Philosophy

Can’t be stopped. Won’t be stopped. Shall not be encumbered along the path toward transcendent evolutionary enlightenment.

In response to John Andrews’ reflections upon my most recent article “The ‘People’s Thesis’ in Environmental History the History of Ideas, and its Relevance to Cultural Studies”, it is apparent that Mr. Andrews did not comprehend the meaning of the people’s thesis but also asserted that the people’s thesis was a construction on my part.

A recent essay by Harvey E. Whitney, Jr., titled “The ‘People’s Thesis’ in Environmental History,” opens by saying that it’s “chic” to analyse “history and/or ideas” with a “prominent platform” to something called the “people’s thesis”.

In the humanistic studies, the chic approach today in analyzing history and/or ideas involves giving a prominent platform to what I refer to as the “people’s thesis”.

Everybody loves a good story and, as Aristotle taught, nothing drives impact like a beginning, middle and end. Start off with fetching characters and compelling themes, a plotline awash with suspense, then cap it off with a wow ending. Genesis oozes mythic ingredients as pre-science scribes, with nary a clue about impenetrable mysteries, fashioned a poetic rendition in part to discourage nitpicking. The stage set, we shift to high drama of the Fall, then the dysfunctional, disaster-prone first family that marches into the real world of earthly time.

How can we bring about an awareness that sharing is the solution to a planetary crisis, and our last remaining hope for rehabilitating a divided world? Central to this question is the problem of ‘isms’, in which our complacency has intellectualised itself in order to justify its existence as being normal.

What was the much-hyped Computer Revolution but another big step in the history of automation? De-skilling millions of people, and forcing each remaining, computer-“literate” worker to then generate the work output which, say, six employees formerly did. Drastically reducing labor costs, even with stagnant revenues, remains a major source of corporate profit.

A few days ago, I published a comment on Dr Ilan Pappe’s performance on BBC Hardtalk. In my comment, I argued that Pappe’s struggle to make his point was not because of his opponent’s bulldozer tactics and certainly not because Dr Pappe’s lacked either scholarship or courage but simply because Ilan Pappe, in his desperation to conceal Jewish shame, is completely and utterly unable to utter the J word.

In the United States “capitalism” is often equated with “Americanism,” so that to criticize capitalism is to be unpatriotic.  One suspects that such an attitude has not arisen “naturally” but, rather, has become widespread as a result of promotional efforts by those having a vested interest in the status quo—a consequence of such promotion being that even many of those not having such a vested interest have become staunch supporters of capitalism.

On BBC’s news program Hardtalk, historian Dr Ilan Pappe answers questions from interviewer Stephen Sackur which begins with Mr Sackur describing Ilan Pappe as maintaining that the Jewish state is racist, born of a deliberate program of ethnic cleansing.
This very interesting discussion, which takes the form of an adversarial debate.
In response, Mr Gilad Atzmon, author of the book, The Wandering Who, has the following to say: