From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Feb 29 2000 - 13:04:36 MST
GBurch1@aol.com writes:
> This made me think about times when the "intellectual establishment"
> is out of synch with society, which appears to be the case now, as
> the article about "thought reform" in academia illustrates.
A good point, Greg. The hopefully emerging new intellectual groups
seem to be in the "third culture" inhabited more by cross-disciplinary
researchers with a leaning towards the natural sciences (but applying
them or learning from) the more traditional humanities. Transhumanism
of course fits in here too.
> I think we may well be in one of the latter periods.
> Deconstructivist, socialist postmodernist relativism seems to me to
> be the hallmark of the Old Order. Just as the elite of the late
> medieval Catholic establishment engaged in an increasingly
> irrelevant and detailed re-working of hierarchical, authoritarian
> christian theology and social theory, so the "soft social science"
> intellectuals of contemporary academia seem to be mired in a program
> that is less and less in touch with the dynamics and real values of
> the society that supports them.
Exactly. The main problem is that the current intellectual
establishment cannot provide with solutions (not even wrong
solutions), since it is busy being self-referential and questioning
everything except the need for questioning (except for its own memes,
of course - when will somebody deconstruct Derrida?). This will of
course give the advantage to groups who can or claim to provide
solutions.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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