From: gerald_a_levy (gerald_a_levy@msn.com)
Date: Thu Jan 16 2003 - 08:32:41 EST
Re Michael E's [8345]: I will pass over your comments on welfare and unions -- which I found surprisingly conservative. Re "the law of inertia of quotidian social life" which you claim discovery of "until proven otherwise": > With such a law of inertia of human living I am aiming at an _ontological_ > level, i.e. at the habitual nature of human existence. Aristotle long ago > made the connection between _ethos_ (habit) and _aethos_ (ethic), > which is a hint at the conservative nature of how we regard 'proper' > living. The inertia of habit weighs like lead on all social practices, > above all on the social practice of thinking. We enjoy and are in love > with our habits and resist changing them, especially our habits in > thinking. I agree that different societies have hitherto had different customs, practices and taboos which have helped to perpetuate the existing understandings. So, yes, we have habits which are hard to break free from -- even if we want to. But, I reject the comparison to equilibrium in the natural sciences that you seemed to be making in [8324] where you suggested that an "external" social force was required to disturb the inertia and lead to a dynamic, changing situation. No "external force" is required for the prevailing "inertia" to change -- we do not live in a vacuum and the concept of equilibrium as understood in physics can not be transplanted to the study of social subjects without doing an injustice to the comprehension of the latter subjects. Change can and _does_ happen within all social formations during all historical periods -- even if the rate of change is very incremental and perhaps unobservable to the naked eye (like grass growing in a lawn from minute-to-minute). > The time span for fundamental > changes in thinking must be measured in centuries and millennia. Or years. Or weeks. Or days. Or minutes. Consider the impact of the womens' movement on popular thought. Within just a few years in the early 1970's some very long-held beliefs were eroded, subverted, and replaced in a number of social formations. Solidarity, Jerry
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