Greeting cards & bumperstickers
Martha Bridegam
sale:
Bumpersticker with Orwell quote -- IIRC, "In an age of universal deceit,
telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
Two, count 'em, two actual greeting cards with quotes from Henry Miller:
"The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously,
drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware."
and
"I am of the order whose purpose is not to teach the world a lesson but
to explain that school is over."
(Not AFAIK by Hallmark, but close enough.)
All three of these make good all-purpose greeting cards because you can
make them mean anything you like & congratulate yrself for agreeing with
them.
Same goes for one we have on our car: "If You're Not Outraged, You're
Not Paying Attention."
Plug in yr personal politics & philosophy, and get ready to pat yrself
on the back.
/MAB
greg
Martha Bridegam wrote in message <379A85...@sirius.com>...
<snip>
>All three of these make good all-purpose greeting cards because you can
>make them mean anything you like & congratulate yrself for agreeing with
>them.
>
>Same goes for one we have on our car: "If You're Not Outraged, You're
>Not Paying Attention."
>
>Plug in yr personal politics & philosophy, and get ready to pat yrself
>on the back.
Sort of like those 'Free Tibet' bumper stickers all over California, the
ones that keep the leaders of the Chinese military in cold sweats.
Reminds me of when we were kids and I was hassling my little brother, who
warned me "Just wait until I'm older than you are!"
Greg
Martha Bridegam
>
> greg wrote in message <4dvm3.12$6J6...@news.callamer.com>...
>
> >Sort of like those 'Free Tibet' bumper stickers all over California,
> the
> >ones that keep the leaders of the Chinese military in cold sweats.
>
>
> "I am not interested in pacifism as a 'moral phenomenon'... as an
> ex-Indian civil servant, it always makes me shout with laughter to hear,
> for instance, Gandhi named as an example of the success of non-violence.
> As long as twenty years ago it was cynically admitted in Anglo-Indian
> circles that Gandhi was very useful to the British Government. So he
> will be to the Japanese if they get there. Despotic governments can
> stand 'moral force' till the cows come home; what they fear is physical
> force."
Oh no, here we go again.....
Passive resistance worked in the early 1960s in the American South. It
also arguably worked in India, Orwell to the contrary.
Seems like it does work, if only so long as the authorities oblige by
behaving despotically in response to peaceful protests, and so long as
said authorities actually fear looking despotic to third parties.
(Believe there has been speculation -- forget whose -- about whether
nonviolent protest would have worked so well in the U.S. Civil Rights
Movement if it hadn't been for the United States' international PR
competition with the Soviet Bloc.)
No, Orwell didn't like or understood passive resistance, as "Reflections
on Gandhi" illustrates. Wonder why not. Macho, maybe?
/MAB
Alan Allport
>Sort of like those 'Free Tibet' bumper stickers all over California,
the
>ones that keep the leaders of the Chinese military in cold sweats.
Just like passive resistance.
"I am not interested in pacifism as a 'moral phenomenon'... as an
ex-Indian civil servant, it always makes me shout with laughter to hear,
for instance, Gandhi named as an example of the success of non-violence.
As long as twenty years ago it was cynically admitted in Anglo-Indian
circles that Gandhi was very useful to the British Government. So he
will be to the Japanese if they get there. Despotic governments can
stand 'moral force' till the cows come home; what they fear is physical
force."
- _Pacifism and the War_, CEJL II p.262.
Alan.
Martha Bridegam
>
> Paul and Melanie wrote in message <379B1C81...@sympatico.ca>...
> >One gets the feeling that if you
> >peel back that sticker you'll find
> >one that reads "Save the Planet"
> >and if you peel that one back
> >you'd find "Feed the World".
>
> Oh yes. Also, "Mean People Suck". Made me give up meanness.
And the "Be Green" bumpersticker that they invite you to order with a
boxtop from Annie's macaroni & cheese.
>
> >These free Tibet concerts give
> >me the same moral vertigo that
> >Martha had not too long ago re kosovo.
> >Despots may stand for 'moral
> >force', but nothing scares them more
> >than angry rock stars.
LOL.
> I still get chills of loathing when I think of the time I saw Richard Gere
> on television, just after some flick about China he made, where he stands on
> stage and shouts "I am the voice of the Tibetans!" Dalai Lama's out of a
> job, I guess.
Yes, but he's only a Tibetan.
/MAB
Alan Allport
>Oh no, here we go again.....
>
>Passive resistance worked in the early 1960s in the American South. It
>also arguably worked in India, Orwell to the contrary.
>No, Orwell didn't like or understood passive resistance, as
"Reflections
>on Gandhi" illustrates. Wonder why not. Macho, maybe?
Let's recap:
"Despotic governments can stand 'moral force' till the cows come home;
what they fear is physical force."
If you believe that America in the 1960s operated under a 'despotic'
government, then clearly Orwell was wrong and you are right. ("Like,
talk about Nazi Germany, Man".) If you suspect that that is hyperbole at
best, then the argument loses some force.
In the case of India, there are three possibilities:
(a) Indian resistance was a good deal less passive than pop history
suggests.
(b) The Raj was a good deal less despotic than Orwell was suggesting
here.
(c) Martha is right.
Though (c) is apparently not unprecedented, I'll go for a heady mixture
of (a) & (b) on this occasion.
Alan.
Martha Bridegam
>
> Alan Allport wrote in message <7nf1hi$rg9$1...@news1.fast.net>...
> >nonviolent protest would have
> >>worked so well in the U.S. >>Civil Rights
> >>Movement if it hadn't been for
> >>the United States' >>international PR
> >>competition with the Soviet >>Bloc.)
>
Sorry, wish I remembered. Will post if I find it.
>
> >>No, Orwell didn't like or understood passive resistance, as
> >"Reflections
> >>on Gandhi" illustrates. >>Wonder why not. Macho, maybe?
>
> For the record there are plenty of women, military in Israel, IRA babes with
> machine guns, American militant feminists, etc. who have expressed
> dissastisfaction with passive resistance. The gender-bound term 'Macho', as
> in male blustering, aggresion, etc., isn't fair to similarly behaved women
> (is there a 'macha' missing from my dictionary?)
Probably. I don't think this discussion has to consider whether women in
general are opposed to violence in general. Personally I don't think
women are natural pacifists at all, any more than they're natural
diaper-changers.
I asked about macho because it might be *Orwell's* personal reason for
advocating the violent overthrow -- or at least for suggesting the
violent overthrow might be more practical than peaceful demonstrations.
Those ancient Greek & Roman soldierly virtues, the "man of action"
image, the service in Spain, etc., etc. Maybe it would be better to say
that he thought of life in very physical, literal terms?
Possibly Alan & Greg are picking up a contradiction in what I said
because Orwell was blurring an issue in the first place & I didn't
straighten it out: he's weaselly with that term, "despotic governments."
Orwell knew perfectly well that the British Empire, for all its
day-to-day brutality, did sometimes care about international public
opinion, which the Nazis didn't. Hence when Gandhi was able to highlight
& shame the daily injustices, the British backed down. Gandhi's
proposals for passive resistance to the Nazis obviously would not have
worked.
There's also the fact that, IIRC, Gandhi and MLK both benefited from the
existence of competing, more violent factions. As an organizer friend of
mine once said about meetings with city officials, "always take along
someone crazier than you are." Helps make the authorities see you as the
voice of reason.
/MAB
Alan Allport
>Possibly Alan & Greg are picking up a contradiction in what I said
>because Orwell was blurring an issue in the first place & I didn't
>straighten it out: he's weaselly with that term, "despotic
governments."
>Orwell knew perfectly well that the British Empire, for all its
>day-to-day brutality, did sometimes care about international public
>opinion, which the Nazis didn't. Hence when Gandhi was able to
highlight
>& shame the daily injustices, the British backed down. Gandhi's
>proposals for passive resistance to the Nazis obviously would not have
>worked.
It's also important to remember that Gandhi was but one figure in the
story of Indian resistance to the Raj, and by no means always the most
important or influential.
Alan.
Paul and Melanie
greg wrote:
> Martha Bridegam wrote in message <379A85...@sirius.com>...
>
> <snip>
>
> >All three of these make good all-purpose greeting cards because you can
> >make them mean anything you like & congratulate yrself for agreeing with
> >them.
> >
> >Same goes for one we have on our car: "If You're Not Outraged, You're
> >Not Paying Attention."
> >
> >Plug in yr personal politics & philosophy, and get ready to pat yrself
> >on the back.
>
> Sort of like those 'Free Tibet' bumper stickers all over California, the
> ones that keep the leaders of the Chinese military in cold sweats.
>
:-)
One gets the feeling that if you
peel back that sticker you'll find
one that reads "Save the Planet"
and if you peel that one back
you'd find "Feed the World".
These free Tibet concerts give
me the same moral vertigo that
Martha had not too long ago re kosovo.
Despots may stand for 'moral
force', but nothing scares them more
than angry rock stars.
GO could have learned from
this. Instead of bothering going to
Spain and fighting, he could have
just put on a concertl (or iterary reading)
in london, with all the proceeds
going to the POUM.
paul.
--
--------------------------
http://www.tao.ca/~fallout
--------------------------
greg
>One gets the feeling that if you
>peel back that sticker you'll find
>one that reads "Save the Planet"
>and if you peel that one back
>you'd find "Feed the World".
Oh yes. Also, "Mean People Suck". Made me give up meanness.
>These free Tibet concerts give
>me the same moral vertigo that
>Martha had not too long ago re kosovo.
>Despots may stand for 'moral
>force', but nothing scares them more
>than angry rock stars.
>GO could have learned from
>this. Instead of bothering going to
>Spain and fighting, he could have
>just put on a concertl (or iterary reading)
>in london, with all the proceeds
>going to the POUM.
greg
Alan Allport wrote in message <7nf1hi$rg9$1...@news1.fast.net>...
>Martha Bridegam wrote in message <379AB6...@sirius.com>...
>>
>>(Believe there has been speculation -- forget whose -- >>about whether
>nonviolent protest would have
>>worked so well in the U.S. >>Civil Rights
>>Movement if it hadn't been for
>>the United States' >>international PR
>>competition with the Soviet >>Bloc.)
Would be interested in learning whose speculation this is.
>>No, Orwell didn't like or understood passive resistance, as
>"Reflections
>>on Gandhi" illustrates. >>Wonder why not. Macho, maybe?
For the record there are plenty of women, military in Israel, IRA babes with
machine guns, American militant feminists, etc. who have expressed
dissastisfaction with passive resistance. The gender-bound term 'Macho', as
in male blustering, aggresion, etc., isn't fair to similarly behaved women
(is there a 'macha' missing from my dictionary?)
<snip to Mr. Allport speaking thus>
>(a) Indian resistance was a good deal less passive than pop history
>suggests.
>
>(b) The Raj was a good deal less despotic than Orwell was suggesting
>here.
With regard to (a), there was a book published last year, of which I don't
know the title (sorry to be useless) that was enthusiastically received by
the New York Review, which claimed that the British partitioning of British
India into India and Pakistan would not have been accompanied by such
appalling violence between the two sides (and would have occurred not so
long after Britain provided India with the constitution/congress; the
decade-long delay aggravated the situation) had there not been acts of
counter-terrorism and a certain stubborness on Gandhi/Nehru's side. Don't
know how relevant to GO this is, but the Gandhi piece was published in 1949,
right? Overall, I'd personally credit him with the ability to disbelieve
what is otherwise a beautiful myth of Indian passive solidarity-if that
isn't a contradiction in terms by itself.
Greg
Tom Deveson
writes:
>Despotic governments can
>stand 'moral force' till the cows come home; what they fear is physical
>force.
This is a muddled thought about Thoreau, who AFAIK coined the phrase
"Civil Disobedience" in his 1849 essay; who, when at Harvard, wore a
green coat to chapel "because the rules required black" and who would, I
think, in the terms presented here by Orwell have argued that the US
government of the time was not despotic towards him personally but was
unjustly despotic towards the fugitive slaves whose unhappiness he did
not wish to further by the payment of taxes.
Thoreau by his 1843 refusal to pay poll tax as a protest against state
support of slavery didn't end the institution, any more than did Bronson
Alcott (father of the "Little Women") in his similar refusal two years
earlier. (In any case, T's aunt paid the fine, though against his
wishes, and he went to prison for one night only.)
Nor did he by his subsequent distinction between poll tax (which he
didn't pay for six years) and highway and school taxes (which he did
pay) persuade the government of Massachusetts to recognise that
distinction in its own legislation. Nor did he actually try to start a
slave insurrection as with the physical force of John Brown or make
possible the abolition of slavery as with the physical force of the
Union armies.
"Civil Disobedience" isn't necessarily the same as "passive resistance"
and Thoreau's argument for ignoring government as far as possible isn't
the same, either in terms of political effectiveness or (perhaps) in
terms of moral impact as going out and getting demonstratively arrested
or in some other way defying the state to express, over-express, and,
it's hoped, compromise the credibility of its power.
It was Thoreau's essay that came to Gandhi's attention in 1907 and,
reprinted in *Indian Opinion*, started a movement of determined non-
cooperation with the South African government (Gandhi being in South
Africa till 1915) that resulted in the repeal of a poll tax, the
validation of Hindu and Muslim marriages, a removal of some restrictions
on immigration of Indians, and the abolition of legislation to do with
fingerprinting.
Nobody would suggest that this meant that South Africa thereby became a
just society -- it became more unjust in many ways as the century went
on. Nevertheless, it seems worth remarking that an obscure essay could
operate sixty years after and an ocean away from its place of
publication to help inequity be made slightly more equitable, both by
enabling an oppressed group to define its rights and by shaming a
government into modifying its use of power. Moral force can operate at a
distance.
Even despotic governments (well, some of them) need to look good to
world opinion. Mandela's moral force worked in conjunction with the
growing disintegration of civil order in South Africa to persuade hard-
headed investors that apartheid would have to go. By being and staying
in prison, he became impossible to ignore, and continued to demonstrate
that the problems of SA couldn't be resolved without major changes. We
do remember Thoreau and not the officer who arrested him. But he wrote
an essay, not a bumper-sticker.
Tom
--
Tom Deveson
Alan Allport
>Even despotic governments (well, some of them) need to look good to
>world opinion. Mandela's moral force worked in conjunction with the
>growing disintegration of civil order in South Africa to persuade hard-
>headed investors that apartheid would have to go. By being and staying
>in prison, he became impossible to ignore, and continued to demonstrate
>that the problems of SA couldn't be resolved without major changes. We
>do remember Thoreau and not the officer who arrested him. But he wrote
>an essay, not a bumper-sticker.
Though of course neither Mandela nor his party ever renounced violence
as a political tool, in theory or in practice.
Though a sound international reputation is important, it's not
necessarily the principal factor that decides the fate of a protest
movement. Governments, especially schizophrenic ones like South Africa's
ancien regime - which managed to combine a Westminster-style
parliamentary system for the privileged with a thuggish racial satrapy
for the masses - must struggle to maintain at least a veneer of internal
logic if their functionaries are going to continue to take them
seriously. This is IMHO what doomed the African and Asian British
Empires; Anglo-Saxon historiography is traditionally founded on a
Whiggish theory of progressive liberal development which is a tolerable
(if vastly oversimplified) model for the British Isles, but which looks
absurd and monstrously hypocritical when the colonies are factored in.
How could someone discuss Magna Carta and the Glorious Revolution with a
straight face when the institution they were lauding was the unchecked
overlord of millions of people? Oceania's O'Brien understood this, which
is why the Inner Party is at such pains to rationalize its behavior (if
only through the legerdemain of Doublethink). Demolishing a regime is
that much easier when the blueprints are patently confused.
Alan.
Martha Bridegam
>
> Martha Bridegam wrote:
>
> > greg wrote:
> > >
> > > Paul and Melanie wrote in message <379B1C81...@sympatico.ca>...
> > > >One gets the feeling that if you
> > > >peel back that sticker you'll find
> > > >one that reads "Save the Planet"
> > > >and if you peel that one back
> > > >you'd find "Feed the World".
> > >
> > > Oh yes. Also, "Mean People Suck". Made me give up meanness.
> >
> > boxtop from Annie's macaroni & cheese.
> >
>
> sticker on a car?
A sticker on a car that says "I Am Polluting The Atmosphere."
They do exist.
/MAB
Martha Bridegam
>
> Hey, whatever keeps Richard Gere busy enough
> to make less movies is indeed a humanitarian act.
I started nitpicking about how it should say "fewer," but Joel said no,
he's right, Richard Gere movies are a substance produced by the yard.
> Any celebrity stumping for a publicity friendly cause,
> however arrogantly, is not as annoying when they start
> asking for money. Somehow, I find the spectacle of
> Paul McCartney or Elton John (etc.)playing a concert
> asking me to send money very bizarre.
Orwell did lend his name to a number of causes, especially later in his
life when he had more of a name. It's just that his name wasn't his only
contribution.
/MAB
Paul and Melanie
greg wrote:
> Paul and Melanie wrote in message <379B1C81...@sympatico.ca>...
> >
>
> >One gets the feeling that if you
> >peel back that sticker you'll find
> >one that reads "Save the Planet"
> >and if you peel that one back
> >you'd find "Feed the World".
>
> Oh yes. Also, "Mean People Suck". Made me give up meanness.
This makes me thimk of GO's essay on Dickens.I mention this because it also
applies to an
earlier thread about liberals(1). IIRC, Orwell
sums up Dickens philosophy as "If only
people were nicer to each other..."
which sort of describes liberalism
these days, IMO.
>
>
> >These free Tibet concerts give
> >me the same moral vertigo that
> >Martha had not too long ago re kosovo.
> >Despots may stand for 'moral
> >force', but nothing scares them more
> >than angry rock stars.
> >GO could have learned from
> >this. Instead of bothering going to
> >Spain and fighting, he could have
> >just put on a concertl (or iterary reading)
> >in london, with all the proceeds
> >going to the POUM.
>
> I still get chills of loathing when I think of the time I saw Richard Gere
> on television, just after some flick about China he made, where he stands on
> stage and shouts "I am the voice of the Tibetans!" Dalai Lama's out of a
> job, I guess.
Hey, whatever keeps Richard Gere busy enough
to make less movies is indeed a humanitarian act.
Any celebrity stumping for a publicity friendly cause,
however arrogantly, is not as annoying when they start
asking for money. Somehow, I find the spectacle of
Paul McCartney or Elton John (etc.)playing a concert
asking me to send money very bizarre.
paul.
(1) I should point out that in
my country, there is a marked
difference between liberal and
*L*iberal. The Liberal party here
are often referred to as the 'natural
governing party', having ruled for
76 of the last 103 years. They
are distinguishable for being
indistinguishable, and have made their
success from stealing the policies of
other parties. They are currently
more conservative than the Conservatives.
Paul and Melanie
Martha Bridegam wrote:
> greg wrote:
> >
> > Paul and Melanie wrote in message <379B1C81...@sympatico.ca>...
> > >One gets the feeling that if you
> > >peel back that sticker you'll find
> > >one that reads "Save the Planet"
> > >and if you peel that one back
> > >you'd find "Feed the World".
> >
> > Oh yes. Also, "Mean People Suck". Made me give up meanness.
>
> And the "Be Green" bumpersticker that they invite you to order with a
> boxtop from Annie's macaroni & cheese.
>
Is there anything more deeply imbuedwith irony than a "save the planet"
sticker on a car?
paul.
Paul and Melanie
Martha Bridegam wrote:
> Paul and Melanie wrote:
> >
> > Hey, whatever keeps Richard Gere busy enough
> > to make less movies is indeed a humanitarian act.
>
> I started nitpicking about how it should say "fewer," but Joel said no,
> he's right, Richard Gere movies are a substance produced by the yard.
Er..yeah...that's what I meant.Anyways I can nitpick too. Using the word
substance and Richard Gere in the same sentence
is a little iffy.
>
>
> > Any celebrity stumping for a publicity friendly cause,
> > however arrogantly, is not as annoying when they start
> > asking for money. Somehow, I find the spectacle of
> > Paul McCartney or Elton John (etc.)playing a concert
> > asking me to send money very bizarre.
>
> Orwell did lend his name to a number of causes, especially later in his
> life when he had more of a name. It's just that his name wasn't his only
> contribution.
>
> /MAB
Indeed.
Also important is the
net worth of the celebrity
asking for money. McCartney
is reportedly worth a billion
dollars. If he wants help a needy
cause, like, say, Ringo Starr, he
can probably ante up on his own.
Charity drives are a good idea, but when
the rich and beautiful come a-begging I
tend to get cynical.
'Fashion Cares'? Give me a break.
Joseph C Fineman
>A sticker on a car that says "I Am Polluting The Atmosphere."
>They do exist.
I used to have one that said "Unsafe at Any Speed".
--- Joe Fineman j...@world.std.com
||: Every passion has its chastity. :||
Michael Cummins
Martha Bridegam
>
> In article "Pacifism and the War" George Orwell <eblair@stcyprians>
> writes:
>
> >Despotic governments can
> >stand 'moral force' till the cows come home; what they fear is physical
> >force.
"Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved
innocent..."
-- G.O., "Reflections on Gandhi."
So, ebl...@stcyprians.com, if yr still out there, what do you think
about the preliminary investigation of Mother Teresa's holiness?
>
> "Civil Disobedience" isn't necessarily the same as "passive resistance"
> and Thoreau's argument for ignoring government as far as possible isn't
> the same, either in terms of political effectiveness or (perhaps) in
> terms of moral impact as going out and getting demonstratively arrested
> or in some other way defying the state to express, over-express, and,
> it's hoped, compromise the credibility of its power.
>
> It was Thoreau's essay that came to Gandhi's attention in 1907 and,
> reprinted in *Indian Opinion*, started a movement of determined non-
> cooperation with the South African government....
So, (TD, not EB), do you mean Gandhi used nonviolence in a political
*campaign* whereas Thoreau acted as he did out of personal conscience
without regard to political effectiveness?
"However, Gandhi's pacifism can be separated to some extent from his
other teachings. Its motive was religious, but he claimed also for it
that it was a definite technique, a method, capable of producing desired
political results. Gandhi's attitude was not that of most western
pacifists. Satyagraha, first evloved in South Africa, was a sort of
non-violent warfare, a way of defeating the enemy without hurtng him and
without feeling or arousing hatred. It entailed such things as civil
disobedience, strikes, lying down in front of railway trains, enduring
police charges without running away and without hitting back, and the
like. Gandhi objected to 'passive resistance' as a translation of
Satyagraha: in Gujarati, it seems, the word means 'firmness in the
truth.'"
-- "Reflections on Gandhi" again.
/MAB
Tom Deveson
>So, (TD, not EB), do you mean Gandhi used nonviolence in a political
>*campaign* whereas Thoreau acted as he did out of personal conscience
>without regard to political effectiveness?
I *think* so, but I don't know enough about either to be sure the
apparent contrast (which dishonours neither) is apt. Thinking about
Thoreau's essay rather than his action -- it can be OK to write what you
believe, even on politics, without worrying about its being effective.
As Auden says:
"...For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its saying where executives
Would never want to tamper; it flows south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth..."
TD not EB
--
Tom Deveson
Martha Bridegam
>
..... Thinking about
> Thoreau's essay rather than his action -- it can be OK to write what you
> believe, even on politics, without worrying about its being effective.
OK? It's essential.
> As Auden says:
>
> "...For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
> In the valley of its saying where executives
> Would never want to tamper; it flows south
> From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
> Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
> A way of happening, a mouth..."
Thx. Came to this fresh from talking social policy across the bench with
a pro tem traffic court commissioner who was also ruling on a dozen of
my clients' public drinking and camping citations. Situations like that
push you to caricature your own opinions. Couldn't prefer poetry more.
/MAB
/MAB
Rowland McDonnell
[snip]
> Is there anything more deeply imbuedwith irony than a "save the planet"
> sticker on a car?
Hmm... Not really - the best thing that could happen to `save' planet
Earth is to remove the only organism on it that's capable of causing it
any significant damage, and that's the human race. Motor cars are part
of the battery of devices that are helping increase the likihood of the
human race becoming extinct, so it's quite neat really.
Rowland.
(who doesn't drive - a fact which caused some consternation when he was
in Dallas some years ago and explained that there must have been some
mistake over the hotel parking bill.)
--
Remove the animal for email address: rowland....@dog.physics.org
PGP pub key A680B89D Sorry - the spam got to me
http://www.mag-uk.org
UK biker? Join MAG and help keep bureaucracy at bay
Jack Kessler
fairly despotic prior to 1914 when it had lots of power and the Indians did
not yet see themselves as a nationality. Similarly the white southern state
governments had nearly unrestrained power over their black citizens.
The reason passive resistance worked against both "despotisms" was that each
was answerable to public opinion in other countries or sections (Britain and
the North) which were not themselves directly involved in the conflicts and
did not feel threatened by the passive resistance movements.
By contrast, Indian passive resistance campaigns against Pakistan have been
conspicuous by their absence.
Alan Allport <all...@snip.net> wrote in message
news:7nf1hi$rg9$1...@news1.fast.net...
> Martha Bridegam wrote in message <379AB6...@sirius.com>...
>
> >Oh no, here we go again.....
> >
> >Passive resistance worked in the early 1960s in the American South. It
> >also arguably worked in India, Orwell to the contrary.
>
>
> >No, Orwell didn't like or understood passive resistance, as
> "Reflections
> >on Gandhi" illustrates. Wonder why not. Macho, maybe?
>
> Let's recap:
>
>
> "Despotic governments can stand 'moral force' till the cows come home;
> what they fear is physical force."
>
> If you believe that America in the 1960s operated under a 'despotic'
> government, then clearly Orwell was wrong and you are right. ("Like,
> talk about Nazi Germany, Man".) If you suspect that that is hyperbole at
> best, then the argument loses some force.
>
> In the case of India, there are three possibilities:
>
> (a) Indian resistance was a good deal less passive than pop history
> suggests.
>
> (b) The Raj was a good deal less despotic than Orwell was suggesting
> here.
>
Jack Kessler
Northern California has a spectacular estate on the Sonoma Coast called
Odiyan, and owns real estate and businesses in Berkeley. Total annual
contribution to Tibetan refugees in India and Nepal? Can you say ZERO, boys
and girls? As in nada, zip, bubkes?
If Gere (or you or I) sends a buck and a half he has more right to speak for
them than those platitudinous bullshitters.
greg <petro...@netzero.net> wrote in message
news:ioFm3.2$us....@news.callamer.com...
>
> Paul and Melanie wrote in message <379B1C81...@sympatico.ca>...
> >
>
>
>
> >One gets the feeling that if you
> >peel back that sticker you'll find
> >one that reads "Save the Planet"
> >and if you peel that one back
> >you'd find "Feed the World".
>
> Oh yes. Also, "Mean People Suck". Made me give up meanness.
>
Martha Bridegam
>
> The reason passive resistance worked against both "despotisms" was that each
> was answerable to public opinion in other countries or sections (Britain and
> the North) which were not themselves directly involved in the conflicts and
> did not feel threatened by the passive resistance movements.
Thx. That explains those two cases, at least, about as well as anything
I've seen yet.
Not sure, though, if it's an axiom re: passive resistance in general
that when the Whole World is Watching it has to be watching *from a
distance* for the protest to be effective. (Maybe yr right, but I hope
not.) What about, e.g., protests that bring police misconduct in poor
neighborhoods to the attn of comfortable liberals within the same city?
/MAB
cono...@my-deja.com
j...@world.std.com (Joseph C Fineman) wrote:
> Martha Bridegam <jo...@sirius.com> writes:
>
> >A sticker on a car that says "I Am Polluting The Atmosphere."
> >They do exist.
>
> I used to have one that said "Unsafe at Any Speed".
>
> --- Joe Fineman j...@world.std.com
>
> ||: Every passion has its chastity. :||
>
Celibacy Isn't Hereditary!
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
cono...@my-deja.com
Alan Allport
>Not sure, though, if it's an axiom re: passive resistance in general
>that when the Whole World is Watching it has to be watching *from a
>distance* for the protest to be effective. (Maybe yr right, but I hope
>not.) What about, e.g., protests that bring police misconduct in poor
>neighborhoods to the attn of comfortable liberals within the same city?
I think part of what has bedeviled this discussion (and I admit to being
party to this) is sloppy definitions - of the 'despotism' that Orwell
juxtaposed against passive resistance, and indeed of 'passive resistance'
itself. The paragraph above seems to be comparing modern civic protest
movements to the PR campaigns of Gandhi, not IMHO always accurately. The
Britannica definition of Satyagraha is instructive:
"(Hindi: "truth force"), philosophy introduced in the 20th century by
Mahatma Gandhi of India; in practice, it is manifested as a determined but
nonviolent resistance to some specific evil. Satyagraha was the guiding
philosophy for the Indian people in their fight against British imperialism
and has been adopted by protest groups in other countries.
Satyagraha may be translated from Hindi as "the devotion to truth," or as
"truth force." A satyagrahi--a person practicing satyagraha--achieves
correct insight into the real nature of an evil situation by observing a
nonviolence of the mind, by seeking truth in a spirit of peace and love. In
so doing, the satyagrahi encounters truth in the absolute. By his refusal to
submit to the wrong or to cooperate with it in any way, the satyagrahi
asserts this truth. Throughout his confrontation with the evil, he must
adhere to nonviolence, for to employ violence would be to lose correct
insight. A satyagrahi always warns his opponents of his intentions;
satyagraha forbids any tactic suggesting the use of secrecy to one's
advantage. Satyagraha includes more than civil disobedience; its full range
of application extends from the details of correct daily living to the
construction of alternative political and economic institutions. Satyagraha
seeks to conquer through conversion; in the end, there is no defeat and no
victory but rather a new harmony.
Gandhi drew from the writings of Leo Tolstoy and Henry David Thoreau, from
the Christian Bible, and from the Bhagavadgita and other Hindu writings in
his formulation of the concept of satyagraha. Satyagraha is also rooted in
ahimsa, the Hindu concept of nonviolence. Gandhi first conceived satyagraha
in 1906 in response to a law discriminating against Asians that was passed
by the colonial government of the Transvaal in South Africa. In 1917 the
first satyagraha campaign in India was mounted in the indigo-growing
district of Champaran. Over the following years, fasting and economic
boycotts were employed as methods of satyagraha.
Pragmatically, the efficacy of satyagraha as a universal philosophy has been
questioned. Satyagraha implicitly appears to assume that the opposition will
adhere to a certain level of morality to which the satyagrahi's truth may
ultimately appeal. Gandhi himself maintained, however, that satyagraha could
prevail anywhere because it could convert anyone."
--
*********************************************
http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~allport/
*********************************************
Rowland McDonnell
[snip]
> IRA babes with
> machine guns,
Are you sure about this one? The IRA has always come across to me as
very much restricted to men at least as far as performing public acts of
lethal violence goes.
[snip]
Rowland.
greg
Rowland McDonnell wrote in message
<1dvrwqe.t5s...@p73.nas3.is3.u-net.net>...
>greg <petro...@netzero.net> wrote:
>
>> IRA babes with
>> machine guns,
>
>Are you sure about this one? The IRA has always come across to me as
>very much restricted to men at least as far as performing public acts of
>lethal violence goes.
Sure I'm sure. My older sister had a popular poster of just such a woman, in
skirt and sandals, firing away from behind a walled street corner. Some
people not too long ago thought that kind of thing was cool. The
opposed-to-violence, 'empathizing with her oppressor' middle class white
woman is a conceit of very recent invention, and not merely a feminist one
but conservative as well. Germaine Greer's new book has an interesting
discussion of some of the ways in which women seem to get enlisted into
traditional cruelties committed against both women and other ethnicities,
and how silly it is to consider non-violence a phenomenon of American
feminism. I found myself stunned once when listening to some vets of Vietnam
reminisce about their parents' feelings regarding the draft; not one had a
mother who thought he should skip the war. Better to become some stranger's
unnamed murderer (or murdered) than bring shame upon the stupid family. But
to warp this thread back to Orwell, it seems to me he has been briskly
dismissed by some for his alleged misogyny all too easily; the strength of
the portrait of Julia is that she seems true to life, not an idealized
male-redeemer like Portia or Mrs. Ramsey. The trouble with the IRA-type of
guys is that no woman (or man), however superior in moral bearings, can
reliably get him to knock off shooting at people.
Alan Allport
>to warp this thread back to Orwell, it seems to me he has been briskly
>dismissed by some for his alleged misogyny all too easily; the strength
of
>the portrait of Julia is that she seems true to life, not an idealized
>male-redeemer like Portia or Mrs. Ramsey.
Plus the fact that Orwell scarcely introduces a sympathetic *male*
character into his fiction either; the well-meaning are either weak,
downtrodden or stupid, while the virile are bright-eyed unimaginative
thugs. But since you're not a significant member of the canon these days
until you've had a thorough dressing-down in a gender-studies monograph,
it's hardly surprising that the misogyny charge lingers.
Alan.
greg
Rowland McDonnell wrote in message
>greg <petro...@netzero.net> wrote:
>
>> Rowland McDonnell wrote in message
>> <1dvrwqe.t5s...@p73.nas3.is3.u-net.net>...
>> >greg <petro...@netzero.net> wrote:
<snip>
>Ever heard of `publicity stunts'?
Yup.
<snip>
>Erm... I'm not sure I know what you're referring to myself.
Don't sweat it.
<snip>
>Eh?
You bet.
<snip>
>Eh?
Right on.
Greg (now *that* was some proper snipping!)
Rowland McDonnell
> Rowland McDonnell wrote in message
> <1dvrwqe.t5s...@p73.nas3.is3.u-net.net>...
> >greg <petro...@netzero.net> wrote:
> >
>
> >> IRA babes with
> >> machine guns,
> >
> >Are you sure about this one? The IRA has always come across to me as
> >very much restricted to men at least as far as performing public acts of
> >lethal violence goes.
>
> Sure I'm sure. My older sister had a popular poster of just such a woman, in
> skirt and sandals, firing away from behind a walled street corner.
Ever heard of `publicity stunts'?
>Some
> people not too long ago thought that kind of thing was cool. The
> opposed-to-violence, 'empathizing with her oppressor' middle class white
> woman is a conceit of very recent invention, and not merely a feminist one
> but conservative as well.
Erm... I'm not sure I know what you're referring to myself.
> Germaine Greer's new book has an interesting
> discussion of some of the ways in which women seem to get enlisted into
> traditional cruelties committed against both women and other ethnicities,
Eh?
> and how silly it is to consider non-violence a phenomenon of American
> feminism.
Who would ever do that?
>I found myself stunned once when listening to some vets of Vietnam
> reminisce about their parents' feelings regarding the draft; not one had a
> mother who thought he should skip the war. Better to become some stranger's
> unnamed murderer (or murdered) than bring shame upon the stupid family. But
> to warp this thread back to Orwell, it seems to me he has been briskly
> dismissed by some for his alleged misogyny all too easily; the strength of
> the portrait of Julia is that she seems true to life, not an idealized
> male-redeemer like Portia or Mrs. Ramsey. The trouble with the IRA-type of
> guys is that no woman (or man), however superior in moral bearings, can
> reliably get him to knock off shooting at people.
Eh?
Martha Bridegam
>
> But since you're not a significant member of the canon these days
> until you've had a thorough dressing-down in a gender-studies monograph,
> it's hardly surprising that the misogyny charge lingers.
Hey, Alan -- how'd you like to be a significant member of the canon
then?
/MAB
Martha Bridegam
>
> .... Germaine Greer's new book has an interesting
> discussion of some of the ways in which women seem to get enlisted into
What'd she say?
"A Passage to India" was good on that subject too -- Forster spends so
much of the book showing how the English girl, who thinks the Indian
doctor has assaulted her, is pushed to become more certain of her story
because it will confirm the English community's prejudices. Then there's
a quiet little secondary theme: when the falsely accused doctor writes
poetry, it's often on the theme of liberating Islamic women. That seems
like an odd theme for Forster to bring in unless it's meant to suggest a
comparison between Indian and Western means of holding women to
prescribed roles. (Am sure any half-decent lit. class will have noticed
this.)
> the strength of
> the portrait of Julia is that she seems true to life, not an idealized
> male-redeemer like Portia or Mrs. Ramsey.
But she's not a very nice person, & she falls asleep during the
intellectual bits of the famous Book. Orwell is great when he talks
about human beings, just not much good when he talks about women.
/MAB
greg
Martha Bridegam wrote in message <37A2BD...@sirius.com>...
>greg wrote:
>>
>> .... Germaine Greer's new book has an interesting
>> discussion of some of the ways in which women seem to get enlisted into
>> traditional cruelties committed against both women and other
ethnicities....
>
>What'd she say?
She cursively notes Indian mother-in-laws roles in wife burning incidents,
and other familiar 3rd world indignities, but what was refreshing was how
serious she is about the difference the impact of the sexual, as opposed to
gender equality, revolution. She says (I borrowed the book, don't have it in
front of me) that working class women are much more susceptible to becoming
pregnant and then abandoned than more affluent women; and that the latter
are much too prone to celebrate the freedom to abort; Greer talks of
abortion as akin to tragedy, which I've never heard a radical feminist
actually say, although some might feel that way privately. And lots of other
undeniable stuff about those men who have no ethical right to get married
but are still able to do so with incredible ease. Had assumed Greer was an
antiquated me-first type of radical, but she knows the right type of
separtism well.
>"A Passage to India" was good on that subject too -- Forster spends so
>much of the book showing how the English girl, who thinks the Indian
>doctor has assaulted her, is pushed to become more certain of her story
>because it will confirm the English community's prejudices. Then there's
>a quiet little secondary theme: when the falsely accused doctor writes
>poetry, it's often on the theme of liberating Islamic women. That seems
>like an odd theme for Forster to bring in unless it's meant to suggest a
>comparison between Indian and Western means of holding women to
>prescribed roles. (Am sure any half-decent lit. class will have noticed
>this.)
'Half-decent' suggests greater confidence than I possess. Only saw the flim
version, where the doctor practically drools while talking about Indian
porn.
>> the strength of
>> the portrait of Julia is that she seems true to life, not an idealized
>> male-redeemer like Portia or Mrs. Ramsey.
>
>But she's not a very nice person, & she falls asleep during the
>intellectual bits of the famous Book. Orwell is great when he talks
>about human beings, just not much good when he talks about women.
Yeah. But I believed in her possible existence. Still too many sedantary
radicals falling asleep these days, esp. when being intellectual.
Greg
Alan Allport
>Hey, Alan -- how'd you like to be a significant member of the canon
>then?
I'd probably get fired.
Alan.
Alan Allport
>Germaine Greer's new book has an interesting
>discussion of some of the ways in which women seem to get enlisted into
>traditional cruelties committed against both women and other
ethnicities,
>and how silly it is to consider non-violence a phenomenon of American
>feminism.
According to this review
(http://www.tnr.com/magazines/tnr/archive/0599/053199/talbot053199.html)
, she's also a big fan of female genital mutilation too.
Alan.
P.S. Ever tried looking for _The New Republic_ in Yahoo!? A whole bunch
of new republics swallow the screen - Czech, Northern Cypriot,
Dominican...
P.P.S. Someone should tell said magazine that there's a difference
between an archive search and an archive browse feature. Might save some
centrist tears in the future.
Rowland McDonnell
> greg wrote:
[snip]
> > the strength of
> > the portrait of Julia is that she seems true to life, not an idealized
> > male-redeemer like Portia or Mrs. Ramsey.
>
> But she's not a very nice person, & she falls asleep during the
> intellectual bits of the famous Book. Orwell is great when he talks
> about human beings, just not much good when he talks about women.
Hmm... I don't see any particular reason for one to assume that women
should be nice or not fall asleep (etc); how does that sort of thing
make Orwell bad when it comes to writing about women?
Martha Bridegam
After being tamped down I suppose. (groan)
I meant you'd get a gender studies monograph dumped on you by yrs truly,
which please take as read to save time.
;-)
/MAB
Martha Bridegam
>
> Martha Bridegam <jo...@sirius.com> wrote:
> > But she's not a very nice person, & she falls asleep during the
> > intellectual bits of the famous Book. Orwell is great when he talks
> > about human beings, just not much good when he talks about women.
>
> Hmm... I don't see any particular reason for one to assume that women
> should be nice or not fall asleep (etc); how does that sort of thing
> make Orwell bad when it comes to writing about women?
Yes, his male protagonists are weak, but at least they have inner lives.
His women don't have inner lives except for Dorothy, who is a
Flaubertian alter ego.
I do think people underestimate Dorothy. "A Clergyman's Daughter" is an
awful book as a whole but she's a real character -- a real product of
what heavy-duty Protestant guilt can do to a literal-minded person who
takes Christianity seriously & doesn't realize it's only meant for
Sundays. I think the best part of the book is the introduction about
Dorothy's awful ordinary life, before Orwell starts scraping the
cutting-room floor for tramping episodes. Since the notion of Serving
Others *is* particularly drummed into girls rather than boys, it makes
sense for the character to be female.
/MAB
Rowland McDonnell
> greg wrote in message ...
>
> >Germaine Greer's new book has an interesting
> >discussion of some of the ways in which women seem to get enlisted into
> >traditional cruelties committed against both women and other
> ethnicities,
> >and how silly it is to consider non-violence a phenomenon of American
> >feminism.
>
> According to this review
> (http://www.tnr.com/magazines/tnr/archive/0599/053199/talbot053199.html)
> , she's also a big fan of female genital mutilation too.
Hmm... If so, she's changed her tune rather a lot; I suspect a reviewer
with an axe to grind. I recall some seriously vitriolic comments from
Greer about that particular practice.
[snip]
Martha Bridegam
>
> greg wrote in message ...
>
> >Germaine Greer's new book has an interesting
> >discussion of some of the ways in which women seem to get enlisted into
> >traditional cruelties committed against both women and other
> ethnicities,
> >and how silly it is to consider non-violence a phenomenon of American
> >feminism.
>
> According to this review
> (http://www.tnr.com/magazines/tnr/archive/0599/053199/talbot053199.html)
> , she's also a big fan of female genital mutilation too.
According to this Margaret Talbot reviewer person, Greer is one of those
strident man-haters. Talbot is saying this in The New Republic, which is
not what you'd call progressive or feminist these days. This makes me
question the honesty with which Talbot portrays Greer as defending
female genital mutilation.
Greg, can you clear this up? Is Greer really defending the practice
itself, or is she attacking Western self-righteousness in a manner
that's debatable but not antifeminist?
I have a running argument about the chador with my mother-in-law, who
served in the Peace Corps in Iran. She argues that to condemn the veil
is Western cultural imperialism. I argue that imprisonment is
imprisonment, culturally sanctioned or not, and that apparently some
women within Iran feel that way too. We are both what you'd call
feminist. We just take very different approaches to this particular
subject. Could that be what's really going on in Greer's book?
/MAB
greg
Martha Bridegam wrote in message <37A3C9...@sirius.com>...
>Alan Allport wrote:
>> According to this review
>> (http://www.tnr.com/magazines/tnr/archive/0599/053199/talbot053199.html)
>> , she's also a big fan of female genital mutilation too.
>
>According to this Margaret Talbot reviewer person, Greer is one of those
>strident man-haters. Talbot is saying this in The New Republic, which is
>not what you'd call progressive or feminist these days. This makes me
>question the honesty with which Talbot portrays Greer as defending
>female genital mutilation.
<snip>
She notes that some women in Africa who undergo this still enjoy sex; then
she later says that no sex is better than bad sex. Just her way of making
the book provactive, selling more copies, etc. The rest of the book is
better than that, not so pseudo-polemical. The issue of who is advocating
whose freedom and rights is what she discusses re foreign cultures' feminism
and U.S. variety of same.
I thought Naomi Woolfe married the publisher of the New Republic? Very
pretty white woman, went to Yale and wrote best seller "Beauty Myth" etc.
Would imagine pop fem is still part of the magazine, even as it drifts
right-ward.
Martha Bridegam
>
.....> >According to this Margaret Talbot reviewer person, Greer is one
of those
> >strident man-haters. Talbot is saying this in The New Republic, which is
> >not what you'd call progressive or feminist these days. This makes me
> >question the honesty with which Talbot portrays Greer as defending
> >female genital mutilation.
>
> <snip>
>
> She notes that some women in Africa who undergo this still enjoy sex; then
Thx. Sounds like an odd position to take but not in the way Talbot
suggests.
>
> I thought Naomi Woolfe married the publisher of the New Republic? Very
> pretty white woman, went to Yale and wrote best seller "Beauty Myth" etc.
> Would imagine pop fem is still part of the magazine, even as it drifts
> right-ward.
IMHO no fem is better than pop fem.
/MAB
Alan Allport
>> She notes that some women in Africa who undergo this still enjoy sex;
then
>> she later says that no sex is better than bad sex.....
>
>Thx. Sounds like an odd position to take but not in the way Talbot
>suggests.
Why so, exactly?
I am a little surprised at the turn in this discussion. Talbot makes
some fairly specific comments about Greer and FGM, including several
direct quotes; unless this part of her article is wantonly misleading,
what she says is devastating. Why is everyone so desperate to defend
Germaine Greer on this point? So far, the most cogent refutations have
been (a) this is 'just her way of making the book provocative', so we'll
let her off, and, (b) well, the review's in _The New Republic_, so what
do you expect?
If Talbot has misrepresented Greer on FGM, as people are apparently
claiming, then how exactly?
Alan.
Tom Deveson
>I have a running argument about the chador with my mother-in-law, who
>served in the Peace Corps in Iran. She argues that to condemn the veil
>is Western cultural imperialism. I argue that imprisonment is
>imprisonment, culturally sanctioned or not, and that apparently some
>women within Iran feel that way too. We are both what you'd call
>feminist. We just take very different approaches to this particular
>subject. Could that be what's really going on in Greer's book?
I haven't read *The Whole Woman* and this is just a derivative riff
based on a piece by the historian Linda Colley in the London Review of
Books (15/July/1999) -- you can get LRB online at http://www.lrb.co.uk,
though not, as far as I can see, this particular article.
Colley is reviewing both Greer's book and the biography of her by
Christine Wallace. She describes TWW as a "radical text of a kind...also
an uneven one" with "too many manifestly inaccurate statements" and
"some pronouncements...very strange, others simply daft" and containing
incompatible statements. [It gets a bit more complimentary later.]
Colley talks of GG's "suspicion of Anglo-Saxondom as a whole, including
the United States. In *TWW* it is the ever-present enemy, capitalist,
consumerist, warmongering, oppressive. Greer's heart is with the 'women
who donned the chador and howled the Americans out of Iran.' "
Colley suggests that among GG's crucial but not wholly acknowledged
determinants are "(of course) her parents, her home town of Melbourne
and Roman Catholicism." In particular, she suggests the Catholicism is
more persistently influential, and may have helped shape her feminism.
"Greer has never been interested in equal rights for women or in
discussing what this might mean. 'Equality,' she declares in *TWW*, is
no substitute for liberation.' Wallace touches on the possibility that
the germ of this position lies in Greer's early exposure to the nuns'
version of separate-sphere ideology."
Colley says that GG's "verdict on Western women's lot on the eve of the
Millennium is bang-on. 'Women's lives have become more, not less
difficult. They are better lives, but they are harder.' " Colley agrees
with GG's portrayal of existing inequalities, but not with her
solutions. "As Wallace puts it, she has always been 'terminally jaded
about the political process'. Colley cites her virtual ignoring of the
suffragettes and the vote in *The Female Eunuch*, her dismissal of New
Labour women MPs in *TWW*, and her contempt for the possibility that
legislation extending the Sex Discrimination Act and the Equal Pay Act
might be of any use.
"Why does she conclude by arguing that all women in this country can do
is withdraw from male-dominated enclaves, and set up their own
segregated communes along with their children, practising celibacy, and
waiting for non-Western women to create the Revolution?"
Colley's answer is that, "Properly and historically understood, Greer is
not primarily a feminist. More than anything else, she should be viewed
as a utopian." Colley cites a long tradition of Australian Utopians to
whose pedigree she assimilates GG. "In 1999, Germaine Greer lives on an
Essex farmstead, where she knows all the animals by name, presides over
guests who 'are all under my thumb', noisily champions celibacy, and
dreams of an Edenic community of like-minded women and fresh-faced
children. A century or so earlier, she might well have called herself
Mother Germaine..."
Tom
--
Tom Deveson
Alan Allport
>I have a running argument about the chador with my mother-in-law, who
>served in the Peace Corps in Iran. She argues that to condemn the veil
>is Western cultural imperialism. I argue that imprisonment is
>imprisonment, culturally sanctioned or not, and that apparently some
>women within Iran feel that way too.
I have had the good fortune to meet several expat Iranians over the last
couple of years, and their general feeling seems to be that what Iran
could do with right now is a great gollup of Western Cultural
Imperialism - secular institutions of state, rule of law, free and open
elections, etc...
Robert Hughes nailed this one down nicely in _The Culture of Complaint_,
I think:
"...When the Iranian mullahs pronounced their fatwa against a live
writer, Salman Rushdie, for 'blasphemy' against Islam, fixing a price on
his head for writing words they didn't like, academe hardly broke its
silence. American academics failed to collectively protest this
obscenity for two reasons. First, they feared their own campuses might
become the target of Islamic terrorists. Second, the more politically
correct among them [Hughes wrote this in 1992, when PC still had a
fairly discrete meaning and had not yet become a stale, generic term of
abuse. AA] felt it was wrong to criticize a Muslim country, no matter
what it did. At home in America, such folk knew it was the height of
sexist impropriety to refer to a young female as a 'girl' instead of a
'woman'. Abroad in Tehran, however, it was more or less OK for a cabal
of regressive theocratic bigots to insist on the chador, to cut off
thieves' hands and put out the eyes of offenders on TV, and to murder
novelists as State policy. Oppression is what we do in the West. What
they do in the Middle East is 'their culture'. Though of course we don't
go along with everything the mobs - correction, the masses - of Iran say
or do, we have to recognize that this culture is indeed theirs, not
ours, and that the objective circumstances of anti-Arab racism in these
Eurocentric United States would make a protest from the lit department
seem like a caving-in to the values of the Republicans, who have used
the often regrettable excesses of Islamic fundamentalism, which must be
seen within a global context of Western aggression against Third World
peoples, as a pretext for... but one gets the drift."
(This book is impossible to quote fairly, because Hughes always sounds
so one-sidedly partisan. There are huge chunks early on excoriating the
Religious Right of Buchanan and Pat Roberts, as well as Ronald Reagan,
who Hughes blames for making public America just that bit more stupid
and dishonest after his presidential career. Hughes is Art Editor on
_Time_ Magazine, BTW, so anyone who gauges authorial value by the
masthead they work under can feel free to entirely disregard the above
quote].
Alan.
Rowland McDonnell
[snip]
> Robert Hughes nailed this one down nicely in _The Culture of Complaint_,
> I think:
>
> "...When the Iranian mullahs pronounced their fatwa against a live
> writer, Salman Rushdie, for 'blasphemy' against Islam, fixing a price on
> his head for writing words they didn't like, academe hardly broke its
> silence.
Bloody well did.
>American academics failed
Ah! Yes... well, *American* academics might not have said much, but
that's not quite the same, is it?
Martha Bridegam
>
> Alan Allport <all...@snip.net> wrote (quoting Robert Hughes):
>
> > "...When the Iranian mullahs pronounced their fatwa against a live
> > writer, Salman Rushdie, for 'blasphemy' against Islam, fixing a price on
> > his head for writing words they didn't like, academe hardly broke its
> > silence.
>
> Bloody well did.
>
> >American academics failed
>
> Ah! Yes... well, *American* academics might not have said much, but
> that's not quite the same, is it?
Michel Foucault memorably took the wrong side in the Iranian revolution,
too. Ironic since the mullahs would have had *him* shot in a New York
minute.
/MAB
Martha Bridegam
>
> I am a little surprised at the turn in this discussion. Talbot makes
> some fairly specific comments about Greer and FGM, including several
> direct quotes; unless this part of her article is wantonly misleading,
> what she says is devastating. Why is everyone so desperate to defend
>
> If Talbot has misrepresented Greer on FGM, as people are apparently
> claiming, then how exactly?
OK, it sounded like the reviewer was taking potshots & I therefore
wondered if she might be picking at odd-sounding bits of Greer's
opinions without fairly describing the philosophy behind them.
Based on the LRB review, it now sounds like Greer *does* take a position
a little like my mother-in-law's -- that western ideas of formal
equality are not the only thing to consider when deciding what is good
for women in a society not one's own. I *do* disagree with that view,
because it implies that freedom & physical comfort are not universally
valued. But it's a rational -- or at least an intelligent -- position to
take & Talbot wasn't entirely fair to it.
But sheesh, Greer does sound odd. In fact, per final paragraph of LRB
review, she sounds an awful lot like a Shaker.
/MAB
Martha Bridegam
<quoting London Review of Books>
> Colley's answer is that, "Properly and historically understood, Greer is
> not primarily a feminist. More than anything else, she should be viewed
> as a utopian." Colley cites a long tradition of Australian Utopians to
> whose pedigree she assimilates GG....
Australian Utopians?
What do we know about Australian Utopians?
I'm especially curious being a fan of Ursula LeGuin's __The
Dispossessed__, about relations between a society like ours and a large
utopian community that has historical similarities to Australia.
/MAB
Alan Allport
>Based on the LRB review, it now sounds like Greer *does* take a
position
>a little like my mother-in-law's -- that western ideas of formal
>equality are not the only thing to consider when deciding what is good
>for women in a society not one's own.
I would say that Greer goes much, much further than that. She can't even
be ranked as a cultural relativist, because she makes pretty clear that
she thinks non-European societies far more desirable than Western Civ -
she's opposed to the Enlightenment project itself. It's been argued that
politics for the last two hundred years has been, at heart, an extension
of the French Revolutionary debate - that sooner or later you must make
a decision as to whether you stand on the side of the
Montagnard-Girondin ideal or not. I think Greer's affiliation is
longstanding, and it 'aint the one many of admirers think it is.
Alan.
Rowland McDonnell
> Martha Bridegam wrote in message <37A48E...@sirius.com>...
>
> >Based on the LRB review, it now sounds like Greer *does* take a
> position
> >a little like my mother-in-law's -- that western ideas of formal
> >equality are not the only thing to consider when deciding what is good
> >for women in a society not one's own.
>
> I would say that Greer goes much, much further than that. She can't even
> be ranked as a cultural relativist, because she makes pretty clear that
> she thinks non-European societies far more desirable than Western Civ
Hmm... She doesn't make that clear to me.
>-
> she's opposed to the Enlightenment project itself.
What's that?
Tom Deveson
>But sheesh, Greer does sound odd. In fact, per final paragraph of LRB
>review, she sounds an awful lot like a Shaker.
True enough, but it nevertheless doesn't prevent her from appearing on
lots of frothy TV and radio talk programmes, panel games, quizzes, etc.
Which is OK but perhaps inconsistent with other of her more austerely
suggested principles.
Also can't really imagine the author of PATEL going on "Have I Got News
For You?" or doing inane celeb chat-shows.
Tom
--
Tom Deveson
Alan Allport
>Also can't really imagine the author of PATEL going on "Have I Got News
>For You?" or doing inane celeb chat-shows.
Heck, he didn't even like _The Brains Trust_, which would probably rank
as absurdly highbrow by present TV standards.
(Which tempts me to off on a riff about Professor Joad and railway
tickets... but perhaps Tom will beat me to it).
Alan.
Tom Deveson
>What do we know about Australian Utopians?
Me, nothing.
Linda Colley writes:
"As Wallace points out, while at Sydney University, Greer was decisively
influenced by Harry Hooton, a utopian anarchist who believed in the
innate perfectibility of mankind. But Greer's ideas have a much longer
pedigree than this. As one would expect of a country which has always
taken in rebels of all kinds, convicts, Chartists, Irish exiles, German
Moravians and Italian socialists, Australia has a rich history of
utopian experimentation. The first communal experimentation there
occurred back in the 1830s. Moreover, those Protestant Anglo-Saxons whom
Greer so despises have their own utopian, millenarian tradition.
Eighteenth and 19th-century groups like the French Prophets, 'Mother'
Ann Lee and her Shakers, and the followers of Joanna Southcott all gave
prominence to women; and some of them advocated segregation of the sexes
and the 'joys of celibacy."
Tom
--
Tom Deveson
Tom Deveson
>(Which tempts me to off on a riff about Professor Joad and railway
>tickets... but perhaps Tom will beat me to it).
"...Now then, Allport, it all depends on what you mean by 'riff'..."
--
Tom Deveson
Alan Allport
>>(Which tempts me to off on a riff about Professor Joad and railway
>>tickets... but perhaps Tom will beat me to it).
>
>"...Now then, Allport, it all depends on what you mean by 'riff'..."
Thank you, Professor. Now, let's see how much of this I can get wrong
from memory. To the great unwashed, Professor C.E.M. (Cyril Edwin
Mitchinson) Joad, 1891-1953, was chief presenter of the popular Home
Service (I assume) radio discussion show, _The Brains Trust_. Orwell
gives a rather backhanded defence of it as semi-progressive in one of
his _As I Please_ columns. Now, apart from the boilerplate introduction
to every subject that Mr. Deveson paraphrases above, the one thing that
Joad is most famous for is train tickets. Or, rather, the absence of
train tickets while on British Railway journeys, an act of petty
criminality normally associated with the juvenile or the penniless, not
the chair of the Department of Psychology and Philosophy at Birkbeck
College. There's a lot of IIRC in the following, but Joad's refusal to
buy tickets was neither related to income nor some obscure act of
political protest, but rather an unusual behavioural tic. Well known to
long-suffering train inspectors, who had been obliged at times to chase
him across open fields in vain hopes of recovering their lost tariffs,
Joad's strange peccadillo was kept out of the public gaze until he was
arraigned in front of a magistrate's court - at which point he was
dropped straight into the memory hole by the BBC. Don't know what ever
happened to his academic career, but his days as a celebrity were over.
Wonder if his colleagues at Birkbeck ever pondered the psychological
implications of his case?
Alan.
Tom Deveson
> Don't know what ever happened to his academic career, but his days as
a celebrity were over.
>Wonder if his colleagues at Birkbeck ever pondered the psychological
>implications of his case?
More Joadiana, tempered by IIRC.
a) Joad (a/c AJP Taylor) was the principal speaker for the famous Oxford
Union resolution in Feb 1933, that "this House will not fight for King
and Country" and made what Taylor describes as a pacifist speech rather
than one in favour of collective security.
b) He wrote 47 books in all, including *A Guide to the Philosophy of
Morals and Politics* (1938).
c) Angus Calder in *The People's War* describes him as "tweedy, bearded
and bright eyed, the epitome of the New Statesman intellectual, made the
running [in the Brains Trust] at first. His popularity, based on
dazzling width of reading and brilliant eloquence, was such that in one
Yorkshire town police had to force a way for him through a milling mob
who could not get into the hall where he was due to speak. But his high-
pitched voice and his tendency to monopolise the sessions soon irritated
many loyal listeners.."
d) A wartime West End revue had a character called Professor Woad, and
the Ministry of Food launched a dish called "Joad-in-the-Hole".
e) When Joad said on the Brains Trust that "astrology is nonsense", the
popular Sunday papers next week gave him particularly nasty horoscopes.
f) I think it was the combination of his writing books on ethics and
practising fare-dodging [the conviction came in 1948] which aroused
public amusement.
g) I think it was also an opportunity for the anti-rationalists and
Blimps (as described by Orwell in CEJL III) to try to suggest that this
showed religion and/or conventional beliefs were necessary as a basis
for moral conduct. On the other hand, Joad himself had written in the
New Statesman (August 1942) that Hitler's and Goering's diabolical evil
sapped the bases of scientific humanism and economic determinism. He
said it was difficult to believe that the Nazis were "*all* the victims,
and *wholly* the victims of unwise psychological training and economic
injustice."
h) Joad did sign (together with Orwell, Wells, Koestler, Symons etc) the
1946 open letter asking for the Gestapo records to be scrutinised and
Hess interrogated to establish whether there was any truth in
allegations during the Moscow trials that Trotsky had been a
collaborator with Nazism.
i) After Joad was convicted, Commander Campbell [one of the other Brains
Trust panellists, who was famous for saying "When I was in Patagonia"]
said he wasn't surprised as Joad was always mean enough to try to avoid
buying a round of drinks.
Tom
--
Tom Deveson
Tom Deveson
>> she's [Germaine Greer] opposed to the Enlightenment project itself.
>
>What's that?
The 18th century (and subsequent, though there are historical arguments
possible here) movement of thought, believing in social progress, and
the liberating potential of rational and scientific knowledge. Often
(but not necessarily) hostile to existing forms of social and religious
convention which it saw as merely superstitious rather than
intellectually justifiable.
Tom
--
Tom Deveson
Rowland McDonnell
Ah! Strange that I've got the impression that Greer thinks that that
whole thing was one of the best things yet.
(but isn't it a bit much calling it a `project' - that tends to imply
some sort of deliberate planning and whatnot)
Tom Deveson
>Colley's answer is that, "Properly and historically understood, Greer is
>not primarily a feminist. More than anything else, she should be viewed
>as a utopian." Colley cites a long tradition of Australian Utopians to
>whose pedigree she assimilates GG.
Adding a few words from a most un-Orwellian writer:
"..A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even
glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is
always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out and, seeing
a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.."
Oscar Wilde from *The Soul of Man under Socialism* 1890
Tom
--
Tom Deveson
Alan Allport
>"..A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even
>glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is
>always landing.
Several C16th maps did indeed include Utopia; cartographers were not always
privy to Sir Thomas More's in-jokes.
Alan.
--
*********************************************
http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~allport/
*********************************************
Rowland McDonnell
> Tom Deveson wrote in message ...
>
> >"..A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even
> >glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is
> >always landing.
>
> Several C16th maps did indeed include Utopia; cartographers were not always
> privy to Sir Thomas More's in-jokes.
Surely anyone who spoke Latin would have got the point?
Alan Allport
<1dvz6z6.75...@p93.nas2.is4.u-net.net>...
>> Several C16th maps did indeed include Utopia; cartographers were not
always
>> privy to Sir Thomas More's in-jokes.
>
>Surely anyone who spoke Latin would have got the point?
'Utopia' is Greek.
Rowland McDonnell
> Rowland McDonnell wrote in message
> <1dvz6z6.75...@p93.nas2.is4.u-net.net>...
>
> >> Several C16th maps did indeed include Utopia; cartographers were not
> always
> >> privy to Sir Thomas More's in-jokes.
> >
> >Surely anyone who spoke Latin would have got the point?
>
> 'Utopia' is Greek.
Picky.
Rowland.
(crimson)