Comments on: Fatalist Policy in Action

By: Tempting fate in schools: contrived randomness as educational policy « Fourcultures

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:04:17 +0000

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By: fourcultures

fourcultures — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 13:24:07 +0000

meika, welcome and thanks for your post.
“While I find I would prefer the world to actually be of an Egalitarian nature, I have a deep suspicion that it is actually arbitrary, capricious and chaotic.”
I think none of us really know what the world is like, so we make it up as we go along. We think we’re being original but we do it in a limited range of somewhat predictable ways. Yes, it is cartoon-like sometimes. See the work of ecologist Buzz Holling, especially on ‘panarchy’, for an explanation of why there are different things going on at different scales, each influencing the others. To answer the question of what the world is really like, then, we also have to ask, at what scale of organisation?

“What would actually happen if we became aware of the fourcultures at a mass level. Would it lead to greater oppression, or greater appreciation and less oppression?”
The aim of this website is to examine and promote consideration of the four cultures analysis, in the hope that it might lead to more inclusive policy making in a number of areas. See Verweij and Thompson, eds, 2006 for some examples of how this might take place in real life situations.

By: Erl Happ

Erl Happ — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 02:49:39 +0000

I can do better than the BOM with the prediction of El Nino events. See http://climatechange1.wordpress.com

By: meika

meika — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:16:27 +0000

became aware of the fourcultures at the mass level? I am sure i corrected that, see the world is capricious…

By: meika

meika — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:09:32 +0000

I’ve been reading fourcultures for a week or so now, and while it may not be true, I find your posts come across as a little Formalist, I mean, I find your description quite correct as far as it goes, and I don’t disagree with it, but it does feel like a bit of a cartoon, such that one does find that Astrology is more attractive, for as at least there are 12 choices. I can accept the cartoon as a didactic tool.

For example, consider the following realisation:
While I find I would prefer the world to actually be of an Egalitarian nature, I have a deep suspicion that it is actually arbitrary, capricious and chaotic. (Though not because of the climate).

I know Mary Douglas stated in Thought Styles that one can only belong to one of the four cultures, but I feel this is the preference of a Conservative Hierarchist. She would say that wouldn’t she. Perhaps it is true in England, certainly the subcultures and classes there have had much harder borders than they do in Australia. I do know personally that all biases informing each culture are available to me regardless of that one I can identify, or cheer along. Though usually not in the same place/context.

So is this nascent coalition building? Or is it simply a more accurate description of the fourcultures at the individual level where they are more fuzzy. They only harden up emergently into cartoon-describable ways in the mass of culture, i.e built up the same way that arbitrary but passionate support is built for a football team or nation?

Is this realization the result of an awareness of the fourcultures description on my own worldview? If someone becomes aware of the fourculures will their own identifications, once unconscious – now defined, become fuzzy and wondersome because of that definition?

What would actually happen if we became are of the fourcultures at a mass level. Would it lead to greater oppression, or greater appreciation and less oppression? Would it destroy the moral fibre of society, or allows us to more easily identify pscyhopaths?

Even our thoughts about the fourcultures can be influenced by our own biases. Even when they are fuzzy.

If none of them are true then the world is meta-capricious. If one of them is true then why do we have all these vestigial others, the world is meta-inefficient. If each of them is true some of the time, then the world is capricious within limits, so lord, help me to know the difference.