[FRIAM] millenarianism

Sat Jun 6 12:56:21 EDT 2020

Glen, 

This is a really good, fair-minded, explication of the rhetorical situation Dave was in.  

I had to look up eschatological:  Courtesy of wikipedia, 

Eschatology /ˌɛskəˈtɒlədʒi/ <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/English>  ( <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:En-uk-eschatology.ogg> listen <https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/En-uk-eschatology.ogg> ) is a part of  <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theology> theology concerned with the final events of  <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_world> history, or the ultimate  <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destiny> destiny of humanity. This concept is commonly referred to as the " <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_the_world_(civilization)> end of the world" or " <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_time> end times". <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschatology#cite_note-1> [1] 

Wow.  Glad finally, after all those years, to have that one added to my lexicon.  So, is this what I am accusing steve of when I accuse him of a “hankering”.  Is this what Glen (?) was accusing ME of when he (?) accused me of a belief in progress.  (Was Deweyism a form of eschatology?  Who would have ever thought!)  So Glen.  What does the word mean to you?  Does somebody who believes that history has a vector have thereby to be an eschatologist?  Does the fact that Peirce believes that there are SOME truth and that some forms of inquiry seek these out and sometimes find them make him an Eschatologist?  (That’s right, Nick, when you learn a new word, use it at least 6 times in the next ten sentences.  )

N

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Saturday, June 6, 2020 8:30 AM
To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] millenarianism

Agreed. To be fair, though, just as Dave announced he had to leave the meeting, he was asked to quickly state why he thought the accusations against Trump supporters was a mischaracterization. He called out the anti-Trump crowd for over-generalizing those who voted for Trump and briefly described a few reasons a *heterogeneous* collection of people might have different reasons for doing so (conservative court appointments, tough talk to China, etc. -- arguably legitimate things some of us might want in a President). This post of his was, therefore, a legitimate response to that request, coming up with a narrative circumscribing the faulty thinking of the anti-Trump crowd.

However, in so doing, he attempts to right one wrong with another wrong. His post rightly calls out the over-generalizing fallacy of the anti-Trump by then over-generalizing (or outright false narrative cartooning) them. My tack would have been to demonstrate the diversity of the not-pro-but-not-anti Trump tolerators first. *Then* maybe dive into why the anti-Trump crowd exhibits such flawed thinking. And FWIW, I agree with his gist that the anti-Trump crowd is, at least a bit, eschatological. But I think lots of us, regardless of political bent, are eschatological. We see it in the Singularians, the bioethicists re: DIY Bio, ecologists, climatologists, Steve Guerins re: societal phase transitions >8^D, etc.

The story could easily be rounded out with a demonstration that the anti-Trump crowd is also diverse. Not all of us are eschatological. Some of us are simply embarrassed by him. I'll take an Evil Genius over a bumbling moron any day of the week. And my reasons for purposefully over-generalizing my characterization of the Trump tolerators as morons or cult members is a (likely misguided) attempt to shame or guilt them into thinking a little harder about who they vote for. It's got nothing to do with "millenarianism".

On 6/5/20 11:16 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:

> Presumably, davew doesn't believe that the preceding characterizes the way any living human being thinks. So why pretend that it does other than to insult people? And why does he want to insult people? We don't need any more of that. We are already fully supplied with insults from the insulter-in-chief. Let's not make things worse.

--

☣ uǝlƃ

- .... . -..-. . ...- --- .-.. ..- - .. --- -. -..-. .-- .. .-.. .-.. -..-. -... . -..-. .-.. .. ...- . -..-. ... - .-. . .- -- . -..

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe  <http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives:  <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/> http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC  <http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/> http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20200606/95af688f/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 375 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20200606/95af688f/attachment.png>