Noam Chomsky at Occupy Boston

in Current Affairs, Politics | November 1st, 2011

Noam Chom­sky joined the fac­ul­ty of MIT in 1955, and, soon enough estab­lished him­self as “the father of mod­ern lin­guis­tics.” (Watch him debate Michel Fou­cault in 1971.) Dur­ing the 60s, he also firm­ly posi­tioned him­self as a lead­ing pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al tak­ing aim at Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy and glob­al cap­i­tal­ism, and we reg­u­lar­ly saw him engag­ing with fig­ures like William F. Buck­ley.

All of these years lat­er, it’s quite fit­ting that Chom­sky, now 82 years old, would pay a vis­it to Occu­py Boston and deliv­er a talk in the Howard Zinn Memo­r­i­al Lec­ture Series. Why has our polit­i­cal sys­tem become more respon­sive to cor­po­ra­tions than cit­i­zens? How has wealth become increas­ing­ly con­cen­trat­ed in the hands of an ever small­er elite — a plu­toc­ra­cy, to put it sim­ply? And why do bil­lion­aire hedge fund man­agers enjoy a low­er tax rate than maligned school teach­ers and pret­ty much every­one else? Chom­sky explains how we got to this point, and what’s to be done about it. Find his talk in three parts: Part 1 (above), Part 2 and Part 3.  via Dan­ger­ous Minds.

More Occu­py Videos:

Willie Nel­son, Pete Seeger, and Arlo Guthrie at Occu­py Wall Street

Slavoj Zizek Takes the Stage at Occu­py Wall Street

Joseph Stiglitz and Lawrence Lessig at Occu­py Wall Street

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Willie Nelson, Pete Seeger, and Arlo Guthrie at Occupy Wall Street

in Current Affairs, Music, Politics | October 22nd, 2011

There’s some­thing hap­pen­ing here
What it is ain’t exact­ly clear…

The intel­lec­tu­als have paid a vis­it to Occu­py Wall Street (Joseph Stiglitz, Lawrence Lessig, Slavoj Zizek, etc.). And so have some icon­ic cul­tur­al fig­ures. This week, Willie Nel­son and his wife wrote and read a poem sup­port­ing the surg­ing move­ment.

Then last night, Pete Seeger marched some 30 blocks through the streets of mid­town, NYC. At 92, the leg­endary voice of protest can still raise some hell. If you have any doubts, just watch his musi­cal protest against British Petro­le­um per­formed last year.

Near 1:00 a.m., the fes­tiv­i­ties were capped off at Colum­bus Cir­cle with Arlo Guthrie and friends lead­ing a sin­ga­long to the folk clas­sic, “This Lit­tle Light of Mine.” As more cul­tur­al fig­ures pay a vis­it, we’ll post them…

H/T to @webacion

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Marshall McLuhan on the Stupidest Debate in the History of Debating (1976)

in History, Music, Politics, Television | October 13th, 2011

In Sep­tem­ber 1976, Jim­my Carter and Ger­ald Ford squared off in a pres­i­den­tial debate, and the fol­low­ing day, the leg­endary com­mu­ni­ca­tion the­o­rist Mar­shall McLuhan appeared on the TODAY show, then host­ed by Tom Brokaw, to offer some almost real-time analy­sis of the debate. The first tele­vised pres­i­den­tial debate was famous­ly held in 1960, and it pit­ted John F. Kennedy against Richard Nixon. Six­teen years lat­er, pun­dits and cit­i­zens were still try­ing to make sense of the for­mat. Was the tele­vised debate a new and vital part of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy? Or was it a care­ful­ly con­trolled act of polit­i­cal per­for­mance? For McLuhan, there was still some ide­al­is­tic sense that tele­vised debates could enhance our democ­ra­cy, assum­ing the mes­sage was suit­ed to the medi­um. But McLuhan came away dis­il­lu­sioned, call­ing the Carter/Ford spec­ta­cle “the most stu­pid arrange­ment of any debate in the his­to­ry of debat­ing” and chalk­ing up tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties (watch them here) to the medi­um rag­ing against the mes­sage.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nor­man Mail­er & Mar­shall McLuhan Debate the Elec­tron­ic Age

The Vision­ary Thought of Mar­shall McLuhan, Intro­duced and Demys­ti­fied by Tom Wolfe

Mar­shall McLuhan’s 1969 Deck of Cards, Designed For Out-of-the-Box Think­ing

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Slavoj Zizek Takes the Stage at Occupy Wall Street

in Current Affairs, Philosophy, Politics | October 11th, 2011

When Slove­ni­a’s hip Marxist/Lacanian crit­i­cal the­o­rist takes cen­ter stage at a Wall Street protest, it’s news for a cul­ture site. No doubt. How can we not observe a rare moment of prax­is? But, what it all means for the Occu­py Wall Street move­ment, we’ll let you wres­tle with that. Part 2 appears here. H/T Bib­liok­lept.

Relat­ed Stuff: It looks like the 2005 doc­u­men­tary Zizek! has found its way on YouTube, and if you want to under­stand the essence of Occu­py Wall Street, it’s worth lis­ten­ing to this recent episode of Plan­et Mon­ey. They do a good job of demys­ti­fy­ing things…

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David Lynch’s Video Response to Washington Debt Deal

in Current Affairs, Film, Politics | August 3rd, 2011

No one is hap­py with Wash­ing­ton D.C. this week, and that includes film­mak­er David Lynch, who gives you his com­men­tary in sounds and images, not words. The sym­bol­ism? Amer­i­ca is in a dark posi­tion and mov­ing back­wards? The deficit deal is flat out garbage?

H/T @opedr


Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch and Inter­pol Team Up on Short Film

David Lynch’s Organ­ic Cof­fee (Bar­bie Head Not Includ­ed)

David Lynch on his Favorite Movies and Film­mak­ers

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Introduction to Political Philosophy: A Free Yale Course

in Online Courses, Philosophy, Politics | July 7th, 2011

Stephen B. Smith, a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty since 1984, has made avail­able a 24-lec­ture course, Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy, which cov­ers Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Machi­avel­li, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Toc­queville.

His approach is high­ly lit­er­ary. In his Repub­lic lec­tures, for instance, he spends a good chunk of the time dis­cussing the metaphors and char­ac­ters involved. One of Smith’s major con­cerns is what cit­i­zen­ship amounts to. The lec­ture above is on Pla­to’s “Apol­o­gy,” and while this may be Pla­to’s most famous work (with its dic­tum that “The unex­am­ined life is not worth liv­ing”), it’s less about polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy than about the vir­tu­ous life. Smith sees these top­ics as inti­mate­ly relat­ed, and in his clos­ing lec­ture, he gives a defense of patri­o­tism, say­ing that in the ivy league envi­ron­ment, express­ing an inter­est in patri­o­tism is like con­fess­ing an inter­est in child pornog­ra­phy.

Despite his engag­ing style, he speaks some­what slow­ly. If your lis­ten­ing device offers a “dou­ble speed” fea­ture, I rec­om­mend using this. You can obtain the whole series on the web: Yale web site — YouTube — iTunes (audio) —  iTunes (video). You can also find the course in the Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er runs the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life phi­los­o­phy pod­cast and blog. He also per­forms with the Madi­son, WI band New Peo­ple.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Oxford’s Free Intro­duc­tion to Phi­los­o­phy: Stream 41 Lec­tures

Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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Collision: Award-Winning Film Explores Politics Through Shapes

in Art, Film, Politics | May 18th, 2011

The Ger­man mul­ti-media artist Max Hat­tler describes his award-win­ning short film “Col­li­sion” (2005) as “Islam­ic pat­terns and Amer­i­can quilts and the col­ors and geom­e­try of flags as an abstract field of reflec­tion,” which will make no sense what­so­ev­er until you watch the video. It’s bare­ly over two min­utes long, so just give it a shot and let the images do their own explain­ing. Be sure to wear head­phones, or at least keep the vol­ume low … but not off. The expe­ri­ence is def­i­nite­ly equal parts sound and sight.

via @matthiasrascher

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Phoenix Still Rising: Egypt After The Revolution

in Current Affairs, Film, Politics, Video - Politics/Society | May 3rd, 2011

Much has been said, tweet­ed and writ­ten about the 2011 Egypt­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, glo­ri­fy­ing it as one of the most land­mark tri­umphs of free­dom in recent his­to­ry. Yet the West­ern media has deliv­ered sur­pris­ing­ly lit­tle on its after­math, leav­ing the lived post-rev­o­lu­tion real­i­ty of the Egypt­ian peo­ple a near-mys­tery.

This beau­ti­ful short film by British film stu­dio Scat­tered Images offers a rare glimpse of a phoenix still strug­gling to rise from the ash­es of oppres­sion. With incred­i­ble visu­al elo­quence, the film peels away at the now-worn media iconog­ra­phy of the rev­o­lu­tion itself, reveal­ing how life after it has actu­al­ly changed — or has­n’t — as Egypt remains a nation in tran­si­tion, with a future yet to be decid­ed.

Polit­i­cal­ly, there is a vac­u­um. The rev­o­lu­tion demand­ed a gov­ern­ment account­able to the peo­ple and ruled by trans­par­ent insti­tu­tions. But now, the only ruler is uncer­tain­ty.

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of cross-dis­ci­pli­nary inter­est­ing­ness. She writes for Wired UK, The Atlantic and Desig­nOb­serv­er, and spends a great deal of time on Twit­ter.

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