Re: Edward Said and Serial Killers

allard has left a new comment on your post "Edward Said and Serial Killers":

Lawrence, you wrote

'Would we have fewer or less fearsome monsters if we followed Heidegger’s advice and turned back from chaos in order to seek authentication in our traditions? I’d like to think so.'

Is there any way that this could be expressed other than as a tautology?

Do you have any evidence, any evidence at all, that we could have sought 'authentication in tradition' and yet the number of serial killers remain the same

If you can't imagine that, can't conceive that it is logically possible that that should occur, you owe your readers an account of the connection you see between our not having done that, and the recurrence of serial killers?

So far, this is just hand waving.

Thanks, and best regards.

al

A few minutes later he left another comment:

allard has left a new comment on your post "Edward Said and Serial Killers":

I wrote

Do you have any evidence, any evidence at all, that we could have sought 'authentication in tradition' and yet the number of serial killers remain the same (roughly as it is now); that is, is it some sort of logical truth that this could not happen?

RESPONSE:

Allard,

Do I need Positivist-type evidence to assert that if Moral Authority is eliminated from a society, immorality will increase? 

Edward Said describes and applauds the removal of standards and traditions.  Traditions in the major sense that Said describes, the “Humanism” exemplified by “The Great Books,” the great works of Literature and Philosophy that we “traditionalists” lay claim to in the Western tradition. 

Edward Said was an opponent of the “Western Tradition.”  He was an opponent of Western standards.  He enjoyed the dilution of standards exemplified by the inclusion of the multiplicity of cultures and standards in each nation.  He welcomed the dissolution of the Western Tradition.

I applaud the spread of Liberal Democracy in the world; which means that the world is becoming more and more “multiculturalist,” that doesn’t mean that each nation of the world would be well off if it turned itself into a mini-world – that is that it became as multiculturalist (within the nation) as the world is outside of the nation.

One of our losses, if this tendency continues, is “the place of authentication” that Heidegger describes – not in the Positivist terms that you demand but as something the people he wrote for understood.  There is surely something good in the traditions of each nation in order for the citizens of these nations to love them.  Do you love France?  Why?  You answer that sort of question by delving into French tradition, picking and choosing until you find your authentication.

As to why we are seeing a proliferation of Serial Killers in the world, I believe it is associated with a lessened belief in and adherence to “standards.”   I do value the Heideggerian “place of authentication,” but I make Said’s ideas the rheostat for the increase of serial killers.  He wasn’t the cause, but be applauded the dissolution of the Western Tradition with its standards, and further applauded the multiplicity of beliefs and traditions within each nation.  Let all beliefs, languages, opinions have an equal say, Said implies.  But if we do, I ask, what standards shall we live by.  Said can’t produce any, if all the variations of the world have an equal say. 

The Serial Killer like the Atheist can then ask, “with so many standards (or religions) out there claiming to be the true one, how shall I find the right standard (or religion) to select.”   Quite right, Hannibal – better make up your own.