How do young people view the future?

[cloud999]

Pardon me sir but i found that quite hilarious, isn't the WHOLE America stolen land from the native American 'Indians', not just south or north, whole. And haven't they been and still are at many places still an outcast people? Wasn't the Iroquois and Sioux tribes pushed of and almost extinct at some point? The Aztec tribe sure is and many other of the Nahuatl speaking ones.

Precisely my point. Every world power in existence today has blood on its hands...and every modern society has abused and oppressed the hell out of out minority populations at one point or another. ZOMG Indians and McDonalds and Bombs, oh my...like these things are somehow new or unique to America.

Getting your panties in a wad over America's actions reveals a lack of historical perspective. Yes, America can't compare to your idealistic fantasy-land, but it compares quite favorably to all other world powers, both past and present.

How does modern America compare to Napoleonic France? Stalinist Russia? Qing China? Mughal India? Victorian Britain? Holy Roman Empire? Mongol Asia? Zulu Africa? The Ottomans? The Incas? Byzantium? Alexander's Greece? Babylon? Han China?

[cloud999]

Right or wrong, as good or bad, are created by man, just like the clock, an innovation. Something wrong and bad can be good and right in someones eyes. As an animal, who says it has the right to kill a lesser animal to feed? It is only doing what it is suppose to survive

Reality is our check of right and wrong. You can sit there all day telling me 2+2=5, but reality makes you wrong. You can argue that it's "my opinion that 2+2=5" all day, but all it makes you is a moron.

You can argue that the US economy doesn't matter outside of the US, but realizing how the US Financial Crisis of 2008 directly led to a global recession makes you wrong.

[OrphanPip]

Literature: Free Verse, Slam Poetry, Beat Poetry, Confessional, Neo-Aesthetic, Neo-Lyric, Modern Mystery, Modern Horror, and 288,355 new publications in a single year (that would be the most by Nation).

Just to nit pick, Americans did not invent free verse, although Whitman could be credited with popularizing it amongst American Modernists. Free verse is as old as structured verse, you can find examples of it in the Bible. It is actually fairly obvious that Whitman's own heavy use of repetition draws heavily on Hebrew poetics, which have come through, albeit transformed, in English translations of the Bible. In fact, we could look at the rise of free verse amongst the Modernists as a return to pre-Latin poetics, which were so rigidly structured around meter.

Slam poetry isn't much of an achievement, and I don't think it actually differs from performance poetry, which has roots in the troubadour poetry of Southern France or the ballad poetry of Enlightenment Europe. Not to mention hymnal poetry, which was an influential form amongst African Americans.

Beat poetry certainly has its roots in an American movement, however it never went outside of Ameriica and no one really pays attention to it except Americans. Particularly, since beat poetry is simply a form of confessional dominated by an American counter-cultural tendency, so it only has meaning within the context of American culture. Not to discount the value of early Ginsberg, who is a good but not too special.

Confessional poetry is certainly an American movement, although like the others, the form is older than the school that gave it a particular name. Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop are great world class poets. Plath has some brilliant moments, but is overly estimated by the lay public. Anne Sexton is garbage. In a sense, Confessionalism is constructed out of modernist ideas of impersonality in poetry, despite the fact that up until the 18th century the poet and speaker were intended to be conflated. Thus, there is a problem because Confessionalism can be retroactively applied to semi-autobiographical Renaissance poetry. However, it could be argued that the intention to break from form, and the conscious awareness of what they are doing makes them something different. I certainly think Bishop is one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.

I'm not exactly sure what neo-aestheticism or neo-lyricism are intended to be. Although, it seems a bit odd to claim a new version of pre-existing movements. I suppose Modernist lyricism can be considered neo-lyricism, but I'm not sure what frame of reference to work from. Although, the English speaking world as a whole likes to think of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound of having created Modernism out of thin air, but most of the ground work was laid by French and German poets who were innovating while the Victorians were stagnating. The true originality in turn of the century American poetry is in the regionalist, like Frost, who build off of their American predecessors, Dickinson and Whitman (who are true luminaries in world poetry).

Of course, modern mysteries owe as much to Agatha Christie as they do to Raymond
Chandler, not to mention earlier pre-cursors like Stevenson for the UK and Cooper for the Americans. Horror certainly owes a lot to Hawthorne, Poe and Lovecraft, but it seems silly to ignore the influence of Stevenson (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), Shelley (Frankenstein), and Stoker (Dracula), not to mention the precursors of continental gothic literature from Germany, or even the older folk traditions of monster and ghost stories.

As for what I would grant as American achievements in literature. There is the vision and scope of egalitarianism in the works of Whitman, that resonated throughout the Americas from Canada to Argentina. Frontier literature, like that of Cooper and some of the work of Willa Cather on the pioneer life. Dickinson's brilliant innovations in the techniques of persona and poetic ambiguity. Faulkner's work with different narrative voices was highly innovative, and the Southern gothic style remains influential. Some people would maybe make a case for the current "Language Poets" as unique, but I don't think we can judge true artistic legacies from the present. And probably the most important, Poe and Hawthorne's contribution to the development of the short story are very important. Personally, I think Americans should look to their artists for expressions of American identities and experiences, rather than universal contributions to some conception of art as a progressive entity that we add innovations to. We fall into a trap when we try to say what America has done for world literature, because in the grand scheme of things literatures have very little influence outside their own generative culture. Who is reading American literature? The obvious answer is Americans, and that is why Americans seem to get this inflated sense of the worth of marginal movements like the beats and confessionals, who were barely noticed in the rest of the English speaking world, let alone in other languages. There are few authors who transcend cultural boundaries, and America has produced some of them: Whitman, Faulkner, Dickinson, and Poe. There are other more minor ones, but those four are the important ones in my book.

Edit: I'd add that there are actually formal innovations amongst Harlem Renaissance poets in the giving of voice to African Americans in poetry, as well as the use of jazz meters in written poetry.

[Pix]

I thought it was an American tradition to hold our government in contempt. Both left wing sources (such as Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, and Huffington) and right wing sources (such as National Review and FOX) make a habit of condemning our government. Even though Democrats and Republicans like to expand the government they typically say they're not going to (granted, they say they'll protect us from the corporations that fund them, illegals, drugs, deadbeat dads, and even gays which leads to bigger government and/or government interference, but they don't normally state that outright). There is the notable exception of George Bush after 9/11 (which MAD magazine list as his superpower--btw, MAD magazine has actually gotten in trouble with the FBI for making fun of the government as it still does to this day), but before 9/11 Bush Bashing was a popular hobby, even when he was just the governor of Texas when he seemed a lot more lucid.

Come to think of it, some Russian and Russian American friends of mine noticed that the popular American sentiment (as reflected in a lot of our music and tv and movies) was often an antigovernment & antiauthoritarian one (even when cops & soldiers are glorified, they're often portrayed as defying their superiors), one they find confusing given how big and powerful our government is (and like how we've got the most people in prison of any country in the world). It's something they just find amusing, especially as Americans seem to them to be a lot less realistic (in their view) and cynical than Russians so that we should be far more trusting of our government than we are (but I can get snarky with them pretty easily, like when Russians complain of our MTV as too trashy corrupting Russian morals & the USA being too accepting of gays while at the same time they promote t.A.T.u. in Russia as well as internationally as just one example, but that's beside the point).

And Jello Biafra of the DK is American so when he speaks of war profiteering he does so as a citizen rather than an outsider. That wouldn't be the US who profits, btw, but military contractors, who pay politicians to kick money and contracts their way, pretty much like how most big biz operates. Even the rare prosecution of such profiteering seems to highlight the problems rather than curb it. And if President Obama putting a Raytheon lobbyist in charge of the Pentagon isn't a conflict of interest (as well as President Obama's breaking his promise of limiting lobbyist power) I don't know what is. As for the debt, that's to us taxpayers, not to military contractors and politicians, so it's not their own money they're burning. And it's a long tradition, and what U.S. Marine Major General Smedley D. Butler wrote in War is a Racket (1935) still applies today.

Btw, while I'm only vaguely familiar with the DKs, I can't imagine they're any more anti-American than Rage Against the Machine (more Americans). RATM actually glorifies cop killers and revolution, and during some concerts they've even burned the American flag on stage (Woodstock 99) and even encouraged anarchist rioting and violence at the 2000 Democrat National Convention, and sing lyrics accusing the US Government of waging war for racism, capitalism (though they don't seem to mind working with Sony records, who in turn don't mind profiting from songs that say how greedy & evil they are...), and war profiteering. Despite this they are surprisingly popular not only with American audiences (almost as popular as Che, though granted it's questionable how many Che fans even know that much about him), but even then Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown gave Tom Morello of RATM an award in 2001, IIRC, and shook his hand.

Heck, I even wear a Che beret complete with a red star (not that I'm into Che, I just enjoy the irony of Capitalism producing the beret, plus my BFF got it for me for Christmas) which has made me friends despite US relations to Cuba (and Che's violent actions against Capitalism). So it seems to me that being anti-American is just an American tradition. If we Americans are that way, why not the rest of the world? :tongue:

[dfiant]

as he is the moderator.

News to me...care to elaborate????

[cloud999]

So it seems to me that being anti-American is just an American tradition. If we Americans are that way, why not the rest of the world? :tongue:

It's like two siblings who always fight. They will fight and insult each other all day long...until an outsider insults their family.

In more practical terms...when some America-haters decide to destroy the World Trade Center, or bomb Pearl Harbor, 90% of the country goes on the war-path. What is beautiful about our society, IMO, is that those 90% will fight to protect the 10% who refuse.

I've seen this effect in even the most partisan political forums...rabid conservatives and liberals quickly united to protest a Chinese basketball team's assault on American students earlier this year.

[cloud999]

even then Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown gave Tom Morello of RATM an award in 2001, IIRC, and shook his hand.

Key word: Oakland. In Oakland, raging against the machine (rioting) is a pastime.

[Inchante]

News to me...care to elaborate????

Oh, dear. I thought I had read a couple of posts that indicated that you were the moderator. I guess my opinion was based on a false premise. Sorry. Thus enlightened, I withdraw my assertion that you are the moderator.

[Inchante]

I thought it was an American tradition to hold our government in contempt.

Oh, yes, I should say that it is very much an American tradition. Indeed, one can see such criticisms in the writings of Cooper, Hawthorne, and Twain. Yes, it is a great tradition, a tradition other cultures should adopt for themselves, but they seem not to be able to understand that it should be applied most vehemently to the governments they themselves live under, the governments they would have the most impact on in order to manifest progress. Dissent is a very important aspect of any Democratic system.

You have to realize that your Russian friends grew up in quite a different system, where dissent was not tolerated but met with violence and oppression, the same things we see today in China . . . though both Russia and China have made some progress, it has not been enough. So, your friends find the criticisms unusual. In reality, dissent has more frequently strengthened a nation as a whole then hurt it.

Yet, there are instances where dissent can be used to obfuscate, divide, and mitigate the strength of the people of a nation, and I believe that that is exactly what we are seeing today and not just in America. You mention military industries and their abilities to profit from wars and to even influence a nation’s willingness to go to war. That is true, but there are other major contributors to this that you have left out, multinational corporations in the energy, banking, and media industries to start. If you think about a book like "Benito Cerino" and its purpose as a novella written by a white abolitionist for an audience of white abolitionists, the contrast shows how national and international conversation have regressed, become simplistic, and divisive. Melville sought to challenge his own beliefs as well as those who held similar perspectives as his own. Today, political conversations have become divided along ideological lines. This is the result of the 15 second sound bite, opinion based news, and the popularization of simplistic understandings of politics and society through music, television, and other arts.

I think it has become necessary for responsible citizens to force public conversation to a higher level, to not given into media hype and ideological schism, and be truly revolutionary in creating dialogs with one another which seek common ground and rational solutions.


For instance, based on posts,Cloud999 seems rather conservative, yet I would be willing to bet the three of us--Pix, Cloud999, and I could find a lot to agree on concerning what should be done to improve and reverse current, negative, national trends. That is, if we dedicated ourselves to pursuing a higher level of dialog.

[Pix]

I think it has become necessary for responsible citizens to force public conversation to a higher level, to not given into media hype and ideological schism, and be truly revolutionary in creating dialogs with one another which seek common ground and rational solutions.

For instance, based on posts,Cloud999 seems rather conservative, yet I would be willing to bet the three of us--Pix, Cloud999, and I could find a lot to agree on concerning what should be done to improve and reverse current, negative, national trends. That is, if we dedicated ourselves to pursuing a higher level of dialog.

I don't doubt it, and I have friends who are strongly liberal or conservative (and miscellaneous) that I feel comfortable talking politics with who strike me as rational people (though I fear politics and rationality don't normally go together). mile: But media hype and ideological schisms seems to be SOP. :frown: