Saturday, February 4, 2017
Americanism, The Guardian, associations
On Americanism, The Guardian
Read this excellent article.
Yes, this is not far anymore from Totalitarianism.
A government sacking at will a supreme court judge,
threatening china with war, treating other countries with
disrespect, arresting journalists,such a government is at least
dangerous to the freedom and welfare of its citizens
if not to the world.
As soon as we see the school children stand at attention
in front of huge Trump posters shouting unisono
"America first", we know democracy will have lost.
When this new wave of nationalism will successfully take over indoctrination
at school, America will not belong to the "free" world anymore.
Can it happen?
Unfortunately everything can happen.
It is too early to know.
Will the intelligence and security agencies fish for anti-government individuals
and groups, anti-Trump-ists, call them anti-American, threaten them,
sort them out for removal?
Apart from a wall along the mexican border, will there be places to dispose
of critical individuals or will they just lose their jobs, get their bank accounts frozen
and be publicly slandered and privately threatened?
After the hunt for booze smugglers the agencies in question had taken over hunting
communists, now will it be hunting Anti-Americanists? and, clearly enough,
they will not be anti-America, but anti-totalitarian, anti-Trump, anti-government.
It is not fun to deal with the perverse elasticity of "alternative facts"
which turns real lies into a new kind of real truth, the truth of real power.
It is not only that journalists may be greedy for sensationalism,
no, there are too many parallels to see with Trump, Erdogan and Hitler.
I wonder, if Trump stays in power, do the Americans deserve him?
My only best conclusion is that clear enemies are better than friends
killing behind the lines and better than anonymous grey men never to be found,
a better stimulus to grow awareness and sharpen intelligence.
Unfortunately so: the grey men don't disappear, we cannot get at them.
They will still be there running business once we will be dead.
Alongside with discussing Mr. Trump in public,
a good press must be busy finding and exposing these grey men
running banks, weapon sales, wars and keeping up poverty and oppression.
Read this excellent article.
Yes, this is not far anymore from Totalitarianism.
A government sacking at will a supreme court judge,
threatening china with war, treating other countries with
disrespect, arresting journalists,such a government is at least
dangerous to the freedom and welfare of its citizens
if not to the world.
As soon as we see the school children stand at attention
in front of huge Trump posters shouting unisono
"America first", we know democracy will have lost.
When this new wave of nationalism will successfully take over indoctrination
at school, America will not belong to the "free" world anymore.
Can it happen?
Unfortunately everything can happen.
It is too early to know.
Will the intelligence and security agencies fish for anti-government individuals
and groups, anti-Trump-ists, call them anti-American, threaten them,
sort them out for removal?
Apart from a wall along the mexican border, will there be places to dispose
of critical individuals or will they just lose their jobs, get their bank accounts frozen
and be publicly slandered and privately threatened?
After the hunt for booze smugglers the agencies in question had taken over hunting
communists, now will it be hunting Anti-Americanists? and, clearly enough,
they will not be anti-America, but anti-totalitarian, anti-Trump, anti-government.
It is not fun to deal with the perverse elasticity of "alternative facts"
which turns real lies into a new kind of real truth, the truth of real power.
It is not only that journalists may be greedy for sensationalism,
no, there are too many parallels to see with Trump, Erdogan and Hitler.
I wonder, if Trump stays in power, do the Americans deserve him?
My only best conclusion is that clear enemies are better than friends
killing behind the lines and better than anonymous grey men never to be found,
a better stimulus to grow awareness and sharpen intelligence.
Unfortunately so: the grey men don't disappear, we cannot get at them.
They will still be there running business once we will be dead.
Alongside with discussing Mr. Trump in public,
a good press must be busy finding and exposing these grey men
running banks, weapon sales, wars and keeping up poverty and oppression.
My favourite Alan Watts spoken word piece.
quote: 'he does philosophy'..'he lost his sense of wonder'...
good night thoughts on post-structuralism, existentialism, a diary note: fed up with reading
when i read around in post-structuralism stuff, i get exhausted.
in a way this way of using thought is annihilating the sense of thought
altogether. Nothing remains but a dead house, roofless, with blackened window sills
through which you may off and on see a fictional ghost,
a human being deconstructed of all meaning.
fine.
the jarring truth becomes finally boring.
the deconstruction of social and cultural implications is probably (my opinion)
a necessary art for the survival of intelligence and integrity,
it is a prerequisite for a smile on the importance of any imagined self or ego.
and this smile carried forth will help profoundly
with a meditation on inter-being and teach us just to be.
to be who we are now.
but it was an -ism, post-structuralism,
as such there was no smile but an undue earnestness
and a ferocious urge to be important.
we have to look through it, once we read,
to find our own smile.
questions may not need to deconstruct all life to ground zero:
there is no ground zero.
analysis does not find ground zero. it
will go without recognizing an end.it is the perfect perpetuum mobile.
once there would be ground zero, existentialism could take over to show the way
from zero to infinity: life with the presence of death.
only two options: to accept or to commit suicide at once.
again an -ism, people with thick glasses writing in cafés,
discussing so seriously being and nothingness.
should they not better have gone for a walk?
i always feel a bit sorry for some of them,
not for Camus though, not for him.
we are alive, and we are not alone:
everybody is alive and tries to live the best way she or he can.
but it is death which makes life so precious,
this is my view which i share with many other
persons, patients, me.
life in a body allowing perception (Merleau-Ponty),
life conscious and unconscious but real for us, real enough
when we meet the dentist or our love, life ridiculous and wasted
and rich and sad and beautiful and filled with too many words
and not enough jokes, life with pain, endurance, bitterness and joy,
life with resilience and ...soul.
now, again having read so much and with estrangement and frustration:
what is soul: i will not discuss the reality of water.
unfortunately stupidity is very resilient too.
or let us say sticky and malleable like chewing gum?
all -isms make you stupid, the blinder the more
you read, caught in a system and out of presence.
-isms are an excuse not to live, to hide out of
full presence, out of exposure and vulnerability,
to take back each kind word before it is said,
to prefer an apparently unavoidable fate
or a leisure period in a hamster wheel of thinking,
of memories, fatigue and melancholy
to questioning, breathing, to acting and to choice.
-isms are seductive, they relieve you of doubt
as they give you a system appearing true in itself,
and getting stuck inside an -ism
can lead to completely inadequate and even horrible deeds.
fearing mutilation through words and social reactions
cannot be a way to be alive, to live, to be, to talk to each other,
to write, to love. what is love: i will not discuss.
you cut the roses, the bush survives if you can see it now or not.
and rebellion, necessary as it is to push forward, is not leading
to maturity, to see oneself as singular, outside of all cultural backgrounds and
society is "enlightening" with a drug-like high....but not ...honest.
Could we be humble, just accepting all conditions as they are but seeing through
them and meet them with intelligence and the honesty of authentic response?
Including -isms...
I try, i try.
in a way this way of using thought is annihilating the sense of thought
altogether. Nothing remains but a dead house, roofless, with blackened window sills
through which you may off and on see a fictional ghost,
a human being deconstructed of all meaning.
fine.
the jarring truth becomes finally boring.
the deconstruction of social and cultural implications is probably (my opinion)
a necessary art for the survival of intelligence and integrity,
it is a prerequisite for a smile on the importance of any imagined self or ego.
and this smile carried forth will help profoundly
with a meditation on inter-being and teach us just to be.
to be who we are now.
but it was an -ism, post-structuralism,
as such there was no smile but an undue earnestness
and a ferocious urge to be important.
we have to look through it, once we read,
to find our own smile.
questions may not need to deconstruct all life to ground zero:
there is no ground zero.
analysis does not find ground zero. it
will go without recognizing an end.it is the perfect perpetuum mobile.
once there would be ground zero, existentialism could take over to show the way
from zero to infinity: life with the presence of death.
only two options: to accept or to commit suicide at once.
again an -ism, people with thick glasses writing in cafés,
discussing so seriously being and nothingness.
should they not better have gone for a walk?
i always feel a bit sorry for some of them,
not for Camus though, not for him.
we are alive, and we are not alone:
everybody is alive and tries to live the best way she or he can.
but it is death which makes life so precious,
this is my view which i share with many other
persons, patients, me.
life in a body allowing perception (Merleau-Ponty),
life conscious and unconscious but real for us, real enough
when we meet the dentist or our love, life ridiculous and wasted
and rich and sad and beautiful and filled with too many words
and not enough jokes, life with pain, endurance, bitterness and joy,
life with resilience and ...soul.
now, again having read so much and with estrangement and frustration:
what is soul: i will not discuss the reality of water.
unfortunately stupidity is very resilient too.
or let us say sticky and malleable like chewing gum?
all -isms make you stupid, the blinder the more
you read, caught in a system and out of presence.
-isms are an excuse not to live, to hide out of
full presence, out of exposure and vulnerability,
to take back each kind word before it is said,
to prefer an apparently unavoidable fate
or a leisure period in a hamster wheel of thinking,
of memories, fatigue and melancholy
to questioning, breathing, to acting and to choice.
-isms are seductive, they relieve you of doubt
as they give you a system appearing true in itself,
and getting stuck inside an -ism
can lead to completely inadequate and even horrible deeds.
fearing mutilation through words and social reactions
cannot be a way to be alive, to live, to be, to talk to each other,
to write, to love. what is love: i will not discuss.
you cut the roses, the bush survives if you can see it now or not.
and rebellion, necessary as it is to push forward, is not leading
to maturity, to see oneself as singular, outside of all cultural backgrounds and
society is "enlightening" with a drug-like high....but not ...honest.
Could we be humble, just accepting all conditions as they are but seeing through
them and meet them with intelligence and the honesty of authentic response?
Including -isms...
I try, i try.
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