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Understanding by Social Osmosis

A wealthy nation just like a wealthy family can maintain a high standard of living even while making a plethora of serious errors in judgment. Someday, however, these serious errors and just the normal course of events will turn the wealth of both into hard times. The degree of error, coupled with the degree of wealth, will determine just how long the fun-and-foolishness can last.

In the recent copy of “Time” the special report is “Dropout Nation”, where “30% of America’s high school students will leave without graduating.” This is a story about the sorry state of education in America and that these facts have remained hidden from the public by our leaders; responding, no doubt, to the desire of the population to remain narcotized in la-la-land.

Every nation, I guess, gets the type of leadership it deserves; the only question is how long America can withstand the foolishness of its citizens.

A rich nation just like a rich family can make many mistakes that never affect their standard of living until someday the mistakes finally take a toll so great as to swamp their wealth and the standard of living goes.

Our understanding is the ‘high-place’ from which we view a domain of reality. Most of our understandings are a result of social osmosis (effortless often unconscious assimilation) in our young years. Occasionally we add to or modify these inherited understandings by concentrated intellectual activity or ideological associations in our adult years.

I think we need to lay off the self-induced narcotics and make a concentrated effort to modify or add to our inherited understandings before our national wealth can no longer protect us.

I claim that our understanding is our idiosyncratic ‘model’ of a specific domain of reality. An example might be that our knowledge of politics is organized and comprehended based upon our ‘model’ of this domain of life.

Do you think that many Americans ever seriously examine their religious understanding during their adult years? Do many every seriously examine their political understanding during adulthood?

Freedom is a word often used these days for political manipulation because it is a concept that carries great weight with the American people and with all people, I guess. It seems to me that freedom is the power to ‘do’ as well as a protection from being ‘done’ to. Freedom has both a negative and positive component.

Self-determination is the power to do: it is the freedom and power for each individual to self-determination and also for self-government--to be part of the public policy making process. We Americans have little reason to fear the rise of a tyrant who will deprive us of our freedom ‘from being ‘done’ to’. We do, however, have great reason to fear the erosion of the ability of the people to participate in the public policy making process that affects all of our lives.

Public policy making in America has become more and more the province of a small elite. This is not because these elite have taken from the population this freedom by force, but because the population has continued to edge away from their right and responsibility in these matters. We have been complacent in the growing cultural development that isolates the people from those elites who now make public policy.

We see recent evidence that the public opinion can influence policy on those occasions when the public becomes very emotional and cohesive. We also hear of opinion polls that seem to have some effect. However, this happens rarely and provides only a momentary effect.

My interest is in our becoming a citizenry more capable and willing to take on the responsibilities of self-government. We all have opinions about everything but almost all of us do not take our responsibilities seriously enough to become citizens of good judgment. In my opinion (judgment?) there is a great gulf between citizens with opinions and citizens with good judgment. I think that without a significant move from opinion to good judgment we will continue to lose more and more of our ability to self-govern.

Diuretic wrote: The Iron Law of Oligarchy coberst.


I suspect that it will always be the case that the many are ruled by the few. The problem that I find with our present situation is that the ruling oligarchy are too few and too homogenious. I would like to see a much larger oligarchy and one more tuned to the nature of the whole. Our ruling elite are too focused on their own self-interest and the citizens have too little to say in public policy because the people rrefuse to uphold their end of the meaning of democracy.

"The people have no power. Power lies with the oligarchy. We exist to serve."

You guys really know how to depress me. You have given up on democracy after all that our ancesters went through to give us the power to be self-governing? Is this what other generations fought and died for? Do you not feel any guilt for such an attitude?



Quote: "All men, like all nations, are tested twice in the moral realm: first by what they do, then by what they make of what they do. The condition of guilt, a sense of one's own guilt, denotes a kind of second chance. Men are, as if by a kind of grace, given a chance to repay to the living that it is they find themselves owing the dead."

"Coming to Terms with Vietnam," by Peter Marin, Harpers, Dec. 1980.