I loved the insights about the racist nature of the enlightenment in the west. "the Enlightenment was always an exclusionary project . . .America's founding fathers have this great document or documents with basically establishing the liberal order here and also have slavery and genocide at the same time". It almost presages what the US government has foisted upon us, its citizens, these past two years: bellowing about liberal democracy while committing a genocide pretty much against the popular will. And toward the end of the interview, Joe sews those thoughts up with "democracies commit atrocities". Amen.
This country has always been riddled with prejudice. Rarely is it brought up that people from the the European south and the east were considered as being inferior even to blacks. They had to work their way toward whiteness. Who fought in WWI, Europeans from the west, or north? No! Blacks and Europeans from the east and south fought that war. some relatives walking through neighborhoods, not Italian, and in the city had glass bottles thrown at them that would hit the side walk, break and spit glass into their legs and arms. Nothing really surprises me about the US in regard to prejudice toward one group or another.
I grew up in an immigrant/1st-gen Italian-American community in NYC, so yes I know of what you speak. Prejudice is a national pastime from the puritans on down through the generations of this empire's brief existence.
I wish more people had an understanding of that. Of course down south it was worse and lynching was not all that uncommon when it came to Italians. There's a short video of the 11 Italians killed down south which is interesting. The 1891 lynching of 11 Italian-Americans in New Orleans
Thanks for that link, and I think I would like to continue to hear what she has to say. As far as Columbus, yeah keep the holiday, but personally I don't like the guy.
"I just imagine that all my money is funneled into a small part of a bomb that causes someone to lose their life in Gaza.”
Is devastating to my soul. A crime so terrible, yet one I am powerless to stop from happening again and again. The darkness seeps in. I stare at the photo's of the faces of the grieving ones whose pain has no boundaries. I ache in shared guilt.
Joe Sacco's reflections on his mother made me think of my own. I grew up in a home where my mother was a rather devout anti-Zionist and I thought maybe she was identifying with the Palestinians because like them she didn't really have a home of her own either, since she grew up in an orphanage. Thanks for that.
It's been said by philosophers and by writers of the Lost Generation that the Enlightenment died in the trenches of WWI. It's just taken a century longer to see in the U.S. because "we" won WWII (or so we were taught.) In addition, capitalism is the greatest econ system ever and synonymous with freedom (or so we were propagandized.) That's why "we" won the Cold War. So then fighting for capitalism = fighting for democracy.
STEM majors are fine because they fit the dominant way of thinking. A way that must be seen for what it is and more importantly, for what it isn't, in order to enable recovery. What it isn't is why the humanities, ways by which we become fully human, are threatened with extinction.
Iain McGilchrist has been writing and speaking about this for a decade; see his 2021 two vol. magnum opus //The Matter with Things (Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World)//. The left hemisphere has been dominant since the Enlightenment. It processes through abstraction and quantification. It needs certainty and control. It is also overoptimistic--like the Dunning-Kruger effect. For sure L modes are characteristic of neolibs and neocons. The right hemisphere is characteristic of the arts, the humanities. It's about possibility, the implicit, the contextual, the unique, gestalt, metaphor, and meaning. The RH understands the LH, but the reverse is not so.
This is not merely some generalized spiritual crap. It's also what quantum physicists have been trying to tell us for a hundred years. Now consider why the western world is in the situation it is in. McGilchrist also warns us that we cannot deal with problems by using the same methods that got us into them.
They say that the Israeli public basically is indifferent to the genocide that their government is implementing whereas the majority of people in the US are against it.
-The discussion regarding the unquestioned and generally uncommented upon abrogation of international laws, the decisions of the powerless international courts disregarded, and immediately forgotten. The crimes against humanity, the genocide "on open display" as Joe Sacco put it, casually accepted by the world powers, certainly in the West. Corruption, lying and the right of might accepted. And the implicit question, where are we now? In so many ways, entering unknown territory.
And this leading into the related question of where does this put our "civilization".
What does it say about our "civilization", the future playing out in the face of the almost certainly inevitable climate, social and economic catastrophe.
Disorder and conflict, leading into an unprecedented time in human history, with a culture in which standards of morality and rules-based order are already largely absent - not an auspicious situation, regardless of the limits and hypocrisies already shown in the Enlightenment tradition as discussed here.
All cultures and societies are a mixture. At a certain point a change in matter of degree becomes a change in kind. What was a part becomes effectively the whole. In our case, it seems to be the worst parts. What comes following the seemingly complete abandonment of the tenets of moral society, which doesn't even pay lip service to the values that it formerly held, at least in part?
To the work of John Grey on this line of thought could be added that of John Ralston Saul. (The thought triggered by the fact that a copy of Voltaire's Bastards was spotted in the background.)
I loved the insights about the racist nature of the enlightenment in the west. "the Enlightenment was always an exclusionary project . . .America's founding fathers have this great document or documents with basically establishing the liberal order here and also have slavery and genocide at the same time". It almost presages what the US government has foisted upon us, its citizens, these past two years: bellowing about liberal democracy while committing a genocide pretty much against the popular will. And toward the end of the interview, Joe sews those thoughts up with "democracies commit atrocities". Amen.
This country has always been riddled with prejudice. Rarely is it brought up that people from the the European south and the east were considered as being inferior even to blacks. They had to work their way toward whiteness. Who fought in WWI, Europeans from the west, or north? No! Blacks and Europeans from the east and south fought that war. some relatives walking through neighborhoods, not Italian, and in the city had glass bottles thrown at them that would hit the side walk, break and spit glass into their legs and arms. Nothing really surprises me about the US in regard to prejudice toward one group or another.
I grew up in an immigrant/1st-gen Italian-American community in NYC, so yes I know of what you speak. Prejudice is a national pastime from the puritans on down through the generations of this empire's brief existence.
I wish more people had an understanding of that. Of course down south it was worse and lynching was not all that uncommon when it came to Italians. There's a short video of the 11 Italians killed down south which is interesting. The 1891 lynching of 11 Italian-Americans in New Orleans
I vaguely recall the history from Zinn's People's History but haven't seen the video. Found a real short one at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y-Dji6Mx_U.
Thanks for the reminder of how brutal it can be, how desperately more kindness is needed in this society.
A People’s History of the United States: 1492 – Present Howard Zinn, a great book!
If only we used it as a standard HS text; Americans might not be so delusional.
Thanks for that link, and I think I would like to continue to hear what she has to say. As far as Columbus, yeah keep the holiday, but personally I don't like the guy.
Extraordinary show. Joe expresses so beautifully and touchingly the suffering and frustration we share. Thank you for this.
The last line of the introduction,
"I just imagine that all my money is funneled into a small part of a bomb that causes someone to lose their life in Gaza.”
Is devastating to my soul. A crime so terrible, yet one I am powerless to stop from happening again and again. The darkness seeps in. I stare at the photo's of the faces of the grieving ones whose pain has no boundaries. I ache in shared guilt.
Joe Sacco's reflections on his mother made me think of my own. I grew up in a home where my mother was a rather devout anti-Zionist and I thought maybe she was identifying with the Palestinians because like them she didn't really have a home of her own either, since she grew up in an orphanage. Thanks for that.
It's been said by philosophers and by writers of the Lost Generation that the Enlightenment died in the trenches of WWI. It's just taken a century longer to see in the U.S. because "we" won WWII (or so we were taught.) In addition, capitalism is the greatest econ system ever and synonymous with freedom (or so we were propagandized.) That's why "we" won the Cold War. So then fighting for capitalism = fighting for democracy.
STEM majors are fine because they fit the dominant way of thinking. A way that must be seen for what it is and more importantly, for what it isn't, in order to enable recovery. What it isn't is why the humanities, ways by which we become fully human, are threatened with extinction.
Iain McGilchrist has been writing and speaking about this for a decade; see his 2021 two vol. magnum opus //The Matter with Things (Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World)//. The left hemisphere has been dominant since the Enlightenment. It processes through abstraction and quantification. It needs certainty and control. It is also overoptimistic--like the Dunning-Kruger effect. For sure L modes are characteristic of neolibs and neocons. The right hemisphere is characteristic of the arts, the humanities. It's about possibility, the implicit, the contextual, the unique, gestalt, metaphor, and meaning. The RH understands the LH, but the reverse is not so.
This is not merely some generalized spiritual crap. It's also what quantum physicists have been trying to tell us for a hundred years. Now consider why the western world is in the situation it is in. McGilchrist also warns us that we cannot deal with problems by using the same methods that got us into them.
They say that the Israeli public basically is indifferent to the genocide that their government is implementing whereas the majority of people in the US are against it.
Thank you again.
Particularly appreciated:
-The discussion regarding the unquestioned and generally uncommented upon abrogation of international laws, the decisions of the powerless international courts disregarded, and immediately forgotten. The crimes against humanity, the genocide "on open display" as Joe Sacco put it, casually accepted by the world powers, certainly in the West. Corruption, lying and the right of might accepted. And the implicit question, where are we now? In so many ways, entering unknown territory.
And this leading into the related question of where does this put our "civilization".
What does it say about our "civilization", the future playing out in the face of the almost certainly inevitable climate, social and economic catastrophe.
Disorder and conflict, leading into an unprecedented time in human history, with a culture in which standards of morality and rules-based order are already largely absent - not an auspicious situation, regardless of the limits and hypocrisies already shown in the Enlightenment tradition as discussed here.
All cultures and societies are a mixture. At a certain point a change in matter of degree becomes a change in kind. What was a part becomes effectively the whole. In our case, it seems to be the worst parts. What comes following the seemingly complete abandonment of the tenets of moral society, which doesn't even pay lip service to the values that it formerly held, at least in part?
To the work of John Grey on this line of thought could be added that of John Ralston Saul. (The thought triggered by the fact that a copy of Voltaire's Bastards was spotted in the background.)
Thanks to Joe Sacco and Chris Hedges for this enlightening discussion.