Sunday, March 31, 2019
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
topics for review, exam 3, honors classes wolfson
click here for more information,
link to your textbook,
you should bring your own scantrons: #888-P or #882-E
if any of you need me to take a test to ACCESS, please send me an email to remind me.
link to your textbook,
you should bring your own scantrons: #888-P or #882-E
if any of you need me to take a test to ACCESS, please send me an email to remind me.
Tuesday, March 19, 2019
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
Tuesday, March 12, 2019
slavery + reversal of social roles
1. we had a nice talk today. we started with david's point of looking at slavery from the past, in a different theater of operations. i concurred. but that's not a conversation about ethics (which is the discussion of what makes an action right, etc). rather, we're talking about anthropology/history/social evolution.
true, in first century AD 60% of the roman population was made up of slaves (not racial, rather geopolitical, i.e., whether you're a roman or not). so this is a different predicament from, say 19th century america. many plebeians offered to become domestic slaves during roman times. why? they had a better chance of surviving than just being homeless in the streets of rome.
rothschild made a nuanced point about slavery, after which i recommended reading frederick douglass's memoirs.
karl marx, for instance would argue that slavery was a necessary step in the march of history ("necessary" here means it is caused by a previous socio/economic cause).
this brings the following point in favor of social evolution: what made slavery disappear around 500 AD? not a decree from a consortium of european states. it was a social supervinient phenomenon!
here marx has a good point: the old relations of production just changed! in other words, slavery wasn't economically viable anymore. we see this happening again in the 19th century america. no doubt it's industrial capitalism that erodes the old system in the south. the civil war is not the cause of the eradication of slavery but the effect of this paradigm change.
___________
2. another interesting point concerning patriarchy, which i took from my tuesday night class is this: what if we flip the existing social hierarchy from patriarchy to matriarchy?
you ready? very little would change. the mother now has financial power, while the father takes care of the child. the mother now incarnates what man used to be, yet we feel no big overall change.
it's like commutativity in math: the order of factors doesn't change the product. we have the same moral norms: incest is wrong, adultery is wrong, breaking promises is wrong, killing is wrong, stealing is wrong, disrespecting the elders is wrong, etc. family would still be paramount since we need family cohesion for cultural flourishing. why? the paramount cultural value is survival, i.e., LIFE.
see?
so, patriarchy -as social development- is not the result of some obscure cabal of evil elders trying to exploit women into submission. that's bunk. whatever we do in our milieu is already predetermined by our culture.
true, in first century AD 60% of the roman population was made up of slaves (not racial, rather geopolitical, i.e., whether you're a roman or not). so this is a different predicament from, say 19th century america. many plebeians offered to become domestic slaves during roman times. why? they had a better chance of surviving than just being homeless in the streets of rome.
rothschild made a nuanced point about slavery, after which i recommended reading frederick douglass's memoirs.
karl marx, for instance would argue that slavery was a necessary step in the march of history ("necessary" here means it is caused by a previous socio/economic cause).
this brings the following point in favor of social evolution: what made slavery disappear around 500 AD? not a decree from a consortium of european states. it was a social supervinient phenomenon!
here marx has a good point: the old relations of production just changed! in other words, slavery wasn't economically viable anymore. we see this happening again in the 19th century america. no doubt it's industrial capitalism that erodes the old system in the south. the civil war is not the cause of the eradication of slavery but the effect of this paradigm change.
___________
2. another interesting point concerning patriarchy, which i took from my tuesday night class is this: what if we flip the existing social hierarchy from patriarchy to matriarchy?
you ready? very little would change. the mother now has financial power, while the father takes care of the child. the mother now incarnates what man used to be, yet we feel no big overall change.
it's like commutativity in math: the order of factors doesn't change the product. we have the same moral norms: incest is wrong, adultery is wrong, breaking promises is wrong, killing is wrong, stealing is wrong, disrespecting the elders is wrong, etc. family would still be paramount since we need family cohesion for cultural flourishing. why? the paramount cultural value is survival, i.e., LIFE.
see?
so, patriarchy -as social development- is not the result of some obscure cabal of evil elders trying to exploit women into submission. that's bunk. whatever we do in our milieu is already predetermined by our culture.
Sunday, March 10, 2019
meanings of "patriarchy"
yesterday, Mark made a couple of points in our 11am class about patriarchy. i asked him: "what do you mean by patriarchy?"
the reason is that there's a difference between 1. patriarchy as a social system, in which men hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, etc. most pre-modern and modern systems exhibit a patriarchal model (though there are isolated models of matriarchy though, the amazons in greece, in germania during roman times, in tibet, etc).
and,
2. patriarchy, the ideology, which uses the model above to explain and justify this dominance attributing it to inherent natural differences between men and women.
clearly these are different things. for example, the traditionalist can support 1, and reject 2.
patriarchy in 1. is a social and cultural product, partially a result of differences between the sexes, but also as a result of conventional roles emerging in the theater of culture. patriarchy as social system is resilient in the legal, political, religious, and economic organization of many thriving cultures of today's third world.
it works. we're here.
as per patriarchy as a social system traditionalism is neutral. both patriarchy (and matriarchy as social developments) are fine as long as they prove to be beneficial in the theater of operations of the group.
3. another point touched in the class was this: can traditions change? of course they change!
but they have to change slowly and incrementally BY THEMSELVES, not by force from the top.
example: the religious orthodoxy in the USSR didn't really change with the bolshevik revolution in 1917. that was a sudden imposition from the top under communism! 70 years may seem a lot, but not in tradition/time. today, russia is more religious than it was before communism!
lesson here? traditions don't change by force or decree.
Saturday, March 9, 2019
in defense of traditionalism
1. traditionalism defends natural and social selection. it avoids the NOW and instead looks at the PAST.
the NOW can only be understood in relationship with the past.
the NOW is just TOO UNRETENTIVE to prove itself.
2. traditionalists believe that each generation inherits the experience and culture of its ancestors through convention, precedent that each individual is able to pass this knowledge down to their descendants.
3. the traditionalist motto? "the individual is foolish; the species is wise."
4. traditionalists have no agenda other than preservation of the best experience, knowledge, and understanding of human success within its milieu and pass it on to the next generation.
the NOW can only be understood in relationship with the past.
the NOW is just TOO UNRETENTIVE to prove itself.
2. traditionalists believe that each generation inherits the experience and culture of its ancestors through convention, precedent that each individual is able to pass this knowledge down to their descendants.
3. the traditionalist motto? "the individual is foolish; the species is wise."
4. traditionalists have no agenda other than preservation of the best experience, knowledge, and understanding of human success within its milieu and pass it on to the next generation.
the traditionalist view of divorce
5% were unhappy in their relationship soon after the baby was
born. just under a third of these then split up. of the majority who
stayed together, only 7% percent (of the 5 percent, so that’s 0.3 percent
of the total sample) were still unhappy by the time their child was
aged 11, whereas 68% said they were now happy (see figure above).
almost half of american families experience poverty after divorce,
long term effects of divorce on children,
from this article:
Unhappiness is, thankfully, much rarer than people imagine. It affects just one in 20 parents with newborns. Unhappiness is usually temporary. Staying unhappy is incredibly rare. Just one in every 400 parents in the entire study was unhappy at both time points, soon after their child was born and then again when their child was 11. Furthermore, we found that the small minority of married parents who suspect their relationship is on the brink have a similar breakup rate—just under 30 percent—as couples who do not think they are on the brink. That’s not the case for cohabiting parents with newborn children, who, regardless of how secure or insecure they are in their relationship, are more likely than married parents to split up during the next 10 years.what does that mean? divorce is overrated, an abnormal's new normal.
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
topics for Midterm exam, spring 19, honors (wolfson campus)
click here for more information.
click here for your textbook exercises and tests.
you should bring your own scantrons: #888-P or #882-E
if any of you need me to take a test to ACCESS, please send me an email to remind me.
click here for your textbook exercises and tests.
you should bring your own scantrons: #888-P or #882-E
if any of you need me to take a test to ACCESS, please send me an email to remind me.
Monday, March 4, 2019
some general recommendations about our second assignment.
it's all good, but,
1- many of you simply took the already submitted proposal and added a point to it. but that creates a problem. while in the proposal you could be as general as you wanted, this second assignment required specificity. so, be mindful that if you simply added one point to your already submitted proposal to save time, your thesis argument is going to suffer in terms of cogency. of course this could be solved as we plow ahead.
2- I'm detecting the following pattern, your second point sort of begs the question on the first. take social media, point 1 says social media "helps people connect," while point 2 states that social media "is a great way to communicate." both these points say the same thing. so, WATCH FOR HIDDEN REDUNDANCIES.
3- counters look a bit sloppy, quickly rendered, poorly researched and argued. and this is factoring that you have not started researching yet.
4- regarding counters, it's a NO-NO to interject your thesis view in the counter's paragraph, or belittle, misrepresent or use ad hominem against the counter in your theses paragraphs. THIS IS NOT HOW YOU WIN ARGUMENTS IN PHILOSOPHY. please, use the best possible counterarguments you can find. research your counters!
5- pay attention to your title, the title is a useful hook for the reader. here is a good advice.
6- you want to keep a 65/35% ratio of argument vs. citation. I NEED YOUR VOICE IN THIS PAPER. and here comes the issue of plagiarism. this is my advice: if you like a paragraph from the internet, what you need to do is to READ IT AND DIGEST IT, write it down several times until the paragraph is rendered IN YOUR OWN VOICE. only then you can present it to a reader.
1- many of you simply took the already submitted proposal and added a point to it. but that creates a problem. while in the proposal you could be as general as you wanted, this second assignment required specificity. so, be mindful that if you simply added one point to your already submitted proposal to save time, your thesis argument is going to suffer in terms of cogency. of course this could be solved as we plow ahead.
2- I'm detecting the following pattern, your second point sort of begs the question on the first. take social media, point 1 says social media "helps people connect," while point 2 states that social media "is a great way to communicate." both these points say the same thing. so, WATCH FOR HIDDEN REDUNDANCIES.
3- counters look a bit sloppy, quickly rendered, poorly researched and argued. and this is factoring that you have not started researching yet.
4- regarding counters, it's a NO-NO to interject your thesis view in the counter's paragraph, or belittle, misrepresent or use ad hominem against the counter in your theses paragraphs. THIS IS NOT HOW YOU WIN ARGUMENTS IN PHILOSOPHY. please, use the best possible counterarguments you can find. research your counters!
5- pay attention to your title, the title is a useful hook for the reader. here is a good advice.
6- you want to keep a 65/35% ratio of argument vs. citation. I NEED YOUR VOICE IN THIS PAPER. and here comes the issue of plagiarism. this is my advice: if you like a paragraph from the internet, what you need to do is to READ IT AND DIGEST IT, write it down several times until the paragraph is rendered IN YOUR OWN VOICE. only then you can present it to a reader.