@iconoclast,
iconoclast wrote:Dear Fido, I cannot agree that it's too late to give our lives meaning - and while i recognize that your struggle with these ideas has integrity, 'shutting the door on the Spanish' is a sentiment i find appalling in the extreme.
the problems we face are global in dimension and isolationsim is the problem, not the solution. Nations, national identity - leading to racism prevent cooperation on vital questions that humankind must answer, and answer correctly or become extinct. Philosophy is the love of wisdom and requires that we abandon prejudice - survival requires that we abandon racism and cooperate to survive. iconoclast.
Well, I don't want to break your appaling barrior. It is a problem with capitalism, that we exploit other countries and take their wealth and sooner or later some of theirs show up here looking for it. Do you think they want to leave home? Do you think they are happy here? Do you think the land of milk and honey isn't a little rank, too much chrome and too little know how, too much shine and not enough mind? England does not look like old England but has people from all the old colonies. And England is one of the richest countries, but the average guy is third world, talking trash, and listening to hip hop. I have Spanish in my family, my grandaughter, and she did not invade, but was invaded, which is to say, she is part Puerto Rican. But, if the Mexicans and Central Americans are made miserable where they live, and come here to act as slaves and strike breakers, driving down wages, and driving down working condition then they are what the slaves were in Rome. Now, a slave is not especially productive, but they were only more productive than the Roman farmers so that over generations they could drive native Roman farmers from the soil. On the other side of that coin is the great power and wealth that slave labor created which did not improve those who owned it, but made them rotten. And when the top of society is rotten the bottom follows. People in a luxury society feel cheated if they do not enjoy the luxury too, so they will sell their futures to have their present.
We stopped having more children when the government promised social security. We gave up the greatest wealth for the cheapest lie. After fifty years of constant pressure on wages we can have luxury, but only if foreign children slave for us or Mexican immigrants slave for us here. I love diversity, but to affect social change one must over come diversity and difference. The Romans said: divide and rule. I cannot celebrate the division of American U.S.. The presence of slaves and former slaves means unity is unlikely, and so change is unlikely, and this old dog cart will go flying off the cliff of time unhindered. All this while luxury disipates and demoralizes us. NO! I do not believe this is a happy time for us. Our lives are all fat and no meat.
I love culture, and in a sense it has been the focus of all my study. But revolutions have to begin some where, and that is why the West so attacked China and Russia, for fear that an established revolution would spread. This last great hope of mankind could better bring revolution to the world if the world were not already here, getting in the way. It is our world. We can all live here. We just cannot all live HERE.