Recently, I was reading a book called The End of Education by Neil Postman
(1996 Vintage Books). The title can be taken two ways, as education is
"dead" or as the goal of education. That's all beside the point, I guess,
but in the book Postman makes his case for a handful of narratives (meaning
paradigms, foundations of exploration, etc.; a narrative in this context
might even be considered a chosen a priori assumption).  One narrative
struck me as _very_ appropos to veg-raw--the one he called "the fallen
angel". It is so lovely that I am going to quote it at length. ((Note that
I don't particularly believe there ever was a golden age of human
prehistory, but that it doesn't really matter in my enjoyment of (or the
possible utility of) the narrative.))

So...feeling a bit Ombodhi-ish (a good way to feel!)... here she be:

The Fallen Angel--Postman's words

"The story as it is told in various places and forms is essentially a
religious idea, and I trust that this fact, by itself, will turn no one
away. Most serious narratives are rooted in a spiritual or metaphysical
idea, even those narratives--inductive science, for example--that are
suspicious of metaphysics. In fact, as I shall have occasion to say in a
moment, science is more committed to the story of the fallen angel than any
other system of belief.

This is the story: If perfection is to be found anyplace in the universe,
it is assumed to exist in God or gods. There may have been a time when
human beings were perfect, but at some point, for various reasons, their
powers were diminished, so that they must live forever in a state of
imperfect understanding. Indeed, for us to believe that we are god-like, or
perfect, is among the most serious sins of which we are capable. The Greeks
called the sin "hubris". The Christians call it "pride". Scientists call it
"dogmatism".

The major theme of the story is that human beings make mistakes. We can
scarcely let an hour go by without making one....That we may be mistaken,
and probably are, is the meaning of the "fall" in the fallen angels. The
meaning of the "angel" is that we are capable of correcting our mistakes,
provided we proceed without hubris, pride or dogmatism; provided that we
accept our cosmic status as the error-prone species. Therein lies the
possibility of our redemption: Knowing that we do not know and can not know
the whole truth, we may move toward it inch by inch discarding what we know
to be false. And then watch the truth move further and further away. It is
a sad story, to be sure; its melancholy poignancy is captured in the myth
of Sisyphis, the story of Job, and scores of other tales the world over. It
is a noble story, as well, and a funny one, its humor expressed in the wise
Yiddish saying, Man tracht un Got lacht ('Man thinks and God laughs'). The
saying tells us exactly where we stand....

The most explicit and sophisticated example of how this narrative improves
the human condition is, of course, science. This would hardly be worth
noting except for the fact that in the popular mind, and certainly in
school, science is thought to be something other than a method for
correcting mistakes...

<snip more stuff about science and a description of Bronowski's TV series
called 'The Ascent of Man' which is what he is referring to in the next
paragraph:>

At the end, and after having reviewed the entire history of humanity's
struggle to discover knowledge, Bronowski offers a single lesson: We must
cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge. How to do this, is the
question. A course in "critical thinking" is surely not an answer. An
increase in the number of science courses is even less of an answer. The
Germans once had the most rigorous science program in the world, and
produced true-believing Nazis. The Russians, later, were almost a match,
and produced true-believing Communists. The quest for certainty, for
absolute authority, cannot be stayed by courses or curriculum
afterthoughts. But suppose the purpose of school was to cure the itch for
absolute knowledge. Suppose we took seriously the idea that we are
dangerous to ourselves and others when we aspire to the knowledge of the
gods. What then?"

Cheers,
Kirt