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mmm...the problem with Hyperbole
Posted July 28th, 2010 by Federico Parra
Hi everyone!
I am so happy to see this wondreous idea proposed here. Thank you so much to Diane and Mark!
Anyway, I am striked by the contradiction between the very usual Ken's statement that
"with Orange (modernity) the white male finished with slavery in less than a hundred years, something
that never happened before in history" and then the statement in this blog post saying that "There are more slaves in the world today than at any other time in history. While precise numbers are hard to ascertain, the International Labor Organization estimates that at least 12.3 million people worldwide".
Of course, I take the second statement as real, and the first as hyperbole...
And anyway I understand Ken's important point when using that hyperbole.
But many could feel deception when seeing how often Ken push ideas to the extreme that it is very near of simply lying.
Same goes for the idea presented in Integral Spirituality that Wisdom Traditions don't know structures of development, but only work with States.
As you can hear in this audio, Ken is quite aware that this is not the case, and have a personal, much more nuanced position about it:http://integrallife.com/spirituality/eastern-traditions/buddhism/chapter-5-boomeritis-buddhism
(Bryan Franz question / 4th audio)
But the fact that he boldly states this kind of things (in his hyperbole fashion) in my opinion make damage, instead of adding, to the seriousness of his overall wondreous writing.
Opinions?
Thanks and love to all of you!
Federico
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Posted July 29th, 2010 by David MarshallHi Frederico,
You say:
Anyway, I am striked by the contradiction between the very usual Ken's statement that
"with Orange (modernity) the white male finished with slavery in less than a hundred years, something
that never happened before in history" and then the statement in this blog post saying that "There are more slaves in the world today than at any other time in history. While precise numbers are hard to ascertain, the International Labor Organization estimates that at least 12.3 million people worldwide".
Of course, I take the second statement as real, and the first as hyperbole...
So you mean that the statement, "With Orange (modernity) the white male finished with slavery in less than a hundred years, something that never happened before in history" is hyberbole? It may be, but I don't see it. In what way is it hyperbole, or in what case(s) has this not been true?
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numbers
Posted July 28th, 2010 by stefanoDepends on what the numbers mean in context.
12 million of the world's population today is less than 0.1%
Ancient Egypt maybe had tens of thousands of slaves, but what was that as a percentage?
Also, the term slavery is a whole range of things. So comparisons with history need to be specific, so we are comparing apples with apples.
PS. another thing about world population, if there's 7 billion, and the bottom couple of billion are mostly pre-modern, then there are alive today more pre-moderns than there were back in earlier pre-modern epochs. So we can have both an orange world, which mostly eliminated slavery, alongside a pre-modern world, with a huge population, which is still using slavery, and in greater numbers than ever before. The problem for us as consumers and community builders in the West is, how do we influence that other mass of people?? [1] [2]
[1] We can start by not bombing them, coz that always works... doesn't it?
[2] I was quite amazed that there was a drive highlighted on IL about slavery, and I was wondering what on earth were they going to suggest doing about it? But then, my miserable disappointment, when it sounds like they're suggesting just another activist drive. Because those always work... don't they?