Posted by
glen e. p. ropella-2 on
Sep 07, 2009; 7:00pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/emergence-tp3586728p3598964.html
Thus spake Nicholas Thompson circa 09/07/2009 11:01 AM:
> Funny, glen, I dont feel it as an alienation. When somebody acknowledges a
> difference in point of view, when we share a common view on our different
> points of view, if you will, I feel embraced, not alienated.
OK, well, the vernacular for "alienate" may not be what I mean. I
really mean something like "to make alien", in essence, to distinguish
oneself deeply.
If we were talking about something trivial like the type of hat you
prefer to wear or the way you wear your hair, then the right word would
be "distinguish". But since we're talking about a very deep paradigm or
way in which one views the world, I pine for a stronger word like
"alienate." Basically, placing yourself on one side of the false "in
here" vs. "out there" dichotomy, and disallowing the fuzzy areas in
between, is tantamount to claiming there is a very wide gap between you
and the others. _We_ who think this way are very different from _they_
who think that way. The way _they_ think is alien, strange, foreign,
other, not-us.
In reality, of course, every last one of us sometimes thinks in terms of
"in here" and other times thinks in terms of "out there". It's only
within the weird (philosophical, overly abstracted, idealistic) context
of making false distinctions do we convict ourselves to one side or the
other.... like while trying to make indefensible generalizations about
our selves and others.
Abstraction, objectification, and alienation are the root of all evil.
[grin] ... though evil is not always a Bad Thing(tm). By saying you
feel "embraced", I suspect what you mean is you feel you've widened the
scope... by explaining a distinction, one has to rise up outside of the
myopic context into a more synoptic context. Paradoxically, by
explaining the difference, you've found a larger category into which
both paradigms fit. And although that _sounds_ nice, since the original
distinction is a false one, the larger category (as well as the 2
smaller categories) is also false. The classification, though perhaps
useful, is only good up to whatever rhetorical construct you're using at
the time. For all other rhetoric, it's suspect, or at least needs to be
re-established as appropriate.
...
OK. I'll stop. I promise. Waiting for my simulation to finish has
placed me in a weird state and I've run out of comments to make on Facebook.
--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095,
http://agent-based-modeling.com============================================================
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