Welcome to the multipolar world

The G8 has done precious little this past week-end to halt, condemn or resolve the current unedifying slaughter of innocents (and, indeed, the guilty) in the Middle East. Nor is the Quartet about to.

Meanwhile, China, Russia, and the USA begin to divide the world's remaining petroleum resources among them, in order to sustain technology and lifestyles which are dismayingly unsustainable.

The French wanted a non-unipolar world to offset the hegemony of the Americans; they may be getting what they ordered, and what once seemed a plausible alternative to the hard-to-construct utopias of the far-flung Left. But it doesn't seem to be the French calling the shots.

The rockets, by the way, being fired at civilians and infrastructure on both sides of the border of this current dispute, are manufactured and sold; who profits from this mayhem?

There will come a time, surely, when stock options are not an option, for those left in the ruined world of the 22nd century.

All these reflections verge on the unsayably trite. But if so trite, why are they still resisted by so many? It seems the women and men of most "democratic nations" prefer their giant screens to the smallest insights - and will not budge to alter the way we live and "do business" in a highly-competitive world - where competition so often masks an utterly degraded view of what the person and the community are meant for and could achieve, in a post-market economy.

Comments

City Slicker said…

Really chuffed I stumbled across your site
Very interesting read
Like yours tyle
Keep typing
Cityslicker
http://www.cityslicker1.blogspot.com/

Tue Jul 18, 03:45:00 pm 2006

Unknown said…

Todd Swift said:
"...the women and men of most "democratic nations" prefer their giant screens to the smallest insights - and will not budge to alter the way we live and "do business" in a highly-competitive world."

Sounds like a pretty darn fair assessment, Todd.

Also sounds like a page torn out of many an entry of my own political tirades. Keep up your own hammering away at these points. After all, it seems like repetition and hammering away at conclusions is the only thingt the media and by extension the people (of whatever the heck the masses are, anyway) will listen to.

Ciao.

Tue Jul 18, 05:40:00 pm 2006

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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