Posted on 05/12/2015 2:32:26 PM PDT by OK Sun
Modern persons have a problem with limits, three in fact. They want every good thing to be unlimitedly available for their desires, and scarcity is taken for a cause of fear and anxiety. Hence, “sustainability” is our new environmental shibboleth.
They cannot perceive limits, in the sense of ends or purposes, and so they consider thinking about such things at worst as stupefying “imponderables” and at best as expressions of subjective taste. Hence, a Republican Senator doubts the legitimacy of funding the National Endowment for the Humanities “Big Questions” grants program, on the basis that nobody knows the meaning of human life so why even talk about it? Meanwhile, a Supreme Court Justice, drinking from the same well, proclaims, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” This lack of perception also leads to anxiety—confronted with the question of why they live, most persons wince. All they know is that they do not want to die, and Seven Habits of Highly Effective People may not answer the question “effective for what?”, but it will put money in the bank in case one becomes ill. We become philosophically illiterate as “self-help” books become our new classics of philosophy.
This illiteracy does not just “stupefy,” it “liberates.” Our third problem with limits arises there: we consider any proposition to define our own limits—our natures as human beings and the telos or proper fulfillment of that nature—to be something like a fascist imposition. Hobbes has the last word in the modern imaginary: liberty is simply the “absence of external impediments,” and so, by definition, every limit is an imposition and an oppression that takes ...
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(Excerpt) Read more at frontporchrepublic.com ...
I ok with limits as long as they are limited...
The big problem is that inferior people are being told they are superior, and they are believing it.
People: half of you are below average! Get it in your stupid heads! Half of you are fatter than average! Half of you are uglier than average! Half of you are shorter than average! Half of you have a worse sense of humor than average! Half of you are worth less to an employer than average!
Eighty five percent of you think you are above average!
Your limits are lower than you think! Learn a little humility, and learn to respect your betters! Know your place!
Not suprising. The government has gone to enormous lengths to encourage voters to believe that there are no limits to the sums of money they can steal from others.
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