Friday, October 3, 2008

The Neutron Star

It seems that the expansion of credit to the “ineligible” simply masks the underlying economic issue: an inequity of wealth. Of course the opposing political discourses revolve around equity’s existence as mutually exclusive to freedom. Yet, this discourse finds limits in the absence of examples in their absolute forms: there is no absolute equity in the presence of the lack of freedom, nor is there complete freedom in lack of equity. (An exploration into Kant's concepts of Praxis, Theory and Practice is needed)

The limit of inequity was found: people cannot afford automobiles, homes, or tuition. This in turn leads to the loss of flow of capital, which in turn becomes the slow of the economy. This closes down the ability for a free market to perform. Yet the “Free Market’s” function is the consolidation of wealth. Is the thesis its own antithesis? Naomi Klein comes to the fore in this discussion with her idea of “No Risk Capitalism”.“They spend seven years just transferring public money into private hands. Their final act is taking private debt and transferring it into public hands.” – Naomi Klein.

Interesting is American resistance to "intellectualism". The fallacy of defining intellectualism lies in the separation of intelligence from the general public; not to say generality is genius, but that it is the general public that fulfills and alters the narratives by which intelligence and intellectualism is defined.

What is anything that has to do with knowledge other than interpretations of existence: both the objects and situations, and the prior texts that contribute to them? The role of intellectualism is interpretation. What doesn't make sense is the general public's belief of institutional benevolence: both economic and governmental, both secular and sacred. The restructuring of this narrative is the most taboo of them all, as Milton Friedman established in the ideological merger of economic and political narrative in his work "Capitalism and Freedom". Yet, doesn't the recent "crisis" nullify this thesis of absolute capitalism's creating absolute freedom by it's own terms, it's own means? The end of capitalism, both in chronological and machovaliean senses, rests in the consolidation of wealth of the few. Par excellance of Milton Friedman's thesis, political and economic terms act as one: wealth and freedom are in the hands of the few.

The hard task before us, exists in the restructuring of a narrative, of negotiating the conditions of risk as opportunity to rewrite this narrative, of seeking the status of our society not in-itself, but as it is for-itself. The move is from negotiating reality not from the ideological pandering to stasis, of thesies self validating (Biden won/Palin won the debate), and into the dynamic exchange in daily life, in seeking ideology in practice, rather than distorting it with a preconcieved narrative. I know I know.