[John]
I'm not blaming Academic or Mediated reality for the decline in
community, I'm saying those are about the only two means of spreading
a metaphysical shift needed for the healing, and as they are
constructed, I do not seen any way to get them to bring about this shift.
[Arlo]
I'm not sure if these are "needed", but I agree they would be very
strong facilitators of such a shift. The Academy moves slow, and like
it or not, it has to. If it did not, every half-baked and cock-eyed
theory would be the fad du jour. The Academy has enough problem
responding to the disinformation, lies, propaganda and
anti-intellectual assaults from without to start opening up its
curriculum to untested, undeveloped ideas. Oh, and don't get me
wrong, at times it does precisely this, and this is a *problem*. But
true change needs to be "grass roots". It needs to come as people
start to see, with their own eyes, the distortions they have thus far
accepted as truisms.
I do agree, the problem overall is gargantuan. Indeed, size may very
well be more of the problem that we think. Was it you (it was
someone) who posted recently about "bioregionalism", at the very
least the idea that "America is too big", and this is the root of its
inability to move in directions other that those manipulated by
ideologues and zealots pandering grossly to one particular narrow
political party. Witness the health care debate, both sides sicken me
(pun intended) beyond words. Town halls of misinformed "protestors"
arguing with misinformed "legislators", and the entire argument
devolves again into the moronic discourse of the ideologues.
"Republicans want to prevent sick people from getting treatment",
"Democrats want to destroy liberty". And that is where we are, and
where we are going to stay. Too big. Too impersonal. To paraphrase
Pirsig, the entire health care "debate" is happening in "primary
America", the impersonal, hyped-up, fuck you, ego-driven, "we are
strangers" America.
[John]
But sometimes the solution to a social inequity causes its own
problems in turn and I think a case can be made here.
[Arlo]
I agree. In my own words, I consider this the loss of "hearth". While
"as men" this can readily be distorted to "wanted to keep women in
the kitchen", but to me its seeing that having "someone", woman OR
man, in the kitchen, provides a warm stability, a locus, a focal
point of "family" around which the "home" functions. The problem was
never that women were released from servitude in the kitchen, but
that in releasing those who would value doing something else, no one
bothered to look at the value of what they were doing. It was "toil",
it was a "burden", it was "unimportant". And so we tossed it aside
and sent these people out into the "real" world to do "important"
work, to do something "meaningful". And we lost, because the role
they were fulfilling was more meaningful than anything outside the
home, and no one stepped in to fill it. It should be voluntary, and
negotiated in the family, but it should never be devalued, and the
person who does it should be reaped with praise and admiration.
Of course, alongside this was the economic reality that one-income
families were often no longer sustainable. As inflation rose, as
spending rose, as debt rose, as we did our good parts as bottomless
consumers to feed the fires of the American Economy, we could no
longer function with only one income. We needed tv's in every room,
iPods, Ataris, computers, second and third cars, boats, summer
homes... and we were told from every voice that consuming as
carelessly as we were was our *patriotic* duty. Remember Bush, "go
out and spend!". The heights of our economy was sustained only by
ever increasing debt spending, by carrying thousands and thousands of
dollars on credit cards, and yet as we sunk ourselves we sang about
how great and glorious capitalism and our economy was. We laughed at
those stupid commie Ruskies and their bankrupt economy, at how we
outspent them into oblivion and proved our superiority. The epic
Rowdy Roddy Piper film "They" had it right. Our national motto was
simply "consume". And now we are only beginning to see the effects of
such behavior.
[John]
If people get a surface social itch scratched, they won't see the
need for addressing the deeper problem.
[Arlo]
Opium des Volkes.
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