charlieb wrote:
FoggyTown wrote:
snip
With all the millenia of tinkering by man,
it is difficult to know what is truly the Word of God and what is a
commercial fillip for medieval fishmongers.
Not difficult at all - if you think about it -without
all the spin humans add for their own benefit.
Threadjack Alert
Be good to each other.
By and large, I find that most people do try to do this except in
two places: cars and airplanes. Why you get to dispense with good
manners when traveling remains a mystery to me. I travel 4 days
a week on average and I am constantly astounded by the moronic
level of personal behavior otherwise nice people manage to
permit themselves.
Lend a helping hand when you can.
Again, mostly I think people do this on the whole. What has changed
(and for the better in my view) is that most of us have lost our
patience for lending "a helping hand" when the recipient is someone
who repeatedly induces self-inflicted wounds (by means of their
bad personal choices) and expects everyone else to get them out
of their own messes. There are too many people whose problems
are not their own fault for me to pay much, if any, attention to
those who live in a sewer and then complain they smell bad.
Try to leave the place in no worse shape
than when you found it. And maybe try
and leave it a little better than you found?
It's a good idea, but the devil is in the details. In a pluralistic
society, "better" cannot be universally defined to everyone's common
satisfaction. I think the very best you can do is "Do whatever you
do in a manner so as not to cause harm to others, present or future,
unless they inflict harm upon you first." "Harm" is pretty easy to
define - it is always some expression of either fraud, force, or threat.
You can actually implement this model (though we don't - lot's of
activity that is claimed to be for "the common good" is actually
fraud, force, or, more usually, both).
Oh - and use your brain. When possible,
engage it - before opening your mouth.
Aye, and there's the rub. "Using your brain" is only useful if it's
been trained to think crisply. This is the Achilles Heel of free
societies. The more "free" we become, the more prosperous we become
with relatively less effort - a hard working neurosurgeon today
expends a whole lot fewer hours and labor than a farmer, say, a
hundred years ago. This means that a good part of society can get by,
living reasonably well, without too much effort - *especially* mental
effort. That's how you get successful "musicians" who can't read music,
"teachers" who can't spell or perform basic arithmetic, "art critics"
that don't understand art, political "leaders" entirely ignorant
of the history and principles of our legal system ... When untrained
brains are engaged you get disastrous results, and we see them every
day.
Then there are those cases of highly trained brains that "use" them in
malfeasant ways: corrupt politicians, dishonest business leaders,
oppressive union leaders, and so forth.
The Enlightenment thinkers and their heirs were quick to point out that
their ideas about political theory only worked so long as you had
a well educated and thinking population. In parallel ways, you can't
have "good" results when bad thinking dominates corners of science,
religion, culture, the arts, literature, philosophy, medicine,
and business.
For just one example of how awful things can be, read Roger Kimball's
"Rape Of The Masters" where he takes you through the modern insane
asylum that is the world of art criticism. He doesn't have to actually
write much commentary to make you want to hurl lunch all over the floor.
He just has to quote some of these "distinguished" professors and
the kind of intellectual sewage they are peddling to our young minds
for $20-$60K a year per student, no less). It's just plain horrifying:
http://tinyurl.com/28kywr
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Tim Daneliuk
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