By Glen Wallace
I think the term 'bail out' derives from historical practice of scooping water out of sinking ship to keep it from sinking.
Perhaps here, that is part of the problem, where people can't get it out of there heads that this bailing out of countries has some fundamental differences from bailing out a sinking ship. When one is trying to save a sinking ship you simply keep shoving a bucket into the water and heave it over the side until there is no more water on board.
But here dealing with nations 'under water', a better analogy would be to think of the countries as being on fire with only a limited amount of water available to, not remove from their deck, but rather to put onto them in hopes of putting out their inferno.
Maybe if nation bailouts were thought of in this respect, it might actually occur to the EU that one of these times when they turn around to fill up their buckets they'll find the well is dry and now the fire is going to get out of control and spread to their country next.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Deep Thinking in 19th Century America
By Glen Wallace
While there may currently be a dearth of broad deep thinking intellectualism amongst our citizenry, I don't think it has always been this way even within the breadth of America's short history. I'm basing this belief based on the public's reaction to the 19th century novel 'St. Elmo' by Augusta Jane Evans. I picked up a tattered copy of this book at an estate sale some years ago just because with a publication date of 1866 it would become the oldest book in my library. But I got started reading it and found it rather profound; constantly addressing many deep concepts. Reportedly this book reached a very fervent widespread degree of mainstream popularity to such a degree that many streets and children were named after the books heroine Edna Earl. This was no mere cult classic like 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' and yet 'St. Elmo' is at least as deep and maybe even a more difficult read. In order for such a book to reach such mainstream popularity I've concluded that a very different mainstream social intellectual milieu existed at the time of its publication in terms of how people thought of deep concepts and their discussion and contemplation.
While there may currently be a dearth of broad deep thinking intellectualism amongst our citizenry, I don't think it has always been this way even within the breadth of America's short history. I'm basing this belief based on the public's reaction to the 19th century novel 'St. Elmo' by Augusta Jane Evans. I picked up a tattered copy of this book at an estate sale some years ago just because with a publication date of 1866 it would become the oldest book in my library. But I got started reading it and found it rather profound; constantly addressing many deep concepts. Reportedly this book reached a very fervent widespread degree of mainstream popularity to such a degree that many streets and children were named after the books heroine Edna Earl. This was no mere cult classic like 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' and yet 'St. Elmo' is at least as deep and maybe even a more difficult read. In order for such a book to reach such mainstream popularity I've concluded that a very different mainstream social intellectual milieu existed at the time of its publication in terms of how people thought of deep concepts and their discussion and contemplation.
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