On Not Knowing What Lies About Us

Descent into Mindlessness

So New Republicanism looks very much like a typical product of the “operational thinker.” The “operational thinker” does not really think; he senses. Like an insect with its antennae, he can detect the impingement of circumstances and the drift of things. The real question is whether his goal can ever be anything more than insect living. On the human plane, the goals of life have to be arrived at dialectically; that is, through investigating and comparing the implications of propositions. That kind of thinking never rests halfway between contradictories. It may not be able to carry out a proposition completely and at once, but it does not therefore discard all propositions. That, again, is the act of irrationalism.

JC

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John Abbot Clark

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Descent into Mindlessness

So New Republicanism looks very much like a typical product of the “operational thinker.” The “operational thinker” does not really think; he senses. Like an insect with its antennae, he can detect the impingement of circumstances and the drift of things. The real question is whether his goal can ever be anything more than insect living. On the human plane, the goals of life have to be arrived at dialectically; that is, through investigating and comparing the implications of propositions. That kind of thinking never rests halfway between contradictories. It may not be able to carry out a proposition completely and at once, but it does not therefore discard all propositions. That, again, is the act of irrationalism.