Ernst Schumacher Lives

To a Student On Spring Break
and Colleagues Across the Curriculum  
 
I.     Mall is Beautiful
II.    Small is Beautiful
III.   All is Beautiful
 
Three Planes of Thought
 
(Response to a student surfing the inter-net
over break—-copying & pasting  samples
from the collective Mind of the Whirl as is,
these days, his unexaminable birthrite.)   
 
In May 1957, in a talk he called 'The Insufficiency
of Liberalism.” Ernst Schumacher gave an exposition
of what he termed the
 
              “three stages of development”
 
The first great leap, he said, was made when man
moved  from stage one of primitive religion to stage
two of scientific realism.
 
This is the stage most modern men  tend to be in.
A few  move to the third stage in which one can find,
in the lapses and deficiencies in science and realism,
that there is something beyond fact and  science.
 
He called this stage three.
 
The problem, he explained, was that stage one and
stage three appear to be exactly the same to people
stuck in stage two.
 
Consequently, those in stage  three are seen as
having had  some sort of a relapse into childish
nonsense.
 
Only those in stage three can understand the
differences between the three stages and
between stage one and stage three
in particular.
 
                          &&&&
 
That is what I feel like in class, Sam.  You say:
let's move beyond illogic and logic. Okay, so
stage one is when I'm in illogic; i am a child.
In stage two, where I am  now, I'm logical.
 
Stage three is beyond both,
but to me stage three looks
like stage one: illogic.
 
    Can you tell me what stage three looks like?
 
                             &&&
 
Beyond the logic to illogic wars.
Beyond the literal to fundamental agonies.
Beyond the good & evil righteousness.
 
                            Non Sense
    Common Sense  No Sense At All
 
            My 3 mothers of invention
 
To the logical positivistic age of enlighten-mental
rational modern & postmodern dominant phdegreed
paradigmatic practical pragmatic assessmental &
instrumental stage-two THINKER,  my small triad
above is no triad at all but merely a binary opposition
between the Good : Logic & Rationality on the one hand
and the Bad: Illogical and Irrational on the other hand.
 
And of course the award goes to
       
               LOGIC & RATIONALITY--
 
for consistency, coherence, clarity, predictability,
for instrumentality, utility, replica-bility, franchise-ability,
for statistical generalizable distribution-able get-you-to-
the-moon-and-back reliability (filtering and occluding the
systemic play of non-sense and no sense at all beyond the
neat tautological self fulfilling network of logic and it's
ratios.)
 
Logic is a tidy
self-confirming
self-validating grid
I throw over any place on the beast
and then measure accordingly the relationships projected.  
 
IF all men die
AND Socrates is a man
THEN Socrates dies 
 
Make it algebraic, make it algorithmic:
it follows that if we claim X is true of a class
and you're a member of that class, then the claim
claims for you, too. IT's not a matter of Socrates
& Men & Dying:  mere tokens to show-off a bit
of fundamental LOGIC & the Ratio-Rational-
Reasonable-Relationship- between class &
members, whole and parts..
 
On the other hand consider this not-logical (illogical) analogy:
 
Men die
Grass dies
Men are grass.
 
Nothing logical here.  Merely an association and a “like-ness.”
Men are like grass. Grass is like men. Both die, is all.  And
yet MORE is expressed in this illogical  grass-to-man & dying
comparison than in the sterile men-&-so Socrates-too
die.  Need we argue?
 
We use the terms “logic” and “rational” the way we use the
terms “awesome” and “terrific,” “excellent” and “absolute”—
as  gestures of  approval, incredulity, admiration and certainty. 
Phatic.  Like hey, how you doon!. Empty strokes.
Pat on the back or head. Good dog! Good dog!
 
If something or someone doesn't make my sense,
I logically call them illogical & irrational—which
amounts to “bad dog! bad dog!”
 
“Logic/Illogic” & “Rational/Irrational” are basically used
abused  as value-judgment distinctions rather than
description  of process— but in any case, if you
are a 3^rd Level  Thinker, it’s  all good.

And if you are struck in Level 2—well,  you’re not
alone and so much seems irrational to the Common
Sense and so much seems illogical and that feels
not good and all is not well, and all is not well,
and all is not well at all..

xxxooo, The Importance of Being,
Ernst