1. Christianity and Islam share what perspective on non-comformist sexuality?
2. What ancient Chinese tradition is more tolerant of variations in sexuality?
3. What "license" do males in our society enjoy, by virtue of existing communication norms?
4. What interesting twist in discourse around the new anthropology of difference has been introduced by the LGBT movement?
5. What limited/limiting 'ism overarches all others in ways not always benign?
6. What's the difference between romantic and republican definitions of "nation"?
7. What do Buddha, Christ, Muhammad, and Confucius have in common, with respect to civilizational identities?
8. What does the Identitarian Movement stand for?
DQs (add yours please)
- Do antagonistic religions tend to resemble one another most at the extremes? Do fundamentalists of every stripe exhibit similar mindsets and general attitudes towards life and the varieties of ways of being human?
- What do you think of Taoism? What are your primary sources of understanding with respect to it, and to other non-western traditions? What do you think of popular works like The Tao of Pooh, or the interpretations of Alan Watts?
- COMMENT: "Gender identities were now seen as partly given, partly made." (44) Why does it matter that they are now seen as partly made? What difference does that shift of attitude make in the lives of people who do not conform to traditional gender identities? Should we commit ourselves to accepting the ultimate verdict of science on this question, or would it be better to accept the "partly made" conception as better, no matter what the science eventually says about it?
- What do you think of identity economics? 47
- Will communication norms governing socially-acceptable male/female forms of speech change significantly in the years and decades ahead, do you think? For the better?
- Was/is the Women's Rights Movement a good and positive example of identity politics serving (rather than subverting) democratic values?
- Is it a mistake to think of identities as mutually exclusive, rather than aiming to make them maximally inclusive? Why can't we all learn to think of race, gender, and other partial identities as subsets of our broader human identity, that indeed only make sense in light of that larger unifying context?
- Is the assertion of nationalism reflective of patriotism, a constricted imagination, an inability or unwillingness to grasp our largest shared identity, all or none of the above?
- Why are there so many more independent states now than a century ago? 55 Does this say more about human psychology, the failures of politics, or what?
- What do you think of the constructivist position on cultural identities? 58
- Should Justin Trudeau have been applauded for declaring Canada the first post-national state? 60 Was he too far ahead of his time?
- What's your response to any of the "pressing questions" on p.63?
Taoism (etc.) @dawn...
The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
Alan Watts asks what is the cause of the illusion that the self is a separate ego, housed in a bag of skin, and which confronts a universe of physical objects that are alien to it. Rather a person's identity (their ego) binds them to the physical universe, creating a relationship with their environment and other people. The separation of the self and the physical world leads to the misuse of technology and the attempt to violently subjugate man's natural environment, leading to its destruction.
Explaining man's role in the universe as a unique expression of the total universe, and interdependent on it, Alan Watts offers a new understanding of personal identity. It reveals the mystery of existence, presenting an alternative to the feelings of alienation that are prevalent in Western society, and a vision of how we can come to understand the cosmic self that is within every living thing. g'r
“We suffer from a hallucination, from a false and distorted sensation of our own existence as living organisms. Most of us have the sensation that "I myself" is a separate center of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body—a center which "confronts" an "external" world of people and things, making contact through the senses with a universe both alien and strange. Everyday figures of speech reflect this illusion. "I came into this world." "You must face reality." "The conquest of nature." This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples." Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated "egos" inside bags of skin.”
“But when you know for sure that your separate ego is a fiction, you actually feel yourself as the whole process and pattern of life. Experience and experiencer become one experiencing, known and knower one knowing.” ...
“The surest way to become Tense, Awkward, and Confused is to develop a mind that tries too hard - one that thinks too much.”
“The main problem with this great obsession for saving time is very simple: you can't save time. You can only spend it. But you can spend it wisely or foolishly.”
“Things just happen in the right way, at the right time. At least when you let them, when you work with circumstances instead of saying, 'This isn't supposed to be happening this way,' and trying harder to make it happen some other way.”
“When we learn to work with our own Inner Nature, and with the natural laws operating around us, we reach the level of Wu Wei. Then we work with the natural order of things and operate on the principle of minimal effort. Since the natural world follows that principle, it does not make mistakes. Mistakes are made–or imagined–by man, the creature with the overloaded Brain who separates himself from the supporting network of natural laws by interfering and trying too hard.
When you work with Wu Wei, you put the round peg in the round hole and the square peg in the square hole. No stress, no struggle. Egotistical Desire tries to force the round peg into the square hole and the square peg into the round hole. Cleverness tries to devise craftier ways of making pegs fit where they don’t belong. Knowledge tries to figure out why round pegs fit into round holes, but not square holes. Wu Wei doesn’t try. It doesn’t think about it. It just does it. And when it does, it doesn’t appear to do much of anything. But Things Get Done." g'r
9. What did Marx and Weber say about class?
10. What has come to supersede class as a determiner of social identity in the past several decades?
11. What is sociology's analogue to the questions Who am I and Who are we?
12. What are the two kinds of stigmas?
13. What did the U.N. say about children and identity in 1989?
14. What goal for 2030 has the U.N. declared?
15. Metadata allow what form of tracking?
16. "Digital natives" touch their smartphones how often?
DQs (add yours please)
- Is class in America more central to our social identities than is commonly acknowledged?
- We tend to think of European feudalism and the English class system as benighted curiosities of the past that belong to the scrap-heap of history, but if that's so then how do we account for the ongoing fascination many Americans continue to hold for the English royal family, for Downton Abbey, etc.?
- Do you claim any particular social station or class that you'd consider relevant to your core identity?
- What do you see as the impact of "lifelong learning" on social status in America? 70
- What has been the impact on social status of declining union strength in America?
- Is fashion, in clothing, consumer goods, etc. important to you? Or is it all just marketing and "stuff"?
- Are there any important stigmas that our text has overlooked?
- COMMENT: "Names have a strong link to their bearers' identities..." 79 What is in a name? Do you think it's a coincidence that peoples' names often predict/reflect their occupations? Can you think of ways in which your life would be significantly altered, if you'd been differently christened?
- COMMENT: "...the vast majority of all people acquire citizenship by accidental circumstances of birth." 80 Have you reflected on who you'd be, how your beliefs would differ, etc., had you been born elsewhere?
- Digital identities are supposed to extend access to welfare benefits etc., among other good things. Is there a downside to universal digital identifiability?
- Do we have a proper notion of what it means to lose our personhood? 83
- "Does a change of personality imply a change of identity?" 83
- Do we have a proper legal notion of "normal persons"? 84
- Why was it a big deal to unearth Richard III in 2013? 85
Paul Fussell, Class: A Guide Through the American Status System-
- “Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles.”
- “When ... asked what I am writing, I have answered, "A book about social class in America," ... It is if I had said, "I am working on a book urging the beating to death of baby whales using the dead bodies of baby seals.”
- “Two motives urge fans to obsession with their sports. One is the need-—through the appeal of vicarious success—-to identify with winners. The other is to sanction, through pedantry, dogmatism, record-keeping, wise secret knowledge, and pseudo-scholarship, a claim to expertise on the subject. Sports give every man his opportunity to perform as a learned bore and to watch innumerable commentators on TV do the same.”
Do you believe that spending $15,000 on a media center is vulgar, but that spending $15,000 on a slate shower stall is a sign that you are at one with the Zenlike rhythms of nature? Do you work for one of those visionary software companies where people come to work wearing hiking boots and glacier glasses, as if a wall of ice were about to come sliding through the parking lot? If so, you might be a Bobo.
In his bestselling work of "comic sociology," David Brooks coins a new word, Bobo, to describe today's upper class -- those who have wed the bourgeois world of capitalist enterprise to the hippie values of the bohemian counterculture. Their hybrid lifestyle is the atmosphere we breathe, and in this witty and serious look at the cultural consequences of the information age, Brooks has defined a new generation. g'r
==
“The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That - with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word 'success' - is our national disease.” William James to H.G. Wells, 1906
The most commonly asked question in a new social encounter is: ‘What do you do?’ And according to how you answer this, people are either incredibly pleased to see you, or abandon you as if you were plague-ridden. The company of the snobbish has the power to sadden and unnerve because we sense how little of who we are deep down – that is, how little of who we are outside of our status – will be able to govern their behaviour towards us. We may be endowed with the wisdom of Solomon and have the resourcefulness and intelligence of Odysseus, but if we are unable to wield socially recognised badges of our qualities, our existence will remain a matter of raw indifference to them... BoL
==
Remember when our leaders subscribed to this sentiment, with pride?
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.