Monday, April 26, 2010

El Paso's Buses...

Interesting propaganda here:

A warning to young men that "ignorance of the law is no excuse"
....A warning that they should make their bodies available for the wars of aggression
in Afghanistan and Iraq....

An advert designed to frighten bus riders into keeping a watchful eye on other passengers....
As if the greatest threat to our lives were our fellow citizens.....

An ad threatening individuals with punishment if they should illegally transfer
weapons to Mexico
--Hypocritical because the US government funds and trains and supplies weapons to the Mexican government/army.... and some assassins trained at the "School of the Americas" (which has a new name) are said to be working for drug gangs....

Well, I said it before and I'll say it again: riding the buses in El Paso is
rather de-humanizing....such propaganda (paid for by tax dollars) is insulting....


Reading Diary

A bit bored by Solomon's book on the emotions.
The discussion of Plato's Symposium was, for me, a low point.
Nothing novel here.
Trying to be positive: some true things about love were said here, but nothing
earth-shaking.

By contrast, I feel in reading Kundera's "Unbearable Lightness", that I am challenged.
What is this between Tereza and Tomas? Is it so simple as to say it can't be love
because Tomas is unfaithful? Well, I do think that would be too simple...
In his narrator's voice, Kundera says something like this: from the chance
event of their meeting, and the blend of events, she came to love him,
and this set in motion a source of energy that lasted her entire life.....

Have also been reading Keith Oatley's "Best Laid Schemes."
As I had supposedly studied Homer once upon a time it is humbling to
read Oatley's speculations....in Chapter Five (drawing upon Bruno Snell)...
The heroes of the "Illiad", he suggests, don't have an inner life as do those
in "Middlemarch". Makes me want to re-read the Illiad.

But emotions as eruptions, disturbances.. . not planned...Now here's something which,
I suppose, Solomon doesn't really like. But I'll have to read more to be sure.

Actually, what Oatley is doing is even more interesting because he wants both that
emotions are eruptive and that they are decisive about our happiness, our relationships
to others. But he formulates it something like this; given that our plans our flawed,
both because they needn't match reality, and because a partner in a joint project will
have a different plan, where can we turn for guidance? Oatley's answer seems to be George Eliot's: we turn to emotions....

It's not just that emotions help us run away from bears. They even help us with issues and problems which are existential....



Sunday, April 25, 2010

to lose a home?

to lose your home?

sad

to miss your home?

sad

And what is it to have no clear picture of who you are because you are on the move?

to have no tie of either memory or emotion to a specific place?

Perhaps to live only in your language because it is "international"?

But to be unsettled even in that......

Friday, April 23, 2010

Hard Reading

I've just gotten a copy of the philosopher Robert Solomon's book, "True to our Feelings". (Ronald deSousa, another philosopher who writes about the emotions, recommended it as the best of Solomon's books.)

It is very amusing to see what Solomon says in his annotated bibliography.
For example, Keith Oatley's "Best Laid Schemes" is described as "difficult".
I've been reading Oatley, and I never noticed that it is a difficult book. Rather, I would describe it as a feast.

By contrast, Solomon, a specialist in French existentialism, does not say that Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" is difficult, but describes it a "One of the great books in phenomenology and the central text of French existentialism."

Recently I tried to read "Being and Nothingness." It is not easy reading. I would say it is harder than Oatley. Sartre has a special vocabulary that one needs to keep track of. I tried reading it during my bus ride, but quickly found it impossible. I would have needed to jot down somewhere a list of his special vocabulary, impossible to do in the bouncy bus. I think that if I did so I would be able to appreciate the book. I do admit that I jumped in at the section about "bad faith" after reading only a little of the first chapter, but I don't think that's the source of the problem. Sartre ends up saying things that sound very paradoxical, and even contradictory if one doesn't keep very close tabs on the technical language he is introducing. I could keep up with him for a while, but in the end i just needed a memory aid.

I haven't tried reading Oatley's book on the bus, but I also haven't found myself needing to keep notes of his special vocabulary.

So you see, the jumpy buses of the El Paso bus system have stopped me from reading Sartre..... Someday when I am in a stable situation I shall return to reading Sartre...

And why read Sartre or Solomon now? I am doing research for an essay on Kundera's "Unbearable Lightness". I plan to present two interpretations of the love between Tereza and Tomas: one existentialist and one Socratic. Kundera himself seems at various points to encourage the existentialist reading, but I think it is possible to go beyond that. I set for myself the task of allowing the principle that all desire is for the good can survive even if we allow for the very particularity or historicity of individual lives. Chance and freedom as principles versus the principle that we always do whatever we do aiming to make ourselves better, starting from where we are now--and some would like to say, starting from where we happen to be now....

Monday, April 19, 2010

NOTE TO SELF

Dear Self:

Please make a mental note of this.

In a society with such rampant inequality and elitism as the United States,

you must never forget that even individuals who are members of organizations which

profess to be acting in the public interest will, from time to time,

pull rank, asserting the superiority of their own qualifications, and their superior knowledge,

instead of engaging in an honest discussion where one human being attempts to understand

and respond to the concerns of another.

I have experienced this once, and observed it also, within the past two weeks....

Such behavior indicates a dislike of democracy within the so-called intellectual class....

Saturday, April 17, 2010

THE CITY OF INDIVIDUALLY PILOTED BEASTS OF GLASS AND STEEL

Living as I do in the city of cars, and seeing so few people,
being forced to hear their noise as they whoosh by, and competing
with them as an unarmed citizen when I cross the parking lot of the
local abandoned shopping lot as I do ten or twelve times a week,
I often think about those who are uninformed about the existence
of anthropogenic climate change.

Recently I watched a video featuring a member of the "Tea Party".
She complained about many things, and I thought it was curious that many of
her beliefs were products of a propaganda system designed to benefit America's
ruling class. But she was right about one thing: climate justice is a lefty issue.

Now, that's not what she said. She referred, in a disparaging manner, to the
"Leftist" myth of climate change. (Well she didn't actually call it a "myth" but it was
some such similar term.)

I wasn't sure why she called it "Leftist" or "Liberal" (Again I've forgotten her exact word.)
But, after thinking about it, I decided that she was right--though not for the sort of reason
that would appeal to the Tea Party.

In brief, the leftist tradition is a tradition of justice and concern for the least fortunate.

The fact of climate change, caused by human activities, is, quite simply, a scientific fact.

But it does fit nicely with a concern for the least well off because the damage (here as in
so many cases) will fall mainly on the shoulders of the poorest among us.

There is much to be said here: about the actual moral depravity of what is called
"conservatism". But I cannot do better than Ted Honderich has done in his book, "Conservatism: From Burke to Bush and Blair."

And as a final thought, I cannot resist mentioning my older sister, who was taught
by the Loretto Nuns to be a "certain kind of person." She is among those who
know nothing about climate change, and comfortably drives around, living in order
to consume. I guess the Nuns of Lorretto never read Eric Fromm either!

I hope to fill in this entry with notes in the future.


Friday, April 16, 2010

Sun So-called "Metro"'s ?Misleading/?Deceptive?or? woefully uninformed? Advertising Campaign

The buses in El Paso have the slogan "Clean" Natural Gas

Natural gas is produced in an environmentally destructive manner.

Are the managers (creators of slogans/devotees of marketing) of Sun so-called "Metro"
ignorant?

See "Democracy Now" April 14, 2010
Interview with Dr. Theo Colborn

http://democracynow.org/



See also, at the "Endocrine Disruption Exchange",
"Chemicals Used in Natural Gas Operations"
http://www.endocrinedisruption.com/


According to Dr. Colborn, in the production of natural gas, dangerous chemicals are pumped into the ground. At present, due to a government failure, not all of the chemicals used by the producers of natural gas are known--but those which are known are known to be dangerous, harmful to the health of human beings.

"Government failure" ? In the interview at Democracy Now, Dr. Colborn mentions that thanks
to Dick Cheney, a decision was made to exempt natural gas production from clean water regulations. It is not hard to see that this was a mistake which benefits the wealthy investors who have profits to gain and will very likely injure citizens who must actually work to survive.

the failure of UTEP

In the past I've commented on the sheer excess of individually piloted glass and steel monstrosities...

But if people are ignorant of anthropogenic global warming,
the blame should be placed on the shoulders of the local "intellectual" class... those scientists at the University of Texas at El Paso who have failed to educate the community.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Ujo no longer

Today as I hiked in the blazing sun across the sidewalks, accompanied by the huff and
puff of tiny dogs and the louder menace of the bigger beasts,
as I was exactly crossing the meaningless waste of a deserted shopping center,
a child (one of a group of three) greeted me.
I said hello back, and in a playful mood said, "and what did you learn in school today?"
The wise answer was: "Not to talk to strangers..."
To which I replied: "Good Idea. I should follow that policy too..."

Which elicited from said child a sarcastic reply...

Which led me to recall the last time an unknown child had spoken to me,
in Slovakia,
where the conventional way to address a male adult you don't know is as "Ujo"
or "Uncle"..

Much more friendly that...

but of course, this is not an especially friendly place.

I wondered, as I walked away, whether my garb (designed to keep off the sun)
or my carlessness had done it,
What was it that made this child think I deserved no respect?

Either way, it wasn't nice....

Saturday, April 10, 2010

America the HOPELESS America the UGLY

I lived in Europe for more than twelve years. I was a pedestrian in Europe for more than twelve years. And, during that time, not once did someone shout at me from the open window of a car speeding by.

I put that down to a deep cultural difference--a way in which the United States of America is backwards, primitive, and hopeless, prone to aggression and violence in ways large and small.

This remark was provoked by yet another case of a peculiarly American tendency to abuse power--albeit the relatively small power implied by the possession of an automobile, a climate destroying opulent waste of resources--with the attendant ability to abuse a person with less material resources.

As I walked down the street near sundown, a car sped by with its windows open, and a head projected from the driver 's side, shouting at me, saying words I could not
understand, but speaking words which were unmistakably aggressive, taunting,
threatening, and unfriendly.

This was not the first such incident since I have lived in El Paso. I have blogged about this before, and I have not blogged about every single such incident. But every time it happens it is disturbing and unpleasant, and I see no reason to believe that these incidents will stop any time soon.

This was not a member of the wealthy ruling class. This was one of the country's poorer citizens abusing me because he considered me to be beneath him.

I see no hope for a country whose residents are so brainwashed by the consumerist ideology.

By the same token, El Paso itself is tremendously ugly.
Yesterday I sat outside a coffee shop near the local university. Countless noisy cars and trucks sped by, many of them loud enough to disturb my reading.
A mindless orgy of glass and steel.

Who could imagine that this is a pleasant scene? Quite apart from the facts of climate change and the United States' excessive consumption of resources belonging to other nations, this is an ugly scene, a noisy scene, with little in it of humanity or civilization.

Those who discovered the laws of physics and engineering needed to create automobiles may have done something worthy, but the individual who merely purchases a car has done nothing.

I see nothing hopeful or beautiful in this land of brutal sunlight and omnipresent sand, glass, steel and perversion, aggression untamed by civilization...hopeless and ugly....


Friday, April 9, 2010

A STUPID IGNORANT CITY

Some large portion of the population of this city must suffer from some sort of brain damage.
Maybe it is something in the water.
I see no other explanation for the generally low level of intelligence, the oppressive,
omnipresent stupidity.

Now that the weather is a bit warmer, we have air conditioning everywhere.
The buses are freezing cold, and everywhere the idea of actually opening a
window seems foreign.

As if air conditioning did not use energy. As if energy were not in short supply.
As if there were no such thing as climate change...

And then there are the big trucks,
and the intense hostility toward pedestrians....

a stupid ugly city, full of stupid, ugly people!

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Kapitalisticke Kurvy

I have noticed that both Albertson's (a grocery store) and Walgreen's (primarily a druggist)
both have very misleading pricing.

The price will be indicated roughly like this:

2 for $7

Farmer Jones' HyperSweet Granola Bars

Consequently, it is easy to see the price, but hard to see what the price is for.

Twice I have attempted to purchase something in Walgreen's only to be told
that the price was different than what I had genuinely believed it to be...

It is bad enough that the quality of food in this country is total shit, but to
have people trying to cheat you out of your money is adding insult to injury.

The food is better in Bratislava, and Bratislava is not Paris or Rome or Barcelona!

Incidentally, I can't resist adding that these totally shitty and not fresh granola bars
(whose ingredients are not the highest quality) are not especially cheap.
Disgusting.
Insulting.
Bullshit.