Word: humanistically
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Next Monday at 8 p.m. the Phillips Brooks House presents "A Humanist Response to Solzhenitsyn...
Solzhenitsyn in turn has a deep religious faith in a Truth operating in the political system. The humanist Western mind, however, finds it impossible to accept this trust, because it believes that any political "Truth" can only be a working hypothesis, defined by those who happen to be in political or economic power at the time. Such a Truth carries with it the roots of oppression...
ULTIMATELY, the humanist Westerner must confront Solzhenitsyn with the argument that any "higher" spiritual ideal, with which he would replace legalistic and materialistic concepts, must still be defined, explained, and promoted in the political system by someone working. That person will, by successfully defining, explaining and promoting, inevitably come to a position of power. And whether it is political, economic, or religious, such power easily leads to exploitation...
Although the book ostensibly focuses on the development and use of techniques for manipulating the brain cells and behavior patterns of those who stray too far beyond social norms, Chavkin also touches on a range of leftist-humanist concerns from the debasing treatment of prisoners to what he considers the racist implications of sociobiology. And the "mind control" methods he describes are sometimes as simple as a commercially produced electric shocking device called a "Personal Shocker," designed for the busy psychiatrist to carry around...
...naivete, but what is your definition of naivete to be? I think one derives from Cambridge an intellectual curiosity and open-mindedness, a lack of preconceptions, that appears to be naive." What the graduates of 1928 were to do with this intellectual curiosity, however, accorded ill with the egalitarian, humanist principles expounded in the classrooms. Most of the professors, Bromage and many of her classmates maintain, had the assumption that their women students would meet good husbands, Harvard men perhaps--and what better fate than that? "It was unthought of that we should go out and do something--we might...