Ian:
> Agreed SA ... like most things that are any good
> they are not really
> new in any sense, just that someone coined a new
> word in a new
> context. Plus ca change - twas ever thus.
SA: Yes, and I think the orientation changes in the
new context. For instance, political systems and
their inherent defining in where power exists, as I
briefly mentioned in another thread. Bands power was
more spread out and no one person was always in
charge. Then the Big Man comes to power in more
tribal contexts, chiefdoms (the family lineage), and
then state where power is decentralized from the
larger population shifting to a more centralized
gov't/institution somewhere, someplace. This shift of
power and thus political systems is an effort by a
society to bring order to themselves. Religion was a
good social ordering power, but then what of all the
religions when they converge, especially in a state,
another overarching governance to enacted and this is
state government. Totem's were individual and
familial (the clan) in orientation. What I see by the
rise of state governance (so we're going way back in
history in certain geographies) is the need for a way
to order society amidst a population that becomes more
diverse in how they conduct themselves socially, such
as different religions, different economic markets,
etc... Thus, more and more impersonal abstractions
come about, and being they are 'impersonal' (what
science would call natural laws, or philosophy logical
premises, etc...) then the person and family is kept
out of these 'impersonal abstractions' for they are
'impersonal' (it is self-defined). What can become a
problem is when impersonal abstractions try to act,
are forced to act, or are believed to act -
personally. As gav pointed out, (I haven't read it,
but this is what gav said), Campbell's "Creative
Mythology" describes how people are to come up with
their own myths, and mythopoetic endeavors are open in
the midst of impersonal abstractions, the personal
abstractions is void, a space exists and we can come
up with them on our own. What becomes difficult is
the resistance impersonal abstractions may take on or
if impersonal abstractions try to take too much
control and kill the mythopoetic process.
Ian:
> I think gene still holds the "cultural" aspect -
SA: Did you mean meme, not gene?
Ian:
> that's the point -
> but as you say it is an attempt to make it "seem"
> more scientific,
> more "atomic". It's only "stripped-down"
> (reductionist) if you want it
> to be, and clearly we don't.
SA
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