Time to go after the real shock jocks...
From LRC
Though I find her pseudo-defense of Imus to be more ridiculous than apalling, Lila Rajiva's point about the real shock jocks, the ones who actually have influence on policy in Washington and elsewhere, is well taken.
Some examples:
"I've been to Africa three times. All right? You can't bring Western reasoning into the culture. The same way ( Read more... )
I think if people could be better than they are, they already would be. Humans don't have a natural craving for liberty; but there are naturally exceptions to the rule, and those of us who are the exceptions didn't need special help to be who we are. We're already here! I think some of us make the mistake of assuming everyone else has the same capacities, the same tendencies, but somehow they've been sabotaged. They need art, or to be rescued by enlightened law makers, or to be raised right. These things may make dents in the way traits are expressed, but they can't get rid of the traits, or make new ones. The movies make humans out to be these creatures who have a deep in the bone craving for freedom. It's a heinous error. Few things are farther from the truth. This thing that some of us have is a gene that is sprinkled around here and there and is entirely missing in about 60 or 70% of humanity - such that if you even offer it to them they resent you for it. They don't want it. They want slavery. They don't want to be uncomfortable, they don't want to be whipped, they want a reasonable cap placed on the amount of personal abuse they think they're getting from their masters, but you can't offer them anything other than slavery.
I think the novel, "Animal Farm" is a description of the human condition. It's the nature of the beast. They can't be any other way. To change things you'd have to be a God and remove the unscrupulous smart pigs from the game board, or decrease the innocence of the animals on the farm, which would require changing their dna. Foisting poems and art or revolution on them in the hopes of getting them to change their minds is like making kids with Down Syndrome watch an artsy movie with the aim of inspiring them to read more. It just isn't going to happen. The wet ware isn't there. Give people civil rights, they oppress themselves some other way (or delight in oppressing someone else). Give them libraries, they drop their kids off at school to have the love of reading torn from them. Give them freedom and they let a banker tell them that being able to drive and take out a loan means they're free.
The only reason human life is better now than in the Middle Ages and the ancient world is because of technology. Someone invented a farming tool and that gave some ppl. free time to do astronomy and write laws and count money. Someone invented paper and ink and the printing press and boats and lending libraries and solid state electronics and central heating and plumbing... But the few rule the many. Humans can't be any other way. There's nothing here to redeem. I'm with Francis Crick; change the dna or "Animal Farm" will be the reality on Earth, forever.
I'm just thankful to live in a time when humans have central heating and plumbing and toilet paper and showers and Ibuprofen. The rest of it I just have to cop a Blackadder to in order to live in the middle of the absurdity.
So, how was YOUR day!?
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Well, obviously, you and I have a fundamental disagreement on this matter. And, quite frankly, I do not recall your being this pessimistic when we were friends down here, all those many years ago. What-in-the-hell happened to you there in South Bend?
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I'll change my mind in a nano-second upon being shown a single tiny peice of evidence that a craving for liberty is a common human trait.
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Part of it could be that it's easy on the internet to talk past each other.
That could very well be the case. Which brings to mind a question I asked some time back: when are you going to come down to B-ton, so's we can get a pint at the Irish Lion, and have this conversation in person?
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