On 8/17/07, ann li <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I was intrigued by the strategic objectives statement of CCU beyond this > charge: "Impact our culture in support of traditional family values, > sanctity of life, compassion for the poor, Biblical view of human > nature, limited government, personal freedom, free markets, natural law, > original intent of constitution and Western civilization;" > > Further down it says: "Debunk "spent ideas" and those who traffic in > them;" http://www.ccu.edu/welcome/objectives.asp > > The end of this statement using the phrase "spent ideas" seems to get > quoted mainly by the right. Does anyone know the source of this? I don't > have a copy of Fukuyama's End of History, and perhaps the path is there. > > Perhaps CCU was parroting this quote: "The neoconservative agenda is a > particular threat to liberty perhaps greater than the ideologically > spent ideas of left-liberalism" > http://www.cato.org/dailys/07-09-03.html, but I think it must have a > more interesting history, since some spent ideas can resemble spent > materials, and as toxic waste, have longer half-lives.
does this mean you can also use them to blow things up? perhaps copies of Capital should have a warning label: "Toxic: handle with care." on the other hand, when i saw your subject line, i thought of guattari's business about technology and how tools get used for different things than they wre designed for, and tools that seem to have outlived their usefulness might at some later time be rediscovered and found to be useful for some other purpose. ideas also have contexts (which we might call "environments"); ideas also evolve and go extinct (i suppose). and maybe if an idea hangs on long enough in a hostile world, as can happen when an idea is articulated in print, or even digitally (and this not-quite-yet discussion is starting to intersect with an ongoing discussion on nettime), it can find that it has a new, maybe even better niche to occupy than when it first appeared in the world. now i'm reminded of a recent lbo-talk thread on science, in which one participant noted that it took two millennia+ for the old greek atomists' theories to be found, well, something like true. meanwhile, the idea of a big father in the sky can't seem to be got rid of. i guess the half-life there is really, really, really long. but anyway i like the metaphors at play here. j
