Peter Challen wrote:
>
> Perhaps this beautiful rhetoric is pertinent to most
> modern currencies as well as to the measurement of GNP
>
> 'Gross National Product measures neither the health of our children,
> the quality of their education, nor the joy of their play.
[snip]
> It measures everything in short,
> except that which makes life worth living,
> and it can tell us everything about our country except those
> things that make us proud to be part of it.'
>
> Robert Kennedy 1968 ..... assassinated !!
[snip]
This kind of "beautiful" rhetoric can, it seems to me, cut at
least two ways.
(1) Sentimentally: It can be used to encourage the people to
do good without reward, and leave the
captains of industry free to pursue ever Grosser
products and profits (But they will go to hell
and the selfless poor will go to Heaven
in the afterlife! as Marx would have noted).
(2) It can be an indictment of the presently in force "rate schedule"
of assignment of monetary values to particular things and
activities: an exhortation for a universal
*reassessment* of "property values", so that doing good
gets rewarded and wasting resources gets charged.
I was 40 years old when I learned that there was an
alternative to the "rate schedule" into which I was childreared,
where everything I did was either altruistic (enriches those with
power over me and nourishes their egos, at
my expense) or selfish (enriches me at a cost or at least some
loss in ego-aggrandizement to those in power over me). I
learned the existence of the
secret "third way" from a person who had been raised in an upper
middle class highly cultured family. This person said that,
in their family, it was "just obvious" that you chose things to do
that both gave oneself pleasure *and* benefited others.
So I would say, helping correct some words that were
emitted by Robert Kennedy's brother:
Before we ask people to ask what they can do for their
country rather than what their country can do for them, Bobby,
let us first ask them whether their country has done enough for them,
as it has done abundantly for you, Bobby, and for me,
to deserve for them to feel this way.
--
From those to whom much has been given, much should be expected.
--
Remember the Titanic. ("I cannot conceive of any vital disaster
happening to this vessel....")
Remember the Lusitania. ("At 8.00am speed was reduced to 18 knots
to
secure the ship's arrival at the bar
outside
Liverpool at 4.00am the following day,
in order to catch the high tide.")
Remember Pearl Harbor. (Convenient negligence or wily
deception of both the Japanese military and
the American people? Was there
an order given: "Carriers out,
battleships in", or did the Japanese
simply give FDR the Xmas surprise
he was waiting for to somehow or other
find something to make the American people
want to join the war?)
Remember the Kursk. (Let's test a cheaper torpedo
launching system!)
Remember the Concorde. (Cheaper not to install wheel flaps
since no airworthiness directive
mandates it -- same exact problem occurred
in 1979, but the plane did not crash
that time...)
Let us remember all the occasions when those in positions of
trusteeship have allowed preventable disasters to occur
on their watch, so that persons without power but under
their power were made to suffer and die unnecessarily.
Student: Happy the land that breeds a hero.
Galileo: No. Unhappy the land that needs a hero.
(--Brertolt Brecht)
Best wishes for Memorial Day holiday! Je me Souviens. I Remember.
+\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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