Yes, "holistic" is one of those bullsh#t bingo buzzwords/phrases - like "moving forwards".

My bullshit alarm always goes off when I hear them.

Pedant, you would no doubt be fond of the term "proactive" then. I know I am.

I'll see your holistic and raise you one 'sustainable' which in Charle's speak equals the life to which I'm accustomed as a Prince for me and dirt poor servitude for thee.

I apologize in advance, as it is probably just me, but to me 'proactive' always sounds like it has something to do with laxatives.

Posted the above a bit quickly. What it should read is "Charles' speak..." and " ... dirt poor forelock-tugging servitude.. "

Buzzword bingo

"sustainable" is the stormer. It used to mean in the context of business profitable without tax-payer cash. It now means Green because of tax-payer cash but then Freedom is Slavery! of course.

Well following on from Alisa's theme, when I hear the word Holistic, I always think of people with bad breath.

"age of Divine Right &&&"
...and phony period architecture

RAB, following on from both our themes, I now see that they are interconnected. Oy.

Oh Charles is O.K.

Indeed PART of what he says has been said by people around here quite like - such as Oakeshott and Hayek.

However, it is almost as if Prince Charles had only heard the leftist account of what such people argued.

For example that they argued for tradition against "reason" or "rationality" - this is quite false, Oakeshott and Hayek (and so on) argued against "rationalistic" ways of operating that were not really following reason at all (Oakeshott attacked "rationalism" not "rationality"). But the more complicated points of the argument seem to have passed Prince Charles by.

Almost, I repeat, as if had never actually read works like Oakeshott's "On Human Conduct" or Hayek's "The Constitution of Liberty" (actually before anyone says "Oakeshott is a naughty conservative, not a libertarian" - it is Oakeshott's work that supports agency/free will, reason, Hayek goes badly wrong in some parts of his work).

I get the impression that Prince Charles has heard various things and read various articles and second hand accounts.

The "half educated man" problem.

Still better than the left - who trhink they can use "scientific reason" to "plan society".

Such people (whether they know it or not) are following the false ideas of Plato and Francis Bacon (NOT Descartes, Hayek - if I get to heaven thee and me are going to have a long conversation about Descartes, although I suspect Rene will have set you straight before I get a chance to talk to you).

And Plato and Francis Bacon were both utterly wrong - and not really interested in science anyway.

"How can you say Bacon was not interested in science - he was always experimenting".

Francis Bacon was interested in finding ways to do things (knowledge to turn into technolgy) - that is not science (contrary to what Prince Charles thinks). Science is about trying to find the truth about the universe - FOR ITS OWN SAKE.

Indeed Francis Bacon and his technocrat totalitarians ("The New Atlantis") would have banned real science - for example any investigation of whether the Earth went round the Sun (Plato would also have had his "Guardians" forbid scientific investigation - indeed they were to teach that everything in the sky was fixed [even the planets] although "for practical purposes" the military commanders of Plato's totalitarian state were to AT THE SAME TIME [double think] accept that some things in sky did wander about - so that they could move their ships and men correctly).

Paul, I think you're putting Charles in much too exalted company.

He, like the rest of his greenie pals, is an arrogant aristocrat who wants the world to return to some imaginary pre-industrial utopia where he's the King, his pals are the Lords of the Manor and the rest of us are the serfs who happily do what our Lords and Masters decree while they study Nature in all it's glory.

When people write 'holistic' or related words, I always think of something I saw on a streetcorner in San Francisco around 1980, and blogged in 2002. Here's the relevant part: "Someone had posted a flyer advertising some kind of 'holistic' health-related program. Someone else had come along with a pen, and wherever the flyer said 'holistic', 'holist', or 'holism' (about 20 different places), had very neatly inserted '(ass)' before the word. Ever since then I've been unable to take 'holistic' and its cognates seriously. They are not etymologically related to 'hole', but very often look as if they ought to be." I don't suppose I have to add that that's "ass" as in "arse", not "donkey"?

See? Told you the themes were interconnected...

Ladies and gentlemen, I think you are still thinking at the level of single word BS terms... the time has come to think in terms of full-fledged verb-adjective-noun memes. Try this or this. And of course, let's not forget what Dogbert thinks - no offense, but it seems to be well-suited for your future monarch.

LOL!