Thomas Paine inspires. This could be a return to our real roots. The US, tattered and broken, can look to this Englishman for a rebirth of the values that launched this country.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Thomas Paine
I have been searching around for an inspiring articulation of this miraculous event. The target is Wall Street and we all know about the lopsided power of these plutocrats. But searching through economics texts for some positive solution has given me a headache. William Greider, Meghnad Desai, Keynes, Schumpeter, and the entire pantheon does not inspire.
occupy wall street
It is a miracle. I don't know whether it was anonymous who started it, or perhaps it was a spontaneous Arab autumn. This might be the breakthrough past the stalemate, the paralyzed government and the slow steady hemorrhaging of the body politic. It is exhilirating to behold. A fresh breath of democracy.
Friday, July 22, 2011
philosopher or saint?
What we need is a figure of power who disturbs us. Not a lunatic, not a harmless
religious figure, but someone who has the aura of authority which comes from somewhere
but whose presence is profoundly disturbing.
These people have existed, but they are not professors of philosophy.
religious figure, but someone who has the aura of authority which comes from somewhere
but whose presence is profoundly disturbing.
These people have existed, but they are not professors of philosophy.
Do we need another ideology?
July 22, 2011.
Stapleton. Staten Island.
Friday. Day off. 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Having trouble getting oriented again. What we are confronted with is beyond normal politics, and it requires an evolution of individual beings.
The clock is still ticking on the debt ceiling crisis. I can’t help but think we are moving into some kind of global economic phase change, and the American people have completely lost control over their destinies.
Question #1: How do we get rid of planetary plutocracy?
Question #2: What does it mean mean to be fully human and what social forms enable us to be such?
Right now Safranski’s biography of Heidegger is on my docket to finish reading. As far as this enterprise is concerned, I have classified Heidegger’s work under #2, expansion of consciousness. The reason I can’t push Heidegger aside is because he has seized on a great piece of truth:
that Dasein as such is demanded of man, that it is given to him--to be there. Anyone evading this essential oppressiveness lacks that defiant “in defiance of” that to Heidegger makes up everyday heroism. He who has not experience life as a burden in this sense knows nothing of the enigma of Dasein. In consequence, what is lacking is the inner terror that every mystery carries with it and that gives Dasein its greatness. …
This terror is the dramatically heightened astonishment that there is something and not nothing, the terrifying enigma is the Being in its naked THAT....
No political event, not even the World War, had been able to cause that awakening by itself. We are therefore still dealing not with a political but a philosophical awakening. Hence also Heidegger’s critique of all attempts to erect a worldview as an edifice in the political field and all calls to live in it. Once Dasein becomes transparent to itself, it ceases to erect such edifices. (Safranski, pages 196-197)
Stapleton. Staten Island.
Friday. Day off. 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Having trouble getting oriented again. What we are confronted with is beyond normal politics, and it requires an evolution of individual beings.
The clock is still ticking on the debt ceiling crisis. I can’t help but think we are moving into some kind of global economic phase change, and the American people have completely lost control over their destinies.
Question #1: How do we get rid of planetary plutocracy?
Question #2: What does it mean mean to be fully human and what social forms enable us to be such?
Right now Safranski’s biography of Heidegger is on my docket to finish reading. As far as this enterprise is concerned, I have classified Heidegger’s work under #2, expansion of consciousness. The reason I can’t push Heidegger aside is because he has seized on a great piece of truth:
that Dasein as such is demanded of man, that it is given to him--to be there. Anyone evading this essential oppressiveness lacks that defiant “in defiance of” that to Heidegger makes up everyday heroism. He who has not experience life as a burden in this sense knows nothing of the enigma of Dasein. In consequence, what is lacking is the inner terror that every mystery carries with it and that gives Dasein its greatness. …
This terror is the dramatically heightened astonishment that there is something and not nothing, the terrifying enigma is the Being in its naked THAT....
No political event, not even the World War, had been able to cause that awakening by itself. We are therefore still dealing not with a political but a philosophical awakening. Hence also Heidegger’s critique of all attempts to erect a worldview as an edifice in the political field and all calls to live in it. Once Dasein becomes transparent to itself, it ceases to erect such edifices. (Safranski, pages 196-197)
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Soundbite ideology?
Jeff Picca, my former colleague at Brandeis, called my attention to the following article in Dissent magazine: http://dissentmagazine.org/online.php?id=504#
The title is "Firing Line: the Grand Coalition against teachers". It really is curious that both Democrats and Republicans are agreed that TEACHERS MUST BE MADE ACCOUNTABLE. ACCOUNTABILITY WILL SOLVE ALL PROBLEMS. Accountability is measured by standardized test scores. Period. That is the sound bite to mobilize public opinion to privatize at least half a trillion dollars going into public education.
It sounds so similar to another soundbite idea found in RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT. Jim Johnson made home ownership for all the pathway to great wealth for himself and his colleagues at Countrywide and Goldman Sachs. Along the way all the warning signs about the dangerous bubble built on sub-prime loans was ignored by the FED, the SEC, all the way down. And now our economy is shattered, and people's lives ruined. And by the way, let's throw experienced teachers under the bus to make politicians feel like we are solving the education "problem".
There is no education problem. There is an economic problem. Our suburban kids score as well as the Shanghai kids, and better than the rest of the world, as the article in DISSENT documents.
The title is "Firing Line: the Grand Coalition against teachers". It really is curious that both Democrats and Republicans are agreed that TEACHERS MUST BE MADE ACCOUNTABLE. ACCOUNTABILITY WILL SOLVE ALL PROBLEMS. Accountability is measured by standardized test scores. Period. That is the sound bite to mobilize public opinion to privatize at least half a trillion dollars going into public education.
It sounds so similar to another soundbite idea found in RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT. Jim Johnson made home ownership for all the pathway to great wealth for himself and his colleagues at Countrywide and Goldman Sachs. Along the way all the warning signs about the dangerous bubble built on sub-prime loans was ignored by the FED, the SEC, all the way down. And now our economy is shattered, and people's lives ruined. And by the way, let's throw experienced teachers under the bus to make politicians feel like we are solving the education "problem".
There is no education problem. There is an economic problem. Our suburban kids score as well as the Shanghai kids, and better than the rest of the world, as the article in DISSENT documents.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Summertime Blues
I'm sitting at home on a possibly stormy summer Friday. I am sending out my resume, hoping to get a new teaching assignment. The jobs report says only 18,000 new jobs were created in June. 40,000 public employees were let go last month. The last NASA space shuttle launch is on C-Span. A new Michelle Bachmann clip has her screeching about saying NO to raising the debt ceiling for any reason.
I think the saddest part is the ending of the space program. In the WSJ yesterday there was an article about cutting the funding for the Webb space telescope. While I am fully aware of the dark side of Manifest Destiny, the gutting of man's exploration of space feels like the shutting down of the new frontier.
In this plutocracy, where the top hedge fund managers are able to block any attempt to plug tax loopholes, where we are looking at millions upon millions permanently unemployed, where the prevailing political mood is to cut domestic programs, where the population flees toward nonstop entertainment in order not to face reality, the only option seems to entertain ourselves to death, to extinction.
I think the saddest part is the ending of the space program. In the WSJ yesterday there was an article about cutting the funding for the Webb space telescope. While I am fully aware of the dark side of Manifest Destiny, the gutting of man's exploration of space feels like the shutting down of the new frontier.
In this plutocracy, where the top hedge fund managers are able to block any attempt to plug tax loopholes, where we are looking at millions upon millions permanently unemployed, where the prevailing political mood is to cut domestic programs, where the population flees toward nonstop entertainment in order not to face reality, the only option seems to entertain ourselves to death, to extinction.
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