I thought of you, Mike as I wrote that. I not only wondered whether there was a place for the benighted fellows who claimed to be military heroes - without risking their lives or even be in military service. I also wondered where you might fit and decided you were a sort of Esch - not the frenetic actual Esch - but a cynical one who had his little selection of made-up values that he takes out privately from time to time to revere. Knowing that few or none will agree with his selection, he makes light of them - jokes about them and only displays his passion when someone else stands up and says "wait. Wait. Here is another value worth preserving." Mike looks at his little store of secret values, doesn't find it and excoriates this throwback, this Neanderthal, this Fascist, this Heideggerian, for claiming values which aren't . . . well . . . progressive Give me a one and a two and a . . . The Chief Anarchist sings, Let us all praise disintegration, There is nothing that last And nothing that deserves to Being very like puffs of smoke In a dimly lit waiting station Where people long for a train That has never come And will never ever . . . It is an illusion You can see if you wave Your hand and brush At it till you find The nothing in Your thoughts and mind Bt the real tangible Nothing that is there And not just there but everywhere. Lawrence From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mike Geary Sent: Sunday, February 07, 2010 6:56 PM To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [lit-ideas] Values, a penny each. LH quotes Kundera in his blog: >>"The world is [in] the process of the disintegration of values (values handed down from the Middle Ages), a process that stretches over the four centuries of the Modern Era and is their very essence. "What are man's possibilities in the face of this process?"<< Hasn't the world always been in "the process of the disintegration of values"? And thank God for that! (or thanks to whom/whatever drives the process). In which stage of our cultural-intellectual development would those who lament such disintegration have us frozen? I'll bet you that it's in the stage that they came of age, in which they find their own identity. No one wants to be robbed of their identity, but that's what life's all about. Who are we as human beings? Where are we going? Towards what end? "Every generation puts a hero on the pop charts," as Simon and Garfunkel sang. Yes, indeed. Everything changes -- which is to say that the world is also always in the process of creating values to replace those it destroys. For the better or the worse? Doesn't matter. Things are always changing. Mike Geary Memphis