A casual topic

[CHOMAT]

What do you mean by better when you talked about minorities?. Is sin really applied by a plurality ? Is the concept not born out of some minority ?

[Dr. Jamshid Ibrahim]

I mean plurality is doxa not wisdom. No matter where sin comes from it is exercised by plurality against singularity or vice versa. Advertising shows how easy it is to fool people. So doxa is sin. The Majority in our world has always used marginalisation against the minority.

[CHOMAT]

So doxa is sin, andthe notion of sin is part of the doxa. Can't we tackle the problem beyond the notion of sin and virtue? I suppose we are subsumed in the doxa. Apart from judging this notion ( in good and in evil terms) after coming to terms with this fatality , how should one behave and think ?

[Dr. Jamshid Ibrahim]

What are you after, after all? Do you think you can escape doxa?

[CHOMAT]

Not at all, I wonder how to cope with it in terms of teaching, writing and thinking ? The first thing , I guess, is to take a look back on our own praxis and be aware of what it implies and entails. To be aware of our being stuck in coded structures ,which are prior to us, makes us less snared.
And then ?

[Dr. Jamshid Ibrahim]

Originally Posted by Tdol

When Paris Hilton is number one in the news, then I think we are doxies.

Not to forget the tabloid sensational press. But don't go that far we are doxies in our daily habits and practices. For example a thread's life cycle depends on the number of replies and viewers ie audience ratings. A reply can be one word or an icon or a text of varied length and quality. This is not only democracy but Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Finally we are doxies because of a variety of reasons:
1.we can be fooled easily.
2. We are victims of our own eyes.
3. We are in need of dreams and hopes.
4. Measure for Measure: The age of benchmarking, appraisals, ratings and balanced scorecards has already set in.

[bianca]

Originally Posted by CHOMAT

Not at all, I wonder how to cope with it in terms of teaching, writing and thinking ? The first thing , I guess, is to take a look back on our own praxis and be aware of what it implies and entails. To be aware of our being stuck in coded structures ,which are prior to us, makes us less snared.
And then ?

I am not sure I'm right about what I think, but allow me to chime in in your conversation. We are all individuals in a society and culture and thus we are, ever since birth, being indoctrinated into accepting its values. School in particular - and education in general - plays an important role in this 'doxa', as the formal, official kind of indoctrination, but there is an informal doxa as well. These two, formal and informal 'doxas', collide. For example, teachers may teach established 'truths' that come into conflict with the reality students experience outside of school (I'm thinking of minorities, drug abuse and so on). That can make students start questioning the authority of schools. Way too often teachers claim that 'this is fact', and feed it to their students, instead of working their way to a constructive discussion with them toward a commonly accepted truth.

When I did my pedagogical year, we, teachers-to-be, had regular debates on 'what is knowledge'? Most of us answered in common accord: knowledge is facts endorsed by scientific, reliable evidence. Books are full to the brim with facts. Students must learn facts from books, period. However, reality has shown me that teaching is about discourse in interaction with the students, about tracking down knowledge or constructing it brick by brick, by adopting a critical attitude toward the world and what it has to offer. It is the minorities, or the periferal cultures, that rock the central values of culture and society, isn't it? If this isn't the case, I wouldn't talk about democracy, rather democrazy...

So, are we the doxies of the doxa? I believe it depends on our views on established truths and on teaching in general.

I'm not sure I'm answering your question, though...

PS "we don't need no false control" (I love Pink Floyd's Another brick in the wall and the meaning of the movie...)

[RonBee]

Keep going. I'm watching. I'll figure out what you're talking about eventually.

[CHOMAT]

Dr Jamshid,Liberté, égalité, Fraternité is originally a freemason motto borrowed by the Enlightened harbingers of lnotre République. Funny isn't it.

I chose the sentence doxies of the doxa on purpose for it exemplifies a subeconomy inherent to language and writing . The question, after all ,didn't entail any answer.

However, I will take back Bianca's last sentence : It depends on our views on established truths...
I first of all, because I'm dubious about sociology which is, nowadays, at the top of its popularity, takes the individual as the starting point of my reasoning and leaves aside groups minorities or majorities albeit the fact, I grant, that everyone of us belongs, willy-nilly, to a society and a group. Sociologits have been tackling the issue successfully.

Language as many other "objects"of the socius are prior to the individuaL
That's another point. Plurality is in every individual.
After marking these obvious facts, I firstwonder what could be wrong with the doxa that is the general opinion, codes, social positions, propositions of truth, and differents answers to life and manhood ( scientific, popular)?
Nothing, provided that the individual reaches happiness and freedom.
and yet, is not the individual fooled ' DrJamshid' word' for the sake of some universal principles and general purposes ? The general interest or its opposite the egoistic appraisal are parts of the doxa. Moral values are here at stake : To think in favour of the doxa or stand against, good or evil. One can follow one of these propositions and consequently belongs to the community.
I don't think -and I claim it again- to escape the doxa . However, I guess the individual hasn't got a proper place .
To be aware of the fact that language (for its the primal medium) is fraught with common truths , general propositions and presupposed parcels of meaning. One should break through the linearity of doxa and its communicative tenet. To question , decipher and criticise every sample of discourse . Are we entering culture ?
Knowing that language in its linguistic stratum ( stylistic, rhetorical , syntactical strata) are inheritance of the general , can the individual stamp language with her/his singularity From language to writing there must be a place, a nexus where general matter( language) and personal history meet:Can we call it the act of writing? Personal history, that is psychological conflicts (nevrosis),is moulded into general words and leaves its print ( I'm back on semiotics and Kristeva). The act of writing as a place of freedom safe from the yoke of general propositions. The act of writing leaves the soul at rest to the nearest point to eternity ( reminds me of a Christian belief).
The question is Can(should) one share this privilege with the community? Dr Jamshid: In your writings,you offer moments of freedom . That's the reason why I once asked you why you kept on editing your texts. ( personal conflicts ,urge to mould some inner struggles into prose or poetry let' s call it proesy). Education comes to the fore now : to teach how to read and deconstruct!

[bianca]

My question to you is: are you in favour of the doxa or against it?

I am sceptical to intrinsic changes of cultural and societal values. In order to go against the mainstream, or against the "moral grain", one must step outside of (or detach oneself from) oneself in order to make onself the object of scrutiny, perhaps in the light of other cultures and values. Our moral conscience is nothing but a social construct. And what good is it to escape 'doxa' when the outcome will almost certainly entail expulsion, or exclusion, or seclusion? We're not only fooled by our senses in perceiving the world, or by ignorance, but by our fear. Science pundits can make their life choices based on fear - or, worse still, fear makes the choices for us. Some of them even react to aesthetic or let's say 'peripheral' truths with a malignant, infectious fear. They write and talk about their own discoveries in terms of winning battles and losing wars. So, does it really make any difference that the world is round? To whom?