[lit-ideas] Re: Values, a penny each.
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 19:36:10 -0800
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
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