On 2009-Feb-03, at 21:31, David P. Henderson wrote: > Stefano, while this is an interesting treatise, it fails because it > uses Lott's arguments that guns and crime(prevention) are connected > in the US. They are not. Crime is merely one of many useful > statistics to justify gun ownership. What you and most Europeans and > just about everyone outside the US fail to understand is how deeply > embedded the necessity of the Gun is in US culture. It is deeply tied > to our founding and our independence. There is a saying over here: A > well-armed citizenry keeps the government honest. > > Guns allowed us to conquer this continent and dispossess its original > inhabitants. Guns allowed us to drive the tyrant, King George III, > and his representatives and adherents from this nation. The Gun is > deeply tied to American identity. The Gun was/is so important that at > the end of the War between the States (or American Civil War), the > victor permitted the vanquished to retain possession of its arms. > > Unlike the English, we have no feudal history, so nothing has really > changed in the UK re arms except that those who always had access are > losing it. > > Also unlike England, our frontier was pacified only within the last > 100 years, there are people here still alive who remember those days.
Well, going back to the AQAL diagram, see a simpler version here: http://wisdomspace.net/sites/wiz2.civicactions.net/files/images/IntegralDiagram-Wilber.jpg Lott studied the gun and crime rates, which in AQAL, are data about material systems, which are the Lower Right quadrant. Chuck's observation is that the real problem is that you have bad people out there, which in AQAL we could locate as the moral character of the individual, which is the Upper Right quadrant of the diagram. And I agree with Chuck that if Lott's data is correct, then fine, gun ownership seems to be a positive in America, and seeing as it is a material thing, separate to people's moral character anyway (the diagram makes that clear) then why not? David, what you are adding now, if I understand right, is that gun ownership has a cultural meaning deeply embedded in your culture's history. As it happens, AQAL diagram has a space for that too: it is the Lower Right quadrant of the diagram--that's the quadrant of culture, relationships, meanings. The point of the AQAL diagram is that you need to touch bases with each quadrant to start to get a integrated picture of a problem. Any issue has a material component (It-objects), an individual component (I-self) and a social component (We-culture). So I don't know if we've failed, as you put it, but you have certainly added the social/cultural quadrant, which Chuck and I were missing so far. And with your addition of the cultural meaning of gun ownership, we now have a more complete picture. Are you basically saying that you have guns because that's the culture and the meaning of freedom in America? Or something like that? "From my cold dead hands" ? Stefano _______________________________________________ OSX-Nutters mailing list | [email protected] http://lists.tit-wank.com/mailman/listinfo/osx-nutters List hosted at http://cat5.org/
