Well done Penfist. Most humans don’t respect the virtue of humility. Nor even the value of equality. To wash another’s feet is beneath them. What we dare to call “civility” isn’t even close.
I'd like it very much if anyone running for political office had to pass a humility screening in addition to getting a green light from a psychiatric screening.
I think humility must be tempered by rationality in order to protect one's own well-being, which is essential to advocating for those who are forgotten, down-trodden, or unable to be self-advocating for various reasons.
I agree with your points. It seems to me, American exceptionalism eliminates moderation, in most forms. Humility isn’t self abasement. It’s Ubuntu (I am because you are) or Namaste ( The divine in me bows to the divine in you) We’re more alike than different... loads shared are lighter, joys shared are doubled.
"We’re more alike than different... loads shared are lighter, joys shared are doubled." I love this - unfortunately we here in the states are rarely exposed to such "radical" ideas such as moderation or humility. Especially the latter gets falsely equated with weakness.
Useful and firm overview of more subject matter dependent on critical thinking fundamentals and applying critical theory in study groups, needless to say it doesn't fit what WE THE PEOPLE decided to do with the most wondrous technical innovations in mass communications of the 20th Century. We've decided broadcast band spectrum should be auctioned off to the highest bidder, with non-enforced social responsibility obligations as part of government handing out broadcast licenses.
The whole U.S. broadcasting system shebang industrialized as cookie cutter centralized formatting. Including the designated "Educational" broadcast curricula thrown overboard after brief circa 1960’s experiment with small group of PBS TV local broadcast programming. Never actually used to technically train up a work-force as cheap labor off-shoring was the Neo-Liberal\Neo-Conservative Bid-Net Practice favored across the Duopoly and Amurikin Identity polarized political binary. We the People could choose a future of either\or Privatization\Financialization and governance financed by trans-national networks of investors with no skin in the local regional game required.
This plutocratically determined use of 20th Century broadcast spectrums changed during Cold War weaponization of the social sciences by Washington's contract czars of Anti-Commie and Anti-Social Democracy Propaganda. Search under "The Chicago Boys." Back in Eddie Bernays Survey Research and Science of Coercion (ref. study by American U. Professor of Communication, Christopher Simpson and published under title SCIENCE OF COERCION communication systems continuum; as small book with generous declassified government docs often on Public\Private Contractors on U.S. campuses of higher learning and in media as primary source footnotes. Simpson more popularly published his post WW II study of Washington's National Security Ratlines titled BLOWBACK as well as his deeper dive into how supremacist thought and networks dominated even so-called liberal OSS and CIA directorates of information gathering, analysis, black ops (academic fields of Communication as well as electoral interference in targeted regimes and life sciences experimentation of non-consenting individuals and communities). Not to mention all of the various privatized contractors to the directorate of operations.
All back when "Education" as a use of National Public Interest Broadcasting was only an indoctrination tool used by our imperial rivals over in USSR and Mao's China bent on Mind Control like Washington's own MK ULTRA experiments on non-consenting U.S. citizens. Or more recently across the Bermuda Triangle in C-U-B-A and Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.
Our Pay2Play broadcasting system and specifically the corporate-capture of even our dba Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) which amounts to quite an industry including corporate underwritten National Radio and National Television "PUBLIC" Broadcasting (never you mind that it is underwritten by Private Interests with profit and Bernays Public Relations motives), none of the structure of how WE the US of Amnesia (kudos to our last televised public intellectual Gore Vidal for naming our nation-states properly) may actually be discussed over licensed U.S. national "PUBLIC" broadcasting.
Health and balance,
keep on doing PenFist
mind both the carpel and Carpe Diem tunnels
with their attendant syndromes and non-attended drones
Outstanding piece, tonight! Proponents of slavery had a dog in the fight of Manifest Destiny as well. Hawaii was forced into Statehood the year I was born but I hope to see its sovereignty returned before I die. ALL countries history include shameful actions. But too many Americans refuse to see that includes the good old USA. Adjacent to heuristics, in 2020 I read "The Undoing Project" by Michael Lewis and became hooked on the work of cognitive psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. If you're not familiar with them, take a look. I think you'd find them interesting. The human mind was perfectly evolved to deal with danger in the wild by shortcutting thought processes. Unfortunately, that strength has left us woefully unprepared for twenty-first century politicians.
I've read some of the body of work you reference, and have more on my to-do list. If hope to live long enough and keep my cognitive abilities for most of that so I can keep trying to understand how our species works, and how it doesn't. You are right, Carol, in observing the fact that we have evolved too quickly, resulting in a culture and society that is pretty toxic to our brains and nervous systems.
This a relentless delineation of America’s gradually expanding reach. Manifest destiny also took it westward to Hawaii and the Philippines. It eventually percolated so deeply into the American psyche that the powers that wanted to be drafted the Project for a New American Century in the late 1990s. That doctrine was a huge enabling factor in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as you well know. The drafters of PNAC ended up with the levers of power. The rest is history.
Thanks Pen. I think this is an absolutely inspired piece of writing.
"Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal" so true and utterly smeared in our faces every day recently. Very informative article - well done. But no surprises in large part because there have always been dirt bombs and opportunists with gullible, willing pawns ready to do their bidding.
You gave us a lot to chew on but I can't even stomach all the cruelty my country has inflicted on others.
Your point about facing our past before we can evolve is so true - it is the epitome "WOKE" and what a real education should prepare us for - human evolution and taking a healthier planet with us.
Well done Penfist. Most humans don’t respect the virtue of humility. Nor even the value of equality. To wash another’s feet is beneath them. What we dare to call “civility” isn’t even close.
Carla,
I'd like it very much if anyone running for political office had to pass a humility screening in addition to getting a green light from a psychiatric screening.
I think humility must be tempered by rationality in order to protect one's own well-being, which is essential to advocating for those who are forgotten, down-trodden, or unable to be self-advocating for various reasons.
I agree with your points. It seems to me, American exceptionalism eliminates moderation, in most forms. Humility isn’t self abasement. It’s Ubuntu (I am because you are) or Namaste ( The divine in me bows to the divine in you) We’re more alike than different... loads shared are lighter, joys shared are doubled.
"We’re more alike than different... loads shared are lighter, joys shared are doubled." I love this - unfortunately we here in the states are rarely exposed to such "radical" ideas such as moderation or humility. Especially the latter gets falsely equated with weakness.
Useful and firm overview of more subject matter dependent on critical thinking fundamentals and applying critical theory in study groups, needless to say it doesn't fit what WE THE PEOPLE decided to do with the most wondrous technical innovations in mass communications of the 20th Century. We've decided broadcast band spectrum should be auctioned off to the highest bidder, with non-enforced social responsibility obligations as part of government handing out broadcast licenses.
The whole U.S. broadcasting system shebang industrialized as cookie cutter centralized formatting. Including the designated "Educational" broadcast curricula thrown overboard after brief circa 1960’s experiment with small group of PBS TV local broadcast programming. Never actually used to technically train up a work-force as cheap labor off-shoring was the Neo-Liberal\Neo-Conservative Bid-Net Practice favored across the Duopoly and Amurikin Identity polarized political binary. We the People could choose a future of either\or Privatization\Financialization and governance financed by trans-national networks of investors with no skin in the local regional game required.
This plutocratically determined use of 20th Century broadcast spectrums changed during Cold War weaponization of the social sciences by Washington's contract czars of Anti-Commie and Anti-Social Democracy Propaganda. Search under "The Chicago Boys." Back in Eddie Bernays Survey Research and Science of Coercion (ref. study by American U. Professor of Communication, Christopher Simpson and published under title SCIENCE OF COERCION communication systems continuum; as small book with generous declassified government docs often on Public\Private Contractors on U.S. campuses of higher learning and in media as primary source footnotes. Simpson more popularly published his post WW II study of Washington's National Security Ratlines titled BLOWBACK as well as his deeper dive into how supremacist thought and networks dominated even so-called liberal OSS and CIA directorates of information gathering, analysis, black ops (academic fields of Communication as well as electoral interference in targeted regimes and life sciences experimentation of non-consenting individuals and communities). Not to mention all of the various privatized contractors to the directorate of operations.
All back when "Education" as a use of National Public Interest Broadcasting was only an indoctrination tool used by our imperial rivals over in USSR and Mao's China bent on Mind Control like Washington's own MK ULTRA experiments on non-consenting U.S. citizens. Or more recently across the Bermuda Triangle in C-U-B-A and Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.
Our Pay2Play broadcasting system and specifically the corporate-capture of even our dba Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) which amounts to quite an industry including corporate underwritten National Radio and National Television "PUBLIC" Broadcasting (never you mind that it is underwritten by Private Interests with profit and Bernays Public Relations motives), none of the structure of how WE the US of Amnesia (kudos to our last televised public intellectual Gore Vidal for naming our nation-states properly) may actually be discussed over licensed U.S. national "PUBLIC" broadcasting.
Health and balance,
keep on doing PenFist
mind both the carpel and Carpe Diem tunnels
with their attendant syndromes and non-attended drones
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of Atonement Seekers)
Media Discussion List\LookseeInnerEarsHearHere
This is one hell of a comment, and I thank you for it. I have to chew on the meat for a while.
Outstanding piece, tonight! Proponents of slavery had a dog in the fight of Manifest Destiny as well. Hawaii was forced into Statehood the year I was born but I hope to see its sovereignty returned before I die. ALL countries history include shameful actions. But too many Americans refuse to see that includes the good old USA. Adjacent to heuristics, in 2020 I read "The Undoing Project" by Michael Lewis and became hooked on the work of cognitive psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. If you're not familiar with them, take a look. I think you'd find them interesting. The human mind was perfectly evolved to deal with danger in the wild by shortcutting thought processes. Unfortunately, that strength has left us woefully unprepared for twenty-first century politicians.
I've read some of the body of work you reference, and have more on my to-do list. If hope to live long enough and keep my cognitive abilities for most of that so I can keep trying to understand how our species works, and how it doesn't. You are right, Carol, in observing the fact that we have evolved too quickly, resulting in a culture and society that is pretty toxic to our brains and nervous systems.
This a relentless delineation of America’s gradually expanding reach. Manifest destiny also took it westward to Hawaii and the Philippines. It eventually percolated so deeply into the American psyche that the powers that wanted to be drafted the Project for a New American Century in the late 1990s. That doctrine was a huge enabling factor in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as you well know. The drafters of PNAC ended up with the levers of power. The rest is history.
Thanks Pen. I think this is an absolutely inspired piece of writing.
Hawaii and the Philippines both deserve their own essays, and they will have those essays.
"Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal" so true and utterly smeared in our faces every day recently. Very informative article - well done. But no surprises in large part because there have always been dirt bombs and opportunists with gullible, willing pawns ready to do their bidding.
You gave us a lot to chew on but I can't even stomach all the cruelty my country has inflicted on others.
Your point about facing our past before we can evolve is so true - it is the epitome "WOKE" and what a real education should prepare us for - human evolution and taking a healthier planet with us.