The Eve of Election Day
Today is the day before the ballots are cast, the vote tallied and the results announced. My cynical self says, “so what.” The one candidate is a life long uber predator, property developer, and pitch man for all manner of dodgy, shell game offers: Trump University, Trump Steaks, apparel, etc. The other candidate offers hope for those at the margins, while aligned with the financiers who increasingly financialize the economy from top to bottom. How much freedom does one have as long is one is in debt up to one’s neck? Looks like life long servitude to me. In a nutshell, this is how things appear to me.
The quote that I offer today is a plea for self regard, compassion. Compassion modifies, qualifies the necessity for efficiency upon which we have always depended for survival. One lives better and longer if you can construct a heated log cabin, rather than remain in that cave. Yet, without compassion after we have mastered Nature, then we begin to regard one another—as an available resource.
Instrumental rationality-
the calculation
of the most efficient
options for achieving a
given desire–
has overwhelmed Western
thinking over the past three
hundred years, generating
a cold, empirical, calculating
mindset.—Alastair Crooke
