ORB Visualization
(soon)
3/16/2004 8:38 PM
A fundamental flaw?
(points where comments will be developed at [ ])
Paul,
Your approach has, I think, a fundamental flaw. As soon as you study social life with the aim of improving it in some way or another, the study is pretty much undermined from the beginning. [*] This is something that few people are prepared to seriously consider because of the profound consequences for what they are trying to achieve.
The issue here is a major difference between the way humans approach social life and the way they approach physical, chemical and biological phenomenon. Control of these phenomena depends on understanding them. Scientific practice has proved to be the major way in which this understanding can be gained. There is just no way around the need for true understanding; you can't send a man to the moon or produce a vaccine if you don't truly understand the astronomical and biological worlds.
In social life, on the other hand, control is gained in pretty much all cases, at least where force is not the key, by active misunderstanding - through myth, ideology, lies, deception, cult practices, following tradition, moralizing, etc. This is why social inquiry has little to offer anyone who seeks control or influence, unless, of course, it is designed, explicitly or implicitly, to proselytize myth, ideology, etc (in which case it is no longer inquiry) [*].
ST