🚀 go-pugleaf

>>The modern man is now enlightened to the fact that what plato
>>says is logically inconsistent,

Sometimes inconsistent. However the clever trickery in Plato's
arguments led directly to the formal logic of Aristotle (so that
such sophistry could be refuted).

In addition, Plato pinpointed very exactly many problems facing
man and society both then and now. (My favorite is whether it is
better to be a good man, or to appear to be a good man). One can
trace many current ideas and viewpoints back to the Greek thinkers.

It isn't so easy to come up with valid, worthwhile new ideas that are
superior to the ideas of past thinkers. After all we have a long 
history filled with brilliant minds.

The technical developments of the modern world have advantages and
disadvantages. One of my favorite examples is writing and printing.
Being able to record information and disseminate it has obvious
uses. But one disadvantage is that since it is no longer
necessary to retain information inside the human mind in order
to pass it from generation to generation, the great capacity for
memorization of vast quantities of information demonstrated by
the ancients is withering away. In some sense modern man is
devolving as a consequence of his technical advancement.

>>that what the greek thinkers say are
>>curious at their time, and as irrelavant in theirs as in ours.

False. Unless you mean that since they are relevant now they were
as relevant then (but I doubt that was your intent).

>>The modern
>>man has matured from his romantic adolescence, ready to take on the
>>harsh reality of the universe that we live in.

Sigh. The fallacies are becoming too numerous to refute in detail.

>>The modern homer and
>>plato are the scientists, engineers musicians, novelists.

Absurd.

>>In order for
>>the modern man to be "educated", it is necessary to refute untruth

Are we to conclude therefore that modern man is not educated?

>>That does not say that
>>the greek thinkers are not historical curiosities, but let's not make
>>them anymore than that; even they would find it silly.

To borrow an expression from weemba:

????

>I read the above and want to throw up.  Ignorance is one thing, but
>pride in it?  And then pseudo-logical reasonings to justify ignorance?

Well said.

>Quite frankly, I find much of Plato, Homer, etc quite relevant to the
>world around me.  It's because "modern men" don't get educated beyond
>their petty how-to-make-a-fortune-and-retire-easy desires that so much
>is wrong with the world today.

Agreed. Modern society resembles a vast con-game where most everyone
is trying to rip everyone else off in order to get rich.

Where are the individuals who are both well educated and dedicated
to social welfare? The few individuals who are dedicated to service
towards humanity are unfortunately fools for the most part.

>Instead of ever learning how to think
>for themselves, which is what a classical education was supposed to make
>possible, we get endless gibbering morons who can't make two sentences
>cohere logically, although they know how to program in C,

Well said.

>and that suf-
>fices for them to make themselves out to be experts on rational analy-
>sis.  And these are the people who turn into rabid Randroids or funda-
>mentalists or the like--intellects that can be blown over with a feather,
>yet who through their stubborn stupidity are reshaping the world around
>us with their stinking effluvia into their own pointless prefab image.

Hopefully Matthew doesn't include me in that category (although it
wouldn't surprise me if he did :-)

>If science could fail, a mountain's a mammal. 

I like that phrase.

>There's an extra irony here in this widespread lack of a full education.
>Mostpeople think Cummings poems are all cute looking games or something,
>but if they only knew that he majored in Greek, and that Greek poetry is
>often preserved in fragmentary form only, they'd have seen what his game
>was a lot more clearly.  Feh.

Unfortunately, I have minimal aptitude for acquiring new languages
(such as C, German, Greek, etc.) Could you explain what his game
was to the ignorant such as myself?

Thanks,

	 -Tom
	  tedrick@ernie.berkeley.edu