Thanks very much for the sumup.
Just a couple of notes:
- If someone writes beautifully that does not necessarily
mean that his conclusions are right
- if someone experienced things - same applies.
Otherwise you should all believe me straight away, as I am probably
the only one on this list who lived and worked (as a blue-collar
worker) for years, while bringing up a family
under both the ex-socialist and the capitalist system...
>From your description I cannot see how this "freedom of
individuality" can be achieved without a democratically sharing.
society.
Eva
Eva
> 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
> -------------------------------------------------------
> <![%THINK;[SGML]]> Visit my website: http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
>
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