[MD] BBC documentary 'the trap'

[John Carl]

On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 9:12 AM, Arlo Bensinger <ajb102 at psu.edu> wrote:

> [John]
> I'm not blaming Academic or Mediated reality for the decline in community,
> I'm saying those are about the only two means of spreading a metaphysical
> shift needed for the healing,  and as they are constructed, I do not seen
> any way to get them to bring about this shift.
>
> [Arlo]
> I'm not sure if these are "needed", but I agree they would be very strong
> facilitators of such a shift.



A shift is needed.  What medium will bring about this shift is not at all
apparent to me and the heart of the problem as I see it.





> I do agree, the problem overall is gargantuan. Indeed, size may very well
> be more of the problem that we think.



Quantity!



> Was it you (it was someone) who posted recently about "bioregionalism", at
> the very least the idea that "America is too big", and this is the root of
> its inability to move in directions other that those manipulated by
> ideologues and zealots pandering grossly to one particular narrow political
> party.



mea culpa, but I don't hold much hope for it actually happening.



> Witness the health care debate, both sides sicken me (pun intended) beyond
> words.  Town halls of misinformed "protestors" arguing with misinformed
> "legislators", and the entire argument devolves again into the moronic
> discourse of the ideologues. "Republicans want to prevent sick people from
> getting treatment", "Democrats want to destroy liberty". And that is where
> we are, and where we are going to stay. Too big. Too impersonal. To
> paraphrase Pirsig, the entire health care "debate" is happening in "primary
> America", the impersonal, hyped-up, fuck you, ego-driven, "we are strangers"
> America.



dogmatic ideologues beating each other over the head with their signs.
sigh.



>
>
> [John]
> But sometimes the solution to a social inequity causes its own problems in
> turn and I think a case can be made here.
>
> [Arlo]
> I agree. In my own words, I consider this the loss of "hearth". While "as
> men" this can readily be distorted to "wanted to keep women in the kitchen",
> but to me its seeing that having "someone", woman OR man, in the kitchen,
> provides a warm stability, a locus, a focal point of "family" around which
> the "home" functions. The problem was never that women were released from
> servitude in the kitchen, but that in releasing those who would value doing
> something else, no one bothered to look at the value of what they were
> doing.



Bingo.  Give that man the prize.  A problem in values.  Man earning 35,000
per year, woman stays home and earns nothing.  In a value-free society, we
equate money with value thus denigrate the hearth-keeper and the
cradle-rocker.

Interestingly, discontent with the situation evolved when women had MORE
free time and labor-saving devices than any time in history.



> It was "toil", it was a "burden", it was "unimportant". And so we tossed it
> aside and sent these people out into the "real" world to do "important"
> work, to do something "meaningful". And we lost, because the role they were
> fulfilling was more meaningful than anything outside the home, and no one
> stepped in to fill it. It should be voluntary, and negotiated in the family,
> but it should never be devalued, and the person who does it should be reaped
> with praise and admiration.


Yep.  Which is what now seems so obvious in hindsight.  But how to put the
troubles back in the box, once they are out?  Also, the nuclear family
survives somehow, but the community connection is lost completely and would
have to be rebuilt from scratch practically.

Hardly anybody even knows their neighbors and the social skills and
traditions have disappeared.  Anybody remember the Welcome Wagon Lady?
 Ain't seen her in a while, eh?


>
>
> Of course, alongside this was the economic reality that one-income families
> were often no longer sustainable.



That also was effectually created by doubling the workforce.  More workers
competing for fewer jobs means less pay which means now it takes two people
earning to match yesterday's standard of living.   Big business happy!  Mom,
dad and kids, sad.



> [John: talking about tv]
> If people get a surface social itch scratched, they won't see the need for
> addressing the deeper problem.
>
> [Arlo]
> Opium des Volkes.


Yeah I think I saw a cartoon once, maybe Bloom County, Marx says that thing
about religion being the opiate and a walking tv says to him, "you ain't
seen nothing kid."