----- Original Message ----- From: "Chuck Grimes" <cgrimes at rawbw.com> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Friday, June 06, 2003 4:06 AM Subject: [lbo-talk] Re: Krugman
>
> ....So, things that I predicted in our conversations months ago -
> resistance, chaos, the parceling out of favors and contracts to
> returned exile and local puppets along with the corporate allies of
> Bushco - have all come to pass. Without resorting to the footnote
> approach, I simply appealed to his understanding of human nature and
> cause and effect.
>
> This has deeply shaken his faith (and that's what it truly is) that
> the administration is working intelligently (or at all) to protect
> Americans from terrorism.... Dwayne Monroe
>
> ---------
>
> I didn't mean to cut off discussion about one to one encounters. My
> mind was on other projects...
>
> As a matter of fact I have one to one encounters all the time, almost
> daily. I also have one work buddy I have been helping get through
> night classes at a local community college.
>
> But this semester something fascinating happened. I had suggested he
> try anthropology to fill out lower division units. Last week I
> asked how his semester was turning out and he said he probably
> flunked anthro. I was shocked. What anthro? It turned out to be
> physical anthropology. Shit, why didn't you say anything, I could have
> helped you at least get through it... Nobody likes physical anthro. I
> meant cultural! Damn...
>
> As the conversation progressed, it turned out that he couldn't get
> around the core historical confrontation in physical anthropology
> between human evolution and the bible. So here we were back to the
> Scoopes trial in Oakland in the 21st Century.
>
> This guy is not a fundamentalist. He was raised in Oakland and went to
> traditional Black churches on Sundays, and for weddings, funerals,
> etc. I also know that behind these traditional christian beliefs is a
> period in his twenties and thirties (he is now in his fifties) when he
> had drug and alcohol problems and went through two marriages. He used
> traditional religion and his church as support to get out of those
> scenes. So Christianity had a more personal meaning to him.
>
> I told him that if he had to repeat the class, he was going to
> have to figure out a way to live in two worlds, one for the class
> and one for his beliefs.
>
> So here is a significant problem, a giant hurdle.
>
> I called up my bio-physics buddy and ask him how to get around this
> scene and he suggested the historical approach and a book called The
> Death of Adam, by Greene, Iowa State Uni Press, 1959. I ordered a used
> copy (nine bucks or so) and got it today at work. Here is a passage
> from page 13:
>
> ``In vain did Newton and his colleagues seek to restrict science to
> the study of the existing order of nature, its beauty, regularity, and
> wise contrivance. As the principles of the new mechanical philosophy
> were applied to the study of the earth's crust and its productions,
> man himself not excepted, there was a growing realization of the
> mutability once assumed, a vastly extended time perspective and a
> sense of the relativity of human conceptions followed as attempts were
> made to explain nature's phenomena in terms of her daily
> operations. The habit of regarding the physical environment as
> subservient to the sentient creation then lost its hold, and the
> adaptation of living organisms was seen to be a matter of dire
> necessity rather than of a wise contrivance. Chance and struggle, the
> antithesis of pre-established harmony and providence, claimed a share
> in the process of creation as biologists sought to understand the
> production of new varieties and species. Throughout this entire
> process of discovery the search for workable scientific explanations
> was colored and often confused by a sustained effort to save the great
> doctrines of revelation and creation which had oriented Western man to
> his universe for centuries and had infused science itself with meaning
> and purpose...''
>
> Sounds too mannered and high flown doesn't it. The point is, if you
> care how your friends view the world, then it is much more difficult
> to deal with these hurdles.
>
> What makes Joe different is he is going back to school more than
> thirty years after high school. This is the first time he has ever
> confronted the classic evolution v. creation conflict in such stark
> and poignant terms.
>
> I am of two minds here. First of all this is just about as good as it
> gets in education or in a life of the mind for that matter. Here is a guy
> who is beginning to face one of the most important intellectual
> controversies in western history, in just as raw, naive and sincere
> terms as it was first encountered about four hundred years
> ago. Whether he realizes it or not, he has the opportunity to discover
> and therefore recapitulate in his own terms the core revolution of
> science and its application to the world of humanity and
> society. Behind this immediate discovery lays another, the fundamental
> ontological change from a fixed world of immutable forms and unvarying
> processes, to a transformational world so animated and dynamic that it
> has almost nothing fixed, immutable or given to it in advance.
>
> But on the other hand, I am pretty sure this kind of discovery won't
> happen because I've never seen it happen. And then, also the whole
> idea that people change their beliefs based on anything external to
> those beliefs seems highly unlikely. In fact it is probably this very
> immutability and fixity of a once and for all creation, that makes it
> such an attractive conceptual frame to people tossed about in the
> waves of meaningless change and arbitrary allocation of fates.
>
> Instead of bugging Joe about this, I decided to read the book and
> maybe some ideas will fall out from the history itself...
>
> Chuck Grimes
>
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