The current UE debate to restrict Schengen agreements in "special circumstances" is a good reminder of a basic logical trade-off in political choice:
Welfare states are not compatible with liberal, global policies.
Welfare segregates. It prefers the inside to the outside.
Call it what it is: ethnocentric, bigoted and chauvinistic.
Clearly contradictory with the received idea of socialist principals and ideals.
More humane, more benefits, more equal, more fraternal.
The only way you can support that is if you're part of the few privileged inside. Privileged to those outside.
Might as well hear the truth: it's the foreigners' fault, they aren't born with the same noble descent. You see our genes are officially recognised as superior by the right of jus sanguinis.
Just watched this old interview with lady Gaga on French TV.
First thing that came to mind was these two parties really symbolize two realities separated by an impassable gap. On one hand entertainment, pure emotional passion (sentimentalism) and on the other Reason (rationalism). (I know very dualistic, but this is TV after all!)
No need for musical elaboration, complication, advancement, or lofty topics with Lady Gaga. Simply passionate communicative vibe, that is intrinsic to all mankind. Sex, drugs, and party ! The secret to her notoriety and success is her accessibility to all natural beings.
I guess our social evolution, which is felt in our education and vocabulary has constantly tried to limit and repress to some extent this passionate side of our characters. So to speak it has helped us build societies on solid foundations of Reason, thus enabling the advancement of civilization, which needs rigour, consistency and hard work.
Thus we are biased in our judgement, always putting values on ideas, ideals and actions. But these are arbitrary in the sense that they are noble or base, only in relationship to our own advancement as a species. No absolute value. (For a quick example just look at the evolution of sex in society)
When in less developed societies such passion was directed to the only desired material objects surrounding us, that is mainly other humans, our passions were logically directed towards it. Violence, rape, you name it came of that. (see Dogville!)
Thus, the necessity of dogma to coerce. Religion, cult, nationalism.
Today, industrial and post-industrial economies, have enabled us I believe, and the US is a great example of this, to direct desire in mass towards other material belongings, that is objects.
We create objects of desire, through design, marketing and associations to other naturally desired humans - swedish models for example...!
The US has found an equilibrium of passion and reason that is certainly more tilted towards passion than Old Europe, which has also made it more powerful economically. It is economically more efficient.
In fact, it has found balance, limiting destructive emotions fueling insecurity, violence and sexual harassment (also helped by strict law - stricter than in most UE I believe - and more present, that is for sure - though another topic to itself) and enabled the emancipation of consumerism, desire of objects and production.
On the good side it makes Americans more emancipated than across the pond. On the flip side, I guess they will also be more frustrated if these greater desires do not materialise.
Nevertheless, being more efficient it should seem only normal it will naturally spread to other parts of the globe's humanity. Thereby goes the great wheel of human social development.
This grand classic by Lars von Trier was my treat of artful cinema last night. It bears a subtle human portrayal, with no easy moral, but a complex depiction of human relationships and dare I say nature.
Very interesting in the light of international conflicts at present.
Lars is remarkable in his capacity to depict a kaleidoscope of human ideals, actions and the evolution of these within a same individual within a very limited time frame.
Far from chosing the classical Manichean scheme of good and bad, he demonstrates with genius a fundamentally amoral humanity, constantly adapting to its social and material environment. Dominant becomes dominated. Victim becomes culprit. And humanity in its whole is once more NAKED and frustrated, unable to transcend and surpass itself with its created ideals.
The depiction of humanity is universal as it symbolically includes the presence of both urban and rural worlds. One could add to this inglobing set of dualisms the developed and undeveloped, the educated and uneducated.
Thus, no escape route here (that we love to believe in) is offered to set the blame on individual particularities. It is HUMAN RACE at its CORE. Ourselves, YOU & ME !
So in short, though it does no justice to the film's sensational work: humans are shown here with the basest passions, which are only possibly repressed through social power and pressure:
Egoism, abuse of power, disrespect, apathy, ignorance, cupidity, brutality..
The list is long and telling.
So if you've seen it let me know what you would really do in Nicole Kidman's role. Otherwise go watch this piece of cultural genius !
Two billion people, including myself watching the wedding of the year, maybe the decade and perhaps the century.
Why? It begs the question.
Dream.
Disney in reality.
Entertainment ? The sheer beauty ?
Because others do too?
Probably. But also something more deep. The wedding symbolizes a stable point of reference. A generational peg. In a modern world punctuated by contradictory values and visions, what is more reassuring than a good old royal wedding? A family in place for nearly 1000 years, and a collective imagination full of fairy dust. An illusion of transcendence!!
It serves a public and global rite of passage, a kind of godly baptism or bar-mitzvah. Obviously, not a wedding because this is to do with the individual in his individuality, not in relation to another specific.
An event that binds all of us, as something shared and valued, though only in one's imagination and mind.
"Thank you and good bye, you may all now return to economic serfdom in personal insecurity, where nothing nor anyone is right or wrong, but only potent or impotent, now that we have kissed and stopped world activity for 2 days. "
This is what could be seen today on the NY Times homepage. Big news indeed. But since when do we acclaim someone's death, even more so one's intentional premeditated murder?
I fail to understand the logic. I thought we gave even the biggest criminals a trial? This man however, was willingly assassinated and the world's leading economic nation is celebrating it. Though it then goes on democratic crusades around the globe. In no way is this consistent in moral or ethics.
We have made laws in our nations to stop this kind of barbarism and seems like we need to release our frustrations on the land of others, like children behind the backs of their parents. Add a political and media spin, no one really pays attention to the implications this has on our perception of foreign extremism, and how they will perceive us in return.
No example, but equal low-grade, childish vengeance that will only help exacerbate existing tensions.
