Enjoyed seeing SPK Komplex yesterday. The film maker had shown parts of a preliminary cut at the RAF film festival in Potsdam in September and I’d been looking forward to seeing it. Scenes which remained with me afterwards included discussion of group therapy which matter-of-factly started with reading Georg Hegel, and a list of authors which included „of course“ Wilhelm Reich.
The opening lines and dedication of Howl came to mind, C. Wright Mills, The Port Huron Statement, and Herbert Marcuse.
In the fall I read the parents of aspiring young US Marines coordinated a prayer relay where participants took responsibility for slots of time during which they would be praying for the new recruits, giving those teenagers learning to be soldiers the benefit of 24/7 prayer. Earlier this month acquaintances supporting men and women my age and older in prison for a nuclear weapons protest in Georgia took for granted that a similar pursuit of continual prayer would be one activity sensible to engage in.
This morning I find myself remembering a childhood where theoretical underpinnings for action on behalf of societal and political change made sense. What would be the effect of Marine parents organizing the 24/7 reading of Smedley Butler’s War is a Racket?
It may well be my having lived so long in Northern California, but I seem to know a great number of people with some connection to twelve step programs. When discerning the things to be accepted as unchangeable, what would be the effect on Debtors Anonymous if there were weekly reading of Marx? Numerous friends self-medicate with alcohol, narcotics, Game of Thrones. This may sound facetious, but I don’t ask it that way: How would AA and NA change with a grounding in Hegel?
