This appears to be an important post for you, Rono, a post simply quoting Kate. Care to explain why it's important to you?

I must say, your fascination with it is strange.

I notice you have deleted it from page one, and placed it here so it will cover my last post, and lo, and behold!, that makes it the lead post on this page instead of mine! Aren't you the clever one, though.


You realize what a metaphor is, don't you Ronald? I've done my best to explain it to you before. It's about a patterns, how patterns can be used to fit other patterns, or to frame ideas.

On a couple of occasions, now, you've indicated you thought this gerbil metaphor we've been playing with fits you. If it does, then I guess it does. It's up to you. No one can make you wear it. You have to put it on all by yourself.

This thread is about how patterns are used to program people and get them to put certain thoughts on certain other kinds of thoughts. That seems to me what Kate is talking about here. Thought patterns and how they are employed.

Gerbil see. Gerbil do. link

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Originally posted by Kerry:
I think we all have a little 'trickster' element in us--and all of us should become aware of how 'tricksterism' works--but I believe the one profession that depends upon 'tricksterism' more than any other is lawyers.

Once several years ago, in a malpractice case against me, I was with the insurance company lawyer discussing the case (which was rather useless to discuss--because the lawyer was working at it for the terms of 'dollars and cents' and I thought I was working from it in the angle of 'what really happens') and I noticed on the wall that this particular lawyer had graduated from Baylor. Sizing him up that he was 'of the faith', I asked him if he wanted to read some verses from the New Testament with me. He readily said, 'Why, of course'--and he got out his Bible. I cited two verses in Luke, chapter 11, verses 46 and 52, which I think represent Jesus' condemnation on how lawyers use 'tricksterism' to their advantage (NIV versions below, respectively):

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Jesus replied, "And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.--verse 46

"Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering."--verse 52

The insurance company settled the case out of court--but, for this little bit, the lawyer did not know what to say--and added, 'That's interesting, I'll have to study it....'

I loved it!..........sort of a 'trickster to the tricksters', but, sometimes, that's all you have.....

Ahhh. I see.

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Well, just look at what law is about. It's essentially about the attempt to take what we recognize intuitively, feel, or otherwise see as the a form of "truth" of how to treat our fellow human beings, and turning it into a code, with then the corresponding problem of interpretation, back and forth. Where better than in that transference of meanings for the trickster to ply his transformative wiles?--ren

Yes, but are we to approach this 'code' as a mandate--or suggestion? As people around here know me saying, if you don't trust the people that directly do the things, then, by exactly the same token, how do you know you can trust the people that oversee the people that actually do the things? It may just be adding another layer of bureaucracy without, in any way, delineating any more assured 'truth' out of any issue.

There's a statement from Clarence Darrow (of the Scopes Monkey Trial fame) about his own perspective of his profession as a lawyer in Ray Ginger's historical novel, Altgeld's America--The Lincoln Ideal Versus Changing Realities. That novel depicts the how the onset of the Industrial Revolution altered the perspective of the role of government in a democratic society from the 'ideal' of laissez faire that the agrarian early America espoused to a more 'interactive role' with the onset of industrial consolidation and resultant class stratifications and struggles. The book is mostly taking place in the city of Chicago where, in the latter half of the 19th century, the city grew from a moderate village of thousands to a major metropolis of millions by 1900.

Clarence Darrow was a prominent lawyer at the time who publicly stood for 'social causes'--but professionally and privately helped entities like cable car companies secure lucrative contracts with Chicago's city council. Many people wondered how he could do both--profess being for the poor while taking money from the rich for their own benefit. Clarence Darrow oftentimes ignored the requests to clarify his stand in this matter--however, to one of the women who had established Hull House in Chicago (a privately supported half-way house for the down and out of the city), Mr. Darrow gave a more complete explanation to her--the content and context of which seems to be lacking in today's 'corporate-government' collusions, I'm afraid. I'll copy the response from the book (starting on page 262):

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Actually in his (Clarence Darrow's) memorial address to Altgeld (governor of Illinois at the time) he referred to his own inconsistency. Every man, he said, is rent by a perpetual struggle between his conscience and his desire for prestige and comfort. "A typical politician puts his conscience entirely aside and considers only the conduct which will serve his selfish end. The devoted fanatical zealot, who sees nothing but his duty to his fellow men, wholly forgets himself and lives only for the principles and convictions that take possession of his life...Probably no great statesman ever lived who was wholly true." But many of Darrow's acquaintances were not satisfied with such a general statement. Most of the queries he ignored. But he did not ignore Ellen Gates Starr, Jane Addam's most intimate associate since the founding of Hull-House, when she asked why he had taken the job of getting favorable amendments to the franchise of a street-car company.

I did it, said Darrow, for the money they paid me. He wrote to Ellen Starr that, judged by "the ordinary commercial and legal standards of ethics," he had been right to represent the street-car company. But "judged by the higher law, in which we both believe, I am practically a thief," he admitted. "I am taking money that I did not earn, which comes to me from men who did not earn it, but who get it because they have a chance to get it. I take it without performing any useful service to the world, and I take a thousand times as much as my services are worth even assuming they are useful and honest."

Years earlier, Darrow explained, he had discussed these matters with a friend named Swift, whose father owned a drug store. When the father died, Swift took all the patent medicines out in the yard and broke the bottles. He renounced his inheritance, left town penniless, lived strictly by his own code. During the 1893 depression, he raised a Coxey's army and marched to Washington. Swift, wrote Darrow, was a man who "has perhaps done some good in his way by refusing to compromise with evil." But was there some other way to do good? Was it essential that a good man should wear a hair shirt?

Darrow chose another way, deliberately. "I came to Chicago," he wrote. "I determined to take my chances with the rest, to get what I could out of the system and use it to destroy the system. I came without friends or money. Society provides no fund out of which such people can live while preaching heresy. It compels us to get our living out of society as it is or die." He explained that, if he were to refuse the business of tarnished clients, he would be prompted not by principle but by fear of public reproach. He cared very much what his friends thought of him, but he would not let it influence his actions. The vital thing, he emphasized, was not to allow professional interests "to influence me as a citizen to the support of measures in which I do not believe...."

In short, he would continue to represent the street-car companies or anybody else, for a fee; at the same time he thought street-car lines should be owned and operated by the city of Chicago. This sort of compromise, he thought, was forced on the honest man at a time when "society was organized injustice." The country, wrote Darrow, was ruled by business, and "business is legal fraud." There were only two classes: "the despoiler adn the despoiled." The only place to get money was from the despoilers; the despoiled had none.

It doesn't seem such candor is so forthcoming in today's rather 'hypocritical environment' (even as, in some ways, Darrow, himself, was a hypocrite--at least he compensated for those actions with some 'honest thought'--which I don't see happening nowadays--especially in 'the professions'....).

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Yes, but are we to approach this 'code' as a mandate--or suggestion?

Are you asking that of someone who thinks for herself? Or someone who wants to conform to the group and is willing to accept the code as mandate? What I'm inclined to ask is "to whom do "we" appeal your question of "are we to"?" I'll work out my answer to that below:

The question I was raising was in the realm of convincing someone who thinks for themselves, always, then by that process questions the code, and wonders whether the code is appropriate for a given circumstance, and whether it appropriately follows a specific meaning and comprehensible course. It's in that process that I see the possibility for persuasion, and those who have the best skill with using the blurred edges of the conceptual categorizes to raise doubts about the specifics of the meanings have an edge in that game of persuasion.

Hypocrisy is not possible without some defined sense of value and truth applied to the definitional meanings of concepts, and then note that definitions are subject to vagaries around the edges, vagaries that often imply a need for clarification by general group agreement on the precision of meaning. Those vagaries in definitional precisions lead to misinterpretations, and then the possibility of a charge of hypocrisy might arise if a certain lack of continuity may be spotted because someone has deviated from the meanings of a series of conceptual notions in some way. Another familiar term used in debates to substitute for the more blunt term: "liar," is to suggest that someone is being "intellectually dishonest" with their use of the defined concepts and their explained position about them in a given argument.

In the end we have the freedom to recognize we are ultimately stuck with thinking for ourselves, whether we want to give our rational efforts over to someone else and trust theirs, or perhaps use their points expediently for other personal motives, even though we may not agree, or however otherwise we may choose about that which we perceive of others and what they have to say; if conscious, it seems to me that we can't help but make that choice, even to choose non-choice for ourselves is choice. In that sense there is no "mandate" but each individual agrees to the codes of a group, even if the alternative to agreeing might lead to incredibly unpleasant repercussions. For me, that brings up the issues of hierarchy and authoritarianism, and the intricacies of social beings and their perceived roles.

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Yes, but are we to approach this 'code' as a mandate--or suggestion?--me

....What I'm inclined to ask is "to whom do "we" appeal your question of "are we to"?"...ren

I think, in the manner that Clarence Darrow is 'setting up the prospects of society and business', this issue has many factors in it that aren't just 'each person deciding as an individual'--and that's where the elements that lend itself to hypocritical actions and social dysjunctions lie.

While what I see as the American founding fathers attempting to do with democratic government was to try to make it more amenable to allowing the parameters of government to endorse 'individual judgment and responsibility' vis-a-vis 'individual rights' (and government's emphasis in 'supporting such rights' against any social contention, otherwise--including government, itself), I see the mechanisms of 'power acquisition' in a society doing just the opposite (even in a 'democratic society') in formulating the 'proper hierarchy and stratifications of society' against any 'individual judgment'.

The problem with that is this concept of 'we action'--and how that is to relate to, or compare with, the more individualistic 'me action'--and how our thoughts of 'proper function of society' (or even 'proper thoughts of such function') are to justify, or even clarify, that. Clarence Darrow saw that the 'we actions' of the Industrial Revolution countered much of the spirit of 'individual rights' as outlined by the American founding fathers--just as it does today. In that manner, the 'higher law' of 'individual rights (being 'free', for instance, to determine what 'love your neighbor as yourself' is to mean, or not, for both the individual and the society that individual finds themself in) is subdued by the mechanisms of social function that stratify (and regulate through such stratifications) that go against the very concept of 'individual rights'. I believe that the philosophical and 'moral' basis for such stratification goes as far back as Augustine's Original Sin thesis (where the 'individual', alone, is 'basically evil')--but it probably has been an 'unspoken basis' for social stratification every since civilizations and organizations began (and is still being used despite any prospects of 'individual rights' to the contrary)....and herein lies the contention that both the hypocrite and the trickster can exploit...


What's an 'honest person' to do with such a set-up? This I believe was what Clarence Darrow was trying to explain (in a rather 'dualistic manner', by the way). Since it is the 'set-up of the we' that has the power of 'social function' (just, by the way, 'because it can'), what is to be made of the 'me' that may disagree with that premise as it is being applied? As Darrow seems to describe, you 'go along with it when you have to' (and Darrow 'went along with it' quite well--raking in over $200,000/year even back then) and, then, you 'speak out against it when you can'....

It appears to me that the discussion has brought up the problem of "we" and "self" to a degree that is worth some serious attention, so we can understand each other and what we are saying.

One of the problems embedded in this discussion is the centuries old problem of deciding what anyone would want to consider to be "truth." We can find a record of the struggle to find a "we" version that can be "de"fined precisely in some way, going back to the Greeks. If I were to put it in any fairly succinct formula, I'd see that the struggle seems to be between finding an authoritarian prescription that resides in "objects" outside the self, and the recognition of the limits of self definition with those forms. This is a long philosophical argument that does not seem to have a happily "defined" conclusion for an all inclusive "we" but goes round and round, like the gerbil running on his irrationally defined circumference of a wheel inside his little defined cage. Oddly this thought came to me yesterday in a discussion on another thread, and I chose to illustrate Kant's answer to the "correspondence of truth" theorists of his day. I would put Kant's answer in the arena of the Twentieth Century phenomenologists, and he was considered one of their philosophical parents to their formulations:

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Truth is said to consist in the agreement of knowledge with the object. According to this mere verbal definition, then, my knowledge, in order to be true, must agree with the object. Now, I can only compare the object with my knowledge by this means, namely, by taking knowledge of it. My knowledge, then, is to be verified by itself, which is far from being sufficient for truth. For as the object is external to me, and the knowledge is in me, I can only judge whether my knowledge of the object agrees with my knowledge of the object. Such a circle in explanation was called by the ancients Diallelos. And the logicians were accused of this fallacy by the sceptics, who remarked that this account of truth was as if a man before a judicial tribunal should make a statement, and appeal in support of it to a witness whom no one knows, but who defends his own credibility by saying that the man who had called him as a witness is an honourable man. (source)

As you might notice, Kant recognizes that truth is verbally "self" referential. One might notice that the entire lexicon of a language is "self referential" in that a dictionary uses itself to define itself. And thus we see that language, and rationality, becomes subject to this problem of self referentiality that we thinkers about it cannot seem resolve satisfactorily without some hopeful appeal to something outside ourselve, with the necessary action of belief, or faith involved.

To me, that's the core of my problem in deciding for myself how I want to approach any given issue. I remain conscious of that even when I'm talking about a "we" sense of things. To answer your honesty query, that's to me being honest with myself. My own sense of conscience I make up, out of the ingredients of my experience, on my willingness, whether conscious or programmed into a subconscious response, to adhere to what I perceive as societal norms. To be aware of that is the most honest beginning point in my awareness. To set things out in the way Clarence Darrow does in your quote a couple of posts up, is the logical machinations of my own self aware, self developed conscience set forth in language and logic. I have to be aware that these are not authoritarian maxims set forth as truth, but my own hypothesis formulated towards an attempt to describe what I may hope to be truth, and may hope to persuade others to agree with. Here's an example from your quote of what I mean by that, as formulated by Darrow:

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Every man, he (Darrow) said, is rent by a perpetual struggle between his conscience and his desire for prestige and comfort. "A typical politician puts his conscience entirely aside and considers only the conduct which will serve his selfish end. The devoted fanatical zealot, who sees nothing but his duty to his fellow men, wholly forgets himself and lives only for the principles and convictions that take possession of his life...Probably no great statesman ever lived who was wholly true."

That's a formula. I can agree with it or not. I consider it a pretty good formula, as formulas go, and I consider the source in saying that, but, naturally, being me, I find flaws. Endless flaws and as usual I'm left with no sense of confident closure that I've just experienced a formula for truth. For instance, when I give it some thought, I realize I don't have any primary sources of information that I can turn to for verification of how any politician thinks, let alone a large enough pool of such to make a statement about "typical politician(s)." That's for me a serious problem that runs through all communication. I think it's such a serious problem that the whole question of what could possibly be meant by "democracy" is in perpetual limbo for me, never to be rescued, especially once the element of interactive communication that I always felt to be a requisite in the term reaches the problem of being somehow meaningfully exchanged at the level of a group that equals 300 million individuals scattered across a land the size of the United States, speaking a variety of dialects from a diversity of settings, despite a concerted effort at the "McDonaldizaion" of society through a variety of efforts, mostly commodifications. Then step back and think about globalization and I think: "let alone the entire planet of some 6.6 billion." What I mean by that is, I consider the most effective form of communication is face to face, where we have so much more of ourselves to observe and share in the communication effort, and that this internet effort, that consists of sharing abstract, self referentially defined concepts through language is a very poor and very distant second to that.

For those who like to make dogmatic, prescriptional formulas that are supposed to be taken as truth, I feel that needs somehow to be brought to attention they are self delusional. I think if more people saw that, eventually the dogmatists would be forced to find alternative forms of expressions. But I notice there is a strong penchant to accept other's dogma in societies of size and the necessary hierarchical complexity that goes with size. And correlated with that goes the whole nightmare of authoritarianism, and all the institutional programming that goes with it. And with that you get the self conscious awareness of what an individual, such as Clarence Darrow, who has a degree in thinking, as Elizabeth Warren put it in my above quote saying:

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Most of the queries he ignored. But he did not ignore Ellen Gates Starr, Jane Addam's most intimate associate since the founding of Hull-House, when she asked why he had taken the job of getting favorable amendments to the franchise of a street-car company.

I did it, said Darrow, for the money they paid me. He wrote to Ellen Starr that, judged by "the ordinary commercial and legal standards of ethics," he had been right to represent the street-car company. But "judged by the higher law, in which we both believe, I am practically a thief," he admitted. "I am taking money that I did not earn, which comes to me from men who did not earn it, but who get it because they have a chance to get it. I take it without performing any useful service to the world, and I take a thousand times as much as my services are worth even assuming they are useful and honest."

Hypocrisy, if you want to call it that, is created by the very nature of a complex society, and the need to negotiate that complexity in order to survive as an individual. Those who "survive" better at the level of extracting a larger share of the pot might be those who are best at being sociopaths, or some such psychobabble, as it becomes a matter of ignoring the continuities of one's own self constructed system of ethics in the face of the facts of where the earnings can come from. The more complex the interactions with the institutional features of society, the greater the call to ignore individual ethical constructs and simply acknowledge the structural features of the situation on finds oneself in. What that seems to amount to in my estimation is an ability to suspend what I'd identify as a "valuing" of the conceptual structural features involved, and just seeing the the logic of those features and working with them as best one hypothetically can to achieve a goal and thus conclusion.

Where does one find the threads of participatory democratic interaction weaving through all of that? I've traveled all over this country many times, and I have moments when I see highways as cow paths, and suburbs as pastures, with the jobs people travel to in buildings that are like cow barns, where their work is extracted like a farmer extracting milk from his cows. Only the people don't even stand together in pastures where they graze, but rather in separate cells where they are fed propaganda through this box with a window into some abstractions called news and entertainment.

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I think, in the manner that Clarence Darrow is 'setting up the prospects of society and business', this issue has many factors in it that aren't just 'each person deciding as an individual'--and that's where the elements that lend itself to hypocritical actions and social dysjunctions lie.

I see that I'm trying to say something similar, in my own way, but that's how I see it -- in my own way, you may not see it in the form I do.

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Clarence Darrow saw that the 'we actions' of the Industrial Revolution countered much of the spirit of 'individual rights' as outlined by the American founding fathers--just as it does today. In that manner, the 'higher law' of 'individual rights (being 'free', for instance, to determine what 'love your neighbor as yourself' is to mean, or not, for both the individual and the society that individual finds themself in) is subdued by the mechanisms of social function that stratify (and regulate through such stratifications) that go against the very concept of 'individual rights'.

One of my deeper threads of thoughts that weave through my thinking involves noticing the significance of the Industrial Revolution upon the problem of individuality and the notion of self governance. This could amount to an extensive discussion. I won't go into all the possible directions that come to mind, but I'd like to point out that I agree with Darrow that the Industrial Revolution changed the nature of the body politic that the Founders of the US devised the Constitution to somehow meet as an agreement in self governance. The result of that was a hodge podge of changes that came about from what I would call a necessity of circumstances. Social Security would be an example of a negotiated result of that problem.

For example, notice that the theories that folks like Marx came up with that became what are called, with some derision, socialism, or communism, are the result of a transformation in society itself, where agrarian small business shop owners and artisans, became pools of labor. The pools of laborers discovered their individual and unique abilities which they might apply with pride to their shop, their craft, or their farm, was now in competition for repetitive jobs of production, and they were in competition for those jobs by their barely differentiated ability to do the same thing anyone else could do at relatively the same pace and minimal skill set. This eventually reached various crisis points and the recognition for group negotiation strategies emerged so that people who no longer had an ability to secure their own livelihood by their own self initiated, directed and actuated efforts found themselves up against vagaries of authoritarian control in the private authoritarian hierarchies we know as businesses, especially now the private collectives we call "corporations."

As I see it, the Founders of the country had no inkling that society would change in this way, and the constitution was poorly designed to accommodate the problem. Jeffersonian Democracy doesn't not seem to acknowledge this problematic set of circumstances. Marxism was also poorly conceived to accommodate the U.S. constitution, and other similar ones. Most of Marxist developed thought does little to acknowledge and set out definitions for individual rights. And thus we have this continuous conundrum.

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One of the problems embedded in this discussion is the centuries old problem of deciding what anyone would want to consider to be "truth." We can find a record of the struggle to find a "we" version that can be "de"fined precisely in some way, going back to the Greeks. If I were to put it in any fairly succinct formula, I'd see that the struggle seems to be between finding an authoritarian prescription that resides in "objects" outside the self, and the recognition of the limits of self definition with those forms.-ren

Actually, with my own readings of history, it appears that the basic concept of 'individual thought coming from an individual' is a rather modern concept--at least with respect to 'defining it as such'. As Augustine's 'Original Sin thesis' implies, the proper perspectives of 'moral action' are 'determined, and implemented, from the top'--not 'realized from the bottom'--of any given 'social hierarchy', as far as I can think of, any where in the world....

In the ancient Middle East, that meant that every 'city-state' had its own god (or gods) that were to, in ways, be the 'social object' upon which to 'define morality'. In that manner, the 'city-state's social conscience' correlated to such a 'god-figure' and, in doing so, it was also defining the 'consciousness' behind it. Anything out of that paradigm would be described in modern terminology as 'sub-consciousness' (or 'outside of the proper perspective of conscience-function')--but, that is a little anachronistic in describing it as such because of the lack of 'placing consciousness within the individual' as the proper perspective of where 'consciousness eminates from'--all do to the lack of seeing 'conscience' coming from each 'subject' (as 'individual') and more from this 'city-state communal depository of conscience as its god'. Only in modern times have thoughts such as individualism and existentialism and even 'individual rights' have such matters been approached as even being a truly individual (as in 'every person') prospect....

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Hypocrisy, if you want to call it that, is created by the very nature of a complex society, and the need to negotiate that complexity in order to survive as an individual.

'Complexity' is a weird concept when it comes to 'social functions'. Because of 'complexity', 'society'--and those in the 'positions of authority' in 'society'--can enact functions that they would never allow in any 'individual fashion'--such as 'preemptive war' and its 'justifications' (any 'preemptive death' by the hands of an 'individual' would at least be 'manslaughter'). Because of 'complexity', just like what this thread started with in describing the 'manipulation of the herd instinct', the most base, and instinctive, characteristic of the 'animal human' has an 'outlet to exploit' in the 'consumer environment'. Because of 'complexity', the primary motive of 'social function' is expediency over communality in 'reaching any goal'. Because of 'complexity', the 'ideal of singularity' (or any 'real sense of wholeness') seems too simple to 'believe as true'....

Somewhat similar to you, but I believe with a different 'emphasis' (or 'ultimate motive and goal'), I hone-in on 'complexity' by comparing it to my own sense of 'integrity of individual motive and action'. In some ways, it's my way of 'dealing with power implementations' by defining all 'implementations' as if it were done 'by me'--and seeing where that 'thesis goes'. In fact, much of my contentions with the very concept of 'complexity' deals with 'power implementations' done in 'its name', if you will.

This reminds me of an analogy that I first heard of from Stephen King's book, The Stand. I am not a Stephen King fan but my first wife was--and she showed me this statement years ago in that book and I still remember the gist of it. It goes something like this:

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If you want to know the nature of man, let me tell you in a nutshell. If you take a man or woman alone, I'll show you a saint. If you put any two of them together, they will fall in love. If you put three together, they will recreate that marvelous thing called 'society'. Put four together and they will build a pyramid (with 'someone on top'). Put five together and they will make one an outcast. Six together and they will reinvent prejudice. Seven together and, in seven years, they will remake war. Man might have been made in the image of God--but human society was made in his opposite number and, with that, man is always trying to find his way back home....

Similar to R.D. Laing's thoughts on what 'society' really 'does for the individual', its 'mechanism of function' alienates as much as it resolves. That little rational dysjunction is 'complexity'....

In that vein, I relate more to Clarence Darrow's concepts of 'society as organized injustice' and 'business as legal fraud'....two 'elements allowed in complexity'....

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As I see it, the Founders of the country had no inkling that society would change in this way, and the constitution was poorly designed to accommodate the problem. Jeffersonian Democracy doesn't not seem to acknowledge this problematic set of circumstances. Marxism was also poorly conceived to accommodate the U.S. constitution, and other similar ones. Most of Marxist developed thought does little to acknowledge and set out definitions for individual rights. And thus we have this continuous conundrum.

That was the point of Ray Ginger's book. It's NOT just the 'consolidating power of government' that 'democratic governments based on individual rights' have to 'guard against', it's any 'consolidating power'--the most significant one of today's world being 'corporate power'....and, if any entity is going to 'check that power', it will have to be another 'organized power'--which, most 'democratically', would be a 'representative government'....

While Marxism has some valid social points related to how the 'business world' can inappropriately skew 'man's efforts', 'socialized motives', enacted through such 'governments so directed', have no way to 'factor out socialized oppression' that every 'consolidating power' in world history has used against its subjects in applying those 'socialized priorities'. As far as I can see it, an 'oppression' that can only be checked by emphasizing 'individual rights' in any 'application' it proposes....every time.....

Keep the faith....

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Actually, with my own readings of history, it appears that the basic concept of 'individual thought coming from an individual' is a rather modern concept--at least with respect to 'defining it as such'. As Augustine's 'Original Sin thesis' implies, the proper perspectives of 'moral action' are 'determined, and implemented, from the top'--not 'realized from the bottom'--of any given 'social hierarchy', as far as I can think of, any where in the world....

I'm afraid you lost me with that argument that the basic concept of "individual thought coming from the individual is a rather modern concept." I'm not sure what you are driving at to say that. I can only imagine you mean it in some formal sense, but I don't see that as pertinent to what I am saying with regards to the objectification and subjectification problems of defining knowledge and truth as can be examined in the philosophical record over the past few thousand years. I suggest you might take a look at the history of skepticism, beginning with the Greeks, the ancient Diallelos (Diallelus), mentioned in Kant's quote above, and even Plato's work -- I'm thinking of the allegory of the shadows on the cave wall, in particular, with the sense of an individual being a prisoner in a cave.

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Plato believed that one can only learn through dialectic reasoning and open-mindedness. Humans had to travel from the visible realm of image-making and objects of sense, to the intelligible, or invisible, realm of reasoning and understanding. "The Allegory of the Cave" symbolizes this trek and how it would look to those still in a lower realm. Plato is saying that humans are all prisoners and that the tangible world is our cave. The things which we perceive as real are actually just shadows on a wall. Just as the escaped prisoner ascends into the light of the sun, we amass knowledge and ascend into the light of true reality: where ideas in our minds can help us understand the form of 'the Good'. Allegory of the cave

The structure of the problem of perception and the definition residing in the object outside self perception is as present, and I would say implicit, in those ancient arguments as it is today, whether formally acknowledged as an epistemology and methodology or simply recognized as implicit in the arguments. If you aren't comfortable with that, I'd suggest we abandon this part of the effort. I'm thinking that perhaps you've developed an esoteric version of individuality that may take more effort than I'm willing to expend to make sense of.

So I'm a little amiss at why you see it necessary to focus on the doctrinal ism-ness of individuality in order to acknowledge its principles at work in the epistemology of individualism and philosophical thought.

At this point I don't know where you are going with the rest of your discussion about city states and their gods and such. That's a metaphorical realm I'm unfamiliar with in regards to what I'm trying to express. I'm very uncertain about how you see the nature of the problem of truth and reason in our own philosophical Western tradition, at least enough to say why you see it to be different than what I've tried to say so far.

My experience with philosophers and their field is they tend to see these different emphases on how to determine and define truth as following different trends and schools of thought in broadly grouped ways that trace back to a Platonic rationalist approach and an Aristotelian empiricist approach -- in very gross and generalistic terms. It's not a pure duality, but it can be organized as one, and often is. Such is our dualistic rational tradition. So we tend to maybe look for, but also see this dualism in an approach to exploring the problems and theories of knowledge. My seeing of it is not through the language of selfness that has evolved, but through the expression of how thought is used in the working out of the ideas over time. The language of selfness does not mean to me that that it need to be expressed formally in an ism, that thinking about how to think about self emerged with that language of one of those "isms" about it, it means a way of expressing its nature and limits can be recognized in the nature of thought as it was expressed. To recognize that actual thinking about self was already there, one needs to look at the way ideas were worked as best we can by how they were recorded, and translated through languages over time.

One might ask questions like, who did the skeptics refer to as an authority for their skepticism? And it's likely to be no one, that I can find, but the individual's capacity to doubt. This capacity to doubt led to such expressions as "I think, therefore I am" by Rene Descarte. The legacy of the skeptics' tradition can be traced through to Descartes, who is credited with stepping off with the first of the thoughts on methodology itself that resulted in the modern tradition of rational thought that led to the "isms" of individuality you referred to:

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René Descartes is credited for developing a global skepticism, as a thought experiment in his attempt to find absolute certainty on which to base as the foundation of his philosophy. David Hume has also been described as a global skeptic. However, Descartes was not himself a skeptic and developed his theory of an absolute certainty to disprove other skeptics who argued that there is no certainty. (source)

A three hundred level survey of existentialism class in college will often begin with Descartes.

Complexity can be described in many ways, but I'm trying to use it in a more generally structural sense. Then you can break it down to the details of how it works itself out. If you want to understand how I'm using the term "complexity," I refer you to Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies. That's the sense I'm using it, and I believe he's fairly clear about what he means by it. I really don't want to quibble much about it at this point. Another suggestive reading of Tainter, regarding this way of seeing complexity can be found in this 1996 essay, which can give at least a taste of what he means by complexity: COMPLEXITY, PROBLEM SOLVING, AND SUSTAINABLE SOCIETIES, by Joseph A. Tainter, 1996

The point I was trying to make with the reference to Marx, is that once the consolidation of power in collectives like corporations got loose in society, and the people found themselves subject to it in ways that their individual rights could not fully be used to guard themselves from a collective powers' potential to abuse, a complementary theory of group power was a very natural need in the vacuum that sort of power created, as we began to see the egregious violations that the hold of livelihood an authoritarian organized collective, like a set of like organized corporations, can have over the populace, and it turns out that a more or less "genius" of the time recognized that, and stepped forward with an attempt to theorize about it. Unfortunately, from my perspective, his focus was such that he left out some basic theoretical effort to formalize individual rights into his framework in the process.

If you can figure out how to get around that problem with individual rights and group rights that's come up in the last 150 years, you may be the next genius they'll be talking about a hundred years from now.

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I'm not sure what you are driving at to say that.--ren

Part of the problem of 'projecting into objects--or even common abstract entities' the thoughts of persons is that very process of 'projecting'. Greek philosophers were big into that prospect--so much so that Aristotle even professed that 'all nature had a purpose, or meaning, that man could perceive' (which is scientifically inaccurate). In that manner, 'truth' was a 'projection' of some sort to perceive--whether using Plato's shadows, Aristotle's 'meaning of nature', or whatever they professed, the tone was 'project'. That places the source of 'truth' out there in some element or concept to 'perceive'--with the act of 'perception' being the primary component of 'interpreting'.

The modern concepts of phenomenology, existentialism, and even the modern principle of just 'granting individual rights to every individual', doesn't place the 'depository of truth' into any external entity, proper, for which 'projectors' can ascribe 'truth'. Instead, it makes the 'one who perceives' (or not, as the case may be) be the 'depository of truth'. In this sense, 'truth' is not an entity or object, it's a method, or process--but it's 'basis of fact' is any 'person'--that's the new 'modern perspective' that 'each person has a consciousness of their own'--not just to 'determine external truth'--but to 'determine how any truth they perceive relates, or not, to them'. It's 'ultimate resolution' must include not just the 'object, or entity, it considers, or not', but, more importantly, 'how it considers it--and with what, or not'--notice that when you add the 'or not' part, it can even acknowledge that such a 'truth' isn't even confirmed by 'external entities'. This doesn't apply the 'conclusion of truth' as being 'out there' to be 'agreed upon by the adept'--but understands that 'the basis of truth', if there is to be a 'truth' for 'each person', isn't 'out there' as much as it is 'in each person considering it, or not'--which, can be any person. In that manner, 'thought' is not just a 'communal agreement'--it's a 'personal endeavor'. Parts will 'agree'--parts 'won't'. But, this is the most critical point as I see it, it's not 'agreement' that 'determines truth' in this respect--it's in each person considering it. The philosophical, and political, ramifications of such a consideration are different.

Our founding fathers had a problem with this 'new thought' that professed that 'individual rights' for the first time in history, to, in any way, represent 'truth', had to include 'every individual'--women and slaves (just like 'ancient democracies') were excluded....at first. But, the 'writing was on the wall' and even the founding fathers, stuck, in ways, by the ancient 'projectors and perceivers of truth' onto 'objects or entities', saw that their political philosophies had yet to 'fulfill its premise of every individual'--but I believe they knew that was where this would eventually go--eventually to determine that 'consciousness' is not a 'social event'--it's a personal one. For each 'person'--that's where 'individual thought coming from every individual' as being both where the 'basis in fact' and the 'basis in truth' starts....and ends.....this is NOT what the ancients professed...but that is the philosophical basis for modern 'individual rights'...the point is 'not what is projected to'--but 'who or what is doing the projecting', if you will....and how that factors into any 'search or conclusion to truth'...while you, ren, seem to imply that's a 'dead end', since it is 'the mind that thinks' and it is 'thinking that promotes existence' and since it is 'such existence that is the basis of any thought', it's not as much a 'dead end' as it is a recognition that this is where all 'existence occurs'....in the 'thoughts of the individual'....how that 'plays out' in both society and its involving politics is based more on the proper role of any regulating entity must acknowledge that any 'resolution of truth' (if that is what 'this life' and 'this world' are to be about) must 'start and end' with the 'interpretor' more so than any 'projection' that can be mutually defined and agreed upon....'individual thought coming from every individual'. You may can 'discern patterns'--but that, in no way, can be a 'whole truth' unless it includes 'the one discerning'--and, that 'right' (and 'responsibility to resolve, or not') is given to 'every individual' (of autonomous age) in a 'modern democracy'--placing 'individual thought in every individual'....

The ancients did no such thing. Their 'democracy' wasn't for everyone. Their 'projections' were only for the adept 'to see'. The onus of 'individual thought' as we know it today wasn't there...that's a modern concept....therefore, the political ramifications of their philosophy is so skewed....

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Plato is saying that humans are all prisoners and that the tangible world is our cave. The things which we perceive as real are actually just shadows on a wall. Just as the escaped prisoner ascends into the light of the sun, we amass knowledge and ascend into the light of true reality: where ideas in our minds can help us understand the form of 'the Good'.

Again, this assumes that this 'escape' is into 'something'--especially 'something else other than the thinker'. This not modern thought--or modern politics. The 'basis of fact' in 'thought' and 'politics' is 'the individual'--and there is no 'basis of fact' for any other 'thought'. Nothing else 'thinks'--and, as Thom Hartmann has so aptly pointed out (in Unequal Protection), nothing else should by 'projection or assumption' be allowed to 'remove such rights of thinking' that are rightfully placed in 'every individual'....'individual rights' so establishes that political perspective....and it's a modern concept....

However, it does seem we are 'losing that perspective' to the 'ancient perspective of projection' into 'something' as being the 'proper role of thought'. But, I don't see that as 'progression'--I see that as 'regression'....the only 'relativity to truth' when it comes to social and political (and philosophical) perspectives is that it is to not only 'be determined by the thinker', but, in some ways, it is 'the thinker'--as 'individual thought in every individual' would be....

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The structure of the problem of perception and the definition residing in the object outside self perception is as present, and I would say implicit, in those ancient arguments as it is today, whether formally acknowledged as an epistemology and methodology or simply recognized as implicit in the arguments. If you aren't comfortable with that, I'd suggest we abandon this part of the effort. I'm thinking that perhaps you've developed an esoteric version of individuality that may take more effort than I'm willing to expend to make sense of.

May be so. I think this is getting stuck more on the implied assumption that this 'object perception' carries with it some form of 'application of purpose'--which further embeds 'truth' into an 'external event, or entity' to be 'interpreted'--when I am more emphasizing that the 'external event' as a 'truth' is secondary to 'the perceiver', himself. In the 'wholeness of truth' I am proposing, in a way, the 'perceiver' becomes another 'aspect of the truth'--and, not just in 'his or her manner of interpreting' as it is in just 'his or her being, proper'. While that onus may indeed be 'esoteric'--it's 'impact on the truth' is no less formidable. In fact, as I've said all along, the 'being as person' is the only 'basis in fact' that we have for a 'thinking entity'. No object that may be 'projected to' can 'think' as the 'one projecting'...there is no 'separate thinking entity' in 'society' other than 'each person as a thinking entity'....and to reach any conclusion otherwise is illusionary and has no 'basis in fact' (unless you can 'point to me this entity that thinks other than each person'--which I know you can't--but, if you disagree with that assessment, I'll listen to your thoughts to the contrary....).

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So I'm a little amiss at why you see it necessary to focus on the doctrinal ism-ness of individuality in order to acknowledge its principles at work in the epistemology of individualism and philosophical thought.

Because, as any consideration to the 'proper depository of truth' (if that is a 'proper role of thought') is going to be in each 'individual'--or it doesn't 'exist' anyway....or, once again, you will have to convince me that 'some other entity thinks' that 'man projects to', and show me how you have 'determined that' in any 'basis in fact'....

As a 'thinking entity', the 'individual' is the 'be all/end all'...and, if man is to 'determine truth, or fate, by his thoughts', that, I believe, is the first thing he should acknowledge...not only does 'no other entity think'--but 'no other man can think for another'...the only thing we can 'gleen from another' are 'suggestions, or impressions, of thought' that we are to 'think for ourselves'....

In this everpresent 'search for truth', I think today's world has exhausted what 'exotericism' can 'show us' (in fact, I think the 'battle of God-believers', exoterically professed, that is now present on the world stage is depicting that very descrepancy in 'truth-seeking' vs. 'truth-applying' with regards to 'groups projecting their beliefs as if true')--we are now in the world where 'truth' is NOT an 'out-there' entity as much as it is 'in-here' perspective where the 'thought of truth starts' (and the 'resolution of truth ends') in the 'individual'...it is 'esoteric' only because its resolution as 'truth' isn't 'projected' like the 'applied world' likes to do...and the manner in which it is 'politically determined' is, also, so altered to an 'awareness' that doesn't require an 'application'--it just 'is'....

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At this point I don't know where you are going with the rest of your discussion about city states and their gods and such.

City-states, and their involved 'gods', is where 'exoteric religion' in 'projected thought' and its involved 'exoteric morality' got started, ren. The 'proper depository of truth' in these set-ups were 'each city-state's deity'--and the 'consciousness' associated with it was so directed. Actually, that is exactly how the ancient Israelite's 'God' got started--as one of the many 'city-state gods' of the ancient Middle East. However, the Israelites made one very significant alteration in that concept--they 'made no graven image' of this 'God'--and they professed that such a 'God' made 'man' in 'His image'. This 'God' was changed from a 'tribal God' to a 'Universal God' by the Jewish diaspora--where the ancient prophets figured out that the 'promises of worldly possession' didn't 'pan out' as this 'God', through the early writings of the Old Testament, 'professed would happen'. At this point in the Bible, the 'tribal God exacting privilege and prosperity to His tribe who followed him' was altered to a 'Universal God' whose 'privileges and prosperity so promised may not be of this world'....and whose 'purpose and meaning' may be 'more than what this world has to offer'....which, as the 'image of God' implies, changed the 'tribal person' to the 'universal person'--now being expressed as the 'individual with individual rights'....

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...an Aristotelian empiricist approach....

This is not exactly in line with what I'm trying to say--but it relates to it. The 'empirical approach' of Aristotle really wasn't that 'empirical'. Aristotle professed that 'all nature has a purpose'--and 'man' can 'determining that purpose'. Even at the time Aristotle made those pronouncements, there were those who saw problems with that. One of his followers asked: 'But what of men's nipples, what is their purpose in nature?'. Aristotle failed to recognize that this 'interpretation of empiricism' wasn't as 'empirical' as he professed--and certainly doesn't pass for the 'scientific empiricism' we use today (which, by the way, doesn't profess any 'defined purpose for all of nature'--it just 'uses the facts' in whatever way 'can be determined'--the same way that I am trying to exert the 'basis of fact' for any 'thinking entity' is 'the individual').

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The point I was trying to make with the reference to Marx, is that once the consolidation of power in collectives like corporations got loose in society, and the people found themselves subject to it in ways that their individual rights could not fully be used to guard themselves from a collective powers' potential to abuse, a complementary theory of group power was a very natural need in the vacuum that sort of power created, as we began to see the egregious violations that the hold of livelihood an authoritarian organized collective, like a set of like organized corporations, can have over the populace, and it turns out that a more or less "genius" of the time recognized that, and stepped forward with an attempt to theorize about it. Unfortunately, from my perspective, his focus was such that he left out some basic theoretical effort to formalize individual rights into his framework in the process.

That's because the political expression of 'socialism', while 'professing a selfless cause', disregards a 'basis in fact'--which is that the 'only thinking entity' is the 'individual'. While 'socialism' aptly accuses the 'collective power' of corporations, business, and capitalism, it fails to recognize that it, itself, is a 'collective power' that, if left unchecked by recognizing 'individual rights', lends itself to exactly the same type of 'collective power oppressions' that all 'collective powers' have exerted everywhere in history--whether that be 'religiously based', 'ideologically based', or in any other way, 'collectively professed'.....that's why I emphasize that any organization exerting power do it only by openly and publicly professing it's 'application of power' with respect to any 'individual rights' it is 'endorsing' or 'rejecting' in doing so...just as I interpret how our founding fathers established 'Constitutional regulations' around 'individual rights'....

Kerry, I appreciate your well worked out ideas about individualism and how you integrate them into your discussion. I've worked out much on individualism myself and I don't have any quibbles with your version. We have similar patterns of understanding there. Though I question anyone's interpretation of seeing so much "vision" in the Founders about the evolution of the individual. They were just as innately exclusionary in their thinking as the Greeks, and they were coming out of a dark period of history at the time that did much to form the thinking of the early stages of liberal thought they inherited.

I think where the crux of our approaches to this differ is in what I feel you've spent most of your post trying to to convince me about, and that's the difference in perception about self, the individual, that may have been in the minds of the Greeks some 2300 years ago and what you perceive as a progression of rational modern thought about individualism today. While I can see the possibilities of your view, I don''t see the necessity of it, and without that sense of "necessity" I don't find it convincing. I do see that there is a linear narrative of history that expresses a similar view, and I was taught that view as well. My own revisionist history "genes" rebel against it, however. Yours seems to coincide with what I understand to be "progressive thought" (whether you consider yourself a progressive or not, I wouldn't know, but the notion of a progression of intellectual development, especially in Western thought seems to be implied by what you say and how you frame it.); I tend to hold progressivism at arms length.

The first point in your argument is where I'd like to point out what appears to me to be our differences in how we work our minds on this topic. Here is how I'd put my response: I can't find myself able to agree with your analysis of projection as an effort to perceive into an external entity with all the Greek philosophers, and certainly not with the way you applied it to Plato's works, especially the very phenomonological implications I find in his theory of forms (innate ideas) in the self, which I can see included in his Cave allegory. I feel like I can see why we aren't communicating on this, but I don't see any way to get past the problems I'm sensing at the moment. It seems to have a lot to do with how each of us has formed our minds, and the narratives we create from that.

I think that first quote you picked from Plato's cave from my fuller quote gives me a place to work out an explanation of what I see as how you are seeing this and why I'm not persuaded.

Actually, what you said about Aristotle represents what I see as one of two major trends of philosophical thought that's worked its way through a number of philosophies to the present. And it's that distinction, which is not mine alone, that my discussion was developed around. I'm going to suggest, once again, why I see a different trend that began with Plato, because without that, I'm not sure where we can go on this from here. Now the point of difference here is, I don't see any reason to put Plato in the same camp with Aristotle, as you have with your notion of "projection into objects." I do agree that Aristotle struggled with that projection sense you've described, and he developed philosophical ideas that others felt compelling in that line of thought to have given him credit for being the genesis of a whole tree of philosophies in Western thought, but I see much in Plato's works that does not imply the necessity for assuming that same sense of projection into objects that you've lumped him into.

Even your word "projection" implies to me a potential for self awareness of an internal image that must be projected outward on the world. The shadows on the cave wall are internal projections. The explanation of that selected quote you explained in your own way comes out quite differerently for me, perhaps as a result of how I tend to interpret the metophorical allegory of the Cave, especially once I remove your sense that it is about "escape."

From the quote:

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The things which we perceive as real are actually just shadows on a wall.

the wall to me in that allegory is symbolic of internal awareness. I suggest from Plato's own writing he could have had that very same awareness. I think it's very possible that a schism between the natural world is even greater today than it's ever been in human history, and perhaps it's difficult for a 21st Century Westerner to grasp that at one time, some 2000 plus years ago, there may have been less of a sense of a schism between the self and the natural world, and thus it could have been said:

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the tangible world is our cave

because they felt the tangible world so intimately.

And I don't feel a need to interpret this as you have as implying something projected outward either:

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Just as the escaped prisoner ascends into the light of the sun, we amass knowledge and ascend into the light of true reality: where ideas in our minds can help us understand the form of 'the Good'.

To me, the statement is symbolic, but not about gettiing out of the cave as if getting out of the mind, but recognizing that the forms in the mind (Plato's theory of innate ideas, where all knowledge existed) need to be examined and understood within the mind itself, thus such statements as this famous one from Socrates:

the unexamined life is not worth living

There are thus many possible implications of internal awareness. With regards to Plato's own awareness about this issue, I wondered why you ignored this part of the explanation with the quote you selected from my larger quote:

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Humans had to travel from the visible realm of image-making and objects of sense, to the intelligible, or invisible, realm of reasoning and understanding.

Because that opens up a different set of possibilities for me, once I see that he is going from the internal world of images and sense (the shadows) to another realm of the internal world, that of abstract reasoning, where the shadows are illustrated and colored with internal reasoning.

And you've overlooked the implications of the skeptics from that time as well. As far as the skeptics are concerned, "phenomenology" would be a modern word to attempt to describe what they were doing, but I see no reason to assume that they couldn't do what is described by phenomenology just as easily without the word. To assume they couldn't is a categorical Worfian language hypothesis -- or a form of linguistic determinism -- which has no major force of persuasion about the nature of language to convince many of us that it's a necessary case, though many are persuaded by it, I'm well aware. I just leave it as an open possibility.

It seems to me that without going back to Socrates and Plato, knowing what we know, learning their language as they spoke it, it would be difficult to know how they actually perceived what they tried to explain in their language and which has come down to us through translations. Given what I've come to understand about precontact consciousness, the Greeks could have been much more self aware than what you seem to imply has come about progressively through an evolution of philosophical thought into what we like to call modern consciousness -- the mere fact of intellectually developing a theory of self as we know it through those philosophies you noted. I should think that what we've been doing is trying to close the schizophrenic gap between humans and nature that's occurred though centuries of "civilized" thought, which may have been a process that began over 2000 years ago with dualistic philosophical thought. But I admit, that's how I've come to see it. I see nothing in what you've said to convince me I have to see it some other way.

Back to the Plato quote: You commented here about that whole selection of the larger quote you picked from:

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Again, this assumes that this 'escape' is into 'something'--especially 'something else other than the thinker'.

For my part, I can see