At 04:15 PM 1/14/98 -0800, Tom Walker wrote:
>If that's what you want, Wojtek, your course of action is clear: do nothing.
>The system is already partially or completely dysfunctional.
examples follow.
It is a tempting proposition, but I am a bit uneasy about the do nothing
part. It is not only that I sincerely hope to see the end of this
neoliberal corporate market-schmarket crap going up in smoke during my
lifetime, or perhaps in some apocalyptic big bang, corporate execs,
pundits, politicians and speculators being defenestrated [what a heroic
word!] by droves - but also a feeling of personally contributing to that
demise.
I am like that "primitive" Trobriand Island fisherman from Malinowski's
ethnographic studies who is about to go on a deep see fishing expedition.
The magical rituals he performs have no effect on the outcome of the
expedition, yet he engages in them because they give him an illusion of
being in control of his own destiny.
Corporate sabotage is also such an illusion. It probably has little impact
on the corporate well being or demise, but it helps you to retain an
illusion that you still control your own fate in this modern, more perfect
arbeit-macht-frei encampment. I guess that is why some people would throw
themselves on electrical wires in that intial implementation of economic
rationality aka Auschwitz - that was still _their_ choice, as opposed to
being led to a chamber and someone else throwing a canister with Zyklon B in.
Aren't we all engaging in manufacturing similar illusions?
>
>Three Mile Island
>Chernobyl
>The former Soviet Union
>Y2K
>The financial crisis in Asia
>the massacre in Chiapas
>"it's not a bug, it's a feature"
>
>The problem with simply allowing the dysfunctionality of the system to
>unfold is that it just keeps unfolding and unfolding. "The trouble with
>normal is it only gets worse." Dysfunctional is normal to the system. The
>attitude can be relatively harmless fun as long as it's little more than Sex
>Pistol Punks shooting up and killing each other. It gets rather tiresome on
>a global scale.
>
>
>Regards,
>
>Tom Walker
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>Know Ware Communications
>Vancouver, B.C., CANADA
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>
wojtek sokolowski
institute for policy studies
johns hopkins university
baltimore, md 21218
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
voice: (410) 516-4056
fax: (410) 516-8233
