[lbo-talk] Kees van der Pijl

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 12:30 PM -0400 6/27/03, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>  > 'We have no idea,' she said (paraphrasing from memory
>>  now), 'how various peoples would have developed if
>>  left to their own devices because Roman intervention
>  > brought self-development to a halt.'
>
>Jared Diamond, _Guns, Germs, and Steel_ addresses that question by 
>comparing societies that were geographically isolated (and thus 
>could count only on sel-development) to those that were not (and 
>thus cross-polinated one another so to speak).  His conclusions are 
>that self-development does not lead anywhere but backwardness and 
>stangantion.

One doesn't want to live in a society stagnating at the level subject 
to periodic famines and chronic malnutrition, but supposing that 
society has already developed to the level where it is free from 
exploitation and oppressions and can meet (at the very least) basic 
needs of all (clean water, food, shelter, sanitation, health care, 
education, etc. and freedom), one may very well enjoy and be content 
with "the good life" that such a society offers and hope that it will 
remain more or less the same, in other words, "stagnate."

According to the OED, the word "stagnate" made its first appearance 
in 1669; the word "stagnant," in 1666; "stagnancy," in 1665.  The 
world had began to change in capital's image, and it was no longer 
good enough to do as well as before.
-- 
Yoshie

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