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

joanna 123hop at comcast.net
Sat Sep 10 23:20:31 PDT 2005


Lionel Mandrake wrote:


>Our culture isn't hyperindividualist.
>
It's rhetoric certainly is.


>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.
>
Absolutely true.


> 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.
>
I'm uneasy with that "inflexible set of ethics." After all these people you describe do not develop as individuals but injected with a concentrated solution of empathy. Rather, they develop in a social context that least distorts the reciprocity of their relation to one another. Which is to say that (paradoxically) a very supportive social system gives rise to the strongest individuals. Extreme deprivation (whether in the family or in society) may, once in a while, produce a strong individual, but 99% of the time it destroys any chance of meaningful presonal development.

Joanna


>
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