On Fri, 11 Feb 2000 02:30:11 -0500 Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> What strange behavior? I don't know of any human activity which can be called
strange.
There are several ways to look at this.
First, everything is normal, including building stealth bombers. This would also require eliminating ideas like reification, alientation and false consciousness.
Second, this approach makes nonsense of any notions of normativity or collective behaviour - aberration, coincidence, dominant, subversive and so on.
Third, it leaves us without resources to make judgement regarding differences. This *is* postmodernism - you can see all these marvellous things without having be believe them - in short - there is no cynical distance.
Carrol, I understand what you are getting at. In a metaphysical sense, yes, there is no "strange" behaviour. However, in the political-social-psychological sense it makes good sense to be able to differentiate between common, uncommon, rare, very rare and unique (I hope you don't mind if I borrow these categories from Dungeons and Dragons' Monster Manual.
ken