Blog1.3.2021

 

 


 

"And then some white man hearing about oppressed Negroes on television will ask you for a little rational conversation on the subject.  This will be a man (this hypothetical questioner) who probably does not know that policemen are menacing subhumans, whose sociological conditioning ---because they are usually grandsons of immigrants, i.e. poor whites  --- has usually prepared them to hate niggers even before they get the official instructions (like James Bond) that they are 'licensed to kill.' "

LeRoi Jones, "The Last Days of the American Empire" (1964)

 

In the pandemic-afflicted American Empire, the words of Jones/Baraka burn with prophetic fire as they remind us that prophets have been displaced by panderers.  This situation makes our work in 2021 delicate and dangerous.  So much sorting of false propaganda from true propaganda.  So much spinning of moral compasses in chaos. Who is killing whom with systemic immunity? Who is selling genocide?

Who profits from commerce in terrorism and the production of "new" diseases?

 

Our responses to such  questions must  pivot on understanding reality versus actuality.

 

In a recent email, a friend suggested that "mentorship and friendship serve as  essential natural resources in this plastic reality."  My friend is an accomplished writer who has read deeply in political philosophy, science, and literature. His analytic skills are exceptional.  I profit from his vision of things.

 

The phrase "plastic reality" reminds me of plastic bags from the supermarket.  Can reality be a plastic bag, cluttering up the mind the way plastic bags endanger our environmental futures?

 

Hasten to definition.  In standard philosophical domains, reality refers to "how things actually are in contrast with their mere appearance…..Appearance has to do with how things seem to be to a particular perceiver or group of perceivers" (Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy  775).  The definition is derived in part from Descartes , and it stands in companionship with the notion that "actual or formal reality has to do with existence independent of the mind" (776).  I replace "actual reality" with the single word actuality.  Actuality  is sufficiently chaotic and plastic to trump reality.  Platonic ideals blossom like wildflowers.  They are covert.  Millions of American citizens do not trouble themselves with thinking about actuality. They are content to swallow representations of reality from social media and other mind-control  agents.  Perhaps telling them otherwise is a waste of time.  Nevertheless, time is mine for the wasting. And I devote some energy in 2021 to comment on the nature of human suffering in bubbles of actuality.

 

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.                            1/3/2021 7:00:49 AM

 

 

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