~Placed this New York Review of Books link on my Wall: How We Were All Misled Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World by Michael Lewis Norton, 213 pp., $25.95
Dr Lamb: Excellent recommendation. I have it open in another tab right now.
Moi: I ran out of Crime Drama and had to read something serious. ;)
Dr Lamb: Dude, this is still Crime Drama. It's just that it's real-life white-collar Crime Drama.
On that note, here's a money quote: The credit wasn’t just money, it was temptation. It offered entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. Entire countries were told, “The lights are out, you can do whatever you want to do and no one will ever know.” What they wanted to do with money in the dark varied. Americans wanted to own homes far larger than they could afford, and to allow the strong to exploit the weak. Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers, and to allow their alpha males to reveal a theretofore suppressed megalomania. The Germans wanted to be even more German; the Irish wanted to stop being Irish. All these different societies were touched by the same event, but each responded to it in its own peculiar way.
I'll repeat. "Americans wanted to own homes far larger than they could afford, and to allow the strong to exploit the weak." What do you suppose that means about us?
Moi: I'd say this is a key part of why the Occupy Movement is not likely to get too far.
Dr Lamb: Yeah, deep down, Americans like dominance and the material life too much to be very committed to equality.
On a related note, I've been reading Greer the Archdruid more lately. He thinks that the same love of the material is going to get in the way of Occupy's goals, which means it will be an issue for the Coffee Party, too.
Speaking of Greer, I can see why you two have the potential to become major spiritual rivals, something you realize but which he has no clue about--yet. He's been writing a lot about The Hologram (without ever using that term) and how it works from a magical perspective. Very enlightening, even if I have to take his hidden motives into account.
Moi: His last post got my blood up a bit as I finally realized that what he is actually doing is pushing a 'lifestyle paradigm' that is mostly personal as a Universal Paradigm.
If Greer needs to go up into the hills and breed chickens and grow veggies, that's perfectly fine. But to so strongly advocate that his Holy Hillbillyism is some kind of Great Solution is not merely egocentric bullshit; it is a formula for mass murder because only the death of literally billions would allow it to be such.
Plus there's the fucking White Arrogance on his part in thinking that we, the great US of A, after having looted the planet for three quarters of a century, that the rest of the world will even allow us to 'just go up into the hills'. As the Marines say, “Payback is a mother fucker.”
No, if The Republic does not fulfill the Great Promise of The Future we've made for so long in some reasonable fashion, White Americans at the very least will be 'made to pay'. Another reason why I push for The Sisterhood to be multiracial.
...I've been think about that latter bit for a few days now...
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