I find Chris Hedges almost unreadable because of his melancholy apocalypticism, even though I concur with much of his analysis.
On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 4:18 AM, Ed Weick <[email protected]> wrote: > ** > > Interesting and scary piece by Chris Hedges on the state and future of > modern capitalist society. > > > http://www.alternet.org/story/155213/hedges%3A_how_our_demented_capitalist_system_made_america_insane?page=entire > > > > Examples: > > "The conflation of technological advancement with human progress leads to > self-worship. Reason makes possible the calculations, science and > technological advances of industrial civilization, but reason does not > connect us with the forces of life. A society that loses the capacity for > the sacred, that lacks the power of human imagination, that cannot practice > empathy, ultimately ensures its own destruction. The Native Americans > understood there are powers and forces we can never control and must honor. > They knew, as did the ancient Greeks, that hubris is the deadliest curse of > the human race. This is a lesson that we will probably have to learn for > ourselves at the cost of tremendous suffering." > > and: > > "All that concerns itself with beauty and truth, with those forces that > have the power to transform us, is being steadily extinguished by our > corporate state. Art. Education. Literature. Music. Theater. Dance. Poetry. > Philosophy. Religion. Journalism. None of these disciplines are worthy in > the corporate state of support or compensation. These are pursuits that, > even in our universities, are condemned as impractical. But it is only > through the impractical, through that which can empower our imagination, > that we will be rescued as a species. The prosaic world of news events, the > collection of scientific and factual data, stock market statistics and the > sterile recording of deeds as history do not permit us to understand the > *elemental > speech* of imagination. We will never penetrate the mystery of creation, > or the meaning of existence, if we do not recover this older language. > Poetry shows a man his soul, Goddard wrote, “as a looking glass does his > face.” And it is our souls that the culture of imperialism, business and > technology seeks to crush." > > Ed > > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > > -- Cheers, Tom Walker (Sandwichman)
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