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 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
