Thanks for your clarification. For the record, I agree with you on:
1. I don't think drugs should be legalized. I don't think it works. Secondary smoke on pot is aggressive and I've constantly had to deal with adults who had drug experienced high school and college and ruined their physical instruments and destroyed the futures. It doesn't work. 2. I don't think Medicine should be deregulated. (See Donald Schon: "Reflective Practitioner books." ) 3. I think school vouchers only work if there is a strong public system to take care of the general population and a strong specialized school system based upon testing. NYCity has this and it works about as well as a voucher system could at it's best. For profit schools do not work. I work in a for profit situation. The potential is very poor. 4. As for prostitution, I have mixed feelings. 5. Guaranteed income, negative income tax? Why not spend the money on public works and culture and build the health and quality of the society? 6. Coyotes are useful as long as you don't have a pack. Questionable agreement. 7. When I was in my operation my wife stuck a small Ipod taped to my chest and put the 32 Beethoven Piano Sonatas in my ears. She knew that I'm not afraid to leave because of our beliefs about death. She didn't like the temptation of that drug trip they call anesthesia. The dazzling patterns of sounds and the memory of the pleasure of playing them are what makes life tolerable and always has for me. It short circuited the glorious colors of the anesthesia and the temptation to play with eternity. It wasn't leisure, it was life and the meaning of existence and quality that brought me back. It also made the operation, and the journey of getting to know my body in a new way, a very interesting and even enjoyable experience although I had a rough time with the pain killers. Still I knew that I would stay and prevail. The people I love are here and Beethoven was here and I wasn't ready to leave without having one more crack at the HammerKlavier. The meaning and value of life is what you do with it. How much you can learn and explore. I will die without a penny but I will have a lot to share with the Creator when I get home. I'm proud of being a professional on the level that I am. It has been a honor. Things I've done, people I've known, things I've seen, worlds I've experienced and most of all questions I've answered. I don't think I've become "enlightened" yet in the way our spirituality idealizes. I believe I will be back but it's been one wonderful trip. If I had focused on money, I wouldn't have done half as much. Almost nothing significant that I have done has brought me a financial profit. I've been a seeker of answers to questions. I put a daughter through a good school and gave her the same tools I was given. I made that capital. She will make her own way. There will be no more children or grandchildren in this blood. But still there is a legacy of students, a beautiful adopted daughter and grandson, beauty and experience with great people at the highest of levels and I've answered many questions for myself and for some others. Friedman's life is now a metaphor for his words. I remember challenging a friend of Friedman at a conference around the issue of ugliness and the unwillingness to fund quality except through the ignorance and whims of the wealthy. No one was willing to answer the question but one had the courage to say that "Milton was a personal friend and that he wouldn't comment." That little deal cost me personally $15,000 and five years of my life paying back the banks. But I would do it again in a minute. As my teachers said: What is your purpose? Why are you here? What significance do you believe that you carry within yourself in your laziness? Happily, asking a question and doing something is more fun that leisure. REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Arthur Cordell Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2011 8:57 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Don't categorize! -- was Re: Economists to Consider Ethics Code We'll stop this soon. Now I don't understand you. You said I believe it was "Sand Dabs" for Friedman that was the sum total of his existence in his later years according to the NYTimes interview. For me it was Beethoven Sonatas by Glenn Gould and Schubert by Alfred Brendel that brought me back from the rim when I had life threatening surgery. Eating dead things doesn't give my life much meaning. I have to do it but if that's the meaning of life why bother? So you take exception to his lifestyle and values and choice of seafood and how he found meaning in life. Your prerogative. I said I really don't know or care how he spent his free time or his diet. For the record, in addition to libertarian and conservative views, Friedman sought to legalize drugs and prostitution and was in favour of a form of guaranteed annual income in the form a negative income tax. I don't support Friedman's views but find them interesting as spurs to thinking of solving old problems in new ways. arthur From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ray Harrell Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2011 8:08 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Don't categorize! -- was Re: Economists to Consider Ethics Code "free time?" Who was speaking of free time? REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Arthur Cordell Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2011 4:41 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Don't categorize! -- was Re: Economists to Consider Ethics Code Ray, I have no idea how Friedman spent his free time. But his views on the economy were quite simple and straightforward. It's all there in Capitalism and Freedom. Agree or disagree. arthur From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ray Harrell Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2011 3:55 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Don't categorize! -- was Re: Economists to Consider Ethics Code Sorry guys, but I read what I wrote and what Keith wrote and Arthur's response and I have a therapist certification, my father was a therapist and counselor and my ex-wife was trained at Columbia and William Alanson White as a psycho-analyst and theatrical character work is far more rigorous than the science side of those questions. Somehow the practical just seems to be missing here. But maybe not. I guess I just have to admit that I have no idea what you are talking about or what you got from what I wrote. I do get the system of which you and Friedman are speaking but it all seems so "basic". Not something I would give two minutes of my life on this earth for. Can't you come up with something more enlightening or higher ideals than just eat, sleep and go the men's room? I believe it was "Sand Dabs" for Friedman that was the sum total of his existence in his later years according to the NYTimes interview. For me it was Beethoven Sonatas by Glenn Gould and Schubert by Alfred Brendel that brought me back from the rim when I had life threatening surgery. Eating dead things doesn't give my life much meaning. I have to do it but if that's the meaning of life why bother? Keith speaks of differences but it still feels like he believes that if we take off our clothes in a dark room we will still be all the same. I can guarantee you that is not the case. Have any of you ever been through a council Medicine Wheel process with native people? One that took at least of couple of years around community issues? And I'm not speaking of some government program run by you or someone else that was from a Western perspective. As for projection Arthur, I believe that Inference is a better physical model for that. One looks at a picture and it makes no sense to them so they infer from their own experience until the picture does make sense. I would suggest a good dose of the "Beethoven Virus" for both of you. http://www.hulu.com/watch/182190/beethoven-virus-episode-1#s-p4-so-i0 Spend a little time getting to know the language, the way of relating, the relationship of a foreign people to the roots of your cultural identity and how they approach what is essentially yours and not theirs. At least stay with it long enough to have read through the basic Friedman texts. Don't just sniff and walk away.. Or you could just check out the musician neurologists work on perception and systems. Sachs, "Musicophilia" Lavitin. "Your Brain on Music." >From the "feel" of the Beethoven Virus program I Obviously have more in common with Koreans than with English or Canadian economists. No insult or assault meant here. Listen to the way that they talk to each other. Imagine Englishmen speaking with such intensity comfortably. What would it take? I've had this conversation before with people who simply didn't seem to exist on the same earth as I've walked. However I would tell you that there are many folks of great character, prestige and fame here in New York City who understand me quite well so its not all me and frankly next to the Russians and the Japanese I'm almost pastel. REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Arthur Cordell Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2011 8:26 AM To: 'Keith Hudson'; 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Don't categorize! -- was Re: Economists to Consider Ethics Code Interesting response, Keith. I think Freud also had something to say about this. The tendency to project on others some of our own repressed or disliked impulses. arthur From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2011 7:39 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: [Futurework] Don't categorize! -- was Re: Economists to Consider Ethics Code At 17:48 03/01/2011 -0500, REH wrote: So Friedman was denying that business that existed in a society had no responsibility to the systems of that society? That it only had a responsibility to itself? Harry, Keith and many of the others on this list have continually argued that business and the market place was a central process in all social activities from monkeys to the present. I'm confused. Your description of Friedmans beliefs sounds like he doesn't agree about the centrality and responsibility for the wealth of everything that almost all of the economic books I own claim as a justification for the definition of value being wealth. Isnt that THE basis for Utilitarianism? Couldnt I use this argument as a basis for an economie of crime? The justification for declaring bankruptcy and walking away from the Uranium Mines in Navajo land or giving the pollution problem in Picher back to the Quapaw? Tell this poor dumb SOB Cherokee Artist who is confused by all of this pale faced horse trading. For the life of me it sounds like cancer. Its a system within a system that has no connection or responsibility to the system beyond its own growth. Tell me where I'm wrong boys. Where you're wrong is that you want to categorize everyone into goodies and baddies, into thises and thats. Everyone alive on earth is the same in his or her basic instincts and motivations. Where we all differ is in our culture, class, inherited epigenes (call them memes if you like) and the particular accidents and opportunities each of us has in childhood, adolescence and early adulthood -- the opportunities for change funnelling down with every passing day. We become increasingly stuck in our roles and act accordingly. Unfortunately, one of the deep traits we've inherited in our genes from millions of years of evolution in quite small groups is to stand on our boundaries and shout "Yaboo!" to the other group. "We're better than you are. You are evil people. We're the good people" we hurl at the others. No great harm was done in hunter-gatherer days apart from a bit of symbolic warfare from time to time or even the odd fatality -- and also our daughters rushing across the no-man's land and marrying a male in the other group. This shouting match is no use any longer in the complicated mess we find ourselves in. And the complicated mess in which we find ourselves is no-one's fault either. The only thing we can blame it on are those mutations which cause our frontal lobes to grow more than they needed to for mere survival. We're far too curious for our own good. But that being said, there's nothing we can do about it except hope that our frontal lobes -- our extra rationality -- might get us out of a mess, too. It's rational arguments we need, not categorizing people because they're superficially different. KSH
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