tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6730212144855253647.post7437241312420687832..comments2023-07-31T05:43:49.467-07:00Comments on Anatomy of Culture: Revolutions and RomanticismRB Glenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16916044843808043297noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6730212144855253647.post-6798165853785553682010-01-31T10:30:48.618-08:002010-01-31T10:30:48.618-08:00Guesses about the future from pundits on late-nigh...Guesses about the future from pundits on late-night talk shows are probably no more accurate than the predictions of linear success and the shibboleths of inevitable progress were of the glories of the 20th century, with its projections of accoutrements like personal helicopters and free food, and constant amusements at the mere touch of buttons--the closest in the latter case being porn and sports at the click of a mouse. On such notions, only the poor get the food stamps, and only the rich get the personal copters. Though the point was made of the mere POSSIBILITY of such things, and in that vein accurate to some degree. Contradictions abounded and were pointed out even then. If progress is inevitable, why all the emphasis on revolution? If the synthesis/antithesis of seeing history was shown to forge new notions, why did it not take root in those nations with desperate situations that writers made note of all the way to the time of the malnourished starvling "Oakies" in the Grapes of Wrath? Why did the Marxians, who had an intellectual following in all of Europe, make their first real Revolutionary strike in a cold, agrarian, mostly non-industrial land of pealing church bells and angry peasants--like Russia. Trouble was brewing, yes, but it was the Czarist variety, not industrial.<br /><br />So much then for predictive insights from every budding Notrodomus.<br /><br />The old saying is <b><i>"The Past is Prologue."</i></b><br /><br />My point being that someone WILL be analyzing us, should the "we" of the "us" leave a legacy beyond chemical waste and refuse. <br /><br />Marx and Engals both had notions that were ahead of their time, and contra what some of my conservative kin say, WERE more than just expert pamphleteers. Of course, their vision was linear, in that human progress moved on a steady if bumpy timeline along the potholes of history, taking a recursive look and rearview mirror glance to superstition and religion and other alleged sins of the past that we've now overcome. Some philosophers today claim this is pish-posh, and that it merely reflects--as did the Marxian vision--an homage that is leftover from the "Triumphalism" of the hard sciences that chased the demons back to their hovels.<br /><br />Romanticism here was really just a rehash of previous notions of conquest over some collective enemy, though Marx would deny this sternly, no doubt. This time, the enemy was a necessary agent, and Marx himself wrote on the expansive and to a degree liberating qualities of early capitalism in that it "batters down all Chinese Walls", both literally and figurately, and smashed the old world and brought an end to the "idiocy of rural life", as he termed such pastoral matters.<br /><br />But even here their predictions were about as accurate based on the info THEY had as we are to be with what WE have, even knowing that per some pundits, our "knowledge" (if by that we mean the "facts of the matter" on whatever topic) is "exploding" at exponential rates. Perhaps on the "factoids", but what about <i>wisdom</i>. Should our forebears' civilizations had had that, they'd still be around in glory.Wakefield Tolberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07214688786380814406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6730212144855253647.post-615920339578178492010-01-31T10:29:59.824-08:002010-01-31T10:29:59.824-08:00The Labor/Knowledge dichotomy is interesting to be...The Labor/Knowledge dichotomy is interesting to behold.<br /><br />Reminds me of one pundit who said this is akin to how the United States Navy basically operates at the human level: A system of fantastically complex machines designed by geniuses, to be operated by dummies. Without taking so glum a view of the abilities of the quotidian masses hired to do the wet work of war, some have also pointed to the <i>"Rosie the Riveter"</i> phenomenon of WWII, where millions of American women--primarily secretaries and housewives for the age where most women were tending home, hearth, and snotty noses of kids--were hired to forge the machinery of war almost akin to some Tolkien narrative about Sauron hiring Orcs to beat metal into scimitars. Johnny went of to war, so Mom had to step in and follow the factory whistles and routines of labor in his absence.<br /><br />Engineers set the standards for mass productions of the war such as tanks, planes, machine guns, etc. Of course. But it was demonstrated that "the average person" could very well grasp--with some shortened hurry-up training--many of these same intricacies of design. No, engineers and scientists were not made out of these women, but it's all the same fascinating to know that the majority of the American war effort's labor and detail of weaponry was made by female hands that formerly were rocking cribs.<br /><br />Your knowledge of history is far more in-depth in mind. I know some of the major players and busybodies on the political or philosophical stage, and that we be about it for my elucidation in the public system of the state of Georgia. No doubt you've moved by choice and interest far beyond this kind of thing.<br /><br />In any event, I can only add that it would be beyond fascinating to speculate what future historians will say was the proximate cause or main set of causes in what will invariably be our turn to have our coffee tables, refrigerators, and cars dug up from the successive layers of soil, that tomorrow's archeologists will almost doubtless sift.<br /><br />Unless, of course, we end things long before then or the transition is something smoother. But whether Utopian or Dystopian, there WILL be some sort of future that we can only guess at and of which writers of all stripes have had much mirth in trying to pin down entertaining vignettes for their stories.Wakefield Tolberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07214688786380814406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6730212144855253647.post-64627658944271027112010-01-31T10:24:44.181-08:002010-01-31T10:24:44.181-08:00This comment has been removed by the author.Wakefield Tolberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07214688786380814406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6730212144855253647.post-56233138571444718562010-01-31T10:23:55.391-08:002010-01-31T10:23:55.391-08:00This comment has been removed by the author.Wakefield Tolberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07214688786380814406noreply@blogger.com