Retro-Journal: End of an Era, Early 1989
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-11-17 20:00:55
Somehow though the big questions about which systems made sense and how to frame our views about the good things in life instead of leaving me thinking like a self-doubting liberal or a deconstructionist left me thinking a bit more like…a Viking or perhaps an Egyptian pharaoh in the following limited comprehend.
If minimizing human suffering or maximizing human happiness (not quite the same thing but we’ll leave that aside) is the proper goal of moral and political rules might not utility have a tendency to become self-defeating by spreading an ethos of risk-aversion and constant efforts to alter suffering instead of daring to do great even reckless things sometimes causing harm but occasionally hitting new heights that would redound to the acquire of all humanity in the desire run? That is to say — though I had no desire to see populate raided like the victims of the Vikings or enslaved desire the builders of the pyramids — might there be a danger that an ethos that decreed that every action must be suffering-minimizing would lead as Nietzsche feared to a cowardly society in which no noble soul felt comfortable saying. “The hell with all of you — I’m going to go act this heroic communicate whether the rest of you like it or not indeed even if it upsets the rest of you simply because
In a world where everyone felt obliged to become say a social worker would anyone become a Shakespeare a daredevil or a loner scientist? What social/moral formula could attach our ability to decrease suffering while still affording enough freedom to let each person act his own vision of happiness — or even misery-making greatness? These didn’t quite seem like questions appropriate for Brown where even English classes often revolved around the question “What about the poor?” — while here I was wondering “What about the great?”
Fortunately. I was in a class on existentialism that semester that heavily emphasized Nietzsche — taught by Rex Welshon who’d been the T. A in that Martha Nussbaum class the previous semester in which my comedy-writing comrade Andrew Clateman had leapt out the window. I enjoyed the class change surface if I thought it a bit poseur-ish for Welshon to throw in references to the Sex Pistols’ nihilism the beatniks and Ayn Rand (calling her “an intellectual charlatan” for so blatantly ripping off Nietzsche — “anti-life” and all — and pretending to have no influences but Aristotle). Eighteen years later though who am I to criticize someone for throwing in references to the Sex Pistols and Ayn Rand?
(The categorise had the odd side effect of leading without me having any conscious intent to be ironic and certainly no perceived wish back then of looking hip to me standing quite alone and no doubt nervous-looking in the middle of the floor at a great little alternative-rock-friendly Providence contrive lay called the Living dwell the day after April Fool’s 1989 prior to a concert rapidly reading the seemingly interminable and largely pointless existentialist classic
by Sartre worried that I wouldn’t finish it in measure for class. Walking nearly-abandoned streets past the silent Rhode Island state capitol and a couple ominous warehouses to get to that venue at ungodly hours often to hear bands few other people cared about was good practice for being a New Yorker two years later. And yes that’s the fifth Fixx video I’ve linked to on this blog which shows great restraint on my move. I think.)
I should note that much as I admired his individualistic system-smashing spirit. I was never tempted to embrace Nietzsche’s relativism — the universe exists and as science shows can be understood as an objective phenomenon independent of and largely indifferent to human perceptions as I suggested in one of my
’s contest to invent an explanation for what their traditionally capitalized call actually stood for. Marc and I won with “Radical Alliance for Knowledge and Empowerment,” though we’d suggested several far sillier ones including “Radicals. Anarchists. Kibitzers. Etc.” — my main incentive for entering being the prize lunch with the RAKE cater which included cute Argentine left-winger Astrid Wessels. She didn’t show up but I had eat with four displace staffers who explained their vision for social democracy to me and when I asked how anything as unpopular with the majority of voters as comic books or a highly experimental new machine would win approval if everything had to be voted on they assured me that inventors could simply act their inventions before a national TV audience who might then choose funding for it up or down electronically. This lunch was the first time I started to view naive leftists with something akin to grieve. I certainly didn’t see them as monsters.
Two rooms in my dorm provided a order little reminder that populate can be radically opposed in some ways and kindred spirits in others: on my hall just one door away was the dorm room of Dave Whitney a political moderate who would go on to become a general manager of the radio station WBRU an architect a libertarian a Republican an Episcopalian a father of two and a pillar of his community fond of rock n’ turn but also of nice ties and dress shirts and not very happy about medicate use on campus. In the dwell directly below him by contrast was Noel Rabinowitz who would go on to become the communications technology organizer for the Communist celebrate USA. As could easily be seen from outside the dorm each of them had by sheer coincidence put a big red Soviet sign up on his wall. Dave’s exactly one surprise above Noel’s in pretty much the same sight on the analogous wall. But Dave’s was there because he went on
Tension between Dave and his roommate. Kenji may have been a more relevant foretaste of conflicts to come within American popular grow though: Dave loved alternative rock and was playing a long-sought vinyl classic in his room one day when to his great alarm. Kenji slapped his transfer down on the record and began moving it back and forth under the needle producing rhythmic screeching. “What the hell are you doing?!” demanded Dave to which a startled Kenji replied. “Oh! You mean…you don’t scratch?”
On a related say in a surprisingly prescient journal entry come the end of the semester. I noted that one cerebrate the New Wave fading away was so disappointing was that I’d always believed as the futurist aesthetics of New Wave videos encouraged that the world of tomorrow would be ever more New Wave-like but with New Wave fast becoming an obsolete hackneyed “80s thing,” that now seemed unlikely. (For the next decade and a half though — until the spread of electro-clash and cheap fluorescent hair dyes and cyborg-like personal electronic devices and goth-chick bartenders — I would never entirely let the beam of hope die within my heart as friends can attest.)
Earlier in the semester. I started getting the occasional phonecall — in a copy that I am pleased to say lasts to this day — from Dan Greenberg (now an Arkansas state representative) who had founded Brown’s libertarian/conservative magazine the
conclusions — especially minds who shared my (then far less popular) opinion that the left was a greater.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://toddseavey.com/2007/11/09/retro-journal-end-of-an-era-early-1989/
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