Values and the Future (Revaluation of Values) is now available at the Kindle Store
Nietzsche said revaluation of values is the supreme task of the philosopher. Nietzsche called philosophers lawgivers. And yet the world continues to operate as though values were not something we are called to revise, develop, enunciate. The position of these recent reflections is allied with Nietzsche. The values suggested are vastly different from the usual, traditional pantheon.
Mark McKinnon on Plouffe and Obama http://bit.ly/5IJ7eA //it’s the synergy that will work IMO
Harold Ford’s Formula for Democratic Recovery http://bit.ly/8bq42H
Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan Goes Belly Up — worth less than half what it was during boom.
McChrystal says we should settle with the Taliban — enough fighting already.
Despite Today’s Meme, Things Look Good for Democrats Long Term http://bit.ly/4Wl1BY
Axelrod: Obama’s State of Union to focus on jobs http://bit.ly/7aA70q
Rivals will vie with Apple for tablet spotlight http://bit.ly/7memLF
Design — When More Is Decidedly Less http://bit.ly/82xX4T
Plouffe is back in the Obama driver’s seat http://bit.ly/8uMYYz
Al Qaeda now has female suicide bombers http://bit.ly/7PhIBg
More Than 150,000 Have Been Buried, Haiti Says http://bit.ly/8YDvU1
Sen. Kerry Says He’ll Vote for Bernanke http://bit.ly/7mWa6o
How liberals can take back the foreign policy mantle. http://bit.ly/6OAVjI
How bi-partisan can you be if you are opposing every Republican in sight. It is easy. In fact the entire instilling of a new White House militancy can be achieved by:
1, Bringing John Dean back in some key role. Like the DNC. Tim Kaine has been invisible. He is a man of great ability who should have a job more suited to his laid-back style. Dean would signal that the President is willing to work with progressives. We know he has always been that way. But the media?
2. Put David Plouffe into a conspicuous partnership role. David Plouffe was half the Obama winning team. When someone is needed to speak for the President, David Axelrod does not cut it with his ums and ahs. Sorry David. I can tell you do not like the role either. Plouffe has RFK instincts. That’s a talent for saying things in language the public can understand. Meaning well does not cut it. A new militancy requires a willingness to grasp the underlying issue by the throat and squeeze hard.
3. The big underlying issue is that Obama remains a person whose interest in social justice and fairness is balanced by a radical individualism that is typically associated with conservatives. We cannot let his bridge building potential fade as the media accuse him of vacating it for a new militancy. The new militancy is precisely taking back the flag of a new politics. Plouffe articulates it best.
4. The final key is to be honest about the amount of change that is needed. I believe this may be the underlying problem facing the President. We are a nation awash in personal debt and drugs. These are individual problems as well as social issues. We are a nation that needs to stop relying on oil and to end our dependence on an unsustainable automobile-metrosprawl economy.
We will only have the new jobs we need when we are pointed not toward recovery but toward creation of a sustainable economy which is not drug saturated and in permanent debt and which is taking an ecologically sound route to a recreation of community.
Sad but true, I believe. Dispersed homes will never recover their “value”.
Economic viability in the future will be five times greater for those living in close proximity in communities that integrate a good deal of what is now all over the map. Another way of saying this: Energy costs are five times greater in dispersion than in denser areas.
Both the dispersed (metrosprawl) model and the commute-by-car, do-everything-by-car models are unsustainable. Ultimately it may be less expensive to redesign and rebuild communities from scratch, than try to continue propping up today’s default sprawl.
This is the underlying reason for the crisis we are in. Remember we said we needed to move to a post-oil economy?
Current efforts to tie recovery to the resuscitation of the automobile and housing markets are unlikely to do more than sputter. Meanwhile the vision of a truly sustainable economy can be found in the thought of thinkers like Christopher Alexander.
Stephen Curtiss Rose 