Rule 1. Back your argument up
Rule 2. Respect other people’s work
Rule 3. Know thyself
Rule 4. Be open to other ideas
Rule 5. Stick to the point
Rule 6. Discuss
If the topic you want to address is under discussion below, please insert your response there, instead of using the New Topic box.
An argumentative point was raised about the nature-culture distinction apparent in this investigation. You can find it here.
New topic:
2009-10-07 19:14:27 Just what exactly is 'puerism', P-A? —NormanNitram
2009-10-10 03:35:59 Howz that, NN? —PerigGouanvic
2009-10-10 12:31:39 Grreat, but how abaht this too, P-A? —NormanNitram
2009-10-11 01:28:01 Another argument for the superiority of wikis! —PerigGouanvic
2009-10-11 13:05:33 This wiki anyway... —NormanNitram
2009-10-16 16:09:23 You know, this kinda reminds me of some of the 'global warming' thinking - are there connections there to be made? People are being told to 'look after their planet' better, no more naughty lightbulbs, running old cars... etc
(Featured pages should have better spelling. Sorry folks...)
2009-10-16 17:13:33 But in this case people would be nurturing the earth guided by bad science.... herd behaviour, guided by not-so-rational pretenses (anti-intellectuals, etc.)? If I had a parallel to make, a parallel that wouldn't make maternalism\ethics of care look clumsy, I'd start more generally with ecological thinking as a return to Mother Earth cosmologies and ethics, after millenia of more testorenoned social organizations and relationships to nature. I'd look into various kinds of so-called "primitivisms", and see how they translate maternalist values.
At the end of Voltaire's Candide, there's this 'moral' precept: cultivate your own garden (or some similar translation). Candide, after seeing chaos and cruelty in the world, finally decides to give up, abandon this violent world guided by ideologies (as we'd say today). This is, as I see it, the birth of bourgeois liberal feel-good, cocooning, individualism. So... I don't take your point lightly: I do feel that there is as you suggest a great temptation to ritualize our relationship to things into a maternalist "routine", and to forget the bigger picture, which objectively enjails people in myths just like those that Edward Bernays spoke about — cf the homepage of PI.
I'm wondering where to find the most radical, I mean by that coherent, discourse on what society should be, if guided by such principles (close to nature and to each other, etc, etc). Utopias. Perhaps you have a better understanding of the ecology movements, and could guide me? —PerigGouanvic
2010-01-15 15:07:16 You know, this page is looking really good. That's the advantage of this wiki, and having an Editor-in Chief too, of course! People like you and occasionally the Doc, can create really good stuff without being distracted by aesthetically challenged know nothings...
Re. ecological utopias, (Henry) David Walden is full of ideas (about nature and society), and there's maybe some relevant material in Aldo Leopold especially regarding nature 'red in tooth and claw', as opposed to just being pretty.
And then, Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University = 'still alive like!, an environmental philosopher with a strong aesthetic sense, Holmes Rolston (![[WWW]](http://wikispot.org/wiki/eggheadbeta/img/sycamore-www.png){kind=small}
http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/Philosophy/Rolston.html), who recently put it thus:
‘Several billion years worth of creative toil, several million species of teeming life, have been handed over to the care of this late-coming species in which mind has flowered and morals have emerged. Ought not those of this sole moral species do something less self-interested than to count all the produce of an evolutionary ecosystem as rivets in their space ship, resources in their larder, laboratory materials, recreation for their ride?
... If true to their specific epithet, ought not Homo Sapiens value this host of species as something with a claim to care in its own right? ... There is something Newtonian, not yet Einsteinian, besides something morally naïve, about living in a reference frame where one species takes itself as absolute and values everything else relative to its utility.’
Take a look at his book maybe. From Amaxon's summary:
"What role, he asks, do genes play in the evolution of mankind? For Rolston, man is not seen just as a superior animal, but as both a creator and creature of culture; this is what distinguishes us from the beasts.
He examines carefully recent evolutionary theories, including Richard Dawkins' "selfish gene" concept, which he finds not only misnamed but misleading. The first couple of chapters look at genes, what they are and how they work, what they do and don't do. From this he moves onto the genesis of human culture, and then to the "evolution" of scientific ideas, ethics, and finally religion. Religion, he concludes in his final deeply-thoughtful and clearly-argued chapter, which will annoy atheist evolution advocates and fundamentalist creationists alike, does have a survival value for mankind, and is not in any way incompatible with genetics or evolutionary theory."
You know, this is really a new topic, innit? —NormanNitram
I put this book on reserve at my university library. Will grab it soon.
— PG
Why don't you ever write summink 'editor in chief?
2010-01-16 07:27:40 Wow, this indeed is something different — and i mean by that, profoundly related!
Any idea how I could transform this page into a candidate for the Featured pages?
With some sense of closure, we/I could enter the realm of ecological thinking and fight the very wrong impression that people might get when reading uncautiously the recent writings of our colleague, Doc M. —PerigGouanvic
2010-01-16 07:32:13 For this page I'm thinking of an investigation that would concern a "Child Liberation Movement". —PerigGouanvic
2010-01-16 07:33:46 Or simply: "What are the children's rights?" —PerigGouanvic
See top of page.
—PerigGouanvic
