Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga

Structural Patterns

Reflections on Art, Technology and Society

Archive for January, 2009

Hans Richter “Rhytmus 21”

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January 5th, 2009 at 5:11 pm

from “The Positivity of Power Thinking”, Siegel

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On Samuel Huntington, a big idea man “whose major work didn’t just explain historical transformation but seemed to crystalize it – in ways that altered how the rest of us looked at the world, for better and also for worse”

…”in the desire to explain so much, big thinkers tend to skip over complicating factors and counterevidence.  Painting broad and often brilliant strokes, they often miss the shadows and crevices.  The very seductiveness of power thinking – its promise that everything fits together or can be made to seem so – is also the source of its danger.  It offers something irresistible, the possibility that we can change, or at least control, our lives by means of ideas, even though those ideas are themselves abstract inventions.”

Lee Siegel’s observation is not original, such has been the long standing critique on essentialist constructions.  But Siegel’s statement is so nicely written that I wanted to put highlight it.

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January 5th, 2009 at 1:35 pm