1:52 am in Uncategorized by David Seaton
As I said in my previous post, at some point prose fails to express what I really feel. And I also begin to observe something that people who have never lived in a dictatorship may be slow to notice: that frank language is actively repressed, that certain truths may not be debated or even mentioned. That is why poetry often flourishes under repressive regimes, where a “secret” language must be used. I see this happening in America… perhaps this is the moment for poetry.
Photo: Giro555 / Flickr.
Thinking over the world, in this summer of 2012, this is what I wrote.
Hanging there like an unpaid bill, this inauspicious summer,
With its hot breath shriveling corn:
Ears that fall to dust.
A summer filled with factories for nesting birds:
Tools absorbed in rust.
While in some godforsaken corner,
From where God is said to hail,
A pimp of others’ agony,
Grooms the panting hounds of hell.
Cross posted from: http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com
Tags: economy, peace, poetry, poverty, war
7:51 am in Uncategorized by David Seaton
“Evil requires the sanction of the victim” – Ayn Rand
The other day in my perusings I stumbled upon this troubling jewel
Not only do Indians perform more Google searches for (Ayn) Rand than citizens of any country in the world except the United States, but Penguin Books India has sold an impressive number of copies — as many as 50,000 of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead each since 2005, a number comparable to sales there by global best-seller John Grisham. And that’s not counting the ubiquitous pirated copies of her works that are hawked at rickety street stalls, sidewalk piles, and bus stations — an honor that Rand, a fierce defender of intellectual property rights, probably would not have appreciated. Foreign Policy
To put this information into some perspective I would ask you to read a paragraph from Wikipedia:
The World Bank estimates that 456 million Indians (42% of the total Indian population) now live under the global poverty line of $1.25 per day (PPP). This means that a third of the global poor now reside in India.(…) India has a higher rate of malnutrition among children under the age of three (46% in year 2007) than any other country in the world.
Now into that context, to see what Indians are so eagerly googling, let’s mix in the following sayings of Ayn Rand, which though few, hopefully give the full flavor of her “Objectivist” philosophy:
“Evil requires the sanction of the victim.”
“If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.”
“I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
“Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.”
“It only stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.”
“Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue.”
Now you may ask yourself, what possible attraction could this sort of paean to sociopathic selfishness have for the countrymen of that paragon of selflessness, Mahatma Gandhi? How can you revere one and also revere the other?
You can’t. Rand is in, Gandhi is out.
How is this put together?
Again from Wikipedia:
Read the rest of this entry →
Tags: Ayn Rand, Dalit, Greenspan, India, injustice, Mahatma Gandhi, Milton Friedman, poverty
