http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2009/03/window-on-eurasia-re-feudalization.html
“Over time, this feudalization will destroy the ability of the young to think independently and mean that “science will become socially insignificant, and the preparation of decisions, including the most important government ones, will ever more often be based on emotions and prejudices and not on facts.”
“On the one hand, Delyagin’s article is the kind of rant many intellectuals often make. But on the other, it contains a serious warning not only for Russia but for other countries as well: We are heading toward ‘a new Middle Ages, a new period of barbarism . . .”
COMMENT:
Every nation has its sycophants. I encountered a number of them in Aerospace, but I don’t recall that they fared especially well in that largely meritocratic industry. On the other hand, are Americans still being encouraged to “learn how to learn” in Leftist-controlled American Universities? I have heard of courses being driven by what happens to be “politically correct,” but that is largely in the Liberal Arts and Humanities. In the Scientific realm I can’t imagine how what Delyagin describes would work, even in authoritarian Russian Universities. As long as experimentation is encouraged then new ideas will surface. And they won’t be dependent upon what one’s boss thinks. Russian Professors in scientific fields would have to be providing instruction in the form of memorization rather than any sort of experimentation – sort of like what a technician would need to maintain a machine – not what a designer would need to design a new one. And that doesn’t make much sense. Who are you, Mikhail Delyagin?
“Mikhail Delyagin, an analyst and former government adviser on economic policy,” according to http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/03/putin-medvedev-kremlin
In another article he is described as “Mikhail Delyagin, the director of the Moscow-based Institute of Globalization Problems”: http://www.russiaprofile.org/page.php?pageid=Politics&articleid=a1237228400
Unless I hear more about what is behind Delyagin’s thinking, I’m going to think that Goble should have stopped after observing that Delyagin’s article “is . . . rant. . . .”
1 comment:
Hi Lawrence,
Your blog is VERY interesting, and I am still here, but simply I cannot afford to write every time, because of the lack of good health and, frequently, of spare time.
I wish you all the best.
God bless!
Michael
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