To compare those people with a connection to their origins and those without, we have a similar degree of difference in self-consciousness as we have between the latter people and other higher mammals.
We can take the debt analogy from ancestors to the earth in which they lived, but let’s not confuse the cold or temperate regions with the desert, or vice versa, if our ancestors came from one near exclusively.
I wasn’t really attributing cause, just noticing a parallel phenomenon. It might have come out of Christianity, lurking as it is in many things secular. We may still feel like guilty, naughty rebel creatures, even if we do not Think there is a God out there wanting to punish us. And a kind of born in debt to now dead ancestors could be one way of conceiving of this debt, and then this would lead to possible actions and attitudes that would assuage it. Either way, coming from Christianity or simply a convergent evolution of a similar idea, I have similar problems with both. So I mentioned original sin, since this might serve as a Jarring analogy.
Since all we would do would incorporate what they did and what got passed down, what does it add to Think we are in debt to them?
I was thinking that your concern was only about my the idea of debt to ancestors being another undue obligation, such as those Christianity gives, rather than your concern also being about guilt.
God or a unified equaling deserving humanity, whether your guilt be tied up in religion or secular humanism, is an abstraction, that can never be verified. One’s ancestors can be verified in a multitude of ways. Certainly through the various fields of science, but even without any of that, with the knowledge that one is the accumulation of his ancestors, one can find out who they were through knowledge of who he is; also knowledge of one’s close relatives is useful.
Then any guilt would be based on a disconnect between the perceived qualities one could have developed and what one actually has. But, the guilt must never be based on fantasy, it must always be well founded. If one believes he’s lacking an education fitting his ancestry, it wouldn’t be because of some arbitrary notion, but because of one or more of the following; scientific knowledge establishing that his ancestors were suitable for a certain type of education, the history of one’s recent relatives, or the knowledge obtain through self-observation as to what is lacking within oneself and what would best fill that lack.
If the discussion was just about the uses of being true to our ancestors, then the idea of debt might have been unnecessary. But, this thread was just as much about adding a new dimension to Sartrean freedom. The idea with Sartrean Freedom is that one must always choose, including the very consequences of one’s choices.
For example, one can do something stupid and get hurt, but then for one to be hurt, meaning no longer whole, one would need to choose to recognize that one is lacking such wholeness. So in the Sartrean sense one can choose, sort of in advance, to accept all the consequences relating to a disconnect between himself and his ancestors. Using the metaphor of cost or debt, helps to differentiate it from other consequences that aren’t necessarily costly in that sense, such as one’s social status in a society that isn’t related to one’s ancestors.
I am not sure what is gained bringing in the 3rd party - God or ancestor. In the education example, I can see where perhaps research into ancestors would reveal one’s potential - though it seems to me there are more direct ways to access this information (testing, brain Scans, analysis of one’s personal history, etc.) - but it is not a debt. It is a practical problem or shortfall. One to be addressed. If it cannot be solved or improved, then there is no Point in getting the information, but the information, it seems to me has nothing to do with a relationship, but rather with what can be done and what is being done.
That’s right I Think I may have introduced the term debt, you were using cost. Cost bothers me less since it is you who are paying or not earning.
Those tests have specific purposes. Such as to help one decide what type of treatment to undergo to alleviate undesired neurological/psychological symptoms or which occupation to take or if one’s qualified for a certain occupation. Furthermore, such tests are based on well established sciences (such as neurology and psychology) that were developed by a multitude of people with differing motives. I don’t think the science of relating one’s phenotype to his genotype is even remotely been established, though conceivably it could be. Understanding oneself is currently little more than a very ambiguous process that for most will be long before giving clear results.
To start one needs to find the lowest common denominator of attributes, such as what any mammal or even vertebrate would have, then to proceed to what all people have in common, and to continue through a process of relating and contrasting. Then even still one could hardly express this without resorting to what may seem nothing other than a poetic description.
Hard science often starts in simple curiosities and artistic sentiments. Lacking the necessary field of research one must often resort to poetic sentiments. Which is why I find it important to think in terms of ancestors, not just when explaining theses ideas to others. That we are who we are and have the traits we have are because people much like us, thousands of years ago, found a harmony of those traits with their environment, is to me a very inspiring idea to dwell on.
But, I’m glad you did. Debt does imply guilt now that I think about it. And guilt implies someone or something that one has failed to meet the expectations of. The full realization that I’m no better than the best of my ancestors could be if born in an environment unsuitable to their dispositions and qualities is very humbling and initially even provoked some guilt.
I want to give an example without getting into to many unclear specifics. So I’ll simplify the matter. Say one group of native people is those descended from Europe, the western parts of Asian and northern parts of Africa, then the next group is descended from east Asian, and the last group is those from North and South Americans.
Those respective groups represent western, eastern and for lack of a better term; new world knowledge. I have no reason to believe (though no certainty either) that I’m of the type of people as capable of developing and understanding western knowledge as anyone. Yet, I wasn’t given anything close to a classical education. I look at the education I received and it was so much useless facts, distortions, and functional (occupational) knowledge. Certainly not fitting one who could very well be part of advancing that realm of knowledge in a significant way.
I may sound like I’m boasting more than being humble, but taken from the perspective of one who long believed he had as much potential as any westerner, yet was under the illusion that he was as apt to show such potential based on his background, maybe you can see how humbling it initially was.
I was thinking more like IQ tests, creativity tests, then test to see how fast one can learn, how one approaches obstacles to Learning, how one participates in Groups that are problem solving (taken very broadly) and so no. IOW doing the best one can to see one’s actual intelligence levels - various intelligences - then also how one’s personality/fears/expectations/social dynamics are inhibiting this or not. So one can get a sense of where one might be if…I would guess that brain Scans, even today, can tell something about what one’s skills are, or at least which parts of the brain are being emphasized. Though this latter test seems less informative than the set of other ones. Looking at one’s ethnic background, it seems to me, could be much more misleading. Whatever tendencies in different Groups…you may be the oddball or farther out on the curve or got less oxygen in the womb or had some seriously creative teachers or were malnourished and so on. To move from ethnic background to Estimates of COSTs of choices and behavior and attitudes seems vastly more speculative than just dealing with what you are. Of course this will also have a speculative aspect, a strong one, but it seems less abstract to me, and further has the benefit of not involving third parties that one should live up to. Then ten thousand years later they find the way Culture interacted with that Group and really when you thought you should be mroe like them you were actually contorting yourself really strangely for hallucinated reasons.
I can see that. As a tangent, I find it very odd how people with the same Brains, the same bodies, do not give a shit about nature, despite their having cromagnon tendencies to thrive if near diverse plant Life. I mean, just hanging out nearby it. The effects of Culture damaging us are immense and horrific. People have no idea who they are or even what they like.
Well, I Went through the same shit and did some classical self-pedagogy on the side as you seem to have. But while I have this kind of regret at times, I don’t Think it is well grounded. The kind of education one might get in the better public, read private, schools in England, is a form of brainwashing. I mean, you must have met Americans who Went to Ivy League colleges and got that shit nailed down tight and while they are creative in boxes, they are in those boxes. They could dissertation you into the ground, but will they really have more original thoughts that matter?
When evaluating yourself as a Product it it humbling, when viewing yourself as potential it is boasting (perhaps accurately).
What we got was poor man’s classical training. We were taught by unsharp minds, and taught to learn by rote, and creativity was stifled, and grades were too much in focus for the smarter people and a whole host of other pedagogical problems that things like problem based Learning, Group work, Child centered educations, anti-schooling movements, apprentice type approaches, subersive teaching and so one were meant to counter. Classical education, to my mind, fails in all the same ways, except one had a better chance of having some Sharp minds to role model, and an organized run through of previous great minds…but the pedagogy is just as outmoded, dead, stultifying, and creativity killing. In fact, I would guess it might be more effective in some ways, because you might find you took it seriously. The current US public school education system - assuming this was your treat also - gave me a much deeper critical mind because I rejected it systematically - after wondering why it seemed so off or felt so off for so long. Even that piece of information - that systematic disease can not only be the norm but be defended as OK by intellectuals - was an Eye opener. I Think I would have gotten that about a classical education also, but it might have takien longer and kept me in the box longer. I can’t be sure it would have been worse, but I am skeptical it would have been better.
This is not to say that any nurture is just as good or we have no way to tell or choice just lead to different goods. I do Think there can be COSTs and losses.
I just see so many insights that some portion of Deep people are getting at just now, just in these last decades, are, were and would have stifled by both kinds of education. They are of the same Worldview, just one is slick as shit and one is the Kmart of superstores.