Hubris: In Greek tragedy, the sin or fault of excessive pride, particularly the likening of one's powers to those of the gods, generally resulting in catastrophe as the gods reveal one's inability to control one's fate.

• at a macro level, the government is interested in bringing as much profit as possible to the owning class.
• profit is maximized to the extent that the people can be persuaded to part with their money for high-profit-margin items.
• profit margins are maximized to the extent that the people can be persuaded to buy goods with only symbolic (abstract) value, or with the greatest ratio of symbolic value to actual production cost.⁽¹⁾
• the sectors in which the highest profit margins occur are the defense industry (which produces an unmeasurable, easily manipulable commodity called "national security") and the space program (which produces ... what? - a smidgen of scientific data? a sense of national pride? support for the military?).⁽²⁾

[More to come. January 6, 1999]

Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 06:33:39 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
From: Stephen Chilton <schilton@d.umn.edu>
To: cblood@newsguy.com
Subject: Re: NYTimes.com Article: Forget Nature. Even Eden Is Engineered.  [8/20/2002 article by Andrew C. Revkin]

Thanks for sending this.  Can we understand the world well enough to prevent it from going haywire beyond our ability to recover, or is it just hubris to think so?  Even if we could do so, would we have the political will to do so?  There is a good argument to be made that technology can keep us ahead of the problems it creates, but I don't think that it can keep us from the unjust practices that it would require to do so.
 

xx

1. See Goffman (19xx, 19xx) for an exposition of the concept of symbolic vs. concrete benefits.

2. Ref: [postcard ref]