Hi,
Reed Konsler <konsler@ascat.harvard.edu> writes:
<<
"strongly fixed patterns of behaviour" = "entrentched theories" =
"dogmatism". Funny how that virian sin comes up again and again, eh?
To be honest, I have no real idea about what can be done for foreign
relations. It seems equally obvious that doing nothing and bombing
are both wrong, that a "happy medium" must exist, but I don't know
where it lies or of what it consists.
Just before we get back to the BNW below, I'd like to recommend
Huxley's _Brave New World Revisited_. It covers a remarkable amount
of material in a slim amount of words (filling on 150 pages), but even
better than is the eloquence and clear forthright style that he uses.
Especially of interest is his chapter on "Education for Freedom", and
his remarkable point about human societies not being "organisms", in
the sense that ants and bees have a social organism, but rather
"organizations" (which, of course, flows against what Bloom said). It
is good enough that I'll even type it out for all Virians to read:
"For the individual termite, service to the termitary is perfect
freedom. But human beings are not completely social; they are only
moderatly gregarious. Their societies are not organisms, like the
hive or anthill; they are organizations, in other words ad hoc
machines for collective living."
He talks about this point and it's relationship to the BNW and tyranny
at great length.
<<
Efficiency is not a good goal for ones life -- the most "efficient"
life would probably be over before it began! It reminds me of
something I read a long time ago... Rifkin. A real fanatic, and
usually wrong, but he did have a very good point about focussing to
closely on efficiency.
http://www.enviroweb.org/coe/e-sermons/jeremy.html
<<
On this point, Huxley mentions The Grand Inquisitor. "In the end they
will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us 'make us your slaves,
but feed us'." He talks about cycles between attitudes... those
without freedom demand it, while those who have it slowly let it go...
http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/dos.htm
It would be interesting to find out if you could us that as an
explaination of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I need more
knowledge of history!!!
ERiC
Agreed. We live in a world where some people have learned to behave
violently. I wish we could teach them all, but many are adults with
strongly fixed patterns of behavior. These people are dangerous. I
don't think we should exagerate our fear, but if they learn to
cooperate by trial and error their errors may involve massacres. If
they learn to cooperate within small groups they may use this
solidarity to strike out at other groups.
>>
Back to BNW...those people are also programmed...but they never
*crave* anything. They never have to...they don't need to consciously
ignore their addictions, in the sense a Buddhist learns to, becuase
they never experience separation. Isn't that more efficient? Or is
there some value in complexity?
>>
Maybe simplicity shouldn't always be our goal? Becuase, perhaps,
simplicity...like the void before the universe began...is pregnant
with instability. Maybe the innocence of BNW, the innocence before
conception, is too unstable to survive reality.
>>