19-21 Feb, 1996
My uncle always says, "When are you going to invent 'beaming up' technology?" My reply is it's not necessary. Why bother moving people from place to place when we can just replicate the same place all over the country -- the planet? When you're in Starbuck's, there you are, whether Astor Place or Hawthorne St or Kuala Lampur. Likewise the Gap, McDonald's, Banana Republic. Or any cobblestoned downtown walking mall. Or any air-conditioned nightmare of a megamall, or any superstore, be it Fred Meyer or Bradlees or Price Club. Or any movie theatre. Or any shabby cramped bulletin boarded bookstore -- is this City Lights San Francsico or Shakespeare & Co Paris or Shakespeare & Co 716 Broadway or Shakespeare & Co 2259 Broadway? Or any interstate, any onramp. Or any falafel joint from Tel Aviv to St. Mark's Place. The monoculture megalith keeps juggernauting along.
"The main strand [of our modern western history] is the progressive erection, by western hands, of a scaffolding within which all the once separate societies have built themselves into one. From the beginning humankind has been partitioned; in our day we have at last become united. The western handiwork that has made this union possible has not been carried out with open eyes, like David's unselfish labours for the benefit of Solomon; it has been performed in heedless ignorance of its purpose, like the labours of the animalculae that build a coral reef up from the bottom of the sea till at length an atoll rises above the waves. But our western build scaffolding is built of less durable material than that. The most obvious ingredient in it is technology and man cannot live by technology alone. In the fullness of time, when the oecumenical house of many mansions stands firmly on its own foundations and the temporary western technological scaffolding falls away - as I have no doubt that it will - I believe it will become manifest that the foundations are firm at last because they have been carried down to the bedrock of religion."
-Arnold J. Toynbee from Civilization on Trial
Wow. There's no use saying anything anymore; someone else has already said it better.
true.
What's the pub. date of this nice book?
I actually found this in a greatest hits compilation called "Philosophy for a time of crisis" ed. Adrienne Koch, 1959. Included is a very interesting discussion of the communist morass from Marx to Lenin to Stalin. Interesting because of the new historical perspective.
And what's he mean by the bedrock of religion?
All of our undertakings and existence will be based on the principle of going beyond our scope as individuals. We will take on a fuller consciousness of ourselves as part of a larger system and therefore we will move beyond ourselves. We will find motivation from the principle of doing what needs to be done not only for our individual self but for the whole system (the earth, its community) of which we all are a part.
Is it that the new society's mores and codes will take on the firmness once possessed by religions?
yes
Or that the new society will discover old religions?
this has already happened.
ps: Albert Einstein says: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
Copyright © 1996 Alexander D. Chaffee (alex@stinky.com). All rights reserved.
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