Carrol Cox wrote: > In this case, I really don't think you can defeat "how things are" by > clarifying vocabulary. That is, I think we have to let the word "growth" > retain the meaning it has in 'standard' usage, which means growth in > gdp, regardless of human desirability of the product that grows. You > would o best to select some different word or words for "growth in > human welfare." Let the WSJ have the word "growth," and learn to attack > growth as such while contrasting it with (say), "human well-being" or > something like that. Growth is bad bad bad and you can't define it out > of existence.
So the task of "interpreting the world" is completely subordinate to "changing it"?? I, for one, do not think that I totally and correctly understand capitalism and the world. Thus, I believe that it's useful to clarify thinking and to try to understand exactly what my peers are talking about so that I can learn from them. It's true that the official media, etc., define "growth" as "per capita GDP growth." But it's worthwhile to point out that they make that definition. People should _know_ that these folks make this kind of illogical conflation. Then they can understand that there may be other kinds of "growth" (e.g., of human well-being) or at least a kind of economy that does not use the market as the measure of all things and can eschew the kind of growth that is measured using GDP-type concepts. It might even be something that does not involve any kind of growth at all, at least for the rich countries (cf. William Morris' utopia in NEWS FROM NOWHERE). But just letting the official media determine the meaning of words seems to be nothing but an example of fatalism. And if we're to be fatalistic, why worry about changing the world at all? heck, eat, drink, & be merry, for tomorrow we shall die. Pass the beer nuts! -- Jim Devine / "If heart-aches were commercials, we'd all be on TV." -- John Prine _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
