[lit-ideas] Re: on the home front
- From: Andy <mimi.erva@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2008 06:11:49 -0700 (PDT)
Basically, that's exactly what I mean by we're all the same except for fill in
the blanks variables. We all have mothers, we all have fathers, most have
siblings or extended families. How those factors come together determines who
we are. My contention is parenting is for a few months biological and
following birth it's overwhelmingly environmental. The irony is that because
we're all children first, that which we learn as children becomes normal,
however rotten that learning is. Result: humans are the mess they are. The
mess is preventable, or vastly reduceable, except that, well, it seems so
normal to be a mess. It seems normal to have war, to settle
disputes with violence (otherwise known as spanking or occupation or whatever)
and on and on. We humans just don't know there's another way to do things.
Genes are important but personally I think they carry infinitely less weight
than environment.
--- On Tue, 8/12/08, John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From: John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: on the home front
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tuesday, August 12, 2008, 12:47 PM
On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 3:53 PM, Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>Variant 1: We're all the same in different ways. Variant 2: We're all
>>different in the same way.
Then who is "we"?
Eric's question points to a third set of answers, three instead of two,
formulated by the American anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn: All human beings
are, in some respects, like all other people; in other respects like some other
people; and in yet other respects uniquely themselves.
"Like all other people" points to basic, primarily biological facts: We are
featherless bipeds that exhibit a rough bilateral symmetry; we are warm-blooded
mammals, conceived by sexual intercourse and born to mothers whose milk can
feed us; we speak some language that shares universal features with other
languages, that sort of thing.
"Uniquely ourselves points to another basic biological fact, that the number of
possible combinations of human genes is larger than the number of electrons in
the visible universe, so we each, even identical twins, start with a somewhat
different set whose results are further differentiated by the accidents of
experience.
Between them likes "like some other people," which points to the particular
language, culture, customs, habits and notions of how society works that depend
on growing in up in one or another group, the fact that makes Eric's "Who is
'we'?" important.
How important is, of course, a matter much debated. Those addicted to the
market fundamentalism that permeates so much of modern thinking tend to see
only unique individuals constrained by universal facts embodied in biology. A
bit more sophisticated view recognizes the importance of "we" and of issues
like whether "we" is a small and relatively simple group whose members all
agree on how life should be lived or a place like New York City, where people
of diverse views must find ways to co-exist or succumb to a war of all against
all.
Cheers,
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/
Other related posts:
