[extropy-chat] FWD (Got Caliche?) Liberals and strangers

[Terry W. Colvin]

CYBERIA

< http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/ArticleView.asp?P_Article=12560 >

Liberalism is not 300 years old; it was born 10,000 years ago with the 
invention of agriculture. Liberalism is not about how to live as a western 
capitalist Protestant. Its roots are to be found not in capitalism but 
in agriculture, in that remarkable 10,000-year-old revolution that led 
modern man, independently in many different parts of the world, to give 
up the hunting and gathering life and to found farms, villages and eventually 
cities. That change had a radical consequence: human beings had to learn 
to live and to trade with strangers for the first time. Modern society 
is built on institutions that persuade us to treat strangers as though 
they were honorary friends. The capacity for abstract thought is required 
to see how strangers who do not share your language or religion may nevertheless 
behave in crucial respects just like you. Modern social life depends on 
a large number of arrangements for reinforcing reciprocity with self-interest, 
so that when we meet and transact with strangers we do not always need 
to ask ourselves about their intrinsic trustworthiness.


-- 
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, Frank Rice


Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com >
     Alternate: < fortean1 at msn.com >
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