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Or could it be something much less nice and
noble. Perhaps the end result of great wealth is boredom and
decay. Something that the West might listen to as these young men
seek something that gives their life more meaning in spite of their education,
sophistication & experience with women and drugs. If J.S.
Mill experienced it as a young man, why not Osamma bin Ladin?
The assumption of the West is that opulence brings
pleasure or power rather than the power to accomplish wonderful things for the
world. The reason to sing at the Metropolitan is to be a great
Artist and do great music. Money makes that possible as well as the
costs of doing, but money too often is a substitute for esteem and a proof of
worth. Not a worthy activity for a mind with the potential given to
us by the Creator.
Ray Evans Harrell
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 5:02
PM
Subject: RE: Anger in politics
Nor
did they suffer from lack of education. Perhaps anger is really quite
simple: a result of a perception of injustice. I sometimes sense that
anger occurs in someone when they have or fear losing something of value:
injustice would be experienced as a loss of comity, and loss of the
opportunity created when everyone plays by the same rules.
Lawry
It would seem that much of the anger comes not from the poor and
downtrodden, but from relatively well educated young people from the middle
and upper classes, many of whom have lived and perhaps studied in the
west. The young men who hijacked the 9/11 planes were not exactly
peasants.
Ed Weick
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002
8:05 AM
Subject: RE: Anger in politics
I have been reading these posts on anger in
politics with great interest, and while the focus has been primarily on
domestic situations, I find a parallel with the international situation.
There is a tide of popular anger rising around the world, now being
exacerbated by US actions in Afghanistan and threats against others.
Corporate exploitation (a la Enron) is not new to peoples in the 'third
world' and I would imagine that the level of suffering of the average 3rd
worlder has increased significantly in the post WWII period. Yes, some
countries have made PCI improvements, but this is not the only measure of
well-being. Suffering can be psychological and spiritual, as well as
economic and other things. This is a tide of anger that should not
be ignored by 'those in power', but probably will be.
Lawry de Bivort
Hi Mike,
Is this an argument for wars?
Ray
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, February 06,
2002 10:25 PM
Subject: FW: Anger in
politics
Hi Gail,
A brief reply to a very provocative note...
At the bottom, I have the feeling that all politics is about
"interests"--corporate, community, collective, personal--however you
want to slice or dice it. When "interests" are threatened no
matter by whom or to what end, people get angry so the issue is not
the anger but the interests.
I also have the feeling that some of the
edges of the grand conflicts of our time, which were mitigated by the
broad sweep of social democracy/social welfarism and the rising post
WWII tide, have now begun for a variety of reasons (being explored by
FW for example) to shift back to their more normal state of being raw
and occasionally bloody.
The anger is a symptom of folks who are
hurting and who feel rather let down that the social consensus which
used to prevail and which they were more or less comfortable with, no
longer holds and so we have the kind of thing quoted by Ed and the
responses to Harris in Ontario.
MG
Ed, Mike, Keith,
Having already a sufficient number
of lines in the water on FW I don't want to add another or would be
sending you this question on-list. (If, in response, you have a
comment you'd like to put on-list, please don't hesitate. It's not a
private question.)
Ed wrote: "what his
government is doing is driven by a punitive and destructive
ideology" (re Gordon Campbell in
B.C.) and I had recently
had occasion to note on FW the "anger" with which the Harris
government in Ontario had come into office and behaved.
The issue of "anger" in politics
is coming to seem to me the source of more problems than ideology
per se. Our political processes seem to legitimate and perhaps even
foster anger -- the release of distaste, dislike and disrespect
rather than the surge of empathy, compassion or thoughtfulness. The
larger ties-that-bind seem to get lost. I find it increasingly
frightening, likely to invite the growth of serious civil discontent
and especially unfortunate in an age when so many issues
concern the "commons."
Does it point, do you
think, to a need to strengthening the integrative
processes and temper the partisan or are such antipathetic emotions
healthy, maybe even essential outlets, in a body politic?
Democracies use the adversarial system deliberately and to good
effect (e.g., parliaments and courts, the "balancing of powers" in
the US, etc.) but by taking for granted that it is
legitimate for leaders to govern "punitively and
destructively" it sometimes seems to me we risk
corroding the foundations of democratic politics that lie in
fellow-feeling. Such leaders lose their capacity to represent "all
the people" thus threatening the legitimacy of government itself.
B.C. seems to me to verge on this from time to time. Were it a
country and not "merely" a province, safe within the arms of a
larger federation, I suspect it might be in difficulty in a system
of government that requires the consent of the governed to make it
work.
Perhaps all this is
so self-evident as not to be worth mentioning but sometimes the
necessary foundations of a situation become weakened through
being taken so for granted they are not articulated?
Your wisdom on this,
gentlemen?
Regards,
Gail
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