October 18, 2014
Pocket paradigms
We live now with dishonest politics, disinformed and disinforming media, disconnected
cultures, disjointed economics, dysfunctional communities and
disrespected citizens. To attempt to repair such conditions without
a morally conscious politics makes as much sense as trying to
revive a body without a heart. This is not romanticism, idealism
or naivete, just basic political anatomy. That we have come to
accept a politics that offers no choice save between our acquisition
of abusive power or our submission to it speaks only to the depths
of our delusion; it says nothing about that which is possible. - Sam Smith
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3 comments:
I have often thought that there is no way to fix any of this without a moral reappraisal. And by "moral" I am not referring to sexual prudishness but rather everyday attempts at basic honesty and a respect for others.
My father (an atheist) opposed war, but when the United States entered World War II, he sold his aeronautics stock, commenting that it was wrong to make money out of wars. We didn't have much meat, because using the black market was wrong. As for lying, that was unthinkable.
Odd, but for years I thought such attitudes were "normal" and that those who didn't hold them were at best unfortunates.
It was only after reading an autobiography of a non-WASP immigrant, (I think maybe Elia Kazan)that I realized how ignorant I was. In that book he made a grudging concession that maybe there was something valuable about the (to him alien) old-fashioned "Yankee" virtues.
Today, if one believes in them, one is prudish, intolerant, judgmental, moralistic..pick whatever pejorative you want.
Strange.
An interesting perspective can be found in the October 15
Archdruid blog.
Civilization versus barbarism, the Bush/ Blair press conference. The middle east as an opportunity for lets go crazy, cold war resumed, nuclear winter as the cure for global warming. Thug Bush didnt just come unassembled from Mattel, shooting up saloons is archetypal and persists alongside the fundamental obligation to whip slaves.
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