Star date 09242024

In his Critique of Dialectical Reason, (1960) Jean-Paul Sartre asks the following questions: 1) Why is violence so universal a feature of human experience, especially in politics? And 2) What becomes of man’s freedom in a world where human beings are constantly threatened by what he called the “practico-inert” (alienation)?  

Example: A motorist is caught in a traffic jam created by the increased availability of cars whose original intention was to enable men to move about more freely. Human beings are increasingly and inevitably held prisoner by their own creations.

In economics, this would be an example of diminishing returns. A concept I learned in the 5^th grade, which struck me like a thunderbolt and has stuck with me ever since.

Another concept I learned a couple of years later in the 7^th grade, was the concept of manifest destiny. Again, this was like a thunderbolt out of the blue, but I think it might have set me on the wrong path for years to come. If you don’t think that schools were indoctrinating students in the 1950s you are sadly mistaken. But I digress….