We took a look at all of the show suggestions today, and responses are posted here.
Sunday February 12 2012
© 2012 Radio Open Source | licensed for free distribution under Creative Commons
This site is based on a design by Orman Clark
Sunday February 12 2012
We took a look at all of the show suggestions today, and responses are posted here.
© 2012 Radio Open Source | licensed for free distribution under Creative Commons
This site is based on a design by Orman Clark
My original post was intentionally open-ended, without being explicit, because I was hoping to stimulate diverse responses that might have been inhibited if I instead had taken the initial ideas down only one or another path. But, I’ll now try to be more explicit.
First, let me restate the central problem: The political divisions within the USA have been growing increasingly severe over a number of years. At times I ask myself if we’re tantamount to two separate countries which, if left to their own instincts, would be making dramatically different decisions with respect both to international and domestic policies. Feelings of frustration and anger are quite strong among large numbers of the populace. There is a frightening sense of alienation, as well. We are clearly divided by questions pertaining to our relations with others in the world (the question of the propriety of preemptive war, or possibly even the role of torture, are some examples here) or to the rights of citizens within our own nation (the questions of abortion, gay rights, responses to poverty, etc. are examples). But beyond this we span nearly opposite worlds even on such matters as the acceptance of Darwinian evolution. These differences in part correspond to the Red vs Blue divisions made so famous on the election nights of recent years. My original post somewhat playfully asked whether the White in the flag of our nation must necessarily represent a surrender by one group to the other? But the central question is, how do we proceed forward as a country?
My reference to the American Civil War brought up a certain irony–the South, which originally sought to secede from the Union, was defeated, and the Union prevailed. But now, in the early 21st century, are the tables in some sense reversed? So-called conservative values are now seen as a threat to individual rights by many more liberal, and specifically by those identifying with the concept embodied by the Blue states. Which brings me to the first possible path of the original post: What defines a nation? Over time, do identities of nations evolve and emerge anew? Despite our mantras and despite the way the Civil War came out, might we possibly be better fit by being two nations rather than one? Is there conceivably a win-win, peaceful way in which we could reformulate ourselves so that the Red states were grouped into a somewhat coherent nation and the Blue states into another? Would we actually find more harmony in our lives under such an arrangement? The practical hurdles to this would be enormous, and perhaps the negatives would far outweigh the positives. But it could certainly make for a very interesting hour of radio.
The second possible path from the original post is less radical a departure from the present. Here, I would like to hear a discussion of how we might consider revising our federation within our single nation. Might we move from the concept of states versus nation into an intermediate concept of having two large regions within the nation, each comprising multiple states? The regions might again roughly correspond to the Red vs Blue division we presently know. The idea here is that people could broadly self-select in what type of society they wished to live, at least with respect to domestic legislation. If we truly are deeply divided as a people between what, for lack of better terminology, is conservative vs liberal, then perhaps we could lessen this incessant conflict amongst ourselves if people could live in the broad region of the country that best reflected their orientations. Given our mobility as a civilization, limiting one’s home to a single state is not terribly practical. But it might be more practical to have a sense of identity living within a broad region comprising many states.
Finally, a third path I at least hoped to hear input on in my original post was an exploration of how we might regain a more shared vision of the world within our existing national framework. Certainly this cannot be by the Blues simply surrendering to the Reds or vice versa. Rather, it would be by the emergence of leadership not only of a political nature, but of a social and intellectual nature as well, that could make significant strides in reducing the sharp differences that presently characterize us. It is beyond my comprehension how this might actually be accomplished, but my hope was that some of the great minds of our day might be able to weigh in on this topic. What a show that would be.
That would make a great show, but before you do such a show, read The Urban Archipelago, http://www.urbanarchipelago.com/, maybe even invite one of the authors on. It challenges the idea of red/blue states by arguing that it’s more about urban and rural.
More still on the Red, White and Blue program(s): The program thoughts offered above concern large issues in the life of this country. But an understandable response would be, why think in such big terms now? Is this such a special point in time? Impossible to know with any certainty. But I would point out that increasingly it’s starting to feel like the period around 1968, when not only this country, but others as well experienced quite a bit of turmoil. The recent rioting in Paris is reminiscent of the trans-Atlantic rumblings from the 1968 Events of May in Paris, although clearly the key participants in the present unrest are quite different from the student-based participants in 1968. Are the frustration, anger, and alienation of today simply a part of business as usual in our civilization, or are we finding ourselves in an increasingly combustible state where some yet unforseen spark will ignite more than just a rhetorical response? A show devoted to assessing this question could be of considerable interest.
Another thought for a program: “EVOLUTION of the Bird Flu”. In the earlier program and blog discussions on the attack upon evolution by the intelligent design supporters, a point taken concerned our difficulty in comprehending the significance of long time intervals. Particularly for those whose forte does not appear to be deductive reasoning, our ususal inability to witness major genetic change in real time makes it all the harder to accept the concept of biologic evolution. But it is that very concept that allows us to understand the biology of this virus. Surely the development of genetic changes within the virus that allow it to move from an avian host to a human host–while the whole world is watching–is a superb example of evolution occuring right under our eyes. The President is calling for a major national response to a possible bird flu epidemic, while at the same time creating an atmosphere hostile to our students gaining a deep and clear understanding of the very mechanisms by which these biological events are occurring. I think an exposition of this matter could make for a great hour of radio.
As someone with a tongue in cheek attitude (one hopes) once asked:
“Given that it is unlikely that enough vaccine effective for the avian flu N1H5 (?) virus will be available to serve more than a small percentage of the world’s population if a pandemic occurs, will the vaccine be denied the Creationists since this virus cannot evolve in their world to affect them?”
Cheers.
A few nontopical topics I’d love to hear you talk about:
-mjking suggested “Bike messengers in the age of the Internet.” Let’s hear from a few local and NYC bike messengers–their somewhat underground culture, how their business is changing, their greatest crashes.
-potter suggested a show on Nicholas Ostler’s new book, Empires of the Word. I haven’t started the book, but it sounds
like a Jared Diamond type of analysis through the world of linguistics: why have some languages survived and are spoken
by the people speak them? What are the lineages of the world’s lagnuages?
-Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy wrote an oped in the Times a couple weeks ago critical of the 1918 flu virus genetic map. To me, this is
an open source issue, and is reminiscent of the Diebold voting machines debate–will releasing source code for public scrutiny
effect more, or less secure?
-French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy’s year-long trek across America, documented in his series, “In the Footsteps of Tocqueville.” His journey ended in Boston.
-Computer game item farms. In the Readings section of this month’s Harper’s there’s a piece on the real business of these virtual economies (est sizeA: half a billion $). If you canj’t stretch that out to an hour’s worth, in the same magazine, there’s an article on the problem with war movies. Also I recall Sontag wrote something about war photographs years ago. Maybe a show on war pictures — whether static or moving -and how we interpret these pictures considering how far removed this war seems to be for the majority of Americans.
I second Obadiah….I would love to hear Bernard- Henri Levy.
A discussion with the Goodwin’s would be very interesting. Doris just published her book on Lincoln and Richard recently produced a play. Richard is an enigmatic figure with a dynamic resume. He was the protagonist of “Quiz show�, the movie based on his book, “Remembering America.� He was a key advisor and speechwriter for the Kennedy’s and Lyndon Johnson, now he focuses more on writing plays. He graduated at the top of his class at Harvard Law School but decided to ENLIST in the Army. He has his fingerprints all over the American landscape; politics, pop culture, and the arts. Gore actually called him to help with his concession speech. All this and his wife is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian, and insatiable baseball fan. Their son also served time in Iraq. Best of all, they are keeping Emerson’s vision alive by living in Concord.