Thanks for your reply Thomas, and especially for --
> I have taken the time to read your Web Page ...
Those words are sweet but rare. I gather from your comments that
you not only read it, but agree at least with the goals. Even rarer.
> So, at a superficial level, I find congruence with your outcomes and some
> unease with your methodologies - partly because I am math aversive by nature
> and I seriously distrust statistics and generalizations and approximations
> that are often drawn from statistics.
Stats and the generalizations drawn from them are the stuff of social
sciences, and I am trying to promote social technology, which tries
to do something useful instead of formulating dubious generalizations
about a species that prizes individuality.
Normally people consider technology as applied science but in some
areas the science is unreliable and we have to go by "whatever works".
I think I have something that will work. There is a lot of math in it,
but it can all be hidden from mathephobes within user-friendly software,
while being readily available in open-source for those who want it.
> You know, people are the problem. Why? My answer is because most of us are
> terribly dysfunctional. Why?
Actually I don't think we are all that dysfunction by nature. How
well or poorly people function depends on their social context or
social environment -- the people they live, work, and make love with.
Most of use are connected to the wrong people, incompatible people,
and so we seem to be dysfunctional, but I am utterly certain that in
the right social context almost all of us would be smarter, more
productive, more creative (not the same thing!) and happier.
> ... We have made bad guesses about human psychology, child birthing,
> child development phases and we are working against nature, the result has
> been dysfunctional people. A leap of logic here, when you have
> dysfunctional people, you have dysfunctional society's, dysfunctional
> economic systems and dysfunctional relationships.
Well, that's a theory. Quite the opposite of my own, I see, since it
blames dysfunctional relationships on dysfunctional people.
> Joesph's answer is to start trying to raise more people from pre-natal to
> adulthood who are not dysfunctional.
I don't think we really know how to do that. From my own theory I'd
suggest surrounding each child with compatible others, with compatible
adults to supervise them, and so on, but it doesn't make sense to test
one theory using techniques from one that's precisely the opposite.
> ... These people, not being dysfunctional will then
> be able - from their more normal perspective, will be able to devise
> new systems that make people more of what they could be. Well, that's
> a pretty utopian plan but it has a logic in it that is difficult to deny.
Denial is a speciality of mine, but I'll try to resist. To be scrupulously
fair (for a change) I should point out that both theories have some
merit, and both could be true. Human society is full of such viscious
circles. Bad people make bad relationships, but bad relationships
make bad people. Break the loop anywhere and we may have a chance.
I still think the world is filled with basically good people, with good
intentions, who are warped by their social context. I think we can
change that context, finding good jobs, good friends, and all the
other social necessities for people. Surely people who are happy and
productive at work and equally so at home would also be more
perceptive of the world around them and inclined to make it better.
Most of the people who support the peace, distributive justice, and
environmental movements are not oppressed conscripts in poor
countries with no trees, but rather comfortable westerners who have
the time and money to spare. That's not a criticism of these people,
just the opposite, I commend them for seeing beyond their own
relative happiness to the misery of others. Let there be more
such people.
> ... You can't make something better when your raw materials are flawed ...
Fine craftsmen the world around know how to make the best out of less than
ideal materials, patching and filling and all the other tricks of the trade.
> ... You can't make a better people society when the flaws in the
> people that created the dysfunctional society are the very onestrying
> to design a new society. ...
I don't know why you say these things. They scare me. The first step
is labelling people as "flawed", the next step is making the most
flawed wear some distinctive marking, say a yellow star-of-David, and
the next step is eliminating the flaws with poison gas.
I prefer to say that people are basically good, are an excellent raw
material, and that we can make an excellent society with them. All we
need to do is help people find the social necessities -- good jobs,
good friends, love, a mentor to learn from, someone to teach, good
co-workers, good neighbours, and so on. In such a context these
people's underlying nature will bloom instead of being repressed or
warped, and they will then be able to cleanup this planet and keep
it that way.
dpw
Douglas P. Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.island.net/~dpwilson/index.html
http://www.SocialTechnology.org/index.html
