At 09:20 PDT 27/10/96 David Wolsk wrote:
At 10:16 27/10/96 -0500, Carl H.A. Dassbach wrote:
and I've snipped:
>
(Unfortunately, the
>most uncommon thing among academic specialists is common sense because
>specialization has very high costs - blinders)
>
>The "baby" on the other hand, are the theoretical categories developed out
>of the European experience (a la Marx, Weber, Durkheim, etc) which enable
>us to make sense of the material historical world. To say that Europe was
>not always the center of the world does not invalidate these categories. If
>one understands the meaning of Weber's rationalization (which, I am
>afraid few do, even `experts' such as Ritzer), it is clear that the
>rationalization of all spheres of life is a master trend of in
>the Occident and the Orient. When rationalization is combined (albeit
>inadvertently) with the pursuit of profit (capitalism, for Weber, is not
>simply the pursuit of profit but the _rational_ pursuit of profit) both are
>reinforced to the Nth degree and both become extremely powerful forces.
I resonate to your wisdom. Much of today's problems, I attribute (in a
gross oversimplification) to the fact that almost all of today's "successful
people"
have passed through our universities and been indoctrinated with the narrow
blinders of specialization without ever realizing what's been done to their
capacity to see the world on its own terms. The movement, largely happening
in the USA, loosely labelled "Metropolitan Universities", and with a journal
of the same name, may signal a change. These are places where a learning
communities approach has its roots in the real-world issues surrounding the
university and in the lives of its mostly-adult students.
As to rationalism, for me the bible is John Ralston Saul's book "Voltaire's
Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West". More recently, his
Massey Lectures have been published as "Unconscious Civilization" .... not
quite as powerful and pointing to the growing role of civil society
"civitas" in our potential salvation. As a full-time civitas volunteer, I
often get the feeling that everything is being dumped on us with little
thought of our "carrying capacity".
I'm about to go off to a neighborhood event that, to me, may signal where
hope lies. A university trained couple from northern Japan recently bought
10 acres of farm land where they are applying an intensive Japanese
planting method. The neighborhors have all been invited over for their
version of an ntercultural Oktoberfest.
David Wolsk, Metchosin (outside Victoria) Canada