Thank you to the person who put up this 1-minute excerpt from my recent interview in Florence:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ln_pPDLYTc …
The foundational question isn't Left vs. Right, religion vs. atheism, or freedom vs. authority. The question is whether we feel gratitude for everything our ancestors actually accomplished, or resentment that they didn't already accomplish everything we might have hoped for.
-
-
All of these dichotomies still distill down to Thomas Sowell's Constrained vs Unconstrained visions.
-
Which I think, in turn, boil down to gratitude towards ancestors for the human nature that we have ('constrained') vs. ingratitude/denial about human nature ('unconstrained')
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
Well put! If I might suggest an additional framing: do we assume that we are to be recipients who are owed things from our forebears or are we invited to be participants in a project of generational progress, to preserve the good and improve upon the rest?
-
All of the above, I hope.
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
Surely the foundational question is not an attitude to a contested past but some version of "What is to be done?"
-
The deeper our appreciation for the past, the easier it is to see the ways forward. Trite, but true.
- 1 more reply
New conversation -
-
-
Damn this is very good
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
Closely associated is whether we feel responsible for making our lives and the world better or we feel we are not but it's only others who are. There are factual issues involved, but the vitriol with which some decry the notion of personal responsibility speaks for itself.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
My guess is that you wildly overestimate the accomplishments of your ancestors, my ancestors, or anyone's ancestors.
-
By which I mean, much more of our broadly available benefits are due to cooperation that occurred breadthwise, across society considered widely, rather than what each of us has gained depthwise, via ancestry per se.
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.