Aswad
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Joined: 4/4/2007
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Elisabella
I think the Gorean section on a philosophy website might get fewer questions like this, than the Gorean section on a BDSM website.
Bingo.
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Surely the division is something more than one's literary catalogue.
It has been argued that this is indeed a defining element.
I've argued to the contrary, and will not rehash the arguments here.
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Our host had a homestone, and he left the preparation for the gathering up to his FC while he worked for the week leading up to it. I'd say that division of labor is pretty Gorean - the man makes sure things are provided, the woman makes sure things are in order.
That's a fair summary of a couple of distinctive points, though not sufficient to be defining. The Home Stone, however, is a reasonably exclusive concept in its cultural form, if not nearly as exclusive in its conceptual form. The FC thing, too, is somewhat exclusive, but not defining, as many cultures have featured marriage as a contract, and some still do, while others are reviving the idea (Norway, for instance, is moving in that direction). Trevelyan points out some things, but those aren't exclusive or sufficient to be defining, either.
I noted elsewhere that perhaps the most defining, and most exclusive, point is that Goreans don't conquer themselves. That is to say, innate nature is, in general, revered and not opposed. Struggling to fit the human animal into the human social constructs is defining of most cultures I have encountered, often for religious reasons. In the Gorean philosophy- the way I read it, anyway- the human animal is not to be shackled, as it is a part of a whole whose primary imperative is to be free (not in an evolutionary sense, of course, but from the perspective of Gorean values).
I am also fairly certain that no other specific trait is entirely exclusive. The full set may be. For the most part, the core of the philosophy is objectivism with a naturalistic and primitivistic bent, i.e. objectivism adapted to humans, rather than a notion of humans adapting to objectivism, and sans the notion of not compelling things from others that is put forth as a utopian law in Atlas Shrugged, which comes down to recognizing conquest and other drives that are contrary to it. "The rest," as the rabbi said, "is commentary."
Still, commentary is all that seperates shi'ite from sunni, so the devil is in the details.
Health,
al-Aswad.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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