[FRIAM] Can you guess the source.

[Nicholas Thompson]

Right!  Or perhaps by somebody who anticipated that they would all fail. 

Why is not complexity theory a counsel of dispair.  And counsels of dispair are urgings toward a libertine life.   On the theory that my raping and muggering is as likely to produce social good as my non raping and non muggering, why dont I just go out and rape and mugger?  How can I possible be an Apollonian in a non-linear world.  
'Live drink and be merry because tomorrow we will die..... nor NOT."

Nick   


----- Original Message ----- 
From: Phil Henshaw 
To: nickthompson at earthlink.net;The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Sent: 4/13/2007 3:41:08 PM 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Can you guess the source.


No clue, but sounds like a normal view from the 50's 60's 70's 80's or 90's?   Clearly not someone who knew about new classes of promising options that hadn't been tried yet though...


On 4/11/07, Nicholas Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net> wrote: 
I am curious to know if anybody in Friam-land will recognize the following passage.  No Fair using google. 

It is NOT from the Gettysburg Address.  

"Our work is guided by the sense that we may be the last generation in the experiment with living. But we are a minority--the vast majority of our people regard the temporary equilibriums of our society and world as eternally functional parts. In this is perhaps the outstanding paradox; we ourselves are imbued with urgency, yet the message of our society is that there is no viable alternative to the present. Beneath the reassuring tones of the politicians, beneath the common opinion that America will "muddle through," beneath the stagnation of those who have closed their minds to the future, is the pervading feeling that there simply are no alternatives, that our times have witnessed the exhaustion not only of Utopias, but of any new departures as well. Feeling the press of complexity upon the emptiness of life, people are fearful of the thought that at any moment things might be thrust out of control. They fear change itself, since change might smash whatever invisible framework seems to hold back chaos for them now. For most Americans, all crusades are suspect, threatening. The fact that each individual sees apathy in his fellows perpetuates the common reluctance to organize for change. The dominant institutions are complex enough to blunt the minds of their potential critics, and entrenched enough to swiftly dissipate or entirely repel the energies of protest and reform, thus limiting human expectancies. Then, too, we are a materially improved society, and by our own improvements we seem to have weakened the case for further change. "


Nicholas S. Thompson
Research Associate, Redfish Group, Santa Fe, NM (nick at redfish.com)
Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University (nthompson at clarku.edu)




============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20070413/ff0c594a/attachment.html