Christoph Reuss wrote:
Well said, Brad. Sweden and Switzerland are probably the best examples
that this combination is best for society as a whole. But now both are
being gobbled up by the globalizers...
The New York Times Sunday Magazine a week or 2 ago had a feature
article about the immigrants in Sweden and the problems they pose [<-- note
that is a double-reading phrase, i.e.: (1) The problems the immigrants
force upon the Swedes, and (2) the problems the Swedes have dealing
with these people in their midst apart from them being wilfully
provacative].
--
To change the topic [but not entirely], my wife recently got a cable
internet connection. I would never have done this, out of
techno-traumatization
in my work, and the dread of having to fight getting this new piece of
sh-t to work -- but the cable company got the thing working so the
only problem i have is that my traumatization makes me reluctant to
face the problem of installing a router so that I could also connect
my second computer to the cable connection, and "cable" telephone
service is not as good as "land lines", so that the 2nd computer
does not work well on the phone-modem.
I could not believe it: I downloaded a 60 meg file is less than a minute --
that's even a lot faster even than at work.... Anyway, this enabled me
to download a 250 meg film of a lecture today ("bittorrent"
format...#$%^&*),
by someone I never heard of except for an ad from Amazon
I found in my email earlier today and which stimulated
a Google search which led to the film. Giorgio Agamben.
My "orality and literacy..." point is simple: Texts that are
incomprehensible
when I try to *read* them in the pseudo/one-way conversation with the
written text, can be quite readily comprehensible when *listened to*
esp. while watching the speaker speak the text.
Now, the lecture is quite relevant to "A way out". I will try to
sum up: Agamben says that globalization has eliminated the
way societies previously solved problems: by sending the problem persons
to some place *outside their society*. In our globalized world,
there is no longer any "outside".
Ambegen cites 2 de-situated
kinds of persons: (1) refugees, and (2) the new global elite, both of whom
are outside the law of nation states, while being topologically
inside some state or other. Ambegen says that whereas previously
the solution to local problems was to globalize them (my aside:
remember when "the solution to pollution is dilution"?), today the
problems have become global -- which Amgeben strongly
contrasts with "international". International is what several
different nations agree to -- global is what affects everyone
irrespective of their governments' actions. He says
international law is like if the traffic laws were
international agreements: anybody from a non-signatory
country would not be bound to obey the traffic laws....
Anyway, the problems have now all become global, while the
only solutions have become local. This, Ambegen says,
is not possible: global problems cannot be solved locally.
("Our town" cannot protect itself from global warming,
is an example which comes to my mind....)
Ambegen says that what are needed are true global institutions,
which currently we do not have.
Ambegen focuses on the refugee. He notes that the reason
refugees arouse so much negative feelings in normal persons
(citizens of nation states)
is that the normal persons realize how fragile their relatively
good life-situations are, and how easy it would be for themselves
to be reduced to being refugees in the new globalization.
Ambegen says that refugees' lives (and refugee camps) are
an experiment [perhaps not entirely intended] in testing
the limits of human beings to endure the logic of globalization.
One of the other panelists notes that refugees can also
become counter-laboratories, in which -- his example is the
Palestinean refugees who refuse to be resettled -- the
powerless try to intensify their misfortune to see
if their situation can break the
power that put them there. That's as far as I've got....
So, back to "orality and literacy", I am reconfirmed in
my belief that, if I had had real persons with whom to discuss
the books I read, I might understand a lot more than
I do.
We are a conversation.
(--a synopsis of Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophy,
which he probably said verbatim somewhere)
You don't listen to anybody but just talk with yourself
in your head.
--accusation some persons have made of me
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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