So, What Are You Freakin' Well Reading Now? part (ii)

An interesting article about Cosmology, outer space under current capitalism, and humanizing the cosmos was recently published in Monthly Review by Peter Dickens. Dickens has a forthcoming article in 2011 in the Journal of Critical Realism.

What's of note are a few things. First of all, it's worth noting that "despite the growing number of critiques of Big Bang, however, the theory remains central to contemporary cosmology." Actually, it's almost an article of faith. Which is a little weird for any science, hmm? "For a vocal minority of cosmologists, the Big Bang actually never happened and the "evidence" for the Big Bang accumulated by COBE remains highly questionable."

Anyway, if you want to read more: For discussion and critique of Big Bang theory, see Eric Lerner, The Big Bang Never Happened (New York: Vintage, 1992); Frankel H. Norris, Out of This World (Ashmore: Cardiff University Press, 2003); Lyndon Ashmore, "Big Bang Blasted!" Booksurge, LLC, http://booksurge.com (no place of publication given). Alan Woods, Ted Grant, Reason in Revolt (London: Wellred Publications, 1995); Peter Mason, Science and the Big Bang: A Critical Review of 'Reason in Revolt' (London: Socialist Publications, 2007); Peter Dickens, "Society, Subjectivity and the Cosmos" (forthcoming), Journal of Critical Realism (2011).

Secondly, Dickens draws attention to the orthodox capitalist approach to space and contrasts that with a humanistic vision of the cosmos. He calls this vision ... "Humanizing Without Colonizing the Cosmos". A more socially just vision of space on the one hand, and, on the other hand, views like the Space Renaissance Initiative (sound familiar?). These latter sorts of views go together with "solutions" to our current ecological and environmental problems in which we get more of the same; these are solutions that seem to "simultaneously exacerbate current social problems while jetting away from them."

Anyway, read for yourself.

Humanization of the Cosmos ... or more of the same? etc.

 

Columbine by Dave Cullen. Compelling, yet requires frequent breaks in reading.

Sinclair Lewis, in his 1935 novel, It Can't Happen Here, eerily presages the teabaggers of today.

 

Right after a description of a street fight between "Minute Men" (Seems the" Spirit of '76" is fertile ground for modern propagandists, whenever they are) and various commies and other degenerates, Lewis describes a gathering of supporters of a populist demagogue at Madison Square Garden:

 

 I'm re-reading "How Israel Lost It's Soul". by Maxim Ghilan, printed in 1974 by Pelican. He was quite a courageous journalist who exposed the assassination of the Moroccan nationalist Mehdi Ben-Barka by the Israeli Mossad and was jailed for that and 3 times for his various journalistic endeavors. It's content which includes many of the original documents of the Zionist leaders is enthralling. He died a few years ago.

 My next rereading is another Pellican book titled "The Arabs" by Edward Atiya, a remarkable book on the Arab world first published in !955. A Lebanese-Christian academic active in the Arab east who at one point organized the Arab Office in London. Obviously not one of the Mullahs.

 Just to refresh my memory of the background to the present catastrophic and dreadful events in the theocratic-Israel/Palastinian tragedy.

 

Hmm, this is either really eerie, or really mundane.  I read On the Road at around the same time I read just about the complete works of Hermann Hesse.

Please tell me you don't listen to The Doors these days too.

 

Lots of Sun-Ra and jazz? I'm not sure if that is a step better or worse.

How did you know I have a cup of, erm, steaming....early grey?

 

Is The Simpsons on in your timezone, too?

John Steinbeck Novels 1942-1952

The Moon is Down (just finished this one which is about resistance in an unnamed Nazi-occupied country in Scandanavia) I figure this might come in handy for practical advice here in North America. Steinbeck had originally intended to write a book about Nazi occupation of North America but changed the topic on the request of the publisher. Maybe if he had written it we'd have had a model for such a story and would have had fewer idiot movies involving the late Pat Swayzey saving aMerrrica from Sov bloc invasion.

Cannery Row, The Pearl, and East of Eden.

 

Here is the first, famous paragraph from Cannery Row

I wonder if there will be a review of it on Not My Typewriter!

When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists [Paperback]

 by Chris Hedges

 

Just finished Thomas Geoghegan's excellent travelogue/rant/politico-economic thesis "Were You Born On The Wrong Continent?" (NY: New Press, 2010) It is a meditation on what life might be like for the average member of the hard-pressed, now vanishing American middle class if they were to live in a European social democracy. Geoghegan is a Chicago labour lawyer who has become familiar with Europe, especially Germany, over the years. While his book rambles and contains a bit of Michael Moore-type faux-naivete, it's superb at uncovering all the hidden injuries inflicted by the brutal Anglo-American variant of capitalism. While we in Canada haven't succumbed (yet) to its worst excesses, it's still a bit of a shock to see the petty slights and impositions we unquestioningly accept laid bare.

Geoghegan's no cheerleader. He acknowledges the manifest problems in the German model. But he also points out its amazing resilience and success. As of 2009, Germany, with its 80 million citizens, rigid labour markets, and millstone Eastern sector, exported more goods by value than any other nation on Earth, including those let-'er-rip capitalist paragons America (pop. 300 million odd) and China (1 billion plus). The reason? In large part, social democracy. As he notes, "German worker control contributes to a group interaction that over time not only builds up but protects a certain amount of human capital, especially in engineering and quality control. It's the kind of group knowledge that our efficient ‘flexible' labour markets so readily break up and disperse. We spend vastly more on basic research than the Germans do...We spend more on higher education. But with our flexible labour markets, we're unable to capitalize on this research and education...What's distinctive about Germany is the privileged position the worker has within the firm. And it's that privileged position that explains how our own middle-class way of life can survive....With our flexible labour markets we cannot develop the human capital or knowledge needed to wean ourselves away from turning out crap. In global competition the U.S. has almost every comparative advantage over Germany, but the one great advantage Germany still has over us is that it is a social democracy."

What makes it galling for an American is that Rhineland capitalism was an invention of the United States, or more particularly the US Army of occupation after the war. Distrusting German big business, but fearful of the Reds, the Americans evolved a system of worker consultation and control that checked and balanced corporate and union demands. This cleverness reflected the fact that the US Army was in 1945 a citizen army and had many New Dealers in its upper echelons. So the irony today of being able to walk into a local of IG Metall and find that (!) Dwight D Eisenhower is considered not so much a foreign general as a founder of the post-war labour renascence. And much of Geoghegan's research was funded by the German Marshall Fund, an offshoot of the original fund proposed by General George Marshall. Hard to imagine such a pair at the Pentagon these days.

One quibble. The book has a good index, but no bibliography. You'll have to run down sources yourself. But I'd recommend this book to anyone, most of all to those pur-et-dur leftists who think that social democracy is some plot to co-opt working-class energy. Read these pages to realize what an immense, yes, life-changing difference an efficient social democracy can make to the live of the vast majority of citizens.

 

I read 84, Charing Cross Road last night. I'm dying to see the film.

I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on the full summer issue of Monthly Review. This year, it focuses on Education Under Fire: The U.S. Corporate Assault on Students, Teachers and Schools.

Something positive to lift my spirits would be good, too.

"A History of Iran" by Micheal Axworthy. Excellent book.

Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968). Had to go interlibrary for this one. Another sad case of a library system NOT retaining the classics so that following generations can better appreciate the lives of their forbears - in this case the 1960s, brilliantly set out for viewing by a magazine writer who has since become known for her novels. Her style is brief, descriptive of her feelings, with acute perception of her surroundings - some might say influenced by Hemingway, but far more intelligent and understanding of her readers' concerns. Political. Her husband had just written a book, Delano, on the California grapeworkers' strike. I can't explain why it took this long to get at it. It has shown up often, over the years, as a must read for anyone wanting to better understand life in 1960s, urban California when the sky was the limit. In a foreword, her inspiration for the book's title, the poem by W.B.Yeats, is presented along with a one-liner from the singer, "Miss Peggy Lee: I learned courage from Buddha, Jesus, Lincoln, Einstein and Cary Grant." I wonder if her marvelous journalism in the days of magazines is there in her fiction, or if, as Peggy Lee asked in her senior years, "Is that all there is, My Friend?" Must find out.