Re: that NY Times article

On Apr 30, 2006, at 10:07 PM, Judy Seigel wrote:

>
> The article Pam mentions is the article I recommended, probably so
> far into something else nobody saw it. I PROMISE it answers many
> of the questions brought up today and yesterday -- in terms, not
> just of naivete, or people being evil, but of -- excuse the
> expression, human nature.
>
> I think reading it would take this discussion to another level...

Okay, that does it.

This article is a logical mess, and doesn't explain anything. A more
useful thing to read IMO for understanding what happened in Nazi
Germany and what's going on today might be Erich Fromm, "Escape from
Freedom," which actually makes sense.

This NYT article is supposedly about fundamentalism, but doesn't even
bother to define the term. It implies in the second paragraph that
the Nazi movement was one of many "forms of tyrannical
fundamentalism" then goes on explain Freud's theory about why people
might follow a tyrannical leader (a theory that seems pure BS to me,
but that's not my point here). Now we have to ask ourselves, what
does blindly following a leader have to do with fundamentalism? Is
he saying that the "fundamentalist urge" is the urge to blindly
follow a tyrannical leader? No definition of fundamentalism I know of
requires adherence to a tyrannical leader. What's more, I don't
think that what's happening today in the US can be adequately
explained by blind adherence to a tyrannical leader.

What characterizes fundamentalism is a strong convinction that you
are in possession of Truth, an inability to see things from someone
else's perspective, an utter intolerance for other points of view.
This is true of Bush and his gang, and it is also true of the tone of
many of the posts in this thread. The one useful paragraph in this
NYT article, IMO, is the last paragraph, where he cautions that
those who fight against tyranny can become tyrannical themselves.
"When that happens, a war of fundamentalisms has begun, and of that
war there can be no victor." THIS is the real danger.

> in fact remove much of the animus, which it does seem is already
> lower. That's good. We've bottled up these feelings for "peace on
> the list" for years. If they come out now, for a while anyway,
> without hysterics and rage (or KILL THE MESSENGER as did happen
> briefly) it's better, not worse for "the list," which is after all
> a "community."

But what you seem to have failed to grasp is that the community
includes Dave Rose and Tom Ferguson and other people who don't agree
with you about politics, and room and respect must be offered and
restraint must be exercised so that people of all political stances
can feel comfortable belonging here and discussing photography. I am
probably to the left of almost any US citizen here, but I don't want
Tom Ferguson called a nazi any more than I want people who agree with
me politically to be called names. The point is that our political
opinions should not be of interest here, one way or the other,
because this is not a political list. The only thing of interest here
is alternative photography. Those who choose to continue making this
a political list, will kill this list.

Katharine Thayer
Received on 05/01/06-03:23:12 AM Z