Paul, "samsara" is not in my vocabulary, as evidenced by my propensity to
mis-spell it.
Re my trepidation. It not so much determinism as *dogmatism* that I am
being cautious to avoid. Once you have a good understanding of where each
other are coming from, it is fairly easy to discuss things like "general
laws". For example, any teacher knows certain truisms about running
classrooms, for example, "if you tolerate personal abuse in the classroom,
then classroom conditions are likely to degenerate". But this truism is
true only within definite cultural limits. In some circumstances the
opposite would be the case, the kids would be expected to handle it.
"the history of society ... becomes the history of the development of
society according to regular laws, and the study of the history of society
becomes a science. ... social life, the development of society, is also
knowable, and that the data of science regarding the laws of development of
society are authentic data having the validity of objective truths. Hence
the science of the history of society, despite all the complexity of the
phenomena of social life, can become as precise a science as, let us say,
biology ..."
Already I can hear the cold footsteps down the corridor, the knock on the
door in the midst of night ... That's Stalin talking, not Marx.
"Dialectical & Historical Materialism", 1938. It was reading this work a
couple of years ago that helped me understand why some people are so
hostile to certain kinds of "marxist-sounding" formulations, "dialectics of
nature" stuff and so on.
It was hegel who managed to formulate these general laws, but we know that
even hegel got into trouble, ending up rationalising a form of society not
too dissimilar to the one he lived in. Personally, I think Marx interprets
Hegel very much in the spirit of Cultural Historical Activity Theory when
the CHAT is not avoiding politics, in the way Carl Ratner pointed to, when
it is *Communist*.
Andy
______________________
At 08:48 AM 6/11/2000 -0800, you wrote:
>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.|
>> +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
>>
>
>
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| - 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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