I was following you up to here, sympathetically. This last seems like quite a leap.
> So the left and the right need each other for their separate existence.
In defining left, the memory of an extinct right ought to be sufficient. I hope we won't have to keep those pricks around indefinitely.
> One is always to the left of some and to the right of others.
> Personally and intellectually, I enjoy more being on the
> left of my companions than on the right, because I have noticed
Myself I prefer being on the left of people who think they are left but are really right (e.g., wrong).
> that attacks from the right tend to be more civilized
> than that from the left. Its just a personal experience, but at
> all an universal truth, but it has again been
> demonstrated on this list.
And how.
> As for facts and and logic, permit me to quote from one of my
> earlier posts:
>
> It is a Daoist axiom that intellectual scholarship and analytical
> logic can only serve to dissect and categorize
> information.
> Knowledge, different from information, is achieved only through knowing.
Sounds circular. Looks circular.
> Ultimately, only intuitive understanding can provide wisdom.
> Truth, while elusive, exists. But it is obscured by search,
> because purposeful search will inevitably mislead the
> searcher from truth. By focusing on the purpose, the searcher
> can only find what he is looking for. How does one know
> what questions to ask about truth if one does not know what the
> elusive answers should be? Conversely, if one knows
> already what the answers should be, why does one need to ask questions?
> Lewis Carrol's Alice in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
> would unknowingly be a Daoist.
This does not clarify matters much for me.
> . . .
> Logic and facts are useful only if one has no desire to break out
> of their self-prescribing circle.
> Creativity and revolution, by definition, must defy logic and
> facts in order to facilitate their own births.
> Of course, it does not follow that being illogical and in
> defiance of fact inherently qualify one as creative or
> revolutionary.
I'm afraid most of this has been lost on me. All I can say is that I agree that intuition and spirit, among other things, supplement and inform the use of logic and facts, but the lack of logic and fact tends to debilitate arguments one was not predisposed to embrace in the first place.
MBS
"Wherever you may go, . . . there you are."