Saturday, August 6, 2022

TIME FLIES, WHETHER YOU ARE HAVING FUN OR NOT

Some of you, although of course perhaps not all, may have noticed that I have not been posting as much on this blog lately, and I thought I would take a few moments to explain why. Until 2008 I was quite unaware of the phenomenon of blogging, but as I approached retirement and became concerned about what I would do with myself, my son, Patrick, suggested that I start a blog and so I did. I began blogging steadily in June 2009 and at first the floodgates opened. It had been a while since I had been writing regularly and I had a great deal to say. In those early years, I wrote a 250,000 word autobiography online, I wrote enough tutorials, mini–tutorials, and appreciations to fill several volumes, which eventually found their way onto Amazon as Kindle books. Thanks for the most part to periodic links by Brian Leiter, I eventually built a readership that seems now to number perhaps several thousand people scattered around the world. I taught adult education courses at Duke University, spent a year visiting at Bennett College in Greensboro, taught several courses close to home at UNC Chapel Hill, and even for two years traveled every Tuesday in the fall to New York to teach at Columbia. I recorded and posted more than 30 hours of lectures on a wide range of topics. In short, I have kept busy since I retired in 2008.

 

Time passes and inexorably I have grown older until now, as I am not too many months from my 89th birthday, I have finally begun to describe myself, albeit reluctantly, as “old.” Somehow along the way I managed to develop Parkinson’s disease – I was diagnosed 2 ½ years ago, but the doctor who made the diagnosis offered the opinion that I had in fact had the disease for two years before that. Almost a year ago, I was forced to give up the early morning walks that had been a part of my life for many years. I took to using what is called a “rollalator.”  What started as a tremor in my left hand has now progressed to “freezing,” a result I am told of insufficient dopamine getting to certain points in my nervous system. Last month my wife and I finally sold the little Paris apartment that has been our delight since 2004.

 

Although I shall start teaching a new and complex course at UNC a week from Monday, I am not the man I used to be and the course, which would have been, 40 or 50 years ago, a demand on my time and energy so slight as scarcely to be noticeable now consumes my days.

 

Added to my personal troubles are of course two rather larger matters that have had an unexpectedly powerful effect on my thoughts and feelings: the two years and more in virtual lockdown because of the Covid pandemic and the serious threats to the very life and continuation of such electoral democracy as we have in the United States. I find myself wondering what it must have been like to live in Germany or Italy or Spain in the years leading up to the onset of fascism in those countries.

 

I am, for the first time since the early 1960s when I was consumed by the threat of nuclear war, perpetually angry.  I have always described myself somewhat wryly as a Tigger rather than an Eeyore, but it has become more and more difficult to maintain a bouncy cheerfulness in the face of the world and my own personal disabilities.

 

I shall continue to blog, but perhaps not as frequently and not at as great length as I have been these past 13 years. As I say, some of you may scarcely notice the change but for those who have noticed I thought I should say something.

17 comments:

  1. Thanks for keeping us up to date about what you're going through.

    Actually, your honest and lucid chronicle of the ageing process is as valuable for many of us as your reflections on Marx and Marcuse, perhaps more so. Take care of yourself..

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  2. "I find myself wondering what it must have been like to live in Germany or Italy or Spain in the years leading up to the onset of fascism in those countries."

    Among other things, there was the constant militia violence in the streets.

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  3. I do miss the tutorials but when you do blog, in classic professorial fashion, I do not notice a lessening of incisive commentary, analysis, and wit. Thankfully, the more serious blogs are just a few clicks away. And how is outrage not appropriate?

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  4. Jerry
    I think you mean the more serious *posts*. (The blog is the platform, the site; the individual entries are the posts.)

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  5. Dear Anonymous

    The militias can materialize any time. They are on call online. They are a virtual mob, but still a mob

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  6. We will all get to that bridge sooner or later. The prospects of worsening climate change, together with the rise of fascistic developments from the far right is maddening. Apparently we learned nothing from the horrors of WW2. I for one rush to see Professor Wolff your latest commentary as I know others here certainly do.

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  7. I've said this before, but anyway, in Spain fascism (some historians deny that Franco was a fascist, but...) triumphed after a long bloody civil war.

    In Germany it seems to me that Hitler at one point at least enjoyed widespread popular support throughout the whole country.

    In the U.S., on the other hand, there are regions of the country where the vast majority of the electorate is progressive or at least centrist non-fascist. I don't see those regions accepting a Trump dictatorship (if he wins in 2024 through fraud) and I believe that the country will simply break up.

    Trump himself tends to be a dove and I doubt that he would try to conquer the blue states through military force even if the red states acclaim him as fuhrer. In fact, the U.S. military is highly diverse in racial terms and many career military people would tend to support the blue states. So I don't see another civil war occurring.

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  8. Achim Kriechel (A.K.)August 8, 2022 at 7:29 AM

    it is not "only" fascism, imperialism and nationalism. It is at the same time the ignorance of the fact that the climate change, the extinction of species, the catastrophic exploitation of all resources and so on, can only be stopped or at least minimized in their effect in a global cooperation.

    The Trumps and Bolsonaros of this world, pull exactly on the other end of the rope. It's like the "dance on the volcano."

    If you realize how high the quality of this cooperation would have to be on a global level to make any difference at all.... one should plant an apple tree.

    The only exception is Xi Jinping. I often think that this whole monstrous digital surveillance apparatus that the communist party in China is building up, provides the equipment for the state of emergency that this dictatorship expects with a probability of 100%.

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  9. Just a word of thanks for the writing you've done here, which I discovered via Leiter, and which has been over the years a great resource for me. You've exposed me to work I otherwise wouldn't have seen, and your videos on Marx have been illuminating. There is a lot of raw sewage on the internet and your work here is a real oasis. Thank you.

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  10. someone said (about 30s Germany): 'Among other things, there was the constant militia violence in the streets"

    Well, we have that here. They're called "police"

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  11. David Auerbach,

    Not really. I have not seen any reports like that below occurring anywhere in the United States. Not yet, anyway.

    https://www.motl.org/the-photo-that-alerted-the-world/

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  12. Achim Kriechel (A.K.)August 9, 2022 at 3:47 AM

    I think there are good reasons to distinguish between fascism and Nazism in Germany. They share, among other things, the mythologically derived nationalism and the imperialism derived from it. Certainly Italy, Spain and the fascist movements in the Balkans were not free of racism. In Germany, however, extreme anti-Semitism was part of the DNA of the Nazi movement from the beginning. It was the constitutive moment and the all-determining motive.

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  13. Tick tock, tick tock.

    https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/08/politics/mar-a-lago-search-warrant-fbi-donald-trump/index.html

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  14. Examples of capitalist profligacy, deserved expressions of talent and/or acumen, or criticism based on sour grapes?

    https://www.history-a2z.com/amazing-celebrity-houses/96?xcmg=1

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  15. Post-script:

    The headline for the montage I linked to above was, “See where O.J. Simpson is now living.” I took the bait, and looked at every one of the homes featured in the montage, waiting to see where O.J. is now living. Result? No. O.J. and no dwelling where O.J. is currently living. Did this teaser lie generate money for the publisher? If so, is it an example of how some/many capitalists generate money by prevarication? Did I deserve to be misled, after all, what is it my business where O.J. is currently living?

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  16. Thank you for your unflinching description of your current situation, both physically and intellectually. As one of those students, 40-50 years ago, in the mid seventies, I can honestly attest that your classes were transformative for me. Best regards...

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