On May 29, 2007, at 4:22 PM, Jonathan H. Hinck wrote:
But does there need to be consensus among the experts for a public
issue to be raised? Regarding other topics that have been on the
public discussion palate for awhile, how often has this been the
case? Perhaps with regard to issues such as the dangers of drunken
driving, but public discussion on other issues of import proceeded
nevertheless, in spite of disagreement among experts and laypeople.
I therefore misjudge the people if they prefer to walk into the
future with blinders on, leaving discussions of issues which might
affect their future in a fundamental way to an aristocracy of the
elite.
Reality check. Half the population has an average or below IQ. Do
you think these are average IQ topics? Do you think the majority of
the people have any real feel whatsoever for the forces that move
their world or even the major patterns? Do you think the majority
care to? Alas it is has been my unhappy experience that most people
either cannot or do not care for these things, understand such issues
or have any real desire to do so. I really, really wish that it was
not so.
Disagreement among this expert group, however, is definitely not
helping the issue along, though I also suspect that the fact that
this issue is still academic, and not immediate, in nature is also
giving the people little reason to discuss it now.
Of course experts disagree. This is difficult cutting edge stuff.
Perhaps the people will finally need to have their backs to the
wall, so to speak, before they reconsider existing paradigms. If
ideas pertaining to the possibility that society may need to
transition from a labor-based to an automation based economy were
put out into the open ahead of time, however, then people would have
a body of thought to draw upon later when times get tough.
Such ideas of post-industrial possibilities have been bandied about
for many decades now. Why is this different?
The ideas behind FDR’s New Deal did not originate during the Great
Depression, for example; they were around for years, if not decades,
before then, and out in the open. “Experts” did not keep them a
secret or hold them close to vest, nor was there any “consensus”
regarding their efficacy. Because these ideas were readily
accessible, however, they got pulled out and utilized byRoosevelt as
a result of a desperate economic situation.
Don't get me started on what an utter disaster the "New Deal" was.
Most Americans were not aware of many of these ideas except in a one-
sided fashion and as a result they gave FDR a lot of the credit. They
also weren't aware of the discussions and problems with these ideas
because they didn't care to think about ideas that deeply in the first
place. If they had been paying attention they would not have so
easily gone along with it. Of course most of those talking about
such ideas spoke of them in glowing terms that fooled many who did
hear about them.
Does this opposition to opening a public discussion have more to do
with social classism/elitism than anything else?
Opposition? There is no real opposition except to making a pubilc
issue stance prematurely. Like it or not the elite, the right hand
tail of the curve, will fashion the future. They always have.
- samantha
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