Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 18:22:42 -0400
From: hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: Re: Endless War


Steve/All,

IMHO the essence of modernity, or post-modernity, is the capability of
independent minds to separate their emotions from their actions; to
personally choose their ethics, legitimization and authority.

They do not have face-to-face involvement with people in Iraq, Palestine,
Congo, or elsewhere, who are massacred with the monies their governments
take from their wages.

This is possible in a world controlled by remote institutions of power,
corporate as in the US and Europe, or governmental, as in China and
formerly in the USSR, or today's Russia??

As Judy says, the disasters that Iraq or other remote nations suffer when US
military bombs fall in their midst are done in the name of U.S citizens and
with their money.

IMHO, a more ideal world would be one in which the important decisions of
life were made in local communities where an individual and those with whom
s/he is associated  in daily life, mutually choose the ethics,
legitimization and authority
  that serves them best, and govern themselves accordingly.

Remote governmental organizations would not possess military force, but
would provide  for nation-wide roads, mail, disaster relief and related
matters.

But that would be in a very distant future.  Meantime we proceed to separate
politics from person-to-person reality, emotion, needs. Back to the Dark
Ages.

regards,
Hugh

----- Original Message -----
From: "steve.devos" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk>
To: <lyotard-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2003 2:15 PM
Subject: Re: Endless War


> Paul/All
> I am not suggesting that one should personally identify with the
> oppressed subjects either as individual human beings or in the sense of
> identifying with the working class, or sub-working class as a historical
> subject, like Lukacs who identified the historical subject with the
> working class and communist parties etc...  After all this is a
> post-modern list, and the critique of these kinds of traditional left
> positions are well known, well founded and generally well accepted.
> However like most people on the left I remain broadly sympathetic to the
> intentions and analysis that underlies the desire to free ourselves from
> the "logos of domination" and the redestribution of wealth towards the
> poor.
>
> I have the sense that you believe a person  should 'care' about the
> death and mutilation of the individual human beings that are being
> destroyed because of their positions in the war and colonial zones, I
> don't. To be emotionally involved with the memories of the tens of
> millions who have died because of the horrors of the post second world
> war period would be madness. It is also perhaps worth considering the
> implications of Jean-Paul Sarte's argument that where colonial violence
> is never acceptable, anti-colonial violence is. To paraphrase him
> "Neocolonialists think that there is some good colonial activity and
> some wicked activity ... it is not true that there are some good
> colonies and others that are wicked, there are colonies and colonial
> activity and that's it..."  Is this a difficult and dubious perspective,
> of course an ethical, social and political commitment is not supposed to
> be easy.
>
> 'Liking' and 'altruism' has nothing to do with this for this is not a
> personal , it is rather an acceptance of the correctness of the notion
> of emancipation in the broadest sense; emancipation from class
> domination, from social and sexual domination, from concentration camps,
> from performance principles, from exchange value, from use value and the
> deformation of everyday existence and so on.  It is always worth
> remembering that the ability of our capitalist market society structured
> within strong national states and the developing 'empire' to absorb
> opposition and destroy alternatives as they appear has not increased but
> remained at a steady state.
>
> regards
> steve
> www.krokodile.co.uk
>
> >Well, I'm not so sure I'm socially and politically on the side of the
> >poor, but considering that I work at Wendy's (my job is to prepare the
> >salad bar so yuppies can enjoy their lunch break) for $1.00 over the
> >minimum wage, I guess I *am* poor. But whether I'm on the side of the
poor
> >or not is another matter. I dislike most of my co-workers and so am not
> >really on their side.
> >
> >And I'm guilty as charged. (Of plagiarism) and many other crimes as well,
> >from the computer I use at the public library after work.
> >
> >As for being malicious, try living in minimum wage hell for a few years
> >and see how much altruism this inspires and how concerned you are about
> >the people of Iraq after putting in a 60 hour work week just to pay the
> >rent.
> >
> >p_antschel
> >
> >
> >
>
>