Re: pkt seminar on the economics of the crisis

[Ted Winslow <egwinslow@xxxxxxxx>]

What would a person who thought that there were "insane and irrational
springs of wickedness in most men" and in particular that

"dangerous human proclivities can be canalised into comparatively harmless
channels by the existence of opportunities for money making and private
wealth, which, if they cannot be satisfied in this way, may find their
outlet in cruelty, the reckless pursuit of personal power and authority, and
other forms of self aggrandisement"

have made of the events of Sept. 11 and the reaction to them.

We do know what he would have made of a discussion which ignored these
"springs" and "proclivities".  I pointed this out on Sept. 9.

"Our [early Bloomsbury's] comments on life and affairs were bright and
amusing, but brittle - as I said of the conversation of Russell and myself
with Lawrence - because there was no solid diagnosis of human nature
underlying them.  Bertie in particular sustained simultaneously a pair of
opinions ludicrously incompatible.  He held that in fact human affairs were
carried on after a most irrational fashion, but that the remedy was quite
simple and easy, since all we had to do was to carry them on rationally.  A
discussion of practical affairs on these lines was really very boring.  And
a discussion of the human heart which ignored so many of its deeper and
blinder passions, both good and bad, was scarcely more interesting." (X, p.
449)

Ted