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I just returned from dinner with a robust, boisterous group of people
who live in cohousing. They decided to follow Donna's injunction to
"make kin", and they're successful at it. People of many ages, many
professions, including the elderly and the differently abled. They care
for each other.
I helped build and help run a community radio station that brings
together people of many ages and many ability levels to keep alive our
motto "many voices, one station". We care for each other.
Instead of looking outward at the horrors perpetrated by our society on
the old and sick and different and differently abled, we look inward and
build our own for our own. It's extremely hard, it's dangerous, it's
possible to fail. But if we don't make kin, if we don't take care of
our own, no one will. To that, I dedicate a large portion of my life.
Let others point out how awful life can be for the elderly, and let
others try to understand what can be done and how to do it. In the
warping presence of the destructive forces of capital, in the face of
all of patriarchy's evil, we'll simply do all we can to continue to make
kin and to care for each other.
That's all I have to say on the topic of aging.
Sandy
Alan Sondheim wrote on 9/29/19 5:20 PM:
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This opens up so many areas. Attention issues are a critical issue in
education today; I don't think even now that cellphone addiction has
been sufficiently dealt with or at least addressed. I keep hearing
people making snap decisions or taking snap metaphors from physics
(i.e. black hole this, black hole that, etc.); if you look at any
elementary physics book today, you immediately recognize how complex,
how amazing convoluted the world is! And it takes years for a student
to comprehend this, to deal with it, even to constribute to the field.
It's even more of an issue with, for example, contemporary biology,
genetics, etc. For a while I studied physical anthropology in college
and it was a relatively simple and organized field - today you need
geology, genetics, molecular analysis, computer reconstruction, etc.
It can be incredibly exciting but it's demanding on a student. So it's
the same thing culture-wide - I agree with you. On one hand the world
is unbelievable, and unbelievably layered; on the other, students want
the imminence of the screen, of a digital life where everything is
at-hand. There's no easy answer...
I've gone through Susskind's Theoretical Minimum books (not
understanding everything); they're enormously enriching; he does an
amazing job at bringing the fundamentals and their contradictions home...
Best, Alan, in agreement!
On Sun, 29 Sep 2019, Theresa Halula wrote:
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