on 11/10/01 9:19 AM, skutvik@online.no at skutvik@online.no wrote:
> OK, a city may be a
> social pattern, but New York City least of all a typical as such, so
> dominated by intellect that the social part is almost invisible.
Oh gosh, no. You wouldn't believe the politicking that goes on selecting the
Grand Marshal for the St. Patrick's day parade there, for example. Look at
the Democratic Party's selection process too. NYC is indeed atypical! But
because it's like a big, constantly evolving community of communities, one
in which the individual nodes of Intellect are also free to be sovereign. It
allows socialisation and atomisation of individuals in equal measure - the
warm and cold weather systems always filling the air with the electric buzz
of potential thunderstorms.
The beauty (and fear) of it, is that there is no Soviet-style (or even
Euro-style) plan/spov to keep it all together. It's like a garden full of
exotic plants and fauna and mini-gardens, devouring each other and
reproducing strange new patterns together. It's like a meta-organism which
evolves and grows, an orgy of life.
My pet word for such things are "Macrobes". In the same way that Microbes
are patterns of value so small that they float around in us, Macrobes are
patterns of value so big that we float around in them.
> All in
> all the NYC stay spawned many sombre thoughts with Phaedrus -
> obviously he is no big city lover.
I think that's a bit selective though; to me, he seems to regard NYC almost
like a roller-coaster ride.
O.b. Laden, now he does not like big cities.
Neither did the Khmer Rouge (who enslaved and exterminated
city-dwellers). Cities (the Latin word for which, I believe, forms the root
of 'Civilisation') are the homes of "rootless cosmopolitans" (Hitler, I
think).
Women have the tendency to drift into the Public domain in cities, and
out of the Domestic/Private domain. They thus impinge upon the 'domain of
Men' - and the Marginal Men don't like that. Women are supposed to be in the
home, the only women in the Public domain are by implication supposed to be
of ill-repute (prostitutes/fallen women/female doctors).
Money - "Frozen Desire" - is freely available in cities. Money is
anathema to societies based on honour codes and inherited rank etc. Money
can be socially corrosive; payment is a means to dissolve traditional social
bonds of obligation/duty. The original Conservatives (landed-gentry
types/slave owners) hated money and capitalism as much as later socialists
because of this. Money makes peasants uppity. It empowers slaves who have
access to it. The Iliad can be viewed as a clash between old Honour Culture
and new Money Culture.
An Irish writer (I am a nationalist, after all), Brendan Behan, once
dedicated one of his books:
"To New York City.
The Man who hates you
Hates the Human Race."
'Nuff said.
- Oisín.
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