Progress happens BECAUSE of antagonism, not DESPITE it.
In his treatise on the Senses, Lowenstein inadvertently sums up modern civilization:
Our story is becoming complicated… for each muscle moving a limb one way, there is at least one other moving it in the opposite direction. The biceps which flexes our arm is counteracted or antagonized by the triceps, which extends or straightens it…
They receive on every occasion exactly opposite commands from the command center. When one is made to contract by proprioceptive reflex, its antagonist is made to relax simultaneously. All movements are smooth and are carried out within the safety limits of the load-bearing capacity of muscles and tendons.
Almost every political discussion: “Man, we biceps are pushing so hard… imagine what we could accomplish if we just got rid of those pesky triceps….”
So wait a minute, Cramulus… are you saying that evolutionary biologists NEED creationists?
In some ways, yes — for a controversial idea to “win”, it must engage and overcome the controversy. Evolutionary biologists need external criticism; the challenge becomes a platform for them to publicly make their case.
Opposition is necessary within science, too. Without the antagonistic peer review process, there is no science. Ideas must be tested before their truth is visible.
It’s worth noting that the space race was a direct result of the cold war — competition between political entities. More on that point from Neil DeGrasse Tyson … Our fuel for putting a man on the moon was Fear of The Other, not thirst for knowledge.
I often hear people lamenting the state of things, then assigning blame to some political faction. As if our problems would quickly resolve into utopia if the democratic party (or any other faction) had unchecked political power.
No no — we NEED those spags across the isle to find the weaknesses in each of our ideas and to be exemplars of what needs to change.
The edge is always messy, so it’s hard to see how today’s battle becomes tomorrow’s status quo.
The Civil Rights movement was a response to real racism – if everybody was rather polite about disliking smudgy colored people, the movement wouldn’t have had meat to sink its teeth into.
Occupy didn’t make headlines until the cops started busting heads and pundits made weak arguments against it.
Lao Tzu grabs the handlebars of his bike and shouts: “Good and bad deify define each other!”
“Study Demonology with an Enemy This Sunday”
-sez Thom,Gnos
on
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Holy Cow and Wholly Chao: An observation
because somebody has to be antagonistic though in a companionable and non-threatening way
Cram said “Progress happens BECAUSE of antagonism, not DESPITE it.”
I think I get what you are saying Cramulus but I would counter that
Progress happens because of antagonism, AND despite it though I’m not sure I really want to call it progress but YMMV
Now what you have set out is an interesting version of the classic thesis/antithesis/synthesis thing, you know, Marxist theory, and I don’t have any problem with that; but it is quite limiting because it tends to imply that there is only one POV in action at any point in time and that is patently not the case. To take the cold war/space race example, it wasn’t just a political decision, nor only a matter of the availability of the necessary technical stuff ie materials, theory, manpower, (mmmm gotta love those german guys with their rockets), nor was it that the post war period generated a zeitgeist which encouraged such developments, nor that there was a genuine scientific potential to be gained from the technological developments of manned space flight as well as rubbing those Russkie noses in it etc etc etc. It is the complex interactions between these competing forces that motivates such developments..
[The Neil DeGrasse Tyson clip is not available in the UK btw though I am familiar with the argument]
I think your comment about edges always being messy is the most interesting bit in the piece, certainly to me. If you’ve never read anything on Permaculture I think you might get a buzz out of it. David Holmgren’s ‘Permaculture Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability’ or Bill Mollison’s ‘Permaculture a Designers Manual’ are quite thought provoking. Permaculturalists are big on edges.
Edges “are the places where both co-operative and competitive relationships between systems elements and whole systems are played out” Holmgren, 227.
So Lao Tzu grabs [...] his bike and sings:
I can ride my bike with no handlebars, with no handlebars . . .
Hegel.
bless you
“Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.”
― William Blake
“So the Angel said: ‘thy phantasy has imposed upon me, & thou oughtest to be ashamed.’
I answer’d: ‘we impose on one another, & it is but lost time to converse with you whose works are only Analytics.’
Opposition is true Friendship.
I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of themselves as the only wise; this they do with a confident insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning.”
“A man carried a monkey about for a shew, & because he was a little wiser than the monkey, grew vain, and conciev’d himself as much wiser than seven men”
“Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burden’d air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.”
William Blake – same piece different quotes; context is king.
PS I think its really sweet that people are still quoting that old nutcase
Blake is a discordian saint, so of course people are still quoting him.
If you piled all the discordian saints on top of one another
it still wouldn’t matter
when did everyone on this forum suddenly get well read and why did you not tell me?