An inauspicious beginning I know! My encounters with Latin will no doubt be the grist for another day at blogger’s mill . However, tabula rasa, the slate wiped clean, interests me a lot right now. Piqued by Naomi Klein’s new book, The Shock Doctrine, released just yesterday. I haven’t read it yet, but just listened to her, and find its thesis fascinating.
The notion that major social and political change can be introduced following massive events such as the breakdown of an existing system has often focussed on armed revolutions and uprisings. The French, American and Russian revolutions are the most commonly known of these.
There are variations on this theme. After the surrender of
As an aside from Klein’s social approach, it appears to me that at the personal level, tabula rasa, would be a process that born-again Christians consider essential. A baptism or ritual cleansing. The slate wiped clean, and a new spiritual birth with its presumed attendant moral, ethical, and other personal consequences.
Klein goes further with her collective study. She documents the deliberate political, social, and economic efforts over decades to create and exploit “disaster mentality” and fear. Generated out of both natural events such as tsunamis and those with human intervention such as national fiscal crises. All to the end of supporting The Shock Doctrine, the Rise of Disaster Capitalism, a situation of fear, despair, or numbness which allows the introduction of conditions beneficial to interests groups but not to the general citizenry. This is not conspiracy theory but the work of a disciplined journalist.
I’m off now to buy a copy. No, this is not a paid commercial!
