Hi Lucas, hi all!
I´ve been following this conversation with interest and my curiousity is taking
me in a different direction, hence a changed subject line- ¨On context.¨
First off, hats off to you, Lucas, for initiating these conversations. Much
needed!
One question that comes up for me when these types of public conversations are
offered is if the matter of context needs to be visited, and if so how is best
to do so.
I think there can be many, many assumptions- uncovered assumptions- that may
end up not being aired. Assumptions like- ¨this is a democracy, we lost our
way, and we need to find our way back.¨ Or, that Rodney King line, ¨Can´t we
all get along?¨
On this question of context- as to who are we (here in the USA) and where are
we, there are two points I´d want to make.
The first one-- by way of a story-- Back in my college days, I took a course in
Soviet history. Our main text was a book titled Utopia in Power by dissident
historians Nekrich and Geller. All (or many?) of the darkest chapters of Soviet
history were right there, in gory detail. I remember thinking at the time- oh,
those poor Soviets, too bad they don´t know the truth of their own history. And
in my time living in Russia, I had the sense that most people- even educated
people- had little knowledge of this history.
Fast forward twenty-five years. My book club read a work titled American
Nations (by Colin Woodard) late last year- and as the coincidental timing would
have it- we discussed the book the day after the election. Woodard identifies
11 different regional cultures in the USA, each with its own distinctive
values, often clashing with those of other regional cultures. While I was
reading the book, I realized how little I knew of ¨my¨ own country, how little
I knew its history, how little I understood the cultural and value context of
each of these regions, and gained a much clearer sense of why we these
so-called culture wars and other kinds of social and political conflict. My
takeaway was that it really didn´t make sense for all of these cultures to
exist under one flag. I also realized that, no, we *can´t* get along (if
couples can divorce, why can´t states/cities/communities divorce from the
USA???)
So, the book had me flashing to that Soviet history class-- and in a way, I had
my own comeuppance- ¨us poor Americans, if we only really knew our own context!
I really wish that book - for all its own shortcomings- had a wider audience as
it could really help us understand our own context much more clearly. And
without a consideration of context, we are having these conversations without
unpacking what *are* our respective worldviews anyway. And they are quite
different.
The other aspect of context is surfacing assumptions about our current
political system. As best as I can tell, the USA never was a democracy, nor
even a republic. The best way I could describe it is as an inverted
totalitarian apartheid state with a not insignificant amount of democratic
window dressing.
Let me unpack this. Sheldon Wolin, a political philosopher at Princeton, who
passed a few years ago, coined the term ¨inverted totalitarianism¨ to describe
the political system we have here-- a web of corporations and other entities
together exerting total control on the political system without the need for a
person at the top (no need for a Stalin or Hitler). Journalist Chris Hedges
breaks this concept down in an engaging three hour interview he gave to C-Span
(it´s online) in 2012.
And, historian Gerald Horne in his recent Counter-revolution of 1776 makes a
strong argument that the so-called Revolution of 1776 was really a
counter-revolution, a reactionary attempt to maintain the institution of
slavery. He states that really the US was the first apartheid state.
And others would say that slavery never really ended, it just evolved...(I
first heard of the institution of neo-slavery that existed from the end of the
Civil War until the end of World War II and still don´t know much about it) So,
when people say, ¨That´s not who we are (we aren´t racist, sexist, etc.)¨-- I
find that maddening. We are all those things!
So, to be an inverted totalitarian apartheid state with a not insignificant
amount of democratic window dressing isn´t bad. But, it would be too bad, I
think, not to recognize that this is our base point. And what´s important is
that there is some democratic window dressing-- there is some space to change
things, some space for conversation, but perhaps not in the ways we would like
to think.
So, I don´t know how or if what I´m bringing up here is useful. But, I do
believe it needs to be part of these conversations somehow.
My two kopecks/rials/dinars/pesos,raffi **************What blocks gratitude in
this moment?
_______________________________________________
OSList mailing list
To post send emails to [email protected]
To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
To subscribe or manage your subscription click below:
http://lists.openspacetech.org/listinfo.cgi/oslist-openspacetech.org
Past archives can be viewed here:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
