can I get a witness? to lives lived with integrity -- cronkite, estemirova, politkovskaya…

Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, and Jan Patocka, Heretical Essays, discuss the interior witness, the all-seeing unseen from which arises responsibility. As does the self, Culture requires a witness, a seeing eye which holds out for the conscience to see to what the Collective is complicit. The founders of the United States understood that without the un-blinkered vision of a Press there can be no accountability. Without an education of the People as to the issues of government there can be no Democracy.

Without honest and discerning witnesses how can we see? I mention here the reason for putting Cronkite in the company of Estemirova and Politkovskaya… Who presently among the media has his courage and his integrity? I am referring, of course, to his 1968 editorial on Vietnam.

Currently We, Western Culture, refrain from criticality, from hierarchy. “The World is Flat.” The audience, we all are audience – passive voyeurs waiting for our personal fifteen minutes (where do I sign up, facebook, twitter? who are my “friends”, my “fans”, who watches me?) … the audience is “free” to choose, without commentary or external valuation. We do not take responsibility for what is performed, We watch and there is no distinction between fiction and life. Our emotions, our actions are as stimulated by Harry Potter; as by Darfur; as by Rwanda; as by The Simple Life; as by Brad and Angelina; as by… it is all the same, We, the Culture, make no distinction, only individual choices. Entertainment is the opiate of the masses. As a voice we are divided, dispersed, removed, solitary, thus lacking critical mass.

The role of the witness is subverted. With a million choices, a million clicks, a million channels, a billion-plus seeking the attention of the Audience, how can the witness be heard?

How do We take responsibility? How We do justice? What is Our ethic?

Hugh Thompson, Jr.
Stephen Biko
Mahatma Gandhi
Natalia Estemirova, Anna Politkovskaya
Jan Patocka
Walter Cronkite

Foreign Policy
Martin Luther King, Jr
Holocaust Resistance
Walter Cronkite (Youtube)
Enough (project to end genocide)
Glenn Thompson, Jr., Glenn Andreotta,
Lawrence Colburn


Ann Frank


For using entertainment to an end:
Stephen Colbert
Jon Stewart

et.al.

lane cooper blogs on politics, philosophy and society

A friend asked me to what end, other than the expression of my own compulsions, do I pursue “blogging” as an enterprise? He said, “How does it advance you or your position?”

In answer to that:

This blog is a space for my philosophical, political and social musings. The lack of an editor or other body to which I must answer provides a freedom in my writing. It is writing for the sake of writing; thinking for the sake of thinking; a practice that I cultivate for the ideas and the writing themselves.

I imagine an audience. I do not dissuade or forbid an audience, in fact it could be said that I wish for an audience, believing as I do the subjects that I turn my attention toward should be of broader interest. Yet it is a practice, like meditation, which I do to cultivate those faculties on which it depends.

the news that's fit to print...

women slain in New Mexico When I look at news websites or listen to the news on television these days I'm consistently surprised at it's flatness. The hierarchy of news stories seems non-existent. This story appeared in a list of headlines which included a story about a squirrel with its head stuck in a cup and Michael Jackson's abuse of sedatives. It was quickly pushed from the main page. If entertainment is constantly the focus of the news media what does that tell us about our priorities? If nothing else... bbc news frankly I first learned of the latest U.S. surge in Afghanistan from the BBC. Not perfect but a little better.

cheney

dear m

when someone gives time and thought to what is offered there is not greater gift. thank you.

to further the conversation on ethics...

i do not believe that ethics can ever be imposed, set or enforced from the outside. this is counter to the authenticity of an ethic. we are in agreement. an ethic must be internal. it must be a personal compass. i wish for, however, a reality of cultural ethics --meaning that i wish the values we espouse were truly reflective of belief. as a culture, or as a collective, not even by consensus, we each would say we believe in the rights of the individual to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- i wish the logic of that position could be followed through, truly adhered to.

mentally i argue with politicized christianity... i am dismayed that a belief system which supposedly advances so many positions of love, tolerance, and freedom from human judgement, often falls short of the logic of these positions.

Examples:
how could a country, led as it was at the time by christians, ever go to war? much less make war based on flimsy provocations... do not cheney and bush present themselves as christians? isn't the logical christian position one of pacifism?

pro-life, anti-abortion -- wouldn't the most logical thing to do be to work to create opportunities for pregnant women... to make it easier to have a baby? wouldn't you be handing out condoms to the heathen in order to (a) keep them from conceiving unwanted children and (b) save them from diseases until you could save their souls? if not condoms, then in general wouldn't you do the work up front instead of after the fact - try to change people's thinking rather than legislate their lives?

in the case of gay marriage, wouldn't you leave it to god to sort things out? judge not least ye be judged.

and whatever happened to "my kingdom is not of this world"? wasn't there a reason early christians set themselves apart, lived outside of the worldly concerns and did not trouble themselves with the doings of non-christians except to preach? why would any christian ever involve themselves in politics?

i seek some logical follow through to the positions espoused. i'm looking for the love brother, looking for the love.

notes from an impoverished culture

image from the book of the dead: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/03/afe/ho_30.3.31.htm

What is Poverty? How do we know Poverty? Is knowing Poverty an awareness of a lacking? What then is lacking?

In speaking of ideals perhaps in this context it is the lack of love or fellowship which makes one poor? Perhaps in another way of thinking poverty is only the product of a deficit in financial means and what those means provide – food, shelter, education – perhaps this is what is lacking in Poverty.

It seems most generally, Poverty is a lack of something essential. Essentials foster a sense of security and to know Poverty, to lack in some way, is to be insecure.

What culture then lacks? Which culture is it which is impoverished?

Any that does not breed security in its citizens.

We…

Who are “we”?
Those that I live among and that I count myself as one of…
“we” who have been living in a world lacking of an ethic.

It is not possible to cultivate security, richness, in the absence of an ethic.

An ethic is essential. An ethic provides a predictable logic from which expectation is extrapolated to the audience of action.

The problem with a culture lacking a commonly held ethic and possessing only individualized, personalized, hidden or non-existent ethics is an absence of a dependable social reality. There can be no concept of even a Justice in this culture… only an arbitrary illusion which pretends to serve some ideal. If “we” lack an ethic as a culture then we are all on our own without expectation of aid – we are cut a drift and the fabric of our society unraveled –

Describe a thing, clearly, objectively and it will tell you a truth – the description can make apparent the ethic at work. All choices are driven by the logic of an ethic. Choices are evidence of the logic that drives them. The greater the commitment to the logic the more consistent the choices… and sometimes the contradictions between what is pledged and what is done become apparent. To see in this way is wakefulness; it is consciousness; it is a taking of responsibility.