From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Wed Oct 23 2002 - 00:12:19 MDT
Dehede011@aol.com wrote:
> Charles,
> As an intelligent and educated person you have probably heard of
> the saying that if you hear the thunder of pounding hooves and it is
> North America then you should expect horses not zebra.
> Now if we are talking about the deaths of American Indians and we
> say "you" killed them most folks know we are talking about people of
> European descent not the Asians nor the Africans. As we are not trying
> to demand reparations nor asking any one person to feel guilt a general
> term is all that is demanded.
There is no problem with levels of abstraction if the levels are
reasonable well-defined and grounded. Perfect definition and
grounding is not practical in many cases though and
over-insistence on such leaves too many important areas
undiscussable. There is a balance.
> But I had a tactical reason for suggesting that we stay at lower
> levels of abstraction. The socialists have been past masters at
> sounding wonderful when taken at the highly abstract level -- it is the
> concrete level where they get into trouble. On the other hand I believe
> that capitalism has proven just the opposite.
Many things are barely understandable at all, or at least not
very effectively understood if restricted to the concrete and
perhap one level up.
> At the abstract level they are humanitarians that love all mankind
> and wish to create a "Heaven on Earth."
Count me among them! I plan to do it in real time.
> At the concrete level they all
> too often have difficulty conducting a two car funeral and ruin the
> lives of the people that are trapped in the societies they run. In fact
> they have a tendency to let a thug to get in charge and to stuff the
> Gulags with prisoners to the point they have to conduct executions just
> to clear out space for the newcomers.
That is worth about as much as most over-generalizations.
> I am well aware there are possibly hundreds of rabbit paths in
> this briar patch of a discussion we are having but my chief concern is
> any contention that socialism is a respectable political theory. Two
> hundred years of history has shown over and over that socialism is not
> respectable.
> Ron h.
Personally I have a problem with still arguing capitalism vs.
socialism as if those were particular valid categories or all
that exclusive or that the two exhaust the possibilities.
More will happen in terms of human capabilities and degrees of
freedom in the next 10-20 years than in the last 200 years.
Don't you think it might be a little limiting to reason as if
the last 200 years are a valid guide to a radically different
time and set of capabilities and possibilities? Rehashing the
same old debates strikes me as less than useful.
- samantha
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