Durant wrote:
>
> > In a world of pure self-interest, can there be any paradigms of
> > communication?
> >
As I think Eva may be suggesting, it's a question of the
*kind* of self-interest. If I may quote one of Eva's
deceased compatriots, Melanie Klein:
> Enjoyment is always bound up with gratitude; if this
> gratitude is deeply felt it includes the wish to return
> goodness received and is thus the basis of
> generosity. There is always a close relation between being able to
> accept and to give, and both are part
> of the relation to the good object [prototypically, the nurturing mother]
> and therefore counteract loneliness. Furthermore,
> the feeling of generosity underlies creativeness, and this
> applies to the infant's most primitive constructive
> activities as well as to the creativeness of the adult.
> (Melanie Klein, Envy and gratitude and other works, 1946-1963, 1975, p. 310)
One of the highest forms of self-interest is for a nobel
laureate to teach young persons what (s)he got their prize for.
Alternatively, a deprived child may grow up to be a Leona
Helmsley or such like....
[snip]
> Eva (for a paradigm-free zone)
Those who do not reflectively cultivate their
paradigms may imagine they live in the
paradigm free zome of the obvious (or of
"hard facts", etc.), but they're only unwittingly
*being lived by* some socially conditioned
paradigm or other. As the philosopher
of physics Norwood Hanson once said (more
or less...) the only paradigm-free experience he
ever had was when his airplane crashed and he
was momentarily in a total daze.
\brad mccormick
--
Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but
Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world.
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
-------------------------------------------------------
<![%THINK;[SGML]]> Visit my website: http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
