Idiocy and the Sublime

Two new Rushkoff-related posts for the new year.

First, a great - if abstract and lengthy - interview with Pop Occulture about my work, my thoughts about media, and a whole lot of deep stuff about the nature of life and such.

“As for what constitutes the authentic human being, well, I guess it’s have something to do with the *other* human beings. I don’t know if we’re fully constituted unless we’re in relationship with other ones. Somehow, it seems to me that this whole notion of individuality, born in Ancient Greece but revived during the Renaissance, is a crock. And it leads to a lot of paradoxes that go away once you realize people don’t really exist if they’re alone. Medically, it’s the main reason people get depressed and die - they’re cut off from the rest of the human organism. They are no longer constituted.”  more…

Second, what I’d consider to be an idiotic “call to arms” by the American Jewish Committee - the largest Jewish organization in the US.  In their new whitepaper, “Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism,” they blame “progressive Jews,” and yours truly by name, for promoting the extinction of the Jewish people. Of course, in my opinion, it is their racist and triumphalist stance that represents the antithesis of the Mosaic insights - and the greatest threat to what it was Jews have to offer the world in the first place.

Download the paper if you’re interested, or check out Dan Sieradski’s more lucid response at Jewschool:
”...there is no safe space for legitimate criticism of Israel within the Jewish community itself. Those who question Israeli policies are hastily isolated, demonized, marginalized and excluded. The resentment of this treatment frequently results in movement towards the farthest fringes of the discourse and the adoption of a tarnished impression of the Jewish community.”

Labels: interview, jewschool, Judaism, popocculture