11 June 2007

meditations on the state of fusing philosophic standpoints

Coming back to a seemingly minor comment I made some time ago in reference to warfare and globalization, I feel now it is important to expand. The intention and purpose of globalizing influences is naturally to increase the influence of each global entity as it partakes and participates in it. But where we have run aground in our own supposed moral crusades as a country, and along with us indeed, the world's principal agency for such crusades of globalizing liberty, the UN, is in the recognition of the individual's rights and capacities.
One reason I have commented before on the advancement of sport in this country is the idea of roles. In the quest of achievement and success, defined roles and positions are accepted by the agents of a team. The team achieves through this self-division and occasional personal sacrifice greater successes, and the individuals are awarded correspondently greater acclaim. This is perhaps the one industry which I can point to publicly where the fusion of Eastern collectivism and Western individualism has gained merit and use. It is not publicly celebrated outside of former agents and commentators that this is the ideal form of a team's process, but it is in fact the ideal basis for my belief of fusing more social imperatives with our personal achievements.
Without this template for idealism, we are left stranded in an ideological no-man's land. Individuals left to their own devices in a collectivist dominated enterprise will undoubtedly become sullen and disaffected by the levels of appreciation and acclaim that are awarded to hard work or ingenuity. Concurrently without this individual drive and personal competitiveness, the collective often becomes tranquil and unproductive. Communist economics were trapped by this philosophical quandary, and instead of relying on liberalizing competitive drives, relied on autocratic routines. Demanding higher achievements and taking credit for them rather than assigning credit naturally through the accomplishments of free-enterprise.
We are little different in this respect for personal achievement and freedoms here. Credit and blame for the economy falls on the shoulders of our personal representative, the executive branch. No laudable gains are subtracted to the appropriate agent, the workers and consumers of America (or, on occasion, the corporations). Blame is likewise assigned, as though our economy was controlled by a giant stop light behind his desk. While this speaks solely to the economic realities, our personal endeavours are little different. Commentary often speaks to the effect of violent video games or music of a violent nature upon youth and the associated shootings to blame on these poisons. Commercials are blamed for our expanding wastelines. Cigarrette companies blamed for camels with sunglasses making teenagers smoke. While assuredly these things have their effects, can we assume that our own individual being is a mere spectator to this devastation?
These things are not monolithic in their effects. Our society is so complex and interactive that to assume a singular modifier will so disrupt and defeat our humanizing influences is foolish, perhaps even dangerous. Everything is constantly in struggle for the future of our behaviors and thus future interactions are determined by how we meet them now. To presume that we are independent actors in all of this is likewise dangerous. We must understand that our world is shaped by how we think of and describe it, as well as how we think of and describe ourselves. Much of the rest of the world makes the opposite fundamental error in presuming that 'objective' realities are of paramount importance. We in America take our individual supremacy too seriously in only this respect, blithely ignoring that the temporary constructs we are interacting in are not quite reality either.
Fundamentally, both sides are flawed. Fortunately, both sides are quite rarely followed to their letter, but when they are, there is great danger. Situations become untenable when both sides make such errors of assumptions on reality and fail to recognize that maybe somebody over there has a point, a need, or a want that must be addressed to resolve this situation. Concurrently this failing expresses the necessity of warfare, as to meet with such situations without a means of resolution may be equally dangerous as to patently ignore the other side of the fence.

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