[lbo-talk] Down with progress(Was Re: Obama picks . . .

[andie nachgeborenen]

Doug and I think that Carrol is talking about the desirability pf progress. Read what he says, he decries all the things that led to the elimination of those evil, so far as they have been eliminated. Obviously and unfortunately regression is possible and progress is reversible. Point is, Doug and you and I agree that on balance it is a good thing. Of course it has its own evils too:

Whatever happens we have got
The Maxim gun they have not

 -- Hillaire Belloc (on European colonialism before WWI)

So I;m not being a Pollyanna. As I think I have remarked I walked into he remaining standing gas chamber at Auschwitz this summer and walked out again into the air. It was a transformative experience. Like the Frankfurters, Carrol doesn't.  He thinks it is not worth it, that Newton leads to Himmler. I was just reminding us all of the price.

--- On Fri, 11/7/08, Jenny Brown <jbrown72073 at cs.com> wrote:


> From: Jenny Brown <jbrown72073 at cs.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Down with progress(Was Re:  Obama picks . . .
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Friday, November 7, 2008, 10:20 AM
> andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> 
> >Bring back the Black Death! And 50% female childbirth
> mortality rates! State-enforced patriarchy! Property-based
> all male >suffrage!  
> 
> Leaving aside whether these or similar conditions have
> actually been eradicated all over the world, do you think
> it's inevitable that they won't come back?  And
> then, what's the reason?  Because I thought that was the
> issue Carrol raised, the inevitability of progress, not
> whether progress has occurred.
> 
> Jenny Brown
> 
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