I discovered Rob Riemen when the local radio station played a recording of one of his lectures.
This is a very bright man. One aspect of his lecture is about gaining perspective on the societal and cultural strains in America and Europe. He is a cultural critic of sorts but more so. In this context, culture includes entertainment, politics, religion, interpersonal relationships, in short the whole thing.
So much of what we hear is about what is going wrong. How society is crumbling. This type of lecture is normal. We seem to need intellectuals to help verify what we experience and witness.
Riemen does this as well but he also provides some models for the betterment, for the higher values, for what is possible and life gaining.
A few excerpts from one of his lectures. Here is the link to the complete talk.
...In a recent research in the United States it is stated that no real friendship is any longer possible because the intrinsic value of friendship no longer exist. It’s all about mutual interest. As long as we have our mutual interest, we are great friends. If something happened to this mutual interest, friendship will be gone.
...Their idea of being the best has nothing to do, whatsoever, with Socrates’ ideal of the highest values on truth, beauty, and good. But it is replaced by essentially the total meaningless success, because money is without meaning. To become the apprentice of Mr. Trump, you have to become as kitschy as him. If have had any personality left, you have to get it out of your system and become like Mr. Kitsch.
Politics used to be the discussion on, what is the good society. This is the discussion of your founding fathers, the federalist papers. At the very moment that kitsch takes over, you get the politics of useful lies. It’s all about useful lies. Read your newspapers and you can read a lot about useful lies.
In short, kitsch is the great reducer of everything: Truth will be reduced to facts, love will be reduced to satisfaction, beauty will be deprived of truth, knowledge will be reduced to information. You get this empty meaningless society, which is so much a cultivation of death.
...the essence of life is everything that gives life: truth, goodness, beauty, but also mercy, forgiveness, love, friendship, wisdom, and true art. All these acts give life; have the capacity of life-giving.
...strive for a lifelong commitment to what is truthful, to what is meaningful, to what is life-giving. Because this is the only way to step out of a kitsch culture and turn into a society in which, we are refocused on what truly and really matters.
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