Too big to succeed | 57 comments (57 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: LQD: Too big to succeed (4.00 / 5)

R selected or K selected? R or K?

one's easier -- just live it up, have a nice boom, and hope that the bust happens to our kids and grandkids instead of us. yippee, party hearty, discount the future, damn the torpedoes.

one's harder.

might call it the Yeast Party vs the Redwood Party: we can grow like blazes, pig out on any bonanza of nutrients or energy with no thought for tomorrow... or we could aim to be a climax anchor species whose activity provides -- rather than destroying -- habitat for many others... unfinished thought... gotta run...

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Wed Apr 14th, 2010 at 08:07:56 PM EST
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Re: LQD: Too big to succeed (4.00 / 4)

DeAnander:

one's easier -- just live it up, have a nice boom, and hope that the bust happens to our kids and grandkids instead of us. yippee, party hearty, discount the future, damn the torpedoes.
one's harder.

now, now with yer binaries!

conceptually, it's easily that stark, but down in the real world ^TM too much hairshirtism leads to atrophy of the will.

as for partying hard, that can be more or less sustainable...

i think of those african tribes out in the desert, barely two sticks to rub together, but still doing a boogie round the fire under the stars.

get too far out and no-one but the already initiated can relate to you.

sometimes you have to let it all hang out, or the efforts to be exemplary can cause a nasty stress of its own.

both/and. this era is tragically funny, and horribly hilarious.

still something good to celebrate there, for want of better choice...

the very meaning of the word 'growth' has to change, from that of a (once-benign, but now metastized) tumour to intellectual growth, since that's what makes us different (if not yet better!) than the rest of mammalia.

that might be your cup of tea, De.

drunk out there rocking on the water under the banshee moon.

;)

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Thu Apr 15th, 2010 at 05:51:41 AM EST
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Re: LQD: Too big to succeed (4.00 / 3)

intellectual growth,

I dunno from definitions, but I call that 'whole-brain-use', or own responsibility for 'personal growth'. IMHO, all human 'capacities and potential' reside in the brain including feeling, creativity, imagination, emotion, intuition,... besides rational thought processing, and the endless combinations. If any of us had had a 'sane' upbringing, we would have developed the neuron discipline to find our 'best mix', guided by basic social values, but I think most of us got blocked, shorted and conditioned in many areas.

So we live trying our best to grow and develop:
the best balance of all of them in ourselves and
the best place to put them to good use.

Dreamer (;

Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. -Charu Saxena.

by metavision on Fri Apr 16th, 2010 at 06:53:52 PM EST
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Re: LQD: Too big to succeed (none / 1)

yes i dream, that's why i have accomplished so little during my years here, but that's also why what little i have accomplished has proved to be enduring to me.

i loved your comment, mv, because it reminded me how male this insistence on the word 'intellect' is, like the mind is some kind of rocket probe to go higher and higher into the vast firmament of the unknown.

while i do want to help celebrate the intellect, i am very aware that the very term falls into a (very male) trap of separation.

and i'm aware that intellect is historically value-neutral, without respect and wonder, humility and proportion, it can lead us into hell and drop us off there with no ride home.

intellect for me can be found in an illiterate bedouin shepherd, it's not a product of academia, though western education can burnish it, notwithstanding the cultural conditioning.

maybe we have to discover the intellect in order to transcend it (another male obsession, btw), or better celebrate it equally with energies from the other pole, a sensuous use of the brain for pure art-delight, seeing its use also in say figure skating, distinguished from its ivy league, ivory tower
connotations. the term has become so loaded, it can be compliment or epithet depending on pov.

i think we need it to comprehend abstract notions, a castalia in which to ponder issues of weight and great nuance that can be lofty enough to leave the gritty everyday world far behind, and therein lies the trap.

intellectual freedom, the bugaboo of tyrants through history is what i think we crave, yet, it's an not unironic truth that ultimately the intellect must get in line with all the other faculties we master and possess, or it will warp and become bent.

...as will a character whose will to intellectualise has been devalued, perhaps by an anti-intellectual parent or peer pressure.

once grown there can be a huge resentment at people who have developed their brains while still flexible enough to do so, a stoking rage that they missed a bus, and now it would be unimaginably hard to correct, like taking up violin at 90!

this bloodlust is what i see blazing in the teabagger movement, fr'example. they look at a leader like obama, and the realisation that the very (self-)education that they eschewed when they could have made something of it is personified in a black(ish) man, who three generations ago they could have called 'boy' and sent to the back of the bus...

you're so right though, it's much more about wholebrain-thinking and balance than mere garlanding the intellect, which without moral grounding can be devastatingly destructive, though it's hard to not see equal capacity for destructivity in power-without-intellect, such as was hallmark of hitler, pol pot, stalin and mao.

when you want unthinking followers, slaying intellectuals who may invite freedom of thought in the lumpenproletariat is a .....-no-brainer', lol.

Idealist (;

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Fri Apr 16th, 2010 at 08:26:57 PM EST
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Re: LQD: Too big to succeed (none / 0)

i loved your comment, mv, because it reminded me how male this insistence on the word 'intellect' is, like the mind is some kind of rocket probe to go higher and higher into the vast firmament of the unknown.

<sigh>

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Fri Apr 16th, 2010 at 09:03:48 PM EST
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Re: LQD: Too big to succeed (none / 1)

Here's a data point. As far as I know, the scenarios without collapse presented in The Limits to Growth ceased to be feasible around 2000 since the kinds of (broad, vague) corrective policy directions assumed in the scenarios were not adopted. (This is from looking at the 1990's 20th anniversary book Beyond the Limits to Growth).

The brainless should not be in banking -- Willem Buiter

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Apr 15th, 2010 at 06:45:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Yes, avoiding a crash is no longer (4.00 / 4)

possible.

The depth of the crash is still undecided.

The Fates are kind.

by Gaianne on Fri Apr 16th, 2010 at 04:10:23 PM EST
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Re: Yes, avoiding a crash is no longer (none / 1)

'since we're on our way down, may as well enjoy the ride...'

James Taylor 'Secret of life'

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Fri Apr 16th, 2010 at 08:30:39 PM EST
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Re: LQD: Too big to succeed (none / 0)

And the yeast can out compete the redwood in the short term.

by njh on Sun Apr 18th, 2010 at 12:13:14 AM EST
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