pete> Pete, who only feels safe reading Terry Pratchett
arthur> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Pratchett arthur> arthur> interesting. Long-time Pratchett fan here. I've just been re-reading more or less the whole corpus. The most -- well, the only -- distressing item of his work is the documentary he made about his investigation of assisted suicide. As for the "bibliotherapy" notion, I think it has the same features, assets and shortcomings as many other approaches variously associated with words such as guru, shaman, juju, alternative medicine, foo therapy (for numerous values of "foo") etc. A practitioner posessed of extraordinary wisdom [1] who is deeply acquainted with a subject's culture, becomes deeply acquainted with the individual subject and brings those assets to bear on (what we may call) intuition about the subject -- such a practitioner can achieve results with/for the subject that might appear magical. This is not a process that can be successfully embodied in or reduced to a systematic therapeutic practice. Attempts at such systematization result in the vast array of crackpot therapies, alternative treatments and "spiritual" guidances that can be found on every (metaphorical) street corner. - Mike [1] Whatever happened to the respect once given to wisdom? In The System of the World, one of Stephenson's characters makes a distinction between wisdom and erudition. Brighter members of the 17th c. Royal Society are erudite while Newton and a few of the more advanced seekers after the Philosophic Mercury (among other deep secrets of the universe) are wise. OTOH, (the fictional) Newton refers to Solomon as the wisest man who ever lived (because Holy Scripture says so) yet seems to attribute to him, by the same token, exceptional scientific knowledge of the physical world, which is not the same thing. Wisdom is, I surmise, what you get when a reasonably bright person has the ability to see what (s)he's looking at, what really on the end of h{is,er} fork, remembers that and integrates it with other observations over the years. It doesn't require knowledge of calculus or a course in statistics or theoretical physical chemistry or the like. Lacking those, it often fails or falls into error if applied with a dressing of hubris. But part of wisdom, of seeing what's on the end of your fork, is seeing where hubris intrudes and where the lack of scientific knowledge presents a pitfall and where, OTOH, accumulated experience and insight, mediated through language, offer constructive guidance. Jeez, footnote longer than text. Sure sign of serious digression. Stop here. -- Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. /V\ [email protected] /( )\ http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
