Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Intrapsychic Divorce and the Worst Laid Plans (1.11.11)

Thinking is a trinitarian process that results from the harmonious union of father conscious and mother unconscious producing baby thought. Then baby thought grows up, mary's his own true-to-wife unconscious, which eventually produces bouncing new grandthoughts out of the voidgin. And so on. This is what it means to be a fertile egghead, for it is not good that a monad should be allone, if you take a page from my claybook and beget my ribbing.

But just as we couldn't have a genetic blueprint without copying errors, we couldn't have real thinking without mistakes. I suppose we could have logic, but logic isn't thinking. If thinking is reduced to logic, then you end up shooting psychic blanks with forms of pseudo-thinking such as materialism or atheism. Even then, anyone should know that logic is useless in the absence of a thinker who knows how to deploy it and is aware of its limitations. Logic cannot provide its own mamaterials, nor can it father its own boundaries. This is why the problem of our trolls can be summarized in four words: their boys can't swim. But I'm sure Robin could extend it into the form of a verbose haiku.

In the absence of a prudent thinker, logic is just as likely to use faulty premises to arrive at incorrect conclusions -- or, as is pervasive among liberals, fail to draw out the full chain of reasoning and arbitrarily stop thinking at a point that suits their desires, such as "helping the little guy." If they would only reason just a little biddy father -- from A all the way to C or D, instead of stopping at B, they would see how their ideas and policies underarm their heirs. But doing this would require them to exit the maternal world of washy wish fulfillment and be detained in the paternal office of the reality principle -- or, to be precise, to marry the two, for the one is useless in the absence of its soul mate. When liberals favor the "redefinition of marriage," it can only be because there has been a divorce in their own psyche between mother and father, or, at the very least, a devaluation of their sacred union.

As the big-brained Roger Kimball writes, "This is the oldest and the best argument for conservatism: the argument from the fact that our actions almost always have unforeseen and unwelcome consequences. It is an argument from so great and so mournful a fund of experience, that nothing can rationally outweigh it. Yet somehow, at any rate in societies like ours, this argument never is given its due weight. When what is called a 'reform' proves to be, yet again, a cure worse than the disease, the assumption is always that what is needed is still more, and still more drastic, 'reform.' Progressives cannot wrap their minds (or, more to the point, their hearts) around this irony: that 'reform' so regularly exacerbates either the evil it was meant to cure or another evil it had hardly glimpsed."

Even more alarmingly, the reforms forced upon us by liberals not only produce unintended consequences, but unintended people and cultures. In short, it produces deviant people who then require the very cultural circumstances that gave birth to them. They are not so much adapted to their environment as addicted to it. It reminds me of a question posed yesterday by Van der Leun: "what is More UNNECESSARY than Liberalism if You Don't Need it?" In fact, in another timely comment that he stole from me before I could think of it, "The more things change, the more they stay insane."

I've given it some thought, and I've concluded that it is impossible to have minds without mind parasites. Unfortunately, this is one of those things that simply "must be." Even God can't alter it, on pain of making us robots. In short, it is a condition of existence, like the necessity of shadows if there be light, or falsehood if there be truth, determinism if there be free will, or permanence if there be change and progress.

Speaking of change, I see that in another piece, Kimball outlines how this has become one of the left's most pernicious mind parasites, to such an extent that it has completely infected the current presidential epidemic. Here it is important to note how the word operates just like a parasite, because... well, because it is one. In fact, so in love are liberals with change, that it can only properly be called a venereal disease:

"I am struck by the prominence of the word 'change' in this campaign. Mrs. Clinton deploys it like a hammer, Mr. Obama offers it up as a sort of sweetmeat. But for most of the candidates change is the holy grail, the unending mantra, the cynosure of their hearts."

But mere change in the absence of permanence and stability is indistinguishable from disease in any living system. The body is constantly changing, but the change is oriented toward a telos called "health" or "normalcy." Most of our change is in order to remain the same, or to prevent entropy. It is not simply unrestricted change. There is a word for that: it's called cancer.

Civilization is also a body, an organic collective with deep unconscious roots. This is why it is absurd to think that one could ever have a purely secular culture, because secularism is the very absence of culture, the latter of which is rooted in the cult, which I would define more abstractly as a shared unconscious (or supraconscious) template of preconceptions for interpreting reality. It's very difficult to impose this cult in a top-down manner -- for example, the cult of freedom and democracy, as we are witnessing in Iraq.

Just as much of our change is in order to remain the same, much of our permanence is in order to change, only in a healthy way. As Russell Kirk commented, "I am a conservative because I am a liberal." To cite one obvious example, the mind cannot grow in the absence of permanent standards of truth. This is why, say, deconstruction, is the equivalent of intellectual cancer. It goes nowhere but sideways or down, and even destroys the very basis of productive thought. Likewise, moral relativism is cancer of the conscience, just as cultural relativism is cancer of reality.

In other words, if all cultures are of equal value, this is equivalent to saying that there is no reality to which culture is an adaptation. Culture therefore becomes a fantasy world. Which, of course, it is for the left. They are, by their own definition, not oriented to reality, since reality is just an oppressive white European male construct. So, what are they adapted to? That's a good question. I suppose it depends upon the day, for it changes -- which is their prerogative, since change is the only reality. Nothing is more futile than trying to hold a liberal to what they said yesterday. (See here, for example, NYT Editorial, Plus Six Months.)

As Kimball writes, one good reason to be wary of promiscuous change is that "lasting cultural accomplishments are hard-won achievements that are easy to lose but difficult to recoup." To paraphrase Dawson, it is possible to destroy something in a day that took 5,000 years to build. The language of change also discourages the cultivation of gratitude, which is one of the prerequisites of human happiness. In the words of Kimball, "the rhetoric of change encourages us to discount present blessings that are real for future promises that are uncertain at best."

So, it seems that some mind parasites are merely nuisances, analogous to the common (k)-->Old, instead of being O-->(k). In fact, mind parasites are generally not too destructive so long as they are confined to individual minds. But just as neurosis may be thought of as a private culture, culture often comes down to a public neurosis. And that is when the mind parasites can result in the eradication of the host, as in contemporary leftism.

The really dangerous thing is that the parasite needn't reach 100% saturation to ravage the population. Think if how few committed leftists there are in the country -- the type of person who would support, say, the vile John Edwards. I don't put Obama even close to that category of noxiousness (which is why the nutroots have not warmed to his campaign). (In fact, see here for a fascinating bit of unconventional wisdom, "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Loving Obama," by Randall Hoven. Conservatives, more than anyone else, should appreciate the the law of unintended political consequences, or the Irony of History.)

Speaking of which, I had no conscious intention of this post ending up here. Rather, I "intended" to continue yesterday's discussion of the transmission of mind parasites from generation to generation, in particular, Bolton's statement that "children automatically share in the moral merits and demerits of their parents, and indirectly those of the society they belong to." What this means is that we don't just have a means of transmitting mind parasites, but a means of eradicating them.

In other words, if you stand back from the historical situation and take a martian's-eye view, the transmission of mind parasites might seem unfair to the individual, but it ultimately benefits the collective, since each individual is tasked with the mission of eradicating the parasites that he has inherited from his parents (and they from theirs, all the way back to the dawn of human time). This is one way to look at our "fallenness," in that we all fall, but we fall in our own way. You cannot undo the fall by "normalizing" it, as leftists do, nor can you undo it by imposing a collective solution, as leftists also do.

50 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't mean to be antagonistic because I mostly read your blog to listen & learn. Trashing deconstruction is too easy and unfair. While probably a majority of those who espouse deconstruction say stupid & untenable things, that does not mean Derrida's ideas are faulty. If that were true, then the literal fundamentalists would discredit what you say here just because there are more of them. Deconstruction is esoteric, so you have to overlook those who take it literally, just as you don't just Christianity as exoteric because of the literalism in the church. Deconstructionism is materialist but it is materialism that holds materialism & idealism are paradoxically, mystically even, bound together as in a gordian knot.

The reason that some of what Derrida has to say, then so maligned by the blockheadedness of many who followed as deconstructionist, seems objectionable is a reflection on the times. If this were the 40s, 50s, 60s, and were the height of modernism, there would be a different ontological & epistemological system confronting those who tend the fires of the cosmos, just as there are different challenges for the German-speaking or Russian-speaking inhabitants of this one cosmos than your challenges.

Anonymous said...

What's good about deconstruction isn't new, and what's new isn't good.

Anonymous said...

That is beside the point. The point about deconstruction is that it is topical. It is a targeted intervention. You want the academy to confront its own petty dogmatism & elitist presumptuousness?

The way to get the doctrinaire materialism rampant in the academy to consider divinity is to deconstruct academic processes, thereby demonstrating the limit of materialist logic. Derrida didn't do deconstruction to convince churchgoing people to embrace leftism, or to befuddle young kindergartners & get them brainwashed ASAP, he did it for the people in the academy. Topical, targeted. That there are lazy students is not the fault of the teacher.

Anonymous said...

How'd that turn out?

Anonymous said...

I suppose without deconstruction, humanities departments would be 100% leftist instead of just 90%...

Anonymous said...

I'm with Hicks. Deconstruction is intrinsic to the whole leftist project.

NoMo said...

"You cannot undo the fall by "normalizing" it, as leftists do, nor can you undo it by imposing a collective solution, as leftists also do." - Unless hell on earth is your goal.

Anonymous said...

When you admit the good in it, I think what we should look at next is its necessity. To the extent that the 'leftist project' is actually about collective obliteration of the space of freedom & dignity - an individual's soul - into a flatland of uniform, materialist blahblabla, then deconstruction is an intellectual trojan horse in the leftist literature. It is also not the only one.

As for how it turned out - well, the ones who pay attention generally don't stay in the academy. That qualifies as good in your opinion, right?

Anonymous said...

Is it good that good people either leave academia or can't get hired to begin with? I don't see how. At least until people realize that higher education is a scam and a rip-off to begin with.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

t least until people realize that higher education is a scam and a rip-off to begin with.

Which it shouldn't be. As they say, 'So much depends on being a person of depth.' I guess it would be left for the last civilized, or first post-civilized peoples to make everyone pay taxes and request donations for service institutions that no longer function. Leaving, of course, every man for himself as he was before.

Anony, those are some elaborate rationalizations.


btw, Was reading upon Eckhart, and it appears that certain 'thinkers' believe his teachings to be identical to Buddhism. I guess they mistakenly believe that 'eudaimoniac thinking' is incompatible with a 'contemplative' Christianity that 'rejects worldly comforts.'

Naturally, the verse that is often forgotten simply reads, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all of these things shall be added unto you."

They mistake the fact that Eckhart was expansive enough to fit all of Buddhism into his teaching for teaching Buddhism.

Anonymous said...

Never mind deconstruction... don't care. But the fall, the mind worms! The blessing and responsibility of each and every one of us to confront our own, those we've inherited and those we've acquired culturally lest we sent them fully formed and destructive to the generations to come, Yeah Buddy, again thanks... wonderful stuff today.

Anonymous said...

"A colleague once defined a academic discipline as a group of scholars who had agreed to not ask certain embarrassing questions about key assumptions."

Mark Nathan Cohen
Health and the Rise of Civilization 1989

Anonymous said...

I do think anonymous may have a point. Any innovative frame can be captured and repurposed; Rene Girard is being hijacked by the victim-identity crowd. Deconstruction was particularly ripe for such seizure, though some of its roots already leaned toward preferentially destroying cultural continuity.

require them to exit the maternal world of wishy wash fulfillment and be detained in the paternal realm of the reality principle's office

Bob'n'hisUnconscious are probably already familiar with this extremely pointed Freudian study, Creativity and Perversion by Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel. A technical and enlightening summary of an analyst's conclusions from individual clinical histories about the refusal of the reality principle in the realm of the father, and the monstrous outcomes of such refusal.

dilys

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

dloye: You've played Alpha Centauri? I wonder what the 'fungus' represents? The seven factions?

Anna said...

nomo,

precisely.

robinstarfish said...

"I've given it some thought, and I've concluded that it is impossible to have minds without mind parasites."

They can be entertaining...

head full of brain snakes
drinking whiskey and thinking
keith richards in drag

Anonymous said...

Though Anonymous seems to make pertinent points in the discussion, Anonymous comes in with a relative point which has cause me some pause and deliberation. Yet Anonymous makes the best arguement of the bunch when he points out the fallacy of Anonymous' arguement when discussing the theory which Anonymous has presented.
So see Petey, you're dead wrong on this one.

Van Harvey said...

Excellent post today! Too many pull quotes to pull, consider all pulled and reposted.

Van Harvey said...

anonymous said... "The point about deconstruction is that it is topical."

So are cold sores.

I don't recommend them either.

wv: otycxim
honest.

Van Harvey said...

"In other words, if all cultures are of equal value, this is equivalent to saying that there is no reality to which culture is an adaptation."

Ohh so true. I wouldn't bring this up yet, except for aninnymouse and that quote seem to make it relevant at the moment. I've been doing something... probably equal parts daring and dumb (should get OMbat pay) - I've been listening to a college philosophy class, from Berkeley no less, it and Yale are the latest to make some of their courses available on line.

I decided to put myself through Berkeley's Philosophy 6 Man, God, and Society in Western Literature, the Prof is Hubert Dreyfus, his hero as he says is Heidegger, who helped the pomofo's get rolling, and it shows... I don't recommend it. He makes several misrepresentations (I'll do a detailed post or two on my site as I finish it up), some of the more painful parts of listening to it is that some of the Students questions are actually quite good, reaching in a sensible direction... but he redirects them into a pomofo direction.

This Hubert speaks like an exaggerated version of Woody Allen, spitting and drooling out his words in self conscious 'eh.. ahh... but...'s and surprisingly demonstrates little or no understanding even of the members of the 'Greek Pantheon' - students continually correct him (this isn't done in a way to cause the students to come up with the right answer, he just blunders about), he wanders around in befuddled points, it isn't until the end of the 4th lecture on The Odyssey, that he puts a few sentences together with any sense of informed authority and you finally figure out why he's bothered to include The Odyssey in his course; it is to say that Homer promotes multi-culturalism, that Homer doesn't say anything about what a good life is.

Homer!

aaarrrggGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!

It isn't discussed to discover any meaning in the Homeric myths, he can't even remember which gods are which - or even which are gods, they are included because a light treatment of them is simple to stretch across the meaning he wishes to project upon them, to make his point, about there being no such thing as A Good Life.

His section summation is that the real benefit of studying the Greeks is so as to see that our problem is that we've lost the polytheistic outlook, which was really a Multicultural outlook, a golden time of all lifestyles and choices being of equal worth and because it made no assertions of one type of life being better or better lived than another (and words to the effect of 'as opposed to that medieval christian fiend Dante, who not only said some were better, but there were several levels of better and worse!'), and we should aspire to reclaim That.

mmmmaybe he'll pull out some value hidden from sight at this point in the course, but I'm doubting it.
The Yale PolySci class looks like it'll have more actual substance... sure hope so.
Wiki notes "Erasmus University awarded Dreyfus an honorary doctorate "for his brilliant and highly influential work in the field of artificial intelligence, and for his equally outstanding contributions to the analysis and interpretation of twentieth century continental philosophy".

At this point, his intelligence sure seems artificial to me.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Seriously, though. I never noticed the mind parasites/mind worms thing until today.

The final technology in Alpha Centauri?

... Transcendent Thought. And it's an 'unlimited' technology. You just keep coming up with the next 'Transcendent thought'

('But the last step is infinite, perfection that is endless...')

The funny part is that during the game you will get 'fungal' blooms which more than often contain 'mind worms', which are tameable monstrosities that "Feed on the psychic energy of their victims"

In this sense, the game itself is entirely analogous to the colonization of one's own mind...

Or, I'm just shooting blanks here.

Anonymous said...

While I agree with the premise in the AT article, and am as sick as the next guy with the the soft welfare of "compassinate conservatism", I'm not sure I'd go as far as to assume things would turn out as well as they did under Clinton. Yes we had two boys who grew up virtualy fatherless and are to some extent still searching for that absent father (reference Shelby Steele's new book), I'm not putting money on the fact that the mind parasites of the two have developed in the same direction.
Though the fatherless condition has manifest the same victim mentality in both individuals and the compulsion in both to become a "champion" for the perceived downtrodden, I see two entirely different levels of conviction between the two men.
Billy Bobs' main operating theme was to be loved and accepted, he wanted a legacy and ultimately did whatever Dick Morris and the polls told him to do. He vetoed many of the same bills he passed later on under the pressure of losing the love. I see this as one of the reasons he and Hillary are still together, he needs the perodic acceptance fix of mommy's love.
Obama on the other hand, though just as clueless as to his motives, seems more of a true believer. He, combined with the whackjob leadership in Congress can do a lot of damage in a short period of time. Though quite amiable, there is a definite chip on his shoulder and alot of emotional baggage which will be foisted on the American people under the moniker of change. And as we all know, it can take decades to dig out from under the stupidity, if at all
As to the rest of the world looking at him and seeing themselves, I can see that point, but most of the rest of the world isn't strapping bombs on themselves to blow up innocents in pizza parlors. What the radicals will see is a man, born to a Muslim father who has basically rejected Islam in favor of what is at best a sort of politicized Afro-centric "Christianity". They'll look at their TV screens and see the worst sort of infidel.
So am I willing to take the chance on the type of "change" Obama is peddling?
Nope.
Hillary has learned enough lessons politically not to come out of the box like a scalded cat to get her agenda passed. Obama on the other hand seems to be in a big hurry.
Don't give me another fatherless adult for president.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Van, I have always had an affinity for Dante, irrespective of all of that 'Purgatory' stuff.

Common friends, common fiends, seems.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

As to the rest of the world looking at him and seeing themselves, I can see that point, but most of the rest of the world isn't strapping bombs on themselves to blow up innocents in pizza parlors. What the radicals will see is a man, born to a Muslim father who has basically rejected Islam in favor of what is at best a sort of politicized Afro-centric "Christianity". They'll look at their TV screens and see the worst sort of infidel.
So am I willing to take the chance on the type of "change" Obama is peddling?


Particularly considering the type of Christianity that I have, the afro-centrics might find it amusing to consider me a 'blasphemer of the holy spirit' - which is oft what many of the hard Pentecostals call those who question their 'signs and wonders'.

Anonymous said...

Van,

With what little I've looked into the writings of deconstructionists, I'm beginning to see that their refusal to put any stock in A Good Life equates to their inability to have A Good Life. Misery loves company.

NoMo said...

Jeez, Van, are you also into self-flagellation? (Although the exagerated Woody Allen Schtick might be entertaining)

Anonymous said...

Van loooves it.
He's my choice for the guy least likely to give up any info when waterboarded. ;*)

vanderleun said...

Regardng "The more things change, the more they stay insane."

Before you could steal it from me, I stole it from Tom Weller.

He stole it from his own mind and published it in a book I edited for him at Houghton Mifflin in 1982.

A small book from 25 years ago. And a brilliant book that I think I shall post about.... because.... the author, an old friend, but now a past friend, put a copy on the internet.

It's at
http://tweller.com/minims/index.html

And it still can inform you as it confuses you -- the very thing.

What is a "minim?"

minim ['mInIm] n: a statement expressed in proverbial or sentential form but having no general application or practical use whatever — compare MAXIM.

Anonymous said...

"When what is called a '_______' proves to be, yet again, a cure worse than the disease, the assumption is always that what is needed is still more, and still more drastic, '_______.'"

In this house we call this function:
The Donut Diet

Lisa said...

I'm really curious to know what that zucchini did to the poor guy?

robinstarfish said...

minims - my kind of book; short, and with pictures!

Favorite minim:

A burning dog needs no chimney.

Rick said...

Gerard,
I couldn’t agree more with what Robin said until he said it.

When I think of Madame Hillary and her idea of “change” it doesn’t look anything like what I was picturing. So I’m voting for this one instead, from page 43:
“Almost any misfortune is preferable to a worse one.”

Here’s one I wrote before I knew what it was:

“You can’t read a book while running down the street.”

Stephen Macdonald said...

Anonymous:

I'm not the genius. Bob is.

I've made close to three hundred million dollars in the past 10 years.

Bob is the real deal, trust me.

Anonymous said...

their boys can't swim You said it spiritually and figuratively but its true physically. If they find out they can swim they kill them. They are completely anti-life. They physically cut themselves off from eternity so its no wonder that they are spiritually cut off.

Anonymous said...

ps I am not the same anonymous that started this thread.

Rick said...

Smoov,
Say hi to Amy for me. She doesn’t know me but I’m rootin for her too.
My favorites: Me & Mr Jones and Some Unholy War
Thanks for bringing her here.

Anonymous said...

If it is not too forward of me, I’d like to recommend From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life by Jacques Barzun. Excellent analysis of how deconstructionism fits in as part of a far longer stream of challenging orthodoxy (started at the end of the 19th Century) until there was no orthodoxy left to challenge. Barzun’s thesis is that we are at the end of this major period of history. Given the fractured nature of what he calls our demotic times, I find it hard to argue with him. And I appreciate that he is too wise to claim he knows what comes next.

Of course, if this is the end and finally the meek are going to inherit the earth, where does that leave us raccoons?

Van Harvey said...

Hoarhey & Nomo,
A Self JelloEatin WaterBoarder perhaps - or beer bong on a surf board? Nah... 20 years ago maybe....

Told my wife (finishing up her nursing RN), if she can enjoy examining disease, destruction and death of the body, I can enjoy examining disease, destruction and death of the Intellect - and what better patient to examine than pomofo's?

Anonymous said...

Has anyone else been having as much fun as I surfing the net and reading the comments sections on the political reporters blogs?

The comments have been fitting in well with the postings here relating to reality and a persons ability to perceive it....or not.

First is an example of a mind riddled with holes from a parasite to the point where this individual is living in a reality I can't even conceive.

"Hillary will win the nomination. First, she is the most trusted candidate. When she speaks people know she speaks the truth. Rarely has she ever switched her stances to gain political favor. Second, her laugh is infectious and because of this people are drawn to her warm personality. And last, people remember the glorious nineties and would do anything to go back when terrorists didn't want to kill us.
Go Hillary!"



Now back to reality with comments on how Donna Brazile played the race card today on one of her own, Billy-Bob, when he called the Obama campaign a fairy tale.

"Wow, it sure is fun to see the Dems feeding frenzy. They are really starting to bite each other in the ass. Imagine Donna calling the "First Black President" racially insensitive. Imagine Bill "I never had sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinski" calling something a fairy tale. The writers can stay on strike. This is really good stuff!"


and this...


"What's wrong with Brazile? ------- BJ Clinton is the USA's first black President and she is not treating him with the respect due that honor! --------- He works in Harlem, he knows the ladies that walk the hoods streets, has been ministered to by Jesse Jackson a highly principled Black Minister. Jesse even brought his Secretary to enjoy the springs in the Lincoln Bedroom. ----------------- Onward to South Carolina !"




Although it's a sad commentary on the current political climate as far as the unreality of it all, I'm having more fun than I thought I would this election season. :*)

Van Harvey said...

Hey Smoov, didn't you say your friend was in Kenya? Getting kinda dicey there... hope the charismatic capitalist is staying safe.

Anonymous said...

Nor am I.

Anonymous said...

Van,

Just make sure not to get any on ya while yer examinatin'.

Anonymous said...

Me either,.....or.

Anna said...

hoarhey said...

First is an example of a mind riddled with holes from a parasite to the point where this individual is living in a reality I can't even conceive.

I say...

Too funny. I read the quote with your (above) statement in mind, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed again... out loud, out loud, out loud. (of course not laughing AT just near it.) wow.

and maybe your statement with the quote was tonic for times when I've met individuals "living in a reality I cannot even conceive." I'm on the (very) tired side so can't write more at the moment. Maybe I required a good laugh, and that was just the neighborhood to find it.

This is beside the point, but I do have sympathy for the poster, as it is kind of a negative space of a slumped sentiment, as if it says "sigh" between the words. If only this one could stumble on some reality boost. It's there, but some people are suffering from vertigo, in the inner ear syndrome, or rather, in the speak of the One Cosmos group - horizontigo syndrome.


But that really did make me laugh, and still is.

Van Harvey said...

Djadja said "... Barzun’s thesis is that we are at the end of this major period of history. Given the fractured nature of what he calls our demotic times, I find it hard to argue with him. "

Barzun's been on my wish list for a long while. I think the argument has merit, and has played out in the past, but I think we do have something potentialy different in our favor this go around that might make us able to avoid the inevitable. In the past, as the elites forsake the older wisdom, said wisdom was as good as gone, the people didn't have access to it, and if they did, they didn't have the right to do anything about it. Which is the one thing that is different between all of history and today - our elites can forsake it all they want - we've still got access to the information. We can pursue it, if we have the wit to. We can even communicate with eachother far and wide without interference, and eventually get us our own elites, and we still have the right to undo the wrongs the previous elites have put in place.

The biggest catch in that is "if we have the wit to", their having near control of education makes it dicey, but 'near' leaves openings still.

julie said...

Smoov, what Ricky said. I never would have listened to her music without your recommendation. I hope she finds her upward spiral.

Stephen Macdonald said...

Amy is pretty deep. When you put yourself out there you take risks.

With everything. Your help. Your looks. Your age. You name it.

Still about beauty though.

Stephen Macdonald said...

Amy is pretty deep. When you put yourself out there you take risks.

With everything. Your help. Your looks. Your age. You name it.

Still about beauty though.

Van Harvey said...

River said "Van, I have always had an affinity for Dante..."

River, Me too - my favorite Christmas present this year was an unabridged reading of the entire Divine Comedy, and am now at Canto XXVI - seems appropriate.

Van Harvey said...

(Psst!...Smoov... double click on windows app, not web apps... just sayin')

;-)

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