-----Platt Holden, Monday, July 16, 2007 09:54----- All points well-taken. To me the "diversity umbrella" in which all approaches are considered equally valid is a cop-out and leaves the message with young brains full of mush that "anything goes." (Have you witnessed the overtly sexual teenage dances?) If the MOQ were adopted as the umbrella, then a value-centered curriculum might evolve, for the betterment of society. But what are the chances? Practically nil as far as I can tell. Diversity rules the day. ------
Having worked at a boarding high school, I have certainly witnessed those dances. In fact, I have chaperoned those teenage dances and been an adult enforcer of appropriate boundaries between hormone-charged teenagers eager to express biological quality ... I share your concern with an "anything goes" mentality and certainly do not support cultural relativism. That said, I endorse diversity. In the words of Blaise Pascal, "Plurality which is not reduced to unity is confusion; unity which does not depend on plurality is tyranny." In endorsing the teaching a plurality metaphysical approaches, I do not intend to perpetuate the fatal flaw of postmodern relativism--that nothing is better than anything else. Rather, I intend to honor the MoQ's assertion that there is no single True intellectual construction of the world. There are multiple perspectives, each providing a partial truth, and some are more comprehensive, consistent, and consilient than others. In the end, what students need is not a pre-given worldview handed down by authority from their teachers, but the critical teaching skills honed by engaging with, articulating, analyzing, attacking, defending, and comparing different worldviews. -----Platt Holden, Monday, July 16, 2007 09:54----- I know of nothing inherent in marriage benefits that would encourage gay partnership into "long-term committed relationships." I would wager the "divorce rate" among married gay couples would at least equal those of heterosexual couples. But, neither of us is going to argue the other out of his position on this issue. The voters will decide. ----- I fear you are correct that we're not going to budge one another from our respective opinions on the matter of recognizing same-sex unions. While I remain open to the possibility of being shown that such a move should be opposed, I have heard no compelling argument articulating the grounds for such opposition and maintain a 99% confidence factor that recognizing same sex unions is not only the morally correct choice in terms of the universalization of rights, it's also the long-term socially beneficial choice. I know you disagree on that, but I still don't understand why. First, I haven't heard the reasons why you think that recognizing same-sex unions leads so social ills. You see it as somehow weakening societal codes but I don't see the connection between allowing gay marriage & any increase in uncivilized or anti-social behavior. What, specifically do you see happening, and how? What's gone wrong in Vermont in the last seven years since they've recognized civil unions between homosexual couples? Second, I find reasonable the logic laid out in the article I cited in my last post which argues that allowing gay marriage actually strengthens marriage as an institution. <http://www.indegayforum.org/news/show/26888.html>. Whether or not it would actually increase long-term committed relationships between gays is an open question, as I have no evidence to point to one way or the other. Prima facia, though, I think that both the formal community recognition and the contractual nature of marriage would tend to incentivize such, since that's a prime social function of marriages. I agree that divorce may end up plaguing gay marriages as much as it does heterosexual marriages. However, that doesn't seem to me to be an argument against gay marriage. -----Platt Holden, Monday, July 16, 2007 09:54----- The intention or motivation behind government intervention doesn't change the nature of government which is legalized force. Behind all government regulations, for good or ill, is the barrel of a gun wielded by the police or military. That's what I meant by any kind of government intervention being "heavy handed." ----- I think you take Pirsig too literally. In Chapter 24 of *Lila*, he does indeed say, "All the laws of history, all the arguments, all the Constitutions and the Bills of Rights and Declarations of Independence are nothing more than instructions to the military and police." Personally, I take issue with the "nothing more than" clause, as I think there is an enormous difference to liberty in the content of laws and the intermediary steps of enforcement. His essential point is the next sentence: "If the military and police can't or don't follow these instructions properly they might as well have never been written." That's certainly true. If compliance doesn't come from the mere statement of the law, then it must come to threat of or actual use of violence against individuals breaking the law. However, government intervention doesn't *start* there--it *ends* there, and only when the law has been broken and the perpetrator refuses to comply peaceably. To equate all government intervention with police action is to mistake the DMV for the SWAT team, to equate a government bureaucrat carrying out a statutory regulation with a machine-gun wielding soldier-cop in a flak jacket carrying out a warrant. As my examples bear out, there's big difference between levels of government regulation, between criminalizing the consumption of alcohol and criminalizing acts of negligence under the influence of alcohol, between micromanaging manufacturing standards and setting pervasive economic incentives & letting individuals & businesses take care of the rest. I think that just as some government intervention unwarranted and some not, some government intervention is heavy-handed, and some is not. -----Platt Holden, Monday, July 16, 2007 09:54----- Thanks. I've reviewed the article and again question its assumption about man-made global warming. Otherwise I noted at the conclusion that any combination of carrots and sticks is ultimately backed by the "heavy hand of government" -- a necessary stick to be sure. ----- Regardless of the reality of anthropogenic global warming and its likely deleterious consequences I hope you agree that the economics of externalities, the applicability of the cybernetic logic of the Tragedy of the Commons, and the game-theoretic mathematics of Prisoner's Dilemma still hold true. In the situations in which these constructs apply, individual short-term self-interest leads to long-term ruin. It requires external (most likely government) regulation to avoids the Tragedy of the Commons because a free market cannot incentivize the nondestructive individual behavior. On this issue, I'm curious what would constitute evidence to persuade you of the reality and danger of global warming. From your commitment to the MoQ and your statements allying it with science, I would have assumed that you were committed to scientific standards of evidence, the overwhelming preponderance of which supports the view that anthropogenic global warming threatens us with enormous loss of property, livelihood, and human life, as summarized by the IPCC and reported in the links I provided in my July 9th post. What makes you question these multiple, peer-reviewed, scientific papers? Do you see compelling evidence to the contrary? -----Platt Holden, Monday, July 16, 2007 09:54----- As an aside, some evolutionary biologists are claiming that our moral sense (what is good) is not intellectual but innate. What do you think? (Maybe another thread.) ----- An interesting question for future exploration. I assume you're talking about Steven Pinker & E.O. Wilson, among others? I haven't read enough of their work to comment, but from what I have read, I think at least some of our moral sense is pre-programmed by evolution, whether at the biological or sociocultural level. I highly recommend Robert Axelrod's *The Evolution of Cooperation* and Robert Wright's *Nonzero* for compelling, game-theoretic, evolutionary explanations of how we came to cooperate and develop our sense of the good over time out of our own self-interested interactions with others. 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.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
