ApPlication of Peter Berger
Key Principles of Peter L. Berger: Vis a Vis Sociology of and the Sociology of Knowledge as they Relate to Social Roles, Social Stratification, Social Inequality, and Justice, Peter J. Jessen, Reader, 1993
More on “historically specific conservatives” and “historically non-specific conservatives”
FROM: Solution Paper #44, posted May 21, 2011, Guidelines for Including Justice in Planning Meetings to Calculate a Better Future for Minneapolis in terms of education, jobs, housing and public safety, by engaging in a “ contestation" between competing public policy idea sets.
Berger key concepts of “historically specific conservatives” and “historically non-specific conservatives” (terms of Peter Berger, discussed in The Minneapolis Story on pp. 297-299, "contestation" of the ideas of these two sets (pp. 38-39, 97, of A Seat for Everyone.
We find all discussions of what “ought/should/must/ be discussed somewhere on spectrum of these two ideas sets, the “historically specific conservatives” (those on the political and religious right and on the political and religious left, who have a Goldern Age from the past that never existed that they wish to resurrect or a putative but impossible future utopia they want to create, and then freeze it in place: conserve it, vs. “historically non-specific conservatives” (those who recognize there will always be unintended consequences with planned change, and therefore urge “making haste slowly”. Some say more harm has been done to people and to the environment by the policies of those who made haste creating change to achieve their good intentions who nonetheless do not evaluate consequences as their plans unfold (20th century ideologies and their wars, famines, environmental degradation, and accompanying impoverishment and enslaving of 100s of millions who were denied the freedoms of speech, press, assembly, petition, religion, etc.) bcause they were creating "the new Germanic/Russian/Chinese man. See also Solutios Paper #42: PLANNING For The Positive Future Possibilities Of Minnesota, for Minneapolis in General, and the African American Community in Particular.
Too many believe that the "end" they promote is "The End." That it will stay that wsy forever ("thousand year reign" and all of that). A recent book called it "The End of History" (a take onHegel who said with his book the world had the last word on philosoph. Marx believed that communism was the end of change, that once ushered in the world would stay that way. But Newton's 2nd law (for every action there is a reaction) is till solidly in place. Always. Forever. And it is the second law that bedevils the "historically specific conservatives." Max Weber use this phrase regarding how the dialectic continued, how Newton's 2nd law continues: "reciprocal causation of reality." As Peter has so eloquently stated, "reality is of course...until further notce."
It is the contestation between these perspectives that will determine the next set of reality back and forths.