I'm listening to a TOP 20 radio station. OH MY GOD.
(Had to use that phrase because of where I grew up)
All the songs that are in english are from the 80s! During my high school days. Some later college stuff, but mostly pop.
A couple of german-like songs... which they play 3-5 times a day I think. Much like all the US radio station rotating their new "hip" songs. Rotating them endlessly... ad naseum.
Here's something I wrote a couple of weekends ago when I had time to read some MLK.
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Been reading MLK collection: A Testament of Hope, ed. By James M Washington.
It’s was a mantel piece back in
Just finished reading “Showdown for Nonviolence”; it was an article that came out just after he was assassinated by James Earl Ray. (random = James Earl Jones is Black!!!)
He talks of the need for nonviolence. He was organizing a large movement that summer to stem the violent rioting that had occurred the in the past two summers. As it was, he was killed and the worst period of racial rioting occurred that summer.
I’m trying to connect thought streams here. It is very difficult for me. Two many of them. Like the neuron “pruning” that occurs during development. We have more neuronal connection (when? During embryo or postnatal?) but these connection are pruned/eliminated as we grow. Less connection for a more efficient and function adult, who is intergraded into the current functioning organism. Perhaps one day these many thought connections will be “prune” so that I can better express and perhaps integrate into the current social/political/cultural human specie? Or perhaps my function lies elsewhere.
Anyways, back to MLK and his dream. He was changing. The movement was changing. He was asking for social change for the poor, more jobs and less unemployment. This is strikingly similar to Gandhi’s approach. It is basically a socialist approach. I can not discuss this aspect of the problem because I don’t know enough. I am sure there are many essays on this topic, especially in the
My comment is on the still underlying “Rage of the Privileged Class” and the poor too. (tangent = this Word auto-correction program really forces you to write in complete sentences). Witness the LA riots after the King verdict (irony? Rodney “Dangerfield/the Clown” King is the martyr). With the video beating of King, we (and the Black community nationwide) had direct proof of the on going discrimination of the poor Blacks/Negros (old-skool!). Here was dramatic, repugnant and clear evidence of what many young, male, blacks experience in US cities. And yet, the white police officers were cleared. The old frustration vents. There are many, many articles on this just after the riots.
But now in 2006 where are we? I don’t want to engage in political commentary. There are many blogs who do this. Where is social justice in the 21st century? We have a black man on the Supreme Court, yet he is very conservative. We have had a black Joint Staff Chairman. And a secretary of state. (and now a black women Sec of State, SoS?, or SS?)
So where we? I think better. And change is accelerating. MLK talked about the end coming for the White supremist. Their hour is almost up.
Perhaps here I speak about the coming of any end to this transitional social/cultural organism. A death of sorts, like the one I mentioned above. There is only extinction or change. We become something else, not better or worse, just different. It is the dynamic tension between those who don’t want to change and those who are for hyperchange that will be interesting to watch over the year. Change will win, I have no doubt, but there are many, many pathways between these two states (though there really isn’t a final state, I’m just using a convenient math/P. chem.. analogy.)
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