Autor: Flanagan, Josef

Buch: Quest for Self-Knowledge

Titel: Quest for Self-Knowledge

Stichwort: Niedergang (decline): langer Zyklus 3; 5 Schritte zur Bewältigung des langfristigen Niedergangs; Prämisse: Intelligibilität des Universums; Einstein

Kurzinhalt: The fundamental premise for setting forth such a world-order is that our universe is intelligible or understandable. As Einstein put it.

Textausschnitt: 69/3 It is too early in our study to examine how such new ways of becoming responsible are to be developed, but we may sketch several important steps that have to be taken. First, a critical study of history begins with an understanding of the notion of a dialectic as a correlation of concretely opposed activities that modify one another as they unfold. Second, these concretely opposed patterns of understanding may operate positively or negatively, thereby generating the cumulative results we know as progress or decline. Third, there are four different dialectics operating in any individual, but the basic dialectic is between the interested and disinterested desire to know. Fourth, the disinterested desire to know is preoccupied with long-term cumulative results while the interested desire to know attends to short-term problems of daily living and their solutions. There is a fundamental distinction to be made, therefore, between short-term and long-term progress and decline. Fifth, in order to overcome long-term decline it is critical that a distinction be made between group bias, and general bias since the short-term interests of common-sense knowers can recognize social disorders that arise from the various forms of group biases such as class conflicts, vested interests, and dominant minorities. (88; Fs; tblStw: xy) (notabene)

70/3 The much more serious problem is that the usual common-sense strategy for eliminating operative group biases is through the use of force and violence. This, in turn, sets the conditions for two new group biases, and if this sequence is repeated the much longer cycle of decline sets in, bringing with it various degrees of despair about appealing to a people's desire to know, since such appeals sound like pious platitudes or Utopian proposals. (88f; Fs)

71/3 Finally, it is critically important to grasp that, just as in the dialectic with yourself, you set up screening memories for censoring past events that you refuse to deal with, so too cultural communities construct stories, songs, rituals, and other means of symbolic expressions to screen out their own histories of past communal deeds which they refuse to acknowledge. Later chapters will spell out in more detail how such a critical history can be developed. The first step in this direction will be to explain the present ordering of our universe based on the method of knowing we have considered. The fundamental premise for setting forth such a world-order is that our universe is intelligible or understandable. As Einstein put it. 'The most incomprehensible thing about our universe is that it is comprehensible.' But, as we already have discovered, there are different types of intelligibilities: classical and statistical intelligibilities, common sense and symbolic intelligibilities. To understand our universe we must be able to integrate the different ways in which we understand. This, in turn, means that we must be able to integrate the different methods that guide our knowing activities toward these different forms of intelligibilities. It is to such an integration that we shall turn in the next chapter. (89; Fs)