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CHAT: illuminati (was: Back again)

From:Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Friday, September 12, 2003, 18:30
On Thursday, September 11, 2003, at 11:23 , J Y S Czhang wrote:

> In a message dated 2003:09:11 05:34:34 AM, ray.brown@FREEUK.COM writes: >>
[snip]
>> While I support freedom of expression, as long as that freedom is >> responsibly exercised (i.e. not to the harm or detriment of the innocent >> among one's fellow members of the human race), I have no truck with >> either >> hedonism or escapism. > > I think that it's unfortunate that bamboogrove.com choose the words > "hedonistic escape" ... that's not accurate from either a Taoist or a > historical > viewpoint. Most of the Sages were either exiled or self-exiled... and, as > Taoists, they took the attitude of "shit happens... might as well enjoy > nature to > the hilt out here in the backwaters since we have nothing better to do - > Oh!, > there's _nothing_ better than appreciating nature and the Music of Nature. > ..ah, > the usefulness of being supposedly useless... gotta write poems about all > of > this... play music on the _qin_/_ch'in_ [5 or 7 string fretless long-board > zither] contemplatively imitatin' nature sounds... brew wine... etc."
Yep, hedonism is misleading. Still sounds a bit escapist to me, however. [snip]
> [ . . .] >> IMO there is so much misery, violence and oppression in the world >> precisely >> because too little reason is used. >> >> Reason does not produce the horrendous genocides that marked the 20th >> century nor the obscenity & evil of 9/11. > > That is precisely similar to what many "reasonable types" said about > conducting the "Great War" - or World War I (1914-1918) - that it was the > "{reasonable} War to End All {un-reasonable}Wars."
But there were others who spoke out against it. It was, of course, a fairly senseless carnage caused by essentially 5 imperialist powers who drifted into a war which they then couldn't halt. In the late Sid Sakson's excellent book "A Gamut of Games" there is a game called "Origins of World war 1." It is a most enlightening game! But the main problem was, perhaps, the Treaty of Versailles which followed. Someone - I forget who - has dubbed it "The peace to end all peace." Ray =============================================== ray.brown@freeuk.com (home) raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk (work) http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown ===============================================