… every culture in history, in every time and every place, has operated from the assumption that it had it 95% correct and that the other 5% would arrive in five years’ time! All were wrong! All were wrong, and we gaze back at their naivety with a faint sense of our own superiority.
… every culture in history, in every time and every place …
We should implement a filter that changes the above phrase to “The USA in the 1950s”. Because then the statements that include the phrase would generally become true.
I don’t really disagree with the point he’s trying to make there, and if we restrict ourselves to talking about post-Enlightenment Western cultures the argument might be largely accurate; but over all cultures in all times and places he’s simply wrong.
It’s actually fairly unusual for a culture to be consistently forward-looking at all, let alone to assume that the solutions to all its problems and the answers to all its open questions will arrive in a few years or decades. Most seem to have assumed that the present world’s unusually debased and that things will only get worse, usually culminating in some sort of cataclysm; compare Hesiod’s Ages of Man, the Kali Yuga, et cetera. This sort of thing might seem like a reactionary fantasy to us here and now, but that or a cyclical viewpoint or some combination are part of the bedrock of myth in essentially all the traditional cultures I know anything about.
every culture in history, in every time and every place, has operated from the assumption that it had it 95% correct and that the other 5% would arrive in five years’ time!
Don’t believe it.
Cultures, to the best of my knowledge, differ somewhat significantly with respect to their attitude to moral and ideological progress or decline. It doesn’t even seem particularly likely that every culture in history has even had an attitude such that it can be said to be operation with an assumption one way or the other.
If you would ask members of the present US culture whether the legal way gays are treated is optimal I doubt you will get that answer.
One the one hand you have people who disagree with state laws that allow homosexual marriage. Some of them disagree with laws that forbid discrimination.
On the other hand you do have people who would want equal marriage rights for homosexuals.
Neither side believes that their position will get cultural consensus in five years.
-- Terence McKenna, Culture and Ideology are Not Your Friends
We should implement a filter that changes the above phrase to “The USA in the 1950s”. Because then the statements that include the phrase would generally become true.
I think you’re being a little to harsh on the OC. You can at least use the phrase “Western Culture in the 20th century”. (;
You can delete the duplicate comments now that they are retracted.
I think you’re being a little to harsh on the OC. You can at least use the phrase “Western Culture in the 20th century”. (;
I think you’re being a little to harsh on the OC. You can at least use the phrase “Western Culture in the 20th century”. (;
I don’t really disagree with the point he’s trying to make there, and if we restrict ourselves to talking about post-Enlightenment Western cultures the argument might be largely accurate; but over all cultures in all times and places he’s simply wrong.
It’s actually fairly unusual for a culture to be consistently forward-looking at all, let alone to assume that the solutions to all its problems and the answers to all its open questions will arrive in a few years or decades. Most seem to have assumed that the present world’s unusually debased and that things will only get worse, usually culminating in some sort of cataclysm; compare Hesiod’s Ages of Man, the Kali Yuga, et cetera. This sort of thing might seem like a reactionary fantasy to us here and now, but that or a cyclical viewpoint or some combination are part of the bedrock of myth in essentially all the traditional cultures I know anything about.
Don’t believe it.
Cultures, to the best of my knowledge, differ somewhat significantly with respect to their attitude to moral and ideological progress or decline. It doesn’t even seem particularly likely that every culture in history has even had an attitude such that it can be said to be operation with an assumption one way or the other.
If you would ask members of the present US culture whether the legal way gays are treated is optimal I doubt you will get that answer.
One the one hand you have people who disagree with state laws that allow homosexual marriage. Some of them disagree with laws that forbid discrimination. On the other hand you do have people who would want equal marriage rights for homosexuals.
Neither side believes that their position will get cultural consensus in five years.