Helmut, yes, “self-control” is almost an English translation of the Greek root of “autonomy.” And yes, I do see a tension between individual self-control and control of the individual by external agencies or subordination to the community. In fact this is one of the major themes of my book Turning Signs, where I refer to it as a creative tension and a crucial feature of holarchic systems. My account of it is a bit different from yours, as far as I can tell from your brief message, but you can perhaps catch the drift of it from my chapter on “guidance systems,” http://gnusystems.ca/TS/gds.htm.
Gary f.
} Well may he be content to live a hundred years who acts without attachment – who works his work with earnestness, but without desire, not yearning for its fruits – he, and he alone. [Isha Upanishad (Prabhavananda)] {
http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway
From: Helmut Raulien [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 2-Oct-17 13:12
Gary f., list,
"self-control is reasonableness": This reminds me of Kants critique of pure reason, if you replace "self-control" with autonomy. So- is there always if not to say a war, a competition between the individual´s autonomy, and heteronomy, that is between self-control and other-control? Between the acephal wildness of the hunter-gatherer- community, and the supersystem´s attempt to tame, compose, and classify the shrewd?
I think, there is two ways of classification or self-control: The enriching (taxonomy) and the deprivating (typology) one. An autonomous individual will always choose the enriching kind, the natural kind of classification: E.g. choose a profession, e.g. farmer, but by keeping all human traits and rights. But a composed society (with division of domination and labor) will deny him these rights, and try to make him not a farmer, but a dependant peasant, stripped of some essential human rights. This is deprivated classification due to composition. The reason is, that classification and composition are hierarchies that go in opposite directions (See Stanley N. Salthe´s paper: "Salthe ´12 Axiomathes"). There can be only one tree structure: The power composition tree (king, ministers, ... peasants), or the classification tree, which would be about humans and their different kinds of cooperation. So I think, there is the basics of human tragedy based on logic. To see it would to be able to deal with it, but it is not easy.
Best,
Helmut
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