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SHINING_WAFFLES
April 24, 2011
Dreyfus and Kelly,
"All Things ALL_THINGS_SHINING
Shining", p. 220:
[ref]
"We've seen already that without the ecstatic
form of the sacred our world would be a poorer
place. After all, crowds can rise up as one to
change the mood of a culture in positive and Wow: change can
transformative ways; without the phenomenon of be transformative!
_physis_ such radical, paradigm-shifting changes
would never occur. We need to find a way,
therefore, to skillfully appropriate the
phenomenon of _physis_, to bring out this form of
the sacred at its best. We cannot rest content
with the safe but lazy, rational approach of
rejecting _physis_ altogether."
"A new kind of courage is required for this
path. In place of the Kantian courage to A_FAMILIAR_DOOM
resist the madness of crowds, we need the
courage to leap in and experience it.
Sometimes, as with Martin Luther King on the
Mall, things will turn out extraordinarily
well: paradigms will shift and the culture
will come to understand itself in new and
more shining and meaningful ways. Sometimes,
by contrast, one dances with the devil. Like
Ishmael being drawn into the contagious mood
of Ahab's monomaniacal quest, one can only
survive its fiery darkness if one learns by Could it be that the
experience the dangerous world it reveals. authors might be trying
Only by having been taking over by the to say that humanity had
fanatical leader's totalizing rhetoric, and to go through it's Hitler
experienced the dangerous and devastating phase, in order for all
consequences it has, does one learn to of us to collectively
discriminate between leaders worth following learn about the Hitler
and those upon whom one must turn one's syndrome?
back."
But if you look at what
"Developing any skill necessarily involves they were saying a page
risk. ... one does not become a master or two before this, it
without taking chances and learning from appears that they're
the consequence's of one's mistakes." really talking about
developing your personal
ability to distinguish
ineffable qualities.
They really are saying
that all of us have to go
through our Hitler-phase
in order to develop the
skill we need to dodge
Hitlers.
You can't, you know,
just *read books*
about it, and try to
learn from *other*
people's experience.
I find it a little difficult to unravel
what they think they're saying here.
Is the point that there was no way to
identify the Hitler syndrome before But you know,
Hitler existed, or are they insisting *Some* people
that there's no way, even now, to spot can apparently
a new Hitler while on the rise? see these things
coming a lot
And when they use the pronoun "one" do sooner than others
they really mean "we", all of us, all the
time, every time? If you're going to
sing the praises
Instead of saying "nature", they like to of someone, how
use the greek word "physis" (in this, a about praising the
book intended for "a general audience"). people who can get
Doesn't this amount to an assertion that these things right
what they're arguing for is "natural"? before-hand?
That would seem to be
stacking the deck a bit. PROPAGANDA_AND_EXPECTATIONS
There seems to be an
assumption that rational
thought is not "natural"
for human beings, so why
bother? QUESTION_FOR_CHOMSKY
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