Had a call today from my nephew up in Williams Lake. He is doing pretty good with his business and enjoying life. At 26 he appreciates his bachelor life. He said he would be coming down when our sons come home for Christmas. So the three of them who grew up together will have time to re-connect. They spent just about every summer together when they were kids. It is amazing when you realize how little they see each other now and how far apart they all live. Then the event of Christmas brings them all together. You begin to realize how important that time of year is for families.
On my way home today I stopped in a light shop and bought two lamps. One for the desk and the other a bedside table light. The proprietor mentioned that as you get older you need twice as much light as when you were younger. That must be the problem with us older people, we live constantly in the dark!
In a book I am reading (Telling the Truth about History by Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt & Margaret Jacob) there is this statement in the introduction:
Relativism, a modern corollary to skepticism, is the belief that truth is relative to the position of the person making a statement. It has generated a pervasive lack of confidence in the ability to find the truth or even to establish that there is such a thing as the truth. Relativism leads directly to a questioning of the ideal of objectivity, because it undermines the belief that people can get outside of themselves in order to get at the truth. If truth depends on the observer’s standpoint, how can there be any transcendent, universal or absolute truth, or at the least truths that hold for all groups for many generations?
In today’s world, particularly with the recent financial events of the world, it would seem to be extremely important to understand that maybe we cannot ‘fix’ the basic economic model. It will work in some form or another. Maybe we need to understand that unless we have some absolute or universal truth to understand, those who hold only relative truths defeat the ability of many of us to fully articulate our ideal of objectivity. If the time for change is now then all the reasons for change need to be the constant dialogue of all participants. I am tired of listening to the same old record and drinking the same old kool-aid.
Tinfoiling 