On Mar 26, 2008, at 9:50 AM, Michael McIntyre wrote:
> My only point is that one can coherently
> understand "better" without reference to one's own parochial views of
> what is "better".
Of course "we" can't really judge what it would be like to live in a radically different world, or what shape that world would take. But we are fighting, or at least hoping, for a world that's better in certain specific ways - more egalitarian, less violent, less greedy. That may not be relevant to Carrol's bizarre passive apocalypticism. But to anyone who thinks that agitation and persuasion have a role in politics, there's no understanding of "better" that's not rooted in the present. Besides, what about all that Marxist/Hegelian business about the new being contained in the seeds of the old?
Doug