From: Steve Peterson (peterson.steve@verizon.net)
Date: Sat Jul 05 2003 - 22:02:20 BST
Hi J, R, all
> J
>> So it is the social patterns that shape humans that are the giant. I
> agree
>> with you that Platt and I were being too narrow, and that the economic
>> systems are organs of the giant.
>
> R
> Interestingly, when you look at the Giant like that, global social changes
> like bringing capitalism to China or bringing democracy to Iraq appear to be
> like social "organ transplants". Will the recipient society reject the
> transplant because the organ is too incompatible with it own Giant?
>
Steve:
I like this analogy. It is also a response to the kind of moral relativist
I often encounter who says that since one culture does without a given
social prohibition then our culture can as well.
Just as different animals have evolved in different ways to solve the same
problems of life on earth, in the evolution of societies throughout the
world, different societies have evolved different morals for dealing with
the problems inherent to living in a society (and to reap the benefits of
social life as well). This fact should not be mistaken to mean that every
social moral is interchangeable with any other from one society to another.
[see relatively unregulated sex in Samoa, pot in Netherlands, abortion in
the United States, no death penalty in Europe, etc.] Or that if one society
has no moral prohibition and survives, that any other society could get rid
of such a social moral and survive as well. It is like saying that dogs
could survive with gills instead of lungs. The social morals that a society
evolves, evolve within a network of morals that must be considered as a
whole.
> J
> A long time ago, humans were shaped into
>> social roles by a giant that was probably 90% environmental - biology
>> dictated what it meant to be a farmer, a hunter, a mother or father.
>
> R
> Not to get to abstract (ha ha), but I would think that when biology was
> still 90% in charge there was no Giant at all. The Giant's birthday was the
> day that social patterns became 51% of the equation and it just grew from
> there.
Steve:
To continue harping on the distinction between patterns of value and a
person being dominated by a type of value, I like how you distinguish the
birth of the Giant from the birth of the first social pattern of value.
Analogous is the birth of philosophy in Greece and the appearance of the
first intellectual pattern of value which are also not the same in my book.
Thanks,
Steve
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