User:Goethean

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

All this is to simply say that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in this world, no man can be totally rich even if he has a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than twenty or thirty years, no man can be totally healthy, even if he just got a clean bill of health from the finest clinic in America. Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way that the world is made. I didn’t make it that way, but this is the interrelated structure of reality.

– Martin Luther King, Jr., "The American Dream"

The Lindisfarne Chapel, Crestone, Colorado.
The Lindisfarne Chapel, Crestone, Colorado.




Do not, I beg you, look for anything behind phenomena. They are themselves their own lesson.

— Goethe, attributed[1]




Either do not give the name of knowledge to your beliefs only and of error, ignorance or charlatanism to the beliefs of others, or do not rail at the dogmas of the sects and their intolerance.

— Aurobindo Ghose, Thoughts and Aphorisms, #9









Some Wikipedia history: in 2005-6, I and some other users (Hawstom, Jossi, Sam Spade) attempted to insert some text into the Human article which would indicate that not everybody accepts the naturalistic view that humans are nothing more than bright primates. (This does not mean that I do not accept contemporary evolutionary theory.) We failed completely; no text was added to the article. Subsequently, Sam Spade was banished from Wikipedia for a year, and quit editing.

I learned a lot about Wikipedia in the process. Namely, that it is a free-for-all in which those who can control content tend to bring it in line with their point of view, and to prevent others from doing the same. The most positive thing that can be said is that this is done with occasional regard for the appearance of fairness. Wikipedia policies are manipulated and abused with enthusiasm and impunity. Idealistic conceptions like fairness, rationality, and truth are only useful when used in a purely rhetorical manner. Everyone pays lip service to neutral point of view, but nobody writes for the enemy.

Good luck!


Gadadhar Chattopadhyay
Gadadhar Chattopadhyay
old maps are cool.
old maps are cool.





[edit] other



[edit] Notes

  1. ^ The same text also appears as:
    "Search nothing beyond the phenomena, they themselves are the theory"

    Quoted in translation in: Hughes, Peter (1992). "Performing Theory: Wittgenstein and the Trouble with Shakespeare". Comparative Criticism 14: 85.