Hello Zeev, Steve, and all - this thread is becoming to "Bermuda Triangle" of ideas [in a very nice way, of course,] of how different streams of topics have come together <g>. Regarding Singapore, the early christian communalism, and the various forms of societal structures, somehow I thought of the veiled social commentaries of Prof. BF Skinner [disclaimer: I am not particularly a big fan of behaviorism, but I do think he has been misjudged because of the zeal of some of his students.] In Walden II [I think, it has been too long a time,] he argued that the myth of freedom should be shattered for the sake of humanity. To the libertines, this argument is simply too much of a Brave New World. However, Steve is absolutely right that, while in a small scale, Singapore's social engineering is as impressive as one can get, in a short span of 30 years or so.
The expand on [my perspective, of course] on Zeev's idea, the common good and the satisfaction of ego are indeed diagrammatically opposed. Even the great St Thomas Aquinas could not fight the seductive power of the intelligent [until the moment of reckoning!] However, I do think "utopia" is possible. It is when everyone arrives at same conclusion independently <vbg>
best, Bosco |
