Nas2EndWork "Pamela's Blogs":
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Blog 1: "You Know How I Know You're a Slave?"
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Blog 2: "Where the Hell is Vasquez When We Really Need Her?"
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Blog 3: "How Do I Con Thee? Let Me Count the Ways...Or: What Is 'Individual Freedom'?"
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Blog 4: "Is It Never Too Late to Be the Parent I Should Have Been?"
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Blog 5: "Are We Innocent When We Dream?"
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Blog 6: "To Enlarge the Realm of the Possible"
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Blog 7: "Bury the Corpse!"
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Blog 8: "Just Say NO! Make Coke the First Corpse to Go!"
Blog 9: "Compassion Always Comes Too Late"
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Blog 10: "To Live and Die a Slave?"
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Blog 11: "Crime Is The Flip Side"
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Blog 12: "Rocket Science Ain't Rocket Science"
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Blog 13: "The Fuck-It Factor"
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Blog 14: "How Do You Organize (Our World) Without Hierarchy?"
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Blog 15: "Eating What The Earth Gives Me"
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Blog 16: "When You Become A Voice Of The Voiceless"
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Blog 17: "You Got To Sucker The Corn Or the Ears Won't Be Worth Nothin'"
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Blog 18: "Packaging Our Children For The Podrunks"
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Blog 19: "The Good Livers"
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Blog 20: "Is There Such A Thing As "Voicelessness"?"
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Blog 21: "Brandon Terrell Jones"
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Blog 22: "Our Real Work"
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Blog 23: "Gennenice Chapman Johnson"
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Blog 24: "What Is Your 'Theory of Change'?"
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Blog 25: "The Plum Tree"
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Blog 26: "Wholism Is A Health Issue"
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Blog 27: "Who's Loving You Michael?"
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Blog 28: "Getting Busy"
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Blog 29: "Depopulation"
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Blog 30: "Growing A Mass Movement"
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Blog 31: "Ridley's Choice"
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Blog 32: "Children Of The Technology"
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Blog 33: "The Devastated Earthscapes From Lawrence Summers' "Logic""
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Blog 34: "How Do We Grow A Mass Movement?"
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Blog 35: "We Have To Make A Loud Noise"
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Blog 36: "The Phoenix"
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Blog 37: "Wind-Blown Seeds Need Roots"
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Blog 38: "Embracing The Plural"
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Blog 39: "Round And Round And Round We Go But Not Merrily"
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Blog 40: "Unplugging"
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Blog 41: "Thank You Sandy From Petaluma"
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Blog 42: “You Got City Hands Mr. Hooper”
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Blog 43: "Letter to Michael Reynolds"
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Blog 44: "The Last Civil Rights Movement"
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Blog 45: "The 4 R's: The Ruses Used To Rend Us...Race, Religion, Reason, and Recognition - 1"
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Blog 46: "The 4 Ruses - 2"
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Blog 47: "The 4 Ruses - 3"
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Blog 48: "The Responsibility Of The Intellectual"
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Blog 49: "The Hidden Malevolence: AKA Michael Moore's Dilemma"
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Blog 50: "Wading Into The Muck Of State"
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Blog 51: "Seeing The Communal Alternative"
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Blog 52: "Becoming The Function"
Pamela's Blog 42
(Part 1 begun on Sunday, September 27, 2009 by Nas2EndWork.org
[There's a 'bigness' here I'm finding it hard to get near...]
“You Got City Hands Mr. Hooper…”
“…you been countin' money all your life.” (Continued from: OTheRLog 35, Saturday, 09.26.09 )
“You Got City Hands” (Part 2) *
[Begun on April 25, 2010]
[…see “Reclaiming Our Stolen Gifts… Our Leadership… To Establish A Future Based On Distributed Generation”, the November 10, 2013 show, for a discussion of this quote.]
by Pamela Satterwhite
"We re-affirm the Christian principles for which the Flags stand, namely the right to freedom for each nation, the community of nations, redeemed from avarice and its outcome in the capitalist system....We wish to draw attention to the passage of Holy Scripture inscribed across our Flag: 'He hath made of one blood all nations.'" (Robert Shaw, The Flag)
When I was in Taos, New Mexico, a bookstore owner heard me out while I pitched the book. He was friendly and supportive, said he would read it, but before I left told me, "I have to be honest with you, I haven't had much luck with things that are free. People will take it but they don't value it."
I'm in that low place where children and social invisibles frequently find themselves when they attempt to speak and are forced to notice they don't really exist.
A week or so ago I gave the book to a man from Ghana who frequents the same cafe I do. Grizzled, red-eyed and loquacious, a man-of-the-world, well-traveled and read, he seemed the sort who would read it…
...I never offer it, however, without explaining what it's about, what I'm about, and without saying, "If it's not your cup of tea, just leave it in a library for someone else to find."
He accepted it warmly, saying, "After I've read it, I want to discuss it with you."
Well, we met again, today, as I hurried in, bladder...at that point. And though we nodded and smiled, I fully intended to leave him with his thoughts, and me with mine.
I needed a chance to think....
...More than that...
...I needed a chance to find my place in the world – all for the price of a cup of coffee and the time to drink it....
...Perhaps what I needed was a chance...to allow those:
...subtle actions inaccessible by any sort of lens, but tracked in that outer darkness through long pathways of necessary sequence by the inward light which is the last refinement of Energy, capable of bathing even the ethereal atoms in its ideally illuminated space.
...to bloom in my consciousness.
(Pause to appreciate Eliot's prose.)
But...once I was seated with caffeine and sugar I could feel his eyes seeking mine with a look that meant a little chat would not be amiss...
I obliged until we somehow got onto the subject of "religion," after which I found myself increasingly reluctant to carry my end. Eventually I said, "You know, I'm not interested in religion in the least."
He paused...expanded the theme...clarified his argument...
...but finally I had to admit...out loud...that I was there to sort my random thoughts...and he graciously drew himself apart. We mouthed mutual nothings, then he rose, and left...
...to return minutes later with a well-thumbed book...
"Just glance at this when you have the chance," he said.
...I sit holding it now. It's called Think On These Things by Krishnamurti.
I open and scan and am dismayed. It was a message I didn't think I needed.
...From the chapter, "Ambition":
...Is it possible to create a society in which there will be no inward or outward conflict?...You will find the right answer when you love what you are doing...
Perhaps the man from Ghana'd read the "Preface" to Waking Up, and concluded I needed the Great Truth that the "solution" to one's dissatisfaction with "work" is to find one's "Right Work"...
...and then get busy doing it.
I had that conversation...decades ago...and here I am still having it...that one and...
...how many other like ones....
There are as many belief systems out there as there are tribes to think them. Playing with ideas is fun – no doubt...
...me and George play every day...
...but I want my world back.
Once we begin putting 'freedom' in our bodies, in our hands, biological memory will take over, the multiplicitous belief systems fade to black, and it will all flood back...
...the knowledge of what it means to be a human being...
[See John Trudell quote in Waking Up, Culture, Pt. 2 ]
...which is not as straight-forward as it may seem.
* “You Got City Hands” (Part 2)
...like most of those who in the end come to think for themselves, he was a slow grower. By far the greater part, moreover, of his education had been an attempt, not so much to keep him in blinkers as to gouge his eyes out altogether. (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)
Ernest resolved at once, as he had fallen so far, to fall still lower – promptly, gracefully and with the idea of rising again, rather than cling to the skirts of a respectability which would permit him to exist on sufferance only, and make him pay an utterly extortionate price for an article which he could do better without.
He arrived at this result more quickly than he might otherwise have done through remembering something he had once heard his aunt say about "kissing the soil." This had impressed him and stuck by him perhaps by reason of its brevity; when later on he came to know the story of Hercules and Antaeus, he found it one of the very few ancient fables which had a hold over him – his chiefest debt to classical literature. His aunt had wanted him to learn carpentering, as a means of kissing the soil should his Hercules ever throw him. It was too late for this now – or he thought it was – but the mode of carrying out his Aunt's idea was a detail; there were a hundred ways of kissing the soil besides becoming a carpenter. (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)
My son doesn't understand why I watch certain movies at certain times singularly...to the exclusion of all others.
When I was writing Waking Up I cycled back and forth between The Godfather and Aliens, because The Godfather is about 'power' (and 'seeing reality'), and Aliens is about working with a crew to confront a common problem collectively (and 'seeing reality.')
At this moment, **** this week, the film I watch obsessively is Avatar. (And as some among those reading this...may think Avatar is science fiction...and view their own lives as the sheerest reality...it's important to recall our Machiavelli:
"...men in general judge rather by the eye than by the hand...")
James Cameron is my favorite film chronicler (in the U.S.) of the vitality and creativity of 'everyday folks'. I don't know where his (body) understanding of the power of the 'crew' (i.e., the communal) comes from – I guess he used to work in one – but his characters are people I can recognize, people with down-to-earth-speak instead of the twerps and tweeps...that artificial staccato-scatter-chatter of the self-consciously verbose (the traits podrunks want us to emulate – speaking fast, pretending command, with little substance and heart behind it).
I also extend gratitude to him for giving us depictions of strong, down-to-earth women. Heroic women. (This is such a rare gift it can make you cry just to think about it.)
And the more I ponder Avatar...
...the more I appreciate...
...the layered longing that went into making it....
...Not only did he have to see...
...the communal reality...
...of all living things,...
...but he also had to see...
...how blunted our sensibilities have come to be...
...in this 'podrunk-made' world of artificiality....
...And choosing the challenge...
...of helping us grasp...
...the interconnectedness of all things...
...meant accepting that...
...we had...
...to see it....
The brilliance of his move...
...to make the invisible visible...
...so we could see it...
...is what I'm trying to do...
...when I challenge...
...what is assumed.
(Reincorporating "all our sides"...
...is way way bigger than merging 'body' with 'mind'...
...it means healing historical divergences...
...beginning where they started...
– in 'the West'.)
And this is where James Cameron's film is so helpful...because it shows what we've lost...suppressed...
– and that...'suppressed' don't mean...'gone.'
(The brilliance of this – making the invisible visible – so we could see it...
...I'm realizing now is precisely what I'm hoping to accomplish...
...in raising the question of 'the heroic'.)
How to start seeing and feeling the communal now...feel our wholeness...begin welcoming it back into our bodies...if not through the heroic?
...What does it mean to be heroic...in this sick system?
...In Avatar we see honorific animal killing as...
...almost the ultimate in warrior-making...
(...not a high point...but I get his meaning...)
...but in this world of the tamed...
...when everything is stamped "podrunk-made"...
...what is the "No" to the "Yes" we're confronted with?...
...particularly as almost every human being you see...
...represents 'the state' in hiding...?
...I raise the question because...
...we all must start to practice...
...heroism as a day-to-day reality...
...in our bodies...
...if we're to begin to confront...
...the chaos and crises 'podrunk-made' for us....
...For instance...
...How to say "No" with love...
...to a parent who thinks hitting children...
...is 'discipline'?...
...And how to practice 'body-presence'...
...when we're all conditioned to not listen to it?...
[The message is everywhere that...
...to succeed...
...you must ignore your body.]
...And how to begin to value the earth...
...when the dominant value we see is 'Mind-Worship'?...
...How to out the abuse that's been 'normalized'?...
...help our brothers and sisters see it...
...so we can begin to make what we do more conscious?...
...If 'the hand' is associated with hurting...
...how can we change it to mean...
..."life-affirming"?
Heroism in defense of the communal is a quality we are much in need of right now – this is discussed in "The Communal Alternative" – so it's not a small thing that he provides opportunities to practice feeling it.
But to get there requires a shift...
...I guess you could say "of consciousness"...
...but only to be arrived at in its entirety...
...by making a shift in our bodies.
"We-are-all-one" is not in our bodies anymore – just as few understand anymore the "power-of-the-hand". Our experience has been stripped of them – making it imperative that we question...the pap they've substituted them.
(What follows is particularly directed at parents. It suggests that if you want to have a lasting legacy, you should give the gift of largeness.)
So what is it about the way the upper-middle-class rear their young – guided carefully by "the market" – that holds us all back?...
...ever pushing...
...ever monitoring...
...ever scrutinizing and polishing...
...ever applauding...
...ever prodding...
...ever challenging them to be "better-than"...
...the folks who work with their hands....
(...and the folks they compete with for pay...
– that of course goes without saying....)
Jack Grubman was desperate to enroll his twin daughters in the preschool run by the 92nd Street Y. By reputation it is the finest in New York City, and it's considerably harder to get into than Harvard. The year was 1999, and Smith Barney telecom stock analyst Grubman was a major player in the overheated market. He went to Sandy Weill, chief executive of Citigroup, which owned Smith Barney, with a complex proposition. In return for Weill's help in getting his daughters into the 92nd Y (help that included a $1 million Citigroup donation as well as Weill's gentle persuasion of key board members of the Y), Grubman promised to upgrade AT&T stock, whose chairman Weill needed as an ally, from "hold" to "strong buy." The deal was struck, and the Grubman filles took their first step along a well-marked pathway to success....
...From Beverly Hills to Boca Raton, wealthy parents are spending upwards of $15,000 a year on the education of their three- and four-year-olds. (David L. Kirp, The Sandbox Investment, p. 1 - 2)
The new brain research, Hillary Clinton declared, marked a scientific revolution of Copernican proportions....It was like the Star Trek script, slightly rewritten – the brain, and not space, had become the final frontier....
...What began as an effort to help those kids whose chaotic early experiences put them in the greatest danger of future failure turned into a middle-class parenting frenzy....
...The brain has bedazzled the early education movement....
..."The brain," a New York Times reporter observed, "has become a pop star"....
...The market has cashed in on the belief that early brain development is the secret of success. At a time when parents are looking for every edge for their children, when preschools can charge more than universities – and have longer waiting lists – what's peddled as brain food flies off the shelves....
...As one well-educated, professional – and plainly fearful – mother told a writer for the Atlantic Monthly, "It sounds panicky, I know, but if those neurons are dying off. You have to get in there. If my baby doesn't use it with a stimulating game or class, he is going to lose it." (David L. Kirp, The Sandbox Investment, p. 99 - 105)
But does that expensive education they buy really mean their children will be more 'creative'...or just more heartless and narcissistic?...as they're told by the system they're "eons ahead" of the rest held back by the No Child Left Behind Act...with its brutal clubbing-in of a "skill-and-drill mentality" (p. 7)(...designed for "the masses" to drub us slubs out of the 'exclusivity tub' – also designed express for the purpose.)
"The Abyss we must fill is our disconnection from what's real." (From "Muck".)
We're not doing our children a favor when we overburden them with intense parental relationships...over-inflating our role and our meanings...creating psychologically-vulnerable beings... and psychic problems for a lifetime...(and plenty of fodder for novelists and filmmakers...but it sure don't get us to our future freedom....[I'm hoping more and more of us begin pondering this: "what does get us to our future freedom?"])
This 'cultivation' of children to make them more marketable commodities has devastating effects on their psyches...teaching them that we are all but "competing personalities"...that no one's in your corner unless you have the receipt for their purchase in your drawer....
...It communicates the message that "acting" as a substitute for "living"...and being priced...ranked...by performance – far from being nuts is somehow legitimate....
...as they dangle carrots...
...they repeat the refrain...
..."the biggest bonuses...
...to the biggest 'brain!'"...
...But in time we learn the inverse is true...
...that "the system" survives by lying to keep us confused...
...and that to claim our true power means unifying...
...self-determinatively...
...all our 'sides'....
...And as this is the most natural way of being...
...we must be lured into treating our 'hands'...
– and brothers and sisters –
...dismissively...
(...and into simply not seeing solidarity...).
...Then they con us into believing...
...that far from being tamed, mutilated and maimed...
...when we reduce ourselves to computer-like brains...
...we're actually made more 'attractive' that way....
...The lying then extends to calling 'the communal' "primitive"...
...and what could be worse...
...to the ethics-averse?
None of this need be said overtly. It's the unspoken message, in fact, that is the most potent. The child feels and sees quite clearly that 'mind' is what matters...while 'hands' (that is, those of others) exist to be commanded...
...that to live in one's head will open doors....
– be much rewarded –
...while to work with one's hands...
...means being sub-human....
– sometimes 'brute,' sometimes 'brigand' –
...stamped with the state guarantee....
..."you will never be 'seen'"....
And the 'performance' you're judged by is the facility with which you recognize the qualities that must be mimed if you are to survive (among the cutthroat.)...
...and the 'performance' best perfected is the capacity to regurgitate that which you're told – to manipulate the 'thoughts' you're taught.
Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully....
...What becomes of reason, conscience and religion in an alienated world? Superficially seen, they prosper....
...If we talk about reason, we must first decide what human capacity we are referring to....we must differentiate between intelligence and reason. By intelligence I mean the ability to manipulate concepts for the purpose of achieving some practical end. The chimpanzee – who puts the two sticks together in order to get at the banana because no one of the two is long enough to do the job – uses intelligence. So do we all when we go about our business, "figuring out" how to do things. Intelligence, in this sense, is taking things for granted as they are, making combinations which have the purpose of facilitating their manipulation; intelligence is thought in the service of biological survival. Reason, on the other hand, aims at understanding; it tries to find out what is behind the surface, to recognize the kernel, the essence of the reality which surrounds us. Reason is not without a function, but its function is not to further physical as much as mental and spiritual existence.
...Ethics, at least in the meaning of the Greco-Judaeo-Christian tradition, is inseparable from reason. Ethical behavior is based on the faculty of making value judgments on the basis of reason; it means deciding between good and evil, and to act upon the decision. Use of reason presupposes the presence of self; as does ethical judgment and action. Furthermore, ethics, whether it is that of monotheistic religion or that of secular humanism, is based on the principle that no institution and no thing is higher than any human individual; that the aim of life is to unfold man's love and reason and that every other human activity has to be subordinated to this aim. How then can ethics be a significant part of a life in which the individual becomes an automaton, in which he serves the big It? Furthermore, how can conscience develop when the principle of life is conformity? Conscience, by its very nature is nonconforming; it must be able to say no, when everybody else says yes; in order to say this "no" it must be certain in the rightness of the judgment on which the no is based. To the degree to which a person conforms he cannot hear the voice of this conscience, much less act upon it. Conscience exists only when man experiences himself as man, not as a thing, as a commodity.... (Erich Fromm, The Sane Society, p. 64, 169 - 170, 172 - 173)
"Reason, on the other hand, aims at understanding; it tries to find out what is behind the surface, to recognize the kernel, the essence of the reality which surrounds us." ( *** Study question:)
Once you recognize that the essence of "the system" is abuse...
...and that to participate in it means you participate in that project too...
...you also recognize that renouncing complicity...
...in order to embrace your full complex of possibilities...
– that is, turning to your wholeness with the goal of restoring it...
...claiming your "self" and choosing to refuse...
– means working with your brothers and sisters...
...to create something new.
(Even the child raised "progressively"...
...if the emphasis is on "intellectuality"...
...as a 'thing' to "add value to"...
...unconsciously becomes...
...a renunciation of "being One...
...with your brothers and sisters"...
...and embracing instead...
...the goal to rise above them.)
"Well-off families can provide the mental stimulation needed for genes to build the brain circuitry for intelligence," [says Eric Turkheimer]...
....[By] the time they are four years old, children growing up in poor families have been exposed to 32 million fewer spoken words than those whose parents are professionals. Four-year-olds from professional families have larger vocabularies than the parents of the poorest three-year-olds. This language gap translates directly into stunted academic trajectories when the children enter school. (David L. Kirp, The Sandbox Investment, p. 126 - 8)
What he neglects to mention in his expression of sympathy...
...is that these children of "professionals" are being pounded into little regurgitation machines...
...corrupting their capacities for true creativity....
"...children from the wealthiest households have the greatest opportunity to develop all their genetic capacities. [Do they, though?] The better off the family, the more a child's genetic potential is likely to be, as Turkheimer puts it, "maxed out." [But is that true, though?] (David L. Kirp, The Sandbox Investment, p. 126 - 7)
What about "heart"...
...or having a pulse...
...or a sense of connection to the 'all of it'?
I recall Studs Terkel's observation that African-American grandmothers left their grandchildren a rich oral legacy – they had lots of "grandmother stories" to tell....
...Perhaps "size of one's vocabulary" matters less than "size of one's soul"?
...Perhaps "intelligence" is just a nice word for "skilled in hoop-jumping"?
And what about that vocabulary that's most eloquent...
...captured in the alchemy of movement...
...in which the body expresses solidarity...
...with 'the all'...
...inherent in it?
I had a job once that took me to...
...another country...in...a school...
...a culture quite marvelous...
...that deaf youth made up for themselves.
Talk about eloquent!...
Talk about it...
...all you want...
...but seeing it...is a whole 'nother thing...
...entirely.
The language of the body is a lot more subtle...
...than the language of "the mind."
(The right understands the rage of everyday folks at the gross violations of good fellowship – that have become our day-to-day way of being – and has been successful at focusing that rage on the state.
So "the state", like "the police", serve the podrunks as buffers to absorb the discontent...and keep those stuck in it confused...while keeping the true culprits well-hidden...until their own arrogance gets the better of them.)
Another way of saying, then, that "ethics" and "reason" go hand-in-hand is..."conscience" and "creativity" go hand-in-hand.
Much of what this system calls "creative" is really "accommodation" – being willing to sell one's intelligence without asking for much more than to be regularly 'seen'...
(...petted, praised, given straight 'A's...).
For 'creativity' to be free, we have to be.
'Creativity' under conditions of Division is necessarily (by definition) limited...cannot embrace 'all' indiscriminately...cannot develop to its fullest capability.
To think authentically we have to look at material reality accurately..."Courage of our convictions"...depends on this...
One of the things I'm arguing...
...is the necessity for us to begin exploring...
...this thing called 'reality'...
...and I call 'false'...
...so we can see it for what it is...
...in order to change it.
And earth-connected peoples...
...are by definition more 'sane'...
...and 'see reality'...
...a lot more clearly...
...than those who believe...
...the people's interests are aligned...
...with those of the 'powers-that-be'.
And earth-connected peoples...
...are by definition better at...
...not mucking up...
...what the earth has given us.
It requires very little effort of reasoning to see...
...that our problems lie with class society.
The trees lopped off for this system...
...are like we lopped off for this system....
As if only It counts...
...while life can be discounted...
...so a tiny few can pretend...
...that the earth revolves around them.
What leads the majority...
...to refute the need for the hoops?...
...as we still deeply believe...
...in the hoops...
...you might even say...
...need the hoops...
– given our non-culture of invisibility –
...as a means of feeling...
...our life has meaning...
...particularly as the real challenges...
...our bodies want to address...
– as we are earth and the earth's in distress –
...are precisely those we're told to defer to...
...relinquish to...
...our so-called 'betters'...?
'Heroism' means putting others before 'self'...(or not recognizing the distinction...) in the service of generalized human freedom....
(...And...'heroism' means 'having fun' in the service of future freedom.)
Marcuse, along with Zola, fantasized that earth-connected peoples are too "oppressed" to demand liberation for our own bodies and the earth as a whole.
But these two were using the very dead world-view...
...they were hoping to move beyond....
And there are some who don't understand...
...the power of the hand...
– unified with mind...
...instead of despised...and...
...soul-infused...
...instead of ridiculed...
What can't be bought off...
...or pawned for "entertainment"...
...or controlled...
...i.e....
...the authentic...
...the real...
...our souls...
Those that can't be bought...
...the power-drunk are horrified by...
...and that one look on Robert Shaw's face...
...is enough to know why....
And that one look on Robert Shaw's face...I challenge you to name one other instance of it...in the whole history of U.S. cinema – the rage of one who works with his hands at the padded life money commands....
(The ancestors don't exist...
...for us to scrounge around in...
...searching for something...
...to take to market.)
(The ancestors don't exist...
...for us to rummage about in...
...searching for something...
...to take to market.)
(The ancestors don't exist...
...for us to root about in...
...searching for something...
...to take to market.)
One of the most powerful sentences I came across when I was doing the reading for Waking Up was:
It will be remembered that Adam Smith expected the land-divorced laborer to lose all intellectual interest. And M’Farlane expected “that the knowledge of writing and accounts will every day become less frequent among the common people” (1782).
*** Study question: Is the below an example of the use of 'Reason' or 'Intelligence'?
In one matter only did he openly backslide...tobacco....
...Tobacco had nowhere been forbidden in the Bible, but then it had not yet been discovered, and had probably only escaped proscription for this reason. We can conceive of St. Paul or even our Lord Himself as drinking a cup of tea, but we cannot imagine either of them as smoking a cigarette or a church-warden. Ernest could not deny this, and admitted that Paul would almost certainly have condemned tobacco in good round terms if he had known of its existence. Was it not then taking rather a mean advantage of the Apostle to stand on his not having actually forbidden it? On the other hand, it was possible that God knew Paul would have forbidden smoking, and had purposely arranged the discovery of tobacco for a period at which Paul should be no longer living. This might seem rather hard on Paul, considering all he had done for Christianity, but it would be made up to him in other ways.
These reflections satisfied Ernest that on the whole he had better smoke....There should be moderation he felt in all things, even in virtue.... (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh, p. 229)
**** 05.07.10
As 'civilization' ticks its way into oblivion * angels along its course, in conjunction and common calling with the earth, have noted the dull fog we live in, 'feel,' for the rest of us, that larger whole to which we're adjoined, try to turn our collective heads to see it...with subtlety...with love...with longing...
That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.
[See: "The Fuck-It Factor"]
...It's unsettling when you see that the folks who gain consciousness -- who are awake -- simultaneous with a power to speak to large numbers...like George Carlin...like Robert Shaw ... ** (it's a long list)...die before their time.
...And by 'consciousness' I mean gaining the ability to see through "the ruses used to rend us" -- who cut through the cons while speaking in a popular voice...
“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime”—Author unknown
[...in progress -- to be continued.]
* And I know some may believe themselves invulnerable (they certainly have 'worked hard' to become so.)
** See: "Round And Round And Round We Go But Not Merrily"
© Nas2EndWork (the NEW)