No Keith, I didn't exaggerate. I said: and I meant:
>>Instead of creating
> >great soaring works of human imagination and building economies around
such,
> >we have built our lives around widgets that mean little and eventually
lead
> >us all down the road to pillaging our neighbors or creating
> >self-justification for legal conundrums that will make even murder just.
What kind of "Great Soaring Works of the Imagination" would an economist
create? Not Cathedrals. Those were works of Imagination built around
the language of the Christian Faith. The Cathedral was the expression of
a philosophy and an ediface of the mind. The Economy that I was speaking
of was the expression a great mind that included all of the masteries of the
human spirit and place proper values on things rather than the upside down
world you complain constantly about on this list. There are expressions
(of ideas and philosophies) that "work" and there are those like the
Cathedral made out of Soapstone that are falling down. It may look
soaring but the builders put the idea of form over content and the building
has had to be propped up ever since. That is what has happened to
Western Society ever since the Utilitarians build their economic edifice.
Such a "building" has created a dumber more bovine humanity and heralded
science as the old act of the human imagination possible in the last two
hundred years because they would only pay scientists for their effor due to
a defective theory of human value. That slovenly definition of economic
philosophy has, in my opinion, to go!
Let us have new, more intelligent, genius economists who will take us out of
this cul-de-sac that J.S. Mill and such second rate minds as followed him
created. Smith and Mill were interesting but you can't leave their world
like you can leave Stockhausen's by simply walking out the door to the
concert hall. Today's Nobel funds ideas that are novel whether they
"work" or not. (Friedman) You may not like our foreign policies but they
are being put forward by people who believe the same economic theories and
theories of law that we hear on a daily basis. Pre-emptive strikes are
just a logical extension of their concepts of law and selfishness. And
today's American public disagrees profoundly with Kofi Anon and Nelson
Mandela. To most of the American public, the only thing Mandela did was
spend his time in jail and come back from it.
I have too often published the quote from the Dawes commission about the
Cherokee Nation from the 1880s that said that Indians would never succeed
because they had universal sufferage, universal health care and held their
land in common in a different system from the West and that it wouldn't
"happen" because selfishness is at the root of all Western genius and
invention. And there is the cause of it. The catoon character Ayn Rand
thought up by the Russian Immigrant Alice Rosenblum is the logical extension
of Utilitarian thought in the West. This stupid short term thought
taught by Western economic theories so seperated the Western citizen from
their spirituality, morality and culture that they created virtuosic
technological idiots. ("What do you mean 'morality' this is BUSINESS!")
Neither Dickens or Blake will ever get a reall read or hearing in this banal
simplistic world of numbers. Today's audiences are so stupid they can't
even imagine most of the works that were created at the end of the 19th
century by the musical giants. Or as Richard Schilder the Musical
Historian from Yale commented in the 1950s: "To today's audience the idea
of Bach racing across a room to finish a cadence left unplayed by a careless
performer is ludicrous. To today's audience even a dominant seventh needs
resolution like it needs a 'hole in the head'".
So, I'm sorry that I wasn't more clear about that. I place the blame
squarely on the backs of the contemporary economic thought that precludes
genius in the economic medium. Every profession should have a Beethoven
and not be limited to the Beatles and the production of Widgits. I hope
this clears that up.
Ray Evans Harrell.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Keith Hudson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2002 4:01 AM
Subject: Soaring works? (was RE: To survive or not to survive.)
> Ray,
>
> Come off it! You really do exaggerate!
>
> If by "great soaring works of human imagination" you mean the great
temples
> and cathedrals of the past, they were erected as the visible symbols of
the
> power of the hierarchies of their times mainly in order to impress (and
> oppress) the hoi polloi.
>
> Yes, technically, they were great achievements and we've even grown to
love
> their interesting shapes, but don't spiritualise them as though they were
> built with any different motives from, say, the Enron building (though,
God
> knows, that building is so boring I cannot imagine that anybody would ever
> love that!)
>
> Keith
>
> At 21:21 02/10/02 -0400, you wrote:
> >Ray said,
> >
> >So Arthur, why do we do all of these things that you mention? I
realize
> >that it is more difficult to explain the grandeur of a magnificent
economic
> >edifice than the Hoover Dam but you should try. Today's economists
are
> >"hooked" on the lower rungs of the Maslow Hierarchy. Instead of
creating
> >great soaring works of human imagination and building economies around
such,
> >we have built our lives around widgets that mean little and eventually
lead
> >us all down the road to pillaging our neighbors or creating
> >self-justification for legal conundrums that will make even murder just.
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
> --------------
>
> Keith Hudson,6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
> Tel:01225 312622/444881; Fax:01225 447727; E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> ________________________________________________________________________
