🚀 go-pugleaf

Gary Strand <gary@titanic.cgd.ucar.edu> wrote in article
<uxug1vs4t6p.fsf@titanic.cgd.ucar.edu>...
> m > Me <none@urbusiness.com>
> 
> m > But, I said one is ultimately responsible for one's actions.  
> 
>   Ergo, "political socialization" and skin color and Ronald Reagan and
annual
>   income are all irrelevant, and free will does exist.

Not at all.  Socialization is the context in which one makes a 
decision.  It is a component of a person's decision making process.

I see you're still looking for simple answers to explain complex human
beings.

Sociology 101:
It is through socialization that a person either does or does not learn
right from wrong.

If they learn it's right to grab for whatever they want and not consider
how it affects the greater society, then any decisions they make will
likely reflect this socialization.

For example, if one's socialization trains one to believe that all of
society's problems are the result of liberalism, then even though
conservatism has been the dominant policy in the country for 17 years, one
will tend to believe all of society's problems are based on liberalism. 
Even their perceptions will likely only acknowledge evidence that "proves"
this socialization, even though 17 years of empirical proof may contradict
it.

Do people break through their socialization?  Yes.  It's my observation
that it happens when the person has such a shocking, contradictory
experience that the trance of socialization is irreparably broken.  I
believe terms such as "integrity crisis", "identity crisis", and "epiphany"
have been used in part to denote this kind of experience.  When it involves
a whole society or civilization going through the change, it is called
various things like a "paradigm shift" or "epoch".

What do you think these terms were created to describe, anyway?

The shock literally forces the person or society to reevaluate everything. 
One must literally rebuild their whole worldview, which can be a painful
yet liberating experience.  

(BTW, the inflation of the late 70s could be considered one of these
periods for the whole nation.  The pain of inflation got so great that it
shattered the dominant paradigm of the Great Society.  It forced society to
rethink all of the socialization under which it had been created during the
Great Society, and then choose another way.  Sometimes, however, the path
chosen can be even worse than the path one has been on.)

Without the shock, though, a person or society will likely take their
socialization to the grave.

It's a paradox.  One is born the tabular rasa.  One learns to be who one
becomes.  All of one's thoughts and actions are based on who one has
become.  It is their context of cognition.  Yet while the greater society
may publicly espouse the ethic under which one has been socialized, like
insisting it is one's right to grab for all one can while not giving a damn
about hurting others in the process, while at the same time it rewards and
punishes based on another ethic, like society must be kept safe from the
monsters it creates through socializing children under the publicly stated
ethic.   

If one's socialization trains one to have no conscience, then
one will likely not have one.  

This is how the village (the society) raises a child.

The Parable of the Production Line

Once upon a time there was a production line that made widgets.  The
production line was owned by the production workers.  They all had stock in
the line.  The widgets they made were used as components in a very big
machine to make it run.  Even though the widgets were very small in
comparison to the big machine, if they were not shaped properly they could
damage the machine, bringing it to a halt.

Suddenly every fifth widget that came off the line was misshapen.  The
members of the production line had a dilemma.  They could ignore the
situation and keep making widgets the same way, letting every 5th widget
come off the line in this perverted condition, or they could find out what
in the manufacturing process was causing every fifth widget to come off the
line misshapen.

The production line is the social society.  The widgets are the people it
helps to create.  The machine is the political environment (nation, state,
city, town, etc.).  The decision to be made is economic.

Decide.

> 
>   Nothing more need be said on the topic. Thanks for demolishing all of
your
>   verbiage and rationalizations so expeditiously.
> -- 
> Gary Strand
> strandwg@ucar.edu                             
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/gary
> 

In your dreams.  Just because you can't see the paradoxes doesn't mean they
don't exist.