In today’s WaPo, we see the fundamental difference between an advanced culture that confronts even uncomfortable reality with courage and honesty and a primitive, short-sighted one that tells itself reassuring lies.
Policy-driven evidence
By Michael O'Hare 479826 Commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.samefacts.com%2F2014%2F06%2Fculture-and-civil-society%2Fpolicy-driven-evidence%2FPolicy-driven+evidence2014-06-25+17%3A36%3A03Michael+O%27Harehttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.samefacts.com%2F%3Fp%3D47982
Ralph says
This must be snark. I see no basic difference between the too approaches.
For the record, I detest ambiguous posts like this. Are you trying to make a particular point or its opposite?
Ken Rhodes says
Your first paragraph is exactly accurate. Your second says, in effect, “Don’t poke them with an épée; hit them over the head with a club.”
I the club is sometimes appropriate, but so too, sometimes, is the poke with the lighter weapon.
JamesWimberley says
The solution for coastal North Carolinans is to move to Kurdistan. The Kurds can read maps and take decisive but prudent action towards a long-term goal. They must be thinking now if it's safe to take Mosul from ISIS. the way they took Kirkuk,
RhodesKen says
In my Philosophy classes at Loyola College, a Jesuit school, there was frequent reference to the Thomistic view that there are certain attributes of humans, known as human nature, that form the basis for ethics. The reason I bring that up is not ethics; rather, it's the idea that there is some commonality to "human nature" that transcends culture, and imbues us all.
These two articles (and observation of many other instances) seem to support that theory.
JamesWimberley says
Who'd have known that Loyola College is run by Jesuits?
Mitch Guthman says
I think your Jesuit education may have made it difficult to see the critical distinction highlighted by Wimberley. There is not necessarily a moral component involved in either the examples in the original post or in Wimberley's Kurdish counter example. The distinction is between responding to an uncomfortable reality clearheadedly and with a calculated plan of action and a response based on self deception superstition or stupidity. The history of our species is replete with examples of both kinds of responses.