In reviewing the Marx reading in class and on my own, I came to some sad conclusions about my faith in modern man. I understand in full the differentiation Marx attempts to make between human, one who is able to reflect on the society which they have created, and animal, one who blindly acquires only what they need to survive. I also understand that Marx's beef is that people willingly turn their life activity over to someone or something else and it is no longer the object of their will and concsiousness, and that his ultimate goal ould be to create time for people to live human life beyond mere animal survival...

But it takes far more work for people to figure out the world around them than it does to just survive. I conclude that people simply aren't willing to do the extra work it takes to figure out their world. And the notion of figuring out the world in itself, is masked by things like entertainment media and TV news. It is more work to listen to NPR than to watch CNN headline news. Here's where I get confused though: is it more work to tinker with your facebook profile than it is to listen to NPR news? Where along the way do we become more attracted to the facebook-esque work than we do the NPR-esque work?

I think it boils down to alienation that Marx refers to. That is, people unwilling or unable to realize that the ills of the world are a result of human activity, rather they exist on their own terms and exist on a completely different plane than the one on which they are living.

So the question is, what are people supposed to do? It would to take a complete reformation of a multitude of institutions, schools, the media, the government, etc, to invoke any sort of change. I simply don't have the faith in humans, Americans at least, to beleive that this will ever happen.

I guess my pessimism and boarderline depression spurs from the ongoing disaster in Iraq and the unwillingness of anyone to admit that it is as bad as all the supposed bleeding-heart liberals said it would be. Last year I saw Seymour Hirsch speak here at Iowa and in discussing the Iraq war, it was almost as though he was looking through a crystal ball. This is one place where I get my news and I really like this guy despite that I hate u of Michigan: http://www.juancole.com/.
I especially like the Donald Rumsfeld rip found linked here: http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-09-25T232516Z_01_N25287562_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-USA.xml&archived=False