ayers

so far, dr. ayers has founded schools,
taught kindergarten, picketed for civil rights
and bombed the pentagon.

i saw education theorist and anti-war activist bill ayers in the bathroom. he was peeing.

i didn't say hello, and we we both walked to a lecture hall jam-packed with enthusiastically aspiring (and de facto) educators. dr. ayers addressed the topic of education.

you may recognize the name bill ayers from television of from history. he was the co-founder of the weather underground, an orgaization the protested the vietnam war by 'bringing the war home.'

the weathermen later claimed the non-violent bombings of several government targets including the bombing of the pentagon in 1972.

democracy and social justice were sub-themes of the two-hour chat this enigmatic activist, teacher and learning enthusiast engaged with in eugene last night. ayers, who has been a major figure in the chicago educational community for years, defined democracy as "the idea that every human being is of incalculable value."

from there, he says, education becomes about communicating the message of an enormous intrinsic value to everyone, both adults and children. we are empowered to do such things, says ayers, when we are exposed to a history of what their people has been and possibilities for who they can become.

now this is the sort of nonsense that you can't just write a philosophical proof for. it's exactly the kind of nonsense i want to practice. 

simmer

rorty among the eyebrows.

if we don't have time for foundationalist notions, we can at least focus on alternative methods for justifying our semi-conscious attachment to normativity. or something.

like laundry on the line and ghosts in the closet, the shreds of times we spent observing the Truth may still warble in the [W]ind: our impulse for metaphysical meaning may leap out of our half-baked souls and into a fully baked world.

out of the frying pan, and into the sun.

for those of you still reading, those last few lines have constituted the introduction to my exposition of a concept i am grappling with - pragmatism.

with the advent of pragmatic thinking, we have been dragged once again into a world where there are things to say - about God, about living, and about apathy.

so let's toast to finding a new conversation! and let's hope it lasts a long, long time.

as ever,

joel

p.s. 

it's unrelated, but megan (megan's blog) has alerted me to this wonderful little cultural comment:

“people cry at weddings for the same reason they cry at happy endings: because they so desperately want to believe in something they know is not credible.” - @margaretatwood 

your jacket, my sad smile

packard motors plant - yves marchand & romain meffre

"you are a poem," she said.

i know.

and these poets come and go,

leaving their worn-out colors like similes.

still, i am too strong for that.

i will end on a stanza where–

p.s. in ironic characterizations of already post-ironic pop, jordan eddy learns to spin.

capitalism

i posted this image on facebook:

facebook: occupy america

...and got three very interesting kinds of replies:

1. people aren't suffering from capitalism because people are suffering from marxism.

2. people aren't suffering from capitalism because people suffer in every system of government, and

3.  this is just the way the world is. work harder, and you'll have a better job, make more money, and transcend all this.

to some extent, these replies were a wake-up call; i guess i hadn't realized how much talking about capitalism is off-limits in a lot of circles. many of the people who read this blog may feel similarly - that capitalism just isn't something worth talking about, and that those talking about it are often being subversive and using it to leverage political gain for them and theirs.

it's true - there are a lot of people manipulating peoples' frustrations with capitalism so they can make more money and have more control. it's sad, but a lot of groups in the states are very subversive. but i'm not in a political party, and i don't have any intention of asking you to join one. i just think that it's important to at least have this conversation, for all of our sakes.

so let's take a crack at these replies: the first two answers will be a little easier to talk about. let's get them out of the way so we can talk about the third one, which i think is the most helpful analysis of the three.

1: marxism

one response i've gotten when i've talked critically about capitalism is that, if i were born in a marxist country, i wouldn't even be able to express how much i didn't like my government. i definitely thought along these lines for a long time. here's a meme that pretty effectively sums up my attitude tward critics of capitalism two years ago:

and this critique works pretty well. when someone was critical of the american way,  i used to think, 'well, if these liberals hate america so much, why don't they go live abroad.'

but maybe this isn't the best way to think about it. telling genuine dissenters that they had better go live elsewhere simply ends the conversation. it's a distraction, not an argument. and if you assume that all critics of capitalism are endorsers of marxism, that doesn't seem fair either - those aren't the only two options for the organization of people.

in fact, capitalism emerged as mercantilism in the 16th century, but didn't include co-option of land and a labor market until the nineteenth century. in the form that we see it today, it has only existed about a hundred years. here's how i saw capitalism when i first started going to school:

similarly, marxism is a stream of historical analysis that emerged in the 19th century, and was developed as a industrious tag-team effort between karl marx and his cat:

the important thing here is that both of these ideas are less than five hundred years old, and neither of them took effect in their current paradigms until the early 20th century. it's not as if capitalism or marxism were given to us by God or have descended into our consciousness through the influence of very smart aliens... or did they?

by the way, the logical fallacy at play when you're assuming that everyone who is not pro-capitalist is a marxist is called a false dilemma.

2: all systems are the same

i talk a lot about this kind of stuff. often, conversations about government, politics and human need a pre-empted by a single statement that is often treated as a game-winning touchdown by the person who first says it: 'it's not the system that's the problem. it's people. until people's hearts change, nothing else is going to change.'

and somewhere in the wilds of barbaric pre-history, some thinker was asking about the merits of cannibalistic tribal warfare, and all the other members of her tribe were rushing to be the first ones to score the touchdown: 'it's not cannibalistic tribal warfare that's the problem. it's people. until people's hearts change, nothing else is going to change.'

that's kind of extreme, but do you catch my drift? cannibalism was a problem. in that case, and, i would argue, in most cases, the system that those people lived in was also present inside of them. true, maybe they needed to change their hearts, but they might not know where to start or even what to aim for if they never started talking critically about cannibalism.

that said, i don't think our present adherence to capitalism has the potential to be bad for humans on the level that cannibalism has been. sometimes, though, it takes an extreme example for us to get used to talking about things critically again. here's picture describing the sort of hesitant way that some people are thinking about our current way of organizing:

3: just the way the world is

as i mentioned before, i think this is the most interesting critique of the three. this is the analysis that helps me the most with having a conversation about capitalism (and i really want to have a conversation about capitalism). i also like this reply because, in a certain sense, it's true.

my world is capitalist. i buy my food and sell my labor. i buy my education, and, most of the time, i buy my transportation. people are making money of of all of these interactions through various processes that i still can't understand after two terms of college economics. if i work harder, generally, i will have more money, and thus more of these things i want. nevertheless, i am disturbed by the way my world is.

  

when people tell me to work harder and stop complaining, i feel misunderstood. i don't want to complain. i like my standard of living. i like working where i do, and truly enjoy my work. even though the recession has really reduced the number of jobs i can pick up as a landscaper/painter, i truly value every day i get to work, and i'm completely content with my life. i have enough to eat and (usually) a safe and warm place to sleep at night.

however, capitalism has not worked out like that for the millions working in american-owned sweatshops, and mining operations which only exist to support first-world markets. they are often exploited to the point where they lack food and shelter, and often don't have the option to buy the things they need for their families. i feel as if this system is not working out for my brothers and sisters in other countries, even if, in some ways it has worked out for me.

true, modern american capitalism is 'just the way the world is.' and yet, i can't help thinking of a better world. and, hopefully, we can talk about that better world together...

as ever,

joel

p.s. i made a little faq to anticipate the potential fall-out of this post.

and out of the dark, and

out of the dark

i.was.a.man

with

 questions

   sifting 

in.my.hands

 a hundred half-productive plans

i think, therefore i understand 

these waking dreams

and nightmares where the world begins

(ships that pass for people in the night,

bridges desperate for a tryst with dynamite)

so, out of the dark we grow

.wild. with understanding

a train of thoughts that will never

reach th-

run.
baby, run.
make your mark 
on modernity, 
evoking eternity, all—

there's a moment that we're here to hold

-messiah-

--revolution--

---love---

there's a shiver where the spineStill cold

- cheap wine still cheapening-

and out of the dark, and

into the six-dollar night

a conspicuous counterculture

in a conversation last night i caught it: a little sense of what it's like to be loved and respected. it's nothing like being talked at about ideals of love and respect.

prizing ideals of tolerance has lifted many people to a precipice of objectivity from which to judge the masses in the valley of the shadow of real-life decisions. and holding onto tolerance, people have found a way to dismiss their friends and neighbors as less and less important.

astrokid by madéleine at little love monster.

but my friend talked to me out of love and mutual respect, never looking down on me for my (often polemical) comments we so obviously disagreed about. he really cared about who i was beyond contextually hypothetical subjects like religion or politics. he loved me, the human.

i try hard to love humans too.

at a dinner party (hate those). i was recently asked by a european professor to talk about my experience with occupy. i started giving account of divisive violence in the camp i had been living in, about drugs and wasteful living; and then i mentioned the violence of the city - the police would hunt the houseless down on the freezing streets and harrass them, chasing them out of parks and public areas in the freezing

i told that professor that everyone deserves a plce to sleep, that everyone deserves to have the opportunity to live in community because they are human beings. i mused at somehow making this happen through a culture of love and dignity...

"you are a christian," she said. "what you're describing is christian love."

and what if it is? but surely i can't be 'defending' christianity...

maybe 'christianity' is a place that people are born, with no control over who will conceive them and birth them, with no sort of mandate with which to direct who will teach them to speak

maybe many parts of 'christianity,' when taken to their logical conclusions, are hateful, spiteful, destructive and represent a horrific doctrine on which to build a brand new world...

and yet in so many christian milieus those potentially destructive claims and mantras are never taken to their "logical" conclusions, and the law of the land is "love one another" rather than "stone the gays." what then?

what if philosophy has never been the underpinning of culture, if theology has never mattered in a practical sense to practical people?

if i never grasp another concept, i want to keep this one in mind: what is done trumps what is idealized.

what if love knows no 'other's?
as ever,

joel

sopa, protect ip

wikipedia is dark today to protest sopa nd protect ip.

if you haven't heard of sopa and protect ip, please feel free to read up on them.

the two pieces of proposed legislation represent an enormous lunge for u.s. security organizations to end online piracy and a grasp at effective methods through which to censor the internet.



craigslist, mozilla and google all have banners protesting the both bills. sites like wikipedia english, reddit and boing boing have gone dark today in hopes of catching people's attention.

you can send a letter to congress from the google page here.