Ah, Thomas, Thomas,
You were probably the original doubting one. You say John Wayne is dead? I
say it is probably John Ralston Saul!
I do have to admit that I don't really know what I'm talking about, but one
does have to have faith. There's an absolutely marvellous movie, a fantasy
piece, about some Scottish hillbillies during the plague years, who bore
their way through the centre of the earth and emerge in modern day Los
Angeles (I believe). Can you imagine their surprise at what they saw!?
If I were to revive my grandfather now, it would take him many days to
recover from the amazement of what we take for granted. And if he and I
were able to revive his grandfather, why.....! In projecting ourselves into
the furture, we can only work from what we know now, at this moment. The
information we have at hand is very confusing, only a little of it positive,
most negative. We try to extrapolate from it, but how can we possibly know
it is valid, and if valid (e.g. only so much oil), that it is all of the
information we need to make sense of the future. So we draw straight lines,
when the reality may be curved, tangled, discontinous or God knows what.
Try communing with one of your ancestors who lived in the 1850s and
describing a Boing 747 to him, or a computer chip, or the internet.
I rarely commune with spirits, but once (in a dream I suppose) I contacted a
very wise man who lived in London in the middle of the 19th century. He was
both a scientist and a mystic, a rare combination. He told me that a
little Jewish boy would be borne somewhere in central Europe toward the end
of the century. That boy, he said, would stand Newtonian physics on its
head. He said it with great certainty, partly out of science, partly out of
mysticism. When I told him I knew about all that, he became quite petty and
broke off the conversation.
John Wayne dead? Never! Have faith Thomas. Doubt no more.
I hope you don't mind me posting this to the list.
Ed
>
>>Somewhere I read that the market must expand for it to work as a system.
>>
>>Could some of the economists fill me in on that one?
>>
>>REH
>>
>>Somewhere I read that the market must expand for it to work as a system.
>>
>>Could some of the economists fill me in on that one?
>>
>Ed Weick wrote as part of a response to the above questions:
>
>These problems are largely
>technological, and therefore probably surmountable when the real need
>arises. Other solutions may also lie on the horizon; for example
>
>Thomas:
>
>Now Ed, I don't want you to think that I am picking on you, rather your
>probably inadverdent cultural belief that somewhere, somehow, some Ford or
>Edison lurks with just the right answer to be provided in the nick of time
>so that the cultural elites in the 1st World can continue to have hot
water,
>large heated air spaces called homes and private transportation systems
>similar if not the same as the automobile. Or that by some miracle the Y2K
>problem will dissipate through some fancy software patch. It is truly a
>collective denial.
>
>What if we don't! What if the mythical hero - as John Ralston Saul so
>elequently points out does not come over the horizon to rescue us? What if
>John Wayne is truly dead. As a guy who fixes - occasionally - mechanical
>things, I can tell you that rusted iron has no strength, conductors of
>electricity loose their ability to conduct over time, potholes in roads
>stress automobiles in ways the designers did not anticipate and nuclear
>power plants, after 50 years of massive doses of money and the work of the
>best brains on the planet still cannot dispose of nuclear waste. Saul
says,
>the hero is a folk myth. I say denial is the intellectual defense of our
>incapacity to solve our problems.
>
>Respectfully,
>
>Thomas Lunde
>
>
