Hi Andy, Judy,
I don't really know where to re-enter the ongoing discourse in a substantive
way, but one thing that has caught my mind is the rather strange use of the
essentially buddhist term "samsara" which I guess is being mis-spelled as
"sansara". It seems Judy used this originally and, jumping around still, I
haven't found the post where she explains her usage.
Samsara is just the wheel of birth and death and it presumes the existence
of a stage in which all dualities are transcended (the ultimate duality of
course being birth/death itself). So it also co-implies the notion of
reincarnation and a lot of other things like karma, etc. all part of the
hindu-buddhist world view.
I find its usage in the context of the discussion of contradiction as the
source of change to be very confusing. I'm wondering why Judy used it to
begin with and if there is another word that might fit what she has in mind.
Andy, I think your adoption of the term to also confuse what you might be
trying to say.
Clearly, dialectical materialism accepts the evolution of matter and
consciousness as a higher stage of the development of matter. Historical
materialism is based on this premise. The rejection of evolutionism as an
ideology for the supremacy of the west aside, all of the paleontological and
historical evidence attests to the certainty of an overall directionality to
greater degrees of organization even given the second law of thermodynamics.
It is foolish to throw the baby out with the primal bath water. Andy, I'm
wondering why you seem to shy away from this? Does your apparent
trepidation, expressed in the statement, "I find it difficult to express
this simple thought without seeming to say something about "the
inevitability of progress", have primarily to do with concerns about
determinism? I'm not sure that one has to accept determinism to accept the
central hypothesis of evolutionary theories of any kind. Quite simply
anything can either grow, evolve, and continue to exist or it can stop
growing, cease evolving and consequently cease to exist, become extinct. In
this sense there is no determinism. I don't think anything determines that a
given individual, species or cultural line must occur. But if something
does grow and evolve then the patterns might well be determined in the
process by a limited , perhaps even a unique, set of possible resolutions to
the contradictions that drive that growth and evolution. This is seen over
and over in the domain of every family of phenomena.
Rationalism is a pretty ideologically charged notion itself and like
evolutionism, its socio-political valence probably needs to be evaluated
before adopting it as a goal/ideal for organizing society, but it seems
that, given the present complexity of human society, something other than
its opposite would be required to ensure our species continued growth and
evolution. But hell, maybe humans are just lucky, there are gods and fates
who like us (fat chance!) and we will serendipiditously resolve all the
contradictions that currently threaten our continued growth, evolution, and
existence.
Paul H. Dillon
----- Original Message -----
From: Andy Blunden <andy@mira.net>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Monday, November 06, 2000 3:04 AM
Subject: Re: Personality
> I don't know if we disagree Judy. I would not assume so. To say: "To
> imagine a totally rational human world is ridiculous" to me, begs the
> question dreadfully.
>
> Correct me I'm wrong, but I will take it that your opinion does not hinge
> around the word "totally". Obviously, there are aspects of being human
> which are not rational and there are very few statements of this kind
which
> uniformly apply to all the phenomena of the Universe.
>
> Likewise, I will take it that you accept that rationality is something
> manifested in human activity and nothing else, that you are not making
some
> statement about the degree of conformity of human action to some
> extra-human standard of rationality. As you said: "Our activities, ...,
are
> the basis for meaning."
>
> So, I assume that your comment about sansara means that you reject as
> ridiculous the *resolution* of contradiction. Perhaps you misunderstand
me,
> because otherwise your position would be untenable I think. I was making
no
> statement about the second coming or the ultimate heat death of the
> Universe, only a broad observation about the course of development of
> concepts. And you describe this as "sansara"?
>
> Vygotsky's example of the development of rational speech for example. Are
> you saying that speech and thought are irreconcilably separate and opposed
> and that it is ridiculous to say that words carry meaning? Surely not. My
> ultra-simple example: are you saying that once two people disagree, then
it
> is normal for that disagreement to remain unresolved forever? Division of
> labour: this proposition was more controversial I admit, but are you
> rejecting as "sansara" the idea that the class of manual labourers may one
> day be a thing of the past?
>
> Another example, human needs. Hunger is a contradiction that drives people
> to activity. Is it just nonsense to see this contradiction passing into
the
> past and being supplanted by other needs which formerly didn't exist? Such
> a thought is not about the elimination of hunger in the sense of the
> arrival of Utopia; people didn't go to the Moon to find food. I find it
> difficult to express this simple thought without seeming to say something
> about "the inevitability of progress", but the whole of human history is
> based on contradictions being *overtaken* by others. If we simply say that
> the idea of hunger being overcome is "sansara"; are we to explain all the
> phenomena of history as simply people trying to fulfill their basic animal
> needs, because it's "sansara" to imagine the resolution of such a
> contradiction?
>
> I'm sure there must be some misunderstanding.
>
> Andy
>
>
> +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
> | - Andy Blunden - Home Page - http://home.mira.net/~andy/index.htm - |
> | All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational |
> | solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.|
> +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
>
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