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>Date:  Tue, 8 Apr 1997 10:29:41 -0400
>From: (Robert Theobald) <[log in to unmask]>
>Priority: Normal
>Subject: review and commitments

>KNOW THAT THERE ARE NO FACTS
>
>Cameron Smith,  Toronto Star, April 5, 1997.  (This is the second article
>by Cameron Smith)
>
>As anyone who has dabbled in philosophy knows, you can prove just about
>anything if you start from the right assumption -- or, to use the terminology
>learned in Logic 101, the right premise.
>
>So if your premise is that society's greatest good comes from the greatest
>growth -- in other words, the more you can increase the gross domestic
>product (GDP) each and every year, the better off everyone will be -- then
a whole
>series of conclusions will follow in logical order. I'll call this the
growth premise.
>
>However, if your premise is that society's greatest good comes from social
>cohesion, ecological integrity and collaborative decision-making, then a
>totally different set of conclusions will follow in logical order.
>
>Logic 101 was the heart of the Massey lectures that Robert Theobald would
>have delivered in 1996 had they not been cancelled by the CBC.  Luckily for
us, he
>has published the stuff of the lectures in a new book entitled Reworking
>Success: New Communities at the Millennium.  In the book, he keeps coming
back to the
>destructiveness of embracing the growh premise.
>
>Those who embrace it, he says, maintain that "economics is value-free and
>applicable to all sorts of cultures.  it is argued that rich and poor
>countries operate according to the same set of dynamics.  This would seem
ridiculous to anyone but an economist.  It is, however, an article of faith
for the
>economics profession."
>
>What logically follows from the growth premise is the desirability of maximum
>economic growth,maximum consumption, maximum international competitiion,
>lowest possible wages, smallest possible work force, greatest possible
competition
>for jobs, lowest possible taxes, and slimmest possible environmental controls.
>
>The greatest good will come, we're told, from the trickle down of economic
>benefits.
>
>"The arguments for the North American Free Trade Agreement, the European
>Economic Community and the World Trade Organization were developed (under the
>growth premise,)" he says. " They make sense given the original starting
>point.  If however the (Quality of life premise) had been placed at the top
of the
>agenda, these organizations would not have been accepted."
>
>"Now that they have been put in place ... firms and countries are forced to
>concentrate on how to reduce costs so they can maximize exports and minimize
>imports, thus creating a favorable trade balance... Thus the emphasis on
>'downsizing' and 'rightsizing' through massive layoffs, which continue even
>when profits are high."
>
>Invariably, growth advocates will claim that it's a fact of life that
>there's a need for downsizing efficiencies, or for the World Bank's
insistence on
>"structural adjustment programs" in Third World countries, or for reducing
>corporate taxes, or for streamlining Ontario's environmental laws to the
>point of gutting them.  And, to an extent it's true.  They flow so
logically from
>the growth premise that they have the same kind of inevitability as "facts."
>
>But Theobald has a response, crafted into a poem, that he offered during an
>interview.  It may not be great art, but it does present a powerful insight
>
>"It's a fact."
>When your hear this,
>Hang onto your mental wallet,
>Somebody is trying to convince you,
>Of his point of view.
>Facts
>are fabricated
>>From our personal images
>And beliefs.
>Isn't it extraordinary
>How everybody
>Has facts to support their case?
>Isn't it odd that one can support
>Totally different directions
>Using facts.
>Trust the person
>Who uses Images
>And anecdotes
>And knows that
>There are no "facts."
>

>Copies of the book are available from Canadian bookstores (not yet
>available in the States)$16.00
David Burman            [log in to unmask]
LETS Toronto            phone: 416-978-0536
                        fax:   416-878-8511