Wednesday, 28 September 2016

A THOUGHT FOR NOW - SO, WHAT ARE THE LIKELY ASPIRATION OF THE AVERAGE PERSON? PART 1









The use of the term 'average' or 'common' is one which is really intended to help us to apply what we are saying to the largest distribution of the people we are presuming to be talking about..

To what extent the 'average' or 'common' person has any real meaning, outside of the members of, say a particular organisation, such as a political party, a religious sect, or a professional occupation body, is debatable. Whenever anybody take on the onerous task of 'speaking for the community', when there is conflict, he/she runs the risk of being challenged, as some people will say 'you do not speak for me.' Unless you are someone like the Pope, who is presumed to have some kind of divine authority. 

One of the most forceful examples of a small group assuming to speak for the may, has to be the authors of the Constitution of the United States, especially the dictum that "We hold these truths to be self-evidenct..." Something which has imbued American Presidents with what could be termed a self-righteous 'jihadistic fervour similar to that of the Christian and Muslim Crusaders of old.

But even in the case of the Pope, he should not presume to speak for Muslims, or Jews, or Sikhs, or Hindus, or Buddhists, or people who do not believe in god, unless he is speaking about something which is basic or 'common' to all humanity, irrespective of whatever their religious beliefs might or might not be.




And so it is, that when we speak of the 'average' or 'common' person, we might sometimes be taking alot or too much for granted, because of how we choose to define what we believe to be the 'average' or 'common' desires, aspirations and attributes of other people. Of course, you could also argue that we do know of the 'averageness' or 'commonness' of other people, because we are all humans. Therefore we share many, if not most of these attributes and characteristic in our genes, with others having been assimilated into us through the process of socialisation, which  all people experience.

Marxism holds that a person is largely influenced by or is a product of their environment. To the extent that this is valid, we can expect that we have to consider people's gender, physical, cultural, ethnic, religious, political and social environments, in forming a view about the extent to which we can speak, validly, about the 'average person.'


To be continued.







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