I was talking about achievements less like those involved in spending money one doesn't have than products of human spirit and activity like Brunelleschi's Duomo, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes, Dante's Divine Comedy, Galileo's Two World Systems.
I do suspect that Carl thinks we would be better off without hoighty toighty stuff like that too, or if we took Feynman's attitude towards it, that it's just hoighty toighty stuff and doesn't deserve special reverence or financing -- or, in his case, physics aside, doesn't even deserve attention (an attitude that's a lot easier to carry off if you are Richard Feynman and have real accomplishments and Nobel Prizes than if you are, say, Homer Simpson or (to date myself) Archie Bunker), but I think that's a basic conflict of values too. Irreverence is a good thing, so is appreciation. Carl doesn't get that Feynman had both; he could be constructively irreverent towards Bohr because be appreciated Bohr's talent's and accomplishment. That is why Feynman wasn't just a bonehead. I like Paul Feyerabend for the same reason; he could make fun of Galileo because he understood him and had the talent, and took the effort to use it, to develop something important to say about Galileo.
But I'd also say that I think the the economic accomplishments of capitalism, including in contemporary China, are considerable although multi-sided. Terrible pollution and inequality, yes, very bad. Great increase in living standards for billions, very good. High fives all around indeed. Carl lacks a sense of what one might call dialectics, that the same phenomenon may have complicated positive and negative aspects.
Anyway, Carl, given your contempt for human excellence and accomplishment, what's your objection to the idea that we should all be living in caves?
--- Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: "Sandy Harris" <sandyinchina at gmail.com>
> >
> >On 8/22/07, Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > > As for me, I think accomplishment merits only
> nominal reward. Perhaps
> > > overachievers might be enititled to wear a
> (small) laurel wreath, but
> >that's
> > > it.
> >
> >What on earth makes you think that?
> >
> >...you appear to be objecting to the basic notion
> that if A produces more
> >or better than B, he or she then has more, and
> should have.
> >
> >Am I misreading you? Are you insane?
> >
> >--
> >Sandy Harris,
> >Nanjing, China
>
> I'm saying what typically passes for "achievement"
> in the world isn't worth
> rewarding. Look at what China has "achieved," for
> instance -- status as the
> world's fastest-growing industrial polluter and the
> leading purveyor of
> toxic junk to consumers everywhere. What a triumph!
> High-fives and lavish
> bonuses for all concerned.
>
> Here in the moldering USA, what passes for
> "achievement" is typically
> financial and legal innovation that creates the
> illusion of prosperity while
> leaving most people hopelessly mired in debt.
> Consider the item from
> Barbara Ehrenreich's blog that B. just posted to the
> list:
>
> "... In fact, easy
> credit became the American substitute for decent
> wages. Once you worked for your money, but now you
> were supposed to /pay/ for it. Once you could count
> on
> earning enough to save for a home. Now you’ll never
> earn that much, but, as the lenders were saying –
> heh,
> heh—do we have a mortgage for you!
>
> "Pay day loans, rent-to-buy furniture and exorbitant
> credit card interest rates for the poor were just
> the
> beginning. In its May 21^st cover story on “The
> Poverty Business,” Business Week documented the
> stampede, in the just the last few years, to lend
> money to the people who could least afford to pay
> the
> interest: Buy your dream home! Refinance your house!
> Take on a car loan even if your credit rating sucks!
> /Financiamos a Todos! /Somehow, no one bothered to
> figure out where the poor were going to get the
> money
> to pay for all the money they were being offered.
> ...
>
> "Global capitalism will survive the current credit
> crisis; already, the government has rushed in to
> soothe the feverish markets. But in the long term, a
> system that depends on extracting every last cent
> from
> the poor cannot hope for a healthy prognosis. Who
> would have thought that foreclosures in Stockton and
> Cleveland would roil the markets of London and
> Shanghai? The poor have risen up and spoken; only it
> sounds less like a shout of protest than a low,
> strangled, cry of pain."
>
> If there's much more "achievement" like this we'll
> all be living in caves.
>
> Carl
>
>
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