This is why I’m against any “rational” tampering with today’s mainstream Western worldview, even where I’m to the left or to the right of its political aspects.
This is an interesting sentence especially in a comment that started out discussing how bad conformism on moral issues is.
I’m basically speaking against “shallow” (bad) conformism and for “religious” (good) conformism in this comment. Only emulating the here-and-now surface patterns of your group = bad. Taking care to choose among your culture’s traditions carefully, taking a sprout and nurturing it if there’s no grown branch (like the moresuccesfulattempts at democracy in Africa, which clearly did NOT come from a mere copy-paste of the Western model, but partly drew on colonial or tribal past), perhaps promoting one branch (say, American Protestant radicalism) at the expense of other (say, Southern slavery and its mode of life) but not cutting any memories and ideas off = good.
Were you aware that even the Bolsheviks in Russia were following an established tradition of “nihilism” and radical upheaval? Their fault was not steering the nation in a direction they wanted, but (nearly) pruning all the other branches of possibilities inherent in the Russian culture, from monarchism to tribal/feudal democracy. Today in the US, slavery might be gone but the positive image of the “Southern Gentlemen”, with its associated aristocratic values, lives on in vestigal form (and has plenty of fans), while the memory of Russian aristocracy is sadly gone.
That’s roughly the difference I’m talking about, between treating the culture as an unique living thing vs. as a generic simple machine.
(And yet still somehow I don’t call myself a conservative. Don’t ask.)
(like the more succesful attempts at democracy in Africa, which clearly did NOT come from a mere copy-paste of the Western model, but partly drew on colonial or tribal past)
Perhaps, but the linked articles don’t go into enough detail to support this assertion.
perhaps promoting one branch (say, American Protestant radicalism) at the expense of other (say, Southern slavery and its mode of life) but not cutting any memories and ideas off = good.
I would like to point out that decentralized systems, e.g., libertarianism, are better at this then centralized systems, e.g., socialism.
This is an interesting sentence especially in a comment that started out discussing how bad conformism on moral issues is.
I’m basically speaking against “shallow” (bad) conformism and for “religious” (good) conformism in this comment. Only emulating the here-and-now surface patterns of your group = bad. Taking care to choose among your culture’s traditions carefully, taking a sprout and nurturing it if there’s no grown branch (like the more succesful attempts at democracy in Africa, which clearly did NOT come from a mere copy-paste of the Western model, but partly drew on colonial or tribal past), perhaps promoting one branch (say, American Protestant radicalism) at the expense of other (say, Southern slavery and its mode of life) but not cutting any memories and ideas off = good.
Were you aware that even the Bolsheviks in Russia were following an established tradition of “nihilism” and radical upheaval? Their fault was not steering the nation in a direction they wanted, but (nearly) pruning all the other branches of possibilities inherent in the Russian culture, from monarchism to tribal/feudal democracy. Today in the US, slavery might be gone but the positive image of the “Southern Gentlemen”, with its associated aristocratic values, lives on in vestigal form (and has plenty of fans), while the memory of Russian aristocracy is sadly gone.
That’s roughly the difference I’m talking about, between treating the culture as an unique living thing vs. as a generic simple machine.
(And yet still somehow I don’t call myself a conservative. Don’t ask.)
Perhaps, but the linked articles don’t go into enough detail to support this assertion.
I would like to point out that decentralized systems, e.g., libertarianism, are better at this then centralized systems, e.g., socialism.