I'm not even sure why there has to be form anyway - seriously, I'm not being facitious
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That there are so many with a general interest to say, as Todd does, 'Enough' says a lot to me, and perhaps that is more than sufficient. Whether there is sufficient time available for a significant world wide social movement is another matter.
When I teach Ethics (with a capital E as opposed to morality with a small 'm') one early statement from me is that we have morals in modern society but no Ethics. As Thatcher opined, there is no such thing as society (any more largely thanks to her). Taking her at her word everything has become an empty, vacuous, self-serving system. Without a social system there arguably is no form anyway: that we hold on to a notion of form rather betrays a human need but not one that is neccessarily right, or which has depth and substance. Look around and what do we see in the media - American Idol, X Factor, Pop Idol. Children can name the latest American Idol contestant but can't remember any recent history. Form and decay; surface and no depth (as Shusterman -sp?- argues).
An issue with modern politics is that of form rather than what we could term a formless, generalised interest. Form implies a coalescence around a common ground. Why does this need to be true rather than just generalised disquiet; why do the general populaion have to justify their concerns rather than the minority in control justify theirs? In a hegemonic system the common ground is set by those in control in a game that we can never win so why do I need to even play that game?
How many billions of dollars have now been spent propping up the world financial houses? How many business and factories have gone bankrupt since? How many people have lost their jobs and been driven in to poverty as a consequence? We try to hold on to form when there is no substance and at what cost?
Further, society should surely be about a
common good if we wish to talk about form. There is a comment from John Champaign in his book 'The ethics of marginality' concerning what he terms 'the hierarchy of the oppressed': here the state divides the common population by arguing that the mass has no form because we all have diverse needs. All these diverse needs then need to be managed sequentially so just wait your turn. Women have, at least in the UK, waited nearly a century for equal rights: they still don't have equality. As they are close to, or at the top of, the hierarchy of the oppressed how long would someone who is very, very disenfranshised have to wait? Modernity is not premised upon a common good and the rights of the many but upon the wants of a very small minority. If that is form it is a very distorted one, certainly not what the Greeks would have referred to as a trancendental.
A rather depressed Foucault argued that modern society has already reached the end of its lot: all we do now is shuffle the deck chairs on (an Hegelian) Titanic as it sinks. There is no fundamental change only a rearrangement. What is necessary, IMHO, is not a rearrangement, and therefore repeation, of the current system but something fundamentally different. If that requires something formless than that's great IMHO
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All that is solid melts in to air.an
or morality, if we can't find common ground on these issues ,how can we find common ground on anything