Fact: Not only does Cornell West have a role in The Matrix: Reloaded, 
Sunday, April 1, 2007
,
Brother West, the man.
In Democracy Matters West writes that:
The most frightening feature of America [and Canada for that matter] is the insidious growth of deadening nihilisms across political lines, nihilisms that have been suffocating the deep democratic energies in America…psychic depression, personal worthlessness, and social despair are widespread in America as a whole. The vast majority of citizens struggling to preserve a livelihood, raise children, and live decent lives-are disillusioned with social forces that seem beyond their control…the market forces in American life generates a market morality that undermines a sense of meaning and larger purpose. The dogma of free-market fundamentalism [brother West loves to alliterate] has run amok, and the pursuit of profits by any legal (or illegal) [moral or immoral] means –with little or no public accountability-guides the behavior of the most powerful and influential institutions in our lives: transnational corporations. The perception of pervasive corruption at the top seems to many to justify the unprincipled quest to succeed at any cost in their own lives, and the widespread cheating in our culture reflects this sad truth. The oppressive effect of the prevailing market moralities leads to a form of sleepwalking from womb to tomb [and the rhyme] , with the majority of citizens content to focus on private careers and be distracted with stimulating amusements. They have given up any real hope of shaping the collective destiny of the nation. Sour cynicism, political apathy, and cultural escapism become the pervasive options.
ni·hil·ism (nī'ə-lĭz'əm, nē'-)
1. Philosophy
a. An extreme form of skepticism that denies all existence.
b. A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.
2. Rejection of all distinctions in moral or religious value and a willingness to repudiate all previous theories of morality or religious belief.
3. The belief that destruction of existing political or social institutions is necessary for future improvement.
What Dr.West says about Nihilism has gotten into me. Me, who deconstructs everything constructive, who am aware of the flip side to most every philanthropy; every reason why it doesn’t work; the extent to which a closed system is corrupted; the degree of difficulty which seems like the impossibility of change. Me who, for this reason and with this excuse, though I’m educated to be aware that there is such thing as better and worse within a corrupt system, don’t bother to boycott Walmart, justifying that “they’re all corrupt anyway, so what’s the difference?”
But if we do not believe there is a difference, a possibility of change, if we the ones who know better don’t choose to deconstruct our deconstructions, and out of our education construct something which, though be it necessarily oversimplified, is strategically, effectively, change-makedly so, then surely things are as hopeless as they seem.
P.S. Someone once told me they told Cornell they didn’t have this one rap album, and he was like “Oh Brother you got to have that,” and gave him 20 dollars to go buy it: Cornell West, the man.
The most frightening feature of America [and Canada for that matter] is the insidious growth of deadening nihilisms across political lines, nihilisms that have been suffocating the deep democratic energies in America…psychic depression, personal worthlessness, and social despair are widespread in America as a whole. The vast majority of citizens struggling to preserve a livelihood, raise children, and live decent lives-are disillusioned with social forces that seem beyond their control…the market forces in American life generates a market morality that undermines a sense of meaning and larger purpose. The dogma of free-market fundamentalism [brother West loves to alliterate] has run amok, and the pursuit of profits by any legal (or illegal) [moral or immoral] means –with little or no public accountability-guides the behavior of the most powerful and influential institutions in our lives: transnational corporations. The perception of pervasive corruption at the top seems to many to justify the unprincipled quest to succeed at any cost in their own lives, and the widespread cheating in our culture reflects this sad truth. The oppressive effect of the prevailing market moralities leads to a form of sleepwalking from womb to tomb [and the rhyme] , with the majority of citizens content to focus on private careers and be distracted with stimulating amusements. They have given up any real hope of shaping the collective destiny of the nation. Sour cynicism, political apathy, and cultural escapism become the pervasive options.
ni·hil·ism (nī'ə-lĭz'əm, nē'-)
1. Philosophy
a. An extreme form of skepticism that denies all existence.
b. A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.
2. Rejection of all distinctions in moral or religious value and a willingness to repudiate all previous theories of morality or religious belief.
3. The belief that destruction of existing political or social institutions is necessary for future improvement.
What Dr.West says about Nihilism has gotten into me. Me, who deconstructs everything constructive, who am aware of the flip side to most every philanthropy; every reason why it doesn’t work; the extent to which a closed system is corrupted; the degree of difficulty which seems like the impossibility of change. Me who, for this reason and with this excuse, though I’m educated to be aware that there is such thing as better and worse within a corrupt system, don’t bother to boycott Walmart, justifying that “they’re all corrupt anyway, so what’s the difference?”
But if we do not believe there is a difference, a possibility of change, if we the ones who know better don’t choose to deconstruct our deconstructions, and out of our education construct something which, though be it necessarily oversimplified, is strategically, effectively, change-makedly so, then surely things are as hopeless as they seem.
P.S. Someone once told me they told Cornell they didn’t have this one rap album, and he was like “Oh Brother you got to have that,” and gave him 20 dollars to go buy it: Cornell West, the man.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
VIDEO: Funny or Just Cheesy? You Decide.
"Store Wars...May the Farm be with you."Ummmm, yeah. "Darth Tater," "Obie One Canolli," "Ham Solo," "Chu Broccoli," and "Princess Lettuce."
I was skeptical at first, but caught myself laughing at the silliness. What do you think?
"Store Wars"
Monday, March 5, 2007
chicken breasts
I got breasts in the sixth grade: real breasts, not the kind you find inside a padded bra, but rather the kind you pour into two, too-small bras in an attempt to make them appear smaller. I was slim, thirteen, and suddenly, I was the girl with the boobs. Such happenings have a formative influence on any young girl’s self identity. I know they did mine.
Growing up I was never much of a meat eater. Turkeys looked like turkeys, and hamburger bleeds in the package. I found this sort of thing repulsive. The meats I ate were those that did not proclaim their animal origins- the snipped, reconstituted, packaged and produced sort of meats, the kinds which placed a fair distance between me and their visible veins and organs. I loved donair, sausage, and sterile sandwich meats, but mostly my meat of choice was boneless skinless breasts.
Looking back at my diaries from age thirteen, I find entries lamenting the speed at which girls grow up. I wrote:
50 years ago a young girl of 12 played with dolls and her girlfriends, and ran home to her mommie. Boys were forighn, obnoxious, and had “cooties.” Now at age 13, I laugh at that…If I played with my dollies and thought the boys were yucky now, in 97, I would be considered “green”…If the grade four’s had boy friends last year, the grad three’s will this year and so more little adults are made, and I’me not saying I want to play with dollies, and don’t get me wrong, I LOVE boys, but sometimes I feel to old and look at myself in the mirror with makeup on andlook fifteen, and feel about 100, and sometimes I wish I hadn’t skipped my childhood…Kids do more at age twelve now, than kids 50 years ago even knew about.
I still agree with myself at age twelve, in fact even more so in hindsight. When I was ten, I still wore sweatpants every day. Stores like La Senza girl and Dynamite (sexy little version of grown up people’s clothes) did not yet exist. I considered myself at the forefront of fashion with my kitty-cat sweatshirt purchased from Northern Getaway. Now, when I go to the mall I see a lot of little girls dressed like little women, little girls who look like woman, but are still just girls. I hear a lot of things come out of their mouths which at their age I would have blushed to even whisper.
Last summer in a conversation about organic foods a colleague of mine said, “Do you ever notice how girls these days look like they’re eighteen when they’re thirteen?” Yes, I answered, and silently exclaimed, thinking about the mall and myself at thirteen. “It’s the chicken breasts,” he said, and went on to tell me about how injections which are given to chickens, in order that they grow larger breasts have been causing the girls who eat them to also grow larger breasts and to grow breast prematurely.
Why aren’t we told these things? I thought. Is there no regulation governing the use of such hormones? Envisioning every chicken nugget I have ever eaten, I felt violated, like unbeknownst to me I had been forced to participate in this grand science experiment, the results of which are uncertain. I instantly wondered whether I would have grown such boobs if I hadn’t had a passion for chicken; whether I would have continued to be successful at track and field; whether I would have stayed a little girl for a little longer. I cannot know whether anything would have been any different, whether my preference for chicken has or has not dictated my greater life experience. Maybe none of it is true; maybe I was overreacting. I know not to believe everything I am told, after all. But, shocked, scared, and upset, it all seemed to make a lot of sense: the girls are getting bigger, the chickens are getting bigger, people in general are getting bigger. Maybe it’s not true. I hope it isn’t, but it is certainly a plausible explanation: it makes sense.
As is often the case, after this issue was first brought to my attention, it seemed to appear everywhere. In the weeks and months that followed, others have mentioned this chicken-breast correlation to me, and I in turn have mentioned it to others. Soon after the first conversation I found premature puberty addressed in the evening news. The reported listed statistics even more startling than my suspicions: the average age when girls first menstruate has decreased dramatically, as has the age when girls first begin to develop breasts. The story focused on a ten-year-old girl shopping for clothes with her mother. With breast, she looked fourteen. She should have been out playing hopscotch rather than shopping for bras with her mother. She should have been playing with dolls, but do girls at ten even play with dolls anymore? I’m not sure. I doubt it.
Rather than “food in the news,” what is news to me is the absence of food in the news. For instead of drawing the obvious connection- that the extreme changes in our diet which have occurred in recent years (genetic modification, increased pesticide use, hormone experimentation, etc.) could in fact be causing girls to go through puberty prematurely, the reporter chose not to ask why. Instead she told parents those young daughters were going through puberty that there were people that they could talk to; she provided contact information for centers which have been set up in each of the Canadian provinces, to help ease parents and their daughters through the difficult process of premature adolescence. This scared me even more than the chicken hormones. The fact that a band aid is applied, rather than inquiry into the cause of the injury, the fact that what solves one problem causes another, and is again patched over, worries me a great deal.
Growing up I was never much of a meat eater. Turkeys looked like turkeys, and hamburger bleeds in the package. I found this sort of thing repulsive. The meats I ate were those that did not proclaim their animal origins- the snipped, reconstituted, packaged and produced sort of meats, the kinds which placed a fair distance between me and their visible veins and organs. I loved donair, sausage, and sterile sandwich meats, but mostly my meat of choice was boneless skinless breasts.
Looking back at my diaries from age thirteen, I find entries lamenting the speed at which girls grow up. I wrote:
50 years ago a young girl of 12 played with dolls and her girlfriends, and ran home to her mommie. Boys were forighn, obnoxious, and had “cooties.” Now at age 13, I laugh at that…If I played with my dollies and thought the boys were yucky now, in 97, I would be considered “green”…If the grade four’s had boy friends last year, the grad three’s will this year and so more little adults are made, and I’me not saying I want to play with dollies, and don’t get me wrong, I LOVE boys, but sometimes I feel to old and look at myself in the mirror with makeup on andlook fifteen, and feel about 100, and sometimes I wish I hadn’t skipped my childhood…Kids do more at age twelve now, than kids 50 years ago even knew about.
I still agree with myself at age twelve, in fact even more so in hindsight. When I was ten, I still wore sweatpants every day. Stores like La Senza girl and Dynamite (sexy little version of grown up people’s clothes) did not yet exist. I considered myself at the forefront of fashion with my kitty-cat sweatshirt purchased from Northern Getaway. Now, when I go to the mall I see a lot of little girls dressed like little women, little girls who look like woman, but are still just girls. I hear a lot of things come out of their mouths which at their age I would have blushed to even whisper.
Last summer in a conversation about organic foods a colleague of mine said, “Do you ever notice how girls these days look like they’re eighteen when they’re thirteen?” Yes, I answered, and silently exclaimed, thinking about the mall and myself at thirteen. “It’s the chicken breasts,” he said, and went on to tell me about how injections which are given to chickens, in order that they grow larger breasts have been causing the girls who eat them to also grow larger breasts and to grow breast prematurely.
Why aren’t we told these things? I thought. Is there no regulation governing the use of such hormones? Envisioning every chicken nugget I have ever eaten, I felt violated, like unbeknownst to me I had been forced to participate in this grand science experiment, the results of which are uncertain. I instantly wondered whether I would have grown such boobs if I hadn’t had a passion for chicken; whether I would have continued to be successful at track and field; whether I would have stayed a little girl for a little longer. I cannot know whether anything would have been any different, whether my preference for chicken has or has not dictated my greater life experience. Maybe none of it is true; maybe I was overreacting. I know not to believe everything I am told, after all. But, shocked, scared, and upset, it all seemed to make a lot of sense: the girls are getting bigger, the chickens are getting bigger, people in general are getting bigger. Maybe it’s not true. I hope it isn’t, but it is certainly a plausible explanation: it makes sense.
As is often the case, after this issue was first brought to my attention, it seemed to appear everywhere. In the weeks and months that followed, others have mentioned this chicken-breast correlation to me, and I in turn have mentioned it to others. Soon after the first conversation I found premature puberty addressed in the evening news. The reported listed statistics even more startling than my suspicions: the average age when girls first menstruate has decreased dramatically, as has the age when girls first begin to develop breasts. The story focused on a ten-year-old girl shopping for clothes with her mother. With breast, she looked fourteen. She should have been out playing hopscotch rather than shopping for bras with her mother. She should have been playing with dolls, but do girls at ten even play with dolls anymore? I’m not sure. I doubt it.
Rather than “food in the news,” what is news to me is the absence of food in the news. For instead of drawing the obvious connection- that the extreme changes in our diet which have occurred in recent years (genetic modification, increased pesticide use, hormone experimentation, etc.) could in fact be causing girls to go through puberty prematurely, the reporter chose not to ask why. Instead she told parents those young daughters were going through puberty that there were people that they could talk to; she provided contact information for centers which have been set up in each of the Canadian provinces, to help ease parents and their daughters through the difficult process of premature adolescence. This scared me even more than the chicken hormones. The fact that a band aid is applied, rather than inquiry into the cause of the injury, the fact that what solves one problem causes another, and is again patched over, worries me a great deal.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
fun facts from the yale earth care committee:
If every US household replaced just three 60-wattincandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, the pollutionsavings would be like taking 3.5 million cars off the road. http://action.environmentaldefense.org/EDF_Action_Network/notice
If Americans chose mass transit instead of driving justonce out of every ten trips, we would save 135 million gallons ofgasoline a year.http://www.nsc.org/ehc/mobile/mse_fs.htm
An online avatar in Second Life, a popular computergame, uses as much electricity each day as an average Brazilian human.
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/12/avatars_consume.php
Turning off your laptop during class for a week stopsalmost a pound of carbon dioxide from increasing global warming. http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/computers.html
Seeing as my handwritings illegible, I "need" my laptop during class. However, I've no excuse for not turning it at night and when I'm not using it. And, perhaps I should't be using it so much- if using it includes playing on facebook for two hours, or I don't know, cutting and pasting fun facts when I should really, really be doing my homework.
If Americans chose mass transit instead of driving justonce out of every ten trips, we would save 135 million gallons ofgasoline a year.http://www.nsc.org/ehc/mobile/mse_fs.htm
An online avatar in Second Life, a popular computergame, uses as much electricity each day as an average Brazilian human.
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/12/avatars_consume.php
Turning off your laptop during class for a week stopsalmost a pound of carbon dioxide from increasing global warming. http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/computers.html
Seeing as my handwritings illegible, I "need" my laptop during class. However, I've no excuse for not turning it at night and when I'm not using it. And, perhaps I should't be using it so much- if using it includes playing on facebook for two hours, or I don't know, cutting and pasting fun facts when I should really, really be doing my homework.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Al Gore Wins an Oscar
Watch Gore on the Oscars. Then, if you haven't seen An Inconvenient Truth, do yourself a favor and watch that, too.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
questioning modernity.
the necessity of postmodern critiques of technology becomes evident very concretely in a question my dear friend katherine once asked me: "why the hell do we need electric canopeners?" seriously. what do they even do that my hand can't do in the same amount of time? (besides suck power out of the wall and make me lazy) oh, progress. progress?
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