Ed Weick wrote:
>
> Brad McCormick:
[snip]
> Brad, think of it this way. If we did not suffer, how would we ever know
> what is good and valid from what is bad and corrupt.
Is truth so pathetic that it cannot survive except in a
sado-masochistic relationship? This idea can be
found, e.g., in Heidegger's notion that the being of
what-is is revealed in functional *breakdown*, which
throws into relief what previously was lived only
pre-thematically. Of course Heidegger has described
*one* modality of revealing. But I think Heidegger missed
another way: the unambivalently benedictory illumination,
which has its source/prototype, in
Heinz Kohut's lovely phrase, in: the mother
whose face lights up at the sight of her child
(i.e., in the child's seeing the mother's face light
up).
I read somewhere that extreme circumstances don't make
pleasant people. Alas, that is me (and perhaps some
less insignificant persons, such as one world-class scientist
I encountered in IBM Research).
Here's my take on
this suffering is good stuff:
If anyone thinks that truth needs suffering to
distinguish the good from the bad, etc., then let this
person NOT TAKE THE EASY WAY OUT: Let him or her have
the wealth of a Bill Gates, or at least of a St. Francis
of Assisi. *Then* let this person overcome
the most insurmountable obstacle to any good thing: wealth,
health and happiness. Heck, the wretched of the earth have
it easy according to this way of thinking. To paraphrase
something from Elias Canetti's _The Conscience of Words_:
If only I was really a writer, my words would extirpate
this way of thinking from the earth, except as
the semiotic equivalent of the smallpox virus in the NIH
(and we know there is a lively debate whether or not *that*
evil should be preserved). Does a mother need to make sure to
hurt her child so that the child will appreciate when
"her face lights up at the sight of the child"?
>
> >Yours in the hope for a more Matissean world (facilitated
> >by science and technology, among other cultural resources).
>
> Amen!
Yes, amen. I would argue that at least most of us been so
badly mutilated by our "upbringing" (downsizing is more like
it...) that we have little idea of who a child could grow
up to be under unalloyedly nurturing social conditions
(see Frederick Leboyer's _Birth Without Violence_). And,
in any case, if anyone thinks life will
be too easy, there are always the *hurts from nature*
which technology has not yet stopped from impinging on us --
starting with aging and death.
\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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