If you stopped throwing insults you may realise that the picture you present
is of a man talking to his mirror.
1. Any person who has a dictionary with the definitions that you quote
prompts questions regarding the other references you make. How do you expect
people to believe anything you say when the items that are easily checked
prove to be false.
2. Of the many things that I am, a farmer is the predominant one. I have
shovelled enough bullshit in my time to recognise the genuine article from
someone selling faulty goods.
3. As a farmer I sow seeds and see them grow. I, and others, have had reason
to question you at different times and your response has been insults and
rhetoric i.e. it's not what it is, it's what I say it is.
To mix my metaphors, a dull thud instead of a clear tone from ringing a
bell.
4. Who is the barbarian? Is it the ones who have the temerity to question
the 'master scientist' by pointing out the anomalies in his utterances, or
is it the 'master scientist' who ignores facts. If that is typical of the
breed it is no wonder the world is suffering the consequences and needs a
new way of thinking.
5. One has to wonder about the ego of someone who quotes " Dictionaries give
synonyms of "illiterate" as barbarian, ignoramus, know nothing, blockhead,
bonehead, dunderhead, fuckhead, hammerhead, knucklehead, loggerhead,
lunkhead, muttonhead, numskull, shithead, halfwit, etc.,
"Shithead" seems to meet the case admirably, but let's be polite, and call
them by euphemism "barbarians"<end quote> and then proceeds to write about
Culture and Literacy.
Pigs and Palacies come to mind.
6. Zionist? Let's look at the facts,
a) he routinely does the 'rags and ashes' bit from the Jewish angle .....
and ignores how many gypsies died in those camps, and ignores all other past
and present examples of ethnic cleansing.
b) thinks Israel was only a consequence of WW2 .... and ignores the Balfour
Declaration and who instigated it, and when.
c) thinks Semitic is Jews ...... then gets upset when I point out that he
has just proved Judaism is not a race.
d) ignores the fact that the biblical David did not have a star, but the
David who engineered the Balfour Declaration did have ..... which is why the
Orthodox Jews will have nothing to do with it.
7. There is another option which ties in with the rags and ashes, Auschwitz,
rants about Germans etc. Guilt ..... what did you really do in the time you
spent working for the Gestapo?
You see Georges, I am a farmer, one who has had to have patience to watch
crops grow, with that goes an interest in the patterns of nature, it is only
a small step to an interest in other patterns, human nature being one of
them.
I am not the slightest bit bothered by anyone's beliefs, or mistakes, what
does bother me is your attitude of shoving it up everyone's nose in such an
aggressive and crude way.
p.s. I did caution you that your 'slip is showing', I can't quite see what
colour knickers you are wearing .... but I will do soon if you keep lifting
your skirt. Each rant moves it up bit at a time.
Back off.
Regards
Bernard
From: Georges Metanomski <zgmet@...>
Date: Thu Feb 2, 2006 3:08 pm
Subject: Culture and Literacy
Culture and Literacy
CULTURE AND LITERACY
"Culture" has two homonyms:
1.Olympic ivory tower reserved for highbrow elites,
2.Generalization of "agri-Culture"; competence acquired by
having "Cultivated" some practical art or craft.
We shall use it exclusively in the second sense, understanding
under "Cultivated" person not a highbrow elitist but a
competent farmer, mason, engineer, scientist, writer, painter
or musician and also somebody who, like Proust's Swann, has
cultivated and refined his artistic, scientific or, why not,
gastronomic taste to a level worthy of "homme de goût".
However, competence alone is not sufficient. Culture rests
upon one's attitude towards his own competence.
A sailor usually sees his skill as relative, open to errors
and dangers. He will talk about it with humility, implying its
deficiencies and refraining from conceited arrogance in face
of the sea. He will usually extend this humility over areas
where he has no competence, where he may or may not want to
learn, but where he will refrain from arrogance and preaching.
A guitar maker, on the contrary, who, instead of humbly
talking about his speciality, embarks upon arrogant preaching
of Physics and Logic, of which he clearly does not have the
vaguest idea, appears as a crude uncultivated barbarian.
Skills, experience and knowledge making up the culture of a
social formation are preserved and communicated mainly by
writing. Thus, Literacy is a necessary condition of being
cultivated and illiteracy is synonymous with unculture. By
sincerely cultivating your literacy you may become a Swann.
By neglecting to cultivate it you stay a crude, uncouth,
illiterate barbarian. "Illiteracy" of course does not, denote
"analphabetism", but "ignorance resulting from not reading".
Unlike analphabetism, it assumes technical ability of reading
acquired, yet unused, uncultivated and unable to penetrate
the gist of read material.
Illiteracy is a general, particularly important and socially
dangerous form of unculture. The society comes to grips with
few skilled musicians, sailors, or scientists, but desperately
needs cultivated, understanding population capable to consider
critical problems such as ecology and globalization. Now,
illiterates even having heard these words, are incapable to
imagine complex structures they involve. Studies have shown
that education systems of leading countries such as France,
UK and Germany produce 40% illiterates, who can read but not
understand a short news article, and 80% of milder sort
"irrationals", who can grasp a story about a road accident,
but whose reasoning capacity stops at the schema "A implies B",
unfit to follow "If A implies B and B implies C
then A implies C".
Example: I copy in Appendix a message which I have posted on
occasion of Auschwitz liberation anniversary. It presents
Auschwitz as archetype of all genocides from which we may
learn in order to avoid future ones.
-An apparently educated, but clearly illiterate engineer
could not grasp the concept of archetype, nor that of
Auschwitz presented as an instance of a more general class
and said that it's all done with Auschwitz, that it was
officially condemned, that its founders and perpetrators have
been punished and that learning from it amounts to
"epistemological divagation".
-A particularly crude barbarian qualified this message as
Zionist propaganda and dissed me for omitting USA, Israel and
Palestine. In Auschwitz message! Why not Tombouctou or
Flamenco dancing? Imagination staggers.
Another example: In a discussion I asserted about the
windpower:
A.Its intermittent and operational for 10% of time.
B.Thus it depends for 90% on reserve fossil energy, polluting
in intermittent regime much more than in the stable.
BA.Thus taken integrally it's the most polluting energy.
BB.Thus it's not renewable, as it will vanish with the
fossils.
C.Thus, being intermittent, wind power is polluting and
not renewable.
Each recursive premise (A,B,BA,BB) of this inference chain
could of course be called in question and, eventually,
refuted, refuting therewith the conclusion (C). Inversely,
accepting them implies necessarily accepting the conclusion.
Yet, an intelligently looking fellow accepted all premises
and concluded:
We need windpower because it's clean and renewable.
Typical for the 80% irrationals:
A implies B, OK; B implies BA, OK; B implies BB, OK;
But "thus A implies C" is too much for the mind moulded in
a some leading school and the whole reasoning collapses under
the media-concocted cliché.
APPENDIX
--------
AUSCHWITZ
The 50'th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz has been marked by
numerous celebrations and manifestations, whose main purpose was to learn
from Auschwitz experience in order to make its repetition impossible.
Therefore I am asking myself:
what have I learnt?
With respect to all I have seen, heard and red, the answer seems clear:
nothing. I heard people cry and I have cried with them; I saw people mourn
and I have mourned with them; I have been faced with unspeakable atrocities
and I was shocked and distressed.
But I have learnt nothing.
Knowledge, indeed, does not consist of emotions, nor of particular events
failing to fall into a logical structure. I still ignore, under which
conditions new Auschwitz's may be set up, or avoided. More, I do not know
at all, what should be understood under the "Auschwitz-to-be-avoided".
Surely not the specific KZ-Auschwitz, in whose place there is no new Nazi_KZ
to fear.
When I wish to say something reasonable about birds, I start with the
zoological definition, with the "birds-principle". I am not obliged to
accept this definition and I may call it in question. One thing I cannot do:
say anything reasonable about an undefined concept. When zoology still
lacked the definition of birds, somebody proposing to talk about them had to
supply his own definition.
As, to the best of my knowledge, there exists no "Auschwitz-logy" nor a
general "Auschwitz-Principle",
I would like to suggest one:
AUSCHWITZ IS FOUNDED UPON ABSOLUTE PROPOSITIONS IN HUMAN DOMAIN,
indeed upon their absurdity, which admits any arbitrary interpretation and
discrimination.
Physics admits exclusively relative propositions.
When we say that a stone is heavy, we imply a relation to the earth: we know
that it would be quite light on the moon, that in the cosmic space its
weight would totally disappear.
In the human/social domain absolute propositions are equally absurd, but we
lack an authority, a humanistic Galileo, or Einstein, to enforce this truth.
Somebody proposing a physical theory based upon absolute propositions would
simply make himself ridiculous. Doing it in the human/social he would have
all chances to found an Ideology, a Religion, an Empire. An Ideology, a
Religion, un Empire which would be based upon the Auschwitz-Principle, whose
laws, principles and virtues would necessarily point towards an Auschwitz.
I realize that I imply with these words a whole philosophic system, a
"Humanistic Relativism" without being able to justify here its principles.
An interested reader may find their discussion in the study:
RELATIVISTIC DIALECTICS
I shall present here an example which shows the nonsense of the absolute
classification criterion "Jew" and of the absolute proposition:
"This man is a Jew".
From the race point of view it is an obvious nonsense, as nobody has ever
observed a "Jewish" gene.
One may certainly have a Jewish culture, speak jiddish, hebrew or ladino and
tell Jewish jokes. However, culture is clearly a relativistic concept. Nazis
may have used it as an indicator, but never as an essential, absolute
criterion of discrimination. A large part of Jews murdered in Auschwitz had
little or nothing to do with the Jewish culture. Some were Catholic priests,
some have heard for the first time from the Nazis or from the blackmailers
that they were Jews.
The criterion of Jewish religion is equally absurd.
According to the Jewish law is Jew who has a Jewish mother, or who has been
converted by a Jewish rabbin.
However, in order to be sure that my mother is Jewish, I have to ascertain
that she had herself a Jewish
mother, or had been converted by a Jewish rabbin.
The same holds of course for the converting rabbin.
A clear case of a vicious circle.
Consequently, the absolute concept "Jew" is empty and, as such, may get any
arbitrary meaning. Heidrich understood it perfectly when he declared: "Wer
Jude ist, entscheide ich" - "It's me who decides
who is a Jew".
If we want to avoid Auschwitz in the future, we must abolish situations in
which a human being may classify and discriminate other ones upon absolute,
arbitrary criteria. In other words, we must extend the
Relativistic Reason over the human/social domain and may admit only
relative, demonstrable propositions
in this domain as well. This calls, of course, in question nearly all
established ideological and political structures, which are based upon
absolute principles.
We live in an Auschwitz-friendly world and if we want to avoid Auschwitz in
the future, we have
to call in question its essential principles.