[lbo-talk] Jerry Lewis as worst-case scenario

Lionel Mandrake brotherlyshove at yahoo.com
Sat Sep 10 22:55:51 PDT 2005


Our culture isn't hyperindividualist. It's atomized. There's a difference. Modern capitalism is largely fueled by individuals' sense of inadequacy in relation to others and faith in work and consumption as means to resolving this inadequacy. People with a strong, independent sense of self and a coherent, relatively inflexible set of ethics, predicated for the most part on empathy, are less easily manipulated into jumping through capitalism's hoops.

--- Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:


> Carl Remick wrote:
>
> > Well, like PBS with its eternal fundraising pleas,
> I'd like to make a
> > pitch yet again for my man Emerson. I don't think
> there's any question
> > that whatever democratic potential the USA had has
> been corrupted --
> > that American individualism has devolved into a
> narcissism that has made
> > Americans atomized, selfish and frightened. I
> think the only long-term
> > solution to this problem is to abolish capitalism
> and whittle away
> > differences in wealth and income among all
> citizens to virtually
> > nothing. That change will require Americans to
> lose their solipsistic
> > mindset. I think Emerson, uniquely among all
> American writers, points
> > the way -- encouraging people to look deeply
> within themselves, not to
> > cultivate further egotism but to recognize the
> profundity of their
> > connection with all humankind.
> >
>
> I don't quite get this: we recognize and enact our
> connection with all
> humankind by actually interacting with people, not
> by solitary
> reflection. Only in a hyperindividualist culture
> like ours could we
> claim that our connection to others is a product of
> individual,
> independent, "deep" thought. --Emerson is a symptom
> of the
> (capitalist) disease, not the cure.
>
> Miles
>
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>
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