hfavr@mtuxo.UUCP (a.reed) (02/13/86)
>>[Adam Reed (ihnp4!npois!adam)] >[Jan Wasilewsky (decvax!inmet!janw)] [Adam Reed again:] >Ayn Rand was predicting, for decades, degeneration and decay of >the whole nation and the world for exactly the same reason: no >coherent philosophy. Not only didn't it occur, but the tide in >many areas has turned in *her* direction. My explanation: the >world isn't run by professional philosophers, as she thought. >Grass roots matter more. (....) I agree with Rand on the importance of "culturally dominant" ideas. Until a few years ago, her predictions, for the most part, were being borne out. The turn-around is due largely to a factor that did not become evident until close to her death: the influence of technology on the "implicit ideology" permeating the culture. Culturally dominant ideas need not come from explicitly intellectual communication. One should not ignore the common use of *metaphors drawn from the environment* as everyday cognitive tools. A technology which changes the everyday environment can give currency to new metaphors, and thus change the way people think. I think that the tide was turned by the spread of computer technology. The computer is just a machine for consistent application of Aristotelian logic. Thus, Aristotelian logic has penetrated the "implicit ideology" of our time through the "computer metaphor". This "computer metaphor" was the driving force behind the rise of Cognitivism and the decline of Behaviorism in the human and social sciences. If one applies Rand's insights to a situation in which man's view of himself and of his society is increasingly founded on (implicitly) Aristotelian ideas, the current resurgence of individualism is not hard to predict. >My own explanation is quasi-Marxist: between the 19th and the >20th century, society became less atomic; more people became *em- >ployees* in hierarchical organizations, small cogs in large >machines. Consequently, individualism waned and collectivism waxed. My experience tends to the opposite. I have worked for enterprises ranging from a two-person garage to AT&T, and lived in communities ranging from a Kibbutz to New York City. In my experience, big cities and big companies are far more congenial to individualism then isolated villages and small partnerships. AT&T is the largest outfit I have ever worked for, and also the most individualistic. I exchange specified services for specified salary and benefits. Nothing else is required or expected. This environment is much farther from collectivism then the typical small partnership, which expects both allegience and conformity as conditions of membership. >The bureaucratization process has not run its course yet, but a >counter-current is already felt. Centralized hierarchical struc- >tures are less efficient in new conditions. In the economy, small >companies are multiplying. Stultifying assembly-line jobs are >disappearing. A new, semi-independent professional class is grow- >ing. (They are mostly employees, too, but in a seller's market >of labor). Individuals feel less crushed by the giant anthill >Look at the net: the cocky self-assurance of so many people is >a pleasure to observe. Consider the Yuppie phenomenon. >Look at the new political agenda - *which* part of the Leviathan >to cut. Look at private space industry; at Sliva (of Guardian >Angels); at Marva Collins (of that ghetto school in Chicago); at >the list of intellectual best-sellers (compare to past decades); >at discredited European Socialism, at libertarian, anticommunist >French intelligentsia (brought up on Sartre). Look at the >newly-rich, capitalist 3d-world countries, and at winds of change >in poor countries - including China and India. Does it still look >as if we are moving towards the world of Atlas Shrugged? No, de- >generation or decline of a *party* is always possible, but this >is a minor matter, it's the small "l" that looms large. All to the good, but does "big L" Libertarianism deserve credit for any of the above? And if not, why call the good stuff "libertarianism"? Adam Reed (ihnp4!npois!adam)