Survivor Values
--Jews being rounded up in the Warsaw Ghetto (4/43)for deportation to Nazi death camp
Monsters exist, but they are too few in numbers
to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are…
the functionaries ready to believe and act without asking questions
--Primo Levi
Live as if you were living a second time,
and as though you had acted wrongly the first time
--Victor Frankl
[we must raise people] so as both to delight in
and to be pained by the things that we ought
--Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle
Political correctness can lead to some kind of paralysis
where you don't address reality
--Juan Williams, on the Bill O'Reilly program
_________________
Let it never be said that RAW suffers such paralysis.
A strangeness has settled over America, making moral navigation hazardous. A recent television promo for the program "Survivor" was unsettling and a harbinger of ill.
The group has a young woman with an artificial, hi-tech prosthetic limb being jumped and wrestled to the ground by a pretty African American lass who says she will do anything to win, to include ripping the limb off her opponent.
We realize this is Hollywood, but that substitutes for many a life in the U.S. today. So, is that what being a survivor is all about -- winning at any cost? Did survivors of death camps persist because they became savages, or because they retained their humanity? Do combat soldiers survive because they became animals, or because they cohere around the shared goal of survival?
"Fierce" is the new hot word for that supposed-survivor's attitude. Co-opted from the gay male fashion scene to describe unusual quality, it is now back to its more animal meaning, ferocious. It is not so much "brave", but it sits in for that quality. It brings with it its runway roots: catty, cut-throat, to seem the best via outrageousness or bravado.
The survivor's comment suggests a new direction in American social evolution. Have we come so far that anything justifies winning? And have we come so far that watching this inhumanity is called entertainment, one which obviously appeals to the mass audience of reality television.
If this is reality, I'd rather be in a monkey cage.
and as though you had acted wrongly the first time
--Victor Frankl
[we must raise people] so as both to delight in
and to be pained by the things that we ought
--Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle
Political correctness can lead to some kind of paralysis
where you don't address reality
--Juan Williams, on the Bill O'Reilly program
_________________
Let it never be said that RAW suffers such paralysis.
A strangeness has settled over America, making moral navigation hazardous. A recent television promo for the program "Survivor" was unsettling and a harbinger of ill.
The group has a young woman with an artificial, hi-tech prosthetic limb being jumped and wrestled to the ground by a pretty African American lass who says she will do anything to win, to include ripping the limb off her opponent.
We realize this is Hollywood, but that substitutes for many a life in the U.S. today. So, is that what being a survivor is all about -- winning at any cost? Did survivors of death camps persist because they became savages, or because they retained their humanity? Do combat soldiers survive because they became animals, or because they cohere around the shared goal of survival?
"Fierce" is the new hot word for that supposed-survivor's attitude. Co-opted from the gay male fashion scene to describe unusual quality, it is now back to its more animal meaning, ferocious. It is not so much "brave", but it sits in for that quality. It brings with it its runway roots: catty, cut-throat, to seem the best via outrageousness or bravado.
The survivor's comment suggests a new direction in American social evolution. Have we come so far that anything justifies winning? And have we come so far that watching this inhumanity is called entertainment, one which obviously appeals to the mass audience of reality television.
If this is reality, I'd rather be in a monkey cage.
Labels: humanity, survivor, when winning is losing
posted by rangeragainstwar at 11:40 AM
2 Comments:
The most interesting part is the Juan Williams quote, in that he was basically trying to suck up to O'Reilly by agreeing that them Ay-rabs are sure scary when they dress up in their turbans an' stuff because they look like terrists. "Deal with reality"?
Juan, the reality is that something like 99.99999% of the 1.57 BILLION muslims around the world want nothing more than to ignore your paranoid former-NPR-pundit ass.
So your values have nothing, less than nothing to do with "survival" and everything to do with making you the terrified stooge of every demagogue with a microphone who wants you to forget that those scary muslims can, at worst, only kill you. Whilst the plutocratic patrons of those demagogues will gleefully impoverish, degrade, and enslave you, your children, and your children's children.
Go figure which is the "survivor's" attitude...
I have no idea what juan said. macht nichts. Juan, well, he's no moe a fraud than any 1 else. he's a non issue. why be hating on him? Every morn., i look @ mnsbc, cnn, wapo,wsj, npr, ny times, la times , etc etc & i ask myself, what type of BS do they want me to think today. you,all are so silly.
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