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I went over there to defend you, bro, but for the sake of balance I figure I’d better re-iterate my thoughts in your direction:

Sometimes things online get blown out of proportion- I don’t think Astarte was right to judge you, a great guy, on one view that differed from yours. One of the hallmarks of a greatness is the ability to argue about things, as we do, without taking them personally- hell, I believe the other day I accused your parents of violently mutilating you at birth, and you didn’t even clock me one.

However your post is a mirror to hers. So someone online called you a prick. So what? Happens to me almost daily, because I stand by certain things and take certain positions, as you do. So we get called names- who cares? If it was me saying it, okay, but a stranger? It’s not worth stressing about, just shrug it off.

I encouraged astarte to come to check out sdc and see for herself that you are a good guy- I hope it doesn’t start a blogwar when she sees this thread.

d

“You can’t call someone a prick and then back out.”

What are you talking about? I do it all the time!

Oh wait - back out. I thought you said black out!

Looking at the full article, it’s clear the girl has issues way beyond thinking you’re a prick, anyway. Getting angry with someone because their writing style reminds you of an ex who you dislike is pretty out there.

And besides, her webpage is black and has a naked guy with red angel wings on it. I mean, can you get any more cliched?

This is really none of my business. I don’t know either you or Astarte, but I read your post, her post, the original article, and the comments discussion.

Yes, yes, I’m supposed to be working, whatever.

I have to say I’m not so terribly sure either of you has much of a leg to stand on. I’m not suggesting that Astarte’s comments were models of respectful philosophical or theoretical dialogue, but it’s your blog I’m responding to here.

I realise that your ‘discussion’ (although this implies communication, and I’m not so sure there was any of that) arose out of comments on a blog, so I’m not exactly expecting a fully footnoted academic thesis.

However, you were definitely making some pretty strong statements that I, for one, would seriously question, without much to back it up. When challenged - I believe a poster questioned your suggestion that we’ve only been attempting to control the bioligical imperative to procreate in the last 50 years - you simply shifted places without changing your argument. You replied that charts would show that the biological imperative was winning - which, to me, suggests that there has been a much longer struggle than you had suggested earlier, but you didn’t seem to acknowledge that or integrate it back into your argument.

You also seem to throw comments out there without thinking about them. You say, for example, that women have only recently been thought of as individuals rather than child-bearers. So what? What does this mean? How is this relevant? I’m not saying at all that I don’t think it’s relevant, I’m just saying that throwing comments out like that without consideration is not part of what I would consider to be thoughtful debate.

Even your response to her blog comment I would question - you object to her statements. Why? Because they’re wrong. And how do we know they’re wrong? Because they’re laughable. Seems a bit circular to me. You say you provide logical, thought-out responses in discussion - can you show me where? I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but I AM saying I didn’t see much evidence of it in the comments discussion.

You object to her recognising that part of her reaction to your posts was visceral, due to the similarity to her ex-boyfriend. Granted, it is unfair to judge people by their similarities to other people, but I would argue that’s not what she was saying. What I read in her post was that she was trying to do a little self-analysis to understand why the whole interaction bothered her so much, and part of it was due to the fact that you reminded her of an ex-boyfriend. But to suggest that she dismissed your arguments as ‘holier than thou’ simply because you reminded her of her ex-boyfriend? Come on. Quite frankly, your response to her original post was condescending and mocking. Your responses did, in my opinion, nitpick on minor ‘flavour’ points she was making, and miss the major thrust of her argument. In her eyes, knowing you only from that discussion, the characterisation of you as a prick who doesn’t really engage in debate so much as condescend to others was pretty legitimate.

I’m not entirely sure why I felt a need to unlurk just to unload all this on you. I’ve read your blog before - it’s linked from another blog I read - and I’ve always found it interesting. Which is not to suggest that I always agree with you, but I’ve never felt compelled to reply before. Maybe it’s because I really think that your analysis of the discussion and your own contribution to its descent is a tad self-deceiving, and I’m not used to reading that here.

Anyway, I’m obviously not any kind of expert on this, and you should undoubtedly take everything I said with a grain of salt. It was all meant constructively rather than pejoratively in any sense, and I really hope my comments don’t just add to the offense you felt due to Astarte’s blog.

Uh, apparently the ‘war and peace’ I just inflicted upon your blog didn’t quite contain EVERYTHING I wanted to say…

One last point: “child-barer”?!? Seriously, I had images of women running around whipping the clothes of of children until we were surrounded by naked children!

But remember, Adrian’s eccentric spelling is one of the many reasons why we love SDC.

I’ve always thought you kick ass.

I think this suitably closes the whole argument.

I heart Richard Herring

Disliking you because you write like an ex, indeed. You have to laugh.

The only problem with arguing over beer is that when I say something like “you’re talking shite”, I’m well within range of you being able to lean across and lamp me.

I think I know what you’re getting at though, although I have to question and possibly disagree. The question is, do you really mean Pythagoras (who probably died of old age) or do you actually mean Socrates (who was executed for sedition by the state)?

I think your argument needs refining. The argument that a woman can contribute to society in more ways than solely as a child bearer and that essentially should be treated the same as a man was espoused by Plato about 2500 years ago (source: The Republic). This was about the same time that Athenian Democracy was in full flow, a way of making political decisions that did not rely on an individual ruler (tyranny) or a government (oligarchy) but majority decision with each citizen being able to cast a vote (unless they were foreign, a slave or a woman).

I’ve lost the general thread of where I was going with this so I’m going to ask a question (or two):

Accepting the premise that we are “hardwired… to shag and procreate as a survival instinct” why do you think it’s important to survive?

Which is more important; the individual or the group?

Dude, you have very strong opinions which are sometimes wrong - i.e. they differ from mine. Nonetheless I seem to remember the odd lengthy comment trail between the two of us where I’ve tried (oh, how I’ve tried) to put you right and failed.

Long may it continue.

You are equating individuality with power- that’s like saying if someone is born into powerlessness today (as most people are), they are not individuals because they don’t have control of thier destinies. This is an incredibly dangerous point of view which I don’t see as very far removed from ‘The Bell Curve’.

People’s brains, thousands of years ago, were very much the same as they are now. Society has changed, but that is not what you are saying- you’re saying there weren’t individuals. This is crap, and I don’t need to read The Support Economy (although I mean to) to denounce this, the three years I spent studying the evolution of mankind is sufficient to make this statement.

d

re: Pythagoras. Depends which history you read. A lot of writers reckon he survived and escaped to Metapontium. Iamblichus wrote that Pythagoras survived and died back in Croton.

“It’s important to survive for any philosophical reason” - not that we’re getting into sweeping generalisations at all! ;-) This is something that has to be debated over beer.

“What’s more important, the brick itself or the collection of bricks that makes a building.” - well damn me. I have had many drunken conversations about this and how no one brick is important as it can be replaced by another and that even unique bricks, such as a keystone, only work in conjunction with other bricks.

Heh!

To my mind - it’s very difficult to read people’s intent…email, blogs whatever lack tone of voice - much like it’s not what you say - it’s how you say it and these convesrsations and perceptions would be quite different - should the conversation be a conversation pre- Internet and email…. It’s all about perception and opinion and you need to respect individuals and embrace their diversity too…imagine how boring it would be if everyone agreed, had the same opinion..therein would end a good debate!

I’m glad my comment didn’t provoke your ire. I like to think that, even if we were talking over a beer, my comments wouldn’t have caused you to reach over and smack me.

And, uh, not just because I’m a girl…

Anyway, back to the debate at hand. I’m not so sure that I am swayed by your reference to the listening/maps/men can’t commit/women can’t drive book. The authors appear to be salespeople who are writing from anecdote and popular opinion polls. Their thesis appears to be that men and women have the same complaints about each other all over the world, so therefore their brains must be hardwired that way. What about the social construction of gender? This appears to be an overly simplistic and stand-up comedian view of gender and relationships. As I believe Dragon pointed out, the question of gender roles and relations is one that has been raised and recognised as more complex for a long period of time.

Your argument seems to be (and pardon me if I’m misreading you) that those people who were better equipped for procreation did so, and so we as a species have evolved to be geared towards procreation. But, if your argument that everyone followed their roles and procreated stands, then wouldn’t that mean that all variations of the need to procreate would have stayed in the gene pool?

In terms of your argument about people becoming greater ‘individuals’, I’m siding with Destructor (Dan?) on this one. If you are defining individuality as having a ‘voice’, then there are huge swathes of recent anthropology and social history that would tell you that people we have smugly considered downtrodden and browbeaten - our ancestors - were, in fact, creating their own realms of ‘voice’ or even ‘power’ within the limits of their worlds. I might even, given enough alcohol, be willing to argue that really nothing has changed, other than the scope of our worlds of limited power/voice. We are still, by and large, limited in our options and trying to carve out our own space within those limits. Whether we perceive what is going on differently is a separate issue.

I also seriously object to your statement that the “empowerment” of women is due to their role as consumers. Granted, you did say ‘largely’ rather than making a definitive statement, and I thank you for that. But I still find this to be a limited analysis of a very complex and ongoing process. I think that both your sources were written by people from a business perspective, and I’m not sure you’re paying sufficient attention to their own biases. What is the analytical framework the authors of the Support Economy book using? Are they examining the world through a lens of production and consumption? Because then of course they would make linkages between power and consumer roles. But what about women who used power that was already their own within their ‘sphere’? What about women using direct political action, legal action, and civil disobedience? What about women using their perceived role as the moral conscience of society? What about women coming to positions of power through religious, medical, and educational institutions? What about the vast majority of women who did not, in fact, have any kind of power as a consumer because they had no money? What about women who did not, and do not, live in this Eurocentric model?

Uh, yeah, can you tell I’m a historian?

I guess my main point is that I have serious problems with theories or hypotheses being presented as absolute answers.

And, honestly, I think democracy’s working about as properly as it’s ever going to.