Michael Gurstein wrote:
>
> -- Original Message -----
> From: John Hibbs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Friday, January 28, 2000 7:55 AM
> Subject: One Country Two worlds
>
> > ==============================================================
> > Since the theme for GLD2000 may well be "Bridging the Gap", I thought it
> > worthwhile to enclose this entire Thomas Friedman editorial found at:
> >
> > http://www.nytimes.com/library/opinion/friedman/012800frie.html
> >
> > CAIRO -- I just had an interesting experience. I did an author's tour of
> > Egypt, meeting with students at Cairo University, journalists at
> > Egyptian newspapers and the Chambers of Commerce of Cairo and Alexandria
> > to talk about the Arabic edition of a book I did on globalization.
> > Two images stand out from this trip. The first was riding the train from
> > Cairo to Alexandria in a car full of middle- and upper-class Egyptians.
[snip]
> > The other image was visiting Yousef Boutrous-Ghali, Egypt's
> > M.I.T.-trained minister of economy. When I arrived at his building the
> > elevator operator, an Egyptian peasant, was waiting for me at the
> > elevator, which he operated with a key. Before he turned it on, though,
> > to take me up to the minister's office, he whispered the Koranic verse
> > "In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate." To a Westerner,
> > it is unnerving to hear your elevator operator utter a prayer before he
> > closes the door, but for him this was a cultural habit, rooted deep in
> > his tradition.
[snip]
> > After enough such conversations I realized that most Egyptians --
> > understandably -- were approaching globalization out of a combination of
> > despair and necessity, not out of any sense of opportunity.
> > Globalization meant adapting to a threat coming from the outside, not
> > increasing their own freedoms. I also realized that their previous
> > ideologies -- Arab nationalism, Socialism, Fascism or Communism -- while
> > they may have made no economic sense, had a certain inspirational power.
> > But globalism totally lacks this. When you tell a traditional society it
> > has to streamline, downsize and get with the Internet, it is a challenge
> > that is devoid of any redemptive or inspirational force.
> > And that is why, for all of globalization's obvious power to elevate
> > living standards, it is going to be a tough, tough sell to all those
> > millions who still say a prayer before they ride the elevator.
[snip]
(1) Perhaps globalization *shall* elevate living standards for Egypt's
poorest -- if they can find any employable job skills
with which to engage themselves into the world
market --, since they are presumably *below* the world-competiton
"normalized" average wage. Though the valley may be much larger than
the mountains around, we cannot deny that lopping off the mountain
tops must perforce to some small extent raise the valley
floor -- unless the material is carted away to some place else (a
parable for the world marketplace).
(2) Anent "inspirational power": There *is* inspirational
power in modern technology, provided human technological
praxis (the living individual transforming what merely
exists into what is good, thru the passionate coordinated
exercise and development of mind and hand). But this power
seems to me (a) to be largely ignored by the "invisible hand"
which grinds all things down into the uniform powder
of "exchange value", and (b) probably most of even the most
highly "educated" (i.e., *schooled* -- like the graduates
from Harvard Tech, etc.) have no notion of any of this.
("Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they
do." Etc.)
Who has not studied and semiotically
*metabolized* into their every daily thought and act --
and, especially, into their *work life*! --
such authors as Edmund Husserl [esp. his: _The Crisis of
European Sciences..._], Robert Musil, Donald Schon, Arnold
Gehlen, Joseph Weizenbaum, Enzo Paci (there are many
sources, but, added all together, they make up almost
a vanishingly small part of the totality of our culture's
communication media output and socialization
processes, esp. childrearing) -- who has not done this,
and/or who has not had his or her own originary
and orienting "ekstatic" experiences in the realm
of technological praxis, must be "charging their
spiritual batteries" from some less robust
source which I think will be vulnerable to
*disillusionment* because it is less-than / prior-to the
exact mathematical sciences, rather than
reflectively appropriating their meaning
and thus going beyond their present [what one might call:]
"adolescent" (only partial) forms. (Over 15 years
ago, I wrote up what I had learned in this regard from
then about 12 years of computer programming work:
http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/giftdoc.html (ca. 160K)
.) Robert Musil's vision of a world in which "mystical experience"
would be rescued from the muddled hocus-pocus of fuzzy feelings
and [what *would* Musil have thought of these folks?!]
new-Age-ers, et al., etc. -- and "the mystical"
realized by each of us at the center
of the most exact technological work (which thereby would
at last discover its *heart*) is only one of the great "dreams"
(I am referring here esp. to Husserl's sad statement
from the late "30s"...) of the 20th century, which is
"over" only in the sense that we have not yet
even begun to take it up, and, in trying to realize it,
to *test it out*. (See below)
The most advanced sectors of
"The West" still, in my estimation, remain largely
in the thralldon of unreflected ethnicity. The Egyptean
elevator operator says his traditional prayer to
Allah the merciful. A Harvard or Wharton Tech.
diplomate investment banker says his equally
traditional prayers to "commercial paper" and
Professional Football.
"Yours in discourse [which is aware of its
self-constituting and world-constituting majesty
and infinite desirability, as well as its universal fragility]...",
on this the holiest day of the secular Western calendar:
Superbowl Sunday.
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
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