My Stuff

https://umass-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/rwolff_umass_edu/EkxJV79tnlBDol82i7bXs7gBAUHadkylrmLgWbXv2nYq_A?e=UcbbW0

Coming Soon:

The following books by Robert Paul Wolff are available on Amazon.com as e-books: KANT'S THEORY OF MENTAL ACTIVITY, THE AUTONOMY OF REASON, UNDERSTANDING MARX, UNDERSTANDING RAWLS, THE POVERTY OF LIBERALISM, A LIFE IN THE ACADEMY, MONEYBAGS MUST BE SO LUCKY, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE USE OF FORMAL METHODS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for "Robert Paul Wolff Kant." There they will be.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON THE THOUGHT OF KARL MARX. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for Robert Paul Wolff Marx."





Total Pageviews

Saturday, May 2, 2015

RELAXING ON A SATURDAY MORNING


I find it extremely painful to sit helplessly by when something about which I care deeply but over which I have not the slightest control is being decided.  Just now, the Supreme Court is deliberating about two cases -- the fate of the Affordable Care Act [ACA] and the constitutionality of bans on same-sex marriage -- that matter a great deal to me.  I am not personally  affected by the fate of the ACA because my health insurance comes through Medicare and a supplementary plan offered by my UMass pension system, but I would be saddened and outraged if the five reactionary justices were to gut it.  The same-sex marriage case touches me personally, of course, because of my son, Tobias.  But I am forced to sit and wait for a decision from a group of people for whom, collectively, I have no respect whatsoever.

This is the appeal to me of sports.  I actually do not care who wins a football game, basketball game, baseball game, soccer game, or golf match, so I am emotionally free to root frantically so long as the team I have arbitrarily chosen to back is winning.  As soon as my team falls behind, I turn off the TV set or surf over to an NCIS rerun -- out of sight, out of mind.  When it comes to sports, I am completely a fair weather fan.  The emotional drain on me is non-existent.

All of this passed through my mind this morning as I sat in the Carolina Cafe.  After eating my lemon poppy seed muffin and managing, with tremendous effort, to complete the NY TIMES crossword puzzle [something that does in fact matter to me a good deal, I must confess], I sat for a bit reading the rest of the Saturday ARTS section.  The lead story today is a long, detailed account of a fight to the death between two Madrid museums who are feuding over which of them will get to exhibit several very famous paintings.  The case seems to hinge on decisions made some four or five hundred years ago by various Spanish monarchs.

I have never visited Spain, and at eighty-one, I rather expect I never shall.  What is more, the visual arts are not desperately important to me [whereas music very much is.]  So as they say down here in the Southland, I don't have a dog in this hunt.  It was a relaxed, amusing way to spend several minutes while finishing my coffee.  For that time, at least, I could allow myself to forget all the truly horrible things in this world over which I have no control.

 

5 comments:

Chris said...

Hypothetically, if they gut ACA, is there a chance single payer could then be considered a viable option?

Robert Paul Wolff said...

In your dreams!!! Go back and take a careful, objective look at the contortions the Obama administration had to go through to cobble together a bare 60 votes in the Senate. Now reflect on the fact that the House is controlled, apparently forever , by Republicans. What alternate universe do you live in?

Chris said...

A hypothetical one.... I didn't intend to suggest single payer was probable....?

mesnenor said...

It's interesting how different people find different puzzles difficult. You said today's required "tremendous effort" and I thought it was one of the easiest Saturday puzzles in months.

Of course if Rupert Sheldrake's ideas have any merit, then the fact that I did it in the afternoon, and you did it in the morning meant that it really was easier by the time I got to it, due to thousands and thousands of other people already having solved it.

Robert Paul Wolff said...

I bow to your superior skill.