UVA's
Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture recently hosted a lecture by
Hans Joas, Director of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt. Joas gives his reflections on the sacredness of the person and the origins of human rights.
Click here to listen to audio file.
November 17, 2011
(Time: 01:00:57 - 29.3 Mb)
A student at Bard College
reflects on his participation in Occupy Wall Street. Why does OWS exist? According to Dan Gettinger, because people are lonely and looking for a sense of community. In our hyper-individualistic culture, one of the few (and flawed) places left to find community is in a spontaneous and fleeting political activity.
My generation is one of extremes and totalities. We grew up defined by the trespasses of the last President, and now we watch as our confidence in this one seeps away. With a crushingly uncertain future we grasp at hope, looking to fill this void with promises.
Why is this? How is that we are so empty that we must be filled with language that is distilled into slogans and ideologically transparent? ...I think it is because we are lonely. A generation of drifters set loose by the misdeeds of those who came before. Around us we see everything being commodified and isolated. We value the world in terms of totalities, the cold language of polls. Discussion becomes debate. Politics becomes personal.
Occupy Wall St. has exposed us as a generation of reactionaries. This era is one of immediate responses instigated by the ceaseless swirl of the cyber world. The Internet, modern telecommunications and globalization outline our existence... The compression of information and language forces immediate reactions, instinctual expressions of sentiment. Instead of taking the time to think, our feelings gush into the abyss that is the Internet. And lost. ‘Once more into the breach!’ shouts the exhausted soldier and student alike.
Read the full article here
I teach them all the good I can, and recommend them to others from whom I think they will get some moral benefit. And the treasures that the wise men of old have left us in their writings I open and explore with my friends. If we come on any good thing, we extract it, and we set much store on being useful to one another. - Socrates, Memorabilia
