I'm Aaron Motherfucking Mandel and here's some goddam shit as it comes to me.
I think the Core program needs an overhaul, in fact it probably needed it sometime shortly after WWII and definitely before Bill Clinton crafted a tenuous peace in the middle east while getting his dong serviced in the oval office. I say this about the Core program because one semester is supposed to be antiquity and the other modernity. I have no problem with the texts chosen, as they are a pretty good primer for the western canon, as good as any semester long set could be at least. However, the "modernity" tag troubles me. In it, we read some shakespeare, enlightenment philosophy, darwin, and then finish with something like Toni Morrison. Now I grant you that the ideas of most of these people form the basis for what we have now in our modern institutions of government and general societal structures. However, the amazing thing about the texts of "modernity" is that in their time they were absolutely cutting edge, they took down a monarchical structure that had held for centuries and reversed the Catholic Church's stranglehold on what was scientific truth. However, that is all old shit. Sure, it is the basis for modernity, but I would posit that we are living in a time right now that is completely unexplained or unexplainable by locke, rousseau, hobbes, kant, darwin, etc...Technology has made the world a lot smaller, metaphorically. Interstate commerce is available at the push of a button, international business and trade is the norm, and companies that do business in many countries of the world rule the market. Airplanes make it so that with moderate capital and 18 hours I can be fucking a Thai whore in her country of birth. None of the folks that Whitman has us reading for "modernity" talks about any of this stuff, and they can't be expected too, since most have been skeletal for 250+ years. That would be fine if their ideas still dictated the current state of things but I don't think that they do. The current state of the world requires for me something beyond the limits of liberal political theory and enlightenment philosophy which is concerned with insular state sovereignty and advancement through individual rebellions against old monarchies. This age of easy internationalism and seamless information requires new scholarship, scholarship that will relegate the current selection of modernity to "old shit", sandwiched in between antiquity and whatever this new beast is that we are developing. I would therefore propose a third semester of core, devoted to true modernity, learning about how the internet has become a geopolitical weapon of the masses but maybe is just a false sense of empowerment for the common man (opiate?) when all is really controlled by Rupert Murdoch and a few other fools who breathe and dream just like you and me, but can control the fates of millions instantaneously, is this the new age of kings?
Yeah, okay Aaron, except then I wake up and read the news and realize that we are still fighting wars over religion and nationalism, I suppose some things never change, although I did vote for Dennis Kucinich.
just some thoughts as they came to me.
Also, I am wondering whether from the third floor of the library I could jump into that native american canoe without taking the whole shebang down with a crash into the foyer. If i could be gently lowered into it without fear of fattification causing a break I would totally spend the night in there.
The modernity of core is defined by its ideas, not by technology. Flying to Thailand has nothing to do with modernity. Locke discusses our modern conception of private property and reward for work; Darwin is a poignant example of modern empirical science clashing with and potentially destroying our traditional ("antique") conception of what it was to live as a human -- instead of special beings, we are just twigs on a big old tree of life; Marx and Engels (don't forget Engels) gave a new understanding of property toward which the West has been moving steadily in the past 90 years right up to and especially including the present day (Social Security & healthcare, anyone?).
ReplyDeleteYour question is valid, but I think your approach should be to ask specifically whether the ideas in the second half of Core still underly our personal and social lives, not whether the authors ever commented directly on the particulars of "modern" life.
Hey "Ventifact", I think Aaron's point was not that those texts don't contribute to our national conscious but that we exist in a new intellectual paradigm within which education and information values have shifted according to a framework which those text's authors couldn't have imagined. New texts which deal with our modern paradigm, such as Neil Postman's Technopoly, Daniel Quinn's Ishmael, and Jonathan Rosen's The Talmud and the Internet all come to mind.
ReplyDeleteI'm not clear on what this new paradigm-framework thing is other than a technological and political reality, and consequently why it deserves attention in Core. Information flows in new and powerful ways these days, but that flow itself is not a part of our fundamental worldview. If Holy Hell broke out overnight and China-Russia-NATO-Taiwan-Iran-et al. went to war and our spiffy telecommunications net was obliterated before we all woke up the next morning, all the people who lie awake at night wondering what the point of life is now that Darwin demonstrated that we were not specially created by God would still have that fundamental part of their mental outlook. Geopolitical-technological realities are important to understanding our world, but it seems to me they're not really what Core is supposed to explore any more than Core should explore the historical development of western art or the history of western science. In my view, Core is first and foremost a philosophy class, venturing only into whatever applied fields are appropriate for understanding the development of the basis for western thought.
ReplyDeleteAs for those books specifically, I can't say I am familiar with the ideas they put forward. Perhaps for that reason I am missing the point.
Ventifacts make good garden ornaments but are poor at intellectual discussion.
ReplyDeleteI think Ventifact makes some good points, if you are indeed a Whitman student that is awesome you read the blog, don't feel the need to hide behind your alias and share your name. I think my point was that the authors of modernity do advance upon the authors of antiquity when commenting on the human and social condition at a basic level but there is no way that they could have interpreted a world like the one we live in. You are right about some holy hell breaking loose and turning us back into cavemen, a famous Einstein quote regarding World Wars 3 and 4 comes to mind, but the point that I would make, especially off your original comment equating some of those theorists with truly modern things like social security, healthcare, etc. is that while the basics of those ideas might hold in some of the "modernity" ideas as core presents them, the true fact of political life these days is not as pure as it was for Locke, Marx, etc because in the early days of liberalism and early liberal political theory there was no such thing as uber-powerful K Street lobbyists, presidents with deeply linked economic involvement in the middle east and corporate giants that shape policy that affects everyday people, that is more my point. I think.
ReplyDeleteI like Ventifact's rhetoric:
ReplyDelete"As for those books specifically, I can't say I am familiar with the ideas they put forward. Perhaps for that reason I am missing the point."
That's a long and complicated way of saying "I haven't read that shit". And Ventifact, it's okay that you haven't read that shit. My point (I don't think I'm supporting Mandel anymore) is that the way we think is determined by the world in which we live. Imagine giving a computer to a 10th century scholar. They wouldn't be able to use it, but not because the technology is unapproachable, but because they don't understand the metaphore. "Documents" and "Folders" on a computer represent things which we understand. We exist in a wholly new paradigm based on a system of symbolism which has never before existed. The virtual world has created a need for representative icons. Darwin was fucking smart, I'll give him that, but gift him and a modern day 8 year old a new computer tommorow and I'll bet you a nickel that the kid is gonna learn it faster.
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ReplyDeletei don't like seeing ads for the monstro blog on the listserv, it ruins it a bit i think.
ReplyDelete'That's a long and complicated way of saying "I haven't read that shit".'
ReplyDeleteI was trying to subtly point out that naming books most people haven't read is not a good way of explaining your point of view. Most people haven't read that shit, and listing a bunch of titles does not explain what kind of ideas one thinks should be included in Core.
I used an avatar out of habit. You know, I've never had an opportunity where it'd be appropriate to use my real name on a web forum.
-Ventifact