Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1996 10:41:38 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Andrew W. Austin" <aaustin@mtsu.edu>
To: Salvatore Babones <sbabones@jhu.edu>
Subject: Re: And Velikovsky for President...
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SGI.3.93.960731010820.25109A-100000@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu>
1. Not that is matters (since it was simply an tool for levity), but of
course Sorokin's metahistory, in addition to being supremely functionalist
and eschatological, was rhythmic and cyclical. Much of the metahistorical
work following Nietzche posited historical cycles (Kroeber, Dawson,
Toynbee, Mumford, etc.), indeed relied on them to make their historical
systems meaningful. Sorokin, for example, posited the ultimate collapse
of the modern era (he was antimodernity) and an inevitable return to the
medieval psyche. If this isn't cyclical I don't know what is. Sorokin's
historiography was tautological and teleological; shorn of human actors,
it was a system left to move on its own and thus necessitated rhythms to
explain transformation. Parsons borrowed much of Sorokin's functional
frame in the development of his own systems theory (although it became
ahistorical), and it too suffers from these same problems.
2. Regarding our 'never having democracy.' Democracy exists in degrees,
beginning with total democracy and running to no democracy. Prior to the
incorporation of the planet, there was more democracy and liberty. Prior
to the development of state systems there was even more democracy and
liberty. Therefore, the human being has, in history and prehistory,
enjoyed democratic societies, and it is these standards of democracy to
which I compare the (hyper)modern era. We are clearly less free and less
democratic that 90% of the generations before us. Corporatism is
destroying what democracy and liberty we have remaining. We are moving
towards a totalized corporate world-system. It isn't inevitable (unless
we do nothing to stop it) and it isn't functional -- real human beings in
real positions of power are purposely constructing an authoritarian
world-state in which all the peoples of the world will be ensnared.
3. I am moving, and will be gone for a while (not sure I will be back
here). This has been an interesting channel, and I appreciate the lively
debate. However, I think much of what goes on this channel suffers from a
very intellectually bounded view of the world, one where some very broad
concepts and theories reduce the ability to think about the world to very
narrow eschatologies. It is a form of groupthink, or paradigm lock.
Systems theories in this closed paradigm, where the theories must meet
criteria laid down by foundational axioms, in this case axioms of
questionable validity, lose their critical edge, and become, as the last
series of contributions clearly shows, illegitimate teleologies with all
the trappings of a Nostradamus. This explains the ridiculous appeals made
to "human nature" made by Sanderson and Moore several weeks back. One who
posits the inevitability of social stages must have the very nature of the
individual locked into the telos. World history then becomes an unfolding
of nature, and becomes intelligible through a rejection of all mysticism
and ideologies, this rejection being the work of positive science, the one
true epistemological system which will reveal the Truth of the world.
Andy