Modern society nixes importance of philosophers and poets. Yet, in purely practical terms, without philosophers political discourse becomes incredibly shallow. And with poets reduced to drudgery in "liberal arts" colleges, the language of political debate becomes increasingly colorless and nasty. Politics is and always was a hyper-competitive business but for the observer of the Kennedy-Nixon exchange of 1960, there is a feeling of unbelievable deterioration of collective intelligence in recent times.
Barbara Ehrenreich is one of the very few, may be the only remaining social philosopher of distinction in America. She is the only person whom I know who poses questions relevant for the everyday life. So-called academic philosophy is sterile. Academic social science should better be called "applied statistical research." These things may be useful for budgetary planning-- how many public toilets with Wi-Fi access an average city must have-- but are irrelevant for the terms in which normal people comprehend the society.
While her new book is not so daring and unusual in its treatment as "Nickel and dimed" and "For her own good" but she identifies the 180 degrees turn in values, which has occurred in American Puritanism. While the pilgrims held the dim view of "institutionalized depression" (Ehrenreich's term), modern American outlook heavily influenced by the Southern Baptist culture of megachurches and the New Age, propagates superficially "sunny" concept of reality and the supernatural. Neither repentance, nor continual self-improvement are necessary. Salvation can be achieved by having "the right attitude." The opposite side of this worldview also with the roots in pilgrim Puritanism is that if one is unhappy and/or unlucky--all mostly understood in terms of material wealth--one is beyond salvation and must fake a positive attitude not to become an outcast.
Kudos to Barbara! Keep up the good work!
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There is one subject on which I sharply disagree with Barbara Ehrenreich. She ridicules applications of quantum mechanics to human consciousness. While most such applications are New Age baloney, a few ought to be taken seriously. At least they were by the fathers of quantum mechanics: Bohr and Pauli among those.
She quotes derisive opinion of Nobel Prize winner Gell-Mann. But he nicknamed the solid state physics--the branch most responsible for modern technological progress--as "squalid state" and exercised bad judgement on many subjects starting from trafficking in Pre-Colombian art and ending with faculty appointments at Caltex. In particular, in view of his dismissal of every branch of physics but the particle physics, he, using his enormous clout, prevented the development of the emergent fields such as quantum optics at Caltex.
On the strictly philosophical level, if, on the ground level there is no uncertainty, we are automatons. There is no free will, and given a sufficiently powerful computer, all our actions can be computed from birth to grave. This is nonsense. I am not arguing that quantum mechanics is the right way out of this philosophical conundrum-- I am not sufficiently competent for that-- but this is a serious issue, which cannot be dealt by derision.
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