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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (52684)	7/8/2002 4:04:59 PM
From: J. C. Dithers	Respond to of 82486

I appreciate the thoughts, Solon. I will give due reflection to your perspective, and read the link carefully, in due course.

To: Solon who wrote (52684)	7/9/2002 10:26:16 AM
From: J. C. Dithers	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Here is a paper which I really like. I like it, too. Although I had to teach my share of undergraduate classes in the university business program, I always lamented (to myself) the choice that these lads and lassies had made. I would have been disappointed (again, to myself) had my own children made that choice (which they didn't). Specialization and vocational courses belong at the graduate level. The four year college experience for everyone should be the opportunity to enrich the spirit through absorption of as much as possible of the the accumulated wisdom and beauty produced by the human reign on earth. I found in the 70s and 80s that business people responded favorably to that idea. They liked the notion that their recruits would be well grounded in the humanities, would be more interesting and rounded individuals, ideally with an MBA to top it off with the specialized skills. A lot of my publications in those days were attempts to link "marketing" to metaphysics. You'll may have trouble swallowing that, but the journals were quite receptive to it. Their editors, too, liked the notion that perhaps marketers could be seen as serving a higher purpose than customer satisfaction alone. ("The marketing concept" as an animator of business was a popular idea then, and one of my articles was on the subject of replacing it with a paradigm called "the human concept"). Anyway, I saw the climate changing in the 90s, perhaps as a perverse consequence of the booming times. Everyone wanted to get in on the action as soon as possible, and then it began to seem as if all the humanities stuff was a waste of time. Why wait ... why not start learning the computer and accounting skills that would get you on the fast track right away with a hefty starting salary. The sky was the limit for American business ... who needs to fart around with "metaphysics" or "philosophy". "Beauty?" -- who needs that? So now we have Enron and World Com. It's hard to see much of any "human spirit" in the mess. Yet all actions have unintended consequences. Could the stage be set for a renaissance of those finest qualities of the spirit of humankind? Where there is life ... there is hope. .