DUNE DISCUSSION FORUM FOR ORTHODOX HERBERTARIANS
http://www.jacurutu.com/
They will call me Shaitan.Phaedrus wrote:Eh, you're back to defend your honor now.
)
(I'm just j/k with you, Orald )In Jaqi, the language she uses as a comparison, they make distinctions between human and nonhuman and data source is built into their language. Therefore, every time they verbally acknowledge what they "know" the speaker must say HOW they know (did I learn if from someone else? Did I observe it?) If you constantly must check your knowledge for its source, that might help to emphasize your dependence on others...To act in a way that is both sexist and racist, to maintain one's class privilege, it is only necessary to act in the customary, ordinary, usual, even polite manner.
--Joanna Russ, How to Suppress Women's Writing
In the 1960s, we said to ourselves that we would be nonracist and nonsexist. Now 30 years later, we find that simply saying so was easier than being so. We have, to our chagrin, discovered the truth of Russ' statement and the difficulty of implementing a society where concern and responsibility for the group coexists with respect for individual integrity, where both community and personal autonomy mutually support and reinforce each other.
).
) are NOT created equal, and equality of life should NOT be enforced on them.Hi Liquidblue.LiquidBlue wrote:Hello all…
I just wanted to take a second to introduce myself and say that I’m happy to have found this forum. I’m a huge fan of the Frank Herbert Dune Series. I took a class in college called Science Fiction and Evolutionary Biology and at the same time saw the Dune mini-series for the first time. That spawned a paper about self-reflective consciousness and the “god meme”. Then, during the next lull from assigned books, I read the original FH series. I’ve since read the books 2 or 3 times in the intervening few years. I also made an attempt to teach Dune in my 11th and 12th grade Intensive Reading class, but it proved too high level for my students (most of them only read at a middle school reading level). I’m teaching world lit next school year and, assuming I get to teach the class again, will try and work in Dune. The themes of cultural conflict and religion would work well, I think.
Anywho! I found this forum through a link from the dunenovel site…I read a 9 page thread about Norma, clicked the Jacurutu link, saw all the posters that I agreed with on this site, and decided to join. (BTW, Chanilover, you’re last post was the piece de resistance, a most appropriate way to end things… “Quentin? God, these books just get gayer all the time.” I literally laughed out loud.) I just finished rereading Heritics and Chapterhouse. I’m trying to re-read Hunters ATM, but its hard…LoL…Hunters and Sandworms are the only BH and KJA books I’ve read…I admit that I’m kind of fascinated with the upcoming Heroes series in a train wreck sort of way. I’m sure I’ll be able to get it used fairly quickly. Reading through things here is a little confusing, its like coming in during the middle of the conversation...so if I ask dumb questions or make irrelevant comments, just let me know!
Thanks!
From your statement, it didn't seem to me as if you read her article in its entirety. So I asked you if you had. A question to which you did not respond. I really think your response is a little fringe and that you are attacking from an emotional position as opposed to an intellectual position. I never said we should be egalitarian or socialist and I have yet to define what it means to be “equal”. I’m not sure where you drew those conclusions.I doubt women are really descriminated because the base form of some language is male. There're bigger fish to fry than that, surely, and nobody but overzealous and bored liguists ever notice that much anyway.
Please excuse the length...On the evolutionary time line, hierarchy appeared in animal species long before the advent of proto-humans and then humans and “hierarchical behavior selects for hierarchical behavior, whether it should or not” (Butler, Adulthood 501). All evolution is retroactive. It occurs in response to a past environment that may or may not exist when the winning phenotype is expressed. When primate intelligence enters the picture, it enters onto a scene in which hierarchy is a major feature of primate life. Because of the competitive nature of hierarchal animals, intelligence becomes nothing more than a tool for ensuring the further dominance of hierarchy. The selection of hierarchical behavior becomes an ongoing cycle that needs conflict, often erupting in violence, as a proving ground. Societies that are hierarchical need a continuous cultural narrative that can sustain and perpetuate a hierarchical drive. This drive encourages dominator societies, societies where a majority of cultural attributes reflect humanity’s genetic hierarchical tendencies, to arise and provides an environment in which they flourish. Even the Oankali become subject to the dominator society effect that the existence of a hierarchical society creates.
In her feminist analysis of the development of western civilization, Riane Eisler recognizes a shift from egalitarian societies to dominator societies. In “War, Language and Gender” Taylor and Hardman summarize Eisler’s argument:
These replacement cultures [the Greeks and Hebrews], organized around a primary male god, were both hierarchical and warlike. These cultures, she posits, needed war because they were hierarchical. Because the previous (and preferred) state of human beings was to live in egalitarian relationships, people did not (do not) submit easily to being dominated; hence the elites of the hierarchies had to develop ideologies to justify the domination. … Simply put, dominator patterns create violence; humans do not docilely accept being dominated. As the ultimate exemplar of violence, wars inevitably result from dominator cultures.
While Eisler proposes that humans do not submit to domination because humanity is naturally egalitarian, the existence of hierarchically driven individuals throughout a population will create the same result. Each member of humanity has the drive to be an elite on a genetic level, to be singular at the top. To the hierarchically driven, being dominated is as unnatural as it is to the egalitarian because success on a hierarchical scale is only granted to the individual who dominates all.
Regardless of the original state of cultural expression in human beings, the rise of one dominator society will encourage the change of other cultures to dominator societies because it appears to be an evolutionary stable strategy. An evolutionary stable strategy, or ESS, is “a strategy which, if most members of a population adopt it, cannot be bettered by an alternative strategy” (Dawkins 69). An ESS is not necessarily the strategy that has the most favorable outcome, but it is a strategy that cannot be invaded by other strategies. As shown in Eisler’s analysis, egalitarian cultures were invaded and then replaced by dominator societies. Though the following quote is in reference to the construction of gender, it illustrates the power of hierarchical societies to invade.
it is critical that we understand gender as these currently dominant cultures constitute it and are constituted, not because their view is more accurate, but because those cultures wield massive economic and political power, power that spreads their violence generating views of gender. U.S. cultural views contaminate (for good and ill) virtually every culture they touch. (Taylor)
Because of the nature of hierarchy and the gene, the cultural spread of hierarchy is inevitable.
Yes, there are optional sentence final elements used for indicating data source.LiquidBlue wrote:I'm curious, SandChigger, does Japanese acknowledge data source?
I'm by no means convinced by what little she brought to the table in that short paper.And wannabe linguistsSandChigger wrote:
It's an interesting topic...even if only boring linguists find it so.
AgreedOur language helps shape our worldview, but I don't believe that it determines it 100%. The other elements of culture also play important roles.
She has other papers that are all related to the idea...My orriginal paper was mostly about Sexist Circuts, but then I branched into her other papers and evolutionary theory for my second draft...I will have to look more into Japanese language and culture and see if I can find some stuff about data source. Before we knew the gender of my daughter, while I was prego, I had the hardest time referring to her. I didn't want to say "It's kicking" becuse "it" is non-human. I didn't want to say "he" or "she" because I didn't know which and honestly didn't have a preference. I felt so terrible gender-biased when I said "he", then I felt so left wing extreemist when I said "she"!! I was hormonal and taking too many gender theory courses LoLIt's always bugged me that there aren't gender neutral replacements for him, her, his, hers, etc in English. Even leaving aside the way that the language forces a person to acknowledge the gender of the person being spoken of (and the lovely way we default to the masculine when in doubt), it makes communicating into a pain in the ass. He/she is a terrible way to do it on paper, and even worse vocally.
"It" generally applies only to non-human subjects. Not very polite!Serkanner wrote:Wouldn't replacing 'his', 'her' etcetera with 'its' make it gender neutral? Of course you will also have to get rid of 'he' and 'she', but there will not be a need for that anymore anyway.
Not sure on that one, sounds likely...I wasn't thinking clearly at the timeAren't unborn babies usually refered to as she? Maybe because they are all female by default and it takes the addition of a hormone to make it male.
I haven't birthed any babies myself but I've watched three of mine being born, they do call them "she" unless the sex is known.LiquidBlue wrote:Not sure on that one, sounds likely...I wasn't thinking clearly at the timeAren't unborn babies usually refered to as she? Maybe because they are all female by default and it takes the addition of a hormone to make it male.
I like how funny that makes the word "woman" (it means "from man" doesn't it)? Kinda ironic that men both come from/out of women and start off as women. Oh, what a wonderful language we have! Right? No, it didn't mean correct, I meant turn right!Freakzilla wrote:I haven't birthed any babies myself but I've watched three of mine being born, they do call them "she" unless the sex is known.LiquidBlue wrote:Not sure on that one, sounds likely...I wasn't thinking clearly at the timeAren't unborn babies usually refered to as she? Maybe because they are all female by default and it takes the addition of a hormone to make it male.