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levite · 07-29-2008, 12:27 PM

Can I just say that, while I think Quinn sometimes has interesting ways of translating non-Western thought to Western idiom, I find his books extremely problematic.

IMO, his notion of "givers" and "takers" being rooted in an original divide between herders and agrarians is fallacious. There seems little support for such a notion. He misses some key exceptions to his descriptions of the evolving city life in the Ancient Near East, and will inevitably gloss over the social issues of non-Western cultures in order to favor critiques of Western culture.

Quinn is a Romantic in the classical sense of the term: he romanticizes and idealizes the distant past, and presumes a pristine, pastoral existence for early humans. He seems to favor a social devolution away from industry and commerce as a solution to the problems presented by industrial society, rather than a forward movement of seeking solutions in the evolution of what we are. He, who criticizes Western history for taking the short view, and beginning only 10,000 years ago or so, himself takes the short view by assuming that creatures that took hundreds of thousands of years to evolve complex reasoning skills and the innovative abilities to develop beyond mere subsistence, ought to have somehow been able to master territorialism, power dynamics, technology, and philosophy within an increasingly complex understanding of the universe much better in 10,000 years than we have been able to do. That seems unreasonable to me. It also seems unreasonable to me to decide that 10,000 years of social and technical evolution just haven't worked out, and we'd be better off without them.

Societies differ; they decide on different rules, different priorities, and they make different trade-offs. None are fixed: rather, all evolve. But all lasting move forward or they stultify and ossify, at which point they die. For Western society to evolve, it must learn to combine its strengths-- innovation, technology, communication, curiosity-- with the needed strengths of various other cultures-- respect for nature, care for the clan, spiritual awareness. But it must be an evolving combination, not an attempted retrogression into something that may never have been.

In terms of spiritual philosophy, Quinn does seem to be attempting to import the Buddhist and Jainist notions of releasing attachment to things of the world around us; a problematic philosophy, in that it can easily lead to radical asceticism, which I don't believe is healthy; also, I don't believe Quinn is transferring the concepts well. I think he is taking the notion of releasing attachments to an extreme: it's good not to be a materialist, no question. But why should we not embrace our love of disseminating information, for example? Printing technology, computer and net technology all seem difficult to argue against unless you just don't like non-agrarian/pastoral societies. And that's an aesthetic choice.

This is all in addition to the fact that in his critiques of Western religion and philosophy, he does not always appear to have done enough reading. He presents nearly his entire critique of Western religion and philosophy based on Christianity and Christian philosophers. Little thought, if any, is paid to Judaism and Jewish philosophers (and what seems to be mentioned, obliquely and circumlocuitously, is often misquoted or misunderstood), and as far as I could tell, none to Islam and Muslim philosophers. That is a major, major flaw, not only because Western society is not monolithic-- some Western societies have very different ideas and rules than others-- but because much Christian thought is adapted from Jewish and Muslim thought, and if one has paid no heed to the latter, it is hard to believe one has understood the former well enough to critique it so thoroughly. The other problem with this is that his understanding of Western history and society is that of a Christian whose "mind has been opened" by exposure to Asian philosophy. But who is to say that all the problems of Western society come from not embracing enough Asian concepts? Perhaps Quinn's Christian problems could be solved by Jewish or Muslim concepts.

Finally, Quinn suffers from universalizing. Not just universalizing certain perspectives, but from assuming that the problems of the world all have an identical, common root, and thus can be solved by more or less identical, common solutions. Despite the depth and breadth and length of his works, he is, ultimately not complex enough in his thinking to permit multiple causes to many problems, each of which might be solved, ameliorated, or reconciled by perhaps several different approaches.

IMO, one is better off disregarding Quinn and simply educating oneself thoroughly in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

07-29-2008, 12:27 PM	#6 (permalink)
levite Minion of Joss Location: The Windy City	Can I just say that, while I think Quinn sometimes has interesting ways of translating non-Western thought to Western idiom, I find his books extremely problematic. IMO, his notion of "givers" and "takers" being rooted in an original divide between herders and agrarians is fallacious. There seems little support for such a notion. He misses some key exceptions to his descriptions of the evolving city life in the Ancient Near East, and will inevitably gloss over the social issues of non-Western cultures in order to favor critiques of Western culture. Quinn is a Romantic in the classical sense of the term: he romanticizes and idealizes the distant past, and presumes a pristine, pastoral existence for early humans. He seems to favor a social devolution away from industry and commerce as a solution to the problems presented by industrial society, rather than a forward movement of seeking solutions in the evolution of what we are. He, who criticizes Western history for taking the short view, and beginning only 10,000 years ago or so, himself takes the short view by assuming that creatures that took hundreds of thousands of years to evolve complex reasoning skills and the innovative abilities to develop beyond mere subsistence, ought to have somehow been able to master territorialism, power dynamics, technology, and philosophy within an increasingly complex understanding of the universe much better in 10,000 years than we have been able to do. That seems unreasonable to me. It also seems unreasonable to me to decide that 10,000 years of social and technical evolution just haven't worked out, and we'd be better off without them. Societies differ; they decide on different rules, different priorities, and they make different trade-offs. None are fixed: rather, all evolve. But all lasting move forward or they stultify and ossify, at which point they die. For Western society to evolve, it must learn to combine its strengths-- innovation, technology, communication, curiosity-- with the needed strengths of various other cultures-- respect for nature, care for the clan, spiritual awareness. But it must be an evolving combination, not an attempted retrogression into something that may never have been. In terms of spiritual philosophy, Quinn does seem to be attempting to import the Buddhist and Jainist notions of releasing attachment to things of the world around us; a problematic philosophy, in that it can easily lead to radical asceticism, which I don't believe is healthy; also, I don't believe Quinn is transferring the concepts well. I think he is taking the notion of releasing attachments to an extreme: it's good not to be a materialist, no question. But why should we not embrace our love of disseminating information, for example? Printing technology, computer and net technology all seem difficult to argue against unless you just don't like non-agrarian/pastoral societies. And that's an aesthetic choice. This is all in addition to the fact that in his critiques of Western religion and philosophy, he does not always appear to have done enough reading. He presents nearly his entire critique of Western religion and philosophy based on Christianity and Christian philosophers. Little thought, if any, is paid to Judaism and Jewish philosophers (and what seems to be mentioned, obliquely and circumlocuitously, is often misquoted or misunderstood), and as far as I could tell, none to Islam and Muslim philosophers. That is a major, major flaw, not only because Western society is not monolithic-- some Western societies have very different ideas and rules than others-- but because much Christian thought is adapted from Jewish and Muslim thought, and if one has paid no heed to the latter, it is hard to believe one has understood the former well enough to critique it so thoroughly. The other problem with this is that his understanding of Western history and society is that of a Christian whose "mind has been opened" by exposure to Asian philosophy. But who is to say that all the problems of Western society come from not embracing enough Asian concepts? Perhaps Quinn's Christian problems could be solved by Jewish or Muslim concepts. Finally, Quinn suffers from universalizing. Not just universalizing certain perspectives, but from assuming that the problems of the world all have an identical, common root, and thus can be solved by more or less identical, common solutions. Despite the depth and breadth and length of his works, he is, ultimately not complex enough in his thinking to permit multiple causes to many problems, each of which might be solved, ameliorated, or reconciled by perhaps several different approaches. IMO, one is better off disregarding Quinn and simply educating oneself thoroughly in the Humanities and Social Sciences. __________________ Dull sublunary lovers love, Whose soul is sense, cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove That thing which elemented it. (From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)