George W. Bush - and other phenomena in the world…

[Slightly updated January 18]. Some loud thinking, inspired by things I read and have read recently...

A leader writer in the leader "Goodbye to Bush" this morning about George W. Bush and his last speech as president (in my amateur translation from Swedish):

“Yesterday George W. Bush held his retirement speech as president.

It was short, vigorous and – as superficial and petrified as always.

His eight years in the White House has made him to one of USA’s less popular presidents ever, the country’s reputation abroad is worse than ever, he leaves more ongoing wars after himself and on top a budget deficit that in itself has transferred power to financiers in Asia. But he is stuck to the conviction that the policy has been successful and the proof of that is that USA since September 11 has managed to fight terror attacks.

In his speech his fundamentalist revival Christianity revived: good and evil stand against each other in this world and no compromises are possible.

How was Bush possible? That’s the ten-thousand-crown-question, a question the historians will pose once. How could he win a second period as president? USA regressed during the 21st Century, a great deal of the population sank into a right Christian and neoconservative slough that made them incapable of understanding themselves, their country, their time/era.

Maybe Bush became the president that came to administer an American empire that at last passed zenith?

Now he retires. The world can start anew again.”

Can it? Does it? Hopefully it does.

In a local newspaper it was a review, ”The shopping culture rules our lives”, today of Zygmunt Bauman’s book “Consuming Life.”

From the review (in my amateur translation from Swedish):

“You are first and foremost consumer – everything else is of subordinate meaning. Each human being is valued first an foremost for his ability to buy and for his creditworthiness./…/

What happens to the humanity and our abilities when we are reduced to shopping creatures only?/…/

According to Bauman even we human beings are above all [above everything else; not really seen as human beings with feelings and emotions and a lot of other needs!? All needs are reduced to hat of consuming?] transformed into goods or merchandises. /…/ In this information era being invisible is like being dead [does it have to be? If you had been seenby your first caregivers?].

The dream of becoming famous attracts more and more people today. The central motif is being seen in all our medias./…/

The own self is in the center of attention./../

This hyper fast chase on kicks is called development and modernity when it in reality is about rapidly arisen consumption of narcissism and of general gossip./…/

Constantly we have to become convinced that our cars, kitchen fixtures, clothes, accessories have to become changed of different reasons. In the shopping culture the drive to throw things away is as powerful and necessary as to shop. Can we find an explanation to why so many people don’t feel well in this consumption society? Why do so many people have to eat antidepressants? Yes, in parts because this shopping culture needs clear feelings of lack of satisfaction and lack of something substantial./…/

The flight from ourselves enriches other people. /…/ We have to be on an ongoing chase for ideal ideas about our lives. Everything can become changed to something better./…/

Another gloomy consequence is a selfish society and people standing completely indifferent for notions like solidarity and human beings equal values. If a human being merely is valued as merchandise the whole idea of brotherly philosophy falls. The step from a collective society and collective responsibility to an individual and privatized societal system changes the human beings’ attitudes and ability to engage in other people.

The neoliberalism gave the shopping culture free scope more than twenty years ago. This has also in a very thorough way changed human beings attitudes, habits and opinions.”

Why are we valued so much, and sometimes only, for our outer appearance? Why aren’t we seen as living human beings and why don’t we see ourselves as living human beings, with feelings, needs, emotions etc. Or how do we see our feelings, needs, emotions? And why do we see them as we do?

Why is the own self in the center as it is? Is it a sound self centeredness? What is unsound? And from where does this self centeredness come? What would a sound development lead to?

What is real development, what would real development be? Both in the society as in individuals?

What are we lacking and what needs do we try to satisfy in different ways? Some not with consumption either!

But in other ways. Maybe sometimes very subtle and disguised…

Can true, genuine respect for individuals exist in a/the collective? If not why?

Bauman thinks that a mixed economy protects people from the capitalism’s varieties. He speaks about social rights [another Swedish leader writer wrote recently about "Forgotten rights"!!], a feeling of belonging and human solidarity. Simply a more equal society. And of course this includes new goals for politics concerning the climate, with a much more “sober” and planned consumption. He also writes about the individualisation of problems that in their bottom actually are collective [see paragraph 6 in this linked Wikipedia-article]! My comment: Yes, indivuals are blamed for problems that actually aren't their personal. But at the same time other people, preferably in power, escape their responsibilities. Quite ironically: and they are also given freedom from responsibility (liability) from the people and not least other people in power.

Yes, what are we striving for and why?

I think the roots lies in our first twenty years in life…

The roots for violence are not unknown, no.

Why do we have the leaders we have? Why are those persons seeking power?

See the following articles and essays: “Bush isn’t a Moron, He’s a Cunning Sociopath” by Bev Conover, “D.C. Shrink Diagnosis Bush as a Paranoid, Sadistic Megalomaniac”, “George W. Bush’s projection dislocation of self” by Terence O'Leary, “See No Evil -- A political psychologist explains the roles denial, emotion and childhood punishment play in politics” Michael Milburn interviewed by Brian Braiker, “So George, how do you feel about your mom and dad?” by psychologist Oliver James, “The Madness of George W. Bush – A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis” by Paul Levy.

Consumerism...

Consuming Life by Zygmunt Bauman.

I got this tip from a friend about "The Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children – CSPCC". On the home-site it stands:

"What is Empathic Parenting?

Being willing and able to put yourself in your child's shoes in order to correctly identify his/her feelings, and

Being willing and able to behave toward your child in ways which take those feelings into account.

Empathic Parenting takes an enormous amount of time and energy and fully involves both parents in a co-operative, sharing way.

Credo of the CSPCC

Recognizing that the capacity to give and receive trust, affection and empathy is fundamental to being human, and...

Knowing that all of us suffer the consequences when children are raised in a way that makes them affectionless and violent, and...

Realizing that for the first time in History we have definite knowledge that these qualities are determined by the way the child is cared for in the very early years..."

And there was an article “Psychopathy and Consumerism: Two Illnesses That Need And Feed Each Other”, there one can read for instance:

"A psychopath or partial psychopath has an impaired capacity to form intimate, trusting mutually satisfying relationships with other human beings as a result of impaired attachment in the earliest years. Unable to find pleasure and satisfaction from others, the psychopath or partial psychopath must turn to things -- goods and services, toys and travel -- to fill the emptiness within.

The emptiness of the hollow man must be filled, and consumerism has learned how.

It is said that a culture creates the kind of people it needs. Maybe we're into frequent separations and changing, shared, paid caregivers in the first three years of the lives of our children so they will grow up with an insatiable need to shop till they drop.

If you're unable to obtain satisfaction from BEING, which is based on love and the pleasure of sharing, then the HAVING MODE, as Eric Fromm put it, is your only choice. 'The HAVING MODE, concentrates on material possession, acquisitiveness, power, and aggression and is the basis of such universal evils as greed, envy, and violence...'"

We fill our needs in other ways too? In destructiveness and self-destructiveness of different kinds… But, yes, many of us fill needs through buying things, to different degrees!??

Searched on shopping and found those two articles “I love shopping" and “Shopping you out of consumerism” (both in Swedish).

PS. About Zygmunt Bauman and his personal moral back when he was young in this article in the Guardian "Professor with a past".

PPS. Ingeborg Bosch has written about forcing a child to share at a too early age... The child will develop into a sharing individual on her/his own if one gives it that chance or opportunity? (not that anyone should be forced to share either?? Whether child or grown up?) I think I have written about this somewhere. Now I am going to pack the car and drive north though... It's plus degrees and cloudy... It's so nice with spring.

Addition in the evening: now I am at the country-side, something I really like. After lunch I took a nap (one whole hour I think) looks like I needed it!!! Need to relax really?? After a lot at work and a lot of emotions...

After the nap I took a walk with a cute dog in the wood here. It's still a lot of snow there. And when I drove here it snowed!!!

Eskil the dog has got a new toy, a sounding one, and when I came he showed it to me!! He wanted to play??? It's so fun that he still wants. He is after all 5 years!!

Rationality contra emotions...

picture taken on a walk November 11, 2006.

I want to translate the comments I got to this posting (very quickly done):

“The Norwegian professor in theology Svein Aage Christoffersen writes about animal-ethics in the article ‘Do we have a common basis of valuation for animals and is this shown in how animals are held today?’:

‘Empathy, the ability to enter into, and take into oneself, what other people are exposed to is an important side in what it is to be a human being. That’s true that many are on guard when it comes to feelings in relation to animals. Our treatment of animals shall be based on facts, not emotions. That is a fear I can’t understand. When it comes to relations human beings between we know that some in fact are lacking empathy, without ability to bond/attach to other human beings with emotional ties/bonds. These people are often called a little drastically for psychopaths.

I can’t understand why psychopaths shall be models for treatment of animals.

This of course doesn’t mean that we can manage only with emotions but without facts. Of course it isn’t like that human beings between either, even if we are tied up with emotional ties. But it means that we can’t manage with facts alone. If we are acting only from facts without feelings, then we are practically without ability to differ between evilness and goodness.’

In the book about ethics ‘Action and ability to judge’ he says that the emotions have a hermeneutic meaning. They make it possible for us in understanding what is going on around us. Through our feelings we are engaged and involved in the world we live in [we react on it, we can enjoy it, really be alive]. Our feelings/emotions give us access to the world and community/fellowship with other people. Without feelings/emotions we will be without/lack ability to apprehend/understand and perceive what a life together with other people brings with it and how other perceive and experience the situation we share with them [the one without this ability is emotionally disabled!!?? Maybe emotionally disabled to different degrees, more or less?].

A person aware of what responsibility is is a person with responsibility-FEELING!”

According to the commentator Zigmunt Bauman means in his book “Auschwitz and the modern society” (or is the title in English “Modernity and The Holocaust”? See also here about this book) that

“...the Holocaust was the result of a fundamentalist fixation on reason/common sense. A sort of fundamentalist rationality. Holocaust is according to him a too far driven rationalisation. Bauman means that these rational and bureaucratic methods are used even more than ever. With this he want to say that today’s society still has potential for creating an even more ghastly future annihilation than holocaust. Bauman means that instead of seeing the Holocaust as an abnormal occurrence we should apprehend it a ‘normal’ aspect of the formal rational modern society. This means that the Holocaust is a product of the modernity and not the result of an undermined modernity.

In accordance with the critical theory’s rhetoric this could be interpreted as the culmination/climax of the irrational rationality which is characteristic for the barbaric civilisation, but Bauman pleads for another view.”

In summary:

“...he sees the Holocaust stamped by the instrumental rationality’s first and foremost distinctive mark, i.e. effectiveness, ability to predict, quantification and inhuman technology. Thus the Holocaust wasn’t a result of irrationality or for-modern barbarism, but instead a logical product of the modern rational [no emotions here!] bureaucracy.

Bauman didn’t see the rationality as neutral, as it lacked moral and was driven only by strive for effectiveness. This means that the rationality isn’t only a tool but also a goal. Baumann saw this as something negative and alarming, because such a fundamentalist fixation to reason/commons sense gets fatal results in form of a self-inflicted annihilation of common sense. However this indicates, in contrast to Baumann’s comprehension, that Holocaust as a symbol for the instrumental rationality is characterized by an irrational rationality and dehumanisation.”

Addition: Made the translation above from I got the comments and till I should see a series on TV, which means I did it in a little more than one hour, so it was really a swift translation with all what that means!!

Konrad Stettbacher talked about feelings as "Watchers of Life" ("livets väktare" in Swedish) in his book, and that we ought to protect them in children [and in ourselves and probably develop them in ourselves!!??]

But as the commentator also wrote:

“In addition to feelings we also need common sense (virtues, principles, knowledge) to be able to ponder upon ethical choices /…/ We can’t say something is right or wrong (just) because ‘we feel it is like that’."

Thanks for the comments!!! I needed this right now! It is in communication things happens?? When we awake thoughts, emotions, reflections, reactions in each other?? And try to communicate this??