24.6.06
C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Roots of War, Poverty and Terrorism
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE AND MISSION
In the words of C. Wright Mills (1916-1962):
“The more we understand what is happening in the world, the more frustrated we often become, for our knowledge leads to feelings of powerlessness. We feel that we are living in a world in which the citizen has become a mere spectator or a forced actor, and that our personal experience is politically useless and our political will a minor illusion.
Very often, the fear of total permanent war paralyzes the kind of morally oriented politics, which might engage our interests and our passions. We sense the cultural mediocrity around us- and in us- and we know that ours is a time when, within and between all the nations of the world, the levels of public sensibilities have sunk below sight; atrocity on a mass scale has become impersonal and official; moral indignation as a public fact has become extinct or made trivial. We feel that distrust has become nearly universal among men of affairs, and that the spread of public anxiety is poisoning human relations and drying up the roots of private freedom.
We see that people at the top often identify rational dissent with political mutiny, loyalty with blind conformity, and freedom of judgment with treason. We feel that irresponsibility has become organized in high places and that clearly those in charge of the historic decisions of our time are not up to them. But what is more damaging to us is that we feel that those on the bottom- the forced actors who take the consequences- are also without leaders, without ideas of opposition, and that they make no real demands upon those with power.”
However:
“Our minds are not yet captive… We belong to those who are still capable of personally rejecting (the official myths and the unofficial distractions)…...we have got first to get it clear with ourselves that we do not belong and do not want to belong to an unfree world. As free men and women we have got to reject much of it and to know why we are rejecting it.”
Directly Quoted from C. Wright Mills -as written by him in the summer of 1954- Letters & Autobiographical Writings, University of California Press 2000: 184-187).
Our Central Goal:
"...A (world) society in which all men and women would become people of substantive reason, whose independant reasoning would have structural consequences for their societies, its history and thus for their own life fates."
(C.Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, 1959:174)
"We know well that all new cultural beginnings today must be part of world culture; that no truly intellectual life can occur if the mind is restricted; that no art can have genuine and everlasting value if it is not in a universal language. East and West. God knows there is enough restriction. Enough laziness of stereotypes. Smash them, we say to ourselves. And the only way to do that is to open up a true world forum that is absolutely free...It will be the seedbed of the future. It will be the climate in which new minds can form themselves and then solve problems we don’t yet even know about."
(C. Wright Mills, Listen Yankee, 1960:144-145)
The writings of C. Wright Mills have been a major inspiration in the themes and modes of research of this Association.
The Association aims at being a loose amalgamation of independant researchers, pursuing the above themes and goals, in a non-institutional, non-bureaucratic, non-nationalistic setting. It is not a formal organization, neither is it affiliated with any other group.
Muhammed A. Asadi
Founder.
In the words of C. Wright Mills (1916-1962):
“The more we understand what is happening in the world, the more frustrated we often become, for our knowledge leads to feelings of powerlessness. We feel that we are living in a world in which the citizen has become a mere spectator or a forced actor, and that our personal experience is politically useless and our political will a minor illusion.
Very often, the fear of total permanent war paralyzes the kind of morally oriented politics, which might engage our interests and our passions. We sense the cultural mediocrity around us- and in us- and we know that ours is a time when, within and between all the nations of the world, the levels of public sensibilities have sunk below sight; atrocity on a mass scale has become impersonal and official; moral indignation as a public fact has become extinct or made trivial. We feel that distrust has become nearly universal among men of affairs, and that the spread of public anxiety is poisoning human relations and drying up the roots of private freedom.
We see that people at the top often identify rational dissent with political mutiny, loyalty with blind conformity, and freedom of judgment with treason. We feel that irresponsibility has become organized in high places and that clearly those in charge of the historic decisions of our time are not up to them. But what is more damaging to us is that we feel that those on the bottom- the forced actors who take the consequences- are also without leaders, without ideas of opposition, and that they make no real demands upon those with power.”
However:
“Our minds are not yet captive… We belong to those who are still capable of personally rejecting (the official myths and the unofficial distractions)…...we have got first to get it clear with ourselves that we do not belong and do not want to belong to an unfree world. As free men and women we have got to reject much of it and to know why we are rejecting it.”
Directly Quoted from C. Wright Mills -as written by him in the summer of 1954- Letters & Autobiographical Writings, University of California Press 2000: 184-187).
Our Central Goal:
"...A (world) society in which all men and women would become people of substantive reason, whose independant reasoning would have structural consequences for their societies, its history and thus for their own life fates."
(C.Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, 1959:174)
"We know well that all new cultural beginnings today must be part of world culture; that no truly intellectual life can occur if the mind is restricted; that no art can have genuine and everlasting value if it is not in a universal language. East and West. God knows there is enough restriction. Enough laziness of stereotypes. Smash them, we say to ourselves. And the only way to do that is to open up a true world forum that is absolutely free...It will be the seedbed of the future. It will be the climate in which new minds can form themselves and then solve problems we don’t yet even know about."
(C. Wright Mills, Listen Yankee, 1960:144-145)
The writings of C. Wright Mills have been a major inspiration in the themes and modes of research of this Association.
The Association aims at being a loose amalgamation of independant researchers, pursuing the above themes and goals, in a non-institutional, non-bureaucratic, non-nationalistic setting. It is not a formal organization, neither is it affiliated with any other group.
Muhammed A. Asadi
Founder.
