As someone who considers a History book as the only thing schools should teach, and someone who is Majoring in History and Philosophy...Hoping for a Professorship

History is not a record of humanity's "grand" endveavor's......rather a history book is a(and pardon the "Halo" reference here) "A monument to all our sins." A record of Mankind's mistakes; what it cost to correct them, and how to avoid making the same ones..again.

And after study centered on the ecology of thought through a record of human history for the last 40 years( a rather lame assignment...or so I thought) till the "teach" recommended we read "The State of Fear" by Michael Crichton.

Now though it is a work of fiction, the novel itself is about enviromental terrorists, using technology to *create* enviromental disasters. However what makes it interesting is that the *ENTIRE* 700 page novel was named after *SEVEN PAGES* that talked about the "state of fear." And the teacher happily pointed out that many famous authors afraid of making a "politcal, social, or career mistake, will place views they hold strongly into their works of fiction, trusting in peoples ability to "read between the lines" so to speak. And since I couldnt say it better myself, and in the wish to inform the "masses" (lol) Im going to give you the lines from the book in "condensed" text , so to speak in the effort to preserve time and space. This we likly be a 3 to 4 page series of posts. Enjoy.

"I began with the study of fashion and slang, the latter being of course a kind of verbal fashion. I wanted to know the determinates of change in fashion and speech. What I quickly found was that there are no identifiable determinants. Fashions change for arbitrary reasons and although there regularities--cycles, periodicities, and correlations--this are merely descriptive, not explanatory."
"I any case, I realized that these periodicities and correlations could be regarded as systems in themselves. Or, if you will, ecosystems. I tested that hypothesis, and found it to be heuristically valuable. Just as there is an ecology of the natural world, in the forests and mountains and oceans, so too there is an ecology of the man-made world of mental abstractions, ideas, and thought."
"Within modern culture, ideas constantly rise and fall. For a while everybody believes something, and then, bit by bit, they stop believing it. Eventually, no one can remember the old idea, the way no one can remember the old slang. Ideas themselves are a kind of fad you see."
"Why do ideas fall out of favor? The answer is simply--they do. In fashion, as in natural ecology, there are disruptions. Sharp revisions of the established order. A lightning fire burns down a forest. A different species springs up in the charred acreage. Accidental, haphazard, unexpected, abrupt change. The is what the world shows on every side and scale."
"But just as ideas can hang on past their time. Some ideas continue to be embraced by the public long after scientists have abandoned them. Left brain, right brain is a perfect example. In the 1970's it gains popularity from the work of Sperry at Caltech, who studies a specific group of brain-surgery. His findings have no broader meaning beyond these patients. Sperry denies any broader meaning. By 1980, it is clear that the left and right brain notion is just wrong--the two sides of the brain do not work seperatly in a healthy person. But in the popular culture, the concept does not die for another twenty years. People talk about it, believe it, write books about it for decades after scientists have set it aside."
"Similarly, in enviromental thought, it was widely accepted in 1960 that there is something called 'the balance of nature.' If you just left nature alone it would come into a self-maintaining state of balance. Lovely idea with a long pedigree. The Greeks believed it three thousand years ago, on the basis of nothing. Just seemed nice. However, by 1990, no scientist believes in the balance of nature anymore. The ecologists of all given it up as simply wrong. Untrue. A fantasy. They speak now of dynamic disequilibrium, of multiple equilibrium states. But they now understand that nature is *NEVER* in balance. Never has been, never will be. On the contrary, nature is always *OUT OF BALANCE.*"
"That means that mankind, which was formerly defined as the great disrupter of the natural order, is nothing of the sort. The whole enviroment is being constantly disrupted all the time anyway."
"You worry that I have strayed off-topic, just building connections. They connections between enviromental issues, such as envirmental crisis."
"If you study the media, seeking to find shifts in normative conceptualiztion, you discover something extremely interesting. If you looked at tran-scripts of news programs of the major networks--NBC, ABC, CBS. If you look at the stories the newpapers of New York, Washington, Los Angeles, and Seattle. You count the frenquency of certain concepts and terms used by the media. The results are striking.


And I'll leave you hanging rriight their.....Next couple of days I'll try an get page 2 to ya.....lotsa work tho.