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