The crisis of western civilization

[Roxanne Appleby]

And when your "persuasion" doesn't work - which it won't, because their values are not yours - what then?

You forget...we've seen the results of "persuasion" before. It looks an awful lot like "force," so much so as to be practically indiscernible.

What I said to Pure: We hope and believe that eventually some version of these values will be adopted everywhere in the world, but whether that takes 100 years, 1,000 years or more is not in our hands. We will applaud progress toward that end, and express regret at its opposite. Those who work to further these values are our friends, and those who seek to squash them are not. We accept our powerlessness to force others to change their hearts and minds, and that it would be a violation of our values to try, but don't expect us to be silent about what we believe, either.

 

[cloudy]

What I said to Pure: We hope and believe that eventually some version of these values will be adopted everywhere in the world, but whether that takes 100 years, 1,000 years or more is not in our hands. We will applaud progress toward that end, and express regret at its opposite. Those who work to further these values are our friends, and those who seek to squash them are not. We accept our powerlessness to force others to change their hearts and minds, and that it would be a violation of our values to try, but don't expect us to be silent about what we believe, either.

so...you can't be friends with anyone who's values are not exactly yours?

Rather narrow-minded, but unsurprising.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

so...you can't be friends with anyone who's values are not exactly yours?

Rather narrow-minded, but unsurprising.

Look more closely at what I said: Those who seek to squash these values are not our friends.

 

[Luke's Angel]

Western Civilization is not in crisis. Some people who live in it can be said to be in crisis. However this is not the same thing as saying the whole of Western Civ is in crisis. Please stop including the rest of us in your projections.

 

[WRJames]

"Learning in progress," 3. No, really. Once again, try to take a step back and veiw all this in a broader historical perspective. These liberal values were first clearly enunciated just 300 years ago, and there was no place or people in the world that fully appreciated or accepted their implications. The values were embodied in our law 232 years ago, in the very act by which we became a nation. Four score and seven years later great battles were fought in the name of these values, to wipe out a smear on them. 100 years after that a nonviolent struggle was conducted in the name of these values, to make real the promise of that earlier conflict.

Along the way women won the vote. Now gays are making progress toward assuming the rights and priviliges inherent in the full application of these values, and once again they call upon these values to advance that struggle.

These values are a new thing in the world, so why should we expect them to be perfectly realized all at once, even in the place where they first found a home? But the direction is clear, and progress steady over time. Look at the tides, not the waves; climate, not weather.

Those movements of liberation were inspired as much by the Biblical prophets as by the philosophers of the Enlightenment.

 

[Pure]

note to rox

We believe that liberal values are superior. Among those values are these:

- Equality for women

i think 3113 pointed out the problem, here, rox. who is "we"-- you and i today. not you and i a hundred years ago.

it's quite odd that you hold 1) there are timeless values [e.g. equality] which all reasoning persons can know; but 2) at any given moment, a majority of reasoning persons may NOT know them, and it may take a century or two to find out the true ones.

your list is purged of issues that weren't already decided decades ago. all one has to do is add undecided items, and your claims of "objective truth," obvious to reason, fall.

a) equal rights of gays to marry;
b) equal right of sexual minorities (e.g. SM) to employment, including in schools;
c) equals rights to equal pay for substantially the same work, for women.
d) rights of women to early abortions
e) rights of the competent, terminally ill to have assistance in suicide.

in short, rox, it's obvious that conceding for the moment that there might be 'objective values,' it's equally obvious that highly informed and rational people at any given point in time may not see them. and that such people may be unable to agree, and unable to find a way to come to agree.

further you assume that you're on the side of angels; for example, if you now believe a), that in a hundred years you'll be vindicated; whereas it might not happen, just as the ERA did not happen. rox, you can't assume that the other fellow is always the one 'behind the curve' of the road.

"objective values" that aren't quite known [regardless of a person's subjective certainty] are a dubious blessing. indeed, rox, if you were candid you'd have to say very much the same thing as the limpwristed relativists: this IS an answer here; but the one i'm certain of, maybe be wrong, and you, who disagree with me, may be right.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

We believe that liberal values are superior. Among those values are these:

- Equality for women

i think 3113 pointed out the problem, here, rox. who is "we"-- you and i today. not you and i a hundred years ago.

it's quite odd that you hold 1) there are timeless values [e.g. equality] which all reasoning persons can know; but 2) at any given moment, a majority of reasoning persons may NOT know them, and it may take a century or two to find out the true ones.

your list is purged of issues that weren't decided decades ago. all one has to do is add such items, and your claims of "objective truth" obvious to reason fall.

a) equal rights of gays to marry;
b) equal right of sexual minorities (e.g. SM) to employment, including in schools;
c) equals rights to equal pay for substantially the same work, for women.
d) rights of women to early abortions
e) rights of the competent, terminally ill to have assistance in suicide.

in short, rox, it's obvious that conceding for the moment that there might be 'objective values,' it's equally obvious that highly informed and rational people at any given point in time may not see them. and that such people may be unable to agree, and unable to find a way to come to agree.

further you assume that you're on the side of angels; for example, if you now believe a), that in a hundred years you'll be vindicated; whereas it might not happen, just as the ERA did not happen. rox, you can't assume that the other fellow is always the one 'behind the curve' of the road.

"objective values" that aren't quite known [regardless of a person's subjective certainty] are a dubious blessing.

The values and principles are universal and timeless; their realization uneven and plodding.

I support all those expansions you list except one, which is inherently subjective and if made legally enforceable would only subject individuals to the arbitrary authority of other men. That is the "equal pay for comparable work." I support this as a valid ethical principle, but given that no clear legal definitions or standards are possible, especially in a dynamic economy, it would be impossible to enforce as a matter of law. Appointing 200,000 commisars to impose their personal interpretation on a case-by-case basis is not law, it's arbitrary dictatorship.

While I support the rest of those as legal principles I am also reality-based. In this thread I've said many times that this nation should not and cannot force its values on other people. As a practical matter an aspect of this applies domestically also, on certain social issues. For example, there is a substantial minority nationally, and a majority in some states, who believe that abortion is murder. It is a legitimate question to ask whether the poisoning of our politics that's arisen from the polarization created by Roe v. Wade outweighs the liberty gains for women living in perhaps 20 states that would surely ban abortion. The gain is that those women are not forced to cross state lines to get an abortion - does that balance the cost in poisoned politics? (That the GOP has become so much more a captive of social conservatives is largely explained by this, for example.)

You never stop trying to persuade, but just as using force internationally creates unintended consequences, so it can domestically, and the price of that should be weighed against the gain.

But these practical difficulties I raise are derivative issues. You identify products of a fuller realization of the values and principles I've enunciated. In doing so you implicitly concur with my evaluation that these values are superior to illiberal ones. I also concur with your fuller realizations.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

in short, rox, it's obvious that conceding for the moment that there might be 'objective values,' it's equally obvious that highly informed and rational people at any given point in time may not see them. and that such people may be unable to agree, and unable to find a way to come to agree.

3113 said essentially the same thing earlier in the thread, and here was the gist of my response:

As for the difficulty of agreeing on what that means in particular cases, two points. First, being difficult, not providing pat answers to all life's problems, does not contradict the truth that there is a standard of value. Second, see my last couple posts discussing Aristotle.*

. . . I have tried (no doubt clumsily) to express Aristotle's take on this through the lens of humanism . . . As 3113 and others have pointed out, this does not eliminate uncertainty and disagreement. Aristotle's response was the concept of prudence, practical wisdom, or just wisdom, period. He dove into these concepts in some depth.

Obviously, in this there are no easy, simplistic pat answers like those offered by the absolutists. Life is infinitely complex, so why should any rational person expect easy, pat answers? Maybe it's just moral laziness to look for such. But this is not to say that we can't know anything or have any standard of value. Those who insist otherwise commit another form of moral laziness, equally misguided.

~~~

I also said, "We hope and believe that eventually some version of these values will be adopted everywhere in the world, but whether that takes 100 years, 1,000 years or more is not in our hands. . . . These values are a new thing in the world, so why should we expect them to be perfectly realized all at once, even in the place where they first found a home? But the direction is clear, and progress steady over time."

The uncertainty and ambiguousness regarding particulars also plays into the plodding (but steady) pace of that progress.


*wiki on the relevant part of Ari: "Aristotle identifies the virtue as being the 'mean' of the situation. Thus, there is no way to form a strict set of rules that would solve every practical problem. 'The virtuous person sees the truth in each case, being as it were a standard and measure of them.' This does not mean Aristotle believed in moral relativism, however. He set certain emotions (e.g., hate, envy, jealousy, spite, etc.) and certain actions (e.g., adultery, theft, murder, etc.) as being always wrong, regardless of the situation or the circumstances."

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Maybe its just me, but PURE reminds me of the kid who asks ARE WE THERE YET? five gozillion times during a trip.

 

[Pure]

note to rox.

You identify products of a fuller realization of the values and principles I've enunciated. In doing so you implicitly concur with my evaluation that these values are superior to illiberal ones. I also concur with your fuller realizations.

you miss the point, rox. you generally like the second list [see below], as do i. and we can sit and say "aren't we universal and timeless and objective [more fully 'realized']." BUT ami will hate it. if it's a rational and objective matter there should be a way to convince him.

pure's second list of rights:

a) equal rights of gays to marry;
b) equal right of sexual minorities (e.g. SM) to employment, including in schools;
c) equals rights to equal pay for substantially the same work, for women.
d) rights of women to early abortions
e) rights of the competent, terminally ill to have assistance in suicide

 

[Luke's Angel]

What I said to Pure: We hope and believe that eventually some version of these values will be adopted everywhere in the world, but whether that takes 100 years, 1,000 years or more is not in our hands. We will applaud progress toward that end, and express regret at its opposite. Those who work to further these values are our friends, and those who seek to squash them are not. We accept our powerlessness to force others to change their hearts and minds, and that it would be a violation of our values to try, but don't expect us to be silent about what we believe, either.

Now you sound like a small child. I assume you are an adult but on the net it's best not to assume things like that. Are you an adult or a child?

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Now you sound like a small child. I assume you are an adult but on the net it's best not to assume things like that. Are you an adult or a child?

Yes, I'm a nine-year-old prodigy who also writes some fairly popular smut. Not that it's any of your business.

So far your contribution to this thread has been a naked assertion unsupported by any argument, and an insult. Essentially, the rhetorical equivalent of "Is not!" and "You have cooties!" (I get that all the time on the shoolyard too.)

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

You identify products of a fuller realization of the values and principles I've enunciated. In doing so you implicitly concur with my evaluation that these values are superior to illiberal ones. I also concur with your fuller realizations.

you miss the point, rox. you generally like the second list [see below], as do i. and we can sit and say "aren't we universal and timeless and objective [more fully 'realized']." BUT ami will hate it. if it's a rational and objective matter there should be a way to convince him.

pure's second list of rights:

a) equal rights of gays to marry;
b) equal right of sexual minorities (e.g. SM) to employment, including in schools;
c) equals rights to equal pay for substantially the same work, for women.
d) rights of women to early abortions
e) rights of the competent, terminally ill to have assistance in suicide

You want a magic wand (or a star trek transporter when you ask "are we there yet?" ) Obviously no such thing exists, but that is NOT the point. The point is that we affirm a few core values and principles, and work to see them realized in as many areas as possible. In 1954 equality under the law for blacks did not exist in the US, but people who perceived how that contradicted the liberal values at the core of our civic creed called upon those values to persuade the opponents of civil rights, and to mobilize those who did not oppose but were apathetic.

Of course they did not persuade everyone, but eventually they moved enough to wipe away this blot on our principles. That was only possible because we really do share a concensus about these principles, however imperfectly some people apply them. Imagine if there was no such concensus regarding "all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights," or that the concensus favored a creed hostile to those principles. Upon what principles could the civil rights activists have called? I don't want to get into an argument about Islam, but upon what core principles in the creeds of those societies do women call when they seek to improve their status? I don't think there are any - they will have to invent something, and that's lot harder.

 

[SlickTony]

There things i feel like i want to say, but I'm not sure i am qualified to wax philosophical on philosophy outside my own. I shall have to do a bit of reading.

Demosthenes, abandon your search. He's here.

 

[3113]

I also said, "We hope and believe that eventually some version of these values will be adopted everywhere in the world, but whether that takes 100 years, 1,000 years or more is not in our hands. . . . These values are a new thing in the world, so why should we expect them to be perfectly realized all at once, even in the place where they first found a home? But the direction is clear, and progress steady over time."

And, we're back to the Church Lady.

I'm sorry, but they're not new. There have been civilizations with equality for women in the past, equality for people of different races, freedom of speech, democracy, acceptance of gay sexuality. Nothing we've got now is new. You view these things like some 50's version of evolution. You start out with the dumb monkey values and eventually they evolve into the smart man values and one day, in 100 years we'll get the big-head values.

You're living in Outer Limits land. A land where you always go back to the monkey and go forward to the big head. But evolution--and cultural values--don't work that way. You can have the Greeks easy about men-fucking-men, and then next you know, you have it outlawed as immoral, and now we're a back again and it's...well, sort of all right for some, but not for others. You can have places with sacred prostitutes and however many years later a woman freely having sex with men is a whore and stoned, and then later it's all right again for a woman to have sex with whomever she likes...

Values don't start at monkey and move onto big head.

In the end, what I said in the beginning stands. You're not an Atheist. This is religion. You *believe* these values are universal, and you *believe* that they'll eventually be recognized as such; that the world will evolve into them and into an enlightened, global, democratic civilization. Just as someone might believe that the rapture will some day happen and take all the good people to heaven. But there's not ONE FACT that you have to prove that either of your two assertions are true: (1) that any of these values are universal, and (2) that any of them will take hold everywhere eventually.

We just have to trust that you're right. Which means this whole discussion is a waste of time. Because you are relying on *faith* and faith doesn't pay attention to pesky things like facts. Look at Aristotle. He believed that women had less teeth than men, and that a heaver object would hit the ground before a lighter object...because that made sense. He didn't bother to count a woman's teeth or to take two rocks (one heavier, one lighter) and drop them both and see if the heavier one landed first. Ooops. Pesky thing, facts.

If you don't convince with facts, if you present arguments for your side that require faith and belief contrary to facts, then all you're doing is trying to preach your religion.

 

[cloudy]

And, we're back to the Church Lady.

I'm sorry, but they're not new. There have been civilizations with equality for women in the past, equality for people of different races, freedom of speech, democracy, acceptance of gay sexuality.

psst...don't tell Roxanne, but even the brown people he looks down on, you know....us with "no culture," believed in those things.

don't tell him. It'd just burst his bubble, and I don't want any on me.

 

[amicus]

I find it astounding sometimes the shallowness of some posts in the attempt to avoid actually dealing with moral questions.

As if the difference between two groups, one of which boils its babies and the other one who fries them in pig fat, is morally superior to the other.

What a joke.

Amicus...

 

[SlickTony]

Look at Aristotle. He believed that women had less teeth than men

Off topic, but I'd like to speculate as to why he believed this. I dare say that a lot of the women he knew did have fewer teeth than men. It's been a common saying down the years that a woman loses a tooth for each child--because if she had a lot of kids, assuming that she breastfed each for a year, it leached a lot of calcium from her system. And up until the last few decades, when the food industry started enriching everything, this was probably true.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

And, we're back to the Church Lady.

I'm sorry, but they're not new. There have been civilizations with equality for women in the past, equality for people of different races, freedom of speech, democracy, acceptance of gay sexuality. Nothing we've got now is new. You view these things like some 50's version of evolution. You start out with the dumb monkey values and eventually they evolve into the smart man values and one day, in 100 years we'll get the big-head values.

You're living in Outer Limits land. A land where you always go back to the monkey and go forward to the big head. But evolution--and cultural values--don't work that way. You can have the Greeks easy about men-fucking-men, and then next you know, you have it outlawed as immoral, and now we're a back again and it's...well, sort of all right for some, but not for others. You can have places with sacred prostitutes and however many years later a woman freely having sex with men is a whore and stoned, and then later it's all right again for a woman to have sex with whomever she likes...

Values don't start at monkey and move onto big head.

In the end, what I said in the beginning stands. You're not an Atheist. This is religion. You *believe* these values are universal, and you *believe* that they'll eventually be recognized as such; that the world will evolve into them and into an enlightened, global, democratic civilization. Just as someone might believe that the rapture will some day happen and take all the good people to heaven. But there's not ONE FACT that you have to prove that either of your two assertions are true: (1) that any of these values are universal, and (2) that any of them will take hold everywhere eventually.

We just have to trust that you're right. Which means this whole discussion is a waste of time. Because you are relying on *faith* and faith doesn't pay attention to pesky things like facts.

Yes, one or another liberal practices have existed in various places and times, but the establishment of Liberalism, an entire suite of them as necessary corrollaries to an overiding philosophy and ethic based on a particular view of man's nature, was a product of the Enlightement.

As for why I believe that values like freedom of speech, freedom of religion - in general freedom from the abitrary power of other men - appeal to people everywhere, here's what I said to Mab: All over the world those values have been making progress, wherever they are not squelched by brutal dictators or atavistic superstition. Remove those inhibiting factors and common people tend to prefer freedom.

I would argue that the appeal is because that Enlightenment view of man's nature is closer to the truth than other versions (like, to cite two, man exists not for his own sake, but to serve God, or to serve the collective).

More evidence: Have you noticed that the "vocabulary" of liberalism is used almost everywhere by both its true friends and by those who cynically use the words to squelch the real thing? "Hypocricy is the tribute vice pays to virtue."

I agree with you that in nature there is no simplistic "teleological" evolution toward a particular goal or purpose. I agree that simplistically expecting a similarly teleological social evolution is misguided, but a nuanced, "noisy" version of this does appear to happen over time: there are huge excursions from the trend, but the creeping expansion of more humanistic and inclusive ethical systems does appear to be the direction the world has moved since the dawn of civilization, and this has hugely accellerated with modernity.

Bottom line: It's not a slam dunk, but I don't think I'm operating on "faith" that some version of liberalism really is better in creating conditions that maximize human well being and the opportunities for every individual human to thrive. I think there's evidence and logic to back me up.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Well, I have another take on the Liberal Value Society. I think it's driven by Mass Consumerism. Liberal Values and Democracy are most consistent with Consumerist culture and that's why these values are spreading so quickly.

A society is supported by three pillars: The production and distribution of goods and wealth: The military/police and institutional force; and the religious and philosophical/mythological underpinnings that reify the first two -- the society''s ethos. All Three support one another. Democracy and its liberal value system are what support our Consumerist Capitalist culture. You can't have mass production and consumption without a democracy and you can't have a democracy without liberal values.