I am sure many of you know it:
– apparently “one of these videos”, going viral … (sorry, it is youtube but you may manage – or look for “What Did I Do Is For Your Own Good」 – Shanghai Rainbow Chamber Singers”
Can make somebody who is working in third level education thinking …, about “towards what” are we teaching, and also thinking about the doctor and professor uncles and aunties …
There it is also said it would be about love … or something this way. And sure it is: love of people, love of the job and career in terms of “commitment” and “inner devotion”, what Max Weber had in mind when he speaks of personal calling (see e.g. in Economy and Society in the paragraph on Prophet versus Priest; and of course, when he looks as Politics as Vocation and Science as Vocation.
And this is surely something we – as students and teachers (i.e. eternal students) – have to emphasises: it is the love to truth. Something that means also the readiness to engage, eve if it possibly painful at times.
I was thinking about this the other day, when reading an article, dealing with Trump’s “real moves” now.
No, nobody can claim “But I did not know.” And we all have it remember
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Last Sunday I spoke to a friend, also saying: yes, he is dangerous – but sometimes I think the many distractions we saw for instance as determining the recent Davos-Agenda are more dangerous, hiding the agenda behind …, yes, exactly, behind words of love …..
And yes, harshness of Trump makes if too often forgetting what is behind some of those declarations, makes us forget that others standing the second row, calling for a new leadership. And it makes us equally easily forgetting or overlooking that it is still relevant to speak about
and how they work today, in the supposed of the open community, with the five rules of providing encyclopedic knowledge, written from a neutral point of view, (re)presenting free content – free to us, edit and distribute – offered by people who treat each other with respect and civility, without firm rules, and available where we find all the Wisdom of the Wide World — may be that, while I wrote on “New Princedoms“, I should have asked as well if these New Princedoms are also about repulsing women’s status on a new level.
Power and love is not only a topic for feminism (just some ideas are outlined here; but .., yes, also for where we, the old and the young want to go together.
Anyway, all the best for the new year …, the year of rooster …, we have to give the bird some wings …!! And talk also about power again … – and the contradictions of hegemonic systems, systems where we can apparently only succeed by using those instruments against which we fight …
COMMEDIA DELLA VITA OR PÁNTA RÊI'S FIRM GROUND 
A proposito d’amore…e morte, Eros and Thanatos : January 27th, the day when the gates of Auschwitz had been knocked down. Every Italian town, every community has a special event in order to remember this date.
Per non dimenticare…
I wonder whether it is just us, Italians, who have a memorial day for the Holocaust or even the rest of the world does.
I wonder why we only have a memorial day for the Holocaust leaving out the many other state crimes infringing the right to life and liberty.
Per non dimenticare… Not to forget . It is noble. Wouldn’t it be nobler if we broaden the range of what needs to be remembered so that it won’t occur anymore?
Peter, it would be great if you could tackle this issue on the blog for an enlightening contribution to the debate I am going to have with my students in class.
Grazie mille!
"Mi piace""Mi piace"
Ciao Peter, whenever I read Niemoller’s text, George Grosz’s drawings come to my mind: there was a particular one in a pamphlet I came across many years ago (about the poor benighted Wilhelm Reich) that illustrates that text, but in a yahoo search that provides a surprising amount of his work, the ‘cartoon’ of the politicians/priests etc. comes close!
"Mi piace""Mi piace"
Thank you fir this …, leaving the immediate reference, to the great aside, there is a further meaning it, I suppose: aren’t we forgetting, while moaning, complaining, “celebrating desperation” forgetting too often the “real highnesses”?
"Mi piace""Mi piace"