Freud. Technology and Law.

"Human civilization, by which I mean all those respects in which human life has raised itself above its animal status and differs from the life of beasts - and I scorn to distinguish between culture and civilization - , presents, as we know, two aspects to the observer. It includes on the one hand all the knowledge and capacity that men have acquired in order to control the forces of nature and extract its wealth for the satisfaction of human needs, and, on the other hand, all the regulations necessary in order to adjust the relations of men to one another and especially the distribution of the available wealth. The two trends of civilization are not independent of each other: firstly, because the mutual relations of men are profoundly influenced by the amount of instinctual satisfaction which the existing wealth makes possible; secondly, because an individual man can himself come to function as wealth in relation to another one, in so far as the other person makes use of his capacity for work, or chooses him as sexual object; and thirdly, moreover, because every individual is virtually an enemy of civilization, though civilization is supposed to be an object of universal human interest."

From "The Future of an Illusion" (1927) [SE, XXI, 5-6]

Peis Dinogat

Peis Dinogat
Gododdin manuscript

Peis dinogat e vreith vreith.
o grwyn balaot ban wreith.
chwit chwit chwidogeith.
gochanwn gochenyn wythgeith.
pan elei dy dat ty e helya;
llath ar y ysgwyd llory eny law.
ef gelwi gwn gogyhwc.
giff gaff. dhaly dhaly dhwg dhwg.
ef lledi bysc yng corwc.
mal ban llad. llew llywywg.
pan elei dy dat ty e vynyd.
dydygai ef penn ywrch penn gwythwch pen hyd.
penn grugyar vreith o venyd.
penn pysc o rayadyr derwennyd.
or sawl yt gyrhaedei dy dat ty ae gicwein
o wythwch a llewyn a llwyuein.

"Maybe we will have to accept that certain features of the universe are they way they are because of happenstance, accident, or divine choice.  The success of the scientific method in the past has encouraged us to think that with enough time and effort we can unravel nature's mysteries.  But hitting the absolute limit of scientific explanation — not a technical obstacle or the current by progressing edge of human understanding — would be a singular event, one for which past experience could not prepare us."  Brian Greene.  The Elegant Universe.  NY.  Norton.  1999.  385.

 

"The task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what one has yet thought about that which everybody sees."
Erwin Shrödinger. 1887-1961.

 

Shakespeare on Politicians. Sounds like he knew Mootch McC!

Hamlet.

"This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass not o'erreaches; one that would circumvent God, might it not?"  V. i. 73-75.

Montaigne.  Essais. iii. v.

Celui qui dict tout . . .

 

"He that speakes all he knows doth cloy & distaste us.  Who feareth to expresse himself, leadeth our conceite to imagine more than happily he conceiveth."  Florio. transl.  794.