Interview with Ken Rose
Dear Friends,
Ken Rose has a kind of controversial thought program on KOSW-FM, I think it is, in California, and recently did an interview with me--abt 50 mins. long. You can access it, if you'd like, on his website: www.pantedmonkey.org. Just scroll down to May 24 and then click on my name.
Enjoy...mb
Ken Rose has a kind of controversial thought program on KOSW-FM, I think it is, in California, and recently did an interview with me--abt 50 mins. long. You can access it, if you'd like, on his website: www.pantedmonkey.org. Just scroll down to May 24 and then click on my name.
Enjoy...mb
posted by Morris Berman at 4:08 PM
13 Comments:
Dear Prof. Berman,
Very nice overview of our predicament and realistic choices. Ken Rose kept trying to come back to a "death/rebirth" scenario that would save us. And, at the very end of the interview, you talked about the possibility of resurrecting some of the "used parts" of our hunter/gatherer past. What do you think the prospects are of integrating aspects of the archaic with our current "mental" (appropriate word, I think) mode of awareness? After the present dark age, of course.
P.S. Good to see so many "real food" advocates in Ken Rose's archive of interviews, such as Sally Fallon and Lierre Keith. In their own fields of nutrition and agriculture, they are attempting to resurrect the tried and true elements of our evolutionary make-up.
Hello Mr. Berman I read your book DARK AGES AMERICA and i thought it was genius!
My friends and I have come up with a solution for the current financial situation and I was wondering if you could take a look at it and give me your opinion of it. Will it work?
Unitedstatesalliance.org
Art-
I think there are no prospects at all in the US, and China ain't looking so good either. Europe may be our only hope; check out the bk by Steven Hill.
mb
I will admit to a degree confusion, that I'm sure the erudite professor can dispel...all the reviews of Hill's book at Amazon look very interesting...and, I will have to read it to see if he addresses what 's happening now in Europe. The reports here in the US are about Europe having its own form of collapse, especially related to unfunded benefits and the cost of social benefits...(how many Greeks admitted to owning swimming pools?)
I was within one week of moving to Croatia last year, when the business deal fell through. I was beginning to think it was providential-of course, remaining in America won't look so wise, either, before too long. There really are no safe havens, at least in the material world, are there?
Peter-
No safe havens, but there's better and there's worse. The US falls into the latter category, and just watch how it plays out over time. Every single indicator suggests slo-mo distaster, and eventually, I predict in less than a decade, we shall have another crash that will hugely overshadow 2008. In fact, all the savvy economists are saying (and with v. gd reason), "You ain't seen nothing yet."
mb
Friends,
Here is an interview with Steven Hill on Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/
2/12/europes_promise
Enjoy.
Dr. Berman,
Have you read "The Fourth Turning," (William Strauss and Neil Howell) and if so, what is your opinion of it's central theory about American history as a series of recurring 80- to 100-year economic, psychological and behavioral cycles?
BTW, I've enjoyed all of your books over the years, ever since I bought "Coming to our Senses" in 1989 at San Francisco's City Lights Bookstore. Also, I attended a talk you gave in 1990, but oddly enough, the clearest memory from that is when a woman stood up to ask a question but then ended up giving what felt like a dissertation on UFO's....!
Mike,
Thanks for the Hill link. Good stuff!
Let me return the favor by offering the latest in Michael Ventura's series on Oligarchy:
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/column?oid=oid%3A1037165
Here he's talking about those "most concerned with making what used to be called a 'contribution,' which is, as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote, 'to feel, when setting one's stone, that one is contributing to the building of the world.'"
Which is certainly a good definition of the civilized life, I think.
And as a sort of companion piece to Ventura's series on Oligarchy, this essay on America's lip service to individuality (as long as you're individual exactly like everyone else):
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/06/06/sweet_land_of_conformity/
Again, what Americans call individuality now seems to be more like narcissism, if not outright solipsism.
And its apparent corollary is that empathy, compassion, sharing, trust -- those things are for suckers, losers & fools. They certainly don't help you become a winner, after all.
While I cherish hope as much as most people, the chances of rebirth from that sort of thinking seem very slim indeed ...
I hate feeling that way.
Dr. Berman,
There is a very interesting study of "fear culture," as you mentioned in your interview, by sociologist George Gertner, on the Media Education Foundation's website ( www.mediaed.org ). It's called Mean World Syndrome and it comes to some interesting conclusions. You can watch the documentary on the site as a not-for-profit preview. I wondered if you would expand on the mechanisms of fear leading to our cultural obsessions with power, control and domination.
Avigail
Dear Avigail,
My expansion on the subject can be found in my book "Wandering God." However, I don't approach it from a media-violence standpt, as does Gertner.
Thank you for writing.
mb
I will look for your book (really, I have read everything else you've written!); I'm sure the usual suspects have it. What I found surprising about the media study was that, rather than make people violent, as is often believed, the culture's saturation with violence makes people afraid and distrustful. Fear does seem to be a particularly salient feature of life in the USA, not merely as a response to media enactment.
I am interested in this subject mostly because of the ethic of power-worship that fear, among other things, engenders. I believe that power, control and domination are the foundations of our moralities, and the desire for such lies very deep within our psyches. I look forward to reading about how the hunter-gatherers mostly kept it in check, although Native American gift cultures spring to mind. I first read Coming to our Senses (out of sequence, I know) because it was cited in Marilyn French's Book, Beyond Power.
Anyway, I hate to blather on about a minor point. Thanks for the blogging that you do.
Gramoflanz,
Not a minor point at all! I'm grateful for the link, and I'm fascinated by what I'm hearing there. It reinforces something I've felt for a long time now: all that media violence may not turn viewers into killers, but it does desensitize them to the suffering of others; and it certainly increases anxiety & fear. Which in turn makes it that much easier to focus their attention on destroying the scapegoat du jour, I suppose.
As we said in the 1960s, "You are what you eat." And Americans eat a lot of violence, vengeance, and dread.
My wife & I have found that since we cut our TV viewing to the barest minimum, uaing it mainly for movies we select, we're a lot happier.
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