From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Tue Sep 17 2002 - 01:30:05 MDT
At 11:15 PM 9/16/02 -0700, Lee wrote, as he has been for a while now:
>Don't you
>get tired of writing the same old thing over and
>over, and reading the same retorts over and over?
Um...
>Don't you yearn to know *why* the others keep on
>persistently thinking differently from you?
One of the same old things *I've* written over and over is that the
problematic of ideology, mental modeling, `world-building', subject
positions and like has been *exhaustively* analyzed during the last 30
years and more, and no short and pithy posts to this list will add much to
that discussion, especially when its history seems to be ignored. But look,
how about this dinky little toy:
I have in my hand a tetrahedron, four equal sides. Sit it down and you can
only see a maximum of three of the sides, often only two. Paint the sides
bright colors.
There's a blue side, which represents the people whose social model most
powerfully emphasizes the priority of individual consciousness, conscience,
will, self-reliance.
Next to that is a red side, where people especially emphasize the communal
aspects of human life, arguing that self is above all a mutable construct
of language, reflection of others, family and social traditions, mutual
support.
Adjoining them are two other triangular faces representing... what?
Brown, for the subtle, usually hidden priority of genetic constraints and
imperatives?
Grey, for the surging memetic pressures that perhaps supervene from above
upon the other factors?
In any event, it seems obvious to me that all these levels of analysis are
legitimate, none of the drives and roadblocks are without their effect. But
maybe the toy is misleading. Perhaps the four schemata frames are more
usefully represented by an ascending hierarchy, in which the higher you go
the more moral authority the level owns over impulses from below... or the
less validity its representations hold as they abstract away from the
gritty realities they are chunking for convenience... or... Or maybe there
are only two sides to a strip of paper, Moebius-twisted, or a dodecehedron
with re-entrant Strange Loops, or...
Damien Broderick
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