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
Good Evening Friends,
Today I want to begin talking, a little bit, about the philosophy of Pragmatism and class stratification.
The philosophy of Pragmatism (capital P) is a far more dynamic system than the common usage of the word 'pragmatism' (little p) would suggest. For me, Pragmatism has to do with the intertwinedness (yes, I've invented the word 'intertwinedness,' intermingled nature) of the abstract, speculative, and theoretical on the one hand, and the concrete, practical, and logical on the other. It has to do with the constantly rotating intermingledness (intermingledness?) of the unseen and the seen. Becoming Pragmatic has to do with remembering this, not realizing or coming to understand this - but remembering it.
What I mean by all this gobbledegook is embodied in the story we get from Slavoj Zizek, about the toilets. As he tells it, remember, he got interested in the three basic western style of toilets: the French, with the inner hole at the back - waste goes down, to the back, and disappears; the German with the inner hole at the front - waste passes by the face of the sitter on its way to...; and the British and American with the hole in the middle, along with, apparently, a greater quantity of water to cut down on the smell, and so forth.
Zizek became curious about why one toilet was made this way, and this one another, and so on and so forth. He asked "engineers" about this, and they tried to give him unrelenting, utilitarian answers, as if theirs was the only true way to make a toilet. This, of course, was an odd expression of nationalism, as it turned out
Then Zizek asked himself where he'd seen that trinity before. Then it came to him. Some two hundred years ago, in Europe, there was a popular idea that the defining essence of western civilization was contained within three exemplars: the civilizations of Britain, France, and Germany, as understood in two categories, political ideology and preferred sphere of life.
Britain and America
political ideology: "liberal democratic" moderate
sphere of life: Economics
France
political ideology: leftist, revolutionary
sphere of life: politics
Germany
political ideology: conservative
sphere of life: philosophy, literature, arts, etc.
Therefore, it is right that the German toilet has the inner hole in the front; that the waste literally confronts you as it is flush, that you come face-to-face, in a way, with what was in you. The preferred sphere of life of Germany, two hundred years ago, at least according to the theory, was the humanities, the disciplines that require deep thought and introspection - introspection is the key word.
See a talk Zizek gave on this at Authors@Google: Slavoj Zizek. I don't know if he was kidding when he said this part (I hope so) but he said that it used to be a part of German hygiene that one made a daily inspection of one's stool.
It is right that the inner hole of the French toilet is at the back. This is in keeping with the revolutionary heritage of the country - waste is liquidated, immediately put out of sight.
It is right that the British and American toilets have the hole in the middle, with the waste floating on water before its removal. The key word is middle or center, as Britain and America, being "liberal democratic," were perceived to be in the political center of Germany and France.
So what I mean, here, by Pragmatism is that the thinkers and philosophers who formulated, developed, and maintained those ideas, are every bit as much the creators of the western toilets as the plumbing engineers who physically wrought the toilet with their hands and tools.
Conversely, I think it must be true that the manipulation of objects contributes to the world of ideas. There's a back and forth, circular relationship between the abstract idea and the practical manifestation, the practical manifestation and the abstract ideas. But we forget this, and because we do so, class stratification emerges, because one form of work is ultimately glorified over another.
How does the manipulation of objects contribute to the world of idea?
I don't have an exact answer to this. But remember when I told you that bodybuilding, for example, is a form of prayer? This is one of the ways that man tries to become God - in that the bodybuilder, through his activity, is trying to attach himself, vainly of course, to one of the infinite capacities of God - the ability to exercise ultimate control over the shaping of his body, the ability to sculpt oneself as fully as a sculptor molds a piece of clay.
"Thinking" work become separated from "manual" work, and we forget the intermingledness of these. Moreover, we think of the latter as more static than it is, and the former as more dynamic than it is. But I'll talk about this more fully elsewhere.
Let's go to another post.
wingedcentaur
Today I want to begin talking, a little bit, about the philosophy of Pragmatism and class stratification.
The philosophy of Pragmatism (capital P) is a far more dynamic system than the common usage of the word 'pragmatism' (little p) would suggest. For me, Pragmatism has to do with the intertwinedness (yes, I've invented the word 'intertwinedness,' intermingled nature) of the abstract, speculative, and theoretical on the one hand, and the concrete, practical, and logical on the other. It has to do with the constantly rotating intermingledness (intermingledness?) of the unseen and the seen. Becoming Pragmatic has to do with remembering this, not realizing or coming to understand this - but remembering it.
What I mean by all this gobbledegook is embodied in the story we get from Slavoj Zizek, about the toilets. As he tells it, remember, he got interested in the three basic western style of toilets: the French, with the inner hole at the back - waste goes down, to the back, and disappears; the German with the inner hole at the front - waste passes by the face of the sitter on its way to...; and the British and American with the hole in the middle, along with, apparently, a greater quantity of water to cut down on the smell, and so forth.
Zizek became curious about why one toilet was made this way, and this one another, and so on and so forth. He asked "engineers" about this, and they tried to give him unrelenting, utilitarian answers, as if theirs was the only true way to make a toilet. This, of course, was an odd expression of nationalism, as it turned out
Then Zizek asked himself where he'd seen that trinity before. Then it came to him. Some two hundred years ago, in Europe, there was a popular idea that the defining essence of western civilization was contained within three exemplars: the civilizations of Britain, France, and Germany, as understood in two categories, political ideology and preferred sphere of life.
Britain and America
political ideology: "liberal democratic" moderate
sphere of life: Economics
France
political ideology: leftist, revolutionary
sphere of life: politics
Germany
political ideology: conservative
sphere of life: philosophy, literature, arts, etc.
Therefore, it is right that the German toilet has the inner hole in the front; that the waste literally confronts you as it is flush, that you come face-to-face, in a way, with what was in you. The preferred sphere of life of Germany, two hundred years ago, at least according to the theory, was the humanities, the disciplines that require deep thought and introspection - introspection is the key word.
See a talk Zizek gave on this at Authors@Google: Slavoj Zizek. I don't know if he was kidding when he said this part (I hope so) but he said that it used to be a part of German hygiene that one made a daily inspection of one's stool.
It is right that the inner hole of the French toilet is at the back. This is in keeping with the revolutionary heritage of the country - waste is liquidated, immediately put out of sight.
It is right that the British and American toilets have the hole in the middle, with the waste floating on water before its removal. The key word is middle or center, as Britain and America, being "liberal democratic," were perceived to be in the political center of Germany and France.
So what I mean, here, by Pragmatism is that the thinkers and philosophers who formulated, developed, and maintained those ideas, are every bit as much the creators of the western toilets as the plumbing engineers who physically wrought the toilet with their hands and tools.
Conversely, I think it must be true that the manipulation of objects contributes to the world of ideas. There's a back and forth, circular relationship between the abstract idea and the practical manifestation, the practical manifestation and the abstract ideas. But we forget this, and because we do so, class stratification emerges, because one form of work is ultimately glorified over another.
How does the manipulation of objects contribute to the world of idea?
I don't have an exact answer to this. But remember when I told you that bodybuilding, for example, is a form of prayer? This is one of the ways that man tries to become God - in that the bodybuilder, through his activity, is trying to attach himself, vainly of course, to one of the infinite capacities of God - the ability to exercise ultimate control over the shaping of his body, the ability to sculpt oneself as fully as a sculptor molds a piece of clay.
"Thinking" work become separated from "manual" work, and we forget the intermingledness of these. Moreover, we think of the latter as more static than it is, and the former as more dynamic than it is. But I'll talk about this more fully elsewhere.
Let's go to another post.
wingedcentaur
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Friends,
I don't know if I mentioned this before but the Cold War seems to be very similar in dynamic to Greek mythology.
Greek mythology, perhaps all mythology in which humans are involved, seems to me to be about the rivalries of the gods of Olympus with each other. They could not fight each other directly because their elemental powers would risk destroying all of them, the whole world. Therefore they had to channel their conflict through a safer channel, humans.
Wasn't it very much this way with the United States and Soviet Union? They could not fight each other directly because of their nuclear weapons, which could destroy the world. Therefore they had to channel their struggle through a safer channel, the Third World. It was in the Third World where their international propaganda war and violent secret operations were waged. The goal would seem to have been to convince a greater share of the world, than the other power, that they, either the Soviet Union or the United States, was the light and the way. I think all of the espionage, secret operations, economic outreach - if you want to call it that, propaganda, and all the rest of it can be seen in this light.
In other words, the United States had to prove that American liberal democracy and capitalism was superior to Soveit communism, and vice versa. We saw this when Francis Fukayama triumphantly declared the "end of history." It was like the football player who scores the touchdown and spikes the ball, and perhaps dances a little jig, in the in-zone.
The purpose of the imperial conflict between the gods of Olympus was to win the most followers. The ultimate strategy can be understood, I think, as each god trying to have the most humans, by far more than any other god, declare that he or she is the most glorious deity.
The United States, having won that battle for glory, became isolated and in fact finds that its glory, paradoxically, is rather hollow without someone else to challenge it - like Alexander, so the legend goes, who wept when he found no more worlds to conquer.
And the U.S. in its isolation has folded in on itself. Its isolation in foreign affairs in several of its policies, I've previously mentioned, is a morbid manifestation of Alexander's tears. This is why the war on terror or the war on drugs (Is that one still on?) can never stop; or if it does, some other war must replace it.
wingedcentaur
I don't know if I mentioned this before but the Cold War seems to be very similar in dynamic to Greek mythology.
Greek mythology, perhaps all mythology in which humans are involved, seems to me to be about the rivalries of the gods of Olympus with each other. They could not fight each other directly because their elemental powers would risk destroying all of them, the whole world. Therefore they had to channel their conflict through a safer channel, humans.
Wasn't it very much this way with the United States and Soviet Union? They could not fight each other directly because of their nuclear weapons, which could destroy the world. Therefore they had to channel their struggle through a safer channel, the Third World. It was in the Third World where their international propaganda war and violent secret operations were waged. The goal would seem to have been to convince a greater share of the world, than the other power, that they, either the Soviet Union or the United States, was the light and the way. I think all of the espionage, secret operations, economic outreach - if you want to call it that, propaganda, and all the rest of it can be seen in this light.
In other words, the United States had to prove that American liberal democracy and capitalism was superior to Soveit communism, and vice versa. We saw this when Francis Fukayama triumphantly declared the "end of history." It was like the football player who scores the touchdown and spikes the ball, and perhaps dances a little jig, in the in-zone.
The purpose of the imperial conflict between the gods of Olympus was to win the most followers. The ultimate strategy can be understood, I think, as each god trying to have the most humans, by far more than any other god, declare that he or she is the most glorious deity.
The United States, having won that battle for glory, became isolated and in fact finds that its glory, paradoxically, is rather hollow without someone else to challenge it - like Alexander, so the legend goes, who wept when he found no more worlds to conquer.
And the U.S. in its isolation has folded in on itself. Its isolation in foreign affairs in several of its policies, I've previously mentioned, is a morbid manifestation of Alexander's tears. This is why the war on terror or the war on drugs (Is that one still on?) can never stop; or if it does, some other war must replace it.
wingedcentaur
Good Morning Friends,
Can countries go insane? By this I mean can the basic governing structure of a country, as a whole, go insane?
Many people point to the fall of the Soviet Union as the point where we begin to find a real decline in democracy in America. As I mentioned, many people point to the period of 1945-1989 as a kind of golden age in many areas: freedom and diversity of the press; culture (even television was better); education to a certain extent (we remember we talked about the reactionary character of it with the launch of the Soviet Sputnick in 1959, before the United States); workers were better off; and so on.
Left activists like Tariq Ali and Michael Parenti for example advance the argument - and I agree with it - that the existence of the Soviet Union provided a way for activists to kind of shame, if that is the word, the United States into at least curbing its rougher edges in terms of international affairs and public repression. A freer press was something the United States could hold up, in its cultural propaganda war against the Soviet Union, to prove that the American way was superior to the Soviet way, and in doing so, inspire unaligned nations to come over to our side, and so forth.
This is what lead me to pose the question: To what extent is culture itself, by definition, defensive and reactionary in character? Let me put it another way.
Remember, long ago, we talked about the nature of individual identity. We talked about the dynamic, accretive, accumulative, life-long process of identity. Identity, in other words, is not a thing, but rather a process. On Star Trek the Borg say, "You will be assimilated." They can only survive by "assimilating" alien species. They have to reproduce themselves in this way.
You may remember, this is what I proposed is the case with people in actuality. In this connection I asked why it should be that when an individual is isolated somewhere with no human contact for an extended period of time, he should become unraveled (by the way, see the Twilight Zone episode "Where is Everybody starring Earl Holliman, which gives a really good illustration of what I'm talking about).
A person in such a situation may do things like put a sock on his hand and try to engage in conversation with it. Why does he do this and why does this behavior seem to lead to his unraveling? I proposed:
Can countries go insane? By this I mean can the basic governing structure of a country, as a whole, go insane?
Many people point to the fall of the Soviet Union as the point where we begin to find a real decline in democracy in America. As I mentioned, many people point to the period of 1945-1989 as a kind of golden age in many areas: freedom and diversity of the press; culture (even television was better); education to a certain extent (we remember we talked about the reactionary character of it with the launch of the Soviet Sputnick in 1959, before the United States); workers were better off; and so on.
Left activists like Tariq Ali and Michael Parenti for example advance the argument - and I agree with it - that the existence of the Soviet Union provided a way for activists to kind of shame, if that is the word, the United States into at least curbing its rougher edges in terms of international affairs and public repression. A freer press was something the United States could hold up, in its cultural propaganda war against the Soviet Union, to prove that the American way was superior to the Soviet way, and in doing so, inspire unaligned nations to come over to our side, and so forth.
This is what lead me to pose the question: To what extent is culture itself, by definition, defensive and reactionary in character? Let me put it another way.
Remember, long ago, we talked about the nature of individual identity. We talked about the dynamic, accretive, accumulative, life-long process of identity. Identity, in other words, is not a thing, but rather a process. On Star Trek the Borg say, "You will be assimilated." They can only survive by "assimilating" alien species. They have to reproduce themselves in this way.
You may remember, this is what I proposed is the case with people in actuality. In this connection I asked why it should be that when an individual is isolated somewhere with no human contact for an extended period of time, he should become unraveled (by the way, see the Twilight Zone episode "Where is Everybody starring Earl Holliman, which gives a really good illustration of what I'm talking about).
A person in such a situation may do things like put a sock on his hand and try to engage in conversation with it. Why does he do this and why does this behavior seem to lead to his unraveling? I proposed:
- There is no Self without others, and because this is so, the Self needs nourishment of other people just as regularly as the body needs food and water to survive and thrive
- Whe the Self, like the body, is starved of the nourishment of others, the Self tries desperately to survive by attempting to split itself into two parts: one acting as the "original" Self and the other as the "separate" interacting other; what is happening is that the Self is trying to survive by simulating person to person interaction.
- But ultimately the performance is eventually given up as futile, because a bisected Self cannot produce the spontaneity needed to stimulate spontaneous, natural development in the originating Self. You are you, so therefore you talking to yourself - to put this crudely - can never keep yourself "alive," at least not indefinitely.
- This process is similar, in my view, to what happens to a starving body. The metabolism forces the body to eat itself in a desperate attempt to survive until access to nourishment becomes available.
- In the late stages of his isolation (again see the Twilight Zone episode I mentioned) the person will collapse in exhaustion - it is at this point when the person has become "insane," not when he's talking to the sock on his fist. It is at the point of collapse that this happens, because he has given up hope of identity.
The various aspects of personality become decontextualized. There is no reaction to our words, gestures, mannerisms, and the like. To put it more crudely, there is no "pushback." Therefore you don't know what you're doing anymore, or if it matters - to anybody.
Throughout the history of the world there have been great empires, but they always had rivals and competitors. This is the first time in human history when one global superpower has ever existed by itself. We all know the statistics: the United States spends at least four hundred million a year, maybe a solid half billion, a year on the military apparatus, and that's not counting the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. This is more than the rest of the world combined spends on their militaries.
We have no "pushback" and therefore it is not pejorative to say that America is "isolated" in international affairs. We don't have to review the data about how most of the world sees American involvement in the Middle East, in the Israeli-Palestinian question, the pressure tactics against Iran over its nuclear development, its failure to adopt the Kyoto global climate change protocols, it position with respect to the International Criminal Court, and so forth, its ongoing war of attrition against Cuba, and so on and so forth. Example after example after example can be cited, chapter and verse, as to how severely out of phase with the rest of the world, the United States is.
And let's not forget the Patriot Act, The War on Terror (though I understand it's not officially called that anymore), torture (the quibbling about what is torture as opposed to "enhanced interogation" techniques is revealing).
In a sense the War on Terror seems to be indicative of the folding over of the Self, that we see in individuals who are kept in isolation for an extended period of time (again, see Twilight Zone episode "Where is Everybody?"). So I am not particularly criticising the United States, I am proposing that this shows the dangers of empires, and all states on the imperial path behave this way, and if, by chance, they become the Undisputed World Heavyweight Champion of the world, there foreign policy is likely to become decontextualized in their isolation from the rest of the world.
Let me also reccommend an excellent documentary film (available for viewing online) called The Power of Nightmares - a BBC film by Adam Curtis. The U.S. obsession with Al Quaeda (which the film explains was a name given to the collection of Islamic jihadists, with only national aspirations, assembled and trained by the CIA, for use against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan) served a very similar purpose ideologically, that obsession with the Soviet Union [a "threat" we now believe to have been exaggerated] did for U.S. policy makers. I think it is quibbling to attribute this solely to the so-called "neoconservatives," though the film identifies them as catalysts in the American policy of nightmares, deployed both at home and abroad.
The obsession with Al Quaeda and the Taliban is a reflection of a government that doesn't seem to be sure it exists without an enemy to fight.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Friends,
So, why is government taking this "accountability," "choice," "merit" approach to education reform?
On one level the answer is pretty straightforward. Government wants to give the business community, what it (government) thinks it heard business say they want in terms of quality of manpower. Government is trying its best to be responsive in educating children, shaping them into the kinds of graduates and employees government thinks it heard business say they want and need.
Indeed, in the words of Richard Cavanagh, President and CEO of The Conference Board in 2006, "It is clear from the report that greater communication and collaboration between the business sector and educators is critical to ensure that young people are prepared to enter the workplace of the 21st Century."
But the ideological roots go much deeper than that. It goes back to the rise of neoliberalism and the idea that "government's not the solution to the problem. Government is the problem," as Ronald Reagan told us. The idea pervaded that everything in life, that society should be run like business, the most logical, efficient way; and this included government, with politicians's obsession with the "deficit" and "balancing the budget," and so forth.
But I think the tragedy of this approach to education is that it may not even be what business needs, on their own terms, or want. I know this seems ridiculous given how intimately involved the business world is with privatized education "reform," and since they are so involved with it, presumably they are getting what they want.
I would say that in a funny way, the business community are a victim of their own propaganda - reflected back at them..
But how can I suppose to know what the business community wants and needs?
Of course we know that they need competent people, strong in all the basic skills, the three Rs, naturally. But they also need something that can only come, in part, from a broad education in the sciences, humanities, and arts. That 'something' is imagination.
The business world need recruits with imagination, particularly in this stage of capitalist development, in which finance is king and the ruling class are shunning actual production. Congress may put in some regulatory reforms. If they do and these reform actually have "teeth," corporations will need recruits with imagination more than ever - in order to come up with ways to make money through paper shuffling, getting around those regulations. I don't even think the bourgeoisie care that much about the corporations they own except as platforms to propel them into Old Money status.
Take Bernie Madoff. Yes, what he did was illegal, unethical, and immoral. But it was also creatively intricate. We may never know the true extent of the wealth he accumulated from himself, his family, and other powerful people. If he sufficiently convolutedly devious in his preparations, the wealth of his most important clients and millions he accumulated for himself will go undiscovered and hidden offshore. I get the feeling he was sufficiently devious enough.
We talked about the small distance between the illegality of Bernie Madoff and the general Reality-is-what-we-say-it-is, mark-to-market, patent-hoarding legally sanctioned neoliberalism.
What about Andy Fastow? He was he chief financial officer for Enron when Jeff Skilling was there. As CFO it was Fastow's job to see that the finances of Enron were kept in order. Unofficially it was his job to create financial instruments that hid debt and puffed up the "bottom line." He created debt-hiding instruments he called raptors.
On a NPR radio station I listened to an interview with a young British playwright who put on a play about Enron. She explained that Fastow loved movies from the nineties. Raptors came from Jurassic Park.
Now, however these things worked, they did for a time - time enough to make a lot of money for Enron. But Fastow didn't learn how to do the things he did reading some business-econ textbook. His deception showed a creativity born of someone who seems to have had a broad-based liberal arts education. It takes imagination to take a concept of a certain kind of dinosaur from a movie and apply it to energy trading business finances.
Government reforms in education don't seem to be intended to foster that kind of creativity in students. We hear about an inordinate focus on testing and "teaching to the test." We hear about the constriction of curricula, since school administration get desperate to show constantly improving test scores - their federal funding often depends on it.
You ever see those ads for obscure colleges that promise to help you meet your destiny? You ever notice how narrow their curricula are, always having to do with criminal justice, business management, and maybe human resources?
Let's go to another post.
wingedcentaur
So, why is government taking this "accountability," "choice," "merit" approach to education reform?
On one level the answer is pretty straightforward. Government wants to give the business community, what it (government) thinks it heard business say they want in terms of quality of manpower. Government is trying its best to be responsive in educating children, shaping them into the kinds of graduates and employees government thinks it heard business say they want and need.
Indeed, in the words of Richard Cavanagh, President and CEO of The Conference Board in 2006, "It is clear from the report that greater communication and collaboration between the business sector and educators is critical to ensure that young people are prepared to enter the workplace of the 21st Century."
But the ideological roots go much deeper than that. It goes back to the rise of neoliberalism and the idea that "government's not the solution to the problem. Government is the problem," as Ronald Reagan told us. The idea pervaded that everything in life, that society should be run like business, the most logical, efficient way; and this included government, with politicians's obsession with the "deficit" and "balancing the budget," and so forth.
But I think the tragedy of this approach to education is that it may not even be what business needs, on their own terms, or want. I know this seems ridiculous given how intimately involved the business world is with privatized education "reform," and since they are so involved with it, presumably they are getting what they want.
I would say that in a funny way, the business community are a victim of their own propaganda - reflected back at them..
But how can I suppose to know what the business community wants and needs?
Of course we know that they need competent people, strong in all the basic skills, the three Rs, naturally. But they also need something that can only come, in part, from a broad education in the sciences, humanities, and arts. That 'something' is imagination.
The business world need recruits with imagination, particularly in this stage of capitalist development, in which finance is king and the ruling class are shunning actual production. Congress may put in some regulatory reforms. If they do and these reform actually have "teeth," corporations will need recruits with imagination more than ever - in order to come up with ways to make money through paper shuffling, getting around those regulations. I don't even think the bourgeoisie care that much about the corporations they own except as platforms to propel them into Old Money status.
Take Bernie Madoff. Yes, what he did was illegal, unethical, and immoral. But it was also creatively intricate. We may never know the true extent of the wealth he accumulated from himself, his family, and other powerful people. If he sufficiently convolutedly devious in his preparations, the wealth of his most important clients and millions he accumulated for himself will go undiscovered and hidden offshore. I get the feeling he was sufficiently devious enough.
We talked about the small distance between the illegality of Bernie Madoff and the general Reality-is-what-we-say-it-is, mark-to-market, patent-hoarding legally sanctioned neoliberalism.
What about Andy Fastow? He was he chief financial officer for Enron when Jeff Skilling was there. As CFO it was Fastow's job to see that the finances of Enron were kept in order. Unofficially it was his job to create financial instruments that hid debt and puffed up the "bottom line." He created debt-hiding instruments he called raptors.
On a NPR radio station I listened to an interview with a young British playwright who put on a play about Enron. She explained that Fastow loved movies from the nineties. Raptors came from Jurassic Park.
Now, however these things worked, they did for a time - time enough to make a lot of money for Enron. But Fastow didn't learn how to do the things he did reading some business-econ textbook. His deception showed a creativity born of someone who seems to have had a broad-based liberal arts education. It takes imagination to take a concept of a certain kind of dinosaur from a movie and apply it to energy trading business finances.
Government reforms in education don't seem to be intended to foster that kind of creativity in students. We hear about an inordinate focus on testing and "teaching to the test." We hear about the constriction of curricula, since school administration get desperate to show constantly improving test scores - their federal funding often depends on it.
You ever see those ads for obscure colleges that promise to help you meet your destiny? You ever notice how narrow their curricula are, always having to do with criminal justice, business management, and maybe human resources?
Let's go to another post.
wingedcentaur
Friends,
We ended with the question of nationalization of the outlying bloated specialty schools, hoping to raise them to a standard in which the four-year degrees actually mean something. The question is: What would be the standard? Hold that thought!
I just remembered that I wanted to mention something about the New Deal. Any serious historian will tell you that it was not the New Deal, but World War II that lifted America out of the Great Depression. The New Deal mostly established business regulation and the social saftey net. A safety net is something that is there to catch you when you fall. It is not something that can, by definition, stimulate growth in an economy, though somepeople say that Roosevelt didn't spend enough on the "stimulus."*
We know that there are problems in secondary education. We hear that a third of all incoming college freshman have to take at least one remedial course. www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-09-15-Colleges-remedialclasses_N.htm
It is said of employers that "despite a shiny new diploma, may routinely give applicants basic tests in academic skills to see if they can read and follow instructions, write reports, and function in a job.
"Very much related is a recent study that indicated that the number one reason given by employers for rejecting applicants is an inability to effectively communicate, especially during a job interview.
"Interestingly, follow-up interviews with the rejected applicant indicated that the applicants appeared to be totally unaware of the problem."www.cybercollege.com/plume3.htm
But what about those young graduates without basic skills who do get these jobs?
In 2006 a report was put out by The Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families (don't laugh, that what its called), the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and the Society for Human Resource Management. The goal was to examine employers view of the readiness of new entrants into the U.S. workforce. We're talking about high school graduates, two-year college or technical school graduates, and four-year college graduates.
I'll give two findings from the report. More than 40 percent of employers surveyed said that incoming high school graduates were insufficiently prepared for the entry-level jobs they hold. They lack basic skills in reading comprehension, writing, and math. Seventy-two percent of incoming high school graduates are seen to be deficient in basic English writing skills, including grammar and spelling.
Poor writing skills seem to be a problem for two- and four-year college grads as well. 47 percent of all employers asked said that two-year graduates were deficient in this area.www.conference-board.org/utilities/pressdetail.cfm?press_id=2971
I think it should be understood that grade inflation (in allegedely "real" universities) and the education bubble work together to produce these effects. You can Google the words 'lack of basic skills' and 'workplace' to be taken to many articles talking about the massive investment companies have to make in workplace education programs.
Incidentally, one might say that crises in education are endemic to capitalism.
But there must be a social difference between those young people, lacking basic skills who get hired for these jobs, and those lacking basic skills who do not. After all, "[w]hen all students receive high marks, graduate schools and business recruiters simply start ignoring grades. That leads the graduate schools to rely on entrance tests. It prompts corporate recruiters to depend on a "good old boy/girl" network in an effort to unearth the difference between who looks good on paper and who is actually good.
"Put to disadvantage in that system who traditionally don't test as well or lack connections.. In many cases, those are poor and minority students who are the first in their families to graduate from college. No matter how hard they work, their A's look ordinary."www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2002/02/08/edtwof2.htm
I'll pick this up later. We have a little way to go yet.
wingedcentaur
We ended with the question of nationalization of the outlying bloated specialty schools, hoping to raise them to a standard in which the four-year degrees actually mean something. The question is: What would be the standard? Hold that thought!
I just remembered that I wanted to mention something about the New Deal. Any serious historian will tell you that it was not the New Deal, but World War II that lifted America out of the Great Depression. The New Deal mostly established business regulation and the social saftey net. A safety net is something that is there to catch you when you fall. It is not something that can, by definition, stimulate growth in an economy, though somepeople say that Roosevelt didn't spend enough on the "stimulus."*
We know that there are problems in secondary education. We hear that a third of all incoming college freshman have to take at least one remedial course. www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-09-15-Colleges-remedialclasses_N.htm
It is said of employers that "despite a shiny new diploma, may routinely give applicants basic tests in academic skills to see if they can read and follow instructions, write reports, and function in a job.
"Very much related is a recent study that indicated that the number one reason given by employers for rejecting applicants is an inability to effectively communicate, especially during a job interview.
"Interestingly, follow-up interviews with the rejected applicant indicated that the applicants appeared to be totally unaware of the problem."www.cybercollege.com/plume3.htm
But what about those young graduates without basic skills who do get these jobs?
In 2006 a report was put out by The Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families (don't laugh, that what its called), the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and the Society for Human Resource Management. The goal was to examine employers view of the readiness of new entrants into the U.S. workforce. We're talking about high school graduates, two-year college or technical school graduates, and four-year college graduates.
I'll give two findings from the report. More than 40 percent of employers surveyed said that incoming high school graduates were insufficiently prepared for the entry-level jobs they hold. They lack basic skills in reading comprehension, writing, and math. Seventy-two percent of incoming high school graduates are seen to be deficient in basic English writing skills, including grammar and spelling.
Poor writing skills seem to be a problem for two- and four-year college grads as well. 47 percent of all employers asked said that two-year graduates were deficient in this area.www.conference-board.org/utilities/pressdetail.cfm?press_id=2971
I think it should be understood that grade inflation (in allegedely "real" universities) and the education bubble work together to produce these effects. You can Google the words 'lack of basic skills' and 'workplace' to be taken to many articles talking about the massive investment companies have to make in workplace education programs.
Incidentally, one might say that crises in education are endemic to capitalism.
But there must be a social difference between those young people, lacking basic skills who get hired for these jobs, and those lacking basic skills who do not. After all, "[w]hen all students receive high marks, graduate schools and business recruiters simply start ignoring grades. That leads the graduate schools to rely on entrance tests. It prompts corporate recruiters to depend on a "good old boy/girl" network in an effort to unearth the difference between who looks good on paper and who is actually good.
"Put to disadvantage in that system who traditionally don't test as well or lack connections.. In many cases, those are poor and minority students who are the first in their families to graduate from college. No matter how hard they work, their A's look ordinary."www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2002/02/08/edtwof2.htm
I'll pick this up later. We have a little way to go yet.
wingedcentaur
Good Morning Friends,
This is part four of our discussion of the education bubble. I think this reality is the origin of the seemingly intractable and interminable "debate" between the mainstream left and mainstream right. Of course, the lines of the debate used to be more sharply drawn. It used to be that the Democratic party were more supportive of public education and teacher's unions.
It used to be that the Democrats believed in directing as much public resources as possible to the public system in terms of textbooks, computers, and yes, even teacher salaries, though its hard to remember now. Now the Democrats speak of "merit" pay.
Its important to remember that when people recall with such fondness, the "good old days," they are thinking about New Deal America and all that went with it. I suppose the period went from about the end of WW II in 1945 to about 1980. Of course the New Deal started earlier than 1945, but I pick that date for our purposes, because that is about the time - as I understand it - that the apparatus of what is called the "national security state" started to come into being.
It was in 1947, I believe, that Truman signed the National Security Act which formed the CIA and the other organs of the internal security and foreign intelligence gathering apparatus. So, not only was a strategic contest waged against the Soviet Union, but also a cultural propaganda war. We had to show the world that the American Way of Life was far superior to the Soviet model.
People look back to this period before 1980 as the golden age in many respects: the golden age of media, never had there been so much freedom and diversity; the golden age of economic equality, economic polarity between the classes seemed to be the least in the industrialized world; the golden age of civil rights, more formerly excluded "minority" communities were gaining their rights at a seeming blistering pace; the golden age of first amendment protection; the golden age of culture, indeed, even that medium sometimes call the "idiot box" seemed to be far superior in substance and quality than what we have today; a golden age, even of education, perhaps - we know that when the Soviet Union launched Sputnick in 1959, this infused a new urgency, especially in science and math, and it is against this background that president Kennedy made his pronouncements about the destiny in space (we couldn't let the Soviets outdo us in space), and no one was a more dedicated "Cold Warrior" than John F. Kennedy and his brother, the U.S. attorney general at the time, Robert Kennedy; unions and collective life in general had never been stronger than in this period.
And all of this must be seen in context of the one hundred fifty years of rising real wages in exhange for rising productivity, from about 1820 to 1970, as Dr. Rick Wolff tells us. During this period it must have really seemed to most people that the "rising tide lifted all boats." And I must say, all of this raises questions, for me, about the extent to which culture itself is defensive and reactionary in character. I'll come back to this.
New Deal America was also a golden age of bipartisanship. There were liberals in the Republican party and conservatives on the Democrat side. While there are still conservatives in the Democratic party, the so-called "blue dogs," there are no liberals in the Republican party, indeed, even their moderates seem to be an endangered species, with many of them making the tortured decision to register as "Independents." As a result, the Republicans are more conservative than the Democrats are liberal.
There is a seeming paradox between the sharp rise in partisanship over the past thirty years and the unifying effects, on both parties, of what is called neoliberalism or the "Washington Consensus." The argument can be made that since their differences are so narrow, now, their argument naturally increases very sharply in intensity.
Coming back to education, as far as I can tell, the Democrats and Republicans are more or less united around the need for "choice," which includes charter schools and the like, "accountability," reflected in test scores, and "merit" pay, as opposed to a guaranteed decent standard of living for teachers.
Now, the Republicans tend to be more careful about spending than their opposites, saying that education is not a problem that can be solved by "throwing money at it." If we return to the education bubble that Paul Fussell told us about, of the 1950s and 1960s, we can say that the Repubican position - as far as it goes - is quite right. The Democrats, having "thrown" money at education clearly caused a bubble, which caused hundreds of "nonselective" specialty schools to inflate themselves into universities, in order to attract federal funding; and in doing so, graduated millions of students with four-year degrees, who experienced no income advantage at all over high school graduates.
As I mentioned before, I know this must be so because I have personally seen this dynamic operate.
But from the point of view of the government, what was the alternative? With all those young men coming back from overseas after the war, something had to be done with them. They had to be occupied in some way, because as everyone knows "an idle mind is the Devil's workshop."
What about nationalization? Could and should the government have nationalized those 1728 bloated specialty schools to bring them up to standard? Should and could the government do this today?
But what would be the standard? - I'll come back to that. Let's go to another part.
wingedcentaur
This is part four of our discussion of the education bubble. I think this reality is the origin of the seemingly intractable and interminable "debate" between the mainstream left and mainstream right. Of course, the lines of the debate used to be more sharply drawn. It used to be that the Democratic party were more supportive of public education and teacher's unions.
It used to be that the Democrats believed in directing as much public resources as possible to the public system in terms of textbooks, computers, and yes, even teacher salaries, though its hard to remember now. Now the Democrats speak of "merit" pay.
Its important to remember that when people recall with such fondness, the "good old days," they are thinking about New Deal America and all that went with it. I suppose the period went from about the end of WW II in 1945 to about 1980. Of course the New Deal started earlier than 1945, but I pick that date for our purposes, because that is about the time - as I understand it - that the apparatus of what is called the "national security state" started to come into being.
It was in 1947, I believe, that Truman signed the National Security Act which formed the CIA and the other organs of the internal security and foreign intelligence gathering apparatus. So, not only was a strategic contest waged against the Soviet Union, but also a cultural propaganda war. We had to show the world that the American Way of Life was far superior to the Soviet model.
People look back to this period before 1980 as the golden age in many respects: the golden age of media, never had there been so much freedom and diversity; the golden age of economic equality, economic polarity between the classes seemed to be the least in the industrialized world; the golden age of civil rights, more formerly excluded "minority" communities were gaining their rights at a seeming blistering pace; the golden age of first amendment protection; the golden age of culture, indeed, even that medium sometimes call the "idiot box" seemed to be far superior in substance and quality than what we have today; a golden age, even of education, perhaps - we know that when the Soviet Union launched Sputnick in 1959, this infused a new urgency, especially in science and math, and it is against this background that president Kennedy made his pronouncements about the destiny in space (we couldn't let the Soviets outdo us in space), and no one was a more dedicated "Cold Warrior" than John F. Kennedy and his brother, the U.S. attorney general at the time, Robert Kennedy; unions and collective life in general had never been stronger than in this period.
And all of this must be seen in context of the one hundred fifty years of rising real wages in exhange for rising productivity, from about 1820 to 1970, as Dr. Rick Wolff tells us. During this period it must have really seemed to most people that the "rising tide lifted all boats." And I must say, all of this raises questions, for me, about the extent to which culture itself is defensive and reactionary in character. I'll come back to this.
New Deal America was also a golden age of bipartisanship. There were liberals in the Republican party and conservatives on the Democrat side. While there are still conservatives in the Democratic party, the so-called "blue dogs," there are no liberals in the Republican party, indeed, even their moderates seem to be an endangered species, with many of them making the tortured decision to register as "Independents." As a result, the Republicans are more conservative than the Democrats are liberal.
There is a seeming paradox between the sharp rise in partisanship over the past thirty years and the unifying effects, on both parties, of what is called neoliberalism or the "Washington Consensus." The argument can be made that since their differences are so narrow, now, their argument naturally increases very sharply in intensity.
Coming back to education, as far as I can tell, the Democrats and Republicans are more or less united around the need for "choice," which includes charter schools and the like, "accountability," reflected in test scores, and "merit" pay, as opposed to a guaranteed decent standard of living for teachers.
Now, the Republicans tend to be more careful about spending than their opposites, saying that education is not a problem that can be solved by "throwing money at it." If we return to the education bubble that Paul Fussell told us about, of the 1950s and 1960s, we can say that the Repubican position - as far as it goes - is quite right. The Democrats, having "thrown" money at education clearly caused a bubble, which caused hundreds of "nonselective" specialty schools to inflate themselves into universities, in order to attract federal funding; and in doing so, graduated millions of students with four-year degrees, who experienced no income advantage at all over high school graduates.
As I mentioned before, I know this must be so because I have personally seen this dynamic operate.
But from the point of view of the government, what was the alternative? With all those young men coming back from overseas after the war, something had to be done with them. They had to be occupied in some way, because as everyone knows "an idle mind is the Devil's workshop."
What about nationalization? Could and should the government have nationalized those 1728 bloated specialty schools to bring them up to standard? Should and could the government do this today?
But what would be the standard? - I'll come back to that. Let's go to another part.
wingedcentaur
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Good Evening Friends,
We're on part three of talking about the education bubble of the 1950s and 1960s. We talked about a study done by New York Times reporter, Edward B. Fiske in 1982. He found that out of nearly two thousand institutions calling themselves universities, only 265 were worthy of the name; the rest were bloated secretarial schools, business schools, vocational schools, "provincial" theological schools, normal schools, and teacher's colleges. These schools were, no doubt, very good at educating people in their core competencies upon which they were founded, but they had made the transition to allegedly full-fledged universities that was in no way proper and coherent.
It is this basic fact that is behind the myth that a four-year college degree, no matter where its from, puts the holder of the degree over everyone else without a four-year college degree.
One commentator wrote "In 1940 about 13 percent of college age young people actually went to college; by 1970 it was about 43 percent" (1). But Paul Fussell, in 1983, said emphatically no, it was still about 13 percent, the other 30 percent going to things merely calling themselves universities. Fiske's selective findings seemed to suggest that the number would always be 13 percent (2).
In his book, Class: A Guide Through the American Status System (1983), Paul Fussell wrote "One of the saddest social groups today consists of that 30 percent that during the 1950s and 1960s struggled to "go to college" and thought they'd done that only to find their prolehood (proletarian, working class status) still unredeemed, and not merely intellectually, artistically, and socially, but economically as well" (3).
In Social Standing in America, two researchers called Rainwater and Coleman published their findings, which said that going to a good college (or a real one, any one of the 265 mentioned at all by Fiske) increased one's income by 52 percent. Going to a really good one (or one of those Fiske gave five stars increased it 32 percent over that. But they found that one achieved no income advantage at all, if he graduated from a "nonselective" college - one of the 1728 organizations left unmentioned by Fiske (4). NO INCOME ADVANTAGE AT ALL!
Paul Fussell published his book in 1983 and here we are in 2010. I don't know how many "universities" there are today in America, and I don't know how many of those subpar institutions may have improved sufficiently to deserve the title; but it seems to me that the same dynamic is still operative today - in terms of about a seven to one ratio of bloated trade schools to real universities, handing out degrees with little or no value [also remember the rampant grade inflation in the Ivy Leagues and other non-Ivy but otherwise legitimate institutions of higher liberal arts, humanities, and science learing].
I know this must be so because I have personal experience with this. I went to a good university, Rutgers in Newark. This is a real liberal arts, humanities, and science university. But I did not finish my degree. Unfocused, I worked for a long time in low-wage service sector jobs - UPS here, Shop Rite there, a security guard some other place, and so on and so forth.
But I always came in contact with fellow employees at these places who had graduated college. These were not all twenty-something youths passing time before they went off to graduate school or their "real" job. No, these were often college graduates who, nevertheless, spent many years as fellow security guards or stock clerks, or the like.
Sure, they tended to be "supervisors," having sweated it out long enough to have earned a paltry modicum of "status" on the jobs. There were several college graduates at my last job, a liquor store, who had worked there for years. I would have thought that their college degrees should have enabled them to be doing work several orders of magnitude beyond the service sector slumming.
There was a manager at UPS who said that he had a master's degree. He said something about "the more oars you got in the water, the better off you are." I remembered that phrase because it was so colorful.
You see these college graduate laborers had always been a mystery to me. I guess the mystery's solved.
Let's go to a part four.
wingedcentaur
1) Fussell, Paul. Class: A Guide Through the American Status System (1983). p.133
2) ibid
3) ibid, pp.133-134
4) ibid, p.134
We're on part three of talking about the education bubble of the 1950s and 1960s. We talked about a study done by New York Times reporter, Edward B. Fiske in 1982. He found that out of nearly two thousand institutions calling themselves universities, only 265 were worthy of the name; the rest were bloated secretarial schools, business schools, vocational schools, "provincial" theological schools, normal schools, and teacher's colleges. These schools were, no doubt, very good at educating people in their core competencies upon which they were founded, but they had made the transition to allegedly full-fledged universities that was in no way proper and coherent.
It is this basic fact that is behind the myth that a four-year college degree, no matter where its from, puts the holder of the degree over everyone else without a four-year college degree.
One commentator wrote "In 1940 about 13 percent of college age young people actually went to college; by 1970 it was about 43 percent" (1). But Paul Fussell, in 1983, said emphatically no, it was still about 13 percent, the other 30 percent going to things merely calling themselves universities. Fiske's selective findings seemed to suggest that the number would always be 13 percent (2).
In his book, Class: A Guide Through the American Status System (1983), Paul Fussell wrote "One of the saddest social groups today consists of that 30 percent that during the 1950s and 1960s struggled to "go to college" and thought they'd done that only to find their prolehood (proletarian, working class status) still unredeemed, and not merely intellectually, artistically, and socially, but economically as well" (3).
In Social Standing in America, two researchers called Rainwater and Coleman published their findings, which said that going to a good college (or a real one, any one of the 265 mentioned at all by Fiske) increased one's income by 52 percent. Going to a really good one (or one of those Fiske gave five stars increased it 32 percent over that. But they found that one achieved no income advantage at all, if he graduated from a "nonselective" college - one of the 1728 organizations left unmentioned by Fiske (4). NO INCOME ADVANTAGE AT ALL!
Paul Fussell published his book in 1983 and here we are in 2010. I don't know how many "universities" there are today in America, and I don't know how many of those subpar institutions may have improved sufficiently to deserve the title; but it seems to me that the same dynamic is still operative today - in terms of about a seven to one ratio of bloated trade schools to real universities, handing out degrees with little or no value [also remember the rampant grade inflation in the Ivy Leagues and other non-Ivy but otherwise legitimate institutions of higher liberal arts, humanities, and science learing].
I know this must be so because I have personal experience with this. I went to a good university, Rutgers in Newark. This is a real liberal arts, humanities, and science university. But I did not finish my degree. Unfocused, I worked for a long time in low-wage service sector jobs - UPS here, Shop Rite there, a security guard some other place, and so on and so forth.
But I always came in contact with fellow employees at these places who had graduated college. These were not all twenty-something youths passing time before they went off to graduate school or their "real" job. No, these were often college graduates who, nevertheless, spent many years as fellow security guards or stock clerks, or the like.
Sure, they tended to be "supervisors," having sweated it out long enough to have earned a paltry modicum of "status" on the jobs. There were several college graduates at my last job, a liquor store, who had worked there for years. I would have thought that their college degrees should have enabled them to be doing work several orders of magnitude beyond the service sector slumming.
There was a manager at UPS who said that he had a master's degree. He said something about "the more oars you got in the water, the better off you are." I remembered that phrase because it was so colorful.
You see these college graduate laborers had always been a mystery to me. I guess the mystery's solved.
Let's go to a part four.
wingedcentaur
1) Fussell, Paul. Class: A Guide Through the American Status System (1983). p.133
2) ibid
3) ibid, pp.133-134
4) ibid, p.134
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Friends,
In the early eighties, a man called Edward B. Fiske, then a reporter with The New York Times published a report called The New York Times Selective Guide to American Colleges, 1982-1983 (1982). At this time the United States had almost two thousand institutions calling themselves four-year colleges awarding bachelor's degrees. Fiske's operating premise seemed to have been that in a world in which the word 'institute' had lost its meaning, it was a fair bet that the words 'college' and 'university,' may have also lost their currency (1).
Fiske set out to identify the "best and most interesting" of American institutions of higher learning. He used a rating system of five to one stars. A school had to get at least one star to get on the list of worthwhile organizations of post secondary education. He rated things like academic quality, social activity, and "quality of life." Fiske's investigations led him to conclude that only 265 of the 2000, were even worthy of even one star (2). This left more than 1700 left unmentioned. We'll come back to those 1700 in a moment.
A lot of the 265 got only one or two stars. One of these that got two stars was Syracuse University. The result came, in part, from questionnaires filled out by students, as well as private interviews conducted with them. Fiske had to conclude:
In the early eighties, a man called Edward B. Fiske, then a reporter with The New York Times published a report called The New York Times Selective Guide to American Colleges, 1982-1983 (1982). At this time the United States had almost two thousand institutions calling themselves four-year colleges awarding bachelor's degrees. Fiske's operating premise seemed to have been that in a world in which the word 'institute' had lost its meaning, it was a fair bet that the words 'college' and 'university,' may have also lost their currency (1).
Fiske set out to identify the "best and most interesting" of American institutions of higher learning. He used a rating system of five to one stars. A school had to get at least one star to get on the list of worthwhile organizations of post secondary education. He rated things like academic quality, social activity, and "quality of life." Fiske's investigations led him to conclude that only 265 of the 2000, were even worthy of even one star (2). This left more than 1700 left unmentioned. We'll come back to those 1700 in a moment.
A lot of the 265 got only one or two stars. One of these that got two stars was Syracuse University. The result came, in part, from questionnaires filled out by students, as well as private interviews conducted with them. Fiske had to conclude:
"classes are large."
"registration is a mess."
"the library... is understocked."
"admission standards tend not to be very rigorous."
"varsity sports are big."
Also the opinion came back that too much teaching was done by graduate students (3). Pretty damning. But remember, Syracuse at least made the list of 265 worthy institutions of higher learning.
Where does this leave the other 1,728 other organizations calling themselves universities?
Paul Fussell wrote: "Educational opportunity" opened up by the process of verbal inflation, by promoting, that is, numerous normal schools, teacher's colleges, provincial "theological" seminaries, trade schools, business schools, and secretarial institutes to the name and status of "universities," thus conferring on them an identity they were by no means equipped to bear, or even understand... What was happening in the 1960s was simply an acceleration of a process normal in this country - inflation, hyperbole, bragging... Here it's as natural for every college to want to be a university as for every employee to want to be an "executive," and every executive a vice president" (4).
They were, no doubt, encouraged in this by an ocean of federal money. And by the way, this situation is not unlike what is happening today, as we speak almost. You may recall recently that New York missed out on millions of dollars of federal money because of the state's cap on the number of charter schools it allows. Both Governor Patterson and Mayor Bloomberg were very upset about this.
So, more than seventeen hundred schools calling themselves universities, with all that implies, were, in fact - and I suppose a great many still are - bloated secretarial and trade schools. Do you know what this is like?
Suppose you have a professional boxer. He's five-ten and his natural body type is such that he has always fought at the lightweight (135 lb), super lightweight or junior welterweight (140 lb), or, at most occasionally the welterweight (147 lb).
This fighter has had a long career, in both the amateurs and the pros. Golden Gloves champion, the whole routine. Having started in the pros as a young man in his early twenties, he has fought forty or fifty professional bouts and beaten everybody of significance. He's won several titles.
Now he is bored, not quite ready to retire. But he's tired of beating on this latest string of club fighters and journeymen they are now putting before him.
Suddenly our friend, let's call him Murray, becomes aware of a fighter everybody is saying is the next great thing. Sports writers and commentators are tripping over themselves praising him - let's call him Brotherman. They say Brotherman hits like George Foreman and dances like Fred Astaire, and so forth.
Brotherman has just won the undisputed cruiserweight (195 lb) title. People are saying that Brotherman might very well be the "best fighter pound-for-pound." Every professional boxer wants to be considered the best pound-for-pound.
Murray becomes a bit miffed at this. What about him? What about all he's accomplished? Why, he put the lightweight division on the map. And yet, he is intrigued at the same time.
Murray checks out Brotherman. Murray admits that the Brotherman is good; however Murray is sure he can take him. Brotherman is the only challenge still worthy of Murray's talents. Knocking out Brotherman and taking his cruiserweight unified title represents the biggest payday he will ever have. Even if he loses... but Murray won't lose, of course.
The deal is made and Murray starts training and packing on the pounds. The day of the fight comes and Murray drags a body that is more than fifty pounds heavier than he's ever been in his life to the center of the ring to stare at his opponent, Brotherman, who is looking down at him from an advantage of four inches, at six-two, looking comfortable at a chiseled 207 punds.
Murray acquits himself skillfully and courageously. But he's beaten decisively over nine rounds before Brotherman takes him out of the fight by landing a sinister left hook to the ribs.
Murray is on the canvass. Beating the count of ten is the least of his cares. He's just hoping his lungs don't explode.
Many things may be said in the post mortem of the fight.
- Murray was a game one
- ... but he just couldn't match the strength of Brotherman
- maybe he took the fight too fast
- Murray's conditioning wasn't where it should have been
- Murray bobbed when he should have weaved
- Murray didn't do this, he didn't do that
- maybe Murray was getting too old for this business
- he is thirty-four, after all
- at the end of the day, he was a "bloated lightweight."
A bloated lightweight, whose "eyes were bigger than his stomach," who "bit off more than he could chew.
1) Fussell, Paul. Class. p.130
2) ibid
3) Fussell, Paul. p.131
4) Fussell, Paul. p.135
Let's go to a part three.
wingedcentaur
Good Evening Friends,
I want to talk about something I learned just a few weeks ago. This is one of those things that appear to be a revelation at the time, but feel absurdly obvious when you think about it. I want to talk about the education bubble of the 1960s.
There seem to have been at least two sources of this bubble, the G.I. Bill of the 1940s (1) and the policies of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations (2).
We should start by taking a look at how words can lose their meaning and become devalued over time. One of the words that became degraded, after the 1960s, according to Paul Fussell, was 'institute.' In his book Class: A Guide through the American Status System (1983) he wrote: "You can estimate the current prestige of the higher-educational establishment by considering the way everyone wants to imitate it. When an institution devoted to profit or deception or huckstering wants to elevate its status, it pretends to be a university" (3).
Fussell called out the New York Times, with its pretentious "Weekly News Quiz," as if it were an educational institution. Brokerage firms and real estate "rackets" conduct(ed) so-called seminars (4). Indeed, "[t]he most naked lobbies in Washington, those most deeply dyed in the practices of bribery and coercion, like to call themselves institutes, as if they were the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton or the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennslyvania" (5).
By the time Fussell published his book there was the Tobacco Institute, The Alcoholic Beverage Institute, the Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils, and so forth. Some of these institutes had "professorships" and "chairs" (6).
"The lust of all classes to acquire status by attaching themselves to universities, learned societies, "science," and the like - anything but commerce and manufacturing and "marketing" - can be seen in the way, for example, the Morgan Library attracts contributors of money by designating them not Donors or Benefactors, but "Fellows" (7).
I want to remind you of three things in looking at this quote:
A) the lust of all classes... We talked about the universal tendency of class mimicry. Man is the desire to become God.
B) anything but commerce and manufacturing and "marketing." The tendency of business to run away from commerce and manufacturing in their public relations, is, as we have said, but symptomatic of capitalism's (as the latest expression of elite wealth accumulation) tendency to remove itself, more and more, from production. This has to do with the New Money/Old Money dynamic.
C) The desire of big business to "market" itself as something other than it is, as "educational institutions," is something already familiar to us from The Godfather, in which Vito Corleone expressed his desire to turn his "family" into a modern, legal, corporate entity with lawyers, each of who could "steal more money with a briefcase than a thousand men with guns and masks." This is also familiar to us from the analysis of capitalism today offered by Naomi Klein in her book, NoLogo.
From the tenth anniversay edition of her book, we learned the story of how the makers of Altoids spent 250 thousand dollars to buy some artwork by several emerging artists. Remember, they put on their own event called the "Curiously Strong Collection"? We were told what was involved in this, the desire that we "become collectively convinced not that corporations are hitching a ride on our cultural and communal activities, but that creativity and congregation would be impossible without their generosity" (p.35). I also had said that as a candy maker, the executives their probably got to thinking there has to be more than this. Candy doesn't make the world go around.
I'll continue in another post.
wingedcentaur
1) Fussell, Paul. Class: A Guide Through the American Status System. Summit Books. New York, 1983. p.136
2) ibid, p.135
3)pp.128-129
4)p.129
5)p.129
6)p.129
7)p.129
I want to talk about something I learned just a few weeks ago. This is one of those things that appear to be a revelation at the time, but feel absurdly obvious when you think about it. I want to talk about the education bubble of the 1960s.
There seem to have been at least two sources of this bubble, the G.I. Bill of the 1940s (1) and the policies of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations (2).
We should start by taking a look at how words can lose their meaning and become devalued over time. One of the words that became degraded, after the 1960s, according to Paul Fussell, was 'institute.' In his book Class: A Guide through the American Status System (1983) he wrote: "You can estimate the current prestige of the higher-educational establishment by considering the way everyone wants to imitate it. When an institution devoted to profit or deception or huckstering wants to elevate its status, it pretends to be a university" (3).
Fussell called out the New York Times, with its pretentious "Weekly News Quiz," as if it were an educational institution. Brokerage firms and real estate "rackets" conduct(ed) so-called seminars (4). Indeed, "[t]he most naked lobbies in Washington, those most deeply dyed in the practices of bribery and coercion, like to call themselves institutes, as if they were the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton or the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennslyvania" (5).
By the time Fussell published his book there was the Tobacco Institute, The Alcoholic Beverage Institute, the Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils, and so forth. Some of these institutes had "professorships" and "chairs" (6).
"The lust of all classes to acquire status by attaching themselves to universities, learned societies, "science," and the like - anything but commerce and manufacturing and "marketing" - can be seen in the way, for example, the Morgan Library attracts contributors of money by designating them not Donors or Benefactors, but "Fellows" (7).
I want to remind you of three things in looking at this quote:
A) the lust of all classes... We talked about the universal tendency of class mimicry. Man is the desire to become God.
B) anything but commerce and manufacturing and "marketing." The tendency of business to run away from commerce and manufacturing in their public relations, is, as we have said, but symptomatic of capitalism's (as the latest expression of elite wealth accumulation) tendency to remove itself, more and more, from production. This has to do with the New Money/Old Money dynamic.
C) The desire of big business to "market" itself as something other than it is, as "educational institutions," is something already familiar to us from The Godfather, in which Vito Corleone expressed his desire to turn his "family" into a modern, legal, corporate entity with lawyers, each of who could "steal more money with a briefcase than a thousand men with guns and masks." This is also familiar to us from the analysis of capitalism today offered by Naomi Klein in her book, NoLogo.
From the tenth anniversay edition of her book, we learned the story of how the makers of Altoids spent 250 thousand dollars to buy some artwork by several emerging artists. Remember, they put on their own event called the "Curiously Strong Collection"? We were told what was involved in this, the desire that we "become collectively convinced not that corporations are hitching a ride on our cultural and communal activities, but that creativity and congregation would be impossible without their generosity" (p.35). I also had said that as a candy maker, the executives their probably got to thinking there has to be more than this. Candy doesn't make the world go around.
I'll continue in another post.
wingedcentaur
1) Fussell, Paul. Class: A Guide Through the American Status System. Summit Books. New York, 1983. p.136
2) ibid, p.135
3)pp.128-129
4)p.129
5)p.129
6)p.129
7)p.129
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Good Morning Friends,
There is another anthropological observation of the bourgeoisie, which, I think helps to account for what are called the "contradictions-in-capitalism." This observation comes from the areas of architecture and interior design. This is important to keep in mind as we talk about capitalism's tendency to "binge and purge" of overaccumulation and subsequent deindustrialization.
Various observations led us to the conclusion that the capitalist class, here and everywhere (left to themselves), are only ever interested in a minimal level of production upon which they can build their pyramids of financial speculation; and we talked about the underlying ideological reason for this: Man is the Desire to Become God - who owns all wealth not thorugh striving but merely by being "God."
The observation we shall make points to a seemingly strange relationship the bourgeoisie has to modernity, which as we will see, has implications for production and "progress" in society.
In his useful book, Class: A Guide Through the American Status System (1983), Paul Fussell cited an authority called Russell Lynes - who wrote in his book, The Tastemakers:
"...despite the facade of modernity a corporation erects to impress the proles (1), behind the scenes the upper business classes cleave to flagrantly archaic effects" (2). Interesting usage there, "flagrantly archaic."
Lynes continued, "...the sheer glass box that sits handsomely on Park Avenue to house the offices of Lever Brothers, you will find that the higher the echelon the more old fashioned the surroundings. The public front is one of daring modernity. The offices of the clerks and department managers are in the functional tradition. But when you reach the offices of top management you will find that there are open fireplaces and chandeliers with an Early American flavor... If you will visit the executive dining room of the J. Walter Thompson Company... you will find yourself in what appears to be a Cape Cod house furnished with Windsor chairs and rag rugs. It has casement windows" (3).
Conclusion: the bourgeoisie - and this is one of my take aways from Paul Fussell's book, whether he meant to convey this specific message or not - as a class, are only ever interested in engaging modernity to the extent that they can use it as a time machine by which they can propel themselves into and maintain themselves in the past. Yes, the past.
Fussell's book looked at class as distinct social and cultural systems, with ingrained patterns of thought, behavior, style, taste, manner of speaking, that remain more or less constant from birth until death. One point he made about class, is that it is not about wealth in absolute terms. Indeed, we have said that becoming Old Money is not about having absolutely the most wealth, but having it arranged for the benefit of your family, on a seemingly automatic, magically self-sustaining basis.
Fussell recognized nine classes: top out-of-sight, upper, upper-middle, middle, high proletarian (he believed the inflationary period of the 1960s and 1970s wiped out the true lower middle class), mid-proletarian, low proletarian, destitute, and bottom out-of-sight.
The upper classes love the old. We all do to a certain extent, of course, and we all use modern technology to transport us to the past [think about how modern camera technology is used to digitally remaster old black and white movies, and digitize and electronically store family photos, and so forth]. We are interested in the way the ruling class uses modernity as a platform to fuel their God-drive to stay in the past; and the contradictory impulses that become embedded in capitalism itself.
The first principle, Man is the Desire to Become God, is operative. "God" is said to be eternal, changeless, perfectly serene. The world changes but the Almighty God remains constant. Indeed, I think that deep down, in the collective unconscious, if you will, of the bourgeoisie, they see "progress" as a kind of weakness, since it is ungodlike.
To continue, Fussell made the point that, if one has to work as a salesman (remember the traditional disdain that the elites have always had for the merchant class) it is better to sell old, archaic things: real wine, unpasteurized cheese, bread without preservatives, Renaissance art objects, or rare books (4).
Indeed, according to Fussell, "[s]elling something old,..., almost redeems the class shame of selling anything at all" (5). Furthermore, "[i]t is in part because Britain has seen better days that Anglophilia is so indispensable an element in upper class taste, in clothes, literature, allusion, manners, and ceremony" (6).
Fussell said that this was why riding lessons were/and still are so cherished among the top classes, because the socially best outfits and accessories were imported from England. In addition to this, top class food was "bland and mushy, with little taste and no chances taken" (7).
There is one more idea I want to leave you with. Fussell pointed out that among the upper classes, it was considered bad form to give them compliments. Fussell wrote:
"It is among members of the upper class that you have to refrain from uttering compliments, which are taken to be rude, possessions there being of course beautiful, expensive, and impressive, without question. They paying of compliments is a middle class convention, for this class needs the assurance compliments provide" (8).
The assurance compliments provide.
I raise this point for two reasons.
A) The first principle, Man is the Desire to Become God, is operative. The further up your position is on the socioeconomic scale, the more and more you are removed from the view, as well as need and desire for the "assurance" (or 'justification' remember that word? [Man exists without justification] of the majority of the population.
B) We might draw a connectrion between this seemingly innocent idiosyncracy of the bourgeoisie and the fact that both major parties, Democrats and Republicans are largely unresponsive to the wishes of the vast majority of the people (9). For example, once again, just consider how Mayor Bloomberg and others in the city council, unimpressed with two public referenda to the contrary, went ahead and changed the law allowing them to supercede term limits voted for by the public.
Fussell gave an amusing anecdote about a British peer of a very old family. One day he invited "an artistic young man" over to his estate. Upon entering the house the young man declared that he had never seen a finer set of Hepplewhite chairs. The lord had the artist removed immediately, saying, "Fellow praised my chairs! Damned cheek!" (10).
What is going on here?
The peer took the compliment (especially coming from the source) as an insult. This is because the compliment itself suggested that the peer was not sufficiently high above the rest of humanity, such that praise or condemnation is only credible coming from "God" (this is so whether or not this peer was a nominal believer or not).
There is an in-built class barrier in political communication between the population (11).
wingedcentaur
1. 'proles' is short for proletarian.
2. Fussel, Paul. Class: A Guide Through the American Status System. Summit Books, New York, 1983. p.72
3. ibid, pp.72-73
4. Fussell, p.73
5. ibid.
6. ibid.
7. Fussell, P. p.73
8. Fusell, Paul. Class. p.32
9. I use as my authority, Noam Chomsky, who always says that both the Democratic and Republican parties have been well to the right of the public on a host of issues, especially on healthcare, for decades, according to polling data he is familiar. He brings up this point on almost any speech readily available on the Internet, when he discusses the domestic American political system. There an interview he gave on a show called Inside U.S.A, in which he makes this point.
10. Fussell, Paul. Class: A Guide Through the American Status System. p.32
11. See footnote #9
There is another anthropological observation of the bourgeoisie, which, I think helps to account for what are called the "contradictions-in-capitalism." This observation comes from the areas of architecture and interior design. This is important to keep in mind as we talk about capitalism's tendency to "binge and purge" of overaccumulation and subsequent deindustrialization.
Various observations led us to the conclusion that the capitalist class, here and everywhere (left to themselves), are only ever interested in a minimal level of production upon which they can build their pyramids of financial speculation; and we talked about the underlying ideological reason for this: Man is the Desire to Become God - who owns all wealth not thorugh striving but merely by being "God."
The observation we shall make points to a seemingly strange relationship the bourgeoisie has to modernity, which as we will see, has implications for production and "progress" in society.
In his useful book, Class: A Guide Through the American Status System (1983), Paul Fussell cited an authority called Russell Lynes - who wrote in his book, The Tastemakers:
"...despite the facade of modernity a corporation erects to impress the proles (1), behind the scenes the upper business classes cleave to flagrantly archaic effects" (2). Interesting usage there, "flagrantly archaic."
Lynes continued, "...the sheer glass box that sits handsomely on Park Avenue to house the offices of Lever Brothers, you will find that the higher the echelon the more old fashioned the surroundings. The public front is one of daring modernity. The offices of the clerks and department managers are in the functional tradition. But when you reach the offices of top management you will find that there are open fireplaces and chandeliers with an Early American flavor... If you will visit the executive dining room of the J. Walter Thompson Company... you will find yourself in what appears to be a Cape Cod house furnished with Windsor chairs and rag rugs. It has casement windows" (3).
Conclusion: the bourgeoisie - and this is one of my take aways from Paul Fussell's book, whether he meant to convey this specific message or not - as a class, are only ever interested in engaging modernity to the extent that they can use it as a time machine by which they can propel themselves into and maintain themselves in the past. Yes, the past.
Fussell's book looked at class as distinct social and cultural systems, with ingrained patterns of thought, behavior, style, taste, manner of speaking, that remain more or less constant from birth until death. One point he made about class, is that it is not about wealth in absolute terms. Indeed, we have said that becoming Old Money is not about having absolutely the most wealth, but having it arranged for the benefit of your family, on a seemingly automatic, magically self-sustaining basis.
Fussell recognized nine classes: top out-of-sight, upper, upper-middle, middle, high proletarian (he believed the inflationary period of the 1960s and 1970s wiped out the true lower middle class), mid-proletarian, low proletarian, destitute, and bottom out-of-sight.
The upper classes love the old. We all do to a certain extent, of course, and we all use modern technology to transport us to the past [think about how modern camera technology is used to digitally remaster old black and white movies, and digitize and electronically store family photos, and so forth]. We are interested in the way the ruling class uses modernity as a platform to fuel their God-drive to stay in the past; and the contradictory impulses that become embedded in capitalism itself.
The first principle, Man is the Desire to Become God, is operative. "God" is said to be eternal, changeless, perfectly serene. The world changes but the Almighty God remains constant. Indeed, I think that deep down, in the collective unconscious, if you will, of the bourgeoisie, they see "progress" as a kind of weakness, since it is ungodlike.
To continue, Fussell made the point that, if one has to work as a salesman (remember the traditional disdain that the elites have always had for the merchant class) it is better to sell old, archaic things: real wine, unpasteurized cheese, bread without preservatives, Renaissance art objects, or rare books (4).
Indeed, according to Fussell, "[s]elling something old,..., almost redeems the class shame of selling anything at all" (5). Furthermore, "[i]t is in part because Britain has seen better days that Anglophilia is so indispensable an element in upper class taste, in clothes, literature, allusion, manners, and ceremony" (6).
Fussell said that this was why riding lessons were/and still are so cherished among the top classes, because the socially best outfits and accessories were imported from England. In addition to this, top class food was "bland and mushy, with little taste and no chances taken" (7).
There is one more idea I want to leave you with. Fussell pointed out that among the upper classes, it was considered bad form to give them compliments. Fussell wrote:
"It is among members of the upper class that you have to refrain from uttering compliments, which are taken to be rude, possessions there being of course beautiful, expensive, and impressive, without question. They paying of compliments is a middle class convention, for this class needs the assurance compliments provide" (8).
The assurance compliments provide.
I raise this point for two reasons.
A) The first principle, Man is the Desire to Become God, is operative. The further up your position is on the socioeconomic scale, the more and more you are removed from the view, as well as need and desire for the "assurance" (or 'justification' remember that word? [Man exists without justification] of the majority of the population.
B) We might draw a connectrion between this seemingly innocent idiosyncracy of the bourgeoisie and the fact that both major parties, Democrats and Republicans are largely unresponsive to the wishes of the vast majority of the people (9). For example, once again, just consider how Mayor Bloomberg and others in the city council, unimpressed with two public referenda to the contrary, went ahead and changed the law allowing them to supercede term limits voted for by the public.
Fussell gave an amusing anecdote about a British peer of a very old family. One day he invited "an artistic young man" over to his estate. Upon entering the house the young man declared that he had never seen a finer set of Hepplewhite chairs. The lord had the artist removed immediately, saying, "Fellow praised my chairs! Damned cheek!" (10).
What is going on here?
The peer took the compliment (especially coming from the source) as an insult. This is because the compliment itself suggested that the peer was not sufficiently high above the rest of humanity, such that praise or condemnation is only credible coming from "God" (this is so whether or not this peer was a nominal believer or not).
There is an in-built class barrier in political communication between the population (11).
wingedcentaur
1. 'proles' is short for proletarian.
2. Fussel, Paul. Class: A Guide Through the American Status System. Summit Books, New York, 1983. p.72
3. ibid, pp.72-73
4. Fussell, p.73
5. ibid.
6. ibid.
7. Fussell, P. p.73
8. Fusell, Paul. Class. p.32
9. I use as my authority, Noam Chomsky, who always says that both the Democratic and Republican parties have been well to the right of the public on a host of issues, especially on healthcare, for decades, according to polling data he is familiar. He brings up this point on almost any speech readily available on the Internet, when he discusses the domestic American political system. There an interview he gave on a show called Inside U.S.A, in which he makes this point.
10. Fussell, Paul. Class: A Guide Through the American Status System. p.32
11. See footnote #9
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Good Morning Friends,
Today we're talking about finance (as an organism) likened to an alien, intelligent, slug-like creature that needs to move from host to host, to survive; and, you may remember, it is our intention to do our best to evaluate this in terms of what I would call a left libertarian (in the American sense of the word 'libertarian,' let us be clear) analysis that believes that, what they call the financial oligarchy, wants to create a world government.
We said before that there is much science fiction about an intelligent slug-like creatures inhabiting humanoid bodies. Think about Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Jadzia Dax is a Trill (humanoid species of the planet Trill) who was one of the lucky ones to get her own symbiot called Dax, a species of incredibly long-lived, sentient slug creature. There's the Stargate series featuring the Tokkra and Go'ould.
But there are also stories in which the slug creatures give superhuman strength and speed to the humanoid host. It does this by making the nervous system and metabolism work in a different way, somehow. I believe there was an episode of the original Star Trek (with William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk) with this feature.
In this way, finance can make an economy unusually dynamic and strong, even while it undermines the internal health of the same economy. I suggested that there is a difference between a strong and dynamic economy and a healthy one. An economy can be strong but internally unhealthy. I gave as examples of this ill health but outward strength, in the form of the breaking of the levvies in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit and the bridge collapse in Minnesota. The bones of the state had been weakened at the expense of profit making.
Think about an NFL player, a great mountain of a man who also uses steroids* with all the short-term benefits that come with their use. Indeed, his musculature makes him appear to be the "picture of health," but the steroids are undermining his kidneys, changing his hormones, and so forth.
The thing about these slug creatures is that they are parasites. Yes, they endow their hosts with superhuman capabilities, but they simultaneosly drain the body's resources in order to produce those results. Because of this the slug cannot remain in one body for very long, nothing like a natural life-span. It has to keep moving from host to host to host and so on and so forth.
I also mentioned that there are two novels by Octavia E. Butler, "Wildseed" and "Mind of My Mind" which feature a character called Doro, who is something like this but not precisely but similar.
We also found useful, an article in the Monthly Review by John Bellamy Foster called The Age of Monopoly-Finance Capital. monthlyreview.org/100201/foster.php
It just occurred to me that capitalism can be thought of as a kind of manic-depressive system. Keeping in mind the bubble-making nature of capitalism (the euphoria phase) - for our own edification - Foster wrote:
"Economic stagnation, in this sense, should not be confused with technological or consumer product stagnation. Indeed, the constant development of the technology of production that characterizes capitalism in general (including its monopoly stage) only increases the productive potential of the system, intensifying its overaccumulation tendencies.** The system could conceivably be rescued from its economic doldrums under these circumstances by the appearance of an epoch-making innovation on the scale of the steam engine, the railroad, and the automobile, in terms of total economic-geographical effects - generating a vast demand for new investment, independent of existing income constraints. Yet no such epoch-making innovation, Baran and Sweezy (two writers whose work Foster referred to) argued, was on the horizon."
Where can new dynamism come from? What is there to bubble? If there is nothing, what then? What will American finance do then? Where will they go? I am making a shaky assumption that Foster is talking about American finance capital, which of course, is a part of global finance capital, by his mention of the steam engine, automobile, and railroad.
From this narrow perspective, if we were to evaluate what left libertarians (don't accept this term as gospel; it's rather thrown together) call the New World Order (which is different from what they seem to think that mainstream politicians pretend to mean by it), which is, according to left libertarians, sovereignty killing world government, in terms of a parasitical slug, then the question would be: where can American finance move to?
This is a nonsensical question. There is no other single country which American finance could move to - even if such a thing were possible - that provides any better prospects for dynamic innovation.
For this reason, left libertarians might argue, the financial oligarchy needs to feast on whole blocks of nations. The Alex Jones documentary Fall of the Republic talks about this. The film speaks of plans for a North American Union, the complete political and economic fusion of Canada, the United States, and Mexico, and NAFTA as a first step to this.
Fall of the Republic sees the ultimate goal of the international bankers as complete world fusion, which from the perspective of parasitical slugs, might provide the ultimate body for the organism to be able to live on forever.
One way we might think about this is Brainiac. Brainiac is the arch-nemesis of Superman (next to Lex Luthor). Brainiac was the living computer of the planet Krypton, who deliberately allowed the destruction of the planet. His twisted justification for this: the more rare knowledge is, the more precious it is. One of the things he always does is to make newer, stronger bodies to house his intellect.
Or we might think about the thirties radio play "Donovan's Brain" starring Orson Welles [Donovan's Brain was an episode of a radio mystery anthology series called Suspense that ran from 1930 to 1960], which was based on a novel by a writer called Kurt Siodmak. William H. Donovan was critically injured in an airplane crash. Patrick Curry was a surgeon obsessed with keeping disembodied brains alive for as long as possible.
Donovan comes into his hands, and Curry decides that the mistake he's made before was that his previous subjects had been dead at the time of the removal of the brain. This is a mistake he intends not to make again, and so on and so forth.
Curry's treatments of the brain, both to keep it alive and develop a means of communication with it, awaken its self-consciousness and confer upon the brain extraordinary telepathic powers. The brain now wants a body, a young and strong body in which to house itself, so that the brain that was once William H. Donovan (and which is now much more) can live on, potentially for thousands of years. And then Donovan's Brain might go on to take over and rule the world.
So, the potential designs of the American branch of the global financial oligarchy might be compared to Donvan's Brain. The world would be the ultimate body.
But it seems to me that finance already has the benefits of global access with the way the world is now, with over a trillion dollars a day of financial capital moving all about the world at the speed the Internet.
It is called a virtual parliament or virtual senate (1).
As Marx said that capitalism only exists as a part of many capitalisms, I would say that world governments can only exist within a framework of many world governments - other all-encompassing planetary governments. I'm being serious about this. I think we can thankful that the international bankers are not going for world government, simply because we seem to be alone as sentient life in this solar system, and as far as we know, the galaxy; otherwise I think it credible that the international banker set might well move to cohere the Earth into a unified structure under their outright control, as a base from which to launch an interplanetary venture of financial imperialism; and to the extent to which imperialism abroad depends upon repression at "home" we can be thankful that we, the people of the Earth, are spared this additional dimension of suffering.
wingedcentaur
Today we're talking about finance (as an organism) likened to an alien, intelligent, slug-like creature that needs to move from host to host, to survive; and, you may remember, it is our intention to do our best to evaluate this in terms of what I would call a left libertarian (in the American sense of the word 'libertarian,' let us be clear) analysis that believes that, what they call the financial oligarchy, wants to create a world government.
We said before that there is much science fiction about an intelligent slug-like creatures inhabiting humanoid bodies. Think about Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Jadzia Dax is a Trill (humanoid species of the planet Trill) who was one of the lucky ones to get her own symbiot called Dax, a species of incredibly long-lived, sentient slug creature. There's the Stargate series featuring the Tokkra and Go'ould.
But there are also stories in which the slug creatures give superhuman strength and speed to the humanoid host. It does this by making the nervous system and metabolism work in a different way, somehow. I believe there was an episode of the original Star Trek (with William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk) with this feature.
In this way, finance can make an economy unusually dynamic and strong, even while it undermines the internal health of the same economy. I suggested that there is a difference between a strong and dynamic economy and a healthy one. An economy can be strong but internally unhealthy. I gave as examples of this ill health but outward strength, in the form of the breaking of the levvies in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit and the bridge collapse in Minnesota. The bones of the state had been weakened at the expense of profit making.
Think about an NFL player, a great mountain of a man who also uses steroids* with all the short-term benefits that come with their use. Indeed, his musculature makes him appear to be the "picture of health," but the steroids are undermining his kidneys, changing his hormones, and so forth.
The thing about these slug creatures is that they are parasites. Yes, they endow their hosts with superhuman capabilities, but they simultaneosly drain the body's resources in order to produce those results. Because of this the slug cannot remain in one body for very long, nothing like a natural life-span. It has to keep moving from host to host to host and so on and so forth.
I also mentioned that there are two novels by Octavia E. Butler, "Wildseed" and "Mind of My Mind" which feature a character called Doro, who is something like this but not precisely but similar.
We also found useful, an article in the Monthly Review by John Bellamy Foster called The Age of Monopoly-Finance Capital. monthlyreview.org/100201/foster.php
It just occurred to me that capitalism can be thought of as a kind of manic-depressive system. Keeping in mind the bubble-making nature of capitalism (the euphoria phase) - for our own edification - Foster wrote:
"Economic stagnation, in this sense, should not be confused with technological or consumer product stagnation. Indeed, the constant development of the technology of production that characterizes capitalism in general (including its monopoly stage) only increases the productive potential of the system, intensifying its overaccumulation tendencies.** The system could conceivably be rescued from its economic doldrums under these circumstances by the appearance of an epoch-making innovation on the scale of the steam engine, the railroad, and the automobile, in terms of total economic-geographical effects - generating a vast demand for new investment, independent of existing income constraints. Yet no such epoch-making innovation, Baran and Sweezy (two writers whose work Foster referred to) argued, was on the horizon."
Where can new dynamism come from? What is there to bubble? If there is nothing, what then? What will American finance do then? Where will they go? I am making a shaky assumption that Foster is talking about American finance capital, which of course, is a part of global finance capital, by his mention of the steam engine, automobile, and railroad.
From this narrow perspective, if we were to evaluate what left libertarians (don't accept this term as gospel; it's rather thrown together) call the New World Order (which is different from what they seem to think that mainstream politicians pretend to mean by it), which is, according to left libertarians, sovereignty killing world government, in terms of a parasitical slug, then the question would be: where can American finance move to?
This is a nonsensical question. There is no other single country which American finance could move to - even if such a thing were possible - that provides any better prospects for dynamic innovation.
For this reason, left libertarians might argue, the financial oligarchy needs to feast on whole blocks of nations. The Alex Jones documentary Fall of the Republic talks about this. The film speaks of plans for a North American Union, the complete political and economic fusion of Canada, the United States, and Mexico, and NAFTA as a first step to this.
Fall of the Republic sees the ultimate goal of the international bankers as complete world fusion, which from the perspective of parasitical slugs, might provide the ultimate body for the organism to be able to live on forever.
One way we might think about this is Brainiac. Brainiac is the arch-nemesis of Superman (next to Lex Luthor). Brainiac was the living computer of the planet Krypton, who deliberately allowed the destruction of the planet. His twisted justification for this: the more rare knowledge is, the more precious it is. One of the things he always does is to make newer, stronger bodies to house his intellect.
Or we might think about the thirties radio play "Donovan's Brain" starring Orson Welles [Donovan's Brain was an episode of a radio mystery anthology series called Suspense that ran from 1930 to 1960], which was based on a novel by a writer called Kurt Siodmak. William H. Donovan was critically injured in an airplane crash. Patrick Curry was a surgeon obsessed with keeping disembodied brains alive for as long as possible.
Donovan comes into his hands, and Curry decides that the mistake he's made before was that his previous subjects had been dead at the time of the removal of the brain. This is a mistake he intends not to make again, and so on and so forth.
Curry's treatments of the brain, both to keep it alive and develop a means of communication with it, awaken its self-consciousness and confer upon the brain extraordinary telepathic powers. The brain now wants a body, a young and strong body in which to house itself, so that the brain that was once William H. Donovan (and which is now much more) can live on, potentially for thousands of years. And then Donovan's Brain might go on to take over and rule the world.
So, the potential designs of the American branch of the global financial oligarchy might be compared to Donvan's Brain. The world would be the ultimate body.
But it seems to me that finance already has the benefits of global access with the way the world is now, with over a trillion dollars a day of financial capital moving all about the world at the speed the Internet.
It is called a virtual parliament or virtual senate (1).
As Marx said that capitalism only exists as a part of many capitalisms, I would say that world governments can only exist within a framework of many world governments - other all-encompassing planetary governments. I'm being serious about this. I think we can thankful that the international bankers are not going for world government, simply because we seem to be alone as sentient life in this solar system, and as far as we know, the galaxy; otherwise I think it credible that the international banker set might well move to cohere the Earth into a unified structure under their outright control, as a base from which to launch an interplanetary venture of financial imperialism; and to the extent to which imperialism abroad depends upon repression at "home" we can be thankful that we, the people of the Earth, are spared this additional dimension of suffering.
wingedcentaur
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