----- Original Message ----- From: Mike Geary To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: 9/28/2006 3:33:42 PM Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Aaaaaargh AA: >> I tell ya, after promoting ideas such as good parenting and promoting >> looking at unconscious drives as the issue that makes the world go round, >> and doing it for years, and being all but waterboarded for it, and not >> having the ideas entertained even in the abstract, there's no question but >> that there is no hope for humanity. << M.G. Then maybe you should stop promoting them and argue them. A.A. I see now the problem. I just never talked about it enough. I'll have to talk about it more. M.G. Contrary to your low estimation of the members of this list, A.A. My estimation is quite high actually. The people on this list are the cream of the crop. But, if they receive these ideas as they do, what hope is there for the world at large? When I was in college I used to think mankind was not perfectible. Then I began to see that mankind is perfectible. Now I've come to terms with the fact that mankind doesn't want to be perfectible, will cling for dear life to the status quo. M.G. you're not the only one here who is horrified by the cruelty and inhumanity of mankind. All of us (I dare say 'all') know quite well the litany of human failures that you chant daily as though you were a lone voice crying in the wilderness. All of us at one time or another have been stymied in our faith in humanity by atrocities such as Darfur, Iraq, 9/11, Rwanda, the Holocaust, the World Wars and all those that preceded them, and on and on, but most of us are able to step back and regain our perspective and continue on knowing that what drives the world is the Energy "that holds up Mountains", that "steers the braiding flights of birds" and not the promotion of some social nostrums. Enough. I'm getting mean and I don't like to be mean. I'm leaving this thread while I still like myself some. A.A. You're not mean. You just don't want to believe that if you can't see it, it's still there. I can't imagine what people like Louis Pasteur went through when they first discovered that something invisible can wreak havoc. Louis Pasteur I am not. I'm more like Galileo, I recant, the world really is flat ... Back to the future ... Just in closing, I thought, I hoped anyway, that I when I brought up the idea of what is success that someone would pick up on it. Instead, ... Okay, Paul, tell me it's my fault since I didn't phrase it right ... rhetorical remark ...