[Arrlo had asked]
Which is it? Something that people determine? Or something bestowed by "God"?
[Ham]
Both.
[Arlo repsonds]
You can't have this both ways. Either "freedom of assembly" is a right
conferred by an intellectual understanding of the best way to order a society,
or it is mandated by a Creator on High.
Also, if such "rights" are innate in man, where praytell did "freedom of
assembly" exist ten thousand years ago? Did it exist and man just had not
"discovered" it yet? Was it lying dormant in our genes, waiting for the late
18th century to suddenly manifest itself?
I think if you look at the history of man, you'll see such "rights" are
anything but innate, or inherent in the nature of man. These "rights" derive
from post-Enlightenment intellection and philosophizing. I don't know why some
seem so scared of that, that they need some external "Creator" to lend validity
to these "rights". If anything, the "endowed by our Creator" rhetoric of the
"founding fathers" was a bow towards the uneducated and unenlightened who could
be made to rally around a "God's right" before they could be brought to
understanding complex rational philosophy.
As you said it the first time, and quite correctly in my opinion, "In a free
society, the people determine how they want to be governed, including the
rights they are to enjoy as free citizens." People determined that "freedom of
assembly" is a high quality "right, it was neither mandated by some external
"God" nor "innate" in the existence of wo/men.
[Ham]
... in order to live harmoniously in a collective society, the individual must
adapt to the morality of that society.
[Arlo]
The individual does not voluntarily "adapt to the morality" of society, by
virtue of her socialization, she internalizes and appropriates large cultural
orientations, views, ways of seeing, ways of being, her entire edifice of
intellectual understanding is built upon the very particular social language,
customs, cultures, and habits of her community.
[Ham]
This in itself is not a constraint on his freedom, for he can choose to isolate
himself by living as hermit or moving to another society.
[Arlo]
Indeed, it is not a constraint, for intellectual freedom derives from social
participation. One can only "live as a hermit" after one has internalized a
social system, a baby left in the wild at birth would not "live as a hermit"
but as a wild animal, devoid of any language to compartmentalize and synthesize
her experiences.
And certainly, one of the benefits of experiencing global diversity is that it
challenges our social static network, and maybe, as you say, we will see a
"better" way of doing something. But this too derives out of a the dialectic
between a collective and an individual. A feral child would have no means to
say "ooo, like that society better". It is only after the self arises out of
this confluence of collective and individual experience, are such intellections
possible.
[Ham]
I have no idea what Ron means by "structurated". It sounds like G.W. Bush
newspeak ("strategiory"?).
[Arlo]
I'd refer you to the article Ron posted. "Structuration" is large body of
thought within sociology, psychology and critical theory. At its simplest it
points to the mutual structuring (and mutual generation) between the individual
and society. It derives from the idea, as Pirsig articulates, that the
intellectual level of man derives from the social level. Man is never an
autonomous agent bouncing around in the world. He is both an active (agenic)
and passive (structurated) participant in a social realm (or "habitus" as
Bourdieu calls it).
Our internalization of the cultural voice begins, Vygotsky would argue, at the
very first moments after birth, with the experiencing of very nuancical and
particular cultural "stuff". We learn what to see and how to see it from a very
early age, through an internalization of a language that says "notice this!
ignore this! value this!".
[Ham]
I take issue with the statement that man's vision is "guided by language"
and "metaphors". Language is only a tool of communication.
[Arlo]
As Wittengenstein had pointed out, "language is the house of being". It is not
"only a tool of communication", it is the symbolic system by which our
experiences are immediately conceptualized. And we internalize subtle metaphors
that guide our experience. You are your language, Ham, what are you apart from
the words in your head? Ectoplasm? Ghostly apparition? Energy? Sure, this
software relies on the hardware of your body, but your body is not "you". You
could lose your legs, your arms, your torso (hypothetically) in an accident and
still have "you" exist. Does that mean "you" is your brain? Is "Ham" that mush
of gray matter inside that boney balloon on your shoulders? I say, no. "Ham" is
a software reality, as is "Arlo". These software realities are built by
language, they do no exist apart from it.
And as such, the limits of your language are the limits of your agency.
[Ham]
Fair enough. Peace, coexistence, and individual freedom are all consistent
with the Western world's idea of civilization.
[Arlo]
Precisely. They are derived from post-Enlightenment rationality. They are "the
western world's idea of civilization". They are not innate, nor mandated by
God. They are an idea.
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