tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post6603770497798989498..comments2024-03-29T02:03:49.151-04:00Comments on History Unfolding: ConfirmationDavid Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05020082243968071584noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-75377998945915516332012-07-26T19:36:58.495-04:002012-07-26T19:36:58.495-04:00i ask you , do you believe government should enact...i ask you , do you believe government should enact more regulations ? that it should grow bigger into an even larger business than it is now?<br />i read what you have to say and i hear contradictions and prejudices without your having first hand knowledge.<br />when you do a book review , review the book for the facts not for a reason to look down upon a group you have little real knowledge of. your blog , like many others , sounds like a reason for you to be able to show how "smart" you are...a self-serving instrument of little real facts.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03818383811687798452noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-41574949008398511422012-07-09T05:59:48.344-04:002012-07-09T05:59:48.344-04:00(Continuing my thoughts from my immediately prior ...(Continuing my thoughts from my immediately prior comment)<br /><br />Which was lubricated by the demonization of the old moral Order as ‘repressive, oppressive, dominant, hegemonic, macho, patriarchal, industrial’ and so forth; thus ‘Archie Bunker’ was created as the symbol and ‘All in the Family’ was the Correct Memo as to how and why the project should work.<br /><br />G-surfer nicely notes that Hawthorne too – despite his many strengths – presumes that an ‘old moral Order’ a) serves primarily a repressive function and b) is primarily dishonest and fake because it is driven merely by ‘hypocrisy’. <br /><br />Whereas I would say that a) an established moral Order functions vitally as a keel to balance the otherwise destabilizing motive power of the sails (i.e. the forces for change) and that b) the Ideal serves genuinely as a ‘kanon’ (Greek: guideline) toward which it is (realistically) assumed that one is always progressing though never fully achieving. This is far more complex a reality than can be encompassed by a reductionist demonizing of the old moral Order as merely repressive and hypocritical (although such propagandistic reduction of the older Order is of course precisely demanded by revolutionary praxis).<br /> <br />I concur with G-surfer’s “common living space”. It is for this reason that I continuously support ‘ship’ imagery in describing society and culture: we are in a very real sense committed to a common life (and in a Larger sense a common purpose) aboard the ‘Vessel’ of our national polity and culture. <br /><br />The American Experiment’s radical gamble is to balance the profound core tension between the members of American culture and society being the ‘crew’ (thus dedicated to maintaining and sustaining their Vessel) and yet simultaneously ‘free’ to pursue their individual visions.<br /><br />The ingenuity of the Framers was to make the Citizenry not merely ‘passengers’ and not merely ‘crew’ but also – ultimately – the ‘command staff’ as well. The Framers achieved this by making The People the ultimate source of the polity’s Sovereign Authority. <br /><br />This remarkable dynamic is not most aptly expressed in the image of a Naval vessel or even an ocean-liner. Instead, I would use the image of a yacht leased with its captain and crew by a party of persons: that party – paying for the leased time as per the terms of the lease contract – are ultimately responsible for there being any voyage at all, yet in the day to day operations of the vessel, the actual captain and command-staff have the authority to operate the vessel.<br /> <br />This is a deeply nuanced image but I think it best captures the dynamics underlying the Framing Vision.publionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02174323115856447561noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-7109157753611690562012-07-09T05:57:57.829-04:002012-07-09T05:57:57.829-04:00A few thoughts come to me in re Galacticsurfer’s g...A few thoughts come to me in re Galacticsurfer’s gravid comments.<br /><br />The moral compass/wave theory connection is, I think, a valid one. But only as one element of the dynamics affecting the moral-compass. One might, for instance, enter a set of Prime Coordinates into the guidance-computer (yes, a Star Trek image here) so as not to have ship’s course deranged by assorted ‘waves’ encountered on the voyage. <br /><br />Thus, e.g. anchoring oneself in the Christian (not to be confused with the specifically American Fundamentalist variant – although it too is an option) Framework would provide a consistent set of ‘pole star’ coordinates which would exercise a stabilizing force against the vortex of assorted currents and waves that the individual/ship might encounter.<br /> <br />Beginning in the period 1966-1972 the federal government committed its authority and purse to the interests of effecting multiple sequential ‘revolutions’. That plan was profoundly influenced by both a) the Gramscian strategy for undermining status-quo ‘hegemonic’ culture and b) a deeply inapt equating of the federal government’s terraforming of Southern culture and society (not just legitimately eradicating the formal skein of Jim Crow laws woven by the Southern States) with the follow-on Identity-revolutions’ agendas that were to be imposed on the entire American culture.<br /> <br />Thus the government was drawn into the (revolutionary) task of essentially speeding-up the historical process of ‘dying-out’ that G-surfer mentions: rather than wait for a (perhaps Generational) replacement of the prior moral Order through the process of natural attrition, the federal government and the Democratic Party (two distinct entities, formally) embraced the revolutionary gameplan of imposing the changes.publionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02174323115856447561noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-17135813261102251462012-07-09T00:40:49.774-04:002012-07-09T00:40:49.774-04:00Oops-- sorry for the multiple attempts to post a c...Oops-- sorry for the multiple attempts to post a comment. I forgot that it needed to be approved before appearing on my page. I just thought I was having troubles with the "captcha." Please accept my apologies and no need to post this or the multiples publicly, of course.Mistyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05672938360949726730noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-78713903667907779462012-07-09T00:37:48.511-04:002012-07-09T00:37:48.511-04:00For what it's worth, my thoughts run along the...For what it's worth, my thoughts run along the same line as those of Bruce Wilder. You are not alone, Mr. Wilder. HahaMistyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05672938360949726730noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-81851527980167032322012-07-08T18:11:19.946-04:002012-07-08T18:11:19.946-04:00I had come across that same Op-Ed and worked out m...I had come across that same Op-Ed and worked out my own thoughts on my site, Chez Odysseus. <br /><br />Good intentions and good outcomes and consequences are three different types of critter and not easily hitched together in a troika (three horse team). <br /><br />Creating workable and sustainable reform is an art form of the highest order and not best left to revolutionary simplicities and excitements.publionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02174323115856447561noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-85679851109927835582012-07-08T07:23:54.807-04:002012-07-08T07:23:54.807-04:00I was away from the internet for two weeks on vaca...I was away from the internet for two weeks on vacation rural northern Germany on the North Sea coastal area and just read your last four posts which are much appreciated. <br /><br />I think the moral compass of the individual is defined through personal experience which, as in Generational theory goes in waves (wave particle theory of light being similar,i.e. I am an idividual but part of a wave phenomenon). This could apply to the largely unused but still posted nudist portion of the beaches in the rural seaside town where I vacationed or when I went to the small town supermarket 10 km away from my vacation rental and saw a single dark skinned foreigner in the store (from india?) and could not help thinking that their presence goes unnoticed (tolerated?) due to the standardization /abundance of the supermarket, i.e. our modern superwealth compared to earlier times. If an small town bakery has local wares and knows everyone by name such anonymity is impossible. <br /><br />I am reading to my son from Hawthorne's 1850 masterpiece The Scarlet Letter set in ca. 1650 New England. 1850 in generational cycle were similar to 2010(1850+160=2010) and the left wing criticsm of repressive and hypocritical moral measures placed in another era is no different than modern Hollywood criticsm of 1950s type repression. This represssion was misunderstood by Hawhtorne (and Hollywood) perhaps as holding a society together is critical after an economic crisis and war and societal norms are set to assure survival of the individual and the group as a whole. One can imagine a centralized European state for example coming inot place due to the debt criss (would be unneccessary without the parallel existence of USA/ Russia/ China as competitive superpowers). <br /><br />Perhaps as in academic sciences, where they say that new ideas are not adopted, but opponents die out (tectonic plates theory, etc.) common moral cause will win only when its opponents are sufficiently in decline. Otherwise it would seem that this moderation would happen only through a true crisis war of sorts where one side wins or when the abundance of industrial society is gone through Peak oil and climate change making tolerance of super wealth and/or moral deviation from norms bad for the common good. <br /><br />I am glad to see that your ideas are seeping though however as when one finally recognizes the problem (total greed and total sexual freedom as two sides of the same coin, i.e. total freedom of the individual against the societal norms and leading in the end to societal destruction) only then can one handle the disease. We all have our demons, sex, power, greed and some choose one or the other as preferable to our temperament and then perhaps even move somewehere where we can live our fantasy freely (gay in Frisco, money hungry to Wall Street, moralists to Kansas,etc.) but in the end we have come to a common denominator due to a common living space and legal and political and cultural framework.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-60779452963145667192012-07-05T16:27:01.328-04:002012-07-05T16:27:01.328-04:00I should perhaps ad a footnote.
In my view, both ...I should perhaps ad a footnote.<br /><br />In my view, both Bobbitt and Fukuyama were each utterly misguided in his analysis. <br /><br />Many virtues and insights sprinkled throughout each, <br /><br />but big picture, each utterly misguided.<br /><br />All the best,<br />GMBozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-77380203575813797822012-07-05T13:53:27.926-04:002012-07-05T13:53:27.926-04:00I am torn between being hyper-critical of, and bei...I am torn between being hyper-critical of, and being supportive of your thesis.<br /><br />The decline of social affiliation needs and associated sense of political solidarity among groups has progressed since WWII to an extent I would have doubted were possible. That has had, as a by-product, a reduction in the organized violence against, and economic exploitation of, social groups by social groups.<br /><br />Much of what was celebrated as heroism in my parents' generation was defiance of the very conformity that demanded that women work only as nurses and teachers and secretaries, or that blacks accept daily humiliations, or that homosexuals live in fear of scandal. <br /><br />Social affiliation (a technical-sounding social psychology term for the opposite of narcissistic selfishness) and the political solidarity it supported had its dark side. The "heroism" of the Hero Generation did, necessarily, require that they were pretty rotten to one another, much of the time; they were working from a really ugly baseline -- I wouldn't want to lose sight of that.<br /><br />And, I hesitate to confirm, that being routinely decent toward one another somehow "necessarily" requires licensing the rapacious looting by a plutocracy, which we now witness.<br /><br />The curious thing, to me, is the absence of a collective willingness to fight back against the worst of the very rich, not that the very rich are selfish and irresponsible. It is easier to arouse resentment among the growing precariat, against the few, say, teachers and policemen, who have slightly better economic security as a legacy of public sector unions, than against those, who conspicuously seek to dominate and exploit, and advance schemes of economic predation. Obama, a hero to many of our generation (b 1954) and younger, on the left at least, cannot seem to bring himself to prosecute a bankster, or aid a victim of foreclosure. What's that about?<br /><br />One critically important link between "selfishness" and the increasingly thorough domination of the masses by the worst sort of sociopathic elite, I have found in the BBC documentary series, Century of the Self, by Adam Curtis. Highly recommended.Bruce Wilderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09631065564839959376noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-59897032985997901682012-07-04T14:13:19.455-04:002012-07-04T14:13:19.455-04:00Both this post, and the Kurt Anderson speech quote...Both this post, and the Kurt Anderson speech quoted are excellent.<br /><br />My first thought was to wonder if we could crack down on the antisocial economic behavior (mainly by the capitalists), and retain the more laissez fair attitude towards unconventional sexual and social behavior. Far fewer people get hurt from people who violate sexual and social norms than from hamfisted efforts to enforce those norms. So my first thought if we could change the exploitative bathwater but keep the humanistic baby.<br /><br />However, I am thinking in terms of having lived my adult life (I was born in 1970) where one social institution after another has been captured by the exploiters, and social norms shaped by mass media cynically used for propaganda, so I automatically assume that a return to communitarian norms would strengthen the hands of the exploiters. In fact, in a more thoroughly communitarian environment there are ground to believe that in practice individual cases of "deviance" would be met by local institutions with compassion, though local institutions would vary much more than now in their response, and there would be room for unconventional social behavior provided it was practiced discretely.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14975859696322633431noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-8888513407868502762012-07-04T13:37:24.697-04:002012-07-04T13:37:24.697-04:00Professor
Great post. I used the same article on ...Professor<br /><br />Great post. I used the same article on my blog. <br /><br />Yet, for me, it has not been about cyclical generational issues really, at all, <br /><br />but about the end (the last 60 years) of the lost Civil War of the West, what Bobbitt had called the Long War, what Fukuyama had called the end of history, <br /><br />a rivalry of the West now won by the East over the West.<br /><br />All the best,<br />GMBozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.com