[MD] Harris and Steve

[John Carl]

On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 9:41 AM, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>wrote:


> dmb says:
>
> Behold my magnificent humility!
>
>
Yeah, it's pretty hard to miss.


> Isn't it obvious that conflict represented by burkhas and bikinis will
> never be solved if that cross-cultural dialogue is conducted by the
> fundamentalists on either side? Aren't they the ones who are most likely to
> toss bombs of the conversational and literal kind? The hardliners on either
> side are hardliners precisely because they are unpersuaded by arguments,
> facts or reasons.
>
>
A point I've made myself many times.  One can't counter hardliners with
hardlines.  You can't fight fundamentalism with atheism.  It takes a higher
analysis, an objective view, in order to overcome reactionaries AND the
patterns they react against.

Otherwise you're just swingin' that ole pendulum all the harder and the
energy fed into the system comes back to bite you hard.

That was also the point stupid Royce was making about "dangerous pairs".




> I mean, community agreement in the narrow, provincial sense is what causes
> cross-cultural conflicts in the first place. And so it seems obvious to me
> that any realistic solution is going to include an expansion of what counts
> as your community. Why should we not identify with all human beings or with
> the ongoing process of life itself?
>
>
Go ahead.  Have fun.  It's your life, make what you want of it.



> I'm always suspicious of anti-intellectual attitudes.



 I'm even more suspicious of making authority or prestige your source of
values.  HItler found pragmatism pretty useful, you know.

But I'm hopeful that since you did hear from THREE different professors (in
the Philosophy Club no less!) that humility is a good thing, and you'll try
it out sometime.

Cheers,

JC