Fox wrote on Fri, 14 September 2007 16:50 |
I really hope that I've interpreted your arguments correctly, Dan, and I hope that you'll correct me if I've made an error in judgement.
All the best,
Fox
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Well, you've got it right for the most part Fox, and I appreciate you putting in the time. The comment from the other guy means as much to me as random bullshit. I'm not really doubting Jim in any way. I was just saying that he went off on a pointless tangent in the argument by impugning Max, which inevitably gets countered, and then when backed into the corner that created had to qualify himself, but had to do so in such a way that those qualifiers themselves don't really give us the meaning of the man. Most of us don't really know each other here. I never suggested that Jim misrepresented his qualifications; only that many people whom we might not really want to rely on have similar qualifications. Max has some pretty good qualifications himself I believe.
Do I think all mediated information is suspect? Yes, I do. But I don't live my life that way, because I focus my life on my immediate world. I get so much "information" of contrasting nature from so many directions that it all becomes a wash; we all do.
The Buddha denied being enlightened, he said he was simply awake. To me, being awake in the modern mediated world means observing all this and not passing judgement. I watched the towers fall, I felt my throat tighten and my heart break at the site of people leaping from them - that much I know. Is it possible that there was a conspiracy to bring them down? A "Pearl Harbor-like" attack on America to get the public into line behind an attack on Iraq? I think so - yes, its an absolute possibility. Was it possible J. Edgar Hoover, the great defender of internal security, was compromised by the Mafia for 50 years? No it wasn't, until it was. Now its fact.
I don't care how many documentaries and how many youtube videos are watched by how many people. None of that proves to me anything, one way or the other. But I am very interested in what people who identify themselves as structural engineers have to say, and equally interested in what someone who is aware that all the avenues of information sourcing are commercial avenues has to say. They are equally valid to me.
Youtube is no more free and democratic than Wikipedia is authoritative. John McCain fathered an illegitimate black baby and it probably cost him the Republican nomination in 2000. Except he didn't - anywhere but in Karl Rove's mind. I'm sorry, but all information
is suspect. The United States government and many others have been actively engaged in disinformation for many, many years. The waters of public discourse are radically polluted, on purpose. This is not conspiracy theory, this is public record. So the problem isn't that all information out there is corrupt, the problem is that its possible that it is. And the consensus is often proved wrong.
I would happily have lunch with either Max or Jim and hear their way of seeing the world. Yours too. (Rollmottle maybe not so much...) What matters to me is personal experience, yours, mine, all of ours.
It would be someone else's judgement as to whether or not I'm paranoid, but it doesn't mean anything to me. When my daughter was 5 we saw a TV ad for some baby formula touting its "comfort proteins" and claiming to be the only product that had them. She asked me "That's a lie isn't it?" I knew I was doing the right job. Its heartbreaking that its this way, but it is.
What I see when I really look at the world, well if you want to do that, we should do it privately by email or something. But in this thread I see people struggling, and in some ways with great beauty. Which is, btw, the same thing I see when I look at the White House (even if I might wish they were clearing brush somewhere...).
DS