I love this book

ABSOLUTE Nothing is absolute, with the debatable exceptions of this statement and death, which may explain why political and economic theories are presented so seriously.

Absolutism is a deadly serious business. If even a hair's breadth of space is left around a theory, doubt may be able to squeeze through. The citizen may then begin to smile and wonder whether the intellectual justifications of power are really nonsense. Few within the expert élites see themselves as ideologues and yet they quite happily act as carriers of truth in whatever their field.

Whether it reveals the dictatorship of the proletariat or the virtues of privatization, truth is ideology. Not their truths, our élites say. They are simply delivering the inevitable conclusions of facts rationally organized. Absolutism is the weakness of others. Our élites have the good fortune to simply be right. See: DOUBT, IDEOLOGY and SERIOUS.

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rgraham666 said:

Whenever the political and philosophical threads threaten to overwhelm me, I go to this book, The Doubter's Companion.

I open it up and find something that brings me calm and hope.

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sweetsubsarahh said:

You'd mentioned this book before, Rob.

I must get it. It sounds amazing.

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rgraham666 said:

I can't help it, sarahh. It's just so damn much fun to read.

It attacks ideology without becoming ideology itself.

And it's soooo subversive. His observation that the last functioning Marxist philosophers are neo-conservative makes me grin every time I read it.

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kendo1 said:

I'll drink to that.

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ABSOLUTE, adj.
Independent, irresponsible. An absolute monarchy is one in which the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins. Not many absolute monarchies are left, most of them having been replaced by limited monarchies, where the sovereign's power for evil (and for good) is greatly curtailed, and by republics, which are governed by chance.

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BUSINESS SCHOOLS Acting schools which train experts in abstract management methods to pretend they are capitalists.

The graduates of these institutions have dominated Western business leadership for the last quarter-century. This corresponds exactly to a severe economic crisis in the West, which has included runaway inflation, endemic unemployment, almost no real growth, record levels of bankruptcy and a collapse in industrial production. Manufacturing, the sector which they have been trained to manage, has suffered more than any other.

This raises two questions:

1. Is there any indication - practical, statistical, philosophical, or financial - that training future business leaders in specialized management schools has benefited business or the economy?

2. Has this new élite - approximately a quarter of the university population - been able to communicate to society any convincing program for ending the crisis?

Not surprisingly, an education which above all teaches management of structures is impervious to failure. Those within the structure define the economy's needs in their own terms and so seek out new generations of business school graduates.

In 1993 the Harvard Business School reacted to growing criticism of its methods by announcing a new curriculum. In the future students would "focus less on specific disciplines and more on combining skills to solve problems." But it is precisely their obsession with problem-solving that is the heart of the problem. To organize the training of business leaders from the point of view of the corporate executive is like training athletes to compete from the point of view of the team's office manager.

The outside observer might conclude dispassionately that these schools should be shut down or their methodology revolutionized. The graduate will argue, like the World War I staff officer, that failure could be turned into success if only there were more of his own kind in positions of power. Just one more wave of bodies heaved out of the trenches for a charge and the war will be won. See: MANAGER

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RATIONALIZE A transitive verb meaning to close, to shut down, to make redundant, to go bankrupt, to fire.

Administrative dialects seem to have been inspired by the baroque politeness of the Victorian middle-class tea-party. Reality is described through allusion and indirection. Technocrats speak as if they can only dignify their lives through verbal propriety.

Rationalization is to economics what bleeding was to eighteenth-century medicine. The underlying idea is that those who rationalize their activities will improve themselves by self-imposed suffering. It is particularly interesting that the élite most inspired by reason should have chosen a derivative of that word in order to indicate failure. A Jungian might argue that this is an unconscious cry of despair or, more optimistically, for help. Until recently rationalization meant lying to yourself about what you were doing.

Metaphors of To Rationalize include To Restructure, To Downsize.

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MYRMECOHAGA JUBATA Ant-eater. The existence of this predator demonstrates that thinking 71 per cent of the time, as ants do, won't prevent you from being eaten. Thinking less than that, as humans do, will almost guarantee it.

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rgraham666 said:

Feel like bumping this thread.

"MYRMECOHAGA JUBATA Ant-eater. The existence of this predator demonstrates that thinking 71 per cent of the time, as ants do, won't prevent you from being eaten. Thinking less than that, as humans do, will almost guarantee it."

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sweetsubsarahh said:

I wouldn't mind being eaten 71% of the time.

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blackhaus7 said:

That leaves 39% of the time for.............???

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sweetsubsarahh said:

Receiving the high hard one.

Oh - and chocolate.

Jeez. Do I have to explain everything???


(Beg pardon for the threadjack, Rob. )

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rgraham666 said:

De nada.

Eating is one of my favourite pastimes bu the way.

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sweetsubsarahh said:

Receiving the high hard one.

Oh - and chocolate.

Jeez. Do I have to explain everything???


(Beg pardon for the threadjack, Rob. )

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sweetsubsarahh said:

Somehow I knew that. You always seemed a gentleman to me.

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rgraham666 said:

It's a very convincing facade I've built isn't it?

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sweetsubsarahh said:

It'll be fun removing it in Chicago.

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rgraham666 said:

Looking forward to it.

Note to self: Must get enough ID to get a passport.

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