Ray, Getting around to dealing with interesting past posts that I marked. This goes back to the beginning of December
What you wrote is interesting but has nothing to do with the subject. My study attempts to be a science and practices scientific method. Most important I that when we study we speak a common language. That's why we define concepts at the beginning. I expect you define concepts too in your study and give them names. I don't claim supremacy, nor do I think anything else is heretical. Where do you get these ideas? You pronounce them as if they were revealed truths. They are not. They may be your views. As is your contention that your desires are not unlimited. What is the limit of your desires? When do you expect to reach the last desire? You should know that a self-evident truth doesn't need mutual agreement. You say "My life is not about doing things for the least but learning the most. " These are not alternatives but a non sequitur. However, you do suggest that "Efficiency of energy is one element of that . . " which suggests that you realize that the way to achieve learning the most is to economize in your time and energy. If you waste time and energy, you will learn less. So you will seek to satisfy your desires with the least exertion. And why not? Everyone else does. It makes sense. You say: " Your system is based in the old antagonist function structure of the body which was logically limited and which caused many injuries in sports and dance." You are talking here about something else entirely - something that has no connection with my system - whatever that is. What is my system? You continued: "We agree about land ownership but your supply demand stuff is pure 19th century and has caused a disaster in the Arts and is doing the same now in education and the healthcare system. How does my "supply demand stuff" do that? Since, I've been in the US trying to save the world, I have never had more than a modest income. Yet, as I have written, our five children have always been covered by a very good health care service as have we. The failure of education is the failure of government education. You will perhaps recognize that the government has blown it without my 19th century supply demand stuff? Your complaint about the arts seems to be that the government doesn't forcibly take enough money from people to give you a larger subsidy. I mentioned natural laws and you said: "There are no natural laws. All laws are human constructs of the human mind. The world is an agreement based upon what works. Or doesn't." You added: "Gravity is a word to define something that works for now with our mechanics but it could change tomorrow and be called something else." You music is a construct of a human mind. What else is new? When we see an invariable consequence I would describe it as a natural law. Gravity always works. Philosophically, we may say it might not work one day. At the moment, and far into the unforeseeable future. I would expect it always to work. And so do you. I am sure that before rising in the morning, you don’t throw a pen on the floor to check if it drops rather than flies up to the ceiling. When I said: "So, with human behavior - we can expect people to behave in certain ways." You said: "No we can't." I'll just say: "Yes, we can." But watch how you deal with people. That's the best way to learn about yourself. You finished with: "And you unfortunately are tied to blaming people for the failure of your laws. I think you should consider another option. It isn't nice or even humane to blame others for things that they didn't do or had no control over." As Reagan would no doubt say: "There you go again." You keep making things up. I haven't blamed anybody for anything. The laws haven't failed because I don't think I told you any. All I explained is what makes a natural law within my own study - and that is centuries old. Certainly, the assumptions are correct and useful. I said they were self-evident truths which you denied (look it up). So, this New Year, continue to hit the ground running! Harry ******************************************** Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141 -- Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net ******************************************** -----Original Message----- From: Ray Evans Harrell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 01, 2003 5:24 PM To: Harry Pollard; 'Christoph Reuss'; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Re: Logic 101 for Georgists Harry, In the arts there are two schools. One is classical and formal while the other is organic and called Romantic. Both have the same elements but work from different perspectives. One is about efficiency of form while the other is about the efficiency of expansion of growth. Both claim supremacy and both claim the other to be heretical. In reality it is like the digital and analogue views of physics. You assumptions are pure classicism and are only a view not the view. Classicism is contractile while Romanticism is expansive. Reality is both and more. Continue below > Ray, > > You are right. After not mentioning the assumptions for many > months, I have quoted them once or twice lately. But, only > because they are appropriate. The assumptions like all > self-evident truths cover all cases. There is no self-evident truth. Mutual agreements are facts not truths. Truths are relative and are the support of individual universes. We don't even see the same circles since the human eye is incapable of it and we all different experiences and memories that create the circles we construct. Vision is made up of things that we cannot see together but must generally construct in our memory. My life is not about doing things for the least but learning the most. Efficiency of energy is one element of that but most plans around such are too incomplete and end up making a mess. So I would rephrase your assumptions for myself. My desires are based upon my perceptions and their projections and are not unlimited except in so much as I believe myself to be unlimited, which I don't. I strive to learn the most, focusing on what I must to do achieve that knowledge but rather than doing the least for it, I always do a little more because I can't know either my universe or the world well enough to truly have the mastery I need unless I operate from a principle of expansion rather than contraction. In the arts we call it "extension tension" which to the classical anatomist is a contradiction in terms but to a dancer is the only movement that avoids injury by being the greatest example of Mastery. Recently functional biomechanics has shown that "extension tension" does indeed exist give the most recent study on the muscular innervation. e.g. the I bands extend from the H bands in the act graded, skilled work while contraction has a distinct lack of control. In my fifty assumptions I spoke of everything emerging from the systems of the body. Your system is based in the old antagonist function structure of the body which was logically limited and which caused many injuries in sports and dance. Eventually the high cost of atheletes wouldn't tolerate the failure and they developed sports medicine and discovered how the muscles really did develop high level control. We agree about land ownership but your supply demand stuff is pure 19th century and has caused a disaster in the Arts and is doing the same now in education and the healthcare system. So, when you, or someone > else, delivers to us an instance as if it an important basic > truth, I must mischievously be impelled to point it out. The > advantage of natural laws is that they (should) handle all > instances. There are no natural laws. All laws are human constructs of the human mind. The world is an agreement based upon what works. Or doesn't. Thus, if we appreciate the Law of Gravity, when a > spoon falls off a table on to the floor, we are not dumbfounded - > we expect it to happen. Gravity is a word to define something that works for now with our mechanics but it could change tomorrow and be called something else. Disease was called the "vapors" for centuries and it worked. People didn't get sick when they were kept away from bad smells. But the underlying story was just a story. Now we have a better, more agreeable one since sulphur also smells bad but doesn't kill with the same process as human waste. > > So, with human behavior - we can expect people to behave in > certain ways. No we can't. That belief is totally limited in its application and grows out of the old "Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill made low" and then God will come biblical beliefs. I like Mountains and Hills and different social and cultural constructs. They make my life rich and interesting. >When we know that, we are ahead of the game. Only if you are in a culture that agrees with you. If you aren't it makes a mess. > If we > refuse to recognize it - we are either dumb, or we want to make > things harder for ourselves. Harry, it is about fitting in the proper system. That is what music and violin would have taught you had you not decided that it would take too much effort to achieve the enjoyment. You have to get out of the envelope and see the options available in other circumstances. > Worse, we want to make solutions more difficult to find, but I > think that is evident even in the pages of FW. Now why would we want to do that Harry? > I should make clear that I don't teach high school, though I have > guested in classrooms hundreds of times. I teach junior and > senior high school teachers. So you are the SOB who taught the high school teachers who taught my son to expect more for as little as he could possibly get by with? Well, he's not done so well with that attitude but he is an artist and not a retailer. Maybe it works in retail. Remember that three hits out of ten is not bad in baseball but a disaster on the piano. > Most of my teaching life has been spent teaching adults, or > teaching teachers of adults. Same > So, when I see a need . . . . . I wish you had continued to study the violin. You should get the movie "together" about that violinist father and son from China. It is now available on DVD. > However, I must say I have a soft spot for your opinions. Several > years ago, when the assumptions came up, they were mostly > discarded out of hand. Sometimes, by people who spend reams of > writing on subjects of which we really know very little. And by > economists whose textbooks are chockablock with hundreds of > assumptions (whose truth rests squarely on their statement and > little else). I have a soft spot for you. But your opinions that work for you, don't work for me. That doesn't make you bad and me right or me wrong and you good. But we could learn from one another. > > You discussed the assumptions and asked questions. Bully for you! > If you accept them even tentatively, you will not be so surprised > at the behavior of people. I love to be surprised by the behaviour of people. > > If you, or anyone else, doesn't agree, simply come up with an > exception or two. I did, above and three years ago but you ignored them. That should knock them out of contention right > away. If you can't find exceptions, then stop the argument and > swallow them down. Every human statement has an exception Harry. Science makes its stories out of much fewer facts than a concert pianist has to control for interpretation. If computers were able to control the elements of music, scale, harmony, rhythm, and the layering of words then we would have universal translators but we don't. Instead we are like astronomy prior to the Hubbell just taking educated guesses most of the time. And you unfortuately are tied to blaming people for the failure of your laws. I think you should consider another option. It isn't nice or even humane to blame others for things that they didn't do or had no control over. REH --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.557 / Virus Database: 349 - Release Date: 12/30/2003 _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
