Quote:
Originally Posted by Igzy
The Ground of Locality is a major failure as well.
All these people [Rand, Keynes, Marx, Nee] were brilliant. But their brilliance worked against them, and us--except as examples of how not to approach thinking about problems.
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These points parallel (to me, anyway) Peter Debelak's recent comments on being known by God, versus knowing God. There are sharp limits on how much we can see, and how much we can know, and therefore how universal in application our schema actually can be. We may gather data, and create theories about how the universe works, either physically or socially or spiritually, and these ideas may have some limited utility. But if we think that we can create some unbiased prescription for all the ills of the world, whether physically, economically, politically or spiritually, we may very well make those ills exponentially worse. Karl Marx is a great example -- his critique of the shortcomings of capitalism in "The Communist Manifesto" is actually quite penetrating. His proposed solution, however, created an unmitigated disaster.
We can only see a little. I prefer with my small view to see Jesus, and I hope to have that view expand and deepen over time, but by no means should I think that my current view constitutes an all-encompassing match with reality as it actually exists.
Jesus said, "If you want to be great, be the least", and "Forgive one another's trespasses, as God has forgiven you". Those are arguably universal prescriptions, but they are arguably limited by our neighbor. Jesus gave us a new commandment: "Love one another" (John 13:34); we perhaps should leave the cosmic big-picture stuff to God.
Our ability to love one another usually seems to be rather weak. I find it to often be a challenge. Why should I think that some optimized social arrangement will allow me to bypass, or minimize, this new commandment of our Lord?