MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents"
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MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents" |
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Kudos, brickbats, spam, you'll find it all right here. We publish everything that comes to our mailbox.
This is where our readers and writers get to talk to each other.
Enjoy!
From Parker Hodes, Utne Reader, USA:
Just a quick note to let you know that today's Utne Web Watch Daily included a link to your piece "A Global Discussion."
The page can be viewed here:
http://www.utne.com/daily/101399.html
Parker Hodges
Editor, Utne Web Watch Daily
From Nancy M., (No City Provided,) USA:
Thank you Rod,
My questions were answered and quite thoroughly at that. I'llbe sure to keep visiting your site. You guys are real cool!
nancy
ROD RESPONDS: Nancy, that's very nice of you to say. We work very hard to be responsive to our readers here. But the actual thanks for your thorough answer should go to my all pal and G21 Alumnus KIM CARTER.
From Daniel A., (No City Provided,) USA:
Rod Amis,
This is the first time I've ever received a personal note of welcome when subscribing to an online newsletter. I think I'm going to enjoy this g21 experience.
I admire what you're doing with your site and online community. I found it via reference to the Purvis article, mentioned in Utne online magazine's web daily newsletter to which I also subscribe. I look forward to coming issues of g21.
The Purvis excerpts, and your essay on globalization that kicked off the topic, came at a perfect time when I'm engaged in an ongoing e-mail debate with a relative who espouses the usual free-market good / government bad thinking inculcated in the privileged American middle class.
By the way, may I suggest a site extremely germane to the global corporate theme:
www.poclad.org (the acronym stands for Project on Corporations, Law, and Democracy)
Perhaps you are aware of it; but if not, this site has been put together by an 11-member group of independent thinker/activists much like yourself, and its purpose is to examine the legal basis for the institution of corporations, and to advocate the reassertion of social control over corporations by popularly-elected governments.
Best Wishes,
Daniel A.
From Kieran McH., Aberdeen, SCOTLAND:
i must say that i totally 100% agree that methadone is an excellant way of dealing with the scourge of addiction, i am a heroin addict in scotland, uk. i was taking heroin for about 7 years, im now 22,the reason i support methodone is the fact that it can put , no, it will put stability back in to the users life, as all i was doing every single day was waking up feeling horrible and needing to score, now, to me that is like a full time job as it takes a long time to get the money together as im sure that you are aware, it isnt free, it costs 25 pounds for some heroin here!! i was lucky, i new that i had very little time left as my body was a mess , i wasnt eating, i didnt care what i looked like etc etc. im sure youve heard it all before... but since starting a meth maintanence program i have been at college for 3 and a half years now and i WILL graduate in 6 months time. now as i keep saying, i was lucky, i know taht i was slowly dying, my doctor told me taht i had 6 months tops, but the reason she couldnt do anything was becouse i wason a waiting list which took about 9 months as there is not enough funding for the programmes. i personally know of at least 11 people 5 of which were old school friends that have overdosed and died due to the fact that the help just wasnt there when they needed it most what woke me up was the fact that i thought that i was the luckiest person alive as i had a beutiful girlfriend , and we were together for 5 great years, she was the same age as me, unfortunately, one morning i woke up and she wasnt with me, so i went to look for her, what had happened was that she had went for a hit in the middle of the night and she overdosed and died, i found her, it is absolute torcher for me as i should have been awake, i should have known something was wrong, but i mean im only 22 and i have to live with that for the rest of my life, thats what got me to get help,i had to make a decision, get help or go with her, i must admit it was a close call, but in the end i decided to go for help and now im doing good,, im at college, im not using, things are actually looking good for the first time in a very long time. so i know that drugs are evil, ive learned taht the hard way, but its not so much the user that should be crucified its those evil cartels who never use the stuff but yet make millions
thanx
kieran mch., 22,
student,
aberdeen,scotland Ý
From Carma S., (No City Provided,) CA, USA:
I haven't laughed so hard in ages..the Swiddenist Diary by Moira is great...I'm glad you reprinted it..I didn't know about your paper when it came out before.. Rod, I have read most of the issues,,your writing is beyond me so I normally don't bother to comment.
Carma
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From Ric Williams, Austin, TX, USA:
Carey writes about the kleptocracy:
"....dressed in the self-important intellectual fripperies of Hayek..."
So I had never heard of Hayek--we've all our lacunae. But in doing cursory research it seems he was a Nobel economist who died in '92 at the approximate age of 93. His most significant work was done in 1944 and is a protest against totalitarianism and speaks of government control as in conflict with personal liberties. He apparently makes a case against Naziism and its roots in socialism which may be rubbing a bit too hard. It would also seem that he might agree with Carey's statement that
"...There never has been a convincing case for economic liberalism in tandem with social repression."
Here's a Hayek quote:
"...Even more significant of the inherent weakness of the collectivist theories is the extraordinary paradox that from the assertion that society is in some sense more than merely the aggregate of all individuals their adherents regularly pass by a sort of intellectual somersault to the thesis that in order that the coherence of this larger entity be safeguarded it must be subjected to conscious control, that is, to the control of what in the last resort must be an individual mind. It thus comes about that in practice it is regularly the theoretical collectivist who extols individual reason and demands that all forces of society be made subject to the direction of a single mastermind . . . ."
One more:
"...A society that does not recognize that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom. "
He warns, it seems, against the Jungian collective unconscious and while plutocrats certainly can use his ideas to justify their rapine, they also rely on the collective for a market. Hayek asks the individual to question the collective, to come to her own conclusions about reality and value. The plutocrats don't want that. In other words, Hayek is more complex that the glib flip-off Carey dishes.
And what's that crack about India, Carey? White man's burden showing?
And the overall thesis of Eat the Rich? Now there's a new and practical idea. Talk about self-important frippery!
Oh, and the four points on why things will be okay really are naively optimistic, especially the first three and most especially the third. In fact, the third is almost laughable.
Let's send them to University! Yea, they teach compassion and generosity at University. Why, it's at the top of every college's curriculum. University and enlightened, self-interested monopolies, bedrocks of deep compassion and unbridled generosity! Stay with them and that'll put us on the straight and narrow.
And then, one day, there'll even rise up a wise king, a philosopher king, who'll be like, like, Arthur, Arthur His Own True Self. A Benevolent Despot of the First Order. Yea. An' Jesus, our Lord an' Personal Savior, will sit beside 'im. And Merlin, looking a little like Emperor Wu, but only just a little, will nod sagely in the background while all the world sips Chardonnay and nibbles on wee truffle bits snouted out of the ground by noble pigs.
It'll be lovely. Really, doncha think?
Yoiks, man, run for office or something. "Steal a lot they make you king." Ask the samplers.
Lovely to see you,
Ric
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