Margaret Morse on Thu, 24 Feb 2011 06:17:18 +0100 (CET) |
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Re: <nettime> How a Library Saved My Life. |
Dear Marc and Goran, Thanks for your moving posts. Marc, your story reminded me of my childhood. Poverty in a remote and economically depressed area in the US was actually not the worst of it; it was rather being terrorized in every aspect of life, from the cold war (and the atom bomb) as I experienced it at school and in the community, as well as in a family dominated by a man formed by a cruel Victorian father, hoboing in the depression and suffering traumatizing events during WWII. What was hardest for me to bear was the violent, narrow and loveless conceptual world of a right winger. What helped me survive this bleak emotional and cultural life was not the other adults around me or, regretfully, other children, or having wonderful ocnversations at the library like the ones you experienced, but rather through voracious reading of books that convey emotions and values that I couldn't experience in the physical world around me. I found books in the garage and the attic, but most of them were in the local Carnegie Library. (It is ironic that the rapacious Carnegie didn't employ compassion for humanity in his business methods so as to distribute his wealth more evenly throughout his life.) I am sure that at its best, parts of the internet function as you suggest, Marc, like a library, offering conversation with other realms of experience that can "save our lives." As far as Goran's story of predatory lending in the student loan program, it really breaks my heart that those who take advantage of and exploit people in abject poverty, eg the grameen bank in a profit making mode, think it is not only legal, it is their right. I am sorry that Goran's education was bought at too great a cost--a student loan as terrifying nightmare. However, I think it is short sighted to draw the conclusion that there hasn't been and thus will not be any change at all. You ask, why can't we change things? Learning that in possible or other worlds, things aren't or don't have to be this way has intrinsic value. It is learning that encourages change, but it also takes ongoing action. I thank the part of American society that struggles every day to defend the rights we have already attained that are now threatened and that works to realize specific and new kinds of rights and practices, including the most difficult and crucial task of saving the natural world. As your story, Marc, cautions, this learning shouldn't be equated with a formal education, though education is the place where we structurally really ought to be accorded this chance. So sorry if this is screed-like. Margaret Morse On Feb 23, 2011, at 4:01 PM, marc garrett wrote: > Thinking back to the harsh times of my early years in contrast to where > I am now, I owe much of my current state of being to that Library in > Southend on Sea. What will become of those other young souls who will not > have the choice themselves to experience alternative avenues out of the > systemic limits of imposed poverty? The Internet is an extension to > libraries not its replacement. Education and knowledge is a varied and > wonderful thing. Once taken away, we are less empowered, more likely to > conform to the whims of others who do not have our best interests in > mind. <...> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org