This is probably going to be my last submission to this list. I will be
signing off in solidarity with Tom, Howard, Brian, and Cheryl; the fact
that peoples' mailings are going through an "approval" phase either at
random or selectively hints at the same sort of "propaganda filtering"
Chomsky warns against. This would not be so bad if the list were not
advertised as being unmoderated. I think there is another mailing list
for Chomsky on Thinknet, and there is always alt.fan.noam-chomksy .
> I can't get that upset about them.[Meyers-Briggs-type tests] After all, the test itself is pretty
> harmless: you tell it that you like being around people, it returns
> "you are comfortable in social situations" and you magically feel
> like somebody understands you. It doesn't get dangerous until
> people start compiling databases and drawing erroneous conclusions,
> and as I have no power to stop people from making stupid decisions,
> I can't do anything about that before the fact either. I certainly won't
> oppose anyone's gathering information or making observations,
> even in the way of tests that generalize, although I will oppose what
> someone does with that information if their implementation is harmful.
I think newer tests that explore "alternative IQs" such as are
respresented by the faculties of empathy, intuition, and wisdom (which
seem to be ignored by traditional IQ tests -- and which are usually
ascribed as being "feminine" traits) are interesting. There is a severe
burden upon the architects of IQ barometers to insure that standards of
total egalitarianism are met, so that there is no bias against anyone
for religion, social class, ethnicity, lifestyle, etc. Of course, I
think most would agree with this.
>
> Hey, if you write a great deal of original and relevant stuff, inspired by
> your studies in Comparative Literature, then... no, then you will probably be admired,
> but still poor... maybe if you do commercials, too... never mind.
I want to use this quote as my new signature file.
>
> I think the true test is not to be found in history, but in verifiable examples
> of new pidgins and creoles, especially the ones created in a relative
> cultural vacuum, like the grammar developed by deaf children whose parents
> cannot correctly teach them.
>
On a slightly unrelated yet highly philosphical note, I've wondered how
one would explain the concept of the speed of light to a blind person,
especially someone who has been blind from birth. Light being a visual
phenomenon, a blind person will have never seen what light is, so how
could it be explained? Light and dark are one and the same for a blind
person, unless they have developed an imagination that closely resembles
our collective perception of reality as it has been historically relayed
to us from our eyes. If our eyes did not work, we would each have
distinct and separate conceptions of what reality's visual substance
was, right? Someone told me that the speed of light was how long it took
for the picture to register in your mind once you opened your eyes and
saw what was before you. If this is so, how does one describe light
speed to a blind person? "You just have to trust me, man, there *is*
light...and, given that there *is* light, it does travel...uh..."
>
> Our knowledge probably overlaps a lot, but I'd love to fill in the gaps in mine
> with any examples I've never heard of. Please, write the essay, and e-mail
> it if it's too long to post!
I'm trying to do a study in which I compare Islamic and Hindu esoteric
practices, and how similar they are. Also, I have an aborted study
theorizing on the possibility that Islam itself may have begun as a
mystical Christian sect. There is a lot of evidence for this, yet the
similarity in religions may be due as much to archetypes as the fact
that these religions all began in central to southwest Asia. Still, this
doesn't account for the fact that the Aztec Quetzlcoatl, for instance,
is eerily similar to the Christian Jesus, as is Krishna and a host of
others. Maybe I'll e-mail you some of this stuff.
Incidentally, the word for Jesus in Arabic is "Isa," and in Sanskrit,
"Isa" means "lord," though in the Scandinavian languages "Isa" means
"ice"...which points to the fact that the Jesus story is a
representation of the popular dying-and-rebirth motif, in that a god
personifying the forces of life dies in the autumn and returns in the
spring, like the crops that sustained primitive agricultural societies.
Ice, of course, formed in the barren, crop-less winter, melts into the
ground and fertilizes it until the crops re-emerge in Spring. Jesus,
similarly, supposedly died and was buried, to be resurrected in the
Spring (Easter). Thus his historic existence could be seen to parallel
the natural order.
Keep in mind I'm quite the agnostic and believe in questioning the
validity of religions. I'm just fascinated with the symbolic richness
that is inherent in most religious beliefs.
>
> Btw, I think it's sad that trumped-up Postmodernists like Dr. Jacques
> Lacan have been given credit for reviving Freud's ideas within a modern
> context, when it's obvious, as Chomsky also agrees, that most of the
> Lacan school are just verbiose and ostentatious dilletantes rather than
> actual psychologists.
Still true.
Liberty and peace -- anarchy.
Sincerely,
B. Oliver Sheppard
mailto:[log in to unmask]
--
"If it is correct, as I believe it is, that a fundamental element of
human nature is the need for creative work or creative inquiry, for free
creation without the arbitrary limiting effects of coercive
institutions, then of course it will follow that a decent society should
maximize the possibilities for this fundamental human characteristic to
be realized. Now, a federated, decentralized system of free associations
incorporating economic as well as social institutions would be what I
refer to as anarcho-syndicalism. And it seems to me that it is the
appropriate form of social organization for an advanced technological
society, in which human beings do not have to be forced into the
position of tools, of cogs in a machine. " -- Prof. Noam Chomsky, MIT
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