tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post7721304384744657776..comments2023-11-05T22:35:31.766+00:00Comments on Neil Clark: How We Lost the Art of LovingNeil Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10479041156190090119noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post-52564779785675106182008-02-16T22:07:00.000+00:002008-02-16T22:07:00.000+00:00I've grasped from reading your blog for a while th...I've grasped from reading your blog for a while that you are a great admirer of Erich Fromm, as are quite a few others. <BR/><BR/>I offer a friendly challenge: I will read and comment on The Art of Loving. In return, you will read and comment on <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/Looming-Tower-Al-Qaeda-Road-11/dp/037541486X" REL="nofollow">The Looming Tower</A> by Lawrence Wright. It has been praised by reviewers on both sides of the aisle, so it's not really considered a neocon tome.<BR/><BR/>In the words of Captain Barbossa in Pirates of the Caribbean, "Have we an accord?"Douglashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15146665485840381349noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post-9652603148772277882008-02-14T22:34:00.000+00:002008-02-14T22:34:00.000+00:00'The way in which modern capitalism destroys love ...'The way in which modern capitalism destroys love is not a topic that many on the left have wished to engage'<BR/><BR/> Well, certainly not in 2008 where far too many of them have managed to combine an instinctual leftism which lauds the sexual transgression with a belief in an unfettered globalist corporations, mass media manipulation, PR and advertising. <BR/><BR/> Pardoxically, this is a result of the the degeneration of the 'sexual liberation' of the 1960s which deregulated sex and subjected it to market forces. The French novelist Michel Houellebecq has written a series of scathing novels about the 60s radicals in this respect.<BR/><BR/> Fromm's Art of Loving was a key text for many on the New Left who had legitimate criticisms of the emerging cult of mass consumerism that developed in the post-war period. <BR/><BR/> The problem with his view of love was that it could easily become a form of kitsch because love of humanity, ie brotherly love, is always in danger of becoming a shoddy substitute for loving individuals in particular.<BR/><BR/> The problem is not necessarily capitalism in itself, though it does need regulating, but the kind of neoliberal version which depends on mass techniques of propaganda and persuasion to ensure a false kind of social stability. <BR/><BR/>Here people have the illusion of being sovereign individuals who overcome their isolation through acts of consumption that maintain some sense of ego security.<BR/><BR/> Ironically, it was once said of Communism that it was designed to prevent man from having to make ethical choices by creating a Utopia of plenty in which every decision was regulated by what was considered of social utility. <BR/><BR/>Neoliberal capitalism is just a more 'successful version' of that Utopia which is why so many of the 60s radicals now espouse global corporatism and its imposition upon the entire world through top down 'regime change' and mass social engineering and propaganda ie Henry Ford democracy.<BR/><BR/>People must learn to love their servitude to the new corporate pseudo-church and those temples of mass affirmation of one's being-the shopping mall. <BR/><BR/>Why ? Because 'the people' are too dumb to make real decisions or really 'become who they are'as unique and never to be repeated individuals. That just leads to what Huxley scoffingly called the sin of 'instability', questioning life, scepticism and the desire to live in truth.<BR/><BR/>The benevolent Guardians wouldn't want that of their infantilised consumers. They just KNOW what the people want and they want kitsch of which modern pop culture, meaningless football based pseudo-patriotism and soap opera will keep the plebs so happy. Blair knew he could be anodyne and pretend to be a normal man who likes Telly and the Beatles. <BR/><BR/>Then we have that sickly abortion of a man Derek Draper exhorting Gordon Brown to admit to drinking beer and watching the X Factor. <BR/><BR/>I'm writing an essay on the Czech writer Kundera about popular kitsch and how, when it becomes part of the political process and a nations mythology, it can lead to forgetting abuses of power and to stimulate docile apathy or mindless enthusiasm.<BR/><BR/>Really, New Labour and certain left liberals really do think the UK is some kind of nation on the road to a model Utopia and that only their progressive orthodoxies are the sole truth about human life. Such conceits are dangerous for human liberty.<BR/><BR/>Dobru nocs from BratislavaKarl Naylorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11400585861569394701noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post-8491481342103561462008-02-14T15:39:00.000+00:002008-02-14T15:39:00.000+00:00Some very good points & you skewered the "democrat...Some very good points & you skewered the "democratic" system & Blair perfectly. On the other hand while relationships are more important I don't see that growth & productivity are inherently counter to them. Peasant life may be short of wealth but it has traditionally been pretty cruel about how it divides it up. Arranged marriages are as materialistic as anything Heather McCartney ever got up to, & have been common throughout history.<BR/><BR/>You will gather I approve strongly of wealth creation. Indeed i think that a state which fails at that is unlikely to succeed at much else worth doing. <BR/><BR/>Perhaps what we need is not to give up productivity for friendship but to all unite in some common achievement. To telegraph the ending I am a space buff & it is quite certain that had we put as much money into achieving there as we have into blowing up Iraq & Yugoslavia we could have colonised the planets.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com