I keep thinking of Prof. Sontheimer and all the little battles we'd have in his office
over good public policy, intent vs. result. Which of course also reminds of all that poring through Amartya Sen's stuff and his colleagues'. And even though that later prof. who shall not be named was a freakin' nutter (he tried to argue the economic efficiency of insider trading, we're talking straight up '80s-style insider trading, ugh) the projects we did on coal mine group policies come to mind sometimes. One needs to always consider where they're coming from of course, the way it's always framed in some way. Hrm.
...
Pretty sure the Prez of the NEA was my favorite speaker yesterday. A tad surprised by it, actually. It was all just content-heavy talk of the real intended and unintended consequences of poorly thought out policies (a favorite general approach/topic for econ majors who went in wanting to help change the world, by the way, and yes, we exist). Not just emotion and hyper-personalized "how does this affect me" stuff--though please believe me when I say I totally understand that attitude too. Just. It was great to hear someone just matter-of-factly talk about why this won't work, at all, and all the ways it will cause problems for everyone, not just teachers...
And I guess it's probably par for the course, but the thing that probably moved me most was that there was the visible presence of teamsters and firefighters who said bluntly how obvious it was to them that we're all in this together re: selective targeting of middle and working class occupations one by one, this pernicious but graduated attempt to dismantle the only institutions available trying to look out for them (of course unions need improvement and aren't perfect, don't get me wrong, but in the face of this chilling historical pattern of neocorporatism and the ensuing shitty incredibly divided economy it fosters they're the only solid visible thing masses of working middle class folks have to turn to as a counterbalance).
Molly asked me last night over pizza if I thought going did any good. The gist of that query is something people ask all the time, me too to myself. And I said something to the effect that I'm so cynical and so...I don't even know the term, Deleuze-y pomo jaded or something, convoluted in probably a bad way in terms of actual ability to act at this point for anything (I mean, like at rallies or meetings I almost always get painfully distracted by some weird pseudo-sociolinguistic-let's-play-psycho
It helps a lot that Robert is an optimist without being blind to the bad. A couple years he smiled to himself mentioning offhand the difference between us, the way he knows how pessimistic and easily defeated I am emotionally whereas he has this foreign-to-me steady cheerful re-energized sort of reaction to the horrible things that happen politically here in the South. He still believes in the good in people for the most part and is matter-of-fact about doing things when he feels something is wrong. It's in contrast to me and honestly, I really needed it, someone like him to remind me it it's possible to refuse to be so fatalistic. It's a Kantian, Camus thing; the striving matters for its own sake too, not just based on its merits overall in the final analysis. Even in the dark. Reminds me of when A quizzed R on whether he thought his not eating mainstream chocolate even meant a damn really, and does that ever make him second-guess. It's a personal need to not just passively suck in/imbibe what comes down the stream. You do it for yourself and your need for personal inherent dignity and hope sometimes, for the acknowledgment maybe you can't control anything else in the world but you still have control over yourself, you can choose and refuse things for yourself. You make decisions you, YOU (as Cummings said over and over, no one can be exactly you for yourself except, well, YOU) can live with. There it is. That is not for nothing.
Not that I'm usually any different on the outside really but he has helped me, internally at least.
...
Pretty sure the Prez of the NEA was my favorite speaker yesterday. A tad surprised by it, actually. It was all just content-heavy talk of the real intended and unintended consequences of poorly thought out policies (a favorite general approach/topic for econ majors who went in wanting to help change the world, by the way, and yes, we exist). Not just emotion and hyper-personalized "how does this affect me" stuff--though please believe me when I say I totally understand that attitude too. Just. It was great to hear someone just matter-of-factly talk about why this won't work, at all, and all the ways it will cause problems for everyone, not just teachers...
And I guess it's probably par for the course, but the thing that probably moved me most was that there was the visible presence of teamsters and firefighters who said bluntly how obvious it was to them that we're all in this together re: selective targeting of middle and working class occupations one by one, this pernicious but graduated attempt to dismantle the only institutions available trying to look out for them (of course unions need improvement and aren't perfect, don't get me wrong, but in the face of this chilling historical pattern of neocorporatism and the ensuing shitty incredibly divided economy it fosters they're the only solid visible thing masses of working middle class folks have to turn to as a counterbalance).
Molly asked me last night over pizza if I thought going did any good. The gist of that query is something people ask all the time, me too to myself. And I said something to the effect that I'm so cynical and so...I don't even know the term, Deleuze-y pomo jaded or something, convoluted in probably a bad way in terms of actual ability to act at this point for anything (I mean, like at rallies or meetings I almost always get painfully distracted by some weird pseudo-sociolinguistic-let's-play-psycho
It helps a lot that Robert is an optimist without being blind to the bad. A couple years he smiled to himself mentioning offhand the difference between us, the way he knows how pessimistic and easily defeated I am emotionally whereas he has this foreign-to-me steady cheerful re-energized sort of reaction to the horrible things that happen politically here in the South. He still believes in the good in people for the most part and is matter-of-fact about doing things when he feels something is wrong. It's in contrast to me and honestly, I really needed it, someone like him to remind me it it's possible to refuse to be so fatalistic. It's a Kantian, Camus thing; the striving matters for its own sake too, not just based on its merits overall in the final analysis. Even in the dark. Reminds me of when A quizzed R on whether he thought his not eating mainstream chocolate even meant a damn really, and does that ever make him second-guess. It's a personal need to not just passively suck in/imbibe what comes down the stream. You do it for yourself and your need for personal inherent dignity and hope sometimes, for the acknowledgment maybe you can't control anything else in the world but you still have control over yourself, you can choose and refuse things for yourself. You make decisions you, YOU (as Cummings said over and over, no one can be exactly you for yourself except, well, YOU) can live with. There it is. That is not for nothing.
Not that I'm usually any different on the outside really but he has helped me, internally at least.