[FRIAM] culture vs things (was: capitalism vs. individualism)

[glen∈ℂ]

Yes! Along the same lines of communities policing themselves, pluralists are at risk of runaway relativism. I was reading this article <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/02/smashing-the-patriarchy-why-theres-nothing-natural-about-male-supremacy> recently and was taken aback by this excerpt:

> Steven Pinker, for instance, has argued that men prefer to work with “things”, whereas women prefer to work with “people”. This, he said, explains why more women work in the (low-paid) charity and healthcare sector, rather than getting PhDs in science. According to Pinker, “The occupation that fits best with the ‘people’ end of the continuum is director of a community services organisation. The occupations that fit best with the ‘things’ end are physicist, chemist, mathematician, computer programmer, and biologist.”

I'm distressed by *celebrity*. But I don't draw a clear distinction between the cultural (aka "people") and the natural. I've forgotten who introduced me to it. But I like the concept of the "naturfact" ... like "artifact", but a found thing modified or remade by us ... partly synthetic, partly natural ... part thing, part "people". It's this mixing of the 2 categories that makes me interested in "stigmergy". One person's purely synthetic "city" is another person's purely natural habitat.

When I hear people seemingly committed to an obviously incompetent and corrupt person like Trump, no matter what he says or does, I can't help but think their commitment is purely a cultural commitment. They, like me, don't see a sharp distinction between natural things and cultural things. So, since they're part of my "tribe", I feel a special responsibility to criticize them and argue the complement: that there *is* a difference between real things (like facts) versus spun narratives or "cults of personality" (wherein both Trump and JFK are 2 peas in a pod, regardless of any other differences).



On 11/11/19 3:26 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> The most distressing, to me, aspect of what is happening is that the discussion - rational on both sides, critical of both sides, has been reduced to a pretty much exclusive focus on one office and one individual. It is impossible to have an informative discussion about actions taken by the individual, in historical context, in terms of philosophy, policy, and context.
> 
> I was speaking recently with a friend whose profession is political historian. She was comparing Trump and JFK with regards actions in the areas of nepotism (and generally trusting family and "cronies" over political professionals) and the intelligence community (both men spoke ill of it and ignored it). Interesting stuff, but she could not imagine such a discussion getting attention, or getting published, in today's black and white rhetorical context.