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Miklos Nyiszli's Lessons On Class (temporary page)

April 17, 2014

Sisters and Brothers: If anyone has Adobe CS4 DreamWeaver (and InDesign) for the Mac that I can acquire from you please let me know. After five and a half years of using this suite of programs, they now no longer work. I don't want to replace the files on my machine with modified versions that I do online... so... until I know how to proceed in getting CS4 DreamWeaver... I'll put the text and audio files for the next few shows here (beginning with the April 20, 2014 show) and hope I re-acquire DreamWeaver soon.

Apologies in advance for the inevitable typos and funkiness of appearance (which never was much to scream praise about anyway...

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* “Remaining April 13, 2014 audio files …”

 

Remaining audio-files from the April 13, 2014 show:

…let’s not forget that the wage work system is the mechanism by which states utilize our energy… by which they do everything. I think it’s time for us to recognize that the wage work system is how they shape the world they want … and that it’s time for us to shape different priorities… which we can only do if we’re in charge of our own lives… which we can’t do if we’re leashed to a paycheck…

 

Last week we listened to Egyptian Activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah testifying from Egypt… how… following each one of our steps toward freedom… ‘power’ learns from our movements… and mounts a reaction… that… they hope… incorporates what they’ve learned. In Founding & Realizing A Test-Site… we noted – or rather De Tocqueville does – that this is a long historical process (much longer than he discusses…) coterminous with ‘class’… …and that it was with the French Revolution that the dutiful sons of ‘rule’ finally got what Plato was trying to teach them… that the only way to successfully… to permanently… sit on the people is: if they (‘power’… the philosopher-king-global-statesmen…) unite… while we (the people) are systematically riven (by them…) by divisions… (… and aren’t states just working double-time on this of late – perhaps they are ever working double-time on this – trying to rev up antipathy towards immigrants… gays, lesbians and transgendered… mutual mistrust between police and people… and between various ethnicities… …and let’s not forget that the wage work system is the mechanism by which states utilize our energy… by which they do everything. I think it’s time for us to recognize that the wage work system is how they shape the world they want … and that it’s time for us to shape different priorities… which we can only do if we’re in charge of our own lives… which we can’t do if we’re leashed to a paycheck. The wage work system is how they implement their plans – so we see the Kenyan police become tools of those who rule… and are the means for global-state-backed ‘ethnic cleansing’… and Russian soldiers are similarly played… to try to create divisions in the Ukraine…. This is the banality of obedience – everyday horrors ‘power’ unleashes around us – the banality of ‘following orders’. Only when we are free to think for ourselves can we end these everyday horrors of betrayal… and of the failure of our empathy… our greatest gift as a human being – and the coerced work system… our dependence on the state for the ‘right’ to exist… doesn’t allow this…)

 

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There’s an element in the emphasis on climate change disruption which is propagandistic… in the sense that… once again… we’re not supposed to care about ourselves…

 

(It’s not about ‘saving the planet’. There’s an element in the emphasis on climate change disruption which is propagandistic… in the sense that… once again… we’re not supposed to care about ourselves. “There’s bigger issues that matter more…” we’re always told. But there’s always ‘bigger issues’. Let’s not be suckered at this juncture… not just because our freedom is long overdue… but also because it’s only us – out of the boxes and out of harness – who can truly brings things back into balance… because it’s our energy being stolen that caused the imbalance that is the root of the problem.)

 

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…Isn’t what’s needed that we-the-people free our souls of ‘obedience’? …the current terms of ‘governance’ disallow ‘all of us’ making the decisions… and rather, as Spearman said, ever tend us toward totalitarianism. How is this so-called ‘new’ vision not “the subordination of the individual to the collective purpose…”? as Diana Spearman described ‘dictatorship’?

 

(And in the particular case of Mr. Rifkin… serving the European Union and the big German banks… they got that from Greece… they got that from Spain… they got that from us… squeezing us and telling us: “live within your means….” Yeah, well, they definitely feel they’re living within ‘there’s.’ Their ‘means’ are bottomless because they always can suck on us.… What about all that ‘legacy-disparity’? While the youth are building the ‘healing economy’ [there… I grant you a new term to try to co-opt… go ahead… fill it with empty content…] their ‘merit’ rising them up to the surface… does Mr. Rifkin care about us systematically kicked below it?… Lack of empathy will always be rewarded with a wage… Doesn’t following orders but get us more ‘Auschwitzs’? Isn’t what’s needed that we-the-people free our souls of ‘obedience’? …the current terms of ‘governance’ disallow ‘all of us’ making the decisions… and rather, as Spearman said, ever tend us toward totalitarianism. How is this so-called ‘new’ vision not “the subordination of the individual to the collective purpose…”? as Diana Spearman described ‘dictatorship’? ‘Power’ must end for our world to be based on reverence… instead of obedience. It could not be more obvious that ‘power’ is but trying to get their ‘global-statesmen-status’ past this present generation… past those dangerous (for ‘power’) questions….)

 

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…The C Camp inmates had lived for four months in the shadow of the crematorium gate: it took ten days for all of them to pass through it. Forty-five thousand tormented bodies rendered up their souls there. Upon C Camp, whose wire stands had enclosed as many poignant tragedies, a dismal silence descended. (Part 70)

 

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The Sonderkommando was awaiting the final blow… We were not certain of anything, but I felt the imminence of death… I went upstairs to the kommando’s living quarters and immediately noticed that something was amiss… (Part 71)

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* “April 20, 2014 Show …”

 

April 18, 2014... Sisters and Brothers: Apologies to those who were reading with me Miklos Nyiszli's Auschwitz, and the new book by Wallerstein et al. Does Capitalism Have A Future?. As soon as I re-acquire DreamWeaver CS4 I'll put what I have up... and once I have InDesign... the pdf. See above for left-over audio from the April 13, 2014 show.

 

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After 6 years of solid service… – and by the way I never changed my operating system – DreamWeaver CS4 (for adding and modifying pages to the website) and InDesign CS4 (in order to put Nascence writings out in pdf form) stopped working…

 

Plea for DreamWeaver CS4 and InDesign CS4 and for help disseminating the text and audio files: After 6 years of solid service… DreamWeaver CS4 (for adding and modifying pages to the website) and InDesign CS4 (in order to put the transcripts of the shows, Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz, and other Nascence writings out in pdf form) stopped working – and by the way I never changed my operating system – both were starting to ‘act up’: InDesign started over-writing text on itself and DreamWeaver started deciding it wanted to change the text I’d selected… among other things. Another problem: putting up only the one temporary page (all I can physically manage consider the laborious cutting and pasting involved in modifying a page manually…) has created a bottleneck because there’s only one way to hear the show and read the text… and I’m very concerned about the inability of these shows reaching anyone. So if you have any ability to share the text with others… and help get discussion going… and I don’t know how to easily share the Mp3s with others… but I would like to do that… I’d like to get them up in multiple places… so if you have any ideas for how to do that…it would be much appreciated. I feel like I’ve been exiled from my own website.

 

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Wallerstein’s book Does Capitalism Have A Future? is important… because it’s presenting the hard reality: that we are in the midst of a major structural shift… and we either let the ‘rulers’ [quote-unquote] keep determining it… or we step up. We have to… because we’ve seen what the ‘rulers’ do: they but keep us asleep and poison our common earth… and we stay perpetual-children like that… or worse…

 

April 15th, 2014… Brothers and Sisters: Decisions are being made for us apace… under the banner “Stop Climate Change.” When have states done anything but… use whatever’s around to bolster themselves? (and then send out their hired guns to cover their butts.) This is ‘the state’s raison d’etre. States don’t exist for our benefit. Recall what we said during the July 28, 2013 show… that the state exists to keep power out of our hands in order to maximize its…. So they lie to us… by means of their propaganda mechanisms. This is what states do…

(…and this is one of my big bones to pick with the ‘progressive media’… we don’t get authentic discussion over them… we need our own media. All the ‘progressive media’ do is megaphone what the states say…but the real deal is left behind scenes for the ‘statesmen’ to face the true circumstances of our lives – this is why I’m particularly frustrated about not being able to put Wallerstein’s et al. Does Capitalism Have A Future? up for discussion… because while they put over the airwaves pap like Jeremy Rifkin’s new book and the whatever-whatevers… there’s a whole string of them. We need on-going discussion of these actual circumstances. I haven’t heard anybody bring Wallerstein on to discuss Does Capitalism Have A Future? so that we can have some debate on that… allow us to call in and ask our questions – not just once but on-going discussion. These are not issues that are just a ‘one-time-only’ deal. These are issues that are determining our future… and we have to want to reclaim it badly enough to make nuisances of ourselves with the existing so-called ‘progressive media’ and force these discussions over the airwaves… or somehow… get not a little pirate-radio-station that’s down most of the time… and you can’t hear it noway… and apparently there’s only twenty-five people at a time who can access the stream [ when there is a stream] – this is not how we get our discussions going. We need discussions in the street… at the water-cooler… in the cafes – wherever we talk with ourselves. We need to start believing that we have the right to determine ourselves and our future… because “what’s the future of ‘work’” is the wrong question… we don’t want to re-design our chains… we want a different future from this one… and that’s why Wallerstein’s book Does Capitalism Have A Future? is important… because it’s presenting the hard reality: that we are in the midst of a major structural shift… and we either let the ‘rulers’ [quote-unquote] keep determining it… or we step up. We have to… because we’ve seen what the ‘rulers’ do: they but keep us asleep and poison our common earth… and we stay perpetual-children like that… or worse…)

…as… if they told us the truth… how could we be kept in check? And checked we must be… for states to direct our energy… and play the game of global supremacy.

 

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“If it’s ‘global’ isn’t it by definition ‘totalitarian’?” It’s always been ‘power’s ambition to make their system global… and we’ll be discussing that today… keeping in mind that ‘totalitarian’ means “a single pattern of thought imposed – or impressed – across all social institutions…” and that’s what this show has been trying to expose… that this is exactly our existing world system…

 

Is a global ‘Supremacy Game’ necessarily totalitarian?

(And I raise that question because in looking again at the show I asked folks to check out (the June 23, 2013 show “Taking Issue With Wallerstein”) in anticipation of our reading together Wallerstein’s Does Capitalism Have A Future?… I noticed the question: “Why is a wage work system necessarily totalitarian?” (“How do we know that a wage work system… leads to totalitarianism?”…) and I’m realizing that there are other questions that are packed in that… the most significant being: “If it’s ‘global’ isn’t it by definition ‘totalitarian’?” It’s always been ‘power’s ambition to make their system global… and we’ll be discussing that today… keeping in mind that ‘totalitarian’ means “a single pattern of thought imposed – or impressed – across all social institutions…” and that’s what this show has been trying to expose… that this is exactly our existing world system….)

Today we’ll be considering this question – “Is a global ‘Supremacy Game’ necessarily totalitarian?” – and one that flows from it: “What does it mean to have a revolution… in a “world-‘class’-system’”?”

 

Obviously as I write this the Ukraine is at the foremost of my mind… but not she alone… there are many today… and many that have gone before… who walk the very road the Ukraine walks today: the U.S…. France… Haiti… Russia… China… Cuba… Rwanda… Somalia… Venezuela… Tunisia… Egypt… to name perhaps the best known since the advent of the ‘global system.’ It seems that no matter what a state does… it becomes what it was… before the ‘revolution’ (a term-apt as it’s from the late Latin: “to roll back”…) the ‘leaders’ but need an external threat… which the ‘global order’ is more than happy to provide to it… to be restored to ‘statesmenship’…

(…and to be integrated in this ‘global system’ means integration in a ‘hierarchical leadership system’… so every state has its ‘statesmen’… – and of course they rank themselves within that too… so while Paul Kigame may be a sociopath of ‘world-historic’ proportions… rank right up there at the top of sociopaths and mass murderers of ‘history’… he’s still at the lower echelons of the ‘pantheon’ of global statesmen… he’s still at a lower rank compared to the ‘Bill Gates’ and the ‘Angela Merkels’ and the people who control the global financial banks…)

“Work!… because we must perform well in the Global Competition! Work!… because if you don’t the economy will collapse! Work!… because you don’t want to go back to living in caves and being hunters and gatherers! Work! work! work! work! work!” So when they tell us, “get busy, brothers and sisters and help us re-design ‘work’”… give them the finger, please… and say, “we don’t need ‘work’… we worked for millennia… we’re ready for some leisure.” I’ve learned in the course of these five years that words are powerful. So we need to open our mouths and tell each other… that our future is leisure…

 

…or the ‘Big Boys’ will systematically whittle it away… or orchestrate its ‘decay’… and the culprit-recalcitrants will be dismissed… like children who have been disobedient… and sent to languish at the bottom of ‘the order of upright states’… or expelled altogether from grace and labeled ‘failed states’… cautionary tales for others to contemplate.

 

So… what does it mean to have a revolution in a global ‘power’-system?

 

It means to be a target… it means to be harassed… it means trying to live with a vampire on your ass… it means balancing on an edge with a bully behind you howling menace….

 

During the June 23, 2013 show we quoted Victor Hugo and then George Bernard Shaw:

The counterfeits of the past take assumed names, and are fond of calling themselves the future. That spectre, the past, not infrequently falsifies its passport. Let us be ready for the snare. Let us beware. (Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, Book VI – XI)

 

“Revolutions never lift the burden of tyranny, they merely shift it to another’s shoulders.”

This is so because ‘tyranny’ and ‘rule’ and ‘statesmanship’… are coterminous. Or… as we’ve said before and will say again: ‘power’ is ‘power’ is ‘power’.

(You know this when the first thing the ‘statesmen’ want to do after that ‘revolution’ is to tell you, “Get to work, Comrades! Get to work! There is much to accomplish! You just let us take care of the decision-making… you just… work.” How many millennia have they been telling us that? And as we’ll see as we read the poem from Plato’s uncle… they’ve been conning us from Day One: “Work!… because it’s close to holiness! Work!… because it cleanses the soul! Work!… because it makes our nation strong! Work!… because we must perform well in the Global Competition! Work!… because if you don’t the economy will collapse! Work!… because you don’t want to go back to living in caves and being hunters and gatherers! Work! work! work! work! work!” So when they tell us, “get busy, brothers and sisters and help us re-design ‘work’”… give them the finger, please… and say, “we don’t need ‘work’… we worked for centuries… millennia…. Ten thousand years of work… we’re ready for some play… we’re ready for some joy… we’re ready for some leisure. That… is only our gift to ourselves… they’re not going to give it to us. We have to plan it for ourselves.

 

I’ve learned in the course of these five years that words are powerful. I didn’t get it before, but I got it now. So we need to open our mouths and tell each other… that our future is leisure.)

And do we really think the alternative is so-called ‘chaos’? Isn’t ‘chaos’ what they’ve been doing to us?… forcing us to live under conditions of insecurity that have been totally manufactured? Herding us into wars… into poisoning the planet… into placidly giving our children up to abandonment [which is also our gifts’ relinquishment…] – in service to we-know-not-what… i.e. all just to stay unconscious… asleep [and this is where the ‘Mr. Smith’ and ‘The Matrix’ metaphors exceed in relevance even ‘the Vampire’ analogy: our longing to be seen… and to receive approval – i.e., we’re back at the central fact… that the core of our distress… is coerced child abandonment…

 

Consider this from Plato’s beloved uncle Critias… using this for lens: consider what it says… that ‘the wise’ must be devious… and moreover… that duplicity is the mark of a ‘sophisticated culture’… i.e. of ‘intelligence’… and furthermore… of ‘civilization’ – the goal being to trick ‘the hoard’ into obedience:

(…and aren’t we tired of being manipulated? Aren’t we tired of not being self-determined? [‘self’ meaning ‘attending to the gifts the earth gave us…’]? And do we really think the alternative is so-called ‘chaos’? Isn’t ‘chaos’ what they’ve been doing to us?… forcing us to live under conditions of insecurity that have been totally manufactured? Herding us into wars… into poisoning the planet… into placidly giving our children up to abandonment [which is also our gifts’ relinquishment…] – in service to we-know-not-what… i.e. all just to stay unconscious… asleep [and this is where the ‘Mr. Smith’ and ‘The Matrix’ metaphors exceed in relevance even ‘the Vampire’ analogy: our fear of standing up to mommy and daddy… the longing to be seen… and to receive their approval – i.e., we’re back at the central fact… that the core of our distress… is coerced child abandonment…. It started in literal abandonment… beginning with Plato advising his citizens… down the road – because in his day they weren’t duped by Plato… it’s only the subsequent ‘rulers’ who have seized on his totalitarian reasoning and used it to justify ‘rule’. But what went along with that was literally wholesale… wide… broad… literal… child abandonment: hanging them in trees… putting them at the steps of what we would call orphanages. Often commoners found these children and took them in. This was a problem of the wealthy much more than of commoners (though we were influenced by them.) But today child abandonment is built into the structure of ‘class’. We turn our children over in order to survive.])

Then came, it seems, that wise and cunning man, The first inventor of the fear of gods… He framed a tale, a most alluring doctrine, Concealing truth by veils of lying lore. He told of the abode of awful gods, Up in revolving vaults, whence thunder roars And lightning’s fearful flashes blind the eye… He thus encircled men by bonds of fear; Surrounding them by gods in fair abodes, He charmed them by his spells, and daunted them – And lawlessness turned into law and order.

 

(And I have to say… it has occurred to me more than once that their fantasy – these Plato’s Tribesmen – is to replace those gods on Mount Olympus with themselves: the roar of their drones overhead that is supposed to inspire fear and dread… what is that if not wanting to imagine themselves as… not just guardians of the universe… but rulers over all of us. Now that’s insane… and it’s beyond misanthropic. I don’t have a word to describe that… and yet that is what has been haunting us for centuries. So… tell me we don’t need our own definitions. We don’t even have the words to describe what they’re doing to us. We need our own lexicon.)

“Direct legislation – a formal attack made with the main body of [the legislator’s]… forces in the open field; indirect legislation – a secret plan of connected and long-concerted operations to be executed in the way of stratagem or petite guerre.”… [Bentham’s] vision was remarkably Confucian. “But the thing is,” Confucius said in the Analects, “to aim so that there should not be any lawsuits at all.”…

 

And consider this from Kissinger’s On China:

Confucius’s answer to the chaos of his era was the “Way” of the just and harmonious society. Confucius preached a hierarchical social creed: the fundamental duty was to “know thy place.” To its adherents the Confucian order offered the inspiration of service in pursuit of a greater harmony…. His philosophy sought the redemption of the state through righteous individual behavior. Oriented toward this world, his thinking affirmed a code of social conduct, not a roadmap to the afterlife. (p. 15)

 

[This is essentially… exactly… Bentham. Statesmen justify themselves by… in their minds… ‘taming us.’ – P.S.]

(It’s almost as if Kissinger… in writing this book… is saying to his fellow and incipient (baby) ‘philosopher-king-statesmen’: “we can work with them… with these Chinese ‘philosopher-emperors’… they too believe in the wise paternal state.”)

 

And consider this from Mary Peter Mack… writing about Bentham:

As Bentham’s pages on Indirect Legislation are among the most neglected of all his work, so too are they among the most important. What did he mean by “indirect legislation”? “Legislation is a state of warfare,” he said in another favorite metaphor: “Direct legislation – a formal attack made with the main body of [the legislator’s]… forces in the open field; indirect legislation – a secret plan of connected and long-concerted operations to be executed in the way of stratagem or petite guerre.”… His vision was remarkably Confucian. “But the thing is,” Confucius said in the Analects, “to aim so that there should not be any lawsuits at all.”…

[Think about what this means… because Bentham is one of their training guides… like Plato’s Republic and other writings (and I’m sure Kissinger wants to be included in that group of training manuals…) and also consider this in light of what we’ve been reading from Miklos Nyiszli… about the systematic… step-by-step planning ‘power’ engages in… which… in their minds is self-justifying… as it ‘proves’ their ‘superiority’… because they are able to dupe us. So they craft a world of layer upon layer upon layer of duplicity… and then ensure we have no time to think. They rig the game and then celebrate themselves for being ‘smarter’ than everybody else. It’s completely ‘childish’… as Karl Popper said… which is why they suppressed that book, The Open Society and Its Enemies – he had their number… boy, did he ever. He saw them as clearly as Miklos Nyiszli did.– P.S.]

“…under the new transcendental logic of the will… there will no longer be government by force, but government by inclination…” – And I have to say… they have put that in place… we have to talk about this…

 

Bentham wrote the history of civilization in different ways at different times, but he usually tied it to the relative strength of a given sanction at a given moment in history. In the most barbarous ages, the physical sanction predominated: men did little but hunt, fight, eat, and sleep. Gradually the religious, then the political sanction became uppermost, and revenge gave way to justice. But in the future age of indirect legislation, the moral sanction will have largely replaced the physical. There will no longer be government by force, but government by inclination, the private voluntary choice of Utilitarian actions.…

[And I have to say… they have put that in place… we gotta talk about it… – P.S.]

…These pages [on Indirect Legislation] are so many efforts to lead the nation to that distant time. They answer the question, what can the government do now to strengthen the moral sanction?… What the logic of the will came to under indirect legislation was the harmonization of contrary motives…. But under the new transcendental logic of the will this disharmony would disappear; men would do what they saw to be better, and all without coercion. (p. 168 – 9)

Wallerstein tells us… in Does Capitalism Have A Future?… that what is unique to capitalism as a world-system is endless accumulation. But perhaps another way to look at this… is to say ‘power’ brooks no competitors… admits no alternatives… yet diversity of thought is what made the ancient Mediterranean world dynamic. But that’s what upset Plato. It brought those unsettling thoughts that “perhaps I am no better than the so-called ‘slave’….” And it is that mindset we’re living with today… mos def… they will not brook alternatives…

 

And consider this from Bentham:

All the indirect means, then, which we can use with advantage, must be employed in directing the inclinations of men, in putting into operations the rules of a logic hitherto but little known, the logic of the will – …

Wallerstein tells us… in Does Capitalism Have A Future? that what is unique to capitalism as a world-system is endless accumulation. But perhaps another way to look at this – that puts the matter in the proper perspective – or just another way to put it… if we shift the lens a bit… is to say it brooks no competitors… admits no alternatives. This is something that Kissinger says surprised… and perhaps unsettled… Chinese rulers… who were no less equally determined to rule… no less rigidly authoritarian….

 

So… once again (here we go…) we’re back to Plato… and his insistence on ‘perfection’…

(…most significantly of the children – “and not too many…” he advised… “one or two will do… will be sufficient… pick ‘the best’… discard the rest… dispense as you see fit the fates of murder or abandonment…”)

…and for this – ‘perfection’… the “idea of ‘the good’”… the ‘best state’… the Republic – the threat by sea – was both literal…

(…because the Mediterranean circulated us – and our diversity of thought – around… that’s what made the Mediterranean world dynamic. But that’s what upset Plato. It brought those unsettling thoughts that “perhaps I am no better than the so-called ‘slave’….” And it is that mindset we’re living with today… mos def… they will not brook alternatives…)

…and metaphoric – the threat from ‘outsiders’ and their degenerate notions… their thoughts-unorthodox… their bridging-alternatives (diversity… unity of all humankind… of all life…) meant the loss of totalitarian control of the citizens. For isn’t it with words merely that they control us? [Truly… we have to have that conversation.]

 

There is a deep insecurity that underlies the need for endless accumulation – total privatization – the need to establish with absolute certainty that there is no alternative… this is what distinguishes ‘the Western’ version of class – ‘the West’s’ bottomless hunger speaks to a deep well… of absence…

 

So while China fully embraced the notion of ‘class’… and its ‘citizen’ – ‘barbarian’ basis… ‘the sea’ – metaphorically – held no menace for it… as it wasn’t concerned about ‘infection’ or ‘degeneracy’… ‘contamination’ by the ‘social disease’ of new thoughts that challenge the ‘powers-that-be’…

 

– and not just because of its geographic isolation.

 

There is a deep insecurity that underlies the need for endless accumulation – total privatization – the need to establish with absolute certainty that there is no alternative… this is what distinguishes ‘the Western’ version of class – ‘the West’s’ bottomless hunger speaks to a deep well… of absence.

 

When I say “we have to take responsibility for our own ‘leadership’…” I hope you don't think I mean ‘representatives’ – I mean our own discounted and suppressed capacities…

 

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…careful plans had been made for the 860 members of the kommando to try and force their way out of the camp. The break was scheduled for that night… (Part 72)

 

…I began to see what had happened. The Sonderkommando men had taken possession of number one crematorium and, from every window and door, were spraying the SS troops with bullets and grenades… (Part 73)

 

For about ten minutes the fighting was heavy on both sides. Loud machine gun fire from the watch towers mingled with the lesser blasts of the sub-machine guns, and interspersed could be heard the explosion of hand grenades and dynamite. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, everything became quiet. (Part 74)

 

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* “April 27, 2014 Show …”

 

…on ‘misdirecting dissent’… we said that ‘power’ has learned that it must capture us at that moment – Pavel’s moment – of truth-seeking… and send us off down fruitless paths… paths allowed by ‘power’ because they can be turned over to ‘scholars’… and rendered up… as ‘science’…

 

(Apologies to those who tried to listen online… there was no stream.)

 

A ‘shout-out’ to Berlin… where thousands turned out to say “no!” to Fascists and neo-Nazism… and the targeting and scapegoating of immigrants – the attempt to make that happen is going on across Europe… but we are past that… any Fascist-sympathizers out there… who are but tools for those who ‘rule’. We’re going to talk about that in this show: who are the ‘them’ in the “‘us’ and ‘them’”?… and is there an “‘us’ and ‘them’”?

 

April 22nd, 2014… Sisters and Brothers: There’s a scene near the beginning of Maxim Gorky’s Mother in which Pavel’s mother hesitatingly approaches him where he sits reading. He looks up at her inquiringly, and after hesitating again she says,

“I wanted to ask you what you are reading all the time,” she said quietly. He closed the book.

“Sit down, Mummy.”

His mother sat down heavily and straightened up, prepared to hear something very important.

Pavel spoke without looking at her, in a low voice which for some reason was very stern.

“I am reading forbidden books. They are forbidden because they tell the truth about us workingmen. They are printed on the sly, in secret, and if they find me with them they’ll put me in jail – in jail because I want to know the truth, do you understand?”

Suddenly she found it hard to breathe. Opening her eyes, she looked at her son and scarcely knew him. His voice was different – deeper and richer and more vibrant. He plucked at his fine soft moustache and gazed strangely off into the corner from under lowered brows. She was afraid for him, and pitied him.

“Why do you do that, Pasha?” she asked.

He raised his head and looked at her.

“Because I want to know the truth,” he answered calmly and quietly.

 

[And doesn’t that disquiet… that burdened seeking… alone show… speak to us of what in our hearts we know: our deep unhappiness… under ‘class’. – P.S.]

A lot of us have had similar moments as young people… of knowing that there’s more beneath the surface of things – beneath appearance – than what we’re told… a reality beneath the approved thoughts which… if we could discern… would unlock certain other things… help us become more conscious authors of our lives. But even further we should go and admit… that ‘social arrangements’ bent to keep truth hidden… and suppress by definition our even being able to consider… to think about… alternatives… are totalitarian. This has been so for the story of ‘class’ since its inception… and the suppression of even thinking that… should show us… how deep the totalitarian control goes.

 

The logic of ‘rule’… the logic of ‘class’… is all we hear – this makes it totalitarian.

 

If we can face that truth… then at least we’re at a place where we can begin to choose.

 

In the February 16, 2014 show on ‘misdirecting dissent’… we said that ‘power’ has learned that it must capture us at that moment – Pavel’s moment – of truth-seeking… and send us off down fruitless paths. For those of us on the Left those paths bear the signs ‘socialism’… or ‘Marxism’ – paths (now) allowed by ‘power’… stamped ‘approved for discourse’… because they can be turned over to ‘scholars’… and rendered up… as ‘science’….

(And why is ‘science’ safe [for ‘power’]? Because it distances us from our lived existence… our interconnections with all living things… our breathing… our earth as a living presence… our bodies… our reverence – that’s the point of it… for… all the rest that ‘power’ claims results from it… we’d freely give regardless… and will… once coercion is past-tense.)

“Resistance Takes Root: Rebellion in Turkey’s Taksim Square” – …more and more of us see… that it is force – ‘power’ – itself, and only, that is the source of discord… disharmony and strife… of material and psychic insecurity in the world…

 

To those of you still living through ‘Pavel’s moment’… I have a request… or two.

 

I obviously have a long-term goal: helping to establish new social relationships (globally) in which we get to live our gifts… grow our leadership… recover our lost humanity… embrace our empathy – by means of establishing human leisure globally. So I have a clear picture… cast in clear feelings… that I want to see around me. I.e., I’m not just thinking concretely… I’m feeling concretely. I want my body… soul… mind… to feel joyous and relaxed… luxuriate in the sense of limitless time… because that’s the truth – our lives and possibilities are unbounded and limitless – and it’s long overdue: our claiming our right to live like this… and not just imagine it… our happiness.

(And I read a good illustration of this in the most recent (Summer) edition of our local anarchist paper (Slingshot) from Inci Stan in Istanbul (and I’m sure our brothers and sisters in Tahir Square after January 25 would recognize the exhilaration evident in this description):

…every kind of person was there: high school students, elderly people, taxi drivers, prostitutes, artists, homosexuals, children, elites, Kurds, tourists, Muslims, intellectuals, etc. All sorts of different people were uniting behind a common goal. The goal was not just about saving a park anymore – the goal was to change the government, the power structure, and the system…. People demanded a humane life free from domination by a government that many Turkish people consider a dictatorship. Every hour the protest became more and more powerful.

 

Together we built a free zone in the center of the city in which there were no police. People were sharing. We built a library, held concerts, practiced yoga, offered workshops, handed out free food, made art, and welcomed varied political ideas, sexual identities and religions. All of this wasn’t easy… 6 young protesters were killed by the police. More than 8,000 people were injured because of gas, water, and rubber bullets. The government pushed and attacked the protesters for hours. The stress of being abhorred by the populace caused at least 5 police officers to commit suicide.

 

Mainstream media didn’t show any of the demonstrations, from walls on the street full of political mottoes and unique art, to hospitals full of injured protesters. When an entire country was standing up, CNN preferred to air a documentary about the lives of penguins. We had to create our own media with tablets, smart phones, social media and the Internet with the slogan “WE are media!”…

 

When Turkey prepared for the election, the revolution in Ukraine inspired the youth of the country. I think that revolution is not impossible but will not be easy either! This is more than a personal hope. This is all in hopes of waking a generation to say “Stop” to all old fashioned mindsets, rules, laws, and political techniques. This incites the question, “If I am smarter, more open minded, more well-educated, more intelligent than the politicians, then how can they manage my rights?”…

[Precisely. This is the sense… rapidly becoming dominant… ascendant… globally right now. But we need a different model completely… one which breaks down atomization daily… just as we see in liberation-moments like Taksim… otherwise we’ll be Plato-played yet again when ‘power’ says: “…you think you have intelligence?… well, then, you step into the leadership positions!” And there’s never a dearth of folks who want to be ‘contenders’… and before they know it… they’re turning their backs on their brothers and sisters… (till the majority of us say “enough is enough!” and join together to end the atomization…) – P.S.]

…This practically screams out, “We don’t need borders, visas, stupid papers, ugly buildings, dirty air, artificial food, liar media, sexist beliefs, secret plans, war for more money, education for brain washing, taxes for the powerful, low living standard, gray cities, awful public transportation and health systems! We need trees, music, good books, sharing, love and understanding! We understand that there is no problem with sexual, ethnic or religious differences – the problem is where the power is placed…. [The recent Erdogan scandal] reminded us of Emma Goldman’s quote: “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” So if we can’t change anything by voting, we should realize that now is the time to stand up and make change happen. (Inci Stan, “Resistance Takes Root: Rebellion in Turkey’s Taksim Square,” Slingshot, Summer, 2014)

The scope and intensity of reaction that ‘power’ is unleashing globally is to be expected…given the power and perspicacity of youth today globally. All over the world youth have tasted… directly and vicariously… the exhilaration of a world… albeit in microcosm… without borders, boredom and false divisions between us… a world in which we’ve overcome the atomization… and move directly to addressing the completely solvable problems of reproducing ourselves… and living together harmoniously… and in balance with the earth. Because more and more of us see… that it is force – ‘power’ – itself, and only, that is the source of discord… disharmony and strife… of material and psychic insecurity in the world.

 

So for five years or so we’ve been successfully diverted from seeing the truth… which is that our so-called ‘rulers’ are furiously trying to re-design ‘our’ ‘system’ ‘for’ us before we notice what they’re doing. One wonders… were it not for Wallerstein… would we now be trying to catch up?…

 

So the question is… with all that power and perspicacity out there… with that picture clear of what we want: “trees, music, good books, sharing, love and understanding!…” – throw in: “habbies (happy babies…) unbounded space and time (a.k.a. our lives… back in our own hands…) and… of course… no coercion… and it’s clear… we all want the same things… and we have the starting place of our principles and vision. And rest assured – sorry if I’m spoiling the suspense – this vision will not be included among the options our quintet presents.…

(Although Wallerstein does say this: “The question before the world today is not in what way governments can reform the capitalist system such that it can renew its ability to pursue effectively the endless accumulation of capital. There is no way to do this. The question therefore has become what will replace this system.” [p. 32] – i.e., exactly what he said six years ago… after which he was routinely ignored by all the pundits [because they don’t want we-the-people shaking our rough manes over it…] then people like Richard Wolff pooh-poohed… if not laughed at… the notion…. Now Wolff et al. want us to help them ‘cure’ ‘capitalism’…. So for five years or so we’ve been successfully diverted from seeing the truth… which is that our so-called ‘rulers’ are furiously trying to re-design ‘our’ ‘system’ ‘for’ us before we notice what they’re doing. One wonders… were it not for Wallerstein… would we now be trying to catch up?)

…And what’s more… these ‘power’-guys… the statesmen (if you minus the principles and plus a ton of megalomania…) want these same things too. They know what ‘good life’ looks like. There’s no mystery about it. They just want it all for them… and none for us…

 

…so with so much agreement about what we want… what are the barriers to us “making it happen”?

 

What indeed… if not… that we don’t know what anything means… i.e. we are kept uncertain – as the definitions we need are defined and changed (by ‘power’) in the media constantly… and what exists is stripped of any picture of a human agency that’s independent… even as we try to have that conversation with others about moving on to our reclaimed wholeness. We don’t have agreed-upon meanings or alternative global models (our ‘alternative consensus’… our alternative ‘communal voice’…) so we can’t move in sync globally – and it is globally that we must do this.

There’s a question that I awoke with – after a difficult night of bombardment: “if we become hard, are they winning?”… because there is a ‘they’… we have be certain of this: There is an ‘us’… and we’re being slaughtered… but the ‘them’ is not the ones who do the slaughtering – those whose hands are literally stained with our blood – No. The ‘them’ is ‘them-who-hides-and-gives-the-orders’… ‘them-who-pay-the-bills’…

 

(Without common definitions we dissolve in endless squabbles… provoked by agents ‘power’ places among us – and saying this is not to be angry about it – what else could they do?… it’s only logical… put yourself in their shoes – we just have to be aware of it… aware how essential it is that we remain hawkeyed-locked on our story – on our principles and vision – and help each other to reinforce it.

 

Moreover… this kind of disruption must be considered in advance of action… factored into our planning. I don’t think enough of us have considered this tactic of ‘power’s from a strategic perspective. We have to understand how ‘power’ thinks… that for them it’s all about ‘winning’: it is zero-sum… for them… for them there is no ‘win-win’… their strength requires that we be weakened. They see maintaining their ‘reign’ as a military campaign: i.e. how to convert our perceived strengths into weaknesses. And our number one strength… because it carries us through the tough times… the hard days… is our heart… we have good hearts. So when we embark on a plan… they give us reasons to wring our hands.

 

Utah Philips gives an example of this when he points out how easily efforts with identified leadership get derailed by the simple means of arresting the ‘chiefs’… after which all that good energy gets plowed into Defense Committees. (This was his argument for having no identified leadership.) But the tactic goes beyond this to ‘power’ exploiting our ‘helpfulness’. For example I recall reading a woman’s story a while back (again… in Slingshot, it so happens…) about how an annual ‘non-violence’ camp was being repeatedly sabotaged by folks who were effectively sapping this woman’s strength… as she was wasting her time trying to figure out how to could give them ‘empathy-training’… folks who could have been paid to do what they were doing.

 

We need tools for dealing with this kind of thing… otherwise it will keep being effective. It’s important that we figure this out because… as insidious and dispiriting as this tactic is… the mass slaughters of our brothers and sisters should tell us that they have much less room to maneuver than we have… for were we to be slaughtered en masse the state would face a broadly-embraced de-legitimization. And as I’ve just said… this isn’t about ‘blame’… or ‘witch-hunts’… or ‘loyalty-tests’… it’s about developing values and practices that are immune to agent-action. We need a structure… an ‘environmental intervention’ (to use the language of ‘public health’) that would keep us on track even as they try to divert us.

 

There’s a question that I awoke with – after a difficult night of bombardment: “if we become hard, are they winning?”…

 

…because there is a ‘they’… we have to accept that if we want our authentic lives… our unburdened earth… back.

 

So… if we become hard… are they winning? Is it an inescapable trap?… we have to think about that.

 

We-being-slaughtered… and the slaughterers… are ‘one’… it’s true… but if we want to live… we fight them. So we must be certain of this: there is an ‘us’ and ‘them’… because they will place many agents among us who will ‘benignantly’ tell us the opposite – and suggest this has relevance for our actions…

 

…and again… no anger… no accusations… no witch-hunts… just staying hawkeyed-locked on the goal… on the future we want.

 

We have to understand that when they shoot down South African miners… they’re killing us… when they pay for slaughter in Sudan or Syria or Congo… they’re killing us…. We have to see this as urgent… when Bangladeshis burn in factories… that’s us…. Everywhere we’re smothered under ‘power’s boot… that’s us…. There is an ‘us’… and we’re being slaughtered… but the ‘them’ is not the ones who do the slaughtering – those whose hands are literally stained with our blood – No. The ‘them’ is ‘them-who-give-the-orders’ and ‘them-who-pay-the-bills’….

 

‘Them’… stays hidden… – we will likely never see ‘them’… but that ‘them’ is causing incalculable damage and hardship… and must be stopped… – on that our minds must be unwaveringly locked.

 

This is where we’ve been confused… like a cornered animal reacting to the boot… snarling at the stick before she gets centered and focuses on the hand that’s wielding it.

 

And I have to add that when I read (as I did in this same current Slingshot issue…) of a progressive person’s home struck by lightning… now that I know their m.o. is to weed out the ‘disobedient’… now that I know they have their minions insinuating themselves into every nook and cranny of our resistance… and reporting it… naming names just like in the old days… just more secret.

 

When powerful good-hearted folks under eighty die of strokes… or heart-attacks… or are lightning-struck… or pushed-out drunk from balconies… or needle-stuck… heart-pumped with heroin… then… I’m like the Godfather in that room full of Dons… saying: “I’m gonna blame some would-be ‘gods’ today…”

 

So let’s decide… what we look like… as hawk-eyes.)

A common lexicon… used to see… express… and build the bridge to… a common vision… would end this system: the millennia-long reign of ‘rule’…

 

And I think on this we have consensus: that if we don’t get clear on what we want – paint in vivid colors our “‘opposite of ‘power’” – we remain at ‘power’s service… if only because it can send us in myriad directions… by means of its main-lever, ‘the wage’.

 

So… my modest request: that we begin to make long strides on… developing a common lexicon. Otherwise… those of us who have this luxury of pondering… can do nothing to help our brothers and sisters foundering on the massive surging overwhelming ocean of need called ‘just surviving’… called ‘pay-me-and-I’ll-do-anything-even-if-it-means-slaughtering-my-brothers-and-sisters-and-children-as-they-run-from-their-homes-we’ve-set-alight…’ We no longer have the ‘luxury’ of division… of flying-all-confused-in-every-direction… not now… not with the stakes so high….

 

A common lexicon… used to see… express… and build the bridge to… a common vision… would end this system: the millennia-long reign of ‘rule’.

 

And a suggestion: that we start… getting clear on our definitions… with this word: ‘capitalism’. Perhaps even answering for ourselves this question: “What will be the culprit at whose door we’ll set responsibility for this mess we see around us… once ‘the capitalist system’ is officially no more?” Will we finally shake ourselves awake and look about us… and stop playing with abstractions and link hands… and pull as many others in as we can… into designing what we do want?… What is our vision?

 

–––

 

It’s not by accident that these messengers that fly across the centuries or the decades are inventors of new language… as they certainly couldn’t speak to our freedom by using the language of ‘power’.

 

……and what’s wrong… with the ‘Marxist’ lexicon? Does it fit with the totalitarian mindset of ‘class’? And perhaps another way of saying this… is… Does it quantify the human spirit? Does it take us… and our sisters and brothers… and render us up… as ‘factors of production’ (‘labor’… ‘workers’…)?

 

“A single pattern of thought…” (“make-use-of”… ‘strip humans of their reverence’…) means (necessarily means…) we are given the definitions… the lexicon… by which we try to understand our ‘reality’… the ‘reality’ into which we are born… which has been shaped by the priorities of ‘power’… the most important of these priorities being: that its rule seem ‘natural’… seem to spring from ‘the natural order of things’… i.e. be ‘unquestionable’… as if a ‘law of nature’: established by forces greater than mere mortals.

(So… when as youth we venture out into the World Of Refined Legitimated Discourse… and prepare our ‘thought’ to compete in the marketplace of ideas… we scrutinize our ‘logic’. Does it gleam with the sheen of ‘Hard Science’ – perform well in scholarly discourse – emerge confidently in neat packages – flatter its wearers with high status – is it quantifiable… is it measurable… can you reduce it to abstractions… will it sit in logic functions… will it submit to massage and manipulation by other objectified-minds like us – can it be computerized?)

Handed ‘the meanings’… the rankings… the values… at birth – born into the ‘logic of rule’ – we obey by ‘inclination’ instead of ‘force’ – subjugated by words ‘merely’.

 

None of us have the language to either describe our reality accurately… or imagine its opposite for our future… but… there have been many among us who have recognized that it is through language that rulers hold us in their sway… and try to point the way… out of the trap… by developing language to express what ‘power’ is determined we never see. This priority… capacity… of those who’ve gone before… who were able to use words to help free their posterity… ancestors who wrote… essentially… for us… for us in this very moment that we’re living – the moment our Nikola wrote of – with the capacity of simultaneous speech across distance… expanses that in past epochs defeated the possibility of our unity becoming reality.

 

Until now… and even now… the domination of that ‘single pattern of thought’ called ‘class’… meant that to see our way out of it we needed those messengers from the past… we needed:

Strong Draughts of Their Refreshing Minds

To drink – enables Mine

Through Desert or the Wilderness

As bore it Sealed Wine –

 

To go elastic – Or as One

The Camel’s trait – attained –

How powerful the Stimulus

Of an Hermetic Mind –

(#711)

 

[Hermes: son of Zeus and Maia… the messenger of the gods… and god of merchants… thieves… and oratory.

(And I suspect if thief he was… he was a thief in the sense of Prometheus… or Robin Hood… one who stole what had first been stole from us – a restorer of balance… – P.S.)

He was portrayed as a herald equipped for traveling… identified with Thoth, regarded as the founder of alchemy and astrology…

 

Thoth: Egyptian mythology… a moon god… the god of wisdom… justice… and writing… patron of the sciences… and messenger of Ra…

 

Hermetic: insulated or protected from outside influences… cryptic…]

It’s not by accident that these messengers that fly across the centuries or the decades are inventors of new language… as they certainly couldn’t speak to our freedom by using the language of ‘power’.

 

In our examination of Does Capitalism Have A Future? we’ll ask whether the language of ‘scholarship’… of academia… could possibly provide the language… the openness of thought… that we need to envision… let alone establish… a future premised on reverence.

 

…clearly… we have to have our own definitions… to progress to freedom… The ‘logic of capital’ is not ‘self-perpetuating’… we are compelled to perpetuate ‘it’… …let’s stop distancing ourselves from our bodies… please… our lived reality. We don’t need the abstractions… we live this reality daily… we are forced to perpetuate it… ‘force’ being the essence of a class system – the seven degrees of distance from the truth becomes an untruth…

 

In that same issue of Slingshot there was another interesting piece that could serve to illustrate the problem of stories that disappear feeling humans. In today’s discussion we’ll begin an effort to develop a practical ‘People’s Lexicon’ – and continue our determined probing of the question: “Why are we so unwilling to demand our right to pursue happiness?” – by examining this word ‘capitalism’… a useful place to start… I think… as it’s the snare that catches most of us… as youth-seeking-the-way-to-move-beyond-domination… when we’re young.

Capitalism is a closed system of logic – it is only concerned with its function of perpetuating itself by turning things into commodities. Community needs and ecological protection simply aren’t built into this logic of perpetual expansion of value, so they are not factored into capitalist decision-making.

 

The logic of capital is self-perpetuating: it aims to rewrite all human activity. This is why we’re seeing the rapid privatization of what were once public services – post offices, schools, hospitals, prisons, low-income housing, and more. Under capital, everything is to be transformed into a commodity ripe for speculation.

 

A majority of the globe’s resources and labor have been hijacked by this game of creating temporary profits for those who are able to gamble for the highest stakes. But as this system attempts to replace all human relationships with its broken own logic of perpetual growth, all of us are bound to lose. (Teresa Smith, “The Speculation Chop Shop: Living at the Knife’s Edge,” Slingshot, Summer, 2014)

She is writing abstractly partly because a friend had just asked her not to be judgmental of ‘capitalists’ (“they are just following the rules…” he said.) And ‘the rules’ seem to be a force floating above and settling in around us impersonally… choking everyone… even ‘capitalists’…

 

…so how can we all escape it.? the question then comes… and the answer seems to be: “more education…” because we’re ‘objectively’ “all on the same side…” and ‘intellectually’ it ‘all makes sense’… the logic is unshakable… unperturbable…

 

In Does Capitalism Have A Future? one of the quintet:

…finds here [if their hope for a narrower global inequality gap comes to pass] a major source of continued market vitality or even the foundations for a more egalitarian and prosperous world capitalist order modeled on the post-1945 social democratic recovery in Europe. (p. 176)

“A more egalitarian capitalism’ on its face makes no sense (if the definitions ‘power’ indoctrinates us with weren’t so ‘elastic’…) – even if we add the words ‘very slightly’ to ‘more egalitarian’ – if ‘capitalism’ is about ‘endless accumulation.’ But if we see ‘capitalism’ as a means for ‘power’ to achieve ‘total privatization’ of the globe… and then add the words ‘and maintain and manage’ to ‘achieve’… such that it reads: “‘capitalism’ is a means for ‘power’ to achieve, maintain and manage ‘total privatization’ of the globe…” then we will indeed see… if we allow that to become reality… “a Chinese-style state capitalism…” as another of the quintet predicted.

 

So you see the importance of controlling the definitions. If we insist on swimming in the definitions handed to us… via ‘power’s propaganda (media and academia) mechanisms… we will either (or both) be told that ‘capitalism’ continues to exist but has become ‘egalitarian’… or that ‘capitalism’ is gone and we now have ‘socialism’… while the reality of our being subjects has never altered one bit.

 

So clearly… we have to have our own definitions… to progress to freedom…

…we have to have our own definitions… to develop a consensus-vision…

…we have to have our own definitions… to see the intermediate objectives for achieving that vision.

 

The ‘logic of capital’ is not ‘self-perpetuating’… we are compelled to perpetuate ‘it’…

(…let’s stop distancing ourselves from our bodies… please… our lived reality. We don’t need the abstractions… we live this reality daily… we are forced to perpetuate it… ‘force’ being the essence of a class system. We don’t need the seven degrees of separation that happens once our reality is turned over to academia – the seven degrees of distance from the truth becomes an untruth…)

The ‘logic of capital’ is not ‘self-perpetuating’… we are compelled to perpetuate ‘it’ (‘force’ being the essence of a class system… and we have to know the essence to prepare its opposite…) – because the wage sculpts the ‘reality’ we live in… or… put more generally… sculpts manufactured scarcity… which compels our obedience. And as far as flipping homes goes (the ‘speculation’ Teresa Smith uses as metaphor in the article referenced above…) in China the state does this. Does that make our bodies feel any better… if we are the victims of it? When we get on the same side with our bodies… the unitary reality of ‘class’… regardless of the particular legitimating ideology it promotes… is exposed.

 

If our analysis doesn’t start with our bodies’ truth… isn’t rooted in that sense that “there is more to feel… and be… than this… ‘This World is not Conclusion. A Species stands beyond – ’” If we don’t trust that… believe what our bodies tell us… we have no true harbor from which our thought can set sail.

 

The ‘logic of rule’ is not ‘self-perpetuating’… we are carefully taught to perpetuate it by every institution under ‘class’… we internalize the ‘logic’ through careful crafting of our social environments by ‘statesmen’… who ensure that we are ‘inclined’ to view our being trapped ‘with dispassion’… as ‘necessary’ for the ‘successful functioning’ of a ‘modern society’… and ‘to compete in the global marketplace.’

 

Such pap as this falls readily from all of our lips… but when it comes to our freedom… we fall silent.

 

–––

 

Look at what determines what happens in this world-system… the ‘lever-sine qua non’ for keeping our nose pointed forward (once we’ve been stripped of all means to live else…): the wage… the coerced-work system… is the linchpin of a hierarchical leadership system… for us the question is strategic: “how do we get the future we want?”… because it’s time for us to start living self-determined lives…

 

But resources are not only shrinking… costs are rising… (“things fall apart…”)

 

De Tocqueville may be the segue here… he who said that “commerce has a leveling effect….”

(And as we’ve said in previous shows: we – and our energy – are what’s being mystified in abstractions… we drive ‘leveling’… drive ‘democratization’… with our determination to improve the lives of the next generation… but… under the terms of coerced atomization… when we’re not defining the terms themselves… we end up fueling the death-system.)

Look at what determines what happens in this world-system… the ‘lever-sine qua non’ for keeping our nose pointed forward (once we’ve been stripped of all means to live else…): the wage… the coerced-work system… is the linchpin of a hierarchical leadership system. What else but manufactured insecurity would cause us to suppress our powerful need to express… our leadership…. Moreover… what about our brothers and sisters?… both under our nose and in other lands?… the ‘regime of insecurity’ doesn’t allow us to think about them…. So… not just “good-bye gifts…” but also: “good-bye… capacity to be empathic… good-bye… standing in solidarity with our brothers and sisters….”

(And why is it that more of us don’t feel it, by the way… the horror of losing our gifts? [And I don’t just mean our art. I include in ‘gifts’ our leadership… and our capacity to be empathic.] Is it that we’re willing to accept ‘rank’… so long as we’re more or less satisfied with our own (rank)?… so long as there are others ‘below’ us… as Plato taught? Why aren’t more of us furious at the indignity of ‘rank’ itself?… as Emily Dickinson said, no human spirit should be reduced to disgrace of price:

Publication – is the Auction

Of the Mind of Man –

Poverty – be justifying

For so foul a thing

 

Possibly – but We – would rather

From Our Garret go

White – Unto the White Creator –

Than invest – Our Snow –

 

Thought belong to Him who gave it –

Then – to Him Who bear

Its Corporeal illustration – Sell

The Royal Air –

 

In the Parcel – Be the Merchant

Of the Heavenly Grace –

But reduce no Human Spirit

To Disgrace of Price –

 

(#709)

 

…particularly… as the lever ‘the wage’ allows them to do anything… and as resources are shrinking… more and more of us are at risk… of sinking into an utter abyss… of depravity of spirit… – P.S.]

And resources are not only shrinking – our earth’s been gnawed to the bone… and what meat is left for the global pot must be carefully apportioned – costs are rising: crumbling infrastructure… toxic dumps in our earth and water (long-ignored…) must be cleaned up… middle ranks in ‘emerging states’ must be paid off – and ‘power’s thinning soup can’t support enough of us.

 

In starting to read this collaborative effort of Wallerstein’s (Does Capitalism Have A Future?) [discussed on the page “How Do We-The-People Come Together To Invent The Future We Want?: Getting A Design-Draft… Putting It On The People’s Telegraph” ] – keeping in mind that for us this – “can ‘capitalism’ continue to exist?” – is not really the question… for us the question is strategic: “how do we get the future we want?”… because it’s time for us to start living self-determined lives… –

 

…so as I consider how they (how all of us…) are trained to see the world… multiple interrelated (in ‘class’) issues relevant to our strategic question arise. First… that if the future we want is (as I’ve been arguing…) the opposite of ‘class’… so will be our ‘way of seeing’… our way of orienting the world… as Kropotkin said – and ditto for its implied ‘value-system’. Second… if that ‘opposite lens’ – the view from ‘the bottom’… is simultaneously… necessarily… the view from the vantage of ‘the whole’… i.e. encompasses more of the truth (what the earth has established as reality…) it must best represent for the health and wholeness of the planet. And lastly – and this is an issue that comes up every day… as I listen to the media-propaganda-parade – that there must be a way for us to have this discussion… of the importance of controlling the definitions… for ‘power’ – to control us… and for us – once we have ‘the People’s Lexicon’… i.e. our own definitions – in order to begin creating the world we want.

 

–––

 

…when I read the words of Wallerstein et al. I’m struck by the fact that throughout this long brutal span of “‘power’-riding-our-back”… the minute we’re born we’re told our happiness is irrelevant… What’s the opposite of that?

 

Let’s consider this matter of ‘lens’… ‘frame’… ‘perspective.

 

Last week we asked, “who speaks for us?”… and… as it turns out… it’s a complicated question… because the language itself – our mother-tongue… our earth-voice – is in development.

 

So how could the lens of ‘scholarship’ represent us… how could it possibly see the world right-side-up?

 

What light we have that sees things right… issues from the earth-connected-indigenous… or screened-off-‘artists’… always dismissed as idiosyncratics…

…“entertaining… perhaps… but certainly not ‘science’…” …which we’re taught to see as the only route to ‘truth’… …which ‘power’ defines as only that which can be ‘proved’… …by means of ‘The Process’… of inventing boxes… …which pounds life into static objects… …inserted then into their ‘Analysis’… …and used to manufacture the ‘big explanations’… (…and each generation gets modified versions… …to further the illusion of ‘Progress’…) …in packaging that’s ‘clever’… ‘engaging’… and ‘interesting’… …lodged in the story: “the wide sweep of ‘History’”… (…which the middle ranks all get for training.)

But ‘The Process’ never uses the lens of the people. It has long-ago condemned the use of authentic language – our mother-tongue – which… were it allowed utterance… issuance into the broad unbounded air… would tell us… that the health and happiness and joy of the earth is all that matters…

 

…that we are life… not a ‘system’… not a ‘process’s servants…

 

…and our story must not just be re-told and re-written…

 

…but newly-invented… using our newly-regained voices… our original ones certainly… but also different… as they’ve been made old by millennia-long sadness… with a past that is always with us… our ancestors’ suffering – all of it is in us… all of it in our voices… all of it suffused through our language.

 

So when I read in the new book by Wallerstein et al.:

All these [prognostications of the five collaborators in writing the book] are akin to “stress tests” in civil engineering or, as we have all now heard, in banking. None of us bases our prognoses of capitalism in terms of condemnation or praise. We have our own moral and political convictions. But as historical sociologists, we recognize that the fortunes of human societies, at least in the last ten thousand years beyond the elementary level of hunter-gatherer bands, have not turned on how much good or evil they produced. Our debate is not whether capitalism is better or worse than any hitherto existing society. The question is: Does it have a future?

[…remember what Karl Popper told us in his second volume of The Open Society and Its Enemies ? I guess he wasn’t an ‘historical sociologist’… thank the earth… thank life… “Thought belong to Him who gave it…”

What people have in mind when they speak of the history of mankind is, rather, the history of the Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman empires, and so on, down to our own day. In other words: They speak about the history of mankind, but what they mean, and what they have learned about in school, is the history of political power… a cruel and at the same time childish affair… the idolatrous worship of power, of success… (Karl Popper)

 

(And it seems to me… the punditry… self-servingly… if unconsciously… way over-complicate things… for… all of ‘power’s history can be reduced to these four words: “Keep the people duped…”)]

…when I read the words of Wallerstein et al. I’m struck by the fact that throughout this long brutal span of “‘power’-riding-our-back”… the minute we’re born we’re told our happiness is irrelevant.

 

What’s the opposite of that?

 

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It’s the fact that they had a story – a plan – that made them powerful… because it meant they had certainty… and could move forward with conviction…. We cannot get free unless we deeply believe that our happiness is the point… our reason to be… It only takes a few to begin to make this world based in trusting our bodies’ truth… in putting that first… based in letting our joy live.… It’s not ‘the earth’ we must ‘save’… it’s ourselves. Just put that first and the earth can take care of herself.

 

Yesterday (April 14th, 2014) I listened to one voice over the airwaves after another echo what I hear from folks out in the ‘day-to-day’ – who say the job is forcing them to act like robots… i.e. that we’re being sped-up…

(…which concretely illustrates the point Wallerstein’s making: that even as the earth-resources available to ‘the rulers’ for eating… are shrinking – or perhaps because of that fact – ‘power’s unconscious agents (the bosses) are determined to extract even more out of us… determined to get every last bit… until all the life of the planet has been ‘spent’…)

…I listened to folks say… in essence… that this train called ‘class’… called… “just-sit-back-and-enjoy-the-ride-and let-the big-boys (the Important Ones)-drive…” is rolling downhill… and it’s got a speed to it…

 

This story in which they ride our backs – that they call ‘Progress’ – was written by ‘power’ who then strangles all other stories… cuts them off at the pass… as Plato instructed.

 

It’s the fact that they had a story – a plan – that made them powerful… because it meant they had certainty… and could move forward with conviction…. We cannot get free unless we deeply believe that our happiness is the point… our reason to be…

 

Our babies come to show us that… and we give them our backs… because our parents turned their backs to us.

 

It’s time to trust… trust that while our parents did their best… they’ve been mis-led… by an authority utterly illegitimate. It’s time to trust those toothless smiles our babies give us… trust the flight and song of birds… the lolling sound of the useless waves. It’s time to trust that joy is our birthright… and must always be at the core of the new story we write… the story that is the opposite of ‘power’ – the story that is the spirit that guides the shapes we create to further our lives… our love… our good fellowship.

 

It only takes a few to begin to make this world based in trusting our bodies’ truth… in putting that first… based in letting our joy live.

 

It only takes a few… and others will come to it.

 

It only takes a few… and we’re already many. It’s many of us who trust that all these years we were mis-led when told our bodies were meant to serve them… when the truth is the opposite of this… we’re meant to serve our fellows and our happiness.

 

It’s not ‘the earth’ we must ‘save’… it’s ourselves. Just put that first and the earth can take care of herself.

 

Consider the untold billions slaughtered in service to the fantasy of ‘rule’… of a system of rank… and control by the few – in the shadow of that mountain of death… we can’t truly imagine we aren’t yet ready to live?

 

Continuing with Chapter XXVII of Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – P.S.]

 

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The fact that I had come away with my life gave me neither comfort nor joy. I knew it was only a reprieve. I knew Dr. Mengele, and I knew the mentality of the SS… (Part 75)

 

It was quite likely that… the SS had… set out to liquidate us… but had discovered, to their surprise, that the twelfth Sonderkommando had no intention of lining up in the courtyard.… Our kommando, quite aware that the SS had come to exterminate us, had apparently chosen to go down fighting… (Part 76)

[This illustrates in concentrated form the importance (for us…) of maintaining… and building on… our historical memory… and the importance (for ‘power’…) of breaking it down. Earlier this morning (April 15, 2014) I listened to a woman who’d written a book called The People’s State of Amnesia about the Tiananmen Square massacre twenty-five years ago… and she said that Chinese ‘rulers’ have successfully erased the memory of the event from the minds of the young in China. All states re-write the historical record… try to wipe the memory of its betrayals from our minds… in order to continuously re-accustom us to its steady diet of lies…. – P.S.]

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* “May 4, 2014 Show …”

 

…if the notion that there must be a degraded class for anything to happen is your barrier… put it out there for the communal mind to think on… let’s get clear on the fact that… no there doesn’t…

 

May 1st, 2014: Happy May Day! Brothers and Sisters… I have my own little private interior celebration going on… because it’s been five years of the Nascence. Five years ago this day… I put up my first page. May very very soon hence… we be living our freedom-leisure-happiness.

 

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April 28th, 2014… Sisters and Brothers: This Sunday, in addition to brief commentary, I thought it might be helpful to our process of developing “vision-consensus-building ‘tools’”… for us to read together large sections of Immanuel Wallerstein’s chapter in the book Does Capitalism Have A Future?, and use this discussion of his analysis as a jumping-off point for that process.

 

May 4th, 2014… This morning I’ve been pondering this question: whether if… in a single bloc of complicit silence… the voice of the Official Left had not ignored Immanuel Wallerstein’s argument… would all of us rising up with such courage against totalitarian regimes – and as class is global… we are all living under totalitarian regimes to some degree… but I’m thinking of Egypt… Tunisia… the Ukraine… and Turkey – would discussing his argument not have enabled us to get clear?… get focused… and so figure out how to unify our efforts? And they can’t say they didn’t know about it because I stressed it in the opening of Waking Up and I sent enough of these pundits copies of the book – only to those who said they’d like to take a look at it – to provoke some notice and hopefully discussion of it. It was quite clear to me when I heard it – Wallerstein’s argument – that for we on the Left… and we-the-people generally… there was nothing else to talk about at this juncture… because the ideology of capitalism has so captured dissent… so derailed it… that discussing it would finally get us focused on claiming the future… which is how we get free.

 

April 29th, 2014: What’s coming up for me… as you’ll read below… is the need for we-the-people (globally) to move quickly… to drive our Global Awakening home. During last week’s show Miklos taught us something important (and it will be emphasized in the upcoming show…) that ‘power’ wastes no time trying to erase from our minds and bodies our recollection of the feeling of its (the state’s) repeated betrayals. We referred to something said in a recent book, The People’s State of Amnesia, that Chinese youth are not being told the truth about Tiananmen Square. And yesterday I heard another example from a woman who’s written a book about the Ludlow Massacre of families on strike in ‘coal-country’ (they played the chilling Woody Guthrie chronicle of it… Woody Guthrie… another powerful witness for the people…) and she said that now… many decades later… local folks have a vague sense that ‘Indians’ had done it. And we know who told them that.

‘Winners’ write the ‘history’… this we know…

…Popper most eloquently told us so….

Deep pockets purchase many media outlets…

…and seem to plant their skewed and false ‘reality’…

…too deep for honest souls to reach…

…unearth…

…and purify in fire’s light….

Except.

Our Will preserved… kept sound… sealed tight…

…as did our Emily…

…essential words for hanging onto sanity…

…with ‘power’s lies a’tempest-swirling round our minds….

Steady…

…stay your eyes in their cool pools of rich simplicity…

…that tell us “truth is truth until the end of reckoning.”

We must move apace – we see how only in a matter of days… they’ve almost re-written the story of the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution… it’s only too obvious what ‘history’ will say… if we allow ‘power’ to continue beyond our day… beyond this generation of uncommon activism. (Which is why it is so alarming to hear Wallerstein talk about “the struggle for the replacement system” taking… perhaps… some forty years or so. In forty years we’ve lost the oceans – to say nothing of the devastated lives of our brothers and sisters – that’s completely unacceptable. It almost feels like an abdication of responsibility… such words from him. Perhaps on this he will engage discussion.)

 

So… for next week’s show… please read this excerpt (on the page I’ve set up online) from Immanuel Wallerstein’s chapter in Does Capitalism Have A Future?, “Structural Crisis, Or Why Capitalists May No Longer Find Capitalism Rewarding” (I’ll post a bit each day…) and… as you read… ask yourselves these questions: “Who should determine the future?” and “Given what Wallerstein is saying… how much sense does a demand for ‘more jobs’ make?”

(…if the notion that there must be a degraded class for anything to happen is your barrier… put it out there for the communal mind to think on… let’s get clear on the fact that… no there doesn’t…)

We have to change the infrastructure of class to move beyond class… …included in this ‘infrastructure’ are the interior ‘mental’ structures we could call ‘rationalism’… or ‘utilitarianism’… or ‘the exclusion of reverence from our thought process…

 

April 30th, 2014… Brothers and Sisters: as I type Wallerstein’s chapter, I find other issues and questions coming up that I hope you’ll have time to consider in advance of Sunday’s show. First: Could Wallerstein serve as a bridge to solving the problem of developing a common lexicon? – which I think is crucial for all of us getting on the same page. Relatedly… is ‘world-systems analysis’ the right lens for understanding this ‘historical’ juncture… and the challenges and choices before us?

 

We’re going to be developing the argument of the July 14, 2013 show. Text and audio for this show is found at: “To Rebuild Our Freedom (Pt. 2)”

 

The pdf that includes the text of this show is: “Reclaiming Our Leadership: The Waking Up Radio Conversations (Volume 1)” .

 

Excerpt from Immanuel Wallerstein’s chapter in Does Capitalism Have A Future?, “Structural Crisis, Or Why Capitalists May No Longer Find Capitalism Rewarding”

 

Let me try to explain where I’m going with this. I believe that in order to move beyond the class system (‘evolution’… or we could say: “reclaiming our full humanity”… our lost wholeness…) we have to plan and act from reality – the actual situation (which is hard to know because the reality we’re given is so constructed…) the physical… concrete conditions in which we-the-global-people find ourselves – but that far from doing this we have been chasing phantasms… bait crafted by servants of ‘state’… sometimes with the intent to sucker us (e.g. Hegel… paid to re-ensnare the ‘German’ people…) but often because the very categories in which we’re trained to think exclude from our consideration the better part of the truth of what we are as living things… and human beings.

 

There were some points made during the July 14, 2013 show from which we’re going to proceed this Sunday, May 4th, 2014:

• We have to change the infrastructure of class to move beyond class…

 

• …included in this ‘infrastructure’ are the interior ‘mental’ structures we could call ‘rationalism’… or ‘utilitarianism’… or ‘the exclusion of reverence from our thought process…

 

‘Statesmen’ assume for themselves exclusively the prerogative of shaping the future… why is this never discussed?… We here in the U.S. can clearly see that ‘democracy’ is not freedom… however fancifully ‘freedom’ may be defined… can clearly see that each ‘nation-state’ is integrated into a hierarchical world-system… which structures the possibilities of ‘place’… through ‘power’s control of access to ‘credit’ – ‘credit’ being the means by which… ‘power’ shapes the future it wants. So… the advantage of a fragment in this state’s legal framework which ‘grants’ the ‘right to pursue happiness’… added to the relatively privileged strategic position of this state at this ‘historic’ juncture… places the onus on us – here in the U.S. – to advance the human race… to freedom…

 

• The privatization mechanisms of ‘power’ (and this includes ‘state-ownership’) cannot stop as long as there is ‘power’…

 

• The processes at work that determine the conditions under which we live are best described not as ‘capitalism’… but rather the progressive tightening of the noose called “the total control of humans…” and that it is within this ‘earth-truth’ that servants of ‘state’ ply their trade… and on which they establish the results of their craft: all the ideologies that grant ‘power’ cover…

 

• The ‘accumulation process’ is the accumulation of means by which ‘power’ shapes the future it wants. This is the part omitted in the Left ‘scholar’s analysis: ‘power’s motivation. Of course we’ve all been trained to think of this motive strictly in terms of ‘greed’… but simple ‘greed’ has never been the chief motivation of human beings… rather ‘accumulation’ has always been means for filling that abyss called “lack of recognition…” but which manifests… as hubris.

 

• The ‘state’ has been captured by the ‘global economy’ and it cannot be claimed by ‘the people’…

 

• The ‘state’ cannot survive the expansion of our individualities (which is why they try to elevate so-called ‘stars’ above us and then tell us we can’t be like them… that the ‘stars’ have risen by merit… that they’re ‘the best’… and that ‘the system’ has identified them for us… these are just some of the unspoken messages… which all at base have the purpose to legitimate rank….)

We have arrived at the point in our human story when we can conclusively say that ‘the state’ is not and will never be the way we can achieve our freedom… we have to be certain of this to proceed… so let’s get these conversations going… but then the question whose presence this begs is: “what is?”…

 

…given that the state and the market comprise a vise that seemingly traps us… until we decide to use our power of flight to soar above it (‘evolution of the species’.…)

 

But this is easier said than done, isn’t it?… as most of us are living from “money-infusion-to-money-infusion”… eyes fixed on that anticipated ‘in-flow’.…

 

Of course… despite this… we’ve done it before… “revolution’s never easy,” as Inci Stan said (and we’re talking ‘evolution’…).

 

However… it can be done… once… we have a goal… which I believe is best captured in the compound word (compound is best I think… as they’d have to corrupt all three simultaneously… a difficult cooptation): “freedom-leisure-happiness” – as each piece of the whole… is interdependent with the others.

 

I’ve been arguing that the U.S. has a greater responsibility in the global effort to end ‘power’… because our experience is most advanced with the only ideology-trap ‘power’ has… at this point… with which to sucker the people: ‘democracy’. We… living under the steady eye of state surveillance… our options in life strictly limited by rank… our connections with all life stripped down to watering potted plants and feeding dogs… or at most one’s personal child to rule…

 

…we are able to see clearly… at this juncture… that ‘democracy’ is not freedom… however fancifully ‘freedom’ may be defined…

 

…further… we have the advantage of a fragment in this state’s legal framework which ‘grants’ the ‘right to pursue happiness’… this… added to the relatively privileged strategic position of this state at this ‘historic’ juncture… at which it can be clearly seen that each ‘nation-state’ is integrated into a hierarchical world-system… which structures the possibilities of ‘place’… through ‘power’s control of access to ‘credit’ – ‘credit’ being the means by which… ‘power’ shapes the future it wants.

 

So… the advantage of the Left in the U.S…. in conjunction with the advantage of this ‘historical’ moment… places the onus on us – here in the U.S. – to advance the human race… to freedom.

 

It’s incumbent on us… to begin… and to place our feet carefully… based on ‘seeing reality’… on the need to confront the actual character of the trap in which we’re stuck.

 

First… a website (along with the use of all other means available) announces that… as the basic lines of ‘freedom-leisure-happiness’ have been identified – ‘freedom-leisure-happiness’ can only be achieved globally… ‘power’s very existence requires rank, coercion and atomization… so ‘freedom-leisure-happiness’ must be the opposite: common access to resources… absence of force… common gathering places and communal practices for meeting common needs… As coerced work is the basis of the class system… leisure must be the basis of its opposite… All who want to see ‘freedom-leisure-happiness’ for our future are encouraged to set up similar planning processes everywhere…

[Subsequent audio-files for this show (with the exceptions of Parts 77 and 78 of Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – below) are posted at: Excerpt from Immanuel Wallerstein’s chapter in Does Capitalism Have A Future?, “Structural Crisis, Or Why Capitalists May No Longer Find Capitalism Rewarding” ]

Consider what follows as a thought-experiment: does it conform to the requirements just stated?

 

First… a website (along with the use of all other means available) announces that… as the basic lines of ‘freedom-leisure-happiness’ have been identified – because ‘freedom-leisure-happiness’ is the opposite of ‘power’… and our analysis has determined what ‘power’ needs to exist… its requirements – we know that…

• …‘freedom-leisure-happiness’ can only be achieved globally;

 

• …‘power’ isolates and punishes dissent by means of its control of credit (i.e. who can get access to the resources of the planet…) so our ‘opposite’ must embrace ‘all of it’… all of our brothers and sisters;

 

• …‘power’s very existence requires rank, coercion and atomization… so ‘freedom-leisure-happiness’ must be the opposite: common access to resources… absence of force… common gathering places and communal practices for meeting common needs (i.e. each community identifies needs that it makes sense to provide for communally – e.g. baths… food gardens… laundry… food preparation… animal pasturing… milling… energy generation…) and of course none of it is compulsory… although food is shared freely (it is known that over time… good fellowship erodes fear of losing things…);

(Brothers and Sisters: if much of the media we hear is a product of finesse – and I believe it is – we should consider deeply when a media message is presented repeatedly… as we’ve heard recently in a drumbeat of anger against “Muslim extremists.” Never forget… that horrific events placed at this door could be orchestrated… specifically to create the effect that it’s having… of casting doubt and discredit upon an entire religion… I think because of its communal practices…)

• …as coerced work is the basis of the class system… leisure must be the basis of its opposite.

All who want to see ‘freedom-leisure-happiness’ for our future are encouraged to set up similar planning processes everywhere.

 

Second… inaugural meeting time and place of folks interested in pursuing global ‘freedom-leisure-happiness’ is announced and the meeting is held with the purpose of deciding what large public square (in close proximity to most interested folks where the process is happening) will be where the group will convene henceforth.

 

Third… the point of all subsequent gatherings is declared to be: to ensure continuous forward momentum toward establishing ‘freedom-leisure-happiness’… globally.

 

Fourth… discussion follows of the essential elements of this process: interlinking with like efforts globally; getting discussion going locally and globally; infrastructure-planning (the essential qualities of the structure to be built… of the communal site itself… and of the future communal village.

 

Fifth… planning actions: the occupation to acquire the site… the General Strike.

[Subsequent audio-files for this show (with the exceptions of Parts 77 and 78 of Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – below) are posted at: Excerpt from Immanuel Wallerstein’s chapter in Does Capitalism Have A Future?, “Structural Crisis, Or Why Capitalists May No Longer Find Capitalism Rewarding” ]

Continuing with Chapter XXVII of Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – P.S.]

 

…the “Pipel,” that is, a jack-of-all-trades assigned to the SS personnel, whose duties included taking care of their clothes and boots, cleaning their kitchen and answering the phone. It was he who gave me a detailed account of the day’s events. It had not been a case of treason. Here is the “Pipel’s” tale… (Part 77)

 

Now my comrades were lying naked in long rows, in front of the cremation ovens. One after the other I identified the bodies of those I knew; at least they had died believing that freedom was only around the corner. They had been brought back on pushcarts from the spot where they had fallen, somewhere inside the outer line of guards. Those who had been executed in the courtyard as we were walking away were also here. After all resistance had been crushed, the bodies had been removed from number two, three and four crematoriums and brought for cremation to number one, which was manned by thirty new, hastily recruited Sonderkommando men.

[You see here… with this example… that as long as we are in their hands… the hands of ‘rule’… that as long as ‘power’ creates the terms – manufactured scarcity… manufactured insecurity – more among us will always be able to be recruited… to perpetuate the insanity of ‘rule’…. – P.S.]

The loss of these twelve companions was a terrible blow to me. After so much effort and loss of life, still no one had succeeded in escaping to tell the world the full story of this hellish prison.… Later I learned that news of the revolt had nevertheless reached the outside world.… It was indeed an historic event, the first of its kind since the founding of the KZ. (Part 78)

 

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* “May 11, 2014 Show …”

 

And what about the larger demoralization of an entire continent?… what about the feeding frenzy on your fertile earth? ‘Power’… in multiple geopolitical robes… rushing in… mouths a’gape to gobble up the land… suggests to me… there is a plan to beat down and render passive our Mother-Africa…

 

May 8th, 2014… To my Nigerian Brothers and Sisters: I have to say… it seems to me… if what powdered and pounded ‘news’ about you that reaches us bears any truth… you are far too generous to this ‘state’ that makes the decisions for you. Even before… they failed to protect your girls… your boys were being slaughtered mercilessly… how many warnings that we were seeing an ever-broadening atrocity did the state ignore? And furthermore… has it shared the oil wealth?… has it shown the least concern for your happiness and health?

 

The events of your murdered and stolen children – and murdered sisters and brothers of many lands – is yet another horrific illustration of what was said about U.C. – Berkeley’s implicit positive sanction of the assaults and rape of women there: that when an entity holds a monopoly of ‘power’… what it allows is the official policy. This so-called ‘Islamic’ group has been allowed by the state to act with impunity repeatedly.

 

Not long ago I listened to a Nigerian brother put this question to a state official [on the radio program “World Have Your Say”]: “Where do they get the money, this group? How is it they can spirit away 300 children? How is it they can move about so freely?” And the official replied vaguely.

 

I’d been thinking the very same thing: who funds these slaughterers?… these child-kidnappers… these killers and rapists… how is it they have the means to wreak such devastation?

 

And what about the larger demoralization of an entire continent?… what about the feeding frenzy on your fertile earth? ‘Power’… in multiple geopolitical robes… rushing in… mouths a’gape to gobble up the land… suggests to me… there is a plan to beat down and render passive our Mother-Africa.

 

So… this is not the time to offer tolerance and ‘understanding’ to this state – it’s time to demand that it vacate… and for the people to start planning apace… planning a freedom formed hand-in-hand with all humans globally. Because we can’t do this individual state by individual state….

 

Brothers and Sisters… at this point in ‘power’s game… atrocities staged in captive states that swim in its orbit… is geopolitics. The Big Boys are obsessed with controlling everything… do you really think their hands and dollars are not sunk deep into the stink of this? Can you not smell their involvement?

 

These folks deeply believe there must be degraded hands – and mos def it ain’t gonna be Denmark – but to challenge them we need to be clear that ending hierarchy is how we get free… but how do we have these conversations when the pundits constantly undermine them?… paid to keep us unsure… uncertain – no less than these phony ‘Islamic’ kidnappers. They have plans for our Mother Africa and we must not let it happen. We must stand together.

 

–––

 

…and this ‘movement’ is rendered visible by means of ‘money’… by means of the fact that quantification (of the resources of the earth…) has advanced to such a degree… that almost all actions (that act on these resources…) can be converted into terms of ‘money’… for us the question is… how to translate these terms authentically so that we can all see and agree that this is the point of states… which means, therefore, that they can never – by definition – allow us to pursue happiness… as happiness requires release from containment…

 

May 6th, 2014… Sisters and Brothers: Perhaps the key message from last week’s show was that “claiming the future is how we get free.” It may be that this is difficult for ‘scholarship’ to see… but… nonetheless… it’s a stunning thing to witness… its seeming indifference… when confronted with… a tiny-tiny miniscule-posturing-few… determined to drag us billions into… their deep-seated illusions of ‘rule’.

 

It strikes me this gets back to that interior… mental… infrastructure of rationalism – the ejection of reverence from decision-making… from our thought-process – which translates to… in concrete terms means disconnection from our bodies… a distrust of feeling…

 

…and when that is the place from which you start… the result forever bears that mark… that signifies loss of heart.

 

My neighbor Mrs. Trotter said to me once, “Some people say it don’t make no sense to look back, but if you don’t go backwards how can you go forwards? You go backwards to get a chance to get straightened out. You know you got some crooked roads back there.”

 

I see it that way too… crooked roads and wrong roads… down which… we didn’t have to go… and the wrong of it… just gets compounded… and compounded again… until we find ourselves in quite a mess.

 

So… we have to go back to where we made that wrong turn… and start out again… in the right direction.

 

Since we’ve been giving thanks for Immanuel Wallerstein… who I see as ‘current scholarship’ at its most honest… let’s illustrate with him. His chapter in Does Capitalism Have A Future?? is a really good condensed version of his overall view and analysis.

 

He begins by drawing an analogy between the ‘capitalist system’ and the human body:

How has capitalism worked in practice? All systems fluctuate. That is, the machinery of the system constantly deviates from its point of equilibrium. The example of this with which most people are very familiar is the physiology of the human body. We breathe in and then out. We need to breathe in and out. But there are mechanisms within the human body, and within the modern world-system, to bring the operation of the system back to equilibrium, a moving equilibrium to be sure, but an equilibrium. What we think of as the moment of the “normal” operation of a system is the period during which the pressure to return to equilibrium is greater than any pressure to move away from equilibrium. (Immanuel Wallerstein, “Structural Crisis, Or Why Capitalists May No Longer Find Capitalism Rewarding,” Does Capitalism Have A Future?, p. 11)

Now… how do we make sense of this word ‘equilibrium’ when applied to an artificial construction?… a manufactured reality?

 

When he says ‘equilibrium’ he’s actually talking about us… we-the-people… and our containment – it means that the captives are sufficiently quiet.

 

Wallerstein argues that there are two ‘mechanisms’ by which ‘global-state-philosopher-statesmen’ (my term) understand the ‘movement’ (‘movement’… again… as with “equilibrium’… is us…) the ‘movement’ of ‘the system’ (for Wallerstein ‘the system’ is ‘capitalist’… for me… ‘class’…) – i.e. what happens in it (‘the system’) ‘politically’ and ‘economically’…

 

…and that (essentially…) this ‘movement’ is rendered visible by means of ‘money’…

(…i.e., ‘life’ is quantified… and thereby reduced… simplified… and of course… by means of this process… disappears. This has been ‘power’s fantasy from Day One: ‘quiet’… ‘no noise’ – we become a passive lump that ‘power’ can pound into what it wants…)

…and this ‘movement’ is rendered visible by means of ‘money’… by means of the fact that quantification (of the resources of the earth…) has advanced to such a degree… that almost all actions (that act on these resources…) can be converted into terms of ‘money’. Two types of ‘movements’… he tells us… does he see: ‘short’ Kondratieff booms and busts (or As and Bs…) back and forth tussles between the ‘heavy eaters’ (‘the producer class’) and us (we-the-people and our earth…) that resolve fairly quickly into a result…

 

…and longer cycles that bring in the heavy guns… cycles that he calls ‘hegemonic’ because… it’s about ‘bully-states’ imposing the rules of ‘accumulation’.

 

Now… necessarily… the scholar’s glasses will not be adequate to see with the lens from ‘below’… for we have very different requirements… ours are not those of ‘management’ – the requirement for which the original (and on-going…) quantification was made. For us… the question is… how to translate his terms authentically… in terms of ‘power’s imperative-in-chief to “keep the cattle penned effectively…”

 

…for us… the question is… how to translate these terms authentically so that we can all see and agree that this is the point of states… which means, therefore, that they can never – by definition – allow us to pursue happiness… as happiness requires release from containment.

 

…that if we can see that the practical… political… result of ‘rationalism’ – of disconnection from one’s body – is disconnection from one’s brothers and sisters… we can make the necessary corrections… all in order to ask: why would we turn those we love most over to “a mill to grind rogues honest”? Why do we so mistrust how the earth wrought them? This is akin to a belief in ‘original sin’… which phrase is perhaps the original justification… or rationale… for our submission to the state…

 

We are being multiply managed… managed on multiple levels…. So Schumpeter’s ‘relative order’ (p. 15) is just another term for this ‘state’ role of ‘management’… the ‘orderly accumulation… or appropriation… of capital’ is just an esoteric phrase for “keep the cattle herded”…

 

…and “the orderly pursuit of profit” translates into “keep the people duped”…

(…and… by the way… I hope we can all see that rolling out Ralph Nader in this moment of our waking is to (they hope) co-opt and derail our growing understanding… by stealing our language and mixing in confusion… for instance by placing the blame for its tight constraints on us… not on ‘the state’ per se… because of what ‘the state’ is by definition… but rather on its ‘bad alter ego’ which is ‘corporatist’…. And just yesterday I happened upon something written by Chris Hedges which said the same thing. He spent the entire article showing us how the state had thwarted his effort to ‘defend the Constitution’… and then he concluded the problem is ‘capitalism’. It was a completely illogical piece… but that’s because its point was ideological.)

And it may be worth pondering… the specific route by which… we make the mental linkages… between our ‘training’… and what we consider ‘reality’… so that we can see how it was we were mis-‘taken’… seized under false pretenses…

 

…that if we can see that the practical… political… result of ‘rationalism’ – of disconnection from one’s body – is disconnection from one’s brothers and sisters… we can make the necessary corrections…

 

…all in order to ask: why would we turn those we love most over to “a mill to grind rogues honest”? Why do we so mistrust how the earth wrought them? This is akin to a belief in ‘original sin’… which phrase is perhaps the original justification… or rationale… for our submission to the state.

 

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…he couldn’t say that the artificial pressure of ‘necessity’ is systematically placed on us… to compel our obedience… …and that instead of a life of relaxation… we’re propelled almost at birth… into a life of ever-vigilance – as we ask ourselves the question: “am I being ‘productive’ enough?” – a life of ‘ruling’ our bodies as the state (our parents) ruled us… so he couldn’t bring in freedom… and our right to it…

 

In the December 2, 2012 show we said that all the puzzle pieces were in place: Popper… Bernal… Hirschman… Polanyi… and Hopkins & Wallerstein – concluding that we have to re-appropriate the powers now ceded to the economy and the state… that we needed these puzzle pieces because ‘power’ stands in false light. Today we’re considering when that magician’s trick first happens in the life of an individual… because it is by enough individuals getting ‘big’… that we inspire enough others… such that the re-appropriation tips… into serious numbers.

 

In the opening of Revealing Division… I quote Samuel Butler who in his novel The Way Of All Flesh wrote of a thing “so easily to be found, that it took a highly educated scholar like himself to be unable to find it.”

 

Now that’s funny… but it’s also a profound truth… but ‘power’ is now fully exposed… the ‘philosopher-king’ has no clothes… and so the next question is: what do we-the-people want? And then… how do we get it?

 

I believe we are now at the point where we can answer this question.

 

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The problem is that ‘the game’… ‘power’s game… stands in ‘plain light’ instead of in ‘truth’s light’… and in this case ‘plain light’ is our deeply conditioned belief in… assumption of… scarcity… [“…we can’t all be Denmark…”] the notion that there isn’t enough for all…

 

Here’s the transcript of that excerpt from the show:

Why is it that ‘power’s game is so hard to see despite the fact that it’s so obvious? And I ask this because in the book Waking Up: Freeing Ourselves From Work… ‘power’s game was staring me in the face. Near the beginning of the final chapter called “The Plan” I had a quote from a gentleman named William Townsend who was writing in England at the end of the 18th century just before the French Revolution… and Karl Polanyi included in his book The Great Transformation these words from Townsend:

“Hunger will tame the fiercest animals, it will teach decency and civility, obedience and subjection, to the most perverse. In general it is only hunger which can spur and goad them [the poor] on to labor; yet our laws have said they shall never hunger. The laws, it must be confessed, have likewise said, they shall be compelled to work. But then legal constraint is attended with much trouble, violence and noise; creates ill will, and never can be productive of good and acceptable service: whereas hunger is not only peaceable, silent, unremitting pressure, but, as the most natural motive to industry and labor, it calls forth the most powerful exertions; and, when satisfied by the free bounty of another, lays lasting and sure foundations for good will and gratitude. The slave must be compelled to work but the free man should be left to his own judgment, and discretion; should be protected in the full enjoyment of his own, be it much or little; and punished when he invades his neighbor’s property,” (William Townsend, Dissertation on the Poor Laws, 1786, inveighing against the minimal support England offered the ‘poor,’ quoted in Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, p. 113-4)

That pretty well sums up ‘power’s game. But I couldn’t… when I wrote Waking Up… I couldn’t see it as an organized strategy because so many of the puzzle pieces were missing. The problem is that ‘the game’… ‘power’s game… stands in ‘plain light’ instead of in ‘truth’s light’… and in this case ‘plain light’ (or ‘false light’) is our deeply conditioned belief in… assumption of… scarcity… [“…we can’t all be Denmark…”] the notion that there isn’t enough for all.

 

But I believe we are in a moment when all the puzzle pieces are in place:

 

We have Karl Popper… who wrote The Open Society and Its Enemies (Volumes 1 and 2)… who exposed the ‘historicist myth’ – and Plato’s, Hegel’s and Marx’s key roles in legitimating it – as well as how totalitarianism hides in it…. He also showed ‘power’s use of it.

 

We also have Martin Bernal… who wrote Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Volume 1: The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785 – 1985…. He shows that the story ‘Ancient Greece’… manufactured at elite institutions from 1785 – 1985… has been teaching elites for centuries a complete fabrication… that bolstered the plans of ‘power’.

 

We have Albert O. Hirschman… The Passions and The Interests: The Arguments for Capitalism Before Its Triumph… and he showed us that money is but a tool for ‘power’… in a monumental duel.

 

We have Karl Polanyi… The Great Transformation… who explained how ‘power’ solved Plato’s problem of ‘imperialism’ [and this is an earlier sense of ‘imperialism’ meaning the infusion of ‘outsider-ideas’ into closed societies whose citizenry its ‘rulers’ hoped to ‘protect’ from such ideological assaults…] – the notion that you can’t permanently control the thoughts of a captive populace because there’s always ‘outsiders’ who will ‘re-infect’ them. And Polanyi explained… not in this language for sure… that this problem was solved by ‘power’ by creating a world market – the 19th century gold standard created a global economy… compelling all “to come in” [a Biblical reference that so impressed Hegel….]

 

And we have Terence Hopkins and Immanuel Wallerstein… who created ‘world systems analysis’ – the notion that there is a single world economic system: ‘capitalism’. And they exposed the fatal flaws of this system: that ‘states’ will ever be pushed from below by ‘the people’… i.e. that we-the-people continuously demand ever-greater access to our unique gifts [something also pointed out by De Tocqueville…] until… very shortly I hope… we each individual one of us will consciously incorporate those powers now appropriated by ‘the state’ and ‘the economy’… in a process of global… and fully-participatory… society-re-design… which will simultaneously be a conscious ‘allegiance-realignment’ with the earth.

 

In the opening of Revealing Division… I quote Samuel Butler who in his novel The Way Of All Flesh wrote of a thing “so easily to be found, that it took a highly educated scholar like himself to be unable to find it.” ‘Power’ is now fully exposed, however… the ‘philosopher-king’ has no clothes. The next question then is: what do we-the-people want? And then… how do we get it? (Transcript of excerpt from the December 2, 2012 Waking Up Radio show)

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There is a crooked road… a wrong road… in the life of the individual… and a crooked road… a wrong road… in the story of humankind: in the one… the road of ignoring our child’s happiness… by our own submission to… and by our imposition on them of… the requirement of obedience…

 

…and in our story as humans by not choosing for our devotion… the realization of each other’s happiness.

 

On Tuesday I listened to a man – a quite compassionate man… who cares about children – try to convince parents that they shouldn’t be “laying down the law” with their children… that they shouldn’t make their relationship with their children be about ‘instilling discipline’… or ‘obedience’. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop but it never did – it was like ‘Alice Miller without the grit’… her analysis of steel… that drove the point home (like Bentham’s did…) never made an appearance.

 

He did give parents this to consider (I paraphrase): “Even if your child succeeds in monetary terms, he or she may not in terms of any larger definition of ‘success’ that considers the whole person.”

 

What this meant is that: “the state will reward her or him… but the child will lose himself… the child will lose her happiness….”

 

What he couldn’t explain (because if he did he wouldn’t be on the airwaves…) is that the whole ‘productivity’… ‘service-to-the-state’ mindset’ is deeply engrained (conditioned) in us… by all social institutions. He couldn’t bring in “leisure-as-the-point-of-life”… our birthright…

 

…he couldn’t say that the artificial pressure of ‘necessity’ is systematically placed on us… to compel our obedience…

 

…and that instead of a life of relaxation… we’re propelled almost at birth… into a life of ever-vigilance – as we ask ourselves the question: “am I being ‘productive’ enough?” – a life of ‘ruling’ our bodies as the state (our parents) ruled us –

 

…so he couldn’t bring in freedom… and our right to it….

 

And we have to understand – that ‘power’s plan is a global installation of ‘internalized discipline’ – and that they intend to have no alternatives presented to their way of seeing…

 

…so those babies safe in their mothers’ arms in the Sudan… in Syria… in Mali… in Yemen – in some sense are the target… as generalized (global) insecurity is their aim.

 

How else could we be effectively contained?

 

And we here in the so-called ‘more privileged’ nation-states unconsciously mull this matter of ‘fate’ – a long overdue discussion… and ours to have now in this moment – and ask ourselves this question: “if there must be degraded ‘hands’… how can I keep my child from being one of them?…”

 

…but the premise is false… a crooked road down which we never should have gone…

 

And we’ll be continuing this conversation next week. I put up a 2nd installment of Wallerstein’s chapter in Does Capitalism Have A Future? I’m putting it up so we can have this discussion of ‘scholarship’… of renouncing our body’s truth. Because each of us in our individual lives… this was done to us. We were systematically shaped… to be ‘servants of state’. And I hope that if we can see that this is true… we can have the certainty to reach out to each other… and create the alternative… to class.

 

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Beginning Chapter XXVIII of Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – P.S.]

 

[Here is how it begins:]

Life soon resumed its normal course, as evidenced by their desire for a good meal and cigarettes, and especially for brandy, the blessed remedy of all Sonderkommando men, the panacea for crematorium sickness… “Take the money,” ‘power’ says to us… “or I’m gonna worry about you.” (Part 79)

 

I awoke depressed after a night of troubled sleep. My nerves were more shot than ever: even my colleagues’ whispered conversation, the sound of their footsteps, grated on me like sandpaper.

 

I was in a foul mood as I went with my associates once again into the dissecting room. En route we had to cross the incineration room. The unfriendly concrete floor extended to the very edge of the ovens. They had finished the job of cremating our comrades by midnight last night. The cooling ovens gave off a feeble warmth. The thirty new Sonder men, stricken by the tragedy they had been made to witness on the day of their arrival, were sitting or lying in deadly silence on the beds of the deceased.

 

But this condition lasted for only a few days. Life soon resumed its normal course, as evidenced by their desire for a good meal and cigarettes, and especially for brandy, the blessed remedy of all Sonderkommando men, the panacea for crematorium sickness. After having gone without clothes in the KZ barracks, they enjoyed the comfort of decent ones. Personal hygiene was once again a reality: showers, plenty of water and soap, towels in abundance. I watched them as an old sergeant might watch a group of new recruits. They would get used to all this before long.

[And you see here… with this example… how urgently the responsibility that calls to us… here in the U.S…. those among us able to see beyond the immediate ‘comforts’… with the help of which we’re encouraged by all the propaganda means ‘power’ has at its disposal (not the least of which are all the ‘tasks’… and ‘bills’… and the minutiae of ‘rules’ in which they hope to bury us… under the pressure of the ‘normalcy’ of our ‘day-to-day-lives’…) to forget… forget those moments when the insanity sat bitter and raw on our tongues… when we knew… beyond all doubt… that the regime of ‘rule’ was wrong – and succumb to the ocean of ‘what-is’ that drowns our body’s ‘knowing’ that we must end the insanity of ‘rule’… succumb… with the ‘gifts’ that ‘power’ gives us in our hands. “Take the money,” ‘power’ says to us… “or I’m gonna worry about you.” – P.S.]

“Captain,” I said unconvincingly, “this environment is highly unsuitable for scientific research. Wouldn’t it be possible to transfer the dissecting room to a better place?” He looked at me steadily, his expression hardening. “What’s wrong?” he said coldly. “Getting sentimental?” (Part 80)

 

What could have happened to this man? Could it be that he had had enough of all this horror? [I must admit… many times I’ve wondered… why does ‘power’ – those handful of guys numbering in the single thousands… who hoard all the dollars… all the decision-making… all the certainty – why do they never feel this?… feel just this: “aren’t they tired of all the horror… Don’t they ever get tired of being the source of so much misery?…” And so unnecessarily… as human goodness released with the dissolution of ‘force’ will make such a paradise on our bounteous earth… such a rich repository of all things beautiful and stimulating… and fun… – P.S.] (Part 81)

 

When the convoys arrived, Dr. Mengele espied, among those lines up for selection, a hunchbacked man about fifty years old. He was not alone; standing beside him was a tall, handsome boy of fifteen or sixteen. The latter, however, had a deformed right foot, which had been corrected by an apparatus made of a metal plate and an orthopedic, thick-soled shoe. They were father and son. Dr. Mengele thought he had discovered, in the person of the hunchback father and his lame son, a sovereign example to demonstrate his theory of the Jewish race’s degeneracy. He had them fall out of ranks immediately. (Part 82)

 

Trembling with fear, he related in an expressionless voice the sad, painful, sometimes terrible events which had marked his five years in the ghetto. […look at what has become of Jews living as Israeli citizens… can there really be no broad opposition… to the atrocities committed against the Palestinians? But how could there be… with no corner of our minds to call our own… with our thoughts… given to us?… – P.S.] (Part 83)

 

The cases were banal, but could nevertheless very easily be utilized as propaganda in support of the Third Reich’s theory concerning the degeneracy of the Jewish race. […‘Rule’ requires its legitimating ideology… and within it ‘supremacy’ will ever be mated with ‘degeneracy’… – P.S.] (Part 84)

 

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* WUR of May 18th, 2014… “Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class”

 

We are not meant for consumption-in-service-to-the-few… we are not meant to risk our lives just to survive. For your loss and the like-losses now… and in seeming interminable march across our subject-years of class… only we-the-global-people can give due recompense… by no longer accepting less… than our freedom…

 

To our brothers and sisters in Turkey… as you struggle to come to terms with the hideousness of this… your loved ones gone… for no good reason… know… your suffering mated with a simultaneous stirring around the globe… is not in vain… but part of the seeding of our transition… to the world of our creation… in which our lives are for each other… each other’s joy… each other’s peace… each other’s endless creativity. We are not meant for consumption-in-service-to-the-few… we are not meant to risk our lives just to survive. For your loss and the like-losses now… and in seeming interminable march across our subject-years of class… only we-the-global-people can give due recompense… by no longer accepting less… than our freedom.

 

And thank you to the folks in the fast-food industry showing us the first step… taking the lead… in modeling global organizing… and we must… as good folks of heart… start standing up simply as human beings… recognizing that it is only globally that we can end ‘power’-worship.

 

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Where are the standards supposed to come from if someone has always been told what was right and what was wrong and if he never had an opportunity to become familiar with his own feelings and if, beyond that, attempts at criticism were unacceptable to the parents and thus were too threatening for the child? If an adult has not developed a mind of his own, then he will find himself at the mercy of the authorities for better or worse, just as an infant finds itself at the mercy of its parents. Saying no to those more powerful will always seem too threatening to him…. Individuals who refuse to adapt to a totalitarian regime are not doing so out of a sense of duty or because of naïveté, but because they cannot help but be true to themselves…

 

During the WUR of May 11th, 2014 we asked: “if we can see how our training (in what gets ‘seen’… recognized… given attention… rewarded…) gets translated into ‘reality’ – the belief that “only ‘mind’ matters” – would that not help us to become more conscious authors of our own lives?

(And this, by the way, is where Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef gets both himself and his audience confused… when he tells us that the reason why economists have not been able to offer any guidance for how to “end ‘poverty’” is that their vast accumulation of ‘knowledge’ has led them to assume falsely “that they know everything that you can know about poverty….” On the contrary… says Professor Max-Neef… they may have ‘knowledge’ but they lack ‘understanding’… and it is only ‘understanding’ of ‘poverty’ that will allow… what? Presumably the design of effective ‘policy’ that will result in the end of ‘poverty’:

…you can only attempt to understand that of which you become a part…. When you belong, you understand. When you’re separated, you can accumulate knowledge. And that is – that’s been the function of science. Now, science is divided into parts, but understanding is holistic. And that happens with poverty. I understood poverty because I was there. I lived with them. I ate with them. I slept with them, you know, etc. And then you begin to learn that in that environment there are different values, different principles from – compared to those from where you are coming, and that you can learn an enormous amount of fantastic things about poverty. What I have learned from the poor is much more than I learned in the universities. But very few people have that experience, you see? They look at it from the outside, instead of living it from the inside. (Democracy Now!, November 26, 2010)

So… ‘economists’ (and by extension ‘philosopher-king-global-statesmen’… for whom the ‘policy’ is intended… who are the ones who ultimately commission the ‘policy’ ‘solutions’… and compel its implementation…) must get this ‘understanding’ of ‘poverty’ – experience it from the inside – in order to know for certain that ‘po-folk’ can be really creative… aren’t stupid… etc. etc.

 

By this logic… if Nazi officers had only lived among Jewish people… they would have made better ‘policy’ decisions… in this world of ‘the rule of Reason’… ‘power’ doesn’t exist… the degradation of certain groups is simply ‘lack of understanding’….

 

I recommend… if Professor Max-Neef really wants to ‘understand’ why ‘philosopher-king-global-statesmen’ cannot find their way to ‘ending’ the degraded status of anyone… that he spend some time with Alice Miller (who… along with Jeremy Bentham… we have to add to the ‘essential puzzle pieces’ that we needed; Alice is necessary because she explained ‘self-betrayal’… and ‘self-betrayal’ is key because if you can betray yourself… you can betray everyone else…):

This perfect adaptation to society’s norms – in other words, to what is called ‘healthy normality’ – carries with it the danger that such a person can be used for practically any purpose. It is not a loss of autonomy that occurs here, because this autonomy never existed, but a switching of values, which in themselves are of no importance anyway for the person in question as long as his whole value system is dominated by the principle of obedience. He has never gone beyond the stage of idealizing his parents with their demands for unquestioning obedience; this idealization can easily be transferred to a Führer or to an ideology. Since authoritarian parents are always right, there is no need for their children to rack their brains in each case to determine whether what is demanded of them is right or not. And how is this to be judged? Where are the standards supposed to come from if someone has always been told what was right and what was wrong and if he never had an opportunity to become familiar with his own feelings and if, beyond that, attempts at criticism were unacceptable to the parents and thus were too threatening for the child? If an adult has not developed a mind of his own, then he will find himself at the mercy of the authorities for better or worse, just as an infant finds itself at the mercy of its parents. Saying no to those more powerful will always seem too threatening to him…. Individuals who refuse to adapt to a totalitarian regime are not doing so out of a sense of duty or because of naïveté, but because they cannot help but be true to themselves. (Alice Miller, For Your Own Good, 1980, p. 83 – 4 [For more on Alice Miller see “The Violence of Class” ])

To illuminate the question of “the challenge of ‘scholarship’” we drew during the radio program of May 11th on Immanuel Wallerstein’s chapter in Does Capitalism Have A Future?

 

The May 18th and 25th, 2014 radio shows will continue this discussion… exploring the relationship between ‘scholarship’… and ‘betrayal.’

 

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“You aren’t looking in the right place, mother. Look further away,” said Rybin, dropping his head. “those that’ve joined up with us – they may not know anything themselves. They have faith, and that’s a good thing. But behind them may stand others – people who are only interested in their own good. A person doesn’t turn against himself for nothing.” In this show we’ll ask again, “how do we know… what is the truth?”

 

May 11th, 2014… Sisters and Brothers: In the Maxim Gorky novel Mother an older woman, Pavel’s mother, is slowly being reawakened to ‘thought’… an activity her twenty years of married life – a life of mistreatment that required her leaving aside all effort but the attempt to survive… to try to evade her husband’s beatings – forbade. But now… after his death… and Pavel’s opening before her this door to ‘thought’… she starts to wonder… if she could learn to read again. She’d learned as a child… but that was decades full of pain ago… so she hesitates… not really believing that it’s possible. One day she’s alone… draws the shades… and takes a book from the shelf and laboriously tries to figure letters out…. But she’s barely begun… when a knock at the door beckons. It’s Rybin, her son’s friend… come to commiserate because her son has been imprisoned:

He sat down and turned to the mother.

 

“Let’s have a talk.”

 

He gave her a significant, secretive glance that filled her with vague alarms.

 

“Everything costs money,” he began in his heavy voice. “Costs money to get born, costs money to die. Books and leaflets cost money too. Do you know where the money for these books comes from?”

 

“No, I don’t,” said the mother softly, sensing that something was wrong.

 

“Neither do I. And the next question is, who writes them?”

 

“People with book learning….”

 

“The gentlefolk,” said Rybin, a dark flush sweeping over his bearded face. “In other words, the gentlefolk write the books and pass them out. But the books are written against the gentlefolk. Now you just try and explain to me what sense there is in them spending their money to stir up the common folk against themselves, eh?”

 

The mother gave a frightened gasp and blinked her eyes.

 

“What do you think?”

 

“Aha!” said Rybin, turning like a bear. “There you are. Me too – as soon as that thought struck me, everything went cold.”

 

“Have you found out something?”

 

“Tricked!” answered Rybin. “I feel we’ve been tricked. I have no facts, but there’s treachery here. That’s what! Your gentlefolk are sly. I’m after the truth. And now I understand the truth, and I’m not going along with the gentlefolk any more. Whenever it suits them, they’ll knock me down and walk over me as if I was a bridge….”

 

His words were a vice gripping the mother’s heart.

 

“Dear Jesus!” she cried in sorrow. “Can it be that Pasha doesn’t understand? And all those who….”

 

Before her passed the grave honest faces of Yegor, Nikolai Ivanovich and Sasha. Her pulse quickened.

 

“No, no!” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t believe it! They’re people with a conscience.”

 

“Who do you mean?” asked Rybin thoughtfully.

 

“All of them. Every last one of them. I’ve seen that.”

 

“You aren’t looking in the right place, mother. Look further away,” said Rybin, dropping his head. “those that’ve joined up with us – they may not know anything themselves. They have faith, and that’s a good thing. But behind them may stand others – people who are only interested in their own good. A person doesn’t turn against himself for nothing.” (Maxim Gorky, Mother, Chapter XVIII)

I read this to my son and he laughed. “When was this?” he asked. “1905” I replied.

 

“So they had their ‘Matrix moment’ too.”

 

In this show we’ll ask again, “how do we know… what is the truth?”

 

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We know from our own bodies… our own hearts… that what turns us on we give willingly… we know in our hearts that coercion is not needed for us to collaborate together… cooperate together… to create beauty and harmony on earth. It's simply been our separation from each other that has led us to doubt that the same heart beats in all human beings. We have been systematically turned against each other. (Kropotkin excerpt, Part 1)

 

We concluded last week’s show by suggesting that ‘scholarship’ should best be framed as renouncing our body’s truth…

(…and by this I mean what Alice Miller meant when she describes a person as having no autonomy… that they’ve not developed their own thoughts…)

…saying that as… we all of us are living under class… we’ve all had this happen to us… had this un-said self-betrayal forced on us as infants – the basic pattern for all subsequent betrayals… we’ve all found – perhaps not consciously – that we do not self-create… but are rather systematically shaped… to be ‘servants (and versions – this is what makes wrestling with it so insidious…) of state’. And I think that if we can expose these thoughts to enough of us of this generation… we can become certain soon enough… to overcome ‘power’s heretofore always-successful strategy (of ensuring that their ‘vision’… their ‘mission’… survives each generation…) – by reaching out to each other… and creating the alternative… to class.

 

One hundred seventeen years ago… and more… in fact for our entire existence as humans… our bodies knew what that ‘opposite’ would be… but we couldn’t see – as Tesla did – how to stimulate this reconnection with our truth… globally. One hundred seventeen years ago… Kropotkin put this ‘knowing’ in these words:

We saw that a new form of society is germinating in the civilized nations [and we see now that this very notion is the core problem… – P.S.], and must take the place of the old one: a society of equals, who will not be compelled to sell their hands and brains to those who choose to employ them in a haphazard way, but who will be able to apply their knowledge and capacities to production, in an organism so constructed as to combine all the efforts for procuring the greatest sum possible of well-being for all, while full, free scope will be left for every individual initiative. This society will be composed of a multitude of associations, federated for all the purposes which require federation: trade federations for production of all sorts, – agricultural, industrial, intellectual, artistic; communes for consumption, making provision for dwellings, gas works, supplies of food, sanitary arrangements, etc.; federations of communes among themselves, and federations of communes with trade organizations; and finally, wider groups covering all the country, or several countries, composed of men who collaborate for the satisfaction of such economic intellectual, artistic, and moral needs as are not limited to a given territory. All these will combine directly, by means of free agreements between them, just as the railway companies or the postal departments of different countries cooperate now, without having a central railway or postal government, – though the former are actuated by merely egotistic aims, and the latter belong to different and often hostile states; or as the meteorologists, the Alpine clubs, the lifeboat stations in Great Britain, the cyclists, the teachers, and so on, combine for all sorts of work in common, for intellectual pursuits, or simply for pleasure. There will be full freedom for the development of new forms of production, invention, and organization; individual initiative will be encouraged, and the tendency toward uniformity and centralization will be discouraged. Moreover, this society will not be crystallized into certain unchangeable forms, but will continually modify its aspect, because it will be a living, evolving organism; no need of government will be felt, because free agreement and federation take its place in all those functions which governments consider as theirs at the present time, and because, the causes of conflict being reduced in number, those conflicts which may still arise can be submitted to arbitration.

 

None of us minimized the importance and magnitude of the change which we looked for. We understood that the current opinions upon the necessity of private ownership in land, factories, mines, dwelling-houses, and so on, as the means of securing industrial progress, and of the wage-system as the means of compelling men to work, would not soon give way to higher conceptions of socialized ownership and production…. And we understood also that the prevalent ideas concerning the necessity of authority – in which all of us have been bred – would not and could not be abandoned by civilized mankind all at once… a complete revision of the teachings now derived from history, would be required before men would perceive that they had been mistaken in attributing to their rulers and their laws what was derived in reality from their own sociable feelings and habits. We knew all that. But we also knew that in preaching reform in both these directions, we should be working with the tide of human progress.

 

Testing these ideas we get to certainty. And we have to understand that ‘power’ has been working on this strategy of undermining our certainty for some time… and that once we get on the same side with our bodies… to not let go that hold… and trust that connection to the earth… which is fundamentally about connecting with our love. And what that means in the face of systematic infiltration and undermining of the discussions needed for us to develop certainty – what that means is having a vision. And to organize consciously for a vision of the future is a whole new thing… we haven't done that globally yet. (Kropotkin excerpt, Part 2)

 

When I made a closer acquaintance with the working population and their sympathizers from the better educated classes, I soon realized that they valued their personal freedom even more than they valued their personal well-being….

 

We trusted – and experience has proved that we were right – that social life itself, supported by a frank, open-minded criticism of opinions and actions, would be the most effective means for threshing out opinions and for divesting them of the unavoidable exaggerations. We acted, in fact, in accordance with the old saying that freedom remains still the wisest cure for freedom’s temporary inconveniences. There is, in mankind, a nucleus of social habits – an inheritance from the past, not yet duly appreciated – which is not maintained by coercion and is superior to coercion. Upon it all the progress of mankind is based, and so long as mankind does not begin to deteriorate physically and mentally, it will not be destroyed by any amount of criticism or of occasional revolt against it. These were the opinions in which I grew confirmed more and more in proportion as my experience of men and things increased.

 

We understood at the same time that such a change cannot be produced by the conjectures of one man of genius, that it will not be one man’s discovery, but that it must result from the constructive work of the masses, just as the forms of judicial procedure which were elaborated in the early mediaeval period, the village community, the guild, the mediaeval city, and the foundations of international law were worked out by the people.

 

Many of our predecessors had undertaken to picture ideal commonwealths, basing them sometimes upon the principles of authority, and, on some rare occasions, upon the principles of freedom…. But all that was preparatory work only. (Petr Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist, 1897, p. 398 – 402)

–––

 

Throughout the course of these radio conversations, repeatedly we’ve raised the question as to whether the media-bombardment of ‘facts’… and ‘perspectives’… and ‘always-changing-definitions’ – the result of which (and consider that this is the intention… [we never hear discussed the possibility that the result was the intention… instead what we’re given is “oh it’s just by happenstance that things turn out the way they do…”]) is the inability for a critical mass of us to achieve certainty (and it is certainty we need… to do the difficult work… of challenging the seeming-authority of ‘what-is’… – Long-term planning has been where we’ve been at a serious disadvantage…

 

How do we know what to trust… and what to be skeptical of? How do we know that what Kropotkin describes is… as he says… our future… if we progress as human beings?

 

When Kropotkin says, “…a complete revision of the teachings now derived from history, would be required before men would perceive that they had been mistaken in attributing to their rulers and their laws what was derived in reality from their own sociable feelings and habits…” (…and the term for this is ‘self-betrayal’…)

 

…what does the ‘complete revision’ consist of? By what criteria do we distinguish it from yet another attempt from ‘power’ at cooptation of the thoughts… the language… that we need… to get free?

 

And when Kropotkin says… of those “prevalent ideas concerning the necessity of authority”… that in them we have all been bred… what does this tell us about ‘scholarship’?

 

This – and next week’s – show will consider the criticisms that Michael Mann makes of Immanuel Wallerstein’s piece… in Does Capitalism Have A Future?… asking ourselves what weight, if any, they carry… and whether that weight is our water… or ‘power’s….

 

I believe that one way to know… is whether ‘power’ is given cover… or is ‘outed’. And… is it not obvious… that an “organized ‘power’” in existence… means an undue media influence? But what is ‘the story’ to which we are being brought? So you see… there’s an obvious series of questions that come… once we begin pondering… the obvious – and this explains why… they are so determined to hide.

 

So if ‘power’-as-behind-the-scenes-cross-national-colluder is systematically snipped out of the story we’re taught in school (and would it be ‘modern’-organized-‘power’ if it didn’t hide behind the buffers it sets up like lightning rods to draw the fire away from themselves?…) mind-made by ‘scholars’… and presented to us…

 

…how do we ‘out’ them… see their hand behind the propaganda-props… so that we can distinguish ‘truth’ from ‘con’ from ‘being mistaken’… in political analysis?

 

–––

 

May 14th, 2014… Sisters and Brothers: Throughout the course of these radio conversations, repeatedly we’ve raised the question as to whether the media-bombardment of ‘facts’… and ‘perspectives’… and ‘always-changing-definitions’ – the result of which (and consider that this is the intention…) is the inability for a critical mass of us to achieve certainty (and it is certainty we need… to do the difficult work… of challenging the seeming-authority of ‘what-is’… the authority of the mass… of existing social conventions – all of which reinforce ‘class’…)

 

–––

 

Now that’s standing with your brothers and sisters. As we said in a recent show: there is an ‘us’ and ‘them’… there is a tiny-few-organized-folks disproportionately ‘endowed’ with the resources of the planet… who are sculpting the world they want. So, far from our benefiting from the would-be ‘gurus’ advising us to make our peace with class… with ‘power’… to look inward and divorce our interests from those of our sisters and brothers… they corrupt the soul… debase our common humanity…

 

May 14th, 2014… Sisters and Brothers: Throughout the course of these radio conversations, repeatedly we’ve raised the question as to whether the media-bombardment of ‘facts’… and ‘perspectives’… and ‘always-changing-definitions’ – the result of which (and consider that this is the intention…) is the inability for a critical mass of us to achieve certainty (and it is certainty we need… to do the difficult work… of challenging the seeming-authority of ‘what-is’… the authority of the mass… of existing social conventions – all of which reinforce ‘class’…)

 

…on the one hand…

 

…and on the other… the censoring out from what we are allowed to hear… of the ‘facts’ – sovereign among them the planning and organization… of the ‘philosopher-king-global-statesmen – and ‘perspectives’… and ‘earth-definitions’… that would further this work of challenging ‘what-is’ – the reality of entrenched… hierarchical… ‘power’-relations… and replacing them with non-hierarchical relations.

 

This therefore – the critical importance of we-the-people forming the certainty that we must combine our efforts… locally and globally… to end ‘the system’ called ‘power’… or ‘class’… or ‘exclusive decision-making of the few’… or ‘the renunciation of our unique gifts and vesting them in ‘states’… to be directed by an hierarchical arrangement… of ‘statesmen’…

 

…this need for certainty is why we need some means of seeing… in the media-bombardment… ‘power’s hand… so that we can both steel ourselves to resist… as well as to decode… it: i.e., see where they’re hoping to take us.

 

Here’s an illustration.

 

For reasons which regular listeners to this program can probably guess… and which Wallerstein explains… ‘power’ has been… for years now… delivering a consistent message to we-the-common-folk of the U.S.: “scale back your hopes…” “settle for less”…

 

…pounding us with this message from every angle they can imagine: “the U.S. has been taking an unfair share…” “we are all one… let’s celebrate more going to China and India…” “the earth cannot bear your consumption-burden…” “the ‘simple life’ is what brings happiness!”

 

So when David Suzuki tells us that our problems began… just in the last hundred years… because ‘we went’ from being ‘rural’ to ‘urban’ (keeping the frame nice and short, as ‘power’ prefers, by the way… and narrowly focused… on the nation-state) what’s his motive?… and how do we know?

 

Could this be a cynical attempt to get us to collude with him in his betrayal?

 

And when we’re told to “go beneath the conflict to find the harmony…” is our ‘harmony’ purchased at a cost of which we’re never told?

 

Gorky has some thoughts on this too:

“Sometimes your heart’s so full you can hardly bear it. It seems no matter where you go, everyone’s your comrade. The same fire’s burning in each of their breasts, they’re all good and kind and jolly. You don’t have to talk to understand each other. Together you form one great chorus in which every heart sings its own song. And all the songs are like streams pouring into one river, and the river flows broad and free into the joyous sea of the new life….

 

Then suddenly you come to your senses,” went on the khokhol [“…Russian nickname for a Ukrainian…” – Translator (Margaret Wettlin)] with a shake of his head, “you glance round and everything is cold and dirty; everybody’s cross and tired….”

 

There was sadness in his voice…. “…You’d like to love the whole of him, but how can you? How can you forgive a person for rushing at you like a wild beast, for failing to see the living soul in you and smashing the human face of you? You can’t forgive that! Not because of yourself. You could stand anything yourself. But because you can’t let them think you approve; you can’t lend them your back to practise beating other people on.” His eyes were burning with a cold flame, his head was lowered stubbornly and he spoke more firmly. “I have no right to forgive anything wrong, even if it doesn’t hurt me. I’m not the only one on this earth. Today I may let someone do me an injury, even laughing at it because it’s not worth noticing, but tomorrow, having tried out his strength on me, he may browbeat somebody else. You can’t look at everybody the same; you have to coldly pick and choose: this is my kind, this is not. Not very comforting, is it? But it’s true.” (Maxim Gorky, Mother, Chapter XVIII)

Now that’s standing with your brothers and sisters. As we said in a recent show: there is an ‘us’ and ‘them’… there is a tiny-few-organized-folks disproportionately ‘endowed’ with the resources of the planet… who are sculpting the world they want.

 

So, far from our benefiting from the would-be ‘gurus’ advising us to make our peace with class… with ‘power’… to look inward and divorce our interests from those of our sisters and brothers… they corrupt the soul… debase our common humanity.

 

–––

 

This, then, may be the key distinguishing quality: minimally… does it recognize our inherent need to be free – and this holds across the political spectrum… as we see in the contrast between Alice Miller and Jeremy Bentham – it’s a matter of whether one respects that need… or fears it… but if it’s acknowledged… it’s honest…

 

So… how do we know what to trust… and what to be skeptical of? I think Kropotkin has given us… in simplest… and so most useful language (and we’ll be elaborating on it next week… illustrating with the ‘Wallerstein – Mann’ juxtaposition…) the key answer… when he says: “Many of our predecessors had undertaken to picture ideal commonwealths, basing them sometimes upon the principles of authority, and, on some rare occasions, upon the principles of freedom….”

 

Based on this, then… the question to put to the political analysis is: in it, are we authentic actors in our own right… or is management of us so obvious it flies beneath notice? In the political analysis… do we need ‘keepers’ to intercede for us?

 

This, then, may be the key distinguishing quality: minimally… does it recognize our inherent need to be free – and this holds across the political spectrum… as we see in the contrast between Alice Miller and Jeremy Bentham – it’s a matter of whether one respects that need… or fears it… but if it’s acknowledged… it’s honest.

 

Further… if it’s admitted that this is so across the millennia… and that we have ever… and will ever be… striving – till it’s achieved – for freedom… it’s honest.

 

This is also like asking… do ‘the-authentic-people’ enter at all… into the calculus?

 

There are other things as well (e.g., is ‘power’ shielded… kept hidden as a conscious actor?… is the frame kept narrow… in time and space?… is it trying to restrain our focus to the nation-state?… and get us to waver from facing the global implications of global accumulation – which we’ll consider next week…) all of which fall under that primary… sovereign… consideration… the distinction between ‘authority’… and ‘freedom’.

This is the divide.

These are the sides.

This is the question that is now being decided.

And further again… ‘authority-based-rhetoric’ will find scarce rooting in reality… no concrete frame in which to squeeze… and must needs deal in abstractions… so its shifting definitions are inherent in the barren project to which it is given. And we know this because – as Kropotkin says –

There is, in mankind, a nucleus of social habits – an inheritance from the past, not yet duly appreciated – which is not maintained by coercion and is superior to coercion. Upon it all the progress of mankind is based…

– and so… there can be no honest political analysis… no honest ‘scholarship’… that ignores it.

 

There’s no ‘fact’ more important than this.

 

–––

 

But this by no means – this ‘distinguishing’ – should be the extent of our engagement with ‘power’s ‘thought’… to develop our ‘opposite’… we need to gather together… and test our growing ‘composite’.

 

–––

 

Continuing Chapter XXIX of Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – P.S.]

 

[Here is an excerpt:]

(from “Chapter XXIX”:)

 

In the KZ orders were always cursory. How the prisoners should go about procuring the materials necessary for their execution was never specified. The order had to be carried out, and that was as much as was known. I was therefore faced with a serious problem: what could I have the bodies cooked in?… (Part 85)

 

–––

 

Nazi propaganda never hesitated to clothe its monstrous lies in scientific apparel. The method often worked too, since those towards whom these lies were directed usually had little or no critical faculty, and accepted as fact everything which bore the regime’s stamp of approval. (Part 86)

 

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After the gasoline bath, the lab assistant very completely gathered up the bones of the skeletons and placed them on the same work table where, the evening before, I had examined the still living men.

 

Dr. Mengele was highly pleased. He had brought several fellow officers with him. They pompously examined certain parts of the skeletons and launched into high-sounding, scientific terms, talking as if the two victims represented an extremely rare medical phenomenon. They abandoned themselves completely to their pseudo-science.

 

And yet, far from being an extraordinary abnormality, it is common to hundreds of thousands of men of all races and climates. Even a doctor whose practice is limited has often come across it. But these two cases could, by their very nature, be exploited as useful propaganda. Nazi propaganda never hesitated to clothe its monstrous lies in scientific apparel. The method often worked too, since those towards whom these lies were directed usually had little or no critical faculty, and accepted as fact everything which bore the regime’s stamp of approval.

[Hearing these words of Miklos’ this morning… May 16th, 2014… after reading Michael Mann… after listening to a whole string of ‘experts’… most recently just now Richard Wolff… folks all reinforcing for each other the same message: “we are entering a new era in which you will have to make sacrifices for the greater good… so that the resources of the planet can be shared more equitably… so that you can live more simply… and in balance with the earth… to help your brothers and sisters through this difficult transition… you will be asked to serve… listen carefully to the voice of your great paternal state… we who work so tirelessly on your behalf…” – the pap is slightly different than for previous generations… in order to accommodate the changed circumstances attendant upon their wholesale rape of the planet… but the comforting tone… crafted to lull us to sleep hasn’t changed since ‘power’ invented – with the help of Bentham – modern propaganda techniques…. At this point, however, I think we can all see… that our critical faculties need to be set… on ‘maximum efficiency’… – P.S.]

–––

 

* WUR of May 25th, 2014… “Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Sergei Konionkov’s To Those Who Fell Fighting for the Cause of Peace and the Brotherhood of Nations (1918) (…floating in a Goya sky… “as Peace should still her wheaten garland wear… (Hamlet, V. 2.41)]

 

We have to establish a world on honest feet… we have to have a world fit for the children… for them to stretch to their full lengths in… and not feel their energies dissipated in loss of empathy and confusion – and to do that… we need a vision of an authentic existence… So we need honesty… we need accurate capturing of the true processes at work that shape our existence… …as… if we don’t have the words to make sense of our ‘reality’… to capture it accurately… how do we create a new one?

 

Once… when I was hawking books outside the North Berkeley BART station… I must have run out of Waking Up… because I was holding up Unpacking Democracy… and a man walking by… stopped… and came back… and leaned towards the book… peering at the cover… “Who did that?” he said with an accent… Irish, I think… “I’m a ceramicist. Those are tiles! That’s amazing! Well done!”

 

And it is amazing… but I have to admit… I’d assumed because I found it in an art book (and after all… what do I know about these things?…) that it’s a well-known piece. It’s only recently that I thought, “I’d like to see it as it’s exhibited… but when I ‘googled’ it… I found only a couple references… and those to plaques! Could it really no longer exist? I find it hard to wrap my mind around that. If anyone knows its fate, please let me know, and I’ll post it on this page.

 

May 23rd, 2014… To the Ukraine… on your Election Day: remember the work of your ancestors… of your Nenko. Maxim Gorky’s Mother has two parts. At the beginning of the second half, ‘nenko’… Mother… has a dream… in which she tells the people in transition, “Don’t abandon the child…” and she placed it on their cart. And the khokhol says to her, “Sing nenko! Such is life!”

 

Sing! Sing!… or the abyss… such are our choices.

 

And she awoke to the question: “What shall I do now?”

 

“Sing, people of Ukraine… sing!”

 

(Last week we finally remembered to add Alice Miller and Jeremy Bentham to the “puzzle pieces” we need to see what ‘power’s plans are. Today we remember John Boswell… for his The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe: From Late Antiquity To The Renaissance….)

 

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May 20th, 2014… Brothers and Sisters: We have to establish a world on honest feet… we have to have a world fit for the children… for them to stretch to their full lengths in… and not feel their energies dissipated in loss of empathy and confusion – and to do that… we need a vision of an authentic existence –

 

– what could be more important than that?… as… to live out roles constructed for us… is an abomination… to indoctrinate children in an ‘un-reality’ is hideous… to burden them with this weight of confusion… of unnecessary questions: “why don’t people say what they feel?”… “why don’t people mean what they say… say what they mean?”… “why is everyone so unhappy?” – and then to compel them to turn their backs on their own questions (self-betrayal) – has been the core of ‘power’s strategy… for perpetuating this insanity… called ‘rule’…

 

…to burden the children… lay the weight of this system on their backs… and then bark at them to carry it… while hiding from their conscious thought… that this is what they’re doing.

 

So we need honesty… we need accurate capturing of the true processes at work that shape our existence…

 

…and for that… we need honest ‘scholarship’.

 

Honest scholarship gives us the words to describe our ‘reality’…. Without them… we’re trapped in confusion…

 

…as… if we don’t have the words to make sense of our ‘reality’… to capture it accurately… how do we create a new one?

 

–––

 

The totalitarian project operationalized means: “take everything the people have… privatize everything…” and this means not just the earth… but our hands and our minds… because that’s the only way to create scarcity… and scarcity is the only way to keep us working… and keeping us working is the only way to control our thoughts… and controlling our thoughts – ensuring that we don’t have minds of our own – is the only way to achieve total control… totalitarianism… as Alice Miller showed…

 

Imagine if all we knew of the Third Reich was from the words of their official documents?

 

But is it not the case… that the extent of what most of us know… is just what we are told… in the official documents of our various states? Recall Göring’s words: “We will go down in history either as the world's greatest statesmen or its worst villains.” And recall Miklos’ words from Chapter XVIII:

But when the race of Supermen had achieved final victory, having won the war and acquired the territory vital to its needs, then the skeletons of those cripples and dwarfs who had been murdered here would be put on display in the spacious halls of great museums, along with a descriptive plaque giving their name, age, nationality, occupation, etc. then, on the anniversary of Victory Day, thousands of students of this Third Reich, built to endure a thousand years, would be led through these halls by their professors, to pay homage to their illustrious forebears. Their forebears who, by this victory, and the realization of the sacred mission which History had entrusted to the Master Race, had pushed the surrounding peoples – French, Belgians, Russians, Poles – into the niches corresponding to their inferiority. Better still, they would have completely annihilated one European people, the Jews, who had a long history behind them, a history of 6,000 years, but who had no right to exist a few centuries longer. Why? Because in the course of its long history the Jewish race had degenerated into a people of dwarfs and cripples. By mixing with other races, they had sullied, and threatened to contaminate with degeneracy, the only pure race: the Aryan.

Isn’t it just that easy… for states to shape our thinking? Don’t we mindlessly repeat its key themes: “We are ‘workers’… and ‘advanced’… and we paid to sell our thinking – our ability to manipulate ‘facts’ – are superior to those paid to sell our youth… our knees… our backs…”?

 

So… in saying that Immanuel Wallerstein can “help us over our ‘lexicon problem’”… putting it like this is but seizing the tip of a very large iceberg.

 

I believe the way-in-chief… we are given that critical ‘leg-up’ by Wallerstein… is in his… along with Terence Hopkins… creating world-systems theory… and thereby showing us… not in these words but true nonetheless… that the world we are living in… defined by ‘class’ prerogatives… is a single reality… and so necessarily… totalitarian.

 

But… there’s an unintended consequence in this… of which we made reference… in the Waking Up Radio show of December 12, 2012: “Totalitarianism is a self-defeating project.” )

Totalitarianism is a self-defeating project. The totalitarian project operationalized means: “take everything the people have… privatize everything…” and this means not just the earth… but our hands and our minds…

 

…because that’s the only way to create scarcity… and scarcity is the only way to keep us working.

(…and keeping us working is the only way to control our thoughts… and controlling our thoughts – ensuring that we don’t have minds of our own – is the only way to achieve total control… totalitarianism… as Alice Miller showed… but…)

Totalitarianism is a self-defeating project… because it requires making everyone come in… i.e. it unites us…

 

…which means… inevitably… we come to see ‘the whole’ (i.e., we must try to understand ‘the whole’ when we try to understand our lives.

(This explains the way the Michael Mann article is framed [as we’ll see next week…] the attempt to render harmless [to ‘power’] acknowledgement of ‘the whole’. And for who’s ‘benefit’?… this intense monitoring and censoring and massaging… of ‘scholarship’?… if not for the privileged youth in universities?… those same youth Miklos could see being led through the impressive spaces ‘power’ creates to celebrate itself… and con the next generation of privilege… to con them into feeling honored… to join the ranks of the ‘philosopher-king-global-statesmen’…)

So for instance… the political class… the sheepdogs… are completely internationalized.

 

Our thought must become all-encompassing as ‘power’ seeks to make its control all-encompassing.

So… ‘power’s firm hold on ‘scholarship’… a sine qua non ‘power’ has been aware of at least since Plato’s Uncle Critias… persists… so it’s up to us… we commoners… to re-incorporate within us… ‘scholarship’…

 

…which means we have to create the language… to do this.

 

–––

 

We embraced Kropotkin’s ‘values’-distinction between having the core value ‘authority’… and having the core value ‘freedom’… And we identified as key to the creation of that critical mass of ‘we-the-global-people’ overcoming the structurally-enforced inability to do long-term planning (because they give us our functions… – that’s controlling what we can think – truly… test it in practice…

 

Before we begin our ‘Wallerstein – Mann’ juxtaposition… it might be helpful to recall (from our last show) how we know what to trust… and what to be skeptical of… in ‘scholarship’. What makes for ‘honest scholarship’? And on what material reality do we base its elements?

• We embraced Kropotkin’s ‘values’-distinction between having the core value ‘authority’… and having the core value ‘freedom’… i.e., we must put this question to the scholarship: does it recognize our inherent need to be free… across the millennia?

 

And we attempted to show that ‘scholarship’ has generally played a particularly unfortunate role… because its intercession on the part of ‘rule’… its assuming the ‘rightness’ of ‘authority’… and the illegitimacy of ‘freedom’ (defined as individual self-creation…) forestalls the development of our thought… thereby precluding our achieving the certainty we need… to help each other get free.

 

And we identified as key to the creation of that critical mass of ‘we-the-global-people’ that has achieved the certainty we need… to do the difficult work… of challenging the seeming-authority of ‘what-is’: overcoming the structurally-enforced inability to do long-term planning (because they give us our functions…

(– that’s controlling what we can think – truly… test it in practice if you’re forced out of that cocoon called ‘the job’… often the first reaction… is not having any thoughts to think… feeling lost… it takes time to rebuild the soul… but get on it if you’re in that situation…)

What the ‘scholars’ track reflects the unnatural force imposed by ‘power’. But our natural ‘movement’ is captured in George Eliot’s words: “What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult to each other?” A removal of unnatural force and a return to our natural ‘movement’ will be the realization of Gorky’s vision…

 

…so… not being able to take ‘the long view’ because they’ve appropriated the long-view as their exclusive prerogative…

(…and that’s seductive… which explains why so many young people “Get on board!” “Yeah I want to be one of the ‘chosen few’ who get to think long and use our full gifts!” [or what they imagine are their ‘full gifts’… ignoring that little one called ‘empathy’… and ‘the soul’… they’ve got to let those go…)

Long-term planning has been where we’ve been at a serious disadvantage.

 

Our thoughts… our hopes… our sight… and so our vision… have been artificially fore-shortened… which interrupts… disconnects us from… our natural ‘movement’… our natural uncoerced evolution. We have to re-ignite the fire for our connections with the earth… the ancestors… and each other – our natural ‘movement’. What the ‘scholars’ track reflects the unnatural force imposed by ‘power’. But our natural ‘movement’ is captured in George Eliot’s words: “What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult to each other?” A removal of unnatural force and a return to our natural ‘movement’ will be the realization of Gorky’s vision… as expressed in the voice of the khokhol…

(…I think we can see why Russia is so afraid… of the Ukraine… obviously over the centuries it has created a very powerful people. Gorky based Mother… Nenko… on actual historical events…

“…I know the time will come when people will wonder at their own beauty, when each will be like a star to all the others. The earth will be peopled with free men, great in their freedom….”

(The people of Russia had a vision… and it wasn’t the vision given them by their so-called ‘leaders’… it was the vision given by themselves… to each other.)

We’ve been discussing how having a vision propels us forward…

(…it certainly propelled Gorky. And in the events he described we can see that it propelled the people of Russia. The people of Russia had a vision… and it wasn’t the vision given them by their so-called ‘leaders’… it was the vision given by themselves… to each other… beautifully expressed in the voice of the khokhol….)

‘Power’ has been phenomenally successful with its “rope ‘the people’ into supporting fixed class divisions”-vision precisely because it looks long: they know where they’re going – and therefore have certainty. And their ‘success’ has been ‘self-reinforcing’ both in the sense that its ‘wealth’ compounds…

(…because recall what we just said: to install a totalitarian project you have to commandeer the resources of the planet… you have to ensure that we-the-global people got nowhere to go… that our brains… our hands… everything… is under control… from ‘power’s perspective. But the only piece of that truth that we’re shown is: “Oh look at this… ‘wealth’ is accumulating…” and that means that: “…it’s just these evil corporations that are unfortunately just manifesting human nature… which is greedy… etc. etc.…” No. The whole point of the privatization project is total control of us…)

So as that ‘wealth’ – the resources of the earth – compounds proportionally with the privatization of the world’s resources – and as the resources available for the reproduction of our lives are privatized… so… to that degree… are we kept begging… for a miniscule piece of what is (in actuality) our communal legacy…

 

…‘power’ gets us to forego the development of our full gifts (necessarily… because developing our gifts requires autonomy… the cultivation of an independent perspective from that of ‘rule’… from the project of ‘authority’… of ‘management’…) and pursue ‘power’s success… instead of our happiness…

 

…but also in the sense that it gets us… we-the-people (as the most important resource that ‘power’ has ‘privatized’… taken for its exclusive use – as it conditions most of us to serve their ‘mission’… it gets us to represent for ‘the state’…) to forego the development of our full gifts (necessarily… because developing our gifts requires autonomy… the cultivation of an independent perspective from that of ‘rule’… from the project of ‘authority’… of ‘management’…) and pursue ‘power’s success… instead of our happiness.

 

This basic undeniable divide – ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ – is the cause-generative in some sense for our push-back-insistence on freedom (in the same sense [in reverse] that a celebration of ‘art’ is a celebration of ‘slavery’…) and to simply (pretend to) ignore all of it… and depend on your paid-brains to invent abstractions to obscure the obvious… is not just dishonest ‘scholarship’… it’s politically-motivated conscious misdirection.

 

Is it trying to restrain our focus to the nation-state? – That’s a big one. That’s generally all we get from Left pundits. That’s why Wallerstein is so needed…. The intentional censoring of what we get to hear is not surprising… it’s how they stay in control…. It’s not surprising… but it still makes me sad – the absence of authentic conversations… so let’s get our own going…

 

• Is ‘power’ shielded… kept hidden as a conscious actor… generally by cloaking its actions in abstractions?

 

Last week we said that we never hear discussed the possibility that the result was the intention… instead what we’re given is “oh it’s just by happenstance that things turn out the way they do…” – we said that ‘power’ operates through a series of moves that conceal their intentions and existence…. Because ‘power’ plans… has nothing else to do but try to stay on top of the game… and keep ahead of us… and keep us in check… they’re able to devote their time to long-term planning (we used as an example California Governor Jerry Brown’s relentless efforts to push through the construction of water tunnels in the Sacramento – San Joaquin River Delta region… as well as the unsubtle propaganda plants of columnist David Brooks to suggest that ‘the people’ will prefer this same Governor Brown as Democratic Party presidential candidate-pick over Hilary… “the people don’t want Hilary because she’s too far to the right…”! Right.)

 

This is where the difference between Wallerstein and Mann is most stark. The whole of Mann’s piece seems designed to undermine the notion of conscious planning on the part of what he calls ‘elites’… reinforcing Bentham’s point as to the critical importance… for ‘power’… for its very existence… of it disappearing into the crafted structure of society – and Mann is more than happy to contribute his bit… to the crafting.

 

• Are terms not… or ill-… defined… the better the butter for slicking the surfaces… if craft is your motive… and conning your purpose?

 

• Is the frame (ultimately) kept narrow… in time and space?

 

• Is our focus kept on the big tends (as James Galbraith did…) or are we dished up a healthy portion of minutiae-driven cooked-‘spin’?

 

• Is it trying to restrain our focus to the nation-state? – That’s a big one. That’s generally all we get from Left pundits. That’s why Wallerstein is so needed…. The intentional censoring of what we get to hear is not surprising… it’s how they stay in control…. It’s not surprising… but it still makes me sad – the absence of authentic conversations… so let’s get our own going.

 

• Does it attempt to divert us from facing the global implications of global accumulation?

 

• Does it reinforce the maintenance of existing ‘power’-relations? (That’s a given for pundits allowed over the airwaves… that’s what the whole “fix the state” thing is about.)

–––

 

In school we’re taught… a diversity of ‘deep fictions’ – Karl Popper has helped us to see not just the inherent dishonesty in this project of ‘inventing thought-systems’… but its inherent political utilitarianism. He wrote: “Hegel may be seen in the fact that he represents the ‘missing link’, as it were, between Plato and the modern form of totalitarianism. Most of the modern totalitarians are quite unaware that their ideas can be traced back to Plato. But many know of their indebtedness to Hegel, and all of them have been brought up in the close atmosphere of Hegelianism. They have been taught to worship the state, history, and the nation.”

 

In school we’re taught that all the… not really “‘diversity’ of perspectives” because that implies truly diverse world-views… while, under class, there are at base just two… as Kropotkin explained… on the one hand: “‘rule’… or ‘authority’… is at the core of all ‘progress’” (which is fundamentally dishonest… i.e. a lie…) or its opposite that: “…that notion is illusion… reflects the state’s conditioning of us to serve its own interests… while the reality is the appropriation of our gifts in the service of ‘privilege’…” (i.e. the truth – and to maintain as your exclusive prerogative decision-making for global-shaping is ‘privilege’ indeed…)

 

– but rather we should call it a diversity of ‘deep fictions’ – “constructions of ‘analytic frameworks’”… in any case… we’re told that all these invented ‘systems of thought’ (although… again… the word we’re given to describe this is ‘perspectives’…) is a good thing… because they serve to stimulate our thinking… and… the story goes… get to more of ‘the truth’.

 

But Karl Popper has helped us to see not just the inherent dishonesty in this project of ‘inventing thought-systems’… but its inherent political utilitarianism. He says this of Hegel:

In our own time, Hegel’s hysterical historicism is still the fertilizer to which modern totalitarianism owes its rapid growth. Its use has prepared the ground, and has educated the intelligentsia to intellectual dishonesty… We have to learn the lesson that intellectual honesty is fundamental for everything we cherish. (The Open Society and Its Enemies, Volume 2, p. 59)

 

The historical significance of Hegel may be seen in the fact that he represents the ‘missing link’, as it were, between Plato and the modern form of totalitarianism. Most of the modern totalitarians are quite unaware that their ideas can be traced back to Plato. But many know of their indebtedness to Hegel, and all of them have been brought up in the close atmosphere of Hegelianism. They have been taught to worship the state, history, and the nation. (p. 30 – 1)

 

My assertion that Hegel’s philosophy was inspired by ulterior motives, namely by his interest in the restoration of the Prussian government of Frederick William III, and that it cannot therefore be taken seriously, is not new…

 

To this day ‘power’ uses Hegel “as fertilizer for totalitarianism’s rapid growth…” so the suckered children of ‘privilege’ can be conned into believing they’re fulfilling some ‘grand’ ‘historic’ mission – ‘power’ is all about conning the next generation. How else can they realize their vision? (This is the obsession of ‘power’ of every nation. Remember that ancient Chinese fable that we suspected Kissinger found inspiring… which taught that if you transmit a vision to the children… it gets done. Which is why it is imperative that we start having our own vision…)

 

My assertion that Hegel’s philosophy was inspired by ulterior motives, namely by his interest in the restoration of the Prussian government of Frederick William III, and that it cannot therefore be taken seriously, is not new. The story was well known to all who knew the political situation, and it was freely told by the few who were independent enough to do so. The best witness is Schopenhauer, himself a Platonic idealist and a conservative if not a reactionary, but a man of supreme integrity who cherished truth beyond anything else…. Schopenhauer’s view of Hegel’s status as the paid agent of the Prussian government is, to mention only example, corroborated by Schwegler, an admiring disciple of Hegel…. (p. 32 – 3)

[And… by the way… ‘power’ hates to this day to see Hegel exposed (almost as much as it does Plato… well… maybe not ‘almost’… but ‘faintly’ as much….) To this day it uses Hegel “as fertilizer for totalitarianism’s rapid growth…” so the suckered children of ‘privilege’ can be conned into believing they’re fulfilling some ‘grand’ ‘historic’ mission – ‘power’ is all about conning the next generation. How else can they realize their vision? (This is the obsession of ‘power’ of every nation. Remember that Chinese fable that we suspected Kissinger found inspiring… which taught that if you transmit a vision to the children… it gets done. Which is why it is imperative that we start having our own vision…: An ancient Chinese fable…) – P.S.]

Returning to the problem of Hegel’s political motives, we have, I think, more than sufficient reason to suspect that his philosophy was influenced by the interests of the Prussian government by which he was employed. But under the absolutism of Frederick William III, such an influence implied more than Schopenhauer or Schwegler could know; for only in the last decades have the documents been published that show the clarity and consistency with which this king insisted upon the complete subordination of all learning to state interest. “Abstract sciences,” we read in his educational programme, “that touch only the academic world, and serve only to enlighten this group, are of course without value to the welfare of the State; it would be foolish to restrict them entirely, but it is healthy to keep them within proper limits.” (p. 34 – 5)

This has been the conscious intent of the state from its inception… and a conscious intent – and this is the argument we began with – with enough legs to carry it… gets established as ‘reality’ around… and within… us.

 

And the conscious intent of the people to get free is catching fire globally… now that we see that globally is the only way we can get free.

The main concern of every government in the world – from the United States to China, from France to Russia to Brazil, not to speak of all the weaker governments on the world scene – has become the urgency of averting an uprising of unemployed workers joined by middle strata whose savings and pensions are disappearing…. (Immanuel Wallerstein, “Structural Crisis, Or Why Capitalists May No Longer Find Capitalism Rewarding”, Does Capitalism Have A Future?, p. 32)

The practice of ‘scholarship’… has… for the most part… operated as a division of state… yet… as with the state and its prerogatives generally… we re-incorporate it in ourselves as we reclaim our leadership capacities… and establish human freedom globally.

 

We’ll continue this discussion next week.

 

–––

 

Continuing Chapter XXIX of Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – P.S.]

 

On the third day following the liquidation of the Litzmannstadt ghetto, the head of the Sonderkommando brought in a woman and two children, drenched to the skin and shivering with the cold. They had escaped when the last convoy had been sent to its death. Guessing what was in store for them, they had hidden behind the piles of wood that were used for heating and that, for lack of a better place, were stored in the courtyard. Their convoy had disappeared, swallowed by the earth before their very eyes. And no one had every returned. Numb with fear and cold, they had waited there for some miraculous turn of fate to deliver them. (Part 87)

 

–––

 

I went for a short walk before nightfall. The weather was hardly conducive, but the cold wind was invigorating, soothing my tired nerves. I made several turns around the courtyard; my steps took me past the stairway leading down into the gas chambers. I paused there for a few seconds, remembering that today was All Saints’ Day. A deadly silence brooded over Auschwitz. The cold concrete steps descended and dissolved into darkness. These same steps where four million people, guilty of no crime, had bade life good-bye and descended to their death, knowing that even in death their tormented bodies would not be granted the sanctuary of a grave. Standing there alone, on the top step of this, their last brief voyage on earth, I felt it my duty to pause and think of them for a moment with heartfelt compassion… (Part 88)

 

–––

 

Thus the Germans got what they wanted from the creation of this model ghetto, for these reports by the International Red Cross had the effect of neutralizing, or better yet, of qualifying as evil slander the rumors going round concerning the horrors of the KZ and the crematoriums. But now, on the eve of its collapse, the Third Reich ceased to worry any longer about world opinion, and rejected even the mask of its shady humanism. It began to liquidate without delay the Jews still in its custody… (Part 89)

 

–––

 

[Here is an excerpt:]

(from “Chapter XXX”:)

 

So it was that the turn of the model ghetto at Theresienstadt arrived. When they reached Auschwitz, the still healthy men of this ghetto had the following convocation in their possession:

GOVERNMENTAL SS COMMITTEE OF THE REICH FOR THE RECRUITING AND EMPLOYMENT OF SLAVE LABORERS

 

Notice: The Jew X Y of the Reich protectorate is hereby advised that by order of the above-mentioned authority, he has been designated for the Service of Obligatory Labor. The draftee shall, before his departure, deposit his instruments, the tools necessary to the exercise of his profession, a supply of winter clothing, and food enough for one week, with the authority’s representative. The date of departure will be announced by public notice.

 

THERESIENSTADT, THE DATE

Signature

The whole story of obligatory labor was of course an infamous lie, merely a pretext to carry out the liquidation without interruption and to recoup some sorely needed instruments, scarce tools and winter clothing needed by the German populace. Twenty thousand men, fully capable of working and in the full flush of their youth, died in the gas chambers and were incinerated in the crematory ovens. It took 48 hours to exterminate them all. For several days afterwards, silence again reigned in the crematorium.

[“By order of the authority…” “all residents of the Greater Metropolitan Area will confine themselves to their residences until further notice…”

“By order of the authority…” “all residents of the Greater Metropolitan Area without employment or receiving public assistance will report to the designated Processing Center to receive specific instructions for the performance of Obligatory Service…”

“By order of the authority…” “all residents of the town of Byron will inventory their personal property and prepare to submit to Obligatory Relocation…”

“By order of the authority…” “the Sacramento – San Joaquin River Delta region will submit to environmentally-devastating 40-mile long, 150-foot deep fissures that will destroy tens of thousands of acres of Delta farmland…”

“By order of the authority…” “San Joaquin Valley farmers will be asked to betray their fellow citizens by profiting from the commodification of taxpayer-subsidized water…”

“By order of the authority…” “the people of the state of California will submit to further division between ‘better-off’ and struggling citizens by accepting dramatic manufactured increases in the cost of water…”

“By order of the authority…” “the people of the state of California will submit to further division between ‘better-off’ and struggling citizens when a new ‘budget crisis’ is manufactured with the predictable default of the Water Agencies on their bond-debt…” (see: “The Water Tunnel Boondoggle: Experts Say the Eye-Popping Costs of Governor Brown’s Plan to Build Two Giant Water Tunnels Far Outweigh the Financial Benefits. And Taxpayers May Be Left Holding the Bag,” East Bay Express, May 14 – 20, 2014)

What did Alice Miller tell us?… that, “if an adult has not developed a mind of his own, then he will find himself at the mercy of the authorities for better or worse, just as an infant finds itself at the mercy of its parents.” When we renounce our body’s truth… when we have no autonomy… when we have not developed our own thoughts… we are at the mercy… of ‘the authorities’… and inevitably betray our brothers and sisters – the question only being a matter of degree… once the point of ‘betrayal’ is conceded… – P.S.]

–––

 

* WUR of June 1, 2014… “Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class”

 

I absolutely know my machine has been tapped… text deleting itself as I try to add text… etc.… I know the point is to make this “opposite-to-‘power’” way of thinking increasingly difficult to put out there… [don’t get me started on the punishingly irregular AT&T access…]

 

May 29th, 2014… Sisters and Brothers: The focus of this week’s show must shift somewhat… so I’ve moved the original plan for this June 1st, 2014 show – a discussion of the Michael Mann article in Does Capitalism Have A Future? – to: Second Excerpt from Immanuel Wallerstein’s chapter in Does Capitalism Have A Future?, “Structural Crisis, Or Why Capitalists May No Longer Find Capitalism Rewarding”

 

Also: An email this week circulated on the Berkeley Liberation Radio listserv informed DJs that the domain name for the BLR website expired and so the website is down… but that the link to the stream still works. I’ll post it here [“Berkeley Liberation Radio Stream” [this ‘alternate’ seems to work better…] as well as on the menu list at the top of this page.

 

Remember: their goal is just to get past this current awakened generation… and burden sufficient youth of privilege with their ‘historical mission’: “Plato’s ‘best state’”… a “perfect global ‘order’…” in which all know their place… and… as Bentham advised… are ‘happy.’… The future is calling. The so-called rulers hear it too… but for them it is a death knell… not for their physical existence… but for their system… their rank… their privilege. So they are mobilizing as never before… moving double-pace to try to dissuade us from it… our future freedom…

 

Instead of the Michael Mann examination… we’ll be addressing this “May 27th” thrust… to push (as propaganda) so-called ‘inclusive capitalism’ on us. Whenever we’re bombarded from many angles like this… it’s obviously calculated. To illustrate we’ll be examining the verbal-en-garde from Christine Lagarde (Managing Director, International Monetary Fund) in London on May 27, 2014.

 

Remember: their goal is just to get past this current awakened generation… and burden sufficient youth of privilege with their ‘historical mission’: “Plato’s ‘best state’”… a “perfect global ‘order’…” in which all know their place… and… as Bentham advised… are ‘happy.’

 

Brothers and Sisters: The future is calling. The so-called rulers hear it too… but for them it is a death knell… not for their physical existence… but for their system… their rank… their privilege. So they are mobilizing as never before… moving double-pace to try to dissuade us from it… our future freedom….

 

Our future is a mighty steed… let’s leap on it…

 

(…and thank you Sister Maya Angelou… bright light… shining star… don’t go too far… stay with us a bit… and help us realize it…)

 

In her speech Christine Lagarde quotes what she says is a Belgian saying: “la confiance part à cheval et revient à pied” (“confidence leaves on a horse and comes back on foot…”) let’s modify it and say: “Confidence without vision comes back empty-handed.” Our hands – we-the-people’s – are full… when we join them together…

 

Please visit that page [“Our hands – we-the-people’s – are full… when we join them together…”] to read the full text of the Christine Lagarde speech… with my comments (forthcoming…) but as I ponder it – as well as the voices from ‘scholarship’ – I must confess… it’s hard to get past… the continuing problem that we don’t have agreed-upon definitions… for the words we need for our discussions… of our future freedom.

 

…‘economics’ provided the language – the words and the way of seeing the world for institutionalizing the global regime of ‘rule’… thereby installing a totalitarian ‘reality’ (i.e. no alternatives to it globally exist…) and we’re talking ‘reality’ in a socially constructed sense… that being what we are allowed to see and therefore think… in the vast array of possibilities around us… and in us (that’s what makes it so insidious….) Erich Fromm illustrates this in The Art of Loving when he says that we have become… for each other… but ‘personality packages’ available for exchange…

 

The December 30th, 2012 show might be a beginning into that discussion [audio and text are below]… during which we said that ‘economics’ provided the language – the words and the way of seeing the world for institutionalizing the global regime of ‘rule’… thereby installing a totalitarian ‘reality’ (i.e. no alternatives to it globally exist…) and we’re talking ‘reality’ in a socially constructed sense… that being what we are allowed to see and therefore think… in the vast array of possibilities around us… and in us (that’s what makes it so insidious….) Erich Fromm illustrates this in The Art of Loving when he says that we have become… for each other… but ‘personality packages’ available for exchange. And we’re set out on life by our parents with the mission to increase our market value – the competition for place we’re made to chase from Day ‘One’. Needless to say… this means the real ‘self’ never gets seen… which our soul deeply needs.

…I’m asking us to consider that ‘economics’ has accomplished this “broadening of the operational range…” for ‘power’… and that it is in fact a language… a language that has been imposed universally… expanding ‘power’s scope to the globe.

 

Jeremy Bentham’s principle of “the greatest happiness of the greatest number” condemns them to extinction… damned with their own principles… their own words… as … as we are not cattle… they cannot deliver ‘happiness’ (unless of course we let them define it….) Bentham has shown us how critical it is to control the defining. He writes, “…the legislator [is] the ultimate lexicographer. The larger the scope and operational range of his abstractions, the wider his area of government, of legislative and judicial authority…. To him belongs the power of making wrong and right change nature….”

 

By these words I think we can see how critical it is to control the defining…

 

…and I’m asking us to consider that ‘economics’ has accomplished this “broadening of the operational range…” for ‘power’… and that it is in fact a language… a language that has been imposed universally… expanding ‘power’s scope to the globe.

 

So we have to reclaim – we-the-people – the power of defining… words… our lives… our future…

 

…but controlling the definitions only makes sense if you have a vision. ‘Economy’ is but a way to universalize… globalize… make totalitarian… their lexicon.

 

In a previous show I said that ‘the wage’ is the ‘Panopticon’… but… more broadly… the economy is the Panopticon… and simultaneously the lexicon.

‘Economics’ is a tool for conquering language. So the problem is bigger than it seems… particularly as we’re never allowed to see it…. When Bentham tells the ‘philosopher-king-global statesmen’: “He who defined the language ruled the universe…” we haven’t appreciated – because we’re not encouraged to think the thought – that this is quite literally true… that as “creatures of illusion” we are made of words… sculpted with words… invented… designed… with words. Which makes their use… a sacred trust… a bond… between humans… not to abuse it… and ‘abuse it’ the so-called ‘rulers’ have done… without cessation… from “Day ‘One’”… since ‘class’ was begun… by ‘philosopher-king-statesmen’. “Contempt for those who are smaller and weaker… is the best defense against a breakthrough of one’s own feelings of helplessness: it is an expression of this split-off weakness. The strong person who knows that he, too, carries this weakness within himself, because he has [consciously] experienced it, does not need to demonstrate his strength through such contempt.”

 

‘Economics’ is a tool for conquering language.

 

So the problem is bigger than it seems… particularly as we’re never allowed to see it….

 

When Bentham tells the ‘philosopher-king-global statesmen’: “He who defined the language ruled the universe…” we haven’t appreciated – because we’re not encouraged to think the thought – that this is quite literally true… that as “creatures of illusion” we are made of words… sculpted with words… invented… designed… with words. Which makes their use… a sacred trust… a bond… between humans… not to abuse it…

 

…and ‘abuse it’ the so-called ‘rulers’ have done… without cessation… from “Day ‘One’”… since ‘class’ was begun… by ‘philosopher-king-statesmen’.

 

And what are these words we’re ruled with if not versions of ‘be productive’… ‘be useful’… ‘be good’… ‘be obedient’…

 

…and when these words oppose the body… we’re told… “the body is wrong… and must be governed…”

 

…and thus begins our training in ‘management’… in ‘utilitarianism’… in ‘economics’ – the world-view we’re all trained in… is designed not for us… but to facilitate the use of us by… to convert us into resources for… the statesmen.

 

So how are we supposed to enter into… authentic discussions of our future… when authentic thought is not allowed to exist?

 

Here’s an illustration: the analyses I heard yesterday (05.30.14) of ‘misogyny’ in response to the recent killings of young people… students… at U.C. – Santa Barbara… by a fellow student… who apparently left messages behind expressing his hatred of women. It was quite saddening to hear their analysis… after all the dedicated… tireless efforts… of Alice: “[The man who did the killings] felt entitled to women’s bodies and when they didn’t give them to him… when they didn’t do what he wanted… he hated them for it. Why would a man feel that women owe them anything? Such men treat women like objects… to be owned and mistreated…”

 

Isn’t that how children are treated? Handled… manipulated… feelings laughed at and dismissed? And isn’t it women too who do this?

 

Now that truth is all around us… right in front of our eyes… and yet we never see it… why is that?

 

When will we have our discussions of Alice Miller? Most of us are completely detached from our own early childhood experience… we’ve distanced ourselves from our own bodies… dismissed our own feelings… because our parents told us to… and to please them… in order to receive the absolutely necessary recognition… we did.

 

In a speech that I gave last year at a conference on “Active Nonviolence” I said:

“Circle of contempt” is the way Alice Miller describes the process by which the basic divide of ‘class’… of ‘power’… the divide between ‘citizen’ (big) and ‘barbarian’ (small)… begins…. She shows us that it is here… in the unconscious dismissiveness with which we treat children… that the seeds of belief in ‘rank’… in ‘force’… and in ‘scarcity’… are planted.

 

In the chapter of Prisoners of Childhood called “The Vicious Circle of Contempt” she discusses how callousness… the absence of empathy… is normalized in a system in which ‘loving parents’ routinely humiliate their children. She describes watching a mom and dad laughingly deny their child ice cream that they are both enjoying, while he cries and begs for his own. She writes that their lack of empathy for what he was feeling was a way of saying, “…we are big, and may do as we like, but for you it is ‘too cold’. You may only enjoy yourself as we do when you get to be big enough.” She writes:

Contempt for those who are smaller and weaker… is the best defense against a breakthrough of one’s own feelings of helplessness: it is an expression of this split-off weakness. The strong person who knows that he, too, carries this weakness within himself, because he has [consciously] experienced it, does not need to demonstrate his strength through such contempt. (p. 67)

 

“Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one’s own despised and unwanted feelings. And the fountainhead of all contempt, all discrimination, is the more or less conscious, uncontrolled, and secret exercise of power over the child by the adult…” If we can face the truth that we are living in a global totalitarian reality… it will spur us on to acknowledge the imperative of moving on. It will motivate us to not put anything ahead of this necessary work… of creating an alternative (the opposite of ‘power’…) not ‘tweaking’… not ‘fixing’… but creating an alternative based on freedom…

 

In the child’s eyes [parents] encounter their own humiliating past, and they must ward it off with the power they now have achieved.

 

…little girls [once they become women and mothers] can pass on to their children at the most tender age the contempt from which they once had suffered. Later, the adult man will idealize his mother, since every human being needs the feeling that he was really loved; but he will despise other women, upon whom he thus revenges himself in place of his mother. And these humiliated adult women, in turn, if they have no other means of ridding themselves of their burden, will revenge themselves upon their own children.…

 

Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one’s own despised and unwanted feelings. And the fountainhead of all contempt, all discrimination, is the more or less conscious, uncontrolled, and secret exercise of power over the child by the adult…

[…which is why we have to talk about it… it sets the mental patterns in place for all discrimination… that’s why ‘class’ is the core issue for us to be talking about – the ‘citizen – barbarian’ divide. That she points her finger at the training in early childhood is simply pointing her finger at the training the state has instituted for us.

 

What else is there to talk about if we’re to get clear enough to begin talking about a different future than this? If we aren’t talking about this… we’re condemned to this endless “Groundhog Day”-watching-our-brothers-and-sisters-get-slaughtered-for-their-resources… if you’re in the more ‘privileged’ states… or watching your brothers and sisters betray you if you are the ones being slaughtered. This is hideous… and none of it talked about… all of it legitimated falsely… dishonest… all of it premised on a false notion of what we are as human beings and living things… – P.S.]

Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one’s own despised and unwanted feelings. And the fountainhead of all contempt, all discrimination, is the more or less conscious, uncontrolled, and secret exercise of power over the child by the adult…

[…It’s a perfect microcosm for ‘power’ – just as they exercise their ‘power’ in secret… so does the parent exercise his or her ‘power’ over the child… in secret…. We perfectly mirror our ‘rulers’… they set it up that way… – P.S.]

Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one’s own despised and unwanted feelings. And the fountainhead of all contempt, all discrimination, is the more or less conscious, uncontrolled, and secret exercise of power over the child by the adult, which is tolerated by society (except in the case of murder or serious bodily harm). What adults do to their child’s spirit is entirely their own affair. For the child is regarded as the parents’ property, in the same way as the citizens of a totalitarian state are the property of its government.…

[If we can face the truth that we are living in a global totalitarian reality… it will spur us on to acknowledge the imperative of moving on. It will motivate us to not put anything ahead of this necessary work… of creating an alternative (the opposite of ‘power’…) not ‘tweaking’… not ‘fixing’… but creating an alternative based on freedom… defined as living one’s own gifts… freedom from necessity… universal human leisure: ‘freedom-leisure-happiness’… it has to have all those components… and happiness is self-creation…. You see this is creating a new language… a new way of thinking about ourselves… and our gifts… as more important than anything. That’s what the earth needs… for us to reclaim our own bodies… – P.S.]

…Until we become sensitized to the small child’s suffering, this wielding of power by adults will continue to be a normal aspect of the human condition, for no one pays attention to or takes seriously what is regarded as trivial, since the victims are “only children”. But in twenty years’ time these children will be adults who have to pay it all back to their own children. They may then fight vigorously against cruelty “in the world” – and yet they will carry within themselves an experience of cruelty to which they have no access and which remains hidden behind their idealized picture of a happy childhood. (p. 68 – 9)

[You see the significance of what she’s saying… that we can tell ourselves we’re fighting against cruelty while not caring about the cruelty that was done to us… which means that we can’t care about the ‘normal’ cruelty of having lost ourselves in the first place… of having no access to our authentic selves…. Until we care about that – and that is what I mean by ‘reclaiming our bodies’… all of that – then we can’t begin claiming the right to a different world… – P.S.]

Is our goal to express our righteous anger? Or do we want to win? …do we want violence to end? If the latter, we must consider the possibility that ‘violence’… ‘coercion’… and ‘necessity’… are key constructs of ‘class’… of ‘power’… and will only end… when we begin again… by moving beyond ‘power’… and that means moving beyond ‘class’… [moreover…] the twisted monster we’re wrestling with is more insidious… more subtle… than we usually credit it as… and if we ponder deep… and allow that truth to rise into our minds, we’re bound to say… “that monster’s in us too”…carefully installed by loving hands.

 

So… I put to you now… the key question all activists against injustice… all advocates for a global humanity who believe every human being deserves to live free… i.e. free of necessity… free of coercion of any kind…

 

“What’s the goal?” Respice finem… know the goal… Bentham told ‘rulers’. In a blog I put up – “Bentham’s Strategic Verities” – I share his “top 5” and this one is Number One.

 

Is our goal to express our righteous anger? Or do we want to win? …do we want violence to end? If the latter, we must consider the possibility that ‘violence’… ‘coercion’… and ‘necessity’… are key constructs of ‘class’… of ‘power’… and will only end… when we begin again… by moving beyond ‘power’… and that means moving beyond ‘class’….

 

The twisted monster we’re wrestling with is more insidious… more subtle… than we usually credit it as… and if we ponder deep… and allow that truth to rise into our minds, we’re bound to say… “that monster’s in us too”…carefully installed by loving hands.

 

The handout I put together for this conference, “The Violence of Class”, concludes by saying that there’s a case to be made that all of us… when we submit to ‘rule,’ do so in the same way that an intoxicated woman ‘submits’ to rape… that our judgment has been intentionally impaired…. I quote a woman being interviewed on Fox News who said, “we have to teach men what ‘consent’ is… what ‘rape’ is…”

 

Well… what is ‘consent’ when our judgment is shaped by the demand for our obedience?… when, as Alice Miller says… “[our] whole value system is dominated by the principle of obedience?”

 

Only when… you and I… all of us… ‘we-the-people’… consciously re-design the world we’re in… to allow conscious mutually-attentive cooperation… forswearing ‘force’… will we be beyond the realm of unconscious obedience… and in the realm of conscious agreement…, conscious, cooperative, continuous society re-design… our future freedom.

 

[This speech is included in the collection of essays I put together for this conference: “The Violence of Class” (conference collection)]

–––

Of course the ‘power’-guys – the philosopher-king global statesmen – are not going to let go of ‘capitalism’… not when it gives such yeoman’s service… standing broad and thick between us and ‘it’… …Hegel was the fertilizer for modern totalitarianism… but Bentham is the gardener. He provides the raison d’etre… he provides… as Plato did… ‘power’s purpose… the ‘why’ of it… the necessary legitimization. For without a sense of legitimacy… how con the youth?… and if the youth aren't conned… how pass the vision on?

 

Capitalism has flourished, and secured widespread legitimacy, on the basis of institutions and social relations that have been damaged in recent decades; its renewal will depend on their renewal. (Craig Calhoun, “What Threatens Capitalism Now?”, Does Capitalism Have A Future?)

Considering the question we posed in our last show: “isn’t the extent of what most of us know… in our various states across the globe… only what we’re told by those various states (none of which will say… that peace and the brotherhood of all nations… is the way we want to be…

[…and let’s take that in: a thought that every state suppresses… with perhaps the exception of Venezuela… I know Hugo Chavez was trying to create a regional counter-weight to the ‘power’ of the global-state (in its manifestation as the ‘world market’… – P.S.]

…and the only way we can get free… and is our due by right of our status as ‘life’… our earth-given-gift… a freedom inherent in us…)?” – is it not so… that the truth is systematically denied us?

 

Rather… what are the messages we’re indoctrinated with?

“We are workers…

…and advanced…

…we support ‘development’…

…we will hurry to obey when ‘power’ commands us…

…to treat our common earth like trash…

…and for each child we’ll demand…

…that it have an equal chance…

…to betray its sisters and brothers…

…and good fellowship…

…and on bended knee pretend…

…to want to be just like them…

…the ‘philosopher-king-global-statesmen’…

…our so-called ‘masters’….”

Of course the ‘power’-guys – the philosopher-king global statesmen – are not going to let go of ‘capitalism’… not when it gives such yeoman’s service… standing broad and thick between us and ‘it’… making certain our sight is obscured… deterring us from claiming the honest world we deserve. ‘Capitalism’ is the only thing that keeps us from seeing them clearly… and so moving past them… around them… through them… because otherwise we’d see… they are but shadows of we-the-people…

 

…shadows of us… as Kropotkin told us….

 

They stand in our light…. The thoughts ‘power’ gives us are designed to procure for them our obedience.

 

The issue has been… and will ever be… for ‘power’… while ‘class’ breathes… our obedience… which is why all Plato’s tribe… whatever their official discipline… all end up sounding like Bentham….

 

Hegel was the fertilizer for modern totalitarianism… but Bentham is the gardener. He provides the raison d’etre… he provides… as Plato did… ‘power’s purpose… the ‘why’ of it… the necessary legitimization. For without a sense of legitimacy… how con the youth?

 

And if the youth aren't conned…

 

…how pass the vision on?

 

–––

 

Of the five co-contributors to Does Capitalism Have A Future? only Immanuel Wallerstein offers an analysis that helps us begin to understand the global reality we live in… because he accurately presents its key structural supports in showing us we live in a politically-enforced global hierarchy… [also… a point they make suggests that…] most of us have not been fully aware ourselves… of what we’re dealing with… i.e. that it is totalitarian (‘inclusive capitalism’? Oh it’s ‘inclusive’ alright…) and so when we tried to resist bureaucratization (the resistance of the antisystemic movements) we had no language to make sense of our dilemma.

 

Of the five co-contributors to Does Capitalism Have A Future? only Immanuel Wallerstein offers an analysis that helps us begin to understand the global reality we live in… because he accurately presents its key structural supports in showing us we live in a politically-enforced global hierarchy… [‘hierarchy’… that word which we never discuss – we-on-the-Left – why is that?] in which ‘power’ is monopolized by the few… i.e. that we have a system of ‘rulers’ and ‘subjects’. Now this is obvious… but never acknowledged… it is ‘seen in thought’… that we have a system of ‘rule’ that requires our obedience… i.e. coercion.

 

There’s a lot to ponder in this book… Does Capitalism Have A Future?… that will help us – we-the-global-people – get to consensus… and we must get to consensus. So we’re going to be taking some time with it – with the honest brokers, that is. We’ll be looking at the Craig Calhoun article and the ‘Conclusion’ – particularly the ‘Conclusion’: it’s where they had to hammer out something they could all sign their names to so… it’s a little tortured… for sure… but it’s therefore a pretty good guide to what ‘power’ really thinks… about the current situation… and what they think their options are.

 

So if we can get on the same page that we are confronting a global totalitarian system… and then… those who want to design a new one… start talking about it… what that alternative to the totalitarian world we’re living in would be – what would be the opposite of ‘power’ – then we’re on our way because our bodies want this.

 

At one point in the ‘Conclusion’ – which was written collaboratively – they comment that “the antisystemic movements of the New Left gained traction wherever they could tap (often without realizing it) into latent social tensions…” [and we just looked at the core one… in talking about Alice Miller…] and that… despite their [the authors'] skepticism about the chances for success of a movement that is “antisystemic” (i.e. opposed to the whole authoritarian project – back to Kropotkin’s identification of the basic ‘us – them’ divide… between those who believe in authority… and those who believe in freedom…):

Although none of us considers anarchism a very realistic strategy, we must admit that the antiestablishment spirit of 1968 proved one of its most enduring legacies, both on the left and on the right. [Both those of us on the ‘Left’ and those of us on the ‘Right’ have that same early childhood experience of being… unrecognized – our authentic selves… – P.S.] Perhaps this calls for taking more seriously the values and organizational alternatives represented by the nonstatist movements tenaciously surviving in the margins. (p. 187)

[And those words are going to mean something different for Wallerstein than for Calhoun… you feel me? – “Calhoun / Lagarde” are going to mean something very different by the words “take more seriously.” The words “take more seriously the values and organizational alternatives” means “co-opt” if you’re Christine Lagarde. Wallerstein is contemplating some more authentic… organic… ‘recognizing’… you know… like us actually transforming our lives ourselves… as opposed to being massaged and finessed and conned… by ‘power’… – P.S.]

So… this says… that while we have been tapping into a strong force – the earth speaking in us – most of us have not been fully aware ourselves… of what we’re dealing with… i.e. that it is totalitarian (‘inclusive capitalism’? Oh it’s ‘inclusive’ alright…)

 

…and so when we tried to resist bureaucratization (the resistance of the antisystemic movements) we had no language to make sense of our dilemma.

 

‘Inclusive capitalism’ means “rope the children back in.”

 

This is a big conversation… let’s continue it next week.

 

–––

 

Beginning Chapter XXXII of Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – P.S.]

 

[Here’s an excerpt:]

(from “Chapter XXXII”:)

 

For the KZ prisoners the event was a good omen, giving rise to hope. For the Sonderkommando, however, the omen was bad, signifying that the end was near. I was quite sure that the liquidation would be carried out even before the end of the four-month period. (Part 90)

[Keep in mind the pace of events. At this point in Miklos’ account… we are two months’ shy of Mengele fleeing the premises…

 

…and he got out, didn’t he? Mussfeld didn’t. The enormous suffering caused by the ‘world wars’ is not borne by the ‘Mengeles’… then or today…

 

…suffering is set up… to forestall our awakening. We’ll talk more about the fact that these wars… these global wars… not by coincidence… corresponded with an enormous awakening of the people globally. And next week we’re going to look at Wallerstein et al. saying that they found it very significant that the next massive global awakening (in 1968…) was not met by a world war (to wipe out… and thereby discipline… the population… it definitely ended our hope for peace… and the brotherhood of all nations…) … – P.S.]

Early in the morning of November 17th, 1944, an SS noncommissioned officer came into my room and informed me confidentially that, upon order of higher authority, it was henceforth forbidden to kill any more prisoners, by any means whatsoever, in the KZ. After having witnessed so many lies, I found it impossible to take him at his word, and expressed my doubts on the matter. But he reasserted forcefully that such were the instructions that had been received by radio only a short while before, both at the crematoriums and at the SS political kommando. We would soon see whether or not they were true. Personally, I feared it was only another trick.

 

Before the end of the morning, however, I had occasion to verify the truth of his statement. A train of five box cars bearing 500 sick and debilitated prisoners who thought they were being transferred to a rest camp stopped on the rails running between number one and two crematoriums. They were met by an SS political commission, who conversed at some length with the commandant and the SS guards accompanying the convoy. At last, before the gates of death, the train was turned round, and its occupants sent to the F camp hospital barracks.…

 

For the KZ prisoners the event was a good omen, giving rise to hope. For the Sonderkommando, however, the omen was bad, signifying that the end was near. I was quite sure that the liquidation would be carried out even before the end of the four-month period.

 

A new life began in the KZ. There were no more violent deaths, but the bloody past had to be hidden. The crematoriums had to be demolished, the pyre ditches filled in, and any witness to or participant in the horrors perpetrated here had to disappear. Fully conscious of our impending doom, we greeted the change with a mixture of joy and resignation.

 

–––

 

Of the millions of souls sent here from the four corners of Europe, by order of the demented Fuhrer, the pyromaniac of the Third Reich, to be assembled less than an hour before their death on unloading ramps ominously lighted by the butchers of Maydanek, Treblinka, Auschwitz Birkenau, a few thousand would come out alive. Feeling uneasy, I paid a return visit about noon to the SS radioman who had informed me of the good news earlier in the day. I wanted to know what decisions had been made in the course of the morning. Had any decision been made concerning the Sonderkommando, and, if so, what (Part 91)

–––

 

* WUR of June 8, 2014… “Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class”

 

What is the shape of a global uprising? I see it in my mind… like bursts of light… a field of sunrises up-flaring like fingers reaching across the globe… grown… by being inter-knitted… into a single firm resolve of light. It’s time.… I mean… at this point… a hundred years past Kropotkin laying it out for us… a hundred years of unfathomable destruction… do we really need more evidence… of where ‘authority’ leads?

 

What is the shape of a global uprising? I see it in my mind… like bursts of light… a field of sunrises up-flaring like fingers reaching across the globe… grown… by being inter-knitted… into a single firm resolve of light. It’s time. I hear it when the folks who run the buses… the subway systems… the folks who serve the food in throw-up restaurants… refuse the curfews… refuse the boxes… who reach out and talk about it with their sisters… their brothers… no more whispering our words… but saying them out loud: “no more”…

 

…“no more” being masticated by that massive machine we call ‘the system’… because we-all-of-us… to ‘it’… are but unruly ‘inputs’ in a calculus from which ‘it’ hopes one day… to extract us…

 

…but we know… behind that ‘it’ will always stand the statesmen… who of one mind strive to corral our hopes… our energy… our longing and our love… seek to keep our inter-linking hands apart…

 

…and to that as well we say… “no more”.

 

–––

 

June 4th, 2014… Sisters and Brothers: This week I’ve been asking myself whether it’s really necessary to anticipate ‘power’s moves as they face the dead-end of ‘capitalism’… the con of ‘endless growth’…

[…I’ll be posting… bit by bit… an excerpt from Craig Calhoun’s “What Threatens Capitalism Now?…” in Does Capitalism Have A Future?… to the page: “Our hands – we-the-people’s – are full… when we join them together…”]

…is it really necessary?… this collective mutual-convincing of each other of the urgency… the imperative need… to push ahead full-steam on developing our vision of freedom?… not ‘fixing’ the system for them…

 

…I mean… at this point… a hundred years past Kropotkin laying it out for us… a hundred years of unfathomable destruction… do we really need more evidence… of where ‘authority’ leads?

 

I’m of two minds about it.

 

…this issue is a version of what we called: “Socrates’ Dilemma” – which centers on this question of ‘authority’ versus ‘freedom’… the central issue of ‘class’… or… stated differently… the central issue of ‘class’ is our mutual-betrayal… generally at the behest of ‘authority’… setting us against each other. …Socrates saw this dilemma as “it is precisely those who don’t believe they need education who most need education…” and so isn’t ‘authority’ needed then… to ‘guide’ us to our ‘better selves’? – whereas Kropotkin advises that freedom is always the best answer to the problems of freedom… a perspective which assumes that ‘thought’ wants to develop itself… and that this is true for all of us… every human being.

 

In a sense… this issue is a version of what we called: “Socrates’ Dilemma” – which centers on this question of ‘authority’ versus ‘freedom’… the central issue of ‘class’… or… stated differently… the central issue of ‘class’ is our mutual-betrayal… generally at the behest of ‘authority’… setting us against each other. But I don’t know if Socrates saw this dilemma in systemic terms… this dilemma being that it is precisely those who don’t believe they need education who most need education… and isn’t ‘authority’ needed then… to ‘guide’ us to our ‘better selves’? – whereas Kropotkin advises that freedom is always the best answer to the problems of freedom… a perspective which assumes that ‘thought’ wants to develop itself… and that this is true for all of us… every human being.

 

So… this question is a version of what we called: “Socrates’ Dilemma” – in the Waking Up Radio show of October 6, 2013… [found at: “The Global Awakening… or the Great Re-Set?”…] and on the page “Karl Popper on Authentic Education for Youth…” [see… in the menu: Excerpts from Ch. 7: “The Principle of Leadership”…] on which we replied to these words of Karl Popper’s about Socrates…

Socrates was a moralist and an enthusiast. He was the type of man who would criticize any form of government for its shortcomings (and indeed, such criticism would be necessary and useful for any government, although it is possible only under a democracy) but he recognized the importance of being loyal to the laws of the state. (Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 1: The Spell Of Plato, p. 127)

…by saying:

…‘knowledge’ is not about acquiring and accumulating ‘facts’… but rather revealing the motive force behind ‘facts’… motive reveals destination… goal… We have been deferring to the so-called ‘masters’ without ever having had the discussion of how this world of enforced obedience was constructed… that it wasn’t by happenstance… that ‘rulers’ have been searching for millennia for the mechanisms… the means… the levers… to make us obedient… to get us to “do what we’re told…” without back-talk… without question… so they could ‘get things done…’ …and I agree with Nikola Tesla that distance – emotional and physical – has been the chief impediment to our unity (globally…) and that we are now poised to span… bridge… fill… that gap… and that all that’s needed is a plan – or, rather, before we can develop a plan, and the courage to bring it to fruition… we must… through myriad conversations…become certain… that we’re done with ‘hierarchy’… competition… ‘the race’ – develop the certainty that ‘the state’ must be replaced… with good fellowship.

 

[But ‘the state’ in Socrates’ sense is just ‘the collective body’… which could perhaps be the functional equivalent of Hugo’s notion of ‘community’… and my notion of ‘fellowship’… (discussed during the June 30, 2013 show) both of which to be fully realized require openness… and, to my mind: non-coercion.

 

Because I agree with Socrates that “lack of knowledge is responsible for all moral mistakes…” and that the critical ‘lack of knowledge’ for the question of ‘morality’ is lack of knowledge of each other… of the challenges that we’re facing… and of the unique gifts we possess… because we see… whenever atomization is overcome in emergency situations… that we want to further each other… and that this longing is inextricably inter-woven in us…

 

(…‘knowledge’ is not about acquiring and accumulating ‘facts’… but rather revealing the motive force behind ‘facts’. For instance, recently [October, 2013, I believe] I listened to financial reporter Matt Taibi describe how his odyssey to find the cause of oil price manipulation put him on the trail of financial industry actors… which led to his discovery that the George W. Bush administration had kicked the firm Arthur Anderson to the curb… and as to why, this he apparently declined his interest. Because the motive… reveals destination… goal… ‘facts’ can be endlessly manipulated and massaged… and tell us nothing on their own. Whereas… once motive is known… the need for ‘facts’ dissolves before the pressing need to work with our brothers and sisters to begin designing something new…. We can unearth ‘facts’ ad infinitum and not be any closer to our freedom… whereas ‘knowledge’… is another matter…)

 

…and I agree with George Eliot that: “it seems to me it’s the same with love and happiness as with sorrow – the more we know of it the better we can feel what other people’s lives are or might be, and so we shall only be more tender to ’em, and wishful to help ’em. The more knowledge a man has, the better he’ll do’s work, and feeling’s a sort o’ knowledge.” [This is from her novel Adam Bede]…

 

…and I agree with Nikola Tesla that distance – emotional and physical – has been the chief impediment to our unity (globally…) and that we are now poised to span… bridge… fill… that gap… and that all that’s needed is a plan – or, rather, before we can develop a plan, and the courage to bring it to fruition… we must… through myriad conversations…become certain… that we’re done with ‘hierarchy’… competition… ‘the race’ – develop the certainty that ‘the state’ must be replaced… with good fellowship. – PS]

Consider this fragment from two thousand four hundred years ago. In it… a man regarded as knowledgeable in ‘economics’ [estate management] is replying to a question from Socrates… essentially the question: “how do you get people to do what you want?…”: “‘And when you want a bailiff [steward], Ischolmachus, do you look out for a man qualified for such a post, and then try to buy him…?” – This was what I found so disconcerting on the job… working in a job… unconsciously: the assumption that I was quite literally bought…. Each time you start a job you have to be something different… my body resisted in all kinds of ways. You go to one job… “OK, who am I today?…” you literally have to be this material to be worked on by some other mind… and it grates… it runs against what we are as living things… (Xenophon, Part 1)

 

And what is that ‘motive force’?… Don’t you feel it?… the relentless driving push to control our thoughts… and through them… our behavior…

 

We have been deferring to the so-called ‘masters’ without ever having had the discussion of how this world of enforced obedience was constructed… that it wasn’t by happenstance… that ‘rulers’ have been searching for millennia for the mechanisms… the means… the levers… to make us obedient… to get us to “do what we’re told…” without back-talk… without question… so they could ‘get things done.’ And when we’ve given it any thought at all… our thought is but to back them… their vision… their objectives… without owning that we have been designed by them (for millennia…) to do so.

 

Consider this fragment from two thousand four hundred years ago. In it… a man regarded as knowledgeable in ‘economics’ [estate management] is replying to a question from Socrates… essentially: “how do you get people to do what you want?…” (and the man who recollects this conversation – Xenophon (428/7 – 354 B.C.) – is considered a trustworthy source… not least because he prided himself on his honesty….) Socrates begins by asking:

“ ‘And when you want a bailiff [steward], Ischolmachus, do you look out for a man qualified for such a post, and then try to buy him – when you want a builder, I feel sure you inquire for a qualified man and try to get him – or do you train your bailiffs yourself?’

[This was what I found so disconcerting on the job… working in a job… unconsciously: the assumption that I was quite literally bought…. Each time you start a job you have to be something different… my body resisted in all kinds of ways. You go to one job… “OK, who am I today?…” you literally have to be this material to be worked on by some other mind… and it grates… it runs against what we are as living things… – P.S.]

So we see here that a careful study has long since been made of how to get us to work. I suspect Bentham borrowed heavily here in his attempt to identify all the possible levers… which… when properly manipulated… bend us to another’s will.… Not much has changed in two and a half millennia, has it? Don’t we find ourselves subjected to the same calculus every time we are subjected to the will of the new boss at the new job. It’s all very familiar. In The Talking Tree I wrote that we’re stuck in a story thousands of years old… and argued that it’s time to move on…. Today… and in the next few shows…we will be considering whether it is the fact of this manipulation itself that is significant… all-determinative, in fact… a ‘cause-generative’ beneath the greed that was unleashed… quite consciously… by those determined to control us… (Xenophon, Part 2)

 

“ ‘Of course I try to train them myself, Socrates. For the man has to be capable of taking charge in my absence; so why need he know anything but what I know myself? For if I am fit to manage the farm, I presume I can teach another man what I know myself.’

 

“ ‘Then the first requirement will be that he should be loyal to you and yours, if he is to represent you in your absence. For if a steward is not loyal, what is the good of any knowledge he may possess?’

 

“ ‘None, of course; but I may tell you, loyalty to me and to mine is the first lesson I try to teach.’

 

“ ‘And how, in heaven’s name, do you teach your man to be loyal to you and yours?’

 

“ ‘By rewarding him, of course, whenever the gods bestow some good thing on us in abundance.’

 

“ ‘You mean, then that those who enjoy a share of your good things are loyal to you and want you to prosper?’

 

“ ‘Yes, Socrates, I find that is the best instrument for producing loyalty.’

 

“ ‘But, now, if he is loyal to you, Ischomachus, will that be enough to make him a competent bailiff? Don’t you see that though all men, practically, wish themselves well, yet there are many who won’t take the trouble to get for themselves the good things they want to have?’

 

“ ‘Well, when I want to make bailiffs of such men, of course I teach them also to be careful.’

 

“ ‘Pray how do you do that? I was under the impression that carefulness is a virtue that can’t possibly be taught.’

 

“ ‘True, Socrates, it isn’t possible to teach everyone you come across to be careful.’

 

“ ‘Very well; what sort of men can be taught? Point these out to me, at all events.’

 

“ ‘In the first place, Socrates, you can’t make careful men of hard drinkers… [I’m excising a bit here…] sluggards… [men] in love…’

 

“ ‘And what about the men who have a passion for lucre? Are they also incapable of being trained to take charge of the work of a farm?’

 

“ ‘Not at all; of course not. In fact, they very easily qualify for the work. It is merely necessary to point out to them that diligence is profitable.’

[So we see here that a careful study has long since been made of how to get us to work. I suspect Bentham borrowed heavily here in his attempt to identify all the possible levers… which… when properly manipulated… bend us to another’s will.

 

Not much has changed in two and a half millennia, has it? Don’t we find ourselves subjected to the same calculus every time we are subjected to the will of the new boss at the new job. It’s all very familiar. In The Talking Tree I wrote that we’re stuck in a story thousands of years old… and argued that it’s time to move on…. Today… and in the next few shows…we will be considering whether it is the fact of this manipulation itself that is significant… all-determinative, in fact… a ‘cause-generative’ beneath the greed that was unleashed… quite consciously… by those determined to control us… another word for this is ‘breeding’… and as we’re about to read… the so-called ‘rulers’ have been well aware of the need to breed us (if they want to control us…) for thousands of years… – P.S.]

So you see he’s trying to get Ischomachus to see what Antiphon said directly: “The only thing that distinguishes me from my ‘slave’ is the word ‘slave’….” We are made of words… and when they lie… and a whole society is constructed around those lies… and they are enforced for millennia… and made global… – you have a very crooked thing… Hierarchy… the one thing we will not hear discussed in the media – mainstream or progressive… It’s time for us… we-the-global-people… to have our global dialogue between ‘Authority’ and ‘Freedom’…. For millennia… only ‘Authority’ has had a chance to speak… (Xenophon, Part 3)

 

“ ‘And assuming that the others are free from the faults that you condemn and are covetous of gain in a moderate degree, how do you teach them to be careful in the affairs you want them to superintend?’

 

“ ‘By a very simple plan, Socrates. Whenever I notice that they are careful, I commend them and try to show them honour; [“Good job!”…] but when they appear careless, I try to say and do the sort of things that will sting them.’ [“Time out!”…]

 

“ ‘Turn now, Ischomachus, from the subject of the men in training for the occupation, and tell me about the system: is it possible for anyone to make others careful if he is careless himself?’

 

“ ‘Of course not: an unmusical person could as soon teach music. For it is hard to learn to do a thing well when the teacher prompts you badly….

 

“ ‘When you have impressed on a man the necessity of careful attention to the duties you assign to him, will he then be competent to act as bailiff, or must he learn something besides, if he is to be efficient?’

 

“ ‘Of course,’ answered Ischomachus, ‘he has still to understand what he has to do, and when and how to do it. Otherwise how could a bailiff be of more use than a doctor who takes care to visit a patient early and late, but has no notion of the right way to treat his illness?’

 

“ ‘Well, but suppose he has learned how farmwork is to be done, will he want something more yet, or will your man now be a perfect bailiff?’

 

“ ‘I think he must learn to rule the labourers.’

 

“ ‘And do you train your bailiffs to be competent to rule too?’

 

 

“ ‘Yes, I try, anyhow.’

 

“ ‘And pray tell me how you train them to be rulers of men.’

 

“ ‘By a childishly easy method, Socrates. I daresay you’ll laugh if I tell you.’

 

“ ‘Oh, but it is certainly not a laughing matter, Ischomachus. For anyone who can make men fit to rule others can also teach them to be masters of others; and if he can make them fit to be masters, he can make them fit to be kings. So anyone who can do that seems to me to deserve high praise rather than laughter.’

[So you see he’s trying to get Ischomachus to see what Antiphon said directly: “The only thing that distinguishes me from my ‘slave’ is the word ‘slave’….” We are made of words… and when they lie… and a whole society is constructed around those lies… and they are enforced for millennia… and made global… – you have a very crooked thing… – P.S.]

“ ‘Well now, Socrates, other creatures learn obedience in two ways – by being punished when they try to disobey, and by being rewarded when they are eager to serve you. Colts, for example… Puppies… And men can be made more obedient by word of mouth merely, by being shown that it is good for them to obey. But in dealing with slaves the training thought suitable for wild animals is also a very effective way of teaching obedience; for you will do much with them by filling their bellies with the food they hanker after. Those of an ambitious disposition are also spurred on by praise, some natures being hungry for praise as others for meat and drink. Now these are precisely the things that I do myself with a view to making men more obedient; but they are not the only lessons I give to those whom I want to appoint my bailiffs. I have other ways of helping them on. For the clothes that I must provide for my work-people and the shoes are not all alike. Some are better than others, some worse, in order that I may reward the better servant with the superior articles, and give the inferior things to the less deserving…. For my part, then, I don’t choose to put the deserving on a level with the worthless… (Xenophon, Oeconomicus, E.C. Marchant translation)

Hierarchy… the one thing we will not hear discussed in the media – mainstream or progressive. These will be our discussions. It’s the heart of the whole thing… our betrayal of each other… and to discuss it raises the issue of the need to overcome it… to join hands together.

 

For centuries piled high we’ve held that horn out to the ‘statesmen’… the so-called ‘rulers’… and they’ve grown fat and proud… inventing stories of fancy to shroud the gift’s provenance… and pretended to themselves they were the source of it. But it’s time – we cannot sleep when oceans weep… when the soul of all humanity is falling lost into the deep… the Abyss… our ancestors of heart have prophesied this… …of perilous times… when decisions must be made… sides chosen…

 

It’s time for us… we-the-global-people… to have our global dialogue between ‘Authority’ and ‘Freedom’…. For millennia… only ‘Authority’ has had a chance to speak… because ‘Freedom’… i.e. honoring self-creation… trusting good fellowship… has been scorned, slandered, derided and demeaned. And this happens before we’re old enough even to speak. Our authentic voices have been silenced and our memory of having had them… erased.

 

Let us have our dialogue.

 

There is a divide.

 

It’s “which-side-are-you-on?” time… those of us who see… that with thought our souls are wrought… and that… in the words of Socrates… “where God is our teacher we all come to think alike…”

 

…we but add to this that ‘God’ has many monikers… and each one means… ‘the earth’.

 

–––

 

In ancient times there was a goat that fed the infant Zeus without stint… and as reward its horn transformed into an endless abundance. We are that goat… our hands and minds and hearts together form that horn….

 

For centuries piled high we’ve held that horn out to the ‘statesmen’… the so-called ‘rulers’… and they’ve grown fat and proud… inventing stories of fancy to shroud the gift’s provenance… and pretended to themselves they were the source of it. This hubris has been going on so long… has bent the wealth of all the world to bolster its continuance… this hubris… until… we… the mighty source of all that ‘rule’ pretends to own… have fallen asleep – the grief… at what seems to be a betrayal without end or bottom… has been too much for our conscious minds to bear.

 

But it’s time – we cannot sleep when oceans weep… when the soul of all humanity is falling lost into the deep… the Abyss…

 

…our ancestors of heart have prophesied this…

 

…of perilous times… when decisions must be made… sides chosen.

 

–––

 

Beginning Chapter XXXIII of Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – P.S.]

 

[Here are excerpts:]

(from “Chapter XXXIII”:)

 

“Alle antreten, alle antreten!” This was an order we were accustomed to hearing twice a day, in the morning and evening, for muster. Coming at this hour, however, it augured no good. (Part 92)

 

“Alle antreten, alle antreten!”

 

This was an order we were accustomed to hearing twice a day, in the morning and evening, for muster. Coming at this hour, however, it augured no good.…

 

Heavy footsteps resounded just in front of our door. An SS opened it a crack and shouted again: “Antreten, antreten!” With sinking hearts we headed for the crematorium courtyard, where a group of well-armed SS already encircled a group of kommando men as we walked up to join them. There was neither surprise nor the faintest sign of protest from anyone. The SS, their machine guns leveled, waited patiently till the last stragglers had joined the group. I glanced around for the last time. The motionless pines that formed a little tunnel at the end of the courtyard were blanketed with snow. All was quiet and very peaceful.

 

“Fellow Jews…. An inscrutable Will has sent our people to its death; fate has allotted us the cruelest of tasks, that of participating in our own destruction, of witnessing our own disappearance, down to the very ashes to which we are reduced. In no instance have the heavens opened to send showers and put out the funeral pyre flames. We must accept, resignedly, as Sons of Israel should, that this is the way things must be. God has so ordained it. Why? It is not for us, miserable humans, to seek the answer. This is the fate that has befallen us. Do not be afraid of death. What is life worth, even if, by some strange miracle, we should manage to remain alive? We would return to our cities and towns to find cold and pillaged homes. In every room, in every corner, the memory of those who have disappeared would lurk, haunting our tear-filled eyes. Stripped of family and relatives, we would wander like the restless, shuffling shadows of our former selves, of our completed pasts, finding nowhere any peace or rest.” (Part 93)

 

–––

 

After death by gas, on the pyre, by chloroform injections, by a bullet in the back of the neck, by phosphorous bomb, here was a sixth way of killing which I had not previously discovered. [The pointless slaughter of thousands of Sonder… to preserve a secret that everyone knew of… but then as today… ‘power’ imagines… that as long as ‘plausible deniability’ can be manufactured… ‘ ‘history’ (invented…) can be re-written… once safely past current ‘embarrassments’… – P.S.] (Part 94)

 

[Until we decide to reclaim our lives… they will continue to disappear the truth… for future generations… if for no other reason but for our allegiance to that truth…. Even if we haven’t yet formed our allegiance to our own bodies… we should begin to form the resolve… to design the alternative… – P.S.]

 

–––

 

(from “Chapter XXXIV”:)

 

The Sonderkommando – thirteenth in the history of the crematoriums – had thus been annihilated. Now our days slipped by in utter silence and boredom. At loose ends, we wandered among the cold, forbidding walls. The ringing of my footsteps in the silence was painful to my ears. We were given no orders, had nothing to do. At night we lay in bed, unable to sleep. Only four of us were left in the building. The thirty men who worked in the crematorium were not members of the Sonderkommando, but were quartered in the KZ itself and came here every day only to burn the bodies of those who had died in the hospital. (Part 95)

 

–––

 

“It’s all over,” he said. “The Russians are barely 40 kilometers from Auschwitz. The whole of Germany is in exodus on the highways. Everybody is leaving the frontier areas to seek refuge in the West.” – His words did our hearts good. And seeing the Ober’s despair, a ray of hope began to grow inside me. Perhaps we would after all succeed in leaving here alive. (Part 96)

 

Silent, introspective, prostrate with grief, we awaited our end. It was a bad sign that Oberschaarfuhrer Mussfeld, as if he had become a different person, studiously avoided meeting us. Perhaps he felt that he had finished playing his role: the bloody tragedy was over, and soon it would be time for the fate that governs the bearers of forbidden secrets to strike him as well. For days at a time he remained locked in his room, drinking, with an apparently unquenchable thirst, to forget both the past and the darkly looming future.

 

Our indolent life continued. More and more often our SS guards sought refuge in drunkenness. It was rare that they had their wits about them for more than a few minutes a day.

 

One evening while we were eating dinner, Oberschaarfuhrer Mussfeld entered unsteadily, leaned drunkenly on the table and said: “Guten Abend Jungs… Ihr werdet bald alle krepieren, nachher aber kommen wir.” (Good evening, children, soon you’re going to die, but afterwards our turn will come.) By these words, spilled from the lips of a drunken man, I learned a truth I had already suspected. Our guards were going to disappear with us.

 

“I offered a glass of tea with a shot of hot rum in it to the Ober, who emptied the glasses as fast as we could fill them, with obvious satisfaction. He sat down at our table and, as though he wanted to make up for his past silence, began to talk. He told how his wife had been killed during an air raid, and that his son was on the Russian front.

[Petr Kropotkin told us that one day ‘history’ will be rewritten on new lines… and the ‘history’ of this ‘world war’ is a prime example – that rewritten history will have to look into the question of the many connections… intersections… synchronistic explosive simultaneous conjunctions between the ‘rulers’ imperial ambitions… and the depth and breadth of the people’s awakening…. The ‘rulers’ fear of our cross-national linkages… never ceases to scream in their ears… that our growing awareness of our single shared interest… our overdue freedom… must be stopped at all costs… all costs… never mind how dear… price is no object… when all could be lost… when ‘the all’ in an instant… in a single bright flaring… of upsurging… upswelling… joining together… of the people in one great sweeping awakening… would in that bright instant… flare the ‘truth’ bright for all eyes… dissolve in an instant all the falsely-blown lies… as we-the-one-people… all nations together… move to that one light… set our lives in that one light… that we hold up together… the one light… the one truth… that we hold up together… – P.S.]

“It’s all over,” he said. “The Russians are barely 40 kilometers from Auschwitz. The whole of Germany is in exodus on the highways. Everybody is leaving the frontier areas to seek refuge in the West.”

 

His words did our hearts good. And seeing the Ober’s despair, a ray of hope began to grow inside me. Perhaps we would after all succeed in leaving here alive.

–––

 

* WUR of June 15, 2014… “Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class”

 

And never underestimate the role that the wage-work system plays… not just in harnessing our energies for the purposes of ‘power’… but in diverting us from our questions… those very ones our bodies want us to work on: “Why is this world false?…” and the minute we start struggling towards that… our chains get pulled…

 

We all begin our days on the planet (under ‘class’): wanting to know the truth… because we feel… our bodies can feel… that what we’re living in isn’t authentic. We're going to be arguing today that it is possible for us to work together to construct a world that is authentic… and… that we deserve that world. And that millennia-long captivity has led us to believe that it’s no longer possible… and even some of us that we don’t deserve it. That’s conditioning… and once we begin coming together to talk about it, it becomes obvious that that’s conditioning… and things transform as quickly as… as Miklos Nyiszli will show us today… Auschwitz: one minute there is Auschwitz… the next there isn’t.

 

June 14th, 2014… Sisters and Brothers: “He who pays the piper calls the tune…” – a quite simple notion… but clearly true… not subject to dispute… and yet… we’ve never discussed… we-the-global-people… its implications… for how this world is constructed…

 

…this discussion’s absence – the fact that we-the-people exist… in a social arrangement constructed for us – one we’re born into… forced to reproduce… without being allowed a role in its determination (our say in it… when we’ve called the question… has been massaged and managed… the final result made inherently cosmetic….)

[And never underestimate the role that the wage-work system plays… not just harnessing our energies for the purposes of ‘power’… but in diverting us from our questions… those very ones our bodies want us to work on: “Why is this world false?…” and the minute we start struggling towards that… our chains get pulled… the bills descend… and we find ourselves locked into survival mode – those mechanisms have worked for millennia. But we’re in a moment… because of the collective work of our ancestors: it’s humbling when that work to achieve our freedom is laid out before our eyes… each piece necessary – though I credit Nikola Tesla a lot because his vision was focused… and when you have a focused vision… you are more effective… and that’s what we have to start talking about… – PS]

…‘we’ didn’t kill the electric car… decide to slaughter our brothers and sisters in order to privatize their resources… work ourselves into early graves… put poisons in our air, earth, and water… No. Just like the prison guards at Auschwitz… the means to exist apart from the system were stolen from us… and we were forced… to obey… – let’s all-we-manipulated get on the same page… we have to prepare ourselves for mobilizing the entire globe… otherwise we’ve lost our souls…

 

Of course that’s not what we’re told over the airwaves… no… just the opposite – all the hideousness of it… this system… we’re told ‘we’ did…

 

…and, true, it was our energy used… but we were put under compulsion (we, too, have been constructed… to be obedient…) we have always been forced to do what ‘the rulers’ told us to: this is the banality of obedience… when we fall asleep… and relinquish our right to think.

 

No. We didn’t make this mess – this manufactured mess is a ‘Plato’s Tribe construction.

 

We’re inculcated with this statist ‘we’… but hey… excuse me…

 

…we don’t uproot and destroy our communities… force ourselves into factories… accept living separately and wastefully…

 

…we didn’t destroy the rail system in Detroit… and force ourselves into cars… thereby destroying our earth faster… converting its beauty into our own chains…

 

…we didn’t decide to poison ourselves with high fructose corn sweeteners and processed food…

 

…we didn’t destroy our local self-sufficient fuel manufactures (as David Blume describes in Alcohol Can Be A Gas!…)

 

…we don’t make communal living and sharing in practical terms illegal… by means of cumbersome laws and codes… to rope our legs, slow us down, and trip us up…

 

…we didn’t decide to flood our communities with drugs… and then criminalize addiction……

 

…we don’t use ourselves as guinea pigs… play Russian Roulette with our health… in countless ways…

 

…we didn’t kill the electric car… decide to slaughter our brothers and sisters in order to privatize their resources… work ourselves into early graves… put poisons in our air, earth, and water…

 

…No. Just like the prison guards at Auschwitz… the means to exist apart from the system were stolen from us… and we were forced… to obey.

 

–––

 

…until we re-establish our world honestly – no duplicitous ‘power’ operating clandestinely – we cannot know what is authentic… and what is manufactured… in the ‘news’ we’re given… But their obsession with orchestration is increasingly… in this moment… increasingly and intentionally… about sowing mistrust among us… falseness destroys good fellowship… and without good fellowship we cannot establish honest relations in the world…

 

Brothers and Sisters: until we re-establish our world honestly – no duplicitous ‘power’ operating clandestinely – we cannot know what is authentic… and what is manufactured… in the ‘news’ we’re given.

 

Listening to a commentator on ‘the news’ respond to an interviewer’s question about how… in a matter of mere days… Iraq was claimed… what I hoped he’d say… was that for ISIS to execute such a speedy military success… there clearly must be behind-scenes financial and logistic assistance… and on-the-ground ‘intelligence’… “that sure doesn’t sound like some brush-fire that up-flared-spontaneous…” is what I hoped he’d say….

 

And when I hear that a progressive politician…

…has repeatedly fallen victim…

…to a string of ‘unfortunate’ incidents…

…I think… “could that be a construction?”…

 

…I thought this about Jean Quan… our local Mayor of Oakland… knowing as I do first-hand… how these ‘power’-guys love to orchestrate traffic ‘accidents’ (“Is she being set up?…” is what I wondered… and what are their plans for Oakland… if so? Although I think it’s obvious: they want it ‘under control’… a passive populace… that’s what they will always want so long as they are determined to rule us… and Oaklanders are some very powerful people…)

 

Manipulation is what they do… and obviously not just ‘the news’… which they do clandestine…

 

…but open in plain sight is their manipulation of ‘education’… and ‘the market’… and… it’s a long list….

 

But their obsession with orchestration is increasingly… in this moment… increasingly and intentionally… about sowing mistrust among us… falseness destroys good fellowship… and without good fellowship we cannot establish honest relations in the world.

 

–––

 

…if we factor-in all the ancestors who have been pointing our eyes toward ‘power’s game of keeping us under control… we can see that capital accumulation accomplishes this… and we simply need to begin discussing: “is that actually the point?” – as we said in a previous show: “could it be that the result is actually the intention?”… I believe it is. Because obviously ‘endless accumulation’ is self-defeating in and of itself… but as a mechanism for getting all the resources of the planet out of our hands it’s a glorious success… from the perspective of ‘power’…

 

June 11th, 2014… Sisters and Brothers: “Do we really need more evidence of where ‘authority’ leads?” we asked last week… largely because we are almost – we have yet to be beat senseless, though, true… – in its destination: universal destitution…

 

…of course there still must be ‘winners’ and ‘losers’… but as Immanuel Wallerstein pointed out (using the example of the so-called ‘BRICS’…) the absolutely necessary (for ‘power’) hierarchical structuring – the election of a few to the so-called ‘winner’-box – only “intensifies… the structural crisis of the world-system”:

The first decade of the 21st century has also seen the geographic relocation of capital appropriation. The rise of the so-called emergent countries, notably the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), is the kind of slow reordering of the hierarchy of the modern world-system that has been seen regularly before. However, this presumes that there is room in the system for new productive leading industries, something the generalized profit squeeze seems to counterindicate. Rather, the rise of the BRICS has involved a widening of the numbers of persons involved in partaking of the distribution of world surplus value. This actually reduces, not increases, the possibilities of the endless accumulation of capital, and intensifies rather than counteracts the structural crisis of the world-system. Furthermore, the austerity measures now so widespread are reducing the customer base for the exports of the BRICS. (Immanuel Wallerstein, “Structural Crisis, Or Why Capitalists May No Longer Find Capitalism Rewarding”, Does Capitalism Have A Future?, p. 31)

(And I think if we factor-in all the ancestors who have been pointing our eyes toward ‘power’s game of keeping us under control… we can see that capital accumulation accomplishes this… and we simply need to begin discussing: “is that actually the point?” – as we said in a previous show: “could it be that the result is actually the intention?”… I believe it is. Because obviously ‘endless accumulation’ is self-defeating in and of itself… but as a mechanism for getting all the resources of the planet out of our hands it’s a glorious success… from the perspective of ‘power’.)

 

For millennia we’ve endured contained and curtailed lives… let go our gifts… turned our children over to ‘the system’… in the false hope that doing so will help them win their freedom. Hoop after hoop we vaulted through… test after test we’ve taken and ‘passed’. We need only think of our survival under endless hardship… whether as kidnapped Africans… displaced Syrians… Chinese squeezed by their would-be ‘kings’… the oceans of European-against-European bloodletting… Egyptians and Nigerians mowed down as cautionary tales for their fellows longing for freedom – endured unimaginable suffering… simply because our degraded status is part of ‘power’s plan… its insane longing for an ‘Ancient Greece’ reenactment. (And that’s a literal statement.)

 

So… despite ‘power’s total hold on the media… despite the constant media-chatter about “the economy turning around…” and “more jobs being created…” – with the new twist that we are being told to suck up and accept our ‘downsized’ ‘simplified’ lives – authentic reality will not be denied: the in-any-case fraudulent ‘social contract’… in which our children will be given ‘better lives’ if we accept the sacrifice of ours… is no more… and no matter how they batter us with “simpler is better!” we are at the end of believing them – these ‘power’-besotted global ‘statesmen’.

 

We want a different future for ourselves and for our children.

 

For millennia we’ve endured contained and curtailed lives… let go our gifts… turned our children over to ‘the system’… in the false hope that doing so will help them win their freedom. Hoop after hoop we vaulted through… test after test we’ve taken and ‘passed’. We need only think of our survival under endless hardship… whether as kidnapped Africans… displaced Syrians… Chinese squeezed by their would-be ‘kings’… the oceans of European-against-European bloodletting… Egyptians and Nigerians mowed down as cautionary tales for their fellows longing for freedom – endured unimaginable suffering… simply because our degraded status is part of ‘power’s plan… its insane longing for an ‘Ancient Greece’ reenactment. (And that’s a literal statement.)

 

All we’ve ever wanted was peace. All we’ve ever been given is grief: prisons… boxes… short or long leashes… bare existence for the vast majority… elevation to an insecure ‘middle’ for a miniscule few to ‘enjoy’ its ‘sophisticated’ betrayal – these have been our forms of compensation… that and watching our Grandmother Earth suffer ‘resource’-depletion…

 

…which brings us to the present moment… when even this… poisonous ‘compensation’… the so-called ‘rulers’ cannot provide… and can therefore no longer hide behind the pretense that our sacrifice could buy for our children a ‘better life’.

 

As the frills fade – the fearful hope of a padded capture for our children – so does the illusion… that the sacrifice of our gifts means anything but betrayal of them. And with all illusion gone… the false-escape-routes closed off… the rose-tinted-lens dropped… and with the strong light of truth dispelling the fog… at last… we begin to see each other… and that we can come together to create a true path… to a true future.

 

This is the juncture where we stand.

 

We are at the point where we push our advantage… we don’t snipe at each other. Snipers snipe for a purpose… distract from… do not forward… our global freedom.

 

Those who snipe over the airwaves are generally placed there to do so… they have nothing to say when it comes to our future… and our future is all that matters now… an authentic future… one conceived and built honestly… on the firm feet of authentic interactions… based in what the earth… and the-earth-our-bodies say they need…

 

The future’s for us to claim… to invoke… to shape…

 

Let’s call forth… its essential qualities…

 

…let’s give ourselves permission… to see it.

 

–––

 

Imagine… coercing us all… distorting human nature… forcing us into truncated lives… suffocating our souls in boxes… constructing a self-aggrandizing and self-flattering reality called ‘class’… and then… as a perfect propagandistic complement to base betrayal… having your sheepdogs create a ‘philosophical’ explanation – in which you… the would-be ‘rulers’ can pretend your ‘work’ is to manifest the ‘divine originals’ (truly… only “the best” must be allowed to be the physical manifestation of ‘Mind’ in the world…) – all of it to sucker future generations… your own children… into suppressing their natural tendency toward good fellowship… rewarding them for relinquishing empathy – all… just a massive con… to ensure that the falseness will be passed on… and you can pretend you are a ‘Mind’ manifestation…

 

In his Chapter 7 on “The Principle of Leadership” in The Open Society and Its Enemies, Volume 1: The Spell of Plato, Karl Popper said:

There is another distinction within the field of political problems corresponding to that between persons and institutions. It is the one between the problems of the day and the problems of the future. While the problems of the day are largely personal, the building of the future must necessarily be institutional. If the political problem is approached by asking, “Who should rule,” and if Plato’s principle of leadership is adopted – that is to say, the principle that the best should rule – then the problem of the future must take the form of designing institutions for the selection of future leaders.

 

This is one of the most important problems in Plato’s theory of education. In approaching it I do not hesitate to say that Plato utterly corrupted and confused the theory and practice of education by linking it up with his theory of leadership. The damage done is, if possible, even greater than that inflicted upon ethics by the identification of collectivism with altruism, and upon political theory by the introduction of the principle of sovereignty. Plato’s assumption that it should be the task of education (or more precisely, of the educational institutions) to select the future leaders, and to train them for leadership, is still largely taken for granted. By burdening these institutions with a task which must go beyond the scope of any institution, Plato is partly responsible for their deplorable state…. (p. 127)

[He’s acknowledging implicitly the existence… the hidden presence… of Plato’s tribe… who do the bidding of their master… as the living-dead their Dracula… gone but not-gone… for millennia. – PS]

The institution which according to Plato has to look after the future leaders can be described as the educational department of the state.

[Controlling the messages that reach our children’s ears is… for ‘power’… basic… their very survival depends on it… – PS]

The institution which according to Plato has to look after the future leaders can be described as the educational department of the state. It is, from a purely political point of view, by far the most important institution within Plato’s society. It holds the keys to power. For this reason alone it should be clear that at least the higher grades of education are to be directly controlled by the rulers. But there are some additional reasons for this. The most important is that only “the expert and… the man of proven probity,” as Crossman puts it, which in Plato’s view means only the very wisest adepts, that is to say, the rulers themselves, can be entrusted with the final initiation of the future sages into the higher mysteries of wisdom. This holds, above all, for dialectics, i.e. the art of intellectual intuition, of visualizing the divine originals, the Forms or Ideas, of unveiling the Great Mystery behind the common man’s everyday world of appearances.

[I believe this is a quite accurate description of the so-called ‘rulers’ self-justification. How else excuse a mind-set so misanthropic?… – and so arrogant. Imagine… coercing us all… distorting human nature… forcing us into truncated lives… suffocating our souls in boxes… constructing a self-aggrandizing and self-flattering reality called ‘class’… and then… as a perfect propagandistic complement to base betrayal… having your sheepdogs create a ‘philosophical’ explanation – in which you… the would-be ‘rulers’ can pretend your ‘work’ is to manifest the ‘divine originals’ (truly… only “the best” must be allowed to be the physical manifestation of ‘Mind’ in the world…) – all of it to sucker future generations… your own children… into suppressing their natural tendency toward good fellowship… rewarding them for relinquishing empathy – all… just a massive con… to ensure that the falseness will be passed on… and you can pretend you are a ‘Mind’ manifestation…

‘Trigonometry or Empathy?’: “Diversity in a classroom means a student is learning not only about math and science, but also about empathy and the lives of others. ” – The “everyday world of appearances” has been constructed to be ‘mere appearance’… so that a tiny few with overblown egos can pretend… they are “manifesting ‘Mind’”… incarnating ‘Truth’… – The “classical education” training they give themselves was never mere esoteric frill… to festoon their offspring with fancy thoughts… to make them appear better than us… no… the point of their ‘classical education’ is deadly serious… for on it was hung a bottomless pit of ‘unfelt imaginations’… a never-ending project that depends… on all we commoners subjecting ourselves to their plans…

 

(…particularly because empathy is our natural endowment… i.e. we start out that way… it’s the way we would naturally be… given encouragement for it to exist: a social arrangement that supports it. I recently read an illustration of this in a local weekly, East Bay Express… from a 9th grader at Oakland Tech. She said:

Parents want what they think is best for their children, especially when it comes to education. In fact, they are ready to invest themselves and their money to ensure that their children receive “what’s best.” But what is “best?”

 

As a ninth grader at Oakland Tech High School (as well as a graduate of Oakland public middle and elementary schools), I experience the adventure that is public school every day. I have had both extremely good teachers and extremely bad teachers.… All of these experiences have been a part of my education. But a diverse and sometimes chaotic public education experience is also important for learning empathy for others, and perspectives and stories different from my own, and for developing life skills.

 

Diversity in a school is the integration of a variety of races, cultures, and classes into a child’s academic environment. Today, private schools are generally much different from public schools. Most often, private schools are disproportionately white and serve affluent communities that are sheltered and blocked off from the rest of the world. A public school, on the other hand, may have less rigorous academics and bigger classrooms, but provides an inclusive and diverse environment for the students. Diversity in a classroom means a student is learning not only about math and science, but also about empathy and the lives of others. (Sophie Schafer, “Trigonometry or Empathy?”, East Bay Express, June 11 – 17, 2014)

Given our natural inclination toward inter-connection… toward, as Kropotkin said, mutual aid… an extraordinary story must be devised… adequate to the pressure that must be applied… to divert the body from its uncoerced bent… and Popper explains how Plato provided it.

 

I believe the above quote from him is a quite accurate description of the so-called ‘rulers’ self-justification. How else excuse a mind-set so misanthropic? And haven’t we, in truth… when honest… felt this… that this ‘reality’ we’re given to live in is utterly false and sculpted? The “everyday world of appearances” has been constructed to be ‘mere appearance’… so that a tiny few with overblown egos can pretend… they are “manifesting ‘Mind’”… incarnating ‘Truth’… – PS]

What are Plato’s institutional demands regarding this highest form of education? They are remarkable. He demands that only those who are past their prime of life should be admitted. “When their bodily strength begins to fail, and when they are past the age of public and military duties, then, and only then, should they be permitted to enter at will the sacred field…” namely, the field of the highest dialectical studies. Plato’s reason for this amazing rule is clear enough. He is afraid of the power of thought. “All great things are dangerous” is the remark by which he introduces the confession that he is afraid of the effect which philosophic thought may have upon brains which are not yet on the verge of old age. (All this he puts into the mouth of Socrates, who died in defence of his right of free discussion with the young.) But this is exactly what we should expect if we remember that Plato’s fundamental aim was to arrest political change. In their youth, the members of the upper class shall fight. When they are too old to think independently, they shall become dogmatic students to be imbued with wisdom and authority in order to become sages themselves and to hand on their wisdom, the doctrine of collectivism and authoritarianism to future generations. (p. 133 – 4)

[The “classical education” training they give themselves was never mere esoteric frill… to festoon their offspring with fancy thoughts… to make them appear better than us… no… the point of their ‘classical education’ is deadly serious… for on it was hung a bottomless pit of ‘unfelt imaginations’… a never-ending project that depends… on all we commoners subjecting ourselves to their plans… – PS]

The very idea of selecting or educating future leaders is self-contradictory… But the secret of intellectual excellence is the spirit of criticism; it is intellectual independence. And this leads to difficulties which must prove insurmountable for any kind of authoritarianism. The authoritarian will in general select those who obey, who believe, who respond to his influence. But in doing so, he is bound to select mediocrities… [They are selected because they obey without question. As we learned last week… thanks to Socrates and Xenophon… what matters most to ‘power’ in its ‘selection-for-election’… is loyalty… – PS]

[I apologize for the inadvertent omission but I’ll fill it in now – I am recording from home… because this pretty important excerpt from Karl Popper on the Plato-dominated education system needs our due consideration. It makes the important point that those selected by the ‘global-state-statesmen’ to become their replacements are being lied to… told they are “the best of the best of the best” – nothing could be further from the truth. They are selected because they obey without question. As we learned last week… thanks to Socrates and Xenophon… what matters most to ‘power’ in its ‘selection-for-election’… is loyalty… – PS]

The very idea of selecting or educating future leaders is self-contradictory. You may solve the problem, perhaps, to some degree in the field of bodily excellence. Physical initiative and bodily courage are perhaps not so hard to ascertain. But the secret of intellectual excellence is the spirit of criticism; it is intellectual independence. And this leads to difficulties which must prove insurmountable for any kind of authoritarianism. The authoritarian will in general select those who obey, who believe, who respond to his influence. But in doing so, he is bound to select mediocrities. For he excludes those who revolt, who doubt, who dare to resist his influence…. Of course, the authorities will always remain convinced of their ability to detect initiative. But what they mean by this is only a quick grasp of their intentions, and they will remain for ever incapable of seeing the difference….

 

We are led here, I believe, to a result of some importance, and to one which can be generalized. Institutions for the selection of the outstanding can hardly be devised. Institutional selection may work quite well for such purposes as Plato had in mind, namely for arresting change. But it will never work well if we demand more than that, for it will always tend to eliminate initiative and originality, and, more generally, qualities which are unusual and unexpected. This is not a criticism of political institutionalism. It only re-affirms what has been said before, that we should always prepare for the worst leaders, although we should try, of course to get the best. (p. 134 – 5)

 

It has been said, only too truly, that Plato was the inventor of both our secondary schools and our universities. I do not know a better argument for an optimistic view of mankind, no better proof of their indestructible love for truth and decency, of their originality and stubbornness and health, than the fact that this devastating system of education has not utterly ruined them. (p. 136)

–––

 

…see that their misanthropy is at base supremely utilitarian… that Auschwitz and its ‘work standard’ was not an aberration… but the logical destination of this mind-set… Is it racist? In a Platonic sense… yes… it’s about breeding and blood. In a Hegelian sense… yes… it’s about so-called ‘national character’. But above all else… for ‘power’… it’s about loyalty… about who can be… and can’t be… trusted… it’s about the knowledge of who has been under the gun… the heavy boot… the longest… and who therefore is most accustomed to it… Recall John Trudell’s point that being owned is a new reality for many of our brothers and sisters globally… and… from ‘power’s perspective… can’t be trusted…. They have less experience with this mess… that’s all it is. For me it's not productive to use the word ‘racist’ in this sense and that’s the only sense most of us are familiar with today… so it’s not a useful way to look at it… from a practical point of view of getting our future…

 

If a critical mass of we-the-global people can appreciate soon enough… that the ‘world of class’ is a product of extreme manipulation – sanctified by ancient authority… bred in the mindset of abandonment… of a deep psychological need to feel important… seen… worshipped, even… – if we can see that…

 

…see that the horrific deeds are justly laid at the feet of the ‘power’-guys…

 

…see that their vision of ‘order’ (“no change…”) has no place within it… for an opposite vision… and is therefore totalitarian… (whereas openness… freedom… means… as Kropotkin shows… each individual’s continuous growth…)

 

…see that their misanthropy is at base supremely utilitarian… that Auschwitz and its ‘work standard’ was not an aberration… but the logical destination of this mind-set…

 

…see that their vision demands the elimination of what can’t be used or commanded…

 

…and then apply this ‘seeing’ to the current world-scene…

 

what conclusion must we necessarily reach?

• If hierarchy is for the statesmen their sine qua non (which is by definition so…)

 

• If it is as consequence of being alive… our longing to ever-strive towards greater access to the ‘good stuff’ that we commonly provide…

 

• …how can any be made to stay at the bottom… except by means of extreme violence?

 

• And who in this global reality today suffer this fate?… this designated place of degradation (and we will never see from which purse the killers are remunerated… let’s stop trying to ‘investigate’ and start getting busy creating the alternative… that will then create hope… for all of us… of a different future… of an authentic future…)

 

• …Africans… Asians… Arabs… Central and South Americans….

 

• Is it racist? In a Platonic sense… yes… it’s about breeding and blood. In a Hegelian sense… yes… it’s about so-called ‘national character’.

 

• But above all else… for ‘power’… it’s about loyalty… about who can be… and can’t be… trusted… it’s about the knowledge of who has been under the gun… the heavy boot… the longest… and who therefore is most accustomed to it…. This isn’t about judging any people… – it’s just stating the reality: that there are some of us who have not been subjected to the regime of class for thousands of years…. Recall John Trudell’s very important point that the tribes of Europe got owned… well that’s a new reality for many of our brothers and sisters globally… it depends on how close you were to that big Mediterranean Bowl… which all the peoples of the world of ‘class’ that developed seven thousand years ago were tied into. But some were not… and… from ‘power’s perspective… can’t be trusted…. They have less experience with this mess… that’s all it is. For me it's not productive to use the word ‘racist’ in this sense and that’s the only sense most of us are familiar with today… so it’s not a useful way to look at it… from a practical point of view of getting our future…

…these would-be kings possess weaponry – ‘weather-machines’ that ‘weaponize’ planetary energy… and others that utilize radio waves of ultra low-frequency that interfere with the body’s internal electrical system – …that their development and use of such misanthropic tools… means we… so long as ‘power’ continues to be… must ever suspect seeming ‘natural’ catastrophic events – in both our individual and collective lives – consider that this is no way to live… with the full weight of ‘power’ suffocating all hope of an authentic existence… but with Nikola’s gift come to fruition… our hands inter-knitted… we can push ‘power’ away… and allow ‘freedom-leisure-happiness’… to finally have its day…

 

So… some questions:

 

Are you prepared to sacrifice your brothers and sisters so a few can pretend they’re superior?

 

Are you prepared to turn your children over to a world constructed for them?… which by definition, then, precludes the full use of their gifts?

 

Are you prepared to accept resource-depletion… and commodification… the end of planetary health with the death of the oceans?

 

And consider this… that… not only do we and the would-be kings want different things… and that when subject to ‘rule’ our gifts cannot fully develop…

 

…consider that we and ‘power’ have opposite visions of ‘earth stewardship’…

 

…and that finally then… any objective view shows… that we are opposed…

 

…but that these opposite visions possess vastly different means to implement them…

 

…and that these would-be kings possess weaponry – ‘weather-machines’ that ‘weaponize’ planetary energy… and others that utilize radio waves of ultra low-frequency that interfere with the body’s internal electrical system –

 

…that their development and use of such misanthropic tools… means we… so long as ‘power’ continues to be… must ever suspect seeming ‘natural’ catastrophic events – in both our individual and collective lives…

 

…consider that this is no way to live… with the full weight of ‘power’ suffocating all hope of an authentic existence…

 

…but with Nikola’s gift come to fruition… our hands inter-knitted… we can push ‘power’ away… and allow ‘freedom-leisure-happiness’… to finally have its day.

 

Beginning Chapter XXXV of Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – P.S.]

 

[Here is an excerpt from Chapter XXXV:]

“Here’s some work to start the New Year with,” he told the Ober who hurried up to greet him… I recognized him as Dr. Klein, an SS major, one of the evil, bloody-handed KZ officials. I came to attention and gave him the regulation salute… He had brought a hundred new victims from KZ Barracks number 10, that is, the camp prison… A hundred Polish prisoners, Christian men all, had been brought here to be murdered…

 

…Suddenly the purr of a powerful motor reached my ears, and a moment later a large brown van appeared. Used to transport prisoners, this van was called “Brown Toni” by the camp inmates, for it was painted a dark brownish color. A tall officer got out. I recognized him as Dr. Klein, an SS major, one of the evil, bloody-handed KZ officials. I came to attention and gave him the regulation salute. He had brought a hundred new victims from KZ Barracks number 10, that is, the camp prison.

 

“Here’s some work to start the New Year with,” he told the Ober who hurried up to greet him.

 

The Ober was so drunk he could hardly stand up. He had apparently gone all our celebrating the New Year. Who knows, perhaps he had merely been steeling himself against the guards’ impending end. At any rate, it was evident from his expression that he was not at all pleased to learn he had been given a bloody job to perform on New Year’s Day. A hundred Polish prisoners, Christian men all, had been brought here to be murdered. SS guards took them to an empty room next to the furnace room and ordered them to undress immediately. Dr. Klein and the Ober, meanwhile, took a stroll around the courtyard.…

 

–––

 

[Here is an excerpt from Chapter XXXVI:]

 

I ran back to wake up my companions. We dressed in haste and got ready for the great journey… Crossing the furnace room, we passed in front of the room where the gold was stored. Boxes containing untold wealth still lay inside, but we did not even think of stopping to take some of it. What was money when one’s life was at stake? We had learned that nothing lasts and that no value is absolute. The only exception to that rule: freedom… [Exactly… there is no value that is absolute but freedom… and if we align ourselves and what we do with that value… we are part of what moves our collective humanity… to our future of freedom… absolute freedom… – and on that tip… with that as criteria… can there be two more important books than The Open Society and Its Enemies… and Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz?… – is a bird absolutely free? In just such absolute freedom will we soon be. We are absolutely free when we live our lives honest… as our earth wrought us… – PS]

 

My days passed quietly, without interruption. It was rumored that Dr. Mengele had fled Auschwitz. The KZ had a new doctor, and, what was more, from now on the area was no longer to be called KZ, but “Arbeitslager,” that is, “Work Camp.” Everything was breaking up and falling to pieces.

 

On the first of January a newspaper I happened to come across told of the beginning of the Russian offensive. The noise of heavy artillery rattled the windowpanes; the line of fire grew closer every day. On January 17th I went to bed early, although I was not tired. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. Lulled by the agreeable warmth of a coke stove, I soon drifted off.

 

It must have been about midnight. I was awakened by a series of powerful blasts, the crackling of machine-gun fire, and dazzling flashes. I heard the sound of doors banging and footsteps running. I jumped out of bed and opened the door. The furnace room lights were on, and the doors of the SS rooms were wide open, witness to the speed of their departure.

 

The crematorium’s heavy gates were also open. Not a guard in sight. I glanced quickly at the watch towers. For the first time in months they were empty. I ran back to wake up my companions. We dressed in haste and got ready for the great journey…

 

We left, filled with the feverish sensation of liberation. Direction: The Birkenau KZ, two kilometers from the crematoriums. Immense flames glowed along the horizon there. It was probably the KZ burning.

 

Crossing the furnace room, we passed in front of the room where the gold was stored. Boxes containing untold wealth still lay inside, but we did not even think of stopping to take some of it. What was money when one’s life was at stake? We had learned that nothing lasts and that no value is absolute. The only exception to that rule: freedom.

[Exactly… there is no value that is absolute but freedom… and if we align ourselves and what we do with that value… we are part of what moves our collective humanity… to our future of freedom… absolute freedom… – and on that tip… with that as criteria… can there be two more important books than The Open Society and Its Enemies… and Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz?… – is a bird absolutely free? In just such absolute freedom will we soon be. We are absolutely free when we live our lives honest… as our earth wrought us… – PS]

–––

 

* WUR of June 22, 2014… “Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class”

 

…If Miklos tells us anything… and he tells us an enormous lot… it’s that we cannot allow secrecy in killing… for with this ace in the hole in place… ‘power’ can have no ‘institutional’ rein?… which makes the sweat of scholars to explain so-called ‘economic forces’… and all the effort from all the legal ‘experts’… to redesign the laws for greater ‘fairness’… is but charade… façade… …because… what truly leashes us – ‘institutionally-enforce-obedience’ – is never ‘seen’ publicly… but only in isolated and contained pockets of thought… that can then be secretly targeted… and so the truth never gets discussed…

 

June 17th, 2014… Sisters and Brothers: If Miklos tells us anything… and he tells us an enormous lot… it’s that we cannot allow secrecy in killing… and disproportionate means for it… because this absolutely silences… as victims of it cannot prove that it’s happening… and so help… if it comes at all… must vault huge challenges. So this tactic quells dissent… which is why ‘power’ cultivated it.

 

So… do you see that with this ace in the hole in place… ‘power’s cultivated… guaranteed… check-mate… ‘power’ can have no ‘institutional’ rein?…

 

…which makes the sweat of scholars to explain so-called ‘economic forces’… and all the effort from all the legal ‘experts’… to redesign the laws for greater ‘fairness’… is but charade… façade…

 

…because… what truly leashes us – ‘institutionally-enforce-obedience’ – is never ‘seen’ publicly… but only in isolated and contained pockets of thought… that can then be secretly targeted… and so the truth never gets discussed.

 

Disproportionate means for killing or disabling secretly… in the so-called ‘democracies’… where secret prisons and mass graves – Townsend schooled them long ago – would prove cumbersome and potentially embarrassing… too many problems do they pose… for ‘power’… in a ‘democracy’… rather… apply pressure ‘quietly’, he said: “no noise… no protest… no hope…”

 

But… Brothers and Sisters… we are not helpless… we need not just go along with what is wrong… never mention the unspoken pressures… the ‘quiet coercions’… that threaten to turn us passive and listless…

 

This is no way to live…

 

…and conditioning… and so condemning… our children to simply ‘accepting’ what is a mutilation of what we are as living things… does violence to their souls – and to our own.

 

Are we not all humans?… are our fates not all inter-woven?

 

Why not acknowledge that openly… and call for joint… cross-national planning sessions for ending all forms of coerced work and / or service [this means you… tyrannical Egyptian military-statesmen…]

(…and it is after all… under pressure of just such coercion… that the made-empty do their master’s bidding… perform the actual ‘work’… of killing… in secret… which… if allowed to exist… quells dissent… after which… the story that says “we live in a democratic system…” becomes a frightful joke… never spoken of… and ending the possibility of true happiness… which requires lives that are authentic…)

…cross-national planning sessions to plan a future based in individual freedom… for all humans.

 

Held in separate states… but electronically inter-linked… it could begin by identifying practical problems – not problems of ‘political will’… for those collapse with numbers [this is for you… tyrannical Egyptian military-statesmen…] –

 

…but rather problems of transition… transitioning from coerced practices… to freedom.

 

To maintain planning momentum several things are needed:

• ‘Meet-ups’

 

• Vision

 

• Education in the broader community

– and all the mental barriers must be identified and discussed to the full…

 

…all the cons exposed…

 

The main difficulty is simply starting… and this can happen with just a few good folks….

 

A few good folks must act on trust… that their body’s truth is enough… when it tells us that to submit to the rule of obedience… even if there’s no clear alternative yet… is to submit to totalitarianism… because obedience must lead to that destination.

 

–––

 

…the problem isn’t that we need better leaders… the problem is that the leadership of each individual one of us is suppressed…

 

Karl Popper believed that “the building of the future must necessarily be institutional…” that a better future is not a matter of breeding ‘leaders’ in the educational department of the state – those Plato-inspired and driven ‘institutions of higher learning’ – but rather a matter of good folks stepping up and trying to lessen the impact of the ‘power’-mad on our existing institutions:

If it is granted that… political rulers are not always sufficiently ‘good’ or ‘wise’… then we must ask whether political thought should not face from the beginning the possibility of bad government; whether we should not prepare for the worst leaders, and hope for the best. But this leads to a new approach to the problem of politics, for it forces us to replace the question: Who should rule? by the new question: How can we so organize political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing too much damage? (p. 121)

…we know this in our hearts… we fall asleep about age three… enough of that… no… spending decades just to get back to our original truth… no… that’s wrong… it’s time for us to face that monumental wrong… that has been done to us in the name of “success for the species overall”. We were lied to… and are continuously… daily… being lied to… (De Tocqueville, Part 1)

 

But I believe there were some things he could not see… although his vast work in almost every way leads us to it: that the world of ‘class’ is inherently totalitarian… and that this mind-set… is reproduced through its institutions.

 

‘Democratic’ rhetoric – what I would call propaganda – would deny this… argue that the difference between dictatorship and democracy is not one of hard or soft totalitarianism… but one of quality…. De Tocqueville, for instance… says this:

Centralization is become a word of general and daily use, without any precise meaning being attached to it. Nevertheless, there exist two distinct kinds of centralization, which it is necessary to discriminate with accuracy.

 

Certain interests are common to all parts of a nation, such as the enactment of its general laws, and the maintenance of its foreign relations. Other interests are peculiar to certain parts of the nation…

[This is all so familiar, isn’t it?… and it probably could have been written two thousand four hundred years ago… you feel me?… we’re repeating the same thoughts… and getting deeper and deeper dug into a huge mess… because it has been equated with ‘success’ – the notion that we have to have a nation… and designated ‘leaders’… to fight for us who are too weak to do anything but cheer them on… and keep dragging that wagon or whatever it is that they tell us to do… we’ve been lied to… – P.S.]

Certain interests are common to all parts of a nation, such as the enactment of its general laws, and the maintenance of its foreign relations. Other interests are peculiar to certain parts of the nation; such, for instance, as the business of different townships. When the power which directs the general interests is centred in one place, or vested in the same persons, it constitutes a central government. In like manner the power of directing partial or local interests, when brought together into one place, constitutes what may be termed a central administration….

 

It is evident that a central government acquires immense power when united to administrative centralization. Thus combined, it accustoms men to set their own will habitually and completely aside; to submit, not only for once, or upon one point, but in every respect, and at all times.…

 

…I believe the global-state-statesmen are continuing to draw on De Tocqueville to justify… and give them some helpful tips… for how to get around us… to continually keep us dancing in place… treadmill-walking… treading water… whatever image gives you that sense that we ain’t moving when we listen to them… they have a million dance-steps to make us think the tune has changed… but it’s the same dance… for millennia… (De Tocqueville, Part 2)

 

It is evident that a central government acquires immense power when united to administrative centralization. Thus combined, it accustoms men to set their own will habitually and completely aside; to submit, not only for once, or upon one point, but in every respect, and at all times. Not only, therefore, does this union of power subdue them compulsorily, but it affects them in the ordinary habits of life, and influences each individual, first separately and then collectively….

 

We have shown that in the United States no central administration, and no dependent series of public functionaries exist. [‘Localism’… – P.S.] Local authority has been carried to lengths which no European nation could endure without great inconvenience […and then we had WW II… we’ll talk about that in a few… – P.S.], and which has even produced some disadvantageous consequences in America. […He’s probably thinking about looking at other human beings as your property… – reenacting ‘Ancient Greece’ – that fantasy ain’t gone away… not yet… it’s with us today… – P.S.] But in the United States the centralization of the Government is complete; and it would be easy to prove that the national power is more compact than it has ever been in the old nations of Europe. (Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume 1, p. 70 – 2)

What is ‘non-interference’ locally if thought is controlled totally? – if you dispute that, let’s have those conversations… let’s test it… we have to get these discussions out in the public – the world has been claimed for a mindset… and while this mind-set is being inculcated… planted… everywhere… what are we doing? – we become spectators to our own imprisonment in it.… Our thought wants to develop… we are not made to stay on ‘the bottom’… so forms of compulsion must be invented… and we accept this… precisely because the institutions reflect this…

 

(Although the “single pattern of thought” called ‘rule’… called ‘class’… for De Tocqueville is a given… he… in discussion… might well concede that if that is the definition… the pattern of thought called ‘class’ is totalitarian… but he might also contend… that without ‘rule’… no ‘civilization’. However I agree with Kropotkin… that what we will accomplish as free beings will exponentially exceed… in beauty and in health… for the earth and for ourselves… any achievement that ‘rulers’ claim for themselves.)

 

So the U.S. statesmen may claim the ‘totalitarian’ label doesn’t fit the description of U.S. ‘governance’… because they de-centralize management of us… they delegate authority over us… to local ‘administrations’… and so… the theory goes… avoid the ‘totalitarian’ label – i.e. that they allow us to be ‘free’… locally…. (I think we can see De Tocqueville being put to use as we speak… to tempt the current generation of youth to forget on whose backs ‘the world system’ struggles along… to forget that the ‘check’ for their ‘success’ is paid by others… those assigned a lower place on the ‘system’s sine qua non hierarchy.

 

What is ‘non-interference’ locally if thought is controlled totally?

 

‘Power’s ability to remain totally hidden – disappearing in the hierarchical structure…

(…and coerced ‘work’ provides the necessary cover… it is a tactic of supreme control in many ways… not the least of which being that it directs our rage to folks near by… instead of to… the hidden few…)

…and in its propaganda…

 

…and in its privatization – and so in the expansion of its reach to the globe –

(…and a ‘business news’ item I recently heard provided a mini-illustration of the degree to which this result is calculated… which should cause us to consider how we can ever begin putting forward the future we need… when we are not using any similar strategies. The ‘business’-snippet was an interview with a man who owned a business called ‘Quality Floatworks’ who was asked by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to go to Iraq… essentially on a privatizing mission… selling his stuff… seizing earth and converting it… into neat figures in a bank account… In this way… the world has been claimed for a mindset… and while this mind-set is being inculcated… planted… everywhere… what are we doing? – we become spectators to our own imprisonment in it…)

…and now we can add that ‘power’ also remains hidden in the clandestine lethality of its weapons… such that those who are targeted with them cannot organize against it…

 

…all of which tacitly (quietly… “no noise”) control thought – and open and uncoerced thought is our backstop against totalitarianism…

 

…all of this has ended all chance of an ‘institutional fix’ (along with… the ‘democratic’ illusion…) because we can’t confront it… ‘power’… openly…

 

…not that the chance ever existed… once hierarchy… and therefore obedience… is accepted. Because like all life our nature is to grow (and… by the way… in this area too ‘power’ hopes to replace the earth… and would have us believe they cause our development… which is why they want rigid control of the development of thought… by disallowing it anywhere but in their sanctioned places…)

 

…our thought wants to develop…

 

…we are not made to stay on ‘the bottom’…

 

…so forms of compulsion must be invented… force must be applied… we must be made to obey… compelled ‘to come in’…

 

…and we accept this… precisely because the institutions reflect this.

 

–––

 

…and we also saw… thanks to both Socrates and Xenophon… that those people most in need (“that which they have not… that which they possess…”) are precisely the would-be kings… the so-called ‘rulers’… precisely those with the certainty and the means… to claim the right of defining… the institutions… which… unsurprisingly… are all set up hierarchically.… So unless ‘ending hierarchy’ is at the top of the list (and we’ll be illustrating once again with the red herring ‘localism’…) of the qualities our future must possess… all our efforts to define an alternative… will but get us ‘hierarchy’ all over again… which is why we can’t have ‘institutions’… and not just because the existing ones are structured hierarchically… but because our nature loves challenges… and loves to volunteer… and we love to surprise each other. Rigidity doesn’t fit with our natural freedom. Freedom is what we want… and only freedom can get us our future… because freedom is our future…

 

Last week we saw that Socrates is right… and has been for thousands of years… since class first stalked and claimed its first captive… in arguing that it is precisely those most in need of education that don’t believe they need education…

(…recall that Karl Popper told us that this was the problem Socrates struggled with most. As we said in the June 8, 2014 show… referring to the page: “Karl Popper on Authentic Education for Youth…” we called this problem “Socrates’ Dilemma” in the discussion of Popper’s Chapter 7 on “The Principle of Leadership”…):

…and we also saw… thanks to both Socrates and Xenophon… that those people most in need (“that which they have not… that which they possess…”) are precisely the would-be kings… the so-called ‘rulers’… precisely those with the certainty and the means… to claim the right of defining… the institutions… which… unsurprisingly… are all set up hierarchically… while biasing the resources of the planet to drop in their pockets… reproducing hierarchy (if not stopped) in perpetuity… to ensure their supremacy… ad infinitum…….

 

Karl Popper is mistaken in thinking that institutions can be ‘reformed’ to deliver a future that can serve as a perpetual check to hierarchy… to ‘power’. And if he means that institutions must be ‘reinvented’… then we’re in the realm of ever-moving definitions. Far better to describe what we want – open… easy… relaxed… generous… allowing every human being to grow their gifts… un-ruled… on the planet – and not be too concerned about the name we give to it.

 

So what does this tell us… about ‘leadership’?… if not… as Socrates saw… that we all possess it… to the degree the conditions that further it in every body… are allowed to be….

 

What are these conditions? As we name them we invoke our future. But unless ‘ending hierarchy’ is at the top of the list (and we’ll be illustrating once again with the red herring ‘localism’…) all our efforts to define an alternative… will but get us ‘hierarchy’ all over again…

 

…which is why we can’t have ‘institutions’…

…and not just because the existing ones are structured hierarchically… but because our nature loves challenges… and loves to volunteer… and we love to surprise each other. Rigidity doesn’t fit with our natural freedom. Freedom is what we want… and only freedom can get us our future… because freedom is our future…

…Freedom can’t exist if you attempt to freeze it…

(…so when ‘power’ says it’s ‘reforming’ ‘democracy’… by modifying policy… the ultimate aim of which is to rein-in potential recalcitrants… by cultivating [particularly youth] buy-in…)

…e.g. allowing a few youth of privilege to be artists… and environmentalists… urban farm ‘experts’… and ‘entrepreneurs’… converting poisoned places into aesthetic oases… producing ‘higher’ level services and stuff… for elite consumption…

 

…and how ’bout that unfortunate foreclosure crisis of the early twenty-first century? Now that they don’t need us in factories they’re encouraging the ‘middle classes’… to all become ‘craftsmen’… and serve up neat stuff… it’s either that or serving up hamburgers… we choose…

 

An ad I saw in the current East Bay Express offers a knee-jerk denial of this (with no evidence): “Localization is about equity. It’s about everybody getting a piece of the pie. It’s about leveling the playing field. We at the Oakland-based Sustainable Business Alliance don’t volunteer every day just so people with disposable income can buy cool things.”

 

And an article in this same issue lauds the notion of ‘sweeping away the po’ folks’… without saying this… preferring to pretend that how cities got ‘cleansed’ is irrelevant. Apparently folks in the middle and upper echelons of paid remuneration by ‘power’… just want to move on… they’ve grown accustomed… even fond… of the crooked roads. It’s a fait accompli after all:

In Oakland and other cities, local entrepreneurs have taken it upon themselves to create commercial corridors and to reestablish once-vibrant neighborhood shopping areas. Oakland’s Uptown and Temescal districts are prime examples of this movement – areas that formerly were dotted with empty or boarded-up storefronts and are now flourishing.

 

It’s a welcome turnaround from the unfortunate shift that began in the Sixties and Seventies with the birth of suburban shopping and strip malls and big-box retailers, and the hollowing out of American cities. (Robert Gammon, “Buy Local Comes of Age,” East Bay Express, June 11 – 17, 2014)

(…how ’bout from the unfortunate foreclosure crisis of the early twenty-first century? Now that they don’t need us in factories they’re encouraging the ‘middle classes’… to all become ‘craftsmen’… and serve up neat stuff… it’s either that or serving up hamburgers… we choose.)

 

So folks with more money moving into all those foreclosed homes and businesses… as ‘wealth’ is up-circulated…

(…and ‘opportunities’ – implicitly deepening hierarchy [as a gift to ‘power’] – locally and globally… let’s never forget with whose suffering the middle ranks get ‘the good life’ – they’ll be allowed to pretend it’s not on the suffering of their brothers and sisters in Asia… Africa… the Middle East… and Central and South America…)

…and thus betrayal made palatable with the message spread… that ‘the churn’ is a good thing… no matter that ‘power’ – whose coffers are so big they don’t know what to do with them – orchestrated it. And this is a global phenomenon… although chewing on the global scene is not what they want we commoners to be doing…

 

…because… ‘the Supremacy Game’ has not gone away… is still being played… and the souls lost in that Abyss can never reach ‘satisfaction’… so ‘cheap food’… ‘cheap hands’… ‘cheap brains’… will still be needed… to feed it… that Abyss…

 

…and that would leave us with but a more desperate version of what we have now… and a freshly-bred new-minted naïve generation… more trapped than ever before….

 

–––

 

‘Obedience’ is what makes the system of ‘class’ totalitarian (that, and the fact that it’s global…) – through this imperative… all ‘institutions’… from ‘the family’… to ‘education’… from ‘work’… to ‘the state’… form a seamless totalitarian whole… which makes it the central issue before us… as we reclaim the challenge of the future from the ‘rulers’ and their delegates. The true issue then… is not ‘capitalism’… but rather leashes and levers and compelling behavior: ‘the logic of the will’.… Jeremy Bentham wanted ‘rulers’ to become adepts in “the logic of the will” – the ‘art’ of control… of manipulation of one’s fellow humans. But what we-the-global-people need, perhaps, is to flip the lens and aim it back… and get clear on ‘the logic of class’…

 

The situation is far worse than we commoners till now have imagined… because we haven’t been allowed to consider the full implications… of our total submission to the regime of ‘obedience’.

 

‘Obedience’ is what makes the system of ‘class’ totalitarian (that, and the fact that it’s global…) – through this imperative… all ‘institutions’… from ‘the family’… to ‘education’… from ‘work’… to ‘the state’… form a seamless totalitarian whole… which makes it the central issue before us… as we reclaim the challenge of the future from the ‘rulers’ and their delegates.

 

The true issue then… is not ‘capitalism’… but rather leashes and levers and compelling behavior: ‘the logic of the will’. And whether the means are psychological (although it may be… as the state determines childrearing… that ‘the levers’ are all psychological, ultimately…)

 

…whether the means are psychological or physical (i.e. exploiting the fact that we must eat…) the ‘system’ is about a tiny few getting the vast majority to do what it tells us to do.

 

Jeremy Bentham wanted ‘rulers’ to become adepts in “the logic of the will” – the ‘art’ of control… of manipulation of one’s fellow humans. But what we-the-global-people need, perhaps, is to flip the lens and aim it back… and get clear on ‘the logic of class’.

The ‘power’-guys treat humans like gas…

…to be run through a ‘refining’ process (called ‘higher education’…)

…which out-spits ‘the best’…

…after which this ‘best’ is put to the pressure test…

…and through further such ‘refining’ you get…

…‘the best of the best’…

…then press down hard as before and weed out some more…

…and then what’s left is…

…‘the best of the best of the best’…

…and these… so-called ‘b of b of bees’ become…

…the ones set above…

…to rule us and make the decisions –

… – all of course very hidden –

…and these guys are all trapped in their illusions…

…terrified of running into the truth…

…which is… as Popper said…

…that what they’ve created with their ‘highly-refined’ ‘education’…

…is but the ‘rule’ of highly-refined ‘yes-men’…

…i.e. the ‘rule’ of the absence of imagination.

This matters not ‘just’ because our lives are sacrificed for nothing… for no reason…

 

…but because our lives are sacrificed to make all life mis-shapen and mal-formed…

 

The current situation… this perilous moment… is far more pregnant with risk than De Tocqueville could imagine… trapped as he was in the mindset of ‘class’… but he gives a hint of it when he says… writing about total ‘centralization’ – of which… I think we can agree ‘totalitarianism’ is the example most extreme… if not it completely:

I cannot conceive that a nation can enjoy a secure or prosperous existence without a powerful centralization of government. But I am of opinion that a central administration enervates [“cause (someone) to feel drained of energy or vitality; weaken…”] the nations in which it exists by incessantly diminishing their public spirit. If such an administration succeeds in condensing at a given moment, on a given point, all the disposable resources of a people, it impairs at least the renewal of those resources. It may insure a victory in the hour of strife, but it gradually relaxes the sinews of strength. It may contribute admirably to the transient greatness of a man, but it cannot insure the durable prosperity of a nation. (Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume 1, p. 71)

…the risk we face extends to the human race… it threatens to mis-shape what it means to be a human… when we allow the regime of ‘obedience’ to be… let alone be totalitarian…

 

–––

 

So if not with ‘institutions’… with what do we build our future?

 

Kropotkin’s ‘associations’. Recall his description: ‘ever-changing’… ‘moving’… ‘growing’… self-generating – there is no institution that flows like this… just the opposite… the point of an ‘institution’ is to fix… make rigid… what is fundamentally dishonest, unbalanced and biased… so let’s let our discussions clarify this…

 

Continuing Chapter XXXVI of Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – P.S.]

 

–––

 

[Here is an excerpt from Chapter XXXVI:]

It was about one o’clock in the morning. The last SS had left the camp. He closed the iron gates and cut off the lights from the main switchboard, which was located near the entrance. The enormous cemetery of European Judaism, Birkenau, sank into darkness. My eyes lingered for a long while on the barbed wires of the camp and the rows of barracks that stood out against the night. Farewell, cemetery of millions, cemetery without a single grave!… (Part 99)

 

We left by the main gate. No one stopped us. The abrupt change seemed incredible. Our path led through the little forest of Birkenau, whose trees were covered from trunk to top with a heavy layer of glistening snow. The same path down which millions had walked on their way to death…. We passed beside the Jewish ramp, buried in the snow. And here they had climbed down from the boxcars for selection…. The image of the two columns, left and right, separated forever, gazing sadly across at those they had just left, came back to me. But for all of them, the matter had merely been one of chronological order: they were all dead.

 

Yes, the Birkenau KZ was on fire. Some of the guards’ rooms, in which the camp records were stored, were burning. A large crowd, perhaps 3,000, was gathered in front of the camp gate waiting for the order to leave. Without hesitation I joined their ranks. No one knew me here. I was no longer the bearer of unholy secrets, no longer a member of the Sonderkommando, and therefore did not have to die. Here I was merely another KZ prisoner, lost in the crowd. It seemed to me this was the best solution. My colleagues concurred. Everyone was fleeing Birkenau, but I judged it improbable that they would be able to take us very far. In a day or two the Russians would catch up with us. But sometime before that happened, the SS would desert. Meanwhile, our best bet was to march with the others between the two lines of fire.

 

It was about one o’clock in the morning. The last SS had left the camp. He closed the iron gates and cut off the lights from the main switchboard, which was located near the entrance. The enormous cemetery of European Judaism, Birkenau, sank into darkness. My eyes lingered for a long while on the barbed wires of the camp and the rows of barracks that stood out against the night. Farewell, cemetery of millions, cemetery without a single grave!

 

We set out, surrounded by a company of SS. We discussed with our new-found friends all that had happened, and what might happen now, trying to guess what the morrow would bring. Would the SS succeed in escorting our convoy to a new prison, or would they, as we hoped, desert us somewhere along the way?…

 

Towards noon we reached Plesow, where we made our first stop. We spent an hour in a sports stadium. Anyone who had some food ate a little. We smoked a cigarette, then set off again along the snowy road, feeling greatly refreshed. But a week went by, two, and still we walked. For twenty days we walked, till at last we reached a railway station. In all, we had covered over 200 kilometers, having had almost nothing to eat for three weeks. At night we slept outdoors, in the bitter cold. When we arrived at Ratibor only 2,000 of us were left. About a thousand had been shot along the way. We were all relieved to see the line of box cars waiting for us.…

 

–––

 

[Here is an excerpt from Chapter XXXVII:]

 

“Forty thousand Spanish Republicans, refugees in France, had been brought here after the occupation, as well as hundreds of thousands of German Jews. It was they who had worked in the Mauthausen quarries cutting the blocks; it was they who had carried the finished stones along the seven-kilometer path up the mountain, where formerly only wild goats had grazed. And it was they who had constructed the powerful walls around their house of sorrow, which was composed of wooden barracks…” […we as a global humanity have yet to confront the implications of this mind-set of ‘make-use-of’… utilitarianism… the absence of reverence for the earth… for life… which underlies all the ‘phenomena’ of class… and as the resources to keep us corralled or bought-off are shrinking… can you not hear them thinking: “how to weed out ‘the intractable’ and make the rest more ‘manageable’?” And never forget that all this is occurring at a moment when the ‘costs’ of ‘clean-up’ from the rulers’ frenzy of consumption… are enormous: there is so much work to be done… When will we begin to associate… discuss… and plan… on our own behalf… as global humans?… instead of allowing ourselves to be fed into the machinery of ‘make-use-of’… – P.S.] (Part 100)

 

The Mauthausen KZ sat on top of a hill overlooking the ancient city of the same name. This extermination camp, which resembled a fortified town, was made of granite blocks. With its bastions, its towers and loopholes, it looked from afar like a medieval castle.

 

This picture would have been a rare and beautiful one if only the stones had been covered with a century-old growth of lichen, or streaked gray from the constant play of wind and rain and snow through the years. Instead, they presented a façade of dazzling white that clashed with the surrounding landscape, which was crowned with dark forests. For the “castle” had only recently been built and its walls were not yet marked with that austere beauty of ancient buildings. The Third Reich had had it constructed as a KZ. Forty thousand Spanish Republicans, refugees in France, had been brought here after the occupation, as well as hundreds of thousands of German Jews. It was they who had worked in the Mauthausen quarries cutting the blocks; it was they who had carried the finished stones along the seven-kilometer path up the mountain, where formerly only wild goats had grazed. And it was they who had constructed the powerful walls around their house of sorrow, which was composed of wooden barracks.

[I must continue to reiterate this point: we as a global humanity have yet to confront the implications of this mind-set of ‘make-use-of’… utilitarianism… the absence of reverence for the earth… for life… which underlies all the ‘phenomena’ of class… fed into the machinery of ‘social science’… out of which is cranked, with disheartening regularity… all the ‘theories’ that purport to ‘explain’ ‘human nature’… or ‘human social interactions’… or… whatever… while never questioning the mindset itself… which is allowed to disappear into the dark ‘givens’ we’re given from birth… when born into the global class system.

 

We have never had this discussion.

 

Is there any greater ‘proof’ than this… that we have been misled… misused… and abused… for millennia?

 

And as this mind-set we’ve never discussed is now vomiting up all the hideousness formerly swept under the rug… for millennia… and the hidden ‘rulers’ who initiated the corrupt and irreverent actions with their fixed determination to herd us to their also-never-discussed destination… as the resources to keep us corralled or bought-off are shrinking… can you not hear them thinking: “how to weed out ‘the intractable’ and make the rest more ‘manageable’?” And never forget that all this is occurring at a moment when the ‘costs’ of ‘clean-up’ from the rulers’ frenzy of consumption… are enormous: there is so much work to be done:

The question then is, in the thinking of Wallerstein and Collins, whether such globally escalating costs could be at all sustained by capitalism…. [They] see capitalism as a global system or, if you wish, a hierarchical ecology of economic food chains and market niches. Like any complex system, it has its interrelated structures, dynamic trends, and therefore it must have its ultimate limits. Even if the systemic limits could be expanded thanks to new geographies and technologies of production, they cannot be altogether abolished. Nobody can now specify the institutions and parameters of the world coming after capitalism…. Nevertheless [they] insist that capitalism is nearing its limits, and they make one big prediction: there will be a world transition. (“Getting Real,” Does Capitalism Have a Future?, p. 177 – 179)

Brothers and Sisters: when we look at the struggles over resources proliferating around the globe – some… do not doubt… being systematically fostered – i.e. bought and paid for –

(…and do we really think that a ‘gift’ for global-‘power’ such as ISIS… so tech-savvy… such deep-pockets… so megalomaniacal… a much better villain than ‘Cold-War-Communism’ (the legend of which – recall our Wallerstein lesson – the U.S. and the then-Soviet Union conspired together in the creation of…) occurring simultaneously with our Global Awakening… just as the early twentieth-century awakening chronicled by Maxim Gorky in Mother was met by world-war-decimation of our growing solidarity across nation… culture… ethnicity…. [“we are of one blood, all nations…” that’s the truth we commoners know… and any who try to con us into violence against each other… into targeting each other… into putting each other in these categories and boxes… and ranks… is paid to do so… if not ‘power’ themselves…] do we really think that such a ‘gift’ to ‘power’… they had no hand in?…

 

…and since we’re on this subject of ‘gifts’ to ‘power’… there was a meaningful juxtaposition yesterday [06.20.14] of news items: the railroading of the Central Park Five when their innocence was known to police officials… finally being met with a ‘settlement’… with the Israeli state using the excuse of missing youth [were they peace activists, by the way?…] to terrorize and incarcerate the Palestinian populace…)

– can we not see the results of that ‘make-use-of’ thinking? Can we afford to doubt that this tiny few who want to rule – who stack the deck and never stop trying to keep us from acting on our own behalf – are moving apace to create the future (“no change”) they want. And hasn’t Miklos shown us their ruthlessness… determination… and the clear shape of their vision: to beat us into submission… and extract from us what they consider of use to them?

 

When will we begin to associate… discuss… and plan… on our own behalf… as global humans? – P.S.]

They had finished the castle at the price of unbelievable suffering, but they had never lived to occupy it. In the midst of this great mass of stone and concrete they hade all perished, like the slaves in ancient Egypt. The camp had not remained unoccupied for very long, however. Thousands who had fought in the Yugoslav underground, as well as members of all the various resistance movements throughout Europe – plus, of course, Europe’s doomed race, the Jews – had flocked here by the tens of thousands, filling the fortress’ barracks in a matter of days. There they had lived during the brief period preceding their death.… (Part 101)

 

I looked around for my companions. Fischer, the lab assistant, was missing. I had not seen him since Plesow. Then he had been lying in the snow, his strength completely spent. From his contracted facial expression, I had suspected that his end was near. He was fifty-five and had spent five years in the KZ, so it was not surprising that his organism had been unequal to the long walk and paralyzing cold. Dr. Korner was in pretty good shape, but Dr. Gorog, on the other hand, was in a critical condition. His mental troubles had steadily worsened, and even in the days of the crematorium keeping his condition a secret had been a source of constant worry to me. I had done all I could to make sure he never ran into Dr. Mengele. Mussfeld had also been dangerous. If either one had noticed his condition, his life would not have been worth a penny.

 

Before leaving the crematorium he had already informed me of his last wishes.

 

“Nicholas,” he had said, “you are a strong-willed person and one day you’ll manage to get out of all this alive. As for me, I know I’m finished.” I had tried to protest, but he had waved my words of encouragement aside and gone on: “I have proof that my wife and daughter both died in the gas chamber. But I left my twelve-year-old son with the monks of the Koszeg cloister. If you ever do get home, fetch him and bring him up as your own. I say this in full possession of all my faculties, knowing I haven’t long to live.”

 

I had promised him that I would faithfully carry out his wishes, in the event I escaped and he did not.

 

Now, happily, we had left the site of certain death far behind. To die now, so near to the end of the road, just when the hope of freedom had filled our hearts, would be truly tragic.

–––

 

* WUR of June 29, 2014… “Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class”

 

…we’re not going to hear what we need for our future over the airwaves…. I think my determined efforts for the last five years have at least demonstrated to me conclusively there’s certain taboo thoughts… that’s just the way it is… and we have to come to grips with that fact… but because they’re taboo doesn’t mean they don’t exist… believe me… we are in the majority… So… “no violence… no division… no leaders…” must be our keys: we all have to start naming the future… and our watchword must be ‘solidarity’…

 

July 25th, 2014… Sisters and Brothers: Today we conclude Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz… a gift we had no reason to hope for… and yet… here it is…. Miklos Nyiszli’s testimony has set us on a necessary trajectory… to our freedom…. Towards that end… I’ve put up a new page… the space where these radio conversations will continue. I hope you will check it out: “Keith Lowe Lessons From Savage Continent… For Building Our Future”.

 

–––

 

June 23rd, 2014… Sisters and Brothers: To say that this moment in our human story portends… clarion-calls to us… that we must step up and claim this challenge called ‘the future’… is to cast in grays what’s better viewed in vivid color… it is a moment rich in promise and in risk… for it is imperative… that we begin moving forward all together… and with consciousness….

 

And I think we should ponder how to take these words to the global arena: how do we – as a global-One – move against attempts to divide us?… if not by collectively claiming the naming… of the future?…

 

…if not by saying that it is we… we-the-people… who have to shape it differently… from this current reality of ‘class’…

 

…and I don’t mean ‘tweak’ what we got… trust… we… here on the bottom… we know you can’t ‘adjust’ what’s wrong…. And because we never hear that over the airwaves it can lead us to believe that there is no other way… but to obey.

 

So we’re not going to hear what we need for our future over the airwaves…. I think my determined efforts for the last five years have at least demonstrated to me conclusively there’s certain taboo thoughts… that’s just the way it is… and we have to come to grips with that fact…

 

…but because they’re taboo doesn’t mean they don’t exist… believe me… we are in the majority… – every single one of us who feels our gifts thrown away… who struggles to simply hang on to the little bit of soul we got left… we are wanting a different future – not an ‘adjusted’ regime of ‘wrong’ – and we have to start believing that… and saying it to each other… and planning with each other… and figuring out how to inter-link inter-nationally what we’re doing…

 

So we… all of us – we-the-global-people – have to name the future – we… have to say what we want….

 

In our hearts… we know what we want… we don’t want ‘force’ to rule us anymore… we don’t want to be compelled to do what we do… we want what we do to be our freely-given gift to each other….

 

And if we don’t step up… we will… once again… simply be taken down the path of ‘Division’… because as we’ll see… with the concluding thoughts in this work of Miklos Nyiszli… when we’re under the regime of ‘Compulsion’… when we’re ruled by ‘Necessity’… we’re in survival-mode… we can’t have empathy for each other… and we are then manipulated to turn against each other very easily… – from ‘Mutual Aid’ we turn… unwillingly but inevitably… to ‘Division’… because that’s what gets paid… and all of us have to live before anything else…

 

…so we will be taken down that path of ‘Division’ – nation by nation – under ‘leaders’….

 

So… we’d best push hard right now… because ‘rule’ is pushing hard… and because our oceans are crying… and our earth is poisoned… and our lungs are filled with gunk… and we can’t hardly hold on to hope anymore… so we’ve got to start boosting each other’s hope….

 

And… “no violence… no division… no leaders…” must be our keys…

 

… we all… have to start naming the future… and our watchword must be ‘solidarity’…

 

–––

 

…we have much confusion around this… we hear this daily in the media because that’s its role… to keep us duped… conned – we always hear about the “division of powers” and “this checks that and ensures our freedom”… and… what?… our bodies are just lying to us?… We know we’re under the rule of ‘Compulsion’… that’s the “‘Iron Law’ of States”…. Ignore what the written laws say… it is that ‘iron’ law – the rule of ‘Compulsion’ – that determines all…

 

How do we proceed?

 

How do we relate to each other?

 

How do we keep from getting de-railed?

 

How do we get to a planning process that’s powerful?… one that grows the seeds of a healthy future… a free and leisure-ful future… for all of us?…

 

…particularly when we aren’t supported by any media… but our own?

 

Because there is a way that this happens… we just have to see that way… and move with it.

 

Let’s pause for a moment and re-consider ‘the state’.

 

Thanks to Alice Miller and Jeremy Bentham we now have a more developed understanding of what it is…

 

…we see that we ourselves are not just enmeshed in it… but little microcosms of it… because we have been trained by its delegates to so be… and have heretofore not been conscious of it…

 

…conscious of the fact that we have internalized the statesmen’s view of us as ‘subjects’… and not as being responsible… each one of us… not just for the health of the planet… but our souls…

 

…except of course when the evil wages of its sins descend… then… all of a sudden… ‘we’ did them…

 

…so though excluded from decision-making… necessarily… by the definition of ‘the state’… on us is heaped the blame… for its evil ways….

 

So while we’ve obviously always had numbers… Jeremy Bentham helped ‘power’ see how to (temporarily) nullify that fact… and for ‘power’… everything hinges on our not being able to see and undo Bentham’s gift of strategy to them – of how the few control the many (‘atomization’… which then fuels “divide-and-conquer”…) which is why ‘power’ is moving with such deadly purpose in this moment… to limit and control our access and use of our commonly-developed technological tools: they allow us to over come ‘atomization’… and to move around them… and link hands together despite their bottomless pockets… and create our own media… by and for commoners.

 

What we have in our favor is that every human being – from the child of three who looks at us so questioningly… to the jaded elder who has long asked: “What did it mean?” – every last one of us is searching for the way… the path… that leads… to our freedom.

 

And there are many… many… who with but the barest outline of the clues… push forward and find the rest… and run to share… the good news.

 

Are we not all humans?

 

Is not the happiness of one dependent on the happiness of all?

 

And is not its pursuit… guaranteed to us… here in the U.S… in the Declaration of Independence?…

 

…which means… that… as we’re here to help each other… and as Marx spoke true in calling to those with means to take the lead… it falls to us… here in the U.S…. to forge our cross-national planning process.

 

–––

 

I think what we’re unaware of… here in the U.S…. is the degree to which ‘the laws’ of this nation were constructed specifically to contain us.

 

(We have much confusion around this… we hear this daily in the media because that’s its role… to keep us duped… conned – we always hear about the “division of powers” and “this checks that and ensures our freedom”… and… what?… our bodies are just lying to us?… We know we’re under the rule of ‘Compulsion’… that’s the “‘Iron Law’ of States”…. Ignore what the written laws say… it is that ‘iron’ law – the rule of ‘Compulsion’ – that determines all.)

 

De Tocqueville even expresses concern that to use coercion to the degree such as that which he had seen could form the seeds of corruption in the body-politic… can any who understand the foul stench that rises from the rot of class… deny his forebodings have been more obvious than prescient?… do not more and more of us understand that the state is an instrument of coercion by definition… and never was a manifestation of the ‘public will’… except… as Bentham schooled ‘rule’… to the degree that ‘the state’ forms the ‘will’ of the majority…

 

What this says… I think we’ll see once we discuss it… is that ‘the state’ has never been needed by we-the-people… and that it’s only through the constant application of the pressure of ‘necessity’… and blunt propaganda and systematic conditioning… that we’ve accepted as ‘inevitable’ our submission….

 

But the reality of ‘the state’s expendability… redundancy… hasn’t changed not one iota….

 

There is nothing ‘it’ does that we cannot do – if done together… in each ‘nation’… as a global ‘one’ – and will do… will organize to accomplish on our own (and this is seen in every instance historically… when in those rare, brief seconds we’re left alone to meet our own challenges [like with ‘Occupy’…] before ‘the state’ decides how… to shut it down.)

 

–––

 

…we are all… not just fellow sufferers… but fellow agents of the state… some with conscious intent… some being paid… and some without… but all not yet… the person… the human… the earth meant for us to be… when she first seized the seeds we were… and set them all alight… Perhaps if we remember that we are all advocates… that we represent… “I am large… multitudes I contain…” …we’ve all had moments when we’re small… we’ve all been paid to do what’s wrong… the abandoned children in the trees who got put into monasteries… and beat… and beat… and beat… until they were ‘perfect’ – that is the legacy we’re dealing with today… in Waking Up I asked, “I don’t want to control the labor of others… do you?”… well, I put it to you… let’s ask ourselves that question. For the vast majority… the answer is “no.” There you have it. Our future is waiting.

 

For me it is quite humbling when I consider the degree of our enmeshment – as each moment, then… becomes a valid subject for our inquiry… as do, of course, our sisters and brothers. Knowing that we are all… not just fellow sufferers… but fellow agents of the state… some with conscious intent… some being paid… and some without… but all not yet… the person… the human… the earth meant for us to be… when she first seized the seeds we were… and set them all alight…

 

…we are Socrates-all it seems… we all know nothing.

 

Some of us are conscious agents… some not… and some of us are consciously un-becoming… disassembling… the state in us….

 

And as we begin… to work together… it’s impossible at first to know just who… is who… and… which… is which… but… we have ground-rules to help us… and hopefully provide sufficient guidance… in addition to: “no violence… no division… no leaders…”

If we can agree that our Grandmother Earth wrought us… each one… free…

…that ‘free’ is what we’re meant to be…

…and so our destination…

…that ‘freedom-leisure-happiness’ is both possible and our due…

…but… also… that…

…because ‘rule’ made the world unsafe…

…it’s made us think that ‘others’ (not ourselves…)

all need the ‘rules’ that ‘power’ makes….

 

But it’s ‘power’s work that heavy-weighs…

when good fellowship is betrayed…

…and it is ‘power’s work…

…from which…

…with consciousness…

…we step away.

We’re moving from the realm of ‘proof’ to ‘trust’…

 

…trust that our future waits in this ‘global-us’… and that our responsibility lay in mutual encouragement… to help us believe that an end to this mess is coming… help us see… that this ‘global-we’ is waiting for us to just… let it be… because it’s what our bodies want to do naturally…. So we must…

 

…trust in what our bodies say they want – bypassing ‘power’s conditioned thoughts – and claiming for our future: ‘freedom-leisure-happiness’….

 

If… as we’ve been arguing… ‘power’ only survives by not being seen… the opposite of that… is to see it in everything under ‘class’… not with suspiciousness and judgment… but with the spirit of open inquiry.

 

And what about the folks who intentionally provoke (because some are paid to so do…) by saying this work of ‘future-claiming’ is not serious… by seeming to take it as a joke? What happens then?

 

How do we re-focus from attempts at distraction?

 

Perhaps if we remember that we are all advocates… that we represent… for the earth… for the oceans… for our trapped brothers and sisters…

 

…as Leonard Cohen says… we are the oceans… we take it all in… or like Walt Whitman said… “I am large… multitudes I contain…”

 

…we’ve all had moments when we’re small… we’ve all been paid to do what’s wrong. And as we represent… we’d best get on with it… our future calls. It speaks in tones both pure… and long… let’s move on.

 

And regarding that dilemma of Socrates… that it is those most needing of education (i.e. the ‘power’-worshippers… the ‘power’-mad… the abandoned children in the trees who got put into monasteries… and beat… and beat… and beat… until they were ‘perfect’ – that is the legacy we’re dealing with today…) who don’t believe they need education… and so… isn’t authority needed then… to ‘help’ them see? […perhaps that was his misguided belief in ‘rule’… let’s think about it once we’re free….]

 

But what Socrates couldn’t see… because he hadn’t our technology… because we hadn’t yet spanned the problem of distance… thanks to Nikola Tesla… is that these folks – the rulers and their delegates – are in an extreme minority…

 

…we-the-vast-majority are like Socrates…

 

…ever-questing…

 

…ever-wanting our earth-gifts to fully be…

 

…just what the earth intended.

 

(At the beginning of Waking Up I asked, “I don’t want to control the labor of others… do you?”… well, I put it to you… let’s ask ourselves that question. For the vast majority… the answer is “no.” There you have it. Our future is waiting.)

 

–––

 

Continuing Chapter XXXVII of… and… concluding… Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – P.S.]

 

–––

Sensing the danger, I forced my way through the crowd and approached the steps leading down into the baths. At last I worked my way to the front row. Several SS armed with rubber clubs were guarding the entrance. A group of forty people was already assembled, waiting to go in. They were all Aryans… Once again I made a snap decision: leaving the crowd I approached an SS Oberschaarfuhrer and addressed him in a self-assured tone of voice: “Herr Oberschaarfuhrer, I’m the doctor for the Auschwitz convoy. Let me into the baths.” He looked me over. My respectable clothes, perhaps my determined manner, or more likely, my perfect command of German seemed to make an impression on him. At any rate, turning to his colleagues posted near the entrance, he said: “Let the doctor go inside.”… Yes, sometimes it pays to make up one’s mind on the spur of the moment… (Part 102)

 

[Here is an excerpt from Chapter XXXVII:]

 

Following roll call, we were sent through a tortuous passage to the baths. There we joined groups newly arrived from other camps: there must have been 10,000 of us crammed into this small area. A strong wind whistled between the walls of the castle. The mountain on which the camp was perched marked the beginning of the Alps, and the winters here were extremely rigorous. We learned that we would be taken into the baths in groups of forty. At that rate, I calculated it would take three days for everybody to bathe.…

 

Reflecting on my situation, I decided that I could not spend the night outdoors without seriously imperiling my chances for survival. I had to get into the baths today. Poor Denis was wandering aimlessly about, hatless, without his glasses, like a man asleep. His gaze was troubled and he was muttering unintelligible words to himself as he walked. I took him by the arm and dragged him with me, hoping that I could somehow get us both into the baths. But before we had gone more than a few steps he slipped away and was lost in the seething mass of humanity. I called his name, shouting at the top of my lungs, but to no avail. The wind was so strong I could hardly hear my own voice.

 

Sensing the danger, I forced my way through the crowd and approached the steps leading down into the baths. At last I worked my way to the front row. Several SS armed with rubber clubs were guarding the entrance. A group of forty people was already assembled, waiting to go in. They were all Aryans.

 

Once again I made a snap decision: leaving the crowd I approached an SS Oberschaarfuhrer and addressed him in a self-assured tone of voice:

 

“Herr Oberschaarfuhrer, I’m the doctor for the Auschwitz convoy. Let me into the baths.”

 

We stayed in Barracks 33 for three days, during which we had nothing to do. Our food was not too bad and we were thus more or less able to recuperate from our three-week march. On the third day of our stay an SS officer, accompanied by a general, visited our barracks and ordered anyone who had formerly worked in the Auschwitz KZ to step forward. My blood froze in my veins. Methodical race that they are, the Germans no doubt had a muster list containing the names or numbers of those who had worked at Auschwitz. It seemed likely. And yet… thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that this was merely a ruse, an attempt to single out from the mass those capable of revealing the sordid mysteries of the crematoriums. If they had really had a list all they would have had to do was to check our tattoo numbers. No one knew me here. I waited, the blood pounding in my ears; there was complete silence in the barracks as the seconds ticked slowly by. And then they left. I had won again. Once again the wheel of death had spun and passed me by… (Part 103)

 

–––

 

[Here is an excerpt from Chapter XXXVIII:]

 

Here everything was disintegrating.… The peoples of Europe, avid for freedom, no longer lived in the fear that their town or city might, by a simple, arbitrary stroke of the conqueror’s pen, be wiped off the map… (“Similar massacres, equally brutal, occurred in countless local communities across Europe. Perhaps the most infamous massacre of them all was that at Lidice, in Czechoslovakia…” – Keith Lowe, Savage Continent) The pyromaniacs of the Third Reich were now playing their final scene on the stage of the world… [Unfortunately… what we’ve seen… is that instead of being decimated and allowing humankind to move on… they but passed the baton… because what we’ll be discussing in upcoming weeks… is the degree to which the mindset is singular… we’re taught to see all the various versions of totalitarianism as separate… which obscures our analysis and understanding of it… distracts us from seeing that the vast majority of the earth’s populace is being herded into hardcore lockdown… – what we judge our lives by… the quality of the world we live in by… is what’s happening to all of us. We cannot accept ‘betrayal’ again… – P.S.] (Part 104)

 

I had been living in the KZ for eight weeks, through good days and bad, but the experience had sapped my strength and left me tired and weak. Only the hope of an early liberation kept me from slipping into a state of utter lethargy and indifference.

 

Here everything was disintegrating. The final phases of the Third Reich’s collapse were unfolding before our eyes. Defeated armies passed in interminable columns towards the interior of a country already reduced to smoking ruins. On the Danube, whose waters were swollen from the melting snows, hundreds of boats and barges transported the inhabitants of evacuated cities. The Third Reich’s dream of a millennium was crumbling. The conviction of a people born to rule, of a Master Race, was giving way to bitter disillusionment. The peoples of Europe, avid for freedom, no longer lived in the fear that their town or city might, by a simple, arbitrary stroke of the conqueror’s pen, be wiped off the map;…

[The following illustrates what Miklos is referring to:

 

“If the wholesale massacre of entire communities made the landscape seem eerie to outsiders, it was far more disorienting for the few who still lived amongst the emptiness. The survivors of the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane in the Limousin region of France, for example, have never since fully come to terms with what happened to them. In the summer of 1944, in reprisal for local Resistance activity, all the town’s men were rounded up and shot. The women and children were driven into the church, which was then set on fire. After the war the authorities decided not to rebuild the village, but to construct a new town nearby – Oradour itself was to be preserved for ever exactly as it was on the day of the massacre. It is still a ghost town today.

 

“Similar massacres, equally brutal, occurred in countless local communities across Europe. Perhaps the most infamous massacre of them all was that at Lidice, in Czechoslovakia, where the entire male population was shot in reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the German deputy Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia. The children of the village were then taken to the Chelmno concentration camp, where they were gassed, and the women were incarcerated at Ravensbruck as slave labour. The village itself was then burned, and bulldozed, and the rubble carted away to allow the grass to grow over where the buildings had once stood. The purpose of this massacre was not merely to punish the local community for resisting the occupation, but to entirely delete that community, as if it had never existed. The Nazis then used the systematic destruction of the village as an advertisement of what would happen to any other village found to be even remotely involved in Resistance activities.” (Keith Lowe, Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II, p. 22 ) – P.S.]

…there was no longer any danger of seeing their homes plundered, of having themselves stripped of all they owned, of feeling the needlepoint tattoo numbers on their arms, of being shipped to forced labor camps and guarded by police dogs and SS troops whose badge was the death’s head.

 

The pyromaniacs of the Third Reich were now playing their final scene on the stage of the world:…

[Unfortunately… what we’ve seen… is that instead of being decimated and allowing humankind to move on… they but passed the baton… because what we’ll be discussing in upcoming weeks… is the degree to which the mindset is singular. ‘Hitler’ was a gift ‘power’ feeds with money… because it serves a purpose… but it is… again… the motive force behind the acts that tells the truth… that reveals the truth…. ‘Hitler’ was used. The entire movement was ‘convenient’… for a few… for what it did… was destroy good fellowship – as we’ll see when we read excerpts from Savage Continent…. There was a rich, vibrant diversity… before… it was destroyed. And they ain’t done: the systematic encouragement of ‘fascism’ across Europe today – and not just across Europe: we’re taught to see all the various versions of totalitarianism as separate… which obscures our analysis and understanding of it… distracts us from seeing them as shades of but one mindset… and from seeing that the vast majority of the earth’s populace is being herded into hardcore lockdown…. So it don’t matter if a small privileged subset of urban ‘farmers’ or ‘craftsmen’ (or ‘creatives’) is allowed to exist in the ‘West’… what we judge our lives by… the quality of the world we live in by… is what’s happening to all of us. We cannot accept ‘betrayal’ again… not after all we’ve been given… from the ancestors… and all we’ve been through… at the hand of ‘power’ – we simply have to begin looking at it… and talking about it… and realizing that the way we’re told to look at this ‘betrayal’ is false – for a reason: if you had the reins of the world in your hands… you’d probably fight to keep them too… and lie… lie… lie your ass off… to hang onto those reins… it only makes sense – but we don’t hear that. This world is defined by… has the stamp of… ‘class’… it cannot be ‘fixed’… but only by-passed… while we create our own. And let the few who want to create a little oasis of ‘rank’ and rigid control of each other… their fellow Plato’s Tribesmen… let them have their space to do so… they won’t last long… trust… because knowing that there’s Freedom out there somewhere will inspire the children to abandon that mess. See… it’s only having the resources of the world in their pockets that allows them to keep this insanity going (i.e. their ability to manufacture scarcity…) – once that is taken away… their thoughts are their own concern… but they can’t have us to realize their thoughts for them… is the point – that is hideous… and we’re living it… we cannot allow that for our future… – P.S.]

…they who had set the world aflame were now perishing in their own fires. The raucous-voiced corporal, whose words, “Deutschland Uber Alles” had been heard on the wavelengths of the entire world for over a decade, was now trembling in his underground bunker. The uncompromising pride of the Third Reich had been broken by the world-wide collaboration of people not avid of conquest, but of freedom… [Let that also be said… for this system of ‘class’: that it must be “broken by the world-wide collaboration of people not avid of conquest, [of their brothers and sisters] but of freedom…” – P.S.] On May 5th a white flag flew from the Ebensee watch tower. It was finished. They had laid down their arms. The sun was shining brightly when, at nine o’clock, an American light tank, with three soldiers aboard, arrived and took possession of the camp. We were free. (Part 105)

 

At least twice I had felt the wings of death brush by me: once, prostrate on the ground, with a company of SS trained in the art of summary execution posed above me, I had escaped unharmed. But three thousand of my friends, who had also known the terrible secrets of the crematoriums, had not been so lucky. I had marched for hundreds of kilometers through fields of snow, fighting the cold, hunger, and my own exhaustion, merely to reach another concentration camp. The road I had traveled had indeed been long. Now, home again, nothing. I wandered aimlessly through silent rooms. Free, but not from my bloody past, nor from the deep-rooted grief that filled my mind and gnawed at my sanity. And the future seemed just as dark. I walked like my own ghost, a restless figure in the once familiar streets. (Part 106)

 

“Epilogue”:

 

Sick at heart, and physically ill, I started my long voyage homeward. The trip was not a pleasant one: everywhere I looked I saw, where flourishing cities and towns had once stood, nothing but gutted ruins and the collective, white-crossed graves of the dead.

 

I dreaded the truth, fearing to return to an empty, plundered home, a home where neither parents nor wife, daughter nor sister, would be waiting to greet me with warmth and affection. Persecution and sorrow, the horrors of the crematorium and funeral pyres, my eight months in the kommando of the living dead, had dulled my sense of good and evil.

 

I felt that I should rest, try to regain my strength. But I kept asking myself, for what? On the one hand, illness racked my body; on the other, the bloody past froze my heart. My eyes had followed countless innocent souls to the gas chambers, witnessed the unbelievable spectacle of the funeral pyres. And I myself, carrying out the orders of a demented doctor, had dissected hundreds of bodies, so that a science based on false theories might benefit from the deaths of those millions of victims. I had cut the flesh of healthy young girls and prepared nourishment for the mad doctor’s bacteriological cultures. I had immersed the bodies of dwarfs and cripples in calcium chloride, or had them boiled so that the carefully prepared skeletons might safely reach the Third Reich’s museums to justify, for future generations, the destruction of an entire race. And even though all this was now past, I would still have to cope with it in my thoughts and dreams. I could never erase these memories from my mind.

 

I, the undersigned, Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, physician, former prisoner of the German concentration camps, declare that this work, which relates the darkest days in the history of mankind, was drawn up my me in strict accordance with reality, and without the slightest exaggeration, in my capacity as an eyewitness and involuntary participant in the work of the Auschwitz crematoriums, into whose fires millions of fathers, mothers and children disappeared. In writing this work I am not aiming for any literary success. When I lived through these horrors, which were beyond all imagining, I was not a writer but a doctor. Today, in telling about them, I write not as a reporter but as a doctor. (Part 107)

 

“Declaration”:

 

I, the undersigned, Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, physician, former prisoner of the German concentration camps, declare that this work, which relates the darkest days in the history of mankind, was drawn up my me in strict accordance with reality, and without the slightest exaggeration, in my capacity as an eyewitness and involuntary participant in the work of the Auschwitz crematoriums, into whose fires millions of fathers, mothers and children disappeared.

 

As chief physician of the Auschwitz crematoriums, I drafted numerous affidavits of dissection and forensic medicine findings which I signed with my own tattoo number. I sent these documents by mail, counter-signed by my superior, Dr. Mengele, to the Berlin-Dahlem address of the “Institut fur Rassenbiologische and Anthropologische Forschungen,” one of the most qualified medical centers of the Third Reich. It should still be possible to find them today in the archives of this Research Institute.

 

In writing this work I am not aiming for any literary success. When I lived through these horrors, which were beyond all imagining, I was not a writer but a doctor. Today, in telling about them, I write not as a reporter but as a doctor.

 

Done at Oradea-Nagyvarad, March 1946.

 

Signed:

Dr. Miklos Nyiszli

–––

 

[Our next (July 6, 2014) show… text and audio files… are located on the page: “Keith Lowe Lessons From Savage Continent… For Building Our Future”]

 

“July 6, 2014 Show…”

“06.30.14 Note to my Sisters & Brothers…”

 

Thandiwe's Word:

ithedawn@gmail.com

...on the challenge of beginning to create the alternative:

“The imagination has to be stimulated – that imaginative part of ourselves that manifests our dreams, through that fire, that passion, that is our art. Asking questions stimulates that process of figuring out, visualizing, and manifesting what we want. But we need each other's help in order to do that – to manifest our power – and we've been cut off from helping each other.”

© Nas2EndWork (the NEW)

http://www.nas2endwork.org