Christoph Reuss wrote:
>
> The Vancouver Sun wrote:
> > Its architects did not understand where the new world trade
> > order would lead. Or how to fix it later.
>
> Whether the explanation for this is
> (a) incompetence,
> (b) negligence or
> (c) intention,
> there's no good excuse for it. Sylvia Ostry seems to suggest (a),
> the most hypocritical explanation. But considering how "they" are
> continuing or even accelerating the course, (c) seems a more likely
> explanation.
[snip]
I think there may be another explanation, which is
far more subtle, although not ipso facto either
better or worse (more or less hopeful, etc.).
Imagine a person who has earned their graduate degree in
"economics" (the kind that thinks the labor theory of value
is hokum, etc.). Imagine this person in a US$100,000+
per annum job, surrounded by colleagues who are their
genuine peers -- who both earn and give respect, as well
as playing handball and drinking fine cognac with them, etc.).
Can anyone seriously believe that such a person would
not genuinely believe they were doing good in every way
by furthering the project of the new global economic order
in working diligently at my particular piece of the work?
(Yes, folks, the "my" was a "Freudian slip"....)
Let me try this another way: If I was Madeleine Albright,
I would be thrilled about the advances in democracy that
are taking place these days. Why? Because the very
real democracy of high officials of "democratically elected
governments" in which "world"/"Umwelt" I would be a "player", is doing
quite well these days.
Or yet another way: Republican politicians (the Bushes and
William F. Buckleys et al.) live [and move and
have their being...] in an almost utopian
*democracy* --> the polis of their peers. Of course
they believe in "free enterprise": It really *does* work
for themselves.
It is also important to remember something Hannah Arendt wrote
about the classical Greeks (and this is a notion that can
be interpreted in more ways than one!): For the classical
Greeks, the line dividing the human from the less than human did
not run *along* a species boundary, but ran *thru* the
species which we call "homo sapiens". Phenomenologically,
for an anthropoid biped to "count" as a *person* in
someone's living experience of the world, the anthropoid
biped must be constituted for that person as a co-interlocutor
in conversation -- else the anthropoid biped is for that person
a *thing*. Things are not citizens of the polis. If I
am a teacher talking WITH another teacher ABOUT what to do about a student
(or a boss talking with another boss about an employee, etc.),
for me, the other teacher is a person and the student is a thing --
no matter what words I may use to refer to either.
"Yours in discourse [which is the only place
where persons can exist...]...."
+\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
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