[FRIAM] quotes and questions

[Prof David West]

Quotes:

*"A thing without oppositions ipso facto does not exist ... existence lies in opposition."* C.S. Peirce.

*"It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is also a deep truth." *Neils Bohr.

Questions:
What is the negation of evolution? Natural Selection? Survival of the 'Fittest'?

What is the negation of 'bleeding heart liberalism'? Of Trumpism? Of "wokeness?"

Quote:

*"Examine the lives of the best and most fruitful people and peoples and ask yourselves whether a tree which is supposed to grow to a proud height could do so without bad weather and storms; **[1]* *whether misfortune and external resistance, whether any kinds of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, mistrust, hardness, greed, and violence to not belong to the *_favorable_* conditions without which any great grown even of virtue is scarecely possible." F. Nietzsche (emphasis his)*

*[1] *The Biosphere 2 project encountered a problem with trees falling over far before they reached their maturity. It was from lack of wind. Wind and mechanical stress was required to grow the hard tissues that allowed the tree to stand.

Questions:

To what extent do we (denizens of FRIAM and their local cultures) require the kinds of stress being encountered in the world?

I suspect that there needs to be a balance between realizable civilization and stresses, but how is that balance defoined and, more importantly, found and maintained?

Concrete example of last question: Will the Twitterites end up being a better or worse 'culture' post-Musk?

davew
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