Subject: Re: [HAB:] Communicative Action in everyday contexts - the family
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 20:56:18 +0100


Are you talking about Darwin's theory - about animals - or about
social darwinism which is Herbert Spencer's, taking the
biological and claiming it's the same in human society. No, I
think people have it wrong when they take this theory as truth,
and the only way to live.  And besides that, they are selfish in
that they don't consider the wider consequences - to the
environment - actually, the world.

Darwin's theory wasn't meant to be applied in the manner you
suggest.  It's probably fairly "natural" to ascribe to it, but we
aren't simply animals. And even though practicing it may resolve
problems of racism and sexism, it doesn't work with classism,
and I don't know how it works on ageism.  Rather than see
following Darwin's theory as a competence, I think it could be
seen as a lack.

Sue McPherson


----- Original Message -----
From: <FREDWELFARE-AT-aol.com>
To: <habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
>
 Unless you consciously or
> unconsciously ascribe to the Darwinian theory (and how can anyone not?) and  practice
both
> the unscrupulous zero-sum game of attempting to advance your own  genetic
> package at the expense of all others OR ANYONE ELSE!!! for that matter  since the
> rule is 'your loss is my gain,'  and the cultural game of  conformity to the
> appearance of fitness, then you will not be successful.   Since this approach
> includes all of those problems that we wish the Habermasian  corpus could
> resolve including racism and ethnocentrism, gender and sex role  discrimination,
> and class discrimination through the achievement of  communicative competency
> (moral and social competency), we are left to hope that  more and more
> individuals (an ever decreasing entity) achieve this  competence since what is
> naturally given to us as bodies is a ruthless  competitive attitude channeled by an
> equally ruthless apparatus!
>
> Fred Welfare
>



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