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Friday, April 7, 2023

The diachronic social — Daniel Little

An earlier post offered what is for me a fairly large change of orientation on fundamental questions of social ontology: a conviction that the concept of ontological individualism is no longer supportable. My concern there was that this phrase gives too much ontological priority to individual actors; whereas the truth about the social world is more complex. Individuals are indeed the substrate of social structures and entities, but social entities are in turn constitutive of individual social actors.

The implication is that our social ontology needs to give equal priority to both actors and structures. But how can we make sense of these three ideas in a non-paradoxical way:

Why is this significant? MMT is a type of institutional economics, for example. Institutional arrangements are some of the structures that Daniel Little mentions as being causal factors in social science, including economics. 

Understanding Society
The diachronic social
Daniel Little | Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the Chancellor (emeritus) for the University of Michigan-Dearborn 2000-2018

9 comments:

  1. All very well.

    But what about geopolitics ?


    If you don't do as we say we will...



    a) Use our universities to generate myths that suit our purpose and implement these myths using unelected central banks, unelected IMF, unelected World bank, unelected UN, unelected trilateral comission, unelected NATO, unelected EU.

    b) Use the media we own to introduce regime change and push a).

    c) Use sanctions and interest rates and our banks as neocolonial tools.

    d) Load you with foreign debt by using a) and b)

    e) Bomb the shit out of you or support far right wing factions to create a civil war. Fight you by proxy.

    f) Invade and simply take the real resources you rely on completely ignore international law and create our own rules based order.

    g) Jail or censor free speech Julian Assange style or simply kill journalists Jerusalem style.



    For me it has always been about geopolitics. France is On fire with millions marching and burning every village, town and city because of a). Yet, Macron's priority was a visit to China. Why did the unelected psycho Ursula von der Leyen go and baby sit him. The fall of the Berlin wall changed everything and all of the domestic institutional changes that have taken place can be traced back to that event.

    The only way things fundamentally change is if America changes. That will have to be done by military defeat or by taking all of their soft power away. So articles like these above are just pushing in the wind and there are thousands of them clogging up libraries.

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  2. The rest of the world have to unite and push the Berlin Wall up to where Warren lives. Then and only then will America change from within. The voters will demand it. Instead of sitting on their fat arses and doing nothing and believing in false prophets like Trump.

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  3. “ factions to create a civil war.”

    Those are typically religious…

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  4. “ by taking all of their soft power away.”

    That’s happening already by design… WHERE IT DIDNT WORK….

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  5. “ false prophets like Trump.”

    He’s not a “false prophet!” that’s a figure of speech…

    He’s just the elected representative of a US political faction that wants to end all these failed US soft power initiatives and adjust to bilateral relations with the ROW..,

    The political cohort has always been there since I voted for Pat Buchanan back in the 90s…

    Trump is just the current political figure representing it..,

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  6. “ But how can we make sense of these three ideas in a non-paradoxical way:”

    Why?

    Paradox is a well known and accepted part of the Art degree methodology…

    Why would an art degree person want to avoid it as a rule?

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  7. “false prophet!”

    That’s a figure of speech right out of Christendumb…

    Did you know you were a member of Christendumb?

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  8. https://www.brandeis.edu/ethics/peacebuilding-arts/current-projects/impact/pdfs/q7-paradox.pdf

    “What is the value of embracing paradox and contradiction? Do the arts enhance our capacities to embrace the paradoxes inherent in seemingly contradictory phenomena? In what ways do discernment of the paradoxical nature of things and capacities to maneuver within paradoxical situations help us address complex global challenges?”

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  9. Human beings are incapable of addressing complex global challenges.

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