http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/intro/moral.html
Considering the Moral of R. Buckminster Fuller's Synergetics Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking.
This brief page, with its first sentence, "Dare to be naïve," feels more oasis-like to me the more I re-read it. There is an ur-optimism here, stated with an ungainliness that is nonetheless transcendently elegant: "It is inherently potential in the integrity of eternal regeneration and the inherent complexity of unity that god is the unknowable totality of generalized principles which are only surprisingly unveiled, thereby synergetically inaugurating entirely new, heretofore unpredicted-because unpredictable-ages ."
Fuller seeks the pattern of McLuhan's sensory mosaic; perhaps his approach, his naivete, is an intuitive approach to the original whole and harmonious ratio of the senses, prior to the closing and outering that McLuhan sees as the effect of our own technology on us.
We can already read and feel the endless bounty of Universe as Fuller perceives it in this very brief Moral: "eternally regenerative," "omni-interaccommodative," "heretofore unpredicted-because unpredictable-ages," "astronomical myriads of new, special-case experiences and problems to be stored in freshly born optimum capacity human brains." Already Fuller bombards us with a sense of Universe sensuously contradicting our received anxious default conception of our world as hostile, austere and bounded, where scarcity is the rule and where each of us must jealously and without respite guard that which is ours.
With that default sense of scarcity and danger, of course we build walls and make orders to keep the others out. In Fuller's conception it feels as if the walls fall before we can build them, the orders become self-evidently selfish and silly, the sense of scarcity and danger evaporates from mind and heart as a bad dream upon waking.
http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/synergetics.html
Sunday, February 5, 2017
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Dissolving Transforming
Beginning on this new path, a consideration of the first, untitled, preface-like page of The Gutenberg Galaxy by Marshall McLuhan.
To begin with, McLuhan explains the "mosaic or field approach" that his book will develop as "the only practical means of revealing causal operations in history." Again, a confirmation, as "mosaic" also roughly describes my plan of week by week jumping from one small bit of one book to one small bit of another to another small bit of yet another. I made the plan not really knowing, though curious to know, what such a plan of attack might reveal--who knows? Perhaps causal operations in history.
McLuhan goes on to assert the galaxy, event-constellation or environment under study "is itself a mosaic of perpetually intersecting forms that have undergone kaleidoscopic transformation--particularly in our own time" (The Gutenberg Galaxy was published in 1962) The particular kinds of events constituting this "galaxy" are changes in technology, and the ways those changes constitute not passive or neutral events but rather "active processes that reshape people and other technologies alike." As examples he asserts that alphabets and writing created the environment or ancient empires, that the stirrup and the wheel greatly expanded the scope of such empires, that printing from movable type created "the public" and nations as we understand them. Finally, in the twentieth century the shift from mechanical to electrical technology has been (and continues to be) a most active process indeed and one the major historical shifts of all time.
For McLuhan, the individual, the public and nations are all products of "an intense and visually oriented self-consciousness, both of the individual and the group," and this intense visual consciousness is itself the product of words on the printed page, hence the world of that period from the 15th into the early 20th centuries was a "Gutenberg Galaxy," since Gutenberg invented the printing press.
However, "electrical circuitry does not support the extension of visual modalities in any degree approaching the visual power of the printed word," so that, paradoxically, those processes which have nurtured and supported the individual, the public and nations are no longer with us in the same way. Since the advent of film, recordings, radio, television, computers and the internet, whatever an individual was, whatever the public was, whatever a nation was have been being dissolved or in whatever fashion, fundamentally transformed. It was to describe this transformation that McLuhan coined the term "global village." Today we are witnessing, not just in the US but all over the world, a resurgence of populist nationalism. Perhaps this resurgence has much to do with the anxiety of the sudden (in historical terms) dissolution/transformation of such basic things as our sense of individuality, of being the public, of being a nation.
https://www.amazon.com/Gutenberg-Galaxy-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/144261269X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485559537&sr=1-1&keywords=marshall+mcluhan+the+gutenberg+galaxy
http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/
To begin with, McLuhan explains the "mosaic or field approach" that his book will develop as "the only practical means of revealing causal operations in history." Again, a confirmation, as "mosaic" also roughly describes my plan of week by week jumping from one small bit of one book to one small bit of another to another small bit of yet another. I made the plan not really knowing, though curious to know, what such a plan of attack might reveal--who knows? Perhaps causal operations in history.
McLuhan goes on to assert the galaxy, event-constellation or environment under study "is itself a mosaic of perpetually intersecting forms that have undergone kaleidoscopic transformation--particularly in our own time" (The Gutenberg Galaxy was published in 1962) The particular kinds of events constituting this "galaxy" are changes in technology, and the ways those changes constitute not passive or neutral events but rather "active processes that reshape people and other technologies alike." As examples he asserts that alphabets and writing created the environment or ancient empires, that the stirrup and the wheel greatly expanded the scope of such empires, that printing from movable type created "the public" and nations as we understand them. Finally, in the twentieth century the shift from mechanical to electrical technology has been (and continues to be) a most active process indeed and one the major historical shifts of all time.
For McLuhan, the individual, the public and nations are all products of "an intense and visually oriented self-consciousness, both of the individual and the group," and this intense visual consciousness is itself the product of words on the printed page, hence the world of that period from the 15th into the early 20th centuries was a "Gutenberg Galaxy," since Gutenberg invented the printing press.
However, "electrical circuitry does not support the extension of visual modalities in any degree approaching the visual power of the printed word," so that, paradoxically, those processes which have nurtured and supported the individual, the public and nations are no longer with us in the same way. Since the advent of film, recordings, radio, television, computers and the internet, whatever an individual was, whatever the public was, whatever a nation was have been being dissolved or in whatever fashion, fundamentally transformed. It was to describe this transformation that McLuhan coined the term "global village." Today we are witnessing, not just in the US but all over the world, a resurgence of populist nationalism. Perhaps this resurgence has much to do with the anxiety of the sudden (in historical terms) dissolution/transformation of such basic things as our sense of individuality, of being the public, of being a nation.
https://www.amazon.com/Gutenberg-Galaxy-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/144261269X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485559537&sr=1-1&keywords=marshall+mcluhan+the+gutenberg+galaxy
http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/
Saturday, January 21, 2017
To the Bottom of Wherever
It has been quite a while (about 3 1/2 years) since my last post. That has had to do with many things, including finding ways to act politically that were not just blogging. It has also had to do with the ways in which life got extraordinarily busy.
Early in November Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, and yesterday, January 20, he was inaugurated. The advent of this presidency feels like a grave crisis for our country and for the world. This crisis has alternately thrown me into rage, despair, helplessness and bewilderment, and it became clear to me shortly following the election that I needed to find a way to intentionally and constructively act in response to this crisis.
Immediately following the election I had raged and vented and spat via Facebook posts. This raging drew Amens from many of my friends but also anger, especially from people in the very small Eastern Washington town where I grew up. One of these people unfriended me, but later messaged me that she was re-friending me, that she loved me, and that she didn't want Facebook politics to get in the way of that.
This person has known me since before I started grade school, and the interaction reminded me of what was unique about that town: there were people of widely varying points of view and those views sometimes clashed, but we didn't become enemies over such clashes; we knew each other too well. We had babysat or been babysat by each other, we had attended church together, rooted at basketball games together, changed and showered in the same locker rooms together, and that being together overrode political differences however deeply felt. The unfriending and refriending reminded me of that, and it has made me much less likely to simply vent on Facebook now.
I am less sure than I once was of the value of attempting to persuade a right wing skeptic of the truth of my left wing values. It's as if we're from different planets and there is no persuading that is going to happen. If I am honest with myself, I don't really know why I hold the values I do, nor why they happen to constitute such a standard left-liberal bouquet: pro-choice, socialist, climate change (is real), embrace of diversity: not to say I don't hold these position staunchly and fervently, but I can't say from where that fervency actually stems.
When I started this blog in 2013 I set out themes and topics, but I'm changing what I'm doing for this re-launch. My goal, perhaps unattainable, is to get to the bottom of wherever right and/or left wing values spring. Not just "perhaps unattainable," it's really not clear to me what the correct way of proceeding might be. In lieu of that knowledge, I am setting myself the following task: To undertake a leisurely and painstaking review, in very small bites, of the written work of R. Buckminster Fuller, Marshall McLuhan, Norman O. Brown, and John Cage. After this thought had come to me it felt like a confirmation when I remembered that Norman O. Brown, under similarly perplexing political circumstances in the early 50's had undertaken the project to critically and systematically read the work of Sigmund Freud.
To begin with, the plan is to read, in parallel, Fuller's Synergetics, McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy, Brown's Life Against Death and Cage's Silence. If I can manage to post once a week, it is hoped to cycle through a brief passage from each book, with reflections connecting to our present situation, over the course of one month, returning to the beginning of the cycle at the beginning of the next month.
Early in November Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, and yesterday, January 20, he was inaugurated. The advent of this presidency feels like a grave crisis for our country and for the world. This crisis has alternately thrown me into rage, despair, helplessness and bewilderment, and it became clear to me shortly following the election that I needed to find a way to intentionally and constructively act in response to this crisis.
Immediately following the election I had raged and vented and spat via Facebook posts. This raging drew Amens from many of my friends but also anger, especially from people in the very small Eastern Washington town where I grew up. One of these people unfriended me, but later messaged me that she was re-friending me, that she loved me, and that she didn't want Facebook politics to get in the way of that.
This person has known me since before I started grade school, and the interaction reminded me of what was unique about that town: there were people of widely varying points of view and those views sometimes clashed, but we didn't become enemies over such clashes; we knew each other too well. We had babysat or been babysat by each other, we had attended church together, rooted at basketball games together, changed and showered in the same locker rooms together, and that being together overrode political differences however deeply felt. The unfriending and refriending reminded me of that, and it has made me much less likely to simply vent on Facebook now.
I am less sure than I once was of the value of attempting to persuade a right wing skeptic of the truth of my left wing values. It's as if we're from different planets and there is no persuading that is going to happen. If I am honest with myself, I don't really know why I hold the values I do, nor why they happen to constitute such a standard left-liberal bouquet: pro-choice, socialist, climate change (is real), embrace of diversity: not to say I don't hold these position staunchly and fervently, but I can't say from where that fervency actually stems.
When I started this blog in 2013 I set out themes and topics, but I'm changing what I'm doing for this re-launch. My goal, perhaps unattainable, is to get to the bottom of wherever right and/or left wing values spring. Not just "perhaps unattainable," it's really not clear to me what the correct way of proceeding might be. In lieu of that knowledge, I am setting myself the following task: To undertake a leisurely and painstaking review, in very small bites, of the written work of R. Buckminster Fuller, Marshall McLuhan, Norman O. Brown, and John Cage. After this thought had come to me it felt like a confirmation when I remembered that Norman O. Brown, under similarly perplexing political circumstances in the early 50's had undertaken the project to critically and systematically read the work of Sigmund Freud.
To begin with, the plan is to read, in parallel, Fuller's Synergetics, McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy, Brown's Life Against Death and Cage's Silence. If I can manage to post once a week, it is hoped to cycle through a brief passage from each book, with reflections connecting to our present situation, over the course of one month, returning to the beginning of the cycle at the beginning of the next month.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Does Greater Equality Make Societies Stronger?
My working plan for this blog is to go around in circles, treating in order the topics I put out there in the very first post: the "both and" topic (that we must generally strive to respect both individual and economic rights and liberties, as exemplified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and also in FDR's proposed second Bill of Rights); the importance of unions; the need to have more voices and parties represented in the national dialogue (beyond two parties); the urgent need to abolish coroporate personhood; the case for the abolition of money; and finally, anarchism. Also part of the working plan is to have a post following the completion of each cycle for a general topic, reflection, book report, or whatever, before returning to the cycle of topics for one more round.
The last post was that "wild card" post, a book report on Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine," the reading of which was the main stimulus for this blog.
This post should represent a return to the cycle, and specifically to the "both and" topic. Somewhat providentially, a friend recommended a book which seems to be on point with further consideration of the values of the Universal Declaration and of Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights. The book recommended by Ronnie Rodriquez, is "The Spirit Level" by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. Today's post is not exactly a book report, because I just got the book from the library and have barely begun reading it. But I'm already quite excited by briefly skimming its contents and getting a general sense of what the authors are up to. Wilkinson and Pickett are MEDICAL researchers, and this book is their report on extensive researches into the effects of social inequality on health and happiness. Their conclusion is present in the subtitle of the book: "Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger"
Intuitively, this makes sense to me, but it feels good, REALLY good, to pick up a book that suggests that there may be fairly hard empirical evidence confirming that this is the case.
I'll probably post a full report down the line once I've read and digested "The Spirit Level." In the meantime I hope some of you reading this blog will check out the book as well. Thanks for the suggestion, Ronnie. http://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies-Stronger/dp/1608193411/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374819536&sr=1-1&keywords=the+spirit+level
The last post was that "wild card" post, a book report on Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine," the reading of which was the main stimulus for this blog.
This post should represent a return to the cycle, and specifically to the "both and" topic. Somewhat providentially, a friend recommended a book which seems to be on point with further consideration of the values of the Universal Declaration and of Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights. The book recommended by Ronnie Rodriquez, is "The Spirit Level" by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. Today's post is not exactly a book report, because I just got the book from the library and have barely begun reading it. But I'm already quite excited by briefly skimming its contents and getting a general sense of what the authors are up to. Wilkinson and Pickett are MEDICAL researchers, and this book is their report on extensive researches into the effects of social inequality on health and happiness. Their conclusion is present in the subtitle of the book: "Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger"
Intuitively, this makes sense to me, but it feels good, REALLY good, to pick up a book that suggests that there may be fairly hard empirical evidence confirming that this is the case.
I'll probably post a full report down the line once I've read and digested "The Spirit Level." In the meantime I hope some of you reading this blog will check out the book as well. Thanks for the suggestion, Ronnie. http://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies-Stronger/dp/1608193411/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374819536&sr=1-1&keywords=the+spirit+level
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Book Report: "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein
"This blog is my political activity. I am making it because I don't want to feel helpless and overpowered, and because I don't just want to sit on the sidelines and watch others work." That was how I began this blog in April. The stimulus to those words, and this blog, was Naomi Klein's profound and scary 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine, subtitled The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
Throughout my adult life my heart has belonged to the left and to progressive causes and the progressive mind-set; but I have, excepting a few marches, letters to the editor, and a radio call-in or two, been a passive sideliner who voted Democrat at election time. I have been a passive sideliner, because of a pretty deeply ingrained sense of helplessness. The Shock Doctrine really did SHOCK me: it showed me WHY I have felt helpless, and WHY I resigned myself to helplessness. The Shock Doctrine convinced me moreover that there are people out there who want people like me to feel helpless and stay on the sidelines. The book has convinced me that the people who want people like me on the sidelines know just how to make people like me feel helpless and behave passively, and that they actively work to create these feelings, and they actively work to keep us feeling that way and on the sidelines.
When I realized this, I became angry, and at the same time, almost instantly, I didn't feel helpless anymore. I resolved that from this point forward I was going to find ways to speak up, and be active, and learn, and agitate, and look for kindred spirits, and change the way things are. And that's where NOT ONLY THE FUTURE came from.
The argument of Klein's book is that for a long time there has been a strategy--NOT a conspiracy, a strategy--to exploit the "shock and awe" of disasters, natural like tsunamis or human-inflicted like wars, to advance the cause of unfettered free-market capitalism. Klein's argument is nuanced, complex, and rests on a lot of detailed study of different examples of the Shock Doctrine's implementation over the last thirty-five years.
http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372400750&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Shock+Doctrine
A nutshell summation of the book's arguments are provided in Michael Winterbottom's film of the same title, which can be streamed here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Shock-Doctrine/dp/B006GUW718/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1372401225&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Shock+Doctrine
Klein has distanced herself from the film, and I would caution viewers that what the book is about does NOT lend itself to being put in a nutshell, so the movie is no substitute for a careful reading of the book itself.
The most brilliant section of The Shock Doctrine for me is Chapter 12, "The Capitalist Id," which is essentially a capitalist critique of capitalism, making the point that capitalist system ceases to work very well (or at least ceases to work well for more than a very few), once the system itself has no real competition.
Throughout my adult life my heart has belonged to the left and to progressive causes and the progressive mind-set; but I have, excepting a few marches, letters to the editor, and a radio call-in or two, been a passive sideliner who voted Democrat at election time. I have been a passive sideliner, because of a pretty deeply ingrained sense of helplessness. The Shock Doctrine really did SHOCK me: it showed me WHY I have felt helpless, and WHY I resigned myself to helplessness. The Shock Doctrine convinced me moreover that there are people out there who want people like me to feel helpless and stay on the sidelines. The book has convinced me that the people who want people like me on the sidelines know just how to make people like me feel helpless and behave passively, and that they actively work to create these feelings, and they actively work to keep us feeling that way and on the sidelines.
When I realized this, I became angry, and at the same time, almost instantly, I didn't feel helpless anymore. I resolved that from this point forward I was going to find ways to speak up, and be active, and learn, and agitate, and look for kindred spirits, and change the way things are. And that's where NOT ONLY THE FUTURE came from.
The argument of Klein's book is that for a long time there has been a strategy--NOT a conspiracy, a strategy--to exploit the "shock and awe" of disasters, natural like tsunamis or human-inflicted like wars, to advance the cause of unfettered free-market capitalism. Klein's argument is nuanced, complex, and rests on a lot of detailed study of different examples of the Shock Doctrine's implementation over the last thirty-five years.
http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372400750&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Shock+Doctrine
A nutshell summation of the book's arguments are provided in Michael Winterbottom's film of the same title, which can be streamed here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Shock-Doctrine/dp/B006GUW718/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1372401225&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Shock+Doctrine
Klein has distanced herself from the film, and I would caution viewers that what the book is about does NOT lend itself to being put in a nutshell, so the movie is no substitute for a careful reading of the book itself.
The most brilliant section of The Shock Doctrine for me is Chapter 12, "The Capitalist Id," which is essentially a capitalist critique of capitalism, making the point that capitalist system ceases to work very well (or at least ceases to work well for more than a very few), once the system itself has no real competition.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
ANARCHISM
I identify as an anarchist, but admit that I'm very much a beginning student. I've found the Anarchist FAQ online to be enormously informative and thought-provoking, but I have only scratched its surface. http://www.infoshop.org/AnAnarchistFAQ
Here's an introductory pass at what I mean (and don't mean) when I say "anarchism." Anarchy is a situation freed of hierarchies, in which power relations between people are as equal as can possibly be made. Anarchy is an ideal, and not an ideal to be realized in a mechanical, or a mechanically purist way. Some authority relationships are very hard to dispense with. As a parent and a teacher I have found myself in situations where I've reluctantly had to impose my authority, and in other situations where I caught myself enjoying my position of being able to call the shots, or anxiously clinging to the reins in fear of what would happen if I sought a more democratic way to approach a particular problem.
Another basic ideal of anarchism is the faith that human beings, freed of fear and coercion, will ultimately do the right thing. I have this faith, though I know that fears and coercions run deep; that they are not just imposed externally, and that there is much teaching and healing and re-framing to be done before this ideal becomes concretely real.
Henry David Thoreau opens his "Essay on Civil Disobedience" as follows: "I HEARTILY ACCEPT the motto, — 'That government is best which governs least'; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, — 'That government is best which governs not at all'; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have." "When men are prepared for it" is the wise, key phrase in all of that. Preparing for it entails struggles and education both inward and outward: the leveling of power structures in work, government, school and family; and the building within of a responsible, compassionate, gracious and noble human individual.
The freeing of trade, of markets, and of trusting the invisible hand, have nothing to do with anarchism. That is because markets and predatory businessmen are the only things that end up being "free" in a "free market." The neo-liberal economics of Milton Friedman and his followers create hierarchies and reinforce power relationships between people; they do not abolish them.
Free improvised music has been an environment in which I've felt something like real and functioning anarchy: mutual respect and trust between musicians as we make something together with no leaders. Another musical situation that has given an experience of a different sort of anarchy is in performing certain ensemble scores of John Cage. Many of Cage's compositions involved his giving up many of the intentions traditionally imposed by a composer. He would also allow freedoms to performers not customarily assumed. There is an experience playing such a score of discovery, of intensified responsibility, of exhilarating surprise, that all feel connected to the relative leveling of hierarchies among and between performers and composer.
I grew up in a very very small town. There was no mayor or city council or police. I remember few crimes or trouble requiring the sheriff be called. In emergencies, people would figure out what to do. There was a volunteer fire department, and my mother, a registered nurse, would step up to be the equivalent of the town doctor when needed. There would be differences of opinion, and these could sometimes be tense, but it still feels to me that it made a whole lot of difference in how that community functioned, that we all had the luxury of actually knowing by face and name everyone living in or around town. Relatively, this was anarchy.
More about anarchy and anarchism in future posts. Thanks again for reading.
Here's an introductory pass at what I mean (and don't mean) when I say "anarchism." Anarchy is a situation freed of hierarchies, in which power relations between people are as equal as can possibly be made. Anarchy is an ideal, and not an ideal to be realized in a mechanical, or a mechanically purist way. Some authority relationships are very hard to dispense with. As a parent and a teacher I have found myself in situations where I've reluctantly had to impose my authority, and in other situations where I caught myself enjoying my position of being able to call the shots, or anxiously clinging to the reins in fear of what would happen if I sought a more democratic way to approach a particular problem.
Another basic ideal of anarchism is the faith that human beings, freed of fear and coercion, will ultimately do the right thing. I have this faith, though I know that fears and coercions run deep; that they are not just imposed externally, and that there is much teaching and healing and re-framing to be done before this ideal becomes concretely real.
Henry David Thoreau opens his "Essay on Civil Disobedience" as follows: "I HEARTILY ACCEPT the motto, — 'That government is best which governs least'; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, — 'That government is best which governs not at all'; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have." "When men are prepared for it" is the wise, key phrase in all of that. Preparing for it entails struggles and education both inward and outward: the leveling of power structures in work, government, school and family; and the building within of a responsible, compassionate, gracious and noble human individual.
The freeing of trade, of markets, and of trusting the invisible hand, have nothing to do with anarchism. That is because markets and predatory businessmen are the only things that end up being "free" in a "free market." The neo-liberal economics of Milton Friedman and his followers create hierarchies and reinforce power relationships between people; they do not abolish them.
Free improvised music has been an environment in which I've felt something like real and functioning anarchy: mutual respect and trust between musicians as we make something together with no leaders. Another musical situation that has given an experience of a different sort of anarchy is in performing certain ensemble scores of John Cage. Many of Cage's compositions involved his giving up many of the intentions traditionally imposed by a composer. He would also allow freedoms to performers not customarily assumed. There is an experience playing such a score of discovery, of intensified responsibility, of exhilarating surprise, that all feel connected to the relative leveling of hierarchies among and between performers and composer.
I grew up in a very very small town. There was no mayor or city council or police. I remember few crimes or trouble requiring the sheriff be called. In emergencies, people would figure out what to do. There was a volunteer fire department, and my mother, a registered nurse, would step up to be the equivalent of the town doctor when needed. There would be differences of opinion, and these could sometimes be tense, but it still feels to me that it made a whole lot of difference in how that community functioned, that we all had the luxury of actually knowing by face and name everyone living in or around town. Relatively, this was anarchy.
More about anarchy and anarchism in future posts. Thanks again for reading.
Friday, May 31, 2013
Moving Beyond Money
I've been looking forward to this topic. The abolition of money seems to me a crucial challenge for real human progress. Yet I don't hear many people talking about this. There seems to be a general acceptance that money is either a neutral utilitarian thing, or at most a necessary evil. And there is all the quasi-mystical conversation about manifesting success, self-affirming that "I deserve to have lots of money," and treating it as a natural or supernatural resource that can be used for good ends or bad ends depending on the user.
My thinking on money is deeply informed by Norman O. Brown's book Life Against Death, especially the chapter "Filthy Lucre." Brown's book will get its own spotlight entry in this blog very soon. For now a quick summary of the isolated chapter which for me is the best account of what money "really" is. Life Against Death as a whole is a summary, a critique, and an extension of Freudian theory as applied to Western Civilization as a whole (as opposed to its usual application, the neurotic individual). "Filthy Lucre" is the main illustration of applying psychoanalysis to a broad social phenomenon, in this case money. A basic assumption of the book is that all people, and civilization as a whole, are afflicted by a general neurosis, or to put it another way, there is no such thing as normal mental health, either individual or collective. It follows that there is no such thing as a reasonable or realistic or utilitarian point of view or institution. All institutions and points of view partake of delusion, and of the infantile fantasies that ultimately drive us in all areas of our lives.
Money is no exception to this rule. Freud himself had analyzed money as rooted in the traumas of the anal developmental period, and had stated that what money is to us, unconsciously, is shit, and that what we do with money is basically play with it as we once played with our own shit. Brown develops this idea, connecting it to witchcraft, and other kinds of human waste: locks of hair, fingernails, the little pieces of us that are used in witchcraft to attain power over those to whom they formerly belonged. That's money too--useless bits of paper and metal used to magically wield power by those who hoard those useless little bits. From the symbolic to the magical to the real: money is power, and the means to power. It is NOT a reasonable and pragmatic medium of exchange. It is a tool of power used by those who want to have power over others. That's what money is for, and that's why it (and capitalism) are anti-human and anti-democratic.
This is a very brief, and perhaps crazy-sounding summary of Brown's argument, which is actually eloquent, detailed, and amazing. I recommend it very highly. And no, I don't at this point know how we move beyond money, and what economy, trade, and prosperity look like without money. I do think it would be important for all of us to think about this problem.
My thinking on money is deeply informed by Norman O. Brown's book Life Against Death, especially the chapter "Filthy Lucre." Brown's book will get its own spotlight entry in this blog very soon. For now a quick summary of the isolated chapter which for me is the best account of what money "really" is. Life Against Death as a whole is a summary, a critique, and an extension of Freudian theory as applied to Western Civilization as a whole (as opposed to its usual application, the neurotic individual). "Filthy Lucre" is the main illustration of applying psychoanalysis to a broad social phenomenon, in this case money. A basic assumption of the book is that all people, and civilization as a whole, are afflicted by a general neurosis, or to put it another way, there is no such thing as normal mental health, either individual or collective. It follows that there is no such thing as a reasonable or realistic or utilitarian point of view or institution. All institutions and points of view partake of delusion, and of the infantile fantasies that ultimately drive us in all areas of our lives.
Money is no exception to this rule. Freud himself had analyzed money as rooted in the traumas of the anal developmental period, and had stated that what money is to us, unconsciously, is shit, and that what we do with money is basically play with it as we once played with our own shit. Brown develops this idea, connecting it to witchcraft, and other kinds of human waste: locks of hair, fingernails, the little pieces of us that are used in witchcraft to attain power over those to whom they formerly belonged. That's money too--useless bits of paper and metal used to magically wield power by those who hoard those useless little bits. From the symbolic to the magical to the real: money is power, and the means to power. It is NOT a reasonable and pragmatic medium of exchange. It is a tool of power used by those who want to have power over others. That's what money is for, and that's why it (and capitalism) are anti-human and anti-democratic.
This is a very brief, and perhaps crazy-sounding summary of Brown's argument, which is actually eloquent, detailed, and amazing. I recommend it very highly. And no, I don't at this point know how we move beyond money, and what economy, trade, and prosperity look like without money. I do think it would be important for all of us to think about this problem.
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