Debate about Gun Control

[Bob Butler 54]

(06-02-2017, 09:47 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: No I don't watch 1950s westerns. Guns do not concern a valid "culture," and the issue does not depend on "values." We all value safety. This is a public safety question on the use of a particular technology used to kill. We have different views on (among other things) how possession and use of guns affect public safety and self-defense.

Yes, it is wise to accept that people have different views. My views are based on my best evidence and my best knowledge of truth, and the ideals and values I hold. All people share a lot of the same values. I can always learn more.

Integral philosophy and spiral dynamics (and planetary dynamics) shows the stages and evolution of different cultural values. As you say, these cultures came into existence for valid reasons at their stage, "and members of said cultures still think those reasons valid." That is in accord with integral philosophy and spiral/planetary dynamics. At their best, higher stages transcend and include the lower ones. Different people are at different stages and hold the corresponding values memes. Cynic Hero is stuck on the red or Mars meme. I am between green (Pluto) and yellow (solar) memes. You are primarily between the orange (Uranus) stage, and the lemon (Neptune) stage. Your empirical science views may still be at the brown (Saturn) stage, apparently, to the extent they are based on Newtonian mechanics, rather than Einstein and quantum theories that understand the role of the observer (not the Many Worlds interpretation which is an attempt to evade it and preserve Newton-era science).

I’ll acknowledge that cultures evolve, and my ‘arrow of progress’ meme buys into the notion that there is a direction we are moving that can be observed.  One aspect is that in the old days (hunter gatherer and agricultural age cultures) violence was used much more commonly to resolve cultural and political conflicts.  Enlightenment concepts such as human rights, democracy and equality attempt to reduce such violence.

Yet, so long as a culture or large numbers of individuals within a culture seek goals using violence, violence will still be around.  The US is meddling in the Middle East.  Many in red cultural areas want to continue to exercise a perceived right to self defense.  Criminals exist in locations labeled both red and blue.  In abstract, ideally, it is easy to wish upon a star that all the violence could go away.  One can state that cultures where it has started to go away have ‘evolved’ more than others.

But you shouldn’t confuse evolution with morality.  Evolution favors the survival of that which survives.  In some respects, it’s less a theory than a tautology.  During the guided age, Darwinism was used to justify the strong exploiting the weak.  Thus, I can get befuddled when addressing a question that can be perceived from both angles.  What is apt to happen given a world of tooth and claw?  On the other hand, what ought to happen?  What sort of culture should we strive to build to keep teeth and claws blood free?

Should we be building more aircraft carrier battle groups?

In the Middle East, we have a surplus of agricultural age cultures.  Strongman rulers force their will upon lesser beings.  Surely, they are less evolved than we?  Surely it is right and proper to force their culture to change at gunpoint, and to drop bombs on them until they do?  The time of the agricultural age pattern is over.  They are going to have to shift anyway.  

And yet, as former colonial possessions, they have seen the worst of both the Enlightenment and Marxist patterns.  Both, to a great degree, are an excuse for strong men to gather power.  Middle easterners have good reason to reject the great western memes, and thus are clinging to the agricultural age Islam in this conflict.  How would they not?  And if bombed, how would they not strive to strike back in any way possible?

To me, when one is striving for both a moral solution, and a plausible solution, things get complicated.  I believe in morality, that there is an arrow of progress that points towards a moral, just yet practical solutions.  Not always.  Not easily.  In traveling in the direction of the arrow of progress, you aren’t apt to be moving in a straight line.  Things get complicated.

Then there is the US gun policy question.  Have we developed an advanced enough culture to let go of violence?  Do we need to and have a right to protect ourselves?  Again, that’s a practical question and a moral question.  There are those who would answer differently.  The answer indeed varies depending on environment and culture.

One place where we differer is in readiness to judge people and cultures.  You have an extreme faith in your ability to judge how much a person or a group has evolved.  The group who uses force the least is right and has a duty to force the other group to become more like it?  Color me dubious.  It’s more complicated.  Forcing people to use less force is a dubious proposition.  Leave the poor people alone.  Freedom and liberty mean part of the country shouldn’t be trying to force the other part to become something they are not.

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On another front, I’m a fan of many worlds for reasons you don’t fully get.  I do have an interest in parapsychology, as opposed to the occult.  There is repeated evidence of reverse time causality.  Something that might happen in the future can effect the probability of something happening before.

I became convinced that if the futures matter, if there is more feedback in one set of possible futures than another, that the alternate futures must be real.  The many worlds alternate futures are somehow effecting the present.

While you might perceive the many words perspective as an attempt to preserve the Newtonian perspective, my own attitude is that many worlds is necessary to explain the experimental result, and way far out weird enough that I’m not trying to preserve an old dated perspective.

Now over the years I have said this repeatedly in several ways, yet you have not listened, or not understood, or have not remembered.  For whatever reason you continue to entirely misrepresent my position on quantum physics.  This is hardly surprising.  You do not listen, understand or remember an awful lot.  I believe a lot of why you refuse to listen, understand or remember is that you do not want to have to tune and change your own particular way of looking at things.

You have your own judgements.  Your way of looking at things builds in these judgements, including disregarding what you ought to know about the things your are judging.