Hi all, On Jan 10, 2012, at 7:08 PM, Mike Gonzalez wrote:
> My concern involves the seeming contradiction between believing that we can > improve the human condition, and the belief that we don't necessarily know > what's best for ourselves, which leads to the logical conclusion that we > conduct aimless action. If there's no contradiction, and humility means > something to the effect of "understanding our role within the construct of a > whole society and the universe", then that eliminates the contradiction. > Rather, that makes humility akin to "self awareness", which brings into play > Socrates' and Thales' exhortations to "know thyself". If that's the case, > then I agree, we can avoid the terms "pride" and "humility", until they're > extremely carefully defined. > > It would create a situation, though, where we would need to know where to > place "excellence" in all this. We want people to exceed expectations and > create all these technological and medical advances to address all the ills > in the world but, at the same time, we seemingly want to express that this > advancement means nothing in the long run. How do we get people to continue > to press the boundaries of human achievement? Excellent discussion. Mike actually touches on the critical tension: we need to believe we know what is best to make improvement, yet an unhealthy certitude that we are right is usually disastrous. Excessive humility is as dangerous as excessive pride. The word I've coined to resolve that tension is the "prefuture". That is, we are creating a better world, and we have a pretty good idea of the next step, but we'll never finish, and we're never going to get it 100% right. We are for improve-ability, but against perfectibility. I agree that there is a tension between humility as "knowing my place within a rigid social system" and 'knowing my proper place in the cosmos." And to be sure, the latter is a fiendishly difficult question to answer properly. Alas, like Billy, I don't know a better term, especially from within the Christian tradition. That said, for many purposes the word "modest" might serve, especially as an adjective. A "modest progressivism" would capture the spirit of what we're doing, at least when talking to the Right. E -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
