In my room... (apologies to Brian Wilson)
I am sitting in my office. In the living room, a Mormon missionary is discussing the Bible with my parents. I have no interest in hearing what he has to say, nor do I have any desire to debate theology, spirituality, or morality---or interpretations thereof---with him. I am sitting in my office listening to W. S. Burroughs read Naked Lunch.
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Thanks for your reply, Mike. I have felt for some time that you and are in agreement more frequently than either of us would've thought when we first met.
Here are some cautionary words from Lewis Mumford that I always try to keep in mind: "It is not enough to say, as Rousseau once did, that one has only to reverse all the current practices to be right. ... If our philosophy is well grounded we shall not merely react against the "air-conditioned nightmare" of our present culture; we shall also carry into the future many of the elements of positive good that this culture actually embraces...." [The Conduct of Life, p. 18]
What this suggests to me is an alternative to both the overly-optimistic belief in "progress" of most liberals and the reactionary "everything was better in the past" ideology of most dunder-headed conservatives. It suggests to me the idea of a "cultural salvage operation": thinkers, hermeneuticians, archaeologists, artists, philosophers, tinkerers, bricoleurs, pirates of signs and meanings---all dedicated to the painstaking sifting of all the detritus of contemporary life to find those "elements of positive good" that are worth carrying into the future. If not us, who? If not now, when?
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