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Lipton’s Journal/January 26, 1955/282: Difference between revisions
Lipton’s Journal/January 26, 1955/282 (view source)
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Sociostasis and sociostasis. Societies leave behind them a homeostatic record ({{LJ:H}} vs. {{LJ:S}}) which we call history. Each death of an H vs. S leaves us a truth. Human life is not a circle but a spiral. When the spiral returns to the point where it was an age, a century, an eon ago, what was once an H may now be an S. Reason which is part of man’s soul was once an H-instrument which put S in retreat. (Arbitrarily, the French Revolution.) But S is part of life too | Sociostasis and sociostasis. Societies leave behind them a homeostatic record ({{LJ:H}} vs. {{LJ:S}}) which we call history. Each death of an H vs. S leaves us a truth. Human life is not a circle but a spiral. When the spiral returns to the point where it was an age, a century, an eon ago, what was once an H may now be an S. Reason which is part of man’s soul was once an H-instrument which put S in retreat. (Arbitrarily, the French Revolution.) But S is part of life too: it is Other-Life, and so in defeating an H it absorbs it. Reason has now become Rationalization (in the large sense of the word). It is one of the bulwarks of society. | ||
So the H turns to the illogical, the intuitive, the ''irrational''. One symptom of this is what everybody is calling the plague of irrationality. Small communities refuse the fluoridation of water, although rationally fluoridation prevents tooth decay and does no ''known'' harm. [[w:Joseph McCarthy|McCarthys]] spring up and have to be defeated at what cost to the rational nervous system {{ins|of the State}} it is difficult to contemplate. Demagogues are on the march, painting deserts the representational—to wit, the rational. Poetry ceases to communicate to large audiences. Billy Grahams{{refn| One of the most charismatic Christian (Protestant) evangelists of the past century, [[w:Billy Graham|Graham]] (b. 1918) appeared on television and held religious rallies for 70 years, including some in England.}} electrify the staid English; Aldous Huxley{{refn|A member of a talented and accomplished British family, [[w:Aldous Huxley|Huxley]] (1894-1963), was a novelist and philosopher with an interest in the occult and spiritualism. His most famous book is ''Brave New World'' (1932), a dystopian satire. He died of cancer shortly after taking a dose of LSD on the day President Kennedy was assassinated, November 22, 1963.}} the last in line of a great intellectual family takes a drug and writes a book about it. | So the H turns to the illogical, the intuitive, the ''irrational''. One symptom of this is what everybody is calling the plague of irrationality. Small communities refuse the fluoridation of water, although rationally fluoridation prevents tooth decay and does no ''known'' harm. [[w:Joseph McCarthy|McCarthys]] spring up and have to be defeated at what cost to the rational nervous system {{ins|of the State}} it is difficult to contemplate. Demagogues are on the march, painting deserts the representational—to wit, the rational. Poetry ceases to communicate to large audiences. Billy Grahams{{refn| One of the most charismatic Christian (Protestant) evangelists of the past century, [[w:Billy Graham|Graham]] (b. 1918) appeared on television and held religious rallies for 70 years, including some in England.}} electrify the staid English; Aldous Huxley{{refn|A member of a talented and accomplished British family, [[w:Aldous Huxley|Huxley]] (1894-1963), was a novelist and philosopher with an interest in the occult and spiritualism. His most famous book is ''Brave New World'' (1932), a dystopian satire. He died of cancer shortly after taking a dose of LSD on the day President Kennedy was assassinated, November 22, 1963.}} the last in line of a great intellectual family takes a drug and writes a book about it. | ||