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Wednesday, May 18, 2011

There Are Only Survivors

David Mamet gave a speech a couple of years ago at Stanford, and there is an article in The Weekly Standard which mentions it. I find the part below interesting:

This led to a full-throated defense of capitalism, a blast at high taxes and the redistribution of wealth, a denunciation of affirmative action, prolonged hymns to the greatness and wonder of the United States, and accusations of hypocrisy toward students and faculty who reviled business and capital even as they fed off the capital that the hard work and ingenuity of businessmen had made possible.
 http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/converting-mamet_561048.html?nopager=1

There in a capsule is all the mish-mosh of our age: The Age of Stupidity... if we define stupidity as the inability to understand. Only a Meshugge could be as sure of himself as Mamet was. The mere fact that something makes me extremely upset does not invalidate it in any sense. Nor does my ire validate my point of view.
But it leads us all to create these beautiful illusions where everything is so very, very obvious and clear, and where our opponents are victims of multiple ironies brought on by their own inability to perceive things as acutely as do we.

Political and Economic arguments of the present day do not possess Truth values: they are opinions used to persuade by working on our pre-existing points of view.
The Ryan Burdget? There is no truth or falsity, nor is there any conceivable way of proofing its claims, for even if it were adopted, it would be changed and amended greatly over time.
There is no Truth in Politics and Economics; there are only survivors...

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