Work doesn't block the doorway it pretends it is the destination.

Waged work remains today the centerpiece of late capitalist economic systems; it is, of course, the way most people acquire access to the necessities of food, clothing, and shelter. It is not only the primary mechanism by which income is distributed, it is also the basic means by which status is allocated, and by which most people gain access to healthcare and retirement. After the family, waged work is often the most important, if not sole, source of sociality for millions. Raising children with attributes that will secure them forms of employment that can match if not surpass the class standing of their parents is the gold standard of parenting. In addition, "making people capable of working is," as Nona Glazer notes, "the central goal of schooling, a criterion of successful medical and psychiatric treatment, and an ostensible goal of most welfare policies and unemployment compensation programs" (1993, 33). Helping to make people "work read" and moving them into jobs are central objectives of social work (Macarov 1980, 12), a common rationale for the prison system, and an important inducement to preform military service. Indeed, enforcing work and the other side of defending property rights, is a key function of the state (Seidman 1991, 315), and a particular preoccupation of the post welfare, neoliberal state.

-- Kathi Weeks "The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries"

"White Americans find it as difficult as white people elsewhere..."

James Baldwin at writer's congress, 1962. Copyright Marc Riboud / Magnum Photos

A passage from "The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin

"White Americans find it as difficult as white people elsewhere do to divest themselves of the notion that they are in possession of some intrinsic value that black people need, or want. And this assumption –which, for example, makes the solution to the Negro problem depend on the speed with which Negros accept and adopt white standards– is revealed in all kinds of striking ways, from  Bobby Kennedy's assurance that a Negro can become President in forty years to the unfortunate tone of warm congratulation with which so many liberals address their Negro equals.

It is the Negro, of course, who is presumed to have become equal –an achievement that not only proves the comforting fact that perseverance has no color but also overwhelmingly corroborates the white man's sense of his own value. Alas, this value can scarcely be corroborated in any other way; there is certainly little enough in the white man's public or private life that one should desire to imitate. White men, at the bottom of their hearts, know this. Therefore, a vast amount of energy that goes into what we call the Negro problem is produce by white mans' profound desire not to be judged by those who are not white, not to be seen as he is, and at the same time a vast amount of the white anguish is rooted in the white man's equally profound need to be seen as he is, to be released from the tyranny of his mirror. All of us know, whether or not we are able to admit it, that mirrors can only lie, that death by drowning is all that awaits one there. It is for this reason that love, is so desperately sought and so cunningly avoided. Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace –not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth. And I submit, then, that the racial tensions that menace Americans today have little to do with real antipathy –on the contrary, indeed– and are involved only symbolically with color. These tensions are rooted in the very same depth as those from which love springs, or murder. The white man's unadmitted –and apparently, to him unspeakable– private fears and longings are projected onto the Negro.

The only way he can be released from the Negro's tyrannical power over him is to consent, in effect, to become black himself, to become a part of that suffering and dancing country that he now watches wistfully from the nights of his lonely power and, armed with spiritual traveler's checks, visits surreptitiously after dark. How can one respect, let alone adopt, the values of a people who do not, on any level whatever, live the way they say they do, or the way they say they should? I cannot accept the proposition that the four-hundred-year travail of the American Negro should result nearly in his attainment of the present level of American civilization. I am far from convinced that being released from the African witch doctor was worth-while if I am now –in order to support the moral contradiction and the spiritual aridity of my life– expected to become dependent on the American psychiatrist. It is a bargain I refuse.

The only thing white people have that black people need, or should want, is power –and no one holds power forever. White people cannot, in the generality, be taken as models of how to live. Rather, the white man is himself in sore need of new standard, which will release him from his confusion and place him once again in the fruitful communion wit the depth of his own being. And I repeat: The price of the liberation of the white people is the liberation of the blacks –the total liberation, in the cities, in the towns, before the law, and in the mind. Why, for example– especially knowing the family as I do– I should want to marry your sister is a great mystery to me. But your sister and I have every right to marry if we wish to, and no one has the right to stop us. If she cannot raise me to her level, perhaps I can raise her to mine.

In short, we, the black and the white deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation –if we are really, that is, to achieve our identity, our maturity, as men and women. To create on nation has proved to be a hideously difficult task; there is certainly no need now to create two, one black and one white.  -- James Baldwin 1963

Democratic Vistas

In 1871 Walt Whitman wrote an essay titled "Democratic Vistas". He seems to be aware that keeping women –in his time white women– from the vote was a great crime. He seems less conscious of the flaws woven into our country by chattel slavery. Those are flaws we've only started to mend and often against what seems like the will of the masses. Human rights should never be put to a vote. In spite of this all-to-common blindness I think Whitman's vision of democracy can offer us some hope. He recognizes that democracy as is popularly understood by the white Americas of his time is polluted with a belief that some humans should still be ruled, just in a democratic manner. Not so, says Whitman. The true aim of democracy is perfect individualism of all humans expressed by joining the masses, not ruling them, “Would you have in yourself the divine, vast, general law? Then merge yourself in it.” Here are a few highlights:


"We have frequently printed the word Democracy. Yet I cannot too often repeat that it is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawaken'd, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests out of which its syllables have come, from pen or tongue. It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history has yet to be enacted."

“The United States are destined either to surmount the gorgeous history of feudalism, or else prove the most tremendous failure of time.[...] The political history of the past may be summ'd up as having grown out of what underlies the words, order, safety, caste, and especially out of the need of some prompt deciding authority, and of cohesion at all cost. Leaping time, we come to the period within the memory of people now living, when, as from some lair where they had slumber'd long, accumulating wrath, sprang up and are yet active...”

"Did you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elections, for politics, and for a party name? I say democracy is only of use there that it may pass on and come to its flower and fruits in manners, in the highest forms of interaction between men, and their beliefs -- in religion, literature, colleges, and schools -- democracy in all public and private life, and in the army and navy."

"I think, after all, the sublimest part of political history, and its culmination, is currently issuing from the American people. I know nothing grander, better exercise, better digestion, more positive proof of the past, the triumphant result of faith in human kind, than a well-contested American national election."

"I have everywhere found, primarily, thieves and scalliwags arranging the nominations to offices, and sometimes filling the offices themselves. I have found the north just as full of bad stuff as the south. Of the holders of public office in the Nation or the States or their municipalities, I have found that not one in a hundred has been chosen by any spontaneous selection of the outsiders, the people, but all have been nominated and put through by little or large caucuses of the politicians, and have got in by corrupt rings and electioneering, not capacity or desert. I have noticed how the millions of sturdy farmers and mechanics are thus the helpless supple-jacks of comparatively few politicians. And I have noticed more and more, the alarming spectacle of parties usurping the government, and openly and shamelessly wielding it for party purposes."


"Sad, serious, deep truths. Yet are there other, still deeper, amply confronting, dominating truths. Over those politicians and great and little rings, and over all their insolence and wiles, and over the powerfulest parties, looms a power, too sluggish may-be, but ever holding decisions and decrees in hand, ready, with stern process, to execute them as soon as plainly needed -- and at times, indeed, summarily crushing to atoms the mightiest parties, even in the hour of their pride."

And a few lines that I find are a quintessential example of "same story different era" (NOTE: I do not think all business people are corrupt):

"The depravity of the business classes of our country is not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater. The official services of America, national, state, and municipal, in all their branches and departments, except the judiciary, are saturated in corruption, bribery, falsehood, mal-administration; and the judiciary is tainted. The great cities reek with respectable as much as non-respectable robbery and scoundrelism. In fashionable life, flippancy, tepid amours, weak infidelism, small aims, or no aims at all, only to kill time. In business, (this all-devouring modern word, business,) the one sole object is, by any means, pecuniary gain. The magician's serpent in the fable ate up all the other serpents; and money-making is our magician's serpent, remaining to-day sole master of the field."

You can read the whole thing here.

I have ventured to paint my happiness on the wall

I know a women who craves her own suffering. She loves to be needed so she actively believes that everyone is downtrodden and desires her concern. She loves no one, but loves everyone's pain - real or imagined.

THE CRAVING FOR SUFFERING -- When I think of the craving to do something, which continually tickles and spurs those millions of young Europeans who cannot endure their boredom and themselves, then I realize that they must have a craving to suffer and to find in their suffering a probable reason for action, for deeds. Neediness is needed! Hence the politicians' clamor, hence many false, fictitious  exaggerated "conditions of distress" of all sorts of classes and the blind readiness to believe in them. These young people demand that  -- not happiness but unhappiness should approach from the outside and become visible; and their imagination is busy in advance to turn it into a monster so that afterward they can fight a monster. If these people who crave distress felt the strength inside themselves to benefit themselves and to do something for themselves internally, then they would also know how to create for themselves, internally, their very own authentic distress. Then their inventions might be more refined and their satisfactions might sound like good music, while at present they fill the world with their clamor about distress and all too often introduce into it the feeling of distress. They do not know what to do with themselves - and therefore paint the distress of others on the wall; they always need others! And continually other others! - Pardon me, my friend, I have ventured to paint my happiness on the wall.  

-- Nietzsche

meeting with the dark side of the moon

"So we do not descend to the bottom of the hill merely by seeing the dark side of ourself, or our friends, difficult as that is, Baba Yaga, in Russian tales, asks: Are you here to pursue a good deed or to shirk it? We reach the bottom when Baba Yaga's hostile boar energy has completely replaced - for a time - childlike eros which each of us felt when our mother set a breast to our mouth, or later set a cup of milk down for us at the table, or when our first marvelous girlfriend beckoned us to bed. These loves are all well; but descent is complete when both have been replaced by the boar-tusked, hog bristled, big-mouthed, skull-necklaced, insanely high-spirited energy of Baba Yaga.

Something wants us there, wants the meeting with the Dark Queen, wants the boar to open his mouth, wants Grendel's pool to fill with blood, wants the swords to melt, wants the Giantess to put the boy in her sack.

Young men in our culture often imagine, when they look forward to meeting Baba Yaga, that they can "kill" her. They imagine annihilation, total victory; but the stories make clear that such fantasies belong to the uninitiated men. The only solution to power of the witch is for the young man to develop energy as great as hers, as harsh, as wild, as shrewd, as clear in its desire. When a young man arrives at her house, proves himself to be up too her level of intensity, purpose, and respect for the truth, she will sometimes say, "Okay, what do you want to know?" -- Robert Bly from "Iron John"

Life is always on the edge of death...

“The real damage is done by those millions who want to ‘survive.’ The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small.

"It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn."

Sophie Scholl: Die letzten Tage (2005). Quote from Sophie Scholl, a student leader of the peaceful anti-government resistance group the White Rose in 1940s Germany. She was a biology major at the University of Munich. She was beheaded by the National Socialists in February, 1943.

via

humanity itself should be always more vivid

"...the things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things are more valuable than extraordinary things; nay, they are more extraordinary. Man is something more awful than men; something more strange. The sense of the miracle of humanity itself should be always more vivid to us than any marvels of power, intellect, art, or civilization. The mere man on two legs, as such, should be felt as something more heartbreaking than any music and more starling than any caricature. Death is more tragic even than death by starvation. Having a nose is more comic even than having a Norman nose." -- From "Orthodoxy" by G. K. Chesterton

Finite and Infinite Games

Today I began the following.




"The rules of the finite game may not change; the rules of an infinite game must change.

Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.
Finite players are serious; infinite games are playful.
A finite player plays to be powerful; an infinite player plays with strength.
A finite player consumes time; an infinite player generates time.
The finite player aims for eternal life; the infinite player aims for eternal birth.
The choice is yours."

"There is but one infinite game."

A great rabbi stands teaching in the marketplace...

Orson Scott Card (An excerpt from the beginning of chapter 16)

A great rabbi stands teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife's adultery, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death. (There is a familiar version of the story, but a friend of mine, a speaker for the dead, has told me of two other rabbis that faced the same situation. Those are the ones I'm going to tell you.)

The rabbi walks forward and stands beside the woman. Out of respect for him the mob forbears, and waits with the stones heavy in their hands. "Is there anyone here," he says to them, "who has not desired another man's wife, another woman's husband?" 

They murmur and say, "We all know the desire. But, Rabbi none of us are acted on it." 

The rabbi says, "Than kneel down and give thanks that God made you strong." He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of the market. Just before he lets her go, he whispers to her, "Tell the lord magistrate who saved his mistress. Then he'll know I am his loyal servant."

So the woman lives, because the community is too corrupt to protect itself from disorder. Another rabbi, another city. He goes to her and stops the mob, as in the other story, and says, "Which of you is without sin? Let him cast the fist stone." 

The people are abashed, and they forget their unity of purpose in the memory of their own individual sins, Someday, they think, I may be like this woman, and I'll hope for forgiveness and another chance. I should treat her the way I wish to be treated. 

As they open their hands and let the stones fall to the ground, the rabbi picks up one of the fallen stones, lifts it high over the woman's head, and throws it straight down with all his might. It crushes her skull and dashes her brains onto the cobblestones. 

"Nor am I without sin," he says to the people. "But if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead, and our city with it." 

So he woman died because her community was too rigid too endure her deviance. 

The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is so startlingly rare in our experience. Most communities lurch between decay and rigor mortis, and when they veer too far, they die. Only one rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation. So, of course, we killed him. 

"sainthood... a thing human beings should avoid"

"To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others. The autobiography leaves it uncertain whether Gandhi behaved in an inconsiderate way to his wife and children, but at any rate it makes it clear that on three occasions he was willing to let his wife and child die rather than administer the animal food prescribed by the doctor. It is true that the threatened death never actually occurred, and that Gandhi--with, one gathers, a good deal of moral pressure in the opposite direction--always gave the patient the choice of staying alive at the price of committing a sin: still, if the decision had been solely his own, he would have forbidden the animal food, whatever the risks might be. There must be, he says, some limit to what we will do in order to remain alive, and the limit is well on this side of chicken broth. This attitude is, perhaps, a nobel one, but in the sense in which--I think--most people would give the word, it is inhuman. The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is in the end prepared to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals. No doubt alcohol and tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint should avoid, but sainthood is also a thing human beings should avoid. There is an obvious retort to this, but one should be wary about making it. In this yogi-ridden age, it is too readily assumed that "non-attachment" is not only better than a full acceptance of the earthly life, but that the ordinary man only rejects it because it is too difficult: in other words, that the average human being is a failed saint. It is doubtful whether this is true. "

-- George Orwell in his "Reflections on Gandhi"

they didn't try too hard to be all men and no animal

From Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles"

- The captain nodded. "Tell me about [the] civilization here," he said, waving his hand at the mountain towns.
- "They knew how to live with nature and get along with nature. They didn't try too hard to be all men and no animal. That's that mistake we made when Darwin showed up. We embraced him and Huxley and Freud, all smiles. And then we discovered that Darwin and our religions didn't mix. Or at lease we didn't think they did. We were fools. We tried to budge Darwin and Huxley and Freud. They wouldn't move very well. So, like idiots, we tried knocking down religion.
- "We succeeded pretty well. We lost our faith and went around wondering what life was for. If art was nor more than a frustrated outflinging of desire, if religion was no more than self-delusion, what good was life? Faith had always given us an answers to all things. But it all went down the drain with Freud and Darwin. We were and still are a lost people."
- "And the Martians are a found people? inquired the captain.
- "yes. They knew how to combine science and religion so the two worked side by side, neither denying the other, each enriching the other."
- "That sounds ideal."
- "It was. I'd like to show you how the Martians did it."
- "My men are waiting."
- "We'll be gone half an hour. Tell them that, sir."
- The captain hesitated, then rose and called an order down the hill. 

- Spender led him over into a little Martian village built all of cool perfect marble. There were great friezes of beautiful animals, white-limbed cat things and yellow-limbed sun symbols, and statues of bull-like creatures and statues of men and women and huge fine-featured dogs."

- "There's your answer, Captain."
- "I don't see."
- "The Martians discovered the secret of life among animals. The animal doesn't not question life. It lives. Its very reason for living is life; it enjoys and relishes life. You see-the statuary, the animals symbols, again and again."
- "It looks pagan."
- "On the contrary, those are God symbols, symbols of life. Man had become too much man and not enough animal on Mars too. And the men of Mars realized that in order to survive they would have to forgo asking that one question any longer: Why live? Life was its own answer. Life was the propagation of more life and the living of as good a life as possible. The Martians realize that they asked the question 'Why live at all?" at the height of some period of war and despair, when there was no answer. But once the civilization calmed, quieted, and wars ceased, the question became senseless in a new way. Life was now good and needed no arguments."
- "It sounds as if the Martians were quite naive."
- "Only when it paid to be naive..."

a merry life and a short one

"In an honest service, there is thin commons, low wages, and hard labour; in this, plenty and satiety, pleasure and ease, liberty and power; and who would not ballance creditor on this side, when all the hazard that is run for it, at worst, is only a sower look or two at choking. No, a merry life and a short one shall be my motto." -- Captain Bartholomew Roberts

they do not make it just as they please

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please: they do not make it under circumstances they choose by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted by the past." -- Karl Marx

Whatever happened to honor?

From John Lyde Wilson's "The American: Code of Honor" or "Rules for the Government of Principles and Seconds In Dueling."

"I would not wish to be understood to say that I do not desire to see dueling cease to exist, entirely, in society. But my plan for doing it away is essentially different from the one which teaches a passive forbearance to insult and indignity. I would inculcate in the rising generation a spirit of lofty independence. I would have them taught that nothing was more derogatory to the honor of a gentleman than to wound the feelings of any one, however humble. That, if wrong be done to another, it was more an act of heroism and bravery to repair the injury, than to persist in error, and enter into mortal combat with the injured party. That this would be an aggravation of that which was already odious, and would put him without the pale of all decent society and honorable men."

environmentalism: the secular religion

Freeman Dyson, "The Question of Global Warming"

All the books that I have seen about the science and economics of global warming… miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.

Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.

Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate. Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard.

lets all try not to die

"Neither misery nor folly seems to me any part of the inevitable lot of man. And I am convinced that intelligence, patience, and eloquence can, sooner or later, lead the human race out of its self-imposed tortures provided it does not exterminate itself meanwhile." -- Bertrand Russell

"the happy region of the Three Dimensions'

From "Flatland" by Edwin Abbott Abbott

You, who are blessed with shade as well as light, you, who are gifted with two eyes, endowed with a knowledge of perspective, and charmed with the enjoyment of various colours, you, who can actually SEE an angle, and contemplate the complete circumference of a Circle in the happy region of the Three Dimensions-- how shall I make it clear to you the extreme difficulty which we in Flatland experience in recognizing one another's configuration?

"Flatland" is free online.

Marx on religion

"Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man—state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. 

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the Opiate of the people

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo."

A tragic sense of life

From David Orr's "Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to the Postmodern World"

"The tragic sense of life, however, is neither resigned or long-faced. It locates the sources of our suffering in ourselves, in human decisions, institutions, and above all in the pretense that we are beyond the laws of ecology, thermodynamics, or even morality.

"A closer reading of Homo sapiens would suggest that at best we are a spindly legged, upstart, disruptive species whose intellect exceeds its wisdom.... our major accomplishment in the larger scheme of things might be only that we recirculated massive amounts of stored carbon in the final moments of our evolutionary career.

"For all of our puffed-up, self-serving talk about the "ascent of man," we have truly no idea whether it is an ascent or a descent, or, if the former, what its destination might be. If our rational consciousness is our crowning glory, we are still unable to say why, or even to explain what it is or why it has occurred.

"On such unstable turf we best tread lightly, without the baggage of pretense, overblown pride, or as the Greeks called it, hubris.   Prudence would lead us to take our esteemed rationality, which may serve ascent or descent equally well, with a large dose of skepticism."

"The millions are awake enough for physical labor..."

From "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau:

"Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been slumbering?... The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?"

"Walden" is free online.