The virtue of diversity; the virtue of the oppressed.
So, as you may have noticed, I'm interested in identity, and thus in identity politics, and identity ethics, and I'm groping my way towards something that feels like a paradox, or a contradiction, or a limitation in this whole way of looking at things.Allow me to ramble...
I'll start here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/28/india-body-john-allen-chau-missionary-killed-by-sentinelese-tribe
"We" (googlers?) identify 'the Sentinelese' as an isolated minority who we know very little about. They might be complete arseholes and nazis, or they might be supremely happy and enlightened. All we know is they don't like us on their island. And the consensus seems to be that we ought not forcibly save them from their ignorant savagery, but on the contrary protect them from exploitation by rogue members of our own tribe.
We used not to be so sensitive about genocide and cultural destruction, but such cultures have become rare, and perhaps we have become a touch less certain of the superiority of our own culture.
So 'we' are the liberal, socialist, euro-centric middle-class, self-satisfied degenerate elite. If you're not of that ilk, you probably won't appreciate the difficulty I'm trying to get to, and will be inclined to say helpful things like,"well duh, stop being so wrong!" - in which case please just butt out and let us namby-pambies agonise in peace a minute.
So we are supporters of oppressed minorities, of black folks, the disabled, women, etc etc. And thus supporters of the Sentinelese, in so far as we interpret their murderous treatment of immigrants as a legitimate demand for privacy.
And there is the beginning of the problem. Because we do not, elsewhere, at the Israeli-Palestinian border, or the US -Mexican border, or the European-African border, take the same respectful understanding view of those cultures that want to maintain their own privacy/purity/security/cultural integrity.
We can fix this problem ad hoc, with an appropriate distinction between refugees and colonials,
even if there are hard cases, but the problem is wider.
Here, unquestionably, is an immigrant having problems with natives and native government.
And here is the oppressed indigenous native, trying to protect his culture from the oppressive colonials.
Identify a culture as local native indigenous, and give it special status in that location. In Rome, do as the Romans do, and if the Romans come here, it's their business to fit in with us.
But unless you are Sentinelese, your culture likes to be in contact with other cultures, and that implies both going to Rome, and welcoming Romans to your place. If Your place is still your place.
Wales, the oldest colony, Welsh the oppressed, versus Wales the coloniser and oppressor. "We" - we politically correct namely-pambies that is, are against oppression, and for equal rights. But the nice distinctions refuse to lay flat; cultures, and therefore individuals, can fall on both sides. We want to identify as oppressed, (and thereby) not as oppressor. But that "thereby" does not run, and there is no virtue in being oppressed.
I'll start here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/28/india-body-john-allen-chau-missionary-killed-by-sentinelese-tribe
"We" (googlers?) identify 'the Sentinelese' as an isolated minority who we know very little about. They might be complete arseholes and nazis, or they might be supremely happy and enlightened. All we know is they don't like us on their island. And the consensus seems to be that we ought not forcibly save them from their ignorant savagery, but on the contrary protect them from exploitation by rogue members of our own tribe.
We used not to be so sensitive about genocide and cultural destruction, but such cultures have become rare, and perhaps we have become a touch less certain of the superiority of our own culture.
So 'we' are the liberal, socialist, euro-centric middle-class, self-satisfied degenerate elite. If you're not of that ilk, you probably won't appreciate the difficulty I'm trying to get to, and will be inclined to say helpful things like,"well duh, stop being so wrong!" - in which case please just butt out and let us namby-pambies agonise in peace a minute.
So we are supporters of oppressed minorities, of black folks, the disabled, women, etc etc. And thus supporters of the Sentinelese, in so far as we interpret their murderous treatment of immigrants as a legitimate demand for privacy.
And there is the beginning of the problem. Because we do not, elsewhere, at the Israeli-Palestinian border, or the US -Mexican border, or the European-African border, take the same respectful understanding view of those cultures that want to maintain their own privacy/purity/security/cultural integrity.
We can fix this problem ad hoc, with an appropriate distinction between refugees and colonials,
even if there are hard cases, but the problem is wider.
Here, unquestionably, is an immigrant having problems with natives and native government.
And here is the oppressed indigenous native, trying to protect his culture from the oppressive colonials.
Identify a culture as local native indigenous, and give it special status in that location. In Rome, do as the Romans do, and if the Romans come here, it's their business to fit in with us.
But unless you are Sentinelese, your culture likes to be in contact with other cultures, and that implies both going to Rome, and welcoming Romans to your place. If Your place is still your place.
Wales, the oldest colony, Welsh the oppressed, versus Wales the coloniser and oppressor. "We" - we politically correct namely-pambies that is, are against oppression, and for equal rights. But the nice distinctions refuse to lay flat; cultures, and therefore individuals, can fall on both sides. We want to identify as oppressed, (and thereby) not as oppressor. But that "thereby" does not run, and there is no virtue in being oppressed.
Comments (116)
There are Norwegians here who were born and raised in Brooklyn, NY who were accorded pretty much instant native status. Race is a factor, of course, but so is accent, personal style, public presentation, patterns of affiliation, history, life goals, and so forth. There are various people belonging to minorities who have qualified as "native Minnesotan". A white cracker from Alabama would have about as much difficulty being accepted as a native Minnesotan as a Chicago slum black would.
It strikes me as normal and appropriate that people maintain cultural boundaries. Even as a native born WASP son of Minnesota there are other WASP groups in this state to whom I would never be considered acceptable. Guys that are gay, not sufficiently bourgeois, didn't attend the right high school and college, not in the right business, lack critical social graces, don't know the right people, etc. just don't get accepted, and quite possibly neither do their children and grandchildren, WASP though they may be.
I just don't accept the idea that diversity of population (race, ethnicity, language, gender, sexual orientation, accent, location on the poverty - wealth continuum, and so on is inherently necessary or advantageous.
IF we value cultural uniqueness, then we have to accept that some groups will be more or less closed to outsiders.
Example: I took a white leftist friend to a Christmas concert at St. Olaf College. It's a big deal, nationally broadcast, etc. The several hundred students in the choirs and orchestra are all pretty much descendants of northwestern Europeans, with very few exception. He objected that there weren't enough minorities in the choir. Naturally there are few -- the success of the college is based on serving a specific constituency -- just like historically black colleges are.
Unique cultural institutions require exclusivity, else they won't be unique.
Does colonization really have something to do with that?
BTW, only 16% of Americans think there are too many immigrants in the US. It's largely a manufactured problem.
Your 'usually' may be correct. I don't know the statistics of the case. But there are some interesting examples in the opposite direction - the Jews and the French.
I am pretty sure there are many more people in the world now that follow Jewish cultural practices than lived in the ancient kingdom of Judah before the diaspora with the Roman destruction of the temple, followed by marauding barbarians, crusades and so on. Cultural Jews seem to be very protective of their cultural identity, and it is flourishing. They have even revived a dead language (or close to dead) - Hebrew - and turned it into a fully alive one.
The French are very protective of their language and, IIRC, even have a government department devoted to its defence against Anglicisation. From what I can see, this is very effective, with far fewer anglicised words in French French than in other European languages. An interesting comparison arises from comparing French French to Canadian French, with the latter using a great number of English/American words that French French do not use.
1. it is immoral to impose one's culture on another against their consent, unless it is known that their culture causes significant harm to those living there (and the lack of consent seems to be implied by the word 'impose')
2. those of us that live in affluent societies have some degree of moral obligation to help those who are suffering in non-affluent societies, including refugees and asylum seekers.
People will argue greatly about the extent of the obligation in 2 but it would be a rare person indeed that says we have no obligation to help any refugee or asylum seeker ever (eg I didn't see anybody saying nobody should help the Saudi girl whose passport was stolen by a Saudi diplomat while she was in transit at Bangkok airport).
We note that 1 is an obligation on those that are seeking to enter the land of another tribe, while 2 is an obligation on those whose tribe-land some outsiders are seeking to enter. So the two cannot conflict. An analogy is to say that it is moral to share but it is immoral to force another to share by stealing from them. Most people would agree with that to some extent.
Another difference is that the obligation in 2 is only on the affluent. We would not say that a country whose people are struggling to survive, like South Sudan, has an obligation to accept refugees from Syria, but many would say that OECD countries do. So again this appears to dispel any conflict, as the affluent are rarely in the position of having a culture imposed on them.
That reminded me of the TV series The Indian Doctor, which I greatly enjoyed. I expect you've seen it. I thought it portrayed the issues involved in a thoughtful and sensitive way. It was also interesting to see Sanjeev Bhaskar play a non-comedic role (I'd only seen him in The Kumars before that).
My feeling about that article is that it is reasonable for the Welsh government to privilege people who have made the effort to learn Welsh. But they need to apply that distinction even-handedly. As long as a white Welsh person whose distant ancestors lived in Wales suffers the same discrimination for not speaking the language as a first generation Welsh person whose distant ancestors lived in India, that seems fair to me. From what the writer says, it sounds like that is not happening, and language skills are just being used as a cloak for racism. Unfortunately, that is the natural human condition, but we namby-pambies can nevertheless feel unconflicted in condemning it wherever we see it.
Right, I think this expresses the beginning of my argument very nicely. But there is a follow-up challenge. What is the difference between a sheep, and a wolf in sheep's clothing? An answer has to avoid essentialism, and your 'just' is doing all the work for you. It's not just a cloak for racism, it's that and also a legitimate nativism.
There's the Paradox: nativism gives a premise to racism (and xenophobia), yet is also the cornerstone of any ethnical or cultural identity. Just like patriotism and nationalism or jingoism are related. It's just what the viewpoint you select to look it, which typically is a bit illogical in our present society. As the joke in the university went, ethnologists study and are fascinated of all human cultures except their own, which they loath. Or that in the US promoting your ethnic/racial identity and heritage is fine... except when being a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
The illogical attitudes basically comes from hypocrisy, that we want to be far more good and benevolent than we are and get tangled up in our so righteous reasoning.
The "sentinels" are the perfect example of this hypocrisy. As the island is so small and meaningless, the Indian authorities have made it an example of how a benevolent actor the country is. Would the Island be more important, then ages ago somebody claiming authority would have "put down the law" to the place. Now we can ponder about the rights of the "Sentinels", but if they would have been in contact with outside culture and would clothe themselves in Nike T-shirts and shorts and speak broken English, we wouldn't care a rats ass about them. Likely that idiot American who got killed wouldn't have gone there in the first place.
That's how actually the "noble savage" thinking goes.
I agree, the problem is far wider. It is not just a matter of cultural identity, because there is also the matter of land ownership thrown into the mix. You mix these two together, as they always are, and you cannot separate them. Are the actions of the Sentinelese meant to defend their own principles, allowing them to sustain their own value system, and cultural identity, or are they meant to defend their rights of ownership to the piece of property which they live on. The two cannot be separated. Colonialism demonstrates that you cannot take a society's property, and tell them that they can continue to live there and maintain their culture. You end up with clashing legal systems. One must submit to the other.
There are wide ranging human attitudes with respect to migration. Some people have a home, getting very attached to the place where they live, thinking I'll defend my right to this patch of ground until the day I die. If you're comfortable, and it's others who are actually defending you rights, then why not? What is a "demand for privacy" other than the claim of rights to a place? But many are quick to wander, not having that patch of ground, or that right, perhaps seeking it, perhaps not even considering the possibility, just roaming. With billions of people in the world and changing weather patterns, the dynamics are complex. I don't think there's any ad hoc solution.
Well yes. In fact I can further generalise it: identity is always divisive. The cohesion that makes a group is sucked from the other that it excludes.
Quoting ssu
Well I don't know about you, but I also want to be less illogical and hypocritical, so I need a moral reasoning that does not get tangled. My problem is that the reasoning is already tangled, and that gives hypocrisy a place to stand, where arguments can go in all directions.
That's a very interesting aspect, but I'd like to shine a light from a different angle. Suppose one says,"I belong to the tribe, and the tribe belongs to the land." This is a very different inverse form of identification from one who identifies as a 'land owner'. The sovereignty of the individual over his tribe and environment is a very modern fantasy, although in a sense identity has always ranged from complete subsumption into Nature, the drop in the ocean, to the Almighty alienated Solipsist God.
Are we protecting merely individual rights? In this case "classical" moral philosophy ought to be the tool to arbitrate disputes.
Are we protecting some collection or cultural expression? But that would be merely museum pieces, that could be preserved, but not something that is in need of protection from oppression. In that sense, the only value of diversify would be the knowledge embodied by different cultures, but that doesn't require the culture to still be practised.
Or is culture supposed to be a living entity apart from the individuals that make up the culture? If so, it seems to me there ought to be some attribute of a culture that entities it so a special consideration beyond just the consideration of it's individual members. I have no idea what that might be though. I am sceptical towards the concept that cultures have some sort of inherent value because the consequences seem to clash with individual morality.
If identity politics is just collective bargaining by individuals, we ought to be able to resolve conflicts by referring to the morals governing the interaction of individuals. That isn't easy, but it's not a new problem.
Maybe this is ground zero. Morality is a tool of identity. Forgiveness kills identity.
Zionism was a reaction to perceived assimilation. Perhaps it's not necessarily the death of identity that drives a protective response, but just change. But the Jewish identity is an example of one that's based on a long-standing grudge, referring back to my previous point: morality and identity are aspects of the same thing.
Quoting frank
Well, that certainly didn't take long.
Surely this broad-brush stroke of stereotyping should not be allowed to stand without objection. I object.
[quote=op]identity
politics[/quote]
It didn't have far to go.
I thought I was just being historically accurate. Memorializing mythical moments of oppression is central to Judaism. What do you think of the point I was trying to make though: identity and morality are inextricable?
IOW, if we try to take a naturalistic view of identity, we just have: Monkey-tribe-A tries protects its territory from Monkey-tribe-B. When we ditch morality from the view, all the base notes of identity fall away as well.
I think @ssu is on the right track. A lot of this has to do with power.
A couple things that come to mind. (Focusing only on one aspect here. I think it's more complex than this.)
(1)
Potlatch. In showing generosity, one enhances one's own prestige. Potlatch increases one's prestige because, in order to take care of others, one has to have at one's disposal resources far in excess of what one needs to take care of oneself (or family). So the feast is symbolic, but a weird kind of symbol. It's a symbol that symbolizes one's capacity to create the symbol. Sort of the same logic behind diamond rings - they don't just symbolize love, they display, in-and-of-themselves, that the lover has the means to buy a diamond ring (and the means, by extension, to take care of the beloved. )
Both potlatch and diamond rings reinforce existing power differentials (or shift them to the advantage of those throwing the party). To give 'selflessly' is also, often, to say : You need me more than I need you. Which is also to say: It would definitely not be in your best interest to threaten my power, or to find a source of power for yourself. (The inherent connection between diamond rings and patriarchal norms and the independent heroines of 19th century novels dying in squalor )
(2)
For each and every virtue tied to economic and power differentials, there corresponds a 'spiritual' one.
"you can't provide for others unless you can provide for yourself."
"How can you love someone before you love yourself?"
The familiar Hegelian and Nietzschean point that many of the more ethereal virtues are direct inversions of earthly ones. Epictetus, the stoic, was a slave - 'slave morality.' "You may have power over me irl, but I have power over you in my mind. " Later, the marxist point that bourgeois sanctimony conceals actual exploitation. What still matters, ultimately, is economic power - only now lip service has to be given to its opposite. To the point where people are genuinely confused about what they value (disconnect between behavior and professed values.)
(3)
Those who are pro-immigration usually discuss the issue in those ethereal, moral terms. It's true that they focus on what immigrants lack materially. But the guiding idea is generally that it is good/humane to provide for those who lack.
Those who are anti-immigration usually come at the question in terms of physical, economic and scoial security. They are worried about crime, loss of jobs andoverburdening the welfare system.
Both arguments exist along a spectrum. At the hyperbolic end of the pro-immigration side, you have those who want totally open borders and seem to display symptoms of spiritual megalomania. On the anti-immigration side, you have open racism and seething resentment.
Both sides often slip into characterizing the other side in terms of that side's most hyperbolic proponents.
(4 - the main thing I want to get at.)
There is way of excluding others, quietly, through quiet signs. What allows one into highly exclusive, or partially exclusive subcultures? Just south of those groups inclusion in which requires very Old Money, its usually manners. Ways of talking, or other of the 'critical social graces' @Bitter Crank spoke of. It seems like belonging to a group which won't take in just anybody is crucial for some part of the human soul. In the same way you can't really feel loved by a lover who would just as easily love someone else, you can't feel like you belong to a club that would include everyone. So, like you said, identity (especially in the mode of belonging-to) is built on exclusion.
Back to potlatch. Those who are most of assured of their own exclusionary clubs are those who will most freely dispense that generosity of spirit which excludes exclusion itself. Those whose aren't are going to get nervous and defensive. It seems to me (caveat: no studies conducted, or even consulted) that pro or anti immigration views usually correspond less to income than to social security. For those who have it, its often invisible, taken for granted. In the same way Kant talks about the transcendental conditions of perception, we could talk here about the social conditions of the virtue of inclusivity.Perception can't perceive its own conditions; It's only through reason that it's able to reflect on itself. In the same way the virtuously inclusive are often blind to what allows them their virtue.
And, because of this, they have no trouble seeing their virtue and moral judgments as exemplifications of a universal virtue ethics or a universal moral matrix which can - and should - be applied to everyone. Again, this is similar to Marx's criticism of bourgeois morality.
(5)
If there's always, inherently, a kind of social power differential in play when it comes to providing for others, then there can be no universal moral answer or heuristic here. While there any many patterns that repeat, the specific power dynamics of any place are complex and singular. The knots of reason come when, from consideration of one particular situation or set of situations, there is extracted a universal ethics, which is then turned around and applied to all situations.
For instance, Americans from Iowa can become Buddhists without losing their identity as Americans or Iowans. Buddhism became part of several different people's identities India, China, Tibet, Japan, Burma, Thailand, etc. Many Chinese have become Christian; it doesn't seem to be the case that they are no longer Chinese. Many Nigerians became Anglican or Moslem. Does that mean they were no longer Nigerians?
It seems to be the case that identity is usually at least somewhat flexible. That would certainly be the case of the Jews. After the Jewish diaspora (100 CE) Jews settled everywhere from India to Belarus. Some things stayed the same, and somethings changed. Just for example, Many Jews started eating meals at Chinese restaurants on Christmas and Easter. Was Chinese food kosher? No, but it was just strange (and delicious) enough to fit outside the dietary rules once in a while. Egg rolls and kung pao weren't mentioned in Leviticus, so... let's have that. (Jews and Chinese were new immigrant groups in Manhattan at around the same time.)
What about surnames though, of somebody whose family has been in Wales for a few generations? Would the Llewellyns, Evans and Cadwalladers be as suspicious of a white person with a strong welsh accent and surname Bentley as they would of a dark-skinned person with a strong welsh accent and surname Kaur?
That's why it's confusing that diversity could be held as a virtue. Diversity is potentially dangerous to identity so it appears to be suicidal to welcome it. Only a very robust identity could accept diversity at all. And maybe such a robust identity would reach out for it as a kind of medicine.
I think csalisbury points out one way that works.
There's probably more than one such inversion involved here, and that's why the issue is complex. Take a look at this particular inversion though. We tend to identify with where we're from, a place on the earth. This is consistent with "I belong to the tribe, and the tribe belongs to the land", because this places me as from the land, at this place. The inversion comes about because I am given identity, citizenship, and this is distinct from the identity which I give myself, as from this place. The citizenship gives me rights in this land where I am from, but by the same token, it denies me rights within other lands. This is done by the powers of government. But the government belongs to the people, it does not belong to the land, hence the inverted way of seeing things.
What the citizenship does is take away my individual identity, making me a member of the tribe. I am not "MU" from this particular place, instead I am a citizen from this country, or if you like, member of this tribe. It's a generality which is imposed upon me by these tribal, or government forces . Now the tribe, or government, has this inverted perspective. It is a type of idealism, or ideology, where the government sees itself not as having a material basis, "from the land", it sees itself as being derived from the ideals of the people. Then it must act as "land owner", caretaker of the land. It sees the people in their material basis, as from the land, and dependent on the land, so for the sake of the people (their ideals), the tribe or government must take ownership of the land. This is what I mean by land ownership, rather than private ownership, ownership by the tribe, the government. Divisions, frontiers, are produced along the lines of ideological differences, and by the powers of the tribe, or government, the people are not allowed to intermix.
Of course if a culture is perfect then it's worth preserving and isolating it from external corruption but such is nonexistent. In fact perfection is impossible. Identity isn't as important as progress. Why would we let cannibals preserve their identity?
I wonder what you mean by this? Identity always does this - subsumes the individual to a group - I am a doctor, or I am a melancholic - or whatever. And curiously, unique identifiers are the worst of the lot for it, one is reduced to a number.
Quoting TheMadFool
Again, I wonder at this. Where else do you think anyone might be looking from? Someone seems to have told you that society is made of individuals the way a house is made of bricks, Whereas the reality is that an individual is made of social relations. Even Crusoe without Man Friday is embedded in his social roots both physically by the tools and supplies he brings with him, and way of life that he does his best to reproduce out of his own being, of house and field, furniture, hearth bed, domestic beast, etc.
Quoting frank
Of course. "they saw they were naked (identity), and were ashamed (morality)." Identity makes morality possible, and morality gives identity significance beyond 'mere facticity'.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Within the tribe of forum members, I have identified my intended audience and myself as "Namby-Pambies". We are the neo-colonialists, that stand in judgement over cultures, ranking them, paradoxically, according to their conformity to our cultural norm of cultural relativity. Our global culture of conformity to this doctrine of cultural relativity is exemplified by our 'tolerance' of the intolerant Sentinelese, our respect and support for indigenous cultures, and our willingness, through our education (which is the inverse of enculturation, and leads out of the collective identity to a critical self-reflection) to stand in judgement from an abstract individuality that is indeed God-like in conception, our own origins in our own society.
"This is Hell, nor am I out of it." - Mephistopheles.
Indeed, tribal markings. There is a way of talking, a subtlety of response that is the admission ticket to the club of the Namby-Pambies.
Quoting csalisbury
Well social security is one way of putting it. But I think it is clearer if one calls it colonialism. 'Let the world become a great big melting pot, and We will prevail.'
That's not the case when we're talking about the U.S. and Mexico, or Israel and Palestine, etc.
I don't think so. Identifying myself as MU, born at such a place, at such time, of such mother, and father, does not place me into a group. That simply identifies me as an individual as distinct from all other individuals. It is the further relations, the place where I was born is part of X country, the time I was born puts me in Q demographic, and my parents are of L and M descent, are what subsumes me into various groups.
Nor does that unique identification reduce my identification to a number, because it provides valuable information, unique identifiers, which could ultimately be used to classify me to various groups. But there are many possible ways to classify me. If there is a problem, it probably lies in the way that the person is classified, and for which purposes. So it comes down to "purpose", which again is a matter of ideology. People are classified according to ideology. And, according to my last post, the ideologies seek to maintain the frontiers, as supportive to the existence of 'the group". it's a feedback situation. The ideology creates the group, then the boundaries are enhanced to maintain the reality of the group. This supports and strengthens the ideology.
Huh? A family is not a group?
I didn't say anything about a family. See, you're already using my identity information to classify me into a group, "a family", for some ideological purpose.
:100: Which point should be a bedrock principle for any sensible conversation on identity. Yet the romantic myth of the pure asocial individual will trundle on. As if the very medium of thought weren't social, or the medium of emotion not socially embedded. Or that the vectors of the myth didn't so often club together for the sole purpose of repeating said myth like herds of seals clapping in unison. (Could just as well post this in the Objectivism discussion re Randians...)
You mentioned your mother and father. Another term for that is "family."
Also, you mentioned place, time, etc. That would put you with the group also born in that place, at that time, etc.
Yes, I had hoped that the bedrock could be built on a little here, rather than just pointing out to folks, again, what that is under their feet.
Randians - the group of individuals who believe themselves leaders of a non-existent society. AKA Thatcherites.
No it isn't. "Family" has many meanings. None of them is "mother", nor "father". I stated the relevant facts, that I have a mother and a father, and you've drawn the conclusion that I have a family.
If you've read Plato's Republic you'll understand that he suggests a type of community in which the identity of an individual's mother and father are not revealed to that child. The child is a baby of the commune, and is identified as a member of that group, not so and so's daughter or son. (There may be a noble lie required here). Now if you look into naming traditions, it hasn't always been the case that a person's family name is representative of that person's father (or mother). That is a relatively recent trend. If you look back into some family name histories, you'll find some instances where the family name means member of such and such tribe, or group, rather than son or daughter of so and so. The modern rendition of one's identity, where the family name signifies son or daughter of so and so is only one of a number of possible forms of identity.
So you could have identified yourself as a member of some commune or tribe, and you might not have known who your parents were or your date of birth. But as it happens, you did identify yourself as the child of particular parents and thus as a member of a family, and not a member of a tribe or commune.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Whoever said it was the only way? But I really don't want to labour this point, which is just preventing the discussion I want to have, by calling into question what should be obvious. So I am going to presume you are wrong without engaging further, and if you want to start a thread on the nature of identity I may contribute there.
Yes, this is the means of identity which is commonly enforced in today's society, In contrast, the commune I described attempts to enforce a different form of identity by denying public knowledge of one's parents. And, in today's societies, many people choose to identify by one's citizenry, race or other types of group. There's profiling, stereotyping, and all sorts of ways of identifying a person by positioning the person as within a particular group.
Quoting unenlightened
I'm wrong about what? I don't see what you're disagreeing with. The point is that you can either identify a person as the individual which one is, or as a member of a group. The latter method leads to all sorts of societal boundaries, exclusionary ideologies and attitudes like racism and bigotry. The "paradox" you speak of in the op, which is better described as hypocrisy, is the result of the common practise of identifying people as members of a group, when we say that individuals ought to be judged as the individual which one is. How can you judge a person as an individual when you can only identify that individual as a member of a group?
That's more or less what I mean. Cultural identity comes through comparison and relations with other cultures. This exchange between culture is part of a culture's identity but...
No culture is so perfect that it will stand to always lose from interacting with other cultures. Identity isn't as important as getting to a better place to me and to do that cultures must enter into some give-and-take with others around it.
Quoting TheMadFool
I disagree, if I understand you right, but 'cultural identity' is a troubling term here. Most isolated cultures think of themselves as 'the people', and the occasional incomer as 'other' (very often mad, sad or bad). But it is internal relations that form the culture rather than external ones. For example, there is in the UK a culture - properly a 'sub-culture', amongst schoolchildren, of playground games, rhymes, rituals and mores, that persists through the generations without or despite adult intervention which is in a sense formed in reaction and opposition to the adult culture, but primarily is self-concerned, with relations between children without the adult as other. Indeed, the exclusion of adults is the prime directive - "Don't tell!" It is a secret society, an underground resistance, but even so, not formed by relations with adults. So it is alienated from the adult culture, but not from itself.
My culture, which might already be yours, or which this thread might be an induction into, or might be oppositional to yours, is alienated from itself. To be inducted into it is to be alienated from it in a reflexive, paradoxical awakening. It is to see oneself from the outside as embedded in a culture. It is the condition of post-modernism. It is oppositional primarily to the nihilism of cultural relativism, because it sees that cultural relativism is itself absolutely a culture of false humility. Thus the abnegation of the tyranny of colonialism is just another tyranny, and the only best hope is of a dominant culture that is aware of its dominance, and justifies its dominance by its self-awareness.
But when the US wants to maintain its cultural integrity by building a wall to keep people that we don't know out, then that is more barbaric than the Sentinelese treatment if their immigrants. Go figure.
What if the Sentinelese were polluting their environment or chopping down rain forests where its impact can affect other cultures?
What the flying fuck do you think I'm doing? Go figure yourself.
As for your views on a dominant culture, I'd prefer universal appeal. Perhaps that's what you meant by ''dominant''. I say this because ''dominant'' seems to connote power which may be exercised through force. I think you're right in the sense that with culutural admixing, people automatically retain the good and the bad peters away in a few generations or so. I must however caution as to the wisdom of the masses - people aren't philosophers by nature and what appeals to them may not always be what's good. All the more reason to guide the masses through enlightened discourse.
First, don't we need to question the claim of some people over some land? Or are we simply defending our groups resources? Claiming land is one thing, defending that claim is something else. Who has a right to claim land in the first place when every group's ancestors had to migrate from somewhere else in the past. History provides a more objective context.
Right, I see. Yes, if by established you mean known, recognised. That is, Some undiscovered tribe can and will have a particular culture on its own, but will not recognise it as a culture, but regard it more or less as human nature. 'Everyone puts a bone through their nose because that's what people do.' And then they meet the white devil monkeys who cannot speak properly...
Quoting TheMadFool
Well I'd prefer it too, except I don't think it's right. Firstly, it seriously lacks universal appeal because it is hard work and bruising to the ego. Secondly, to anyone who has a satisfying culture of their own is going to find it runs counter to their own values.
So I call it dominant because it is the culture that recognises other cultures and itself as cultures, and is thus more able to understand inter-cultural relations. So compare it with the Randian culture mentioned above, or the dying culture of the industrial working class, and I think it is readily apparent that it has a flexibility that will give it the upper hand in the long run, Trump and Brexit notwithstanding. They are stupid and shortsighted, and therefore they will lose.
In what sense can a culture be aware of anything? Do you mean that people who have the power to undermine other cultures would be aware of that power? Like Christian missionaries who dig wells for people in Africa or the movie producer whose movie makes fun of Kim Jong-un? In both of these cases, the change-makers are very aware of their power.
And in case I'm due a "fuck you" for this post, well, fuck you!
First, if you can hold to the notion "...that an individual is made of social relations", then it will sound less strange to talk about what a culture is aware of, rather than what an individual is aware of. (The cult of the individual is a culture)
In an isolated culture, as I just said to TheMadFool above, there is no 'other', and therefore there is no awareness of culture in the culture. Compare that to the culture of the Roman or British Empire, where there is full awareness of a range of cultures, but still an awareness as Roman & Barbarian. The nearest one gets to a critical self-awareness is a nostalgia for the golden age. Now I'm painting with a very broad brush, but some combination of events and circumstances, perhaps the Holocaust, the end of Empire the development of nuclear weapons, the development of the human sciences, mass migrations, the maturing of capitalism, has called into question the goodness and greatness of the Great and the Good. "Perhaps - our wonderful Christian traditions are not What the Sentielese need or want for 'the best'... " "Perhaps, English is not the language everyone needs to speak..."
Let me put it this way, supposing my culture is dominant, and powerful, supposing my culture involves knowing this, then its expression would not be defensive, as if we are liable to be overwhelmed unless we build a wall. It would not need to suppress or eliminate other cultures. And so it is, that the more xenophobic cultures are those in decline, those that are weak or dying.
Or in flux. Yes, I pointed this out earlier.
Yes, values change with knowledge and that is growing at a rapid pace. You also mentioned globalization. It's a struggle I guess for cultures to stay relevant to our fast-changing informed minds. Flexibility is necessary for a culture to be valued but, oddly, it would be an ever-morphing entity without a fixed identity. Would you call this culture? Cultural flexibiity would mean losing identity piecemeal or in toto while matching the approval or rejection of the people. It seems flexibiity isn't a good option for culture. The other alternative - rigid resistance - is even worse. All cultures that are now lost didn't adapt or were not flexible enough to keep up with change. I guess you're right, given a choice between rigidity and flexibility, the latter is a wiser choice.
Until you recognize that the identity of the individual is proper to the individual, qua individual, rather than as a member of any particular group, the existence of divisions and boundaries within the population will remain unintelligible to you. That is because the only real boundary or division within the population is the one that separates the individual from everyone else. The boundaries which separate groups are ideological boundaries. To identify an individual by designating one as part of a group, culture, or whatever, is an identity based in the ideology of the person doing the identifying, rather than in the true identity of the individual. The individual is not "made of social relations", ideologies are made of social relations.
I'm just trying to restate what you're getting at succinctly and clearly.
So, what to do with the Welsh? Maybe an exchange program? For every immigrant from Syria or Bangladesh to Wales, 1 Welshperson can take their place in Damascus or a Dhaka. It's the least these privileged white people can do for their unfortunate oppressed brown brothers and sisters.
Wales would finally be really multicultural, very diverse--which is what really matters.
This is nonsense. A culture in decline wouldn't have millions of people risking their lives to immigrate to it. Millions of people risking their lives to immigrate to your country is evidence that your culture isn't in decline and millions of people leaving your culture is evidence that your culture is in decline. It is the reason why you have to build a wall or else you become overwhelmed by the costs to accommodate these people into your culture. In other words, it will bring your culture into a decline. We see what is happening in Europe as well with the Arab immigrants. Accepting other groups that don't want to adopt your culture but bring their own is what causes a culture to decline.
No. I'm trying to describe rather than formulate or justify. I think the paradox has to be lived.I'll try and lay it out. Let's try it as a moral dilemma first. I think the diversity principle comes from cultural relativism.
So if you look above at @ep3265, or @Harry Hindu, they clearly do not really appreciate that their contributions are simply expressions of a different culture. they are the people I tried to warn off in the op thus: "If you're not of that ilk, you probably won't appreciate the difficulty I'm trying to get to, and will be inclined to say helpful things like,"well duh, stop being so wrong!" - in which case please just butt out and let us namby-pambies agonise in peace a minute." They are not aware that their judgements of culture are culturally conditioned, or to the extent that they are, they are fanatics convinced that they have the one true culture - colonialists.
We Namby-Pambies reject such nonsense, but we also reject radical relativism and moral nihilism.That is the paradox - to embrace and reject relativism. The awareness that our judgements are as culturally conditioned as any other makes our judgements more sound. Psychologically this is called 'insight'.
Namby-Pambies are a human culture. But what makes our culture different is that only our culture is aware that it is a culture.
So we must turn to ideology to find a form of identity with veracity. Ideologies, based in ideas, arise from the individual, so an ideology is created by an individual, not vise versa. The ideology does not create the individual, the individual creates the ideology. That is the nature of free will.
Quoting unenlightened
Namby-Pambism is more of an ideology than a culture. it pervades many cultures and is not proper to one. Perhaps your "culture", in being "aware that it is a culture", is mistaken, and is not really a culture at all.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't need your contradictions, I have my own. :razz:
That's awfully big of you and Plato, but in my culture Plato is the original colonialist, secure in the knowledge of his own superiority and the primitive blindness all but 'philosophers'.
Here's something about that though -- perhaps your culture is not the only culture that sees itself as a culture. There is a kind of thought that I think I can empathize with in that there are people who don't see their own culture. But I think I'd posit that this is the case in all cultures -- that there are people who don't have a kind of self-awareness of their milieu, and there are people who do have that self-awareness. As early as Herodotus we have people who began to recognize that mores are relative to one's culture. Not everyone, and not even on the whole given what evidence we have ,but it was not unheard of either.
The real horn of your dilemma comes from not just recognizing oneself as a culture, but as you put it wanting both weak cultural relativism and rejecting radical cultural relativism and nihilism. Perhaps this conflict couldn't come about without an awareness of oneself as culturally conditioned, though, so perhaps that aspect is distinctive to your culture -- in that there are more people who are reflexively aware of themselves as inhabiting a culture.
What if what is good for us is not what is good for them? In which case we are not radical relativists, but perhaps our absolute moral propositions are context-sensitive.
That'll do, it's not the culture of people who agree with unenlightened in every detail, or the culture of people who understand this thread.
I'm watching the news about the first conviction in the UK for female genital mutilation. It's not part of 'our' culture, but it is part of the culture of some parts of Africa. We don't put bones in our noses, but we do put silicone in our tits, and we do sanction male genital mutilation. We are a bit inconsistent, and in large part it is simple myopia, rathe than any lack of insight.
Wrong. Natural selection designed us to be territorial. So it is naturally conditioned.
I don't think its melting-pot. Or colonialism. Exactly, anyway. "let the world become a melting pot" - sure, but the reading group on conrad still assumes you've read conrad, or at least have a good excuse, this week anyway.
They have the right to defend themselves, we don't.
Back to social security, which I think we oughn't leave. (Back me up, Naipaul!)
You're breaking it all apart, but I think it's clear what it is - The schemers in the other room know just as well as the namby-pambys that culture is relative - Kissinger made trendy 'realpolitik' after all. The anthropologists have been consulted.
If the reading group is safe, there's sympathy. If it feels threatened, the fangs will show.
Only -- reading groups are sentimental, but we, philosophers, have the (post-cave platonic) concepts that allow thorough self-abuse. (or the twice-distanced post-cave platonic concepts that function the same)
What do 'namby pambys really want?'
[real question ]
As it always is with the british empire, and its epigones - they want the 'world' to remain a resource, accessible from home.
Hah! They want the same kind of shit as anyone else, you know, stuff they haven't got, stuff that is impossible. They want everyone to be middle-class, conflicted and peaceful. It doesn't come over as a friendly inquiry. "What do Brexiteers really want?", I say - the answer 'Brexit' is no answer, and any real answer will be partial. In Hull they want the fishing, in Rotherham, something else entirely.
In terms of the theme of this thread, the Namby-Pamby wants above all to transcend his own culture, and to stand outside it in a judgement of perfect impartiality.
Quoting csalisbury
That is the Brexit nostalgia, and the Trump nostalgia, and the Namby-Pamby is a firm Remainer. He wants to put Britishness on equal footing with Frenchness and Germanity and Italiosity. He wants a negotiated settlement, and free movement.
See how we have similar culture, but different identity. How could two people have the very same culture, such that we could identity a person by classing one in a group determined as "a culture"?
Quoting unenlightened
Oh I see, you're laying claim to the culture now, excluding me from your "culture" just because I interpret Plato differently from you. You're the one expressing superiority with your exclusionary tactics.. And not only are you expressing superiority, but you're also intimidating me, implying that you have the backing of a group, your "culture". Your intimidation won't work though. I know that you are just an individual, and you are not expressing the will of any group. You remind me of a whiny child: "play the game my way or my daddy will kick your daddy in the arse".
Yes I am. That's the paradox. Everyone thinks they are right, even the ones that realise they are probably not. I am defending that Namby-Pambies are superior to other cultures although they are not anything but another culture, just as humans are superior to other animals although they are just another animal. But you don't interpret Plato differently; it is impossible to interpret the idea of philosopher kings as other than cultural superiority and colonialism. I am even condescending to re-enter the cave to try and convince you to come out - that is the extent of my total hypocrisy. But the only disagreement we have is that you want to disagree.
Here's something to consider unenlightened. There is a natural human tendency to learn other cultures. You and I, with education and resources can pick up books, or travel, and expose ourselves to the vast variety. Some people are denied this capacity due to natural circumstances, lack of resources, or the power of authority. But if you accept this basic premise, that this tendency exists as a natural will of human beings, you may see where the problem is in the op.
So where do you get this idea to "protect" an isolated culture? What would be the purpose of maintaining this distinct and isolated culture, as exemplified in the op? You seem to be considering the idea that it's a good thing to keep particular cultures, like the Sentinelese, excluded and living in their own isolated little way, without integrating with other cultures. How could this be a good thing? Isn't this contrary to the human will explained above? I believe this is where the problem is. There is no reason why such exclusion could be good, because it's a matter of going against the will of the people. The only way that such a culture could be maintained would be to deny the freedom and rights of the individuals within that culture to learn and practise what is available to them from other cultures. So this idea of protecting a culture is part of the very same ideology of building walls. To maintain that culture would require denying its individuals the freedom of access to other cultures.
I get the idea from the Indian government, whose policy it is. I get the idea from the Welsh government that has a policy of protecting the Welsh language, I get the idea from the general post-colonial notion that indigenous cultures that have been invaded, oppressed and suppressed should be afforded protection.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, you're getting it. This is the contradiction inherent in the position that I am pointing out in the op. I'm so glad we agree thus far.
Unfortunately, you seem to think that the solution is to abandon the principle.
Yes I think that this idea of "protecting" is just a veiled form of oppression. When you see that there is a natural will of the individual human being to learn and understand alternative cultural principles, and diversify oneself, then you'll see that any attempts to protect a culture cannot get beyond the fundamental requirement of denying its members the freedom to choose otherwise.
Take the example of the Welsh government "protecting" the Welsh language for example. I am not familiar with this practise, but how could it possibly be successful without some form of suppressing the will of the people to use other languages?
You mean I, as an individual, identify with the culture rather than with the individual that identifies with the culture?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well it couldn't, any more than the protection of people from slavery could be successful without suppressing the will of the people to own slaves.
It seems to me that a more advanced culture would want to preserve a more primitive one for the purpose of science - something a more primitive society might not understand.
Quoting unenlightened
Then Namby-Pamby needs to be a human raised by machines and never see or make connections with humans and be taught about humans as if they are just another animal that engages in different types of social behaviors than other animals. Or better yet, Namby-Pamby needs to be a machine observing humans in an objective light. A human being could never obtain that sort of objectivity because every one of them is a product of their culture (and their DNA - and it is in our DNA to be a social creature (for most of us at least)).
Right, maybe you're starting to understand. Notice in your example of slavery, the individual who has the will to own slaves does not actually have the power to own slaves. So we don't really need to suppress the will to own slaves, that desire is already suppressed by natural conditions. Slavery is only a problem if it is culturally sanctioned. It requires a like-minded group, with power, to enslave others. So removing slavery is not a matter of suppressing the will to own slaves, it is a matter of annihilating that cultural. The will to own slaves might always exist in some impotent form. suppressed by natural circumstances, when it is not sanctioned by a culture.
If you want to characterize law and punishment as suppressing the will of the people, for the sake of "the culture", then we would need to negotiate moral principles to justify such suppression. But where would we start, the good of the individual people, or the good of the culture? Individual people have solid material needs. What kind of needs does a "culture" have, other than needing people?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Of course this all becomes an issue of moral principles. How would preserving a primitive culture for the purpose of science be fundamentally different from keeping slaves?
Fraid not.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What does this mean? An individual has no power at all without society, since the individual is born helpless. With the relevant society the individual has the power to own slaves, just as with the relevant society and not otherwise, the individual has the power to paint a cave, or open a facebook account.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't want to, I'm responding to your characterisation as best I can. I want to characterise law and punishment and the will of the people as aspects of the culture along with the moral principles and negotiations that 'we' need, according to you.
My immediate reaction was to think of the differences between these and other practices, but I think I would say that, hey, a solution of context-dependency doesn't always work.
I'm tempted to say myopia is a part of the human condition. When we set out to work out a broader vision we can do so in conversation or thought -- but we have yet to figure out how we can do so as a group. Has any culture really done so? Maybe, maybe not. But at least our collective culture has a problem planning for the long-term -- we are like an adolescent chasing after the ephemeral now without any effective means for self-control.
And we are defensive about this too. Hence the claims to cultural superiority -- "The greatest country on Earth"
But I believe I've started to grasp the knot you're pointing out, at least, so thanks for that. How to untie it? I don't know right now.
Well that is the problem I seem to be having a lot, that I am describing a knot and folks will keep trying to untie it for me and explain why it is a knot in my thinking and not theirs, as though their primitive individualism is in any way consistent.
I agree.
Quoting unenlightened
Do you agree that the individual has freedom of choice to decide whether or not owning a slave, or opening a facebook account is a good thing to do, regardless of whether or not the person proceeds in such activities. In other words, a person could live within a culture which strictly forbids owning slaves, the state declaring it a bad thing and illegal to own slaves, yet the person still believes it's a good thing to own slaves, in the mind, disagreeing with the culture.
Quoting unenlightened
If you agree with the principle I sated above, that the person's belief could run counter to the person's culture, how can you characterize the will of the people as aspects of the culture? The person chooses to believe, of one's own free will, moral principles which are contrary to one's own culture. For instance, imagine a person born and raised within a particular culture, being taught that slavery is not good. That person at a later age, in adulthood, may read various materials, or be exposed to other believes with elements of "counter-culture", and decide that slavery is good. The person need not act on this belief, but still the will of that person is not consistent with the culture, having chosen to believe principles contrary to those of the culture, so the will of that person cannot be characterized as an aspect of the culture.
Yes.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'll put it as plainly as I can. The will of the person is one thing that pertains to the individual, whereas the will of the people is a plurality or aggregate of wills and therefore pertains to a culture.
In a way, yes. But just as one moment of being an asshole doesn't define you, unenlightened, one episode of scapegoating in the centuries long history of a culture only tells you that the culture gives rise to occasional stupidity. Since all cultures do, this really tells us nothing at all about a particular culture.
Look at pottery shards. That's what the experts do.
OK, since you clearly acknowledge a distinction between "the will of the person", and "the will of the people", then how can you identify the individual through reference to the group, in relation to moral issues? Moral issues involve matters of will. The "will of the person" cannot be identified within "the will of the people" so "the person", in the context of morality, cannot be defined through reference to the culture.
Suppose the mores of your society are that Christian colonial racism that finds it moral to keep slaves and has a moralistic talk that justifies that. but you see past the economic convenience of the thing and reject it because you are enamoured of the dignity of the person or universal human rights. So you campaign, perhaps you are part of the underground railroad, and you do what you can. Now you surely understand that when you say 'slavery is wrong', and your neighbour says 'slavery is fine' you are both taking a moral stand, and that you are opposed. Now if you are truly alone in your opposition, you will likely be ignored, reviled, locked up or killed - as mad sad or bad. You will be in this regard external to the culture, and if there are others to form a resistance, you will be part of a counter-culture.
You seem to be opposing this sort of talk, and I think you have an ideological reason, which is odd, because nothing about what I am saying there is ideological in intent. Let's go back to the beginning, where I said 'the individual is made of social relations'. All this means is that the campaigner against slavery - the very descriptive definitional term - describes the person's relations to his society. It defines the society he lives in and his relation to it (opposition).
It is exactly the same for the animal rights protester. We have described her in terms of her relation of opposition to the culture. If she is a doctor, we have described her as having been given a certain role in society; if we say she is tall, she is tall in relation to the other members of society - indeed she might be nicknamed Miss Giraffe in Hong Kong, and then move to the US and be called Shorty Pants. A revolutionary is just a conservative in the wrong society.
None of this privileges society as the moral priority, or removes the freedom of the individual, which I think is what you are objecting to, it simply points out that these relations of opposition and conformity, of resistance and cooperation are the substance of individuality. From my point of view it is as banal as saying that the human body is formed by the environment it inhabits. if we lived in the sea, we'd have flippers not legs. One cannot be a dodo hunter when there are no dodos to hunt.
I have nothing to oppose here. What I oppose is identifying the individual in reference to the existing culture. So consider the individual in this example, who is alone in opposition to the norms of society. That person has an identity which is distinct from the culture. We do not know that person's values so we cannot even discuss them, it's just been stipulated in the example that the values are distinct from those of the culture. This person is known in the example as distinct from the culture. That person has the choice of remaining silent, having one's values which are distinct from the culture, never come to light, or, the person may associate with others, to build support. If that person chooses to associate, the identity of that person is built upon the ideas expressed. The person, is the starting point of identity, and this is the same for any person. The person expresses ideas and an identity is produced accordingly. We may compare those ideas to the values of the culture, if we desire.
Quoting unenlightened
The problem here is that the person has an identity even prior to being "the campaigner against slavery". This identity is associated with the values that the person holds, and it is very important to identify the person as "campaigner for X values" rather than "campaigner against our culture". The difference is very evident, and well documented, if you consider someone like Jesus. You might identify Jesus as the campaigner against Jewish culture. But if you supported his cause, you would not identify him in this way, you'd identify with the values and ideas that he professed, and he would be known to you by what he promoted, rather than by what he was against. Looking back posteriorly, we can identify Jesus according to the culture which came from him, Christianity, but at the time when he was campaigning against the Jewish culture, that later culture Christianity, did not exist. So there was not such an option. At that time you could either identify him as campaigner against the Jewish culture, or campaigner for X values. The difference is magnificent, and only Saul (Paul), in an epiphany, saw the means for reconciliation. The problem though is that the reconciliation is not real, as there is no real reconciliation for that difference of identity. The two identities are magnificently distinct. So Saul's reconciliation raises Jesus to the level of divinity, assigning to Jesus the false identity of Son of God.
Quoting unenlightened
What I am objecting to is the false identity which identifying the individual in relation to the existing culture, rather than identifying the individual according to the values and ideas which one holds, creates.
:gasp: Mu, if you don't know the difference between simply observing someone's normal behavior to acquire knowledge, and beating someone to make them do your bidding, then you have bigger problems that can't be helped on a philosophy forum. You need to go to a psychology forum. You observe other people everyday in order to acquire information or knowledge about them. If you think that is any where close to being morally equivalent to owning slaves then I just don't know about you.
The problem with both of you is that you both don't seem to understand that this simply a revamp of the nature vs. nature debate in which I already showed that nature and nuture are the same. An individual is an amlgam of culture and its genes.
The problem is, that in order to maintain that culture for the purpose of observation it would require denying the members of that culture the right to leave that culture and join the culture of the observers instead. This would be the same sort of oppression forced on slaves, denying them the right to leave the culture of the enslaved to join instead the enslaving culture.
Quoting Harry Hindu
A mixture of two distinct things makes a mixture of two distinct things, each of the two distinct things forming a part of the mixture. It does not make the two distinct things one and the same thing. Mixing water and salt will produce a solution, but it does not make water and salt the same thing.
That's it! They want everyone to be part of the book club. I do too. Because if everyone's part of the book club, everyone's huddled within, attacking the outside. But if the outside's gone, the whole thing goes to pieces. The important thing is to maintain the symbolically violent gestures - attacking the other.
My feeling is its irresolvable. And most of the effort is dedicated to a well-choreographed dance around not-attacking. But, nevertheless- we attack.
This is nothing but straw-men, MU. Denying members of that culture the right to leave isn't just observation as I have been stating. Once you've done that you've gone above and beyond what I've talking about (observation).
Think about it this way. When a biologist wants to observe another animal, they hide so that they don't disturb the animal and its natural behavior. They don't want to influence the behavior by making themselves known the other animal. This is what I'm talking about. Scientists would observe from a distance so that their presence isn't noticed so that they can observe their behavior independent of any interaction with them because once you interact you forever change that culture. So cultures change as a result of interacting with other cultures.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not if it is in one's nature to be cultured, or social, like it is for human beings.
Quoting csalisbury
Well looking at practice for a moment, the Sentinelese are above all remote, and their barbarity is tolerable. I don't think the Channel Islanders could expect our ignorance to the same extent, being too near our trade routes and strategically important.
The post-colonial enjoys the benefits of Empire and agonises about the statue of Rhodes in the Quad. Namby-Pambies are guilt-ridden. Look through this thread for the posters that describe the immorality of their own morality, and acknowledge the hubris of their humility - because if it isn't universal, then it isn't a morality - and that is Namby-Pambyism.
____________________________________________________________________
Nobody meets the Sentinelese on equal moral terms. John Chau was neither an idiot nor a madman, but a dedicated liberator, whose morality matches any of those here who consider it 'moral' to allow these savages the right to our magnificent civilisation, and to have a couple of Starbucks at least.
"Give them all a good education, and then they can choose".
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But the Sentinelese cannot campaign to have a Starbucks, or against it, individually or all together, until the have the benefit of an education (cultural indoctrination) to tell them about Starbucks. And once they have the education and can form the view, they are no longer Sentielese in anything but name.
Perhaps it's worth considering the reflexivity of morality. Jesus did not have a view on Global warming, and thus did not consider a commandment forbidding the extraction of fossil fuels. But we are not more moral because we do. A good person is one who does good deeds according to a moral code. But it is the reflexivity of what makes a good moral code that is in question in this thread, and that requires a ground.
John Chau gave his life to his moral duty; he was a good Christian man according to his own lights, and that is, in the Christian traditional least, the measure of individual virtue, what one will sacrifice for the good. "Greater love hath no man..." Not a Namby-Pamby by any means. So by what moral code does the Indian government, or the liberal elite, or anyone else, judge him to be an evil fanatic, an idiot, a madman, or whatever level of condemnation is attached to him? It seems to me that consistency requires that we treat him as generouslyl as we treat the Sentinelese - he is as innocent as they.
And if we have the right of it, if we are the guardians of morality and civilisation, is it not likewise our duty to gather these miserable sufferers under the yoke of religious indoctrination, and attempt to deprogram them, as the Chinese are doing?
But the subject we're discussing is not simple "observation". What we're discussing is "preserving the more primitive culture for the purpose of...". The subject is preserving the culture, not observing the culture.
Quoting Harry Hindu
All you've done now is changed the subject. You're not talking about preserving a culture any more. So what's the point in proceeding on this path?
Quoting unenlightened
I think education is a key point here. And this is why Plato's cave allegory is relevant. The philosopher goes out of the cave and sees (learns) what the others don't see. What the philosopher sees is true and right, being something apprehended and firmly grasped by the mind, but the others cannot apprehend it because they have not been exposed to it. So the task of the philosopher is to educate the others, and it's no simple task because the others have made a comfortable namby-pamby life, living in their own little cave. So the analogy is that of forcing the people to look directly at the light source. It's painful, but the cultural habits, or even the culture itself, must be broken for the good of the people.
Quoting unenlightened
I'm having difficulty with your use of "reflexivity", particularly "the reflexivity of what makes a good moral code". It appears that we need to distinguish two different senses of "good". There is "good" in the sense of "according to a moral code", but there is also 'good" in the sense of what justifies the moral code. There's another thread now on the Euthryphro problem, which looks at this same issue from a religious perspective, but I think it's more easily understood in the way that it's presented here.
If I understand you correctly, the reflexivity you refer to is that the moral code must reflect back upon the good of the individual people within the society. So we have "good" #1, which is the people behaving according to the code, and we have "good" #2 which is what the code is doing for the people. The issue is the grounding of good #2. This is why I insist that the identity of the individual, how we define "person", must be derived from outside of the culture, or else we'd just have a circle. The circle is that the good moral code is the one best capable of inspiring the people to follow it. And there is some truth to that, but it just begs for the question of what inspires people to follow the code, and then we must turn to the nature of the individual anyway. If you've read Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, you'll know that he posits "happiness", as grounding for the ethical "good" of the people.
Quoting unenlightened
These are issues of the relationship between good #1 and good #2. You ought to see that good #2 must take priority over good #1. Acting according to the code is only good in so far as the code is good. So how is the code judged? And this is where we turn to education. However, the issue is very complex, and it is not simply a matter of education here. Plato uncovered a very difficult problem in his analysis of sophism. The premise was that virtue could be produced by education. Teaching individuals how to recognize and understand "good" ought to inspire them to act well. But this is not necessarily the case, as people choose to do what they know is not good, and choose not to do what they know ought to be done, as good. And this problem was taken up directly, and to a greater extent by Augustine. Virtue is not simply a matter of education, as the sophists claimed "virtue is knowledge", which could be taught. There is a matter of creating the inspiration required to do what one knows is good. (Namby-pambyism doesn't cut it). This is why it is essential to understand the nature of an individual, as an individual, in order to judge a good code from a not so good code. Not only must the code outline what is "good" as a direction for education, but it also must provide the means for inspiration.
I'd kind of like you to apply this to the case of John Chau. John judges himself according to an evangelical culture that he follows/accepts/believes/identifies with. The Sentinelese culture seems to identify him as a white devil invader. The Indian government identifies him as a criminal interfering white idiot. How do you see this individual? I've said I see him as a good man by his own lights.
You want to claim that every one of these cultures is a cave, and you and Plato are outside? Even the way you put it makes no sense to me. "... how we define "person", must be derived from outside of the culture, or else we'd just have a circle." We???? We define things in a shared language and these definitions are thereby cultural. But you want to start with a 'we' that is not a culture!
You ask a difficult question, and the easy answer is to say that I don't really have the information required to make that judgement. I don't really understand his ambition, and that is what drove him to his death. And, you can be sure that he knew death was a real possibility. He was not explicitly asking for death, but he was putting his life into the hands God, where he probably saw two possible outcomes, either he'd have some success with the Sentinelese, or he'd be killed and God would make him into a martyr. Either way, he fulfills his commitment to God.
The bigger question I think though, is his perception of evil. He seems to have proceeded in his actions as an effort to fight evil, and this implies an enemy. Do you apprehend a difference between going forward with the intent of bringing good, and going forward with the intent of fighting evil? The former implies the existence of friends, while the latter implies the existence of enemies. So I think that poor John Chau's approach may have been all wrong. He most likely had good intentions, because fighting evil is of course a good intention, but he didn't properly identify and understand the evil involved, so his approach was all wrong. It is one thing to go out into the world alone, with the intent of doing good, and a completely different thing to go out alone, with the intent of fighting evil.
Quoting unenlightened
That we define things with a shared language, and the definitions are cultural, is irrelevant to whether or not the thing being identified, the person, which we are defining, or describing, can be properly defined through reference to one's culture. We use shared language to describe things like the earth and the moon, but this does not mean that these things being defined are being defined by referring to their cultures.
Let me try a different approach for explanation. Do you agree that there are things common to human beings which are not culture specific? When we define what it means to be a human being we refer to these aspects which are common to all of us. and not specific to any particular culture, or group of cultures. We are all in the group "human being" regardless of culture. On the other hand, there are particular human beings, which we call individual persons. So when we go to identify an individual human being, as this particular human being, we must refer to things particular to that person, and this is not the person's culture, because that signifies a group of similar people. That would not identify a particular human being, it would only identify a group, giving us no means to identify the particular individual.
Now we have two extremes. All human beings are the same in one sense, and this validates "we". In another sense each is individual, particular, and this validates "me". We could move further and identify a particular variety of human beings having some similar properties, or habits, as "a culture", but in relation to moral purposes what would be the point of such a determination? "Culture" does not serve to identify the individual, nor does it serve to tell us what's common to all human beings, so what purpose is there to identifying distinct cultures?
How do you know what it is you're preserving without first observing the culture in its primitive state PRIOR to any interference of another culture? Once you've interacted you've destroyed any chance at knowing what the culture is before any external interference changes it. But yeah, you and unenlightened can keep running around in circles if you want.
I don't see what you're arguing, if you are arguing anything. How would you expect to observe a culture without interacting? By spying through telescopes? How could that be respectful of the people's privacy?
I'm afraid this is not the settled unquestionable reality you think it is. On the contrary you have merely hidden the circularity from yourself. We decide who is human, and whoever we have decided is not human does not get to make the decision. And that used to include peasants, slaves, blacks, children, homosexuals, the disabled, and disfigured, and women, at various times and various places. there is still controversy on this board about when a clump of cells becomes a human.
I wasn't arguing anything. I was asking a question and you answered it with another. Are we performing mental gymnastics again? Just answer the question, MU.
Yeah, like I said, it comes down to nature. Humans' use of an arbitrary system of categorization isn't very helpful. The hierarchical nature of life's speciation isn't arbitrary.
Yes, I realize this, and I was wondering if this point might come forward. But what this indicates is that all forms of identifying by group are somewhat arbitrary, and unreliable judgements. This leaves us with the other option, which is to identify by the individual. And this I insist, is the only true form of identity. A thing's identity is found by determining aspects which are unique and particular to that thing itself, not by examining that thing's position within an arbitrary group. That is why law enforcement agencies depend on things like fingerprints and DNA, while profiling is less reliable and in some cases controversial.
Quoting Harry Hindu
The reason I did not answer this question is because it is not relevant to the point I was making. The point I was making is that such cases of preserving are fundamentally wrong. So from my perspective there is no instance of preserving something and you do not know what it is that you are preserving, because "preserving" has already been determined as the wrong procedure.
Remember, I was arguing that preserving a culture is fundamentally wrong, because it can only be successful through oppression of its individual members. If you consider what unenlightened and I have discussed, you'll see that I've been arguing that the group (or culture), is a category of classification created for some purpose. The effort to preserve the correctness of the categorization (preserve the culture) can only be successful through suppression of the individual members' will to diversify. You seemed to think that preserving the categorization for the purpose of scientific observation was somehow acceptable, and fundamentally different from preserving the categorization for the purpose of slavery.
All you are talking about is the political ideology of traditionalism or conservatism being imposed on a culture from outside of the culture. How is this any different from a culture defining itself as being traditionalist and imposing that on it's own people (kind of like how the Republicans are in the U.S.)? A political ideology isn't right or wrong. It is just a method of living. Other cultures have imposed themselves on others for all of history. It the natural way of things.
Again, you don't know what you'd be preserving or changing without first observing.
How does one discover a unique aspect without relating it to the group? Even with DNA the uniqueness of the individual consists of usually a unique combination of traits that are shared in a population, or rarely a unique mutation, which is only found to be so by comparison with the group. That is to say, uniqueness is necessarily a position in a group, like a king in a country, or a runt in a litter. To say that I am unique is to say that I have X, and no one else has X, and it is only through the relation to everyone else that uniqueness can be seen.
And what MU has been telling you for a long time now is that groups, or categories, are arbitrary. To say that something is defined by its relation to some arbitrary category isn't a very good definition. What an individual is is an amalgam of certain features that is shares and doesn't share with other things. We arbitrarily group things based on certain similar features over others. There is simply a way things are and then how we group those things based on some arbitrary need. We have this need to put things in boxes, but that does not necessarily mean that these categories exist independent of the mind that creates them.
I wouldn't say that there is a big difference between these two. And to the extent that members of the culture are oppressed (because we identify "oppression" as bad), this is not good. When certain members of a culture oppress other members it effectively divides the culture in two, so that you are left with one culture oppressing the other. And when Americans brought slaves from Africa, you may think of this as one culture oppressing another from outside it, but the two cultures integrate, living together in that one act of slavery, creating the situation where one culture suppresses its own members. So the two are essentially the same thing, the two cultures are divided, or united into one, depending on your perspective, by that act of oppression.
I believe there is such a thing as right and wrong ideology. And just because you describe something as "the natural way", this does not make it right. Morality is often involved with curtailing what comes natural to us, as is the case with breaking bad habits.
Quoting unenlightened
Yes, that's what makes an individual, it's a "unique combination of traits". I would say it's a unique set of characteristics. When we describe something, we cannot describe it by referring to this or that attribute, we must create a set of attributes which is unique to that individual thing. That's a matter of placing the thing into numerous different groups. So if "culture" is the principle of identity for a person, we couldn't describe a person by referring to this or that culture, we'd have to find numerous different cultures which that person is a member of, and create a uniqueness for that person through reference to the numerous different cultures ... is a member of this one, is not a member of that one, etc. But "culture" by itself doesn't serve this purpose because there aren't enough of them distinguished, and the boundaries are not well defined. But it could be used as one of the identifying features.
The notion that I particularly oppose though is the thought that "uniqueness is necessarily a position in a group". I believe that this is off track in two ways. First, as per above, uniqueness is a function of a person's position in numerous groups. The second problem is the idea of necessity. This issue is a bit more complicated because we tend to think that an object has an "objective" identity, an identity independent of any "subjective" identity assigned to it by a human being. (What Harry calls "there is simply a way things are"). This creates the idea of necessity, the identity is necessarily such and such according to the objective position of the thing.
But in general, we talk about "the identity" of a thing as something handed to the thing through human discretion, and that's a matter of judgement, choice. So this identity is inherently subjective. When we are creating an identity for a person, we create groups for classification, and choose the groups where we want to place the person, in order to create a unique identity for the person. The serious problem is that unless it is assumed that there is some objective reality to the groups (and this is a real issue as your example of "human being" in the last post demonstrated) and also that people are inclined to adhere to what is apprehended as "objectively real" when making such judgements, then they are free to create all sorts of different groups as they please, giving different persons all sorts of strange identities. Furthermore, even when the creation of groups follows principles of objectivity, there is a seemingly endless number of different groups which may be created. Therefore there may be numerous possibilities for a person's "unique identity" depending on how one creates the groups of classification, even when the groups of classification follow objective principles. And identity is a matter of choice.
The way things are is what I call contingency. Like Popeye, I yam what I yam. But that tells you nothing; to know something about me, you have to know things that relate me to the world That I am a sailor man, and live in a caravan, that I eat spinach, etc. This is the necessity, that knowing anything about me means knowing how I relate to the world; it is a linguistic, and epistemological necessity. If I am unique, I am unique regardless of what is said or known, but to know that I am unique is to know something about the world, that it only has the one unenlightened in it.
That is what I believe is the necessity of identity. It is not to say anything about the thing, except that it is a thing, and this is to individuate, separate it from everything else. If this process of identification is not done first, prior to any type of saying something about the thing, there will be ambiguity as to the identity of the individual thing which we are talking about when we start to say things about the thing.
Quoting unenlightened
So from my perspective, this is a vague and partial truth. It is true that "knowing anything about me means knowing how I relate to the world", but only in the most fundamental sense of "how I relate to the world", meaning knowing that I am an individual, distinct, separate from the world. Knowing "that" I am an individual is knowing something about me, which is not the same as knowing "what" I am. But it is necessarily prior to knowing what I am as an individual, in order to avoid the ambiguity involved with distinguishing whether I am talking about me, or I am talking about the world. So it is not necessary in an absolute sense, but necessary for an accurate understanding. This is the basic necessity, "I am that I am", and any statements about what I am can only follow from this basic assumption. Moving beyond this basic assumption, how I define or describe myself is a matter of choice, and this is where I find contingency.
Well we all have our differences of opinion, and to me, that's what makes each of us different, forming our different personalities and consequently our identities as persons. That's why I refer to Plato's cave analogy, the "real me" is to be found in my ideas and opinions, whereas my activities and cultural relations are a reflection of the real me. To reverse this, making my ideas and opinions a reflection of my cultural relations, is to deny the importance of free will in choosing what to believe. And determinist ontology leads to all sorts of problems with respect to cultural relations.
I am no determinist. But my position is that freedom arises from limitation; my freedom lies not in the fabrication or forging of identity because that is the given, but in the transcendence of identity. I am, alas, stuck with my middle-class white male Englishness, but I am downwardly mobile, and a revolutionary traitor. Time and place and genes and upbringing make me - cut out the cloth - and my freedom is in what I make of these necessities. But now we're really off topic.
It isn't really off topic, because the nature of freedom, and how it is that some form of freedom can get some sort of status as a fundamental right is important both to the creation and maintenance of diversity, and to the concept of oppression.
So I look at "freedom" as a fundamental element in living organisms, which is responsible for the existence of diversity within these living creatures, not as something which the organism has to strive to obtain, as if freedom can only arise from those efforts. And from my perspective freedom is closely tied to the concept of life itself. In Aristotle's principal biological work, called "On the Soul", he describes the various potencies of living beings. Each capacity that a living being has, from the most basic, self-subsistence, through self-movement, sensation, and intellection, is itself the potential for action. Every such capacity, or potential for action, is a contingency, and according to the nature of possibility, it need not be actualized in any particular way. Therefore I find the freedom to choose (and this is not a rational choice, but closer to a random choice as we'd find with trial and error) to be a basic principle of life itself. And the fundamental freedom to choose is the cause of diversity in life forms.
This is why identity, when it is a living being which is being identified, is so difficult. The power of choice gives that being the capacity to change its identity. That is assuming that we base "identity" in some sort continuity of existence. Aspects of a thing which do not change for a period of time provide us with the identity of that thing. In the case of living beings, what we find is that what does not change, is the capacity for change (choice), and this confuses the hell out of us. So the living being is a true chameleon, always showing you a different identity, and to determine its true identity requires exposing the capacity to change its identity.
The history of the Andaman islands is sordid. The evil here is the evil of the authorities. The British established a penal colony, mainly for those Indians opposed to British colonization. The convicicts were enslaved to provide for the opulence of the authorities. The natives were treated worse. It's no wonder that the natives hate foreigners. The convicts were known to escape, and would therefore associate with the natives, whether the natives killed them or not would depend on the particularities of the situation. What do you think the ancestry of a modern day Sentinelese really is?
Oh I agree with this completely. The business of life is to build freedom. Gravity says stay down, but life refuses. And I think all along in the thread I have emphasised identification as an activity more than something static. - Or perhaps I took it for granted?
I didn't know the history of the Andamans, but I am not surprised. There is hardly a corner of the world that the British have not polluted with their civilisation.
We seem to actually agree on a lot, we just each have a different way of expressing what we believe. But you look at activity as the identifying feature, I look to the reason for the activity (intent) as the identifying feature. That's why when you asked me about John Chau I had to try to learn what motivated him, to properly answer the question. I didn't think I'd be capable of properly judging him simply on the basis of the action reported. But this piqued my interest to do a little more research into the history of the area. The internet is so good for that, no need to go to the library anymore (that's freedom). But I worry it might only be temporary, getting overrun by special interests, so that whatever information you can get for free, will become unreliable.