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philosophy -> RE: Gun Sales Up Since Obama Election Victory (11/13/2008 2:26:59 PM)
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ORIGINAL: celticlord2112
However, your explanation does not address the "why". It merely pushes the question farther out. WHY does scale matter? WHY are we limited to those immediately around us?
...ok, scale matters in a myriad of applications. What works with an individual is not bound to work with a group. What works with a small group is not guaranteed to work with a bigger one.
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If our involvement with humanity ends at the end of the village, WHY do we have nations and communities that transcend the village?
...well, because it's not a black and white thing. Let's start small, with a family. We can reasonably expect to know more about ou family members than our neighbours. We can reasonably expect to know more about our immediate neighbours than those in the next town. We can reasonably expect to know more about those in the next town than those in a town the other side of the continent.
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You claim you cannot be responsible for someone in the next village. Very well, how then can government which is several villages farther away discharge that responsibility?
...well, let me rephrase a little then for clarity's sake. i am less responsible for those in the next town than i am for my town.....i am even less responsible for those in a town the other side of the continent. It's analogue, not digital. A concept you and i have butted heads over before. i maintain that reality is analogue, you have often seemed to argue from a digital point of view.
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You have stated in the past that the United States should "grow up" (paraphrase, I hope you'll recall the post), and be more like others in the community of nations. By your words here, that community does not exist, because responsibility ends at the village.
....no, the operative word is 'less'. See my point about reality being analogue not digital. Communities across large distances can exist. They can create over arching ideals that bind them together. The US constitution is an example of this. What that doesn't do though is create the same thing that being a neighbour does. It doesn't replace the ability to nod to your neighbour as they leave for work in the morning. It doesn't give an individual the same ability to borrow a mower from a neighbour (try borrowing a mower from someone on the other side of a continent). Now when we were talking earlier about how neighbours can act as the brake that prevents atrocity, we were talking about immediate neighbours. The mower-borrowing neighbours.
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The flaw in your scale argument is that it is both too large and too small. If one man and one village cannot be responsible for another village, and if therefore no man and no village should be trusted with WMD's, how is it that you are at ease with governments beyond the village having such things?
...because of the checks and balances that do exist. Inertia. i don;t want to rewrite Maslow here, but try reading his seminal work on how beauracracies work if you haven't done so already.
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Why are you so easy with trusting government when you distrust those from whom government is derived?
....because i don't distrust all individuals. However i do recognise that anti-social behaviour exists and needs countering. All we differ on is the best way to deal with that, what to do when our remedies fail and what is an acceptable loss rate.
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