oracles ancient and modern
What I was trying to say last night when noise took over is that we have a long list of modern oracles–not that their message is (necessarily) mystical but because, like ancient oracles, they have been assigned the task of acquainting us with the unknown and unknowable. We appoint them, pay them and we listen to them: pundits, pollsters, statisticians, consultants, ministers, psychoanalysts (of which I’m one), physicians, experts and self-anointed experts of all stripes….
The point is that the impossible wish to know the unknowable–and the unconscious–is deep in the human program. And that for thousands of years, Herodotus teaches, the wish has led us astray. (It’s interesting in this regard that Herodotus regards it as one of the wisdoms of the Persians that they ignore physicians!)
Henry Seiden
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