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I'm reflecting on what I've written. Going slower. Taking time to know what I know. Not so fast Koenigsberg. You're not going to die tomorrow. Make things clear. Don't depend on everyone else to figure out what I'm saying. Explain things. Have a little tolerance.
Each of the sections of this missive can be read separately, although the ideas are connected.
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What did Clay Shirky say? "Publishing is now a button." The greatest revolution in the history of the human race. We don't need to go into how complicated it used to be to "get published." Proposals, "submission" letters (who did you have to "submit" to? If you were an author you had to "submit"). Now you press a button and you are published. I'll do it in a few minutes, and more people will read what I've written in the next ten hours (ten minutes actually, but I don't want everyone to get too depress) than read the typical journal article in ten years
iContact used to limit the number of messages one could send out. NOW THEY ALLOW--I don't even know or unable to say it--but it seems to be unlimited. Part of this Internet revolution. Costs nothing to send things out over the Internet. What is an author to do?
I "pigged out" (to use an ugly word) over the past few years. From September 20, 2022 to April 14, 2023, I sent out 232 Newsletters (not all written by me, many by my colleagues, I only publish the greatest authors in the world). This comes out to 16.66 Newsletters per week, 2.32 Newsletters a day.
I often say, "I reach more people in a day with my articles or papers (often 2000+) than most authors reach with their articles or papers in a lifetime. And this is true.
But what about "refereed journals" the oldies may say? Well, I did that when I was very young. I published in the American Imago when I was 24 years old (or was it 23), then The Psychoanalytic Review, and then I was promoted to Assistant Professor, and then I didn't need to do "get published" to get promoted, and then I decided to quit teaching (and writing for journals) so I could say precisely what I wanted to say.
It became easy to publish or to get my ideas out into the world. And I know what I know. So I didn't need anyone's "approval." But I didn't have much interaction. A lonely mission.
So what's happening now is I'm starting to interact with people, convey my ideas in a more friendly way, bring other scholars into the fold who share the objective of trying to understand what's going on in the world, what happened in the Twentieth Century all these strange, bizarre things that people fatously call "history."
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If someone dies in a war, there must be something he is dying for. This "thing" that one dies for holds the group together. We call these things "nations." Warfare turns nothing into something (creates nations) by virtue of death.
Richard Koenigsberg
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In other words, if people die in politics, they are dying for some thing. There has to be a "motive" or "cause." What does one die for? this is the thing that people in a particular culture warship (worship I mean). People die and kill for what they worship.
Bobby Dylan sings, "You gonna have to 'serve' somebody (link): (it may be the devil or it may be the lord)." What does he mean? He's suggesting that each human being has to submit to a higher power.
War is an example of a form of behavior which is based on "serving" or submitting. The nation is an object CREATED BY HUMAN BEINGS so they will have something to "serve."
The entire mass-media produces figures that people seek to "serve," submit to, to "place so high above us." People continue to serve Mohammed Ali or Paul McCartney or Michael Jordan (or Bob Dylan). It's endless, a repetition compulsion, boring finally. But people need to "serve somebody."
Of course, the most profound form of "service" is dying for something, like a country, or Allah, or that weird Korean leader or that ugly, resentful Russian leader.
What one is willing to die for structures or defines a culture.
Of course, nowadays, people (particularly young people) don't need to die for things like people used to need to die. There are too many other things to do.
Richard Koenigsberg
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