Welcome

Reader’s Challenge Issue

Fun Food For Thought

Civil society in America is evolving faster than anywhere else in the world. The Middle East, China, Africa, South America will catch up and possibly surpass us well before the end of this century in total economic output, but by then the rules of civil society will have changed dramatically. The economic and even political rules America and the world play by today have roots in the 19th Century. The developing world is doing what we have been doing for 150 years or more, and in some ways doing it better. But better is not going to be good enough. By the time the developing nations catch up, one would hope we will have further evolved into a society that breaks down barriers between humanity, technology and bureaucracy so that corporations — as governments — no longer are regarded as “persons”, but as constructs devised by people to realize human goals — and nothing more.

We hear a lot of complaints these days about what people don’t get in the way of intellectual stimulation from newspapers, magazines, or  television news shows.  “You give us twenty-two minutes and we’ll give you the world,” proclaims the most listened to station in the nation, and that’s great when you’re driving to work in the morning, but not if you want to begin to understand  the “Whys” and “Hows” behind the “Whats”.   Happily, and in a completely random fashion, this issue of Ragazine.CC brings together a banquet of food for thought about relational changes taking place in the biosphere.  We call it the “Reader’s Challenge Issue,” because you’re going to have to read a lot — and think about it –  to see how it all fits together.

A good starting point would be Eleanor Goldfield‘s article about the “Move to Amend” effort in Los Angeles that resolves that corporations should not enjoy “personhood”. Follow that with Scott “Galanty” Miller‘s piece based on his sociology class lectures − a discourse on how corporations, the internet, and technology in general, drain the individual of empathy, sympathy and, in turn, humanity, turning them, he laments, into “F**king A**holes”.

After these, you might want to dive into politics editor Jim Palombo‘s follow-up report on his visit as Ragazine envoy to the Rhodes Forum in Rhodes, Greece, where delegates from around the globe shared their world views on political, economic and social issues of the day. Jim also weighs in the OWS crowd. Not enough? Flay yourself further reading a moderated interview by Rosebud Magazine publisher and Binghamton University professor John Smelcer with Donald Pease, of Dartmouth University, and Robyn Wiegman of Duke University, as they discuss the present state and direction of American Studies.

Garnish this with dynamic portfolios from photographer Olaf Heine; the surrealistic comic bookish fine art of Fernando “Pulpo” Hereñu; fiction from Ann Bogle; Bengali poetry in the original and in translation from Masud Khan; poems by American poets Gail Fishman, Gillian Brall, Myron Ernst and Dwyer Jones; music reviewer Jeff Katz‘s annual TOP TEN Not-All-New picks from 2011; Mark Levy‘s “Casual Observer,” and more.

Just look inside to find it.

Thanks for reading!

− Mike Foldes

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