Re: FW: Technologies and Their Effect on Learning as aBiologicalProcess

Phil Graham (pw.graham who-is-at student.qut.edu.au)
Thu, 14 Oct 1999 21:29:10 +1000

I think a neo-neo-post-post-neo-Hegelian megalomaniac has actually
synthesised Orwell and Huxley, thus superseding the need for any Hitler by
presenting Nordo-Einsteinistic Napoleonism as a
cosmetic-eugenic-discursive-militaristic normative standard to which we all
ought to aspire.=20

Compare and contrast the following few statements:=20

cf. Foreign Affairs and Trade policy (recently conflated in most OECD
countries)

"The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist =96
McDonald=92s cannot flourish without McDonnel Douglas, the builder of the
F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley=92s
technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine
Corps. "Good ideas and technologies need a strong power that promotes those
ideas by example and protects those ideas by winning on the battlefield,"
says the foreign policy historian Robert Kagan. "If a lesser power were
promoting our ideas and technologies, they would not have the global
currency that they have. And when a strong power, the Soviet Union,
promoted its bad ideas, they had a lot of currency for more than half a
century."(Friedman 1999: 84).=20

"No economic policy is possible without a sword, no industrialization
without power. Today we have no longer any sword grasped in our fist, how
can we have a successful economic policy? England has fully recognized this
primary maxim in the healthy life of States; for centuries England has
acted on the principle of converting economic strength into political
power, while conversely political power in its turn must protect economic
life. The instinct of self preservation can build up economics, but we
sought to preserve World Peace instead of the interests of the nation,
instead of defending the economic life of the nation with the sword and of
ruthlessly championing those conditions which were essential for the life
of the people." (Hitler 1923a).=20

"History proves: He who has not the strength - him the 'right in itself'
profits not a whit. A world court without a world police would be a joke.
And from what nations of the present League of Nations would then this
force be recruited? Perhaps from the ranks of the old German Army? _The
whole world of nature is a mighty struggle between strength and weakness -
an eternal victory of the strong over the weak_. There would be nothing but
decay in the whole of Nature if this were not so". (Hitler 1923b)

cf. Lifelong learning and "pragmatic" education:=20

"The National Socialist Revolution has clearly outlined the duties which
this social education must fulfil and, above all, it has made this
education independent of the question of age. In other words, the education
of the individual can never end. Therefore it is the duty of the
folk-community to see that this education and higher training must always
be along lines that help the community to fulfil its own task =85

For that reason we must insist that all organs of education which may be
useful for the instruction and training of the people have to fulfil their
duty towards the community. Such organs or organisations are: Education of
the Youth, Young Peoples Organisation, Hitler Youth, Labour Front, Party
and Army--all these are institutions for the education and higher training
of our people. The book press and the newspaper press, lectures and art,
the theatre and the cinema, they are all organs of popular education".
(Hitler 1937)

cf. The end of political dogmas

"We live in an age when most of the old dogmas that haunted governments in
the past have been swept away. We know now that better government is about
much more than whether public spending should go up or down, or whether
organisations should be nationalised or privatised. Now that we are not
hidebound by the old ways of government we can find new and better ones."
(Prime Minister and the Minister for the Cabinet Office [UK], 1999)

"Party, State, Army, the national economic structure, Justice etc, all
these are only secondary and accidental. They are only the means to the end
and the end is the preservation of this nation. These public institutions
are right and useful according to the measure in which their energies are
directed towards this task. If they are incapable of fulfilling it, then
their existence is harmful and they must either be reformed or removed and
replaced by something better.

It is absolutely necessary that this principle should be practically
recognised; for that is the only way in which men can be saved from
becoming the victims of a devitalized set of dogmas in a matter where
dogmas are entirely out of place, and from drawing dogmatic conclusions
from the consideration of ways and means, when the final purpose itself is
the only valid dogma." (Hitler 1937)

cf. "Waste disposal"=20

"When Maggie X died, the home [Morpeth Castle, Northumbria, UK] decided
that her savings of =A3450 was insufficient to pay for the funeral and asked
the council to pay. It refused and the owner of the home appealed to the
Local Ombudsman. In his comments to the latter, the council Chief
Executive, wrote that =91without wishing to appear insensitive, one could
argue that from a commercial viewpoint residents of a home are its income
producing raw material. Ergo, from a purely commercial view, deceased
residents may then be regarded as being the waste produced by their
business=92. Since, he continued, the resident=92s body was =91controlled wa=
ste
likely to cause pollution of the environment or harm to human health=92 the
home had, under the definition of controlled waste as defined by the
Environmental Protection Act, =91a specific duty=92 to dispose of the remain=
s.
Disposal, under the definitions of the Act, was =91a business cost=92. " (Do=
ig
& Wilson, in press)

Keynes merely succeded in delaying what would appear to have been
inevitable all along.=20

Phil

At 23:37 13-10-99 -0700, you wrote:
>So in the end the western victory in the Cold War was the triumph of Brave
>New World over 1984 with a touch of Adolf Hitler thrown in as Icelandic
>beauties sell their genes to Swiss pharmaceutical companies for mass
>replication. A new occupation in the works: orthogenetician (replaces
>orthodontics, counseling, and cosmetic surgery the way photography replaced
>portrait painting and drafted illustration and xerox carbon paper.) =
Woopee!
>
>And it's only October.
>
>Paul

Phil Graham
p.graham who-is-at qut.edu.au
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/8314/index.html