A Dead Man Meets a Nobody

Written and directed by: Jim Jarmusch

Released: 1995

Genre: Western, drama

Starring: Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer



The industrialization of life and what it brings about is a theme that many writers and filmmakers have developed in their works. From "Wuthering Heights", by Emily Bronte, in which Heathcliff is the character who is the symbol of the harsh industrial world to "Unknown Citizen", by Auden, which demonstrates how a human being has lost his individuality in a soulless world and reduces into a confined being. In cinema, one of the most outstanding films with this theme is "Modern Times" by Charles Chaplin. Undoubtedly "Dead Man", written and directed by Jim Jarmusch is another conspicuous movie which takes the decline of humanity as its central theme. Dead Man in a symbolic manner focuses on the diminishing of emotions, ethics and conscience in humans and the transformation of humans to soulless and mechanistic beings.

The film begins with a quotation from Henri Michaus: "It's preferable not to travel with a dead man." The first question that this sentence brings to mind is whether it is possible to travel with a dead man. The sentence shows that the viewer should expect to encounter a world of symbols. Elements of the film have a metaphorical meaning: From the beginning of the film we see the names of the cast and the makers of the film which fade out. The train which William Blake is on, the sound of the friction of the train on the rails, the scene turning dark and then bright which could be a symbol of night and day, traveling to the west which is the symbol of inexistence, people who are sitting side by side in the train without any dialog, all have a connotative meaning as well as an overt meaning. The name of the city is also metaphorical: The iron city of Machine, not a city of kind and hospitable people. In other words, one has to be harsh and tough to be able to enter this city, one has to be soulless and mechanistic to find a place in this city. This trend is what William Blake goes through: He, whose name reminds the viewer of the emotional English poet, at the end turns to a dead man. He learns that to survive he has to kill life in himself and is obliged to kill and destroy, he learns that human emotions are not welcome in the city of Machine, and that if you choose a way different from the ordinary way of the people, it is as if you don't exist at all (this is well displayed by Nobody).

Perhaps at the beginning of industrialization it was believed that human is the creator of the machine and they are worlds apart. But the passage of time gave rise to a different phenomenon. As we see in Dead Man, the creator of machine has become similar to his creation, and machine, instead of being a tool to help promote humanity, has dressed humanity with mechanistic characteristics. This human being is not full of compassion and emotions, but rather is a corpse lacking any feeling who is struggling to continue his deadly life. However the situation does not stay like this. At the end of the film, the main character reaches the end of his life, but this end is a new beginning. This time he is lying on a canoe which is moving with the river stream. This time he is in line with nature, and he is going to die and return to it. Once again he is called "William Blake", his real name. But now Dead Man is really "dead".

U.S. Dollar towards Three-Month High

The U.S. Dollar reached a three-month high this morning after S&P Corp. downgraded Greece’s credit rating which in turn gave momentum to a strong rally. The rally started last night but is becoming stronger because it is possible that the Euro Zone's sovereign debt may be downgraded consequently. Investors are concerned that the spread of bad debt throughout the continent could cause serious problems for the banking industry, undoing the current economic recovery.

The Euro turned to the downside after a 9-month upside rally. The weakness is caused by fundamental as well as technical factors. Traders expect to see a short-term rebound if Euro gets oversold due to the panic of the debt problem.

As well as the weakness in the European currency, the British pound is under pressure caused by a lower-than-expected retail sales report. This piece of news overshadowed Wednesday’s better than expected British jobless claims data. Technically, the British currency failed to hold its zone of support and is now trading at 1.6292 which is the lowest in three months. Forecasts indicate that the GBP/USD pair may fall to as low as 1.5941.

Lower stock prices and the possibility of an increase in the U.S. interest rates are putting pressure on all the other currencies across the board. As for Australian dollar, for example, a report showed slower than expected 3rd Quarter growth which led into selling and acted as a sign to traders that the Reserve Bank of Australia was unlikely to hike interest rates over the near future. The Aussie turned the uptrend down to trade at .8905.

Gold has lost more than 100 dollars due to the greenback strength, breaking away from the strong rally during the last three months that set and broke records one after the other in an unprecedented manner. Falling gold prices and the weakening stock market are pressuring the Canadian Dollar. Technically, the USD/CAD is expected to trade around 1.0991 in coming days.

Higher demand for the U.S. Dollar and the debt problem in the Euro Zone are helping to pressure the Swiss Franc. Traders are taking in the possibility that Swiss banks will be exposed to debt issues in Greece, Portugal and Spain. On the longer-term the forecast is a rise to 1.0469 and then to 1.0600 for USD/CHF.

As for the Iranian currency, rial declined against the U.S. dollar during the last week from 9986 rilas to the dollar to 10026. Forecasts point to a higher USD/IRR rate in the coming week as the dollar is gaining momentom against most major currencies and commodities.

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/reuters/2009/12/17/2009-12-17T215033Z_01_N17190295_RTRIDST_0_MARKETS-COMMODITIES-UPDATE-1.html
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10648050/1/stocks-hold-lower-on-mixed-data.html?cm_ven=GOOGLEFI

Book Review: Reflections on America by Claus Offe





By: Tofigh Maboodi & Massoud Hosseini Fard

Description

The full name of the book is Reflections on America: Tocqueville, Weber, and Adorno in the United States. The book was first published in German as Selbstbetrachtung aus der Ferne: Tocqueville, Weber und Adorno in den Vereinigten Staaten by Clause Offe Ó Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004. This translation first published in 2005 by Polity Press, Cambridge, UK. Professor Claus Offe (born 1940 in Berlin) is one of the world's leading political sociologists of Marxist orientation. Once a student of Jorgen Habermas, the left-leaning German academic is counted among the second generation Frankfurt School. He currently teaches at a private university in Berlin, the Hertie School of Governance. He has made substantive contributions to understanding the relationships between democracy and capitalism. His recent work has focused on economies and states in transition to democracy.

Summary

1- Introduction

In this book the author gives an account of the thoughts of three major European philosophers on Western world particularly on America as an example of a modern state. Tocqueville, Weber and Adorno traveled to US and got acquainted with its political, social and economic system. The common theme in the works of these three philosophers regarding America is the fate of liberty in modern capitalist societies. They emphasized on the negative characteristics of Western modernity and tried to find ways to obliterate its advance or change it for the better. They considered America as an ambiguous combination of free and equal individuals and imperceptible constraints that destroy equality and liberty.

2- Alexis de Tocqueville or the Tyranny of the Middle Class

Alexis de Tocqueville was a French judge who was sent to US to investigate America’s progressive penal system. The condition of the United States interested him because he considered it the symbol of a new age called ‘democratic’ age. He asserts that sooner or later Europe like America shall reach the equality of condition. Tocqueville praises the American democracy and grieves for European backwardness. However he thinks that America lacks a principal which has worked well in Europe and that is, the political rights of individuals are unequally distributed and acquired by birth. According to him America enjoys an exceptional condition in which liberty came into existence without mediation and without the transitional process of liberation. This will allow them to enter a stable cycle which consists of the bilateral strengthening of institutions on one hand and attitudes and habits on the other hand.

According to Tocqueville American laws and institutions encourage stability and prevent tyranny. He argues that bureaucratic centralism as it exists in Europe is a manifestation of tyranny and a danger to liberty. However in America the distinguished vertical divisions of powers (among federal government, states and autonomous municipalities) and the horizontal divisions of powers along with the independence of courts guaranty democracy. The pillar of Tocqueville’s theory of ‘democratic age’ based on the American example is that democracies are stable when they have religious and secular structures which are able to counter the two pathologies of ‘equality’: individualism and despotism.

3- Max Weber: American Escape Routes from the Iron Cage?

Weber in his work tried to explain the ‘special peculiarity of Occidental rationalism’. For him Europe is the dynamic core of the ‘Occident’ and the role of America in the formation of Occident isn’t clear. He argues that American society is taking shape on a structural type already existent and dominant in Europe. However America constituted the core of his research program because for him, it represented a ‘picture of freedom’ in contrast to the weak, depoliticized and opportunistic ‘indifferentism’ of Europeans. The main question for Weber regarding America was if he could distinguish a preferable model of capitalist modernization and liberal democracy there. Weber admired the puritanical asceticism of American sects and regarded it a revolutionary force. For him, Puritanism with its self-conscious, individualistic and sober attitude towards life created a counter-balance to confront state power. According to Weber there has been a change of motives in capitalism since its early days; it is no longer the inherent values of religious life which motivate the membership of Protestant sect but rather this membership brings about a ‘qualification certificate’ in the business world. Nevertheless he sees strong elements of individualism in this sectarian society.

4- Theodor W. Adorno: ‘Culture Industry’ and Other Views of the ‘American Century’

The work of Adorno is different from the other two philosophers because his trip to US was forced because of the Nazi government in Germany. His thoughts on America are that of a refugee not an academic. For him United States ‎is the country which saved his life. In comparison to the other two he is not interested in the social and cultural conditions in the US. Nevertheless a close observation of American cultural practices such as radio, jazz and sports drove him to develop a successful diagnosis of this society. Along with competitiveness and liberal democracy which are changing into monopoly and ‘authoritarian state’, he introduces a third tendency in this society: the development of autonomous bourgeois culture into mass culture and the culture industry. Adorno is concerned that the ‘European totalitarianism’ would replace the ‘American entertainment industry’ and fascism would take control in the US. According to him the prospect of the Cold War is a sign that American capitalism would take a fascist direction. Adorno asserts that Europe is becoming to resemble American condition. The first point in which the US is advanced is that there is no class conflict because no class consciousness exists there. Despite the early critics of America, Adorno in return to Europe presents the American democratic system and civil freedom as a model for postwar Europe and especially Germany.

5- The United States in the Twenty-First Century: Traditions of Religious Socialization and Struggle against ‘Evil’

The common ground in the work of the three authors is their perception of Americans as open-minded, trusting, cooperative and emotionally warm. However they all assert in different ways that American society enjoys a liberally ‘social capital’ which is lacking among Europeans. The three philosophers argue that the civilized world of ‘the West’ is going to resemble America because of the many similarities such as Christianity, Science, technology and industry between them.

Since World War II, American hegemony has led vast parts of the world to follow the United State. America has become territorialized particularly since the fall of Soviet Union but not because other countries choose to imitate American model as the three philosophers suggest; rather because of political-military, economic and cultural-ideological supremacy of the US. Most of the countries on earth are today either allies of the US or threatened by its military power. That is why the United States defines itself as responsible for global order. It has become a part of American identity to project itself on to others and to shape the rest of the world in its own image. Americans consider the fight for ‘freedom and democracy’ as the essential part of their identity. Behind the mission of bringing freedom to the world we can notice the obsession of ‘traditionless’ America for making an identity. As a result one of the most important differences between today’s America and that which the three authors discovered is that in case of claimed necessity, the rules, principals and agreements of other countries aren’t binding for it.

Format

The book begins with a Contents page followed by an Abbreviation page which introduces abbreviation symbols that are used throughout the book to refer to books by Tocqueville, Weber and Adorno. It’s a good way to do away with repetition of names. Next is the Acknowledgement page which precedes the main chapters of the book. The first main chapter, Introduction, is short; 6 pages. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 are on Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber, and Theodor W. Adorno’s views on various aspects of America and chapter 5 which is on the issue of American religious socialization concludes the book. The book which is based on Adorno Lectures presented in German by Claus Offe at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt in November 2003. The book is an English translation of those lectures and everywhere in the book, where reference is made to the three scholars, the material is translated into English, usually explained in the footnote section. Each chapter begins with a description of fundamental beliefs of the scholar, and then applying those concepts to their understanding of America. Some other points worth noting are:

A good cover shows a skyline metropolitan area in New York;

A map, on page 48, shows the routes taken by Tocqueville and Weber in the United States on their visits; there are no other maps or illustrations in the book. This does not seem to limit the readability of the book;

Extensive footnotes give necessary background to the reader unfamiliar with thoughts and ideas of the three scholars, and

Comprehensive reference and Index sections are at the end of the book.

Content Analysis

The book has been able to give the reader a general account of what these three scholars think on American society, politics and culture. The scholars have viewpoints that have some common ground and some differences. While Tocqueville and Weber hold specific views, Adorno's viewpoint on America seems to have changed through time, maybe due to his long stay in America.The good point about the content of the book is that it compares and contrasts the three scholars' views on America on every subject and occasion so that the reader gets a good sense of how they think similarly or differently on various topics. What might be considered a weak point from an ordinary reader's perspective are the discussions that might be lengthy and boring.

However, all in all, the book is very informative and the content is developed in a scientific and scholarly fashion. The interesting approach of the writer to relate the present situation in America and Europe to the past and to provide the reader with a relatively deep understanding of issues is another advantage of the book.

Recommendation

This book is essential for every student of American studies, presenting a brief but multi-dimensional view on American democracy, society, culture and polity. It is also good to be read by students of European studies and those who are interested in the study of the western civilization in general.

Researchers in the fields of politics, sociology, religion and cultural studies will find this book very interesting. The book is a thought-provoking source of a lot of different ideas on American society and civilization and is a must-read book for everyone who wants to come to an understanding of how America came to be the America we know today.

The Violent Capitalist Volunteer

Volunteerism in the United States is not a new concept. America has long recognized the importance of “a societal responsibility to join in, to give freely of one’s time to assist or aid others.” For example, Alexis de Tocqueville, in 1831, stated in his book, Democracy in America, that the U.S. was a “nation of joiners that regularly formed groups to meet or accomplish common goals.”(1)
What do volunteers do? Volunteers provide services to local schools and libraries, parks, senior citizen centers, police, ambulance and firefighting units. Statistically, for example, 80 % of the manpower needs of local fire departments in the U.S. are provided by volunteers.
The benefits of voluntarism are many. One study states that greater than 50 % of management in the public sector believe that volunteers provide substantial cost-savings and productivity gains to organizations. The Independent Sector, a prestigious coalition of philanthropic and charitable organizations, states that volunteering—among many other things—adds value to services, promotes social harmony, and creates public trust.(2)

The Capitalist America

America is a capitalist country. That's what America is known as all over the world. By definition, capitalism is "an economic, political and social system based on private ownership of property, business and industry, and directed towards making the greatest possible profits for successful organizations and people"(3). The question I would like to raise here is "what makes a capitalist people who are supposed to be thinking solely about individual gain and profit to be so highly involved in volunteer work? That's the question that came to my mind the moment Dr. Ameli told us about the vast involvement of American people in volunteer work. He said that 28 % of all Americans did volunteer work in 2007, a figure that showed considerable increase compared to the previous year.

The Violent America

Every day in America, guns claim 84 lives, and wound nearly 200; every year more than 30,000 people die – over 3,000 of them children and teens – and over 70,000 are injured. Firearm homicide is the leading cause of death for black men ages 15-34, and is the leading cause of death for all African-Americans 15-24. Homicide represents the second-leading cause of death for Hispanics between the ages of 15 and 24, 76% of which are firearm related.(4) Estimates of direct medical costs for firearm injuries range from $2.3 billion4 to $4 billion,(5) with additional annual indirect costs estimated at $19 billion.(6)
America is the sole high-income, industrialized country that has not responsibly addressed the problem of gun violence. The firearms death rate in the U.S. is eight times higher than in other high-income countries(7) and the rate among children under 15-years-old is nearly twelve times higher in the U.S. than in 25 other industrialized countries combined.(8)

The Controversy

How is it that a capitalist country with such a high rate of violence also has the highest rate of volunteering? Is it not true that violent people are usually considered to be selfish and isolated, who don’t care about the other people? Isn’t the same said about capitalists? Does volunteerism have something to do with organization in a given society? Is volunteer work the product of an organized society and if so why isn’t the rate of volunteering in Europe as high as that of America, if we consider European societies as organized as America? Is volunteer work a product of a kind society? If so, why don’t we see as much involvement in volunteerism in Eastern societies including Iran? These are the questions that I would welcome any one who can help me find the answers to.

1. Tocqueville, A. (1945). Democracy in America. Edited by Phillips Bradley. Vol. 1. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopt, p. 198.
2. Independent Sector. Retrieved January 7, 2004 from http://www.independentsector.org/programs/research/gv01main.html
3. Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary
4.Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (2005, most recent year available), available at: www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars.
5. American Academy of Pediatrics, Firearm-Related Injuries Affecting the Pediatric Population, 105 PEDIATRICS 888 (2000).
6. Kizer KW et al., Hospitalization charges, costs, and income for firearm-related injuries at a university trauma center, 273 J. AM. MEDICAL ASS’N 1768 (June 14, 1995).
7. Ginsburg, JA et al., American College of Physicians, Firearm Injury Prevention, 128 ANNALS OF INTERNAL MEDICINE 237 (1998).
8. Krug EG et al., Firearm-related deaths in the United States and 35 other high and upper-middle-income countries, 27 INT’L J. EPIDEMIOLOGY 214 (1998).
9. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rates of homicide, suicide and firearm-related death among children - 26 industrialized countries, 46 MORBIDITY MORTALITY WEEKLY REPORT 101 (Feb. 7, 1997).

What does it mean to be "American"?

"I've come around to the view that the culture war can best be understood as a conflict between two different kinds of patriotism. On the one hand, there are people who believe being an American is all about dissent and change, that the American idea is inseparable from "progress." America is certainly an idea, but it is not merely an idea. It is also a nation with a culture as real as France's or Mexico's. That's where the other patriots come in; they think patriotism is about preserving Americanness" (Jonah Goldberg) Well, what is Americanness? Samuel Huntington believes in the Anglo-Protestant culture as a very important basis of Americanness. (Who Are We?) What do you think? Before you decide on your answer, look at the table below: (Melanie E. L. Bush)

Interesting, isn't it? As you see many Latinos, Asians, foreign-born blacks and foreign-born whites living in the United States do not consider themselves American while they are holding American passports and pay tax to the American government. And their number is increasing in comparison with the "Anglo-Protestant" people Huntington believed to be "American". So, what is the future of Americanness?

Huntington sees the idea of an American identity and culture under attack. But these enemies are not terrorists. "They are America’s own political and cultural elites with their doctrines of cultural pluralism. Armed with a misinformed virtue, these elites have systematically undermined the very idea of a national identity and sought to erase its cultural component" (Who Are We?) So, the danger comes from within the United States. But to know where matters will lead we need to study the weight of these different ethnic groups to find out their share in the power structure of America which will determine their influence on the social, political, economic and cultural identity of America. The trend so far has been pointing to a constant increase in the influence of these minorities over the social, political, economic and cultural apparatus of the U.S.A.

There is another angle through which we can approach the question of "What does it mean to be American?". If we believe, as some do, that America is an idea and an idealogy of liberty, equality and the rule of law, is it possible for someone to be the legal citizen of another country but believe in the American idealogy and be culturally and intellectually "American"? In his book "Beyond Citizenship,
American Identity After Globalization" Peter J. Spiro contends that it is. He says: "globalization is detaching identity from location. What used to define American was rooted in American space. Now one can be anywhere and be an American, politically or culturally ". Well, does this sound like an answer to the question "What does it mean to be American?" Maybe it does.

Internet in the United States of America

According to Nielsen Online, there were 227,636,000 Internet users in the USA in June of 2009, which makes up 74.1% of the population. Now, what role did the USA had in development ofthe Internet? Actually the role of the U.S. in the IT technology goes back to 1945 when it produced itd first computer called ENIAC in 1945, two years after the British invented Colossus, the first programmable digital electronic computer, used for code breaking in World War II. Although computers are more than sixty years old, they and their related technologies are the latest technology to enter the household. But now computers are everywhere, from schools and hospitals to banks and shops and even mobile phone of today are essentially acvanced computers equipped with Internet. With an Internet penetration rate of 74.1%, the USA is the leading country and North America is the leading region in the world.(1) Internet is used for a variety of purposes, and different people use it differently, for example gender, age, socio-economic status, and education of Internet users affects their Internet use.(2),(3). All in all, information is the new source of power in the world and as the sole superpower, the USA is at the center of the information techology which can best be manifested through Inetrnet.