...暗流...: 无政府主义

History is a weapon

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:27:37 GMT

关于历史书上哥伦布被认为是航海英雄，历史学家Howard Zinn写到：
摘自Howard Zinn的书籍<A People's History Of The United States>
       One can lie outright about the past. Or one can omit facts which might lead to unacceptable conclusions. Morison does neither. He refuses to lie about Columbus. He does not omit the story of mass murder; indeed he describes it with the harshest word one can use: genocide.
       But he does something else-he mentions the truth quickly and goes on to other things more important to him. Outright lying or quiet omission takes the risk of discovery which, when made, might arouse the reader to rebel against the writer. To state the facts, however, and then to bury them in a mass of other information is to say to the reader with a certain infectious calm: yes, mass murder took place, but it's not that important-it should weigh very little in our final judgments; it should affect very little what we do in the world.
       It is not that the historian can avoid emphasis of some facts and not of others. This is as natural to him as to the mapmaker, who, in order to produce a usable drawing for practical purposes, must first flatten and distort the shape of the earth, then choose out of the bewildering mass of geographic information those things needed for the purpose of this or that particular map.
       My argument cannot be against selection, simplification, emphasis, which are inevitable for both cartographers and historians. But the map-maker's distortion is a technical necessity for a common purpose shared by all people who need maps. The historian's distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending interests, where any chosen emphasis supports (whether the historian means to or not) some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial or national or sexual.
       Furthermore, this ideological interest is not openly expressed in the way a mapmaker's technical interest is obvious ("This is a Mercator projection for long-range navigation-for short-range, you'd better use a different projection"). No, it is presented as if all readers of history had a common interest which historians serve to the best of their ability. This is not intentional deception; the historian has been trained in a society in which education and knowledge are put forward as technical problems of excellence and not as tools for contending social classes, races, nations.
       To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to de-emphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity but an ideological choice. It serves- unwittingly-to justify what was done. My point is not that we must, in telling history, accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality. But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save Western civilization; Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism; nuclear proliferation, to save us all)-that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth. We have learned to give them exactly the same proportion of attention that teachers and writers often give them in the most respectable of classrooms and textbooks. This learned sense of moral proportion, coming from the apparent objectivity of the scholar, is accepted more easily than when it comes from politicians at press conferences. It is therefore more deadly.
       The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks)-the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress-is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders. It is as if they, like Columbus, deserve universal acceptance, as if they-the Founding Fathers, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, the leading members of Congress, the famous Justices of the Supreme Court-represent the nation as a whole. The pretense is that there really is such a thing as "the United States," subject to occasional conflicts and quarrels, but fundamentally a community of people with common interests. It is as if there really is a "national interest" represented in the Constitution, in territorial expansion, in the laws passed by Congress, the decisions of the courts, the development of capitalism, the culture of education and the mass media.
       "History is the memory of states," wrote Henry Kissinger in his first book, A World Restored, in which he proceeded to tell the history of nineteenth-century Europe from the viewpoint of the leaders of Austria and England, ignoring the millions who suffered from those statesmen's policies. From his standpoint, the "peace" that Europe had before the French Revolution was "restored" by the diplomacy of a few national leaders. But for factory workers in England, farmers in France, colored people in Asia and Africa, women and children everywhere except in the upper classes, it was a world of conquest, violence, hunger, exploitation-a world not restored but disintegrated.

手写日记电子版

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:11:42 GMT

2007年10月14日周日阴

前几天在听《那就是我》这首n老的歌时竟然很感动。坐在沙发上，一大早眼泪就伴随音乐呼之欲出。不知道是否因为勾起了思乡的情绪，还是怀旧的情绪。“。。。哦妈妈，如果有一朵浪花在向你招手，那就是我，那就是我。。。”吃早点的时候，有些忧虑自己的将来，忧虑着忧虑着再次回到“随遇而安”。笑一笑，也罢。不知日后是否会后悔这种“也罢”。至少现在不后悔。

再次思考Merleau Ponty:

“Retreating to a world of individual bodily and sensory experience would not enable us to escape the political degradations of our culture. Even at this most basic level, we inhabit an intersubjective world, not one stripped bare of the effects of human interaction,,,,,,, the polotical distempers of our times are 'born within this tissue which we have woven between ourselves, and which suffocates us' and which constitutes the very fabric of our most private-seeing experiences...."

试着翻译如下：（英文好的还是看英文原文）

退到个人的身体和感觉的世界不会使我们逃脱文明在政治上的堕落。即使在最基础的层面上，我们居住于互相影响交织（intersubjective，不知道怎么翻这个词才准确）的世界，我们这个时代的政治瘟疫来自于我们互相编织的这个组织中，这个组织由我们每个人编织，而又是它把我们窒息。这个组织构成了我们看上去的最私人的生活之网。（一言以蔽之，我们既是始作俑者，又是受害者）

此段文字之意即是我在10月3日的日记中写到的：个人不应该退缩到自己私人的躯壳中来享受所谓的淡定的幸福，因为个人的遭遇和经历具有比个人本身更大的意义，是构成了世界，又是世界的缩影，直接受到政治的影响。因此即使退到“个人”里也是逃不掉的。我们既是各种公司利益和政治利益的牺牲品，又同时为他们搭建了滋长的温床，为他们服务。就如同，90年代很多工厂改制之前，大多数工人的生活还过得去，可是之后却由于工厂被卖带来的经济影响而家庭破裂。而这个事情的受益者甚至可以追到现今的拥有原工厂地皮的房地产商，银行，政府和商业富豪。一系列的关联，装作看不见就算了吗？用个人命运的不幸来解释和掩盖一切罪恶吗？

"the very real sense we have of being able to surpass and move beyond our inmmediate circumsatances is generated within the fabric of the intersubjective, material world we inhabit: it is nothing less and nothing more than an intensely activated aspect of its continual self-transformation." 这一段文字意义深刻，不做翻译，大家各自体会吧。

另外发觉艺术的其他意义, 也是生命与思想如何交织的意义和方式：

"the incessant process of projecting beyond while necessarily remaining immersed within the given material substances of things."

手写日记电子版

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 12:30:46 GMT

2007年10月6日周六晴

Chomsky制造共识的最后一段中说“重要的是你在做”。——首先是为了改变现状向更多的人传达真实，引起更多的人的关注。纪录片中提到的美国更为自由的私人媒体，杂志都是漫长的几代人需要走的道路上小小的起点，而我们离这个起点都仍然很远。

电视里是如何“宣传”消费主义的：湖南卫视展示某女星收藏的大批的鞋子，主持人们纷纷附和说“好棒”，粉丝们纷纷效仿，消费主义的接力棒传递了下去，拜金主义继续滋生，社会和人生终极标准被误导为消费和享受，社会悲剧产生。我们都成了“公司化政府”和公司利益的牺牲品而不自知，反而津津乐道。

手写日记电子版

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 12:20:27 GMT

2007年10月3日周三晴

前几日在网上看到关于于丹在百家讲坛中所讲的孔子的“淡定”的评论，评论认为在当今社会诸多弊端暴露的时候，这种淡定是错误的，是逆来顺受，从而否定了论语的价值。对此有话要说：

我们需要的淡定是什么：

无论于丹和百家讲坛是蓄意的还是无意的灌输“逆来顺受”的“淡定”，尤其是在目前社会体制弊端频频暴露的时候，我们不应该因此否认孔子思想的的的价值。虽然这种思想千百年来被统治阶级利用的原因之一就是它可以导致的“逆来顺受”的“淡定”。

然而时代已变，我们真正应该思考的是：我们现在需要的“淡定”究竟是什么？——是不受外界的诱惑，仍能坚守内心的信仰！对于广大的民众来说，在可能的环境下，对“不公”“丑恶”“政治黑暗”进行反抗，争取真正的民主与自由。显然我们不应该逆来顺受，钻到个人的躯壳中体会所谓的“幸福”，所谓的“淡定”。尤其是在目前的科技发展的情况下，在这个语境下，按照乔姆斯基的话说，民众已经有能力进行某些方面的反抗（比如我们目前可以抵制消费主义，现代奴隶制，虚伪民主等等，以及其他更广泛的反抗），或者说这种反抗的能力已经不远。这都需要我们用淡定来排除外界的诱惑，坚守内心的信仰。

如果没有追求的信仰，“淡定”就成了逆来顺受；如果没有追求的信仰，“淡定”就成了自私的苟延残喘；如果没有追求的信仰，“淡定”的价值和意义又从属于何方呢？并且从历史上来看，即使是封建时代，逆来顺受的“淡定”也不是当时人们，尤其是知识阶层的追求。逆来顺受是一种陋习，恰恰满足了统治阶层的需要。

罗素的three passions:对爱的渴求，对知识的探索，对受压迫民众的悲悯（我们都处在社会的悲苦中，我们每个人的遭遇都含有比我们想象中更大的意义。）

我的一些评论

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 07:40:41 GMT

一段时间以前，有报道说一对美国夫妇穿反对布什的T恤被抓后获得赔偿8万美元，在北青网上看到一些网友在大赞美国的民主，甚至认为美国没有强权政治。心中既想哭又想笑，于是回帖如下：

如果因为这个就认可美国的民主是错误的（虽然他们的可能比我们的好一点，我想说两者都不好）。如果各位感兴趣，可以在youtube上搜索“police brutality“关键词，就会找到n多关于美国警察暴行的视频，甚至一个人因为没有及时的掏出身份证就将其逮捕，这样的例子数不胜数，虽然很多被逮捕的人后来得到了钱，但是我们需要深挖一下钱在这里的意义和作用是什么。对于大部分受害人来说钱在这里是没有意义的，并且这些赔偿的钱一方面对于政府是用来缓和冲突的工具，另一方面对于政府的腐败来说是九牛一毛。再说说这些事件的结果，结果是没有任何改变，警察依然有很多暴行，并且这些暴行仅仅被官方认为是 “偶尔的失职“，给受害者一些钱，然后让相关警察放假反思（简直就是“奖励“），不该发生的依然正在发生，除了受害者之外，其他民众的愤怒还被平息了，这难道不是政府给受害者补偿的真正用意吗？这对美国夫妇反对布什，得了8万美元后布什难道不是仍然进行着战争，给美国人民继续制造灾难？那对美国夫妇是为了这8万才反对他的吗？那8万美元又起到了什么作用呢？看看我们在这里的讨论就知道了——大家正在称赞美国的民主。

美国的言论自由可能是世界上最自由的，但是也只是相对的。虚伪的民主无处不在。不要让它愚弄我们的智商。

...暗 流...: 无政府主义

History is a weapon

手写日记电子版

手写日记电子版

手写日记电子版

我的一些评论

...暗流...: 无政府主义