Good Morning Friends,
Pragmatism (the philosophy, capital P) overlaps with Idealism (the philosophy, capital I), in my view. And just as the philosophy of Pragmatism has a different meaning, is more dynamic - and I think, empowering - than the common usage of the word 'pragmatism' would indicate; so is the philosophy of Idealism different from what the common usage of the word 'idealism' would indicate. In fact, viewed from a certain angle, one might say Idealism is, in a way, almost a cynical philosophy - or at least its implications might open the way for cynicism.
Idealism: "the philosophical doctrine that reality is somehow mind-correlative or mind-coordinated - that real objects constituting the "external world" are not independent of cognizing minds, but exist only as in some way correlative to mental operations. The doctrine centers on the conception that reality as we understand it reflects the workings of the mind.
"Perhaps its most radical version is the ancient Oriental spiritualistic or panpsychistic (I have no idea what this word means either) idea, renewed in Christian Science, that minds and their thoughts are all there is - that reality is simply the sum total of he visions (or dreams?) of one or more minds.
"A dispute has long raged within the idealist camp over whether "the mind" - at issue in such idealistic fomulas was a mind emplaced outside of or behind nature (absolute idealism), or a nature-pervasive power of rationality of some sort (cosmic idealism), or the collective impersonal social mind of people in general (social idealism), or simply the distributive collection of individual minds (personal idealism). Over the years, the less grandiose versions of the theory came increasingly to the fore, and in recent times virtually all idealists have construed "the minds" at issue in their theory as separate individual minds equipped with socially engendered resources.
"There are certainly versions of idealism short of the spiritualistic position of an ontological idealism that (as Kant puts it at Prolegomena, section 13, n.2) holds that "there are none but thinking beings." Idealism need certainly not go so far as to affirm that mind makes or constitutes matter; it is quite enough to maintain (e.g.) that all of the characterizing properties of physical existents resemble phenomenal sensory properties in representing dispositions to affect mind-endowed creatures in a certain sort of way, so that these properties have no standing without reference to minds. Weaker still is an explanatory idealism which merely holds that an adequate of the real always requires some recourse to the operations of the mind" (Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. General Editor, Robert Audi. 1995).
Let me say a word about the teaching of philosophy, before we "unpack" this definition. I think it would be well if, someday, the educational system would make a distinction between teaching students, who want to be philosophers, how to philosophize, how to do philosophy; and teaching students how to historicize philosophy, how to be historians of philosophy - because here we come to an important distinction to be made between knowledge and information, which I'll come back to.
As usual, the rest of this passage is about the great figures of the past who worked with Idealism and their various points of departure, and differences of opinion and intellectual rivalries and debates they had over these. For those who want to be historians of philosophy, these facts are crucial. The history of philosophy is important.
History in general is about the kinds of events and sequence of these, as well as the patterns of social, cultural, political, economic, technological, and intellectual movements that led to the lives we lead today. The history (of philosophy) is about the great thinkers and their ideas and innovations, which had practical consequences for political life, and led to the ways we think today, whether individuals are consciously aware of this or not.
The practice of philosophy is about moving our knowledge of the natural world and the mind forward. Indeed, we hope to convert knowledge into information, which we convert into knowledge converted into information. And on and on idefinitely. Remember I told that philosophy is the unmanned probe from the base of concrete human knowledge (I should have said information).
Let me give two definitons.
Knowledge: the search for insight into the nature and ways of the mind and natural world, as a
whole; by knowledge, I mean the act of seeking, a process not a thing; knowledge
can be "remembered" or recreated in the Platonic sense - I'll come back to this.
Information: this is converted knowledge into proven doctrine - an aspect of the sciences and
mathematics; information also comes from human activity, which is outside of
nature; history, economics, finance, politics are not knowledge, in that they cannot
recalled in the Platonic sense. You cannot recall The Treaty of Westphalia of 1648,
for example, because it is outside of nature.
On the one hand it is important to distinguish between knowledge and information, there is also overlap between the two. Mathematics started as the process of knowledge (as defined above) with the aim of practically solving a problem; once the problem was solved, we arrive at the "starting point for reflection," but in the meantime we have information, in the form of a set of proven set of doctrines; and with the field of theoretical mathematics, it is again converted into knowledge, about there can be and is disagreement.
Physics, chemistry, biology, and all the sciences are like this. I would imagine that the ratio of knowledge to information, tilts very heavily toward the former in the fields of archeology and anthropology. History seems to be mostly informational, and yet there are occasions when the knowledge process might be activated - where the particular headscratcher might not simply involve crucial missing documents, where a different way of seeing might be called for, where assistance from other disciplines like anthropology, sociology, and the like might be necessary, and so on an so forth.
Economics is something like the sciences, in that the field is presented to us as informational, with an origin in knowledge-seeking. But the appearance of the field of behavioral economics can be read as the conversion of informational economics back into knowledge-seeking economics, about which there can be and is disagreement among various seekers.
But its important to say that physics, math, and all the sciences can be learned through Platonic means, since the informational doctrine is never outside of nature. History cannot be learned in this way since man-made events are most decisively outside of nature.
My thinking on this is powerfully influenced by Plato's idea that learning is about recollecting what we once knew but forgot (Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 1995, p.620). In a sense the general memory of how the information was originally acquired, was forgotten, and reassembling this memory can lead us back knowledge-information about the natural world.
You can take a definition of philosophy, and if you trust yourself, you yourself can work through all the implications and possible points of departure from it; and in this way you can cover all the territory once traveled by the great and not-so-great thinkers of the past without knowing who a single one of them were.
This is so because the practice of philosophy, philosophizing, is an intuitive, personal, empathetic process. It is wholly within the realm of nature. They way we think is natural, because the way we came to be is natural. Anyway, the confusion of knowledge and information is another way in which the educational system is tilted heavily in favor of good memorizers, even in the humanities.
Friends, until our educational system is appropriately restructured, here is a technique that might help you cope. Use this technique for philosophy, psychology (including so-called 'abnormal' psychology), sociology, archeology (not anthropology, then again, perhaps with some aspects of physical and cultural anthropology at that), not history (events outside of nature), not theology, not geology [though this is the area of the natural world, I'm not sure that the informational doctrine can be approached through introspection; geology doesn't lend itself to "thought experiments" like physics and chemistry.
In any events, try taking the basic definition of a conceptual movement in philosophy, sociology, or something, then, trusting yourself, think through - by yourself- all the directions it can take you. Write these down. Next choose the names of formal movements and the historical figures associated with them, and match them up with the self-generated implications that match up best with these.
If, like me, you are not a good memorizer, you may find that this technique helps your memorization. You may feel a more organic connection to the material. You may feel more like you "remembered" these things. And if you do this, you may find that the answer to that age-old question - posed by Gatorade - "Is it in you?" is yes.
Let's go to another post.
wingedcentaur
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Friends,
Does it seem to you that our educational system is, by a long, long way tilted in favor of people who are good memorizers and test-takers, as opposed to those whose talents might lie elsewhere?
It does?
Well, that's understandable, I suppose. Government is always anxious to produce business-ready high school and college graduates for, well, business firms - and thus contribute to the "health of the economy." The "accountability," and "choice," and "merit pay" for teachers, the narrowing of the curriculum and "teaching to the test," seem to be reflective of the perception that business is solely, impersonally, dispassionately, logically about the "bottom line."
But one of the revelations that always comes up, during a crisis, but that we soon forget, is that business itself is often not very "business-like." I mentioned a book, before, by Paul Fussell called Class: A Guide Through the American Status System (1983).
One of the amusing take aways from this book concerns class mimicry. I defined that as the tendency of people, in general, to ape certain characteristics of those social classes above them, in order to appear more prosperous than they are. The thing is, when we try to mimck the social behavior of the classes above us, we almost invariably always get it wrong. We act out an illusion. We are usually so far off base that our mimicry cannot even be fairly called caricature or satire.
Fussell makes this point convincingly in category after category, in a variety of ways. I won't go into it here, but I think I mentioned that this is one tragicomic irony of "No Child Left Behind" and "Race to the Top," (is it?) of the current administration. They think they're giving business what it wants.
But it seems that what business actually wants and needs, are people with imagination and a kind of creativity that comes from, in part, from a broad-based liberal arts education - even when a company's goal is to rip off the public. I gave Andy Fastow of Enron and Bernard Madoff as examples. Yes, what they did was slimy, but it was also creative.
You know, I'll pick this up later.
wingedcentaur
Does it seem to you that our educational system is, by a long, long way tilted in favor of people who are good memorizers and test-takers, as opposed to those whose talents might lie elsewhere?
It does?
Well, that's understandable, I suppose. Government is always anxious to produce business-ready high school and college graduates for, well, business firms - and thus contribute to the "health of the economy." The "accountability," and "choice," and "merit pay" for teachers, the narrowing of the curriculum and "teaching to the test," seem to be reflective of the perception that business is solely, impersonally, dispassionately, logically about the "bottom line."
But one of the revelations that always comes up, during a crisis, but that we soon forget, is that business itself is often not very "business-like." I mentioned a book, before, by Paul Fussell called Class: A Guide Through the American Status System (1983).
One of the amusing take aways from this book concerns class mimicry. I defined that as the tendency of people, in general, to ape certain characteristics of those social classes above them, in order to appear more prosperous than they are. The thing is, when we try to mimck the social behavior of the classes above us, we almost invariably always get it wrong. We act out an illusion. We are usually so far off base that our mimicry cannot even be fairly called caricature or satire.
Fussell makes this point convincingly in category after category, in a variety of ways. I won't go into it here, but I think I mentioned that this is one tragicomic irony of "No Child Left Behind" and "Race to the Top," (is it?) of the current administration. They think they're giving business what it wants.
But it seems that what business actually wants and needs, are people with imagination and a kind of creativity that comes from, in part, from a broad-based liberal arts education - even when a company's goal is to rip off the public. I gave Andy Fastow of Enron and Bernard Madoff as examples. Yes, what they did was slimy, but it was also creative.
You know, I'll pick this up later.
wingedcentaur
Good Morning Friends,
We're going to wrap up here, our topic having been Pragmatism (the philosophy) and class stratification. We asked the question why class stratification happens despite people's best efforts to create egalitarian institutions. We looked at the Soviet Union in the fifties, which had already "evolved" a ten-class social system.
We looked at Israeli farm collectives at the turn of the twentieth century. There is a perspective that would have liked to have seen the manual workers and farmers, of these communities, remain on top socially as they had been at the beginning; they would have liked to have seen this community remain a "worker state."
But, sociologically, its like a see saw, with the "brain" or "clean" work class eventually remaining on top, or the bottom holding workers aloft, depending on your perspective. There seems to be a transition period when new societies are being created - when things are a bit rough and the rugged sort of John Wayne character is needed, and glorified, to tame things.
The adventurer, doing his job so well, actually expedites his own extinction. After "civilization" is established the managerial sort is needed to sustain it. Hopefully, the civilized state lasts far, far longer than the transitional stage. Hopefully, the civilized state continues in perpetuity, indefinitely. And so, the adventurer becomes "obsolete." This is almost mathematically obvious when one thinks about it.
It is the "knowledge worker" who is seen as vital in "holding society together," and so forth. One of the criticisms made of, the first post-conquest viceroy of Iraq, Paul Bremer's "de-Baathification" policies, was that they created a "brain drain" effect. They drove away, and sometimes underground with the "insurgency," a lot of the educated professionals who already knew how to run the society like teachers, engineers, and the like.
Brain-drain is not a term I like, because it implies that those people who are left behind do not have intelligence. When you confront commentators on this, they will undoubtedly say that they didn't mean it that way.
I could be wrong, but I think that, deep down, they did mean it that way. Not only is the term an insult, but it reflects an incorrect view of the nature of knowledge. It does not acknowledge the relationship between the perceived-abstract and the perceived-practical.
Now, the adventurer, in the form of the national security state, tries to avoid riding off into the sunset of obsolescence, by: A) insistently assuring us how "wild" the situation still is; B) creating adventures for itself, being provocative, talking belligerently about (with respect to one nation or another) "keeping all options on the table," and so forth; and C) deploying the "Buffalo Bill" solution and telling us how many threats they delivered us from, popularizing, and, sometimes, we think, even fictionalizing their exploits.
Again, I would refer you to the Adam Curtis BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares," which is online. For example: A) We need only recall George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech, and before that Ronald Reagan told us the Soviet Union was "The Evil Empire"; B) I would just cite, here, the constant rhetorical harassment of the nation of Iran by U.S. officials, and also we might cite what many think of as the "spreading" war on terror, into Pakistan, Yemen, etc; C) We are constantly being told that "we" are fighting the terrorists "there" so we don't have to fight them "here," and so forth, and, as you know, there are many people who believe the U.S. went to war in Iraq on the basis of "cherry-picked" intelligence.
But returning economic class stratification, none of us would suggest that society be convulsed deliberately in order to bring about, once more, a "wild" situation in which the worker can once again reign. The goal of making a classless society is total freedom, not to exchange one rulership for another. What is needed, in my opinion, is a proper understanding of the nature of knowledge, which I talked a little about before.
If I had my druthers I would restructure education in general. For example, I think more dialectical materialism is needed in the study of history. I know this term 'dialectical materialism,' may have unpleasant Marxist associations for some of you, and you may think that this approach is horribly "reductionist," meaning that it reduces the passions of history-makers to crude material motives. But, as we have discussed in detail, materialism is not just materialism and money is not just money.
Money and material possession are symbols - unwholesome ones when accumulated in excess - of man's desire to become God.
Dialectical materialism offers a way in which we might teach an "integrated" curriculum. What is the study of history, as we largely have it today? It is white, heterosexual, male, bourgeoisie/aristocracy, political triumphalism, little more than kings and popes lists. I think I mentioned this before, but some observers are concerned about what they think of as de facto or "voluntary" school segregation.
This is hardly surprising since the curriculum itself is segregated. Because of this we don't really know how to be together across class, ethnic, "racial," and sexual orientation lines. Some of your "best friends" might come from x group, but if you examine your interactions I think you will find that you keep it light, you keep it relatively superficial. You stick to sports, travel (if you're of the traveling class), shopping, sex, and the like. There are certain places you don't go, certain things you don't and can't talk about. You don't want to make each other uncomfortable. This is the fault of bad education. Deep down, we really don't know what to say to each other.
Moving on, I think math could be taught differently, to make it more accessible to more people. We have the discipline as a fixed set of rules, equations and formulas, what have you. We tend to think mathematics as something handed down from Heaven whole cloth. But before we had math it had to be created or discovered, piece by piece, part by part.
I would say that the initial exploration of mathematics, thousands and thousands of years ago, started as a joint abstract-practical investigation. It was practical in that an "immediate" problem, of how to express a relationship, needed to be solved. It was abstract, in that it was an engagement with language.
Math is a kind of language or sub-language. Math is a response to a desire to bring more precision to communication, in one sense; and as such this is the province of intuition or the abstract. When we "reach" to find the "right word" to express ourselves in a given situation, this is a very intuitive, abstract activity. But as math is taught the intuitive element is entirely cut out.
And yet the fact of the existence of something called theoretical mathematics, indicates the intuitive, abstract aspect of math. If this level of math is speculative, it must mean that there is room for disagreement among mathematicians concerning their field, even though we may not be used to thinking about it this way.
Does all this mean that I think everyone could be train to the exact same level of proficiency in math? No.
It's like this: most of us over 18 have a driver's license. But only a tiny fraction of us have the skill of a professional race car driver. And yet we can all handle a car. I believe math, as well as the sciences can be taught in such a way that gives us all driver's licenses, at least. The distance between the "professional" scientists and mathematicians need not be so very vast; and because of this we, the public, are so susceptible to misconception, gross error, and "old wives" tales.
Let me end by saying, that I'm beginning to suspect that one reason there were so many "polyglots" (multitalented) thinkers in the ancient world, as we're told there were, is - in addition to the relative scarcity of data - the fact that they understood the relationship between the perceived-abstract and the perceived-practical much better than we do today.
wingedcentaur
We're going to wrap up here, our topic having been Pragmatism (the philosophy) and class stratification. We asked the question why class stratification happens despite people's best efforts to create egalitarian institutions. We looked at the Soviet Union in the fifties, which had already "evolved" a ten-class social system.
We looked at Israeli farm collectives at the turn of the twentieth century. There is a perspective that would have liked to have seen the manual workers and farmers, of these communities, remain on top socially as they had been at the beginning; they would have liked to have seen this community remain a "worker state."
But, sociologically, its like a see saw, with the "brain" or "clean" work class eventually remaining on top, or the bottom holding workers aloft, depending on your perspective. There seems to be a transition period when new societies are being created - when things are a bit rough and the rugged sort of John Wayne character is needed, and glorified, to tame things.
The adventurer, doing his job so well, actually expedites his own extinction. After "civilization" is established the managerial sort is needed to sustain it. Hopefully, the civilized state lasts far, far longer than the transitional stage. Hopefully, the civilized state continues in perpetuity, indefinitely. And so, the adventurer becomes "obsolete." This is almost mathematically obvious when one thinks about it.
It is the "knowledge worker" who is seen as vital in "holding society together," and so forth. One of the criticisms made of, the first post-conquest viceroy of Iraq, Paul Bremer's "de-Baathification" policies, was that they created a "brain drain" effect. They drove away, and sometimes underground with the "insurgency," a lot of the educated professionals who already knew how to run the society like teachers, engineers, and the like.
Brain-drain is not a term I like, because it implies that those people who are left behind do not have intelligence. When you confront commentators on this, they will undoubtedly say that they didn't mean it that way.
I could be wrong, but I think that, deep down, they did mean it that way. Not only is the term an insult, but it reflects an incorrect view of the nature of knowledge. It does not acknowledge the relationship between the perceived-abstract and the perceived-practical.
Now, the adventurer, in the form of the national security state, tries to avoid riding off into the sunset of obsolescence, by: A) insistently assuring us how "wild" the situation still is; B) creating adventures for itself, being provocative, talking belligerently about (with respect to one nation or another) "keeping all options on the table," and so forth; and C) deploying the "Buffalo Bill" solution and telling us how many threats they delivered us from, popularizing, and, sometimes, we think, even fictionalizing their exploits.
Again, I would refer you to the Adam Curtis BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares," which is online. For example: A) We need only recall George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech, and before that Ronald Reagan told us the Soviet Union was "The Evil Empire"; B) I would just cite, here, the constant rhetorical harassment of the nation of Iran by U.S. officials, and also we might cite what many think of as the "spreading" war on terror, into Pakistan, Yemen, etc; C) We are constantly being told that "we" are fighting the terrorists "there" so we don't have to fight them "here," and so forth, and, as you know, there are many people who believe the U.S. went to war in Iraq on the basis of "cherry-picked" intelligence.
But returning economic class stratification, none of us would suggest that society be convulsed deliberately in order to bring about, once more, a "wild" situation in which the worker can once again reign. The goal of making a classless society is total freedom, not to exchange one rulership for another. What is needed, in my opinion, is a proper understanding of the nature of knowledge, which I talked a little about before.
If I had my druthers I would restructure education in general. For example, I think more dialectical materialism is needed in the study of history. I know this term 'dialectical materialism,' may have unpleasant Marxist associations for some of you, and you may think that this approach is horribly "reductionist," meaning that it reduces the passions of history-makers to crude material motives. But, as we have discussed in detail, materialism is not just materialism and money is not just money.
Money and material possession are symbols - unwholesome ones when accumulated in excess - of man's desire to become God.
Dialectical materialism offers a way in which we might teach an "integrated" curriculum. What is the study of history, as we largely have it today? It is white, heterosexual, male, bourgeoisie/aristocracy, political triumphalism, little more than kings and popes lists. I think I mentioned this before, but some observers are concerned about what they think of as de facto or "voluntary" school segregation.
This is hardly surprising since the curriculum itself is segregated. Because of this we don't really know how to be together across class, ethnic, "racial," and sexual orientation lines. Some of your "best friends" might come from x group, but if you examine your interactions I think you will find that you keep it light, you keep it relatively superficial. You stick to sports, travel (if you're of the traveling class), shopping, sex, and the like. There are certain places you don't go, certain things you don't and can't talk about. You don't want to make each other uncomfortable. This is the fault of bad education. Deep down, we really don't know what to say to each other.
Moving on, I think math could be taught differently, to make it more accessible to more people. We have the discipline as a fixed set of rules, equations and formulas, what have you. We tend to think mathematics as something handed down from Heaven whole cloth. But before we had math it had to be created or discovered, piece by piece, part by part.
I would say that the initial exploration of mathematics, thousands and thousands of years ago, started as a joint abstract-practical investigation. It was practical in that an "immediate" problem, of how to express a relationship, needed to be solved. It was abstract, in that it was an engagement with language.
Math is a kind of language or sub-language. Math is a response to a desire to bring more precision to communication, in one sense; and as such this is the province of intuition or the abstract. When we "reach" to find the "right word" to express ourselves in a given situation, this is a very intuitive, abstract activity. But as math is taught the intuitive element is entirely cut out.
And yet the fact of the existence of something called theoretical mathematics, indicates the intuitive, abstract aspect of math. If this level of math is speculative, it must mean that there is room for disagreement among mathematicians concerning their field, even though we may not be used to thinking about it this way.
Does all this mean that I think everyone could be train to the exact same level of proficiency in math? No.
It's like this: most of us over 18 have a driver's license. But only a tiny fraction of us have the skill of a professional race car driver. And yet we can all handle a car. I believe math, as well as the sciences can be taught in such a way that gives us all driver's licenses, at least. The distance between the "professional" scientists and mathematicians need not be so very vast; and because of this we, the public, are so susceptible to misconception, gross error, and "old wives" tales.
Let me end by saying, that I'm beginning to suspect that one reason there were so many "polyglots" (multitalented) thinkers in the ancient world, as we're told there were, is - in addition to the relative scarcity of data - the fact that they understood the relationship between the perceived-abstract and the perceived-practical much better than we do today.
wingedcentaur
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Friends,
What would the schools of the future look like and how would they function to keep class stratification to a minimum?
I don't have a blueprint, just some scattered thoughts. The most important thing, to my mind, is that these institutions would constantly teach generation after generation of students, the intertwined nature of the perceived-abstract and the perceived-practical, in order to prevent the artificial separation and segregation of "brain" or "clean" work from manual or vocational work, like a plumber.
There is something I forgot to mention in the last post. I said how intellectual work is largely mental housekeeping, to show that it is not as dynamic as we think. But how do you know that your plumber is not inspired by Poseidon, to make a marvelous innovation in his field, which might not only improve toilets (if such things can be improved) but also might also lead to improvements in water distribution systems for large sectors of the world's population - and for which he may be robbed of credit, not to mention royalties.
Suppose a young man graudated high school and wanted to be a farmer. He would go to a four-year school, we wouldn't necessarily call them colleges or universities, and they would be somewhat different from liberal arts universities.
Now, the farmer would learn everything technically he needs to know about agriculture, everything. But during those four years he would also learn about an area comparative mythology concerning the god of agriculture, literature concerning that theme (Grapes of Wrath, for example), and the history of agriculture. But the mythology would be most important.
The same true for the plumber (Poseidon, literature (perhaps works dealing with the sea), history of plumbing.
The same true for the electrician: (Zeus, literature on the topic, and the history of the electrician's field)
The same true for the carpenter: (the relevant mythology, literature touching on the theme, and the history of carpentry)
And so on and so forth. I'm leaving out jobs like sanitation worker, and so forth, because these are jobs created by the bulimic, deindustrializing, urbanizing aftershocks of capitalism.
I'll wrap this up in the next post, with a very small word about education in general.
wingedcentaur.
What would the schools of the future look like and how would they function to keep class stratification to a minimum?
I don't have a blueprint, just some scattered thoughts. The most important thing, to my mind, is that these institutions would constantly teach generation after generation of students, the intertwined nature of the perceived-abstract and the perceived-practical, in order to prevent the artificial separation and segregation of "brain" or "clean" work from manual or vocational work, like a plumber.
There is something I forgot to mention in the last post. I said how intellectual work is largely mental housekeeping, to show that it is not as dynamic as we think. But how do you know that your plumber is not inspired by Poseidon, to make a marvelous innovation in his field, which might not only improve toilets (if such things can be improved) but also might also lead to improvements in water distribution systems for large sectors of the world's population - and for which he may be robbed of credit, not to mention royalties.
Suppose a young man graudated high school and wanted to be a farmer. He would go to a four-year school, we wouldn't necessarily call them colleges or universities, and they would be somewhat different from liberal arts universities.
Now, the farmer would learn everything technically he needs to know about agriculture, everything. But during those four years he would also learn about an area comparative mythology concerning the god of agriculture, literature concerning that theme (Grapes of Wrath, for example), and the history of agriculture. But the mythology would be most important.
The same true for the plumber (Poseidon, literature (perhaps works dealing with the sea), history of plumbing.
The same true for the electrician: (Zeus, literature on the topic, and the history of the electrician's field)
The same true for the carpenter: (the relevant mythology, literature touching on the theme, and the history of carpentry)
And so on and so forth. I'm leaving out jobs like sanitation worker, and so forth, because these are jobs created by the bulimic, deindustrializing, urbanizing aftershocks of capitalism.
I'll wrap this up in the next post, with a very small word about education in general.
wingedcentaur.
Friends,
The society that is brought about by the adventurer lasts much, much, much longer than the transitional phase, of which he, the adventurer, was a part. Most such figures have trouble making the transition, if they can at all, unless one is a character like Buffalo Bill. The adventurer becomes an anachronism, and when this happens class stratification sharpens.
The connection between the seeming abstract and the seeming practical is lost, and the two dimensions become segregated. The former come to be seen as more important than the latter; because it is the former that is seen to be necessary to keep society functioning, and the latter needs to be a tool of and subordinated to it. The hands need to listen to the head, when before it was the other way around.
How can we get the head and the hands to get to work, without one ever subordinating the other?
I think there are certain educational changes that need to be institutionalized. What needs to become embedded in the education system is this: our intial foray into knowledge [in all its retroactive glory, which is mistakenly, in retrospect, seen to be the sole exploratory journey of abstract thinking man - to the extent that the abstract and the practical are erroneously seen to be mutually exclusive] has a practical aim of solving a specific problem; and when this is done we are at the "starting point for reflection" [this starting point is mistakenly, in retrospect, appropriated solely as the area of abstract thinking man; but abstract man joins the practical man here, again, to the extent to which the abstract and practical are seen to be mutually exclusive]. Practical man's role is completely obliterated from memory.
Thus, the college professor of comparative mythology earns vastly more - over time - and is accorded far more social status than the plumber. The former is seen to be an opinion-maker and thought-moulder, and "leader" of society; and the plumber (even if he earns more money than the professor) is seen as a grunt to take orders.
Another thing that happens, here, is so-called intellectual work (one has to be careful here because charge that sometimes gets leveled at us Luddites is "anti-intellectualism") is seen to be more dynamic and changing than it is. And manual or vocational work is seen to be more static than it is.
As Noam Chomsky said "The hidden truth is that a large amount of scholarship is clerical work. In fact, a good deal of science is detailed, routine work. I'm not saying it's easy - you have to know what you're looking for and so on - but it's not an enormous intellectual challenge" (Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World. Interviews with David Barsamian. Metropolitan Books. Henry Holt and Company. New York, 2005. p.139).
This hits us as counterintuitive at first, but makes sense, at least to me, when you give it some thought. After all, no "knowledge worker" can think up an innovative thought every twenty minutes. A lot of what she does, walking around, briefcase in hand, in her power suit, to and from and at work, a frown on her face, looking important and bothered - is mental, conceptual housekeeping: playing around with the exterior and interior of your house; moving the furniture around; deciding which you shall keep, what you will throw away, what you will donate to Goodwill, and what you will give away, and what you will fix; and so on and so forth.
This is another dimension of what I mean when we talk about the connection between "theory and praxis."
Let's go to another post.
wingedcentaur
The society that is brought about by the adventurer lasts much, much, much longer than the transitional phase, of which he, the adventurer, was a part. Most such figures have trouble making the transition, if they can at all, unless one is a character like Buffalo Bill. The adventurer becomes an anachronism, and when this happens class stratification sharpens.
The connection between the seeming abstract and the seeming practical is lost, and the two dimensions become segregated. The former come to be seen as more important than the latter; because it is the former that is seen to be necessary to keep society functioning, and the latter needs to be a tool of and subordinated to it. The hands need to listen to the head, when before it was the other way around.
How can we get the head and the hands to get to work, without one ever subordinating the other?
I think there are certain educational changes that need to be institutionalized. What needs to become embedded in the education system is this: our intial foray into knowledge [in all its retroactive glory, which is mistakenly, in retrospect, seen to be the sole exploratory journey of abstract thinking man - to the extent that the abstract and the practical are erroneously seen to be mutually exclusive] has a practical aim of solving a specific problem; and when this is done we are at the "starting point for reflection" [this starting point is mistakenly, in retrospect, appropriated solely as the area of abstract thinking man; but abstract man joins the practical man here, again, to the extent to which the abstract and practical are seen to be mutually exclusive]. Practical man's role is completely obliterated from memory.
Thus, the college professor of comparative mythology earns vastly more - over time - and is accorded far more social status than the plumber. The former is seen to be an opinion-maker and thought-moulder, and "leader" of society; and the plumber (even if he earns more money than the professor) is seen as a grunt to take orders.
Another thing that happens, here, is so-called intellectual work (one has to be careful here because charge that sometimes gets leveled at us Luddites is "anti-intellectualism") is seen to be more dynamic and changing than it is. And manual or vocational work is seen to be more static than it is.
As Noam Chomsky said "The hidden truth is that a large amount of scholarship is clerical work. In fact, a good deal of science is detailed, routine work. I'm not saying it's easy - you have to know what you're looking for and so on - but it's not an enormous intellectual challenge" (Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World. Interviews with David Barsamian. Metropolitan Books. Henry Holt and Company. New York, 2005. p.139).
This hits us as counterintuitive at first, but makes sense, at least to me, when you give it some thought. After all, no "knowledge worker" can think up an innovative thought every twenty minutes. A lot of what she does, walking around, briefcase in hand, in her power suit, to and from and at work, a frown on her face, looking important and bothered - is mental, conceptual housekeeping: playing around with the exterior and interior of your house; moving the furniture around; deciding which you shall keep, what you will throw away, what you will donate to Goodwill, and what you will give away, and what you will fix; and so on and so forth.
This is another dimension of what I mean when we talk about the connection between "theory and praxis."
Let's go to another post.
wingedcentaur
Good Morning Friends,
We're back talking about Pragmatism and class stratification. We gave a formal definition of the term and worked through it piece by piece, as it were. What is most important for us is something I mentioned before: the intermingled connection between the speculative, abstract, and theoretical and the concrete, logical, and the like; this connection remains but we forget it, and in this way work becomes stratified, with one kind of work, "thinking" separated from "manual" or "trade" work.
However, I want to remind you that what is called practical is not as practical as practical thinks it is; and speculative is not as speculative as speculative thinks it is. We gave an example of this with the story Slavoj Zizek tells us about toilets. We said that thinkers are every bit as responsible for the toilet as the people who wrought it with their very hands.
And the manipulation of objects (say, innovation in toilets) contributes to the world of ideas. I said that I didn't have exact proof of this, however [again see Authors@Google: Slavoj Zizek] Slavoj Zizek seems to be able to take inspiration, as a thinker, from innovations in toilet design and construction.
Remember, the "outcome of directed action" is the "starting point of reflection." We seek knowledge to solve a specific problem, and once we solve it we get to thinking... In this way the utilitarian feeds the theoretical, and the theoretical feeds the practical. It is a constant, circular relationship. But we forget this.
Question: Why is it that despite people's best efforts to create a classless society, elites spring up? Why is it that, in a sense, the more things change, things remain the same ultimately?
For example, in addition to the way Washington had seemed to have exaggerated the menace of the Soviet Union, its egalitarian nature seemed to have been exaggerated, as we now know. But I don't say this cynically.
This seems to have been noticed in the fifties.
"The Soviet Union, despite its professions of achieving a society of true equality, is becoming more precisely stratified each year. The need of the expanding industrial machine for a hierarchy of managers and specialists as well as workers of varying skills provided, and in fact perhaps demanded, a social structure to match" (Packard, Vance. The Status Seekers: An Exploration of Class Behavior in America and The Hidden Barriers That Affect You, Your Community, Your Future. David Mckay Company Inc. New York, 1959. p.19).
I'm not making a political punch against the old Soviet Union or Communism. It's just that any statist system is going to behave this way.
Alex Inkeles, with the Russian Research Center at Harvard, had concluded that Russia under the Communists, had evolved a ten-class social system. Classes ranged from the ruling elite (officials, scientists, top artists and writers) down through managers, bureaucrats, three classes of workers, two classes of peasants to the slave laborers. To formalize the classes Russia had been requiring more and more of the millions of its civilians to wear uniforms to show their exact position within the system. In 1958 a group of managers and technicians visited America. They were billed by the government as "ordinary." But inquiry revealed that these ordinary folks earned an income that was five times that of the typical Soviet worker (Packard, Vance. The Status Seekers. p.19).
At the turn of the twentieth century some folks set up hundreds of farm collectives in and around the territory of what would come to be called Israel. Originally it was "productive" workers (manual laborers, farmers) were the ones glorified because their talents were needed to settle the arid land and few of the immigrant Jews had any experience with the kind of work, as they were mostly intellectuals and white collar people. "Brain" or "clean" work was scorned an non-productive. Furthermore, in the early days managers were elected on a rotation basis (Packard, Vance. Status Seekers. pp.19-20).
But over the years, it developed that highly regarded, capable men got elected managers, again and again. They tended to return less and less to "productive" work, and higher prestige began shifting from "productive" to "brain" work. Also, an "aristocracy" of "old-timers" emerged, and had become the main source of managerial talent (Packard, Vance. Status Seekers. pp.19-20).
The question we want to ask is: Why does this happen?
If you have never heard such information before (and neither had I), I think we can intuitively grasp the truth of this. Think of the western film genre as a whole. What is the overriding thematic concern, or one of the main thematic concerns?
I would argue that one of these is this: it takes one kind of man to "settle" or "win" the "wild" west. The west must be tamed for civilization to be able to grow. The "injuns" must be subdued and severely marginalized, if not utterly wiped out. The out-of-control white criminal element must be controlled. Forests must be cleared and predatory animals must be hunted out of existence or pushed back into the new border separating the animal world from the human. And so on and so forth. There is must work to be done preparing the west for civilization.
And yet it takes another kind of man to civilize the west and continue the civilization. At this time the kind of men needed are shopkeepers, teachers (mostly women, yes?), preachers, dentists (who used to perform surgery), doctors, and the like. Such a place also comes to need artists, especially writers and storytellers. People in civilized society like to hear stories about the good old days when "men were men," and so forth.
The John Wayne or Clint Eastwood character is the adventurer who "wins" the west, but, sadly later finds himself - I hate to say this - obsolete (You might check out the Twilight Zone episode "The Obsolete Man"starring Burgess Meredith).
There was one western adventurer we all know of who solved this problem. He was both the adventurer and his own fictionalizer. In this way he made the transition from one phase of history to another. He escaped the fate of becoming irrelevant or a "dinosaur." That man was William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody (1846-1917).
According to Wikipedia, Cody earned his nickname by killing 4,860 American Bison. He was also a soldier. Apparently he was also a trapper, "bullwhacker" (whatever that is), a "Fifty Niner" (again, whatever that is) in Colorado, a Pony Express rider, wagonmaster, stagecoach driver, and even a hotel manager. Wikipedia makes clear that we don't know how much of this biography is real and how much is fabrication - which was Cody's genius. But he was certainly a soldier and buffalo hunter, perhaps even something of an anti-slavery activist. William Cody, of course, was best known for his Wild West Show.
That's it, William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody refused to allow himself to become obsolete.
Therefore, one way to look at the way the national security state, of America or any other country, justifies itself is the Buffalo Bill solution - an apparatus that justifies itself by using every technique of public relations at its disposal to popularize and fictionalize itself and the dangers it conquered and continues to conquer. Again, I would refer you to the excellent documentary film, "The Power of Nightmares" on the BBC by Adam Curtis.
Curtis's convincing is this: in the past politicians promised us a better world; those dreams failed therefore the fell back on promising to protect us from nightmares of Islamic terrorism.
Perhaps the national security apparatus, as a whole, are afraid of peace. Hard to justify an empire if there's peace. The national security apparatus probably, as a whole, wouldn't know what to do with themselves if there was peace. The military industrial complex wouldn't know what to do with itself, with all of those soldiers on at least sixty bases around the world. What would the various intelligence agencies do with themselves if there was peace. What would the defense armament industry do with themselves?
I think that military overcapacity could be converted into additional capacity for space exploration and undersea exploration. They could be put to work searching out other planets for humans to live on, as well as looking into the feasibility of setting up human colonies under the sea (I hear the sea levels are rising and so forth). They could be put to work formulating, designing, and implementing those things necessary to help human society adapt to those changes in the atmosphere that have been irretrievably set in motion by global warming. There's lots of other things they could do.
wingedcentaur
We're back talking about Pragmatism and class stratification. We gave a formal definition of the term and worked through it piece by piece, as it were. What is most important for us is something I mentioned before: the intermingled connection between the speculative, abstract, and theoretical and the concrete, logical, and the like; this connection remains but we forget it, and in this way work becomes stratified, with one kind of work, "thinking" separated from "manual" or "trade" work.
However, I want to remind you that what is called practical is not as practical as practical thinks it is; and speculative is not as speculative as speculative thinks it is. We gave an example of this with the story Slavoj Zizek tells us about toilets. We said that thinkers are every bit as responsible for the toilet as the people who wrought it with their very hands.
And the manipulation of objects (say, innovation in toilets) contributes to the world of ideas. I said that I didn't have exact proof of this, however [again see Authors@Google: Slavoj Zizek] Slavoj Zizek seems to be able to take inspiration, as a thinker, from innovations in toilet design and construction.
Remember, the "outcome of directed action" is the "starting point of reflection." We seek knowledge to solve a specific problem, and once we solve it we get to thinking... In this way the utilitarian feeds the theoretical, and the theoretical feeds the practical. It is a constant, circular relationship. But we forget this.
Question: Why is it that despite people's best efforts to create a classless society, elites spring up? Why is it that, in a sense, the more things change, things remain the same ultimately?
For example, in addition to the way Washington had seemed to have exaggerated the menace of the Soviet Union, its egalitarian nature seemed to have been exaggerated, as we now know. But I don't say this cynically.
This seems to have been noticed in the fifties.
"The Soviet Union, despite its professions of achieving a society of true equality, is becoming more precisely stratified each year. The need of the expanding industrial machine for a hierarchy of managers and specialists as well as workers of varying skills provided, and in fact perhaps demanded, a social structure to match" (Packard, Vance. The Status Seekers: An Exploration of Class Behavior in America and The Hidden Barriers That Affect You, Your Community, Your Future. David Mckay Company Inc. New York, 1959. p.19).
I'm not making a political punch against the old Soviet Union or Communism. It's just that any statist system is going to behave this way.
Alex Inkeles, with the Russian Research Center at Harvard, had concluded that Russia under the Communists, had evolved a ten-class social system. Classes ranged from the ruling elite (officials, scientists, top artists and writers) down through managers, bureaucrats, three classes of workers, two classes of peasants to the slave laborers. To formalize the classes Russia had been requiring more and more of the millions of its civilians to wear uniforms to show their exact position within the system. In 1958 a group of managers and technicians visited America. They were billed by the government as "ordinary." But inquiry revealed that these ordinary folks earned an income that was five times that of the typical Soviet worker (Packard, Vance. The Status Seekers. p.19).
At the turn of the twentieth century some folks set up hundreds of farm collectives in and around the territory of what would come to be called Israel. Originally it was "productive" workers (manual laborers, farmers) were the ones glorified because their talents were needed to settle the arid land and few of the immigrant Jews had any experience with the kind of work, as they were mostly intellectuals and white collar people. "Brain" or "clean" work was scorned an non-productive. Furthermore, in the early days managers were elected on a rotation basis (Packard, Vance. Status Seekers. pp.19-20).
But over the years, it developed that highly regarded, capable men got elected managers, again and again. They tended to return less and less to "productive" work, and higher prestige began shifting from "productive" to "brain" work. Also, an "aristocracy" of "old-timers" emerged, and had become the main source of managerial talent (Packard, Vance. Status Seekers. pp.19-20).
The question we want to ask is: Why does this happen?
If you have never heard such information before (and neither had I), I think we can intuitively grasp the truth of this. Think of the western film genre as a whole. What is the overriding thematic concern, or one of the main thematic concerns?
I would argue that one of these is this: it takes one kind of man to "settle" or "win" the "wild" west. The west must be tamed for civilization to be able to grow. The "injuns" must be subdued and severely marginalized, if not utterly wiped out. The out-of-control white criminal element must be controlled. Forests must be cleared and predatory animals must be hunted out of existence or pushed back into the new border separating the animal world from the human. And so on and so forth. There is must work to be done preparing the west for civilization.
And yet it takes another kind of man to civilize the west and continue the civilization. At this time the kind of men needed are shopkeepers, teachers (mostly women, yes?), preachers, dentists (who used to perform surgery), doctors, and the like. Such a place also comes to need artists, especially writers and storytellers. People in civilized society like to hear stories about the good old days when "men were men," and so forth.
The John Wayne or Clint Eastwood character is the adventurer who "wins" the west, but, sadly later finds himself - I hate to say this - obsolete (You might check out the Twilight Zone episode "The Obsolete Man"starring Burgess Meredith).
There was one western adventurer we all know of who solved this problem. He was both the adventurer and his own fictionalizer. In this way he made the transition from one phase of history to another. He escaped the fate of becoming irrelevant or a "dinosaur." That man was William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody (1846-1917).
According to Wikipedia, Cody earned his nickname by killing 4,860 American Bison. He was also a soldier. Apparently he was also a trapper, "bullwhacker" (whatever that is), a "Fifty Niner" (again, whatever that is) in Colorado, a Pony Express rider, wagonmaster, stagecoach driver, and even a hotel manager. Wikipedia makes clear that we don't know how much of this biography is real and how much is fabrication - which was Cody's genius. But he was certainly a soldier and buffalo hunter, perhaps even something of an anti-slavery activist. William Cody, of course, was best known for his Wild West Show.
That's it, William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody refused to allow himself to become obsolete.
Therefore, one way to look at the way the national security state, of America or any other country, justifies itself is the Buffalo Bill solution - an apparatus that justifies itself by using every technique of public relations at its disposal to popularize and fictionalize itself and the dangers it conquered and continues to conquer. Again, I would refer you to the excellent documentary film, "The Power of Nightmares" on the BBC by Adam Curtis.
Curtis's convincing is this: in the past politicians promised us a better world; those dreams failed therefore the fell back on promising to protect us from nightmares of Islamic terrorism.
Perhaps the national security apparatus, as a whole, are afraid of peace. Hard to justify an empire if there's peace. The national security apparatus probably, as a whole, wouldn't know what to do with themselves if there was peace. The military industrial complex wouldn't know what to do with itself, with all of those soldiers on at least sixty bases around the world. What would the various intelligence agencies do with themselves if there was peace. What would the defense armament industry do with themselves?
I think that military overcapacity could be converted into additional capacity for space exploration and undersea exploration. They could be put to work searching out other planets for humans to live on, as well as looking into the feasibility of setting up human colonies under the sea (I hear the sea levels are rising and so forth). They could be put to work formulating, designing, and implementing those things necessary to help human society adapt to those changes in the atmosphere that have been irretrievably set in motion by global warming. There's lots of other things they could do.
wingedcentaur
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Friends,
A formal definition of Pragmatism:
"a philosophy that stresses the relation of theory to praxis and takes the continuity of experience and nature as revealed through the outcome of directed action as the starting point for reflection."
The idea of western civilization and the western toilet are intermingled and constantly intermingling. As Slavoj Zizek once put it, as soon as you flush the toilet "you're confronted wth ideology" (for me, a subdivision of philosophy). There is a continuity between the idea of western civilization and the artistic, yes, artistic and engineering work that went into building the device itself, are constantly pushing against each other as we speak (this is a crude, weak way of putting it, but its the best I can do right now). The idea and the thing are two sides of the same coin, as it were.
"Experience is the ongoing transaction of organism and environment, i.e., both subject and object are constituted in the process." The first clause seems straightforward enough, living experience comes from you interacting with the world. Out of that world, or void, in fact, for our purposes, both the tools for furthering your experience and the specific ends to which that tool will be used, are derived.
So, a chimpanzee sees a heavy branch and gets the idea that it might be good to use that to crack open a coconut or something like that. Perhaps the branch is the subject which the chimp will use with the object of cracking open the coconut. In this way one begins to contextualize his world by making choices. That coconut could just as easily be cracked open with a heavy stone, or whatever. But the relationship of the branch to the coconut is "constituted" in this way.
"When intelligently ordered, initial conditions are deliberately transformed according to ends-in-view, i.e., intentionally, into a subsequent state of affairs thought to be more desirable. Knowledge is therefore guided by interests or values."
We seek knowledge, initially, for a specific purpose of solving a problem, for taking us from here to there, to make things "better." This "better," whatever that might be, are the ends-in-view. But when we have solved the problem, we get to thinking... We get to thinking about things beyond the initial utilitarian concern, this is our "starting point for reflection." In other words, abstract ideas led to the development of the toilet, and innovation in toilet design and construction, will, I think lead to contributions to the world of ideas.
Again, see Authors@Google: Slavoj Zizek. Changes in toilets seem to inspire him, albeit in a tiny part, to come up with interesting and provocative ideas. I hear some people call this Slovenian philosopher "The Elvis of Cultural Commentary."
"Since the reality of objects cannot be known prior to experience, truth claims can be justified only as the fulfilment of conditions that are experimentally determined, i.e., the outcome of inquiry."
The definition in quotation marks comes from The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (1995).
Good Night and Good Luck!
wingedcentaur
A formal definition of Pragmatism:
"a philosophy that stresses the relation of theory to praxis and takes the continuity of experience and nature as revealed through the outcome of directed action as the starting point for reflection."
The idea of western civilization and the western toilet are intermingled and constantly intermingling. As Slavoj Zizek once put it, as soon as you flush the toilet "you're confronted wth ideology" (for me, a subdivision of philosophy). There is a continuity between the idea of western civilization and the artistic, yes, artistic and engineering work that went into building the device itself, are constantly pushing against each other as we speak (this is a crude, weak way of putting it, but its the best I can do right now). The idea and the thing are two sides of the same coin, as it were.
"Experience is the ongoing transaction of organism and environment, i.e., both subject and object are constituted in the process." The first clause seems straightforward enough, living experience comes from you interacting with the world. Out of that world, or void, in fact, for our purposes, both the tools for furthering your experience and the specific ends to which that tool will be used, are derived.
So, a chimpanzee sees a heavy branch and gets the idea that it might be good to use that to crack open a coconut or something like that. Perhaps the branch is the subject which the chimp will use with the object of cracking open the coconut. In this way one begins to contextualize his world by making choices. That coconut could just as easily be cracked open with a heavy stone, or whatever. But the relationship of the branch to the coconut is "constituted" in this way.
"When intelligently ordered, initial conditions are deliberately transformed according to ends-in-view, i.e., intentionally, into a subsequent state of affairs thought to be more desirable. Knowledge is therefore guided by interests or values."
We seek knowledge, initially, for a specific purpose of solving a problem, for taking us from here to there, to make things "better." This "better," whatever that might be, are the ends-in-view. But when we have solved the problem, we get to thinking... We get to thinking about things beyond the initial utilitarian concern, this is our "starting point for reflection." In other words, abstract ideas led to the development of the toilet, and innovation in toilet design and construction, will, I think lead to contributions to the world of ideas.
Again, see Authors@Google: Slavoj Zizek. Changes in toilets seem to inspire him, albeit in a tiny part, to come up with interesting and provocative ideas. I hear some people call this Slovenian philosopher "The Elvis of Cultural Commentary."
"Since the reality of objects cannot be known prior to experience, truth claims can be justified only as the fulfilment of conditions that are experimentally determined, i.e., the outcome of inquiry."
The definition in quotation marks comes from The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (1995).
Good Night and Good Luck!
wingedcentaur
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