Life in Ireland

Reading Failed States by Noam Chomsky just now, it is not an easy read. A friend of mine called it a polemic, but it is not, it does not that that type of tone, if you want a polemic on the United States read Michael Moore, he has the tone and the anger.

However, there is no balance. It would be easy to get the impression while reading this book that there is nothing good about the United States. Now I have never been there, and I expect he knows better than me, but I know that no-one is ever all bad.

At the start of chapter 1 Chomsky cites Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein as his first moral source. What a pity, I immediately thought when reading that. I know little about Einstein, however I have read a bit of Russell. Russell was brilliant, but he would not let the truth get in the way of a good story, therefore his historic writings on philosophy cannot be trusted or cited in any academic work - without some derision.

But back to Failed States. Any thinking person should know that almost all politicians are liars. That really, I think, should be taken as a given. It again does not mean that they are all bad, just they tell the story sometimes that people want to hear and the story that will keep them in office. Failed States wanders through recent American history, item by item, pointing out the flaws in the American government. This is something that I would not want to happen to me, we all make mistakes, we all at times act in our own best interest - finding out later how selfish we actually can be at times.

I admit that I am reading Failed States because it falls in the category of “should read” not want to read. It will, most likely, be the last of Chomsky that I will pick up for a long time.
Life is too short. I find that while reading a book which is so negative, with no positivism at all, effects ones own view of the world, oneself, and others. It effects me to thinking in a way that is not true. There are many good things happening in the world at this moment - right now - today. I don’t want my mind to be concerned completely with conflict, my mind can revel in that just a bit too much. No, I want to often think more positively of myself and the rest of the world, yes we have problems, but it does not seems to help by concentrating on those problems all the time. If I find that I encounter a problem that I do not know the solution to I will ask my mind to find a solution, and then get on with something else. Often my mind at some later date gives me a solution - and sometimes I find that the problem is not a problem when I get a look at it from a different angle.

My last issue is this; it is too easy to be critical and much more difficult to be positive. So my last words are directed at Noam Chomsky, help me and others like me, you are a brilliant person, you have an insightful mind, please use it to spread something better - not a nearly polemic. Thanks.

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