Ed Weick wrote:
[snip]
> My other point was almost a question. We in the western world are now
> rich beyond measure. Even the poor live to a higher standard than was
> typical of the well to do a hundred and fifty years ago. Whom should
> we thank for this, if anyone? I suggested that we thank our ancestors
> who had no options but lifelong work in factories and mines. We have
> benefited because they were exploited. The fact that, in Marxist
> terms, they produced 'surplus value' that capitalists could then use
> to create more capital and exploit more of our ancestors has been
> fundamental to creating the wealth we enjoy today.
[snip]
I certainly agree that our prosperity has been bought at the cost
of great suffering in the past. The thought crosses my mind as
I write this that, if the Capitalists were not able to dismiss
the early period of capital accumulation (the Dickensian "world")
as history, the process of capital accumulation in the FREE WORLD
might not look all that much better than the Soviet Union's
industrialization under Stalin.
But I want to go off here in a different direction: I agree that,
in "objective" measures, the poor today are "better off" than the
rich in earlier ages. A feudal baron's abode didn't have
heat, and everybody slept in one room, etc. *However*: I think
this way of viewing the contrast is one-sided. For the feudal baron
had *power* and *respect* and a arge measure of *personal agency*,
along with his primitive living conditions. The present day
American "poor" have none of these "human goods". I invite you
to carry on this train of thought for yourself....
Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote (at the end of _Wind, Sand and
Stars_) that poverty is not the real problem: He noted that
orientals have long lived in filth and liked it. The real
problem, he went on to say: Is the tragedy of "a little bit
of Mozart murdered" in each of these persons whose cultural
possibilities are foreclosed by their low social status.
> What is sad about 'progress', or whatever one wants to call it, is
> that something is gained but something is also lost. Some fifty years
> ago, the Inuit of northern Canada still lived migratory lives on the
> land. An anthropologist friend told me that on northern Baffin
> Island, where he spent a year among them, they had some seventy
> different words for snow. Inuit now live in fixed villages. They
> still venture out in hunting parties, but do not spend nearly as much
> time on the land as they once did. Many young Inuit can barely speak
> their language, let alone name snow in seventy different ways. In our
> Indian villages, I've seen old grannies scold children in the native
> language, which the children no longer understand, and besides, it's
> alright to ignore old grannies now. At one time, it was strictly
> taboo. The gains have been many. The ill-mannered children stand a
> much greater chance of survival to a ripe old age, being educated (as
> we understand education) and earning a good living than their
> ancestors of even a generation ago. Yet much that is irreplaceable
> has also been lost. That is the price people pay, usually without
> knowing it, for something they think we are getting without any real
> idea of what it is.
[snip]
Here, again, I would like to point out a different possibility.
There was an article in the New York Times a few months ago
(ref. lost) about one of the tribal societies in Africa, where
female genital mutilation and other "native", non-Western, etc.
practices still prevailed. This culture, the article described,
is doing something different: The elders have gotten together
and undertaken a thoughtful examination of all their customs and
all the "Western" customs, and these elders are eliminating
from their culture the traditions that no longer
seem useful (like genital mutilation), and keeping the
customs which still seem good. *Clearly*, however this
endeavor turns out, their culture can no longer be considered
traditional, because it is no longer holding to its
traditions through unreflected habit (see, e.g., Edward
Hall's _The Silent Language_), but rather is *choosing*
its form of life thematically. Imagine if our
society took a similarly enlightened attitude toward
*its* ethnic customs: If we studied the stock market
(etc.) and decided what parts of it were useful and what parts
were not....
Enlightenment is not something "Western", but Universal.
That it happened in the West, in classical Greece and
late-Medieval Western Europe was like a meteor falling
from the sky among these people. We have yet, for the
most part although not without exceptions, to prove
ourselves worthy of having received this gift, or
shown ourselves good (or even: good enough...) stewards of it.
"For the spirit alone is immortal." (Edmund Husserl)
...by which he was not refering to "spirits" (be
they Medieval Roman Catholic, 20th Century new-Age,
or whatever), but to the event of consciousness
taking responsibility for itself in such discourse
and actions as we are here trying to elaborate....
\brad mccormick
--
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
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