Dragaera

OSC on the virtues of writer's block

Thu Dec 4 15:24:31 PST 2003


On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, Gomi no Sensei wrote:

> On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, Philip Hart wrote:
>
> > Well, from my perspective as a physicist, an atheist, and a reductionist
> > (all one thing in my opinion), all belief is the same stuff - hooey.
> > But that's not a productive argument.  Rather I should say that it seems
> > to me people have a set of mostly emotional viewpoints on what's right,
> > and that they effectively practice their religion and politics
> > accordingly.
>
> Politics ultimately derives as a system that attempts to solve large-scale
> problems of human society,

This seems insufficiently cynical or perhaps Darwinist to me.


> and as these problems have largely proven intractable to science and
> reduction,

I disagree about the science part - when a cadre of hard scientists are
promoted to high office we can talk.  Of course reductionism isn't
practically applicable to messy poorly-measured systems.

> some amount of belief inevitably creeps in.

In my view it's mostly belief.  In my experience people have world-views
first, politics and religion second - or rather, those world-views are
effectively their politics and religion.  Maybe not a very useful (or
clear) distinction.

I don't think this has anything to do with liberalism or conservatism,
though in my view liberals are the less belief-driven lately.

- Philip


> The Edmund Burke quote on tradition has always seemed apropos to me:
>
> "Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors.
> It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and
> arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All
> democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition
> objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells
> us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition
> asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father."
>
> Lord Falkland was perhaps more blunt, but no less to the point:
>
> "When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change."
>
> pe
>
>
>