Way-out, Saturday party-time, plist-type open-ended question....grounded in Puritanism maybe?

David Morris fqmorris at gmail.com
Tue Jun 26 09:33:02 CDT 2012


On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 9:23 AM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net> wrote:
> On 6/26/2012 6:06 AM, alice wellintown wrote:
>>
>> It is far too easy to pile the problems of the world on business and
>> on men and women in grey suits. And, doing so ignores the issue that
>> the "cleanliness is next to godliness" phrase begs us to explore. This
>> phrase, from Acts, has to do with what is sacred and what profane.
>> And, this distinction is quite germane to our present crisis, how to
>> engage the Other, the outsider, the foreigner, the person who shares a
>> new globalized and digitized world with us, perhaps a currency, but
>> lives over the boarder. First, the forging of the industrial and
>> mechanical, and now digital way of life, was not done in Big Business
>> factories. Moreover, the motive for this way of life was not money or
>> greed, nor was it something technical, nor was it an ideology of
>> efficiency or some other Big Business Visible Hand value. It was
>> something sacred. It was a holiness, a Virgin made Dynamo. And, as
>> your example of a producta that kills those who use it and the world
>> they live in, suggests, it was about the Control of the Other. So, the
>> cigarettes of RJR and Phil-Mo were merely a product of the Keeping the
>> Faith in the machine-cult. The Dynamo was elevated above all else.
>> And, though Gradgrinds and Spenglers and Mumfords and so on, all
>> warned that what Adams had identified was a Cult, a religion that
>> would ignore with Blind Faith, Life and Earth, and though after the
>> second Great War and several lesser ones after, the Faithful pushed
>> themselves up off their knees, it was only a matter of time before the
>> tolling of the Bell called them to service again. And here we are. And
>> it is not Business we worship. And it is not Businessmen in grey suits
>> who preach and save us from our wickedness, but the Faith We Keep.
>
[...]
> Alice needs to develop her thesis further.

You can say that again, unless she's really only interested in talking
to herself.

> I suggest she include in her argument my own devoutly held view that Big Business isn't something  separate from Us--if fact, Big Business IS us.

A-and Corporations are People!!!?

Nope.

David Morris



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