:: blame the extended gestation.... ::

:: Saturday, June 22, 2002 ::

"The day the world ends, no one will be there, just as no one was
there when it began. This is a scandal. Such a scandal for the human race
that it is indeed capable collectively, out of spite, of hastening
the end of the world by all means just so it can enjoy the show."

Jean Baudrillard
--Cool Memories

:: Jim Nichols 6/22/2002 02:22:00 PM [+] ::
...

Tuesday, June 25
----------------
Game 1: Germany vs South Korea at Seoul (South Korea) 7:30 am ET

Wednesday, June 26
-------------------
Game 2: Brazil vs Turkey at Saitama (Japan) 7:30 am ET


THIRD PLACE -- Saturday, June 29
================================
Loser Game 1 vs Loser Game 2 at Daegu (South Korea) 7:00 am ET


FINAL -- Sunday, June 30
========================
Winner Game 1 vs Winner Game 2 at Yokohama (Japan) 7:00 am ET

:: Jim Nichols 6/22/2002 01:55:00 PM [+] ::
...

"For 'existentialism' like 'Enlightenment' denotes not so much a historical period as an attitude, a style, and a message. The attitude is that of respect for freedom and for being. The style is authenticity. And the message is the optimistic reminder: You can always make something out of what you've been made into." --Thomas R. Flynn "Existentialism and Beyond"

:: Jim Nichols 6/21/2002 02:10:00 PM [+] ::
...

"[I]n the current circumstances, devolution from the federal government to the state level is disastrous. The federal government has all sorts of rotten things about it and is fundamentally illegitimate, but weakening federal power and moving things to the state level is just a disaster. At the state level even middle-sized businesses can control what happens. At the federal level only the big guys can push it around. That means, that if you take, say, aid for hungry children, to the extent that it exists, if it’s distributed through the federal system, you can resist business pressure to some extent. It can actually get to poor children. If you move it to the state level in block grants, it will end up in the hands of Raytheon and Fidelity—exactly what’s happening here in Massachusetts. They have enough coercive power to force the fiscal structure of the state to accommodate to their needs, with things as simple as the threat of moving across the border. These are realities. But people here tend to be so doctrinaire. Obviously there are exceptions, but the tendencies here, both in elite circles and on the left, are such rigidity and doctrinaire inability to focus on complex issues that the left ends up removing itself from authentic social struggle and is caught up in its doctrinaire sectarianism. That’s very much less true there. I think that’s parallel to the fact that it’s less true among elite circles. So just as you can talk openly there about the fact that Brazil and Argentina don’t really have a debt, that it’s a social construct, not an economic fact—they may not agree, but at least they understand what you’re talking about—whereas here I think it would be extremely hard to get the point across. Again, I don’t want to overdraw the lines. There are plenty of exceptions. But the differences are noticeable, and I think the differences have to do with power. The more power and privilege you have, the less it’s necessary to think, because you can do what you want anyway. When power and privilege decline, willingness to think becomes part of survival." -Noam Chomsky "Expanding the floor of the Cage"

:: Jim Nichols 6/20/2002 11:54:00 PM [+] ::
...

Generation X: So very...Blank, and still undefined.
by Jim Nichols

To try to place magic words of description on a generation seems at first shallow and of little intellectual virtue, merely a vapid exercise in self-gratification or else a blame game of petty patriarchal names, hypocritical false statements, and historical misnomers. The name, the description, the cultural label given to a generation--upon closer examination--is always full of contradictions. Ironically enough as I began to try to codify my generation, Generation X born between 1964-1981(Washburn 54), within a single description, I realized that by semantic fluke it is the only generation to stay true to its description. Not only does it retain its labels of apathetic, slacker, and undefined, but it is the first generation entirely born into an economic Superpower.

These two truths at first seem disconnected and of little consequence, but the connection is glaring and of much importance if one is to understand my generation. Generation X was the first solely manufactured generation of the century, slacker and apathetic were not self-anointed descriptions of a chosen path, but an afterthought, a symbolic way of saying and showing that there was never a path created--economically restrained, by the choices and paths earlier generations made or couldn't help but make; politically repressed, due to its lack of size; institutionally controlled, by a major shift in the political views of the country--a generation lacking the power and self-motivation that other generations were allocated and entitled to, it callously had no other choice but to fall into the description it had been given: X, undefined.


The century began with a bang, 3 successive generations, with romantic titles and romantic expectations. After the Spanish-American War the country grew from a small-time-nobody to another player on the world's stage. Both the Industrial Revolution and the Europe's asinine tendency to kill one another created for the G.I. Generation born from 1902-1925, the Silent Generation from 1926-1945, and the Baby Boomers from 1945-1964 (Washburn 54), a vacuum in which U.S. geopolitical self-interest could take the driver seat after World War II. Back home this had made for an economy that saw great expansion and growth, and a perception that with hard work (the giant government intervention in the economy is always left out of the equation) one could achieve success and prosperity.


With the superpower stalemate of the Cold War, the rebuilding of the industrial centers of (West) Germany and Japan, and the expansion and growth of infrastructure within the country itself complete, the country no longer had realpolitik as a stimulating force in its leniency towards the la-di-da of egalitarianism and idealism. The dismantling of the Bretton Woods system of financial regulation in the early 70's created an international environment that put an end to the concept of the Welfare State as politically viable--business was finally allowed to run free. Profits over people became the new mantra, the business world was able to more efficiently look internationally while humans were forced to make do within their own country. This is what Generation X was born into, a major shift in the global economy and political infrastructure. Where earlier generations had expansion and dominance on their collective minds, Generation X found themselves constrained conceptionally and politically to the Nation-State while the world moved towards a Multi-National Corporate hegemony.


These new economic changes meant, as Abby Ellin wrote in her article "Generation X, Still Undecided", that "it...[has] become clear that we [will] not follow in our parents' footsteps--no 35-year job, no four-bedroom house in the suburbs before the age of 30." Where other generations had expansion or social change to defuse the energy of the young, Generation X came of age lacking such traditional paths. The right of passage had been blocked by international stability and rounded off in the cul-de-sacs of suburbia. But these new realities did not only affect our own perceptions of the world, all generations were effected. A new ideology of "me" became the rule, with a conservative movement leading the way to vilify and cut back on social spending which was not privately profitable to investors short term (all the while increasing spending within the pentagon/high-tech sectors of the economy). As the infrastructure became more and more underfunded (cuts in spending for schools, health care, day care) the true cost of these "savings" became more apparent, in "all those abstract problems like youth crime and teenage pregnancy" (Lynch "Taking Stock").


When I asked one Gen X'er what a word like Generation X meant, she told me she didn't feel "a part of any name." Many in Generation X feel estranged from any idea of a group in which they are bound together by some commonality. But when asked what words like Trickle Down Economics, Reagan, and Nicaragua said to her, without pause she sighed, "the 80's. They screwed their own children over... kinda funny when you think about it." This is the sardonic wisdom, exposed by my generation, at its best. This disdain and distrust of what society wants of them, in such a broad and general fashion, would be shocking in a pre-Vietnam, pre-Watergate era. In this generation it is merely one of the many hats being worn.


From this disdain and distrust another label has befallen on this generation, that they are apolitical. Once again you find a situation, quite common to Generation X, where external realities are brushed over and the actions are magnified. Instead of asking why there is a generation of people unwilling to take part in a process that has great effect over their lives, the conclusion is drawn that they don't care. A true calibration of Generation X's political views would more than likely find a group that feels that their voice can not be heard within the current process. Their small size creates a situation where the other, larger, generations concerns retain greater focus and have greater sway over what little influence the public sector now retains. The validity of the straight and narrow within the political realm may be destroyed but Generation X is also the generation that showed up in Seattle to shut down the WTO meetings. They have organized many other anti-corporate globalization demonstrations in the past few years since, as well. Political apathy apparently shows up as hard dedicated organizing these days.


Generation X found itself manufactured, a transition age where everything flipped. A society which moved from the modern to the postmodern, not the text but subtext; the liberal to the neoliberal, not the ideal but the bottom line. Hightech subsidy's became the internet and once again the public was privatized--except we were the generation in charge of that transition--our expectations and goals were channelled and opportunity was finally ours for the taking, or so we were told. As Generation Y is making its way into the real world the Business pages are reading the obituary for that great transformation of Dot-COMs, and Generation X is once again looking for new work, new places within which to entrust our expectations, channel our goals. The great diaspora that is Generation X, always being told not to worry, that the Promised Land is just around the corner, continues.


To be the 13th generation from the founding of our country is rather fitting. A generation that felt it had no place, got to be the testing ground for truly making this country a place where the minority of the opulent are protected from the majority, as one of our founding fathers had aspired (or was that conspired?) to create. We didn't even demand the handouts given to every generation before us, because as Orwell once noted "circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip, but the really well-trained dog is the one that turns his somersault when there is no whip" (Barsamian at al. 80). We were trained to not ask questions and not have expectations, manufactured to respond that we were apathetic and didn't know what we wanted to do. Even when the rough edges show up, the seedy underbelly of years of neglect, it was explained away as mere wandering. Generation X never really was any of those things specifically, it got labelled as a negation, undefined. But a negation can be anything, our disunity and lack of direction fit within that anything, but any other generation's could have done the same--in us it comes out as our validation in others their hypocrisy. It wasn't like Generation X asked for such purity(sic), in fact we've been a generation constantly at odds with being labelled.


Yes Generation X truly is, was, and will always be X. Undefined. But that's not saying anything about us, about who we are and what we dream. That's just another label for a generation that grew up with labels and is a little embarrassed to keep telling people that broad generalizations will not fit--if only because we won't allow it to happen. I asked a friend, a fellow early twenty something in college(a late Gen X'er), to sum up the Generation. "Maybe Richard Hell and the Voidoids's 'Blank Generation' might apply. That's not to say blank as in nothing, but blank as in fill in the blank line." In the end it probably doesn't matter how we define our own generation, I've been told we tend to whine about everything anyway. If that is true, I can't help but think that if we hadn't been given so much to whine about, quite possibly, we wouldn't.


---------------

Barsamian, David, and Noam Chomsky. Propaganda and the Public Mind. Cambridge: South End Press, 2001.
Ellin, Abby. "Generation X, Still Undecided." New York Times 17 Jun. 2001, sec. 3:10.
Lynch, Stephen. "Taking Stock of Gen X: It's Fallen Sharply." The Washington Post 25 Apr. 2001, CO8.
Washburn, Earl Trey R. "FAAP." Physician Executive, Jan./Feb. 2000, vol. 26(1), p. 54.

:: Jim Nichols 6/19/2002 12:18:00 AM [+] ::
...

There is something I find fascinating about reality, but i'm not really sure how to explain it.

:: Jim Nichols 6/19/2002 12:13:00 AM [+] ::
...

See Change?

good points. good one-liners.

:: Jim Nichols 6/09/2002 09:01:00 AM [+] ::
...

Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences, Second Edition

:: Jim Nichols 6/09/2002 08:54:00 AM [+] ::
...

Scientific Boehner:
The new creationism and the congressmen who support it. by Iain Murray

"ID is not, however, true science. According to the eminent modern philosopher Karl Popper, the defining characteristic of science is that its assertions are falsifiable. In other words, if we have no means to prove a theory wrong -- by experiment, observation, and the like -- then it is not scientific. And theories that cannot be falsified simply have no place in science books or classrooms."


"The only scientific theory of life's origins thus far is the theory of evolution. ID may have a genuine role to play in the classrooms of philosophers or comparative theologians, but it certainly does not belong in the science lab. If creationists want to have their views taught, they must first meet the biggest challenge in history: proving the existence of God."

:: Jim Nichols 6/09/2002 08:46:00 AM [+] ::
...

And the Emmy Could Go to: Comedy Actresses Worthy of the Statuette

Lauren Graham should win everything. I mean like lotto, an emmy, MVP for the National league....

:: Jim Nichols 6/07/2002 07:09:00 AM [+] ::
...

"I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the
wrong. They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other
countries and in this. But I do say, that in all disputes between them
and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of
the people."

Edmund Burke
--Reflections on the Revolution in France

:: Jim Nichols 6/07/2002 03:19:00 AM [+] ::
...

ABC Plays God, Bleeps "Jesus"

:: Jim Nichols 6/07/2002 03:16:00 AM [+] ::
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Dee Dee Ramone, Rock Singer and Artist, Dies at 49

:: Jim Nichols 6/07/2002 03:12:00 AM [+] ::
...

Putin Tries Weaning Russia Off the Oil Barrel

:: Jim Nichols 6/06/2002 01:49:00 AM [+] ::
...

EU Market Recognition is Linked to Gas

From Evil Empire to potential cheap labor in under 20 years.

:: Jim Nichols 6/06/2002 01:45:00 AM [+] ::
...

NATO Plans New 'Military Concept' for New Threats

New "military Concept" for terrorism... its not new. Its called counter-terrorism. And its the exact same thing, except its done by the (do the bunny-ear fingers with me people) "good guys".

:: Jim Nichols 6/06/2002 01:30:00 AM [+] ::
...

been sing to myself... all the live long day

"Morality enforcement based on the interests of a state, coerced into concordance and threatened into place. It's not just isolated incidents of cop-jocks kicking ass. It's a fucking war machine protecting the wealth of the employing class." --Propagandhi

:: Jim Nichols 6/06/2002 01:13:00 AM [+] ::
...

"The means of... communication..., the irresistible output of the entertainment and
information industry carry with them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual
and emotional reactions which bind the consumers... to the producers and, through the
latter to the whole [social system]. The products indoctrinate and manipulate; they
promote a false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood... Thus emerges a
pattern of one-dimensional thought and behaviour." --Herbert Marcuse

:: Jim Nichols 6/06/2002 01:02:00 AM [+] ::
...

Found a great web site.... called Voice of the Shuttle.

Dandy of a humanities web site, if I do say so. And I do. So I have. There you go.

(okay i'm going to edit that "great"... it has a bunch of dead links...but what it does have is still really good)

:: Jim Nichols 6/06/2002 12:49:00 AM [+] ::
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Well geezz the U.S. actually won a world cup game

U.S. 3
Portugal 2

It was an excellent match to watch.

:: Jim Nichols 6/05/2002 03:56:00 AM [+] ::
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I'm tired of people always talking about how they want "the world to work." The world works just fine, it always has and always will--no matter what we infinitely unimportant beings ever do. What they mean to say is that the world is not working the way they'd like it to.

:: Jim Nichols 6/04/2002 09:27:00 AM [+] ::
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I always doubt what I know is right and I tend to be correct in that assumption.

:: Jim Nichols 6/04/2002 06:28:00 AM [+] ::
...

My whole tendency and, I believe, the
tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk Ethics or Religion
was to run against the boundaries of language. This running against
the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. Ethics so far
as it springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate
meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, can be no
science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But
it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally
cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it.

--Ludwig Wittgenstein

:: Jim Nichols 6/03/2002 03:52:00 AM [+] ::
...

4.003 Most propositions and questions that have been written about philosophical matters are not false but senseless. We cannot, therefore, answer questions of this kind at all, but only state their senselessness. Most questions and propositions of the philosopohers result from the fact that we do not understand the logic of our language. They are of the same kind as the question whether the Good is more or less identical than the Beautiful

:: Jim Nichols 6/03/2002 03:21:00 AM [+] ::
...

6.53 The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing
except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science--i.e. something that has
nothing to do with philosophy--and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something
metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in
his propositions. Although it would not be satisfying to the other person--he would not
have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy--this method would be the only
strictly correct one.
--Ludwig Wittgenstein "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus"

:: Jim Nichols 6/03/2002 03:13:00 AM [+] ::
...

So much he says confuses me, but I still see something in him that fascinates me as much as Nietzsche

5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

5.61 Logic pervades the world; the limits of the world are also its limits.So we cannot say in logic, 'The world has this in it, and this, but not that.' For that would appear to presuppose that we were excluding certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case, since it would require that logic should go beyond the limits of the world; for only in that way could it view those limits from the other side as well. We cannot think what we cannot think; so what we cannot think we cannot say either.

5.62 This remark provides the key to the problem, how much truth there is in solipsism. For what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest. The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world.

5.63 I am my world. (The microcosm.)

--Ludwig Wittgenstein "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus"

:: Jim Nichols 6/03/2002 02:58:00 AM [+] ::
...