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Gryphonadmin
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22375 posts
Mar-14-14, 11:19 PM (EDT)
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"Better-Than-Expected Company"
 
   I'm sure this comes as no surprise to the cooler kids, and I'm only lifting the lid on my own unhipness by making note of it, but: I'm reading a selection from the works of Immanuel Kant for in-class discussion when school resumes next week, as we've just about reached the Enlightenment in the 16th-through-19th-century Europe class I'm taking, and I ran across the following:

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large part of mankind gladly remain minors all their lives, long after nature has freed them from external guidance. They are the reasons why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor. If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet, and so on - then I have no need to exert myself. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will take care of that disagreeable business for me. Those guardians who have kindly taken supervision upon themselves see to it that the overwhelming majority of mankind - among them the entire fair sex - should consider the step to maturity not only as hard, but as extremely dangerous.

Immanuel Kant, "What Is Enlightenment?" trans. Peter Gay, Introduction to Contemporary Civilization in the West (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954); from Margaret C. Jacob, The Enlightenment: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001), 203.

If you can't put your finger on why that jumped out at me so, I direct you to Dorothy and Utena's conversation way back in S1M3 A Rose for the New Year:

        "What are you afraid of?"
"Nothing," Dorothy said, but there was a very faint quiver in
her voice, and she no longer followed the denial with a flat dismissal
of the whole concept of fear.
"Bullshit," Utena snapped, too annoyed to moderate her
language any longer. "You're... " Realization dawned on her face.
"Of course. How could I not see it... I've faced the same fear
myself. You're afraid to grow up."
Dorothy looked puzzled and slightly indignant. "I have no
growth cycle."
"Don't be semantic," Utena told her. "It's all coming clear
to me now." She paced away, turned back. "I had to make the same
choice myself, not so long ago. Do I follow the easy path, be a good
little girl, do as I'm told, and live the life another has mapped out
for me? Or do I stand on my own feet, fight for my own rights, draw
my own map and then pick my own road on it? I understand the second
choice is a scary one. It's a hell of a big job to do all that. So
much easier just to take the ready-made alternative being offered, and
God help me, I considered it, for a second. I suppose it wouldn't
even have been such a bad life. Privileged, comfortable, protected.
I'd never have wanted for anything... except freedom.
"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings. You know who
said that, R. Dorothy Wayneright? A -robot- said that. One of the
greatest leaders of your reality, or so I've read. But rights have to
be sacrificed for. In order to claim them, you have to give something
up - the security of confinement. And you have it so much easier than
I did, Dorothy. I had to fight my way out of the cage past all the
obstacles a determined opponent could throw at me. You've got Corwin
standing outside the open door, beckoning you out, -begging- you to
become your own person."
"And then what?" Dorothy inquired.

Like I say, I'm sure it's only going to diminish my cred to admit that I got all Kantian on that action inadvertently, but there it is. (Part of the referential backdrop of Utena's source material, presumably, but we've already established that I could never be arsed to sort the wheat from the chaff there consciously. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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  Subject     Author     Message Date     ID  
Better-Than-Expected Company [View All] Gryphonadmin Mar-14-14 TOP
  RE: Better-Than-Expected Company Mercutio Mar-14-14 1
     RE: Better-Than-Expected Company Gryphonadmin Mar-15-14 2
  RE: Better-Than-Expected Company Offsides Mar-15-14 3
     RE: Better-Than-Expected Company trigger Mar-20-14 4
         RE: Better-Than-Expected Company Gryphonadmin Mar-20-14 5
             RE: Better-Than-Expected Company Mercutio Mar-20-14 6

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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
942 posts
Mar-14-14, 11:54 PM (EDT)
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1. "RE: Better-Than-Expected Company"
In response to message #0
 
   It's worth noting that Kant was far from the first one to come up with that specific line of thought. Folks have been equating easy, comforting submission to authority as a kind of protracted per-adolescence since the time of the ancient Greeks.

(The other big hit from that album is "the current generation of young people is uniquely and badly deficient compared to previous generations of young people." Although that one is significantly less true.)

This is not to diminish either Kant or yourself for hitting on a broad universal aspect of the human condition and deciding to explore the hell out of that, of course.

-Merc
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Gryphonadmin
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22375 posts
Mar-15-14, 00:02 AM (EDT)
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2. "RE: Better-Than-Expected Company"
In response to message #1
 
   >(The other big hit from that album is "the current generation of young
>people is uniquely and badly deficient compared to previous
>generations of young people." Although that one is significantly less
>true.)

Except, of course, when it's completely true. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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Offsides
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1264 posts
Mar-15-14, 10:07 PM (EDT)
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3. "RE: Better-Than-Expected Company"
In response to message #0
 
   Just think of it as a case of "Great minds think alike."

Offsides

[...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben Gurion
EPU RCW #π
#include <stdsig.h>


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trigger
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1500 posts
Mar-20-14, 01:26 AM (EDT)
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4. "RE: Better-Than-Expected Company"
In response to message #3
 
   >Just think of it as a case of "Great minds think alike."

Or we could just argue that you're a product of one of the few social and educational systems that continues to be influenced by the political philosophies of the 19th Century.

It's not by accident that we have had multiple movements towards legal and social enfranchisement (and disenfranchisement) in the US, a pattern that isn't really mirrored elsewhere in the West. The ongoing debate as to the rights and responsibilities of citizens is a live and well in the US, despite what can be considered some serious backsliding over the last decade.

That's a massive oversimplification of Kant's influence on American behavior, but it's been 20 years since I first (and last) read his work. So any mistakes above are mine.

Three cheers for Gutenberg, the Enlightenment, public education, the humanities, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution,the Amendments (esp. 13th, 14th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 23nd, 24th, and 26th), apple pie, the American Way.

yours,
t.

Trigger Argee
Manon, Maccadon, Orado, etc.
Denton, never leave home without it.

"This isn't exactly the Olympic Games." - Corwin of Amber


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Gryphonadmin
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22375 posts
Mar-20-14, 01:29 AM (EDT)
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5. "RE: Better-Than-Expected Company"
In response to message #4
 
   >Three cheers for Gutenberg, the Enlightenment, public education, the
>humanities, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution,the
>Amendments (esp. 13th, 14th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 23nd, 24th, and 26th),
>apple pie, the American Way.

I've always thought the Third Amendment was woefully underappreciated. Who wants soldiers quartered in their house? Not me!

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
942 posts
Mar-20-14, 01:45 AM (EDT)
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6. "RE: Better-Than-Expected Company"
In response to message #5
 
  
>I've always thought the Third Amendment was woefully underappreciated.
> Who wants soldiers quartered in their house? Not me!

The history of the reasons behind the Third Amendment (not the amendment itself; that is actually really boring, owing to the fact there's almost no jurisprudence attached to it) is actually utterly riveting, as it branches into weird tangents involving both English and Roman common law, the tensions and issues raised by the ongoing modernizing of armies in the 18th and 19th centuries, and what you could get away with politically in the colonies that you couldn't get away with in England itself. You start off reading about the quartering abuses during the French and Indian War and then eight hours later you're reading about Rotten Boroughs and are like "how the hell did I end up here?"

-Merc
Keep Rat


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