mf - story #6313 - I -heart-

I -heart-
posted by jenni on August 9th, 2012 at 4:23PM

The rant on 'love' seems almost neurotic to me. He speaks of it as if it is only imperative and not a basic human emotion, that people actually do want to love each other seems to be out of the question. "Love is something immediate and in essence contradicts mediated relationships." What makes a great teacher/doctor/lawyer is their love for people and the unbearable need to not only help but be a part of the lives of others. If there was more love there would be less war (I feel like Bob Marley probably said this).

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posted by dennisn on August 9th, 2012 at 9:06PM

"[The lack of curiosity (and by extension barbarism)] happens in urban areas just as frequently [as in rural areas]".

I'm not so sure about that, since simply by virtue of being surrounded by more people, more diversity, one is almost certainly going to have a broader view of things. It makes sense to me that rural areas would be more "backwards" / barbaric, since they are more isolated, incestuous, self-reinforcing. Of course, we could search for studies, to see the prevalence of "barbaric" events in rural versus urban environments, to avoid handwaving ourselves :D. This study [1] seems to suggest rural areas are indeed more barbaric :p.

Nevertheless, he didn't mean that only the rural areas need to be debarbarized -- just that they are more at risk. It is fascinating (if it's true), that most of the Nazi torturers were from rural areas. It certainly jives with my intuitive experiences with urban and rural peoples.

I like your critique of "Public Education" :).

That sentence that you quoted from him about love was actually criticizing the imperative nature of culture/Statism -- he was saying that love can't really exist in "mediated relationships" -- that it has to be spontaneous / "immediate" -- so I think you two are in agreement on that point. Although I guess he does imply that the barbaric / broken / traumatized people aren't capable of love. Do you think the Nazis in Auschwitz were capable of love?

[1] http://www.justice.gc.ca/.../rd4-rr4/p2.html

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posted by jenni on August 11th, 2012 at 11:42AM

I think we all start off relatively similar as infants, then, as Adorno says, something happens to traumatize or break people down and allows evil or hatred to be a dominating emotion that destroys all logical thought. As he states again, this is what we need to figure out, what has happened to these individuals and how can we help them. The Nazis probably loved their own partners and children very much. They were just taught that certain people are not worthy of love, which sadly still happens today.

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posted by dennisn on August 11th, 2012 at 4:21PM

Yep. One thing that certainly happens, is kids aren't taught to value their own reasoning. What stopped me from becoming an atheist earlier was not so much the logical arguments, but the social pressures I experienced to conform. Blind conformity to unreasonable rules is the norm in child-rearing even today. "Because I said so." In fact, Statism is a perfect example of this mentality -- a blind belief in unreasonable things like "the social contract" -- things which make little logical sense, but are propped up almost entirely by social pressure. The denigration of reason.

Without respect for reason, anything is possible. Like an SS officer kissing his kids good bye as he goes to work, murdering his kid's friends. Compartmentalization. Cognitive dissonance.

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