Posted by Jost on October 4, 2006, at 18:07:08
In reply to Re: excluding others in order to bond... » Jost, posted by alexandra_k on October 4, 2006, at 15:38:30
Alex, the main answer to the question of why a reason against X may not be a reason against Y, even if there's overlap or similarity in some respects between X and Y, is that the differences between X and Y that nullify the reason.
For example, if I object to pickles and my reason is that pickles are very sour, you may wonder why I like sour cherry pie, because it also is very sour.
I will then reply that the sweetness of the pie makes the sourness seem very different from the sourness of the pickles. The fact that the pie is very sour can become one of its virtues.
Would you say, but you said before that sourness was bad- how can you now be changing so much as to make the statement that sourness is actually good?
If a board is constituted so that people can be together in a small group, that may facilitate greater initmacy.
One might argue that these small boads are unacceptable because it will make people feel excluded. In a given community (ie Pbabble at the time of the discussion), this may seem a dominating argument against small boards, ie, more powerful than the arguments for them (eg intimacy).
The question becomes, does this objection apply at all times, in all situations, to all small boards?
To me, the answer is clearly, no.
The factor of exclusion may be outweighed by some other, more powerful consideration-- even, in some groups, at some times, the value of intimacy. If the sentiment in the larger group were that the value of intimacy outweighed the disincentive of some feeling of exclusion at some times-- nothing would IMO make it inherently wrong to have small boards.
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One group (Pbabble sub1) may have a different set of community standards, values (as a group) than another group (Pbabble sub2). Therefore they may make opposite choices, despite seemingly "identical" questions.Or the small boards may have different purposes, members, times of meeting, etc etc-- that could distinguish them from one another--
This for example is how laws accrete and evolve-- as situations develop, the understandings of rules, and the distinctions between seemingly similar situations (and therefore the qualification of general theoretical concepts and models created to analyze them) also ramify and become more nuanced.
I guess that's my first take on why you could come up against people who take a seemingly (but only seemingly) counterposed position from the one they took previously in a parallel-seeming (but not, to them, actually parallel) situation.
This is probably an incredibly round-about explanation, but do you know what I mean?
Jost
poster:Jost
thread:690598
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20060918/msgs/691853.html