I'm aware that this posting is not entirely about the
future of work -- it's also about trying to figure out
what's going on....
(1) The recent successful cloning of a domestic cat has
brought all the adopt-a-stray people out of the woodwork.
Is cloning cats or dogs -- or *PERSONS* a bad thing?
If it is, then why are we
not consistent and point out that when persons reproduce
(which is logically the same as cloning, since it adds
another mouth to feed to the number of mouths to feed
and does nothing to help the underfed mouths that
already are alive) --> if cloning is bad, then isn't
reproduction just as bad? Adopt a stray pet? OK.
Then: adopt an orphan (there are zillions of them all over the
world). Is cloning selfish? If so, how is it any
more selfish than traditional (or in vitro) reproduction?
(2) Today's New York TImes reports how the British government
has been attentive to opportunities to report bad news
without it getting noticed (p.A10). September 11 was
cited as an example of a day when "nothing the British
government would say could possibly overshadow
what had just happened in the United States". Of course,
once this cat got out of its bag, the government
media advisor who issued the instructions had
give her resignation.
(3) As for the Olympics, I wonder why all the fuss about
athletes tuning their bodies with "drugs", when we
read that the grounds crew doesn't want it to
snow for the ski events, because real snow that
falls from the sky messes up the artificially produced
snow that they lay down for the events.
(4) The head of the CIA last week explained to a
Senate committee that was asking him about the
intelligence failure that let September 11 happen --
he explained that there *was no intelligence failure!*
and wagged his finger as his questioners to emphasize the point
(his explanation is that an intelligence failure is where
there is a lack of focus, and there was no lack of focus
at the CIA concerning trying to prevent terrorist acts).
----
Yes, the best way to hide anything is to make it be obvious.
It also helps to find some Evil to distract everybody by getting
self-righteously indignant about it. If you
are in a position of power, assert something
so ludicrous that nobody could mean it seriously, and
therefore nobody will dare question it for fear of
showing how they "just don't get it"....
Those who are not in the crosshairs (a Washington Post
commentator...) criticize Sherron S. Watkins for selling some of
her Enron stock after she warned Kan Lay, and
Bertolt Brecht left the U.S.A. rather than
take the future Joe McCarthy had in store for
him like a real man.
As for the dead, why don't we get equally upset about --
and provide the same level of compensation to
the survivors of -- all the other
people who died on September 11, not to mention
every other day of every week, month and year?
----
There was a fine article in the NYT Sunday Magazine a few months back
about all the Germans in WWII who helped Jews in ways
they could do without incurring serious risk to their own lives
(nobody was really safe in Europe in that time, of course).
So let us look for unromantic ways to improve our environment
that are not likely to require of us that we trade our
life for somebody else's who we may not know and might
not like if we did.
Even if it's not very strange, find it estranging
Even if it is usual, find it hard to explain
What here is common should astonish you
What here's the rule, recognize as an abuse
And where you have recognized an abuse
Provide a remedy!
(--Bertolt Brecht, _The Exception and the Rule_)
Student: Unhappy the land that breeds no hero.
Galileo: No. Unhappy the land that needs a hero.
(--Bertolt Brecht, _Galileo_)
(If Brecht is not to one's liking, Edmund Husserl --
the supposed head-in-the-ether idealist philosopher,
spells out what is at stake:
http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/HusserlQuote.html
. Victory always runs the risk of being Pyrrhic.)
Maybe we will be lucky enough to live in uninteresting times
at last.
\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]
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
