That's an interesting comment, Gary R - but I don't agree. I don't think that
creativity is something that can or must be taught. I think that we humans are
naturally curious, exploratory and thus, creative. You can watch any young
child at play to see this, as they put together strange sandpile shapes or
figure out how to manipulate a parent to get that extra sweet.
I don't think that destruction is the default position - which it would be if
you assume that creativity only exists IF it is taught. I think that
destruction emerges out of psychological angst and anger - and - it is not in
itself always 'taught', i.e., the result of childhood abuse. I think that
sociopathic behaviour can be innate.
As for doing nothing - I don't consider it destructive or leading to decline.
Releasing oneself from the bondage of action in a retreat is not a destructive
action in many ideologies, eg, Buddhist, Christian retreat.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: Gary Richmond
To: Edwina Taborsky
Cc: Jon Awbrey ; Peirce List 1
Sent: Monday, September 01, 2014 6:57 PM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Q. Why is there so much falsity in the world?
Edwina, Jon, list,
A friend of mine, a Peirce scholar not currently in this forum, just happened
to include this comment in a personal note. I thought it had some relevance.
To the extent that humans are not taught to be creative, they will be
destructive (even if only by default; even doing nothing is destructive, or
leads to decline).
Best,
Gary
Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
C 745
718 482-5690
On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 4:00 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:
You are playing games with us, Jon! You haven't said WHY you consider that
people 'prefer falsity to truth, illusion to reality'.
And I don't agree with your conclusion, for it carries within it an
assumption that truth and reality are unpleasant. Are they?
What about - the fact (truth, reality) that our species has the greatest
capacity of all living organisms to 'imagine' the world. That capacity for
imagination enables man to invent - something that animals, for the most part,
have little capacity to do. Rather than waiting for evolution to develop wings,
man imagines flying and invents the airplane. And email and....
And in his capacity for invention, man must deal with truth and reality.
Or, the plane won't fly and the computer won't exist or work.
So, aren't we a combination of both? And thus, don't we require both?
Edwina
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jon Awbrey" <jawb...@att.net>
To: "Peirce List 1" <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 01, 2014 3:50 PM
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Q. Why is there so much falsity in the world?
A. Because people prefer falsity to truth, illusion to reality.
⁂
Being the drift of my reflections on the plays I saw at Stratford this
summer —
King Lear, King John, Man of La Mancha, Alice Through the Looking-Glass,
Crazy for You, Hay Fever.
⁂
The Beaux’ Stratagem • Masks, Madness, & Shakespeare's Sonnets • Anthony
and Cleopatra
⁂
http://web.archive.org/web/20140730150000/http://www.stratfordfestival.ca/mobile/plays.aspx?id=63
http://web.archive.org/web/20140901185642/http://www.stratfordfestival.ca/forum/showcases.aspx?id=20472
⁂
The obligatory report on What I Did This Summer,
but not unrelated to pressing problems of logic.
Cheers,
Jon
--
academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey
my word press blog: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/
inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
isw: http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/JLA
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey
facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache
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