01-13-2019, 10:10 AM
(01-13-2019, 05:06 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:(01-12-2019, 04:49 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(01-12-2019, 11:08 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: Dependence on large-scale organisations like states and corporations is the root of the problem. We have to either go back to more a natural way of life, like the Amish did, or find a way for high tech to be usable in independent small scale communities.
The Amish way of life is incompatible with giant cities, let alone high technology, meaning anything more advanced than railroads and bicycles. An education beyond junior high is worthless in their world.
Simple living is more attractive than giant cities and swotting pages full of equations. This is the way Nature meant for us.
Some of us could not so simplify our lives. Some of us are hooked on vehicular mobility, instant communications, and intellectual indulgence. I am satisfied that the economic elites of 140 years ago were enjoying much that we do now, if in different forms. They enjoyed live theater instead of the cinema. They were perfectly happy to listen to opera or the symphony in a concert hall or opera house -- or heard organ music on a live orchestra. A recording is all that is available now of Artur Rubinstein (deceased) playing the piano in performance with the Chicago Symphony under the direction of Fritz Reiner (also deceased), and a video is the only way of watching Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn (both deceased) under the direction of Howard Hawks (also deceased) in the 1939 screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby. Maybe most of us would be wise to not collect clutter and to divest ourselves of what we have accumulated; most of us will end up sharing a room with someone similarly helpless in a nursing home. The elites were enjoying live music and theater too expensive for the proles.
Without radio and television, the Old Order Amish are spared much of the cultural schlock that many of us have found objectionable. The Old Order Amish are effectively also denied any opportunity to enjoy much of the great creative achievements of our world.
Some people see a beauty not so obvious to most people in "swotting through pages of equations". Many people have had an obsession with solving Fermat's Last Theorem, which proves that
a^n + b^n = c^n
has no integer solutions for non-zero a, b, and c and n>2. We of course have a solution c for every a and b if n = 1 (thus 5 + 12 = 17) and infinitely many for n = 2 (thus 5^2 + 12^2 = 13^2, because 25 + 144 = 169). This seems self-evident without a proof, but the mathematics of the proof is beyond me. It was a mystery for 358 years.
I try to make simplicity out of complexity, but that can itself be a complicated effort. But simplicity without truth, and worse, without joy, is either dishonest or mad. The intellectual basis of Marxism (that capitalism is corrupt, cruel, inequitable, and dehumanizing as a consequence of the drive for profit -- and anything corrupt, cruel, inequitable, and dehumanizing merits overthrow) is something that any overworked and underpaid worker of slight education can understand easily. Maybe capitalists can save themselves from being sent before firing squads by complicating life with consumerism, paid vacations, pensions, and tax-supported free public education.
If I must choose between simplicity and happiness I wi9ll choose happiness.
I am not convinced that the old ways were simpler. Feudal economics, with all the rights of lords and duties of peasants, was far more complicated than the free-enterprise system that came to dominate the world in the Age of Enlightenment. At the most blatant, the world is far simpler without 'slave codes' that established the perverse relationship between master and slave. This said, if I am ever asked to give youth advice, it is to not accumulate stuff and to not tie themselves to heavy personal debt (the two now go together) that keeps them from enjoying what makes life meaningful. Maybe the ultimate wisdom is to keep no more than one can transport in a suitcase so that one can travel easily and witness the best. We can all rent or borrow anything, and the technological wonders of our time allow us cell phones and notebook computers that allow us access to great art, literature, and music.
The fine china that my parents bought for me as an intended heirloom? I have never gotten a chance to use it. The fine china that they have in a pantry in the house that they used to have? I would love to sell it and the pantry in which it sits so that I could take an enriching journey.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.