I’m up too late doing work, listening to jazz and having a nice glass of Spanish wine. As I wait for someone to send me a file that I need to complete my project, I thought I’d take a moment to comment on an essay I read earlier in the evening.
I’m perpetually behind in my reading. That’s true on two levels at least. There’s all the great works of philosophy, literature, rhetoric, sociology, communication theory, ethics, religion, etc. that wait impatiently on my lifetime reading list constantly reminding me of what little I know. Then there’s also all the magazine and journal articles I’d like to be reading to stay "current," as they say. Yet, I’m never current with such reading. Frustration abounds.
At any rate, I cracked open the December 2007 issue of Harper’s this evening, which isn’t all that tardy for me. I generally start with the Notebook column (even though it’s not always written by Lewis Lapham these days, it’s still usually a great read) and then hit whatever seems most interesting in the rest of the magazine.
(I have the feeling that I’ll never get the hang of this blogging business unless I can learn to dispense with all the introductory detail, such as what appears in the first three paragraphs of this post. So, on with it.)
In last month’s Notebook column entitled "Hot Air Gods," Curtis White (click here for his faculty info at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois, of all places: http://www.english.ilstu.edu/people/profile.aspx?ulid=ckwhite) uses the banality of belief (as a cultural phenomenon or trait) in America as the pathway to get at some important truths about capitalism. White argues that capitalism has been so effective in structuring reality that it is
above criticism. "What capitalism has successfully obscured is the fact that the competition it prizes is not just between business entities internal to it but between capitalism as such and all other possible systems of value." By so doing, capitalism is above reproach as it has "succeeded in convincing the people living under it that it is not a system at all but a state of nature."
White’s essay evokes the arguments of Jules Henry in Culture Against Man, in which he describes the "technological drivenness" of our "pecuniary culture" that will eventually extract everything organic from human existence, replacing it with the cold, synthetic detritus of reflexive consumption. Instead of embracing a "culture of life," says White, capitalists see "nature and humanity ‘instrumentally,’ as things to be manipulated rationally and technically for profit" (author’s emphasis retained).
The implications of what White and Henry have to say are profound. Why am I sitting here at midnight waiting for an e-mail to meet a next-day deadline? Perhaps I see no alternative. Maybe what I need is not so much belief, but faith. More about that later.
I’m perpetually behind in my reading. That’s true on two levels at least. There’s all the great works of philosophy, literature, rhetoric, sociology, communication theory, ethics, religion, etc. that wait impatiently on my lifetime reading list constantly reminding me of what little I know. Then there’s also all the magazine and journal articles I’d like to be reading to stay "current," as they say. Yet, I’m never current with such reading. Frustration abounds.
At any rate, I cracked open the December 2007 issue of Harper’s this evening, which isn’t all that tardy for me. I generally start with the Notebook column (even though it’s not always written by Lewis Lapham these days, it’s still usually a great read) and then hit whatever seems most interesting in the rest of the magazine.
(I have the feeling that I’ll never get the hang of this blogging business unless I can learn to dispense with all the introductory detail, such as what appears in the first three paragraphs of this post. So, on with it.)
In last month’s Notebook column entitled "Hot Air Gods," Curtis White (click here for his faculty info at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois, of all places: http://www.english.ilstu.edu/people/profile.aspx?ulid=ckwhite) uses the banality of belief (as a cultural phenomenon or trait) in America as the pathway to get at some important truths about capitalism. White argues that capitalism has been so effective in structuring reality that it is
above criticism. "What capitalism has successfully obscured is the fact that the competition it prizes is not just between business entities internal to it but between capitalism as such and all other possible systems of value." By so doing, capitalism is above reproach as it has "succeeded in convincing the people living under it that it is not a system at all but a state of nature."White’s essay evokes the arguments of Jules Henry in Culture Against Man, in which he describes the "technological drivenness" of our "pecuniary culture" that will eventually extract everything organic from human existence, replacing it with the cold, synthetic detritus of reflexive consumption. Instead of embracing a "culture of life," says White, capitalists see "nature and humanity ‘instrumentally,’ as things to be manipulated rationally and technically for profit" (author’s emphasis retained).
The implications of what White and Henry have to say are profound. Why am I sitting here at midnight waiting for an e-mail to meet a next-day deadline? Perhaps I see no alternative. Maybe what I need is not so much belief, but faith. More about that later.
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