Originally posted by jamie83
Originally posted by LLoyd45
reply to post by jamie83
Either one sounds like a workable plan. I can see your rationale behind paying them more to lessen their temptation to supplement their salaries.
I know a lot of people in the private sector who laugh at the idea of working in the government. They make more in a month than they could make in a
year in D.C. But these people are 10x smarter than any of the politicians in D.C.
I guess that's why we're stuck with a government of mediocrity.
Today's society is driven by results, in the pursuit of rewards. Crux cupidity, if you will.
I personally believe this mediocrity is a result of this jump into modernity, which most individuals in the West are currently embracing.
Intellectualism has been declining ever since the start of the twentieth century. I think it truly ended with the death of Nikola Tesla, who at his
peak his obscenely long hours of work and creative energy was not channeled as a means for acquiring wealth, but to affect fundamental change to our
world. People like John Adams and George Washington did not get recognized for their achievements in their life time, at least not to the level that
someone from the twentieth century would have expected. Those two undertook in possibly the greatest intellectual thought of any men that came before
them. They affected change. They died on their farmsteads working their own land. Well, Washington had slaves, but that was a difference of social
pressures. Although nearer the far end of the Enlightenment period, the Bill of Rights especially was a herald for the triumph of intellectual thought
over the pursuit of wealth and riches; that notion fell with the decline of the East as a major power (the empires of the Mesopotamia especially,
ranging from the time of Babylon to the time of a united Arabia in 1000 AD... and only now again reemerging in the form of Dubai and the Saudi
dynasty).
A lot of those men were sufficiently demented, especially in the social aspects of their lives. They did produce unparalleled work and they did it
alone. They had done on their own accord far greater than any people of this century will achieve "individually". However, in this century we will
see progress like no other. Because for the next hundred years the "average" man will be included in a sort of "communal" intellectualism. Where
everyone is contributing and where men that would have been intimidated to share their work in an earlier age, are becoming leaders in their own
right. Imagine if you will, this intrepid, though relatively uneducated man presenting his claims to The Royal Society in London. It would have been
overwhelming, not to mention daunting to have stood in front of all those powerful individuals.
I'm certain this coming century will be of far greater progress than previous, but that sense of Enlightenment is definitely gone. We will see works
produced of greater vision and creativity, and scale especially, though we will always be starved for authentic knowledge and truth in a ruthless,
competitive and increasingly secular society.
[edit on 8-9-2008 by cognoscente]
[edit on 8-9-2008 by cognoscente]
McCain's promises are even more far-fetched than W's were 8 years ago. 
