[MD] Oneness, Dualism & Intellect

[Case]

[Platt]
There you go, another ad hominem. No. Two ad hominems. Nothing like throwing
brickbats to reveal the mind of a "Critical Thinker."

[Case]
While looking for a tasty E.O. Wilson quote to jab at you I ran across this
one from Woodrow Wilson. IT was published in 1897 in Atlantic Monthly while
Wilson was a professor at either Bryn Mawr College or Wesleyan University.

Maybe it is not germaine to the current discussion but I thought you might
like it. Pirsig talks a lot about Wilson in Chapter 22. There is a kind of
harmony here between Pirsig's Giant and Wilson's city. Wilson also expresses
a longing for "betterness" but uneasiness over the agrarian to industrial
transformation.

This is Wilson speaking from before the turn of the 20th century. Just
another liberal academic glad handing at parties in the days of William
James. Wilson was 16 years away from the Oval Office at the time. The full
text of his article is available from Project Gutenberg here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/nbhmn10.txt

"Once--it is a thought which troubles us--once it was a simple enough matter
to be a human being, but now it is deeply difficult; because life was once
simple, but is now complex, confused, multifarious. Haste, anxiety,
preoccupation, the need to specialize and make machines of ourselves, have
transformed the once simple world, and we are apprised that it will not be
without effort that we shall keep the broad human traits which have so far
made the earth habitable. We have seen our modern life accumulate, hot and
restless, in great cities--and we cannot say that the change is not natural:
we see in it, on the contrary, the fulfillment of an inevitable law of
change, which is no doubt a law of growth, and not of decay. And yet we look
upon the portentous thing with a great distaste, and doubt with what altered
passions we shall come out of it. The huge, rushing, aggregate life of a
great city--the crushing crowds in the streets, where friends seldom meet
and there are few greetings; the thunderous noise of trade and industry that
speaks of nothing but gain and competition, and a consuming fever that
checks the natural courses of the kindly blood; no leisure anywhere, no
quiet, no restful ease, no wise repose--all this shocks us. It is inhumane.
It does not seem human. How much more likely does it appear that we shall
find men sane and human about a country fireside, upon the streets of quiet
villages, where all are neighbors, where groups of friends gather easily,
and a constant sympathy makes the very air seem native! Why should not the
city seem infinitely more human than the hamlet? Why should not human traits
the more abound where human beings teem millions strong? 

Because the city curtails man of his wholeness, specializes him, quickens
some powers, stunts others, gives him a sharp edge, and a temper like that
of steel, makes him unfit for nothing so much as to sit still."

-Woodrow Wilson - 1897