Intellectual Pissing Contests

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Mon Nov 27 16:23:32 PST 2000


Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:


>
> I would not hold my breath to see anything of substance coming out of this
> debacle.

Make your own favorite list of the 15 most important events in human history.

Of every single one of those events it would almost certainly have been true to say, "I would not hold my breath to see anything of substance coming out of this debacle."

The point about alienation, etc. is not that it can be depended on to cause anything -- but that when something does happen it will after the fact reveal itself as having been caused by alienation. And one can say that (however one defines the concept) no significant changes will occur in the absence of resistance to mass alienation.

Huge changes are *always* enormously unlikely in advance. To be so confident that nothing will happen you need to possess a crystal ball. Mao had a sardonic comment on marxists and crystal balls.

You make an awful lot of fuss out of rather banal tautologies.

Carrol



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