Michael Gurstein wrote:
>
> A lot of systems use motivators other than financial ones--religious
> faith, ideological zeal, family/love relations, communal/ethnic/tribal
> ties (and not surprising pace the 10,000 year history of the creative arts
> and starving artists--creato-endorphins).
>
> There are those who argue (cf. Sorokin following Kropotkin following
> Tolstoy) that contemporary "material/capitalist" incentive structures are
> in fact, the overwhelming historical exception.
[snip]
I am not interested in what is usual (Heinz Kohut
beautifully pointed out that dental carries were
usual until the advent of flouridated water...), but
in what is *good*. If financial motivations were
the highest humanity has so far conceived of, then
so what if only *we* are so guided?
But, as Hannah Arendt pointed out in her aptly named book:
_The Human Condition_, for the classical Greeks --
those few thousands of persons who created
*ideas* as such, including the idea of The
Good, etc. -- , the
objective in life was not to make a lot of
money, but to not have to do with *banausic*
pursuits (everything concerned with what Marx
called "the reproduction of individual and species life").
The classical Greeks would have deemed Investment
Bankers and such to be mere tradespersons -- unworthy,
due to their absorption in busy-ness, to be citizens
of the City (polis).
Read Josef Pieper's: _Leisure, the basis of culture_ if
you can find a copy of this aptly out-of-print little
book!
\brad mccormick
--
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
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