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Sir;...I am inclined to buy the premise of the book in question; but it seems from your story that the guy did not defend his point worth a dang.... Sir; I expect you do not grasp the meaning of civilization, as the end of civilization as we know it might well mean something far better for people... Few people were more civilized than the Germans, though I am certain they would call it cultured, and few were more rational, giving a home to the likes of Luther, Goethe, Kant, Schopenhaur, Hegal, Marx, and Nietzsche... It is hard to imagine a people more rational, or more law abiding, or with a longer history of law.... When they took their turn at world war, and genocide they did so after a rational fashion, and these acts were the victory of rationalism over spiritualism, faith, compassion and sympathy... That we are rational is no complement by itself... We are alienated from ourselves... I don't know about your class of people, but my class lives in self denial, giving their lives for short wages, meaningless activity, and endless frustration... What people should do is art... Where is the art in a task a trained monkey could do if done far beyond the point of death defying boredom??? People get only a fraction of the value of what they produce, and see only a fraction of the process, and too often the product is a service making a servant, or it is junk produced to be junk and sooner trashed than paid for...Let me ask you...Has the world not already seen civilizations a plenty???? If they were so great, or even a worthy goal; why have they all been swept so quickly into the dump of history??? It is because all civilizations have been built upon injustice, and flawed into the marrow of their bones...Consider that rationality is a cover for unhappy relationships, just as science reflects powerlessness far more than strength... But rationality is only a form, a structure of relationships... If rationality is all that is keeping people from war, or bloodshed, general violence, or revolution then we are all done, because no one can show where anyone is more rational than emotional, or spiritual, or anti rational..Look about you..Law seeks to control every facet of human behavior, and nothing is more reasonable.... Is immorality, crime, infidelity, avarice, violence, coercion, exploitation or war evidence of happiness or of a deep malaise???. Reason created the nuclear bomb, and reason used it, and reason built the death camps, and reason fed the furnaces... Reason is no friend of human kind, and if only reason is holding civilization together then it is in terrible trouble.... We need happy, morally satifying lives, and no amount of reason will delay forever our having our lives complete...Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #2
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Thu Jan 15, 2009 6:10 AM
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