From the archives of the UCLA Communications Studies Department. Digitized 2013. The views and ideas expressed in these videos are not necessarily shared by the University of California, or by the UCLA Communication Studies Department.
How funny. On a whim I thought I'd see if there were any RU-vid clips of Richard Hofstadter, and this terrific lecture was apparently just posted today! I hope many people listen to this. Essential!
Hofstadter is one of the most lucid thinkers in American history. His entire canon should be required reading. His casual distaste for the average American ignorance is palpable and refreshing.
12:08 - 15:20 Some things will never, ever change. Listen very carefully to these words, reflect on recent debates throughout the country on guns, and then realize that you are listening to a recording FROM ALMOST 50 YEARS AGO.
Imagine if Hofstadter could see the polarized country we have today. 1968, a year I most vividly recall and the turbulent events of that year as a almost draft eligible highschool junior seems almost utopian compared to the internal diivisions we have now.
It's sad because Dr. Hofstadter was ill when this picture was taken. He looks so frail and sickly compared to pictures of a much more vibrant and healthy Hofstadter. This was recorded two years before his death.
Here for the first time in a single authoritative annotated edition are two masterworks by one of America’s greatest historians, Richard Hofstadter (1916-1970). In the Pulitzer Prize-winning (1963) and in (1965), Hofstadter offered groundbreaking and still urgent analyses of deep undercurrents in American life: a stubborn, irrepressible opposition to rationality, expertise, and higher learning, and the destabilizing pull exercised by conspiratorial movements on the right and left.
Wow! How awesome! I'll give you a U, I'll give you a C and you'll obey me and give me LA. Jokes apart, this is really awesome! Thanks UCLA! One question: why is Richard Nixon introducing Prof. Hofstadter?
we must distinguish between aggression and violence--aggression is what all animals do to survive, to acquire food and other necessary resources...violence is "to violate" --it goes beyond basic need into a pathological greed and mental illness....a narcissistic aggression...farmers rioting for their rights is NOT violence, it is aggression with good cause...a farmer beating his wife, yes, that is violence, no good cause, only pathology.... by lumping these two together we do a great disservice to valid social cause ...which can at times be misguided, but nonetheless, is well intentioned aggression.....we need to be very careful not to impose psychoanalytical interpretation on groups of activists...who may use aggression to fight for what is actually righteous.....
The irony of it all is that the academic crowd can always tell you what's wrong with the world and society , but they can't alter the ways of the world. Sometimes , I wonder why even talk about issues that can never be fixed or altered. Nature has her way in the end and brutality, starvation, privation, greed and all of the other stuff we find reprehensible just come with the package. You can't reform the world. That which is crooked cannot be made straight. To me it's pointless to listen to professors crow on about the tragedies of life where there exists no remedies.
The future is not already foretold my friend. Those who use their brains for a living do so to encourage us to think to make the world better. Cynics think they have the world figured out. Life is short and hard. Maybe, but we should strive to be our best.
There are societies which do a good job, or at least a better job, of mitigating the brutal “realities” of life. And I believe we should aspire to improve our own society.
If we followed ur logic we’d still be living in caves like animals. Our ability to critically question our shortcomings is what allows us rise above our instinctual animal self to create a better place for others. A world without intellectual discourse would truly be dark terrifying and meaningless.
