Craig, Thanks for weighing in.
On Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 2:13 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > [John] > > Society is comprised of individuals COLLECTIVELY relating with > > one another and their common environment > > Craig: > I think the "COLLECTIVELY" part of this statement misleadingly obscures > the difference between cases where there is collective intention to act > vs. where there isn't. For instance take the "housing market" in an Amish > community: there everyone goes to Farmer Brown's barn raising, then to > Farmer > Smith's, and so on. That is COLLECTIVE action. Outside of the Amish, > there's not. > > John: Collectivism wasn't the focus of my discussion, but the commonality of environmental input, so i'll leave aside, if you don't mind, the intentions of collective actions and just focus on what I see as the main point, which you do address below. > [John] > > the morality of a society reflects the individual values shared by the > > members AND the consensus reached will be that which reflects their > > congruence with that common environment. > > Craig: > This sounds like the myth of the noble savage. There may be "values shared > by the members", but also NOT shared by other members. And not only might > there be no consensus, there might not even be a dominant value. > > John: What I mean by "value" in this regard is as simple as the values of light and dark. The experience of nightfall is shared by all, and thus the semantic distinction between dark and light is understood by all, in their struggles toward communication and understanding. I understand that complex conflicts in the values of an individual, versus the values and needs of the collective, can be at odds, but the underlying matrix of understanding is formed by the common experience of a common environment. That's the "playground" where the games are worked out. I think there's usually a pretty good consensus on whether the sun is shining or not. If a person is that contrarian, then he's not going to last very long within the community. Furthermore, there are other matters that are as easy to comprehend as this. Life and death matters, they are termed, because, well, life is good and death is bad. Do we really need anyone to tell us this? John Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
