A not for profit exit is at http://www.dignitas.ch/
-----Original Message----- From: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Sunday, August 25, 2002 12:17 PM To: Ray Evans Harrell Cc: futurework Subject: Re: Angels of Death > Ray Evans Harrell wrote: > > Capitalist Presumption that growth is life, homeostasis is holding > one's own > not living and that old age is death. [snip] > The West has made the adolescent female the model for its concept of > beauty. > Why should it be surprising that they worship the same model of beauty > in > their economic system as well? [snip] Clearly, old age is not death --> not *quite*. But it's getting there. I do not find beautiful the dermatological excrescences of agedness, which are outward and visible signs of inward devolution of the vital organs. My "ideal" would be for science and technology to enable us to live forever in ever advancing knowledge and wisdom but with the bodies of 25 year old supermodels. I.e., the technological realization of the religious fantasy of Heaven. I would refer to Robert Musil's _The Man Without Qualities_ as one guidebook how we can orient ourselves to live with advanced technology in a "phronetic" way (i.e., deploying technical "rationality" in an overarching context of self-reflective cooperative social reasonableness). As Musil said: It's a shame engineers do not have more mystical experiences in the very heart of their most exacting technical work. And George Leonard would add: Maybe some do, but they have the good sense not to tell anybody so as not to lose their jobs. Have I separated the baby from the bathwater? Or am I a dupe of bourgeois propaganda? I think you would say the latter. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) <![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
