From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Fri Aug 24 2001 - 00:06:07 MDT
Damien B. writes
> Lee wrote
>> But unlike most Americans, who traditionally had their eyes only
>> on the next dollar and were completely uninterested in "theory",
>> the Japanese were very willing to do or die for the Emperor [etc]
> This is hilarious to Aussies, say, who regard your panoplies of `patriotic'
> parades, cheer squads and other hokey drivel, flags-clutched-to-hearts, O
> say do you hears, military triumphalism, etc etc with uttermost
> incredulity. This is the thing: you guys apparently have the greatest
> trouble *noticing the ideological loading* of your culture, like fish
> swimming in water. Yeah, we have ours too, and it's murky enough.
Well, enough about yours. Stay on topic. We are discussing
the heav'n-rescued land.
> But the idea of Americans as driven only by some crisp pragmatic
> hunger for the next greenback is *so incredibly* ideological--
> Oh, never mind.
Well, yes, the point might not sail very well if made by one of
of the fish, so to speak. But I thought that ever since De Tocqueville
it was understood that Americans were somewhat more, statistically
speaking, focused on making money than other people (in general). No?
>From http://www.freedonia.com/panic/detocqueville/detocqueville.html :
If the social field, for Tocqueville, was created out of the subterranean network of
prisons, the field of American empire truly became energized by the catalytic action of
the substitution of morals by money. Tocqueville recognized the telematic requirement in a
power field (as opposed to the hierarchical power of Kings and Queens) for a universal
transformer (a parasite) to precipitate motion in the system. If Tocqueville could note
that in America "the first of all social distinctions is money," it was, perhaps, because
he saw so clearly that in the emerging American empire "commercial wealth" and the "love
of money" would combine with the exersize of power in a decentralized democratic field
So my main point in
>> But unlike most Americans, who traditionally had their eyes only
>> on the next dollar and were completely uninterested in "theory",
>> the Japanese were very willing to do or die for the Emperor [etc]
was about the pursuit of the almighty dollar. But what caused your
spasm of hilarity was evidently the attempt at contrast with the
Japanese, whose patriotism is probably unequaled in the 20th
century. No?
> This is hilarious to Aussies, say, who regard your panoplies of `patriotic'
> parades, cheer squads and other hokey drivel, flags-clutched-to-hearts, O
> say do you [sees], military triumphalism, etc etc with uttermost
> incredulity.
Again, being one of the fish, I just don't see the difference between
that any what happens in most large nations, e.g., Russians at a May
Day parade, English singing God Save the Queen in 1901, French and
German super-patriots, etc. American patriotism isn't what it used
to be, by the way. You seem a little dated here. It had a high point
in WWII, and was still pretty strong during the Cold War. It's
definitely faded, and some people are upset enough about its "passing"
to have written books. Saw some fellow on TV touting his a few nights
ago. (He actually, though sheepishly, admitted that we probably
needed a war if we wanted it back!)
But are we discussing the difference, again, between large and small
nations?
> But the idea of Americans as driven only by some crisp pragmatic
> hunger for the next greenback is *so incredibly* ideological--
> Oh, never mind.
:-) Oh please, do mind. I need to be enlightened about this
very point. I've grown up here a little bit annoyed that most
people seemed to be such materialists (in the bad sense) here.
Whereas I thought that Germans or English were, on the whole,
less so. I never would have guessed that this was an ideological
position.
Thanks,
Lee
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