Literary Discussions

William: But how may one demonstrate that what you reply is not mere words, idle words, empty ideas, the lip service of demagogues. I mean no offense. Noam Chomsky points out that Neanderthal man lived a total of 400,000 years. We Homo Sapiens have only been around 200,000 years. And for 400,000 years, the Neanderthal's polity was anarchy (as Paul said SIMPLE rational logic), bands, clans of hunter gatherers loosely associated. And their life was stable for those 400,000 years. Their technology never changed. The were not sickly but robust because of natural selection. How can you say that their lives were any less meaningful to them then our lives are to us?  You really cannot say anything to refute me.  Things have been going down hill for a few centuries the way I see it. What goes up must come down. You wont patch the leaking holes in your dike with empty words and stump speeches and sound bites and ideologies, with brave new worlds or slogans. You are doomed. We are all doomed. Perhaps not in this century but surely in the next several. The way I see it, only a naive child could be optimistic and taken in by rhetoric.