1. “Be Careful” Given the history I’m surprised that you think I wouldn’t be careful.
2. “Don’t be swayed by the current intellectual fashion.” Are you referring to my statements about the most advanced architectural and transportation projects today are to be found in Asia and China in particular and in the Islamic countries? If so, data is just data. I’m concerned about comparative advantage in the coming world. I’m concerned that we support our disloyal, unpatriotic fat cats and do nothing to keep up with the rest of the world. During the Cold War America propagated the myth that we were great followers and developers of culture. Abstract Expressionism, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, many journals in Europe and most of all, building 81 Opera Houses and many orchestras in Germany. All to prove that we were a better model for culture oriented Europe than the Soviets and their Arts structures. Today, America won the war and reverted to trinkets and trash entertainment and hires the Russians to do our serious music. It was a lie that won the war and we are non-competitive because of that lie. It was true once but since the 1980s and the conservative revolution it has destroyed the fragile flower of Minimalism and an evolving American artistic professionalism equal to anyplace in the world. One other thing. In the first seventy years after 1776 America murdered a large percentage of my people, stole our property, stole our children and only stopped enslaving us because Africans were less expensive and more easily replaced. (their words). Our way of life was ravaged, lied about, we were stolen blind and at the end of those seventy years our religion was made illegal because it protected the land from speculators and resisted missionaries. One hundred years after 1776 we still were able to mount an army that destroyed Custer’s 7th Cavalry. What were we protecting? The legal treaty land titles to the Sioux “Jerusalem” at Paha Sapa in the Black Hills. Red Cloud had won the day and Custer, that little thief, went into the Black Hills and destroyed the treaty. In the quarter of the 20th century the courts found that the Sioux were cheated and tried to buy them out at the 1880 price. Even today the Sioux refuse to take billions in cash for the sacred land that they fought and died for and that represents their identity as a people. As a result they are the poorest people in America with 80% unemployment at Pine Ridge. Some things are ideals and you don’t sell your identity for anything. 3. “Profound solutions happen slowly” That is what I’ve been saying to Harry. It took us a thousand years to make the land philosophy (that Harry speaks of) a part of the total fabric of our culture. In 1492 we were millions and the size of France. By 1838 we were 20,000 and still our lands were so well developed with our policies that the State of Georgia coveted them and sent us on a death march to the barren plains of Oklahoma where we accomplished the same thing again including the best schools west of the Mississippi at the time and still they attacked and disbanded us. Harry has no idea what he asking. If he got it, they would take it and change it back. 4. “tyrants kill people who look different.” America tells nice stories but even today there are people who are robbed and killed for what they wear and what they look like. We were once 30 to 40 million people. By the turn of the 19th century we were less than 150,000. More crimes are committed against American Indians by non-Indians than any other group. We’ve been a punching bag since 1492. 5. “I feel your pain” I don’t know what that statement means. REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Arthur Cordell Sent: Tuesday, January 18, 2011 9:07 AM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] The 'New Normal' of Unemployment 1. Be careful of what you embrace, it might turn around and bite you later on. 2. Intellectuals in the 30’s were equally taken with Russia, intellectuals in the 60’s were equally taken with Mao. Some intellectuals are taken with Islam today. 3. Intellectuals seeking total solutions sometimes grab on to total ideologies not realizing that change comes bit by bit. Small bites are more easily digestible. 4. A revolution is not a tea party. Be careful of what you ask for. Do you have smooth hands and wear glasses? The Khmer Rouge would have you killed for this “crime” since it is clear that you are not a worker. 5. As Clinton would say, “I feel your pain” but there is little I can offer to ease that pain. arthur From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ray Harrell Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 10:48 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] The 'New Normal' of Unemployment In human systems, what is it that resists a descent into apathetic randomness? You may be right about our inability to communicate but I’ve made my way out of more than one cave-in when I’ve tried cross cultural communication. It seems to me that there are certain tools necessary in the designing of a society. It also seems to me that the knowledge of the past and the knowledge of historical systems is also necessary. It also seems to me that most of that knowledge is stored in cultural artifacts and to a large degree in works for the stage, film, concert hall, opera house etc. You can learn very little about the context for the U.S. Constitution if you never been to New England or walked the hills of Tennessee and Georgia. The extant architecture, the literature, the culture contained within the schools and the churches and the expressions themselves all provide an insight into what made this world come into being. You have to look through the American problem of “face” and the tendency to make history “nice” for the legacy. As Obama said in Tucson, we need to be civil but we need to speak the truth as well. We need to study the two industrial revolutions, the break-up of the old families in the remaking of the schools, the assumption of complex culture by the wealthy beginning with Higginson at Harvard and Boston, the revamping of the educational structure at the turn of the century into the current professional forms and specialties, the entrance of the German and Viennese intellectuals escaping from Hitler into the University of Chicago which has fed the current revolution down to the current President. It seems that it is hard to know how things came to be unless you are serious about cause and effect. And finally there is the rise of the “core value” of society as monetary which is a new bird. As recent as the 1960s Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr said that the definition of faith in your God was what you held to be your core value. Today’s core values are monetary which according to the two theologians [and I believe Martin Buber would have agreed] that money has become the God of the current world. So whatever money does is OK. Is that a world that you would build if you were doing as the Chinese economists, artists and engineers and designing a society and a future culture? I spoke with one of my Elders today whose son is an urban planner. He’s spending his time learning Mandarin. The exciting part of the world for today’s architects is China and for others it’s the Islamic world. Both have the power to design a society. One from an aristocracy and the other from an authoritarian, evidently [hopefully] benevolent cultural world view. Why no entropy there? Why no trains across America? Why claptrap old cars and airports closed killing the business of the American small towns? Entropy? or excuse? I’m not sure how to talk to you? Like the man skiing down Everest, “nothing works.” I like you and admire your list and your work here but it feels like there’s no answer. REH - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_de_seigneur> <javascript:void(0)> Droit de seigneur or lord's right, often used synonymously with jus primae noctis or simply primae noctis and its translation right of the first night, ... History <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_de_seigneur#History> - Similarities to other traditions <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_de_seigneur#Similarities_to_other_traditions> - Literary and other references <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_de_seigneur#Literary_and_other_references> - References <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_de_seigneur#References> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_de_seigneur - Cached <http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SqawlLVdMrgJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_de_seigneur+Droigt+de+Seigneur&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us> - Similar <http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=related:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_de_seigneur+Droit+de+Seigneur&tbo=1&sa=X&ei=RwY1TcfYLsOC8gaypeT_CA&ved=0CBwQHzAA> ► From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Arthur Cordell Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 9:41 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] The 'New Normal' of Unemployment You mean do societies wind down or become more chaotic over time? From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ray Harrell Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 7:08 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] The 'New Normal' of Unemployment Arthur, what do you think about entropy as applied to societies? REH Snip, snip, snip…………..
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