The World Needs a New Marx, but it Keeps Creating Malcolm Gladwells, in Guardian.Co.UK. Who is Marx, you ask? Who is Malcolm Gladwell? Best to write in USA Today prose if one wishes to be understood by the electorate here. We lack the language to express our unease. Best to police the border, detain suspects without habeas corpus, and patent the humane genome. If billionaires target their favorite causes and measure and manage strategies, we will all be better off. As Ralph Nader has helped us see, global corporations may be unsafe as any speed, but only the super rich who run them can save us. If we could elect true populists and consumer advocates like Nader to high office, even to the Presidency, that would be marvelous. Not likely, though, he is too outspoken. If he spooks the super rich, they may not save us.
Phil,
Kudos on tossing rotten tomatoes at the self-important, self-deluded rich or consultants to the rich. But hyping a turgid, derivative thinker who work led to mass murder in Eastern Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa? Just because some journalists on the left complain about feeling "bleak" and uninspired? C'mon. I would have expected you to give these whiners a kick in the pants rather than to join their chorus. Unless perhaps the dumpster is becoming a partisan pulpit ...
Best wishes,
Keith
Posted by: Keith Whitaker | June 08, 2011 at 10:05 AM
I am not sure the post came out much in favor of Marx, Gladwell, or Nader. The point was about the ubiquity of one world view today, Wealth Bondage as the Will of God. What would you contrast with that worldview? There is no outside of wealth bondage, particularly for those who pursue a career, a calling, counseling the wealthy on their, shall we say, ethics, aesthetics, spirituality, or whatever one calls that dumb prompting of the holy spirit. I appreciate your dropping by, Keith.
Posted by: Phil Cubeta | June 08, 2011 at 11:44 AM
Thanks, Phil. I always drop by when my digital master tells me there's a new post. I wish there were more discussion! Thanks for the clarification of your point. It sounds similar to Georg Simmel's argument (in a really tiny nutshell) that abstract money has become the contemporary expression of the unifying principle once known as God. Properly understood, I think it is a powerful claim. However, not to sound too Heideggerian, I think we all can see around us and within us a great deal of longing for something much more like the old God. That's what I, at least, see behind those "dumb promptings": not the presence of the holy spirit but its absence tugging at the heartstrings.
Keith Whitaker, www.wisecounselresearch.org
Posted by: Keith Whitaker | June 14, 2011 at 03:16 PM
That's beautifully put. The mythos that we obstinately continue to desire, without portfolio to get there.
Have you perhaps seen The Ister?
Posted by: tom matrullo | June 16, 2011 at 06:53 PM
I wish there were more conversation, too, Keith, particularly of the calibre of your comments and Tom's. How the emptiness where spirit once was drives us - I sometimes feel that Heidgger is a symptom more than a cure of rootless modernity longing for the submlime. Where the genuine leaves a hole, the bogus enters.
Posted by: Phil Cubeta | June 17, 2011 at 10:16 AM
I like to believe I've felt this void-ness growing over the years, and I fret that there's no way out of Bogosity Bondage in this modern noise-and-delusion filled era.
You know something's up when (in his own words) the 2nd most popular comedian on cable tv is delivering the commencement speech at a reputable university. In the closing (from about 16h00 on .. ) he exhorts the graduands to a life of improvisation underpinned by genuine service to others.
"Even if you get your dream, it's important for you to know that you are not a winner ..." etc.
An ode to service ... well done Stephen.
Posted by: Jon Husband | June 19, 2011 at 02:42 PM
The mood in some quarters is receptive to that ode to service, so I am finding by addressing people in that spirit. The politicians have left that space open. What is so ugly about the entrenchment of power and money are the lies and divisiveness needed to support it. Better that, though, than overt oppression backed by violence. But lies and hatred are a good forerunner of that.
Posted by: Phil Cubeta | June 19, 2011 at 11:35 PM
What is so ugly about the entrenchment of power and money are the lies and divisiveness needed to support it.
The heart of the matter. An enduring problem for which I cannot see an end, unfortunately it corrodes the souls of all it touches, penetrates and surrounds. The corrosion of character suffocates life.
Alas.
"There must be some kind of way out of here,"
Said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion,
I can't get no relief.
Businessman they drink my wine,
Plowman dig my earth
None will level on the line, nobody offered his word, hey"
J. Hendrix
Posted by: Jon Husband | June 20, 2011 at 09:19 AM
Lies legitimated by force and vice versa. Teach your children well that they might rise.
Posted by: Phil Cubeta | June 20, 2011 at 10:14 AM
Oh fer chrissakes, the longing for the old god always was the old god. That's why they had to invent Jesus - to stop time!
It didn't work.
Posted by: Ben Turpin | July 02, 2011 at 08:55 PM
Jesus will come again to judge the living and the dead, having harrowed hell. That is what will stop time.
Posted by: Phil Cubeta | July 03, 2011 at 10:58 AM