Subject: Re: HAB: Re: THEORY & PRACTICE
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 23:51:50 +0000
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<P>Ralph,</P>
<P>Apologies for being obscure.I am probably reading TOO much Foucault at the moment and being inspired by lots of what he writes.<BR><BR>What can you say about our much beloved revolutionary subject of history:</P></DIV>
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<DIV></DIV>>As for popular enlightenment, here's what I face: whenever poor
<DIV></DIV>>people get
<DIV></DIV>>the opportunity to escape the culture of poverty and get a college
<DIV></DIV>>education, they take the standards of so-called civilization far
<DIV></DIV>>more to
<DIV></DIV>>heart than the guardians of official culture themselves, and
<DIV></DIV>>overvalue the
<DIV></DIV>>intellectual products of high culture, as well as the
<DIV></DIV>>popularizations that
<DIV></DIV>>stem from them. They will defend bourgeois philosophy to the death
<DIV></DIV>>and are
<DIV></DIV>>prepared to go down with it even as it drains the life blood out of
<DIV></DIV>>them.
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>We have fallen over each in our rush to join the nobs in the big houses on the hill trampling our inner natures, our comrades here and in third world countries as well as the environment in our efforts to do so.</DIV>
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<DIV>Now this sort of rhetoric is OK but lionizing the proletariat as noble savages is grotesquely paternalistic as well as open to error. The descendants of the proletariat in societies like the U.S.A and Australia en masse LIKE capitalism and it is only when there is recession or the welfare-state compromise isn't working that voices are raised, shall we say, and generally through the ameliorative process of the political system at the very least change is seen to be done or revenge is felt to be had and the dull existential misery of consumerism can once more be resumed. </DIV>
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<DIV>There I go again extending MY values over others! IMO the vast majority of all people on this planet like trinkets, toys and bland re-assuring forms of entertainment. I am still old fashioned enough to believe that as a species we have the moral responsibility to ensure that all of our brothers and sisters at the very least can enjoy a sustainable material standard of living (at the very most the health care, education opportunities, civil and political liberties, recreational opportunities of let's say Bill Gate's children) Why not?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In a very broad ( and cynical) sense "emancipation" is about making access to the spoils of our industrially and technologically advanced civilization equally available to all. The human right to be greedy :-)</DIV>
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<DIV>Best Regards,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>MattP</DIV></div><br clear=all><hr>Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: <a href='http://g.msn.com/1HM501201/40'>Click Here</a><br></html>
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