Re: impulses

At 10:38 PM 3/28/96, Jonathan Cohen wrote:
>>>and "standards". The impulses that make the Buchanan reactionaries upset
>>>over immigration and homosexuality are not all that different from the
>>>impulses that make a James Howard Kunstler (and me, too) upset about strip
>>>malls and office parks.
>>
>>How would you characterize these impulses?
>
>There is widespread unease about the disorder of our society, whether it's
>the musical taste and sexual practices of high school students or the mess
>that we've made of the built environment.

So, then, it's the fear of death that is behind all these disparate social
movements? :)
Of course I am _not_ joking.
Death is the ultimate in disorder, the process particularly.
The forgetting where one has placed the eye-glasses, the lack of balance in
walking, the indignity of incontinence, the tubes: death can be a messy
passage indeed.
We push death away by ordering and organizing the world around us---no
metaphors or symbols here. We have even close to 3 score + 10 because we
have a complex industrial system---marvelous self-sustaining externalized
womb (per Buckmister Fuller)---a roof over the head keeps one dry and the
rheumatism at bay, for instance.
So we order the world in order to survive and live.
And we order others, as well, when we can, to make sure that they don't
screw things up, either out of ignorance or intent.
Behind "sustainable development" movement lies genuine fear of death---of
the earth.
I'm not in touch with right-wing as much so not quite sure how to
characterize its fears but certainly Mr. Buchanan projects many: for one,
fear of "the other"---not always an irrational fear for these many
millenia, of course but now more dangerous (Franklin Roosevelt called this
one correctly.)  than the thing it fears.  You can hear it in his laugh---a
cackle of fear.

***

Well that's why I prefer to keep this whole thing light: "just start with
the parking lot."

Dave Sucher