Hedges certainly believes in absolutes; he is quick to classify institutions, businesses,economic systems as evil. I find that an oversimplification. Entities and systems are rarely good or evil. The entity reflects the culture that creates it. I also question his pessimism. If we are to buy Hedges' view of the U.S.,we're going to hell in a rowboat and may as well blow ourselves up. I confess that I only made it through the first 75 minutes but I plan to revisit and watch the rest. Perhaps at some point Hedges offers something other than criticism, revulsion, despair and a smug superiority in his belief that only he can see the world as is clearly.
He's terribly critical of liberals and liberal institutions, asserting that they merely engage in pretty speeches and lofty ideals about helping the poor whom they don't really take the time to know. I agree that there is some paternalism involved in liberal outreach efforts but I respect the number of people who work hard to push through their own misconceptions and engage in genuine interactions with those for whom they advocate. Hedges appears to bestow no positive credit on those whom he disdainfully calls liberals ad fails to recognize that he is perhaps a shining example of the very type of liberal he so heavily criticizes.
Curious, I find, this juxtaposition of title and introductory statement:
“This blog and the sellout of America by the left”
[and]
“Three hours of discussion for your consideration...”
What is the relationship between "this blog” and “the sellout of America by the left,” and why is this post framed in such terms?
What is your definition of a blog? What is your perceived purpose of a blog? This blog? What distinguishes a personal blog from a community forum? Are its members severable from the group? If there is a challenge or gauntlet being thrown down, what is its shape? Color? Point?
Is every self-appointed seer and visionary a true prophet? Why is Hedges always so critical of the Left while ignoring the neo-fascist proclivities of the Right? Shall we receive the words of Hedges uncritically? Is the language of the mythic mode appropriate for ironic mode times?
I am thinking of an educational toy for toddlers that teaches basic shapes and wonder if this skill has been fully mastered here.
A curious statement, but it may be right. Maybe we should evaluate systems by their immune systems or ability to resist misuse and corruption. Communism looks good on paper after all but there are no checks and balances and it's those balancing forces under attack in our system - or what we call our system.
I don't have three spare minutes much less three hours, but if a general argument for M theory or quantum mechanics can be made in minutes, I suspect any argument that takes three hours to expound upon is relying on argumentum ad nauseam and the numbness it produces to exhaust our critical faculties.
And of course references to "the left" begin with a usually undefined idea of what that means. It's the kind of one dimensional rendering that allows the debater to equate opposites because the three other dimensions are missing.
The right sold out America long ago. It's the sell out by the left that we find truly distressing.
To the notion that entities and systems are rarely good or evil, research and observation has show that to be false. Corporate cultures are surprisingly enduring and pernicious and survive entire leadership and management changes. Countries and religious cultures demonstrate similar patterns. Organizations, like hives, seem to have survival mechanisms although they seem to be nothing more than mindless ideas. Machiavelli knew this, taught this.
Thinking, Octo, means challenging existing, personally held views.
Edge, A challenge is always welcome, but what exactly are you challenging us about? There is a difference between scatter shot (i.e. an epic video avalanche) versus a rifle shot, and it would be helpful here to have more precision.
As Captain Fogg states, “ I don't have three spare minutes much less three hours,” it would have been helpful if you provided at least a brief summary of exactly what challenge you have mind – instead of or in addition to three hours of video. Inasmuch as life comes before blogging, personal time is a boundary issue.
Furthermore, I am still scratching my head over the relationship between “this blog” and “the sellout of America by the left.” By implication, are you suggesting that this blog or the community herein share some unspecified collective guilt, and that our choice is to salute some flag or grovel? And spend three hours of personal time ascertaining whatever it is that Edge is on edge about? Do you see the problem here?
I hope we're not using a rowboat to get to political and social hell -- I don't think a large theropod would fit in a rowboat. Even a very ample one.
I've been pessimistic about our prospects based on my "geriatric republic" thesis, but at the same time, I don't cotton to the old saw that "both sides are just as bad." In politics, it's all well and good to take up a stand allegedly outside the main perspectives and rail away, but at the day's end, there's still going to be a choice to make. Does anybody who identifies as liberal or genuinely moderate think Romney and a GOP-controlled House and Senate pulling him to the right on every issue would be anything but pernicious? That it wouldn't make any difference if Romney beats Obama? Of course it makes a difference, and that's why it's important to offer one's criticisms with that awareness in mind. People like Hedges would probably like to see some changes we could call genuinely "leftist," but this is the US & A, so that isn't going to happen. In consideration of the American political context, there's no point condemning Obama for not being an Italian or French socialist, so if anyone comes at me with that kind of critique, I just tune it out and turn it off. Nothing comes of it.
My problem with the title of this centers around the term "the left." Are we talking about that left or people who pretend to be but aren't. If it's the former, maybe left isn't right -- if the latter maybe the left is the right.
Aren't we talking about a group failing to live up to one person's concept of what the left is or should be? A concept that is impossible to pin down or agree on in the first place? Is the right turning left or the left right or is the problem in another dimension? Is there still the need or left and right or is this a nihilistic proposition?
Again, left and right, and in my opinion of course, are terms best ignored as are 'Conservative' and 'Liberal.' Slippery, shape shifting, nebulous and not amenable to consistent or universally accepted definition. It's inevitably the source of too much argument.
Wouldn't we be better off talking about specific instances where specific people have "sold out," been bought or the like? One can be very 'left' but be incompetent, stupid, firmly intransigent in the face of contrary facts. Are we talking about human failure, human weakness, human incompetence and corruption or are we talking about doctrines and dogmas sometimes not worth defending? Are we suggesting that there be no more left or that the left isn't left enough? Is the concept of left outdated or is it just that politicians will be politicians? I'm just confused and don't have the time to listen to someone who can't put it succinctly. Argumentum ad nauseam is kind of a fallacy of distraction, isn't it? I'd rather hear Edge put it in his own words.
Yes, of course, even though I probably am some sort of liberal, my ideas vary considerably from the various and conflicting and tendentious and flattering stereotypes, so have I sold out or am I a free thinker or what? Do I have to think a certain way or am I, as a liberal, free to think as I will? If I think we have enough gun control but not enough regulation of financial markets, what kind of a Chimera am I? We won't settle it with that left right left goosestep.
Have all liberals sold out or is it all "lefties" and if they've sold out can we ask if they are in fact liberals any more?
Hell, this is a bottomless pit of questions leading to more questions and I don't know what to think of it.
I will go so far as to say that corruption and incompetence and blind stupidity are everywhere and that power corrupts -- hardly a novel observation, but if the idea is to say that all is futile and for naught, I have to agree with Dino that judgements can still be made and must be made or the crooks win.
I'll also insist that I'm as much "the left" as anyone else and I haven't sold out and I repeat with intentional irony, that all sweeping generalizations are wrong ( including this one)
So, no, I don't have the time, but I'm not afraid of opinions that confuse me or irritate me -- I'm just afraid I don't have the time for this one since going to be out on the water early in the morning and won't be back until next week.
I don't think "Left" means a great deal in the American context. It's used often and defined seldom, especially by those who employ it the most. The Faux-Noiser usage seems to reduce pretty facilely to "socialist."
I don't mind the liberal/conservative terms as much because they at least seem to mean something to some of us beyond the usual blog-rant usages. I like the British historical overtones of these terms, as opposed to the more extreme ambience of the continental left/right opposition. I love the French, but they're always running into the streets with their ideas, just as Matthew Arnold said. Trouble with my own preference is, we really do have a crazy-radical obverse-Jacobin "Right" in America. Some of 'em are every bit as nuts as those leftist groups from the Euro-1960s-70s. You know, crazies like the Revolutionary Dinosaur Liberation Front, the Velociraptor Vanguard and other nefarious organizations....
I have decided to make it simple, for I am a simple person.
Classical liberalism is the only label I have been able to identify as having some consistent meaning over a large expanse of time. As I identify with and think I understand classical liberal principles I think it reasonable to consider current situations against classical liberal standards and ethics, and philosophy in general. At least that is how I see it.
Free thinkers likely provide the best defense against statism as well as the tyranny of the majority.
Indeed the nation faces many seemingly insurmountable problems. Certainly no single hide bound ideology has the solutions. It Will take the cooperative productive energies and intelligence of all if we are to succeed.
Dino, In my ecosystem, we have them too … the Holy Mackerel Raptorial, the Kitsch Fish Party, Albacore Anonymous, and the Lost Atlantis Fly Fisherman Lobby (which wants to reinstitute a caste system).
“ the man is an American hero.”
Edge, Whatever floats your oats. In my view, the former divinity student turned journalist turned prophet has grown pedantic, pretentious ... and humorless.
After 15 minutes, I'm equal parts intrigued and determined to keep a grain of salt handy. Hedges is knowledgeable and did a remarkable job of giving rich historical perspective while not wandering all over the place in answering the first few questions. That's not easy to do. He makes a potent, detailed and discomfiting case with facts and examples. That's something we need more authors, commentators, editorialists, bloggers and social critics to do. I'm reminded of Kevin Phillips, who has earned my respect.
I've finally gotten back to listening to the second half of the Hedges interview. I'm afraid that I don't find anything heroic about his rather pedantic speeches. This isn't really much of an interview but rather a series of questions that allow Hedges to expound on his ideology.
After three hours, I'm still unclear as to the foundations for his beliefs. Typically I would expect such sweeping condemnation of what he perceives to be a betrayal of America by the left to be grounded in factual specifics,a sequence of evidentiary events to support such a conclusion. Hedges offer little evidence to support his conclusions except conjecture based on his personal interpretations of events.
I would concur that the radical change that I believe is needed in the economic culture of the U.S. has not occured.However, I also believe that there is not mass support for such radical change. Even those who are most harmed by our current financial pyramid with a large base that is severely lacking in adequate financial resources tend to support continuation of our current free market enterprise system.
My belief is that focused efforts must be maid to re-educate the American public. As long as people perceive any efforts to provide for a social and economic system that is designed to ensure that a basic hierarchy of needs (food, clothing, shelter, medical care) is met for all citizens a a socialist plot to destroy America, it is unlikely that progressive change will happen.
I don't perceive that the left, if by left Hedges means progressives and liberals who view the role of government as meeting the essential survival the needs of all the people, has sold out America Instead,I think that the left has stumbled in its efforts to effect change in assuming that the general populace will recognize and embrace the benefits of radical change to our current social and economic systems once the merits of such change are revealed to them.
I find Hedges critical disdain off putting, especially as he doesn't offer any concrete alternatives but merely declares that the ship is inking. If you don't have a life raft or at the very minimum a life jacket to offer, then exactly what good are you except as a doomsday messenger? Hedges needs a third act, one that prescribes what should be the next steps rather than simply declaring, "All is woe."
Aw crap, my proofreading skills are worse than ever!I really do know the difference between "maid" and "made."
I offer further explanation of my observation that "Entities and systems are rarely good or evil."
The terms good and evil denote some type of intentional and chose path of behavior. I reserve those terms for descriptors of human behavior. A lion kills a gazelle.The act is neither good nor evil but an instinctive desire to feed.
I think that it absolves humans of responsibility for our actions when we attribute intent and desire to non-human creatures or things.
For example, variations of the declaration that "War is a necessary evil" have been repeated throughout recorded history. It allows us to declare that some wars are good wars. The Roman Catholic Church went so far as to declare that some wars had God's blessing and were indeed, holy ears. It has also allowed us to regard war as inevitable and devote very little energy to the avoidance or prevention of war. After all it's a necessity, can't be helped. We totally avoid tackling head on that we create wars and what we create we can choose not to create. We continue blissfully fighting these necessary wars as if there really were an Ares who decides when humans shall engage in wars.
When we attribute anthropomorphic qualities to systems and events, that is we declare them to be good or evil, we abdicate human responsibility for control of those systems and entities. They are neither good nor evil, they are simply what we permit them to be and if we want them changed,we first have to accept our collective responsibility for allowing those systems and entities to get out of control in the first place.
Thank you, Sister. Your comment certainly sums up my views on Hedges. Over the years, I myself have quoted Hedges from time to time and liken him to an old nursery rhyme about little boys whose behaviors range from "very, very good" to "horrid." Reading with a critical eye, I take what I like and leave the rest.
Most of all, I appreciate your comment on "our collective responsibility for allowing those systems and entities to get out of control in the first place." The tendency among far too many voters is not taking responsibility for their vote, for allowing themselves to be suckered by pandering and propaganda, for inverting the laws of cause and effect by blaming the next politician for the misdeeds of the last one, and for failing to hold themselves accountable as citizens.
Yes, the perennial blame game; and Chris Hedges has not raised himself above it. In this respect, Hedges does more harm than good.
Finally, I still have not gotten an answer to my question: What is the relationship between Chris Hedges and "the sellout" versus "this blog?"
Corporate cultures are surprisingly enduring and pernicious and survive entire leadership and management changes.
Edge I agree with the above observation, where I disagree is that this is evidence that non-human entities are good or evil. They are what we shape them to be. The reason that I think it is imperative to make the distinction is because it's our willingness to attribute intent and purpose to inanimate structural organization systems that allows us to abdicate responsibility for the actions and policies of those entities. Ultimately, we, human beings, are the authors of good or evil. The ability of a corrupt corporate culture to survive beyond the terms of those who initiated such a culture is only a sign that the practices and policies that created such a culture are being continued by those who follow those who originated such a culture.
In my thinking, declaring systems or entities to be evil does nothing to eradicate such structures. Instead it allows us to declare our inability to control such evil. To address making critical change we mus first fully acknowledge that any "evil" that exists is of our own making. What we do, we have the wherewithal to undo.
Evil and good as concepts mean nothing unless measured against a standard of value.
In my view the standard of value must be life, human life specifically. Given this anything that ethically and morally acts positively on a persons life is good. Things that act negatively on a persons life is evil. Indeed we as cognitive beings have it in out power to change. For individuals this is relatively easy compared to organizations or societies.
We welcome civil discourse from all people but express no obligation to allow contributors and readers to be trolled. Any comment that sinks to the level of bigotry, defamation, personal insults, off-topic rants, and profanity will be deleted without notice.
Hedges certainly believes in absolutes; he is quick to classify institutions, businesses,economic systems as evil. I find that an oversimplification. Entities and systems are rarely good or evil. The entity reflects the culture that creates it. I also question his pessimism. If we are to buy Hedges' view of the U.S.,we're going to hell in a rowboat and may as well blow ourselves up. I confess that I only made it through the first 75 minutes but I plan to revisit and watch the rest. Perhaps at some point Hedges offers something other than criticism, revulsion, despair and a smug superiority in his belief that only he can see the world as is clearly.
ReplyDeleteHe's terribly critical of liberals and liberal institutions, asserting that they merely engage in pretty speeches and lofty ideals about helping the poor whom they don't really take the time to know. I agree that there is some paternalism involved in liberal outreach efforts but I respect the number of people who work hard to push through their own misconceptions and engage in genuine interactions with those for whom they advocate. Hedges appears to bestow no positive credit on those whom he disdainfully calls liberals ad fails to recognize that he is perhaps a shining example of the very type of liberal he so heavily criticizes.
Curious, I find, this juxtaposition of title and introductory statement:
ReplyDelete“This blog and the sellout of America by the left”
[and]
“Three hours of discussion for your consideration...”
What is the relationship between "this blog” and “the sellout of America by the left,” and why is this post framed in such terms?
What is your definition of a blog? What is your perceived purpose of a blog? This blog? What distinguishes a personal blog from a community forum? Are its members severable from the group? If there is a challenge or gauntlet being thrown down, what is its shape? Color? Point?
Is every self-appointed seer and visionary a true prophet? Why is Hedges always so critical of the Left while ignoring the neo-fascist proclivities of the Right? Shall we receive the words of Hedges uncritically? Is the language of the mythic mode appropriate for ironic mode times?
I am thinking of an educational toy for toddlers that teaches basic shapes and wonder if this skill has been fully mastered here.
Sheria,
ReplyDelete"Entities and systems are rarely good or evil."
A curious statement, but it may be right. Maybe we should evaluate systems by their immune systems or ability to resist misuse and corruption. Communism looks good on paper after all but there are no checks and balances and it's those balancing forces under attack in our system - or what we call our system.
I don't have three spare minutes much less three hours, but if a general argument for M theory or quantum mechanics can be made in minutes, I suspect any argument that takes three hours to expound upon is relying on argumentum ad nauseam and the numbness it produces to exhaust our critical faculties.
And of course references to "the left" begin with a usually undefined idea of what that means. It's the kind of one dimensional rendering that allows the debater to equate opposites because the three other dimensions are missing.
The right sold out America long ago. It's the sell out by the left that we find truly distressing.
ReplyDeleteTo the notion that entities and systems are rarely good or evil, research and observation has show that to be false. Corporate cultures are surprisingly enduring and pernicious and survive entire leadership and management changes. Countries and religious cultures demonstrate similar patterns. Organizations, like hives, seem to have survival mechanisms although they seem to be nothing more than mindless ideas. Machiavelli knew this, taught this.
Thinking, Octo, means challenging existing, personally held views.
Edge,
ReplyDeleteA challenge is always welcome, but what exactly are you challenging us about? There is a difference between scatter shot (i.e. an epic video avalanche) versus a rifle shot, and it would be helpful here to have more precision.
As Captain Fogg states, “ I don't have three spare minutes much less three hours,” it would have been helpful if you provided at least a brief summary of exactly what challenge you have mind – instead of or in addition to three hours of video. Inasmuch as life comes before blogging, personal time is a boundary issue.
Furthermore, I am still scratching my head over the relationship between “this blog” and “the sellout of America by the left.” By implication, are you suggesting that this blog or the community herein share some unspecified collective guilt, and that our choice is to salute some flag or grovel? And spend three hours of personal time ascertaining whatever it is that Edge is on edge about? Do you see the problem here?
Quite interesting. Needs to be consumed and digested in small segments.
ReplyDeleteAs with all ideas and beliefs Hedges' are certainly open to scrutiny. Which is not to say they are all wrong.
I hope we're not using a rowboat to get to political and social hell -- I don't think a large theropod would fit in a rowboat. Even a very ample one.
ReplyDeleteI've been pessimistic about our prospects based on my "geriatric republic" thesis, but at the same time, I don't cotton to the old saw that "both sides are just as bad." In politics, it's all well and good to take up a stand allegedly outside the main perspectives and rail away, but at the day's end, there's still going to be a choice to make. Does anybody who identifies as liberal or genuinely moderate think Romney and a GOP-controlled House and Senate pulling him to the right on every issue would be anything but pernicious? That it wouldn't make any difference if Romney beats Obama? Of course it makes a difference, and that's why it's important to offer one's criticisms with that awareness in mind. People like Hedges would probably like to see some changes we could call genuinely "leftist," but this is the US & A, so that isn't going to happen. In consideration of the American political context, there's no point condemning Obama for not being an Italian or French socialist, so if anyone comes at me with that kind of critique, I just tune it out and turn it off. Nothing comes of it.
My problem with the title of this centers around the term "the left."
ReplyDeleteAre we talking about that left or people who pretend to be but aren't. If it's the former, maybe left isn't right -- if the latter maybe the left is the right.
Aren't we talking about a group failing to live up to one person's concept of what the left is or should be? A concept that is impossible to pin down or agree on in the first place? Is the right turning left or the left right or is the problem in another dimension? Is there still the need or left and right or is this a nihilistic proposition?
Again, left and right, and in my opinion of course, are terms best ignored as are 'Conservative' and 'Liberal.' Slippery, shape shifting, nebulous and not amenable to consistent or universally accepted definition. It's inevitably the source of too much argument.
Wouldn't we be better off talking about specific instances where specific people have "sold out," been bought or the like? One can be very 'left' but be incompetent, stupid, firmly intransigent in the face of contrary facts. Are we talking about human failure, human weakness, human incompetence and corruption or are we talking about doctrines and dogmas sometimes not worth defending? Are we suggesting that there be no more left or that the left isn't left enough? Is the concept of left outdated or is it just that politicians will be politicians? I'm just confused and don't have the time to listen to someone who can't put it succinctly. Argumentum ad nauseam is kind of a fallacy of distraction, isn't it? I'd rather hear Edge put it in his own words.
Yes, of course, even though I probably am some sort of liberal, my ideas vary considerably from the various and conflicting and tendentious and flattering stereotypes, so have I sold out or am I a free thinker or what? Do I have to think a certain way or am I, as a liberal, free to think as I will? If I think we have enough gun control but not enough regulation of financial markets, what kind of a Chimera am I? We won't settle it with that left right left goosestep.
Have all liberals sold out or is it all "lefties" and if they've sold out can we ask if they are in fact liberals any more?
Hell, this is a bottomless pit of questions leading to more questions and I don't know what to think of it.
I will go so far as to say that corruption and incompetence and blind stupidity are everywhere and that power corrupts -- hardly a novel observation, but if the idea is to say that all is futile and for naught, I have to agree with Dino that judgements can still be made and must be made or the crooks win.
I'll also insist that I'm as much "the left" as anyone else and I haven't sold out and I repeat with intentional irony, that all sweeping generalizations are wrong ( including this one)
So, no, I don't have the time, but I'm not afraid of opinions that confuse me or irritate me -- I'm just afraid I don't have the time for this one since going to be out on the water early in the morning and won't be back until next week.
Be nice please.
Capt.,
ReplyDeleteI don't think "Left" means a great deal in the American context. It's used often and defined seldom, especially by those who employ it the most. The Faux-Noiser usage seems to reduce pretty facilely to "socialist."
I don't mind the liberal/conservative terms as much because they at least seem to mean something to some of us beyond the usual blog-rant usages. I like the British historical overtones of these terms, as opposed to the more extreme ambience of the continental left/right opposition. I love the French, but they're always running into the streets with their ideas, just as Matthew Arnold said. Trouble with my own preference is, we really do have a crazy-radical obverse-Jacobin "Right" in America. Some of 'em are every bit as nuts as those leftist groups from the Euro-1960s-70s. You know, crazies like the Revolutionary Dinosaur Liberation Front, the Velociraptor Vanguard and other nefarious organizations....
I have decided to make it simple, for I am a simple person.
ReplyDeleteClassical liberalism is the only label I have been able to identify as having some consistent meaning over a large expanse of time. As I identify with and think I understand classical liberal principles I think it reasonable to consider current situations against classical liberal standards and ethics, and philosophy in general. At least that is how I see it.
Free thinkers likely provide the best defense against statism as well as the tyranny of the majority.
Indeed the nation faces many seemingly insurmountable problems. Certainly no single hide bound ideology has the solutions. It Will take the cooperative productive energies and intelligence of all if we are to succeed.
My own words: the man is an American hero.
ReplyDeleteDino,
ReplyDeleteIn my ecosystem, we have them too … the Holy Mackerel Raptorial, the Kitsch Fish Party, Albacore Anonymous, and the Lost Atlantis Fly Fisherman Lobby (which wants to reinstitute a caste system).
“ the man is an American hero.”
Edge,
Whatever floats your oats. In my view, the former divinity student turned journalist turned prophet has grown pedantic, pretentious ... and humorless.
After 15 minutes, I'm equal parts intrigued and determined to keep a grain of salt handy. Hedges is knowledgeable and did a remarkable job of giving rich historical perspective while not wandering all over the place in answering the first few questions. That's not easy to do. He makes a potent, detailed and discomfiting case with facts and examples. That's something we need more authors, commentators, editorialists, bloggers and social critics to do. I'm reminded of Kevin Phillips, who has earned my respect.
ReplyDeleteI just might pick up a copy of Hedges' book.
I've finally gotten back to listening to the second half of the Hedges interview. I'm afraid that I don't find anything heroic about his rather pedantic speeches. This isn't really much of an interview but rather a series of questions that allow Hedges to expound on his ideology.
ReplyDeleteAfter three hours, I'm still unclear as to the foundations for his beliefs. Typically I would expect such sweeping condemnation of what he perceives to be a betrayal of America by the left to be grounded in factual specifics,a sequence of evidentiary events to support such a conclusion. Hedges offer little evidence to support his conclusions except conjecture based on his personal interpretations of events.
I would concur that the radical change that I believe is needed in the economic culture of the U.S. has not occured.However, I also believe that there is not mass support for such radical change. Even those who are most harmed by our current financial pyramid with a large base that is severely lacking in adequate financial resources tend to support continuation of our current free market enterprise system.
My belief is that focused efforts must be maid to re-educate the American public. As long as people perceive any efforts to provide for a social and economic system that is designed to ensure that a basic hierarchy of needs (food, clothing, shelter, medical care) is met for all citizens a a socialist plot to destroy America, it is unlikely that progressive change will happen.
I don't perceive that the left, if by left Hedges means progressives and liberals who view the role of government as meeting the essential survival the needs of all the people, has sold out America Instead,I think that the left has stumbled in its efforts to effect change in assuming that the general populace will recognize and embrace the benefits of radical change to our current social and economic systems once the merits of such change are revealed to them.
I find Hedges critical disdain off putting, especially as he doesn't offer any concrete alternatives but merely declares that the ship is inking. If you don't have a life raft or at the very minimum a life jacket to offer, then exactly what good are you except as a doomsday messenger? Hedges needs a third act, one that prescribes what should be the next steps rather than simply declaring, "All is woe."
Aw crap, my proofreading skills are worse than ever!I really do know the difference between "maid" and "made."
ReplyDeleteI offer further explanation of my observation that "Entities and systems are rarely good or evil."
The terms good and evil denote some type of intentional and chose path of behavior. I reserve those terms for descriptors of human behavior. A lion kills a gazelle.The act is neither good nor evil but an instinctive desire to feed.
I think that it absolves humans of responsibility for our actions when we attribute intent and desire to non-human creatures or things.
For example, variations of the declaration that "War is a necessary evil" have been repeated throughout recorded history. It allows us to declare that some wars are good wars. The Roman Catholic Church went so far as to declare that some wars had God's blessing and were indeed, holy ears. It has also allowed us to regard war as inevitable and devote very little energy to the avoidance or prevention of war. After all it's a necessity, can't be helped. We totally avoid tackling head on that we create wars and what we create we can choose not to create. We continue blissfully fighting these necessary wars as if there really were an Ares who decides when humans shall engage in wars.
When we attribute anthropomorphic qualities to systems and events, that is we declare them to be good or evil, we abdicate human responsibility for control of those systems and entities. They are neither good nor evil, they are simply what we permit them to be and if we want them changed,we first have to accept our collective responsibility for allowing those systems and entities to get out of control in the first place.
Thank you, Sister. Your comment certainly sums up my views on Hedges. Over the years, I myself have quoted Hedges from time to time and liken him to an old nursery rhyme about little boys whose behaviors range from "very, very good" to "horrid." Reading with a critical eye, I take what I like and leave the rest.
ReplyDeleteMost of all, I appreciate your comment on "our collective responsibility for allowing those systems and entities to get out of control in the first place." The tendency among far too many voters is not taking responsibility for their vote, for allowing themselves to be suckered by pandering and propaganda, for inverting the laws of cause and effect by blaming the next politician for the misdeeds of the last one, and for failing to hold themselves accountable as citizens.
Yes, the perennial blame game; and Chris Hedges has not raised himself above it. In this respect, Hedges does more harm than good.
Finally, I still have not gotten an answer to my question: What is the relationship between Chris Hedges and "the sellout" versus "this blog?"
Just another thought....
ReplyDeleteCorporate cultures are surprisingly enduring and pernicious and survive entire leadership and management changes.
Edge I agree with the above observation, where I disagree is that this is evidence that non-human entities are good or evil. They are what we shape them to be. The reason that I think it is imperative to make the distinction is because it's our willingness to attribute intent and purpose to inanimate structural organization systems that allows us to abdicate responsibility for the actions and policies of those entities. Ultimately, we, human beings, are the authors of good or evil. The ability of a corrupt corporate culture to survive beyond the terms of those who initiated such a culture is only a sign that the practices and policies that created such a culture are being continued by those who follow those who originated such a culture.
In my thinking, declaring systems or entities to be evil does nothing to eradicate such structures. Instead it allows us to declare our inability to control such evil. To address making critical change we mus first fully acknowledge that any "evil" that exists is of our own making. What we do, we have the wherewithal to undo.
Evil and good as concepts mean nothing unless measured against a standard of value.
ReplyDeleteIn my view the standard of value must be life, human life specifically. Given this anything that ethically and morally acts positively on a persons life is good. Things that act negatively on a persons life is evil. Indeed we as cognitive beings have it in out power to change. For individuals this is relatively easy compared to organizations or societies.
Sheria makes many great observations