Family Values
Kirby Urner
> = James R. Kelly
= Kirby
At 09:10 AM 8/26/96 -0700, James R. Kelly wrote:
>Kirby
>
>Thanks, for that one, the Market Economy is dependant on the great herd
>that does not consider the Market Economy--and homelessness is a necessary
>end result of the PT Barnum--Maxum "There's a sucker born every minute."
According to a well-researched bio of PT Barnum I saw on PBS, there's no
indication that he ever said this. Possibly a misattribution (sounds like
something he maybe *should* have said -- though from the bio, I'd say he
wasn't nearly so cynical, either about his public, or about the quality
of his showmanship).
>And the argument that market economy could be instilled in every family as
>an economic factor by legislation is about as lame as I've ever heard--and
>is a facist rant by my own standards. The right answer for families and
>their demise is Love--a ubiquitous and unquantifiable but all pervasive
>factor.
>
And my point is that, sitting around the dinner table, the kids are likely
to pull in Vietnam and student head-bashing in Korea, Kissinger's tacit
support of the occupation of East Timor, the CIA's drug pushing to finance
dirty wars in Central America, and so on. Parents without the information
or conditioned-reflexes to deal with this kind of discussion sound lame to
their kids, or worse, like part of the problem (and in some families, dad,
a WWII veteran, calls the authorities when his kid goes AWOL 'for his own
good' etc.).
---- from CRITICAL PATH by R. Buckminster Fuller
The young were saying, "I know that Dad and Mom love me to
pieces, and I love them to pieces, but they don't know what
it's all about. They come home from the office or golf links or
hairdressers and sit down to beer and small talk or 'sitcoms.'
They have nothing to do with our going into Vietnam. They have
nothing to do with our going to the Moon. They have nothing to
do with anything except earning a living and spending it on
TV-advertised goods. The whole world is in great trouble. My
compassion is for all the people anywhere who are in trouble.
Since the older people don't seem to know what is going on and
are too preoccupied with irrelevancies, I and my contemporaries
must do our own thinking and find out what needs to be done to
make the world work."
As we wrote in the opening lines of our "Self-Disciplines,"
Chapter 4, up to the time of the radio the older people were
always saying to the young, "Never mind what you think. Listen.
We are trying to teach you." With the TV making it clear to the
young that the parents did not know much about anything and
were not "the authority," the young, responding to intuition,
said to themselves, "I am going to have to do my own thinking
and take my own actions." Nonetheless, they were utterly
unskilled in world affairs, highly idealistic, and easily
exploitable.
----
Kirby
BFI webmaster
----------------------------------------------------
Kirby Urner "All realities are virtual" -- KU
Email: pd...@teleport.com
Web: http://www.teleport.com/~pdx4d/