[lbo-talk] Progress? (Was . . . Re: Catholicism, )

[Matthias Wasser]

How much of this is privelige and how much of it is simply the
widening horizons of knowledge? Aristotle was able to write the
definitive text on everything; but if we don't have any Aristotles
today, it's not because there aren't men and women in possession of
his intelligence, curiousity, and freedom to parasitically do nothing
but sit around and think all day - it seems to me that there are more
such people than ever, at least in absolute terms. But both the
specificity and volume of intellectual output has grown with such
prodigity that one can't know everything - an ideal social planner, in
defining the thoroughness of a canon, would have to match the marginal
benefit of people's sharing a common language with the marginal
benefit of savants and specialists and diversity.

Obviously this doesn't change the main point, which being that it's a
problematic feature of capital's destruction of pre-existing forms of
culture. There are upsides and there are downsides.