Many good observations here, and an eye-opener follow-up question:
— “It asks whether we have built a society worthy of the people who live in it.”
And in America’s current exaggerated socioeconomic pyramidal structure … some are still ‘believers’ that extreme wealth makes you right, bigger, better people … even some poorer people believe/ adulate this vision.
America (and the world, to varying degrees) has for too long venerated wealth & status.
— to the point where we are being dragged by a self-aggrandizing snake oil salesman ‘off the cliff’ and back into a new age of feudalistic serfdom.
At the rate things are going, in the coming decade the U.S. may not be much different than Russia - except for outward appearances due to past advances - perhaps we should learn to cook borscht & more potato & onion-based dinners now? (Healthier than some of our insta-meals anyway).
There are so many ways the Trump admin is dragging us back to the bad old days & ways.
💎 “Keep your eyes open and guard against every sort of greed, because even when a person has an abundance, his life does not result from the things he possesses.” Luke 12:17
Good for you, Jay Jay, including a reference to something (Luke) from our humanities.
Most commenters cannot at all do this. Most imagine the human or the personal marginal, ornamental only. So typically zero references either to anecdote or to any novels, memoirs, histories, essay collections, biographies, or any other arts.
Diane Ravitch accounts for this systematic dehumanization in "The Language Police," with great appendices citing how U.S. schools and public figures all stick to the depersonalized wonk enforced both by all standardized testing and all the corporate packaged textbooks.
And it was all already latent in "The Great Gatsby" of exactly 100 years ago, accumulating force and momentum for our coming corrupted in the novels of Dashiell Hammett in the next two years following Fitzgerald's.
A great article.. I think the societies that come closest to being humane seem to be the Scandinavians. Perhaps hardship has taught them that we rise or fall together, and that each citizen should have a chance to reach their full potential. It's really hard to be creative when you're exhausted and stressed. They have pretty successful societies.
And yet, all that most Americans seem to be able to see about Scandinavia is their high taxes. You don't need as much after-tax income when health care and education are free, right through University. You live with less fear when you know that a broken leg won't mean you lose your home. You can study more effectively when you don't have to worry about how you're going to pay back those huge student loans, and what will happen if you can't get a job.
I keep wondering how many wonderful inventions and artistic creations have been missed because someone who could have been their author was ill, uneducated or otherwise overburdened with the cares of survival?
Welcome to the Age of Money, or perhaps the Age of Grift and Graft. Lamenting lost values, another masturbatory practice among the disaffected, is useless. So what then?
Perhaps this revolutionary statement from Jefferson more aptly applies instead:
...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Beautifully stated.
Many good observations here, and an eye-opener follow-up question:
— “It asks whether we have built a society worthy of the people who live in it.”
And in America’s current exaggerated socioeconomic pyramidal structure … some are still ‘believers’ that extreme wealth makes you right, bigger, better people … even some poorer people believe/ adulate this vision.
America (and the world, to varying degrees) has for too long venerated wealth & status.
— to the point where we are being dragged by a self-aggrandizing snake oil salesman ‘off the cliff’ and back into a new age of feudalistic serfdom.
At the rate things are going, in the coming decade the U.S. may not be much different than Russia - except for outward appearances due to past advances - perhaps we should learn to cook borscht & more potato & onion-based dinners now? (Healthier than some of our insta-meals anyway).
There are so many ways the Trump admin is dragging us back to the bad old days & ways.
💎 “Keep your eyes open and guard against every sort of greed, because even when a person has an abundance, his life does not result from the things he possesses.” Luke 12:17
Good for you, Jay Jay, including a reference to something (Luke) from our humanities.
Most commenters cannot at all do this. Most imagine the human or the personal marginal, ornamental only. So typically zero references either to anecdote or to any novels, memoirs, histories, essay collections, biographies, or any other arts.
Diane Ravitch accounts for this systematic dehumanization in "The Language Police," with great appendices citing how U.S. schools and public figures all stick to the depersonalized wonk enforced both by all standardized testing and all the corporate packaged textbooks.
And it was all already latent in "The Great Gatsby" of exactly 100 years ago, accumulating force and momentum for our coming corrupted in the novels of Dashiell Hammett in the next two years following Fitzgerald's.
A great article.. I think the societies that come closest to being humane seem to be the Scandinavians. Perhaps hardship has taught them that we rise or fall together, and that each citizen should have a chance to reach their full potential. It's really hard to be creative when you're exhausted and stressed. They have pretty successful societies.
And yet, all that most Americans seem to be able to see about Scandinavia is their high taxes. You don't need as much after-tax income when health care and education are free, right through University. You live with less fear when you know that a broken leg won't mean you lose your home. You can study more effectively when you don't have to worry about how you're going to pay back those huge student loans, and what will happen if you can't get a job.
I keep wondering how many wonderful inventions and artistic creations have been missed because someone who could have been their author was ill, uneducated or otherwise overburdened with the cares of survival?
Thank you and many thanks for your support!
Key elements of happiness. To share is to have more of everything! Nice piece, thank you, Michael❣️
Heart warming post. Thank you.
Welcome to the Age of Money, or perhaps the Age of Grift and Graft. Lamenting lost values, another masturbatory practice among the disaffected, is useless. So what then?
Perhaps this revolutionary statement from Jefferson more aptly applies instead:
...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.