The problem with this argument is in the assumptions I would have to accept in order to be ‘pragmatic’.

Most clinical psychiatrists can tell you that schizophrenics often use perfectly sound logic and be consistent, though their actions are based on a central delusion.

Would I like to live in a mental institution, where everyone behaved sensibly, as long as one accepts the assumption that the water faucet is God?

And that is my problem with the human species.

Look at an example: violent crimes committed by fire arms. Canada is trying to solve this problem by ‘gun registration’. Enormous expense, red tape, administration, resistance, resentment. Violent criminals are not lining up to register their firearms. Very limited, if any, result.

The real solution to this ‘unsolvable’ problem is foolproof and obvious: Stop manufacturing firearms and ammunition, destroy any we can lay our hands on. Sooner or later there won't be any left. An even saner solution: remove the causes that make most people use them in violent crime.

Whenever I suggest it, hearty laughter – I am obviously a funny man.

Why?

Because ‘everyone knows’ that it is impossible.

Just like 'everyone knows' that the water faucet is God.

Now, as a good pragmatist, I could accept that and try to find another solution, based on the premise that assumes: it is impossible to stop manufacturing firearms. But do I want to participate in a society where the only sane solution is rejected out of hand as impossible?

Before I go on, let me admit: I know it is impossible. Not because of a natural law of physics, not because the Martians forced it on us, but because we humans (a sufficient majority of those in power) choose to make it impossible.

Crimes committed by firearms is just one example. Almost all of our ‘unsolvable’ social problems have perfectly obvious, sane, simple solutions. All of them ‘impossible’.

So, do I want to participate in a society which is run by people who reject the only sane solution as impossible? Where the majority of citizens go along with this by refusing to consider and implement the required life style changes?

I can only see four basic choices:

1/ Escape from the mental institution to a place of sanity.
2/ Go along with the assumption that the water faucet is God.
3/ Try to convince the inmates they are wrong
4/ Ignore the inmates and isolate myself as much as humanly possible.

Looking at these options, I have to realize that: 1/ would require a space ship or a time machine; 2/ is repulsive and painful for a healthy mind; 3/ I have tried that - no chance in hell; 4/ is the only practical solution I have ever found.

So be it.

[ September 16, 2002: Message edited by: Zatamon ]

You are a funny man. What you suggest is simple: Everybody behave! Good luck. Such naiveté. So lovable you are. I want you to be thy neighbor.

I just wish that was a recognized legal defence.

But seriously, oh, wait, I must now kneel and pray to thy divine God of Drippiness, and hope against hope that no heathen plumber cometh and replace thy mystical washers with new rubber rings of Satan, in an attempt to silence the one true voice...

However, in this thread, it was only an example.

The point in this thread is: 'is there any point trying to make the world a better place (and pay the price it would cost) if the world is so far away from sanity that it often resembles a mental institution?'

For me, personally, it seems like a lost cause.

To finish it, again, with Schiller's famous quote:

"Against stupidity the very gods
Themselves contend in vain"

[ September 15, 2002: Message edited by: Zatamon ]

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For me, personally, it seems like a lost cause.

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Well, why do you keep coming on here and posting these threads, Zatamon? I don't mean that in a 'get lost' kinda way, what I mean is your constant (apart from the recuperation gaps, welcome back, mr idealism!) threads around this subject implies to this amateur psychologist that you actually don't think it is a lost cause, but that there is some hope, if only people would listen to you (or at least if people would hear and think about views like the one you expand on here!).

Methinks there is an underlying contradictory thought beneath your often pessimistic appraisals of life in the asylum! Either that, or you revel in sitting in your pain!

As for the question posed, do you accept any possibility of a middle way - that we can aim for an eventual, perhaps unstated to avoid freaking the deluded powers that be out at this stage, end to the manufacture of firearms etc., but accepting that to say that and work to that explicitly now would instantly condemn us to the sidelines as 'hippies' and make us irrelevant, so instead we start with gun control as a step in the right direction. Is that not pragmatic and achieves something rather than being idealistic and achieving nothing?

You have chosen to:

quote:

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Ignore the inmates and isolate myself as much as humanly possible.

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quote:

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It is about the price-benefit ratio, Apemantus. Too much of one for too little of the other. It is completely personal and individual. I did not make a suggestion to anyone else, I was just thinking aloud. Don't take it too seriously.

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Did you think I had? You should know I take everything you say with a pinch of salt, Zatamon!!

The Buddhists (or one that I met shortly after 9/11) call this period something (bloody can't remember it now, but along the lines of the Age of Horror), but at the same time, in the long run of human history, when we are 5 million years older (assuming we get there, you may think not, I think we will, well at least get past this dark age!), we will think of the start of humanity as a very interesting, tragic time, but humanity being what it is (which encapsulates an awareness of itself), it has as much good as it does evil (for want of better less religious words), and the progression of power from the latter to the former, although painfully slow is slowly happening.