procrastinations
Oh no I'm procrastinating...

Just came back from a great housewarming in Leura (now is that where my weekend went?)

just wrote a response to a melbourne indymedia post about ecology: (probably pointless, but wanted an opp to explain ecology) see here

Also, there was just a lovely letter by a painter on Sydney Indymedia: see here.

complexities...
Mood:  not sure
Now Playing: silence
[I was browsing on the web this arvo about peak oil, and came across an article on complexity. This analysed complexity in relation to energy and ecological economics- in a way that I had never seen before (although it was quite determinist).I am not so sure of its rigour (and hence legitimacy as an academic article)- but it got me thinking about complexity, which is a common theme in my thoughts today.]

Today, I had a real feeling of being overwhelmed by my obligations such as essays- its nearing the end of semester. I also was trying to work out how to convert high memory .wav sound files into manageable bits that I can email- for an urgent group assignment. I wasted HOURS on this and still didn't find an answer. By the end, I was really stressed out and upset, wishing these essays would disappear.

Then later in the day, we had our last Kant tutorial, talking about how Kant stayed in his town of birth all his life. We discussed how the insular lifestyle of academic contemplation for Kant may have helped with clarity- since he did not have much stimulus from the outside world, hence could focus on the relationship between the mind and the world. (perhaps with all the variables constant)

Our lives today, if anything, are overstimulated, without the space or the conceptual tools to process the stimulus into insight.

The further we understand things, the more there is a need for nuance- But nuance is more data if it is learnt in a data-oriented way. How do we accomodate nuance if our brains keep wanting to see patterns?

Well maybe nuance can become an ordinary part of perception if it is integrated into a VALUE SYSTEM. So instead of remembering patterns such as "Politicians behave according to a certain ideology EXCEPT when...",

We take on a value of believing in the basic human good intentions of people, and imagine the barriers to that becoming realised in real life.

Hence statements that say "Except when..." actually need further rethinking and further theorising; an adjustment of expectations, that is not necessarily academic, but possibly a decision to judge in a different way.

After my philosophy class, I was thinking a lot about the philosophy of teaching. I talked as we walked with my lecturer Jane, and my classmates Matt and Johnathan, talking about Rhetoric and Clarity.

There are two definitions of Rhetoric that are absolutely opposed in terms of their outcome:

1. Sophistry: e.g. Bertrand Russell's Rhetoric in delegitimising Kant was very successful in turning generations of Analytic Philosophers away from Kant. I believe that sophistry (skillful persuasive discourse, that isn't necessarily of any merit in terms of truth value) is EVERYWHERE in our society. How does one WADE through all this CRAP? Sophistry does not contribute anything to either the understanding OR the moral worth of a society.

2. Clarified communication: e.g. Habermas (actually perhaps it was Paul Ricoeur) believes that Rhetoric should be the discipline of clarification, in order that people are on the same wavelength, and hence genuine dialogue and understanding can become possible. [here] is one article I found on google on this. I think a good ref is Habermas, "Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action", p. 195. Habermas attempts "to reformulate Kant’s ethics by grounding moral norms in communication"[1]

political essentialism
Mood:  cool
I think it is really bad when in political conversations, people regard historical categories- such as 'right and left' and 'DLP Catholic Right' as set in stone, and innate as structures of objective existence (as colours are, or basic biological taxonomies).

This amounts to essentialism, ignoring the dynamic capacity of people- to constantly change and evaluate - to shift their allegiances in individual issues, according to their personal deliberations. It also positions the ideology as the primary agent, rather than the person (who uses the ideologies as tools to help to understand the world)

Whenever I hear a person at the SRC denigrate a person by saying "Her politics are all over the place", I prick up my ears and wonder who this amazing person could be: Either they are new to politics- in a 'state of nature' you could say- or extremely resilient to the conformist tendencies within politically conscious circles.

To analyse this statement, we would see that it uses the spatial metaphor of 'right and left'. It also uses the word 'politics' as an object that she owns- that perhaps is intrinsic to her character. Yet our politics are only related to our character to the extent that they are authentic translations of our values, backed up by our beliefs about the world. And how many people share the exact same values and beliefs about the world?

I am always concerned that political formations expect conformity- either informally or formally. Yet we cannot enforce conformity without making our own views a hegemony- enforced through either party discipline or peer-group pressure. I worry sometimes about 'party loyalty' that is so highly regarded within the ALP- because parties as a whole have NO CONSCIENCE hence no feedback mechanism to learn from.
I was surprised to hear Linda Burney (ALP indig woman MP) saying how important the value of party loyalty was to her- in a way that raised the hackles on my back- because I see party loyalty as such a defeat of agency, creativity and potential.

If we are to have a truly democratic culture, we wouldn't judge people on where they are on the political spectrum- if indeed they do fit anywhere.
And we wouldn't make assumptions about people according to outdated categories. Enforced conformity is always a defeat for the human potential, since communities are like ecosystems, and hence require diversity.

dialogue day
Mood:  a-ok
A dialogue- where more was revealed about privilege indirectly than directly.

Today, I (and my "consultation" class group) held a dialogue at uni between students from different parts of Sydney. It was meant to be one based on divisions of class (projected spatially), however, the people who turned up were overwhelmingly middle class and generally not from the Western Suburbs. This pattern of attendance was very much a result of class barriers:

1.most people at Sydney Uni have class privilege.
2.those people who can spare time at uni (rather than having to go to work) are privileged in money.
3.those people who have the confidence to respond to such an invitation are privileged.
4.those people who are in my and other friends' social networks (from which we recruited most of the people) generally have educational privilege.

Most of the (more obviously working class people) from the Western Suburbs who I invited last week did NOT turn up. One Vietnamese-Australian guy from Cabramatta emailed me to say he had to work. His friend did not come either. All three of the homie guys I invited did not come. They were reluctant to come to Manning- they did not like the people there. Perhaps this was also because they were recruited randomly- they were not my friends hence felt no sense of obligation. The only Western-suburbs person who came was Danielle, who was quiet for most of the discussion.

So what happened today? I was quite frustrated by the poor quality of analysis and discussion that took place, and the general uniformity of the people who turned up. I guess generally dialogues attract articulate people. Also, the way that stereotypes were uncritically raised and laughed about, yet with no direct interrogation of the validity of those stereotypes. So... I need to work out what to do for next dialogue. I am thinking of doing a short film of interviews to show people as stimulus....

Anyway- driving and picking up my sister, I started thinking more about privilege. I would love to study privilege in a philosophical/ language/ economic way. What does it mean to 'have' privilege? What are some taxonomies of privilege that we can use? What about oppression? In what way is privilege 'good fortune' and in what way is it class, handed down the generations...?

Anyway- then Liz got me to come with her to Bikram Yoga, which was in a hot room (hatha). That is why I feel great whereas yesterday and the day before I was falling asleep all the time.

A.

So so much has passed since my last entry-

but I don't need to catalogue that- I'll just talk about the present moment.

My brother John is downstairs, on the computer- in a dark room, staring up at the bright screen. I come up behind him and ask him what he's doing- he tells me, "I'm loading iron ore into a furnace to make iron bars".

Among the many functions of a computer in absorbing the technical tasks of production, i never guessed that this stage of production would be one of them. (Though my bro is only in year 6 at school)

chickens

we got 3 chickens yesterday (Sunday)... and one of them layed an egg today. It was nice and small and brown.

Rosie - my brother Thomas's dog -went crazy running after them, and so we barracaded her out of the backyard.

I took some photos. Here they are:

The chickens stayed in the undergrowth looking for grubs.

And here some are:

And heres a kookaburra- not facing me-

the Pope
Mood:  hungry
Here are some good progressive analyses of the Pope's legacy:

From Antiwar.com

From New York Indymedia:

Pontificating about the Pontiff

On his role in Sandinista suppression

From Green Left Weekly: Pope John Paul II, a reactionary in shepherd's clothing

From Juan Cole's Weblog: Reclaiming the Pope's radicalism

And here are some shirts for the Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club.

On a totally other note, here is a very different thing- an interview with an author in New Mexico whose village took on the global heroin trade.

Sunday
Even though its a Sunday, I had a very busy day.

Firstly, my brother got me to go to the Adbusters meet up on behalf of him, in Hyde Park. That was good...

Then I went to glebe, to do some 'study' in a cafe with a friend... it's so hard to read Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" anywhere, but I got through a few pages.

I went to the SRC to check my email, then I went to a meeting at Newtown to plan a forum with Chico whitaker, a Brazilian catholic who helped initiate the World Social Forum

And then I went to St Patricks Church Hill.

After getting home, I rang Jen to talk about our FBi radio interview tomorrow which is pretty scary.

Now I'm on the internet. It's 11.36 and I scanned Melbourne Indymedia, reading again Paul's 'Shambolic review' of the Italian Effect conference.

Also, I read an amazing article about West Papua by Paul Kingsnorth.
It's a great introduction to the West Papua issue.

bitsn pieces
I just read an article by John Gray from The Ecologist, In this article, John Gray asserts that the most problematic idea that secular humanism has inherited from Christianity is a faith- driven belief in progress, This was an inheritance impoverished of its context in a more balanced religious understanding of the complexities of the human condition.

(Gray doesn't have a nuanced view of utopian movements, putting them all in the same box as Leninist Communism without recognising the culture wars within them. He speaks of utopian ideologies from the point of view of a far off observer with little agency, eg 'communism promised...' but he doesn't acknowledge that only authoritarian communism promised anything. The self- organisation of oppressed people would lead to a very different 'utopia' to the state capitalism of bureaucrats. A promise or a contract by unaccountable politicians like that will never get a just result.)

Now here is a beautiful interview of a US- grandma and forest activist, Joan Norman. Its on infoshop, which has recently been attacked by the FBI.

Talking of FBI, FBi radio want to interview me about religion with a few other people, in the context of the pope dying... But I feel that I have such a contradictory and confusing picture in my mind about the institutional Church that I'm really worried about giving it ... so I'm not sure what to do...

Also, an Interview with Noam Chomsky is pretty intriguing, about the impact of the World Social Forum Process.

And here is People Power: an interview with David Solnit.

The Sydney Morning Herald was very interesting this morning, with articles about the basic wage as the government's next target, Right wing Christians in the Liberal Party, with branch-stacking etc, biodiesel, Peak Oil 1, Peak Oil 2, Nelson's Criticism of NUS spending $250 000 money on Labor's (non) re-election, A vision for a fun engaging classroom.

Also, I posted these on email recently:

Two items: 1. More on the Canadian Student Strikes: From the Dominion grassroots paper, From the , from an amazing group called ASSE-solidarity. (Association for Solidarity between Student Unions)

2. EU endorses Paul Wolfowitz, the leading Neoconservative behind Dubya, for World Bank Presidency- Now the World Bank can give up pretending to be socially responsible.

Article from Guerilla News Network, Article from Foreign Press Foundation, Wednesday, 30/03/2005 - 10:48 World Bank Wolfowitz: Shame over the European Union!

Blogs plus Tony Negri
Mood:  bright
Now Playing: M1 cd
I'm having such an excellent day! I have sooo much to do- hopefully I'll plough through it in time for deadlines, eg grant application due this arvo...

I just discovered some aquaintances interesting blogs:

Andy and Safari

Lee Rhiannon.

Judy Rebick from Canada- an amazing organizer for unionism and feminism.

ALSO, Tony Negri refutes some pathetic allegations against him in The Australianby history-reviser Keith Windschuttle, in anticipation of a conference at Sydney Uni.

ALSO, 1360 scientists from 95 countries have just signed a statement saying that the Earth's biological systems are at risk of imminent collapse. Here is a good article from The Independent that puts this in perspective.