Nas2EndWork "Pamela's Blogs":
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Blog 1: "You Know How I Know You're a Slave?"
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Blog 2: "Where the Hell is Vasquez When We Really Need Her?"
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Blog 3: "How Do I Con Thee? Let Me Count the Ways...Or: What Is 'Individual Freedom'?"
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Blog 4: "Is It Never Too Late to Be the Parent I Should Have Been?"
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Blog 5: "Are We Innocent When We Dream?"
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Blog 6: "To Enlarge the Realm of the Possible"
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Blog 7: "Bury the Corpse!"
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Blog 8: "Just Say NO! Make Coke the First Corpse to Go!"
Blog 9: "Compassion Always Comes Too Late"
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Blog 10: "To Live and Die a Slave?"
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Blog 11: "Crime Is The Flip Side"
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Blog 12: "Rocket Science Ain't Rocket Science"
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Blog 13: "The Fuck-It Factor"
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Blog 14: "How Do You Organize (Our World) Without Hierarchy?"
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Blog 15: "Eating What The Earth Gives Me"
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Blog 16: "When You Become A Voice Of The Voiceless"
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Blog 17: "You Got To Sucker The Corn Or the Ears Won't Be Worth Nothin'"
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Blog 18: "Packaging Our Children For The Podrunks"
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Blog 19: "The Good Livers"
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Blog 20: "Is There Such A Thing As "Voicelessness"?"
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Blog 21: "Brandon Terrell Jones"
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Blog 22: "Our Real Work"
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Blog 23: "Gennenice Chapman Johnson"
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Blog 24: "What Is Your 'Theory of Change'?"
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Blog 25: "The Plum Tree"
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Blog 26: "Wholism Is A Health Issue"
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Blog 27: "Who's Loving You Michael?"
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Blog 28: "Getting Busy"
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Blog 29: "Depopulation"
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Blog 30: "Growing A Mass Movement"
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Blog 31: "Ridley's Choice"
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Blog 32: "Children Of The Technology"
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Blog 33: "The Devastated Earthscapes From Lawrence Summers' "Logic""
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Blog 34: "How Do We Grow A Mass Movement?"
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Blog 35: "We Have To Make A Loud Noise"
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Blog 36: "The Phoenix"
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Blog 37: "Wind-Blown Seeds Need Roots"
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Blog 38: "Embracing The Plural"
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Blog 39: "Round And Round And Round We Go But Not Merrily"
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Blog 40: "Unplugging"
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Blog 41: "Thank You Sandy From Petaluma"
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Blog 42: "You Got City Hands Mr. Hooper"
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Blog 43: "Letter to Michael Reynolds"
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Blog 44: "The Last Civil Rights Movement"
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Blog 45: "The 4 R's: The Ruses Used To Rend Us...Race, Religion, Reason, and Recognition - 1"
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Blog 46: "The 4 Ruses - 2"
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Blog 47: "The 4 Ruses - 3"
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Blog 48: "The Responsibility Of The Intellectual"
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Blog 49: "The Hidden Malevolence: AKA Michael Moore's Dilemma"
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Blog 50: "Wading Into The Muck Of State"
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Blog 51: "Seeing The Communal Alternative"
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Blog 52: "Becoming The Function"
Pamela's Blog 52
[In Progress] October , 2009 by Nas2EndWork.org
“Becoming The Function (How The Job Is The Booster Shot)”
Brothers and sisters...can we please stop saying, "we need jobs"...? Every time we do we're aligning our interests (unconsciously) with the pitiful-power-drunk-few. We don't need 'jobs'...we need full, vibrant, interesting, fun and reverent lives free of the yoke.
It's time to houseclean our heads, sweep out the conditioning, change the messages, make our own 'stories,' re-name our 'selves.' I've looked "human being" up in the dictionary and there's nothing there about being a slave. (From: "The Ruses Used To Rend Us".)
The problems are not insuperable...I hope you'll compose some discussions (such as: What is our responsibility to others? and What Is The Responsibility Of The 'Intellectual'?), get it touch, and start re-orienting your allegiance. (Related questions: OTheR Log 34, 44, 50, 76 and consider [in Waking Up: The Plan, Pt. 4] our remembered “wildness".)
Sitting down with each other is critical, especially because, as the 'reality' we are given does not reflect our inherent freedom: * We live more completely in our imaginations than we know...
**** "...The most important Manhattan Projects of the future will be vast government-sponsored enquiries into what...will be called 'the problem of happiness' – in other words, the problem of making people love their servitude..."
*** "Dr. Mengele was indefatigable in the exercise of his functions."
** ...and then, there's this matter of 'motivation'...
In the end, as each day's backbreaking routine further reduced him to little more than a machine, he was accepted and looked upon as a real miner. (Emile Zola, Germinal)
Catherine...went on in her tired and resigned way, bending her back...pushing her cart... (Emile Zola, Germinal)
We have to embrace what podrunks negate...heart, feeling, earth, art, poetry...tenderness....And give 'figuring out' this question our chief attention: What moves 'Resignation' to refuse?
by Pamela Satterwhite
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds;...There is a terrible coercion in our deeds which may first turn the honest man into a deceiver, and then reconcile him to the change; for this reason – that the second wrong presents itself to him in the guise of the only practicable right. The action which before commission has been seen with that blended common-sense and fresh untarnished feeling which is the healthy eye of the soul, is looked at afterwards with the lens of apologetic ingenuity, through which all things that men call beautiful and ugly are seen to be made up of textures very much alike. Europe adjusts itself to a fait accompli, and so does an individual character – until the placid adjustment is disturbed by a convulsive retribution. (George Eliot, Adam Bede)
"There is a terrible coercion in our deeds..." – and though we may be as unwilling to own them – as Arthur in Adam Bede was unwilling to own his heinous acts...
...when we sell our agency...our energy...our vitality and powers of analysis to the highest bidder...that deed shapes us nonetheless...makes us what we 'are'...
...(a commodity)....
There is a slow accretion of dread from this daily 'deed' called "selling our labor" – that accrues to us every moment we give to 'the job'...
...'dread' because when we give it our precious attention, our precious time, we know, on some level, that the attention we give it it does not deserve...that it does not serve...the greater good of life in balance...("today I, tomorrow you" – we are all one....See Determination 13 and OTheRLog 82)
...the spiral dance that all life is a part of...
...and if it does not serve the earth, the deeds we devote our lives to are worse than meaningless – they are life-denying and reek of death.
...So, 'dread' too because of this 'knowing' that will not leave us alone that we are marching – meaninglessly, mindlessly – toward Death (...of the soul...of a healthy planet...of good fellowship with our brothers and sisters and fellow living things – it's all of a piece)....
...and when we give 'the job' our precious attention...our precious time...most of us only unconsciously know that this act is worse than meaningless and reeks of death...
...what we tell our conscious 'Mind' is something else altogether...
* We live more completely in our imaginations than we know.
...So here's a question:
Is a 'pretend-purpose' better than no purpose?
We tell ourselves stories to get through the torture of limited and narrowed ‘selves’ – we call it “efficiency” when we act like machines, take pride in the extent and predictability of our narrowness.
...at 'work' we pretend we're engaged in something meaningful.
In our 'families' we imagine we love and are loved...
...the word 'market' we tell ourselves means "fair exchange"...
...and that this 'polity' means 'democracy'...
– "...creatures of illusion as we are..."
...and without giving it any thought at all...we accept as our practical definition of 'freedom': "the freedom to think thoughts given us"...by the system...
How little do we know our thoughts – our reflex actions indeed, yes; but our reflex reflections! Man, forsooth, prides himself on his consciousness! We boast that we differ from the winds and waves and falling stones and plants, which grow they know not why, and from the wandering creatures which go up and down after their prey, as we are pleased to say without the help of reason. We know so well what we are doing ourselves and why we do it, do we not? I fancy that there is some truth in the view which is being put forward nowadays, that it is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us. (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)
We live in an echo chamber...
...with 'the family' standing solidly for one wall, 'the state' for another, 'the school' for a third, and 'the economy' or 'the market' ("the job") locking the whole firmly in place...
...all repeating the same messages...
...and as they are the only thoughts we ever hear, we necessarily confuse these messages with the extent of 'thought'...the prerequisites for 'thought'...itself...
(...and with 'reality' itself...)...
...and then train our children to see the Echo Chamber as 'Life'...
...because we want nothing but "the best" for them...
...because we want them to "succeed"...
...because we want them to get what we never got:
...the chance to finally be seen...
...and for these strokes...and more...
...bestowed by a system unworthy of any of us...
...we make certain they well-internalize...well-become... the qualities 'the system' ('the market') needs.
Then we 'spend' the rest of our lives pretending not to see how little...how limited...we've trained them to be...
...and how little we've trained them to settle for.
We've allowed ourselves and our children to be stripped of our / their own bodies, our / their own minds, our / their own earth....
So...which way out of the maze?
On this question Samuel Butler cautions us to not underestimate the extent of the 'change' we must make, as each person manifests "the system" in microcosm.
It must be remembered that at the beginning of the nineteenth century the relations between parents and children were still far from satisfactory....The parents in Miss Austen's novels are less like savage wild beasts than those of her predecessors, but she evidently looks upon them with suspicion, and an uneasy feeling that le pere de famille est capable de tout makes itself sufficiently apparent....Moreover, Puritanism restricted natural pleasures; it substituted the Jeremiad for the Paean, and it forgot that the poor abuses of all times want countenance.
Mr. Pontifex may have been a little sterner with his children than some of his neighbours, but not much. He thrashed his boys two or three times a week and some weeks a good deal oftener, but in those days fathers were always thrashing their boys....At that time it was universally admitted that to spare the rod was to spoil the child, and St. Paul had placed disobedience to parents in very ugly company. If his children did anything which Mr. Pontifex disliked they were clearly disobedient to their father. In this case there was obviously only one course for a sensible man to take. It consisted in checking the first signs of self-will while his children were too young to offer serious resistance. If their wills were "well broken" in childhood, to use an expression then much in vogue, they would acquire habits of obedience which they would not venture to break through till they were over twenty-one years old. Then they might please themselves... (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)
We fear that unless our children are "malleable" ("flexible") (and we pound the importance of being "malleable" into them – being willing to accept any master...)
...unless we condition their 'will' to accept the collar and the leash...of any 'master' set up by "the system" to be so...
...condition their 'will' to accept the orders of teachers...bosses...states...markets...
...that unless we cut an opening in their souls and make them bleed...that our children will not "succeed"...
...Before he was well out of his frocks it was settled that [Theobald] was to be a clergyman. It was seemly that Mr. Pontifex, the well-known publisher of religious books, should devote at least one of his sons to the Church...
...The boy's future destiny was kept well before his eyes from his earliest childhood and was treated as a matter which he had already virtually settled by his acquiescence....
...No one believed in the righteousness of the whole transaction more firmly than the boy himself; a sense of being ill at ease kept him silent, but it was too profound and too much without break for him to become fully alive to it, and come to an understanding with himself. He feared the dark scowl which would come over his father's face upon the slightest opposition....Opposition had never got him anything he wanted yet, nor indeed had yielding, for the matter of that, unless he happened to want exactly what his father wanted for him. If he had ever entertained thoughts of resistance, he had none now, and the power to oppose was so completely lost for want of exercise that hardly did the wish remain; there was nothing left save dull acquiescence as of an ass crouched between two burdens....
...Now that he had taken his degree the next thing to look forward to was ordination – about which Theobald had thought little hitherto beyond acquiescing to it as something that would come as a matter of course some day. Now, however, it had actually come and was asserting itself...He did not like the near view of ordination as well as the distant one, and even made some feeble efforts to escape...:
"My Dear Father, I do not like opening up a question which has been considered settled, but as the time approaches I begin to be very doubtful how far I am fitted to be a clergyman...would it not be better for me to try and look out for something else?..."
"Dear Theobald,...I am not prepared to see [the expense I have been put to] thrown away and to have to begin again from the beginning, merely because you have taken some foolish scruples into your head....Of course you needn't be ordained: nobody will compel you; you are perfectly free; you are twenty-three years of age, and should know your own mind..."
"My Dear Father, You tell me – and I heartily thank you – that no one will compel me to be ordained. I knew you would not press ordination upon me if my conscience was seriously opposed to it; I have therefore resolved on giving up the idea..."
"Dear Theobald, I have received yours. I am at a loss to conceive its motive, but am very clear as to its effect. You shall not receive a single sixpence from me till you come to your senses...."
...Theobald...was ordained in the autumn of...1825. (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)
...but being forced to be anything at all forces us to be nothing at all....
...Because 'authenticity' means 'free'...means "weaving the tapestry"...means "honoring the ancestors and those yet-to-be"...ranking imposes invisibility....
Ranking...means invisibility...
...because those dismissed aren't seen...
...because those dismissive don't see...
...because confronted with lies, authenticity hides...
...because we're all powerful beings...
...because Division flies in the face of reality...our inherent unity.
For centuries we've been rendered invisible by a system of ranking that tells some they're 'special' and tells others they're 'not'...
...such an egregious violation of our unity...our natural solidarity...
...is only accomplished by instilling passivity.
'Passive Obedience' is structurally maintained...
...is not a train that can be turned using individual means...
...we must help each other...(this being "The Last Civil Rights Movement'"...)
...but with a clear purpose in mind... – i.e. with a plan, with consciousness, with intention...with the affirmation, "I will work to free my brothers and sisters...and myself" – to bring into being the freedom that will...
...unload the boulder Unlove we've been carrying around for centuries...
...erase the false face "Exploit!"...
...break free of the chains called "Achieve!"
Other species don't so burden their young, then why do we?
Other living things, when young, learn what they need to know to live really well...
...but not humans in class society...
...we are taught how to lie really well...and to not want to really live at all...but rather to mold ourselves to fit our chains...our boxes...our 'roles'...
Of course we think we do...we think we live...
...does that suffice?
Are pretend-purposes palliative enough to get us to our graves with resignation sufficiently tuned to pass for happiness?...
Young people have a marvellous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances. Even if they are unhappy – very unhappy – it is astonishing how easily they can be prevented from finding it out, or at any rate from attributing it to any other cause than their own sinfulness....True [they] will probably find out all about it some day, but not until too late to be of much service to them or inconvenience to [this system]. (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)
...or is 'happiness' a quality we're willing to shed...along with our souls...in exchange for being 'safe,' 'secure'...and 'comfortable'?...
...in exchange for 'a job'?
(Of course we're not "comfortable" at all....it's just the idea...the thought "comfortable" they've given us....)
In Waking Up I asked the question:
If we turn ourselves (and our children) over to a market (!) to define us, what are we? [from Waking Up, "The 'Culture-Con'"]
We have given the market this power, and in so doing, forfeited our right to be self-determinative living things...
...and because making ourselves is the only authentic source of happiness Aldous Huxley concluded that...
**** "The most important Manhattan Projects of the future ...
The most important Manhattan Projects of the future will be vast government-sponsored enquiries into what the politicians and the participating scientists will call "the problem of happiness" – in other words, the problem of making people love their servitude. Without economic security, the love of servitude cannot possibly come into existence...The love of servitude cannot be established escept as the result of a deep, personal revolution in human minds and bodies....Today, it seems quite possible that the horror may be upon us within a single century....[We] have only two alternatives to choose from: either a number of national, militarized totalitarianisms...or else one supra-national totalitarianism... (Aldous Huxley writing in 1952, quoted by Erich Fromm, The Sane Society)
But...I think they've decided that...
...the "happiness project" may be dispensed with,
...and that they can manage manufactured unhappiness,
...if 'chaos' and 'crises' pummel our consciousness...
...such that survivors are pounded into 'Passive Obedience'...
– So how can we begin to make ourselves rather than cooperating with the plans of others to make us?
For most of us, we begin to make ourselves when we claim that 'sacred silence' – that 'divine distance' from the diversionary drivel this system bombards us with...the drivel of 'the master's voice' broadcast from every media outlet, family or institution within the established 'Order."
By giving ourselves this silence we can begin to hear Nature's truth...and begin seeing with "the healthy eye of the soul."
Fromm is advocating for this, I think, when he argues for a guaranteed minimum income for all:
...What is necessary is an income which will be the basis for a dignified human existence....The existing social-security system must be extended to a universal subsistence guarantee....Each individual can act as a free and responsible agent only if one of the main reasons for present-day un-freedom is abolished: the economic threat of starvation which forces people to accept working conditions which they would otherwise not accept. There will be no freedom as long as the owner of capital can enforce his will on the man who owns "only" his life, because the latter, being without capital, has no work except what the capitalist offers him. (Erich Fromm, The Sane Society)
But in OTheRLog 73, I point out that "The Hidden Malevolence" is an actor missing from Fromm's analysis...that unless we confront 'Power' (in all its guises...all four walls of the Echo Chamber) then the Mr. Smith Virus will replicate.
...So...putting the matters of institutionalized unhappiness, stunted souls and a distressed planet to the side...why do we care? Doesn't capitalism provide the best possible standard of living? ...at least for those who by happenstance inhabit "The West"?
But one of the problems is...stunted souls and unhappy people are capable of anything. When Samuel sketched Mr. Pontifex – "le pere de famille est capable de tout"– he was sketching us all. We are all complicit. You can't be just a little bit pregnant and you can't be only slightly infected...with the Mr. Smith Virus.
...Without a society that supports souls...i.e. one based in reverence...for the ancestors...the earth...and each other...
...we are capable of anything...
...we are just that 'malleable.'
When we allow a system to tell us what our work is – "the man who owns 'only' his life...has no work except what the capitalist offers him" –
...one day, when we least expect it, our "work" will be to betray our brothers and sisters and the earth in a manner previously unthinkable...
...one day our 'function' in the Grand Scheme could be to close our eyes to genocide.
(But this risk shouldn't be posited as some future event we must try to prevent...
...when we've already been told that the 'Grand Experiment'...
...to change the climate...(See The 4 Ruses – 3)
...by pumping particulates into our lungs...
...will result in drought in Asia and Africa...
...and what do you suppose "drought" means...
...to those trying to grow things...
...so that they may eat?...
When it's your babies that die...
...we call it genocide.)
(...There must be a way to express concern...
...about your brothers and sisters....
...Otherwise...
...we're not really alive...
...just "functionaries" stuck...
...in someone else's Muck....
...And if grey heads go along...
...with what is clearly wrong –
...while younger ones watch this...
...abandonment of good fellowship...
– implying abuse...
...and the theft of lives...
...is justified...
...or has some mission and meaning...
...beyond misanthropy and greed –
– then we are horribly misleading....)
[A copy of Waking Up reached a man from the blessed Prison-Lawyer Tribe that all of us are much indebted to. Recently he got in touch and raised an interesting point relevant to this discussion:
So here I sit....Death By Time....I know...the government does not play 'fair.' I understand that. Dissidents and free thinkers must be purged from society or the well will be poisoned and the masses will rise up and tear down the evil machine....Can't have outcasts infecting the mindless hum of governmentally-created automatons. Nope. As I see it, the government exists to keep itself in existence. It must control the populace and enslave it so that the people must depend on it for survival. If the people believe they have to have the government in order to survive, well, they will support the government at all costs...for fear that a loss of the government would mean the loss of their individual lives.
If there suddenly were no running water and Kroger, and Winn Dixie grocery stores no longer sold Bottled Water (Ugh!)...how would 'they' get water? They wouldn't. They'd die because they don't know how....My point is that reliance on the government – governmentally-created reliance – causes ignorance, and ultimately is genocide. (D. Michael Salerno)
He cuts to the chase...
...leaps, bounds, goes around...
...the intermediate moves...
...and reaps a bounty of truth.
I'm making the same point in Muck...that...
...if we give podrunks the power...
...based on their self-professed 'superiority of Mind'...
...to literally control our lives...
– the power to say who lives and who dies...
...to consciously decide who can survive...
– look at almost any "disaster" you can find –
...ultimately we allow them the power to...
...commit genocide.]
In the famous 'twin studies' at Auschwitz a large team of 'experts' were required to be assembled in order to receive their 'functions.' Each member of the large impersonal machine called "Perfecting The Social Order" contributed their piece of 'The Work'. And in obeisance to The Grand Scheme – however looney – humans have, since the inception of class society, been sacrificed in droves.
I opened the file and glanced through it. Very detailed clinical examinations, accompanied by X-rays, descriptions, and artists' drawings, indicated from the scientific viewpoint the different aspects of these two little beings' "twinhood." Only the pathological report was missing. It was my job to supply it. The twins had died at the same time and were now lying beside each other on the big dissecting table. It was they who had to – or whose tiny bodies had to – resolve the secret of the reproduction of the race. To advance one step in the search to unlock the secret of multiplying the race of superior beings destined to rule was a "noble goal." If only it were possible, in the future, to have each German mother bear as many twins as possible! The project, conceived by the demented theorists of the Third Reich, was utterly mad....The immediate objective was the increased reproduction of the German race. The final objective was the production of pure Germans in numbers sufficient to replace the Czechs, Hungarians, Poles, all of whom were condemned to be destroyed, but who for the moment were living on those territories declared vital to the Third Reich.
I finished the dissection of the little twins and wrote out a regulation report of the dissection. I did my job well and my chief appeared to be satisfied with me. (Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account [written in March, 1946])
He sacrificed his peace, his integrity, his sense of himself (his soul?), to bring us this testimony, to bear witness. He represents for millions. What enormous courage crouches within his enormous 'cowardice.' [Was it cowardice? Bruno Bettelheim thought so. I asked myself, reading it, what would have changed in his story (or our perception of it) if his daughter had been 13?] We have to gather those lives to our breasts and listen to what they want us to do to redeem their stolen lives.
...Perhaps redeem our own?
I feel like I've been descending deeper and deeper into the psyche of the death-defined as I try to explicate the line that "capitalism is doomed".... And this is where we finally talk about Dr. Nyiszli...(Continued at The Muck Of State.)
He crafted a purpose for his life...
...to insure the world would see...
...the full extent of the insanity (of class society).
But I would argue that the Grand Schemes of sadists...
...the earth-haters...
...life-debasers...
...are not aberrations...odd exceptions...to the general quest for "democracy"...
...but logical conclusions to "class"-based exclusions...
...of the "intellectually-supreme" from the collectivity....the vast majority...
...us.
We have been given our 'functions' by "a system" unworthy of the smallest worm that aerates our soil...
...for the podrunks' 'idea' of 'mastery' we have betrayed ourselves, our earth, and our brothers and sisters, over and over and over...
...turned our backs on our own gifts...
...our illimitable power...
...because...
...we've been abandoned (betrayed) and no longer believe in fellowship...
...'believe'...
– it's just that simple...and just that hard.
We cannot have human fellowship and sell human labor. They are mutually exclusive. Forcing your brother or sister to labor does not demonstrate fellow feeling.
We want to tend our own gardens...not someone else's.
We need new stories based in the reality of human fellowship (however cold and lifeless it may seem now)...[Also discussed in: "The 4 Ruses – 3"]
...to replace the lies told by a Will-To-Destroy (On Steroids):
"What if the story of class society was not “the Idea becoming Itself,” whether “the Idea” is “Man’s Productive Capacity” or “the Triumph of Reason over Unreason,” but instead was a story of “Abandonment on Steroids”: the paroxysmal, pathological revenge of the abandoned child?" (from Waking Up, "Progress (Part 2)")
Dr. Mengele was indefatigable in the exercise of his functions. He spent long hours in his laboratories, then hurried to the unloading platform, where the daily arrival of four or five trainloads of Hungarian deportees kept him busy half the day.
Unceasingly the new convoys marched off in columns of five, flanked by SS guards. I watched one come in and line up. Although my vantage point was at some distance from the tracks and my view obstructed by the maze of barbed wire fences, I could still see that this convoy had been expelled from some fair-sized city: the prisoners' clothes were smartly tailored, many were wearing new poplin raincoats, and the suitcases they carried were of expensive leather. In that city, wherever it was, they had managed to create for themselves a pleasant, cultured way of life. And that was the cardinal sin for which they were now paying so dearly. (Miklos Nyiszli, Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account, p. 33)
...We need new stories that free Human Solidarity from the mental chains forged in 'Abandonment'...
...stories that make it possible to live our reality of human solidarity...
...to feel Fellowship, so that we may believe in it.
How to begin?
It's "The Responsibility Of 'Intellectuals'" to help their brothers and sisters see and believe in our new story, "Our Communal Story", so we can begin rebuilding our 'tribes,' 'crews,' 'villages'...
...not out of exclusionary thinking but based in reverence for 'the all of it.'
In the stories we tell ourselves of necessity we play the hero's part. Our psyches demand this – and what else, after all, do we have, in this sick system, but our psyches, our imaginations – "creatures of illusion as we are," this gift can never be dispensed with.
So it does seem the way out of this morass is to create new stories...to become heroes of a new story, a grand new story of our own conception – we who do the work –
...in which we rescue 'Life' itself from the centuries upon centuries of piled-up 'Death', much as Dr. Nyiszli and his comrades rescued the child from the bottom of the heap of dead bodies and breathed new life into her....
...And this time...in this story, our new story...
...she lives.
** ...on this matter of 'motivation:
But then, there's this matter of 'motivation.'...
...becoming one with the will to change things...
But how become one with the will to change things when fellowship's destroyed by ranking? (From "OTheRLog 82")
Ranking imposes invisibility. (See The Last Civil Rights Movement for more thoughts on this.)
We cannot have human fellowship and sell human labor. They are mutually exclusive.
A system in which human energy is sold means it must be measured...
...ranked...
...reduced to a numerical 'reality'...
...when it is not...
– it is mystery.
Mystery cannot be pre-packaged...
...and mystery (trust, fellowship) is what we are on the cusp of...
There is a spirit (trust) deficit. Our brothers and sisters (we) no longer believe in goodness...in honesty...in fellowship...
...we expect to be used / exploited.
This is the next most disastrous effect of being subject to 'the job.' It teaches us...
...over and over and over...
...that everything exists to be used...that we are all expendable...that everything is a commodity...
...because if human spirit can be a commodity...what can not?
This is a con that no one can overcome alone.
It is "The Responsibility Of The 'Intellectual'" to expose the con...to show...it is not so...
...we are not them.
To counter the Mr. Smith Virus we put our energy into its opposite...
...to counter the insidious effects of the Con Game we must create a Trust Reality...extending trust...not to virtual voices...but rather to actual folks on good fellowship poised...
Any will to manifest that which will be, our future that's free...
...must be accompanied not just by seeing reality but by
...breaking ranks with ranking...
...fusing tenderness with visioning...
– moving past mere critique...
...that activist mystique...
...towards modeling the trust that encourages others...
...to vision with us.
By "modeling trust" I mean being willing to be in solidarity...with mystery...
...which means to reject the Commodity Mindset...in which we package dissent..make it our very own product...
...with our faces on it...
...that we sell...and sell...and sell...
("...round and round and round we go...") So...
Any will to manifest that which will be, our future that's free...means:
Step 1: Form the intention...allow in...the thought "I refuse"...ask help of the universe...which aligns us with the endless energy of the earth itself....
Step 2: Say it out loud...with others...i.e., discuss....
Step 3: Your endless creativity...in a workable plan...once you're seeing reality...manifests your intention...
In the grand, new story of our conception...
...all the dismissed form a single resistance...
...in defense of our right to a fully realized existence...
...that unites humankind...
...reunites us with our 'tribes'...
...and with our earth...
...in a process of self-naming that means a NEW birth.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion – a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge. One may have that condition by fits only. (Middlemarch, See: OTheRLog 50 )
Imagine if we were all poets...
...could we ‘function’...
...at “the job”?
What ‘qualities’ confront us...at “the job”?
...certainty...fixity...rigidity...flatness of affect...
...repetition...robot-like behavior...lack of movement...arbitrary ‘order’...
– qualities that seem of ‘death’ –
...death of independent thought...
...death of freedom...
...death of spontaneity...
...death of feeling...
...death of movement...
– for if you insist on claiming those qualities – independent thought, freedom, spontaneity, feeling, movement – suspicion clouds on you.
Consider the possibility that we are all poets....
...that we do “have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it”...
(See: Countering Complicity With Good Fellowship, “Determination 3”)
...seeing ‘all’ like the gulls and the hawks...
...feeling ‘all’ like...
...unmutilated humans do – and all life really –
...and that we started out that way...
...and that “the family” is “A Theater Of Limits”...
...and that “the job” is “A Theater Of Limits”...
...and that “the state” is “A Theater Of Limits”...
...constructed to keep us from seeing the cage...from following our questions when we feel its constraints...
...We all start out – in this sick system – with questions...by definition irresolvable...the ones that come when our heads butt up against the bars...or our hearts break.
And we bring the family in us with us, as we settle in to our jobs...which cushion us with still more fog...
...that deepens as we fall asleep...and dream.
...and in the dream dimly we hear the soul's call...its patient clear tone....
...and though we're told not to listen...it's time to...
...and the solid clear tone...
...at “the job” we put on hold...
...what does that make “the human” then?
And what happens to those questions...the ones that if we followed would lead us out of the maze?...
...cause us to question the thin gruel we're given...
...in the midst of the feast.
...how little we know of our animal friends...our earth...our world...ourselves...
...
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
The “Mr. Smith Virus” is communicated through “speed, insecurity, and overwork” -- seeds which the podrunks drop-and-weave through every corner and hidden recess of our lives.
Speed, insecurity, and overwork are their essential weapons, for if we could stop long enough to look at our lives, we’d be devastated. (Waking Up, Progress, Pt. 7)
But the most concentrated dose comes from the job....
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
This system seeks to train our 'noticing,' our 'figuring-out' [see: "Seeing The Communal Alternative"], to turn these capacities to its ends. So what we notice, what we see, what we question is conditioned, molded to ends not of our making.
Because "the system" conditions our capacities, they get fore-shortened...we come to embrace our blinders, believe them to be of our own making...and finally end up defending them...
...the loss of our ability for independent thought means most of us don't 'see' or 'notice' anymore.
We don't notice when our gifts leave us...when our hearts harden...our sensibilities frost over...our world stolen....
We don't notice when 'joy' or 'nature' become 'ideas' only...
...when we abuse our children...when we concrete over their freedom...frame out for them a comfortable box...
...we don't notice that other animals have greater sensitivity than we do....
We don't notice how ugly all the concrete is...how lifeless our world...how little we ask for....
...instead...
...we turn ourselves and our children into a bundle of functions at the command of a "system"...
"Limited lives" means that our lives are lost to our purposes.
Watching the mysterious intermission of a gull, floating on the merest breeze,
I wondered...does the pigeon watch this pregnant poise with agony...
...longing to feel such majestic stillness...in the alchemy of balanced energy?
But every living thing has its particular gifts and the comforts from them.
What's most heinous in this manufactured misery the podrunks have made...
...is this disallowance against our own gifts, our claim to what gives us our especial comfort.
Enwrapped in, apparently, a perfect circle of control, stuck in the self-reproducing logic of ‘Power,’ it's easy to understand why so few propose a plan for escaping it.
However...if you're looking for some 'good news' (and, trust me, I am too), I'll tell you something else true....
Because our inherent nature is 'freedom,'...because the earth continuously seeks to reclaim her own...
..."Passive Obedience" is an inherently unstable state....
...So the seeming omnipotence of "the system" is actually illusion...(and they know this better than you and I do...)....
...The need for an "Echo Chamber" means "weakness"... not "strength"....
...Eternal vigilance is the price 'power' must pay...
...for maintaining Passive Obedience.
(From "Muck Of State")
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
One part of our difficulty seeing our communal future is – not to sound too facile – that so few of us have worked in the trades, and have never seen, therefore, how easily dreams arise from desire, when collective will is applied.
(...actually, after due consideration, not too facile. In Waking Up, "Science" I point out:
But the game, their game, the whole game, the Big Con, depends on our not waking up. This, then, is their most fundamental sine qua non.
This means that we, at base, are the target of all their devious devices: promoting nuclear power in a state with nothin'-but-nothin'-but-sun...crushing and burying electric cars...spending more to imprison than educate...destroying communal transportation systems to force folks into individual cars...spending more to keep us sick than it would cost for us to keep ourselves well...
We are the target ultimately of all their sick schemes...schemes that keep us jumping....
...issue to issue...
...and back again...
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
If I had encountered this message (“wage work is a con”), this analysis (“only a mass movement to end wage work will unseat ‘Power’”), when my son was small, would I have changed things in my life?
I think about this a lot -- I try to put myself in that body, that head...of my young, single-mom self.
I think about the jobs I worked, post-Welfare...how I strove to distinguish myself, ‘prove’ my ‘worth’...
...How fear drove me forward (“how feed my child without the paycheck?”)...
...How the inherent human ‘longing’ to ‘figure things out’ and ‘make things’ plugged into those external dictates (that become internal) to “work harder!,” “faster!”...
...How ‘speed’ made me feel like I was accomplishing something...fed by and feeding that manufactured need to “prove my worth”...
“A perfect circle of control”...
What punctures it?
Reclaiming our lives starts with our bodies...literally...
...means checking in with them regularly as with a good friend:
"How are you feeling?" "What do you want to do today?" "What would make this a better day?"
Asking such questions of oneself is a precursor to asking them of others...
So I imagine myself, my younger self, reading Waking Up.
What would I have done with its messages?
...Would I have faced my fear of losing the paycheck and put my son -- my ‘self,’ my earth, my fellows -- first?
And then I recall...
I “lost” those jobs anyway...
...for one reason or another...
And so I rushed my son and myself around to preserve this present ‘Absence’, this 'Nothing'...
And I find the Fear is just that...fear. Not reality.
...I didn't have to give those jobs my (give up my) full power at all...
...And if my unwillingness to rush meant I had to ‘power-down,’ ‘couple-up,’ connect-up, ask the ancestors for help, follow my longing, make the best of the terms I could craft for myself...
...my son would have been...more than just ‘alright’...he would have been...
...less damaged...
...more “whole.”
And it's fear for our children that constrains us most, we parents, isn't it? -- wanting only "the best" for them.
But if "the best" is actually "communal living"...joining together...in good fellowship...
...If that's what really allows them to stretch to their fullest lengths, be their best selves...
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
Undoubtedly without quantification and abstractification modern mass production would be unthinkable. But in a society in which economic activities have become the main preoccupation of man, this process of quantification and abstractification has transcended the realm of economic production, and spread to the attitude of man to things, to people, and to himself. (Erich Fromm, The Sane Society)
When we say, as we often do, "I wasn't very productive today. I didn't get much done," we're making Fromm's point.
Our bodies, in our own eyes (unconsciously), have become instruments, tools, for the performance of functions.
Sometimes these unpredictable (unruly) things, objects, tools, instruments (our bodies)...even under the lash of the most sternly unsympathetic 'Mind', refuse to perform to standards, to the required specifications...
...and we are forced to apply chastisement...
...but what if 'we' – oh reckless feckless human-animals that we are – removed the collar and leash...
...and magically merged with our bodies into an indistinguishable whole?...
...became 'One' with our bodies, such that if lolled about all day while the walls remained unpainted, our description of this event was: "I wanted to rest today"...?
– what if 'objective' and 'event' magically merged into 'intent' ...
...such that every day – oh entirely perfect beings that we are – we could say that we had "magnificently manifested desire, longing, decision, dream, determination, today"...?
...that we had marvelously embodied 'intention'...
– what would that world of such days look like?
...But far from being at 'one' with our bodies...at peace with ourselves...
– wholes...
...we are so well-trained in Passive Obedience, in hierarchy and ranking, in the "Master-Slave" mindset...
...we compulsively 'rule' ourselves...
...painstakingly craft ourselves into (as Fromm points out) "personality packages"...and...
...into Bodies that are sculptures or otherwise works of art...Souls that read Rilke – or religious texts du jour –
...Minds that memorize and execute...and ruthlessly rank...
...It is the very evil of present-day culture that it separates and compartmentalizes the various spheres of living.... (Erich Fromm, The Sane Society)
...with the common denominator Performance... Seeking Recognition and Reward...
The way to sanity lies in overcoming this split and in arriving at a new unification and integration within society and within the individual human being... (Erich Fromm, The Sane Society)
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion -- a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge. One may have that condition by fits only. (Middlemarch, See: OTheRLog 40 )
Imagine if we were all poets...
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
In the modern industrial enterprise, the worker is not in touch with the whole product at any point. He is engaged in the performance of one specialized function, and while he might shift in the course of time from one function to another, he is still not related to the concrete product as a whole. He develops a specialized function, and the tendency is such, that the function of the modern industrial worker can be defined as working in a machinelike fashion in activities for which machine work has not yet been devised or which would be costlier than human work. The only person who is in touch with the whole product is the manager, but to him the product is an abstraction, whose essence is exchange value, while the worker, for whom it is concrete, never works on it as a whole.
Undoubtedly without quantification and abstractification modern mass production would be unthinkable. But in a society in which economic activities have become the main preoccupation of man, this process of quantification and abstractification has transcended the realm of economic production, and spread to the attitude of man to things, to people, and to himself. (Erich Fromm, The Sane Society)
...and it seemed to him as if he were beholding in a magic panorama a future where he himself was sliding into that pleasureless yielding to the small solicitations of circumstance, which is a commoner history of perdition than any single momentous bargain.
We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent into insipid misdoing and shabby achievement. (George Eliot, Middlemarch)
In "Embracing The Plural" and "Unplugging", I argued that we on the left have too often internalized the podrunk value of 'contempt' – embracing a crippled 'truth' (i.e. the lie) that our brothers and sisters are "too brainwashed," "too apathetic"...
'Contempt' is the habit of thought that necessarily springs from ranking.
We cannot internalize Contempt and yet manifest 'Love.'
'Love'...that's all we're talking about....Is it such a rare quality, then, caring about our brothers...and sisters...?
(Waking Up, Progress, Pt. 7)
(Middlemarch, See: OTheRLog 40 )
(Waking Up, "The 'Culture-Con'")
© Nas2EndWork (the NEW)