Glen -
Not to be argumentative, but:
/Yes, the racist attributes of the system map to the individual's
myopia, their inability to extrapolate to the consequences of their
own actions. But at the system layer, the attribute is racism. At
the individual layer, the attributes are not racism. Myopia (and
other types of ignorance) at the individual layer can generate all
sorts of systemic effects. If such gen-phen mappings were always
bijections, then there would be no "complex systems". /
It sounds as if you are entirely dissociating individual racist (or
misogynist or... ) bigotry from the collective?
I know you to have some fairly eclectic ideas about individual and
collective human behaviour/motivation/self-awareness, so I'm trying to
wrap my head around what you are trying to say here rather than deny or
discount or disagree with it.
Perhaps one could postulate that many if not all human "sins" are
emergent properties of collectives and that individuals, raised out of
the context of an already corrupted group would not have those
properties. Adam and Eve before expulsion from the garden of Eden?
It is as if you are suggesting that many (or all?) individuals remain in
some kind of state of Grace, marred only by their myopic (and other
types of) ignorance, magnified quantitatively or transformed
qualitatively into the kind "sinful" behaviour we see in group
activities? I can buy SOME of that, but have a hard time not believing
that there *are* truly bad actors, individuals who have, through
whatever process of arriving (nature or nurture,
genetic/disease/trauma-induced insanity), exhibit truly, deeply madly
abhorrent if not actually evil (how do you measure that?) behaviour?
Again, not to belabor it, I know you to have some very *useful* (to me)
alternative perspectives on things, I'm hoping my questions here provoke
you to illuminate me more.
- Steve
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