Re: FW: "Warum Krieg?" ~ *les aides sur le fait de la guerre*

[Tom Walker]

Steve Kurtz wrote,

>I'm waiting too! And governments can't make chicken salad out of chicken

But the more urgent question might be: can they make (live) chickens out of
chicken salad?

>The composition of the retirement accounts is *not* limited to stocks. The
>money can go into bank deposits, corporate, municipal, or national gov't
>bonds, real estate trusts, mortgages, commodity funds, etc.

Agreed. The appropriate term would be investment instruments. Jeremy Rifkin
claimed in 1995 that pension funds accounted for more than one-third of all
corporate equities and nearly 40% of corporate bonds. I haven't bothered to
follow up on the statistics because my point is simply that a "big chunk" of
money in the market is there because people imagine they're avoiding taxes
(and, secondarily, they expect to earn a return on the taxes they don't have
to pay).

My guess is that even without a sustained bear market, the net present value
of the imagined tax savings, including the accumulated return on investment
(of the deferred taxes) would be remarkably close to zero. Deduct brokers'
fees and the baby boomer mutual fund savants will find that they would have
been better off to pay the god-damn income tax up front and stuff whatever
was left in a mattress (or somewhere else more graphic).

Looking on the brighter side, think of all the government make-work jobs
that have been created in the securities sector. For those who don't think
governments can make live chickens out of chicken salad, consider all the
"private sector jobs" it creates with public money! Governments will even
find a way to make the extraction of energy-sink oil profitable for the oil
companies. It's called creative accounting and it's still going on in
value-subtracting firms in Russia.

There is a way out of the mess, but it's a very strait gate. It's amazing to
hear all this caterwauling about apocalypse and hardly a peep for
providence. Ray gave precise instructions -- "begins with taking a drum into
the forest, digging a hole and putting your feet where no one has ever
walked, finding the beat of the earth and then observing the adage: 'Pay
Attention to Everything.' The Old Testament stated the same principle as
"sabbath of the land" -- let the land rest and God will provide
(providence); wring every last ounce of recoverable substance out of the
land and the land will take its own rest (apocalypse).

One simple answer to the question, "what is to be done?": rest.

Regards, 

Tom Walker
^^^
#408 1035 Pacific St.
Vancouver, B.C.
V6E 4G7
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(604) 669-3286 
^^^
The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/

ideas for futurework website

[Richard Mochelle]

Some ideas for the new futurework website.  Comments invited
___

(This is a re-posting of a proposal sent to S.Lerner which I supposed
would be forwarded to the list, but ??? )

S. Lerner wrote:
> 
> The FW Website is now functioning (and the archives *will* be searchable
> soon!)
> What links and other materials would you FWers like to have on the FW
> Website?  Please let me know. We're  aiming for a 'one-stop' website for
> everyone interested in researching, discussing and reading about FW issues.



1  A catalogue of definitions of work, current and proposed, (conveyed
as alternative language games) with criteria/rules for distinguishing
work activities from non-work activities as clearly defined as
possible.  An open ended catalogue so that FWsers may propose additions
to it.  

This could be usefully accompanied by an on-line survey instrument
polling FWers, selected target groups, schools and the general public on
their preferred choice of definition for economic organisation in the
future.  

A further enrichment of this catalogue could be achieved if FWers could
support their nominations with short, succinctly phrased justifying
arguments.  

2  A catalogue of proposed new terms to label and distinguish each of
the various definitions now carried by the single word work as
catalogued above.

3  A catalogue of proposed 'alternative futures' in relation to the
future of work, providing 1-2 page summaries with links to detailed
expositions.  Here we would find versions of Income Guarantee schemes,
Gorz's concept, Albert & Hahnel's 'Participatory Economics' concept,
Offe's 'cooperative circle' concept and so on.  

As above, this catalogue could be enriched with the addition of a survey
instrument which could poll FW subscribers and others as to their
preferred schema.  

Links to critical commentary would further enrich such a catalogue.


Towards a powerful research/educational/political site for FW.  How
about it folks?


Richard Mochelle

Re: FW: "Warum Krieg?" ~ *les aides sur le fait de la guerre*

[Steve Kurtz]

Tom Walker wrote:
> 
> I
> guess I'm becoming frustrated with the complacency of "waiting for the
> bubble to burst". The reason the bubble won't burst is that if the stock
> market falls violently, we will be called upon by governments to make
> tremendous sacrifices to pump it back up again. 

I'm waiting too! And governments can't make chicken salad out of chicken
.
When the bear re-appears, it will not go away quickly IMHO. Savings
accounts have become mutual fund accts. People will think hard & long
before jumping back in.

> We are told by classical economic analysis that the money that
> goes into the market is "discretionary" -- a free choice between consumption
> or savings. That is a lie.

Some is, some isn't.
 
> Money going into the market is compelled to do so by the tax code. The
> choice is not between consumption or savings but between paying higher taxes
> on current income or deferring receipt of that income in hopes of reducing
> the total tax bite (pensions, RRSPs, 401Ks, etc.).

The composition of the retirement accounts is *not* limited to stocks. The
money can go into bank deposits, corporate, municipal, or national gov't
bonds, real estate trusts,
mortgages, commodity funds, etc.

Steve Kurtz

Re: Nominations for FW web site

[Steve Kurtz]

Greetings all,

I can second Rick Coronado's statement. Recently the traffic has been
weighted in this area, but I recall months going by without it coming up. I
sometimes felt like a lone voice in the wilderness. :-)

Steve

Re: chimpanzeehood

[Ed Weick]

-Original Message-
From: Jay Hanson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Monday, August 03, 1998 1:41 PM
Subject: chimpanzeehood


Jay Hanson:

>We are not computers, we are animals.   The genetic distance that separates
>us from pygmy or common chimps is only 1.6%  (the two chimps are separated
>by 0.7%).  In fact, we are the chimp's closest relative with the gorilla
>differing by 2.3%.

So?  Can chimps build computers?   Can they program them?  That 1.6% makes a
hellova difference.

>The human mind is a billion-year accumulation of innovations through
>countless animals, and through countless environments for specific
reactions
>to specific situations.  Genes for a panic response to threat are millions
>of times more likely to pass on to future generations than genes for
>contemplation -- the runner wasn't as likely to get eaten as the thinker.
>
>I can't think straight, but I can run like hell. 


Perhaps.  But what we seem to have done in evolving is learn to control our
panic responses and to strategize instead of panic.  What makes us unique
among animals is that we have developed enormous powers to act for both good
and evil.  Among herd animals, we are unique in that we can fall upon
another herd and destroy it.  Or we can consciously decide to leave it in
peace.  I can think of no othe herd animal that has that capacity.

Ed Weick

Re: FW: "Warum Krieg?" ~ *les aides sur le fait de la guerre*

[Eva Durant]

> Eva Durant wrote,
> >...
> >> 
> >> If emancipation may be described as a project of organizing non-repressive,
> >> socially useful activity, the Dow Jones Industrial Average must then be
> >> properly seen as a token for eroticizing repressive sublimation.
> >> 
> >
> >it is SO evident that my inner plane of non-delusional
> >alpha-dimensional interface nearly got syncronised.
> >
> >Eva 
> 
> Which word did you think was so funny, Eva? Emancipation? Repression?
> Sublimation?
>

I thought it was meant to be funny, to link any
of these with the Dow Jones index...


Eva

> 

Re: BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

[Ed Weick]

-Original Message-
From: Eva Durant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: list futurework <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Monday, August 03, 1998 10:02 AM
Subject: Re: BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?


In response to my posting on the probability that we are transcending the
limits of sustainability, Eva Durant asks:

>who wouldn't agree with you?

I can think of ever so many people.  I know that a few people on this list
would agree with me, and some people that I know personally and
professionally, but most people would either disagree or not bother to think
about it.  Many of those who disagree would work for bureaucracies or large
corporations which have made efforts to become more environmentally and
conservationally responsible.  They have bought into ISO 9000 and 14000 and
have made commitments to put sustainable development into practice.  The
point that I would make, and I believe that Jay Hanson and others would
agree, is that this is not nearly enough.  It does not represent any kind of
serious departure from the high energy using technology that is central to
our culture.

I would also suggest that much of it is phony.  I have worked for a
government department which said it believed in sustainable development.
In public pronouncements, anything the department did was given a
sustainability spin.  The promotion of mining was sustainable development,
as was the encouragement of oil and gas development.  The creation of large
bureaucracies in northern Canada, sustainable only because of large
transfers from the federal government, was said to be about sustainable
development.
I was originally impressed with the Brundtland Report (Our Common Future)
when it was published in the late 1980s.  I have since come to believe that
it was one of the greatest hoaxes we have ever pulled on ourselves.  It has
given rise to a mantra, "sustainable development", which is repeated
everywhere and often in the hope that it will not only save us, but save us
the bother of changing our behaviour in the direction of real environmental
responsibility.

>The system doesn't work, the system has to go, to be
>replaced by local and global democracies, initially
>collating local resources and then having a global
>stock-taking of what we can do to survive and sustain
>what we can...


Eva, you're dreaming.  The system will go, not because it is either
capitalist or communist or anything else, but simply because the resources
it requires are finite.  It may or may not last another 100 years, but its
time is limited.  While it would be nice if it died with a whimper that
allowed humankind to get on with the business of building a new and better
system, it probably won't happen that way.  I would expect to see growing
international violence as issues around who gets to use the last of the
water table are settled.

Ed Weick

Re: BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

[Eva Durant]

who wouldn't agree with you?
The question is, what to do, when we know, that
the present economical structure is not
able to cope with global environmental and social 
problems. 
Giving money to failing economies means
giving western financial institutions back what they
"risked" in investment, while when the going was good
they contributed nothing to any social or environmental
betterment.
"Financial aid" to a poor country is more or less the
same, lending them money to buy western goods - mostly
arms.
The system doesn't work, the system has to go, to be 
replaced by local and global democracies, initially
collating local resources and then having a global
stock-taking of what we can do to survive and sustain
what we can...

Eva

> 
> I find Jay Hanson's position a bit contradictory. On the one hand, he argues
> that we are all going to hell in a handbasket, and yet, on the other, he
> suggests the involvement of "systems scientists" in the analysis of "the big
> picture" and the development of of an action plan that would save "whole
> enchilada".  During my career, I have been involved in several "big picture"
> social and environmental impact studies, and would suggest that there is
> absolutely nothing less frustrating than trying to understand "big
> pictures".  No matter how objective one tries to be, one always approaches
> the "picture" with preconceived notions, perspectives and illusions.  To
> undertake the analysis with some efficiency, one starts by distinguishing
> the really important things from the unimportant, only to find, half way
> through, that the important isn't important and the unimportant or
> unexpected is.  Meanwhile, one is dealing with an enormously complex moving
> picture into which new events are forever intruding themselves.
> 
> But having said that, I would agree with Jay's main point: that we are
> pushing against the limits of the Earth's ability to sustain us, a point
> which many have made, including an economist, Herman Daly.
> 
> We are not the first people to have pushed up against the limits of
> sustainability.  Many peoples have done so, but when this has happened in
> the past people have usually always found another place to go. If people
> depleted their water table, they might have died, but if they were strong
> enough, they would simply have take over someone else's water table and have
> them die instead. This is no longer possible. We are all using a common
> water table now.
> 
> I for one have serious doubts about our ability to remain confined within
> our ecological limits.  We are an imperfect animal, not nearly as rational
> as some would like us to be.  There are too many of us now, and we are
> greedy and self-serving.  And as Jay and many others have pointed out, we
> are moving from an energy surplus to an energy deficit position too rapidly.
> In my opinion, the problem has already shifted from how we might be
> contained to what might happen if we are not.
> 
> We may, in fact, already be getting an early taste of what the
> unsustainability of our industrial culture could mean. The Asian Miracle is
> unraveling.  People who just a year ago were reasonably well off are now
> poor and in many cases destitute.  Solutions which cannot possibly work in
> the longer run are being applied in some desperation; for example, attempts
> to prop up Russia and other failing economies by massive transfers of funds
> via the IMF.  There is a  pessimism abroad which suggests that people are
> subconsciously if not consciously aware that there is something very wrong
> in the global basement.  We no longer believe in things the way we used to
> (or, perhaps more accurately, we no longer have our sustaining illusions).
> 
> Even "big picture" analysis could probably not tell us whether we are
> already in a downward spiral, but let us for a moment consider what chain of
> events might materialize if we were.  What might "winding-down" mean?  One
> possibility is that it could mean the life- boat effect made real - an
> increasing concentration of wealth in the few very rich countries which
> could continue to afford the increasing costs of energy as supplies begin to
> dwindle, and an increasing impoverishment of the rest of the world.  A shift
> in global distribution is already happening. The distribution of income
> between rich and poor nations is already highly unequal and is becoming less
> equal. UN data reveal that, between 1985 and 1995 the rich world's share of
> global GNP grew from 78.9 percent to 81.2 percent, while the poor world's
> share shrank accordingly. I doubt very much that this trend is reversible.
> It may even accelerate as economic conditions in Asia, eastern Europe and
> Africa worsen more rapidly than conditions in a few rich countries improve -
> if indeed they do improve. What might the distribution be by, say, 2020?
> Will the rich world then have 90% of global GNP? And, of course, the rich
> world is not homogeneous. A rela

Re: BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

[Eva Durant]

> >
> >So the "thinker" and the "herd" are different species...  there is no
> >evidence of this and all theories that attempt to use such notions
> >were very limited in their efficiency besides being sinister.
> >Jay, I think you are into some sort of personality-cult stuff...
> 
> Not different species, the two still mate and have children.  Thinkers are
> defective believers -- unable to believe in the Good Tooth Fairy, Santa
> Claus, Progress, and so on.
> 
> 


There are a reality and some theories based on 
feedback from reality. Consequently I believe that gravity exists
and that the Earth exist and that my environment
exist until I get counter-information. So I work on
this reality to suit my and hopefully other lives better.
I think most people are in this category, even if
they haven't a chance to contemplate about it,
so I am the heard and the leader in one person -
as it should be.


Eva

Re: FW: "Warum Krieg?" ~ *les aides sur le fait de la guerre*

[Eva Durant]

...
> 
> If emancipation may be described as a project of organizing non-repressive,
> socially useful activity, the Dow Jones Industrial Average must then be
> properly seen as a token for eroticizing repressive sublimation.
> 

it is SO evident that my inner plane of non-delusional
alpha-dimensional interface nearly got syncronised.

Eva 

> 
> Tom Walker
> ^^^
> 

Nominations for FW web site

[GreenPlanet]

Dear Sally and others:  RE:  Futurework Web site.

I would certainly nominate more input for ecological economics (EE).   There
is much discussion on this list serve for jobs, the economy and the future
of society, etc.  However, how do we proceed to protect and restore our
dwindling resource base, and preserve a reasonably fulfilling and healthy
lifestyle for its inhabitants - in this case I am referring to NA and
western civilizations.  A sustainable forum for the third world also needs
to be discussed as well, but I think a link to other list servers where this
is already covered, such as <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.  I guess what I am
describing here is more discussion on the science of social change.  

We know as a society that inevitiably we are looking at significant social
change in many aspects of our lives in the near future.  It is happening
now.  We also realize that many firms (corporations) will not survive.  Are
we looking at the rebuilding of a new society and social order or just the
collapse into chaos of the old order.  What are the key issues of this
coming social, and economic transition?? What are the good and the bad
points?  How can we do more in our communities to prepare and educate for
this coming social change??

Books such as Our Ecological Footprint by Wackernagel and Rees come to mind
in this scenario for more info and discussion of social change re: EE. 

There is a need to get the science of EE to an understandable level for the
grass-roots and general public.  The EE Bulletin certainly leaves a lot to
be desired.  Although, many of their articles are focussed on topical issues
they require much more explanation and discussion, and they seldom get
there.  A recent article from EE Bulletin discussed EE and a possible future
scenario for the US EPA, and other environmental management agencies,  but
was very vague on how this might be done.

The Canadian Labour Congress has been working with the Canadian
Environmental Network on a project called Sustainable Livelihoods, it is
worth a link to this project and also to the Sustainable Guideposts group in
Ottawa.  

Just some thoughts for your discussion.



Rick Coronado


*
Windsor & Area Social Justice & Ecological Network
PO Box 548, Windsor, ON  N9A 6M6
Voice:  519-973-1116  Fax 519-973-8360
E-mail:  riccawu@mnsi  (GreenPlanet)
web page: http://www.mnsi.net/~cea
**

[Fwd: All is solved....!] (fwd)

[Eva Durant]

A little help for our few mystiques on this list...
Eva



-- Start of included mail From:  James Randi --- Wizard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Date:  Sat, 1 Aug 1998 23:12:10 -0400 (EDT)
Mailing-List:  contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]; run by ezmlm
Delivered-To:  mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:  All is solved!

Just when we were perhaps beginning to despair about peace-on-Earth,
comes this assurance that all will be well in just two weeks.  Whew!
What a relief!

Yes, friends, on August 15th, at 2 pm GMT, the "Starseed" groups all
over the world will give out a minute of silent prayer to bring about
world peace.  This is being coordinated by the Seed of Life
Foundation and the Brahma Kumaris (?) and is in celebration of "the
birth of Krishna and the coming together of the Christ consciousness."
We're assured that a "vision of world peace will dawn in the heart of
human beings" right at that moment.

You see, it all started last autumn when the unsinkable Uri Geller
(remember him?) gave a demonstration at the Royal Albert Hall in
London, and brought back the sprouting-seed number.  It's a
crowd-pleaser, indeed

I do this trick by having some radish or mustard seeds poured into the
hand of a spectator, then I reveal that one or two of the seeds are
sprouted, and I gradually move away the other seeds so that one sprout
seems to develop.  It's an old trick, mentioned in a similar form by
Madame Blavatsky when she visited India.  Mr. Geller, however, does
his demonstration by genuine supernatural means, he tells us.  To me,
that seems to be the hard way.  By simply moistening the seeds about 8
hours earlier, you can get them to sprout, and then poke them about
until you've talked the audience into believing that they sprouted
there and then.  It's pretty easy, by trickery.  But I'm sure that the
real miracle requires clean living and great devotion.

In any case, all sorts of devout folks will be begging some deity or
other to bring about world peace on August 15th.  I suspect, having
lived through many, many, of these events, that warring religious
factions will not even notice this event, will continue to slaughter
one another in the true spirit of vengeance and racial purity, and
blood will flow at about the same rate.

I hope I'm wrong, but I think I'm right.  We'll see.  As always, I'm
willing to be shown.  The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi promised us all this,
decades ago, but he hasn't even been able to get his "Vedaland"
amusement park built, though hundreds of people all over the world
have invested millions in that scheme.  And, come to think of it,
former magician Doug Henning still hasn't managed to levitate himself,
a miracle he promised to show me decades ago.  The Maharishi was
giving him personal lessons, too. .  E . !

Next week, the Media, Myth, and Magic conference.  Hope to see many of
you there.  You can still call 1-888-USA-JREF toll-free to make
reservations and get the great hotel rates

Randi


Subscribe to SWIFT!

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-- End of included mail.

- End of forwarded message from James B. Rollins -

Re: chimpanzeehood

[Jay Hanson]

From: Ed Weick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

>>We are not computers, we are animals.   The genetic distance that
separates
>>us from pygmy or common chimps is only 1.6%  (the two chimps are separated
>>by 0.7%).  In fact, we are the chimp's closest relative with the gorilla
>>differing by 2.3%.
>
>So?  Can chimps build computers?   Can they program them?  That 1.6% makes
a
>hellova difference.

It does make a big difference.  But an observer from outer space would
classify humans as the Third Chimpanzee (see Diamond's book of the same
name).  The most important difference between us and chimps is our innate
technology: big brains, thumbs, and voice.

The ONLY scientific explanation for human behavior comes from the
evolutionary psychologists.  Evolutionary psychologists are
reverse-engineers -- they observe behavior and then try to understand how
that behavior led to survival.

If we reject their findings because we believe that humans transcend nature,
then we are left with "unexplainable behavior".  If we continue to deny our
animal nature -- if we embrace superstition and ignorance -- then we condemn
our grandchildren to certain death.

Deja Vu:
--

Uncritical offhand condemnations of Copernicus and his followers were not
restricted to conservative and unoriginal popularizers. Jean Bodin, famous
as one of the most advanced and creative political philosophers of the
sixteenth century, discards Copernicus' innovation in almost identical
terms:

"No one in his senses, or imbued with the slightest knowledge of physics,
will ever think that the earth, heavy and unwieldy from its own weight and
mass, staggers up and down around its own center and that of the sun; for at
the slightest jar of the earth, we would see cities and fortresses, towns
and mountains thrown down. A certain courtier Aulicus, when some astrologer
in court was upholding Copernicus' idea before Duke Albert of Prussia,
turning to the servant who was pouring the Falernian, said: 'Take care that
the flagon is not spilled.' For if the earth were to be moved, neither an
arrow shot straight up, nor a stone dropped from the top of a tower would
fall perpendicularly, but either ahead or behind  Lastly, all things on
finding places suitable to their natures, remain there, as Aristotle writes.
Since therefore the earth has been allotted a place fitting its nature, it
cannot be whirled around by other motion than its own."

In this passage Bodin looks a traditionalist, but he was not. Because of its
generally radical and atheistic tone, the book from which the quotation is
taken was in 1628 placed upon the Index of books that Catholics are
forbidden to read.

[p. 190, THE COPERNICAN REVOLUTION, Kuhn]

FW: ...what's wrong with the ideologies we have so far?

[Michael Spencer]

me> John Ralston Saul's book, _The Unconscious Civilization_, was...

eva> so give us - or me - a summary.

Well, I'm not quite done re-reading it.  Here's a very short first
approximation summary.


Ideologies provide each their own single, simple and inevitable answer
to questions that are intrinsically complex and characterized by
uncertainty.  With ideological certainty available we -- the whole
civilization -- fall into a state of zombie-like (my word)
unconsciousness, a state in which the exercise of "common sense,
ethics, intuition, memory and, finally, reason" fail.

Dominant idologies for the last 120 years or so have been dominated by
corporatism.  An ideology of, or derived from, corporatism has no
place for a conscious individual participant in the democratic process
and no venue for the "obligation to act as a citizen."  It has
room only for putatively rational management and negotiation between
competing "interests".

Saul begins his own summary, near the end of chapter 5:

What I have described in these five chapters is a civilization --
our civilization -- locked in the grip of an ideology --
corporatism.  An ideology that denies and undermines the
legitimacy of the individual as the citizen in a democracy.  The
particular imbalance of this ideology leads to a worship of
self-interest and a denial of the public good.  The quality that
corporatism claims as its own is rationality.  The practical
effects on the individual are passivity and conformism in the
areas that matter and non-conformism in the areas that don't.

- Mike
---

Michael SpencerNova Scotia, Canada

[EMAIL PROTECTED]
URL: http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/mspencer/home.html
---

Re: FW: "Warum Krieg?" ~ *les aides sur le fait de la guerre*

[Tom Walker]

Eva Durant wrote,

>I thought it was meant to be funny, to link any
>of these [emancipation, repression, sublimation] with the Dow Jones index...

Funny in the sense of odd, yes. But also not at all funny in the sense that
an index of immiseration is daily presented to us as proof of prosperity. I
guess I'm becoming frustrated with the complacency of "waiting for the
bubble to burst". The reason the bubble won't burst is that if the stock
market falls violently, we will be called upon by governments to make
tremendous sacrifices to pump it back up again. As usual, the sacrifices
won't be voluntary and since most of us won't resist, those of us who do
resist will be punished.

What I am proposing is a clearer perspective on how contemporary stock
markets work. We are told by classical economic analysis that the money that
goes into the market is "discretionary" -- a free choice between consumption
or savings. That is a lie.

Money going into the market is compelled to do so by the tax code. The
choice is not between consumption or savings but between paying higher taxes
on current income or deferring receipt of that income in hopes of reducing
the total tax bite (pensions, RRSPs, 401Ks, etc.). In addition, much of that
latter "choice" is written into employment contracts, so it isn't even *that
much* of a choice.

One can view taxation as auxiliary to the "main body" of circulating capital
(both productive and financial) or one can view the financial markets as
auxiliary to the state's power of taxation. For some purposes, namely the
analysis of wages and profits under "normal" conditions, the former view may
offer better insights. For other purposes, such as the analysis of financial
crises and major systemic change, it may be more appropriate to begin from
the perspective of the state and taxation.

That, by the way, is precisely what Marx did when he distinguished
"primitive accumulation" from the normal capitalist accumulation of surplus
value. Capitalist crises inevitably involve a reversion to more brutal and
less consensual forms of expropriation. Neo-liberalism (Thatcherism, et.
al.) is far from the celebration of the free market it purports to be.
Rather it is an admission (not at all a frank one) of capital's weakness and
of the need for massive state interventions to prop it up.

The most important means by which the state intervenes to enforce the
primitive accumulation of capital is through its power of taxation. Money
doesn't have to be collected to be effectively taxed. Tax deductions that
are conditional on the taxpayer using the money for a specified purpose are,
in effect, a way of getting people to do "voluntarily" what they are
otherwise compelled to do. 

To add insult to injury, the most servile act of tax code compliance is
upheld as the supreme expression of democracy and free will, pace Michael
Spencer's citation of John Ralston Saul's quote from the Canadian
government's 1995 foreign policy statement: "human rights tend to be best
protected by those societies that are open to trade, financial flows,
population movements, information and ideas about freedom and human dignity."

What's happening is both subtle and crude. When we try to address its
subtleties, we are told to shut up because we are 'incomprehensible'. When
we try to address its crudities, we are told to shut up because we are
'simplistic'. When we try to address both at the same time, we are told we
are making a joke. Yes, it is a joke. Yes, I am serious.


Regards, 

Tom Walker
^^^
#408 1035 Pacific St.
Vancouver, B.C.
V6E 4G7
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(604) 669-3286 
^^^
The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/

FW: ...what's wrong with the ideologies we have so far?

[Michael Spencer]

Eva hit the wrong key and sent to me privately what she meant to send
to FW, viz.,  

eva>   From: Eva Durant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
eva>   Subject: Re: FW: ...what's wrong with the ideologies we have so far?
eva>   Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 12:02:26 +0100 (BST)

eva>   so give us - or me - a summary.
eva>   Of the ideologies, I know what was wrong with
eva>   the socialism so far attempted or labelled so.
eva>   I am not aware of any one "reduced" capitalist ideology,
eva>   but the conscious attempts to avoid it's 
eva>   inbuilt contradictions did not work either.

eva>   I thought we needed ideologies; they are the hypotheses
eva>   we conclude from past experience, to work towards to.
eva>   That's what politics were supposed to be about
eva>   in a democracy; each ideology having advocates, and
eva>   the electorate chosing the one that sound most
eva>   sensible.
eva>
eva>   I rather have a conscious plan, than letting the
eva>   blind forces of nature/economics take their course. 
eva>   
eva>   
eva>   Eva

and quoting my previous post:

> Eva remarked:
> 
> > Should we not first analyse what's wrong with the ideologies we have
> > so far?
> 
> John Ralston Saul's book, _The Unconscious Civilization_, was on the
> Toronto Globe & Mail bestseller list for somthing like a year and a
> half, yet I don't recall that anyone has mentioned or quoted him on
> this list.
> 
> Chapter 5 begins:
> 
> On the day that you or I achieve a stable condition of
> equillibrium, those arounds us who have been less fortunate will
> draw one of two conclusions.  Either that we are dead or that we
> have slipped into a state of clinically diagnosable delusion.  And
> to live in delusion is to live in the comfort of ideology.
> 
> 
> I don't see much difference between the inevitability of the communist
> utopia and the inevitability of the capitalist global utopia, nor
> between Mussolini's relationship with the corporatist interests and
> that of congress and parliament to those same interests.  I've said
> occasionally (and nobody laughs or seems to get it) that the cold war
> is over and the bad guys won.  Not that the Commies were the good guys
> and the 'Muricans the bad, but that the two ideologies in putative
> conflict were each dominated by a common mechanistic, corporatist and
> inhumane view of society.  Economic determinism was once held up as
> the immoral and damning tenet of the Reds but, so soon as the
> capitalist bloc was freed of the balance of the Soviet one, economic
> determinism emerged from the shadows as the alleged ideological core
> of democracy.  George Bush said, in is innaugural address,
> 
>We know how to secure a more just and properous life for man on
>earth:  through free markets, free speech, free elections.
> 
> and Saul quotes
> 
>The liberal government in Canada declared in its 1995 foreign
>policy statement -- as if it were an obvious truth --  that "human
>rights tend to be best protected by those societies that are open to
>trade, financial flows, population movements, information and ideas
>about freedom and human dignity."
> 
> The egregious inaccuracy of these assertions aside, look at the order
> of priorties: free markets, trade and financial flows come first.
> 
> Saul's book (originally the 1995 CBC Massey Lectures) "analyzes what's
> wrong with the ideologies we have so far".  He doesn't like what he
> sees and neither do I.
> 
> - Mike
> ---
> 
> The Unconscious Civilization
> John Ralston Saul
> House of Anansi Press, 1995
> ISBN 0-88784-576-2
> Paper, C$13.95
> ---
> 

Re: BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

[Eva Durant]

> 
> 
> Durant wrote:
> 
> > I had no response to my arguments;
> >
> >   Science is only a tool and even art would be non-existent without
> >scientific problemsolving.
> 
> What is the date on the invention of the modern scientific process?  Method?
> 
>


The old one was just the same as the modern, even
including the peer review...: observe, make pattern,
make hypothesis, experiment, if it doesn't work make
new hypothesis, if it does work, use it and pass it on.

At what point you think science became your nasty, modern version?

 
> > It is the social/economical/cultural  system that poses and applies/buys science; 
>so
> > blame that for any  "miscarriages".
> 
> No I blame the personality of scientists who believe that science has all the answers
> and everyone else is stupid.  


You are well, plain silly than, as there are probably larger
percent of the public - probably even artists!, 
than scientists who believe that
science has all the answers. 



> I prefer to listen instead to people like Bohm and
> Gell-Mann who seem to understand  what it means to be a complex adaptive system,
> dependent upon all of the tools given us by the Creator.  


So if we cannot pick it up - like chimpanzees the sticks,
than we shouldn't use it? The problem lies with Eve's
satanic thirst for knowledge??
Intelligence evolved as an efficient survival tool,
it is a "natural" human characteristic to use science,
probably at least as "natural" than to use art.
I have yet to see any good reason to refer to a Creator, 
but that is another issue. 
Don't use a lot of names, summerise what they said.
I don't except ideas just because a lot of Big Names
said so, it also has to make sense to me. I'll read everything
you say once I retire, until than I just don't have the time...



Especially those perceptual
> tools that are developed prior to conscious thought and that give rise to such.
>

?


 
> > >The simple fact is that
> > > science has a history with the wolf that makes trusting them tough at times.  It
> > > was science as a tool that fascilitated changes in industrial practices for the
> > > better.  But it often was the morality of religion that made them use the
> > > science.
> >
> > you mean the economical/social/cultural system
> 
> No the spiritual, social, aesthetic, economic system.  Science and technology were 
>the
> nails but not the thought that conceived of the building.
> 


the spiritual is part of the cultural. Every different
culture have a different god, remember. Otherwise here
you just repeated what I said.


> > >As Mike Hollinshead has pointed out on many occasions as he described
> > > the actions of the non-conformist industrialists who were Quaker. Science
> > > wants to take credit for them, but they no more deserve that credit than the
> > > piano does for the pianist.
> >
> > when did science wanted to take credit for the few quakers? Or for
> > anything for that matter; accrediting blame or credit is not part of
> > science, but of the social/cultural establishment. Sorry to be
> > repetitive, but there seems to be a difficulty with getting through...
> 
> I think you are mistaking the creative balance that goes on between the material
> sciences and engineering and the cultural sciences like anthropology and the practice
> of excellence as expressed in the arts and the morality that comes from the
> contemplation of Ultimate Concerns.  That would be a pretty wobbly table with only 
>one
> leg, if I understand you correctly, but you could dance on a table with four legs.
> 

There is a creative balance?? I thought we established, 
that science is not used properly at the present.
Our argument is about the role of scientists; you say
they are the root of evil, I say they just reflect
their social/economical environment, like everybody else.
They create, like artists do, but their creations
are not used in the best interest of the people,
that happens with art, too.



...
> The U.S.,  Spain in middle and South America as well as Portugal, and England in 
>North
> America.  100 million people at first contact,  with a decline of 23 out of every 25
> with no appreciable growth in birth rate until a low was hit in North America of
> 100,000 at the turn of the century.  After forced sterilizations were rescended in 
>the
> 1970s there has been a bounce back of 1.5 million certified Indian people at present.
> 

sorry, you totally lost me here.


> > We would be just an other type of ape without any art if we had no
> > science.
> 
> Well, according to that definition we were just a bunch of apes up until the 17th
> century.   


So the piramids, the exact forcast of floods, the
chinese, arabs, indians, greeks, romans, arabs etc, etc
had no science?? I repeat, we had science since the appearence
of the first homo sapiens. 
Uptil the 17th century science was
monopolised in most places by the religious hierarchy,
as part of their magic, to help to keep people in their
various castes.  

Re: ...what's wrong with the ideologies we have so far?

[Jay Hanson]

Mike:

>   We know how to secure a more just and properous life for man on
>   earth:  through free markets, free speech, free elections.

Did you ever wonder what the economy "economizes"?  It economizes money.

Money is not a physical measure such as BTUs, money is a "relative measure
of social power".  By economizing social power, one preserves existing
social hierarchies.

Think about it.

Jay

Re: FW: ...what's wrong with the ideologies we have so far?

[Tom Walker]

>John Ralston Saul's book, _The Unconscious Civilization_, was on the
>Toronto Globe & Mail bestseller list for somthing like a year and a
>half, yet I don't recall that anyone has mentioned or quoted him on
>this list.
 
I did. About a year and a half ago.


Regards, 

Tom Walker
^^^
#408 1035 Pacific St.
Vancouver, B.C.
V6E 4G7
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(604) 669-3286 
^^^
The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/

Re: FW: "Warum Krieg?" ~ *les aides sur le fait de la guerre*

[Tom Walker]

Eva Durant wrote,
>...
>> 
>> If emancipation may be described as a project of organizing non-repressive,
>> socially useful activity, the Dow Jones Industrial Average must then be
>> properly seen as a token for eroticizing repressive sublimation.
>> 
>
>it is SO evident that my inner plane of non-delusional
>alpha-dimensional interface nearly got syncronised.
>
>Eva 

Which word did you think was so funny, Eva? Emancipation? Repression?
Sublimation?

>>A magazine recently ran a "Dilbert quotes" contest. They were looking for
>>people to submit quotes from their real life Dilbert-type managers.
>>Here are some of the submissions...

>>13. Speaking the Same Language: As director of communications I was
>>asked to prepare a memo reviewing our company's training programs
>>and materials. In the body of the memo one of the sentences mentioned
>>the "pedagogical approach" used by one of the training manuals. The day
>>after I routed the memo to the executive committee, I was called into the
>>HR director's office, and told that the executive vice president wanted me
>>out of the building by lunch. When I asked why, I was told that she
>>wouldn't stand for "perverts" (pedophilia?) working in her company.
>>Finally he showed me her copy of the memo, with her demand that I be
>>fired-and the word "pedagogical"circled in red. The HR manager was fairly
>>reasonable, and once he looked the word up in his dictionary, and made
>>a copy of the definition to send back to her, he told me not to worry. He
>>would take care of it. Two days later a memo to the entire staff came out
>>directing us that no words which could not be found in the local Sunday
>>newspaper could be used in company memos. A month later, I resigned.
>>In accordance with company policy, I created my resignation memo by
>>pasting words together from the Sunday paper. (Taco Bell Corporation)

Regards, 

Tom Walker
^^^
#408 1035 Pacific St.
Vancouver, B.C.
V6E 4G7
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(604) 669-3286 
^^^
The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/

chimpanzeehood

[Jay Hanson]

> I find Jay Hanson's position a bit contradictory. On the one hand, he
argues

We are not computers, we are animals.   The genetic distance that separates
us from pygmy or common chimps is only 1.6%  (the two chimps are separated
by 0.7%).  In fact, we are the chimp's closest relative with the gorilla
differing by 2.3%.

The human mind is a billion-year accumulation of innovations through
countless animals, and through countless environments for specific reactions
to specific situations.  Genes for a panic response to threat are millions
of times more likely to pass on to future generations than genes for
contemplation -- the runner wasn't as likely to get eaten as the thinker.

I can't think straight, but I can run like hell. 

Jay  -- www.dieoff.com

p.s., Please pass the bananas

Re: BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

[Ray E. Harrell]

Durant wrote:

> I had no response to my arguments;
>
>   Science is only a tool and even art would be non-existent without
>scientific problemsolving.

What is the date on the invention of the modern scientific process?  Method?


> It is the social/economical/cultural  system that poses and applies/buys science; so
> blame that for any  "miscarriages".

No I blame the personality of scientists who believe that science has all the answers
and everyone else is stupid.   I prefer to listen instead to people like Bohm and
Gell-Mann who seem to understand  what it means to be a complex adaptive system,
dependent upon all of the tools given us by the Creator.  Especially those perceptual
tools that are developed prior to conscious thought and that give rise to such.

> >The simple fact is that
> > science has a history with the wolf that makes trusting them tough at times.  It
> > was science as a tool that fascilitated changes in industrial practices for the
> > better.  But it often was the morality of religion that made them use the
> > science.
>
> you mean the economical/social/cultural system

No the spiritual, social, aesthetic, economic system.  Science and technology were the
nails but not the thought that conceived of the building.

> >As Mike Hollinshead has pointed out on many occasions as he described
> > the actions of the non-conformist industrialists who were Quaker. Science
> > wants to take credit for them, but they no more deserve that credit than the
> > piano does for the pianist.
>
> when did science wanted to take credit for the few quakers? Or for
> anything for that matter; accrediting blame or credit is not part of
> science, but of the social/cultural establishment. Sorry to be
> repetitive, but there seems to be a difficulty with getting through...

I think you are mistaking the creative balance that goes on between the material
sciences and engineering and the cultural sciences like anthropology and the practice
of excellence as expressed in the arts and the morality that comes from the
contemplation of Ultimate Concerns.  That would be a pretty wobbly table with only one
leg, if I understand you correctly, but you could dance on a table with four legs.

> Mengele's stuff was adopted by a fascist (capitalist social/cultural)
> system. (I don't even know if it can be excepted as science, how well
> his data was duplicated and repeated in peers's studies, etc, but
> that is irrelevant here.)

No Eva, you're wrong it wasn't "adopted" it was paid for and the subjects were
provided by the Reich, but the science as in "method" is there.  As for replication,
the reason we don't,  isn't the science but the humanity.

> Most economics do not skip Marx and Lenin,
> as their definitions of some aspect of economy and social system and
> their conclusions are as valid as ever.   Their "science" was
> sloganised but not applied, if it were applied, all socialist system
> would have been democratic, as that was a basic principle of Marx's
> and even Lenin's theories.  What country you are refering to in the last sentence?
> US?

The U.S.,  Spain in middle and South America as well as Portugal, and England in North
America.  100 million people at first contact,  with a decline of 23 out of every 25
with no appreciable growth in birth rate until a low was hit in North America of
100,000 at the turn of the century.  After forced sterilizations were rescended in the
1970s there has been a bounce back of 1.5 million certified Indian people at present.

> We would be just an other type of ape without any art if we had no
> science.

Well, according to that definition we were just a bunch of apes up until the 17th
century.   But I think we would probably make pretty poor apes, don't you think?

> The only question is how it is managed. The present
> establishment is obviously not into integrating the various branches
> and in looking into global solutions.

You must realize that there is no hierarchy, just legs for the table of life.
Hierarchical thinking is about politics and is doomed to failure because it becomes an
issue of power.For every action there is a reaction.

> So what you propose we do with the 5 billion + people that are
> extra to requirement if we adopt the native american way of living?

The Native American way of living is to be responsible, move slowly, have patience,
hurt no one and remember that we are all related.  Everything including the animals
and plants.   The balance is between hurting no one and  eating to survive.  Solve
that first.

There is nothing that frightens me more than billions of Western economically educated
Chinese making "things" out of everything that was and is alive.


> > All of this being said, I am not an anti-European or an anti-Scientist.
>
> you sound pretty anti-scientist to me... by the way scientists
> are all over the place, not only in Europe...

Does that mean if I criticize Hitler that I am being anti-Art?

> What's wrong with be

FW: ...what's wrong with the ideologies we have so far?

[Michael Spencer]

Eva remarked:

> Should we not first analyse what's wrong with the ideologies we have
> so far?

John Ralston Saul's book, _The Unconscious Civilization_, was on the
Toronto Globe & Mail bestseller list for somthing like a year and a
half, yet I don't recall that anyone has mentioned or quoted him on
this list.

Chapter 5 begins:

On the day that you or I achieve a stable condition of
equillibrium, those arounds us who have been less fortunate will
draw one of two conclusions.  Either that we are dead or that we
have slipped into a state of clinically diagnosable delusion.  And
to live in delusion is to live in the comfort of ideology.


I don't see much difference between the inevitability of the communist
utopia and the inevitability of the capitalist global utopia, nor
between Mussolini's relationship with the corporatist interests and
that of congress and parliament to those same interests.  I've said
occasionally (and nobody laughs or seems to get it) that the cold war
is over and the bad guys won.  Not that the Commies were the good guys
and the 'Muricans the bad, but that the two ideologies in putative
conflict were each dominated by a common mechanistic, corporatist and
inhumane view of society.  Economic determinism was once held up as
the immoral and damning tenet of the Reds but, so soon as the
capitalist bloc was freed of the balance of the Soviet one, economic
determinism emerged from the shadows as the alleged ideological core
of democracy.  George Bush said, in is innaugural address,

   We know how to secure a more just and properous life for man on
   earth:  through free markets, free speech, free elections.

and Saul quotes

   The liberal government in Canada declared in its 1995 foreign
   policy statement -- as if it were an obvious truth --  that "human
   rights tend to be best protected by those societies that are open to
   trade, financial flows, population movements, information and ideas
   about freedom and human dignity."

The egregious inaccuracy of these assertions aside, look at the order
of priorties: free markets, trade and financial flows come first.

Saul's book (originally the 1995 CBC Massey Lectures) "analyzes what's
wrong with the ideologies we have so far".  He doesn't like what he
sees and neither do I.

- Mike
---

The Unconscious Civilization
John Ralston Saul
House of Anansi Press, 1995
ISBN 0-88784-576-2
Paper, C$13.95
---