Not a believer in reverse psychology, Tom Paterson wrote:
> From gwhite:
>
> >You do it all the time.
>
> Do what all the time? (15 words or less, please?) (no Hayek quotes, either,
> OK?)
Dumbass,
Non-sequitur ranting, just like Curtis said.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hayek, _The Fatal Conceit_, excerpts from ch9:
Natural Selection from Among the Guardians of Tradition
In closing this work, I would like to make a few informal remarks--they
are intended as no more than that--about the connection between the
argument of this book and the role of religious belief. These remarks
may be unpalatable to some intellectuals because they suggest that, in
their own long-standing conflict with religion, they were partly mistaken
--and very much lacking in appreciation.
This book has shown mankind as torn between two states of being.
On one hand are the kinds of attitudes and emotions appropriate to
behaviour in the small groups wherein mankind lived for more than a
hundred thousand years, wherein known fellows learnt to serve one
another, and to pursue common aims. Curiously, these archaic, more
primitive attitudes and emotions are now supported by much of
rationalism, and by the empiricism, hedonism, and socialism associated
with it. On the other hand there is the more recent development in
cultural evolution wherein we no longer chiefly serve known fellows or
pursue common ends, but where institutions, moral systems, and
traditions have evolved that have produced and now keep alive many
times more people than existed before the dawn of civilisation, people
who are engaged, largely peacefully though competitively, in pursuing
thousands of different ends of their own choosing in collaboration with
thousands of persons whom they will never know.
...
So far as I personally am concerned I had better state that I feel as little
entitled to assert as to deny the existence of what others call God, for I
must admit that I just do not know what this word is supposed to mean.
I certainly reject every anthropomorphic, personal, or animistic
interpretation of the term, interpretations through which many people
succeed in giving it a meaning. The conception of a man-like or mind-
like acting being appears to me rather the product of an arrogant
overestimation of the capacities of a man-like mind. I cannot attach
meaning to words that in the structure of my own thinking, or in my
picture of the world, have no place that would give them meaning. It
would thus be dishonest of me were I to use such words as if they
expressed any belief that I hold.
I long hesitated whether to insert this personal note here, but
ultimately decided to do so because support by a professed agnostic
may help religious people more unhesitatingly to pursue those
conclusions that we do share. Perhaps what many people mean in
speaking of God is just a personification of that tradition of morals or
values that keeps their community alive. The source of order that
religion ascribes to a human-like divinity — the map or guide that will
show a part successfully how to move within the whole — we now learn
to see to be not outside the physical world but one of its characteristics,
one far too complex for any of its parts possibly to form an 'image' or
'picture' of it. Thus religious prohibitions against idolatry, against the
making of such images, are well taken. Yet perhaps most people can
conceive of abstract tradition only as a personal Will. If so, will they not
be inclined to find this will in 'society' in an age in which more overt
supernaturalisms are ruled out as superstitions?
On that question may rest the survival of our civilisation.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
