"Of course the Russians and others are inventive, but people with cheap PCs and Internet connections in their homes can thank Capitalism."One of the things I do "thank capitalism" for, is the poor quality of argument and intellectual ratiocination in this era. I suppose it has always been this way, though I feel I can certainly credit capitalist thinking for infantilizing those who were supposed to be educated by the institutions of universal education created by governments. People today rarely produce a single new thought, a thought that is more than mere repetition, or an "intellectual" thought that doesn't merely pay eternal homage to the rich and famous in a favored specialty. Banality rules the schools, today, from kindergarten to college. Intellectualism is too often today a mere whore to the tenure-track college position; very few people really have anything to say, certainly nothing of the import of the discussion these guys or this guy produced.
Rocky certainly doesn't tell us anything new, and one can tell by his short, glib replies, that my request that he actually read something from the previous thread on this topic, has gone ignored. Who is to say whether we might have the network we have today, or something BETTER, without the money games we play around what we do for a living?
Look, Rocky, if you have something better to add to the discussion than anything Mike Bednarz has put forth, then let's read about it. You are saying nothing if you cling to Goebbels' logic that "anything that is said three times is true."
I don't have to "thank capitalism" for anything, thank you, I pay mightily for it, and work hourly for it, already, and that's thanks enough. Capitalism is a scheme for making money off my labor, money that is given to me only to be taken away in larger quantity. There is no moral imperative behind the capitalist system that would invite me to thank it as I would thank a human being. Human beings are capable of moral thought, of caring for their fellow human beings; capitalism isn't, and the capitalist system throws people away daily much as you and I throw away our garbage.
A reading list:
Habermas, Jurgen: THEORY OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTION, both of 2 volumes, and THE STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE
Horkheimer, Max, and Adorno, Theodor: DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Turner, Victor: THE RITUAL PROCESS
Foucault, Michel: DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH
Freire, Paulo: PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED and PEDAGOGY OF HOPE
Weber, Max: THE PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM
Arnason, Johann P.: THE FUTURE THAT FAILED
Baumann, Zygmunt: MODERNITY AND THE HOLOCAUST
Huxley, Aldous: BRAVE NEW WORLD
Burke, Kenneth: ATTITUDES TOWARD HISTORY
also see my bibliography on ethnographic readings
None.
