Thank you, Michael, for your thoughtful post in which you provide great
insight into the possibilities for change even among people whose deepest
instinct is to preserve the status quo. You were provoked by my comment
in LO7643 --
> Both Michael and John Woods seem to me to be in denial regarding large
> numbers of people who believe they understand the systems they find
> themselves in, have determined them to be senseless, and feel powerless
> (or are unwilling for other reasons) to change the nonsensical world they
> live in.
I believe I was unclear in what I meant in that paragraph, and was
consequently not understood as I had intended.
I was speaking of a portion of humanity who deliberately act in ways they
know to be "wrong". My words were intended as a kind of diagnosis of what
I would otherwise call "evil".
I am speaking of people who kill other people, either without apparent
motivation or for pleasure; people who "take" whatever they want whether
they need it or not; people whose sense of identity comes from inciting
fear and subservience in others through brutal assault or threat of
violence; people totally without moral scruples; etc. etc.
I do not think such people believe that they are doing the right thing,
and some of them don't even have or want to have a rationale for their
behavior. I'm sorry to say that I have known a few such people in my days
(perhaps more than my portion), and most of them had a clear idea about
people who want to "do the right thing", namely that we are stupid and
worthless.
The sad truth is that in my experience, almost everyone partakes of this a
little bit, in our culture.
--Jack Hirschfeld How deep is the ocean? How high is the sky? jack@his.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>