Terry Gilliam's take on the old taleAn interesting post from Michael Panzner, commenting on the views of derivatives expert Satyajit Das. The latter thinks we're in for a 70s-style inflationary grind, whereas Mr Panzner leans towards a 30s-style deflation.
I am reminded of Borges' short story, "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote". In this, a modern author attempts to re-produce the 16th century novel "Don Quixote" by Cervantes: not copying - writing it again exactly, but as though for the first time ever. Since Menard is writing in a different period of history, the same words have quite different meanings, implications and associations. To pen the identical lines today, spontaneously, would involve a monstrous effort. So Borges' tale is a wonderful parable about the near-impossibility of our truly understanding the mindset of the past, and how history can never be quite repeated, because the present includes a knowledge of the past that it takes for its model.
For those reasons, we'll never have the Thirties again, or the Seventies; but we might have a retro revival. And the differences may be as significant as the similarities.
Ken Kesey's bus (named "Furthur"), and part of the commercialised modern follow-up
2 comments:
This is a fascinating topic for rumination, and has several applications, IMHO.
Some 250 years ago Herder also suggested that it is effectively impossible truly to understand the past; but that it is the scholar's task to feel his way into every aspect to the maximum extent possible, to 'regenerate' that past as a whole.
I'd say there is a parallel challenge in trying to understand some of the positions we find ourselves in confrontation with in the present 'clash of cultures' - and that this might be of more iminent significance than some historical enquiries.
(not that I'm belittling the effort to predict what will happen next in the global economy, for which task all insights and pointers, from history and elsewhere, must surely be welcomed !)
Question: can we make substantial progress on these challenges without becoming moral relativists ?
Hi Nick:
I'm not entirely sure what moral relativism means. I think it's correct to say that you can't derive an "ought" from an "is", in which case (with an exception I'll come to) there is no morality at all - it's just what people like or don't like. Yes, there may be biological reasons why most of us share certain feelings about certain acts - but that's merely descriptive, not prescriptive.
Unless you postulate something that combines both "is" and "ought" - a Creator who is also the Lawgiver.
Now you certainly don't have to share that view, and being of a sceptical cast of mind I can't proclaim such a belief - nor its opposite.
There seems to be a fashion - a fad - for atheism in circles that think themselves sophisticated, and there must be a certain degree of fun in "bugging the squares" with bollocks about "embracing the dark". However, I don't think such people really follow their train of thought to its logical conclusion - as Mao did. Somebody once repeated to him the ethical principle that you should do unto others as you would wish them to do unto you, and he said it was his principle to do to others exactly what he did not wish them to do to himself. Is that where they wish to go? If not, perhaps we could have a little less preaching the darkness to the young in children's books.
Back to relativism: remember Jesus' parable about the houses built on rock and on sand. On some things, there is no compromise, because otherwise there is nothing at all. I think - I fear - that this century will see a clash, not between Christianity and Islam, but between Islam and Marxism. It's happened already in Iran - the lefty students connected with the religious right to overthrow the Shah, and then found themselves in the firing line shortly after. Libya seem to me an uncomfortable mixture of Islam and Marxism - I spent time trying to argue with Libyan students in the seventies, about Northern Ireland, of which they knew virtually nothing.
But I'm also reminded of the saying that you should remove the beam from your own eye before taking the mote out of your fellow's. If we concentrate on the moral precepts on which we agree, and defer the bloody conflict until we've made ourselves perfect according to our own rules, then perhaps the clash can be deferred forever.
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