Wow. Just wow. Some people are SOOO on the money!!
Thankyou so much for posting that, and thanks to Jeff as well!
I agree with you - people WERE smarter back then! And when I read books like "The Lucky Country" I see the same sort of things being inferred at times - and it's written so much better than the (oftentimes) tripe you get these days.
I really do wonder what has happened in the last 50 years. It's like we've kind of stood still as a race. Sure, there's more on the electronics front, and we've tried to gather as much 'stuff' as we can in our quest for materialism, but the base model human hasn't changed. Except that as I agreed above, we're more stupid now as a species. So in that sense, we HAVE changed. We're more pliable, more able to be destroyed from within. And it's happening. Everywhere.
It almost makes you want to give up hope, doesn't it?!?!
But I won't give up hope. I can't. We've been better before, and we can be that again. I just wonder, what will it take for people to be...better?
In a very real sense, the rapid development of technology, and our increasing reliance on it, has made us more stupid. When I was in high school, I memorised the first 30 elements of the periodic table by writing them out, 10 at a time, on the back of my hand, and reciting them while I walked my leaflet delivery run. I also knew all my friends' phone numbers off by heart, and the numberplates of my dad's cars, and my friends' parents' cars (so that I wouldn't embarrass myself by approaching the wrong car if they were picking me from up after-school activities!). I can still recite John Donne poems that I studied in Year 11 English in 1988. But now there's no incentive to memorise information, because I can just look it up online. I don't even know my kids' mobile numbers because they're in my phone. I know I'm not alone in this.
Donald Horne was perhaps a bit too subtle in The Lucky Country. Most people read the title, skimmed the book (if they even bothered reading it at all), and assumed that he just meant we were really lucky to have been born here (which is still true, when you compare Australia to many other countries). But we've always just ridden along on that dumb luck, never undergoing the kinds of struggles that shaped the American Revolution or even the peasant uprisings in Europe.
What will it take for people to be better? I hate to say it, but I'm afraid that only when they've been exposed to the darkest things that human nature can conjure up, will they realise that, in the immortal words of Leonard Cohen, "Love's the only engine of survival."
I, too, used to memorise everyone's phone numbers, addresses; all that jazz! I memorised poems as well, ballads/songs, and I memorised 30 A4 pages of Latin translations in one night whilst cramming for my HSC! I had rather slacked off all year (was busy playing sport, watching TV, catching up with friends, sleeping, working etc) and thought I'd better try to pass. Which I did...just! Only just made it into my chosen course with my barely-above 'state average' TER! God I hated school looking back. Good for memory usage and socialising (so long as you HAD friends), but not much good for anything else!
As a teen, I worked at a fruit market and had to remember ALL the codes for the fruit & vegetables - and then some! After 7 years doing that casual job, some are still etched in my brain today!
Plus I used to memorise my piano pieces. I still do, for some of them :-)
Then again, I have a partial photographic memory, which rather helps me with remembering things - but I don't use it like that much anymore. I did during my school/Uni years, though, but it is really intense remembering things like a computer might, and I don't like frying my brain like that these days! I think it's full of too much other stuff, like how my family & I can survive in this world!
Anyway, these days it's like I 'bookmark' an interesting idea/knowledge in my mind, and then I go back to where I originally found that info (online, book, article, email etc) and re-read it when I want to. Less pages to remember that way, just some search terms, or which book/email/date it was. So I guess I'm being more efficient with my memory these days, and outsourcing where it's safe to ;-)
But yes, people are NOT required to memorise things anymore. I don't remember my friend's mobile numbers, either. Like you, they're in my phone! I know about 5-10 people's phone numbers off by heart! And can hazard a guess at a few more, but that's it. I even looked at the Periodic Table the other day and I swear I don't remember half of what's on it anymore! Perhaps I've got other things worth remembering these days. And the important numbers are written down in my address book, anyway.
Maybe when people don't have the internet anymore because it's been so limited by our (pseudo-)totalitarian government, then maybe they'll be forced to use their brains?! If they can find them, that is!
I have actually read the whole of Donald Horne's book, and I think I may read it again, soon. But yes, subtle is a good way to describe it. Perhaps if he wrote it many years later he might not have been so subtle?! :-D
Not sure that Love will get everyone by, but I understand where you're coming from. It's just that I learned a very painful lesson in my 20s that love was not enough. I have since realised, thankfully, that life is more than love. Far more. But yes, we all still need love :-)
I think that line from Leonard Cohen - love's the only engine of survival - is more about Love in the sense that Christians say that God is Love. In other words, if we want to get out of this mess we have to cultivate our ability to embody and express the highest good that we're capable of. I'm also reminded of the US Founding Fathers' warning that the republican form of government that they instituted, was only suitable for a moral people. We see the consequences of the abandonment of moral standards in the dissolution of that country now.
The whole thing is astonishing and breathtaking and disturbingly accurate.
But this: "at the root of my concern is the conviction that a human being is not a digit; he's not a digit in regard to the state and he's not a digit in the sense that he can ignore his fellow men and his obligations to society".
I love that line too. The 'leftists' prioritise the collective (which inevitably boils down to the state) over the individual and the 'right-wingers' prioritise the individual over the collective. Garrison pitched it right down the middle: we are all individuals who have dignity and worth, but we cannot thrive except in a social context.
Yep. The book 180 Degrees ... is pretty much all about this too. I like Seymour Hersh too. But I’m also at the pony where I can’t read every substack anymore either. Less is more unfortunately
I listened to Delingpole's interview with the author of 180 Degrees and I'd love to read the book, but my stack of unread books is already up to the ceiling!
Wow - Jim Garrison was a man of great integrity with a powerful, prescient warning for us decades ago. Thank you for sharing this!
There are some words that echo down the ages and the people who spoke or wrote them deserve to be remembered.
Wow. Just wow. Some people are SOOO on the money!!
Thankyou so much for posting that, and thanks to Jeff as well!
I agree with you - people WERE smarter back then! And when I read books like "The Lucky Country" I see the same sort of things being inferred at times - and it's written so much better than the (oftentimes) tripe you get these days.
I really do wonder what has happened in the last 50 years. It's like we've kind of stood still as a race. Sure, there's more on the electronics front, and we've tried to gather as much 'stuff' as we can in our quest for materialism, but the base model human hasn't changed. Except that as I agreed above, we're more stupid now as a species. So in that sense, we HAVE changed. We're more pliable, more able to be destroyed from within. And it's happening. Everywhere.
It almost makes you want to give up hope, doesn't it?!?!
But I won't give up hope. I can't. We've been better before, and we can be that again. I just wonder, what will it take for people to be...better?
In a very real sense, the rapid development of technology, and our increasing reliance on it, has made us more stupid. When I was in high school, I memorised the first 30 elements of the periodic table by writing them out, 10 at a time, on the back of my hand, and reciting them while I walked my leaflet delivery run. I also knew all my friends' phone numbers off by heart, and the numberplates of my dad's cars, and my friends' parents' cars (so that I wouldn't embarrass myself by approaching the wrong car if they were picking me from up after-school activities!). I can still recite John Donne poems that I studied in Year 11 English in 1988. But now there's no incentive to memorise information, because I can just look it up online. I don't even know my kids' mobile numbers because they're in my phone. I know I'm not alone in this.
Donald Horne was perhaps a bit too subtle in The Lucky Country. Most people read the title, skimmed the book (if they even bothered reading it at all), and assumed that he just meant we were really lucky to have been born here (which is still true, when you compare Australia to many other countries). But we've always just ridden along on that dumb luck, never undergoing the kinds of struggles that shaped the American Revolution or even the peasant uprisings in Europe.
What will it take for people to be better? I hate to say it, but I'm afraid that only when they've been exposed to the darkest things that human nature can conjure up, will they realise that, in the immortal words of Leonard Cohen, "Love's the only engine of survival."
I, too, used to memorise everyone's phone numbers, addresses; all that jazz! I memorised poems as well, ballads/songs, and I memorised 30 A4 pages of Latin translations in one night whilst cramming for my HSC! I had rather slacked off all year (was busy playing sport, watching TV, catching up with friends, sleeping, working etc) and thought I'd better try to pass. Which I did...just! Only just made it into my chosen course with my barely-above 'state average' TER! God I hated school looking back. Good for memory usage and socialising (so long as you HAD friends), but not much good for anything else!
As a teen, I worked at a fruit market and had to remember ALL the codes for the fruit & vegetables - and then some! After 7 years doing that casual job, some are still etched in my brain today!
Plus I used to memorise my piano pieces. I still do, for some of them :-)
Then again, I have a partial photographic memory, which rather helps me with remembering things - but I don't use it like that much anymore. I did during my school/Uni years, though, but it is really intense remembering things like a computer might, and I don't like frying my brain like that these days! I think it's full of too much other stuff, like how my family & I can survive in this world!
Anyway, these days it's like I 'bookmark' an interesting idea/knowledge in my mind, and then I go back to where I originally found that info (online, book, article, email etc) and re-read it when I want to. Less pages to remember that way, just some search terms, or which book/email/date it was. So I guess I'm being more efficient with my memory these days, and outsourcing where it's safe to ;-)
But yes, people are NOT required to memorise things anymore. I don't remember my friend's mobile numbers, either. Like you, they're in my phone! I know about 5-10 people's phone numbers off by heart! And can hazard a guess at a few more, but that's it. I even looked at the Periodic Table the other day and I swear I don't remember half of what's on it anymore! Perhaps I've got other things worth remembering these days. And the important numbers are written down in my address book, anyway.
Maybe when people don't have the internet anymore because it's been so limited by our (pseudo-)totalitarian government, then maybe they'll be forced to use their brains?! If they can find them, that is!
I have actually read the whole of Donald Horne's book, and I think I may read it again, soon. But yes, subtle is a good way to describe it. Perhaps if he wrote it many years later he might not have been so subtle?! :-D
Not sure that Love will get everyone by, but I understand where you're coming from. It's just that I learned a very painful lesson in my 20s that love was not enough. I have since realised, thankfully, that life is more than love. Far more. But yes, we all still need love :-)
I think that line from Leonard Cohen - love's the only engine of survival - is more about Love in the sense that Christians say that God is Love. In other words, if we want to get out of this mess we have to cultivate our ability to embody and express the highest good that we're capable of. I'm also reminded of the US Founding Fathers' warning that the republican form of government that they instituted, was only suitable for a moral people. We see the consequences of the abandonment of moral standards in the dissolution of that country now.
Very astute, Robyn. Thanks for the clarification re Leonard Cohen :-)
And yes, morals do seem to be being abandoned every which way we turn at present :-(
The whole thing is astonishing and breathtaking and disturbingly accurate.
But this: "at the root of my concern is the conviction that a human being is not a digit; he's not a digit in regard to the state and he's not a digit in the sense that he can ignore his fellow men and his obligations to society".
Thank you so much for sharing and to Jeff also.
I love that line too. The 'leftists' prioritise the collective (which inevitably boils down to the state) over the individual and the 'right-wingers' prioritise the individual over the collective. Garrison pitched it right down the middle: we are all individuals who have dignity and worth, but we cannot thrive except in a social context.
Exactly! : )
Yep. The book 180 Degrees ... is pretty much all about this too. I like Seymour Hersh too. But I’m also at the pony where I can’t read every substack anymore either. Less is more unfortunately
I listened to Delingpole's interview with the author of 180 Degrees and I'd love to read the book, but my stack of unread books is already up to the ceiling!
I’m still reading it after two months :)
Imagine how clever the Ancient Greeks were.
Depressing, but true. The future does not look bright.
I often wonder what it will take to wake enough people up to really make a difference.