Date: Thu, 04 Dec 1997 12:39:47 -0800
Subject: Rights and Wrongs and Loss of Time


Eric wrote:

"We need to act soon, however, because we are all running out of time."

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Eric et. al.

I agree with most of your statements of your 28 Nov. reply to my post.

But hardly any of it came from Le Differend.

Making philosophers or anyone else look good or bad is a chore for 
biographers and teachers - 

What philosophy contributes to present readers/thinkers in terms of
insight, new horizons, new questions, is of more concern.

Elements of philosophy are: Politics, science, art, and yes, religion.  
Modern ideologies of greed and gore sanctified by those who own the
world's resources are engines of socio-political control, including
control of the socio-political realms of academia.

But ancient fundamentalist religions still have great power.

As I've noted before, my interest in Lyotard has to do with the language
of words and phrases and all the other languages of being, and the
evolution of homo-sapiens to the language-created and dominated species
we are. You know he says silence is a phrase, a cat's taii makes a
phrase.

It would have been interesting if, following discussions of rights and
wrongs and the Holocaust, Lyotard had reflected on: 

First -  Historical rights and wrongs in the dispossession of indigenous
peoples of their lands, resources, communities and ways of life in three
continents of the New World.  The same imperialism affected Africa and
India, and led to gun diplomacy and domination of trade in the Far East. 

Second - As technology progressed there was dispossession of rural
communities by banks and other corporate lenders, and takeovers by
agribusiness. 

Third - Elimination of small stores, shops and factories in the world's
cities, as corporate mega-stores and malls and factories went to the
suburbs,  They abandoned inner cities to taxpayers and drug dealers.

Fourth - In this process, nvestment migrated to the suburbs, and,
especially in the last two decades, much of it migrated across borders
to poverty-stricken sources of cheap labor (including prison labor) in
foreign countries round the world.

Wrongs have thus been committed against populations of the most
industrialized and civilized countries.  

Ironically, we pity and give "help" to some third world populations
who still possesess their lands and historic life-styles.

The loss of time, is a result, not a cause.  

After families tribes, communities surrendered their lands, communities,
villages, small towns and ways of life.

After they considered themselves lucky to get or hold jobs, to survive
from paycheck to paycheck.

After wives and older children had to do the same.

Some folks discovered that others controlled their time, as Lyotard
noted.

In the spirit of Eric's statement above, perhaps someone, somewhere 
sometime soon, can find a way to right these many wrongs.

Regards,
Hugh