[Xmca-l] Re: Burning...

Thu Aug 22 16:42:22 PDT 2019

Hi. Sorry, what follows is not my own work. I can't read Spanish well enough to get the import so I ran the text through Google. (It's gotten better. I guess.) Says Martin's colleague (in translation):
"The ridiculousness of the day: Facebook asks me what I'm thinking. Then he bombards me with the images of the jungle in flames, of dead animals and of men and women, almost voiceless, shouting with fire on their heels. It reminds me of the hidden stupidity in considering that we can mitigate the damage caused by buying a glass bottle. The only ones who know how to take care of the Amazon are the ancestral peoples and that is why they are the first in the extermination line.

Answer: I am thinking that we fail as a species.
The problem is consumption, the problem is the unequal distribution of wealth, the problem is monoculture, the problem is eating meat and raising cows, pigs, fish, chickens to be slaughtered. The problem is the greed of those who sweep the forests, forests, plains, mountains, rivers, seas, marshes, moors, to become richer every day. The problem is to desire a diamond and dismiss the blood that bathed other fingers before it shines on one of ours. The problem is to vote for those who defend those who kill us in so many horrific ways. The problem is programmed obsolescence, deceptive advertising and stunning stupid propaganda. The problem is the short term, selfish comfort, waste, lack of solidarity, ingratitude. The problem is well-being based on consumption. The problem is all the people we forget, we abandon, we close our eyes, we don't listen. The problem is you and I, who resist letting other people and other species be. The worst blindness is that we do not see how many species (including shameful humanity) are now enslaved, in some other part of the world, in the next yard or in the closet itself, on the whim of looking rich while a few become truly millionaires at the expense of our lives, of the lives of all of us in the majority world (the minority are the rich).

The only solution is to change the predatory economic model in which we live and that only favors an infamous minority. Let's stop playing with the rules of consumption, let's stop this massacre against all lives - including ours.
Facebook already knew, in advance, what I am thinking.
The phrase of the day: "it is not fire, it is capitalism".
------Original Message------
差出人："Martin Packer"<mpacker@cantab.net>
宛先："eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"<xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
ＣＣ：
件名：[Xmca-l] Re: Burning...
日時：2019年08月23日(金) 08:23(+0900)
It does all seem rather like a bad dream, doesn’t it! And to point out that two things are, or have been, burning is certainly a rather loose similarity. But my point was really the difference rather than the similarity; the difference that Julie pointed out. One event got extensive media coverage and an outpouring of sympathy and financial support. The other seems to be passing largely without notice, except to those directly involved. The two seem to be unconnected, or treated as such. My message was a pathetically small attempt to counter that; to say, stop and take a look at this!

Don’t you think, David, that capitalism is playing a role in the destruction of the Amazon? Wagner, who is a lot closer, seems to think so.

I am secretly hoping that Trump will purchase the Amazon basin, and that will be the salvation of us all.

Martin

On Aug 22, 2019, at 5:38 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:

Last night I had a dream. It's a recurring nightmare, vaguely connected to something that actually did happen to me once--I was in a rape centre somewhere, and I could hear voices of people being raped, without being able to tell if they were men or women, children or adults. But with every scream, a large red mark would appear on a whitewashed wall in front of me, and the marks were slowly descending towards me. As they reached the level of my head, I began to wonder if they somehow meant that I was next, or maybe that I would be murdered, or something out of some silly horror movie. But of course, because it is only my old familiar nightmare, when the marks reached the level of my nose and eyebrows, the door flies open, and I wake up--free and with a very full bladder ("O welche lust....")

I must admit that when I first wake up from the dream, I feel what Vygotsky calls "incoherent coherence", that everything is connected to everything. But two things about this dream seem, nevertheless, actually relevant to the two threads on this list. First of all, Martin's question is based on the same kind of Levy-Bruhlesque "participation" as my dream--the fires of Notre Dame and the fires of Amazonia are mystically linked by some underground tunnel, either through the liberal conciousness (should you save the baby in the pram or the old woman on a crutch from the driverless Google car descending upon them?) or through the generalization of capitalism quite beyond any useful meaning ("no es fuego--es capitalismo!" seems almost like Bolsinaro's actual response to the fires--"Do you want me to blame Indians or Martians?"). Secondly, this dream, which is rather indicative of my mindset, at least when I am asleep, is really what Thomas Nagel meant when she asked "What is it like to be a bat?"  What it is like to be a bat--that is, the mindset of the bat--is that everything is connected to echo-location, and that suggests, quite wrongly and even deceitfully, the way only our own mindset can ever deceive us, that everything is connected to everything and that therefore nothing is connected to me.

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Article: 
Han Hee Jeung & David Kellogg (2019): A story without SELF: Vygotsky’s
pedology, Bruner’s constructivism and Halliday’s construalism in understanding narratives by
Korean children, Language and Education, DOI: 10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663
To link to this article:https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663

Some e-prints available at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KHRxrQ4n45t9N2ZHZhQK/full?target=10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663

On Fri, Aug 23, 2019 at 4:19 AM Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net> wrote:
Yes, from what I’ve read, the fires in the Amazon are no accident.

It speaks volumes that people see the value of saving a burned building, but not of saving the planet on which we depend. Or am I wrong: have billionaires been declaring their dedication to rebuild the Amazon?

A colleague here in Colombia, Lina Paola Negrette, wrote this on Facebook today:

La ridiculez del día: Facebook me pregunta qué estoy pensando. A continuación me bombardea con las imágenes de la selva en llamas, de los animales muertos y de hombres y mujeres, casi sin voz, que gritan con el fuego en los talones. Me recuerda la estupidez escondida en considerar que podemos mitigar el daño causado comprando una botella de vidrio. Los únicos que saben cuidar la Amazonía son los pueblos ancestrales y por eso mismo son los primeros en la fila del exterminio. 
Respuesta: estoy pensando que fracasamos como especie.
El problema es el consumo, el problema es la distribución inequitativa de la riqueza, el problema es el monocultivo, el problema es comer carne y criar vacas, cerdos, peces, pollos para ser sacrificados. El problema es la avaricia de los que arrasan las selvas, los bosques, las llanuras, las montañas los ríos, los mares, las ciénagas, los páramos, para hacerse cada día más ricos. El problema es desear un diamante y desestimar la sangre que bañó otros dedos antes de que brille en uno de los nuestros. El problema es votar por quienes defienden a quienes nos matan de tantas formas horrorosas. El problema es la obsolescencia programada, la publicidad engañosa y la aturdidora propaganda permanente. El problema es el corto plazo, la comodidad egoísta, el desperdicio, la falta de solidaridad, la ingratitud. El problema es el bienestar basado en el consumo. El problema somos todas las personas que olvidamos, que abandonamos, que cerramos los ojos, que no escuchamos. El problema somos usted y yo, que nos resistimos a dejar que otras personas y otras especies sean. La peor ceguera es que no vemos cuántas especies (incluida la vergonzosa humanidad) están ahora mismo esclavizadas, en alguna otra parte del mundo, en el patio de al lado o en el propio clóset, por el capricho de parecer ricos mientras unos cuantos se hacen verdaderamente millonarios a costa de nuestras vidas, de las vidas de todas nosotras en el mundo mayoritario (la minoría son los ricos).
La única solución es cambiar ya mismo el modelo económico depredador en el que vivimos y que solo favorece a una infame minoría. Dejemos de jugar con las reglas del consumo, paremos ya esta masacre contra todas las vidas -incluida la nuestra.
Facebook ya sabía, de antemano, lo que estoy pensando.
La frase del día: "no es fuego, es capitalismo".

"I may say that whenever I meet Mrs. Seligman or Dr. Lowie or discuss matters with Radcliffe-Brown or Kroeber, I become at once aware that my partner does not understand anything in the matter, and I end usually with the feeling that this also applies to myself” (Malinowski, 1930)

On Aug 22, 2019, at 12:57 PM, Wagner Luiz Schmit <wagner.schmit@gmail.com> wrote:

Amazon is burning, but also:

There is a genocide of indigenous people. 
There is a genocide of the poor (helicopters are dropping grenades on favelas, but only favelas  not controlled by the militias - because the Bolsonaro family is very very close to the militias).
There is a total privatization of the Brazilian State.
There is the destruction of Brazilian science (probably I won't go to ISCAR next year for I do not have money, nor the public university where I study).
There is a total subservience to USA.

Back to the forest, why it burns? For the profit of big real state speculators, to grow soy (to sell to China) and to make beef (to many parts of the world).

There is strong evidence that all this started with the lawfare promoted in Brazil by USA government through the Car Wash movement and the same fascist powers that moved Brexit, Trump and now the protests at Hong Kong (You can see Steve Bannon's fingers everywhere). USA done this in 1964 with the military, and in 2016 through a legislative coup.

Some people say that it is not impossible for Brazil to became the Puerto Rico of this century.

What keeps me going is the application of Marx and Vygotsky in my classes and my understanding of the world, without it there would be only despair.

Wagner 

On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 1:53 PM JULIE WADDINGTON <julie.waddington@udg.edu> wrote:And which of the two have the media in our different countries chosen to focus our attention on?

Very big sigh,

Julie

________________________________________
De:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu[xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] en nom de Martin Packer [mpacker@cantab.net]
Enviat el: dijous, 22 / agost / 2019 16:32
Per a: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Tema: [Xmca-l]  Burning...

Which is more important to save from the flames? Notre Dame, or the Amazon forests?

<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/world/europe/notre-dame-paris-lead-reconstruction.html>

<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/world/americas/amazon-rainforest.html>

sigh

Martin

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