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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group

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To: Neocon who wrote (140182)	7/13/2004 7:34:18 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) of 281500

Neo, I can help you. Win's point was that ignorance about what nefarious tricks Hoover got up to with vacuum cleaners, or even when George Washington cut down the apple tree and lied about it [he obviously didn't, but was pretending he did to collect kudos for honesty and manliness], is trivial compared with ignorance about Saddam's activities in regard to the 911 attack. My point was not that collective amnesia is good, though I suspect that is the case, which is why new people is a good idea and nature has arranged for the dopey old people to die off rather than live 500 years, but that people have very limited brain capacity and it's better that they know and understand things which are most important to their lives. Things such as how to do things so they can earn a living. Things such as how to relate to other people so the community functions. Things such as what might happen so they can adapt their lives to the future. Things such as what they can do to create next year according to their wishes by doing things next week and figuring out what to do today. Learning what some crusty old geezers were up to 20, 50, 100 and 200 and 400 and 1000 and 5000 and 5200 and 10000 years ago is interesting and useful to some extent. But given our tiny brains, we shouldn't allocate too much effort and thought and brain space and time to things which are unlikely to have an effect on tomorrow. Yes, I know the cliche about those who don't learn from history and I understand that ignorance is not bliss and that the future is produced by the past and understanding why things happen is a good idea and we can learn what happens by seeing what happened when various circumstances arose. Mqurice

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