Th pathetic aspect of a capitalistic culture is its tendency to equate wealth with wisdom. In Chinese culture, a rich man is automatically disqualified as a wise intellectual. Preoccupation with counting money is considereed an insurmountable obstacle to the task of finding truth.
Henry
Doug Henwood wrote:
> George Soros writes:
>
> "What reflexivity and self-reference have in common is the element of
> indeterminacy. Logical positivism outlawed self-referent statements as
> meaningless, but by introducing the concept of reflexivity I am setting
> logical positivism on its head. Far from being meaningless, I claim that
> statements whose truth value is indeterminate are even more significant
> than statements whose truth value is known. The latter constitute
> knowledge: They help us understand the world as it is. But the former,
> expressions of our inherently imperfect understanding, help to shape the
> world in which we live.
>
> At the time I reached this conclusion, I considered it a great insight. Now
> that natural science no longer insists on a deterministic interpretation of
> all phenomena and logical positivism has faded into the background, I feel
> as if I were beating a dead horse. Indeed, intellectual fashion has turned
> to the opposite extreme: The deconstruction of reality into the subjective
> views and prejudices of the participants has become all the rage. The very
> basis on which differing views can be judged, namely the truth, is being
> questioned. I consider this other extreme equally misguided. Reflexivity
> should lead to a reassessment, not a total rejection, of our concept of
> truth."
>
> Doug