Responding to Tashbeg's Dictum

I think the problem is that it all depends too much on the vagaries of individual perception. Although the dictum acknowledges collective consciousness and its arising from a mass of point-actors, it operates under the unspoken conceit that this consciousness is self-aware.

I'm all for finding mutual common ground and agree that it is the only way past conflicts; however, the simple perception of common ground can create the very problems we wish to combat. Take the imperialists for example. (Let's assume that they even had a consideration of mutual benefit in their minds - which they most certainly did not.)



Or maybe we should consider small-pox infested blankets. Imperialists think it's good. The natives think it's good too. Both for the same different reasons. "Hey... dirt for blankets is not a bad deal at all!"

On second thought, let's not use the Imperialists as an example. But nevertheless, we know it is possible for people to be so deluded so as to think they're truly helping others when they are not. Oblivious in the face of their detrimental effects. So then: it seems we can't rely on ourselves to do the norm translating. Who will do it then?

Our context is the only one we know. Others know their own. Even within our own limited circles, context can vary greatly. The people living in the apartment above may think it's okay to harvest organs, while those living down the hall only think of playing organs. Across the street the organ meat is sacred, across the ocean, they grind it up for sausage. Behold the sacred sausage! But to all outside observers, we are of the same culture, living in the same environment, much the same context. Commonality is harder to find than I thought. Dubious.

Lest we become mired in the morass of relativism, let us consider the family below:
They seem like nice people. Sometimes there is just not enough overlap to find common ground. Or maybe the overlapping areas hold no uniting power.

Like you said, to find true understanding we need some form of concentrism - both being born from the same locus. Now, I ask you, how do we find that point?

Top Albums of 2009

As you discover them, list the best albums of the year:

Alela Diane - To Be Still
Andrew Bird - Noble Beast
Antony & The Johnsons - The Crying Light
The Decemberists - Hazards of Love
Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele - The Good Feeling Music of Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele
Neko Case - Middle Cyclone
Various Artists - Dark Was The Night

Shoot, I would put Ponytail - Ice Cream Spiritual, but it came out in 2008. Also, Howlin' Wolf. He came out with an album this year, didn't he?

List those you're anticipating here:

Final Fantasy - Heartland
Regina Spektor - Far
Midlake - Courage of Others
Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
Kings of Convenience?
Joanna Newsom?
Sufjan Stevens?

Sidiqjan Tashbeg’s dictum. To the extent that you share something with others that makes you, with them, a community based on that X [with all recognizing the importance of the sharedness of X; otherwise it is not a community], you may participate in defining its rules. This is not imperialism; it is citizenship. That humanity which is shared provides an avenue for subjective participation in a process of electing what should be valued, but only to the extent to which the basis of the appeal is shared. (You’re lucky, this is sometimes self-policing—that is, adherence to this rule does not rely on my thinking it should be that way—because you get too far off of your experience, too far out of your fish bowl, and folks will look at you and laugh and go about their ways. [Shit, but what if you’re too powerful, and you can push them around despite being out of touch? (I bring this up as a challenge to my immediately proceeding statement.) Then you would be able to impose all sorts of horrible stuff thinking you’re righteous. Dang, and I still think, in the context of Imperial Europe in sub-Saharan Africa, that imposing those norms should not have been done. The proposed rule did not self-police there. 

Lothar van Trotha

So this tells me that we do need to make it a prescriptive norm, if we want it apply more widely, to prevent genocide. On what basis can we impose this norm, the thinking man wonders to himself? How about on the basis of the very dictum proposed here (Mr. Tashbeg's own norm norm itself). It is compatible with, uh, itself. (Would a rule that isn’t compatible with itself survive? [God says believers in God should stop believing in God.] Honest question. Perhaps, but I wouldn’t want such a rule in my head, and I wouldn’t want to propose that kind of bullshit to my community.)) We operate (and/or should operate) in the center of concentric rings of just moral projection. I suggest that if you want to change what’s going on somewhere, and your arguments rely on a basis of appeal that is not shared, you better find a common basis of appeal for that change; if you cannot, maybe you were wrong and the norm is not appropriate to translate across the contexts. I am proposing it should become the norm. What do you think?

I am unconvinced that Positivism was or will be the new Right. I believe we are, at all strata, and across time, consistent Positivists; The Dominating West was not the first to think, hey maybe we could figure this thing in the world out… That was a Red Herring upon which too many are still snacking.

God demands we kill the natives,

God demands we save the natives,

God damn it, why won’t he make up his mind?

Alight, oh nation.

Levitate the langues

that, by our loins, are linked,

Lance the Left, cleave (to make cleft)

our brothers bereft.

Chaulked up to ignorance,

driven by affluence,

gifts at each level,

to buy in 

and to settle.

A Litter Ation

The Lichtensteinian linguist
lost in a reverie.
labor though he must -
languished lackadaisically.