Posted from the same place as lasst week's.
Yesterday was a good day.
Sonya came through with a bit of an early birthday present for me. Radio City Music Hall hosted a performance of the score of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, played live to a showing of the film. It was AWESOME. Raised goosebumps on me. Vocalists, particularly Kaitlyn Lusk, were excellent.
All in all, it was a hell of a night.
It has been a hell of a week, what with the President winning the Peace Prize and other things. A few of my students are convinced that the award is an attempt to make it so that The Man can say "What? One of you was President AND won the Nobel. Now it's all your own fault." And as I think on it, I find myself made a bit uncomfortable. In some senses, it has always been "their" own fault...but not in all. A great many people of all sorts, not just those The Man works against (though that is a larger set than is usually realized) are content to be as they are. They are happy to wallow in their abjection.
For them, it is and always has been their own fault. They don't try to do better.
For those who do, though, it is not necessarily because of their own failures that they do not succeed. There are social forces arrayed against a great many people--namely, inertia, because again, people like to be where they are. In the closed system that the world ultimately is, gain on one part necessarily means loss on another. And that makes people nervous.
As I said, uncomfortable. But fun to talk about with the class.
Yesterday was a good day.
Sonya came through with a bit of an early birthday present for me. Radio City Music Hall hosted a performance of the score of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, played live to a showing of the film. It was AWESOME. Raised goosebumps on me. Vocalists, particularly Kaitlyn Lusk, were excellent.
All in all, it was a hell of a night.
It has been a hell of a week, what with the President winning the Peace Prize and other things. A few of my students are convinced that the award is an attempt to make it so that The Man can say "What? One of you was President AND won the Nobel. Now it's all your own fault." And as I think on it, I find myself made a bit uncomfortable. In some senses, it has always been "their" own fault...but not in all. A great many people of all sorts, not just those The Man works against (though that is a larger set than is usually realized) are content to be as they are. They are happy to wallow in their abjection.
For them, it is and always has been their own fault. They don't try to do better.
For those who do, though, it is not necessarily because of their own failures that they do not succeed. There are social forces arrayed against a great many people--namely, inertia, because again, people like to be where they are. In the closed system that the world ultimately is, gain on one part necessarily means loss on another. And that makes people nervous.
As I said, uncomfortable. But fun to talk about with the class.