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The concept of "living in the moment" has a duality that is the scourge of civilization, namely "re-inventing the wheel". I have touched upon this issue previously (see for example, here, here, and here). Re-inventing the wheel, of course, is what people must do after having been bombed into the stone age by their ancestors who ignored the lessons of history.
The real problem with living in the moment is not the intent of the sophism, which is a prescription for self-fulfillment. The problem stems from our inclination to extrapolate everything to the extreme, thereby subverting a prescription for self-fulfillment to a prescription for self-destruction through ignorance of history's lessons.
Instead of guiding our younger generations to progressively better lives through the leveraging of past achievements, often gained at great cost in lives and limited resources, we encourage a self-actualization that is doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, each cycle of vicious repetition occurring at vastly diminished natural resources. Johnny is not academically challenged. Johnny's future has been stunted by his parents' misguided nurturing of naivety, ignorance, and the worship of trivial accomplishment.
Every child is a potential genius. The mistake most parents make, along with those who worship at the alter of political correctness, is that genius will spring forth fully formed like Athena, the favorite daughter of Zeus, born fully armed from his forehead after he swallowed her mother, Metis. But even the great genius Isaac Newton stood "on the shoulders of Giants".
Is there a point to all this? Yes — namely this: The best way to live in the moment is to read a book.
Post #744 Living in the Moment
“The current furor over the three water-boarded terrorists is right out of the old Greek idea of excess leading to hubris leading to nemesis leading to destruction. Do we really wish to revisit 2002?”If you Google the title of my present post you will get 95,300,000 results, the vast majority of which are in favor of it (I did the math). Not to put too fine a point on it, this explains many ills of our enlightened society.
— Victor Davis Hanson
The concept of "living in the moment" has a duality that is the scourge of civilization, namely "re-inventing the wheel". I have touched upon this issue previously (see for example, here, here, and here). Re-inventing the wheel, of course, is what people must do after having been bombed into the stone age by their ancestors who ignored the lessons of history.
The real problem with living in the moment is not the intent of the sophism, which is a prescription for self-fulfillment. The problem stems from our inclination to extrapolate everything to the extreme, thereby subverting a prescription for self-fulfillment to a prescription for self-destruction through ignorance of history's lessons.
Instead of guiding our younger generations to progressively better lives through the leveraging of past achievements, often gained at great cost in lives and limited resources, we encourage a self-actualization that is doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, each cycle of vicious repetition occurring at vastly diminished natural resources. Johnny is not academically challenged. Johnny's future has been stunted by his parents' misguided nurturing of naivety, ignorance, and the worship of trivial accomplishment.
Every child is a potential genius. The mistake most parents make, along with those who worship at the alter of political correctness, is that genius will spring forth fully formed like Athena, the favorite daughter of Zeus, born fully armed from his forehead after he swallowed her mother, Metis. But even the great genius Isaac Newton stood "on the shoulders of Giants".
Is there a point to all this? Yes — namely this: The best way to live in the moment is to read a book.
Post #744 Living in the Moment
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