Study anthropology. Focus on how the concept of “race” has been supplanted by “culture” and “subcultures”.
Culture vs Race
Please see: The Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropogy, edited by Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer.
Page 463:
“The word race was used by the English and other colonists justifying abuse and robbing the p…
Study anthropology. Focus on how the concept of “race” has been supplanted by “culture” and “subcultures”.
Culture vs Race
Please see: The Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropogy, edited by Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer.
Page 463:
“The word race was used by the English and other colonists justifying abuse and robbing the people in their colonies. The use of the word race became associated with cranial studies in the 1830s and 1840s when Samuel Morton “proved “ the larger brain size, and therefore superiority of Whites over other races. Only in 1977 did biologist Stephen Jay reanalalyze the data and discovered that Morton’s overt racists bias had made mistakes in the measurements.”
Page 464
“Modern anthropologists use “ethnicity” to express process of cultural identification.”
The USA is a mass culture. It has lots of sub-cultures, life styles, each with their own traditions and each may include many skin colors.
OK, I hope I haven’t bored you too much. It’s hard for me to find English books here in the backwoods of Portugal. I’m sure there are many more that can back me up. I was so interested in this discussion, I couldn’t resist sticking my nose in. To be silent is to be aquiesent.
I never forgot my good friend Axel whose first childhood memory in prewar Silesia was of a man placing metal calipers on his head to measure his skull.
Years later, he became a citizen of The Netherlands and celebrated by burying his German passport in Ireland.
Having said which, I, born in England one month into the Second World War, with memories of V1s falling on London, have gone out of my way to spend time in Germany, where I formed deep friendships. Given paranoia and the depth of the horrors, it wasn't always easy.
It won't be easy either for Americans to talk to one another after so much mind-poisoning and the dark history that lies behind it, and to wake up to the fact that their fellow-citizens are not demons but human beings just like them.
When I first read these words “for I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me,” I thought this was a cruel, savage Deity. Yet Deuteronomy is stating a simple truth which one need not be a believer to understand: we are conditioned by our families' forgotten past. We, too, are often the innocent victims of our forefathers.
The horror of evil is how it stains the innocent and makes itself a home in their consciousness, so that they too pass down the curse to their children and grandchildren.
HCR's contribution to our consciousness and the growing awareness we are sharing here and now—this is what true citizenship is all about. Being simply human.
This wisdom is well known and the foundation for indigenous cultures. “An essential value which forms the foundation for much of the Haudenosaunee ways is the duty of preparing for the seventh generation. The nations of the Haudenosaunee believe that we borrow the earth from our children’s children and it is our duty to protect it and the culture for future generations. All decisions made now are made with the future generations, who will inherit the earth, in mind.” https://www.haudenosauneeconfederacy.com/historical-life-as-a-haudenosaunee/
Could there be a sounder concern, a sounder basis for our actions?
I shall read the item you included, but it strikes me at once that in our supposedly advanced societies we must overcome a problem among the living: the absence of dialogue between generations, especially the old and the young.
How to care for the unborn when there is so little fellow feeling among the living?
Additionally there is a serious tenet of "respect for elders" within indigenous cultures and multigenerational homes are common and so with the exception of the loss of their languages, there is a lot more room for that dialogue. I was heartened that the indigenous voice in the recent Truth and Reconciliation Forum I recently posted about began her shared story by apologizing to her elders out of respect for their wisdom. Of course perhaps some of our problems today arise from elders who are defined by their disrespect for "life". Sometimes in the moment it can be a challenge to discern what is life affirming versus what is not. Right now in my husband's homeland there exists conflict between elders who want to respect traditions and the land and subsistence versus the corporatists who want the dollars that the oil industry has brought to them. Nothing can be black and white when it comes to humanity. I think most of us, though, want our grandchildren to know grace and joy and beauty
Yes, Mr. Burnett, I agree. However I think that some of the problem is the premise that we are indeed more advanced. Perhaps in technology, but what has that cost us?
Thank you, Christy. I have read through the material in the Haudenosaunee website, but the most important aspect for the purposes we are talking of is protecting the earth for future generations FROM WHOM WE HAVE BORROWED IT.
Economic modelling based on that premise?
It would surely make far more sense than trading in pollution rights. (When economists first came up with cap and trade—such a wonderfully clever idea—I penned a Swiftian proposal for trading in... human rights... And then, in the same vein, invasion rights, likewise secured by means of a Multilateral Arrangement under the auspices of the relevant UN Subcommittee.)
Setting aside this derision, we seem to agree at quite a deep level, as expressed by your phrase "but what has that cost us?"
“Progress”, linear progress, is one of those grand abstract ideas, blind belief in which unites modern materialists both Communist and capitalist. But innovation and “progress” always come at a cost. There is always a corresponding regression, something is always lost. Even when that something lost is a handicap, a disease or a phenomenon like illiteracy, we count only our short-term gains and fail consistently to factor in the cost of the new imbalances we’ve created. It’s all like squeezing a balloon—tremendous expansion, but no one pays any attention to the contraction that produced it. Schumpeter’s creative destruction?
In America, an entire society has been desperately sick for decades and, as with so many psychoses, unaware of its sickness even when the symptoms worsen, blaming its woes on others. Like so many words and phrases issuing from the mouth of the former president, “witch hunt” tells us plenty about the accuser, nothing about those accused. And when America falls ill, the whole world’s in danger. Hence the incalculable importance of every effort that promotes health.
And yes, we are animals. Animals—often feral—that have lost their survival instincts and replaced them by… the ideas of the moment.
Christy, the most reprehensible thing about our societies is how we have replaced the Soviet lie which sacrificed the present to a mythical future by the sacrifice of the poor, of our children and of all future generations to assuage the present greed of a few.
Having said all of which, I remain convinced that we humans have it in us to turn away from what we are not and become what we truly are.
The Haudenosaunee order of priority could provide a framework and a schedule for the recovery of our sanity and the healing of the planet. What are the practical implications of applying it?
Peter, the planet earth seemed to be missing from your equation of the gains and losses as we 'proceed'. It has been so difficult address the end result of your equation.
Sorry, Fern, I don't quite follow you. Perhaps this is because concern for earth is so dominant in my mind that I fail to state it enough. Yet I thought it was clear from the first and the last words of my statement:
Most important is... "protecting the earth for future generations FROM WHOM WE HAVE BORROWED IT".
AND:
"The Haudenosaunee order of priority could provide a framework and a schedule for the recovery of our sanity and the healing of the planet."
One of the things I most admire about the spirituality of the oldest inhabitants of the Americas is their awareness of the sacred character of mother earth.
In a lifetime, I've seen with my own eyes so much blind destruction, so much defilement by marauders who claim to represent "civilization". Makers of hell on earth.
Thank you, Peter, for understanding why I missed the foundational point of your comment.. The fault was mine, and we share the same dominant concern. With your thoughtful guidance, I recognized how you wrapped the earth around your thoughts.
A thin book you might enjoy is "Gaia: a new look at life on earth" by. James Lovelock first published in 1979, revised in 1987, reissued in 2000. Then follow the author's latest book, Revenge of Gaia: earth's climate crisis and the fate of humanity.
Jay, Thank you for this recommendation and for writing that it is thin I am reminded of the high stack of books here, still unread and calling for my attention.
Thank you, too, Fern. I recognize that age is beginning to tell on me, I have plenty of work on my hands, and sometimes, when I'm tired I find it difficult to state my arguments as clearly as I'd wish to.
Yet, this is a good forum for expressing and exchanging ideas that are not mainstream -- but should be!
Thank you for this. I'll read it. Sometimes earlier insights are more comprehensive, and this book must, given the time of publication, be directly influenced by the Second World War.
As I'm a translator, I'll go for the original.
I was deeply impressed by the work of another French thinker, phenomenologist Michel Henry, in particular Barbarism (La barbarie) 1987. I don't know if the translation is good but the arguments are powerful and (like so much of this unfashionable philosopher's work) were neither appreciated nor sufficiently understood. A frontal attack on our society's habits, ill-digested beliefs, dogma and choices was bound to meet with outright rejection.
Here's a telling sentence:
“When that which cannot feel, does not feel itself and is devoid of desire or love, is enshrined as a universal organizing principle, that signals the advent of madness, because madness lacks everything but reason.”
Michel Henry, Phénoménologie matérielle
[Quand ce qui ne sent rien et ne se sent pas soi-même, n'a ni désir ni amour, est mis au principe de l'organisation du monde, c'est le temps de la folie qui vient, car la folie a tout perdu sauf la raison.]
Maybe my translation should have been more literal, for he's announcing THE TIME OF MADNESS, an age of madness. And it is indeed upon us, nor should the relative respite America is enjoying blind us to the horror human beings have visited on themselves and on the planet.
Dear Peter Burnet- my heart jumps at your words. You are the person I have been looking for on this list serv. I suggest you would enjoy a fresh listen to the audio book, Frankenstein by Mary Shelly in 1830. Her insight cuts through both world wars to our century facing AI, genetics, and bio-engineering. Theodore Rosak is a Mary Shelly scholar who explains what she reveals about science, technology and feminism.
Also, check out the web site of the Jacques Ellul Society. I believe philosophy is the queen of the social sciences. While most people realize Western Civilization needs a new paradigm, it will be through philosophy (perhaps) a new Worldview might be constructed before we face the assurred destruction of Progress & Development.
I think you might also find Jurgen Habermas's writing about The Public Sphere helpful in guiding Democracy toward a responsible worldview to address human society's relationship to the environment we depend upon. His German writings have not been translated to English in a reader friendly way.
Thank you, Jay, but the only times I have been called a philosopher, it was NOT intended as a compliment!
My comments in the 1980s on the coming threats to the survival of democracy were viewed as wildly imaginative nonsense having no possible connection with reality, but my concern was with the nurture of living institutions -- nothing special, living entities need attention: feeding, watering, exercise...
As for me, despite a lively interest in philosophy and a strong regret not to have made a proper study of it when young, I simply try to think for myself and free myself of conditioning. I can make no other claim than that.
I haven't read Mary Shelley's powerful novel for a long time but maybe I'll take your advice and read it again. Good books always speak differently to us at different ages. I've always been thrilled by the poetry of her life partner.
One author who had a very clear and present sense of our much-vaunted civilization as a very, very fine veneer was Joseph Conrad. His work is shot through with the symbolism of illusory appearances masking savagery. Nor was he mistaken.
Only, these days people don't seem able to distinguish a symbol from a road sign.
You speak of Habermas -- yes -- but at this moment there's a sociologist I'd like to bring to your attention: the German Hartmut Rosa, who teaches at Jena university. I'm very interested in the concepts he picks on to explain our utter failure to lead the good life, and the growing discontent and violence in our societies. The first is blindingly obvious: Acceleration. Runaway change, slavery to the stop-watch and the drying up of time's stream (my silly image) in our over-regulated societies. The second is more subtle: Resonance and the cult of Growth.
I am blown away by Harmut Rosa! My son is enjoying Sociology in his first year in college. I sent him a link to a TedTalk by Harmut. Did you notice he listed through "spheres"? I believe he is referring to a systematic analysis of social spheres, the public sphere is only one of many social spheres. I am excited to hear more from Hartmut and others about social resonance and de-growth. This "invisible college" of thought is exactly the direction Western countries need to go to find a way out of addictive, unsustainable growth.
Aloy Soppe, the writer, is a professor of financial ethics at the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
His approach is holistic, taking account not only of human beings but of the planet and all life.
In addition to mankind’s original struggles with the environment and other life forms, we mortals are caught between the hammer and the anvil of abstract, inimical forces—ideologies with little or no bearing on our lives and the dead weight of debt, at once lifeless and undying. I think you’ll find that Soppe takes an original but well-grounded approach to the issue of growth, drawing on the patterns of life and death in Nature, far from dualism and Cartesian abstraction.
Do we really have to wait for greed and hubris to pursue their uninterrupted career all the way to the bursting of the next bubble before we act to bind and tame the monster we have created?
Hi Peter, I too have similar memories - waiting under my father’s raincoat, beneath my mother’s arms, for the awful overhead whine to “stop”. My godmother, who was Irish, had such a hatred for Germany, that even years after the war she refused to meet a German girl I befriended who was spending a year at my grammar school. My arguments all fell on deaf ears, alas, the closed and bitter mind, yet in many other things she was a wise and kind woman. It is good to be “simply human” but we have also to overcome “fear” when our mind closes in.
Well put whether we’re simply or complicatedly human. One of my smartest friends occasionally reminds me that after all we’re animals. I guess as part of the animal kingdom, we’ll always be engaging in turf wars.
I did study Anthropology at UC Berkeley many years ago, when I was reading
"Ishi, Last of His Tribe", by Theodora Kroeber (the mother of one of my most beloved writers, Ursula Kroeber LeGuin), and mourning in those younger years the loss of an entire people and their language and customs. And because I didn't go into my own ancestry, I will say here that I am of English, German, Irish, Dutch and Native American descent. I am almost certain that none of my ancestors or predecessors owned slaves. On my maternal side my German ancestors arrived in Illinois in the 1860's and proceeded to become very respected citizens and farmers in Edgar County, and when they felt perhaps they owned more than their share of the fertile land there, they offered the county residents an opportunity to buy, at what was reported to be very fair prices, land to create more small farms there. As far as I know, Edgar County has never succumbed to corporate farming. But I don't know everything. On my father's side, I was informed (by him) that we have three tribes in our blood: Cherokee, Cree and Blackfoot, and my great grandmother was indeed a Cherokee whom I knew as a small child. All this is to say that my sisters of course know this history as well, but that did not apparently figure into their current political stance. And stance it is. One refuses to have political discussions of almost any kind, and the other has all but disappeared down the rabbit hole of conspiracy.
So...looking at anthropology is all well and good, but having that sort of discussion with either is not
currently possible. My other sister continues to try to engage them in a deeper conversation, bless her, and I occasionally send along Heather's posts ~ up to now with no acknowledgement.
I think you would be interested to read Isabel Wilerson's book titled Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (published 202). It is such an important book which helps to explain why the social construct of caste supercedes that of race, class, and culture. Her Pulitzer prize winning book written before Caste is titled The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (pubished 2010) also deals with the concept of caste and is exquisitley written.
Unfortunately for access to the English books and the absence of bookshops in rural areas Amazon comes to the rescue for me in France too.
You are right, kowing the history of the "word" , how it was used and often now deformed helps us understand the "pickle" that we've now got ouself into everywhere.
Study anthropology. Focus on how the concept of “race” has been supplanted by “culture” and “subcultures”.
Culture vs Race
Please see: The Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropogy, edited by Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer.
Page 463:
“The word race was used by the English and other colonists justifying abuse and robbing the people in their colonies. The use of the word race became associated with cranial studies in the 1830s and 1840s when Samuel Morton “proved “ the larger brain size, and therefore superiority of Whites over other races. Only in 1977 did biologist Stephen Jay reanalalyze the data and discovered that Morton’s overt racists bias had made mistakes in the measurements.”
Page 464
“Modern anthropologists use “ethnicity” to express process of cultural identification.”
The USA is a mass culture. It has lots of sub-cultures, life styles, each with their own traditions and each may include many skin colors.
OK, I hope I haven’t bored you too much. It’s hard for me to find English books here in the backwoods of Portugal. I’m sure there are many more that can back me up. I was so interested in this discussion, I couldn’t resist sticking my nose in. To be silent is to be aquiesent.
I never forgot my good friend Axel whose first childhood memory in prewar Silesia was of a man placing metal calipers on his head to measure his skull.
Years later, he became a citizen of The Netherlands and celebrated by burying his German passport in Ireland.
Having said which, I, born in England one month into the Second World War, with memories of V1s falling on London, have gone out of my way to spend time in Germany, where I formed deep friendships. Given paranoia and the depth of the horrors, it wasn't always easy.
It won't be easy either for Americans to talk to one another after so much mind-poisoning and the dark history that lies behind it, and to wake up to the fact that their fellow-citizens are not demons but human beings just like them.
When I first read these words “for I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me,” I thought this was a cruel, savage Deity. Yet Deuteronomy is stating a simple truth which one need not be a believer to understand: we are conditioned by our families' forgotten past. We, too, are often the innocent victims of our forefathers.
The horror of evil is how it stains the innocent and makes itself a home in their consciousness, so that they too pass down the curse to their children and grandchildren.
HCR's contribution to our consciousness and the growing awareness we are sharing here and now—this is what true citizenship is all about. Being simply human.
This wisdom is well known and the foundation for indigenous cultures. “An essential value which forms the foundation for much of the Haudenosaunee ways is the duty of preparing for the seventh generation. The nations of the Haudenosaunee believe that we borrow the earth from our children’s children and it is our duty to protect it and the culture for future generations. All decisions made now are made with the future generations, who will inherit the earth, in mind.” https://www.haudenosauneeconfederacy.com/historical-life-as-a-haudenosaunee/
Yes.
Could there be a sounder concern, a sounder basis for our actions?
I shall read the item you included, but it strikes me at once that in our supposedly advanced societies we must overcome a problem among the living: the absence of dialogue between generations, especially the old and the young.
How to care for the unborn when there is so little fellow feeling among the living?
Additionally there is a serious tenet of "respect for elders" within indigenous cultures and multigenerational homes are common and so with the exception of the loss of their languages, there is a lot more room for that dialogue. I was heartened that the indigenous voice in the recent Truth and Reconciliation Forum I recently posted about began her shared story by apologizing to her elders out of respect for their wisdom. Of course perhaps some of our problems today arise from elders who are defined by their disrespect for "life". Sometimes in the moment it can be a challenge to discern what is life affirming versus what is not. Right now in my husband's homeland there exists conflict between elders who want to respect traditions and the land and subsistence versus the corporatists who want the dollars that the oil industry has brought to them. Nothing can be black and white when it comes to humanity. I think most of us, though, want our grandchildren to know grace and joy and beauty
I went to the T&R gathering, by the way, and was deeply inspired by it. Thanks for posting the link to it.
And of course to eat. This gives to Corporatists leverage in trying to debunk the rest.
Yes, Mr. Burnett, I agree. However I think that some of the problem is the premise that we are indeed more advanced. Perhaps in technology, but what has that cost us?
Thank you, Christy. I have read through the material in the Haudenosaunee website, but the most important aspect for the purposes we are talking of is protecting the earth for future generations FROM WHOM WE HAVE BORROWED IT.
Economic modelling based on that premise?
It would surely make far more sense than trading in pollution rights. (When economists first came up with cap and trade—such a wonderfully clever idea—I penned a Swiftian proposal for trading in... human rights... And then, in the same vein, invasion rights, likewise secured by means of a Multilateral Arrangement under the auspices of the relevant UN Subcommittee.)
Setting aside this derision, we seem to agree at quite a deep level, as expressed by your phrase "but what has that cost us?"
“Progress”, linear progress, is one of those grand abstract ideas, blind belief in which unites modern materialists both Communist and capitalist. But innovation and “progress” always come at a cost. There is always a corresponding regression, something is always lost. Even when that something lost is a handicap, a disease or a phenomenon like illiteracy, we count only our short-term gains and fail consistently to factor in the cost of the new imbalances we’ve created. It’s all like squeezing a balloon—tremendous expansion, but no one pays any attention to the contraction that produced it. Schumpeter’s creative destruction?
In America, an entire society has been desperately sick for decades and, as with so many psychoses, unaware of its sickness even when the symptoms worsen, blaming its woes on others. Like so many words and phrases issuing from the mouth of the former president, “witch hunt” tells us plenty about the accuser, nothing about those accused. And when America falls ill, the whole world’s in danger. Hence the incalculable importance of every effort that promotes health.
And yes, we are animals. Animals—often feral—that have lost their survival instincts and replaced them by… the ideas of the moment.
Christy, the most reprehensible thing about our societies is how we have replaced the Soviet lie which sacrificed the present to a mythical future by the sacrifice of the poor, of our children and of all future generations to assuage the present greed of a few.
Having said all of which, I remain convinced that we humans have it in us to turn away from what we are not and become what we truly are.
The Haudenosaunee order of priority could provide a framework and a schedule for the recovery of our sanity and the healing of the planet. What are the practical implications of applying it?
The authors of the US Constitution should have adapted matriarchy from the Haudenosaunee. Maybe they didn't because they were Founding FATHERS.
Peter, the planet earth seemed to be missing from your equation of the gains and losses as we 'proceed'. It has been so difficult address the end result of your equation.
Sorry, Fern, I don't quite follow you. Perhaps this is because concern for earth is so dominant in my mind that I fail to state it enough. Yet I thought it was clear from the first and the last words of my statement:
Most important is... "protecting the earth for future generations FROM WHOM WE HAVE BORROWED IT".
AND:
"The Haudenosaunee order of priority could provide a framework and a schedule for the recovery of our sanity and the healing of the planet."
One of the things I most admire about the spirituality of the oldest inhabitants of the Americas is their awareness of the sacred character of mother earth.
In a lifetime, I've seen with my own eyes so much blind destruction, so much defilement by marauders who claim to represent "civilization". Makers of hell on earth.
Thank you, Peter, for understanding why I missed the foundational point of your comment.. The fault was mine, and we share the same dominant concern. With your thoughtful guidance, I recognized how you wrapped the earth around your thoughts.
A thin book you might enjoy is "Gaia: a new look at life on earth" by. James Lovelock first published in 1979, revised in 1987, reissued in 2000. Then follow the author's latest book, Revenge of Gaia: earth's climate crisis and the fate of humanity.
Jay, Thank you for this recommendation and for writing that it is thin I am reminded of the high stack of books here, still unread and calling for my attention.
Thank you, too, Fern. I recognize that age is beginning to tell on me, I have plenty of work on my hands, and sometimes, when I'm tired I find it difficult to state my arguments as clearly as I'd wish to.
Yet, this is a good forum for expressing and exchanging ideas that are not mainstream -- but should be!
Read Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society to dicover the answers to the question, "What is the cost of technology?
Thank you for this. I'll read it. Sometimes earlier insights are more comprehensive, and this book must, given the time of publication, be directly influenced by the Second World War.
As I'm a translator, I'll go for the original.
I was deeply impressed by the work of another French thinker, phenomenologist Michel Henry, in particular Barbarism (La barbarie) 1987. I don't know if the translation is good but the arguments are powerful and (like so much of this unfashionable philosopher's work) were neither appreciated nor sufficiently understood. A frontal attack on our society's habits, ill-digested beliefs, dogma and choices was bound to meet with outright rejection.
Here's a telling sentence:
“When that which cannot feel, does not feel itself and is devoid of desire or love, is enshrined as a universal organizing principle, that signals the advent of madness, because madness lacks everything but reason.”
Michel Henry, Phénoménologie matérielle
[Quand ce qui ne sent rien et ne se sent pas soi-même, n'a ni désir ni amour, est mis au principe de l'organisation du monde, c'est le temps de la folie qui vient, car la folie a tout perdu sauf la raison.]
Maybe my translation should have been more literal, for he's announcing THE TIME OF MADNESS, an age of madness. And it is indeed upon us, nor should the relative respite America is enjoying blind us to the horror human beings have visited on themselves and on the planet.
Dear Peter Burnet- my heart jumps at your words. You are the person I have been looking for on this list serv. I suggest you would enjoy a fresh listen to the audio book, Frankenstein by Mary Shelly in 1830. Her insight cuts through both world wars to our century facing AI, genetics, and bio-engineering. Theodore Rosak is a Mary Shelly scholar who explains what she reveals about science, technology and feminism.
Also, check out the web site of the Jacques Ellul Society. I believe philosophy is the queen of the social sciences. While most people realize Western Civilization needs a new paradigm, it will be through philosophy (perhaps) a new Worldview might be constructed before we face the assurred destruction of Progress & Development.
I think you might also find Jurgen Habermas's writing about The Public Sphere helpful in guiding Democracy toward a responsible worldview to address human society's relationship to the environment we depend upon. His German writings have not been translated to English in a reader friendly way.
Thank you, Jay, but the only times I have been called a philosopher, it was NOT intended as a compliment!
My comments in the 1980s on the coming threats to the survival of democracy were viewed as wildly imaginative nonsense having no possible connection with reality, but my concern was with the nurture of living institutions -- nothing special, living entities need attention: feeding, watering, exercise...
As for me, despite a lively interest in philosophy and a strong regret not to have made a proper study of it when young, I simply try to think for myself and free myself of conditioning. I can make no other claim than that.
I haven't read Mary Shelley's powerful novel for a long time but maybe I'll take your advice and read it again. Good books always speak differently to us at different ages. I've always been thrilled by the poetry of her life partner.
One author who had a very clear and present sense of our much-vaunted civilization as a very, very fine veneer was Joseph Conrad. His work is shot through with the symbolism of illusory appearances masking savagery. Nor was he mistaken.
Only, these days people don't seem able to distinguish a symbol from a road sign.
You speak of Habermas -- yes -- but at this moment there's a sociologist I'd like to bring to your attention: the German Hartmut Rosa, who teaches at Jena university. I'm very interested in the concepts he picks on to explain our utter failure to lead the good life, and the growing discontent and violence in our societies. The first is blindingly obvious: Acceleration. Runaway change, slavery to the stop-watch and the drying up of time's stream (my silly image) in our over-regulated societies. The second is more subtle: Resonance and the cult of Growth.
Take a glance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCLPpU0hSUw
One description of hell -- drawn from a distant memory of the hell of depression -- NO SPACE -- NO TIME.
Everywhere, but there is never any room. Eternity, but there is never any time. Never room, never time, never any escape.
America's just had a golem for president... And no one anywhere will be safe for as long as he, his backers and his cronies walk free.
Anyway, while I'm here, maybe take a look at an item I've written further on in this thread about bringing America's Gun Cult to my country, Scotland.
I am blown away by Harmut Rosa! My son is enjoying Sociology in his first year in college. I sent him a link to a TedTalk by Harmut. Did you notice he listed through "spheres"? I believe he is referring to a systematic analysis of social spheres, the public sphere is only one of many social spheres. I am excited to hear more from Hartmut and others about social resonance and de-growth. This "invisible college" of thought is exactly the direction Western countries need to go to find a way out of addictive, unsustainable growth.
Jay, I'm adding another cross-reference which could perhaps be useful to Dr. Richardson herself and to others who follow her blog:
https://www.routledge.com/New-Financial-Ethics-A-Normative-Approach/Soppe/p/book/9781138366527
Aloy Soppe, the writer, is a professor of financial ethics at the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
His approach is holistic, taking account not only of human beings but of the planet and all life.
In addition to mankind’s original struggles with the environment and other life forms, we mortals are caught between the hammer and the anvil of abstract, inimical forces—ideologies with little or no bearing on our lives and the dead weight of debt, at once lifeless and undying. I think you’ll find that Soppe takes an original but well-grounded approach to the issue of growth, drawing on the patterns of life and death in Nature, far from dualism and Cartesian abstraction.
Do we really have to wait for greed and hubris to pursue their uninterrupted career all the way to the bursting of the next bubble before we act to bind and tame the monster we have created?
Thank you, Jay.
HCR and her followers exemplify RESONANCE.
Let's snowball!
the link was simply given as a source. there are multiple others, but it certainly is interesting to explore.
History is a love letter from the past, when we know how to read it. Heather knows History like a mother knows her own child.
“we are conditioned by our families' forgotten past.” Hear, hear, Peter.
Hi Peter, I too have similar memories - waiting under my father’s raincoat, beneath my mother’s arms, for the awful overhead whine to “stop”. My godmother, who was Irish, had such a hatred for Germany, that even years after the war she refused to meet a German girl I befriended who was spending a year at my grammar school. My arguments all fell on deaf ears, alas, the closed and bitter mind, yet in many other things she was a wise and kind woman. It is good to be “simply human” but we have also to overcome “fear” when our mind closes in.
Well put whether we’re simply or complicatedly human. One of my smartest friends occasionally reminds me that after all we’re animals. I guess as part of the animal kingdom, we’ll always be engaging in turf wars.
Yes, and the most invasive of all species.
That’s for sure and the most violent
But the other breeds do it for survival and control of the size of the herd whereas human animals...
Dear Susan Lorraine Knox,
I did study Anthropology at UC Berkeley many years ago, when I was reading
"Ishi, Last of His Tribe", by Theodora Kroeber (the mother of one of my most beloved writers, Ursula Kroeber LeGuin), and mourning in those younger years the loss of an entire people and their language and customs. And because I didn't go into my own ancestry, I will say here that I am of English, German, Irish, Dutch and Native American descent. I am almost certain that none of my ancestors or predecessors owned slaves. On my maternal side my German ancestors arrived in Illinois in the 1860's and proceeded to become very respected citizens and farmers in Edgar County, and when they felt perhaps they owned more than their share of the fertile land there, they offered the county residents an opportunity to buy, at what was reported to be very fair prices, land to create more small farms there. As far as I know, Edgar County has never succumbed to corporate farming. But I don't know everything. On my father's side, I was informed (by him) that we have three tribes in our blood: Cherokee, Cree and Blackfoot, and my great grandmother was indeed a Cherokee whom I knew as a small child. All this is to say that my sisters of course know this history as well, but that did not apparently figure into their current political stance. And stance it is. One refuses to have political discussions of almost any kind, and the other has all but disappeared down the rabbit hole of conspiracy.
So...looking at anthropology is all well and good, but having that sort of discussion with either is not
currently possible. My other sister continues to try to engage them in a deeper conversation, bless her, and I occasionally send along Heather's posts ~ up to now with no acknowledgement.
Isabel Wilkerson's Caste is a very important book in this discussion.
For sure. I found it changed my life.
Yes!
I think you would be interested to read Isabel Wilerson's book titled Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (published 202). It is such an important book which helps to explain why the social construct of caste supercedes that of race, class, and culture. Her Pulitzer prize winning book written before Caste is titled The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (pubished 2010) also deals with the concept of caste and is exquisitley written.
Unfortunately for access to the English books and the absence of bookshops in rural areas Amazon comes to the rescue for me in France too.
You are right, kowing the history of the "word" , how it was used and often now deformed helps us understand the "pickle" that we've now got ouself into everywhere.
Not boring to me, Susan. Thank you for sharing!
Stephen Jay Gould; The Mismeasure of Man
Welcome to LFAA, Edward.