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From: janw@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Individual as a Mythical Beast
Message-ID: <28200582@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 11-Jan-86 22:25:00 EST
Article-I.D.: inmet.28200582
Posted: Sat Jan 11 22:25:00 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 24-Jan-86 22:32:59 EST
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Nf-From: inmet!janw    Jan 11 22:25:00 1986


[Larry Kolodney (INTERNET) lkk@mit-mc.arpa]
>>If all humankind needs is to become as rational  and  independent
>>as the marginal netter, can things be quite hopeless ?

>God forbid.  What humankind needs has little to do with rationality
>(in the sense that you mean it).

You probably misunderstand me. Let me describe in  what  sense  I
mean it. Rationality is the desire and the ability to *get at the
truth*. At the core is the *desire*, an *urge to understand*,  to
make sense of things.

 As it works, it accumulates skills and habits of  concentration,
observation,   induction,  sampling,  deduction,  generalization,
specification, abstraction, concretization, analogy, imagination,
invention, testing, self-criticism, and many others.

The concept of rationality is close to those of  intelligence,
of sanity, and of objectivity. We can never have enough of it.

>Rationality only works with the correct premises.  

I disagree. Rationality *discovers* the correct premises.

>The current state
>of affairs (at least in the USA) is that people start out with the
>premise that they are independant free agents (i.e. they can somehow
>exist and live a happy life independently from any arbitrary part of
>the rest of the world, that they are distinct from the world), whose
>place in the world is to maximize their utility by making as much
>*money* as possible, the rest of the world be damned.
>This attitude survives easily on USENET because  it [...]

Does it ? I'd be surprised. If the netters maximize *money*,  why
are  they wasting so much of their time and brains on unpaid dis-
cussions ? Surely you must be misjudging them.

The people who *do* maximize  their  money-making  potential  are
very  useful, however, and we should all be grateful to them. If,
by some mass hypnosis, you eliminated this engine of achievement,
half  the  world  would starve very soon; the rest would stagnate
and probably perish a little later.

Not that these are the *only* productive  people,  but  they  are
irreplaceable.  You may say, there's got to be a better reason to
do these useful things. Possibly, but make it *better*. Fear sup-
plemented  with fanaticism is infinitely worse. And that, so far,
has been the only attempted alternative.

			Jan Wasilewsky