What can we do as educational and cultural workers, at this crucial moment
in history, when corporate revenue expands as the job market shrinks, when there is such a callous disregard for human suffering and human life, when the indomitable human spirit gasps for air
in an
atmosphere of intellectual paralysis, social amnesia, and political quiescence, when the translucent hues of hope seem ever more
ethereal, when thinking about the future seems anachronistic, when the concept of utopia has become irretrievably Disneyfied, when our social roles as citizens have become increasingly corporatized and instrumentalized
in a world which hides necessity
in the name of consumer desire, when media analyses of military invasions is just another infomercial for the US military industrial complex with its huge global arms industry, and when teachers and students alike wallow
in absurdity, waiting for the junkyard of consumer life to vomit up yet another panacea for despair?
Emanating a strong transcendental quality, these
ethereal constructs seem to be floating
in space, at once emergent from and receding into the surrounding
atmosphere.