William Blake Jr.
2006-06-13 12:21:18 UTC
Think of a pomegranate. A pomegranate consists of hundreds of seeds.
Each seed has its unique core - its unique center - of which it is
a manifestation. Each seed is also a manifestation of the entire fruit
in which it exists. The seed is the substructure; the fruit is the
superstructure. The pomegranate and the seeds reinforce and shape each
other.
The fruit is the seeds in it, but also itself as a unique being. The
seeds are part of the fruit, but also their own unique and unshakeable
selves. An individual and a civilization can be therefore seen as the
seed and the pomegranate, with complex patterns of interconnectivity
among one another shaping and reframing both - with each individual
endowed with its own center, contributing its own unique essence to the
larger whole, and the whole containing the individuals while also
having its own character. Through the recombination, the mutual
shaping, among the two levels of structure, the individual and the
collective, is formed humanity.
When looking at a succession of seeds in the pomegranate, one gets an
idea of what the pomegranate is like; until one comes across a seed
that is different, and that by its sheer beingness refutes the pattern.
This is known as the pioneer seed. The pioneer seed is different from
previous bunch of seeds; it's different from voices that claim to
speak for the fruit. It is a part of the fruit however, and it peforms
a very important function: that of giving a truer understanding of the
whole than what has existed before.
Pioneer seeds lead difficult lives. They are pressed by the previous
patterns, they are made to believe they are wrongly made, in order that
they disappear and the cognitive dissonance of the existence of seeds
such as them vis-à-vis the patterns that claim to speak for the fruit
be resolved. The solution is for the pioneer seeds to dig in their
heels and identify with the larger whole and say that they are serving
a social function: That of refuting the pattern that claims to speak
for the fruit and making the observer understand something that was not
seen before.
The pomegranate and the seed depend on air, water and sunlight. The
pomegranate and the seeds take these components and make something
better than has existed before; something beautiful, consummate and
synergistic. Since both the pomegranate and the seeds are real,
legitimate entities, achieving benefit consists of achieving benefit
both for the individual and for the whole. It consists of both the
individual and the collective good. I say collective good not in the
utilitarian meaning - the meaning of "greatest good for the
greatest number" - but in the meaning of the benefit of the whole;
the benefit, that is, of the pomegranate. I say individual good in the
manner spoken of by the enlightenment philosophers and the objectivists
and extolled by them as the highest and only form of benefit.
Both the seeds and the pomegranate are legitimate entities; and both
must strive to be the best thing they can be even as it is legitimate
for them to seek their own fulfillment. We must tend to our garden; we
must also tend to the world. And it is legitimate for us, as seeds in
the fruit, to reap dividends of what both our own seed and the fruit
produce, even as it is legitimate for the fruit as a whole to reap
dividends from the individual seeds and from its own structure.
Because both the seeds and the pomegranate are legitimate entities,
they both possess power and they both consequently possess
responsibility for the outcome of the whole as well as for themselves.
Where an individual is in his life, is a function both of his actions
and of his society's preferences; where a society is, is a function
of the actions of the whole and of those of its individual members. The
same character that is encouraged in France (finely cultivated,
delicate) is desecrated in American heartland; the same character
traits that lead to success in Japan (respectful, docile, patient,
hard-working) lead, in Africa, to extinction. Even within America
itself, the values differ between different regions and between cities
and heartland; and the character that does best in Los Angeles is quite
different from a character that does best in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Each
society has its own character that rewards some traits while punishing
others, and an individual with given natal predispositions will be
expected to achieve different things in different societies.
The power over lives of both the individuals and the social whole is
therefore shared between the individual and society; it is an
interaction of the substructure and a superstructure, a synthesis. True
responsibility for individual lives and the social whole is therefore
shared among the two levels. And yet the current ideologies err on
either side and fight each other, resulting in people believing one
thing in one set of places and the opposite in another. One ideology,
popular especially in Midwest, consists of assigning all responsibility
to the individual. This quickly degenerates into bullying attacks on
the individuals whose inner propensities are not valued by the society,
which spirals downward further into ignorant claims that their inner
propensities are innately wrong and that the individuals with their
propensities are incapable of success, or if they do succeed are evil.
This is of course a case of society playing God, claiming for its
ill-informed judgments the authority to judge what is beyond its power
to create; and the most eloquent and well-deserved blow that one at the
receiving end of such bludgeoning can do to the entire social edifice
that assails him is to move to a place that values his or her natural
propensities and live happily there.
The other error, seen in the worldview of sociology and in Marxism,
consists of assigning all responsibility to society. This strips the
individual of responsibility for his actions and shapes a character
that is irresponsible, criminal and weak. In reality - and I mean
here in the quantified, complete reality that involves and quantifies
both the individual and the society, and not in the pushy screechy
ignorant assault of those who, committing the first error, want to
indulge in orgies of abuse against some individuals while considering
themselves good realistic responsible citizens - both levels are real,
and both levels are to be held justly accountable for their effect.
Responsibility for a life is a shared function of the individual and
society he inhabits; responsibility for a society is a shared function
of its inhabitants and its historically and sociologically formulated
national character.
An action can possess a real, or natural, consequence; a consequence
that stems from the action's inherent character and that results
automatically, by law of cause and effect, in another event. In
addition to real consequences, there are the artificial consequences,
or the consequences assigned by society. Different societies assign
different consequences to different kinds of actions. Conducting
business in America results, due to the first set of consequences, in
success or failure according to effectiveness of marketing and quality
of deliverables; conducting business in the Soviet Union, due to the
second set of consequences, resulted in imprisonment. That the same
action, when performed in different social universes, results in
different consequences, shows that the social universe is artificially
constructed - whether by top-down design as in the case of the former
Soviet Union or, as in the case of most societies, by bottom-up social
and historical development. I define bottom-up as that which evolved
spontaneously among people. I define top-down as that which was
formulated and given to the people from above. The same character,
while in all cases evoking the same natural consequences, will evoke
different sets of artificial consequences in different societies; and
it is both beneficial to the characters and resulting in their greatest
contribution for them to find themselves in societies whose artificial
systems of reinforcements are friendly to their basic nature.
In the way of the fulfillment both of the individual and the collective
benefit stand - bullies. I define bullies as entities and individuals
that seek power over other individuals at the expense of their life,
liberty and pursuit of happiness. The most vicious attacks on the
internationalist Clinton administration, which sought the benefit of
humanity as well as all individual humans whose self-interest did not
consist of oppression over other individuals, came from two sets of
people: bullies at home (Republicans who were used to dominating the
American citizenry and could not stand for them to have cultural and
economic alternatives) and bullies abroad (Islamic terrorists,
murderous regimes and Stalinist dictatorships that were used to pulling
the same trick on their own populations and were threatened by
Clinton's promise). In order for the individual and the collective
benefit to be fulfilled, the power of bullies has to be broken through
action combining the top and bottom - through action combining the
leader with visionary outlook pushing from above and the people who do
not wish to be dominated by the bullies any longer pushing from below.
Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo, in fighting with people's help the
corrupt officials in his country, provides the model for that
sandwiching arrangement. Another model has been the United States, with
the help of the Afghan people, overthrowing the Taliban.
It is therefore entirely in the best interests of both the world and
the individuals that inhabit it for there to be a flux of individuals
among regions within nations and across national boundaries. An
individual with genetic predisposition for a Kansas character would not
be happy in Japan; an individual with a genetic predisposition for a
San Francisco character will not be happy in Kansas. Rather than apply
their talents for the benefit of the world they inhabit, they will
become liabilities to their societies even while they themselves lead
miserable lives. It is a social service, and a service to humanity, to
take the people who through clash of inner traits with social values
are manipulated into the function of scapegoats in their societies to
social universes in which their innate traits are rewarded rather than
stigmatized - and in this end the distraction that self-righteous
abuse of outcasts poses to the demanding historical task of formulating
societies into humane, civilized, intelligent and habitable shapes.
This requires that the societies themselves compete for members within
an overarching perspective that includes many societies united in free
and fair competition for members - that the power exercised by
societies over people's lives be checked by the individual's
ability to leave when he or she feels too downtrodden for another
society, and the existence of information, resources and political
power for people around the world to be able to make such a change.
Thus, global economy - an arrangement that benefits the collective
prosperity of the whole as well as prosperity of far more individuals
around the world than it hurts - is an excellent arrangement; one
that improves the state of humanity even as it improves lives of its
individual members. It is beneficial, both for its inclusiveness of
millions of individual human beings, and for the reason that it
destroys the stranglehold of local entities that lay claim on the
lives, minds and hearts of individuals, at the expense of their
membership in humanity and at the expense of their individual benefit.
The global economy, with international entities created to place
safeguards against protectionism and other abuses, results in the
people who are competent around the world being able to have global
market for their produce while consumers around the world have the best
of the world at their disposal. This arrangement was striven for by the
best among both Republicans and Democrats - by both Reagan and
Clinton; and it is still producing great dividends for people around
the world, having raised 250 million people out of poverty in two
decades in China alone.
But global economy is not sufficient. Global economy requires global
diplomacy. It requires this: global outlook in participating countries.
A isolationist like LePen or Pat Buchanan in one country could jinx the
entire global cooperation. Global economy is a synergistic arrangement.
It is, once again, a fragile equilibrium that requires a presence of
mind and a global outlook on the part of everyone to achieve, an
ongoing political strength and vision, willingness to extend oneself to
embrace something different from oneself, and willingness to motivate
the people to see the big picture as well as themselves.
Following the economic progress toward globalization is progress in
other spheres of human endeavor: endeavor such as cultural, spiritual
and social. Competition, whether between economic entities or between
social entities, forces them to improve their deliverables for the
consumer. Thus, the advanced state of American and European society,
which has seen cultural competition, as compared to Middle Eastern
society, which has not, is demonstrative of the principle of cultural
competition at play and the improvement it has had in the lives of
humanity. In this way, cultural competition, like economic competition,
arrives at the best outcome for the human being.
Intercultural competition leads to intercultural communication,
resulting in a more integrated world. The optimal outcome of
intercultural competition for citizens is improvement realized in all
cultures, as good ideas from other parts of the world are adopted while
bad ideas within one's own culture are destroyed. The process leading
to that, like economic competition within advanced regulated economies,
is not automatic, but rather requiring the agreement upon fair tactics
and unfair tactics - on exclusion of amoral, forcible and fraudulent,
methods of influence - on requiring constant effort of synthetic
intelligence and peacemaking to achieve at the best outcome among
components and not allow cultural chauvenists within each region to
silence, demonize or kill off the other cultures. Like laissez-faire
economics within social covenant shaped by law, or like game
theory-influenced competition within the framework of cooperation, this
requires an overarching perspective of international cooperation at the
task of producing the best possible people living within pareto-optimal
social covenants that reflect the best of humanity - its foresight,
its compassion, its knowledge, its inspiration, its wisdom. Its
commitment to living - beautifully.
Ilya Shambat
(to see the rest, go to http://ibshambat.blog.com, under Integrationism)
Each seed has its unique core - its unique center - of which it is
a manifestation. Each seed is also a manifestation of the entire fruit
in which it exists. The seed is the substructure; the fruit is the
superstructure. The pomegranate and the seeds reinforce and shape each
other.
The fruit is the seeds in it, but also itself as a unique being. The
seeds are part of the fruit, but also their own unique and unshakeable
selves. An individual and a civilization can be therefore seen as the
seed and the pomegranate, with complex patterns of interconnectivity
among one another shaping and reframing both - with each individual
endowed with its own center, contributing its own unique essence to the
larger whole, and the whole containing the individuals while also
having its own character. Through the recombination, the mutual
shaping, among the two levels of structure, the individual and the
collective, is formed humanity.
When looking at a succession of seeds in the pomegranate, one gets an
idea of what the pomegranate is like; until one comes across a seed
that is different, and that by its sheer beingness refutes the pattern.
This is known as the pioneer seed. The pioneer seed is different from
previous bunch of seeds; it's different from voices that claim to
speak for the fruit. It is a part of the fruit however, and it peforms
a very important function: that of giving a truer understanding of the
whole than what has existed before.
Pioneer seeds lead difficult lives. They are pressed by the previous
patterns, they are made to believe they are wrongly made, in order that
they disappear and the cognitive dissonance of the existence of seeds
such as them vis-à-vis the patterns that claim to speak for the fruit
be resolved. The solution is for the pioneer seeds to dig in their
heels and identify with the larger whole and say that they are serving
a social function: That of refuting the pattern that claims to speak
for the fruit and making the observer understand something that was not
seen before.
The pomegranate and the seed depend on air, water and sunlight. The
pomegranate and the seeds take these components and make something
better than has existed before; something beautiful, consummate and
synergistic. Since both the pomegranate and the seeds are real,
legitimate entities, achieving benefit consists of achieving benefit
both for the individual and for the whole. It consists of both the
individual and the collective good. I say collective good not in the
utilitarian meaning - the meaning of "greatest good for the
greatest number" - but in the meaning of the benefit of the whole;
the benefit, that is, of the pomegranate. I say individual good in the
manner spoken of by the enlightenment philosophers and the objectivists
and extolled by them as the highest and only form of benefit.
Both the seeds and the pomegranate are legitimate entities; and both
must strive to be the best thing they can be even as it is legitimate
for them to seek their own fulfillment. We must tend to our garden; we
must also tend to the world. And it is legitimate for us, as seeds in
the fruit, to reap dividends of what both our own seed and the fruit
produce, even as it is legitimate for the fruit as a whole to reap
dividends from the individual seeds and from its own structure.
Because both the seeds and the pomegranate are legitimate entities,
they both possess power and they both consequently possess
responsibility for the outcome of the whole as well as for themselves.
Where an individual is in his life, is a function both of his actions
and of his society's preferences; where a society is, is a function
of the actions of the whole and of those of its individual members. The
same character that is encouraged in France (finely cultivated,
delicate) is desecrated in American heartland; the same character
traits that lead to success in Japan (respectful, docile, patient,
hard-working) lead, in Africa, to extinction. Even within America
itself, the values differ between different regions and between cities
and heartland; and the character that does best in Los Angeles is quite
different from a character that does best in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Each
society has its own character that rewards some traits while punishing
others, and an individual with given natal predispositions will be
expected to achieve different things in different societies.
The power over lives of both the individuals and the social whole is
therefore shared between the individual and society; it is an
interaction of the substructure and a superstructure, a synthesis. True
responsibility for individual lives and the social whole is therefore
shared among the two levels. And yet the current ideologies err on
either side and fight each other, resulting in people believing one
thing in one set of places and the opposite in another. One ideology,
popular especially in Midwest, consists of assigning all responsibility
to the individual. This quickly degenerates into bullying attacks on
the individuals whose inner propensities are not valued by the society,
which spirals downward further into ignorant claims that their inner
propensities are innately wrong and that the individuals with their
propensities are incapable of success, or if they do succeed are evil.
This is of course a case of society playing God, claiming for its
ill-informed judgments the authority to judge what is beyond its power
to create; and the most eloquent and well-deserved blow that one at the
receiving end of such bludgeoning can do to the entire social edifice
that assails him is to move to a place that values his or her natural
propensities and live happily there.
The other error, seen in the worldview of sociology and in Marxism,
consists of assigning all responsibility to society. This strips the
individual of responsibility for his actions and shapes a character
that is irresponsible, criminal and weak. In reality - and I mean
here in the quantified, complete reality that involves and quantifies
both the individual and the society, and not in the pushy screechy
ignorant assault of those who, committing the first error, want to
indulge in orgies of abuse against some individuals while considering
themselves good realistic responsible citizens - both levels are real,
and both levels are to be held justly accountable for their effect.
Responsibility for a life is a shared function of the individual and
society he inhabits; responsibility for a society is a shared function
of its inhabitants and its historically and sociologically formulated
national character.
An action can possess a real, or natural, consequence; a consequence
that stems from the action's inherent character and that results
automatically, by law of cause and effect, in another event. In
addition to real consequences, there are the artificial consequences,
or the consequences assigned by society. Different societies assign
different consequences to different kinds of actions. Conducting
business in America results, due to the first set of consequences, in
success or failure according to effectiveness of marketing and quality
of deliverables; conducting business in the Soviet Union, due to the
second set of consequences, resulted in imprisonment. That the same
action, when performed in different social universes, results in
different consequences, shows that the social universe is artificially
constructed - whether by top-down design as in the case of the former
Soviet Union or, as in the case of most societies, by bottom-up social
and historical development. I define bottom-up as that which evolved
spontaneously among people. I define top-down as that which was
formulated and given to the people from above. The same character,
while in all cases evoking the same natural consequences, will evoke
different sets of artificial consequences in different societies; and
it is both beneficial to the characters and resulting in their greatest
contribution for them to find themselves in societies whose artificial
systems of reinforcements are friendly to their basic nature.
In the way of the fulfillment both of the individual and the collective
benefit stand - bullies. I define bullies as entities and individuals
that seek power over other individuals at the expense of their life,
liberty and pursuit of happiness. The most vicious attacks on the
internationalist Clinton administration, which sought the benefit of
humanity as well as all individual humans whose self-interest did not
consist of oppression over other individuals, came from two sets of
people: bullies at home (Republicans who were used to dominating the
American citizenry and could not stand for them to have cultural and
economic alternatives) and bullies abroad (Islamic terrorists,
murderous regimes and Stalinist dictatorships that were used to pulling
the same trick on their own populations and were threatened by
Clinton's promise). In order for the individual and the collective
benefit to be fulfilled, the power of bullies has to be broken through
action combining the top and bottom - through action combining the
leader with visionary outlook pushing from above and the people who do
not wish to be dominated by the bullies any longer pushing from below.
Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo, in fighting with people's help the
corrupt officials in his country, provides the model for that
sandwiching arrangement. Another model has been the United States, with
the help of the Afghan people, overthrowing the Taliban.
It is therefore entirely in the best interests of both the world and
the individuals that inhabit it for there to be a flux of individuals
among regions within nations and across national boundaries. An
individual with genetic predisposition for a Kansas character would not
be happy in Japan; an individual with a genetic predisposition for a
San Francisco character will not be happy in Kansas. Rather than apply
their talents for the benefit of the world they inhabit, they will
become liabilities to their societies even while they themselves lead
miserable lives. It is a social service, and a service to humanity, to
take the people who through clash of inner traits with social values
are manipulated into the function of scapegoats in their societies to
social universes in which their innate traits are rewarded rather than
stigmatized - and in this end the distraction that self-righteous
abuse of outcasts poses to the demanding historical task of formulating
societies into humane, civilized, intelligent and habitable shapes.
This requires that the societies themselves compete for members within
an overarching perspective that includes many societies united in free
and fair competition for members - that the power exercised by
societies over people's lives be checked by the individual's
ability to leave when he or she feels too downtrodden for another
society, and the existence of information, resources and political
power for people around the world to be able to make such a change.
Thus, global economy - an arrangement that benefits the collective
prosperity of the whole as well as prosperity of far more individuals
around the world than it hurts - is an excellent arrangement; one
that improves the state of humanity even as it improves lives of its
individual members. It is beneficial, both for its inclusiveness of
millions of individual human beings, and for the reason that it
destroys the stranglehold of local entities that lay claim on the
lives, minds and hearts of individuals, at the expense of their
membership in humanity and at the expense of their individual benefit.
The global economy, with international entities created to place
safeguards against protectionism and other abuses, results in the
people who are competent around the world being able to have global
market for their produce while consumers around the world have the best
of the world at their disposal. This arrangement was striven for by the
best among both Republicans and Democrats - by both Reagan and
Clinton; and it is still producing great dividends for people around
the world, having raised 250 million people out of poverty in two
decades in China alone.
But global economy is not sufficient. Global economy requires global
diplomacy. It requires this: global outlook in participating countries.
A isolationist like LePen or Pat Buchanan in one country could jinx the
entire global cooperation. Global economy is a synergistic arrangement.
It is, once again, a fragile equilibrium that requires a presence of
mind and a global outlook on the part of everyone to achieve, an
ongoing political strength and vision, willingness to extend oneself to
embrace something different from oneself, and willingness to motivate
the people to see the big picture as well as themselves.
Following the economic progress toward globalization is progress in
other spheres of human endeavor: endeavor such as cultural, spiritual
and social. Competition, whether between economic entities or between
social entities, forces them to improve their deliverables for the
consumer. Thus, the advanced state of American and European society,
which has seen cultural competition, as compared to Middle Eastern
society, which has not, is demonstrative of the principle of cultural
competition at play and the improvement it has had in the lives of
humanity. In this way, cultural competition, like economic competition,
arrives at the best outcome for the human being.
Intercultural competition leads to intercultural communication,
resulting in a more integrated world. The optimal outcome of
intercultural competition for citizens is improvement realized in all
cultures, as good ideas from other parts of the world are adopted while
bad ideas within one's own culture are destroyed. The process leading
to that, like economic competition within advanced regulated economies,
is not automatic, but rather requiring the agreement upon fair tactics
and unfair tactics - on exclusion of amoral, forcible and fraudulent,
methods of influence - on requiring constant effort of synthetic
intelligence and peacemaking to achieve at the best outcome among
components and not allow cultural chauvenists within each region to
silence, demonize or kill off the other cultures. Like laissez-faire
economics within social covenant shaped by law, or like game
theory-influenced competition within the framework of cooperation, this
requires an overarching perspective of international cooperation at the
task of producing the best possible people living within pareto-optimal
social covenants that reflect the best of humanity - its foresight,
its compassion, its knowledge, its inspiration, its wisdom. Its
commitment to living - beautifully.
Ilya Shambat
(to see the rest, go to http://ibshambat.blog.com, under Integrationism)