Soar_Like_An_Eagle_2 : Messages : 2029-2058 of 11714

#2029

From: "kathykundalini@..." <kathykundalini@...>
Date: Tue May 17, 2005 12:57 am
Subject: Re: [The Existential Society] Outsiders looking in.....

kathykundalini

Send Email

Hi Bob ....

  If I understand what you are saying (with my ability to misinterpret, this
is always questionable)...I think I disagree.

  You seem to be saying that humanity's only hope is through fulfillment of
some kind of biblical prophecy, as when you say:

    "I foresee Biblical Christianity eventually
playing itself out (i.e. the setting up of the abomination that
maketh desolate and the second-coming of Christ."

  Followed later by:

   "... man, without divine
intervention, cannot save the sinking ship he's on."

  You, of course, are free to believe whatever you like -- but to me, this
viewpoint is not only invalid, but also very dangerous. It ultimately
represents a belief in a magical saviour to make it all better -- and
believing in this allows one to engage in a kind of (pseudo)moralistic
superiority, while, in fact, ignoring the real social-historical situation
that is threatening human life on earth. In other words, it means remaining
basically passive while expecting a heavenly father figure to clean up our
mess. It allows one to not come to any kind of real theoretical
understanding and certainly not to imagine real solutions or take part in
any actual movement that might do the dirty work of actually changing
things. In other words, it is to embody the kinds of (non)action (or
diversionary action) that many Christians have been criticized for over and
over again for the last 200 years. This viewpoint seems to advocate putting
humanity into permanent infantile status -- in that, it relies on God to
save us -- which means that we earthly people are incapable of
self-understanding, and self-action, and that, in fact, God's little
earthly experiment is a failure. We dirtied ourselves and now we need our
diapers changed, and we can't do it ourselves, so let's hope our savior
comes along to clean up our mess. Well why should a savior come along? To
save what? A bunch of messy infants that soiled their crib? Maybe the
savoir is busy living-it-up on another planet where the folks learned to
take care of themselves -- maybe they learned a little responsibility (and
learned to consciously face their circumstances.) As I said before -- there
are certain social-economic realities that need dealing with, that, in my
understanding, are behind the basic "out-of-control" nature of modern life.
These realities are humanly created, and therefore can be humanly
transformed. I will happily send you (or anyone else) a longer piece in
which I outline my theoretical analysis of our current situation. Just ask
and it is yours...

Kathy







Original Message:
-----------------
From: Bob M. new_trail_blazer@...
Date: Sat, 14 May 2005 12:04:48 -0000
To: theexistentialsociety@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [The Existential Society] Outsiders looking in.....


<html><body>


<tt>
Good morning Kathy,<BR>
<BR>
Sorry again for the delay, but too much contact with my everywhere <BR>
fallen (self-entrenced) brothers and sisters can still sometimes <BR>
diminish my enthusiasm, strength, and optimism, at least for a time. <BR>
Anyway, in this new day, I foresee Biblical Christianity eventually <BR>
playing itself out (i.e. the setting up of the abomination that <BR>
maketh desolate and the second-coming of Christ).<BR>
<BR>
And till then or towards this event it is my (our?) task to, as you <BR>
too allude, attempt to awaken the wakeable (those not satisfied with <BR>
being automatons) who remain fast asleep in the dust of the earth <BR>
(dark, fallen, lifeless, loveless society). <BR>
<BR>
Krishnamurti's 'strategy' was obviously wrong as you say. His <BR>
transformation was too much of a cakewalk, so to speak. Therefore in <BR>
the practical down to earth realm of things he was quite a flop, yet <BR>
then again perhaps his job was to 'save' only myself and a handful of <BR>
others to carry on until the end. His longed for group of 10 or 20 <BR>
radically transformed people just may be 'out there' without him <BR>
having ever realized it. Obviously the end wasn't scheduled to come <BR>
in his days, and yes indeed, 'good intentions and hell' , as you say, <BR>
surely was in play with him too. Had he any real brains <BR>
(intelligence) about himself and life, he would have built his <BR>
schools for the sake of teaching adults, not children, how to live <BR>
and love and fully be. <BR>
<BR>
So in keeping it short, sweet, and simple, man, without divine <BR>
intervention, cannot save the sinking ship he's on. <BR>
<BR>
<a
href="http://www.barrylong.org/terrorism.html">http://www.barrylong.org/terr
orism.html</a><BR>
<BR>
<a
href="http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/Soar_Like_An_Eagle/message/53">http:/
/uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/Soar_Like_An_Eagle/message/53</a><BR>
<BR>
Happy trails and trials,<BR>
<BR>
Bob M. (NTB)<BR>
________________________________________________<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
--- In theexistentialsociety@yahoogroups.com, kathykundalini@c... <BR>
wrote:<BR>
> Bob...<BR>
> <BR>
> Thank you for your insightful thoughts....My only question at this <BR>
time would be how you see this quest for "awakening" can be seen in <BR>
our social/historical context. That question would again involve: <BR>
what you are awakening to? In other words, if the <BR>
social/economic/political context is such that it produces people who <BR>
(mis)understand their lives in certain ways, and they are obliged by <BR>
these circumstances to continually reinforce this ignorance by way of <BR>
the modes of surviving and living as dictated by our social-economic <BR>
forms? In fact, isn't the whole social world� created by way of <BR>
concrete forms of alienation -- and wouldn't "awakening" involve a <BR>
facing up to these facts and thus a seeing of the need to engage in a <BR>
project of fundamental change? Isn't the "self-centeredness" that you <BR>
wish to overcome a product of certain forms of alienated production? <BR>
Wage-labor, commodity production, and capital accumulation, that is, <BR>
capitalist society, immediately come to mind. How can we hope <BR>
to "awaken" when the whole weight of society is geared to keep us <BR>
asleep? You mention Krishnamurti's disclosure that when all was said <BR>
and done, he "saved" no one. Well, my question would be -- was his <BR>
strategy valid? By addressing the question of "being saved" merely on <BR>
an individual level -- that is, by imagining a strategy that by its <BR>
nature ignores the social-historical -- then one might be merely, <BR>
once again, paving the way to hell with good intentions. The problem <BR>
might be the need for real social change rather than individual <BR>
awakening -- or rather, the problem might be seeing those two realms <BR>
mutually exclusive rather than dialectically intertwined. By posing <BR>
the question as how to do away with "self-centeredness" might you <BR>
already be accepting a constricted and alienated view of what <BR>
this "self" might be? In other words, you accept an individualized, <BR>
personalized view of your "self" -- and then seek to abolish it, or <BR>
at least, mitigate some of its "unawakened" effects. But by accepting <BR>
this view, you are already accepting your own constriction -- in <BR>
that, you are not seeing yourself, as a premise, as a larger social-<BR>
self -- which already understands itself as a social, collective <BR>
creation. In other words, you accept your "self" as a kind of private <BR>
property, which you come to find constricting, and then you try to <BR>
ameliorate that situation by coming less selfish. But I would ask how <BR>
you came to be defined this way in the first place. What are the <BR>
social forms that oblige us to experience ourselves in these ways? If <BR>
we come to recognize ourselves as products of alienated forms of <BR>
social development -- then it would be in our interests to abolish <BR>
those conditions -- and perhaps in so doing we would recognize our <BR>
need for a collectivised transcendence, we would actually move beyond <BR>
the whole framework of "self vs other" (or the selfish vs non-<BR>
selfish) and realize that we are each already a larger "social self" -<BR>
- and that our real interest is in a kind of resonation with others, <BR>
in that the constriction of our selves into private property will be <BR>
transcended in a social-collectivised- communalized existence. In <BR>
other words, we will see that our current problem is not that we <BR>
are "too greedy" -- but rather that we are not greedy enough. <BR>
Our "greed" right now is a constricted, frustrated, privatised, <BR>
alienated greed -- which is also why this "greed" always involves our <BR>
doing actions that are clearly against our own self-interests <BR>
(destroying the environment comes to mind). By abolishing the <BR>
conditions that create this alienation, we can then put our "greed" <BR>
where it really belongs -- into the creation of a peaceful, <BR>
beautiful, humanized world, where our desires can actually be taken <BR>
seriously because we, ourselves, will have the means to actually make <BR>
our desires a reality. Our collective, mutually-informed actions will <BR>
evolve into a shared destiny of global transformation. But to bring <BR>
this about will have to involve a real-historical transformation -- a <BR>
transcendence of capitalism. In other words, until the totality is <BR>
understood and transformed, then all our individualized, <BR>
privatized "awakenings" will only mean more of the same -- little <BR>
backwaters of moralisms, feel-goodisms, constricted individualism, <BR>
and frustrating dead-ends. <BR>
> <BR>
> Meanwhile, don't worry about my use of an anti-depressant. It is <BR>
very very mild, and, believe me, I am very capable of experiencing <BR>
the highs and lows of feelings and emotions. Another side of <BR>
my "transformation" is my vulnerability to very intense mood-swings, <BR>
and these can be quite severe. The medication was prescribed by one <BR>
of my therapists to help me keep my breakdowns a little under <BR>
control. I was very hesitant to begin taking this medication, as I <BR>
definitely did not want to find myself "flattened out" in my feelings <BR>
and experience. But that has not been a problem at all. Actually, I'm <BR>
not sure if the medication is really doing anything at all. But I am <BR>
taking it, and I see no reason to stop. I think part of the issue for <BR>
me may be the effects of certain other medications I am taking that <BR>
have a way of intensifying my emotions due to hormonal fluxuations. <BR>
And also, this new existence that I am living has just naturally <BR>
opened me up to all kinds of new feelings -- so I tend to be a little <BR>
intense and also vulnerable. As one of my therapists told me a few <BR>
years ago when we began mapping out my path, she said, "Kathy, you <BR>
will find yourself not only experiencing things with a new intensity, <BR>
but you will be experiencing feelings you did not even know existed." <BR>
She was sure right about that!..The whole experience was quite <BR>
exhausting, and it changed every aspect of my life, so, yes, for now, <BR>
I might need a little help to cope -- so I took my therapist's <BR>
recommendation, and I take some mild medication. But trust me, if you <BR>
knew me personally, you would not say that lack of intensity is a <BR>
problem for me. (Quite the opposite for sure!)<BR>
> <BR>
> Kathy<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
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#2030

From: "Bob M." <new_trail_blazer@...>
Date: Wed May 18, 2005 4:53 am
Subject: Re: [The Existential Society] Outsiders looking in.....

new_trail_bl...

Send Email

Hi again Kathy,

Dangerous you say? Not anymore so than it was during the great
cleansing that took place in the days of Noah.

'(Pseudo)moralistic' superiority you say. Why the need for
the '(pseudo)moralistic'. Is not what is simply what is? Many are
called-few are chosen? Let the dead bury their own dead? Straight is
the gate, narrow is the way and few are they that find it? Consider
the work of God; who can make straight what he has made crooked?
Nothing much new under the sun here in this camp.

The 'savior' concept I allude to is not of the typical petty and
lame 'Graham style' (more road to hell paved with good intentions) of
clinging to and riding on the coattails of a namby-pamby Jesus
figure, but one more in the Tillich tradition of a torch-bearer of
truth appearing in the flesh and prompting and instructing others by
example of his own experiences and observations to not only walk in
the footsteps of Christ the man, but then to go onward and beyond
him. Likewise he would serve also to judge both 'the quick and the
dead' in the process.

Nietzsche put it quite nicely as follows:

"But someday, in a stronger age than this decaying, self-doubting
present, he must yet come to us, the redeeming man, of great love and
contempt, the creative spirit whose compelling strength will not let
him rest in any aloofness or any beyond, whose isolation is
misunderstood by the people as if it were flight from reality-while
it is only his absorption, immersion, penetration into reality, so
that, when he one day emerges again into the light, he may bring home
the redemption of this reality; its redemption from the curse that
the hitherto reigning ideal has laid upon it. The man of the future,
who will redeem us not only from the hitherto reigning ideal but also
from that which was bound to grow out of it, the great nausea, the
will to nothingness, Nihilism; this bell-stroke of noon and the great
decision that liberates the will again and restores its goal to the
earth and his hope to man; This Antichrist and Antinihilist; this
victor over god and nothingness-He must come one day."

Happy trails and trials,

Bob M. (NTB)

P.S. Feel free to place anything you'd like herein, so long as it
meets the Yahoo guidelines Kathy.
______________________________________________

--- In theexistentialsociety@yahoogroups.com, "kathykundalini@c..."
<kathykundalini@c...> wrote:
> Hi Bob ....
>
>  If I understand what you are saying (with my ability to
misinterpret, this
> is always questionable)...I think I disagree.
>
>  You seem to be saying that humanity's only hope is through
fulfillment of
> some kind of biblical prophecy, as when you say:
>
>    "I foresee Biblical Christianity eventually
> playing itself out (i.e. the setting up of the abomination that
> maketh desolate and the second-coming of Christ."
>
>  Followed later by:
>
>   "... man, without divine
> intervention, cannot save the sinking ship he's on."
>
>  You, of course, are free to believe whatever you like -- but to
me, this
> viewpoint is not only invalid, but also very dangerous. It
ultimately
> represents a belief in a magical saviour to make it all better --
and
> believing in this allows one to engage in a kind of (pseudo)
moralistic
> superiority, while, in fact, ignoring the real social-historical
situation
> that is threatening human life on earth. In other words, it means
remaining
> basically passive while expecting a heavenly father figure to clean
up our
> mess. It allows one to not come to any kind of real theoretical
> understanding and certainly not to imagine real solutions or take
part in
> any actual movement that might do the dirty work of actually
changing
> things. In other words, it is to embody the kinds of (non)action (or
> diversionary action) that many Christians have been criticized for
over and
> over again for the last 200 years. This viewpoint seems to advocate
putting
> humanity into permanent infantile status -- in that, it relies on
God to
> save us -- which means that we earthly people are incapable of
> self-understanding, and self-action, and that, in fact, God's little
> earthly experiment is a failure. We dirtied ourselves and now we
need our
> diapers changed, and we can't do it ourselves, so let's hope our
savior
> comes along to clean up our mess. Well why should a savior come
along? To
> save what? A bunch of messy infants that soiled their crib? Maybe
the
> savoir is busy living-it-up on another planet where the folks
learned to
> take care of themselves -- maybe they learned a little
responsibility (and
> learned to consciously face their circumstances.) As I said before -
- there
> are certain social-economic realities that need dealing with, that,
in my
> understanding, are behind the basic "out-of-control" nature of
modern life.
> These realities are humanly created, and therefore can be humanly
> transformed. I will happily send you (or anyone else) a longer
piece in
> which I outline my theoretical analysis of our current situation.
Just ask
> and it is yours...
>
> Kathy

Reply | Messages in this Topic (13)

#2031

From: kathykundalini@...
Date: Thu May 19, 2005 12:07 am
Subject: Re: [The Existential Society] Outsiders looking in.....

kathykundalini

Send Email

Bob -- Well whatever it is you are trying to say appears to exemplify exactly
what I was critiquing in my previous posting -- the infantile craving for The
Authority,  The Leader who will miraculouosly intervene to save the chosen few.
This magical myth is even more dangerous than I first thought in that you choose
to adopt an irrationality steeped in Biblical imagery combined with the
expressed need for a fascististic "final solution." Your craven expectation of
some macho-savior exudes the character-type of a frightened and disoriented
child hoping against hope that Daddy will come at make it all right.  This is
dangerous because it represents a passivity and a disowning of the possibility
of real action and real solutions (an attitude referred to by Sartre as "bad
faith")...and this characterological rigidifation makes you extremely
susceptible to fascistic projection onto some authoritarian avenger who will
take control of  your self-repressive fear of freedom and responsibility. Thus
you risk falling into an enthrallment to some Power by way of your own
character-armorings (self-repressions that are mapped onto your psyche and
body). In other words, you sound like a perfect candidate for fascist
indoctrination and manipulation --  and absorbtion into an irrational
authoritarian movement made up of repressed, self-righteous lapdogs wagging
their little tails in the service of the Top Dog Leader Supreme.  Obviously this
dynamic is active not just on the level of social vision or politics -- but is
inherently psychological, which makes it very difficult to commicate about and
discuss. I would only ask you if you have considered why you have these needs,
why you have these vulnerabilities. Such a question would mean putting aside or
bracketing the supposed truth-value of your attitudes, and to honestly probe
your own psychology as to why you think the way you do -- why you are
susceptible to one set of beliefs rather than another -- that is, what problems
are you REALLY trying to solve, what energies or fears are you really trying to
suppress and avoid, what frustrations are you really sublimating and why, what
repressions are active in you -- and why their sublimated projection and release
take the form that they do.

     *******
"I recognized the deadly fear of the living in you, a fear which always makes
you set out correctly and end wrongly. You had the happiness of humanity in your
hands, and you have gambled it away. You had the world in your hands, and at the
end you dropped your atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Through the
centuries, you will shed blood where life should be protected, and will believe
that you achieve freedom with the help of the hangman; thus you will find
yourself again and again in the same morass. "
"You are afflicted with the emotional plague. You are sick, very sick, Little
Man. It is not your fault. But it is your responsibility to rid yourself of this
sickness." (Wilhelm Reich)
********
"If you want a Big Brother,
you get all that comes with it." (Erich Fromm)

********
Kathy

-------------- Original message --------------
Hi again Kathy,

Dangerous you say? Not anymore so than it was during the great
cleansing that took place in the days of Noah.

'(Pseudo)moralistic' superiority you say. Why the need for
the '(pseudo)moralistic'. Is not what is simply what is? Many are
called-few are chosen? Let the dead bury their own dead? Straight is
the gate, narrow is the way and few are they that find it? Consider
the work of God; who can make straight what he has made crooked?
Nothing much new under the sun here in this camp.

The 'savior' concept I allude to is not of the typical petty and
lame 'Graham style' (more road to hell paved with good intentions) of
clinging to and riding on the coattails of a namby-pamby Jesus
figure, but one more in the Tillich tradition of a torch-bearer of
truth appearing in the flesh and prompting and instructing others by
example of his own experiences and observations to not only walk in
the footsteps of Christ the man, but then to go onward and beyond
him. Likewise he would serve also to judge both 'the quick and the
dead' in the process.

Nietzsche put it quite nicely as follows:

"But someday, in a stronger age than this decaying, self-doubting
present, he must yet come to us, the redeeming man, of great love and
contempt, the creative spirit whose compelling strength will not let
him rest in any aloofness or any beyond, whose isolation is
misunderstood by the people as if it were flight from reality-while
it is only his absorption, immersion, penetration into reality, so
that, when he one day emerges again into the light, he may bring home
the redemption of this reality; its redemption from the curse that
the hitherto reigning ideal has laid upon it. The man of the future,
who will redeem us not only from the hitherto reigning ideal but also
from that which was bound to grow out of it, the great nausea, the
will to nothingness, Nihilism; this bell-stroke of noon and the great
decision that liberates the will again and restores its goal to the
earth and his hope to man; This Antichrist and Antinihilist; this
victor over god and nothingness-He must come one day."

Happy trails and trials,

Bob M. (NTB)

P.S. Feel free to place anything you'd like herein, so long as it
meets the Yahoo guidelines Kathy.
______________________________________________

--- In theexistentialsociety@yahoogroups.com, "kathykundalini@c..."
<kathykundalini@c...> wrote:
> Hi Bob ....
>
>  If I understand what you are saying (with my ability to
misinterpret, this
> is always questionable)...I think I disagree.
>
>  You seem to be saying that humanity's only hope is through
fulfillment of
> some kind of biblical prophecy, as when you say:
>
>    "I foresee Biblical Christianity eventually
> playing itself out (i.e. the setting up of the abomination that
> maketh desolate and the second-coming of Christ."
>
>  Followed later by:
>
>   "... man, without divine
> intervention, cannot save the sinking ship he's on."
>
>  You, of course, are free to believe whatever you like -- but to
me, this
> viewpoint is not only invalid, but also very dangerous. It
ultimately
> represents a belief in a magical saviour to make it all better --
and
> believing in this allows one to engage in a kind of (pseudo)
moralistic
> superiority, while, in fact, ignoring the real social-historical
situation
> that is threatening human life on earth. In other words, it means
remaining
> basically passive while expecting a heavenly father figure to clean
up our
> mess. It allows one to not come to any kind of real theoretical
> understanding and certainly not to imagine real solutions or take
part in
> any actual movement that might do the dirty work of actually
changing
> things. In other words, it is to embody the kinds of (non)action (or
> diversionary action) that many Christians have been criticized for
over and
> over again for the last 200 years. This viewpoint seems to advocate
putting
> humanity into permanent infantile status -- in that, it relies on
God to
> save us -- which means that we earthly people are incapable of
> self-understanding, and self-action, and that, in fact, God's little
> earthly experiment is a failure. We dirtied ourselves and now we
need our
> diapers changed, and we can't do it ourselves, so let's hope our
savior
> comes along to clean up our mess. Well why should a savior come
along? To
> save what? A bunch of messy infants that soiled their crib? Maybe
the
> savoir is busy living-it-up on another planet where the folks
learned to
> take care of themselves -- maybe they learned a little
responsibility (and
> learned to consciously face their circumstances.) As I said before -
- there
> are certain social-economic realities that need dealing with, that,
in my
> understanding, are behind the basic "out-of-control" nature of
modern life.
> These realities are humanly created, and therefore can be humanly
> transformed. I will happily send you (or anyone else) a longer
piece in
> which I outline my theoretical analysis of our current situation.
Just ask
> and it is yours...
>
> Kathy

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#2032

From: "Bob M." <new_trail_blazer@...>
Date: Fri May 20, 2005 11:25 am
Subject: Re: [The Existential Society] Outsiders looking in.....

new_trail_bl...

Send Email

Hi Kathy,

I'm quite aware that many of the things I try to convey here will
only be understood by the hearts and minds of a few, and then at best
perhaps only limitedly and fragmentarily presently. But attempts must
be made and I sit reasonably content with mine and without any need
for further argument or attempts to prove anything. Actually though
to carry on any further with this particular theme (end of the old-
beginning of the new, at least on a collective level) I feel would be
essentially non-productive in the awakening of others, which I must
still continue to remind myself is job-one. Save for stating that
rather than an 'irrational fascist authoritarian avenger' type that
you somehow deduce appearing (according to me), the new man or men I
have in mind would be more along the lines of a genuine
teacher/friend who's thoroughly walked the walk, is thereby free of
the bondage of self, totally void of self-interest, and deeply
immersed in love, experience, understanding, and wisdom.

Last evening while lying in bed with my wife before retiring for the
night, I read aloud the following reflection of his childhood days by
Sam Keen from his book, "The Passionate Life: Stages of Loving".

"Where does my story, or yours, begin? When I trace the roots of my
being, at what point do I distinguish between 'my' self and the soil
in which I was planted? When can I first say 'I am'?.....I could
begin with the birth of self-consciousness. One day, when I was nine
years old, I was walking down Court Street in Maryville, Tennessee.
Near the bottom of the hill, fifteen feet from an apple tree, on a
part of the sidewalk that was smooth enough for skating, I knew
suddenly and with blinding clarity that I was different than my
parents, my brothers and sisters, and my playmates. Self-
consciousness descended on me like a hawk. In a sense, I might date
the origin of my self from this moment.....But my consciousess was
swaddled in a cradle made by nature and culture long before I knew
myself to be a person apart from others. I was neither father,
mother, nor architect of my own being. No self-made man. I grew like
a seed in humus that was composted of the residue of generations. A
nexus of communication of the living and the dead wove the tissue of
my mind and body. My individuality was born from a web of life too
intricate to unravel. Thinking back on the context that created me, I
can only conclude that I must start my story with this affirmation: I
was loved; therefore I am. As Martin Buber put it, "In the beginning
was relationship"." (S.K.)

My wife and I then again reflected back on our own lives and
discussed how we both see clearly now that our own early childhood
feelings and experiences were near carbon-copies of Mr. Keen's. And
it was also especially apparent (and quite painfully at times) to us
that the 'God seed' or the foundation of an authentic self was
somehow formed in us from the very beginning and that this was not
the case with the vast majority of those around us. In our particular
cases though we both went down the road to destruction as life went
on, only to have been eventually 'called back' to the need to
recapture and begin rebuilding the authentic self along with
discovering the causes of our 'falls'. And here I've become once
again fully aware of the twice-born nature of both my wife and myself
and I'm now wondering if this was the case with Keen, Reich, Fromm,
and others, of course. I've read much of Reich (liking the 'body
armor' business while rejecting the orgone baloney) and Fromm (The
Art of Loving) over the years, but I don't recall how they regarded
themselves personally so far as being once or twice 'born'. And I
think here of a pretty neat, long gone, older, but once-born cousin I
had, and who served as a good male role model for myself in my
childhood years. Although in retrospect as neat, wise, mature,
responsible, successful, and good to and for myself as he surely was,
I find in him there was a lacking in the sense of his being a fully
whole and complete human being. A common grandmother (who raised him
and obviously quite well) often said to me that she felt he was 'too
good for his own good'. I think now I finally got the picture.
Personally while I too would often let others 'shit all over me'
(seemingly a real weakness in those with the inherent capacity to
love), I could too rise to the occasion, at least at times, and tell
many of them to go pound sand up their asses if need be, thank
goodness.

Anyway I think here of Nietzsche's man of 'great love and contempt',
and the difficult balancing act that such a state of being entails,
but the absolute need for attaining it, if one is to ever truly stand
on his own two feet and walk fully upright and thereby being fully
pleasing to our Creator.

Lastly, I doubt there'll ever be a true 'final solution', although I
believe there'll soon come a considerably lengthy time of great
peace, harmony, and genuine brotherhood among all men here on planet
earth. And once again, this will all come about by God's design and
in His time, and not man's. Until that time, or till the end of my
days, again I must continue to live fully in the solution and make
awakening others both individually and collectively job-one. Though
not by long-winded psychological, philosophical, or religious banter
and rhetoric, theories and/or argument, but simply by sharing
(freely) my own and other's personal down to earth living and
spiritually growing experiences and observations.

Be well Kathy,

Bob M.
______________________________________________

--- In theexistentialsociety@yahoogroups.com, kathykundalini@c...
wrote:
> Bob -- Well whatever it is you are trying to say appears to
exemplify exactly what I was critiquing in my previous posting -- the
infantile craving for The Authority,  The Leader who will
miraculouosly intervene to save the chosen few. This magical myth is
even more dangerous than I first thought in that you choose to adopt
an irrationality steeped in Biblical imagery combined with the
expressed need for a fascististic "final solution." Your craven
expectation of some macho-savior exudes the character-type of a
frightened and disoriented child hoping against hope that Daddy will
come at make it all right.  This is dangerous because it represents a
passivity and a disowning of the possibility of real action and real
solutions (an attitude referred to by Sartre as "bad faith")...and
this characterological rigidifation makes you extremely susceptible
to fascistic projection onto some authoritarian avenger who will take
control of  your self-repressive fear of freedom and responsibility.
Thus you risk falling into an enthrallment to some Power by way of
your own character-armorings (self-repressions that are mapped onto
your psyche and body). In other words, you sound like a perfect
candidate for fascist indoctrination and manipulation --  and
absorbtion into an irrational authoritarian movement made up of
repressed, self-righteous lapdogs wagging their little tails in the
service of the Top Dog Leader Supreme.  Obviously this dynamic is
active not just on the level of social vision or politics -- but is
inherently psychological, which makes it very difficult to commicate
about and discuss. I would only ask you if you have considered why
you have these needs, why you have these vulnerabilities. Such a
question would mean putting aside or bracketing the supposed truth-
value of your attitudes, and to honestly probe your own psychology as
to why you think the way you do -- why you are susceptible to one set
of beliefs rather than another -- that is, what problems are you
REALLY trying to solve, what energies or fears are you really trying
to suppress and avoid, what frustrations are you really sublimating
and why, what repressions are active in you -- and why their
sublimated projection and release take the form that they do.
>
>     *******
> "I recognized the deadly fear of the living in you, a fear which
always makes you set out correctly and end wrongly. You had the
happiness of humanity in your hands, and you have gambled it away.
You had the world in your hands, and at the end you dropped your atom
bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Through the centuries, you will shed
blood where life should be protected, and will believe that you
achieve freedom with the help of the hangman; thus you will find
yourself again and again in the same morass. "
> "You are afflicted with the emotional plague. You are sick, very
sick, Little Man. It is not your fault. But it is your responsibility
to rid yourself of this sickness." (Wilhelm Reich)
> ********
> "If you want a Big Brother,
> you get all that comes with it." (Erich Fromm)
>
> ********
> Kathy

Reply | Messages in this Topic (13)

#2033

From: "Bob M." <new_trail_blazer@...>
Date: Sun May 22, 2005 12:55 pm
Subject: "I Was Loved - Therefore I Am"

new_trail_bl...

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"Most people never attain to faith. For a long time they live on in
immediateness and finally they attain to a certain amount of
reflection, and so they die. The exceptions begin the other way
round, from childhood up dialectical, i.e., without immediateness,
they begin with dialectics, with reflection and in that way live on
year after year (just about as long as others live in the immediate)
and then, at a ripe age, the possibility of faith shows itself to
them. For faith is immediateness after reflection. The exceptions,
naturally, have a very unhappy childhood and youth; for to be
essentially reflective at an age which is naturally immediate, is the
depths of melancholy. But they are recompensed; for most people do
not succeed in becoming spirit, and all of their fortunate years of
their immediateness are, where spirit is concerned, a loss and
therefore they never attain to spirit. But the unhappy childhood and
youth of the exception is transfigured into spirit." Kierkegaard

Bob M.

Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)

#2034

From: "Bob M." <new_trail_blazer@...>
Date: Sun May 22, 2005 9:05 pm
Subject: "In the beginning was relationship".....(Love in action)

new_trail_bl...

Send Email

Mr. Peck put it quite well on the dedication page of his best
seller 'The Road Less Traveled', as follows:

"To my parents, Elizabeth and David, whose discipline and love gave me
the eyes to see grace."

M. Scott Peck, M.D.

Bob M.

Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)

#2035

From: "Bob M." <new_trail_blazer@...>
Date: Tue May 24, 2005 12:04 pm
Subject: Innate Sensitivity vs. 'Self' Refinement

new_trail_bl...

Send Email

Sensitivity is wholly different from refinement; sensitivity is an
integral state, refinement is always partial. There is no partial
sensitivity, either it is the state of one's whole being, total
consciousness or it is not there at all. It is not to be gathered bit
by bit; it cannot be cultivated; it is not the result of experience
and thought, it is not a state of emotionalism. It has the quality of
precision, no overtones of romanticism and fancy. Only the sensitive
can face the actual, without escaping into all kinds of conclusions,
opinions, and evaluations. Only the sensitive can be alone and this
aloneness is destructive. This sensitivity is stripped of all
pleasure and so it has the austerity, not of desire and will but of
seeing and understanding. There is pleasure in refinement; it has to
do with education, culture, environment. The way of refinement is
endless; it is the outcome of choice, conflict, and pain and there is
always the chooser, the one who refines, the censor. And so there is
always conflict and contradiction and pain. Refinement leads to
isolation, self-enclosing aloofness, the separation which intellect
and knowledge breed. Refinement is self-centered activity, however
enlightened aesthetically and morally. There is great satisfaction in
the refining process but no joy of depth; it is superficial and
petty, without great significance. Sensitivity and refinement are two
different things; one leads to isolating death and the other to LIFE
THAT HAS NO END. (Krishnamurti's Notebook Oct. 25)

Bob M.

Reply | Messages in this Topic (2)

#2036

From: janvanbiervliet66
Date: Wed May 25, 2005 11:52 am
Subject: Can you handle life?

janvanbiervl...

Planet Cioran + Yahoo Group

http://www.geocities.com/PlanetCioran/

What will be the physiognomy of painting, of poetry, of music, in a
hundred years? No one can tell. As after the fall of Athens, of
Rome, a long pause will intervene, caused by the exhaustion of
consciousness itself. Humanity, to rejoin the past, must invent a
second naivet�, without which the arts can never begin again.
- The Trouble with Being Born

In certain men, everything, absolutely everything, derives from
physiology: their body is their mind, their mind is their body.
- The Trouble with Being Born

Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant
than an insect, and so on. Salvation? Whatever diminishes the
kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy.
- The Trouble with Being Born

To stretch out in a field, to smell the earth and tell yourself it
is the end as well as the hope of our dejections, that it would be
futile to search for anything better to rest on, to dissolve
into. . . .
- The Trouble with Being Born

Paradise was unendurable, otherwise the first man would have adapted
to it; this world is no less so, since here we regret paradise or
anticipate another one. What to do? where to go? Do nothing and go
nowhere, easy enough.
- The Trouble with Being Born

Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.
- Drawn and Quartered

Man is the great deserter of being.
- The Fall into Time

Suffering makes you live time in detail, moment after moment. Which
is to say that it exists for you: over the others, the ones who
don't suffer, time flows, so that they don't live in time, in fact
they never have.
- The New Gods

From denial to denial, his existence is diminished: vaguer and more
unreal than a syllogism of sighs, how could he still be a creature
of flesh and blood? Anemic, he rivals the Idea itself; he has
abstracted himself from his ancestors, from his friends, from every
soul and himself; in his veins, once turbulent, rests a light from
another world. Liberated from what he has lived, unconcerned by what
he will live; he demolishes the signposts on all his roads, and
wrests himself from the dials of all time. "I shall never meet
myself again," he decides, happy to turn his last hatred against
himself, happier still to annihilate--in his forgiveness--all
beings, all things.
- A Short History of Decay

Cut off from every root, unfit, moreover to mix with dust or mud, we
have achieved the feat of breaking not only with the depth of
things, but their very surface.
- "Civilized Man"

What life is left him robs him of what reason is left him. Trifles
or scourges--the passing of a fly or the cramps of the planet--
horrify him equally. With his nerves on fire, he would like the
Earth to be made of glass, to shatter it to smithereens; and with
what thirst would fling himself toward the stars to reduce them to
powder, one by one.
- A Short History of Decay

If truth were not boring, science would have done away with God long
ago. But God as well as the saints is a means to escape the dull
banality of truth.
- Tears and Saints

The only profitable conversations are with enthusiasts who have
ceased being so�with the ex-na�ve�Calmed down at last, they have
taken, willy-nilly, the decisive step toward knowledge� that
impersonal version of disappointment.
- Drawn and Quartered

As long as I live I shall not allow myself to forget that I shall
die; I am waiting for death so that I can forget about it.
- Tears and Saints

What to think of other people? I ask myself this question each time
I make a new acquaintance. So strange does it seem to me that we
exist, and consent to exist.
- Drawn and Quartered

My mission is to suffer for all those who suffer without knowing it.
I must pay for them, expiate their unconsciousness, their luck to be
ignorant of how unhappy they are.
- The Trouble with Being Born

We smile, because no answer is conceivable, because the answer would
be even more meaningless than the question.
- The Trouble with Being Born

I feel I am free but I know I am not.
- The Trouble with Being Born

Reply | Messages in this Topic (3)

#2037

From: "Bob M." <new_trail_blazer@...>
Date: Wed May 25, 2005 12:59 pm
Subject: And no paddles either.....

new_trail_bl...

Send Email

"I am the only man living who understands human nature; God has put me
in charge of this branch office; when I retire there will be no one to
take my place. I shall keep on doing my duty, for when I get over on
the other side, I shall use my influence to have the human race drowned
again, and this time drowned good, no omissions, no Ark." (Mark Twain)

Bob M.

Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)

#2038

From: Kathy Kerrihard <kathykundalini@...>
Date: Wed May 25, 2005 5:34 pm
Subject: time out

kathykundalini

Send Email

lost time, sold time, dead time....
read all about it...

Time out. <http://home.teleport.com/%7Ealbumen/edocs/TimeOut-v1_5.htm>



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#2039

From: kathykundalini@...
Date: Wed May 25, 2005 10:27 pm
Subject: Re: [The Existential Society] And no paddles either.....

kathykundalini

Send Email

More Mark Twain Quotes:


"Faith is believing something you know ain't true."

"'In God We Trust.' I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true."

"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is
the parts that I do understand."

"Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes
and wishes he was certain of."

"There is no other life; life itself is only a vision and a dream for nothing
exists but space and you. If there was an all-powerful God, he would have made
all good, and no bad." [Mark Twain in Eruption]

"Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless
exactness... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print
anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and leading by contrast" [Reflections
on Religion, 1906]

"O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells;
help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead;
help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded,
writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of
fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing
grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander
unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst,
sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in
spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied
it..." ["The War Prayer"]

"[The Bible is] a mass of fables and traditions, mere mythology." ["Mark Twain
and the Bible"]

"Man is a marvelous curiosity ... he thinks he is the Creator's pet ... he even
believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire
him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to
him and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea." [Letters from the Earth]

"If there is a God, he is a malign thug."

Mr. Clemens was once asked whether he feared death. He said that he did not, in
view of the fact that he had been dead for billions and billions of years before
he was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
"[The Bible] has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of
obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies."
"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every
case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have
not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at
second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a
brass farthing." [Autobiography of Mark Twain by Samuel Clemens]


-------------- Original message --------------
"I am the only man living who understands human nature; God has put me
in charge of this branch office; when I retire there will be no one to
take my place. I shall keep on doing my duty, for when I get over on
the other side, I shall use my influence to have the human race drowned
again, and this time drowned good, no omissions, no Ark." (Mark Twain)

Bob M.





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#2040

From: "Bob M." <new_trail_blazer@...>
Date: Thu May 26, 2005 12:55 pm
Subject: Time well spent.....

new_trail_bl...

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Overcoming the huge conglomerate of degeneracy (the world) both within
and without is surely time well spent. And with real progress in this
direction there comes a genuine gladness in one's heart. Surely this
continues to be my experience, though initially it took some time to
really feel the gladness as the result of having been considerably
deadened to the senses for quite some time. Playing 'dog eat dog' for
too long however can be fatal, even for those who initially had the
right stuff.

"Whoever therefore wants (continues) to be a friend of the world makes
himself an enemy of God."

"I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who
understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks--who had a
genius, so to speak, for sauntering......."

http://faculty.mansfield.edu/tmurphy/walking.html

Bob M.

Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)

#2041

From: Cristian Ciocan <cristiciocan@...>
Date: Thu May 26, 2005 6:21 pm
Subject: Studia Phaenomenologica / Alexandru Dragomir

cristiciocan

Send Email

Dear Colleagues,



I am pleased to announce the publication of the last issue of Studia
Phaenomenologica � The Romanian Journal for Phenomenology. It is a special
issue, dedicated to a recent discovered figure of the Romanian Phenomenology:
Alexandru Dragomir (1916-2002).

Until his death in 2002, we were aware of Alexandru Dragomir only as a strange
figure who moved more or less mysteriously in Romanian intellectual circles. All
that we knew of him came from those who actually met him, because Dragomir never
wanted to make himself known. Indeed he had a sort of aversion towards the idea
of becoming a public figure. It was known that back in the �40s he had been a
student of Heidegger�s, studying for a PhD degree in Freiburg. Those who had the
chance to meet him during the last decades of his life said that he possessed a
fabulous philosophical knowledge, that he was brilliant as a thinker, and had an
insightful and lively mind. However, what greatly intrigued those around him was
the fact that he never cared to publish a single page in his life. He always
said that publication was of no importance to him, and all he was interested in
was understanding. Hence he constantly refused to enter the cultural industry.

Soon after his death in 2002, more than one hundred notebooks were found in his
apartment, containing notes, commentaries on classic philosophical texts, essays
of phenomenological research and analysis, and very precise and insightful
philosophical descriptions. And what is even more important, many of them are
original texts. Most of these texts are phenomenological microanalyses or subtle
and incisive clarifications of various concrete aspects of the world in which we
live. One can find texts on the mirror, on forgetfulness, on error, on how
things get worn out, on waking up in the morning, on the spectrum of ugly and
disgusting things, on attention, on making mistakes, on writing and speaking, on
making distinctions among things, on being unique, and so on. There are very
different and heterogeneous topics, as though Dragomir watched the diversity of
the world through his acute phenomenological lens, for the sole purpose of his
own desire to understand. His genius was to discover
  within the banality of the everyday events of our lives, within the most
concrete experiences we deal with daily, within those aspects which we deem to
be the most self-evident and implicit, the profound layers of meaning and
fundamental significance, which he then analyzed with a fascinating sharpness.

Yet, one topic remains constant: there are several notebooks, called Chronos, in
which Dragomir thematically and systematically pursued the problem of time, over
a period of several decades: the first notebook dates from 1948 and contains
many notes written directly in German, while the last notebooks date from the
�80s and �90s. It may be that the as yet unedited book on time will prove to
represent Dragomir�s most important work. After the crucial discovery of
Dragomir�s notebooks, it was possible to start recovering his work. The
Humanitas Publishing House has already published one volume, Utter Metaphysical
Banalities, edited by Gabriel Liiceanu and Catalin Partenie (that will be soon
published in English translation at CEU Press). A second volume called Five
Departures from the Present is in press. Six or seven further volumes await
publication.



Best wishes,

Cristian Ciocan







STUDIA
PHAENOMENOLOGICA
Romanian Journal for Phenomenology

The Ocean of Forgetting
Alexandru Dragomir - A Romanian Phenomenologist




ALL ISSUES:

vol. IV, nr. 3-4/2004  The Ocean of Forgetting
vol. IV, nr. 1-2/2004  Varia
vol III, Special Issue  Kunst und Wahrheit
vol III, nr. 3-4/2003  Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Chiasm and Logos
vol III, nr. 1-2/2003  The School of Brentano and Husserlian Phenomenology
vol II, nr. 3-4/2002  Varia
vol II, nr. 1-2/2002  In Memoriam: Hans-Georg Gadamer
vol I, nr. 3-4/2001  The Early Heidegger
vol I, nr. 1-2/2001  Heidegger and Theology


TABLE OF CONTENTS:

INTRODUCTION
---------------------------------


Paul Balogh /  Cristian Ciocan
Alexandru Dragomir. A Romanian Phenomenologist


IN MEMORIAM ALEXANDRU DRAGOMIR
---------------------------------


Walter Biemel
Erinnerungen an Dragomir

Gabriel Liiceanu
The Notebooks from Underground (English translation by James Christian Brown)

Andrei Plesu
Fragments of a Portrait (English translation by James Christian Brown)

Horia-Roman Patapievici
The Lesson of Alexandru Dragomir

Virgil Ciomo#351;
Th�orie et pratique de la ph�nom�nologie. Une rencontre manqu�e

Catalin Partenie
Archive relief. Dragomir�s Perspective


DOCUMENTS
---------------------------------


Alexandru Dragomir
The Protocol of Heidegger�s seminar of January 14, 1943 on Aristotle�s
Metaphysics Book Theta

Walter Biemel
A letter to Alexandru Dragomir (1946)

Alexandru Dragomir
A letter to Martin Heidegger (1947)

Martin Heidegger
A letter to Alexandru Dragomir (1947)


TEXTS BY ALEXANDRU DRAGOMIR
---------------------------------


Alexandru Dragomir
De l�unicit� (French translation by Michelle Dobr�)

Alexandru Dragomir
De l�erreur (French translation by Michelle Dobr�)

Alexandru Dragomir
De l�usure (French translation by Michelle Dobr�)

Alexandru Dragomir
Dans la contr�e du laid-d�go�tant (French translation by Michelle Dobr�)

Alexandru Dragomir
Dit et non-dit (French translation by Michelle Dobr�)

Alexandru Dragomir
Que signifie � distinguer � (French translation by Michelle Dobr�)

Alexandru Dragomir
Utter metaphysical banalities (English translation by James Christian Brown)

Alexandru Dragomir
About the ocean of forgetting (English translation by James Christian Brown)

Alexandru Dragomir
About the world we live in (English translation by James Christian Brown)

Alexandru Dragomir
De quelques mani�res de se tromper soi-m�me (French translation by Michelle
Dobr�)

Alexandru Dragomir
L�attention et les cinq mani�res de quitter le pr�sent (French translation by
Michelle Dobr�)

Alexandru Dragomir
Du bien et du mal (French translation by Michelle Dobr�)

Alexandru Dragomir
Sur le non-sens du pass� et de l�avenir (French translation by Michelle Dobr�)

Alexandru Dragomir
Chronos Buch I (German translation by M#259;d#259;lina Diaconu)








---------------------------------
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#2042

From: kathykundalini@...
Date: Thu May 26, 2005 10:32 pm
Subject: Re: [The Existential Society] Time well spent.....

kathykundalini

Send Email

"...The situationists' desire to become psychogeographers, with an understanding
of the 'precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment,
consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals', was
intended to cultivate an awareness of the ways in which everyday life is
presently conditioned and controlled, the ways in which this manipulation can be
exposed and subverted, and the possibilities for chosen forms of constructed
situations in the post-spectacular world. Only an awareness of the influences of
the existing environment can encourage the critique of the present conditions of
daily life, and yet it is precisely this concern with the environment which we
live which is ignored...."

"An example of a situation-creating technique is the d�rive. The d�rive is the
first step toward an urban praxis. It is a stroll through the city by several
people who are out to understand the "psychogeographical articulation of the
modern city". The strollers attempt an interpretive reading of the city, an
architectural understanding. They look at the city as a special instance of
repressed desires. At the same time, they engage in "playful reconstructive
behavior". Together they turn the city around. They see in the city unifying and
empowering possibilities in place of the present fragmentation and pacification.
This "turning around" or d�tournment is a key strategic concept of the
Situationists. D�tournment is a dialectical tool. It is an "insurrectional
style" by which a past form is used to show its own inherent untruth-- an
untruth masked by ideology. It can be applied to billboards, to written texts,
to films, to cartoons, etc., as well as to city spaces. Marx used it when he
"turned Hegel on his head." He used the dialectic in the study of history to
expose the ideological nature of Hegel's idealism. The Situationists use
d�toumement to demonstrate the scandalous poverty of everyday life despite the
plenty of commodities. They attempted to demonstrate the contrast between what
life presently is and what it could be. They wanted to rupture the spell of the
ideology of our commodified consumer society so that our repressed desires of a
more authentic nature could come forward. The situation is based on liberated
desires rather than alienated ones. What these desires are cannot be stated a
priori. They will emerge in the revolutionary process of situation-creation, of
d�tournment. Presumably, communality, unification, and public urban space will
emerge as more desirable than commodification, fragmentation, and
privatization...."
       *********
"Concealed by the functional drudgery of city life, such areas of
psychogeographical research were seen as the ground of a new realm of experiment
with the possibilities of everyday experience.
One of psychogeography's principle means was the d�rive. Long a favorite
practice of the dadaists, who organized a variety of expeditions, and the
surrealists, for whom the geographical form of automatism was an instructive
pleasure, the d�rive, or drift, was defined by the situationists as the
'technique of locomotion without a goal', in which 'one or more persons during a
certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their
relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the
attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there'. The d�rive acted
as something of a model for the 'playful creation' of all human relationships."
( 'The most radical gesture: The Situationist International in a postmodern age'
by Sadie Plant )
*******
Theory of the D�rive
Guy Debord
Internationale Situationniste #2 (December 1958)
Translated by Ken Knabb
ONE OF THE BASIC situationist practices is the d�rive [literally: "drifting"], a
technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances. D�rives involve
playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects, and
are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll.
In a d�rive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations,
their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for
movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the
terrain and the encounters they find there. Chance is a less important factor in
this activity than one might think: from a d�rive point of view cities have
psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes
that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones.
But the d�rive includes both this letting-go and its necessary contradiction:
the domination of psychogeographical variations by the knowledge and calculation
of their possibilities. In this latter regard, ecological science - despite the
narrow social space to which it limits itself -provides psychogeography with
abundant data.
The ecological analysis of the absolute or relative character of fissures in the
urban network, of the role of microclimates, of distinct neighborhoods with no
relation to administrative boundaries, and above all of the dominating action of
centers of attraction, must be utilized and completed by psychogeographical
methods. The objective passional terrain of the d�rive must be defined in
accordance both with its own logic and with its relations with social
morphology.
In his study Paris et l�l'agglom�ration parisienne (Biblioth�que de Sociologie
Contemporaine, P.U.F., 1952) Chombart de Lauwe notes that "an urban neighborhood
is determined not only by geographical and economic factors, but also by the
image that its inhabitants and those of other neighborhoods have of it." In the
same work, in order to illustrate "the narrowness of the real Paris in which
each individual lives . . . within a geographical area whose radius is extremely
small,� he diagrams all the movements made in the space of one year by a student
living in the 16th Arrondissement. Her itinerary forms a small triangle with no
significant deviations, the three apexes of which are the School of Political
Sciences, her residence and that of her piano teacher.
Such data - examples of a modern poetry capable of provoking sharp emotional
reactions (in this particular case, outrage at the fact that anyone's life can
be so pathetically limited) - or even Burgess's theory of Chicago's social
activities as being distributed in distinct concentric zones, will undoubtedly
prove useful in developing d�rives.
If chance plays an important role in d�rives this is because the methodology of
psychogeographical observation is still in its infancy. But the action of chance
is naturally conservative and in a new setting tends to reduce everything to
habit or to an alternation between a limited number of variants. Progress means
breaking through fields where chance holds sway by creating new conditions more
favorable to our purposes. We can say, then, that the randomness of a d�rive is
fundamentally different from that of the stroll, but also that the first
psychogeographical attractions discovered by d�rivers may tend to fixate them
around new habitual axes, to which they will constantly be drawn back.
An insufficient awareness of the limitations of chance, and of its inevitably
reactionary effects, condemned to a dismal failure the famous aimless wandering
attempted in 1923 by four surrealists, beginning from a town chosen by lot:
Wandering in open country is naturally depressing, and the interventions of
chance are poorer there than anywhere else. But this mindlessness is pushed much
further by a certain Pierre Vendryes (in M�dium, May 1954), who thinks he can
relate this anecdote to various probability experiments, on the ground that they
all supposedly involve the same sort of antideterminist liberation. He gives as
an example the random distribution of tadpoles in a circular aquarium, adding,
significantly, "It is necessary, of course, that such a population be subject to
no external guiding influence.�" From that perspective, the tadpoles could be
considered more spontaneously liberated than the surrealists, since they have
the advantage of being "as stripped as possible of intelligence, sociability and
sexuality,�" and are thus "truly independent from one another."
At the opposite pole from such imbecilities, the primarily urban character of
the d�rive, in its element in the great industrially transformed cities � those
centers of possibilities and meanings � could be expressed in Marx's phrase:
�Men can see nothing around them that is not their own image; everything speaks
to them of themselves. Their very landscape is alive."
One can d�rive alone, but all indications are that the most fruitful numerical
arrangement consists of several small groups of two or three people who have
reached the same level of awareness, since cross-checking these different groups
 impressions makes it possible to arrive at more objective conclusions. It is
preferable for the composition of these groups to change from one d�rive to
another. With more than four or five participants, the specifically d�rive
character rapidly diminishes, and in any case it is impossible for there to be
more than ten or twelve people without the d�rive fragmenting into several
simultaneous d�rives. The practice of such subdivision is in fact of great
interest, but the difficulties it entails have so far prevented it from being
organized on a sufficient scale.
The average duration of a d�rive is one day, considered as the time between two
periods of sleep. The starting and ending times have no necessary relation to
the solar day, but it should be noted that the last hours of the night are
generally unsuitable for d�rives.
But this duration is merely a statistical average. For one thing, a d�rive
rarely occurs in its pure form: it is difficult for the participants to avoid
setting aside an hour or two at the beginning or end of the day for taking care
of banal tasks; and toward the end of the day fatigue tends to encourage such an
abandonment. But more importantly, a d�rive often takes place within a
deliberately limited period of a few hours, or even fortuitously during fairly
brief moments; or it may last for several days without interruption. In spite of
the cessations imposed by the need for sleep, certain d�rives of a sufficient
intensity have been sustained for three or four days, or even longer. It is true
that in the case of a series of d�rives over a rather long period of time it is
almost impossible to determine precisely when the state of mind peculiar to one
d�rive gives way to that of another. One sequence of d�rives was pursued without
notable interruption for around two months. Such an experience gives rise to new
objective conditions of behavior that bring about the disappearance of a good
number of the old ones.
The influence of weather on d�rives, although real, is a significant factor only
in the case of prolonged rains, which make them virtually impossible. But storms
or other types of precipitation are rather favorable for d�rives.
The spatial field of a d�rive may be precisely delimited or vague, depending on
whether the goal is to study a terrain or to emotionally disorient oneself. It
should not be forgotten that these two aspects of d�rives overlap in so many
ways that it is impossible to isolate one of them in a pure state. But the use
of taxis, for example, can provide a clear enough dividing line: If in the
course of a d�rive one takes a taxi, either to get to a specific destination or
simply to move, say, twenty minutes to the west, one is concerned primarily with
a personal trip outside one s usual surroundings. If, on the other hand, one
sticks to the direct exploration of a particular terrain, one is concentrating
primarily on research for a psychogeographical urbanism.
In every case the spatial field depends first of all on the point of departure -
the residence of the solo d�river or the meeting place selected by a group. The
maximum area of this spatial field does not extend beyond the entirety of a
large city and its suburbs. At its minimum it can be limited to a small
self-contained ambiance: a single neighborhood or even a single block of houses
if it's interesting enough (the extreme case being a static-d�rive of an entire
day within the Saint-Lazare train station).
The exploration of a fixed spatial field entails establishing bases and
calculating directions of penetration. It is here that the study of maps comes
in - ordinary ones as well as ecological and psychogeographical ones - along
with their correction and improvement. It should go without saying that we are
not at all interested in any mere exoticism that may arise from the fact that
one is exploring a neighborhood for the first time. Besides its unimportance,
this aspect of the problem is completely subjective and soon fades away.
In the "possible rendezvous",�on the other hand, the element of exploration is
minimal in comparison with that of behavioral disorientation. The subject is
invited to come alone to a certain place at a specified time. He is freed from
the bothersome obligations of the ordinary rendezvous since there is no one to
wait for. But since this "possible rendezvous"� has brought him without warning
to a place he may or may not know, he observes the surroundings. It may be that
the same spot has been specified for a "possible rendezvous"� for someone else
whose identity he has no way of knowing. Since he may never even have seen the
other person before, he will be encouraged to start up conversations with
various passersby. He may meet no one, or he may even by chance meet the person
who has arranged the "possible rendezvous".� In any case, particularly if the
time and place have been well chosen, his use of time will take an unexpected
turn. He may even telephone someone else who doesn't know where the first
-possible rendezvous- has taken him, in order to ask for another one to be
specified. One can see the virtually unlimited resources of this pastime.
Our loose lifestyle and even certain amusements considered dubious that have
always been enjoyed among our entourage - slipping by night into houses
undergoing demolition, hitchhiking nonstop and without destination through Paris
during a transportation strike in the name of adding to the confusion, wandering
in subterranean catacombs forbidden to the public, etc. - are expressions of a
more general sensibility which is no different from that of the d�rive. Written
descriptions can be no more than passwords to this great game.
The lessons drawn from d�rives enable us to draw up the first surveys of the
psychogeographical articulations of a modern city. Beyond the discovery of
unities of ambiance, of their main components and their spatial localization,
one comes to perceive their principal axes of passage, their exits and their
defenses. One arrives at the central hypothesis of the existence of
psychogeographical pivotal points. One measures the distances that actually
separate two regions of a city, distances that may have little relation with the
physical distance between them. With the aid of old maps, aerial photographs and
experimental d�rives, one can draw up hitherto lacking maps of influences, maps
whose inevitable imprecision at this early stage is no worse than that of the
first navigational charts. The only difference is that it is no longer a matter
of precisely delineating stable continents, but of changing architecture and
urbanism.
Today the different unities of atmosphere and of dwellings are not precisely
marked off, but are surrounded by more or less extended and indistinct bordering
regions. The most general change that d�rive experience leads to proposing is
the constant diminution of these border regions, up to the point of their
complete suppression.
Within architecture itself, the taste for d�riving tends to promote all sorts of
new forms of labyrinths made possible by modern techniques of construction. Thus
in March 1955 the press reported the construction in New York of a building in
which one can see the first signs of an opportunity to d�rive inside an
apartment:
The apartments of the helicoidal building will be shaped like slices of cake.
One will be able to enlarge or reduce them by shifting movable partitions. The
half-floor gradations avoid limiting the number of rooms, since the tenant can
request the use of the adjacent section on either upper or lower levels. With
this setup three four-room apartments can be transformed into one twelve-room
apartment in less than six hours.
(To be continued . . .)

-------------- Original message --------------
Overcoming the huge conglomerate of degeneracy (the world) both within
and without is surely time well spent. And with real progress in this
direction there comes a genuine gladness in one's heart. Surely this
continues to be my experience, though initially it took some time to
really feel the gladness as the result of having been considerably
deadened to the senses for quite some time. Playing 'dog eat dog' for
too long however can be fatal, even for those who initially had the
right stuff.

"Whoever therefore wants (continues) to be a friend of the world makes
himself an enemy of God."

"I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who
understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks--who had a
genius, so to speak, for sauntering......."

http://faculty.mansfield.edu/tmurphy/walking.html

Bob M.





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#2043

From: ebru canan <azeasina@...>
Date: Sun May 29, 2005 12:15 pm
Subject: Re: [The Existential Society] Can you handle life?

azeasina

Send Email

even reading theese made me feel the pain from my heart to my feet....so
effective....

janvanbiervliet66 <no_reply@yahoogroups.com> wrote:Planet Cioran + Yahoo Group

http://www.geocities.com/PlanetCioran/

What will be the physiognomy of painting, of poetry, of music, in a
hundred years? No one can tell. As after the fall of Athens, of
Rome, a long pause will intervene, caused by the exhaustion of
consciousness itself. Humanity, to rejoin the past, must invent a
second naivet�, without which the arts can never begin again.
- The Trouble with Being Born

In certain men, everything, absolutely everything, derives from
physiology: their body is their mind, their mind is their body.
- The Trouble with Being Born

Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant
than an insect, and so on. Salvation? Whatever diminishes the
kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy.
- The Trouble with Being Born

To stretch out in a field, to smell the earth and tell yourself it
is the end as well as the hope of our dejections, that it would be
futile to search for anything better to rest on, to dissolve
into. . . .
- The Trouble with Being Born

Paradise was unendurable, otherwise the first man would have adapted
to it; this world is no less so, since here we regret paradise or
anticipate another one. What to do? where to go? Do nothing and go
nowhere, easy enough.
- The Trouble with Being Born

Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.
- Drawn and Quartered

Man is the great deserter of being.
- The Fall into Time

Suffering makes you live time in detail, moment after moment. Which
is to say that it exists for you: over the others, the ones who
don't suffer, time flows, so that they don't live in time, in fact
they never have.
- The New Gods

From denial to denial, his existence is diminished: vaguer and more
unreal than a syllogism of sighs, how could he still be a creature
of flesh and blood? Anemic, he rivals the Idea itself; he has
abstracted himself from his ancestors, from his friends, from every
soul and himself; in his veins, once turbulent, rests a light from
another world. Liberated from what he has lived, unconcerned by what
he will live; he demolishes the signposts on all his roads, and
wrests himself from the dials of all time. "I shall never meet
myself again," he decides, happy to turn his last hatred against
himself, happier still to annihilate--in his forgiveness--all
beings, all things.
- A Short History of Decay

Cut off from every root, unfit, moreover to mix with dust or mud, we
have achieved the feat of breaking not only with the depth of
things, but their very surface.
- "Civilized Man"

What life is left him robs him of what reason is left him. Trifles
or scourges--the passing of a fly or the cramps of the planet--
horrify him equally. With his nerves on fire, he would like the
Earth to be made of glass, to shatter it to smithereens; and with
what thirst would fling himself toward the stars to reduce them to
powder, one by one.
- A Short History of Decay

If truth were not boring, science would have done away with God long
ago. But God as well as the saints is a means to escape the dull
banality of truth.
- Tears and Saints

The only profitable conversations are with enthusiasts who have
ceased being so�with the ex-na�ve�Calmed down at last, they have
taken, willy-nilly, the decisive step toward knowledge� that
impersonal version of disappointment.
- Drawn and Quartered

As long as I live I shall not allow myself to forget that I shall
die; I am waiting for death so that I can forget about it.
- Tears and Saints

What to think of other people? I ask myself this question each time
I make a new acquaintance. So strange does it seem to me that we
exist, and consent to exist.
- Drawn and Quartered

My mission is to suffer for all those who suffer without knowing it.
I must pay for them, expiate their unconsciousness, their luck to be
ignorant of how unhappy they are.
- The Trouble with Being Born

We smile, because no answer is conceivable, because the answer would
be even more meaningless than the question.
- The Trouble with Being Born

I feel I am free but I know I am not.
- The Trouble with Being Born






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#2044

From: ebru canan <azeasina@...>
Date: Sun May 29, 2005 12:57 pm
Subject: Re: [The Existential Society] Innate Sensitivity vs. 'Self' Refinement

azeasina

Send Email

would you explain"refinement leads to isolation"

"Bob M." <new_trail_blazer@...> wrote:Sensitivity is wholly different from
refinement; sensitivity is an
integral state, refinement is always partial. There is no partial
sensitivity, either it is the state of one's whole being, total
consciousness or it is not there at all. It is not to be gathered bit
by bit; it cannot be cultivated; it is not the result of experience
and thought, it is not a state of emotionalism. It has the quality of
precision, no overtones of romanticism and fancy. Only the sensitive
can face the actual, without escaping into all kinds of conclusions,
opinions, and evaluations. Only the sensitive can be alone and this
aloneness is destructive. This sensitivity is stripped of all
pleasure and so it has the austerity, not of desire and will but of
seeing and understanding. There is pleasure in refinement; it has to
do with education, culture, environment. The way of refinement is
endless; it is the outcome of choice, conflict, and pain and there is
always the chooser, the one who refines, the censor. And so there is
always conflict and contradiction and pain. Refinement leads to
isolation, self-enclosing aloofness, the separation which intellect
and knowledge breed. Refinement is self-centered activity, however
enlightened aesthetically and morally. There is great satisfaction in
the refining process but no joy of depth; it is superficial and
petty, without great significance. Sensitivity and refinement are two
different things; one leads to isolating death and the other to LIFE
THAT HAS NO END. (Krishnamurti's Notebook Oct. 25)

Bob M.





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#2045

From: "Bob M." <new_trail_blazer@...>
Date: Mon May 30, 2005 1:40 am
Subject: Re: [The Existential Society] Can you handle life?

new_trail_bl...

Send Email

Granted reality is not necessarily a pleasant thing ebru, but it is
what it is.

"My little girl is singing: "Ah, ah, ah, ah!" I do not understand its
meaning, but I feel what she wants to say. She wants to say that
everything...Ah! Ah!...is not horror but joy." (Nijinsky)

"A considerable percentage of the people in a great town are people
who are empty inside, that is they are actually 'already dead'. It is
fortunate for us that we do not see and do not know it. If we knew
what number of people are actually dead and what number of these dead
people govern our lives, we should go mad with horror." (Gurdjieff)

"Let the dead bury their own dead", grin and bear it, and "be of good
cheer."

Bob M.
_________________________________________________

--- In theexistentialsociety@yahoogroups.com, ebru canan
<azeasina@y...> wrote:
> even reading theese made me feel the pain from my heart to my
feet....so effective....
>
> janvanbiervliet66 <no_reply@yahoogroups.com> wrote:Planet Cioran +
Yahoo Group
>
> http://www.geocities.com/PlanetCioran/

(snip)

Reply | Messages in this Topic (3)

#2046

From: "Bob M." <new_trail_blazer@...>
Date: Mon May 30, 2005 2:03 am
Subject: Re: [The Existential Society] Innate Sensitivity vs. 'Self' Refinement

new_trail_bl...

Send Email

Hi ebru,

What Krishnamurti means here is that all efforts to develop and
refine one's character via self-will will always lead to continued
alienation [isolation], fragmentation, and conflict rather than to
harmony, love, and true brotherhood. One might also add here that
Love or God alone is the ultimate healer, restorer of sanity, and
guide to fullness of being.

Bob M.
________________________________________


--- In theexistentialsociety@yahoogroups.com, ebru canan
<azeasina@y...> wrote:
> would you explain"refinement leads to isolation"
>
> "Bob M." <new_trail_blazer@y...> wrote:Sensitivity is wholly
different from refinement; sensitivity is an
> integral state, refinement is always partial. There is no partial
> sensitivity, either it is the state of one's whole being, total
> consciousness or it is not there at all. It is not to be gathered
bit
> by bit; it cannot be cultivated; it is not the result of experience
> and thought, it is not a state of emotionalism. It has the quality
of
> precision, no overtones of romanticism and fancy. Only the sensitive
> can face the actual, without escaping into all kinds of conclusions,
> opinions, and evaluations. Only the sensitive can be alone and this
> aloneness is destructive. This sensitivity is stripped of all
> pleasure and so it has the austerity, not of desire and will but of
> seeing and understanding. There is pleasure in refinement; it has to
> do with education, culture, environment. The way of refinement is
> endless; it is the outcome of choice, conflict, and pain and there
is
> always the chooser, the one who refines, the censor. And so there is
> always conflict and contradiction and pain. Refinement leads to
> isolation, self-enclosing aloofness, the separation which intellect
> and knowledge breed. Refinement is self-centered activity, however
> enlightened aesthetically and morally. There is great satisfaction
in
> the refining process but no joy of depth; it is superficial and
> petty, without great significance. Sensitivity and refinement are
two
> different things; one leads to isolating death and the other to LIFE
> THAT HAS NO END. (Krishnamurti's Notebook Oct. 25)
>
> Bob M.
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>    To visit your group on the web, go to:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theexistentialsociety/
>
>    To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> theexistentialsociety-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>    Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of
Service.
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Mail
>  Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Reply | Messages in this Topic (2)

#2047

From: "Bob M." <new_trail_blazer@...>
Date: Mon May 30, 2005 9:27 pm
Subject: The Greatest Thing.....

new_trail_bl...

Send Email

Nietzsche's Zarathustra says that 'the hour of great [self]-contempt is
the greatest thing that a man can experience'. That point of the total
realization of the utter vanity of a life run on self-will [complete
defeat - in the AA tradition] that must precede actual and complete
psychological death & rebirth. Yet I find it is only those
more 'intelligent and finely formed' [using Schopenhauerian terms]
among us that have the manifest sensitivity to ever get to this point
[bottom]. Krishnamurti also reached this same conclusion stating it as
follows:

"Only the sensitive can face the actual, without escaping into all
kinds of conclusions, opinions, and evaluations. Only the sensitive can
be alone and this aloneness is destructive. This sensitivity is
stripped of all pleasure and so it has the austerity, not of desire and
will but of seeing and understanding." J.K.

Bob M.

Reply | Messages in this Topic (2)

#2048

From: "Bob M." <new_trail_blazer@...>
Date: Tue May 31, 2005 1:26 pm
Subject: Re: The Greatest Thing.....

new_trail_bl...

Send Email

I shall add Christianity's main man's take on the matter here as
follows:

"If anyone comes to me and does not HATE his father and mother, his
wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, EVEN HIS OWN LIFE--
he cannot be my disciple." J.C.

Bob M.
_________________________________________

--- In theexistentialsociety@yahoogroups.com, "Bob M."
<new_trail_blazer@y...> wrote:
> Nietzsche's Zarathustra says that 'the hour of great [self]-
contempt is
> the greatest thing that a man can experience'. That point of the
total
> realization of the utter vanity of a life run on self-will
[complete
> defeat - in the AA tradition] that must precede actual and complete
> psychological death & rebirth. Yet I find it is only those
> more 'intelligent and finely formed' [using Schopenhauerian terms]
> among us that have the manifest sensitivity to ever get to this
point
> [bottom]. Krishnamurti also reached this same conclusion stating it
as
> follows:
>
> "Only the sensitive can face the actual, without escaping into all
> kinds of conclusions, opinions, and evaluations. Only the sensitive
can
> be alone and this aloneness is destructive. This sensitivity is
> stripped of all pleasure and so it has the austerity, not of desire
and
> will but of seeing and understanding." J.K.
>
> Bob M.

Reply | Messages in this Topic (2)

#2049

From: "Bob M." <new_trail_blazer@...>
Date: Wed Jun 1, 2005 2:45 pm
Subject: Burnout - surrender - breakthrough.....

new_trail_bl...

Send Email

The average person tends to go through life accepting things as they
are and adjusting to situations as they arise without too much inner
frustration. People who have significant potential often have high
physical and mental energy levels, superior truth insight, and the
will capacity to drive themselves toward goal objectives. They are
strongly motivated toward selective types of achievement.

These people of superior potential also have a greater probability of
driving themselves to the point of psychological-physical exhaustion
and encountering what appear to be unsolvable existential problems.
They keep pushing themselves unrealistically, determined to meet all
obligations, and respond to new opportunities. This pace in the fast
lane becomes a way of life.

One day when the conditions are right, some of these people
experience the listlessness and overwhelming depression of "burnout."
They see no adequate reason for their inability to respond positively
to their many responsibilities. Threatened by this ambiguity and
their own imaginations, they are overcome with the various psychic
and physical symptoms of "battle-fatigue" � inability to cope,
powerlessness, anxiety states, crying, a sense of doom and black
despair! The onset of these "burnout symptoms" is usually associated
with some sort of community, a threat to assumed security, death in
the family, or some challenge that requires resiliency and creative
energy.

http://www.urantiabook.org/archive/readers/doc791.htm

Bob M.

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#2050

From: kathykundalini@...
Date: Wed Jun 1, 2005 11:22 pm
Subject: Our Situation -- Kathy's Political Statement

kathykundalini

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Our Situation



We are each born into this world, and this world is not our making vis-�-vis
ourselves as real beings, born and raised in certain historical conditions. We
find ourselves in a world, and in political/economic systems which are
overwhelming in their scope, power, and historic inertia. We all feel ourselves
to be individuals, yet we all participate in a kind of collective, social
consciousness. What is this "collective consciousness?" Where is it? How does it
manifest itself? Was it always in existence? If not, then how did it come to be?
It seems to me there is, potentially at best, a kind of quasi-collective
consciousness that exists as a kind of ideal projection. But really, what exists
now, is not a "collective consciousness" but rather just its opposite -- an
alienated projection of class interests, hierarchical power, antagonistic
division, manipulation, commodification, and reification. What passes for
"collective consciousness" is really nothing but the pseudo-collectivity of
capitalist class power relations which define the world of accepted ideas, as
well as, the modes of communication, and the goals and means of a social system
whose basic relation is separation, not collectivization. In other words, the
consciousness of the (pseudo) "collective" is disengaged from the "collective"
and given an autonomous power over and above the disenfranchised and powerless
mass of individuals, and rendered into the service of mass-hypnosis, commodity
production and circulation, capital accumulation, and state power. In other
words, what passes for "collective consciousness" becomes the ideology of a
spectacle which appears to be simultaneously the totality of society, a part of
society which stands superior to the rest of society, and the goal of society.
All the power and creativity that is daily disengaged from all individuals,
primarily through work and consumption, returns as a mysterious alien force
which then rules over society, which becomes our "economy," our "government,"
our "world," which becomes a "second nature" - and which appears without
question, becomes the sun which never rests over modern passivity, becomes the
laudatory monologue ever proclaiming its own glory, spiced-up with the fear and
terror of ever-emerging crisis, breakdown, violence, threats, war, starvation,
disease, ecological decay, and global catastrophe. This is the woeful map of our
alienation, which has now become a global system. In a real sense, this human
world is "created by ourselves" -- but created in conditions that none of us
have chosen, and that none of us have any clear way of changing, and that none
of us are being asked to change, and, in fact, this system is a class system,
which means that it is presided over by people who suffer from the illusion that
they benefit from this state-of-affairs, simply because they squeeze out
monstrous wealth and power, and they use their resources, their
mass-technologies of ideological projection and control, their seductive methods
of commodity intensification, their police, their armies, their politicians,
their bureaucrats - all to insure the security of their positions as top-dogs,
as king-rats, as chief-cannibals over a reified and alienated world.

So I ask you -- do you deserve this? Did you give your consent? Did you sign a
contract? Can you "fix yourself" outside of fixing the social-historical context
in which you were formed, in which you have to operate everyday, in which you
are embedded? Where do you end and your social reality begin? How can you
separate them? We live in a world of alienation in which what it means to be a
human being, what it means to be a body, a mind, a self -- to a very real extent
-- are products of socially determining factors that are out of our control, at
least up till now. The question is: can we become conscious enough, can we
become the CLASS OF CONSCIOUSNESS -- which means, can we create the ideas, the
means, the modes of collective power, to turn the tables on our alienation and
also on the entrenched class powers that think they benefit from it. Can we
engage ourselves in a Copernican revolution in our social relations. Can we
REVOLVE OUR CONSCIOUSNESS in such a way that brings into existence a world in
which the statement "the collective consciousness is all of us, here and now"
actually has a decisive meaning because the collective can bring its plans,
hopes, imaginations, and desires into reality by way of real acts through the
creation of real self-managed situations. Nothing less that the abolition of the
economy, politics, the state, the spectacle -- and all the other separations
between people and their social-historical reality - can free up humanity enough
so that we can actually put ourselves in the driver's seat of our own
self-evolution. To not come to grips with this problem, this question of our
historical epoch, is to not address the problem of human subjectivity and its
possibilities. In other words, to not come to grips with this problem is to
succumb to alienation and its reifications. It is, as they say, to be doing
nothing but pissing in the wind. And like alienation and its reification, the
piss will come flying back in your face.



___________________



Commodities



"The commodity can be understood in its undistorted essence only when it becomes
the universal category of society as a whole. Only in this context does the
reification produced by commodity relations assume decisive importance both for
the objective evolution of society and for the attitudes that people adopt
toward it, as it subjugates their consciousness to the forms in which this
reification finds _expression..."


George Luk�cs, History and Class Consciousness

___________________



"The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production
prevails, presents itself as "an immense accumulation of commodities," its unit
being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the
analysis of a commodity.�

"A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its
properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such
wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes
no difference. Neither are we here concerned to know how the object satisfies
these wants, whether directly as means of subsistence, or indirectly as means of
production.�

"Every useful thing, as iron, paper, &c., may be looked at from the two points
of view of quality and quantity. It is an assemblage of many properties, and may
therefore be of use in various ways. To discover the various uses of things is
the work of history. So also is the establishment of socially-recognized
standards of measure for the quantities of these useful objects. The diversity
of these measures has its origin partly in the diverse nature of the objects to
be measured, partly in convention.�

"The utility of a thing makes it a use-value. But this utility is not a thing of
air. Being limited by the physical properties of the commodity, it has no
existence apart from that commodity. A commodity, such as iron, corn, or a
diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a material thing, a use-value, something
useful. This property of a commodity is independent of the amount of labour
required to appropriate its useful qualities. When treating of use-value, we
always assume to be dealing with definite quantities, such as dozens of watches,
yards of linen, or tons of iron. The use-values of commodities furnish the
material for a special study, that of the commercial knowledge of commodities.
Use-values become a reality only by use or consumption: they also constitute the
substance of all wealth, whatever may be the social form of that wealth. In the
form of society we are about to consider, they are, in addition, the material
depositories of exchange-value.�

"Exchange-value, at first sight, presents itself as a quantitative relation, as
the proportion in which values in use of one sort are exchanged for those of
another sort, a relation constantly changing with time and place. Hence
exchange-value appears to be something accidental and purely relative, and
consequently an intrinsic value, i.e., an exchange-value that is inseparably
connected with, inherent in commodities, seems a contradiction in terms. Let us
consider the matter a little more closely...."

Karl Marx, Capital



___________________



Well, well, well. What is going on here? Somehow, the use-value of commodities
must become aligned with the exchange-value of commodities, or rather, the
use-value (quality) must take the form of a quantity, that is, a price -- but
that seems impossible -- as one side is the quality, form, usefulness etc. but
the other side is pure abstraction, like a measurement on a number scale. So
there must be some mediating factor, something embedded and yet distinct from
the commodity that can mediate between its use-value and exchange-value. Could
it be money? Money obviously mediates the act of exchange, and money is surely a
form of measurement -- but a measurement of what? What is being measured? Supply
and demand? Well supply is, again, a quantity, and demand is a quality, a
feeling of want or desire. So supply and demand may be factored in, but they do
not solve the problem, they still do not account for the bottom-line measurement
that can mediate the VALUE of the commodities -- the relation of each commodity
against all other commodities and the translation of this measurement into the
material embodiment into a certain amount of money. So what is being measured?
Do you know? Have you ever stopped and wondered? Isn't it funny -- we each of us
engage in this behavior of commodity exchange countless times in our life, each
and everyday, yet do we really understand what is going on? How can seventeen
umbrellas be measured as equivalent to, oh say, 100 hits of LSD.... Well for now
I'll leave it to you to come up with an answer.... But here is my point -- this
system of commodity production and exchange is the basic mode of operation of
capitalist society. It is "how things work." And it appears to us as totally
natural, primarily because the system has produced a form of living, a culture,
that has become all-encompassing. "All we see are things and their prices."
Through the mode of commodity production there is a hidden secret, a
sleight-of-hand, which when seen for what it is, can be exposed as the source of
wealth/poverty, class antagonism, and the accumulation of CAPITAL. Through some
process there is an accumulation of wealth in the hands of the owners of
capital, despite the fact that it is the workers who do most of the work, who
produce the commodities. And this process creates the relation of ALIENATION.
This process creates a surplus that then stands opposed to the workers that
produce it -- and its accumulation as capital becomes yet a more enlarged
embodiment of wealth that the workers are then obliged to continue to work for,
to sell themselves to, to exchange their daily lives, skills, time, and energies
-- for a wage. They, themselves, become commodities that are sold for a price.
Further, the accumulation of capital cannot just stand pat, the whole circuit of
capital->commodity production-->commodity exchange--accumulation-->commodity
production--commodity exchange--accumulation must successfully make it through
each stage, must complete the circuit, or else there will be breakdown, crisis.
Further, each capital, and the system of capitals as a whole, fights in the
market for dominance and for an ever expanding market. There is an inherent
expansionism in capitalism, and thus an inherent conflict between capitals and
between national organizations of capital (as in national states). Actually
there are many points of conflict -- because there are inherent contradictions
in the functioning of this system. But the point here is that this system is a
particular system, it is a game with its own rules, and its seizure of control
of human society was a real historical process. Yes, commodity exchange of
various kinds, and at various levels, existed before capitalism. But the
evolution of capitalism and its form of surplus generation and ownership meant
that the development of commodity relations became the DOMINATING organizing
force of society, and this organizing force inherently must expand and control
more and more and more territory, it must be able to render more "things," more
resources, more people into the commodity form. It cannot stop this process
without going into crisis -- it must break through all limits, all resistance,
it must colonize life intensively and extensively. That is the world we live in,
this is the dominating force that builds cities, creates technologies, stands
behind imperialisms, creates the growing contradiction between wealth and
poverty, creates tensions that can lead to war, renders everything it touches
into a market relation, and comes up against its own external limit in
biospheric degradation.



___________________



"The development of productive forces is the unconscious history that has
actually created and altered the living conditions of human groups � the
conditions enabling them to survive and the expansion of those conditions. It
has been the economic basis of all human undertakings. Within natural economies,
the emergence of a commodity sector represented a surplus survival. Commodity
production, which implies the exchange of varied products between independent
producers, tended for a long time to retain its small-scale craft aspects,
relegated as it was to a marginal economic role where its quantitative reality
was still hidden. But whenever it encountered the social conditions of
large-scale commerce and capital accumulation, it took total control of the
economy. The entire economy then became what the commodity had already shown
itself to be in the course of this conquest: a process of quantitative
development. This constant expansion of economic power in the form of
commodities transformed human labor itself into a commodity, into wage labor,
and ultimately produced a level of abundance sufficient to solve the initial
problem of survival � but only in such a way that the same problem is
continually being regenerated at a higher level. Economic growth has liberated
societies from the natural pressures that forced them into an immediate struggle
for survival; but they have not yet been liberated from their liberator. The
commodity�s independence has spread to the entire economy it now dominates. This
economy has transformed the world, but it has merely transformed it into a world
dominated by the economy. The pseudo-nature within which human labor has become
alienated demands that such labor remain forever in its service; and since this
demand is formulated by and answerable only to itself, it in fact ends up
channeling all socially permitted projects and endeavors into its own
reinforcement. The abundance of commodities � that is, the abundance of
commodity relations � amounts to nothing more than an augmented survival."

Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle



___________________



I would add here that augmented survival is now obliged to show its underside,
that is, the threat of terror, economic collapse, environmental destruction,
and....

And so here we are -- floating in our tranquil pools of unhappiness --
surrounded by desolation and terror, "listening to the new told lies, with
supreme visions of lonely tunes...."



Well, so where are we? Why have I gone on and on about this? Because, dear
friend, until you grasp these very fundamental relations, these very real
developments, you will never get to the real basis of our history and our daily
lives. In a sense we are victims, but only as long as we accept that role.
Understanding the basic rules of political-economy can give insight into global
capitalism in at least rudimentary sense (which, quite frankly is about all my
pea-brain can handle.) But we are not victims, we are the creators of a world,
but we create that world according to rules that are not of our conscious
making. But we do inherent the results of history up to this point, for better
and worse. Capitalism has revolutionized the world, and there are countless ways
that we benefit from that system. But everything has its limits. The system is
full of contradictions that lead it to crisis, and those crisis have nasty way
of a becoming deeper and more profound. And a primary crisis is the colonization
of daily life by capital, and the rendering of us all into being servants of its
quantitative dictates. Thus as the system slides into crisis, it will take us
with it. When capitalism falls, it will fall on you. Our schooldays� civics
lesson about voting and changing government is entertainingly sweet and naive,
but also ultimately bland and banal -- because it misses everything that is
important. We must begin to reference and expose the ways people actually live
-- that is, how we work (and for who, and why) and how we survive, how we spend
our time, and what purpose do our daily lives serve. We must engage realities of
enforced hierarchy and its forms of domination, and the ways we alienate power
to forces outside ourselves, as a matter of routine. We must come to grips with
the effects this must have on our psychologies. We need to expose and subvert
the mass need for authoritarian domination - and how this domination is made
necessary by way of our own alienation, our own constant retreat from control of
our own lives. Along with alienation comes dependency, we all depend on
capitalism, no matter where it is taking us. Some people say (over and over and
over) "well, four years from now we might be conscious enough to elect a better
leader!" Not only does this viewpoint ignore the fact that our society is
presided over by a small but extremely wealthy class of people who were never
elected and whose decisions fundamentally affect the lives of millions, but also
that these billionaire power-players also buy and sell politicians, and that
legislation is not just written and passed in the interests of the corporate
power bases -- but, in fact, the strategizers for the corporations are writing
the legislation themselves and giving our "representatives" their marching
orders.



___________________



We can no longer accept the basic premises of hierarchy and bureaucratic power.
Along with the overthrow of capitalism will come the abolition of authoritarian
hierarchy.

___________________



Consciousness/Spectacle



So we began with the notion of "collective consciousness" -- but the term can be
seen in two ways. (1) The ideological _expression of the pseudo collectivity --
forms of "false consciousness" that define, proscribe, dictate, and enforce
behaviors and ways of thinking upon the mass of individuals. This notion points
toward a kind of mass-mindedness that enforces a way of life. This
"mass-mindedness" is a product and _expression of capitalist culture and it
manifests in particular ways. In our society, one of the primary forms of the
(pseudo-)collective consciousness takes the form of what has been called "the
spectacle."



"Understood in its totality, the spectacle is both the result and the goal of
the dominant mode of production. It is not a mere decoration added to the real
world. It is the very heart of this real society�s unreality. In all of its
particular manifestations � news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment � the
spectacle represents the dominant model of life. It is the omnipresent
affirmation of the choices that have already been made in the sphere of
production and in the consumption implied by that production. In both form and
content the spectacle serves as a total justification of the conditions and
goals of the existing system. The spectacle also represents the constant
presence of this justification since it monopolizes the majority of the time
spent outside the production process....�

"The spectacle keeps people in a state of unconsciousness as they pass through
practical changes in their conditions of existence. Like a factitious god, it
engenders itself and makes its own rules. It reveals itself for what it is: an
autonomously developing separate power, based on the increasing productivity
resulting from an increasingly refined division of labor into parcelized
gestures dictated by the independent movement of machines, and working for an
ever-expanding market. In the course of this development, all community and all
critical awareness have disintegrated; and the forces that were able to grow by
separating from each other have not yet been reunited.�

"The reigning economic system is a vicious circle of isolation. Its technologies
are based on isolation, and they contribute to that same isolation. From
automobiles to television, the goods that the spectacular system chooses to
produce also serve it as weapons for constantly reinforcing the conditions that
engender "lonely crowds." With ever-increasing concreteness the spectacle
recreates its own presuppositions.�

"Workers do not produce themselves, they produce a power independent of
themselves. The success of this production, the abundance it generates, is
experienced by the producers as an abundance of dispossession. As their
alienated products accumulate, all time and space become foreign to them. The
spectacle is the map of this new world, a map that is identical to the territory
it represents. The forces that have escaped us display themselves to us in all
their power.�

"Though separated from what they produce, people nevertheless produce every
detail of their world with ever-increasing power. They thus also find themselves
increasingly separated from that world. The closer their life comes to being
their own creation, the more they are excluded from that life."

Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle
http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/1.htm



___________________




So, if you can understand what is being said, you can see that, yes, this
society is produced, and reproduced, each day, by all of us -- but our
production, our creation, the results of our life-energies, take on an
independence from us, we alienate them via real social/productive relations into
an independent power that then dominates our lives. That is how CAPITALISM
operates -- that is what it IS -- the accumulation of capital by way of wage
labor and commodity production and exchange and under the ownership of
capitalist class interests. The State primarily exists as a management body
which oversees the workings of the system. The culture becomes a
pseudo-collectivity.

The "collective consciousness" (ideology) is given the means of modern
technologies and mass communications: it becomes a world view that has actually
been materialized, a view of a world that has become objective. We are saturated
by its ideologies.

But I also assert that (2) "collective consciousness" can take on another form
-- when it begins to be the _expression of our collective desires, and when we
have the means to actually bring them into reality. There is a dialectic between
the "individual" and the "social grouping." All human individuals are
individuals vis-�-vis his/her society. The creation of individuals is a social
process. So what it means to be an individual is also a product of society and
history, and this develops in time. Yes, there may always be a tension between I
and They, but They are also the means of my greater social realization. The
dialectic, when freed from its current imprisonment, can be move toward a
resonation of individuals, wherein we each begin to recognize our larger SOCIAL
SELVES. This will be the return of the repressed, where all separations will be
understood to be but moments in a greater dialectical unfolding....

___________________



"Self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself only insofar as it exists in
and for another self-consciousness; that is, it exists only by being recognized
and acknowledged."

Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit

___________________

Revolution



I advocate the abolition of the economy, politics, the State. What that would
leave is humanity beginning to collectively, consciously, and directly begin the
adventure of our own revolutionary self-management. What that would leave is
humanity engaging in a world-historical act of self-transformation and
experimentation. I cannot spell out what forms this would take, because I am
just one individual with very limited capacities, although I do have my own
primitively developed ideas. I am not advocating a utopia, that is, an ideal
state, but rather an ongoing experiment whose forms would be evolving according
to possibilities. Basically the idea is power without mediators, power exercised
by the "base" of society, not disowned or projected or alienated into a class
above ourselves -- direct democracy or some form of consensus in collective
forms of self-management. Such forms have come into being for brief moments in
history, but they were always localized, isolated, and eventually crushed By
forces of reaction. Basically a simplistic outline would mean some kind of
generalized movement amongst workers, artists, students, families,
neighborhoods, emerging collectives, etc. The scenario would probably require
some kind of society-wide crisis of a class-contentious nature -- that is,
workers, etc. consciously struggling and organizing against the owners of
capital and state bureaucrats. This leads to a series of strikes, and this leads
to coordination and collectivization of the strike process -- and also to the
rise of autonomy and consciousness amongst the strikers -- in other words, a
"wildcat" consciousness outside of the control of trade union bureaucracies.
Then comes the fun part: the strikes become generalized, we begin to shut down
the economy -- but of course we can't just shut everything down -- we need
things to survive: like food, medicine, communication, computers, energy,
weapons, etc. etc. -- so rather than just staying "passively" on strike -- we
take matters into our own hands -- WE OCCUPY THE FACTORIES, THE OFFICES, THE
STREETS, EVERYTHING. And we just don't passively occupy -- we restart production
UNDER OWN CONTROL -- and we coordinate on a citywide, region-wise, even
international basis. Obviously there is going to be a lot of chaos, struggle,
debate, and of course the capitalists and their functionaries are not just going
to stand by and watch their world evaporate, so it is going to be a real
struggle, in all ways. The stakes will be raised to the limit because everything
will be called into question. We will all begin to directly intervene into the
making of our own history -- we will enter "historical space" by way of "seizing
our time." Beware: "Those who make revolution only halfway merely dig their own
graves."



The crucial part, besides defending and extending the occupation movement, will
discovering the methods of coordinating and making decisions that do not get out
of the control of the people themselves -- so that any "representatives" that
are needed to coordinate on a "higher" level are not really "representatives" --
but rather are delegates, immediately revocable, and whose function is to
coordinate and carry our decisions already made. What would begin happening is a
society-wide, ongoing, fluid, and evolving federation of assemblies and
councils, making and carrying out plans, processes, and experiments. This
movement would be based on  "power without mediation," which is merely an
attempt to express the idea of social revolution that does not immediately
set-up a new form of authoritarian domination -- and the councils are form in
which such direct decision-making could happen. And the assemblies/councils
would seek ways to be democratically autonomous, and also coordinated and
federated.  The conception is not anti-organizational -- it is rather a search
for a kind of organization that does not get out of control of the people
themselves -- that is, it is a form of self-management. Obviously, any such
conception should evolve as social conditions and technological possiblities
evolve. But equally important is the understanding that such  councils have not
been merely an imposed form on radical movements in modern history, some kind of
blueprint that is grafted onto a revolution --- but rather that they have been a
form that the autonomous workers and their allies have themselves discovered at
moments of revolutionary contestation.. So if there is an authentic revolution
in our future,  chances are,  there will be some form of councilist experiments
that emerge -- as this form seems to be an organic tendency. That is, general
assemblies will emerge that exist to deliberate, debate, plan, and carry out
specific goals. The awareness of this process, of what it means and what are its
implications, is crucial --  if the revolution is to remain in the hands of the
people themselves, rather than being abandoned to a newly emerging bureaucracy
or authoritarian party. Such social forms of councils, or something like them,
will be the pivotal points that secure and push the movement forward -- that is,
they will be popular forums and centers of action, they will be the space for
the emergence real direct democracy. and a place whose existence will be a
counterforce the tendency to return to "normal" functioning of capitalism, that
is, back to the false security of capitalist daily life and all that implies,
which is: retreat back to deadly routine, passive producers of our own demise,
witnesses to the defeat of our own world-historical adventure.

We will abolish any need for the state, and  will certainly abolish what is
known, reified, and fetishized as "the economy" -- abolished as an entity
separate from people and their desires. The system of commodity exchange and
production will be replaced by production directly for human need. Capitalism
with its need for class hierarchies and with its relentless need for expansion
and commodification of the world -- will be superseded. This movement, this
transcendence, will be the blossoming of humanity, a flowering of possibilities
-- it will mean a fundamental revolution in the nature of human subjectivity in
its social-historical dimension. For the first time, humanity will come to be
directly and consciously engaged in its own development, precisely because
alienated power will be transcended -- the "economy" - the state - politics --
as the class-based management system of capitalism -- will all be jettisoned.


But of course, the question presents itself -- can humanity (that is the
workers, the alienated, can we, ourselves) find and develop the capacities to
launch ourselves onto such a trajectory -- can we attain "escape velocity" from
the social conditions that now imprison us? I would assert that without such a
movement, without some such solution as I have very tentatively outlined, not
only will we remain trapped within our own reifications, like a corpse preserved
in alcohol, but we will hopelessly and helplessly witness the ever-deepening
crisis of global-capitalism, as well as, the intensification and irreversibility
of biospheric damage, species mass-extinction, environmental poisoning, and thus
the possible extinction of the human race itself. We are fast approaching a
rendezvous with history. So the question remains -- will the emerging global
crisis in all its modes of _expression and ramifications provoke humanity to
look for the means to lift itself out of the crisis in a fundamental way? I say
-- the global crisis begins in our own daily lives, so the problem is not only
awesome in its extent and meaning, but calls into question what we do everyday
-- how we alienate and disown our life-energies, creativities, and
possibilities. This is the action of the subject/object dialectic of world
history. We will learn to transcend who we "think we are," and redefine what we
can become, in a new world of our own making.



___________________



So where does that leave us???



___________________



"The concept of class struggle constituted the first concrete, tactical
marshaling of the shocks and injuries which men live individually; it was born
in the whirlpool of suffering which the reduction of human relations to
mechanisms of exploitation created everywhere in industrial societies. It issued
from a will to transform the world and change life."

Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life
http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/34



Kathy Kundalini

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#2051

From: kathykundalini@...
Date: Thu Jun 2, 2005 3:18 am
Subject: A Buddhist Critique....

kathykundalini

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A Buddhist Critique of Transnational Corporations
David Loy
We have given corporations dominion over the sustaining of our lives. They have
become sovereign citizens and we have become consumers. They concentrate power
and wealth. They design and shape our society and world. They carve our goals
and aspirations. They shape our thoughts and our language. They create the
images and metaphors of our time, which our children use to define their world
and their lives. In other words: what corporations do well, what corporations
are designed to be, is the problem.[1]

What is globalisation, and what does it mean for our lives? There is no simple
answer to these questions because there is no such "thing" as globalisation.
Globalisation is a complex set of interacting developments: economic, political,
technological and cultural. This paper attempts to bring a Buddhist perspective
to bear on what is probably the main agent of globalisation, on an institution
which has more day to day influence on our lives than any other except
governments: corporations, especially transnational ones. I propose to think
about what corporations are, from a religious, particularly a Buddhist,
perspective. Despite their enormous and increasing impact upon all of us, we
know surprisingly little about them -- that is, about what they really are and
why they function the way they do. In 1995, only 49 of the world's 100 largest
economies were nations; the other 51 were corporations. Malaysia was number 53,
bigger than Matsushita (54) but somewhat smaller than IBM (52); Mitsubishi, the
largest corporation on the list, was number 22. Total sales of the top 200
transnational corporations were bigger than the combined GDP of 182 countries --
of all except the top nine nations. That is about thirty percent of world GDP.
Yet those corporations employed less than one-third of one percent of the
world's population, and that percentage is shrinking.[2]

In the United States, the largest 100 corporations buy about 75% of comercial
network time and over 50% of public television time as well.[3] This means that
they decide what is shown on television and what is not; it has become their
"private medium". Corporate mergers and buyouts also mean that the nation's
radio stations, newspapers, and publishing houses are owned by a decreasing
number of conglomerates increasingly preoccupied with the bottom line of profit
margins. In short, corporations control the U.S. "nervous system", and
increasingly our international one as well. It is amazing, then, that we hear
relatively little about what corporations do -- which seems to be the way they
like it. Newspapers and television news are full of the speeches and meetings of
government leaders, even as globalisation of the world economy reduces their
power to direct their peoples' destiny. The main point of this paper can be
summarized very simply: today, thanks to spreading ideals of democracy, states
are increasingly responsible to their citizens, but whom are transnational
corporations responsible to?
One of our problems today is that, in our preoccupation with present consumption
and future possibilities, we tend to lose the past -- that is, our sense of
history. If you want to understand something, one of the first places to look is
at its history, which can illuminate aspects that we otherwise overlook or
misunderstand. . . . So I hope you will indulge me while I present a short
history lesson. What does history teach us about corporations and their
responsibilities?
Incorporated business enterprises, with legally limited economic liabilities,
began in Europe. The earliest record I have found of such a corporation is from
Florence, Italy, in 1532. Both the date and place are very interesting. Columbus
had "discovered" America in 1492; just as important, Vasco da Gama had sailed
around Africa to India in 1498 and returned with cargo worth sixty times the
cost of his voyage. A profit of 6000%! You can imagine what effect that had on
the dreams of Italian merchants. But there were some problems. First, it was
extremely expensive to outfit such an expedition, so very few people could
afford to do so by themselves. Second, such voyages were extremely risky; the
chance of a ship sinking in a storm or being taken by pirates was considerable.
And third, there were debtor's prisons -- not only for you but for your family
and your descendants -- if you lost your ship and could not pay your debts.
The solution to these problems was ingenious: legally limited liability. Unlike
partnerships, where each partner is legally responsible for all business debts,
limited liability meant you could lose only the amount you invested. Such an
arrangement required a special charter from the state -- in Renaissance Italy,
from the local prince. This was convenient not only for the investors but for
the prince, because a successful expedition increased the wealth of his
territory -- and because he got a big cut of the profits for granting the
charter.
What is the relevance of all that now? It shows us, first, that from the very
beginning corporations have been involved in colonialism and colonial
exploitation -- a process which continues today under a "neo-colonial" economic
system that continues to transfer wealth from the South to the North. Although
they have plenty of help from the World Bank and the IMF, corporations continue
to be the main institutions that supervise that process.
Second, it shows us that from the very beginning corporations have also had an
incestous relationship with the state. In the sixteenth century nation-states as
we know them did not exist. Rulers generally were too limited in resources to
exercise the kind of sovereignty that we take for granted today. The state as we
know it today -- politically self-enclosed and self-aggrandizing -- developed
along with the royally-chartered corporation; you might even say they were
Siamese twins inescapably joined together. The enormous wealth extracted from
the New World, in particular, enabled states to become more powerful and
ambitious, and rulers assisted the process by dispatching armies and navies to
"pacify" foreign lands. As this suggests, there was a third partner, which grew
up with the other two: the modern military. Together they formed an "unholy
trinity", thanks to the new technologies of gunpowder, the compass (for
navigation), and this clever new type of business organization which minimized
the financial risk. In short, the modern nation-state and its military grew by
feeding on colonial exploitation, in the same way that chartered corporations
did.[4]
This incest needs to be emphasized because we tend to forget it. We distinguish
between government and the economy, but at their upper levels there is usually
little effective distinction between them. Today governments still get their
royal share of the booty -- now it's called taxes. On the one side, states today
need to promote corporate business because they have become pimps dependent upon
that source of revenue; on the other side, transnational corporations thrive on
the special laws and arrangements with which states promote their activities. As
Dan Hamburg, a former Democratic representative from California, concluded from
his years in the U.S. Congress: "The real government of our country is economic,
dominated by large corporations that charter the state to do their bidding.
Fostering a secure environment in which corporations and their investors can
flourish is the paramount objective of both [political] parties."[5] The same is
true internationally. Almost everywhere globalisation means that the interests
of politicans who control nations are more and more intimately entwined with
those who control corporations. In most countries the elite move back and forth
quite easily from one to the other, from CEO to cabinet position and back again;
naturally they identify with each other's interests. Think, for example, how
much U.S. foreign policy today is determined by the desire to open foreign
markets (and raw materials, cheap labor, etc.) to U.S. corporate penetration.
Occasionally there have been exceptions to this cosy relationship -- genuinely
populist leaders, for example -- but they tend not to last very long.
This brings us back to the question of corporate responsibility. A royal charter
listed a corporation's privileges and responsibilities. It has been said that
the history of corporations since then is a history of their attempts to
increase their privileges and reduce their responsibilities. One important step
in reducing that responsibility was the introduction of the joint stock company;
the first English one was chartered in 1553. One's shares in a corporation could
now be bought and sold freely, even to someone in a foreign country. The stock
market has since become an essential feature of every developed economy, of
course, and of most developing ones. Consider, however, the effects of this
development on responsibility -- on the ethical consequences of business
activities. Legally, the primary responsibility of a corporation is not to its
employees nor to its customers but to its stockholders; after all, they own it.
What does it mean, then, when those stockholders are anonymous, scattered here
and there, most living far away and with no interest in the corporation's
activities except insofar as they affect its profitability?
Compare the situation of a smaller, locally-owned business. Suppose you are a
master carpenter living in 16th-century Italy. If business is good you might
employ several other carpenters and apprentices. You may treat them badly --
long hours, low wages -- but it will be difficult to escape all the consequences
of that. You and your family live above the workshop, or around the corner; your
wife sees the wives of your senior workers, may socialize with them; your
children probably play with their children, perhaps take lessons from the same
teachers. You worship in the same church, participate in the same festivals. My
point is that in such a situation economic responsibility is local and not so
easily evaded. Everyone in the town knows how you treat your workers, and that
affects your reputation -- what other people think about you and how they
respond to you.
Contrast that with what happened, say, at Bhopal, India in 1984, where it is now
believed that up to 10,000 people died and another 50,000 permanently injured in
the world's worst chemical disaster, when a Union Carbide plant leaked toxic
gases. Although we do not know who they are, it's safe to say that the
stockholder owners of Union Carbide were elsewhere, living in various places
around the world; and that (although, exceptionally, a few were outraged enough
to protest) the large majority felt no responsibility for what happened. The
people responsible for managing Union Carbide also live and work far away.
Whatever legal liability a corporation may have -- usually only financial -- is
quite different from having to live with the consequences, and this difference
has a great impact upon the way that impersonal institutions like corporations
can conduct their business. It is important to understand that the Bhopal
problem was not primarily a technological one, as we tend to think ("one of the
inescapable dangers of modern life"), but one of responsibility -- of corporate
immorality. The gas that escaped is so volatile and dangerous that normally it
is not stored but immediately made into a more stable compound; it was stored
improperly, without being refrigerated; the emergency release valve was not
working; there had been prior problems and accidents but recommendations
resulting from those incidents had not been implemented; there were no plans or
exercises for emergency evacuation; no training or information had been provided
to the municipality about the gas and how to respond to such an accident. . . .
Now consider: if the CEO of Union Carbide had been living next door to that
plant, with his family, would those conditions have been permitted to continue?
And Union Carbide never apologized for the accident, evidently because there
were some legal implications at stake. Instead, company executives in India
spread rumors that a disgruntled employee had caused the disaster, but no
evidence to support this was ever provided. This inability to apologize is
precisely my point: it is intrinsic to the nature of large corporations that
they cannot be responsible in the way that you and I can be. Dr. Rosalie
Bertell, who directed the International Medical Commission Bhopal in January
1994, was asked how the Bhopal disaster has changed the way multinationals
operate abroad. Her reply is sobering: "I don't think it has, and that's scary.
I think that most of them think that Union Carbide got away with it, and maybe
they could get away with it. I think the effect has been minimal." The accident
cost Union Carbide nothing: it settled all claims for $470,000,000, which was
covered by its insurance.[6]

We begin to understand how "a principle purpose of corporations is to shield the
managers and directors who run them, and shareholders who profit, from
responsibility for what the corporation actually does."[7] We also begin to
understand why we should speak of transnational corporations rather than
multinational ones. Early corporations transcended local communities; today the
largest, most powerful corporations transcend responsibility even to
nation-states and their citizens. In their preoccupation with profitability,
they have learned to play off nations and communities against each other in
order to obtain the most favorable operating conditions -- the biggest tax
breaks, the least environmental regulation, and so forth. This is a significant
development: although corporations and nation-states grew up together, in some
important respects they have become delinked. Today corporations are freer than
nation-states, which remain bound by their responsibilities to their own borders
and peoples. Corporations have no such fixed obligations. They can reinvent
themselves completely, in a different location and even in a different business,
if it is convenient for them to do so.
So, then, what is a corporation? To become incorporated (from the Latin corpus,
corporis "body") does not mean, of course, that a corporation gains a material
body. You cannot point at a corporation, because it has no physical location. In
principle, at least, corporations are immortal. You can point to a building that
is owned or used by a corporation, yet that building can be sold without
affecting the legal status of the corporation. Everything can be replaced -- all
the people working for it, all the material resources owned by it, the type of
activities it engages in, even its name -- while it remains essentially the same
corporation.
That is because a corporation is not a thing but a process. Like the physical
bodies of living things, a corporation is a dissipative system. That is, it must
take in energy from the outside (e.g., raw materials), which it processes in
various ways (e.g., manufacturing). In order to continue "living" indefinitely
its income must equal its expenditures. And, like other living things, this
process is subject to the law of entropy: although value-added products may be
produced (e.g., manufactured goods, or, for humans, a cultural product such as a
book or work of art), energy is consumed in the process.
It is already evident that there is an parallel here with human beings. Our
physical bodies are also dissipative systems that absorb energy (from food) and
use it for physical and mental activities. And from a Buddhist perspective this
parallel is even deeper, for in one important respect we humans too are fictions
according to the Buddhist teaching of anatman, "non-self". Buddhism teaches that
our sense of self is a delusion -- what might now be called a "construction" --
because the feeling that there is a "me" apart from the world is mistaken; our
sense of "I" is an effect of interacting physical and mental processes that are
part of the world. Although counter-intuitive and difficult to understand, this
teaching of anatman is essential to all schools of Buddhism, and enlightenment
includes the realization that "my" self is "empty", for "I" am a manifestation
of the world.
This similarity between corporations and people -- both being "empty"
dissipative systems that nonetheless have a life of their own -- raises the
question whether corporations are subject to the same type of problems.
According to Buddhism, the primary cause of our human problems is greed;
sometimes ignorance is mentioned as well. Is this also the problem of
corporations? It is the nature (or natural tendency) of our minds never to be
satisfied with what we have, but always to want more. The tendency of
corporations to grow and seek ever greater profits simplies a similar problem.
When we consider the Buddhist solution to this problem, however, we realize the
vast difference between corporations and us.
The difference is that corporations are legal fictions. Their "body" is a
judicial concept -- and that is why they are so dangerous, because without a
body they are essentially ungrounded to the earth and its creatures, to the
pleasures and responsibilities that derive from being manifestations of the
earth. You may prefer to say that corporations are unable to be spiritual, for
they lack a soul; but I think it amounts to the same thing. As the example of
Bhopal shows, a corporation is unable to feel sorry for what it has done (it may
occasionally apologize, but that is public relations, not sorrow). A corporation
cannot laugh or cry; it can't enjoy the world or suffer with it. Most of all, a
corporation cannot love. Love is realizing our interconnectedness with others
and living our concern for their well-being. Such love is not an emotion but an
engagement with others that includes responsibility for them, a responsibility
that if genuine transcends our own selfish interests. If that sense of
responsibility is not there, the love is not genuine. Corporations cannot
experience such love or live according to it, not only because they are
immaterial but because of their primary responsibility to the shareholders who
own them. A CEO who tries to subordinate his company's profitability to his love
for the world will lose his position, for he is not fulfilling that financial
responsibility to its shareholders.
To make the same point in a more Buddhist way: despite the talk we occasionally
hear about "enlightened" corporations, a corporation cannot become enlightened
in the spiritual sense. Buddhist enlightenment includes realizing that my sense
of being a self apart from the world is a delusion that causes suffering for me
and the world. To realize that I am the world -- that I am one of the many ways
the world manifests -- is the cognitive side of the love that such a person
feels for the world and all its creatures; that realization and that love are
two sides of the same coin. Legal fictions such as corporations cannot
experience this any more than computers can.
That sums up us the tragedy of economic globalisation today: increasingly, the
destiny of the earth is in the hands of impersonal institutions which, because
of the way they are structured, are motivated not by concern for the well-being
of the earth's inhabitants but by desire for their own growth and profit. "We
are calling upon [those who wield corporate] power and property, as mankind
called upon kings of their day, to be good and kind, wise and sweet, and we are
calling in vain. We are asking them not to be what we have made them to be."[8]
It is intrinsic to the nature of corporations that they cannot be responsible in
the ways that we need them to be; the impersonal way they are owned and
organized guarantees that such responsibility is so diluted and diffused that,
ultimately, it tends to disappear.

One might argue, in reply, that there are good corporations which take good care
of their employees, are concerned about their products and their effect on the
environment, etc. The same argument can be made for slavery: there were some
good slaveowners who took good care of their slaves, etc. This does not refute
the fact that the institution of slavery is intolerable. The analogy is not too
strong. "It is intolerable that the most important issues about human livelihood
will be decided solely on the basis of profit for transnational
corporations."[9] And it is just as intolerable that the earth's limited
resources are being allocated primarily on the basis of profit for transnational
corporations.
My Buddhist conclusion is that transnational corporations are by their very
nature problematical. We cannot solve the problems they create by addressing the
conduct of this or that particular corporation; it's the institution that's the
problem. I do not see how, given their present structure, we can repair them to
make them more compassionate. So we need to consider whether it is possible to
reform them in some fundamental way or whether we need to replace them with
better economic and political institutions -- better because they are
responsible not to anonymous investers but to the communities they function in,
better because are motivated not by profit but by service to the earth and the
beings who dwell on it. As long as corporations remain the primary instruments
of economic globalisation, they endanger the future of our children and the
world they will live in.
NOTES
1.Richard Grossman, "Revoking the Corporation", Journal of Environmental Law and
Litigation (1996) vol. 11, p. 143.
2. "Corporate Empires", Multinational Monitor 17 no. 12 (December 1996). The
information is from Forbes Magazine and the World Bank's World Development
Report for 1996.
3. Jerry Mander, "Corporations as Machines", in Jonathan Greenberg and William
Kistler, ed., Buying America Back (Council Oak Books, 1992), p. 295.
4. The United States was born of a revolt against corporations, which had been
used as instruments of abusive power by British kings. The new republic was
deeply suspicious of both government and corporate power. Corporations were
chartered by the states, not the federal government (the U.S. Constitution does
not mention them), so they could be kept under close local scrutiny. The length
of corporate charters was limited, and they were automatically dissolved if not
renewed, or if corporations engaged in activities outside their charter. By 1800
there were only about 200 corporate charters in the U.S. The next century was a
period of great struggle between corporations and civil society. The turning
point was the Civil War (1861-65). With huge profits from procurement contracts,
corporations were able to take advantage of the disorder and corruption of the
times to buy legislatures, judges, and even presidents. Lincoln complained
shortly before his death: "Corporations have been enthroned. . . . An era of
corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to
prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people...until wealth is
aggregated in a few hands ... and the republic is destroyed". Rutherford Hayes,
who became president in 1876 due to a tainted election and back-room
corporate-dominated elections, later declared: "this is a government of the
people, by the people and for the people no longer. It is a government of
corporations, by corporations, and for corporations." Corporations gradually
gained enough influence to rewrite the laws governing their creation: state
charters could not be revoked, corporations could engage in any economic
activity, etc. Their biggest success was in 1886, when the Supreme Court ruled
(in Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad) that a private corporation
is a "natural person" under the U.S. Constitution and thus entitled to all the
protection of the Bill of Rights, including free speech. Given the vast
financial resources of corporations to defend and exploits these rights, this
meant, in effect, that corporations today are more free than any citizen. In
sum, during and after the Civil War there was a coup d'etat in the United States
-- not a military takeover, but an illegal perversion of the institutions of
state power. Except for a temporary setback during Roosevelt's New Deal (the
1930's), the United States has been governed by a corporate-state alliance since
then.
5. "Inside the Money Chase", The Nation May 5, 1997, p. 25.
6. Information about the Bhopal disaster is from "The Bhopal Legacy: An
Interview with Dr. Rosalie Bertell", Multinational Monitor 18 no. 3 (March
1997).
7. Richard Grossman, "Corporations' Accountability and Responsibility", unpubl.
8. Henry Demarest Lloyd, Wealth against Commonwealth (New York: 1894), p. 517.
9. Herman E. Daly and John B. Cobb, Jr., For the Common Good (Boston: Beacon
Press, 2nd ed. 1994), p. 178.

(September 1997)
David R. Loy

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#2052

From: kathykundalini@...
Date: Thu Jun 2, 2005 10:29 pm
Subject: Earth from Mars

kathykundalini

Send Email

"Spirit also captured the Earth in the sky during sunrise on Mars...."

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_earth_040311.html

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#2053

From: "Bob M." <new_trail_blazer@...>
Date: Fri Jun 3, 2005 2:02 am
Subject: Re: Our Situation -- Kathy's Political Statement

new_trail_bl...

Send Email

The nature of the problem is quite clear here in this camp, Kathy.
And my focus continues to be on the solution, living (being at one
with) the fix. Getting some of those with the right stuff out of the
closed loop of deeply-conditioned self-will, which is the
overwhelmingly prevailing pattern of human existence everywhere.
Being part of the fix and doing whatever it takes albeit even
mahasamadhi-ing oneself out of here via a 357 or whatever the
caliber, as did Mr. Debord. Old Nietzsche probably would have
commended Guy for having died at the right time. Not too soon, and
not too late so that he might not, like so many, hang around the
planet doing mischief, and consequently paying the price. But then
again too, very, very few ever had a really clear picture of things
(i.e. the mind of God) since the beginning of time. So while the
blind continue to lead the blind, along with most of those with ears
to hear into the inferno, I'll focus on trying to steer some clear of
the mess and what then rises up out of the ashes (here ON EARTH as it
is in outer space).

http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/Soar_Like_An_Eagle/message/55

Bob M.

P. S. Ever remembering that 'this is our Father's world'; the good,
the bad, and the ugly.
___________________________________________

--- In theexistentialsociety@yahoogroups.com, kathykundalini@c...
wrote:
>
>
> Our Situation
>
>
>
> We are each born into this world, and this world is not our making
vis-�-vis ourselves as real beings, born and raised in certain
historical conditions. We find ourselves in a world, and in
political/economic systems which are overwhelming in their scope,
power, and historic inertia. We all feel ourselves to be individuals,
yet we all participate in a kind of collective, social consciousness.
What is this "collective consciousness?" Where is it? How does it
manifest itself? Was it always in existence? If not, then how did it
come to be? It seems to me there is, potentially at best, a kind of
quasi-collective consciousness that exists as a kind of ideal
projection. But really, what exists now, is not a "collective
consciousness" but rather just its opposite -- an alienated
projection of class interests, hierarchical power, antagonistic
division, manipulation, commodification, and reification. What passes
for "collective consciousness" is really nothing but the pseudo-
collectivity of capitalist class power relations which define the
world of accepted ideas, as well as, the modes of communication, and
the goals and means of a social system whose basic relation is
separation, not collectivization. In other words, the consciousness
of the (pseudo) "collective" is disengaged from the "collective" and
given an autonomous power over and above the disenfranchised and
powerless mass of individuals, and rendered into the service of mass-
hypnosis, commodity production and circulation, capital accumulation,
and state power. In other words, what passes for "collective
consciousness" becomes the ideology of a spectacle which appears to
be simultaneously the totality of society, a part of society which
stands superior to the rest of society, and the goal of society. All
the power and creativity that is daily disengaged from all
individuals, primarily through work and consumption, returns as a
mysterious alien force which then rules over society, which becomes
our "economy," our "government," our "world," which becomes a "second
nature" - and which appears without question, becomes the sun which
never rests over modern passivity, becomes the laudatory monologue
ever proclaiming its own glory, spiced-up with the fear and terror of
ever-emerging crisis, breakdown, violence, threats, war, starvation,
disease, ecological decay, and global catastrophe. This is the woeful
map of our alienation, which has now become a global system. In a
real sense, this human world is "created by ourselves" -- but created
in conditions that none of us have chosen, and that none of us have
any clear way of changing, and that none of us are being asked to
change, and, in fact, this system is a class system, which means that
it is presided over by people who suffer from the illusion that they
benefit from this state-of-affairs, simply because they squeeze out
monstrous wealth and power, and they use their resources, their mass-
technologies of ideological projection and control, their seductive
methods of commodity intensification, their police, their armies,
their politicians, their bureaucrats - all to insure the security of
their positions as top-dogs, as king-rats, as chief-cannibals over a
reified and alienated world.

[snip]

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#2054

From: "Bob M." <new_trail_blazer@...>
Date: Tue Jun 7, 2005 4:39 am
Subject: Was Nietzsche the only man.....

new_trail_bl...

Send Email

.....in modern times who had the depth of insight along with the
courage to fathom the simple truth that there'll never be peace on
earth - good will toward men, until the greater portion of humanity
perishes, as was the case also in the days of Noah? At least this is
what I deduce from the following passage in his book 'The
Antichrist', along with my own observations of the present day (last
days) human condition, although personally I don't give the full rap
for the situation to Christianity alone.

"What is good?--Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to
power, power itself, in man. What is evil?--Whatever springs from
weakness. What is happiness?--The feeling that power increases--that
resistance is overcome. Not contentment, but more power; not peace at
any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the
Renaissance sense, virtu, virtue free of moral acid). The weak and
the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one
should help them to it. What is more harmful than any vice?--
Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak--Christianity..."
F.N.

The 'weak and the botched' Nietzsche refers to here, in my view,
being those whose early childhood formative conditioning (training-
up) was of such poor quality that they have unfortunately been left
with an irremediably formed and fragmented mind and sensate system
from which no authentic 'I' or being can ever manifest under any
circumstances.

Bob M.

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#2055

From: kathykundalini@...
Date: Tue Jun 7, 2005 5:22 am
Subject: Re: [The Existential Society] Was Nietzsche the only man.....

kathykundalini

Send Email

:the depth of insight...until the greater portion of humanity perishes....in the
days of Noah....

if this was Neitzsche's viewpoint, then he was even more insane than I realized.
This, and your interpretation, are clearly examples of the "fragmented mind"
that you then go on to wring your hands over....Lacking in any grasp of any
totality, any sense of compassion, any sense of real historical issues, and
surely lacking any self-critical sense whatsoever, this viewpoint characterizies
the fetishized mind projecting its own vacant pseudo-superiority (i.e. its
barely conscious sense of inferiority) and its "no nonsense" cynicism concerning
the fate of the majority of people on earth.  Why is it that certain kinds of
males are always the ones to put forward such crudely insensitive arm-chair
"philosophizing?" The illusory projection of the "will-to-power" is naturally
the pathos of the alienated, constricted mind which, in real life,  demonstrates
anything but a real "will-to-power," and in fact, always opts for the mystical
father figure appearing from elsewhere to carry out the sentence. The hope for
the "perishing" of the "greater portion of humanity" is most-likely the inverted
awareness of one's own need for oblivion, as the sadism involved here is the
inverted need for a masochistic submission. In other words, what is being asked
for is a good spanking from Daddy -- thus the references to "early childhood
formative conditioning" and the "fragmented" "sensate system." In other words,
the allusions that appear here denote more about the speaker than about the
world situation, or rather, they describe the unconscious motivations of the
speaker -- that is, the need for sado-masochism, need for authority, submission,
mystical projection, fragmentation, compartmentalism, reduction of
self-awareness. These tendencies would have to be further analysed to then
uncover deeper motivations....

-------------- Original message --------------

.....in modern times who had the depth of insight along with the
courage to fathom the simple truth that there'll never be peace on
earth - good will toward men, until the greater portion of humanity
perishes, as was the case also in the days of Noah? At least this is
what I deduce from the following passage in his book 'The
Antichrist', along with my own observations of the present day (last
days) human condition, although personally I don't give the full rap
for the situation to Christianity alone.

"What is good?--Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to
power, power itself, in man. What is evil?--Whatever springs from
weakness. What is happiness?--The feeling that power increases--that
resistance is overcome. Not contentment, but more power; not peace at
any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the
Renaissance sense, virtu, virtue free of moral acid). The weak and
the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one
should help them to it. What is more harmful than any vice?--
Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak--Christianity..."
F.N.

The 'weak and the botched' Nietzsche refers to here, in my view,
being those whose early childhood formative conditioning (training-
up) was of such poor quality that they have unfortunately been left
with an irremediably formed and fragmented mind and sensate system
from which no authentic 'I' or being can ever manifest under any
circumstances.

Bob M.








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#2056

From: kathykundalini@...
Date: Tue Jun 7, 2005 10:09 pm
Subject: fetishism and reification

kathykundalini

Send Email

An interesting essay on commodity reification and State fetishism:

The State and Economy as Regimes of Discipline: Beyond State Fetishism - by
Chris Kortright

Introduction - by Sasha K.
Part 1: State Fetishism and Reification: Starting to Understand the State
Part 2: The State and Economy: Two Regimes of Discipline
Bibliography

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#2057

From: kathykundalini@...
Date: Tue Jun 7, 2005 10:47 pm
Subject: The Fun Never Stops

kathykundalini

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Published on Tuesday, June 7, 2005 by the Los Angeles Times
Torture's Part of the Territory
by Naomi Klein

Brace yourself for a flood of gruesome new torture snapshots. Last week, a
federal judge ordered the Defense Department to release dozens of additional
photographs and videotapes depicting prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.
The photographs will elicit what has become a predictable response: Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld will claim to be shocked and will assure us that action
is already being taken to prevent such abuses from happening again. But imagine,
for a moment, if events followed a different script. Imagine if Rumsfeld
responded like Col. Mathieu in "Battle of Algiers," Gillo Pontecorvo's famed
1965 film about the National Liberation Front's attempt to liberate Algeria from
French colonial rule. In one of the film's key scenes, Mathieu finds himself in
a situation familiar to top officials in the Bush administration: He is being
grilled by a room filled with journalists about allegations that French
paratroopers are torturing Algerian prisoners.
Based on real-life French commander Gen. Jacques Massus, Mathieu neither denies
the abuse nor claims that those responsible will be punished. Instead, he flips
the tables on the scandalized reporters, most of whom work for newspapers that
overwhelmingly support France's continued occupation of Algeria. Torture "isn't
the problem," he says calmly. "The problem is the FLN wants to throw us out of
Algeria and we want to stay�. It's my turn to ask a question. Should France stay
in Algeria? If your answer is still yes, then you must accept all the
consequences."
His point, as relevant in Iraq today as it was in Algeria in 1957, is that there
is no nice, humanitarian way to occupy a nation against the will of its people.
Those who support such an occupation don't have the right to morally separate
themselves from the brutality it requires.
Now, as then, there are only two ways to govern: with consent or with fear.
Most Iraqis do not consent to the open-ended military occupation they have been
living under for more than two years. On Jan. 30, a clear majority voted for
political parties promising to demand a timetable for U.S. withdrawal.
Washington may have succeeded in persuading Iraq's political class to abandon
that demand, but the fact remains that U.S. troops are on Iraqi soil in open
defiance of the express wishes of the population.
Lacking consent, the current U.S.-Iraqi regime relies heavily on fear, including
the most terrifying tactics of them all: disappearances, indefinite detention
without charge and torture. And despite official reassurances, it's only getting
worse. A year ago, President Bush pledged to erase the stain of Abu Ghraib by
razing the prison to the ground. There has been a change of plans. Abu Ghraib
and two other U.S.-run prisons in Iraq are being expanded, and a new
2,000-person detention facility is being built, with a price tag of $50 million.
In the last seven months alone, the prison population has doubled to a
staggering 11,350.
The U.S. military may indeed be cracking down on prisoner abuse, but torture in
Iraq is not in decline � it has simply been outsourced. In January, Human Rights
Watch found that torture within Iraqi-run (and U.S.-supervised) jails and
detention facilities was "systematic," including the use of electroshock.
An internal report from the 1st Cavalry Division, obtained by the Washington
Post, states that "electrical shock and choking" are "consistently used to
achieve confessions" by Iraqi police and soldiers. So open is the use of torture
that it has given rise to a hit television show: Every night on the TV station
Al Iraqiya � run by a U.S. contractor � prisoners with swollen faces and black
eyes "confess" to their crimes.
Rumsfeld claims that the wave of recent suicide bombings in Iraq is "a sign of
desperation." In fact, it is the proliferation of torture under Rumsfeld's watch
that is the true sign of panic.
In Algeria, the French used torture not because they were sadistic but because
they were fighting a battle they could not win against the forces of
decolonization and Third World nationalism. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein's use of
torture surged immediately after the Shiite uprising in 1991: The weaker his
hold on power, the more he terrorized his people. Unwanted regimes, whether
domestic dictatorships or foreign occupations, rely on torture precisely because
they are unwanted.
When the next batch of photographs from Abu Ghraib appear, many Americans will
be morally outraged, and rightly so. But perhaps some brave official will take a
lesson from Col. Mathieu and dare to turn the tables: Should the United States
stay in Iraq? If your answer is still yes, then you must accept all the
consequences.
Naomi Klein reported from Iraq for Harper's. She is the author of "No Logo"
(Picador, 2002) and is writing a book on the ways capitalism exploits disaster.
� 2005 LA Times

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#2058

From: "Bob M." <new_trail_blazer@...>
Date: Wed Jun 8, 2005 3:44 am
Subject: Fighting the dragon with Nietzsche.....

new_trail_bl...

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Interesting reply Kathy. Thanks. Surely it's clear that 'fighting
against the dragon' is not going to be an easy task and likewise also
far, far from being an overnight matter.  And seemingly more and more
this particular medium of 'warfare' has become in large part a thing
of vanity for the awakening and transformation of souls, save for
perhaps some limited pointing out and testing of the waters in
certain areas. NTL, I stand resolutely focused on forming an ever
increasing body of self-overcomers and presently feel quite hopeful,
which frankly is not always the case. So meanwhile I shall continue
onward with dress-rehearsals (getting every last 2 + 2 to equal 4) at
my AA meetings and being of good-cheer until bigger and better things
come along, or I die (change forms) in action on the 'firing line of
life'. But then again perhaps I too came too early.

Bob M.
___________________________________________

> if this was Neitzsche's viewpoint, then he was even more insane
than I realized. This, and your interpretation, are clearly examples
of the "fragmented mind" that you then go on to wring your hands
over....Lacking in any grasp of any totality, any sense of
compassion, any sense of real historical issues, and surely lacking
any self-critical sense whatsoever, this viewpoint characterizies the
fetishized mind projecting its own vacant pseudo-superiority (i.e.
its barely conscious sense of inferiority) and its "no nonsense"
cynicism concerning the fate of the majority of people on earth.  Why
is it that certain kinds of males are always the ones to put forward
such crudely insensitive arm-chair "philosophizing?" The illusory
projection of the "will-to-power" is naturally the pathos of the
alienated, constricted mind which, in real life,  demonstrates
anything but a real "will-to-power," and in fact, always opts for the
mystical father figure appearing from elsewhere to carry out the
sentence. The hope for the "perishing" of the "greater portion of
humanity" is most-likely the inverted awareness of one's own need for
oblivion, as the sadism involved here is the inverted need for a
masochistic submission. In other words, what is being asked for is a
good spanking from Daddy -- thus the references to "early childhood
formative conditioning" and the "fragmented" "sensate system." In
other words, the allusions that appear here denote more about the
speaker than about the world situation, or rather, they describe the
unconscious motivations of the speaker -- that is, the need for sado-
masochism, need for authority, submission, mystical projection,
fragmentation, compartmentalism, reduction of self-awareness. These
tendencies would have to be further analysed to then uncover deeper
motivations.....

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