Thursday 30 October 2008

A lasting crisis



The cuts in education expenses, as a measure against current financial crisis, is a sign that the way out of it is not even near.

The despotism of instrumental rationality is still in charge, I am afraid. In a recent article in
El País Paul Krugman explains the idea of the Homo economicus, "whose preferences can be expressed mathematically". The world’s view that has driven our lives in the West for almost the last two centuries is based in the negation of the internal contradiction of human nature. Orient has taken the lead in that sense.

For avant-garde artists art is the solution of human internal contradictions in a satisfactory way: the three coordinates of reason, desire and feeling (Ozenfant). I am convinced of the necessity of understanding artistic way of thinking as a way of re-funding humanism in the 21st century.

Only through education our mentality will evolve. If we do not learn to respect emotions, we will never have a truly model of human behavior and no reliable economic and political planning would be possible. In the
webpage of Krugman there are lots of his best articles for free.


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