JOURNAL: Previous | Next | Current | Index

11 August 2001

Pre-Coffee A.M. Ramblings

"You can dance with the devil, but you can't lead."

-- Still a favorite line of mine, from a song by Brent Mitchell

Poking around on LiveJournal this morning, I'm reminded why, several years ago, I quit following any newsgroups in my areas of intellectual interest -- the investment of time and effort required to pull the handful of excellent, reasoned, EDUCATED arguments out of the rest of the mess is just too high, and the process too inefficient. Most of those engaged in such discussions are young and exuberant (pluses!) but also intellectually ignorant (i.e. they've read the latest musing by Friedman, or Kelley, or Sciabarra, or -- fill in whatever name you want and they have the ANSWER to whatever problem). Even worse are the ones who think they've constructed entire new systems of thought when, in reality, there are classic texts FULL of those same ideas, presented more forcefully and eloquently, and usually even with some notion of their place in the history of ideas. Some of it is painful for an educated person to watch, and I can understand why some academics dismiss Randroids/Anarcho-Capitalists as they do. That's not to say they are right to do so -- because one winds up dismissing some very bright people in the process -- but I can almost understand it.

The question then, however, is how to find those bright people who are inclined in the right direction on these ideas, but also have some interest in their place in the history of ideas -- and some interest in the classical treatment of some of those questions. Maybe a sifter-style approach is the way to do it. Maybe one just stumbles into it. Beats me at this point.

Work on the dissertation awaits today after a fun evening last night -- fun even though I missed the Shakespeare I was planning on seeing. Oops!

[Posted @ 10:51 AM CST]


Powered By Greymatter


If you can read this, your browser does not fully comply with standards. You can still view the site via the navigation bar below.

Reductio (old) | Journal | Glossary | Search | Bio | Photos | Disclaimer