This may be a matter of taste, and my tastes in this matter are rather
ferociously pluralistic. Are you arguing for the homogenization of culture,
or against it? I oppose the homogenization of culture; in the *long* term I
think it would be a disaster. However, I also recognize that the only
long-term solution to this problem is offplanet diaspora. And in the
post-diaspora future I'm fairly confident that purposes/values will not
only be diverse, but will proliferate and ramify far beyond the scale of
value pluralism that we see around us in the world today.
In fact, that's the long-term goal toward which I work, because such a
cosmos of ramifying and proliferating cultures is precisely the sort of
cosmos in which I'd like to live in the long term.
The preservation of opportunities for the careful and painstaking pursuit
of all sorts of frivolous values is exactly what I like about peace and
liberty. First things come first, but the whole point of securing first
things is to allow time and security to work on secondary things... the
elegant and deliciously frivolous music of Maurice Ravel, for instance. Or
the exploration of Banach spaces. Or toy trains and flower arrangements.
>However, I am speaking of a vision that I have already seen on several
>occasions; at least I got a glimpse of it. There are many questions in
>my mind about how to characterize it, but no question about whether it
>is real, or whether it is worth pursuing.
I think I know of what you speak, but I don't know whether or not there's
much point trying to decide (a) whether or not you and I have had the same
vision and (b) whether the content of this vision is "really" monist or
"really" pluralist.
Eric Watt Forste <arkuat@pobox.com> http://www.c2.org/~arkuat/