Sandy Krolick's Blog, page 18

It’s Not a Clusterfuck! It’s an American Pussy Riot!

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It is comically depressing to watch the pole dancing of American politics from over here in the land of Putin and rioting pussy.  Even Dmitry Medvedev realizes that the girls have already spent enough time in lock-up.  Yet we all gawk in amazement at how the American public can stand for the same striptease routine over-and-over again and not realize they are being had…

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Filed under: 9/11, American Dream, Anarchy, Austerity, Body-politic, capitalism, Christianity, civilization, collapse, Colonialism, commodification, Corporate State, cultural crisis, democracy, feral, Financial Crisis, freedom, genocide, geopolitics, global collapse, homeland security, human nature, Islam, madness, Obama, Presidential politics, progress, Protest, Putin, religion, Riots, Russia, social contract, Spectacle, State, terrorism Tagged: Africa, Arab Spring, capitalism, Christianity, conspiracy, Corporate State, Earth, Egypt, Empire, Financial Crisis, freedom, geopolitics, Libya, MENA, Protest, thought police

The Nuclear Family and Its Discontents

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[In the ‘post-kinship’ era] the nuclear family by itself cannot resist the impingements of modern political and economic institutions: the father, mother, and their children must be surrounded by some intermediate, protective body of persons in order to be safe from unacceptable levels of [institutional] control. In fact, those modern political and economic institutions could not have been created in the first place unless the original protective body of persons, the clan, was broken into its constituent and susceptible parts, its nuclear families. The first civilization, in the Middle East, and all subsequent civilizations elsewhere, were constructed on the break-up of their pre-urban clans. (Bram, Recovery of the West)

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Filed under: Agriculture, American Dream, Anarchy, Aristotle, Body-politic, capitalism, civilization, collapse, Corporate State, cultural crisis, feminine, feral, freedom, geopolitics, global collapse, language, madness, Presidential politics, primal humanity, progress, religion, Russia, Siberia, soul, State Tagged: Aristotle, capitalism, Christianity, Communalism, Corporate State, Earth, Empire, Engels, Family, freedom, Freud, geopolitics, human nature, phenomenology, primitive, Reality, religion

The Only Question: No Apologies Necessary

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Well, a new whirlwind that had been brewing off the coast and heading towards the homeland, as now touched landfall.  Is it a tropical storm, a hurricane, or perhaps just the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida?  Of course, we are familiar with all three phenomena.  Will this one be any different?  Of course not!  There will be lots of thunder and lightning. Many will get soaked or displaced in the downpour, others may die from boredom, the loss of an anchor, or simply crushed by the weight of all the uncertainty. Surely, the usual suspects will be rounded up, keeping the brown-shirts from homeland security busy throughout.  Perhaps the true believers among them will even supplicate their storm-god, Yahweh, to assist in the clean-up effort.

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Filed under: American Dream, Aristotle, Body-politic, body-subject, business, capitalism, Christianity, civilization, collapse, commodification, Corporate State, cultural crisis, democracy, freedom, geopolitics, global collapse, homeland security, Obama, Presidential politics, progress, Protest, rationality, religion, social contract, soul, Spectacle, State, terrorism, trust Tagged: Ayn Rand, capitalism, Christianity, Corporate State, Empire, freedom, geopolitics, human nature, phenomenology, Reality, religion, Soul

In the Folds of My Flesh

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Living in Siberia – surrounded by forests and rivers, dachas and banyas, gardens and fields; enjoying the sweaty closeness of others engaged in real physical activity, in touch with the land, sampling the fruits of our labors together, the camaraderie of food and strong drink – I can no longer ignore the pleadings of my flesh, and the deep-seated need for touch in everyday experience.  I also recognize the continuous and deliberate attenuation of both of these in daily life in America today.

Filed under: American Dream, body-subject, civilization, commodification, cultural crisis, earth, earthly-sensuous, feminine, feral, freedom, geopolitics, human nature, nature, phenomenology, primal humanity, progress, rationality, religion, Russia, sexuality, Siberia, social contract, Spectacle, time

ATTENTION – Fix Is In

Sorry: In the Folds of My Flesh should work now!!! You can Click Image Here or Go to the original post and click there! Sorry again, sandy

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Filed under: cultural crisis

In the Folds of My Flesh

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Living in Siberia – surrounded by forests and rivers, dachas and banyas, gardens and fields; enjoying the sweaty closeness of others engaged in real physical activity, in touch with the land, sampling the fruits of our labors together, the camaraderie of food and strong drink – I can no longer ignore the pleadings of my flesh, and the deep-seated need for touch in everyday experience.  I also recognize the continuous and deliberate attenuation of both of these in daily life in America today.

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Filed under: American Dream, body-subject, civilization, commodification, cultural crisis, earth, earthly-sensuous, feminine, feral, freedom, geopolitics, human nature, nature, phenomenology, primal humanity, progress, rationality, religion, Russia, sexuality, Siberia, social contract, Spectacle, time Tagged: Body/flesh, capitalism, Christianity, Earth, freedom, geopolitics, human nature, phenomenology, primitive, Reality, religion, Soul

Age of Reason

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Can the smokescreen created by these diversions in the homeland get any thicker; can the spectacles be any more entrancing and distracting?  We are living through the most obscurant of times, my fellow travelers.  As the charade-parade of the stiffly British Olympics wound down in a strangely eerie twilight, and the time clocks ceased clicking off the milliseconds, with heroic athletes leaving the tracks and fields of battle to make their way home with shiny medallions swinging from the necks, we the people were left searching for the next wave, the next fix, the next event, the next rush of adrenalin.

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Filed under: Agriculture, American Dream, Anarchy, Aristotle, Body-politic, body-subject, capitalism, censorship, Christianity, civilization, collapse, commodification, Corporate State, cultural crisis, democracy, entrepreneurship, evangelical, feminine, feral, freedom, geopolitics, global collapse, homeland security, human nature, Presidential politics, rationality, religion, Russia, social contract, Spectacle, State, syllogism, terrorism Tagged: capitalism, Christianity, Corporate State, Earth, Empire, Financial Crisis, freedom, geopolitics, human nature, Reality, religion, syllogism

On Ordinariness: A Foray in Cultural Phenomenology

[We've had opportunities to hear some of these arguments from Marvin Bram, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Mikhail Epstein earlier in the year.  I would like now to flesh-out these points more concretely, and consider the  phenomenological apperception of what one anthropologist has termed the experience of "liminality" -- a state in which one's usually well-delineated cultural distinctions  become blurred, even foreign.]

By virtue of natality and the ability to act, each new individual poses a threat to civilization. The child carries barbarism with him or her. (Einer Øverenget, Hannah Arendt, 217)

Let us first agree that modern cultures, and most especially the Western Curriculum, are about making distinctions. Language, and of course writing,1 is a vital accomplice in this activity that “cuts” the world up into so many discrete entities, creating a sense of order where formerly there was just (dare we say it) ordinary stuff. The logic of a culture’s language (syntactic, grammatic, and logistic structures) will determine in large measure how these distinctions are drawn and what categories are applicable within different contexts, establishing diverse horizons of meaning.

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Filed under: Agriculture, Anarchy, body-subject, civilization, collapse, Corporate State, cultural crisis, democracy, earth, feral, freedom, geopolitics, human nature, language, phenomenology, primal humanity, progress, rationality, religion, Siberia, social contract, soul, State Tagged: Corporate State, Earth, Empire, freedom, geopolitics, human nature, phenomenology, primitive, Soul, syllogism

Vidal and Monotheism: The death of a god

The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. – Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal died this week.  He was eighty six years old.  He was a “man of letters” as they say; but more than that, he was a cultural critic — a novelist, playwright, essayist, memoirist, screenwriter, and political commentator. He was known to many, even those who had never read his works.  He was loved by many, and hated by many more, perhaps.

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Filed under: American Dream, Anarchy, capitalism, censorship, Christianity, civilization, collapse, Corporate State, cultural crisis, democracy, earth, evangelical, freedom, geopolitics, global collapse, Gore Vidal, Hitchens, homeland security, Islam, nature, Occupy Wall Street, progress, religion, social contract, State, terrorism Tagged: capitalism, Christianity, Colonialism, conspiracy, Corporate State, Earth, Empire, Financial Crisis, freedom, fundamentalism, geopolitics, Gore Vidal, Hitchens, monotheism, Occupy Wall Street, Protest, religion

Paterno-ism

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Well now, look at that; they took down Joe Paterno’s statue from outside the Penn State Stadium.  Why?  To make themselves feel better about the culture of excess and abuse they have created and continue to nurture around this country daily?  Football – the commodified and commercialized sport of champions – has become the heroic denouement in this bone-dry graveyard of capital.  How many more of our children, and ourselves, will be sacrificed on this altar of consumption, greed and excess, grinding down our youth in order to enrich the wealthy and distract the Joneses? 

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Filed under: American Dream, Anarchy, business, capitalism, commodification, Corporate State, cultural crisis, freedom, geopolitics, madness, Obama, religion, sexuality, terrorism Tagged: capitalism, Christianity, Corporate State, Empire, free will, Reality, religion