Pamela's Blog 12

Published on Monday, May 18, 2009 by Nas2EndWork.org

“Rocket Science Ain't Rocket Science”

("Thank You Sandy From Petaluma")

What leads to the need to claim full power?

by Pamela Satterwhite

...he became aware of muddled questions working in him: why poverty for some? Why wealth for others? Why the former under the heel of the latter....A secret shame, a hidden grief, gnawed at him; he knew nothing, so he didn't dare talk about the thing that moved him most – the equality of all men and the justice that called for a sharing among them of the goods of the earth. As a result, he was gripped by the uneducated man's methodless * passion for study....one volume, on cooperative societies, had set him dreaming for a whole month about a universal system of exchange in which money would be abolished and the functioning of society based on the value of work itself. As he felt himself beginning to think, the shame of his ignorance left him, and in its place came a sense of pride....

...What, weren't the workers to be allowed to think? Why, things were going to change just because the workers were finally thinking. In the old man's day a miner lived in the mine like an animal, like a coal-extracting machine – always underground, his ears and his eyes shut to what was going on outside. And that was why the rich people who ran things could agree among themselves so easily, could buy him and sell him and gobble him up alive....But now the miner was waking up down there; he was germinating in the earth just like a real seed, and one day you'd see what would spring up in these fields: men would spring up – yes, an army of men who would reestablish justice..... (Emile Zola, Germinal)

There’s something in the air. Do you feel it? A growing sense in that critical mass that it’s time for something new – and a growing sense that it will not happen unless we – we who do the work – make it happen.

We know that governments don’t lead – the very notion is laughable. But the understanding that’s emerging right now is that the designated “thinkers” – the ones our podrunk-planned system rewards with degrees and titles and official status – not only cannot make something new happen, but instead actively obstruct our getting to the NEW world.

Not on purpose, but because their thinking runs in well-worn ruts.

They cling to the familiar, because that’s what life tends to do…but also because they’ve been well rewarded, psychically and materially, for keeping to the ruts.

When life is in balance conservatism makes sense. In that circumstance we can look to our elders for knowledge and guidance…choosing the helpful plants, avoiding the poison. We can take what they’ve learned and advance it in the careful, methodical way that worked well when we were whole beings…many millennia ago.

But the times we’re in are burdened with human activity wildly out of balance with all other living things.

This result did not occur by happenstance.

For generations now we’ve been pummeled with the podrunk lie that each of us is on her own, alone.

As a result, we’ve gotten smaller and smaller, more fearful, more doubtful of our own power.

In the breach carved out by our doubt, the podrunks fattened a few egos, plumped a few pockets, then proclaimed and placed among us these “designated experts.”

The particular Division Work they do is to remind us all that this podrunk-planned disaster is much too complicated for the “average person” to grasp, let alone run. The most that can be expected of us is…service. And as the world grows ever more “complex,” our ‘service’ must be periodically retooled, so that our existence may be provided for…and justified.

…The focus [of the economic stimulus] should be on fundamental economic stimulus…Unless you focus on preparing – as Peter Drucker wrote fifty years ago – preparing American workers to accept the challenges of a highly technological, service-based society where the money comes from the actual profits of production and not from financial speculation, it’s going to be a disaster all over again, even if there’s temporary respite. (Lawrence Mitchell being interviewed on KPFA’s Sunday Sedition, May 3, 2009)

He would deny that he means what I’m saying he means: that we are fit only to be “hands” for the “brains” of the “thinkers.” But unless and until he promotes the opposite: that’s it’s long past time for those of us who make and remake the human world to be the ones planning it…until he says this, he reinforces the myth that we can’t…“aren’t able to,” “…sorry.”

Entering the trades in my mid-forties I was forced out of my “comfort zone.” I launched myself in, in a happy, naïve way. I took it as a given that if I bumbled along long enough, I’d learn, however unmasterfully…took it as a given that as a living thing, thinking-things-through is what we do.

And, you know what? I was right.

Rocket science, like learning electrical work, or whatever you’ve a longing to do, is about slicing things up into small enough bites, and not swallowing ’til you chew.

Nothing magical about that.

It’s called “life.”

Time we demanded some.

Anything truly new must come from the people.

(Our children are down for this, by the way, they’re rooting for us.

Let’s don’t disappoint.)

* i.e., moved by the earth and naught else.

http://www.nas2endwork.org

Nascence to End Work

Nas2EndWork "Pamela's Blogs":

Pamela's Blog 12

Published on Monday, May 18, 2009 by Nas2EndWork.org

“Rocket Science Ain't Rocket Science”