Who is running the show?

[Sato]

Cute, Reza, signing your post with my initial.

I see you are trying to morph yourself into this discussion.

I think your point about virtue has some merit, but virtue has its source in communities and in personal growth. These phenomena are like an ambient fluid in social affairs, due to the fundamental makeup of human beings. To focus on a particular era is educational but can obscure a clear view of virtue as it springs into contemporary actuality.

Virtue might spring up anywhere; there is no point in bewailing the many "fallings-away" that have always been apparent to preachers and the like.

The world is composed of many easily condemnable institutions and fairly Machiavellian entities furiously struggling for a place in a far-from-equilibrium world. So-called "corporate culture," for instance, is really very like the original fascist ideas -- no rights nor freedom of expression exist in a corporation; yet such entities are a preferred instrumental approach to business and application of technical knowledge.

What or where is "virtue" in such an organization? Yet such organizations are a functional part of our step-by-step advance into the future. Like Machiavelli, we must somehow subordinate them to a good end. This is a very sticky problem, and your whistful feelings of paradise lost offer little in the way of a solution.

Sato

[Nonson]

My reading of the Analects is not as complete as it might be. Therefore, errors are a certainty in any discussion of their subject matter. However: _____________________________________________ Jen means 'humaness' to me. Li means 'rites'. And, of course, Chih means wisdom. It is an interesting triplicity which one can use as a rather elemental model to begin a construct. However, I don't see it as (a Prime Model) being of durable social value in a Western culture. _____________________________________________ That being said, it must also be said that the Analects are of personal value to me. As is the off-shoot, Taoism. Peace

[Nonson]

As Sato remarks, it is the "contemporary actuality" which one must keep in the forefront of thought if a rational Synthesis is to be achieved. That which is now (contemporary) battering civilizations is the real (actuality) that gives rise to certain thought patterns. The causes may be attributed, in part, to a lack of virtue in man, but cannot be viewed as the sole culprit. I suspect there might be other, more complex, reasons. Peace