Re: Reloaded with plastic pea pellets; a rant for Jim

We're probably not that far apart, really. You should recognize that
once you have a system whose goal is to maintain power, then pretty much
all its decisions have been made ahead of time. If you have a
counter-system whose impulse is to be free of power, then all those
decisions have been made ahead of time. That's part of what was going
on in the second Matrix movie. Neo was being told his decisions were
already made: he just needed to understand why he made them. The
computer, of course, wants to integrate Neo so that his particular
version of randomness is now incorporated into the system again. When
all the possibilities of randomness have been incorporated into the
system it will have control (this is an illusion).

Where I tend to think along your lines is that yes, the distinction
between reason and nature is artificial. That was also part of
Habermas' point in his essay -- that previous critics envisaged a "pure
reason" and there's no such thing. I tend to think that reason is a
function of nature -- Nature conceptualizes itself through reason
because human beings are a part of nature. The western philosophical
tradition that is still influenced by Greek thought tends to see reason
as above or beyond or beneath nature. There are pagan ways of
configuring this other position (see Robert Corrington) and Christian
ways (incarnational), though.

Jim

Yocum Daniel GS 21 CES/CEOE wrote:

>Interesting Jim. I wasn't thinking along those specific paths but we are in
>the same world. The alleged dichotomy is between natural and spiritual.
>There is a real dichotomy between the two but they have been reconciled,
>there is continuity. The false dichotomy makes one real and the other the
>illusion, one is center and the other is marginalized. True, if you can't
>tell the difference between design and chance or rather decay (chance is not
>choice). You cannot have equations without equal signs and you can not
>cross bottomless gorges without bridges, and I don't recommend leaping.
>Nature, the world is not my prison it is my home, broken but repairable.
>See? engineering is a trade of hope. I am not merely a ghost in a machine
>just like a computer is software it is also hardware, together they make a
>computer. Some may think that Neo is a self healing program but of course
>he is more like an agent of self evolution but the myth of evolution is that
>it goes in the up direction. When I buy a machine I look for the one that
>does the job with the least moving parts, you know breakdown frequency and
>all that, like bacteria and genomes. A program may be able to alter its own
>programming but in which direction and does direction matter? That is the
>whole Morovingian thing and Utopian camelots and such, they are someone's
>vision of paradise but who's? Determinism implies a determiner or
>instrumental reason. Reason is good but like everything else in this world
>it can not rule alone else it too becomes a tyrant but without it we are
>flotsam and jetsam and will becomes the wild gestures of a free falling man.
>Unlike the Gnostic, I do not discard the natural and unlike the modern I do
>not discard the spiritual. Look at my feet I have a left one and a right
>one and they are not the same, I know because if I reverse shoe them it
>hurts. They are not at war either they alternate and I go, now where I go
>is a whole 'nother topic. Nietzsche saw art as some sort of vehicle for
>will and some see criticism as a vehicle for reason and both seen
>exclusively hop about and fall. We are thinkers and artificers but that is
>not surprising since I am just like my parents and my neighbors and so I
>stoop what else can a thinker and artificer do? Yes Jim I don't create by
>fiat but by re-organizing what is at hand and as an image or reflection I
>know my place and revel in it because it is with all of you. Maybe Seymour
>knew some of this but couldn't't bear it, some can't I suppose, now that is
>absurd.
>Daniel
>
>
>

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Received on Wed May 21 12:41:44 2003