[Paleopsych] the prison of left vs. right

[Steve Hovland]

I think the most persistent polarization is that between
the few and the many, the aristocrats and the commoners,
the elite and the rest of us.  Often the left-right mirrors
the upper-lower, but at the moment in the US the major
parties are both elite parties.  

This would also be true in India, where the upper castes
are descended from people who conquered India and
placed the natives into the lower castes.

Steve Hovland
www.stevehovland.net


-----Original Message-----
From:	HowlBloom at aol.com [SMTP:HowlBloom at aol.com]
Sent:	Sunday, October 10, 2004 11:05 PM
To:	paleopsych at paleopsych.org
Subject:	[Paleopsych] the prison of left vs. right

This cropped up in an email conversation with a friend from India tonight.  
It relates to things Michael Lockhart (anonymous_animus) and I have been 
discussing.

Abhinav Goyal: To be frank, I am a little confused about which side of the 
spectrum - right or left - do I really belong to?  

hb: it's disturbing that in India you feel compelled to fit into the two 
available stereotypes of political thought in the West.  

A choice between only two political approaches in a world of great complexity 
indicates that our political concepts are primitive and stifling.  

What's worse, it indicates that our politics are a  badge of identity, a 
decision about which of  two social groups we want to join.  The notion that they 
are useful or penetrating ideas is merely a blind, a disguise for a social 
choice.  

I suspect that the more you maintain a position above, below, and outside the 
acceptable spectrum of left and right, the more likely you are to produce 
thoughts of value to your fellow human beings.  Howard

----------
Howard Bloom
Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of 
History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 
21st Century
Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core 
Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute
www.howardbloom.net
www.bigbangtango.net
Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic 
of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The 
Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American 
Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy 
of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International 
Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive 
editor -- New Paradigm book series.
For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: 
www.paleopsych.org
for two chapters from 
The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, 
see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer
For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang 
to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net
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