>Date: Sat, 13 Mar 1999 13:13:03 -0500
>From: "Eric Boyd" <6ceb3@qlink.queensu.ca>
>Subject: Re: virus: Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.
Reed:
>Do you see Voltaire's brilliance? He ended in a question. It is
>still a question.
>A rhetorical question, though! Why would you *want* to replace a
>blood-sucking monster?
Maybe the alternative is oblivion. Maybe the beast is really a beauty. It depends on your point of view.
>I think that you are mistaken in attributing your
>relative success to <God>, or even to <Faith>.
I don't attribute it to those things EXCLUSIVELY. To be honest, I found faith only recently...it's what allows me to speak with the confidence of my convictions. I've always known what was in my soul, I just never thought anyone else wanted to hear it.
>The less I seek definition, the better off I am!
>Really? My experience has always been opposite. The more explicit I
>am about what I want, the better I understand the issue, the better
>results I achieve. Your statement sounds more like "innocence is
>bliss", which is perhaps true, but also quite shallow.
Expression and definition aren't the same thing. You can be expicit and implict and side-splitting and over the top all at the same time. As long as you are saying something you believe is true.
>Free to do what, exactly? Why wasn't
>she free in school? Why do we feel
>constrained and prostrate before the
>higher mind?"
>I don't know. I certainly feel free here at school. Maybe that's
>becuase the knowledge often comes easy to me -- I don't have to work
>at it, like some people (apparently) do.
I had the same experience. Most people are people people. If you aren't talking about people or to people, you have a hard time maintaining their interest. People are more important than ideas.
>Actually, I don't know that ostriches do that, in fact I suspect that
>"head in the sand" is some type of feeding or cooling behaviour. But
>anyway, I have always argued that conscious knowledge and
>understanding is better than ignorance, even if they have the same
>outward result. To give a mechanical analogy, ignorance is like a
>ball sitting on top of sphere. It may be stable, but the least little
>nudge can send it flying off into space. A position based on
>knowledge and understanding is more like a ball sitting in a bowl --
>it takes a very large bump to make it unstable.
But that ball never goes anywhere. I'd rather build a set of gyroscopes inside the first two balls such that when the bottom one rolls, the top one counter-rotates in exact response. Then give the system a little nudge and it will roll, upright, along the path. Sure, it's unstable in principle...but it moves.
>My favorite example of this is an argument than Christians make
>against atheism, which goes something like this:
>
>"If there is no God, then I can do whatever I want! I'm going to go
>out and rape and pillage the town!"
>
>The conclusion one is supposed to draw, of course, is that we must
>have a God, in order to ensure the morality of humans.
I agree. God is not a harsh parent or master, but a loving one. That is the essence of the new convenant. God evolves as man evolves. When people are warlike and angry, so God is brutal. When we become calmer and more sophisticated, so God is loving. I try not to be an angry person, and I find that my God repays the favor.
Reed
Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------