Wednesday, August 04, 2010

Palin, Summers and the Crisis of Kitsch

By Phil Rockstroh
August 4, 2010

Given the level of cultural absurdity at large, both the commercially tormented landscape and the mass media dominated mindscape of the United States seem a Gogol goof-take.

Read on.

2 comments:

rosemerry said...

What refreshment to read something so unlike the "normal" comments. Summers had had lots of quotes, none of which show him in a good light, and the fact that he remains in power, like so many useless others, helps to explain our present dilemma. There ARE sensitive, intelligent, environmentally and socially conscious Americans, many of whom voted for Obama and were cast aside as he rehired all the old hacks.

racetoinfinity said...

Summers may have a high-IQ, but he hasn't evolved to ecological awareness. He's a modern guy with the European enlightenment's pathological dissociation of mind and body (nature). (It overshot its healthy imperative of differentiation of them), who hasn't healed that divide and gone on to postmodern ecological awareness and mind-body being/awareness. He's a relic of the pre-late sixties.

I agree with so much of your wonderful piece. We have a corporate plutocracy that is disconnected with nature and narcissistic, chasing wealth and power as if it were real liberation. It's an old, sad story.

For a way out of the confusion, read Ken Wilber starting with "Up from Eden" to see the development from pre-rational religion to rational atheism/agnosticism/rational religion to trans-rational spirituality. Myths are actually shallower than rationality (science)- what are deeper are archetypes and creative vision-logic postmodern art which can use myth as an element in its much deeper exploration of the movement of Evolution.