Neil Faulkner wrote:
Hmm. Perhaps. I don't know, I certainly don't regard human beings as the center of the universe, and there are plenty of things that I find interesting that have nothing to do with humans at all (astronomy, for example).
Erm, you were the one who said <quote>it's *individual people* who are of primary importance </quote>
Ah. I meant in this particular context, not in any and all contexts. We were talking about human societies, not cosmology.
But we're talking about sociology and ideology here, and those are *human* things. And when we're talking about human things, I do believe it's important not to lose sight of the existence and importance of the individual.
Ah, but why? Could it be something to do with the importance you place in your own individuality?
(That is a straight, honest question, incidentally, not a sarcy gibe.
To give a straight, honest answer: yes, of course it does. My *own* ideological stance (or whatever word you want to use for it) places a great deal of value on individualism. And I'm no less immune to bias than anyone else.
I don't consider myself terribly important, despite the excessive number of posts I write on my night off, which makes me wonder: Do I consider myself unimportant because of the worldview that I hold, or do I hold that worldview because I consider myself unimportant?
This is pretty interesting to me, actually, because I *don't* consider myself important in, like I said, the cosmic scheme of things. (It's interesting to find myself on the other end of this argument, actually, because I remember having a discussion with a friend about moral stances not all that long ago, in which my argument was, basically, that the reason I don't base my own morality on selfish what's-good-for-me reasons is that I'm not any more important than anybody else. He didn't think that made a great deal of sense. :))
Oh, absolutely. But I regard the individual as primary with a lot of animals, too. Just ask my cats!
Yeah, I was meaning to ask you. You seem to have a ginger female. That's unusual, isn't it?
She's actually sort of a tan color, which is not something I've seen all that often. I'm not sure what the genetics of that are.
You don't need to step aside from the person and lose sight of the individual to be aware of that person as a product of evolution. (Actually, evolutionary psychology is a field that interests me greatly, in my dabbling-layman sort of way.)
Layman? Lay*man*??? Layperson, surely...
Surely not. Constructions like "layperson" annoy me, actually, but, tempting as it is, I'll avoid expanding on that particular rant. It's even *more* off topic than the rest of this stuff.
Neither do I actually, I find it [voluntary surrendur of individual identity within a group] very threatening. To the point where I've been unable to listen to live concert recordings (of rock bands. I have no such problem with live recordings of punk bands, for some strange reason). And I suppose I too value individuality over conformity. But conformity exists, and no amount of preference will make it go away.
You know, the farther I go along this thread, the more uncertain I am just where it is that we diagree. :)
I agree with this, actually. But just because we share large bundles of traits in common with lots of other people <snip> When you get down to the *details*, all of us are different. Me, I'm particularly interested in those details, and I think that's a perfectly valid thing to be interested it. You're not, fair enough.
Less interested, yes. I suppose you could say I can't see the trees for the wood. Whereas the CJs can't see the wood for the trees.
Sounds like a fair assessment to me.