universals

________________ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/18/opinion/juneteenth-federal-holiday.html _____________________________ from the new York times this past Sunday…the gist of the piece is no it cannot if the nation as a whole is going to attempt to understand black experience …and it is also a clear index of the conflict between identity and inclusiveness…in a search for true understanding of their suffering the black community is going to have to surrender a portion of its identity…and like any other group of humans some may find that difficult…we define ourselves as much by what we are not as by what we are and letting go of a piece of identity makes us like the others…in-group bias is not an easy thing to relinquish…it is part of what we are and, no matter how sympathetic we are to the suffering of others or how much we may admire their accomplishment, we still think “our” group is that marginally bit better…yet we are all humans of the same species that sprang form the same cradle in africa ( i had my dna sequenced i am of african origin…my dna has been on a roundabout trip from there…but that is where it started )…why don’t we see that? in-group bias is on donald brown’s list of human universals…it is fairly lengthy and i believe i have provided a link to it before…human universals beyond the obvious biological ones exist despite what some academics may say so why don’t we see the sameness? my thoughts are that there must be human universals that act as impediments to perceiving human universal so i took a look at brown’s list and these are the ones i found that would seem to fit that description… 1. habituation- we all have mental shortcuts we use to do things without much thought…these include stereotyping people 2. territoriality-we all have out “turf” of one sort or another that we are proprietary about and from which we exclude most people. 3. group living-leads to in-group bias which we already covered. 4. social structure-there’s always a hierarchy…always someone above or below…someone to aspire to be or someone to look down on…exclusionary thinking. 5. leaders- basically someone with an agenda that favors them more than you…proponents of the above hierarchy because they are the “above”. 6. coalitions- “us” against them…exclusionary. 7. collective identity- source of in-group bias and identity politics…a bane to inclusiveness. 8. envy- self-evident as a contributor 9. manipulative social relations- see, ”social structure” and “leaders” 10. ethnocentrism- in-group bias as a pharmakon 11. language employed to manipulate others- politics/leaders with an agenda inimical to the interests of the bulk of the polity with an interest in keeping that polity divided and hostile. 12. language used to misinform or mislead- basically the same as the immediate above except it should include corporate entities and their continued efforts to skew our needs to one that can be sold…another source of the divisive “envy” for those of more limited means 13. overestimating objectivity of thought- am i as objective as i think i am? probably not…like it or not we are all stuck behind our own eyes…all of life is relative to us because we are centered where we are…in our heads…no matter how sympathetic it’s still mostly subjective if we are going to get past divisiveness and on to human inclusiveness we would seem to have some work to do on ourselves as a species, myself included…i am not innocent of bias…neither are you…it is part of being human…i never said we were an attractive species.

no particular results

"the pragmatic method, in such cases, is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective pratical consequences...it stands for no particular results, it has no dogmas, and no doctrines save its methods." william james. pragmatism. 1907____________________________ "we do not intend to lecture contries on their internal structure, either in cases like the phillipines at present, or the communist countries. our concern is for foreign policy behavior and we will aid dictatorships if it is in our interest to do so." richard nixon to u n ambassador john scali 13 february 1973__________ just a short tangent before i get to my point dick...we need to have a heart to heart about north viet nam and cambodia and your "foreign policy behavior" towards their "internal structure" during your first term in office...i sense something of a conflict there...been at the gin again? and so the quintesential american philosophy, " if it works towards achieving your 'goals-in-view' then it's an ethical good"...a wholly situational ethic that, as old dick's views on "dictatorships" show, entails no permanent friends, no permanenet enemies ( why you can buy clothes made in viet nam ), only permanent interests ( why you can be a good consumer and buy aforementioned clothes )...so manuel noriega can go from a good friend to a federal prison when he got greedy about drugs...or saddam hussein can go from being a saunch ally fighting a proxy war against the evil iranians to a hanged guy when he got greedy about kuwaiti oil...they both trangressed those "permanent interests" and paid the empire's price...dick was a politican and so had a professional need to lie through this teeth about almost everything...james considered himself an educator and philosopher of sorts...he died in 1910 i believe...before the first world war, much less the rest of that miserable century...i have to wonder what he might ( or might not ) recant in this if he had made it to mid century...situational ethics and "goals-in-view" can have some unpalatable consequences...i suppose that interpretation would have a lot to do with your definiton of "practical".