- Dear Web2.0 user-centered bla bla startups: if I haven't been active for months, dont send me a weekly activity summary, it isn't endearing #
- today's reading is a late… but here goes… #
- "Where thy physical climate changes suddenly from high to low temperature … or … atmospheric pressure …the result is usually a storm. #
- When the social climate changes from preposterous social restraint of all intellect to a relative abandonment fo all social patterns, #
- the result is a hurricane of social forces. That hurricane is the history of the 20th century…November 11, 1918…the end of World War 1.. #
- ..President Woodrow Wilson belonged in both worlds,Victorian society and the new intellectual world of the 20th century: #
- the only university professor ever to be eclected president of the United States. Before Wilson'stime academicians has been peripheral #
- within the Victorian power structure…. intellectuals were not expected to run society itself. They were valued servants of society… #
- Leadership was for practical, businesslike 'men of affairs'. #
- The Victorians social system and … morality that led to World War 1 had portrayed war as an adventorous conflict between noble individuals #
- engaged in the idealistic service of their country: a kind of extended knighthood. World Wart 1 wasn't like that. #
- … The Gatling gun removed the nobility and heroism. The Victorian painters had never shown a battlefield of mu and shell holes and … #
- half a million rotting corpses… that many had been murdered in one battle alone. #
- Those who survived… felt bitter toward the society that could do that to them. They joined the faith that intellect must find some way #
- out of old Victorian 'nobility' & 'virtue' into a more sane and intelligent world. In an instant it seemed the snobish fashionable #
- Victorian social world was gone. New technology fueled the change… shufting fromagriculture to manufacturing. #
- Electrification was shifting night into day and eliminating hundreds of drudgeries. Cars and highways were changing the speed with which #
- peopledid things. Mass journalism had emerged. The mastery of all these new changes was no longer dominated by social skills. #
- ..A horse could be mastered if your resolve was firm,your disposition pleasant and fear absent.The skills required were biological & social. #
- But handling the new technology was something different. Personal biological & social qualities didn't make any difference to machines. #
- A whole population,cut loose physically by the new technology..was also cut adrift morally & psychologicallyfrom the static social patterns. #
- …No one knew what to do about the lostness… people raced from one fad to another… a chaos of social patterns ONLY. #
- The events that excited people in the 20's were events that dramatized the new dominance of intellect over society… #
- abstract art, discordant music, Freudian psychoanalysis…contempt for alcohol prohibition…The test of what was good, of what had Quality, #
- was no longer 'Does it meet society's approval?' but 'Does it meet the approval of out intellect?'. #
- The hurricane of social forces…was most strongly felt in Europe, particularly Germany where the effects of WWI were the most devastating. #
- Communism & socialism, programs for intellectual control over society, were confronted by..fascism a program of social control of intellect. #
- Nowhere were the intellectualsmore intense in their determination to overthrow old order. #
- Nowhere did the old order becomemore intent on finding ways to destory the excesses of the new intellectualism… #
- a conflict of levels of evolution… explains that driving force behind Hitler not as aninsane search for power but as an all consuming #
- glorification of social authority and hatred of intellectualism. His anti-Semitism…[and] communists …was fueled by anti-intellectualism. #
- In the United States … Franklin Roosevelt & the New Deal… became the center of a lesser stormbetween social and intellectual forces… #
- at the center of it all was the belief that intellectual planning by the government was necessary for society to regain its health… #
- it was also a new deal for the intellectuals of America… for the 1st time they were at the center of the planning process…were in a #
- position to give orders to AMerica's finest and oldest and wealthiest groups. #
- …Suddenly, before the old Victorians' eyes, a whole new social caste…of intellectual Brahmins,was being created above their own military #
- and economic castes…Social snobbery was being replaced with intellectual snobbery…academic foundations were taking over the… country. #
- … It was like the replacement of Indiansby pioneers… too bad for the Indians but it was inevitable form of progress… #
- …from the idea that society is man's highest achievement, the 20th century moved to the idea that intellect is man's highest achievement. #
- …The Ph.D. was on its way to becoming the ultimate social status symbol…academic fields were expanding into new undreamed-of territories #
- …among the most rapidly expanding was… anthropology… [and it's] unassailable 'objectivity' had some very partisan cultural roots… #
- it had been a political tool with which to defeat the Victorian's and their system of social values. #
- ..The Victorians…presumed all primitive societies were early forms of "Society" itself & were trying to grow into a complete #
- 'civilization' like that of Victorian England. The relativists… stated that there is no empirical scientific evidence for a 'Society' #
- toward which all primitive societies are heading…[they] virtually wiped out the credibility of the older Victorian evolutionsists and #
- gave to anthropology a shape it has had ever since… presented as a victory of scientific objectivity over unscientific prejudice, but the #
- Metaphysics ofQuality says deeper issues were involved…intellect could now pass judgment on all forms of social custom… #
- When peopleasked, 'If no culture, including a Victorian culture, can say what is right and what is wron, then how can we ever know what is #
- right and what is wrong?' the answer was, 'that's easy.Intellectuals will tell you… what they say is absolute… because intellectuals #
- follow science,which is objective.An objective observer does not have relative opinions because he is nowhere within the world he observes'. #
- … An American anthropologist could no more embrace nonobjectivity thatn a Stalinist bureaucrat could play the stock market. #
- … the Metaphysics of Quality supports this dominance of intellect over society. It says intellect is a …more moral level than society. #
- But having said this,the Metaphysics of Quality goes on to say that science, the intellectual pattern that has been appointed to take over #
- society, has a defect in it… subject-object science has no provision for morals… is only concerned with facts. #
- Morals have no objective reality. You can look through a microscope or telescope or oscilloscope for the rest of your life and you will #
- never find a single moral. There aren't anythere. They are all in your head. They exist only in your imagination. #
- From the perspective of subject-object science, the world is a completely purposeless,valueless place. There is no point in anything. #
- Nothing is right and nothing is wrong. EVerything just functions like machinery. There is nothing morally wrong because there are no morals. #
- Now that intellect was in command of society for the 1st time in history,was this the intellectual pattern it was going 2 run society with?" #
- drinking tea from first of the season & fesh picked leaves: peppermint, spearmint, verbena & sage… heavenly! #
- "The new intellectualism of the twenties argued that if there are principles for right social conduct they are to be discovered by social #
- experiment to see what produces the greatest satisfaction … of the greatest number. For example,drink that causes car accidents or #
- loss of work or family problems is irrational…a vice. On the other hand,drinking is not irrational when it produces social… relaxation. #
- Of all the 'vices' none was more controversial than premarital and extramarital sex… It was expected that with the new application #
- of reason, sex could be handled much like other commodities without the terrible tensions and frustrations of social repression… #
- …throught this century we have seen over and over again, that intellectuals weren't blaming crimeonman's biological nature bu on the #
- social patterns that had repressed this biological nature…[believing] that this would be the cure of man's criminal tendencies… #
- intellectuals became excited about anthropology in the hope that the field would provide facts upon which to base new scientific rules… #
- Here in this country, American Indians were suddenly revived as models of primitive communal virtue… 'anthros' … swarmed to huts and #
- teepees and hogans of every tribe they could find,jockeying to be in on the great treasure hunt for new information about possible new moral #
- indigenous American ways of life. This was illogical since, if subject-object science sees no morals anywhere, then no scientific study #
- of any kind is going to fill the moral void left by the overthrow of Victorians society. #
- Intellectual permisivenessand destruction of social authority are no more scientific than Victorian discipline. #
- this lapse in logic magically fit the thesis… that the American personality has two components, European and Indian. #
- The moral values that were replacing the old European Victorian ones were the moral values of American Indians: #
- kindness to children,maximum freedom, openness of speech, love of simplicity,affinity for nature. #
- Without any real awareness of where the newmorals were coming from, the whole country was moving in a direction that if felt was right. #
- The western movie was another example of this change, showing Indian values which had become cowboy values which had become 20th century #
- all-American values. Everyone knewthe cowboys of the silver screen had little to do with their actual counterparts, but it didn't matter. #
- It was the values, not the historical accuracy,that counted." #
- @nivertech please remove me from your 'Israel' list #
- @gervis thank you for your attention. These are not my thoughts … I am quoting an inspiring book- I'll reveal it soon 🙂 in reply to gervis #
- @nivertech thank you very much. #
- @nivertech I know 🙂 & tags just say something about people …& good luck finding a photo of me on flickr 🙂 in reply to nivertech #
- some thoughts on making donating to WordPress plugin authors easy and effective: http://bit.ly/cBdnwd #
- @adambn thank you for the heads up on Breaking Bad, didn't know is existed,enjoying it greatly! #
- I feel so remote, that getting close hurts #
- Economics is not science http://bit.ly/bPv5Eo [ via @raymondpirouz ] #
- Firework http://bit.ly/aRM1S8 #
- @buffdesign thank you for getting back to me. do you have space/interest now? iamronen[at]iamronen[dot]com in reply to buffdesign #
- "The drift away from European social values worked all right at first, and the 1st generation of the Victorians, benefiting from ingrained #
- Victorian social habits seem to have been enormously liberated intellectually by the new freedom. But with the 2nd generation … #
- problems began to emerge. #
- Indian values are all right for an Indian style of life, but they don't work so well in a complex technological society… #
- An upbringing that allows the child to grow 'naturally' in the Indian fashion does not … guarantee the finest sort of urban adjustment. #
- …The world was no doubt in better shape intellectually and technologically but … the 'quality' of it was not good. #
- There was no way u could say why this quality was no good. U just felt it … He remembered seeing The Glass Menagerie http://bit.ly/d1laaw #
- in which one edge of the stage had an arrow shaped neon sign flashing onand off… beneath the arrow was the word 'PARADISE', also flashing #
- PARADISE> PARADISE> PARADISE>… But the Paradise was always somewhere pointed to, always somewhere else. .. #
- Paradise was always at the end of some intellectual, technological ride, but u knew that when u got there paradise wouldn't be there either. #
- … You had to be a rebel without a cause http://bit.ly/2k3Xba . The intellectuals had preempted all the causes. #
- Causes were to the 20th century intellectuals as manners had been to Victorians… They had everything figured out… #
- 'pursuit of happiness' seemed to have become like the pursuit of some scientifically created mechanical rabbit that moves ahead at whatever #
- speed it is being pursued. If you ever did catch it for a few moments it had a peculiar synthetic,technological taste that made the pursuit #
- seem senseless. #
- Everyone seemed to be guided by an 'objective', 'scientific' view of life that told each person that his essential self is his evolved #
- material body. Ideas and societies are a component of brains, not the other way around. #
- No two brains can merge physically,and therefore notwo people can ever really communicate except … [for] sending messages back and forth. #
- A scientific, intellectual culture had become a culture of millions of isolated people living and dying in … psychic solitary confinement, #
- unable to talk to one another, really, and unable to judge one another because scientifically speaking it is impossible to do so. #
- Each invididual in his cell of isolation was told that no matter how hard he tried…his whole life is that of an animal that lives & dies. #
- ..He could invent moral goals for himself, but they are just artificial inventions. Scientifically speaking he has no goals. #
- Sometime after the 20's a secret loneliness,so penetrating and so encompassing that we are only beginning to realize the extent of it, #
- descended upon the land. This scientific, psychiatric isolation and futility had become a far worse prison … than…Victorian 'virtue'. #
- They had lost some of their realness … living in some kind of movie saying … PARADISE> PARADISE> PARADISE>… " #
- progressing in ripping my CD collection… now Pearl Jam followed immediately by Peter Paul & Mary 🙂 #
- @raymondpirouz re:HTML5 – maybe there is an element of vision and inspiration that is being overlooked by technical critics? in reply to raymondpirouz #
- it's been my most difficult open-source transition: 1st time saving PSD file as GIMP XCF to continue work http://www.gimp.org/ #
- Insights courtesy of the Dalai Lama, Barack Obama & Twitter: http://bit.ly/aLBjJW #
- wading into new linux territories: using GParted to resize an existing Windows Vista partition on Dell laptop… making room for Ubuntu #
- unless you have good reason for it, avoid Ubuntu 64bit, the 32bit install makes for an easier life #
- @ennyman3 "art is not necessary" is a misapprehension I carried around 4 a long time … art gives life direction in reply to ennyman3 #
- change & clinging #
- had an emotionally painful day, now food, TV and ice-cream … and let this day come to a peaceful end #
- when they are sent out to war they are called soldiers, when they die or go missing they become boys #
- working on Yoga asana illsutrations with fresh coffee and Jeff Buckley #
- listening to "Jeff Buckley Strange Fruit" ♫ http://blip.fm/~p8p1h #
Powered by Twitter Tools