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Posted by: Virgil K. Saari
Date posted: Sat Apr 14 7:41:25 2001
Subject: On Freedom and for the Children
Message:
authority. In The American Prospect an review of Mr. Alan Wolfe's Moral Freedom for all save the children who get authority still...but an authority of no great importance, something to grow out of like small tennis shoes.

Posted by:Chris Loyd '82 (Chris Loyd '82 )

Date posted: Sat Apr 14 9:16:07 2001
Subject: F
Message:
Forgive me if I stereotype, but isn't American Prospect quite liberal for you, Mr. Saari?
No matter, as the review was quite good. I do wonder, if today's morals need more "depthness" and "structure", whose and what morals shall be imposed? You Boomers will fight it out (as you're good at that).

Posted by: Virgil K. Saari
Date posted: Sat Apr 14 11:33:52 2001
Subject: Set My Limits,
Message:
Mr. Loyd. What can read, cite, etc. to help you maintain your world view of what is Progressive and what is not. As a conservative who acknowledges Authority, I would certainly bow to yours when it comes to such limits. HTH

Posted by: Eric Meece
Date posted: Sun Apr 15 23:37:57 2001
Subject: sorry to nit-pick, but
Message:
That seceed, Bob.

Posted by:Bob Butler (Bob Butler )

Company/Organization:Polyticks
Date posted: Wed Apr 18 6:06:20 2001
Subject: Nit Pick Wars!
Message:

MS Word?s spell checker rejects ?seceed?. Did you mean ?seceded? or ?secede?? The words are clearly of the same base with identical meaning as success. A state that has seceded has success. A state that has not seceded is a failure. :wink:

Posted by: Eric Meece
Date posted: Wed Apr 18 22:53:15 2001
Subject: I secede from the Nit Pickers
Message:
Yes that is correcte; secede.

I'm glad we're not running for office.
Eric

Posted by: Jenny Genser the Grammarian
Date posted: Thu Apr 19 11:30:14 2001
Subject: Success
Message:
Can you succeed at seceding? I bet everyone's spell checker will take "succeed" and "secede".

Posted by: Virgil K. Saari
Date posted: Mon Jun 18 19:02:40 2001
Subject: Born that way
Message:
Conservatives are born and not made say scientists in the Great White North. HTH

Posted by: Virgil K. Saari (a minder)
Date posted: Mon Jun 25 15:21:55 2001
Subject: The Brainers vs. the Minders
Message:
Some thoughts by Mr. Stanley Kurtz at National Review Online of another Culture War- posted 25 June 2001.

No Brainer is he; nor I. Is this the ? for the next Crisis? HTH

In Peace In Our Time Mathew Melko commented that a certain outlook, a generalized way of thinking, will dominate an era of Western history. Like Newtonian physics, the older outlook was cut and dried, somewhat mechanical. The older outlook gave rise to the age of Enlightenment and persisted to WWII. "This earlier outlook developed in the time of Newton and reached its culmination in Darwin. ..This outlook is concerned with the reality of things, with a set of absolutes or basics from which development took place. The development was important, even more important than the things: man had the capacity to utilize his knowledge and make things better...that progress is essentially additive." Reality is sequential, rather like a series of novels forming a sequence.

Quoting Melko:

"Every so often a paradign becomes exhausted or loses its power for some other reason and a new paradign is sought. This period of discovery is a transformative one. When the new paradign is found , a new 'normal' period of creative development takes place. The paradign is likely to affect much more than the scientific world, because all the best minds of an epoch will be attuned to the same cultural situation. The most recent Western paradign to be adopted came into being around the turn of the century. It included a series of ideas having to do with relativism and indeterminacy associated with Einstein and Planck, but of course there was a whole climate out of which these ideas emerged. Burckhardt foreshadowed it in his emphasis on the separate identiity and value of each society, which anticipated the development of the relativistic science of anthropology. Freud reenforced it by introducing theories of personality that featured immensely complex variable, inversions, displacements and symbolic substitutes in which almost nothing was what it appeared to be. What all these approaches had in common was that no element was seen as an absolute, but always in relation to other elements; and as perspectives change, the elements changed.
" Let us call this way of seeing the 'relational outlook.' "

This outlook is more concerned with systems, and systems of systems, than with individual things. Instead of absolutes or basics, one's perspective can change depending on where you are or what you are looking at-and things need not be sequential.

"...and while the relational outlook is unique to Western history, parallel outlooks may be found elsewhere, especially in East Asian civilization."

Thanks for posting this Tim. BTW that should be "paradigm."

Relational does not necessarily mean relativist.

I think inter-relationship and connectedness is the heart of the new paradigm. The idea of isolated things is what went out with Newton. Lots to think about though. I think the idea of unconscious things is also on the way out. Everything is related to consciousness.

Remember the same period circa 1900 is also when Europe discovered it could no longer dominate the world, and the interconnectedness among all peoples has been the inexorable trend ever since, as the global village develops. But I know you have some problems with this, as indeed there are. We want the new global culture to respect differences, not swallow them up in a corporate monoculture. Let's hope that happens, but we'll have to resist the dominant trend being pushed by the Bush types.

Melko believes that outlooks tend to change as one period is terminated by a crisis-such as a major war.

Melko tends to attribute the adoption of a new paradigm to older generations dying off and being replaced by a younger generation who had been taught the new paradigm. He believes that the Relational paradigm became dominant about 1980.

He regards WWII as a crisis after which the new paradigm took root-a younger generation had come of age. "It might include some persons born as early as 1925 since such a person would be only 20 at the end of World War II and might not have actively participated in it, but might have been sensitive to emerging relational approaches."

It has certainly occurred to me that this outlook would have a particularly strong appeal to a young Adaptive generation. It speaks of complexity and nuances.

"A combination of improved communications, open tolerance and the relational outlook makes the present period particularly inclined towards cosmopolitanism."

Melko has divided Western history since the Renaissance into periods of relative peace, each tending towards its own dominant outlook: the thirteen decade long Age of the Reformation(1485-1618), the fourteen decade long Age of the Baroque(1648-1789), the ten decade long Victorian Age (1815-1914), and the Present Age (1945-).

Change would accumulate over the decades. Somewhat like pressure building up at a fault line until a major earthquake shatters the peace and quiet. The Age of the Reformation was terminated by the 30 Years War, the Age of the Baroque ended with the Napoleonic wars, and the Victorian ended with the World Wars.

Suppose we are lucky and the Millenial Saeculum somehow avoids a major Crisis war? The rhythm described by Melko suggests that the West could enjoy a relative peace-after 1945-lasting perhaps around fourteen decades. If the saeculum has indeed shortened to seventy-odd years, then our era may last two saeculae: the Millenial Saeculum and the next one. Then our era may terminate with a severe Crisis around the dawn of the 22nd century.

Suppose that the Crisis-after-ours is severe yet resolved with reasonable success? Perhaps an Adaptive generation will come of age carrying the outlook of a new era.

Actually, Sorokin speculated that-as an absolutist religous outlook becomes ever more remote in time-a secular world view would become ever more relativistic. And he saw the old worldly world view exhausting itself in the late 19th century. But the relativism that arose-resulting is the "relational" outlook of Melko and the cosmopolitanism of our Quasi-Hellenistic age-meant quantum leaps in the physical sciences. Einstein and Relativity, E=MC squared, the God like power of nuclear energy in the hands of meer motrals (and a spectacular if horific finale to the last Crisis). Instead of collapsing, secular society was spurred onto further worldly achievement. The shift to a religious world view apparently started with the Traditionals during the Gilded Age-but this was when the industrial revolution really took off. The Traditionals were to include half the population, but eventually shrank till they plus the Cultural Creatives together still included only half the population. The thing is most of history is about pre-industrial societies. Industrial societies may well have potentials-opportunities-denied to preindustrial society. So perhaps cycles identified in pre-industrial societies cannot be expected to manifest in industrialized society-unless they have been demonstrated to continue to this day, as in the case of the saeculum.

Here's a fun test to help you determine where you will spend the Hereafter.
Mine came up much better than I thought. I'm going to Purgatory.
If anyone here has read Dante's Inferno, the worst sins are greed and treachery.

http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-test.mv

Here's a fun test to help you determine where you will spend the Hereafter.
Mine came up much better than I thought. I'm going to Purgatory.
If anyone here has read Dante's Inferno, the worst sins are greed and treachery.

http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-test.mv

Here's a fun test to help you determine where you will spend the Hereafter.
Mine came up much better than I thought. I'm going to Purgatory.
If anyone here has read Dante's Inferno, the worst sins are greed and treachery.

http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-test.mv

Originally Posted by Xoomer

Here's a fun test to help you determine where you will spend the Hereafter.
Mine came up much better than I thought. I'm going to Purgatory.
If anyone here has read Dante's Inferno, the worst sins are greed and treachery.

http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-test.mv

I'm in Limbo!

Originally Posted by Xoomer

Here's a fun test to help you determine where you will spend the Hereafter.
Mine came up much better than I thought. I'm going to Purgatory.
If anyone here has read Dante's Inferno, the worst sins are greed and treachery.

http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-test.mv

I'm in Limbo!

Originally Posted by Xoomer

Here's a fun test to help you determine where you will spend the Hereafter.
Mine came up much better than I thought. I'm going to Purgatory.
If anyone here has read Dante's Inferno, the worst sins are greed and treachery.

http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-test.mv

I'm in Limbo!

Originally Posted by Kiff 1961

Originally Posted by Xoomer

Here's a fun test to help you determine where you will spend the Hereafter.
Mine came up much better than I thought. I'm going to Purgatory.
If anyone here has read Dante's Inferno, the worst sins are greed and treachery.

http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-test.mv

I'm in Limbo!

Then let us Limbo together, m'dear. :wink: (Though it is nice to be called "virtuous"...)

Charon ushers you across the river Acheron, and you find yourself upon the brink of grief's abysmal valley. You are in Limbo, a place of sorrow without torment. You encounter a seven-walled castle, and within those walls you find rolling fresh meadows illuminated by the light of reason, whereabout many shades dwell. These are the virtuous pagans, the great philosophers and authors, unbaptised children, and others unfit to enter the kingdom of heaven. You share company with Caesar, Homer, Virgil, Socrates, and Aristotle. There is no punishment here, and the atmosphere is peaceful, yet sad.

Good company, nice digs, pleasant atmosphere. Ex-cellent.