Hello Mike:
I agree. A Christian Pastor once said to me - If I'm in control of
everything where does that leave God? This Pastor was speaking to me about
her work with a person she knew who was a control freak/eating disordered
perfectionist who had reached her bottom. Even though I don't believe in an
intervening God, this comment struck me as wise. It lead me to my beliefs
about having faith in the universe to sort itself out. A premise in my book
is that we have seen an acceleration of our misguided attempts to manage the
universe in the last one hundred years and it has brought us to disaster.
David Brooks wrote about European Technocrats in this morning's in the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/18/opinion/brooks-the-technocratic-nightmare.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212
Really, isn't being enamored with our own greatness a state of
reflection that proceeds from an uncritical view of our situation? We
have these (depending on your view) god-given or evolutionary
abilities that allow us to create and improve, and it would be
horrifically wasteful to not utilize them. Of course, I don't
necessarily agree with the utilitarian belief that happiness is the
end-goal, either. I still think there has to be some ultimate
satisfaction that exists beyond happiness, for when we finally work up
to our potential both as individuals and a society.
On Nov 17, 7:02 am, "Kevin Kervick" <[email protected]> wrote:
I think this speaks to man's controlling instinct, and instinct that must
be
balanced by a reverence for mystery and awe. We Americans have become
enamored with our own greatness, a misguided belief that we can study,
design, predict, and manage our way to happiness.
We have input but the Universe continues to do what it does, in spite of
us.
Kevin
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/16/europe-technocrat...
> Too long to post the whole thing, but here's a snip:
> "Yes, there's no harm in saying it: technocracy once used to be a big
> idea for the international left. In 1930s America, for instance, it
> wasn't a term of abuse but the programme for a new social utopia. In
> the middle of the Great Depression, an emergent technocratic movement
> led by engineers and dissident economists such as Thorstein Veblen and
> Howard Scott proposed that populist politicians simply weren't capable
> to fix the system: "The maladministration and chaos imposed upon the
> industrial mechanism by arbitrary rule of extraneous interest has
> reached such a point that many technicians feel the urgent need of
> confederating their forces in a program of industrial co-ordination
> based, not on belief, but exact knowledge," thundered a pamphlet by
> the Technical Alliance.
> The American technocratic movement was short-lived, not least because
> the flaws in its thinking were so apparent: their belief that anyone
> could ever be completely apolitical in their decision-making now
> strikes us as naive. No one remembers the technocrats' "Plan of
> Plenty", and everybody remembers Roosevelt's New Deal.
> Over the course of the next few decades, technocracy got a dodgy rep.
> Veneration of industrial progress and unchecked rule by bureaucrats
> became a trademark of totalitarian regimes in Nazi Germany and Soviet
> Russia. George Orwell describes technocracy as a precursor to fascism.
> What was Adolf Eichmann if not a technocrat?
> Some might say, though, that technocratic ideals and practices never
> really went away. Henry Elsner's critical account of the movement
> floats the idea that the New Deal, with its embracing of social
> engineering, was more of a synthesis of technocratic and democratic
> ideals than an alternative."
> My response:
> I guess this reflects that whole initial gray zone between the
> precursors to both centrism and fascism.
> So Europe is relying on technocrats to resolve their gigantic
> financial problems...
> I think the author lays in a good point in noting that technocracy led
> the transition from communist authoritarianism to democracy in eastern
> Europe, which really weakens any argument that technocracy signals a
> move toward extreme rightist or leftist governance. But those
> arguments about moving definitively leftward boil down to the Far
> Right not wanting anything so large as to require the services of a
> technocrat, making technocracy a symptom of a larger problem to the
> hardcore right, naturally causing the lefties to look for the same
> beacon.
> It breaks down that, when you have a crisis, you want the most
> competent people addressing the problem, rather than those with a
> vested interest in seeing through a result that may not be the most
> optimal solution. Certainly, as the article states, we remember
> Roosevelt's New Deal, but don't remember Plan of Plenty. But that's a
> good thing sometimes. Do great things, solve the problem, don't take
> credit, and move on. Just call it humble meritocracy.
> I don't wholesale support or oppose anything here yet, though. There
> is still the concern that technocrats technically operate without
> direct consent of the public, but a possible answer to that concern is
> that technocracy is an important built-in failsafe mechanism in a
> democracy that protects itself from destruction. Anyway, I need to
> read into this a little more.
> --
> Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
> <[email protected]>
> Google Group:http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
> Radical Centrism website and blog:http://RadicalCentrism.org
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
