Dear David f.

Have you read Arthur Koestler"s "The Ghost in the Machine"?
It explores many things, but concentrates on hierarchies and the relativity and ambiguity of the terms "part" and "whole". He coined the word "holon" to mean something that was at the same time both a part and and a whole.
He explores how man operates in being at once a complete system in himself and, at the same time, a smaller part of a wider system in his communal role.

Dear Friends,

As friends I include all of you. I took a day off as I was getting over excited and was feeling hostility to some of you.

Banjo wrote referring to Hegel:

"I rather see it as a long term prophesy. I think he was looking at the big picture of mankind, saw where we had come from and tried to imagine where we would finally end up if we continued in the same direction."

Hegel saw the Prussian state as a goal attained but also saw beyond that. I don't know that anyone can see a big picture of mankind although many have made such big pictures. I distrust grand narratives of history. With the best will in the world we cannot know accurately what happened in the past, and we form our picture of the future based on the society we would like to see. The existence of the Soviet Union has a tremendous effect on the history of the twentieth century, but I don't think Lenin a month before the Bolshevik coup though that he and his supporters could take it over. I also think that Gorbachev thought he could reform communism and had no idea he was contributing to a process that would result in the end of the Soviet Union. Marx, Joachim and others who have created such narratives could have been quite brilliant, but we simply don't keep going in the same direction. What we can do is to try to identify problems and solve them with the means at hand. That's the only means we have.

The grand narratives share certain characteristics. They generally have some apotheosis at the end - the eventual classless society (Marx), the triumph of liberal capitalism (Fukuyama), the Prussian state (Hegel), the second coming of Christ (Christianity), the thousand year Reich (Nazism) whatever. They generally are Manichaean in seeing some enemy that is working against reaching that goal. Hegel and Fukuyama apparently thought the goal had been achieved, but they may have changed that point of view later. Excuse me for making a narrative of narratives.

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The class enemy, restrictions on trade, the race enemy, the enemies of the Prussian state, Satan, the Jew are respectively what the builders of those narratives saw as enemies. The authors of the grand narratives see the side they identify with as good, and they see the enemy of that side as evil. Unfortunately real live human beings are seen as representing the enemy so they make corpses of them. If they can rid the world of the enemy they will live in millennial peace. Dichotomies of good and evil are useful in rousing people to fight a war. In other areas such as making peace they are not so good.

Anyhow that's what I think of Hegel's and similar prophesies.

I think the main problem we have at the moment is that we are destroying the capacity of the planet to support human life. It possibly cannot continue to support human life in the numbers we have now. However, it is not a problem except to us. If we are reduced greatly in numbers or become extinct the world will continue to exist until the predicted heat death. Predictions based on physical theory I accept. I just don't accept the predictions of makers of grand narratives.

Not only do we make unreal dichotomies we treat abstractions as real. One abstraction I regard as pernicious is the ‘will of the people’. I think Rousseau thought that one up.

The ‘will of the people’ may be expressed by a fuehrer, a vanguard class or other subset of humanity. In democratic countries ‘community standards’ can serve to set limits for artistic or other expression. Those who are defined as counter to the will can be sent to re-education or concentration camps, deprived of livelihood or simply killed.

Enough of my rant. I’m retiring to bed which is a low rant district.

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Dear David F.,

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Gosh, you should take a day off more often.

That was a very relaxed and informative post. It strikes me, nevertheless as something of a paradox that you write:

"If we are reduced greatly in numbers or become extinct the world will continue to exist until the predicted heat death. Predictions based on physical theory I accept. I just don't accept the predictions of makers of grand narratives".

I just read on a fairly reputable web site that astronomers predict the "heat death" you refer to as being due to occur in roughly 5 billion years time. That's a mighty long time, David.

I doubt that Hegel had that sort of time frame in mind. But then again, I guess if he predicted the sun would rise tomorrow you would probably still prefer to put your money on the astronomers.

Who said religion ? Did you say religion?

Have a great day, David and welcome back.

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Dear DavidF,
yes thanks for that considered argument, some of which I agree with, but some I think highly debatable.
In spite of Banjo's generous comments earlier, I'm no expert on Hegel, or even Marx, though I know more of Marx than Hegel.
Postmodernism has been defined as disillusionment with grand narratives and their basis in some form or other of universal truth. Such disillusionment also lies behind much modern intellectual disillusionment with Marx's historical materialism.
But I cannot emphasise too much that this is based on yet another misunderstanding. Marx's meta-narrative is only historical in terms of prevailing historical conditions. They are, according to Marx "laws which are valid only for a given historical development". Indeed, Marx accused Smith and co of feigning a transhistorical scope to their laws of economics---which were "mystified by the economists into a supposed law of nature" (of human nature!). Marx's law of falling profit, for instance, was an "expression peculiar to the capitalist mode of production; and in fact every particular historical mode of production has its own special laws of population which are historically valid within that particular sphere". Marx's so-called grand narrative was nothing of the kind, his idea of the 'progress' of human 'societies' were logically 'forecast' to culminate in conditions peculiar to their respective dynamics. That is why predicted communism was 'not' an item of faith, but of logic and optimism. Marx was, above all else, a materialist and did not romanticise grand narratives for humanity.
While we tend to disagree on some of these matters, DavidF, I would emphasis that I have no final stand to defend, apart from scepticism (though neither do I retreat into relativism).
Quotations above are from Marx and can be found in context online.

Dear Poirot,

I have not read "The Ghost of the Machine". I read "The Thirteenth Tribe" and "The God that Failed." Arthur Koestler wrote the former and contributed to the latter. After I read the latter I thought Koestler was an intelligent fool.

You wrote: "He [Koestler] explores how man operates in being at once a complete system in himself and, at the same time, a smaller part of a wider system in his communal role."

Our society is greatly influenced by Christianity. Christianity has created the dichotomy between individual salvation which can be achieved apart from the rest of humanity or the social gospel in which one serves Christ by working to make the community better.

Such a dichotomy exists in neither Islam nor Judaism. One is simply part of the community, and salvation which does not involve being part of the community does not exist. There is a Jewish saying to the effect that if you kill a man you have destroyed a universe. You are part of the community, and you have dignity in yourself. For a Jew or Muslim there is no dichotomy. I am influenced by that to think little of any society that does not see individual human rights as necessary and important.

Dear Banjo,

I am aware of the distance in time of the expected heat death. Any times of human development are tiny compared to that. That's why I mentioned both. Even in that small frame time we cannot predict the future so any long range prediction is fantasy.

Dear Squeers,

You wrote: "Our lives under utilitarianism and capitalism are alienated, pointless and barren." That sounds to me like an echo of runner's lament, "We are all sinners."

I have the feeling your life is not at all “alienated, pointless and barren." I enjoy your use of language and your erudition, and I feel you must enjoy it also. You have mentioned on another thread your children and your concern for the nonsense they get in school. I know you enjoy reading the insights of Marx. Your statement seems debatable.