[extropy-chat] Politics

Dirk Bruere dirk.bruere at gmail.com
Thu Dec 29 17:53:19 UTC 2005


On 12/29/05, Natasha Vita-More <natasha at natasha.cc> wrote:
>
> At 06:28 PM 12/28/2005, you wrote:
>
>
> On 12/29/05, *nvitamore at austin.rr.com* <nvitamore at austin.rr.com> <
> nvitamore at austin.rr.com > wrote:
>
> From: Harvey Newstrom
>
> > As my original note pointed out, all "solutions" fail some
> >segment of the community.  There seems to be no answer that everyone
> >finds acceptable.  No matter which we chose, some segment of the
> >audience will leave.  I have no idea what the answer is, because
> >different people have different criteria for the list.
>
> My ideal discussion would be to approach an issue/problem from
> multidisciplinary, and domain-diversity, viewpoints.  Rather than beating
> the donkey or elephant silly, it would be more extropic to take an issue
> such as getting vaccines to developing countries or proactively fighting
> for individual (human) rights and work at finding a solution.  For
> example,
> if a topic is "POL-STEE: Vaccines & Dev. Countries," posters would apply
> domain-diversity in their suggested solutions by looking at the issue from
> social, technological, economic and environmental perspectives.
>
> Rather than pushing party politics, posters would push the domain "ideas"
> to solve the problem.  In the end, this would mean that the solution
> finding would be non-partisan and focused on solutions rather than
> personal
> politics.
>
>
> That works for well defined technical problems.
> It does not work if some dispute that there is a problem, or for social
> problems that involve cultural clashes.
> How would you use your technique to resolve the abortion debate in the US?
>
>
> This method has to work for social problems or it is no good.  I think all
> social problems involve cultural clashes, don't they?  And usually these
> clashes can be reduced to religious or political views in which individual
> rights (freedom of choice) are not respected.



That statement is a perfect example of the kind of cultural blindness that
results in the failure of such programs. You are assuming that the issues
revolve around individual rights - which they do - in *your* culture. There
is no 'outside' observer or objective standard by which any social situation
can be resolved.

Try rephrasing what you have just written from (say) the standpoint of a
Confucian perspective where individual rights are subservient to family duty
and social coherence. You might end up with something like... "And usually
these clashes can be reduced to religious or political views in which social
values (the duty to society) are not respected."

Dirk
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