Day by day I find that our biggest problem as humanity is the disconnect between experience and the value we accord the verifiably impossible (see post).
It’s funny that the biggest problem in creating a so-called better world – that people don’t believe it is possible – is (according to my scale) in essence infinitely more real than the verifiably impossible noumena that we create constantly (these concepts are not generated and then left alone, but maintained perpetually) – money, nations, institutions.
Now, some may argue that a nation is a good way to describe a certain region and events that have happened. If we understood that actions were caused first by “people” who will sacrifice their life for the verifiably impossible.
Instead an error is compounded through our modern conception of history…the loss of cause and effect and the belief that the things “happen,” e.g. Spain was the dominant power in the New World in the 16th Century.
The above statement fulfills two functions, first – to reinforce this notion “Spain” – and with it all the preceding propositions such as nations and their constitution. Second, it posits history as a static event, a result of a “decision” made by a subject – in this example Spain.
I will elaborate later.
Active Philosophy 
“It’s funny that the biggest problem in creating a so-called better world – that people don’t believe it is possible – is (according to my scale) in essence infinitely more real than the verifiably impossible noumena that we create constantly (these concepts are not generated and then left alone, but maintained perpetually) – money, nations, institutions.”
Yeah, funny. And frustrating as hell!!!!!!!!!! 🙂
Reading this review of the book _Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History_ just reminded me of this post:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/books/review/Kennedy-t.html?8bu&emc=bua2
“She denounces identity studies of all sorts, particularly when they descend into what she calls the “unseemly competition for victimhood.” (She singles out certain Afrocentric histories for special scorn, as having “the same relationship to the past as “The Da Vinci Code” does to Christian theology.”) But she directs her most cogent criticism at the particular kind of historically constructed identity that is nationalism.”
Today I’ve been incredulous, and yet not, at some comments posted to an article about an ordinary traffic accident causing the collapse of a bridge, just because the person who caused the accident happens to have been born in Iran rather than the US. Three guesses, and the first two don’t count, which comments are mine!
http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/20087637/detail.html
Good to see ya Cheryl!
Stood out like a sore thumb!