Dear Banjo,

The reason I don't debate in dialectic fashion is that somebody might think I was making fun of their dialect.

Dear David f.,

Koestler talks of hierarchy as not so much linear, but more like an inverted tree branching downward - (I promise this is my last Koestler quote - but he explains it so well)

"We find such tree diagrams of hierarchic organization applied to the most varied fields: genealogical tables; the classification of animals and plants; the evolutionist's "tree of Life"; charts indicating the branching structures of government departments or industrial enterprises; physiological charts of the nervous system, and of the circulation of the blood. The word "hierarchy" is of ecclesiastical origin and is often wrongly used to refer to order of rank--the rungs of a ladder, so to speak. I shall use it to refer not to a ladder but to the tree-like structure of a system, branching into sub-systems,...."

One would imagine that although anarchists are interested in dispensing with the dominating hierarchic edifice of government, that they would themselves be forced to adopt and adhere to a similar hierarchical structure if they were to successfully undertake any of the organisational roles you mentioned.

Dear Poirot,

Thank you for telling about Koestler's book. The ladder structure has been used to describe evolution. It is a consequence of seeing evolution as a series of improvements eventually leading to humans.

Anarchists in forming armies, factories and other structures have incorporated hierarchical structures. "Homage to Catalonia" by Orwell tells about it.

I will look for "Ghost in the Machine". You have made it sound interesting.

Banjo:
<The world would be a better place if all debate could become dialectic, but I guess that is utopic.>

An interesting thought; indeed, you said a mouthful!
I've spent ages trying to come to terms with Hegel's criticism of Newton---and by implication his criticism of empiricism contra a priori judgement. Dialectics is anthropocentric; it doesn't posit nature as at a remove from human cognition, but intimately entwined with it. While empiricism distrusts the data and seeks to objectify phenomena, subjecting it to methodological analysis (for some obscure reason, if anyone wants to explain it to me?), thereby laundering mere sense perception of it. The latter approach is the bulwark of the modern philosophy of science--which finds itself in a cosy-rational (indeed symbiotic) relationship with liberal political economy (the church, you know, never lost sight of its saving mission, all through the decadent years. Neither has science, even after Hiroshima and Auschwitz). No wonder Hegel was the pariah of philosophical modernism for over 100 years! and has only just emerged among a flotsam of technological iconography on a calm (stagnant) and complacent sea. I wonder if technocracy will be as hard to unseat as theocracy was..

Dear all who are still on this thresd,

I will be 85 on October 31. I would like to meet anybody who lives or will be in the Brisbane area during the month. It would be a birthday gift to me to meet the live people who have voiced their opinions.

Dear David f.,

Nice thought...alas, I'm on the other side of the continent. Hope you have a good birthday, though.