<Bill Williams 9 December 2003 8:34 PM CST>
Kenny said in a previous "Discouraged" post,
Bill, this is one of the "ancient" posts in a thread I started. So, I am
especially sorry that I never replied to you.
Not to worry. We both had other things to think about. But, you say, in reply to what I said,
<Still if we view speach from a control theory standpoint, then the
disruption caused by poor speech is a disruption that takes place in and because of the
reference levels on the part of the person who is listenng to the speech.>
Man I love the way you explain that. Others words can not hurt you unless
you allow them to disturb your references of yourself. I think that is a PCT
corollary. There is another old adage that if you let someone make you angry,
you are allowing them to control you. Can you expound on this as it relates to PCT?
Well,... you and I may be confident, confident that is that the source of pain that some sorts of speech may cause is a pain that we generate because we have allowed what we have heard to disturb our self-concept. As you say, you regard it as a PCT corollary. So do I. (But, not everyone on the CSGnet agrees with us.) And, I as a practical matter recognize that there is a huge difference between recognizing what we understand to be the control theory implications as applied to speach as something like the truth of a proposition in geometry and applying the "abstract" understanding in difficult conditions in the real world, in real time.
I think there may be another factor involved here. I'm of the opinion that people are not by nature the sort of creatures that have as their natural existence the sort of issolated self-sufficiency that modern european thought, say John Locke, Hobbes and the 18th century social theorists, attribute to an "original" human nature. I don't have any doubts at all that Powers is correct in insisting that the agency that people have is located in creataures that are biologically distinct specimens. There is, I am convinced, nothing that remotely has a causal existence that remotely resembles the social anthropologists or sociologists "group mind," or "social agency." However, when people get together things happen that might lead one to think that there might be "causal powers" that are the expression of the reality of somesort of group existence. And, I don't think it is just a matter of just dramatic happenings like riots, or panics, or similiar events. I think the recent thread in which Bruce Nevin provoke by his interest in language is an example of a phenomena that has been considered difficult to explain as resulting from the properties of individuals. So, there has been a tendency to attribute to some group construct, like Durkheim's almost magical conception of society a causal reality. In the absence of a better explaination there are otherwise quite reasonable people who think it is neccessary to posit the existence of such group realities-- there is a recent book Douglas, Mary. 1986. _How Institutions Think_. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. There is a much older example Kroeber, A. L. 1917. "The Super-Organic."American Anthropologist. Vol. 19. # 2. (April-June): 163-213. And, of course there is Durkheim. I'm convinced that a control theory conception of an individual _could_ account for this, but doing so would require changing the notion of an "individual" from the 18th century Lockean "individual" to a control theory conception in which the social aspect is conceptually built in by way of the inherent reference levels. The cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker has a book out _The Language Instinct_ which comes close to what I'm thinking about, but Pinker's conception of an instinct seems to be close to a fixed action pattern whereas I think might make quite a bit of difference if instincts were re-defined in terms of control theory. Then it might be easier to perceived the complex things that happen when people get together as having their source in the inherently social properties of the individuals, and things like society might not seem so magical and threatening.
The evening of 911 I was driving across eastern Missouri when I stopped at a fast food store for gas and something to eat. A middle aged woman was alone behind the counter watching TV and tuned to the post-strike news. She said she was worried, and I asked "About what?" Improbable as it might seem, she said that she was worried that "ragheads with AK-47s were going to come across the highway" and get her. I tried to reasure her by pointing out that there was a big ocean between "them" and us, and "they" didn't have much anything in theway of a navy. So, not to worry about ragheads coming across the highway.
In thinking about this woman's worries, as I drove across the rest of Missouri I thought about some of the things Thorstein Veblen had to say about the patriotic animus,
Veblen, Thorstein. 1919, 1945 _The Nature of Peace and the Terms of
its Perpetuation_ Viking Press: New York
"Patriotism is of a contentious complexion, and finds its fullest
expression in no other outlet than warlike enterprise; its highest
and final appeal is for the death, damage, discomfort and destruction
of the part of the second part. p. 33.
"The ideals, needs and aims that so are brought into the patriotic
argument to lend a color of rationality to the patriotic aspiration
in any given case will of course be such ideals, needs and aims
as are currently accepted .... p. 35.
"By and large, and overlooking that appreciable contingent of
morally defective citizens that is to be counted on in any
hybrid population,... p. 36.
"To anyone who is inclined to moralize on the singular
discrepancies of moral life this state of the case will be
fruitful of much profound speculation. The patriotic animus
appears to be an enduring trait of human nature, an ancient
heritage that has stood over unshorn from time immemorial,
under the Mendelian rule of the stability of racial types.
It is archaic, not amenable to elimination or enduring
suppression and apparently not appreciably to mitigated
by reflection, education, experience or selective breeding.
p. 41.
"The continued prevalence of this archaic animus among the
modern peoples, as well as the fact that it is universally
placed high among the virtues, must be taken to argue that it
is, in its elements, an hereditary trait, of the nature of
an inborn impulsive propensity, rather than a product of
habituation. It is, in substance, not something that can
be learned and unlearned. p. 41-2.
I don't happen to agree with all that Veblen says, but some of
it may be all too true.
Bill Williams