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U.S.S. Alabama Dr. Parkins served aboard this ship in WWII |
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©Ivan W. Parkins 2010, All articles, text, web pages property of
Ivan W. Parkins. Use of any material
requires permission of the author
and can be obtained by contacting,
info@americanpoliticalcommentary.com |
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Excerpts from: Perspectives For American Society By
Ivan Parkins The
strength of democracy lies not so much in any special capacity that it may
have for discovering truths or for making truths known as in its ability to
detect and serve the many views and interests of its citizens. …. …..The dominion of Europe spread to the ends
of the earth. The West had risen to a point that, in terms of
geopolitics, could not help but be the zenith of its power. But how significant are the views that
attempt to measure the rise of the West in such materialistic terms? It
has become intellectually fashionable to follow every acknowledgment of
Western superiority in material things with condemnation of materialism and
the West. But the shallowness of mind
and spirit exposed in such evaluations may be more characteristic of those
intellectuals who do the condemning than of the Western civilization that
they pretend to evaluate. |
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Chapter 3, cont. excerpts from Perspectives
for American Society The exponential growth of our
accumulation of knowledge has soared to such a point that the total reservoir
is estimated to double every few years.
At the same time our capacity to store, recall, and transmit this exploding
mass of data and ideas adds a whole new dimension to problems of
comprehending what is happening in the world.
Never before have men needed to cope with a body of knowledge so huge
or so lacking in common premises.
Never before have so many needed to share their views with one
another. Language, the ability to
communicate with one another through elaborate symbol systems, is a
distinguishing characteristic of man.
It is true that other animals besides Homo sapiens communicate among
themselves. But no other species has
been able to invent socially and to preserve and, moreover, continuously
elaborate upon its system of communication.
The extent of communication among human beings is without parallel in
animal behavior. …..The ruling class bias in written and recorded history scarcely
disappeared before the twentieth century even in the highly literate nations
of the world, and only now is it beginning
to be offset in less literate countries. Nothing else illustrates quite so clearly
that writing and the inscribed record that were made of men’s lives were
reserved for a privileged few as a case from approximately two thousand years
ago. There came to the eastern
Mediterranean a leader of men whose appeal has grown ever since. Jesus Christ made his appeal orally and
directed it primarily to the poor and illiterate of his time; hence he was
virtually ignored in the recorded histories of the period. |
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