From: L' Ermit (lhermit@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Feb 06 2002 - 20:30:56 MST
[Hermit] I liked it (Dawkins quote -RR) the first time - and did not need
convincing of its merits or applicability.
[Richard Ridge] Sorry if it irritated you
[Hermit] It didn't irritate me. I liked it the first time and the second
time. And agreed that it was appropriate. So you have nothing to apologize
for.
[Richard Ridge] but I did have a very specific reason for quoting it. The
major reason was that much of this discussion had begun to bear a distinct
resemblance to discussions I've had elsewhere, which run like this; Human
beings have a natural tendency to be belligerent when confronted with
difference and in contexts of that kind the nature of the difference is to
all intents and purposes irrelevant, serving only as a marker in any
situation. If the marker were not religion, something else would be
manufactured on demand. Doubtless, this argument is not entirely without
merit (though its fatalism and casuistry are decidedly galling) and could be
applied with some justice under the circumstances you describe, but seems
significantly less persuasive when applied under more complex conditions
(i.e. when people are free to self identify as individuals, or in other
words when memetic issues are allowed to come into play alongside issues of
genetics and natural selection. What you could call proceeding up the
Maslow/Hertzberg hierarchy for all that's worth). As such, I wouldn't
necessarily argue with your analysis of the situation but was somewhat
nervous that you had not at that point explained why that argument could not
have been applied in any other context.
[Hermit 2] I'm with you. It's a criticism I make myself. Let me try to make
my position quite clear by means of an illustration. Blaming the horrors of
the Spanish/Portuguese conquests of South America on Christianity vs.
Paganism would be invalid - but observing that the RCC and memplexii
involved greatly exacerbated the situation would not be wrong. Blaming the
eradication of the Albigensians, Cathars, et al on anything other than a
collision of religious memeplexii would be invalid, but accuracy requires
recognizing that the hope of a rich haul of loot didn't help the situation.
While most situations are a continuum and redacting them to the black and
white results in silly conclusions, ignoring [i]causus belli[/i] makes it
impossible to perform effective analysis or to attempt to learn from our
communication and interaction failures (which is how I view most wars). In
this instance (and indeed in most of Africa and the Middle East outside of
the Palestine), my argument is that the principle driver for war is
ethno-cultural differences and religious (and political) memeplexii, while
contributing to the general nastiness and tending to widen and exacerbate
the conflict beyond the immediate combatants, is ancillary to these
principle motivators. This is due to the highly significant effect that
tribal social organization has on any members of such a culture. To an
extent the same effect is seen in family centric tightly organized societies
(e.g. Italian, Georgian), although this tends to draw fewer people into
inter-group quarrels. I am sorry I did not make this perspective
sufficiently clear before.
[Hermit 2] Finally you raise what I see as an important point. Both
"fatalism and casuistry" are powerful effectors to apathy. If we don't
believe we can do something about a situation, then we won't. I refuse to
accept that as a valid argument to inaction, and would argue that these
behaviors are contributory to perspectives that the CoV perceives as
"sinful." In almost every situation, careful analysis and scrupulously
reasonable behavior can improve the situation. IMO, the reason that
intervention frequently (often? usually?) fails is that analysis, when it
happens at all is seldom careful, and behavior is even more seldom entirely
reasonable.
Regards
Hermit
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