Profound article. My Priors can relate to the priors you describe and the priors we both experience. Thanks, I'm looking forward to your next article :)
Truly we stand on a promontory overlooking a vast interior landscape. I'm interested in exploring the connective we-space among the onlookers in real time. As we do this we generate new syntheses, inside and out.
Nice, Ivo! You've developed this all beautifully. The only place I disagree is your valuation of "individualism" as "an oppressive social hyperprior". You should then predict that societies with more individualism, such as historically the Dutch, English and Nordics should be found more socially oppressed than those with far less, for example the Chinese, Korean and Japanese. There are of course exceptions in each culture. These are not absolutes. But there's been a great deal of study of these cultural differences, which have even been found to be embodied structurally in brain development of children raised in them, as well as in the languages.
Traveling in Japan in the early '80s, we met young Japanese who had spent months or years in American colleges. There, they had caught the individualism virus, and knew it. They were eager and happy to speak with us as individuals, and were cognizant of the difference between that attitude and what they had been raised in. Now, this shows several things: First, it's possible for a person to operate with multiple sets of priors, and shift between them according to company or environment; second, new sets can be gained in relatively short time -- months not decades -- given effective exposure; third, there is something positive and liberating in individualism.
Now, I share your respect for Asian spiritual traditions. I'm as much Taoist and Buddhist (and the Ch'an blend of them) as Christian. But the Taoist immortals were famously the rare individualists of their society, who trekked off into the mountains to find their true nature there, rather than stay in the confines of society.
Thanks. Really useful
It's funny, the urge, wanting to have a relationship with people who are so distant, because they say interesting things.
Profound article. My Priors can relate to the priors you describe and the priors we both experience. Thanks, I'm looking forward to your next article :)
Truly we stand on a promontory overlooking a vast interior landscape. I'm interested in exploring the connective we-space among the onlookers in real time. As we do this we generate new syntheses, inside and out.
Nice, Ivo! You've developed this all beautifully. The only place I disagree is your valuation of "individualism" as "an oppressive social hyperprior". You should then predict that societies with more individualism, such as historically the Dutch, English and Nordics should be found more socially oppressed than those with far less, for example the Chinese, Korean and Japanese. There are of course exceptions in each culture. These are not absolutes. But there's been a great deal of study of these cultural differences, which have even been found to be embodied structurally in brain development of children raised in them, as well as in the languages.
Traveling in Japan in the early '80s, we met young Japanese who had spent months or years in American colleges. There, they had caught the individualism virus, and knew it. They were eager and happy to speak with us as individuals, and were cognizant of the difference between that attitude and what they had been raised in. Now, this shows several things: First, it's possible for a person to operate with multiple sets of priors, and shift between them according to company or environment; second, new sets can be gained in relatively short time -- months not decades -- given effective exposure; third, there is something positive and liberating in individualism.
Now, I share your respect for Asian spiritual traditions. I'm as much Taoist and Buddhist (and the Ch'an blend of them) as Christian. But the Taoist immortals were famously the rare individualists of their society, who trekked off into the mountains to find their true nature there, rather than stay in the confines of society.