<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">anders - Bruno got there first in a way. </span><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">Yes, he did. I've read about old Giordano. So sad.</span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">Great good comes out of great evil. The Roman church was so evil that it finally shook up the Western world so badly that it failed (and is still failing, though pretty powerful at that). The Reformation is still going on, and needs to be. The Renaissance it spurred could not have happened unless that church had been so corrupt. (will take opinions from those who know more history than I do - that is, probably most of you - my taste in history runs to Jacques Barzun).</span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">But that there is some validity to all points of view is silly. Listen to them, yes. I would listen to Flat-earthers just to study their minds, not their views. But again, many too liberal Eastern profs seem to take it seriously that all cultures are equal in importance, which is sheer hogwash - sheep dip. </span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">Re Principle of Mediocrity - Is there anyone anywhere who would argue that today is not the best of times? Look at knowledge and our ability to communicate it to others in terms of raising food, health care and many many others. We are the best and it has been Western civilization that has gotten us to this point.</span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">I argue that we are unique in history and while we have raised mammoth problems along with our solutions, nobody would go back even one year to where something is better. Not when the ability to cure something seems to happen every day.</span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">And maybe all of this would not have happened, or happened much more slowly had not the Roman church been so bad. As Bruno, among others, showed us.</span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">bill w</span></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 12:24 PM, Anders <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:anders@aleph.se" target="_blank">anders@aleph.se</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"><span class="">
On 2016-07-15 17:38, William Flynn Wallace wrote:<br>
</span><blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr"><span class="">
<div class="gmail_default"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">David
Brin suggested that the unique aspect of Western culture was
not just fascination by other cultures (that can be found
elsewhere) but a deeply ingrained idea that other cultures
might have figured out things we haven't, might have better
solutions we ought to pick up on, or that we need to
reinvent ourselves to avoid being bad. anders</span><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px"><br>
</span></div>
</span><div class="gmail_default"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">Speaking
only for the USA, yes, we are fascinated by other cultures
and often, very often, we assume that they are better than
we are at certain things. ...</span></div><span class="">
<div class="gmail_default"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px"><br>
</span></div>
<div class="gmail_default"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">I
don't know that Anders is correct re science and technology,
or form of government. I think we think that we have the
best there. I also very much doubt that most of us feel
inferior in the moral department (being bad). </span></div>
</span></div>
</blockquote>
<br>
You think too small. Think western culture, where US culture is one
of the offshoots. <br>
<br>
Most cultures have been a bit curious about exotic things - upper
class Romans threw around Greek quotes to show their erudition, and
paid fortunes for silk and other products from near-mythical Sinica.
But they would never have entertained the thought that those
cultures had anything to teach them in statemanship: Romans were the
best, manifesto. Same thing over in China: lots of myths about the
exotic Occident, but there is nothing truly important to learn from
it. Sure, some cool art and tech, but living like *them*?!
Outrageous! The Romans would completely have agreed. So would nearly
all societies across time and space. <br>
<br>
Brin's excellent essay can be read here:<br>
<a href="http://www.davidbrin.com/dogmaofotherness.html" target="_blank">http://www.davidbrin.com/dogmaofotherness.html</a><br>
His claim is that there is a set of interlocking beliefs and
behaviors in our culture. One is that there must be no dogmas.
Another that no expert can know all the answers. The Dogma of
Otherness insists that all voices deserve a hearing, that all points
of view have something of value to offer.<br>
<br>
He claims it might be a liberal Western, even American doctrine. I
think it goes deeper; Brin suggests that maybe the Copernican
principle of mediocrity might have been the start, but Bruno got
there first in a way. He argues that the otherness doctrine came as
a reaction to the religious, mechanistic and romantic worldviews,
which I think is half right - it became so powerful thanks to their
failures. Yet it builds on a base of skepticism and universalism
going back to the Greeks (humans are social animals with a common
nature) and Christianity (and they have the same kind of souls - all
the rest is contingent), the renaissance/enlightenment/liberal
discovery that people in different cultures actually thought
differently and that different life projects could be valid (and
should be protected). <br>
<br>
Note that this is not a claim that every western person believes
certain things. Rather, it is a claim that there are certain ideas
that are as pervasive in our world as machismo or reverence for the
family in other cultures. We don't notice it because we are embedded
in it (although it is notable that western culture invented
professional anthropology to study other cultures, and then began to
turn the critical anthropological eye on itself). <br>
<br>
Note the link to our kind of cosmopolitanism: an interest in
exploring and interacting with the Other (not just other cultures
these days, but nature and maybe also different mental states), the
willingness to see if the Other has something of value or can show
that we are wrong about something. This in turn requires tolerance
and open societies: without them it is not possible to actually meet
the Other or update ones own society in the light of the new
information. <br><span class="">
<br>
<pre cols="72">--
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University</pre>
</span></div>
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