Friday, September 16, 2005
Katrina Thoughts
It will be folly to rebuild New Orleans, but it will still be done for reasons of pride, ego, sentiment, politics, profit and more. No amount of money and effort can build a city on the coast in a marsh that can withstand the force of a Category 5 hurricane. It's impossible. However, it's a risk that will be taken just as a new World Trade Center will be built which will again tempt terrorists. It seems to me that in many ways our world is in an inevitable downward spiral. Karl Menninger wrote many years ago in Man Against Himself that humans have an urge to self destruct, and that we all seek our own demise as a moth is drawn to a flame. I think we do so as individuals and in groups as in WW II Germany and Japan did and we may be doing now.
Human nature can improve, in my opinion. Human nature can grow. Human nature can be educated. It can also be contaminated by selfishness, by aggressiveness, and by revenge. Most people are not mean for amusement. Most people who are violent, most people who are aggressive, are simply acting in adult form what they learn as children.
- Karl Menninger
Most people are other people.
Their thoughts are someone else's opinions,
their lives a mimicry,
their passions a quotation
- Oscar Wilde
¶ 9:22 PM
Human nature can improve, in my opinion. Human nature can grow. Human nature can be educated. It can also be contaminated by selfishness, by aggressiveness, and by revenge. Most people are not mean for amusement. Most people who are violent, most people who are aggressive, are simply acting in adult form what they learn as children.
- Karl Menninger
Most people are other people.
Their thoughts are someone else's opinions,
their lives a mimicry,
their passions a quotation
- Oscar Wilde
¶ 9:22 PM
