As Eve was to Adam, Shamhat was to Enkidu... And if cultural anthropology is to be believed, the feminine brain may indeed be behind language, craft, and yes... Settlement, concentration of population, the giving way of family to clan... Civilization. Old poets were wise in giving such meaning to the word "knowledge." One sort leads steadily ( Read more... )

( A few, more light-hearted examples to illustrate my argument. What is, what isn't, how what we say might mess up what we think and thence our ability to deduce what really is, et cetera and so forth. )

A long time ago, I got stumped on a meme. hedgegoth asked me five questions, and I was to ask him five questions in return. The most difficult questions were the last two and, over time and some half-dozen posts, I believe that I've answered the fourth (though an official entry is still forthcoming). The fifth remains elusive, however, and it daunts me ( Read more... )

The task of negotiating and reforming institutions is the greatest waste of thought and energy yet devised.

Were all factions dissolved, imagine what natural arrangements might be formed, what new nations, parties, faiths... families. Fraternities of nature, choice, and desire rather than inheritance, that eternal foe to merit.

It is a matter of common sense that it takes more energy to create or to repair than it does to destroy ( Read more... )

Well, there is one clear good that might come of a widespread economic crisis.

The resulting crime wave might put to rest, if only briefly, all this non-stop moralizing garbage about how society just went down hill when people stopped respecting their social betters, or started giving their kids cars in high school, or this or that development of ( Read more... )

Conflict can never be eradicated, but it can be shifted. Civil wars took place regularly in most civilizations to settle claims to the throne and, though we may frown upon such activities, they were perfectly legitimate and rational responses to a power struggle. We can all think of societies whose civil conflicts dragged on (and have dragged on ( Read more... )

Some of last night's deeper thoughts were based on the possibility (or impossibility) of achieving the great scifi utopia, where individual freedom walks side-by-side with social purpose, where the fruits of your labor are your own and where collaboration takes place not out of coercive necessity (as is the case in all extant economies to greater ( Read more... )

I studied history because of a natural compulsion. It made sense and comforted me. Then, the more sense it made, the more it hurt, so I stopped. I haven't actually applied myself to a history book for some time--now they're for reference, and I don't read them for long ( Read more... )