Feb 25, 2017 06:52 AM
(This post was last modified: Feb 25, 2017 06:54 AM by C C.)
How economic boom times in the west came to an end
https://aeon.co/essays/how-economic-boom...-to-an-end
EXCERPT: The second half of the 20th century divides neatly in two. The divide did not come with the rise of Ronald Reagan or the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is not discernible in a particular event, but rather in a shift in the world economy, and the change continues to shape politics and society in much of the world today.
The shift came at the end of 1973. The quarter-century before then, starting around 1948, saw the most remarkable period of economic growth in human history. In the Golden Age between the end of the Second World War and 1973, people in what was then known as the ‘industrialised world’ – Western Europe, North America, and Japan – saw their living standards improve year after year. They looked forward to even greater prosperity for their children. Culturally, the first half of the Golden Age was a time of conformity, dominated by hard work to recover from the disaster of the war. The second half of the age was culturally very different, marked by protest and artistic and political experimentation. Behind that fermentation lay the confidence of people raised in a white-hot economy: if their adventures turned out badly, they knew, they could still find a job.
The year 1973 changed everything. High unemployment and a deep recession made experimentation and protest much riskier, effectively putting an end to much of it. A far more conservative age came with the economic changes, shaped by fears of failing and concerns that one’s children might have it worse, not better. Across the industrialised world, politics moved to the Right – a turn that did not avert wage stagnation, the loss of social benefits such as employer-sponsored pensions and health insurance, and the secure, stable employment that had proved instrumental to the rise of a new middle class and which workers had come to take for granted. At the time, an oil crisis took the blame for what seemed to be a sharp but temporary downturn. Only gradually did it become clear that the underlying cause was not costly oil but rather lagging productivity growth – a problem that would defeat a wide variety of government policies put forth to correct it....
Humans in Dark Times
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/op.../the-stone
EXCERPT: [...] Over the past year, we have engaged in a series of discussions with prominent and committed intellectuals who are all concerned in various ways with developing a critique of violence adequate to our times. Sadly, many of the warnings offered have become more pressing than ever. Across the world, it is possible to witness the liberation of prejudice, galvanized by the emergence of a politics of hate and division that plays directly into the everyday fears of those seduced by new forms of fascism.
The mission of The Stone is to explore issues both timely and timeless. Violence is evidently such a phenomenon, demanding purposeful and considered historical reflection. But here we immediately encounter a problem: If fighting violence demands new forms of ethical thinking that can be developed only with the luxury of time, what does this mean for the present moment when history is being steered in a more dangerous direction and seems to move more quickly every day?
Perhaps one answer is that any viable critique of violence will not arrive from any singular, sovereign academic who might offer reductive explanations of its causes and propose orthodox solutions. Such a stance leads to the domestication of thought, often in the politicized service of a select few. Instead, we need to have a serious conversation among thinkers, advocates, artists and others that leads to a new textual borderland of open inquiry, where poetry slips into the demands for human dignity and the importance of transdisciplinary conversations are not simply focused on revealing the crises of contemporary political thought but encourage a rethinking of what it might mean to be human in the 21st century.
With this in mind, it is useful to revisit the articles in this series to draw out some of the more important common threads, insights and shared concerns. While not in any way exhaustive, the various conversations we have already undertaken present us with a possible framework in which to begin a better discussion of the problem of violence and to imagine more peaceful relations among the world’s people. So here are 11 lessons worth considering...
The OG philosophy comic
http://revfitz.com/dead-philosophers-hea...phy-comic/
EXCERPT: After reading the latest entry to my serial “Existential Terror and Breakfast” and the latest issue to Mr. Square, are you left with wanting another fix of philosophy or comics? Combined? AGAIN?! Though I have already recommended Existential Comics, I did not touch on the originator of the idea Dead Philosophers in Heaven (found here). They are both excellent comics that have philosophers across the ages interact with each other, but Dead Philosophers in Heaven is the original gangsta of the two and has a special place in my heart....
Recent updates to SEP entries:
Frege's Theorem and Foundations for Arithmetic
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frege-theorem/
Aquinas' Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquin...political/
Dependence Logic
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-dependence/
Phenomenal Intentionality
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pheno...tionality/
Paradoxes and Contemporary Logic
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/parad...ary-logic/
https://aeon.co/essays/how-economic-boom...-to-an-end
EXCERPT: The second half of the 20th century divides neatly in two. The divide did not come with the rise of Ronald Reagan or the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is not discernible in a particular event, but rather in a shift in the world economy, and the change continues to shape politics and society in much of the world today.
The shift came at the end of 1973. The quarter-century before then, starting around 1948, saw the most remarkable period of economic growth in human history. In the Golden Age between the end of the Second World War and 1973, people in what was then known as the ‘industrialised world’ – Western Europe, North America, and Japan – saw their living standards improve year after year. They looked forward to even greater prosperity for their children. Culturally, the first half of the Golden Age was a time of conformity, dominated by hard work to recover from the disaster of the war. The second half of the age was culturally very different, marked by protest and artistic and political experimentation. Behind that fermentation lay the confidence of people raised in a white-hot economy: if their adventures turned out badly, they knew, they could still find a job.
The year 1973 changed everything. High unemployment and a deep recession made experimentation and protest much riskier, effectively putting an end to much of it. A far more conservative age came with the economic changes, shaped by fears of failing and concerns that one’s children might have it worse, not better. Across the industrialised world, politics moved to the Right – a turn that did not avert wage stagnation, the loss of social benefits such as employer-sponsored pensions and health insurance, and the secure, stable employment that had proved instrumental to the rise of a new middle class and which workers had come to take for granted. At the time, an oil crisis took the blame for what seemed to be a sharp but temporary downturn. Only gradually did it become clear that the underlying cause was not costly oil but rather lagging productivity growth – a problem that would defeat a wide variety of government policies put forth to correct it....
Humans in Dark Times
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/op.../the-stone
EXCERPT: [...] Over the past year, we have engaged in a series of discussions with prominent and committed intellectuals who are all concerned in various ways with developing a critique of violence adequate to our times. Sadly, many of the warnings offered have become more pressing than ever. Across the world, it is possible to witness the liberation of prejudice, galvanized by the emergence of a politics of hate and division that plays directly into the everyday fears of those seduced by new forms of fascism.
The mission of The Stone is to explore issues both timely and timeless. Violence is evidently such a phenomenon, demanding purposeful and considered historical reflection. But here we immediately encounter a problem: If fighting violence demands new forms of ethical thinking that can be developed only with the luxury of time, what does this mean for the present moment when history is being steered in a more dangerous direction and seems to move more quickly every day?
Perhaps one answer is that any viable critique of violence will not arrive from any singular, sovereign academic who might offer reductive explanations of its causes and propose orthodox solutions. Such a stance leads to the domestication of thought, often in the politicized service of a select few. Instead, we need to have a serious conversation among thinkers, advocates, artists and others that leads to a new textual borderland of open inquiry, where poetry slips into the demands for human dignity and the importance of transdisciplinary conversations are not simply focused on revealing the crises of contemporary political thought but encourage a rethinking of what it might mean to be human in the 21st century.
With this in mind, it is useful to revisit the articles in this series to draw out some of the more important common threads, insights and shared concerns. While not in any way exhaustive, the various conversations we have already undertaken present us with a possible framework in which to begin a better discussion of the problem of violence and to imagine more peaceful relations among the world’s people. So here are 11 lessons worth considering...
The OG philosophy comic
http://revfitz.com/dead-philosophers-hea...phy-comic/
EXCERPT: After reading the latest entry to my serial “Existential Terror and Breakfast” and the latest issue to Mr. Square, are you left with wanting another fix of philosophy or comics? Combined? AGAIN?! Though I have already recommended Existential Comics, I did not touch on the originator of the idea Dead Philosophers in Heaven (found here). They are both excellent comics that have philosophers across the ages interact with each other, but Dead Philosophers in Heaven is the original gangsta of the two and has a special place in my heart....
Recent updates to SEP entries:
Frege's Theorem and Foundations for Arithmetic
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frege-theorem/
Aquinas' Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquin...political/
Dependence Logic
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-dependence/
Phenomenal Intentionality
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pheno...tionality/
Paradoxes and Contemporary Logic
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/parad...ary-logic/