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Originally Posted by Erasmus "What would we be capable of if we all understood each other perfectly?" |
Peace. Although, it would likely come at the cost of stagnation to the intellectual field for a while, especially if this perfect, mutual understanding to were to supplant our current understanding of other cultures though the filter of translation, or the understanding of other philosophies through the filter of interpretation. It is those filters that take what we’ve known, refine it, and perhaps reveal something we did not know. But I don't think it's necessary to rely on the past, to use it as a crutch, and while saying that, I'm not suggesting that we ignore it either.
By my question yesterday I was just musing (actually worried) about how much value we place on referencing past thoughts. I was thinking of a situation in lecture where one student responded to the professor's question on aphasia, noting only the current text and applying her own assessment of the situation, while the next student who responded said essentially the same thing just by mentioning a past instance of the same disease and how it was treated. The second student was lauded and the rest of the class was just an expansion the procedure referenced in his answer. Why is it that a logical deduction based on empirical data (the first student’s response) was debunked by a regurgitation of that empirical data (the second student’s response) when both answers came to the same conclusion?
Even looking at your own response, I felt that he you had put much consideration and originality into it and I admired it (and still do). But then I thought about why I admired it and I realized that I was, to a degree, practicing the same love of affectation that drives some students to use only quotes as their substance, some sermons to use only platitudes as their talking points, and I’d even go as far as to say that it’s the same pretention that causes some of the patrons at the library where I work to peruse the stacks; It’s not a love of knowledge but a love of seeming to be knowledgeable.
But then again, I've made references of my own in this response. It's just that the lines between progress, stagnation, and decadence are so arbitrary that I don't know when to marvel or when to feel disgusted.
(Also, rauchen is bad for you ^_-)