Autor: Flanagan, Josef

Buch: Quest for Self-Knowledge

Titel: Quest for Self-Knowledge

Stichwort: Niedergang (decline): langer Zyklus 1; Dialektik: progressiv - konservativ; Gruppenbefangenheit (group bias) -> allgemeine Befangenheit (general bias) -> verengter Horizont; Allgemeinverstand (im Rahmen sozialer Unordnung) - reines Streben nach Wissen

Kurzinhalt: If this scenario is repeated over several centuries, the results will bring to light how the general bias interacts with group bias to generate a long cycle of decline, which leads to a series of lower viewpoints or constricting social and cultural ...

Textausschnitt: 5. Long Cycle of Decline

60/3 It is important to distinguish in any social situation those disorders that arise from particular groups in society and those that result from the general neglect by all communities. There is a significant difference between short-term disorders that result from class or group biases and the long-term disorders that stem from the general bias.1 This distinction between short-term and long-term cycles of disorders needs some clarification. We are all familiar with ideas about progress and growth, but explanations of decline and contracting horizons are less familiar. (86; Fs; tblStw: xy)

61/3 Let us consider first the problem of correcting class conflicts. In the examples of iceboxes and refrigerators or horse carriages and automobiles, we find advances in technology which result in, among other things, material comfort. Such advances, though they may go against the vested interests of certain economic groups, are very difficult to block, even in the short run. However, if we examine attempted reforms or improvements in religious, political, and other social groups, we find it is much more difficult to correct group biases. What usually happens is that the social order divides into a reform group and a reactionary group. The reform group may turn rebellious and break away, or it may become revolutionary and end up using force to accomplish its goals. Unfortunately, this course of events has two negative results. The reform group becomes the new dominant group and will develop symbolic stories, rituals, slogans, and songs to celebrate and justify its own wisdom and righteousness while denouncing the follies and injustices of the vanquished. The defeated group, on the other hand, has its own hatreds and resentful memories which it will hand on to future generations to motivate and promote revenge whenever opportunities for retribution emerge. In this scenario a group bias is overcome, but in such a way that two new group biases have been generated in correcting the older bias. (86; Fs)

62/3 If this scenario is repeated over several centuries, the results will bring to light how the general bias interacts with group bias to generate a long cycle of decline, which leads to a series of lower viewpoints or constricting social and cultural horizons. To grasp the results of this long cycle of decline, let us recall that the basic dialectic is between the interested, practical knowing of common sense and the disinterested desire of theoretical knowing. While there is a tension and opposition between these two concrete conscious poles, there could be harmonious complementarity. But for such complementarity to emerge, people who are working out day- to-day solutions to the problems of practical living must realize that common sense is a specialized pattern of knowing that is limited to particular problems and particular solutions. It cannot deal adequately with problems inherited from past generations that are blocking questions, insights, and ideas that could become operative if these inherited biases and disorienting cultural assumptions were recognized and removed. (86f; Fs)

63/3 In other words, common-sense knowers must realize and acknowledge their own limitations and agree to cooperate with knowers whose insights and ideas have their source, not in short-term objectives and practices, but in long-term concerns and consequences. To people of common sense, this sounds like more foolishness; even worse, to some it may sound like the blind leading the blind. Such long-term interpretations and evaluations seem like mere idealism and folly because general bias has been so effective in establishing the attitudes and opinions that make these interpretations seem like wishful thinking. (87; Fs)

64/3 Just as common-sense insights accumulate to form a solid core of intelligent working assumptions that lead to progress, just as simple excuses and rationalizations accumulate and become permanent disorders in the social order, so too a historical series of social disorders can set up a longer cycle that form tensions between the hard-boiled pragmatists and the abstract, impractical theoreticians. (87; Fs)

65/3 The hard-boiled pragmatists have to work out their day-to-day problems in a social order that is the result, not only of past intelligent policies, but also of various forms of institutionalized disorders. What works in such historical situations are not coherent and reasonable courses of action because the policies are not dealing with reasonable and coherent situations. What will work is some form of compromise that does not challenge the actual source of the disorders, but effects a plausible adaptation to these present disorders. This means that the cycles of daily living can keep moving in some combination of reasonable and unreasonable practices. The result is that the common-sense desire to know will itself become distorted. But what is much more serious is that the same sort of distortion can spread to the theoretical sphere. (87; Fs)