Ian writes
Welcome to the contradictions of the division of labor and bounded rationality.
Seems to me that coaxing fellow learners to 'see' connections that weren't apparent in their quest to improve the quality of their lives is a small first step creating greater public discussion whereby everyone has the opportunity to bring forth the overarching vision in solidarity rather than having it imposed on them by a different set of elites who feign a non-existent omniscience.
It remains to be 'seen' if there can be no such 'thing' as an overarching vision.
In speaking to Americans about socialism, worker's rights, or in formulating any criticism of business-as-usual, I have encountered the same problem as I did once attempting to teach an eleven-year old girl how to multiply by ten. The problem was that articulating/expounding the rule of "adding a zero for every power of ten" was, somehow, incomprehensible....no matter how many ways I explained it. This little girl was willing to memorize what each number multiplied by ten would yield, but could not countenance/understand that an "abstract" rule (overarching vision) could cover each and every case of multiplying by ten.
In the social arena, the same debility holds: Americans react to the articulation of a general case, which necessarily depends on concepts such as class, solidarity, capitalism, relations of production, power... as fundamentally violating their concept of the "free individual": "I'm nothing but a worker?", "I have no particular power as an individual, divorced from other human beings?", "I belong to a class? This is somehow significant?", "The same rules apply to me as to everyone else?" etc.
It is understandable that as capitalism renders people more and more interchangeable (coupled with celebratory advertisement), there should be this desparate, visceral clinging to individual identity and exceptionalism -- but can the working class be made conscious of this process, because, until they are willing to trade in their insulation, nothing can happen...
That is why, perhaps, art is the first weapon.
Joanna
