To Philip Glass, to Virginia Woolf, and to Michael Cunningham

The music of Philip Glass has moved me more than any music I have ever heard. I recently obtained a copy of Glass’s music to the movie, The Hours, and in the CD booklet is an essay by Michael Cunningham. This essay has explained to me my unexplainable and odd fascination with Glass, and in addition, with the work of Virginia Wolf. I guess I am one of the “wild and lonely ones,” because I often listen to Einstein on the Beach (and any other work of his that I have collected) on repeat, especially while writing.

Money, Money, Money

Maher is right on. All of the major issues in this country can be linked to capitalism and greed. Health Care, jails, war–these things should not, under any circumstance, be run for-profit.

When I worked at a medical clinic, it made me uncomfortable to be talking about vaccines and health in terms of bottom line and profit. It just seemed morally wrong to me. There must be a way to give good health care without the worry of money. There is a good way–many other countries use this way! I am sad to say, but I don’t know if we will ever step out of our individualist, capitalist, greedy ways.

New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit

By Bill Maher

How about this for a New Rule: Not everything in America has to make a profit. It used to be that there were some services and institutions so vital to our nation that they were exempt from market pressures. Some things we just didn’t do for money. The United States always defined capitalism, but it didn’t used to define us. But now it’s becoming all that we are.

Bell Hooks & Teaching to Trangress

The following are my favorite passages from bell hooks’ “Teaching to Trangress: Education as the Practice of Freedom:” (emphasis mine)

To educate as the practice of freedom is a way of teaching that anyone can learn. That learning process comes easiest to those of us who also believe that our work is not merely to share information but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students. To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin. (13)

The Third Generation

“There is something about post-World War II America that reminds me of the classic wealthy family that by the third generation starts to squander its wealth. The members of the first generation are nose-to-the-grindstone innovators; the second generation holds it all together; then their kids come along and get fat, dumb, lazy and slowly squander it all. I know that is both overly harsh and a gross generalization, but there is, nevertheless, some truth in it. American society started to coast in the 1990s, when our third postwar generation came of age. The dot-com boom left too many people with the impression that they could get rich without investing in hard work. All it took was an MBA and a quick IPO, or one NBA contract, and you were set for life. But while we were admiring the flat world we had created, a lot of people in India, China, and Eastern Europe were busy figuring out how to take advantage of it. Lucky for us, we were the only economy standing after World War II, and we had no serious competition for forty years. That gave us a huge head of steam but also a huge sense of entitlement and complacency–not to mention a certain tendency in recent years to extol consumption over hard work, investment, and long-term thinking. When we got hit with 9/11, it was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to summon the nation to sacrifice, to address some of its pressing fiscal, energy, science, and education shortfalls–all the things that we had let slide. But our president did not summon us to sacrifice. He summoned us to go shopping.”

– Thomas L. Friedman, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century

The Century of the Self

“The twentieth century was one of breathless, spectacular, relentless innovation. But we can forget about the horseless carriage, the radio, the polio vaccine, the wireless telephone and the PlayStation. The true triumph of the century was the invention of a whole new way of being–a new imperative of the self.

So, go ahead and express yourself. Be true to yourself. Enjoy yourself. Treat yourself. Find yourself. Spoil yourself. Distinguish yourself. Love yourself. Get some self-esteem. Some self-worth. A positive self-image. Achieve self-awareness. And self-sufficiency. Do some self-improvement. Self-actualization. Self-help.

Get out there, into the big glittering universe of the self. Measure it out in Me time and MySpace. Welcome to individuality. Population: You.”

– Adbusters: 79

The great sickness of our time is the solidification of the ego. We are a nation of self-perceived self-contained individuals. We are wrapped up in cardboard boxes, an army of Barbie dolls and GI Joes, marching single file while fearfully stealing glances at one another through the cellophane windshield.

Does a helping hand absent of financial gain or notoriety exist? Our nation’s ideology has always been along the lines of self-reliance-the new city on the hill, built by the hands of hardworking autonomous people. Like Stephen Colbert has said, to overcome adversity one must pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Not working? Then get longer bootstraps!

As globalism has become all pervasive, Americans are relying less on themselves more and more. We have traded in our blue collar factory jobs for comfortable air-conditioned service jobs, of which would not exist if countries like China and Mexico were not producing products and food for us. This myth of independence and “the self” is cracking, and when it falls to ruins all will be lost. When the bottom falls out, how will a nation who has forgotten the fundamentals of life-love, kindness, compassion, community-be able to rebuild?

This culture is self consuming; like the oroborus, we are consuming our own tails.