Steve Kurtz wrote:
>
> B.McC:
>
> This does not get to the root of the matter. "The media"
> do not get into the game until the child has been infected
> with the values of his or her social matrix of origin --
> what I call: an "ethnicity" -- thru
> *childrearing*, which the parents transmit to the
> infant before the acquisition of language.
>
> ----------------------------------------
>
> Hi Brad,
>
> As usual, I enjoy reading your comments. What is mindboggling to me is
> most humans devotion to religion,(incl you as evidenced by your sig file
> quotes.) The leap of faith required to believe in dogmatically derived
> absolute values of ethics, aesthetics, and metaphysics is perhaps the
[snip]
I attended a church school from grades 7 thru 12, during which
time I became a fervid atheist. More to the point, the school was named
after St. Paul (not the famous St. Paul's school!), and I came to wish that
he had fallen off his horse *a lot harder*.
As an adult, I have cultivated Husserl's phenomenological philosophy,
which emphasizes openness to all experience. I now am an
agnostic: Absence of evidence does not constitute conclusive evidence of
absence. Consistent with Husserl's emphasis on what things mean
as opposed to what they "are", I have decided that the most important
theological question is not whether G-d exists, but to assess
the various notions of divinity (the G-d of The Tower of Babel, e.g.,
was clearly paranoid, and the G-d of Abraham and Isaac was
at best an early avatar of "the story of foolish curiosity" in
_Don Quixote_)....
Now, why do I use those two Christian quotes in my email
sig? In part because I believe in not throwing out the
baby with the bathwater. (Analogy: For us to not
study the records of Nazi and Japanese human medical
experiments/tortures from WWII because of the horrible
nature of the acts which produced those records does
nothing good for the victims of those crimes.)
The first quote is a pointed criticism of
today's emphasis on this quarter's bottom line
rather than on making things worth making in ways
that are humanely rewarding.
The second quote is used much by Unitarians, whom
I think are one of the few good religions (many
people would question whether Unitarianism fully qualifies as
a religion...). Also, I believe it is a powerfully
succinct synopsis of the Universal[izing] Culture
which arose in the West but is not ethnically
"Western": Test everything (including G-d, if G-d
exists). Nurture the things that pass the test.
Museum conservators are some of my "heroes" (museum
curators are no better than businessmen, however).
> Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a
> finite world is either a madman or an economist.--Kenneth Boulding
Kenneth Boulding's book _The Image_ is a fine expression
of many of the ideas of Universal[izing] Culture. It's
one of the good things that has happened in the U.S.A.
\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]
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