Fourth, political and economic growth do not always automatically improve
child nutrition. According to the authors, "wealth creation at a national level
does not preclude the persistence of wasting on a large scale." For example, the
United Arab Emirates, a wealthy country, has a wasting rate of 14%. "Similarly,"
state the authors, "both India and Brazil have shown remarkable rates of
economic growth without proportional gains in the nutritional status of poorer
people in their society."
Like Matt, a year ago I
thought that an orderly and planned withdrawal of American troops had a chance —
a small one, but a chance — of reducing tensions and producing a
non-catastrophic outcome in Iraq. I don't anymore. At this point, I'm mostly
worried about what happens when Iraq's low-level civil war turns into a
full-scale, armies-on-both-sides-fighting-openly-in-the-streets civil war.
Either we'll try to do something about it, which will produce enormous
casualties and probably have no effect, or else we'll retreat to our "enduring
bases" and hide. Either option will make clear to the world that the greatest
military in the world is helpless.
That's quite a legacy. I wonder who George Bush will try to blame it on?
THE HAWKS REGROUP....Jacob
Heilbrunn surveys the scene in liberal hawk circles these days:
A host of pundits and young national security experts associated with the
[Democratic] party are calling for a return to the Cold War precepts of
President Truman to wage a war against terror that New Republic Editor
Peter Beinart, in the title of his provocative new book, calls "The Good
Fight."
....These Democrats want to be seen as anything but the squishes who have led
the party to defeat in the past.
This morning on Meet the Press, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), a member of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, delivered a strong rebuke of Bush’s
assessment of what’s going on in the Middle East:
I think you could make a pretty strong case that things are worse off
in the Middle East today than they were three years ago. By measurement of Iraq,
by Iran, by the Palestinian-Israeli issue, what’s going on in Egypt.
And, I think the United States must use its force of diplomacy to engage
Iran.
President Bush invoked the name of former President Harry Truman 17 times
today in his West Point commencement
address. “Bush drew parallels
between Mr Truman’s Cold War efforts and his own in fighting global terrorism.”
One Truman quote that Bush did not invoke today: “I never did give them hell. I just told the truth,
and they thought it was hell.”
A 26-year-old college dropout who carries President Bush’s breath mints and
makes him peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches will follow in his boss’s footsteps
this fall when he enrolls at Harvard Business School (HBS).
In the fragments of Empedocles we find possibly the clearest
elucidation of the idea of equality. Empedocles posits two fundamental powers in
the world: Love and Strife. Of them he says:
These two forces, Strife and Love, existed in the past and will
exist in the future; nor will boundless time, I believe, be empty of the pair.
Now one prevails, now the other, each in its appointed turn, as change goes
incessantly on its course.
Philosophy for Kossacks II: Theological and Historical Antecedents to
Athenian Humanism
It was an `archaic world', where aristocracy ruled one was born into a
`station' in life; a world full of wars over wives and the whims of dramatic
deities. However, this extremely hierarchical social economy was governed by
several core concepts of Greek religion that when fully grasped, resulted in its
undoing - in a much parallel fashion, the gifts bestowed upon humanity by the
gods, resulted in the undermining of the power of the gods. There are two core
concepts that are at stake here: moira and charis. The former was
the fundamental concept in Greek religion, the latter was the basis of what was
envisioned as a just economy.
Charis is usually translated as `grace'. Theologically speaking is was
the province of The Charities, who `added luster to things'. Its reach within
archaic social code was extensive: rights of adulthood, childhood education,
rites of fertility, rites of social interaction such as symposia, and it was the
central concept of heroic code. In terms of the last of these, charis
frames the entire action of Iliad. The central problematic within Iliad is the
social struggle between Agamemnon and Achilles. At the outset, Agamemnon strips
Achilles of his social worth, time, by stealing from him a priestess of
Apollo, Briseis, that had been awarded to him as a spoil of war. This is the
last of many outrages that Achilles suffers by Agamemnon, from whom comes `scant
charis'. In response, Achilles decides not to fight, and the Greeks
cannot achieve their destined victory over the Trojans without the mercenary
talents of Achilles. The social economy breaks, because charis has been
removed. It is only through the restoration of a proper `according of worth',
that Achilles will rejoin the Greeks and conquer the Trojans.
One might see this as a simple `reciprocity cult', i.e. one gives gifts and
expects gifts in kind. However, it is not merely material exchange. It is a
public `recognition of one's worth' - like, for instance, at symposia, where
each should speak and act in a manner that confers recognition on all those
present. Furthermore, it is only under these conditions, that society itself is
`fruitful' [keep in mind for later that `fertility' plays a key role in the idea
of `grace'].
Moira is usually translated as `fate' or `destiny'. It really means
neither. It is much closer to a `lot', or a `sphere of influence'. Furthermore,
it stands above even the gods. This is most clearly seen in Hesiod's cosmogony.
Prior to the generation of any gods, Chaos dissolves into four `provinces', the
four moirai, earth, sky, water, and underworld. It is within these
`provinces' that the generation of the gods begins, and with the rise of the
Olympians, these `lots' are shaken. Each of the three sons of Kronos receive
their equal `sphere of influence' [moira], with earth being common
to all three. As we see in Iliad:
No, no. Great though he is, this that he has said is too much,
if he will force me against my will, me, who am his equal in rank. Since we are
three brothers born by Rheia to Kronos, Zeus, and I, and the third is Hades,
lord of the dead men. All was divided among us three ways, each given his
domain. I when the lots were shaken drew the grey sea to live in forever; Hades
drew the lot of the mists and the darkness, and Zeus was allotted the wide sky,
in the cloud and the bright air. But earth and high Olympos are common to all
three.
If civilization is to be
saved, people must come more and more to realize that our consciousness is not
something spatially enclosed in the skin or in the skull or in the brain; that
it is not only our inside, but the inside of the world as a whole. That people
should not merely be able to propound as a theory . . . but that it should
become more and more their actual experience. . . . That, and also the
overcoming of the total obsession there is today, with the Darwinian view of evolution--of consciousness or mind
having emerged from a material, but entirely unconscious universe. Putting it
very shortly, to realize, not simply as a theory but as a conviction of common
sense, that in the history of the world, matter has emerged from mind and
not mind from matter. (TI 10) |
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