Durant wrote:
>
> >
> > The following article is a masterful
> > response to pie-thinking (zero-sum mentality):
> >
> > > Szczepanski, J. (1981). Individuality and society.
> > > Impact of science on society, 31(4), 461-466.
> >
>
> any chance of a sum-up or abstract?
[snip]
I'll just try to quote from loving memory.
Szepanski, a sociologist I think little known in
"the West", begins (in 1981 Poland)
by stating that he has reached
an age at which, having lived through 5 political
regimes, including "the incomparable monarchy
of Franz Joseph II", he, like Faust, has attained
the right to be addressed as: "Magister et Doktor gar".
He differentiates between individual*ism*
and individual*ity*.
Individualism, he says, is what dominates the "Western
democracies": everybody trying to be even more like
everybody else by getting a bigger piece of the
existing sum of goods for themselves (the zero-sum
game).
Individuality, on the other hand, he says is the
person's unique elaboration of a new idea, which
takes nothing away from anyone, but adds to the
sum available to all.
Szczepanski claims that all previous societies have
been oriented around allocation of scarce
existing goods, and that the only hope is to reorient
society toward the nurturance of each individual's
creative powers. We must reject *both* zero-
sum alternatives of collectivism
and individualism, and re-form society in the
unprecedented shape of individuality, where the
society exists for the sake of the nurturance
of individual creative elaboration, rather than
the subsumption of the individual in the
"collective puropse" (which can take either the
form of submissive conformism or that other
thing: competition, where, no matter who wins or
loses, society's predefined agenda is always
advanced by all the competitors' efforts).
He concludes with a quote from Tertullian:
"I believe this because it is impossible."
This
whould perhaps all be maudlin pap were it not
that the words are spoken by a person whose
life experience and erudition clearly give
them/him the kind of moral authority
which comes from "having been there". --Like
the character in Hermann Broch's novel _The
Sleepwalkers_, who after having
been brought back to life after
being blown to bits on a battlefield
of WWI, attends a prayer meeting where
the preacher starts talking about Lazarus,
and this man rises on his crutches and declares:
"Only those who have died and risen again
have the right to speak."
I can only say that, when by accident I came across
Szepanski's article in the IBM Research Library,
I was immediately moved to tears, both for the
article's simple beauty and for the things I
found around me which were not similarly
worthy.
You asked for a "sum up or abstract", and
I am pleased to recall this article. I hope
I have conveyed something of it.
\brad mccormick
--
Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but
Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world.
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
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