Hi Ray,
I found this posting so long and full that I can't address it all. However,
a few points in response:
>What I remember is
> that Democracies tend to dissolve into tyrannies looking for a hero
(tyrant)
> or an elite (aristocracy) to take care of them. Freud would call it a
> subconscious desire to recapture childhood and reconnect with long dead
> parents. (No doubt Brad will correct me on that, since he is the
> one with the psych degree.)
I would agree that people are always looking of a hero. They tend to make
rather ordinary people into emperors only to discover, later, that their
emperors have no clothes. What a democracy has to do is develop a system of
constitutionally based laws that prevents emperors from behaving like
emperors and that requires them to respond to an electorate every few years.
In my opinion, that is what present day democracies have succeeded in doing.
It took a very long.
>As for answering the questions,
> I think that young people often keep us old farts youthful and honest and
I
> think that is probably the best gift they can give us in the twilight of
our
> years. After all, would we rather go with a weak body or a weak mind? It
> was the wife of one of our list members, a scholar in her own right, who
> pointed out to me what an idealistic young man Chris happens to be and how
> likeable he is.
Ray, I try very hard not to be an old fart, even though someone called me
that many years ago when I had just turned forty! Old fartdom is entirely a
matter of perspective. During the sixties, young people maintained that
they shouldn't trust anyone over thirty, which meant that people that young,
by then current perspectives, were old farts. At my present age (not to be
revealed!) I have to consign people over ninety to old fartdom! Yet I do
know some people in their twenties who, in my opinion, think like old farts.
> If I may quote one of my favorite elder wise men J.N. Warfield:
>
> "... when complexity is involved,
> linear communication is seriously deficient; ...
> As a consequence, essentially all dialog is defective when
> the topic exceeds the normal degree of difficulty. The idea that key
> concepts can't be defined is a basic absurdity because all definition is
> arbitrary. If there is any meaning to say something can't be defined, it
> must be that (a) the means of defining are not known to the individual,
> hence
> he is treating the matter subjectively or (b) he means that it is not
> possible to get a working consensus on what the term means."
Perhaps, but I'm reading Thomas Homer-Dixon's "Ingenuity Gap" which suggests
that complexity compounds from relatively simple individual actions. Each
of those actions can be understood and their consequences predicted, but
when you put them all together, understanding and resolution become
tremendously more difficult, so difficult in some cases that the problems
they raise simply cannot be resolved. In case you haven't encountered him,
Homer-Dixon thinks about things like the impact of population growth on the
environment, interactions among nations, and climate change.
> Are we willing to define key concepts or shall we just stuff words in each
> other's mouths because it is really as Fukuyama has said on more than one
> occasion, "Western history is finished and this is a cultural war to the
> death." (Actually I think Fukuyama is exploitive but he has a way of
> picking the right subject and then being shallow and stuffy in his
> examination of it. But this could just be cultural, like whether I enjoy
> Ozawa or Von Karajan or not.)
The only thing I've read by Fukuyama is "The End of History" and that was
some years ago. I didn't think much of it - rather shallow and stuffy, as
you say.
> I would suggest that Ed Weick, and Keith start paying attention on this if
> they have an estate and are not wealthy. It is not such a long way from
> middle class Canada or Bath to Pine Ridge Reservation as one might think.
> You can make it in one generation. I've seen it and can swear to the
truth
> of it. The Quapaws who were wealthy prior to WW II have been stripped
> bare through government and private enterprise collaboration in their
status
> as dependant nations. Just as the Irish and Canary Islanders were a
> warm-up for the European genocide in the Americas, so have the dependent
> Indian Nations of America been a warm-up for what is now being worked out
> here. This is not a new phenomenon but the reaction to it does resemble
> the Jewish reaction prior to WW II. "This can't really be happening. It
> must be the fault of the reactionary orthodox! If they would just be
> quiet, we could live here comfortably as Germans." Living with
> Holocaust surviver's stories here in New York it is an eery feeling to
hear
> their stories resonate with those from my own family two generations
earlier
> here in the good ole' US of A.
I have to submit my income tax today and feel stripped and bare. But
seriously, what I said above about a good, comprehensive set of laws applies
here as well. Individual rights, including property rights, must be
protected. When I was in Russia a few years ago I witnessed examples of
what happened to people when they were not protected and I still shudder!
During the Indian wars and displacements, there was an assumption that they
had rights in the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the rulings of Chief
Justice Marshall in the 1830s, but those rights were ultimately not
respected and nations like your own Cherokee were simply overwhelmed. In
the US it was done by wars and forced displacement, in Canada by by one
sided treaties. The effect was similar.
But I will take your advice to heart and protect my small and dwindling
estate.
> Also no one seemed to comment on Chris's statement about environmental
> overrides in Scandinavia either.
In about 1970, I did an extensive tour of Sweden, tasked with finding out
what the Swedes were doing for their Saamic (Lapp) population. I got an
earful. At that time, the Saams were still pursuing their ancient practice
of herding their reindeer up into the mountains for summer pasture. What
the Swedes had done was cut deep trenches across the routes the Saams took
so that the reindeer could not pass. The Saams felt that this was a
deliberate effort to destroy an ancient lifestyle, and I saw no reason to
disagree. The Swedes wanted their north for hydroelectric and mining
development, and the fact that a northern minority wanted it for another
purpose did not seem to bother them. So, if Sweden is being bullied by the
EU, all I can say is "what goes around comes around!" However, I might add
that the Swedes are not easily bullied.
>And Ed, it even worked in
> the Soviet agriculture for a while. I know because we had farmers from
> Oklahoma who went as observers at one point and they were impressed and
used
> it to goad our farmers into being more competitive.
I'd suggest that your farmers were shown the better stuff. The Soviets were
quite capable of that. Anything I've read or heard about Soviet agriculture
was that it was not particularly efficient and certainly not competitive.
It was organized to provide the foodstuffs needed to build heavy industries
and bureaucracies, not to provide goods in a free market. Many people
starved while Soviet agriculture was being reshaped to suit Soviet purposes.
Many others were liquidated or sent off to Siberia.
> I've disagreed with Chris on many things but I don't see why Ed or Keith
got
> so upset with the youngster from the wealthy side of Europe. In fact I
> will go one better and say that you shouldn't have and that it was beneath
> your own competance to do so. I'm posting this to the list because it
> came to me on the list and because I value all of you and would hate to
see
> the same kind of "pinned to the wall" that happened with Hanson and Kurtz.
> Two people that I miss and valued. If Chris's data was wrong then give
> something counter. You certainly have done so to me upon occassion as
has
> Chris. I never liked it and screamed but if you were right, I modified
my
> thought. Sometimes you were, but right now, from my place of ignorance
on
> the specifics of these "Nouveau-Indian Treaties," it seems that Chris is
the
> one who has the data. I even shout encouragement when something you or
he
> says that challenges my prejudices. That is the fun of this type of
> aggressive dialogue.
I would be more willing to argue points and facts with Chris if he didn't
suggest that I swallow PR whole or am a reactionary. I felt he overstepped
it a bit.
And thanks for your comments, Ray. They are valued.
Ed W
