At 22:28 30/07/2003 -0400, you wrote:[snip]
KH To live longer is an even stronger instinct than keeping up with the Joneses.
AC Maybe living longer than the Jones is the new status good.
But of course! Arthur has put his finger on it precisely. However, I must claim joint-ownership of this insight . . .
. . . because, just before I woke up this morning, I had been dreaming of the Egyptian Pharoahs and their pyramids -- of the vast treasures, food, household goods, relatives, servants and others who were buried with them inside -- supposedly to serve them in the afterlife. As I dressed I thought also of the incredible tombs of the Chinese Emperors of similar periods in their civilisation when they were buried alongside the loveliest concubines and indescribable wealth, of the English Bronze Age king buried at Sutton Hoo in his ship with his richest goods and ornaments, of the princes and princesses of Mongolia buried with their best horses and beautiful accoutrements. There must have been thousands of such instances when big kings and little kings were buried in splendour throughout Eurasia in respective civilisations and smaller-scale principalities.
Of course, these ancient chieftains didn't really think that they were physically going to live forever!
Are we really sure of this? Of course I would like to believe
that the ancient kings were ancient spin doctors who didn't believe
their own press ("religion not only is now but was in 3000BCE
the opiate of the masses...")....But maybe they *did* believe, although in a form of experience which we no longer have -- Julian Jaynes' "bicameral mind" in which what we might call "the voice of conscience" was experienced as the voices of the gods.
Now, what "payoff" am I looking for from this? Well, perhaps in a future in which humanity is reborn in philosophy (Husserl), the form of experience in which some persons (bosses, teachers, etc.) experience other persons as *objects* (employees, stuents, etc.) will be as foreign to these persons-of-a-better-future as obeying the voices of the gods is foreign to us. (We have never yet really been modern.)
Yes, but I know: Any person who experiments with exercises to expand their imaginative horizon risks suffering Admiral Poindexter's fate. Some things must remain unthinkable (at least until they unimaginably(sic) befall us..)....
\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/
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