Carl:
I watched the movie, and was with them until they got to the part about
technology saving us. It didn't really hit me why, and then I was reading
Joseph Campbell's "The Power Of Myth" with Bill Moyers, and came across the
following:
"It's what Goethe said in Faust but which Lucas [Re: George Lucas, in the
movie Star Wars] has dressed in modern idiom -- the message that technology
is not going to save us. Our computers, our tools, our machines are not
enough. We have to rely on our intuition, our true being."
That rings more true with me. Comments?
woods:
I completely agree. It's the ideas or ways that lead us away from
self-reliance in
which we need to depend on institutions to fix all our problems. It's when we
get into the mode in which we believe by over-lapping static patterns and then
more
static patterns, and more and more that we suffocate dynamic quality.
The spectrum for me is as explained in Lila in generalities. The Europeans
are more
institutionalized then U.S. Americans, and Amerindians even less.
Lila (Chapter 3) :
"Phaedrus
noticed that the division of Twain's personality fitted the cultural split
he'd
been talking about. Tom was an Eastern person with the manners of a New
Englander, much closer to Europe than to the American West, but Huck was a
Western person, closer to the Indians, forever restless, unattached,
unbelieving
in the pompousness of society, wanting more than anything else just
to be free.
Freedom.
That was the topic that would drive home this whole understanding
of Indians.
Of all the topics his slips on Indians covered, freedom was the most
important.
Of all the contributions America has made to the history of the
world, the idea
of freedom from a social hierarchy has been the greatest.
It was fought for in
the American Revolution and confirmed in the Civil War.
To this day it's still
the most powerful, compelling ideal holding the whole nation
together...
"The idea
that 'all men are created equal' is a gift to the world from the American
Indian. Europeans who settled here only transmitted it as a doctrine that they
sometimes followed and sometimes did not. The real source was someone for
whom
social equality was no mere doctrine, who had equality built into his bones.
To
him it was inconceivable that the world could be any other way. For him there
was no other way of life. That's what Ten Bears was trying to tell
them.Phaedrus thought the Indians haven't yet lost this one. They
haven't yet won it
either, he realized; the fight isn't over. It's still the
central internal conflict in America
today. It's a fault line, a discontinuity
that runs through the center of the American
cultural personality. It's
dominated American history from the beginning and continues
to be a source of
both national strength and weakness today. And as Phaedrus' studies
got deeper
and deeper he saw that it was to this conflict between European and
Indian
values, between freedom and order, that his study should be directed."
woods continues:
This passage comes to mind. I don't fully know why. But I see a heavy
reliance on
technology saving us is the same as order saving us. Regulation and socialism
too heavily
relied upon to save us suffocates dynamic quality. Suffocates freedom. It's
not that we would
need to be all freedom, but a balance can be struck where we come to our
conclusions and ways of living on our own without needing others who think they
know best how to fix everything for us. Intuition is heard in freedom. It is
a voice not lost and
suffocated by too many over-lapping static patterns.
good point Carl
woods
P.S. never have seen you here. Welcome!
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