Dennis Claxton wrote:
>
> >
> >So how much of my achievement is MY achievement and how
> > > much is it hers?
> >
> >All of it. Next question?
> >
> > John A
>
> What happened to standing on the shoulders of giants?
John is having fun. Look closely at the question to which he replies.
I'm not quite sure how to parse it, but essentially it's the same as though he had said "Yes" to the question, "Is it X OR is it Y?"
But one could argue he is wrong. Surely there are more tangled threads in the social complex we call Joanna than merely one other person. I mean, doesn't the founder of the California university system have something to do with it? And the farmers who produced the food that founder ate? And the iron miners who produced the iron that went into the harvesting machinery that those farmers used to to produce the food that the founder of the California university system ate.
And we haven't began to trace the relations of the people who wrote the books that Joanna's first-grade teacher read in college. Surely they have must be given their due.
But you still can't have a revolution without some praise for both the big and small revolutionary leaders, so whether it's really really really Mozart who deserves credit for Don Giovanni or not, we better praise him or we pretty soon won't have an opera and we won't have any leaders of local minimum-wage groups and we will have to suffer capitalism for ever.
And if you get 40 people out for a demo you had better give them high praise, for if you do they might not only come the next time but invite some friends to come with them, and if we're really lucky one of those friends might be Lenin.
Carrol