On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 10:01 PM, joseph berg <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 9:04 AM, William Conger > <[email protected]>wrote: > >> America has come to despise the old fashioned sense of morality and >> ethics, the >> real and visible hand, when it comes to the implementation of capitalist >> economics. Now it's proper to only follow the money, care about the money, >> ignore values that any society needs, and claim that unfettered >> self-interest is >> the only true and impartial way to manage wealth. The Founding Fathers >> valued >> Virtue as the highest good. For them it meant self-deprecation and >> service for >> the greater good: putting the other fellow's need above self-interest. >> Some >> actually tried to follow that principle and they certainly framed a >> Constitution >> that aimed at embodying it. >> >> What people need to do in my opinion is to recognize that their positions >> in >> life are not only due to their own diligence but also the structures the >> society >> has in place. Those structures favor inequality in both opportunity and >> condition. >> >> I'll venture that all the people on this list have enjoyed a much greater >> proportion of inequality of condition and opportunity than most >> Americans. Our >> duty is to help create greater equality of opportunity for those who >> don't yet >> have their proper share and then assure them more and more improvement in >> their >> conditions. > > > > But what about those who the better they are treated (the more > opportunities they are given), the worse they become (e.g., the more > problems they create for not only others but also for themselves, the worse > they become)? > > I've certainly met a lot of people like that. > > Something tells me that the truly elite can be performance-oriented, > but everyone else should be trained to be more compliance-oriented if only > to keep themselves out of trouble. > In regards to my above comment, I would like to address the following which I've recently posted: 1) "...Society, once freed from the burden of merely existing, begins to focus more on the irrelevant minutiae of life?" 2) "...Is there a redemptive purpose in performing the monotonous, uncomplicated task? Or is the meaning of life reserved for only those who pursue the artificial, created cerebral exercises of modern civilization?" If the "burden of merely existing" consists of "performing...monotonous, uncomplicated task[s]," then, "once freed from [that] burden," rather than beginning "to focus more on the ireelevant minutiae of life" or starting to "pursue the artificial, created cerebral exercises of modern civilization," don't a lot of people's misguided efforts tend to start watering and even fertilizing the seeds of self-destruction? Or have my experiences made me too cynical?
