3/07/96, David Wilkinson wrote:
>I doubt that "social
>movements" currently function as Quigleyan instruments
>...
>I believe these groups [Amish et al] were interested in economic
>sufficiency >rather than prosperity.
>...
>Persons similarly interested in the state complex, and taking Quigley
>seriously, might usefully examine the rundown to collapse of the Soviet Union
"Social movements" and "culture" are _awsesome_ "instruments of
expansion". I recall a visit to Prague back in the early sixties. The red
hammer and sycle flew on the main thoroughfares, the media was strictly
party line, and people watched what they said in public -- there were no
visible signs of unrest. But in the evening, I went to a rock & roll
dance, and noticed a level of excitement that couldn't be explained by the
beat of the band... queries to some of the punters revealed that the dance
was being experienced as an act of rebellion, an open embracing of
forbidden Western values, a kindling of democratic spirit.
More generally, Hollywood acts very much as a global missionary
movement, smuggling in a potent dose of consumerism and "American" values
with its lantern show. Hollywood projects a synthetic cultural norm, a
mythical land of smiling, freedom-loving, capitalism-enriched semi-gods.
This norm has been "in the face" of people everywhere this century (USA
included), and the seeds of yearning and unrest planted thereby contributed
substantially to creating a nascent worlwide constituency for
globalization, neoliberalism, and "progress" generally.
In a more recent coversation with someone from Eastern Europe,
again it was Prague, he exlained that the blind Soviet-block rush to
discard all the past, and jump fully clothed into the neoliberal stream,
was largely an attempt to perform magic -- to climb directly into the movie
screen of instant economic fulfillment.
I'm intrigued by the phrase "interested in economic sufficiency
rather than prosperity"... Is this not unconciously buying into the
capitalist myth that prosperity can exist without self-sufficiency?... that
growth itself is "sustainable economics"? ...that the Earth is not a
finite, closed system? And is this myth not an invincible destroyer of
cultures, a leveller who clears the way for investment-based devlopment?
I hope these comments are on-topic to the Quigley thread, I'm still getting
up to speed on this list...
Regards,
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Posted by Richard K. Moore - rkmoore@iol.ie - Wexford, Ireland
(WWW or FTP) --> ftp://ftp.iol.ie/users/rkmoore
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