Blatham
You mean you haven't swallowed Chomsky---hook, line and sinder????
perc
You go fishing with sinders on your line? Boy, that must confuse the hell out of those rainbow trout.
I love Chomsky, but you don't want to go reading one of his linguistics books. That's reading about as tough as it comes.
There probably aren't a lot of people on this site, right or left, who find his political analyses as credible as I do, but we are all lonely at times. Sometimes he heads off into territory where I'm not willing to follow, but his take on the functional and complimentary relationship between media and power is essentially right, I think.
I find that I must be in agreement with Mr. Blatham on this one. I have not read a great deal of Chomsky. But I have read a lot from a man who has learned a great deal from Chomsky, namely, Steven Pinker, the author of "The Language Instinct"
Pinker makes some telling points about Chomsky, but the one which pleases me most is the one which says:
"...chomasky attacks what is still one of the foundations of twnetieth-century intellectual life--"The Standard Social Science Model".
Pinker in his fine book
"The Blank Slate" also quotes Chomsky:
"It is, incidentally, surprising to me that so many commentators should find it disturbing that IQ might be heritable, perhaps largely so."
And this from a man of the left!!!!!
There is a body of evidence that IQ is indeed heritable: through the mother!
Blatham
There is little doubt that Chomsky has made significant contributions in Linguistics but IMO he should not venture where Stalins practical model has proven the hypothethcial model of Lenin and Marx to be unworkable.
Steven Pinkers "Blank Slate" knocked the props out from under Marx's propostion that human nature could be changed which he had to do to in order to dupe people into believing his mad doctrine of "to each according to his needs". To think that human nature can be changed and molded is ludicrous.
perc
Chomsky isn't a Marxist. Never has been.
blatham wrote:perc
Chomsky isn't a Marxist. Never has been.
Yeah ---I know he's just a smart elec anarchist but I never pass up a chance to inform everyone about Marx's dumb ass claim that human nature can be changed.
Do you find anything worthwhile in anarchism? You seem to be fascinated by Chomsky's political views------I was amazed that when he visited Cuba in Oct of 2003, he could blast Bush and his policies but turn a blind eye to the totalitarian nature of Castro's regime.
He's a damn snake Blatham and you know it.
perception,
What do you mean by human nature?
POM
This is an excerpt from a review of Edwards Wilson's "On Human Nature"
and this is also my interpretation:
"Yet despite the solidity of Wilson's research, when "On Human Nature" first came out, it was viciously attacked by left-wing ideologues who violently disagreed with Wilson's conclusions regarding the limitations of man's nature. The Left, of course, wants to believe that human nature is largely fluid and malleable. Man, leftists argue, is the product, not of genetics or biology, but of social conditions, which can be changed. Under a "just" society, human nature would become transformed and evil would virtually disappear from the world. Wilson's "On Human Nature" thoroughly demolishes all these sterile hopes for man's secular salvation. Using scientific evidence, he demonstrates that most human behavior is genetic (or related to or influenced by genetics) and therefore unalterable. The sociologist Vilfredo Pareto has probably described this view of man most trenchantly when he wrote: "The centuries roll by, and human nature remains the same!" In "On Human Nature," Wilson shows us why Pareto is right".
Marx must of course try to convince his readers and advocates, that human nature is malleable in order to put forth his premise that in his utopian world man would live by the following ideal: " To each according to his needs"------Ludicrous----- Marx had a giant intellect but his scheme came unglued due to his lack of understanding of human nature.
the intersting thing is that in the early days of the labor union movement, particularly in Britain, laborers gathered together in the evening to read the great works of literature or to learn arts and crafts in order to heighten their intellect and humanity. Why do we associate the worker today with the crass and the stupid? What is to blame? The mass media? The greed of the upper classes? That human nature is static?
High school kids in upper class communities don't believe what their great grandparents did at the end of the 19th C. That looks like human nature changed for the worse.
Don't confuse temporary changes in human BEHAVIOR with the instincts of human nature which are always lurking just beneath the surface.
For example: Western civilized society no longer tolerates cutting of throats or beheadings for effect or deterrent. But when we see a beheading such as that of Berg-----the immediate reaction is act in the same manner if or when the murderers are captured.
There are feelings of good and evil in us all------all that is required is for the proper set of circumstances to bring it out. A very good example is the behavior of a few soldiers at Abu Graib prison. I believe each of those people would have lived decent lives had they not been confronted with the proper set of circumstances to tempt the evil lurking beneath the surface.
Our Celtic forebears had a severed head fetish. Look up the shrine at Roquepertuese (sp?) France.
Damn good points Perc. I would only add that it is a relatively tiny percentage of U.S. Soldiers who are tarnishing the name. What is it... Something like one in five thousand have been accused of crimes? We should do so well back here at home.
Compared to those who insitituted the policies in Iraq in the first place, the soldiers are saints. Noone is really blaming the individual soldiers for the abuses except.... for the Bush administration, funnily enough.
They couldn't possibly have any reason to try and protect themselves on this one. Nah.
Noone has been able to explain to my satisfaction how the moving of prisoners in order to dodge the INRC is the actions of a few soldiers, and not a general policy issue.
Cycloptichorn
