Thursday, May 31, 2012

a footnote to Socrates

How can you say we don't have ethical knowledge?
Easy.
Take the last time you made what you flatter yourself with calling the "right" or "good" decision.
The consequences surprised you, and there were very many unanticipated consequences.
Don't our friends surprise us by their kindness and cleverness?


Ah, but I was smart enough to choose the right friends.


Sometimes....


Another argument:
Judgments of good and bad, happiness, satisfaction are inevitably comparative, and our minds are warped by what we see around us (i.e., the limited share of happiness that we have), so that our judgments are slanted.  Do we even know what we are aiming at?  A better life than our neighbor's?----but that "better" life might not be good.


Another argument:


It's easier to say "He/she/NN did wrong" than it is to choose wisely one's self....


Ahhh, this is all too schematic.  Not fully developed.   Not proper argumentation at all...... Yet, in broad outline, I think it's all true...
We are very ignorant, and very much in denial.....



(In fact, your denial is deeper than I've said so far.... Your achievements, such as they are,
have as much to do with your starting point-----your location in the socio-economic order, or the ant-colony of humanity, who your parents were, what they knew, and their resources-----more to do with all that, than it does with your individual self-generated effort.....But we ignore all of that due to our insane individualism.....a piece of ideology which distracts us from seeing our real situation, the real injustice which exists....)

The grouch reads.....badly

Casual thoughts:  Chew before Swallowing.

If I may be forgiven for thinking out loud......
I've been reading "Debunking Economics" by Steve Keen.
And, undoubtedly I have benefitted, learned something (though I'm not yet finished)...

Keen's criticism of what's taught as a "Science" are very much internal criticisms----of the sort:
given your axioms and your theorems, that does not follow..
Oh, so you want to keep it (let's say a certain shape of demand curve), then you need
to assume X and Y...

And:  X and Y are absurd!

That's important.

but, au fond, Keen himself enjoys professional deformation of character.

To speak of what's good and bad or to criticize economics at a more fundamental level
is not his thing----and he seems to regard it as obscure, metaphysical (in a negative sense),
like religion.......

But I think it is a very fundamental criticism to say:  prices do not reflect the real value of anything,
and there is such a thing as a thing's real value.

Have I missed something?  Maybe K would agree with me.  I haven't finished his book
and I don't find the book easy reading.  On the contrary, I frequently have the impression
that the concepts (such as they are) of economics when introduced verbally lack their
appeal, and I suspect they need mathematics to be clearer.  But what do I know?

Well, I shall keep reading.  If I've only just demonstrated my ignorance, so be it.  Chew before swallowing.

Desert madness

NO, I am not used to bending down,
extracting the desert shrubs,
nasty, smelly, prickly, looking for water wisely, effectively, shooting out seeds and sharp Needlepoint thorns, long and invisible,
prepared by natural selection for more years than either of us can imagine,
and also able to adjust (I hazard a guess) more rapidly than either one of us!

NO
NO
NO, I am not used to this pointless exercise in human futility!
--Are you?!
Have you really got nothing better to do with your time!??
Do you imagine these infantile blotches of green or arrangements of stone are actually beautiful?
Beautiful?---Are you kidding me?
I will tell you what they are: -- an attempt to control what cannot be controlled,
an exercise in futility and stupidity,
a contribution to the wealth of the already wealthy who are undeservingly so.

No, you are right:  I am not used to it.
But, NO, you are wrong:  The presuppositions of your question are all wrong.
The ignorant supposition that the way you live is normal, let alone good or healthy.

No!----I am not used to it!
And I am not going to get used to it:
I have better things to do with my time.

But you can be sure that the local desert plants ARE used to it
--- And they will be here when we both are gone.


Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Land of the Blind ( A Parable)

The blind man has no cane and no seeing- eye dog./He has bruises on his arms and legs because he does collide, or bump or brush up against things./Sometimes he falls./His friends have heard of these sticks and dogs./Some say "I know someone who has one./ Usually, sticks that is./But sometimes a dog?/ "A dog!? --- But who could afford to feed it? /And sticks could be used as weapons!////The man does not go out --- there are cars and trucks, you know. And how his friends come to visit is a mystery./ They rarely do. Or, perhaps they are sighted./ "Sighted? What good is it? More money for glasses?! And the sighted must drive---- Why that's just more work!"

Only five!!

The f- ing nyt just told me I only have five more free articles this month! O dear!! Woe is me! Booo hooo! Boo hoo! ------ now, in the real world........... Well, actually, i can never stand to read the pretentious glib, oh so knowing style, of what's written there -----could not even get through one article, in fact...... Usually i just want to throw up. Life is too short for that sort of crap. OH DEAR only five! Well, in fact I couldn't get through even one.....oh dear, the month is almost over....the thought of actually reading five! Yccch! Makes me want to throw up! How in the world can people say anything there is well written?!? We plainly live in different worlds!---------- in sum, how kind they are to give me something for nothing. Ha, ha, ha....... KAPITALISTICKÉ SVINSTVO

Sunday, May 27, 2012

In passing

Capitalist plumbing continues to be inferior to communist plumbing. You dont want to know the details. However, the toilets in my parents' home continue to present problems I never saw in Eastern Europe. What kind of country is it that can spend billions to murder people but cannot even design a toilet that is not in constant need of plunging? The USA is a truly pathetic and miserable country.

Saturday, May 26, 2012

The subtle and quiet art of non-resistance to paternalism

Sound scene:
TAP---TAP---TAP--TAP
---my father's spoon against his dish.
clink-clink-clink........

We practice denial and non-confrontation daily:
If it's too much trouble,  don't do it, just forget it.


It's hard to say that when basic food stuffs are in question.
but if you say it often enough.....


"Don't bother if it's so much trouble...."


----giving in at the least sign of resistance----


If you say that,


If you use that strategy,


for, say, fifty years of your life.....


avoiding all possible conflict.....


quickly retreating...


"We didn't want to impose..."


In the end, you preserve a mythology of independence,


(Although sometimes you can't resist commenting,
complaining, and interfering......)


But you can maintain a mythology until


you fall flat,


lose consciousness,


and wake up in a pool of blood,




in the post office,


lose your short term memory.....


And now you've simply got to have help,


and all the while,


you will continue to say,


"I don't want to be a bother."


Then again I wonder,


If a woman spends her entire life giving in to the wishes and whims of her husband,
doesn't she have a right to practice the subtle art of quiet resentment?


What other survival tool is available to her?  (psychologically speaking)


Just as in the workplace,


you've got to give in when your boss or manager tells you what to do,


Or when the Commanding Officer makes an order,


Or when the King threatens to cut your head off,


As I was told once by a Tenured Professor of Philosophy,


"Never argue with the Administration!."




(Corrected, expanded, revised 27 May 2012)

Friday, May 25, 2012

Car Burn

My head hurts.
My stomach aches.
I can hardly stand.
Everywhere I go,
All I see is .......No!
I can't say it.


Look out of the window,
and you see a parking lot,
full of trucks.


All I hear,
everywhere,
is the noise of somebody's truck,
or their "car stereo".


(boom-boom-boom-boom)


I want to throw up, run away, leave this country forever.


Look out the window and what do you see?
A fat person climbing down out of a fat truck.


Parking lots everywhere:
the hot sun bounces off them.


Glass and steel, asphalt, cement:
the sun reflects, blinds, burns you.




El Paso, Texas:  Man-Made Hell-on-earth.


Why do they live like this?
How can they stand it?
Which part of their brain has been removed?


Get me out of here!

anticipating my death...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/opinion/sunday/the-human-disaster-of-unemployment.html?_r=1

Thursday, May 24, 2012

why I love Albertson's

today you saved two dollars and fifty-one cents.


ha  ha ha

tell me another one

If I believed bullshit like that, I'd need to get my head examined.

It's almost as insultingly arrogant as the little signs everywhere telling me I'm getting a great deal.

Yeah, right.

When people have so little respect for truth and reality, it's is funny

But also disgusting.

That kind of primitive manipulation is the opposite of civilization.

Just like the phony "How are you?" asked by strangers in this pathetic, miserable land....

Sounds right

I think I just happened upon an interview with the translator Michael Henry Heim where he said that in any country--- no matter how large, mind you--- there are3,000 readers for serious books. Sounds right to me. --- ah but, A Neurotic in an Exotic Land was primarily funny, and I do not think it has had even T h r e e. readers......

Almost another fall

Editor's Note:  Like much of what I post here, this entry has much the quality of a diary entry.  It hasn't been pre-structured or enough revised.  It was composed after an upsetting event.  My father (eighty seven years old and frail) did not fall, but he might have, and the ensuing panic led to elevated adrenalin levels and exhaustion.

Original Entry now revised:

My father did not fall, but he might have.
 I panicked, shouted, was angry and frightened --- later, exhausted and despondent.
What good am I? This is hopeless. And where the hell are my two sisters? They should see with their own eyes! If you love someone and care about them, you want to see for yourself. --- but my sisters do not come.

If you love someone, you want to see with your own eyes how they are doing----whether they
are sick or healthy, unhappy or happy, you want to see for yourself!


 One  sister has been turned into a virtual child- invalid by an over- protective and not terribly imaginative husband and so- called health professionals.

Bracketed thought:   The USA has a record of over- medication and other abuse ... do I really believe that these so-called experts are real experts?  Why should I?  Merely completing a course of study proves nothing!

Moreover, they have self-interested reasons for resisting my questioning.  When I was a teacher, I was frequently called upon to show that my students were making progress----and most did make progress...

counterpunch

APRIL 28, 2010
A Conversation with Robert Whitaker
The Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America
by BRUCE E. LEVINE


http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/04/28/the-astonishing-rise-of-mental-illness-in-america/



 After- thought: clearly, there is a need to balance safety and quality of life. However, insofar as a person becomes self- absorbed and attempts always to avoid potential sources of stress, she ceases- to that extent- to have a fully human or fully adult life. In my father's case, I wish I hadn't panicked. I hope that next time I can gently ( but quickly) offer him a helping hand. He did not fall tonight, but the anxiety and fear which I experienced is precisely the sort of thing that takes a heavy toll. My days and weeks are full of ceaseless worry and cares, with a niggardly amount of help from professionals.

Do I dare contemplate the thought of so-called "assisted living"?  No!  In this land of capitalism, the care for the elderly has been made a business, a source of profit for the already rich!  That is obscene.

Consider the above a series of fragments, not a finished work....

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

The Pure Idiocy of Capitalism

It's disgusting that something which should be free and available to every one---like education or health care----has been turned into a commodity.

It is disgusting that people are faced with the terrible dilemma:  either take out a loan to pay for college or give up hope of finding a decent job.

And even more disgusting is the sort of nonsense that universities and colleges actually teach----marketing, advertising, business.  All non-subjects with the intellectual integrity of the worst of medieval theology.

Take, for example, the idea of "added value."  We see its victims in the cheese department of a store like Albertsons. Whereas in the humble Slovak Republic, one can buy an inexpensive and delicious version of goat cheese without added salt, preservatives---not tinkered with in any way, in Albertsons, you find all sorts of Feta, crumbled, with extra ingredients in wasteful plastic boxes..... I don't need that sort of over-salted pre-crumbled Feta.  I just want a piece of the real thing, without extra salt or anything else.  But I cannot buy it here.

And the idiots who destroyed the cheese in this way imagine themselves to be clever, and probably got the idea from what they were "taught' (sic) at university......

And it is exactly the same sort of ignorance, arrogance, and idiocy which makes it possible for the manufacturers of the shit they call "beer" in the USA to sue a Czech manufacturer who makes real beer.......unfathomable stupidity and arrogance produced by capitalism.....

Disgusting
Immoral

gmooh

Sunday, May 20, 2012

despising and loathing El Paso, Texas

It's a pretty paradox.
On the one hand,
I don't care to go out in the bright sun.
the heat itself is unpleasant,
and I've no wish to get skin cancer.

On the other,
I've no wish to go out after dark.
The streets are poorly lit,
but the vehicles have beams of amazing brightness,
burning through your retina,
annoying and distracting,
moving towards you as you attempt to move forward.

And, anyway where is one to go?
Day or night, there's no place to go.
Except to buy groceries or lawn tools.

How I loathe and detest this miserable place!

gmooh


Love Song for a Cruel Empire


 "The jobs lost in bad times would not come back when times   improved; they were never coming back."--Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes


More than thirty years ago,
in a library in the Department of Philosophy,
of The University of Wisconsin at Madison,
I listened to a Professor of Philosophy,
a Wittgensteinean of sorts,
scoff at the idea that I might be,
experiencing excruciating pain at that very moment.


And, I, young and lonely,
disconnected and uncomfortable,
unsure of myself and frightened about my future,
was able to summon up some inward awareness of all that I felt,
and had felt,
and I knew its continuity,
and its lingering presence,
but could not articulate it;
grasping that awareness, 
I knew that his words were an arrogant mockery,
a practiced scoff pretending to be insight.
If he had been more honest,
he might have simply said:
How could you, young man, feel something now that I could not see,
let alone imagine?


Today I know better,
because what I felt then,
was an inexpressible pain,
just as surely as I feel it now,
the very same pain,
and the very same awareness:
the fear of failure,
and the absence of friends combined,
with an absence of comfort,
an absence of consolation,
which by now has itself become a sort of constant companion.


And today I know:
There is pointlessness and futility in saying,
based on the the pure incommunicability, 
of one’s position on a sinking ship of a life:
half the problem is the lies we are told,
from the minute of our birth,
mixed with the hopes of parents,
and the indifference of strangers;
half the problem is we can never manage 
to figure out where we really started from,
which lies were innocently and ignorantly repeated,
and which were lies told deliberately with evil intent.
And there is as well the difficulty that comes when you’ve seen what it was that was irritating you:


Can I tell you what it means to live in a city which can never be my home?
Can I explain to you that I feel more at home in a city where English is spoken as a second or third tongue by a minority of the population?
At home in that city because English is only one of several languages,
spoken there as minority languages?
Can you believe or even imagine that it is sometimes better not to speak the language of a cruel empire?


Those thoughts were beyond the reach of the scoffing man.
But, don’t think I am too hard on him.
He was scoffing that day and cynical on others too,
but he was lucky enough to have been born in a better time,
---jobwise I mean.


And that, more than age or worth, explains our different positions in this rat race.


Although, on the other hand, he probably had a simplified picture of excruciating pain, 
and would have complained anyway,
and I will, I suppose, grant it too,
that my pain, this daily pain of living, 
is not excruciating,
but after all the years I’ve carried it with me,
I myself am not so sure.


It is certainly unbearable and distracting,
overwhelming and unpleasant.
I suppose he would say it is too small and insignificant,
but I reserve the right to say that this betrays
the insignificance of his imagination.


But I’ve heard, or anyway read,
how other philosophers talk about the love that lasts a lifetime,
but they neglect to mention that pain can last a lifetime as well.
What makes it the same pain?
The cause is unchanged, and it never goes away.
(Yeah, it can change, but so do you,
and you won’t go away either.)
You can call it social injustice,
but I prefer to say it is pure ugliness,
just as much as when you are on the receiving end of the stick 
they beat you with every day of your life,
as they tell you that if you’ve not got a job,
it’s your own fault,
or if you failed the exam,
it’s all your fault.
But mainly you have no one but yourself to blame.
And don’t expect any sympathy from me!
You made your bed,
now lie in it:
Filthy scum,
you rotten communist!


Displaced and unwanted,
abused and abandoned,
spit out after being half-chewed,
undigested,
I am still here.


I could write a volume on the absence of home,
on the sense of not belonging.
And I know Europeans who could not read those words with understanding,
--because they have the convenience of feeling at home in a place.


Not, perhaps, in little Slovakia,
where the young want nothing so much as to leave;
---not all of the young, perhaps,
but enough to tilt the floor beneath them.


And I want nothing so much as a room of my own,
in a quiet place,
definitely not on the ground floor,
because that is always insanity:
Imagine an entire city of homes built on the ground floor!
Lives lived on the ground floor,
with the constant paranoid fear of thieves,
and the consequent building of walls and fences,
to keep the thieves out,
giving their fear form,
making their paranoia obvious,
visible for all to see,
except the souls trapped within.


This country, too, is insanity,
with its boxy homes laid out like pieces of a factory,
making the factory lives of people,
whether they ever enter a factory or not.


Factory lives,
all the same size,
one easily replaced by another,
worth nothing in the eyes of our over-seers,
who say communism was bad,
because it was not working in their factories,
and their workers who believe that communism was bad
because they know it was not free.


But I am not and have never been free.
Nor am I planning to become so.


I would rather be drunk
with the illusion that someone is listening to me,
that someone cares about what I am saying,
and that someone will share my bed tonight.


When I say that I despise the lies and the manipulation that I hear  and have heard,
every day of my life from cradle to grave,
I am saying that I despise the most characteristic features of this country.


And I hope the grave is coming,
sooner rather than later,
because I am running out of things to say,
and places to go,
places to escape to.


(El Paso, Texas,
the desert outpost of a cruel empire
Sunday, May 20, 2012)

Saturday, May 19, 2012

bad food--a USA trademark.....

I've written before about how the food in this country (the USA) is extremely low quality.
Nothing is fresh.
In El Paso, Texas, so far as I can tell, it is impossible (e.g.) to buy fresh mushrooms.
(By contrast in Bratislava, Slovakia---which is 17 of the 18 Euro countries in terms of income---I could always find fresh mushrooms......And that's just one example...)


And I've complained about the inferior, low quality apples sold by Albertson's----and sold as
"fresh" when they are not.


Well, I've just eaten a totally shit apple that I purchased at Wal Mart. Not fresh. Not juicy.  Not tasty.
What did they do to it?  How did they destroy it in this way?  Did they freeze it and then thaw it out?  They should be ashamed.  (But, of course, they are not.)


It is disgusting!
el paso is disgusting,
and capitalism is disgusting!


gmooh!


After-thoughts:
There are, of course, several sub-problems here.  First, maybe people have actually gotten used to crap food.


Secondly, do I expect to get fresh food year round? Yes, I do---but I do not expect to have any one food
food year round.  I would prefer to have food in season.  I can live with not having apples year round if I ever had them fresh----which currently I don't......  There is much insanity about the local grocery stores---for example the idea of displaying things in enormous quantities which suggests a kind of abundance which, in fact there is not.  What's the good of having so many apples on display when all of them are crap?  And, in any case, by displaying mass quantities, it suggests that these are mere commodities.


There is something fundamentally disrespectful---to life and food and culture----about capitalist grocery stores.


Nothing is merely a commodity; and that's another reason to get rid of capitalism once and for all....


(It so happens that I expressed some of my dissatisfaction with the food here recently, in front of several  clerks at Wal Mart...and they all smiled and laughed as if it were all a joke.  What the hell is wrong with  them?!!!??***) GMOOH

"The worst thing about communism....."

"is what follows after it " -- Adam Michnik --- Quote from Slovo, a Slovak weekly (19 May 2012)


http://www.noveslovo.sk/

„Najhoršie na komunizme je to, čo nasleduje po ňom.“ Adam Michnik

corrected 19.5.2012
(I have corrected the inaccurate translation which I provided late Friday/early Saturday;  I hope it's accurate now.)



Communism in Texas

Communist Street Lighting Superior to Capitalist Street Lighting
revised and corrected 19 May 2012


The headline is a bit misleading; it should say communist street lamps in Texas, but even that is not quite right. I lived about three years in a communist era dormitory in Bratislava--- Hotel Druzba. And I recall late one night (early one morning) looking at the street lights thinking how dim they were. 


 Now here's the funny ( or sad) thing! Tonight I was standing on the street outside my parents house and I realized: The street lights are even dimmer than the communist ones I saw in Slovakia!.


Right here in the world capital of capitalism, the center of hatred toward communism. The street lights are so bad that communist street lights are better! In fact, much of the street has no light at all. 


 I can imagine various explanations, all of which go to show what an awful country this is--- explanations such as: people don't go out at night unless they are driving a car.... ( which is probably true and is disgusting because, once again, it shows the fundamentally anti-social nature of this place--and that in two sense, first because climate destruction is anti-social behavior toward the rest of the globe, and because everything about cars is anti-social..--- Cars come beween people more than promoting civility.-- 


But the explanations could continue:  In any case people in the eptx don't walk --- and I don't blame them for that.  During the day the heat and sun don't make for healthy outdoor activity.  And, well, where would you go at night?  Where would you walk to?  Two or three miles to the nearest grocery store?  That's unlikely.  Everything is far away because it is assumed that "everyone" has a car.....


 Of course, there is a striking exception every evening when the sun goes down. You can see oddly shaped bodies with running shoes determinedly and stoically walking for their health---doing their laps at a local park---- but it is all so joyless! 


(Incidentally, dare I say that the park in question is a miserable tiny square of green with a few trees?---And doesn't bare comparison with the parks in Bratislava!--I won't call those parks "communist" as I don't know when they came into being. But here again, in "Eastern Europe" (as Americans think about it) I find something better than what exists in Capitalist America.  To be sure, if the parks in Blava pre-date communism, they can't be called "communist"---but they are in (what Americans think of) as "Eastern" Europe, and the things they call parks in El Paso are pathetic by comparison.  (And even those pathetic parks are going to be privatized......)


With public transit, one always walks between stops and it is not such a bother. Anyway, as I have written here before, El Paso Texas is a city hostile toward pedestrians.  If you are a pedestrian you are a potential target of insults from speeding vehicles, and (at the very least if it is after dark) careful inspection by the local police.


Yes I know that there are sidewalks, but the main focus is on enormous roads for the local assault vehicles. Not friendly to pedestrians. All in all, this is the ugliest place I can imagine--- bad food, inadequate infrastructure---- everything designed more for machines than people. Every day that I stay here I am dying. GMOOH!

Thursday, May 17, 2012

communist toilets beat capitalist toilets ....again..

I lived in Slovakia for more than ten years, and I lived in buildings mostly with communist-era toilets.
And I never had as many problems as I've had with the toilets in the USA in the past three years.

There's a cheap plastic handle that just broke on the toilet, and so it doesn't work...

The USA is a terrible place in countless ways.

gmooh

Death and Myth Making


My eighty-seven year old father says, with astonishment and wonder, “Nineteen years old and I was responsible for the maintenance of a fighter plane.”

He continues to have a boyish and militaristic obsession with weapons, technology, the application of science to the art of killing and maiming human beings.

And I think:  soldiers and cannon-fodder are always, have always been young men---who did not know what the hell they were doing.

The recurrent myth-making of USA films and television shows fills my father’s head.

I don’t mind his memories, but sometimes, his memories seem to be artificial constructions---built out of what he read and what he imagined more than what he had experienced first hand.

My own myth-making starts with the letter I received as a twenty-year old telling me that I could go to graduate school, but that there would be no job at the end.

Of course, the letter was more careful, more scholarly and objective than that!

But it didn’t matter.  My hopes were dashed.  And I have lived with desperation and fear in my heart ever since.

I am sure the authors of the letter meant no harm.  They did not, after, all decide where the resources of a society would be spent.

They never chose that more money would be spent on bombs than on books, or that the books that were published would be mostly trash.

But the letter was a kind of death sentence.

And I have been dying slowly ever since. 

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

The Crimes of Capitalism

Among the crimes of the USA are climate criminality and militarism.
Both escape the notice of ordinary citizens.
Today I happened to be sitting in a coffee shop annexed to a book store (not an especially high quality books store) when I happened to glance to my side.

The man next to me was reading a magazine about World War Two.  I have no doubt that this was not an especially historically accurate account, but, rather characteristically USA style propaganda of a militaristic sort.

Earlier he had been reading a magazine about automobiles.

So, here is a USA citizen who in his spare time indulges fantasies about combat or climate-destroying vehicles.

Is there any hope for this country?

Recommended Reading:

William I. Hitchcock, The Bitter Road to Freedom, Free Press, New York, 2008.
Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire; Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic,
Owl Books, 2005
http://www.americanempireproject.com/bookpage.asp?ISBN=0805077979



Idiot book

Facebook is just idiocy. They want to know my" hometown" . I have no home and no home town. A house is not a home and a place of birth is not a home and a country is not a home or a homeland either. I am not at home anywhere, least of all on f.book---Ffbook, he said-- he, not me! I like my friends abroad where English is spoken as second or third tongue or not at all. Better there than here. But i have no F.ing home. Aint home anywhere.Nowhere is my home.

Capitalism killed me

A thousand small gashes, Too small to see: the insults and offenses against dignity, All can't be seen by those who take it all for granted, But I never could and it burned and simmered and it is boiling over now. Killing me just as surely as if a truck ran me over or a bomb blew out my brains, Because it is the brain first of all that they try to kill.

I can't sleep

I can't sleep, And I can't think. Tho the two are connected, they do occur at different times. At night I don't so much think as drift between thoughts, And I am never sure what I am thinking or what I feel, Though I am damn sure it is not a warm body in bed with me. I cannot think more than half a thought and I want to scream, Keep your capitalism out of my life! I cannot calm down and read half a page because the phone rings, And my father fumbles with the phone. And I hope he gets it right this time. And then my sister's voice answers him. Today at least she was in a tolerable, even pleasant mood.--- but why the hell am I listening to all of this when I need to read or write or become someone. But now I've got to get out of my chair to make lunch, And make sure my father hasn't fallen out of his, And, yes, I am tense again, and cannot think half a thought again. And now I really can't sleep.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Hopeless

I don't have   a space of my own.  I don't have a place where I can be comfortable,
read and write and think, free from interruption.

Without that I am not alive. Without that my life is at most a half or a quarter life.

Then when I hear about how things are better now than they were in the 1950's or 1960's....
(as Noam Chomsky repeatedly tells us), I just want to throw up.  I can't see that my life is better now than it was when I lived in Bratislava.(roughly 1996-2008-with breaks---followed by a year in Vienna, when my life was also better than now.

And when Amy Goodman insists upon talking about "hope", I really begin to throw up.

I can see no cause for hope.

Goodman is making a contribution, but there is often a lack of rigor in her broadcasts......a certain sloppiness within the lines of thoughts.

Hope? No, I have none.  Hope about this country? Certainly not!

Get rid of you TV?  Yes, that's a good idea.  Maybe a little less internet too....

Notes from Prison

Corrected Version:  An error in the earlier version has now been corrected.


Expensive

I would like to count the times the word “expensive” occurs in my father’s vocabulary.

Wars are not expensive.


Remote controlled airplanes whose bombs and rockets  kill and maim women, children, and men too in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Sudan--ripping off arms and legs or heads, burning living flesh, tearing innocent people to pieces---none of that is reckoned as expensive.

Haircuts are expensive and cars are expensive.

The ecological consequences of the personal automobile (self-steered orgies of consumer preference) are not expensive.

My mother is complaining that she can’t get out of bed.

If we leave the house, my father sits in the front seat and regularly exclaims, “Look at all the cars!”—but most of the “cars” are trucks.

He exclaims in astonishment at the number of cars, but the number of cars in this dusty border town certainly can’t be compared to a crowded metropolis, certainly not New York or Prague or even Vienna or Bratislava.

I add the note that VIenna is a pedestrian friendly city, while El Paso Texas is pedestrian-hostile-and insulting.  The bike lanes in El Paso Texas are a bizarre sort of joke---filled with potholes.  The mere act of crossing one of the wide streets in eptx is frightening.  The sadists employed by the city  have designd the traffic light system so that any potential pedestrians are allotted the minimum number of minutes to cross the street. The flashing lights and even the computer-voice count-down add to the unpleasantness of the experience.  (Get your ass out of my way.---says the large man in an even larger truck.)


I add another note on the width of all of the streets:  I've lately had a fantasy of a fat cat in the construction industry counting all the dollars he'll get if the streets are wide---and someone, sitting in an air-conditioned office in a tall building far away, someone with a warped soul reckoning this as "progress", preparing a report... .  And at the same time, I recoil in disgust at the idea that the citizens of this noble and free country felt a need to fill those wide streets with wide vehicles and wide bodies....... that too a kind of "progress"....

My mother complains and complains and complains.  If she did not complain, she wouldn’t have anything to say.

I dream of a day when I lived by myself, had my own flat, and regularly used public transit.  For thirteen years I had no car, and during that time I never for even one second wished that I owned one.


I dream of the day I escape from the merciless sun and the equally merciless system of non-stop propaganda.






Sunday, May 13, 2012

the "new" literary criticism

The Grouch reads--just a bit...

After-thought added 15 May 2012

I'm not mentioning names here until I have a better developed story to tell...but...

I am beginning to suspect that there is a new sort of literary criticism which approaches texts with a theory in mind, and sees what it wants to see---ignoring the rest.

It is much akin to a certain sort of history, or history of philosophy which concentrates on producing a certain smooth narrative......

Of course a proponent of the new literary criticism can add footnotes conceding that the major claims are not exactly true of a given text....And thereby protect himself against criticism...

Yet, I have the feeling that what we've got here is a new Procrustean bed.......

A related phenomenon is the treatment of "communism" in Central Europe as though it were
obvious to all what it really was, and that it was obviously bad, and that anyone associated
with it  in any way   must have been in need of confessing----All mostly unstated, but, I think, an idea that floats around and hinders real understanding......

An after-thought

Do I mean thereby to say that the thing they call "communism" was good?  Surely not.  But, even granting that it was a bad system, there is room for further thought and analysis.  Moreover, it wouldn't be surprising if it had advantages not possessed by current capitalism.  It is a commonplace, e.g., among those old enough to remember the old system that then they had more time for friends and families.  I intend to deplore the tendency to say/think:  that's in the past, so let's not talk about it.

Everyday Blind Capitalist Dogmas

Dear Reader,
I promised this a while back.


Everyday Capitalist Propaganda Passing as Obvious Truth Among the Residents of the USA:  Three Examples

Draft


“Of course, it’s the first axiom of Marketing:  packaging matters more than content.”


Strictly speaking, that is the same as if one were to say lies are just as good as truth.
However, what is shocking is the way in which a person can repeat this claim without any self-consciousness whatsoever, as if it were an obvious truth.


Not only is it not true, but the attitude (confident and cocky disrespect toward reality) well illustrates the deep cultural miasma represented by capitalism in its mundane manifestations.


I emphasize: the North American repeats such nonsense, proudly as it affirms his or her membership in the society.  Moreover, they do so naively with absolutely zero self-criticism and no irony.


Second Example


“Everyone wants lower prices.”


This statement was made to justify the exploitation of workers in sweat shops.  As if it were justification!


The poor manufacturer really has no choice because all of us (the greed “consumers”) force him to seek for the lowest prices.---This is in several ways false.  First, of all the remark assumes that we are all narrowly selfish.  We want to possess the largest possible quantity of consumer goods---as if we felt no solidarity with other human beings, as if we cared not at all about justice.  Secondly, it misrepresents the relationship between ordinary citizens and capitalists---as if the capitalists were forced by us to behave as they do.


Further, to mention only one example;  The actual contribution of wages to the cost, e.g., of an IPad is well under ten percent.  So, the idea that prices would soar if wages were higher is just false.  The unwritten and undebatable assumption is that the Capitalist must have his profits----and the largest profit possible, no matter what the cost to other human beings or the environment.


Of course, insofar as a man identifies with his role as a capitalist, any other possibility will seem unthinkable.  But that’s the same as to say as long as he insists upon his undeserved privileges, others will suffer.  An insistence which should have no weight whatsever with the rest of humanity.


Third Example


“You have to have a gimmick to succeed.”


This is actually connected (or even identical with) the first bit of capitalist propaganda.  Unfortunately, this is something my mother has been repeating my entire life.
It suggests a certain cynicism:  quality is not enough, you have to somehow trick people to get their attention---as if the quality of what you were doing were not enough.


The saying is closely related to the true thought that hard work, effort, and accomplishment are not enough to guarantee reward.  Some indefinable obscure almost magical element is needed.
Insofar as that recognizes the injustice of the society, I must agree; insofar as it suggests that the world itself (rather than the capitalist and his society) is irrational, I must dissent.




El Pasoans are assholes

some asshole is playing "his" music:  BOOM-BOOM-BOOM......BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.......BOOM-BOOM-BOOM......

gmooh


The Grouch reads

The Grouch reads:  Mary Margaret Mackenzie , Plato on Punishment.

Mackenzie complains that if we are determinists, we cannot adequately understand our natural tendency toward anger when we are transgressed upon.

Our picture of ourselves as agents, she claims, is destroyed.

That's just not true.

Recall the Platonic/Socratic claim that all desire is for the good.
I may get angry with someone who shits on me, and I may even do it automatically.

But there is still lots of room for me to wonder what is best.  Am I really improving my
life if I strike out at the fellow?  Am I improving his life?  What is the best thing to do?
What will contribute to a better future rather than a worse one?

And, if you tell me that when I reason thusly, I am obeying that Socratic/Platonic
law.....that I am aiming at The Good, then you will be right.  And, that is precisely my point.

Reference:
p. 224, Chapter 12, Plato on Punishment, Univ. of California Press, 1981.

Note:
In effect when M. cites Morris on how Plato's view threaten "our vital sense of ourselves as persons", she is half right.  The Platonic view would require us to think differently (along the lines I sketched above), but that's hardly any kind of conclusive objection.

I dream of escape.

When life is as empty and dirty, dusty as this desert,
unpleasantness heaped on unpleasantness,
with not even one sincere smile,
not even one friendly conversation with a person for whom I have the least genuine affection,
death seems an attractive option,
an improvement.

--After all, what I am experiencing now
is nothing more than a living death.

A violent death would be more honest than this slow torture.

How can the inhabitants of this site of unending misery stand it?
Why do they not scream and pull out their hair?
Why do they not pound their fists and wail?

I find myself forced to draw the conclusion
that all of them died long ago,
and I am surrounded by their ghosts.

Yo tambien soy indignato.


I, too, am indignant.

in solidarity with Los Indignatos; Sunday, May 13, 2012

I am indignant after hearing a lifetime of lies.

I turn away in indignation at a country that has lied to me non-stop, every day of my life.

I remember with indignation the miserable schools of my youth—places where anything I learned was despite the influence of teachers who themselves knew nothing of freedom and culture.  And, if those teachers believed the lies they had been told, then they are blameless because that is how one survives in the cruel politicial and economic system called capitalism.

And if there were one or two teachers who encouraged freedom and creativity, their influence was not enough to overcome the tremendous weight of an evil system of conformity and control.

I am indignant when I think of the impersonality and factory-like nature of the so-called “higher” education which I received at the University of Texas-Austin.  And whenever I hear that someone would like to credit that institution for any of my achievements, I recoil in deep and bitter indignation.  There, too,  basic humanity was lacking---except for one or two or three individuals who were an exception to the rule of factory production.

I am indignant when I think of my parents’ faith that by helping me get an education they were helping me to have a better life than they have had.  I have had nothing but insecure, temporary employment----and that includes short-term jobs with universities when I was given a fancy title.  It would have been more accurate to describe me as a Professor-Temp.

I am indignant when I think that all of my education was warped and twisted by the Capitalist’s refusal to recognize that education is a right, a social good, not a commodity.  And that decision by a small number of evil individuals ruined my access to real culture. –Not evil in a metaphysical way, not evil as an imaginary creature with horns, but evil in the only way humans can be evil, when they encourage, participate in, and profit from a system of exploitation.  Capitalism perverted and twisted what should have been something only good in my life so that it was an unpleasant experience with only moments of pleasure and insight.

I am indignant at the joylessness of my life, the anti-social nature of my schooling experiences and my childhood---due in large measure to the over-expenditure on highways and freeways, the obsession with climate-destroying indivisually-piloted vehicles of destruction.

I look back on my life with indignation.  I look back on the lives of my parents with indignation.

I am indignant when I see the privileges of doctors and the way my elderly parents are treated.

I am indignant when I see frail elderly adults struggling to travel to the office of a much younger, much healthier doctor who might easily and comfortably travel to them.

I am indignant when I see the constant demand that my parents' justify their need for help----and most indignant of all when I realize that no such parallel demand is ever made upon those who manufacture weapons of killing.

We have been lied to and used.  And, as if that were not enough, my country, the USA has abused many other nations, and continues to do so.

The place of my birth, which can never be my spiritual home, is a place of militarism and racism.  It is a hypocritical purveyor of disorder throughout the world, a greedy beast which devours the innocent at home and in foreign lands.

Enough is enough.  It is time to say that it is all a lie.  It is time for justice and an end to wars of aggression, time for real education which liberates rather than limits the imagination, time for relations between human beings which are not based upon exploitation and fear.  It is time for courage and imagination to triumph over pettiness and violence.  But, first of all, we must speak truly, and
say what's going on, and what has been going on.  It is needful to describe the ugliness of existing institutions without shrinking back.  And with even a half accurate description, anyone with a shred of honesty must turn away with disgust, indignation, and anger.

They will of course invoke a taboo and attempt to stop you from such emotional honesty.  That, too, is a device of control.  Indeed, companies sell software packages to measure that bad honesty!

But I laugh, laugh, laugh at such idiocy.














Saturday, May 12, 2012

The Ignorance of My Sisters

The Ignorance of My Sisters is Infinite.
Three years ago, when my father had a bad fall, one requiring hospitalization, it was suggested that I should come home, to take care of my parents.
Now, I later discovered, that it had, in effect, been agreed without consulting me, without discussing it with me, that I was the right one to take care of the elderly parents because I was unmarried.


As it turns out, my sisters imagine that an unmarried person has no life worthy of considering, and no responsibilities---least of all responsibilities to one's own self.  (So if I have no job currently, or no health care, or no friends, or no chance to pursue my talents, all of that counts for nothing.)

The hypocritical aspect of the whole thing is this:  both sisters have adult children.  So, it's certainly not the children which prevent them from caring for my parents.  Furthermore, their adult husbands are not invalids.  So, they surely do not require the care and attention of another person.

Of course, the simple fact is that my sisters are incapable of even imagining the displacement and disruption to my life entailed by a move from Central Europe to a stagnant backwater of the USA.
First of all, because I lived by myself, with my own apartment--oh Silence! blessed silence!  No interruptions from annoying phone calls from bored sisters or health care workers or a thousand sorts of annoying unwanted calls, no shouting parents, not television noises echoing endlessly through a small house---- and in the process of moving I had to leave things behind----books and clothing.  I also left people--friends---behind, and electronic communication just is not the real thing!  All that represents a real cost, a real loss to myself a drastic diminution in the quality of my life.
But according to the book-keeping of my sisters, all of that counts for nothing.


Furthermore, I did have a job in Europe, and I have left that behind.  I don't say it was a great job,
but I had an income, and managed to survive.  Moreover, I had a routine, a schedule, which allowed me time for myself, time to read, write, and study.  And, I even had a research program of sorts.  I had managed to have one article accepted for publication just before leaving, and I had plans to continue writing.  But, all of that was interrupted and destroyed in the move to a different country.

Now, it is impossible for me to have any kind of consistent work schedule.--Here I refer to scholarly activities not activities performed for the benefit of the capitalist class.  I have no space of my own where I can work.  I am trapped in the home of two elderly persons, and it is filled with clothes that no one wears, books that no one reads, and assorted other items that are here merely because no one will throw them out.  And, I cannot simply throw them out---because they are not mine.  Indeed, the paradox is that the necessary things in the house increasingly don't work----e.g. toilets are always breaking, while unnecessary things which no one uses fill up every empty space, sitting idle and collecting dust, making it impossible to open a window and let light or air into this cave of hollow consumption.

I can only close this post by saying I would visit upon my sisters a plague of mammoth proportions as a punishment for their blindness and stupidity, their willful lack of consideration--- if it were in my power.

My only hope is that someday I can escape.  For now I am in prison, a prison not of my making, but one created by two sisters who gave not a thought to my happiness, and thereby managed to preserve their own habits and conveniences.  In order to preserve their comfort and convenience, they have---insofar as they were able----destroyed my life.

the stupidity of nurse supervisors

"Is Mark working?"

The correct answer:  Look you stupid cow!  Mark does work.  He cooks.  He shops. He buys the groceries.  He helps his father with his exercise.  And he does other things to help his parents.

Sub-text:

The stupidity of the nurse supervisor:  She accepts the conventional wisdom (stupidity really) about what work is.  Work is when you receive money because one of the Capitalist Class manages to increase their wealth by your activity.

More diplomatic answer:  Mark has a Ph.D. in Philosophy, but in the current world, the powers that be are destroying the public education system.  That means that there are fewer jobs for Philosophy Ph.D.'s every year.  Do you realistically think he has a chance of getting a job?  Do you expect him to work part time with low pay and no health benefits or pension?  Do you honestly imagine that this would be better than spending more time at home where he can help his parents?

As I said, these visits are intrusive.  Undoubtedly, the Nurse-Supervisor (No, not "Nurse Ratchet', but perhaps "Nurse Wretched") thought her question "innocent'------But then people who behave badly often do so in ignorance, and quickly forget what they have done because its badness was never registered by them.........Eichmann, after all, seemed a very sane, normal, moral man to the health care professionals who met him!


visiting nurses

My opinion of Americans, and their overall education level, is very bad.  Their heads are full of all sorts of propaganda---and very little knowledge.

(I shall be adding a post illustrating what I have in mind exactly by "propaganda".  But, for now, let's say that they are blind to the militarism and racism in their country; and, they additionally freely spout capitalist nonsense.  I do have specific examples which I shall provide in a future post.)

The regular visits by a nurse-supervisor are irritating and annoying.  They are intrusive and not helpful.

I am afraid I've not quite hit the nail on the head.
So,  I shall try again.
About the supervisoryvisits...

We have these regular visits---I can't be sure how often, maybe very ninety days.
And they are idiotic.  The woman asks exactly the same questions over and over again.

And the pretense that she is our "friend" is just not sincere.  She is not my friend, yet
I am forced to grin and nod like an idiot because I fear she can deny my parents the very
little help they currently get.

I feel like she is inspecting us!  Not here to help us, but here to check up on us.


(She asks questions and we answer----a non-egalitarian situation at the most basic level!)


The whole business is intrusive and insulting.


Recall:  infinite money if available for weapons.  The USA spends more money than any other country on killing machines.  And the budgets for those killing machines are not carefully controlled--in fact not really controlled at all.


They are not controlled and inspected the way that my parents and I are inspected by this nurse-supervisor every three months.


 This is an insulting, degrading system.


The USA is an insulting, degrading place to live.


Friday, May 11, 2012

New York City as a Home of Anti-Culture

If Socrates himself were re-incarnated as a sixteen year old African-American youth in the Bronx,
he would undoubtedly be ticketed for "belligerence"....

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=8304

News Flash: Communist Toilets Win

Communist Toilets are Better Than Capitalist Toilets


endnote added 23 May 2012


From 1996 to 2008 I spent most of my time in formerly "communist" countries---Slovakia, and (briefly) the Czech Republic.

During that time, I used many different toilets in buildings of different vintages.  I live in a panelaky (pre-fab high rise) and I lived in older buildings as well.  You might as well say that panelaks are communist buildings since they were built during communism.

But never once did I have the problems with toilets that I have experienced in the USA in the past three years.  I do not wish to go into the gruesome details, but the toilets in the USA just don't work very well.

I draw the conclusion that communist toilets are superior.

Indeed, given the increased surveillance of ordinary citizens, the increasingly militaristic role of the police in the USA, and the complete absence of job security and the scarcity of health care, it seems to me not at all an unreasonable proposition to suggest that communism in Eastern Europe gave many people a better life than is currently available to many people in the USA.  The current residents of the USA may say that, despite the features I have cited, they are "freer".  I don't know what that comes to.  The mass media in the USA is full of propaganda, and if you don't have time to read non-commercial media, then your thoughts are not your own, but were planted in your head by someone else.  I suppose that some citizens might point to their new "smart" phone, their large truck, or their new computer.  Resisting an urge to laugh (or throw up), I would say that those items do not, by themselves, make your life better.  The quality of your life depends upon what you do.  Do you have independence and make decisions at work---or, must you simply follow orders?  Do you have time for your family and friends?   When was the last time you actually read a book?  (Was it a piece of militaristic political propaganda provided by a "history book club"?) How much time do you spend worrying about whether you will lose your job?  How much time do you spend worrying about whether you can pay your bills?

Of course, it is to be expected that what I am saying will seem outrageous to many people.  As a historian might point out, the USA was unique among countries in the world in the "hysterical" reaction to the Soviet Union and its version of communism during the "Cold War', and such hysteria lingers among many citizens of the USA.  Plainly, that sort of fear-mongering is useful to the political class. It is an easy entry point by which to manipulate citizens.  (In the future I shall add a reference to the thus far unnamed historian, who, by the way, points out that the hysteria was completely unjustified.  The USSR was in no position to invade the USA, and, in any case, took a mostly defensive posture.)

Endnote:
The historian in question is Eric Hobsbawm, in his The Age of Extremes;  A History of the World 1914-1991, Random House, 1994; Chapter Eight, "Cold War".

Monday, May 7, 2012

The Crimes of Capitalism

In the USA an educated man can strut proudly and proclaim
the maxims of marketing
and think thereby
that he shows his worth;
but marketing is bullshit.
It pretends to reveal some deep truths about humanity,
but instead has all the power of a distorting glass that cuts the light
and twists shapes into grotesque mockeries of original perfections.

The fact that such rubbish is given any place at all in universities
 is evidence of a dismally low level of actual culture.

Overheard:
"And they have a good business school."
---Said by a young man....to  a friend, as if boasting....
But he is about to ruin his life,
to waste his life,
and damage the lives of others;
all perfectly legal,
--capitalistically legally.

The crimes of capitalism include the personal possession of paintings
and things of beauty
by individuals;
----things which are by natural right the birthright and possession of all human beings;
never mind the question how they got their wealth
---these fools who clutch at beauty they cannot create---
They exchange their wealth for things at auctions,
auctions which should never happen.

What kind of fool imagines that he can possess beauty?

What narrowness of intellect!
What brazen idolatry!
Oh! Look at me!  On MY wall hangs this or that beautiful thing which I did not and never could create!
But I could buy it.

The man has evidently got a screw loose.

A perfect capitalist fool!

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Weather Report: El Paso, Texas, 6 May, 5pm

I  am dying here. The air is foul.  All the windows are sealed shut.  Air comes in through the air conditioning system---air "conditioning" ha ha ha!  what a joke!  The air is dirty!  Outside the air is too hot to breathe.  No sane person would willingly go outside except for very short periods of time; it is too hot.  I am dying, suffocating.  There is no life here.---only dust, dirt, a heartless sun, enormous trucks, and cement.......  This is hell.  -----gmooh!  Death would be a welcome relief.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Little Otik

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of seeing Jan Svankmajer's film "Little Otik."
It is based upon a folk tale collected by KJ Erben.
The story expresses the fear that a small child will eat more than a poor couple can provide for them.
In the story, a wooden substitute for a child eats the parents, and many others----until he meets a grandmother who knows what to do.

In the USA, if there were to be a modern version of such a folktale, it would have to be about
the automobile----which destroys lives and cities.....

Would that the USA version would end in a way analogous to Erben's original, with the mother and father
saying that never again would they wish for an automobile....

If only.....

gmooh