http://roughroadreview.com/blogs/blog1.php?disp=comments en-US http://backend.userland.com/rss 60 Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:13:05 +0000 Steve Belasco [Member] c126@http://roughroadreview.com/blogs/ La Societe du Malaise not available in English. You are going to have to translate it Bill. Have you read anything else by Alain Ehrenberg? Thanks for this post. It keeps running through my mind. http://roughroadreview.com/blogs/blog1.php/2010/02/23/pathological-narcissism-nationalized#c126 Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:03:59 +0000 Steve Belasco [Member] c125@http://roughroadreview.com/blogs/ When you read something so well thought out that touches on something you too had thought of there are a number of things that run through your mind. In a very small part of your mind you think, hey, I thought of that. But in a larger, dare I say better part of your mind you feel reassured and connected. You feel a kinship, camaraderie. I have had occasion to remark on the gradual isolation of individual Americans and wonder whose purposes it served. We don’t go to parks. We have our own little parks in our backyards. We don’t go to the theatre or to concerts. We have our own theatre and concert machines at home: televisions. We don’t go to town meetings. We don’t gather in public squares. We have our televisions. We don’t talk. We text. We don’t write long thoughtful letters. We e-mail. We don’t gather to hash things out; we meet with the like-minded and vent in unison. And I have compared this movement toward what I have rather lamely and simply called isolation to, for example, the behavior of recent immigrants from older cultures. In California I observe new arrivals from Mexico who gather in the parks, in the failing local mall, on street corners driven I have supposed by a need for social interchange. For me these were simply observations, inchoate observations that I had not linked to anything larger. To read this piece and see some linkage is exhilarating. Thank you, Bill. Would you translate Ehrenberg’s book for me? I need to read it. http://roughroadreview.com/blogs/blog1.php/2010/02/23/pathological-narcissism-nationalized#c125