I sat in the emergency room Saturday -- alone and, I am glad to report, OK -- waiting for the ER physician to release me. After pacing the exam room along the very edges of patience, and having read nearly every poster, sticker or tag in sight, I settled in a chair next to the bed and hid behind the little drawn curtain. I noticed the instruction guide to the Morgan Lens device taped to a table top, and wondered how I had missed it in the forty-five minutes I had been waiting. One read-through confirmed my suspicion: in an ER, this sort of device could only suggest dreadful conditions: glass fragments, poisons. I steered clear of the possibilities.
Down low, taped to a medical cabinet, which offered at least a dozen drawers, I spotted a curious and tiny handwritten note on the front of a middle drawer:
"They are more Rapid Rhinos in the closet in Room 7."
The nurse or orderly who had written the note was forgiven the misspelling. "There are more Rapid Rhinos" would be more accurate, but the point was made. I get "they are more," at least in a pinch.
But I couldn't help but feel a bit anxious. I looked closely at the closet door; I was sitting in Room 7. Was someone up to no good here? What would I see if I opened the closet door, black rhinos rushing across the plains of Serengeti?
I quickly stood up, pulled the curtain back and leaned against the frame of the exam room door, telling myself I have enough things to worry about. Despite my best efforts to fix my mind on the whereabouts of my doctor, I discovered I could not resist hearing something move behind me in the muted distance -- the portents of adventure. The sounds of the mysterious inevitable.
©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Looking Forward To The Past
Gary Rosen's recent review of Susan Neiman's new book Moral Clarity is provocative reading, and surely makes a decent case that Ms. Neiman, who stands on the political left, has produced a work worthy of broad attention.
Mr. Rosen does not hesitate to explore Ms. Neiman's frustrations with the increasingly intellectual and cultural vapidity of her leftist peers vis-á-vis universal principles. One passage stands out:
Ms. Neiman points to many factors in the left's retreat from universal principles. The demise of socialism has played a role, as has despair over the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. But the real source, she suggests, is a "conceptual collapse," a self-destructive descent into identity politics, postmodern theory and victimology. Her peers have become paralyzed, she writes, by the view that moral judgments are, ultimately, little more than "a hypocritical attempt to assert arbitrary power over those with whom you disagree."
Part of Ms. Neiman's prescribed antidote is a call to the Great Books catalog of western civilization (often touted by conservatives, like the late-Allan Bloom, as curative of many social ills). No doubt her proposal will raise the ire of multi-culturalists and feminists committed to radical egalitarianism, but I would assume she is more than capable of defending herself before such critics. The only "danger" in Ms. Neiman's idea is that she opens the door to the value of Tradition; such backward looking interests do not sit well with progressives committed solely to that which lies ahead. But tradition, and the intellectuals embedded therein, can be formidable pedagogues. That is scary to a lot of folks.
I am the first to admit that many of my conservative peers have also turned a blind eye and deaf ear to the so-called western canon. I have not completed it myself, though I was definitely trained in that canon's great tradition. There is much to learn; and many Americans are like many fundamentalists, as both the progressive patriot and the fundamentalist act with little regard to the storehouse of knowledge available in the literature and traditions of the past. Both types of zealots forget that many of the questions of today have been amply discussed by our forefathers, civil and religious. In many cases, answers and solutions have been given. The trend to deify our own era at the expense of other notable times is rooted in conceit and arrogance. And it is, at present, a perilous conceit.
Peace.
BG
©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
Mr. Rosen does not hesitate to explore Ms. Neiman's frustrations with the increasingly intellectual and cultural vapidity of her leftist peers vis-á-vis universal principles. One passage stands out:
Ms. Neiman points to many factors in the left's retreat from universal principles. The demise of socialism has played a role, as has despair over the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. But the real source, she suggests, is a "conceptual collapse," a self-destructive descent into identity politics, postmodern theory and victimology. Her peers have become paralyzed, she writes, by the view that moral judgments are, ultimately, little more than "a hypocritical attempt to assert arbitrary power over those with whom you disagree."
Part of Ms. Neiman's prescribed antidote is a call to the Great Books catalog of western civilization (often touted by conservatives, like the late-Allan Bloom, as curative of many social ills). No doubt her proposal will raise the ire of multi-culturalists and feminists committed to radical egalitarianism, but I would assume she is more than capable of defending herself before such critics. The only "danger" in Ms. Neiman's idea is that she opens the door to the value of Tradition; such backward looking interests do not sit well with progressives committed solely to that which lies ahead. But tradition, and the intellectuals embedded therein, can be formidable pedagogues. That is scary to a lot of folks.
I am the first to admit that many of my conservative peers have also turned a blind eye and deaf ear to the so-called western canon. I have not completed it myself, though I was definitely trained in that canon's great tradition. There is much to learn; and many Americans are like many fundamentalists, as both the progressive patriot and the fundamentalist act with little regard to the storehouse of knowledge available in the literature and traditions of the past. Both types of zealots forget that many of the questions of today have been amply discussed by our forefathers, civil and religious. In many cases, answers and solutions have been given. The trend to deify our own era at the expense of other notable times is rooted in conceit and arrogance. And it is, at present, a perilous conceit.
Peace.
BG
©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
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