Reading the discussion on this thread between AD and brekin. It's interesting that you're coming from opposite angles, and seem to arrive at similar conclusions. The real work of social transformation is/will be very difficult. If anything, I'd say that is the common ground, the synthesis, here.
And I can't say I disagree with either of your viewpoints. I find myself thinking along both lines. It brings to mind F Scott Fitzgerald's quote: "The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
Not that I think I'm a 'first rate intelligence.' It's the 'holding two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time...' part I'm referring to.
AD's points go along with the 'Ruth Benedict' line of my thinking. From the introduction to Patterns of Culture:
"the great spread of white civilization is not an isolated historical circumstance. The Polynesian group, in comparatively recent times, has spread itself from Ontong, Java, to Easter Island, from Hawaii to New Zealand, and the Bantu-speaking tribes spread from the Sahara to southern Africa. But in neither case do we regard these peoples as more than an overgrown local variation of the human species. Western civilization has had all its inventions in transportation and all its far-flung commercial arrangements to back up its great dispersion, and it is easy to understand historically how this came about.
The psychological consequences of this spread of white culture have been out of all proportion to the materialistic. This world-wide cultural diffusion has protected us as man had never been protected before from having to take seriously the civilizations of other peoples; it has given to our culture a massive universality that we have long ceased to account for historically, and which we read off rather as necessary and inevitable. We interpret our dependence, in our civilization, upon economic competition, as proof that this is the prime motivation that human nature can rely upon, or we read off the behaviour of small children as it is moulded in our civilization and recorded in child clinics, as child psychology or the way in which the young human animal is bound to behave. It is the same whether it is a question of our ethics or of our family organization. It is the inevitability of each familiar motivation that we defend, attempting always to identify our own local ways of behaving with Behaviour, or our own socialized habits with Human Nature."
also:
"Custom did not challenge the attention of social theorists because it was the very stuff of their own thinking: it was the lens without which they could not see at all. Precisely in proportion as it was fundamental, it had its existence outside the field of conscious attention. There is nothing mystical about this blindness. When a student has assembled the vast data for a study of international credits, or of the process of learning, or of narcissism as a factor in psychoneuroses, it is through and in this body of data that the economist or the psychologist or the psychiatrist operates. He does not reckon with the fact of other social arrangements where all the factors, it may be, are differently arranged. He does not reckon, that is, with cultural conditioning.
He sees the trait he is studying as having known and inevitable manifestations, and he projects these as absolute because they are all the materials he has to think with. He identifies local attitudes of the 1930’s [or the twenty-teens] with Human Nature, the description of them with Economics or Psychology."
She does go on to add:
"Practically, it often does not matter. Our children must be educated in our pedagogical tradition, and the study of the process of learning in our schools is of paramount importance. There is the same kind of justification for the shrug of the shoulders with which we often greet a discussion of other economic systems. After all, we must live within the framework of mine and thine that our own culture institutionalizes."
(Here's a pdf of Patterns of Culture. worth a read, or if you've already been down this road, worth a refresher)
http://203.200.22.249:8080/jspui/bitstream/2014/10368/1/Patterns_of_culture.pdf
The other line of thought, the side of the spectrum where brekin's points resonate with me, I'd call the Bill Burroughs/Mike Tyson/Frank Herbert line.
You know, Bill says, “This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games. All games are basically hostile. Winners and losers. We see them all around us: the winners and the losers. The losers can oftentimes become winners, and the winners can very easily become losers.”
And Iron Mike says, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."
Frank Herbert muses on the basic motivations of conflict, power:
"It is said that there is a principle of conflict which originated with the single cell and has never deteriorated."
"In all major socializing forces you will find an underlying movement to gain and maintain power through the use of words. From witch doctor to priest to bureaucrat it is all the same. A governed populace must be conditioned to accept power-words as actual things, to confuse the symbolized system with the tangible universe. In the maintenance of such a power structure, certain symbols are kept out of reach of common understanding--symbols such as those dealing with economic manipulation or those which define the local interpretation of sanity. Symbol-secrecy of this form leads to the development of fragmented sub-languages, each being a signal that its users are accumulating some form of power."
That last one kind of crosses over into the Ruth Benedict line of thought.
The God Emperor says, “Remember that there exists a certain malevolence about the formation of any social order. It is the struggle for existence by an artificial entity. Despotism and slavery hover at the edges. Many injuries occur and, thus, the need for laws. The law develops its own power structure, creating more wounds and new injustices. Such trauma can be healed by cooperation, not by confrontation. The summons to cooperate identifies the healer.”
From Heretics of Dune: "Life cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent mutual regard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it."
And we've come full circle.
So which is 'correct?' Is one side more grounded in logic, the other in wisdom? I feel that I could make a case either way. Seems both have a mixture of both qualities. I might say that I think Ruth Benedict is correct, yet I agree with the God Emperor.
And the god emperor agrees with me, about paradox: "“Paradox is a pointer telling you to look beyond it. If paradoxes bother you, that betrays your deep desire for absolutes. The relativist treats a paradox merely as interesting, perhaps amusing or even, dreadful thought, educational.”
So is this educational? 'Productive?' Perhaps. Does it have anything to do with the topic of the thread? Not so much. Perhaps, perhaps. But you already know how I have trouble staying on topic. Or is it deliberate?
The God Emperor and I would say, "Think of it as plastic memory, this force within you which trends you and your fellows toward tribal forms. This plastic memory seeks to return to its ancient shape, the tribal society. It is all around you—the feudatory, the diocese, the corporation, the platoon, the sports club, the dance troupes, the rebel cell, the planning council, the prayer group [, the discussion board, the virtual social circle]...each with its master and servants, its host and parasites. And the swarms of alienating devices (including these very words!) tend eventually to be enlisted in the argument for a return to "those better times." [or "better futures!"] I despair of teaching you other ways. You have square thoughts which resist circles."
