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Chomsky Reflects on His Life...

ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
edited March 2013 in A Moving Train
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/ma ... hing-alone


Noam Chomsky: 'No individual changes anything alone'

Noam Chomsky is one of the world's most controversial thinkers. Now 84, he reflects on his life's work, on current events in Syria and Israel, and on the love of his life – his wife


Aida Edemariam
The Guardian, Friday 22 March 2011


'...Does he think that in all these years of talking and arguing and writing, he has ever changed one specific thing? "I don't think any individual changes anything alone. Martin Luther King was an important figure but he couldn't have said: 'This is what I changed.' He came to prominence on a groundswell that was created by mostly young people acting on the ground. In the early years of the antiwar movement we were all doing organising and writing and speaking and gradually certain people could do certain things more easily and effectively, so I pretty much dropped out of organising – I thought the teaching and writing was more effective. Others, friends of mine, did the opposite. But they're not less influential. Just not known."

In the cavernous Friends' House, the last words of his speech are: "Unless the powerful are capable of learning to respect the dignity of their victims … impassable barriers will remain, and the world will be doomed to violence, cruelty and bitter suffering." It's a gloomy coda, but he leaves to a standing ovation.'
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Comments

  • brianluxbrianlux Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 42,080
    To say Chomsky is brilliant is an understatement. He's one of the great thinker/teachers of our time.

    Thanks for posting it, Byrnzie.
    “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
    Variously credited to Mark Twain or Edward Abbey.













  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    brianlux wrote:
    To say Chomsky is brilliant is an understatement. He's one of the great thinker/teachers of our time.

    Thanks for posting it, Byrnzie.

    My pleasure, dude.
  • Drowned OutDrowned Out Posts: 6,056
    he's being humble and totally understating his importance... not everyone can be that person. he's right in that different people contribute differently to change....but to say that some of these friends of his are not less influential, just less known, doesn't make much sense to me. Chomsky is a leader because his words resonate enough to have endeared him to a huge audience. there is greatness in every field and chomsky is a great in his. The man is a walking encyclopedia. It's good that he's so humble tho :)

    84.....ugh. can we clone him somehow? I don't like reading the words "chomsky reflects on his life" :(
    who picks up the torch when he leaves us?
  • redrockredrock Posts: 18,341
    brianlux wrote:
    To say Chomsky is brilliant is an understatement. He's one of the great thinker/teachers of our time.

    Thanks for posting it, Byrnzie.

    +1
  • JeanwahJeanwah Posts: 6,363
    redrock wrote:
    brianlux wrote:
    To say Chomsky is brilliant is an understatement. He's one of the great thinker/teachers of our time.

    Thanks for posting it, Byrnzie.

    +1
    +2

    I hope he's not planning on leaving us any time soon.
  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    Well, the above article gets quite a grilling here:


    How Noam Chomsky is discussed

    The more one dissents from political orthodoxies, the more the attacks focus on personality, style and character

    Glenn Greenwald
    guardian.co.uk, Saturday 23 March 2013


    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... ersonality
  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    Drowned Out wrote:
    he's being humble and totally understating his importance... not everyone can be that person. he's right in that different people contribute differently to change....but to say that some of these friends of his are not less influential, just less known, doesn't make much sense to me. Chomsky is a leader because his words resonate enough to have endeared him to a huge audience. there is greatness in every field and chomsky is a great in his. The man is a walking encyclopedia. It's good that he's so humble tho :)

    84.....ugh. can we clone him somehow? I don't like reading the words "chomsky reflects on his life" :(
    who picks up the torch when he leaves us?

    Looks like Glenn Greenwald agrees with you on this point:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... ersonality
    'But the strangest attack on Chomsky is the insinuation that he has changed nothing. Aside from the metrics demonstrating that he has more reach and influence than virtually any public intellectual in the world, some of which Edemariam cites, I'd say that there is no living political writer who has more radically changed how more people think in more parts of the world about political issues than he. If you accept the premise (as I do) that the key to political change is to convince people of pervasive injustice and the need to act, then it's virtually laughable to depict him as inconsequential. Washington power-brokers and their media courtiers do not discuss him, and he does not make frequent (or any) appearances on US cable news outlets, but outside of those narrow and insular corridors - meaning around the world - few if any political thinkers are as well-known, influential or admired (to its credit, the Guardian, like some US liberal outlets, does periodically publish Chomsky's essays).'
  • brianluxbrianlux Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 42,080
    Byrnzie wrote:
    Drowned Out wrote:
    he's being humble and totally understating his importance... not everyone can be that person. he's right in that different people contribute differently to change....but to say that some of these friends of his are not less influential, just less known, doesn't make much sense to me. Chomsky is a leader because his words resonate enough to have endeared him to a huge audience. there is greatness in every field and chomsky is a great in his. The man is a walking encyclopedia. It's good that he's so humble tho :)

    84.....ugh. can we clone him somehow? I don't like reading the words "chomsky reflects on his life" :(
    who picks up the torch when he leaves us?

    Looks like Glenn Greenwald agrees with you on this point:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... ersonality
    'But the strangest attack on Chomsky is the insinuation that he has changed nothing. Aside from the metrics demonstrating that he has more reach and influence than virtually any public intellectual in the world, some of which Edemariam cites, I'd say that there is no living political writer who has more radically changed how more people think in more parts of the world about political issues than he. If you accept the premise (as I do) that the key to political change is to convince people of pervasive injustice and the need to act, then it's virtually laughable to depict him as inconsequential. Washington power-brokers and their media courtiers do not discuss him, and he does not make frequent (or any) appearances on US cable news outlets, but outside of those narrow and insular corridors - meaning around the world - few if any political thinkers are as well-known, influential or admired (to its credit, the Guardian, like some US liberal outlets, does periodically publish Chomsky's essays).'

    Plus, the changes great thinkers instill spread out over time. Chomsky's may well reverberate for centuries.
    “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
    Variously credited to Mark Twain or Edward Abbey.













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