From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Fri Jun 09 2000 - 21:55:45 MDT
At 09:35 AM 9/06/00 -0700, Max wrote:
>I think you will see that Perpetual Improvement has a scope
>not identical to that of those other principles.
As a sort of rhetorician/semiologist/wordhack, I get worried by the
connotative shadowing of some of these slogans.
What gets triggered in my (formerly Catholic) mind by the rather unusual
word Perpetual are two bogus and inflated terms:
Perpetual Motion
Perpetual Indulgence
Maybe this is foolishly idiosyncratic of me. But I'd prefer something more
neutral. The best I can come up with is (retaining the second half, which
has a somewhat unfortunate teleological spin to it):
Unlimited progress, or Unlimited improvement
Does that appeal?
(Again, however, it is somewhat misleading, since without a developed
definition of `progress' or `improvement' it *can* sound altogether too
much like Paving Over The Universe by the Cosmic Chamber of Commerce Rah
Rah Oompah. Growth/development/`progress' do tend to be self-limiting
except in pathological cases of uncontrolled runaway. The point I'd prefer
to see stressed is the lack of, and resistance to, imposed limits.)
Damien
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