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comment by alpha0
alpha0  ·  4918 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Vaclav Havel's Critique of the West
"The modern era has been dominated by the culminating belief, that the world ... is a wholly knowable system governed by finite number of universal laws that man can grasp and rationally direct ... objectively describing, explaining, and controlling everything."

mk, I am trying to understand how you arrived at that as the fundamental "issue that [informs the issue that] Havel was raising". (Please explain.)

There are 2 distinct concerns here: top-down systems of societal order that govern based on heuristic reasoning and statistical modeling, and, (ultimately) cosmic points of view. Consider: a bottom-up system can be based on an absolutist bias that is applied locally.





mk  ·  4918 days ago  ·  link  ·  
Well, like I inferred, I can't say that I am sure what it is exactly that he meant. However, my understanding is that he felt that we ought not to consider the world a wholly knowable system (a puzzle to be solved), and also, that we should be ok with fundamental differences that we have, and not feel that they must be resolvable.

And, to me, these seem to be contradictions of a sort. That is, he seems to assert (like you mention) that local or personal absolutism (absolute bias) is natural and good, and yet, he believes that global absolutism is our problem. However, I believe that global absolutism is based in the validity of personal absolutism.

For example, I do not think that: "The more we know about dangers like global warming, the less we seem able to deal with them." In fact, I think most individuals know very little about global warming. And, yet, many individuals have strong opinions on global warming based upon personal absolutism. The problem, I see, is that we have validated the idea of personal absolutism too much.

In short, if we understood that we are all only correct in context, and knowable in context, then we might better understand that the world may not not be a puzzle to be solved, but that parts of the puzzle can be understood and solved from a (humble) point-of-view. That is, I don't look to my self for an opinion or solution to global warming, but I look to others to better help me understand it and to solve it. That is, 'correctness' about global warming is not found in the individual.

I can't even reconstruct the entirety of my own yesterday. I am actually much less knowable than the world. The problem with solving the world has more to do with my complexities than that of the world.

IMHO, I think absolutism (objectivity) in the West is wrongly validated in the Individual. In the communist block, I think absolutism (objectivity) was wrongly validated in the State.

alpha0  ·  4918 days ago  ·  link  ·  
Well said, mk.
mk  ·  4917 days ago  ·  link  ·  
Hey, thanks. :)