[lit-ideas] Re: Irene's experiment...

This all started because I said that society, as in the whole world
(because if anything, we do a little better than the rest of the world)
does not affirm life.  It affirms only youth, which is to say, about half
of the average lifespan.  I also stated that society straightjackets
everyone with a very very narrow definition of success in only one form:
money.  I further stated that success, interpreted by society exclusively
as money, is something we do to get approval, or disapproval, from parents,
which, parents long forgotten, we transfer onto the world at large.   I
illustrated my premises with specific examples (black balloons for birth
(i.e., life) days, etc.) .  

In exchange for my efforts, rather than get a reasoned account of why I'm
wrong, I received (and not the first time) emotion laden, vituperative
accusations that I hate life, am a sourpuss, don't know who to celebrate,
and on and on.  Why, I wonder dispassionately, all the emotion?  Why the
defensiveness?  Why an inability to point to examples of how the world
really does affirm life?  Can it be that perhaps there are no examples
apart from itty bitties along the lines of cats torturing  crickets, and
watching bumble bees and sitting in parks?  No examples at all of how
society, that aggregate of bipeds, affirms life, and what it allows as
success.  Can all the emotion be because I am in fact right, and there are
no examples of how society is anything other than anti-life, and success is
nothing but brainless acquisition, because that's all that society
approves?  

It seems that whenever I suggest that there might be hidden motives that
travel in a feedback loop between society and individual, I'm all but
stoned to death.  What gives?




> [Original Message]
> From: Ursula Stange <Ursula@xxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 9/28/2006 7:33:53 PM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Irene's experiment...
>
> No condescension meant, Irene.  At least no personal condescension.   
> And it's your response that's ridiculous.   Listen to yourself.  Do you 
> really think that I (and probably all of us) don't cry inside at the 
> hell the Iraqis are enduring?  Do you really think that when I don't 
> curl up on the floor with grief (which I do occasionally) that I'm 
> celebrating death?  The world is a horrible place.  Say it loud (if not 
> proud).   But that doesn't get us from one end of the day to the other.  
> What gets us from here to there is the small kindnesses, the everpresent 
> campfires of gentle people (as someone said).   That's what I don't seem 
> to see in any of your notes.   I know nothing about who you are except 
> what you put out here.  And that's all I'm responding to. 
> Ursula
>
> Andy Amago wrote:
>
> >I will take your advice and begin to
> >appreciate how wondrous the world is because the Iraqis are at this very
> >moment finding a glimpse of beauty in the hell we created for them.  I
will
> >begin to appreciate that nothing needs to be understood and no changes
need
> >to be made except to bring on more of the same.  
> >
> >Now that that's settled, I need to get back to work and stop wasting my
> >time.
> >  
> >
>
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