:huh: IMO in the theory, no. A different matter is that politicians want to make politic embracing one or the other theory. It is obvious that capitalism can't be practiced in a system where private property is not recognized, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a economic proposal. Wether it later meets or not the bases it needs to be applied in a political context, is something different.

I don't remember a country the USA invaded military and beligerantly directly for exploiting its resources (Except Irak, but this is still a bit confusing and unclear) like the UK invaded the India, or Spain invaded South/Central America, or Rome invaded most of the known world. True, they took control of Philippines and Cuba from Spain, but that was a very different matter than agressive colonialism. USA could have invaded Arabia for the same reasons the UK invaded India, but they limited their action to secure economical ties and influence. May be it's only we are living in a different era, but still....

No matter how it is defined, in any system where the power is directly placed in some individuals, it's them who in the end will decide what is worth of protection and what isn't. And about the self-emerging systems....well, as soon as they are a system, certain points are designated to hold the power. So we end up in the same thing.


Nope. The roman imperators organized games and shows for the population to stay idiotic and distracted from the important things, and that tradition has continued until today. It is in the interest of the powers that the individual stays near-lobotomized and under control, be it through games (circensis), soccer, or consumism. The era of the enlightment was something organized by an intelectual elite that gathered to organize a new system based in apparently humanistic and noble principles, but whose purpose was to swap the former domination by a royal dinasty for another system they could control. Can you name a time in german history where a critic education was the official policy in schools, and when people were not distracted/controlled by circensis or in focusing in apparent enemies? Hmmm...the Kaiser's era certainly wasn't. The Weimar Republic...ahem. 3rd Reich :roll: . Post War? Under american control, taught officially to be brave and refuse as well as be ashamed of your past of violence. Good boys, you have understood it now. Now you can have Coca Cola, and go to see Hollywood movies. No further comments.

Come on! Copying most of Picasso's paints is a child's game. We did it here at school when I was 12 years old :doh:

Sports have all of that. Even some plastics in their movements. And still
they are sports. Why is ballet an art, and olympic gymanstics a sport? Can you really tell the difference in terms of skill, experience, craftsmanship and aesthetics?

That concept is a bit elitist. Not everyone has the musical aptitude to recognize that, but even so he can find a pleasure in musics. My grand-grandfather was a famous painter here, and I have herited a shy part of that skill. I have always been very good at painting, I even won some contests while at school. Yet I have no aptitudes for music. I like classical music, and I can tell when I like a concert or not, depending on who plays it. But that doesn't mean I will match what an "expert" would say. Am I not worthy of buying a CD of classical music then?

I know I like Mozart and Bach way more than Eminem or Britney Spears. But would Mozart or Bach have been able to sing like Britney does, even if she is not very good at it? Each one has its qualities, and in the end Mozart is a genius and Britney...well....but anyway I doubt much that Mozart had a voice fitted for singing.

Errrr... the discussion was about culture, but anyway I know no "Big Brother" fans that want to seize my house to force me to follow it. As I said, as long as my TV has an on/off knob, my freedom is preserved.

As for general cultural degradation, well I choose the school I will bring my childs to, and I will of course guide their education both in sports and philosopy and arts, so I will do my 2 cents for their formation. My tolerance means just that if others are not interested in doing that with their sons, that's not my business. As long as I can educate mines freely, that's OK with me.

That's not very constructive and helpful for something new and organized to self-emerge, isn't it?. Though it might well be helpful to prevent something already existing to sink :hmm:

If one intervenes militarily to keep tyrants in poiwerr, prevent rulers hostile to US interests, or gain or reestablish influence over regions where one has economical interests, and maybe strategical interests as well, than this qualifies for "economical interventions" in my book. And then you get quite a list of countries together where the US intervened directly or indirectly for classical imperialistic motives: San Salvador, Columbia, Nicaragua, Argentine, Vietnam being the most obvious. the massive base-building around the globe since the end of the cold war also cannot be exclusively explained by support operations for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq alone.

Disagree again, but don't want to write another novel :) Language also hinders me to be more precise on what I mean.

Don't see what part of my previous posting you think you are attacking her. I don't feel hit.

[quote]
Come on! Copying most of Picasso's paints is a child's game. We did it here at school when I was 12 years old :doh:

Not when allowing to be reduced to that limited explanation range of yours that I accepted in my previous reply to follow, l which maybe was a mistake. My explanation may not be complete, but your attempt to reject the existence of culture in general I find to be depending on extreme hair-splitting. Let's see if 5 year old kids at kindergarten can also so easily copy a painting by Caspar David Friedrich. Or can dance a pas-de-deux on stage in perfection and let it appear as if it is the easiest thing in the world. Or compose a partition for great orchestra.

Let's see if even adults can do that.

Yes, I hope it is.

I was about pointing at it that if something looses value by becoming the norm and is being used as if it is not any special anymore, people loose the ability or even do not develope the ability to appreciate the value of it, or see the difference between high and low value. something is special only as long as it is rare. But not all that is rare necessarily is automatically a worthy item for that reason alone.

Pointless. I don't see the relevance of that answer.

Why should one even want to sing like that terrible girlie? I think the motivation and intention plays a role here, and wanting to perform something sounding that bad hardly can be a criterion to define a piece of arts -e even if one cannot sing that bad although trying hard :lol:

I assume that is why maybe he did not sing, but compose. Britney can't do neither the one, nor the other.

In that part of my reply to you I talked about the need for structures, and culture is a structure, too, a self-organising structure that developes independent from a single controller (although you see that different than I do).

The other nevertheless do their share of forming the environment in which your kids later will have to live in. And maybe they will help to form an environment (no matter if intentionally or by acts of unawareness) that you do not hope to see you kids to live in later.

Oh, your answers does not match my statement, we are not meeting in the same categorical order here, to lend a bit from Kant.

However, nice talking this was, but I leave for this night now.

You have not understood what I said in my talking with Hitman, obviously. Sorry, I can't express it any better. Most of your questions again - I already adressed. The rest is trying to trick me, and beat my understanding of what culture is by luring me into a debate on wether the dot above the i is really round like a circle. Not interested! ;)

:o And you said I didn't understand you?

Generic expressions that have no other message than "I'm way above you and do not see it worth to discuss at your childish level anymore" have no force in themselves. However your attitude has helped me forming a more accurate image of you, as some pieces of the puzzle were still missing, and now I can understand much better many of your comments and reasonings.

Anyway, when a debate enters a point when someone starts forgiving the rest for being so inferior in their intelligence and limited in their points of view and knowledge, it is about time to abandon it, as it has become pointless. :hmm:

I apologize for having put something into words that were so easy to be misunderstood, I did not mean it the way you understood it. I wanted to say that i was wondering if you really have understood the concept of culture that I have, since oyu repatedly came back to that sports-arts comparison, and brought this or a similair comparison more than once, while I in the talk before allowed myself to try to focus on this only - and then necessarily found myself described in your reply in a way that I consider to be an uncomplete set of categoeies and qualities by which to judge wether something is a culture or not. so again, I put it into too unprecise words and therefore caused you to misunderstand me. Sorry. My English abilities come to their limits in this discussion, and I fear bI lack the verbal competence to cover my issue good enough, that's why I wanted to stop it here, as said in my last posting.

OK no harm done, english is not the native tongue for most of us here (BTW we forgot to say about US/UK heritage that thanks to them we can communicate here:up: ) and we have settled anything else per PM. We are not again but still friends :up:

I was going to post this to explain where in my opinion a good part of our lack of good communication lies, but Skybird already saw it well in a PM he sent me. I'll post my appreciations anyway, as they were done in a jockingly and humorous spirit and it seems I was to a certain extent correct.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Admittingly, it has taken me much longer than usual to understand why discussing with you leads to such confusion, but you gave me the clue when you said that "we are not in the same categorical order". Rightfully, but mainly because you are continuously shifting on each reply to the next superior "categorical" order when answering the previous question, which makes it impossible to follow a logical discussion.

Let me illustrate this with an example, even at the risk of it being simplistic:

Skybird: The RAI will no longer make reality-shows, good decision for the mental health of people (Social level)

Hitman: The RAi is a public media, shouldn't it do what people want? (Social Level)

Skybird: It is imperative to defend our culture, our legacy, and it is legitimate to ignore the opinion of the majority if it leads to nonsense (Answers, but also shifts to Political level. Now it goes about steering the society)

Hitman: Is it legitimate for a few to make decissions for the rest? I don't think that is always so (Shifts now also to political level, to keep up, and questions who and why can steer such decissions).

Skybird: Those who are not enough educated can't understand it and shall be ignored .... our culture has a tradition based on .... it has been formed by .... modern life puts that richness into danger by such and such behaviours ... (Answers, but now shifts to cultural level. We have already superceded 1) basical society level -me and my inmediate environment- , 2) political lead of that society level -who makes decissions and his legitimation-, and are now in 3) cultural level, which extends to several societies and refers to a different perspective, not vertical but inter-social or trasversal)

Hitman: But isn't there a part of a culture, -aside from a undisputable core-, that is always somehow diffuse and a kind of "grey area" before it consolidates? (Jumps now also into cultural level)

Skybird: Look, you and me are not in the same categorical level. In my replies all the above was implicit or explicit. I'm loosing time here. (Skyrockets into the infinitum)

Hitman: ****gggggggghh***** (Can't follow Skybird there without using drugs or other artificial aids)

I'm usually interested in what Skybird says, but I also have to admit that I often miss the point.

No problem in following someone at any possible level in my language, or in french; very difficult when using english, as I become soon confused and easy to misunderstandings.

Hitman,

let me quote myself with one passage from an older "essay of mine", and note the criticism after the introduction, when I refer to Ken Wilber. The same problem that is pointed at in that text, I have with many people's demand here when they want me to stay with a given detail and not going beyond it - while I cannot reasonably define and understand that detail without referring to the context in which it is embedded (which necessarily represent one level up in the hierarchical order), and that context itself being a single item itself again at the same time, and being embedded in higher contexts. I understand what you are pointing at when giving the dialogue you just posted, but I do not feel myself correctly understood by you.

The following text presupposes a basic knowledge about what "radical constructivism" is.
I find the German wikipedia entry
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radikaler_Konstruktivismus
better than the English wikipedia entry from which this short note is taken:

Radical constructivism
Ernst von Glasersfeld is a prominent proponent of radical constructivism, which claims that knowledge is the self-organized cognitive process of the human brain. That is, the process of constructing knowledge regulates itself, and since knowledge is a construct rather than a compilation of empirical data, it is impossible to know the extent to which knowledge reflects an ontological reality.
See also: Francisco Varela, Humberto Maturana, and Heinz von Foerster

Maybe you find this even more confusing as a reply, but it describes perfectly why I find it difficult to see sense and meaning in something if taking that "something" all for itself, isolated from contexts in which it is embedded, while the given detail at the same time is representing a higher order of context of subordinate "details". You want me to stay static where I see it as having to deal with a continuum of dynamically self-organising items and contexts.

This is a bit abstract, since the quote i gave originally was written in a text that dealt with complete different themes, but the principal of "radical constructivism", and Wilber's criticism of it, nevertheless is matching here.

Great. I just managed to hijack my own thread. :rotfl:

No, quite the contrary. I think I understand well how you think. In fact, each of the steps you do is also answering the previous with a more ample justification, and I can perfectly understand how the reasoning evolves into a final very wide spectrum. It certainly flows there naturally, and I perceive it like that. I always thought that this style of your thinking had a lot to do with your formation in oriental mediatation and philosophy, but now I can confirm it well.

The problem is that your method is essentially a sort of Kantian method, (Kant appeared not coincidentally in your and my previous assesments) with which it shares a good part of its basis. And in turn, I'm completely Cartesian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Method instead (I'm per definition a huge fan of Descartes, especially rules nº1 and 4, as you will have already noticed). And it is certainly difficult to have a conversation going on that is based both in Descartes and Kant's methods; while I must discuss and finish tightly each level of discussion per itself before jumping to the next one, you are used to find the answer in the next one and can't find a correct answer in an isolated context.:doh:

Anyway, I really like to discuss with you, even if I'm only an aficionado compared with you when it comes to philosophical background. Cheers :up:

Sure, and now that we've decided that politicians have the authority to decide what is and isn't crap, and what must be banned...

What if their next step is to ban criticism of Islam? Because, surely, any denial that it is a religion of peace is "crap". Any suggestion that more muslims in Europe is not a cultural enrichment is "crap". Right?

Sure, reality shows are crap. Sure, it's better if they're gone. But allowing reality shows to exist is, in my opinion, a lesser evil than giving our politicians full authority to decide which things are "crap" and must be hidden from the people.

Again, don't make this bigger than it is, Wim. I tried to describe that (especially young) people's mind reflect what they put into it, so when you allow endless consumking of "crap", don't be surprised to finally find yourself with a population that simply is too dumb to care for critizising Islam (to stay in your example). Freedom is no right for me, it is an ability that must be learned and then trained. If people misunderstand it and take the "freedom" to endlessly dmaage themselves, then this is not what I see as the vital interdynamic relationship between individal and society. It is the freedom by which a baby would consume sugar water and candies all day long - and by doing so, kill itself.

I understand very well what you are concerned about. Nevertheless I recommend not to start splitting hairs when a case is so very obvious like it is with the issue in this thread. Who demands unlimited freedoms, also accepts the possebility of unlimzted damage being done by the one, or the many. Were man is not alone in his own private little universe, there cannot be something like unlimited freedom - sooner or later he limits the freedom of others by demanding his unlimited freedom for himself. If you want to have a voice in a democratic society, imo you have the obligation to make sure that your voice is educated enought that it is worth to be heared. Else it is no argument he can make when adding his voite to the general discussion, but it is mindless babbling only. One or two generations ago not few people were still convinced that trying to acchieve a good level of education is not a choice, but an obligation for the citizen. Many families of the so-called "Bildungsbürgertum" saw it like this: an obligation that was owed to the community in order to be able to add something good to the overall culture of the community. That was about manners. Arts. Knowledge. Professional abilities. - Today, young people grow up with idols like Britney Spears (special friend of mine :arrgh!: ) Big Brother and - reality shows. We do not teach them about manners and ethics anymore.

And then we wonder why the young get more and more uncontrolled and violant in their manners, become selfish, fixated on their own wellbeing and entertainment, and become more and more íncompetent in even basic skills like reading, writing and maths?

I have a sharp eye myself on politicians deconstructing democracy, the dstruction is in full speed. but the risks you refer to I cannot see here.

It is said that children are our future. If we fail to improve their education and standard of being civilised dramatically, then our future will look like what we see in desinterest, violence, lacking responsibility, lacking skills and knowledge, and sillyness today when looking at general schools.

And then tyrants and ursupators will have easy play to reign.

Skybird, it's amazing that you started that post with "don't make this bigger than it is"

:lol: Some hidden humour in your reply, eh? :lol:

It's a state TV of some sort. Ban it. The entire channel, that is. Privatize it. I'll buy. I'll get Saudi or Dubai money and buy it. I'll have to feed you with 10 hours of Islamic preaching, 10 hours of Saudi/Dubai ass-licking, 1 hour of commercials in Arabic and finally the remanining 4 hours a day will be dedicated to the declamation of Skybird's essays.