We need a complete rupture and departure
In the last hour I read this and some of the comments after it:
http://www.economist.com/node/15108593
and then started reading this:
https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21715636-original-attempt-explain-todays-paranoid-hatreds-deep-roots-modern-resentment
But before I could make it through a few paragraphs of the latter I stopped. If I had a print magazine in my hand rather than a smartphone I might have violently slammed it on the ground and said "Enough!".
Wow, I just made myself conscious--for the first time--that things have me flirting with violence. It's not the kind or amount of violence that would get a movie "rated R for violence" or fill a horrible documentary or news report--it's just throwing reading material to the ground. It may be harmless (paper and electronic devices do not feel pain or suffer, as far as I know). But it is violence, nonetheless.
Call it an epiphany, I guess.
A few minutes ago I completely saw something for the first time: I don't like this trajectory we are on. I guess I have been in denial until now. There's a way to make it better. There's a way to rehabilitate it. There's a way to work within it. I subconsciously thought--but didn't really believe--those kinds of things.
No. Forget about doing anything else with it. We need to stuff all of it in a box, wrap every square millimeter with several layers of duct tape, and fire it on a rocket as far away from our memory and sight as we can.
If you're thinking "Hit the 'Reset' button and start over again", you've come up with the wrong metaphor.
We need--or at least I personally want--to transcend all of it. We need a complete rupture and departure.
All of this talk about automation; AI replacing humans; the latter resulting in lives of nothing but leisure for everybody or resulting in an apocalypse; ecological collapse; conquering death (transhumanism); is progress a myth or are we living in the most peaceful, prosperous period ever and? things will only continue to get better?; is same-sex marriage in the U.S. evidence of the latter?; is the United States of America an empire that has started to collapse? (was the 2016 presidential election the beginning of the end?); etc.--get rid of all of it.
We need a completely? new perspective. A completely new spiritual and intellectual framework.
My subconscious efforts led me to postmodern theory, Christopher Lasch, David Smail, Ken Wilber, the Zapatistas and the First Intercontinental Encounter for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism, and other outlets over the last 15 to 20 years.
Outlets are not enough. A complete rupture and departure is needed.
There is no light at the end of the tunnel of all this fighting over free will, religious fundamentalism, technology, free markets, neo-liberalism, feminism, sentient beings' rights, veganism, democracy vs. tyranny, scientism, queer theory, dualism vs. non-dualism, secularism, darwinism, evidentialism, and every other point of bitter, the-sky-will-collapse-if-the-other-side's-worldview-is-not-eradicated childishness.
The light is outside of the tunnel.
I am sure that this makes me a lone wolf, but I want out of the tunnel.
Here's a suggestion, rest of the world: instead of trying to master manipulating, controlling and dominating, try to master mutually respectfully co-existing for a change.
Who knows, maybe even the briefest, most harmless eruptions? of violence will follow the tail end of all of the anger, hate, disagreement, etc. as they are pushed to the farthest margins of our individual and collective memories and experiences.
http://www.economist.com/node/15108593
and then started reading this:
https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21715636-original-attempt-explain-todays-paranoid-hatreds-deep-roots-modern-resentment
But before I could make it through a few paragraphs of the latter I stopped. If I had a print magazine in my hand rather than a smartphone I might have violently slammed it on the ground and said "Enough!".
Wow, I just made myself conscious--for the first time--that things have me flirting with violence. It's not the kind or amount of violence that would get a movie "rated R for violence" or fill a horrible documentary or news report--it's just throwing reading material to the ground. It may be harmless (paper and electronic devices do not feel pain or suffer, as far as I know). But it is violence, nonetheless.
Call it an epiphany, I guess.
A few minutes ago I completely saw something for the first time: I don't like this trajectory we are on. I guess I have been in denial until now. There's a way to make it better. There's a way to rehabilitate it. There's a way to work within it. I subconsciously thought--but didn't really believe--those kinds of things.
No. Forget about doing anything else with it. We need to stuff all of it in a box, wrap every square millimeter with several layers of duct tape, and fire it on a rocket as far away from our memory and sight as we can.
If you're thinking "Hit the 'Reset' button and start over again", you've come up with the wrong metaphor.
We need--or at least I personally want--to transcend all of it. We need a complete rupture and departure.
All of this talk about automation; AI replacing humans; the latter resulting in lives of nothing but leisure for everybody or resulting in an apocalypse; ecological collapse; conquering death (transhumanism); is progress a myth or are we living in the most peaceful, prosperous period ever and? things will only continue to get better?; is same-sex marriage in the U.S. evidence of the latter?; is the United States of America an empire that has started to collapse? (was the 2016 presidential election the beginning of the end?); etc.--get rid of all of it.
We need a completely? new perspective. A completely new spiritual and intellectual framework.
My subconscious efforts led me to postmodern theory, Christopher Lasch, David Smail, Ken Wilber, the Zapatistas and the First Intercontinental Encounter for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism, and other outlets over the last 15 to 20 years.
Outlets are not enough. A complete rupture and departure is needed.
There is no light at the end of the tunnel of all this fighting over free will, religious fundamentalism, technology, free markets, neo-liberalism, feminism, sentient beings' rights, veganism, democracy vs. tyranny, scientism, queer theory, dualism vs. non-dualism, secularism, darwinism, evidentialism, and every other point of bitter, the-sky-will-collapse-if-the-other-side's-worldview-is-not-eradicated childishness.
The light is outside of the tunnel.
I am sure that this makes me a lone wolf, but I want out of the tunnel.
Here's a suggestion, rest of the world: instead of trying to master manipulating, controlling and dominating, try to master mutually respectfully co-existing for a change.
Who knows, maybe even the briefest, most harmless eruptions? of violence will follow the tail end of all of the anger, hate, disagreement, etc. as they are pushed to the farthest margins of our individual and collective memories and experiences.
Comments (82)
It has always been, since the dawn of time, a matter of some trying to dominate others because that is what that they are good at. The Mongols a good case study. Nowadays it is different. If people want to retain freedom to choose they have to be aware of how it is being continually taken away, mostly via a collaboration between big industry and the government they control.
It doesn't. Plato wanted out of the cave; Freud decided that civilisation is identical with madness; Jesus declared that it is necessary to die and be reborn in the spirit... There is a long tradition.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
Well with all due respect to one who cannot read a few paragraphs of another without becoming angry, it is easier said than done. In fact, it is worse than that, it is a continuation of the mistake that got us here in the first place.
To put it very briefly, thought, intellect, science, philosophy, is a superb tool for mastering the environment. We accumulate knowledge and understanding and learn to manipulate the world. The mistake is to turn this mastery on thought itself - I think that is what you are suggesting, that we must master our own being so as to end conflict? But this simply recreates the conflict internally; the master is angry at his own anger and another's anger, and so anger is sustained in him even as he fights it.
The first step is for thought to understand completely that it cannot solve this problem, because itis the problem. And if that is clearly and completely understood, then there is an end. Thought stops. And it is the silence that follows that is the solution. But one must be very clear that this silence cannot be reached by any kind of effort or mastery; it cannot be practiced or achieved. All one can do by way of approach is to seek to understand the limits of thought and will.
So Enlightenment progress means "Thanks to medical advances some of you get to live longer lives and therefore get to be manipulated, controlled and dominated even longer. You get to live in a fool's paradise even longer."?
I didn't say that a few paragraphs made me angry.
I haven't? been angry enough for 45 years.
A few seconds of anger after suddenly becoming fully conscious of a lifetime of denial amounts to the inability to "read a few paragraphs of another without becoming angry"? If you say so.
I'd be disappointed if I wasn't angry or disgusted. I probably haven't ever been angry enough.
But feminism, identity politics, etc. have probably more than compensated for my lack of anger. They seem to be based almost entirely on anger, and not just their radical elements. Like a ball carrier in football who looks for contact, they seem to look for something to be angry about at all times.
Maybe little respect is due to me. But it's silly to say that because of some temper that I don't have and have never had--especially when there's no evidence of me having it or ever having it. If there's any reason that I am due little respect it is because I apparently have been extremely naive my whole life.
Quoting unenlightened
No.
I am suggesting that we all cooperate, respect one another, respect non-human life, and respect the Earth as the home of all life.
I am suggesting that we stop seeing humans and non-humans as things to be manipulated, controlled, and dominated.
Quoting unenlightened
Making mutual respect in all human relationships and respect for non-human life and the Earth in all dealings with them may not end conflict, but it will be more realistic.
No more Enlightenment promises of a better world through power--the power of the autonomous individual, the power of reason, the power of science and technology, etc.
Just a simple non-pre-modern (superstition, mysticism, ecclesiastical authority, etc.), non-modern (freedom, rationalism, technology, etc.), non-postmodern (diversity, multi-culturalism, local narratives?, etc.) idea: we can choose to do our best to all get along, or we can choose not to.
Quoting unenlightened
I think that the first step is to break free from the shackles of denial.
Who is in greater denial, people who do not heed what science tells us about? human activity and climate change or people who try to pin the whole problem on the latter behavior of the latter group when there's abundant evidence that the entire modern Western lifestyle--insatiable consumption; preoccupation with and obsession with the individual's "pursuit of happiness"; reliance on objectifying and manipulating everything through math, empiricism, etc.--is the problem?
I am saying that for the first time I no longer buy any of it. We don't need more science, more of the philosophy of the past thousand years, more laws, more institutions to enforce and implement those laws, more technology, more social movements, etc. We need a complete rupture and departure.
In other words, a wise person does not respond to climate change by ignoring or denying science and praising the virtues of unregulated business, nor by vilifying business and being condescending towards common people while praising science as the breathtakingly amazing arbiter of safety, longevity, justice, etc. A wise person responds to climate change by recognizing that it is the creation of both business and science and looking for ways to act outside of business and science. A complete rupture and departure from the worldviews that have created and sustained modern business and science might be a no-brainer once people start looking outside of them.
Right. Keep it simple: Like Micah 6:8 says it, "What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love tenderly, and to walk humbly with your God?" One could lead a good life by following what you or the prophet Micah said.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
No brainer in more ways than one. Obvious, on the one hand, brainless on the other.
I agree that there are times when one wants to chuck the whole sickening mess. But, pause...
One of the things that intelligent, well read, and maybe over-informed people need to do is selectively cut back on the data feeds that are plugged into their heads.
There are tons of agencies out there serving up bad news about the world: the environment, the economy, the education system, the government, white supremacists, racists, and sexists, liberals, republicans, conservatives, democrats, private prisons, ISIS, lead poisoning, and on and on. It isn't all fake news, but it is very tendentious, and they don't generally offer any solutions. One is just left with more and more discontent and disturbance. We are overstimulated with bad news.
I am not optimistic about the future, but I find some peace in the realization that there is nothing significant that I can personally do about most of the problems I know about. I get further peace from cutting back on hearing once again about x, y, or z problem. It also helps to cross some concerns off the list. I'm just not going to worry about the Alberta Tar Sands industry for instance. It's not that I don't care that it is an extremely filthy way to get petroleum, it's just that there isn't room in my agenda for the tar sands problem.
Yes, I know there is a lot of plastic particles in the ocean screwing up ocean life. Again, I can't solve that problem. It doesn't help to read about it again.
If the world looks like it is going to hell, it probably will--if for no other reason that it has been picking up a lot of momentum, and who is going to stop it? There are problems that I can make a dent in. Small and local, but I'll just have to settle for that.
I too once felt we should have a complete rupture. Let the Revolution begin! It would be a bad experience -- at least as bad as the crap we are already putting up with. People would not be brand new beings after the rupture. It would be back to business as usual.
If we were all wise, or even most of us, there would be no problem. The solution to climate change is well known, and not difficult to implement. But wise people have been turning away from consumer society and promoting sustainable living at least since the sixties. Indeed vilifying and condescending does nothing, but nor does being wise unless wisdom acts to become vegan, stop using fossil fuels, reduce transport by consuming local products, insulate homes, fit solar panels and learn to live without waste.
But all that is straightforward. It is the wisdom that is in short supply. And that is what I am interested in trying to manufacture.
All people have to do is consume less, but industry/government have become very good at marketing consumption. Let's take a look at the sales pitch of the medical device industry: "Take this test, or you will die!". Pretty effective sales pitch especially when the lobbyists have successfully passed laws to help them push their products and drugs.
Maybe environmentalists can take less trips to the environments they are trying to save? There are many ways to look a simple, healthy, interesting life without constantly consuming.
And I suppose you have some evidence of this? I change all the time and it had zero to do with my genetics and upbringing. The WHO says only a small percentage of chronic ailments are due to genetics, while 80% or more are due to lifestyle choices. Choices.
The knowledge and experience you use to make your choices are based on past choices and outcomes, the earliest of which were dependent on various influences over which you had no control - parental, societal, environmental. The person you are today and the choices you make would be very different, given different parents and place of birth.
No, I am constantly adding novelty to my life.
I am beginning to realize that there actually may be people who are purely robotic in their life and without actual experience otherwise have come to believe that everyone is equally robotic.
The mind not only had the capacity for creative novelty, for many it is the primary experience. Creative evolution is the essence of Life.
The 'I' you speak of only exists because your parents had sex. The desire you have to add novelty to your life only exists because of the experiences that have led you to that point, and your biological instinct to love and create.
I agree that many people live as part of 'the machine' of society without realizing that there can be more to life, but this 'awakening' normally comes about as a result of first becoming a miserable robot, and realizing that something needs to change if your life is going to continue. Unless you have very aware parents, whose influence is strong enough to combat the effect of society, there's a good chance you will live as a robot before you are able to shrug off the chains of the personal identity that you've formed throughout your life.
No. I am creating and evolving everyday in my life. Are you creative? Do you create new things, new ideas, new directions in your life? Allowing the creative mind to express is good for the soul. I live and breathe creativity. The major issue is that people have been trained since kindergarten to suppress creativity and play follow the leader. I was pretty much my own person for most of my life. Never needed to be or wanted to be one of the crowd. Never a robot and always creative in the direction I followed in my life.
Apparently I am not making myself clear.
I will try again.
All of this Marxism; liberalism; "progress"; conservatism; Enlightenment rationalism, autonomy of the individual, rule of law; empiricism/"science"; technology; transhumanism; postmodernism; feminism; queer theory; identity politics; neo-liberalism; "the logic of free markets"; globalization; populism; "democracy" vs. "tyranny"; dualism vs. non-dualism; overconsumption vs. prosperity; Malthus vs. Adam Smith; etc.; etc.; etc. needs to be stuffed in a box, bound with several layers of duct tape, and fired on a rocket as far out of our sight and memory as possible.
Garbage in, garbage out.
If we are tired of getting garbage then we need to grow up and throw away the garbage.
The garbage is gone, what do we do now?
How about listening.
Listening to each other.
Listening to non-human life
Listening to the Earth.
How about empathizing.
I said let's break the garage-in-garbage-out cycle, and you responded with more of the garage.
We don't need more politics, laws, philosophy, science, technology, etc. We need to get a grip.
We need to try, gasp, being nice.
But then we will be told that if consumption is dramatically decreased then the whole system will collapse, prosperity will disappear, and we will all be living short, miserable lives like feudal serfs or prehistoric cave dwellers.
Someone will then reply that if we don't dramatically reduce consumption the whole biosphere will implode and all life, not just humans, will become extinct.
Ad nauseum.
We need to break out such patterns. We need to stop spinning our wheels.
We need a completely different conversation.
Your genes are driving your novelty seeking behavior. Other people's genes drive familiarity seeking.
Like I said, most of us are just too over-exposed to all this stuff, most of which is way beyond our capacity to control, affect, stop, change...
Once you've become informed, you don't need fresh doses of this stuff. It's like if you eat a healthy diet, there is no need to take vitamin pills. For instance, there is nothing new to say about Marxism; liberalism; "progress"; conservatism; Enlightenment rationalism, autonomy of the individual, rule of law; empiricism/"science"; technology; transhumanism; postmodernism; feminism; queer theory; identity politics; neo-liberalism; "the logic of free markets"; globalization; populism; "democracy" vs. "tyranny"; dualism vs. non-dualism; overconsumption vs. prosperity; Malthus vs. Adam Smith, etc. etc. etc.
It's pretty much all been said. Several times a day it is repeated. Unplug, tune out, turn off (as opposed to Timothy Leary's advice to Turn on, tune in, drop out).
It sounds like more of the same.
It sounds like more Enlightenment faith in our ability to intervene and manipulate and control things to optimal circumstances/conditions.
I would argue that it was such faith that led to climate change in the first place.
Maybe it's pride. For whatever reason, we can't seem to admit that objectifying everything and removing ourselves from everything else and thinking that we can be some third person molding our bodies and the rest of the world to create great stories has failed miserably.
Culture wars, disagreements between strangers on internet philosophy forums, etc. are simply people quarreling over how the story should be written.
We can't go back.
We can't go back to existing like the first primates or something like that.
But we don't have to be trapped in the present way of existing either.
If we have ever listened rather than dictate, I have never heard any account of it.
There's probably a lot--from past humans, other forms of life, and the non-living Earth--that we have not heard because we were not and are not listening.
Reason--specifically, Enlightenment human reason--has spoken. It has been a very long monologue. Maybe it's time for it to hand the microphone over and listen for a change.
I love stories that people just make up. Genes are just little humans doing everything that we do? And who does it for the genes?
The problem is that consumption isn't the sum of the choices of individuals.
It is an indivisible whole that is part of a system and is required? for that system to function.
As consumption behavior changes the system adjusts--and takes all of us with it.
A contraction in output due to decreased consumer demand will likely result in unemployment, crime, more incarceration, more military conflicts, and other misery to bring things back to equilibrium. It is not likely that it will merely result in common people living happily with less and the owners of capital not missing a beat as economic inequality contracts.
We need to think outside of that system, not tell the system "We are changing the rules! Deal with it!".
The way the system deals with it probably won't be pleasant for many people.
If subverting the system is your game plan, things like quietly restoring local economies, quietly restoring the extended family, and quietly restoring local communities and anything else local--control of education; neighborhood churches (as opposed to mega-churches); culture; etc.--would probably be a more prudent strategy.
Okay, then we need the conversation to be about how to tune it all out.
As far as I know, no such conversation has ever taken place.
And we will be talking about a formidable opponent, because no matter what you do--shop, go for a walk, eat a meal--or where you go--work, church, the gym--you will be on that aforementioned trajectory and from every direction something or someone will be reminding you of it.
It seems to me that the more prudent thing to do to would be to use whatever power and resources one has to change the conversation, not ignore the conversation or have a preliminary conversation about how to ignore the conversation.
There's nothing that says anybody has to accept the way things are and should not do anything to disrupt the order of things. That sounds like fatalism or something else from ancient times.
This is 2017. We believe now that we can change course, not that it is some kind of blasphemy to not accept the way things are.
Capitalism, science, technology, etc. are sorry excuses for the sacred anyway. Blaspheme against them all you want to. I doubt that many people will care. They'll probably say, "The most that I do is curse at my laptop or the grocery store self-checkout. You are more honest than me!".
Now that might be the conversation we need to be having. Instead of splitting hairs over things like free will vs. determinism, we probably ought to all be having open, honest conversation about how we really feel about this way of life we have been told repeatedly since our birth that we are extremely fortunate to experience. Just getting it off of our collective chest will likely yield a lot more good than hours and hours of debate over, oh, dualism vs. non-dualism.
Indeed, there is not. And I am not advocating that anyone just accept the way things are and not do anything to disrupt the order of things. I disapprove of many aspects about the established order of things. When I was younger I was much more devoted to disruption. When the opportunity presents itself, we should (figuratively speaking) take off our wooden shoes and drop them into the works (sabots = wooden shoes, dropping wooden shoes into the gears = sabotage.)
At 70 I don't disapprove of disrupting the bad things about life, I just don't have as much energy as I once did. During the 40+ years that I was working, I resisted unreasonable authority and unthinking adherence to the dominant paradigm as much as I could. (Naturally, that made me a less than highly desired employee.)
I don't use any fertilizer, weed or insect killer on my lawn. I use a minimum of energy keeping the grass short (it's not very short; in fact it looks like hell -- but there is no good reason to keep grass 3 inches short. See Thorsten Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class). I let weeds that I like grow. If I don't like them, I pull them up. I recycle yard wastes, food wastes, plastic/paper/metal. I produce very little "garbage". I bicycle and use public transit. I eat a minimum of meat and fish. I live in a small house.
I spent about 15 years working in a socialist organization educating "the public" about Marx, De Leon, economic justice, the meaning of class, and so on and so forth. I donated to the cause. I wrote material.
People need to find the area in which they can make a difference, and go do it. Become informed, but don't keep listening to and reading the same old bad news every day. It's just too demoralizing. Keep abreast of what is happening, but that doesn't take a lot of time. Things, like the disasters, don't change that much from month to month.
Do I believe that 'the people' can change the direction away from certain disaster that we all seem to be heading for? Sure I do. Do I think 'the people' will rise up, smash the corporate dictatorship, take over the government, and usher in a period of progressive ecological, economic, educational, et cetera policy which will get us all collectively out of the shit hole we seem to be sliding into? No, I think that is fairly unlikely.
So, I continue doing what I can do and recognizing that my power to effect change in the world is quite limited. It's more limited than I would like, but there's not much I can do about it. Got a magic ring or something you could give me to enhance my powers?
Right. Because...
In response to your comment to Rich:
You think "the system" won't notice if you quietly reorganize the economy, quietly institute changes in the family (like establishing extended families), and quietly restore local communities to a state of former vitality? News Flash: making these changes will create an enormous amount of noise and disturbance. Do you think Target, Walmart, Macy's, et al are going to sit still while the behemoths of centralized manufacturing, transportation, and merchandising are taken apart? BTW, just how do you plan on getting the single women with children and the nuclear family couples back into 'the extended family'? Grandma probably isn't interested in becoming the live-in babushka, taking care of the children. Restoring local communities? Again, you're talking about a massive change in the modus operandi of late capitalism. You think the powers that be are going to sit still for all that?
If you want to achieve those goals (and they are, actually worthwhile goals) you'll have to get rid of the richest 5% and then the government that enabled them to exercise their power.
Good Luck!
Completely agree with you we cant impose wisdom/knowledge and im not saying that we should. It wouldnt be very wise. But i think that the school systems completely ignores that most central aspect of human development and so public schooling should try to "nurture" wisdom/knowledge. it wont be successful 100% of the time, but it will make a difference.
Well there is no reward for being wise and a good person. It's a rather selfless desire and pursuit. Not many people are motivated by selflessness but tend to go down into the history books for some reason. Rare people they are.
Woops totally meant to post that on the American school sytem thread. Im smart :s
Me too. That's why I've taken a break posting on this philosophy forum.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
Perhaps a better place to begin would be to address this adage to yourself, rather than the rest of the world. The "rest of the world", after all, begins with you.
I'm with you.
>:O (and where's the standing O emoji to follow?)
I am with you...
Our unprecedented prosperity is predicated upon, utterly dependent upon, consumerism and growth economy. So, the [profiteers will by no means be the only ones hurt; unless you count all those above the poverty line as 'profiteers'. And even then, it is arguable that those below the poverty line would also be hurt by declining consumption and growth.
Which world are we talking about? You must read the Economist. Concentration of wealth had never been greater nor has debt. It's quite a disaster in the real world unless you live in one of the 1% enclaves.
Absolutely not. The problem is wealth concentration not of production. Conventional thinking is making this world into one polluted mess. The top 1% had sure been successful in messing with everyone's thinking. So what is the point of the OP? You still are buying into all of the marketing junk pouring through the media. When it comes right down to it, you are still quite conventional.
I can't help but laugh at this. You are saying that autonomy of the individual is garbage, as well as science. How does one express themselves for you to listen without autonomy? How do you listen to non-human life and the Earth without organizing that knowledge (science is organized knowledge) into something meaningful to even talk about for others to listen? You dictating what I can talk about is contradictory to your goal of listening, and thinking that such-and-such topic is "garbage" is subjective. Maybe others don't think that and you need to listen to that.
How do you expect to change people who aren't nice, into people who are without manipulating them? How do you expect self-centered people to listen to others without manipulating them - without giving them their right to express their self-centeredness and you listen and be nice? You are simply talking about how you'd like it to be and not everyone feels the same, which means that you'd have to limit what it is that they do or think that YOU don't like in favor of what YOU do like.
Also I like to listen to others except when they become nonsensical or hypocritical. After that, it becomes a waste of my time to listen to them. Once they insult my intelligence with what they say, being nice isn't part of my response.
Exactly.
According to Oxfam (and they were using the same data sources that everybody else uses) a handful of people, a few dozen, have as much wealth as 1/3 to 1/2 of the world's people--depending how many super-rich one bunches together. If you take the richest 1% of the world's population, then they have more wealth than just about everybody else put together.
This concentration of wealth distorts, compounds, and aggravates both the routine and novel problems the world faces, making them all impossible to solve.
The middle classes and even the upper echelons of the working classes live unprecedentedly comfortable and 'material goods rich' lives. Many are leveraged up to the hilt, and thus on a knife's edge it is true, however.
Sure, there are many cases like this, but the point is that we in the prosperous west enjoy lifestyles that, in their levels of comfort, and health care, are beyond anything enjoyed even by kings and emperors in past times. Sure this may be thought of as a form of servitude, but so then would any lifestyle, even ascetic lifestyles, not to mention the lives of true slaves. It is estimated that there are 45.8 million true slaves in the world today. Given a current population of 7.5 billion that means that about one person in every 164 is living in slavery.
Anyone who lives the life of a consumer, even a modest consumer, lives at the expense of the unspeakable suffering of others. You have a computer and probably a smart phone, for example; do you know how much slavery and what intolerable working conditions exist in the supply chain that enables you to enjoy those luxuries?
So, who gives a shit about the poor women who lives a life of modern luxury, even if she can only just make ends meet? Her suffering is as nothing compared to those who live in genuine servitude. Who of us will give up our precious lifestyles? Very very few, and I'm not saying I could. But at least let us not be hypocrites, and be honest about the price others are paying so we can enjoy our incredible prosperity. It may well not last as long as we might hope in any case, and then we will be forced to really suffer too.
Chinese process: If you don't change direction you'll end up where you are headed.
Pakistan 1.2%
India 1.1%
Haiti 2.1 %
Mauritania 4%
People at the top of the economic heap have a great deal of comfort at the expense of everyone else, true enough. But most people are nowhere close to the top of the economic heap. Working people who make up about 95% of the world's population, are all wage slaves. A wage slave is someone who is entirely dependent on a daily, weekly, or monthly wage to sustain themselves and their families. If they do not work, they and their family will suffer enormously
Wage slaves have to work, and companies (big or tiny) give their workers no more than what it takes to keep them from starving and still coming to work. Sure, an American or German auto plant worker expects more for an hour of their labor (in equivalent dollars) than a Bangladeshi worker in a Nike shoe factory. Because living costs are higher in Germany and North America, companies have to pay more. They pay much less in Bangladesh because they can pay less.
Wage slavery is the primary form of exploitation in capitalist economies. You work for a wage, or you die. And most of the value of the products workers produce goes to the owners of the company (who do not work) and not to to workers (who do it all).
Workers all over the world get the same bad deal. We should all stop cooperating with the owning class.
I'm impressed by that BC. I would like to find a way to contribute in a like manner.
Quoting Janus
Yet, my mobile telco provider has all its helpdesk in India, in the call centres of Hyderabad and Pune, which now provide middle-class (in Indian terms) employment opportunities for millions of people.
I think it's an unfortunate fact that 'Western liberalism' in the broadest sense - the combination of liberal democracies, scientific technology, and the belief in progress and growth - have provided a general prosperity which couldn't have been achieved by other models. I mean, soviet-style communism was never going to do that.
But I do recognise that the model is also running up against absolute limits in terms of what the Earth can sustain. Furthermore, I agree that the concentration of wealth flowing upwards is basically criminal. This is the consequence of Thatcher and Reagan's supply-side economics nonsense, and the idea that giving the capitalist kleptocracy free reign would somehow miraculously make everyone better off. (George Monbiot's criticism is worth reading.)
In the US, 'tax reform' means giving the 1% even more tax breaks. Health care reform likewise means giving the 1% even more breaks. Basically the whole political system has been gamed to that end. Trump is just a puppet (trum-pet?)
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
Capitalism, science and technology can co-exist with the sacred if you can see through scientific materialism. Which basically amounts to adopting a spiritual philosophy and what that entails. I of the view that the mainstream of Western thought is actually religious, but that it has been hijacked by the materialist meme for complex historical reasons.
Anyone here familiar with John Michael Greer? I've been reading his blog for a couple of years. His writing appeals to me. One of his books is called Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush.
I probably would be in a position to sell up, downsize, and move to a fully-owned, off the grid house outside the main urban centres. Problem is, spouse has no interest in doing that, so I'm on the hamster wheel for another couple of years. I'm trying to find some remote work opportunities in technical writing and product documentation which can help me ease into (very late) retirement.
Ah yes, the Arch Druid. He's not quite my cup of tea, but some of my best friends read him religiously.
Straw man.
Quoting Rich
Red herring.
Quoting Rich
Collective psychotherapy.
We are trapped in destructive, self-defeating patterns of thinking, communicating, and relating.
We need to completely break out of those patterns.
Not hit "Reset" and start over. Find the biggest, sharpest knife we can, cut through the cord that tethers us to all the garbage (feminism, "progress", religious fundamentalism, trickle-down / supply-side economics, globalization, neoliberalism, queer theory, dualism vs. non-dualism, spiritual vs. material, free will vs. determinism, scientism, culture wars, the sexual revolution, marijuana anti-prohibition, ecological collapse, defense of traditional marriage, etc., etc., etc., etc.) and turn our backs and don't even watch as it drifts away out of sight and out of memory.
A good, but not perfect, analogy is the thesis of Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures, by Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri-Prakash. While the West struggles over the messes that we have created with things like neoliberalism, the world's oppressed majority have put all of it in their rearview mirror and are moving beyond it.
If you still don't know what I mean, think of it this way: You can worry about ecological collapse, you can appeal to emotion or ideology to deny the threat or possibility of ecological collapse, you can write objective, scholarly material arguing that ecological collapse is a fiction/myth, or you can decide to no longer filter anything through the concept of ecological collapse. The latter is the kind of rupture and departure that I think we need.
Probably the biggest things we would be giving up is wanting to and feeling the need to manipulate and control everybody and everything, and our belief that we have the ability to manipulate and control everybody and everything.
Quoting Rich
Conventional--whether it is from academia, the mass media, business, government, or strangers on the internet--is wanting to and feeling the need to manipulate and control people and things and believing that by manipulating and controlling people and things we can eradicate problems.
If we'd just tax this, cut that, research that, legislate that, enforce that, self-improve that, etc., etc., etc., the problem would be solved, the thinking goes.
Of course, there's the other extreme: "I can't control it. I can't do anything about it. So I am going to ignore it. I am going to tune it out".
The latter is still seeing everything in terms of what can be manipulated, controlled and/or dominated.
We need a complete rupture and departure from that and everything (feminism, religious fundamentalism, "free markets", queer theory, "progress", Marxism, neoliberalism, economic justice, etc., etc., etc., etc.) that comes with it.
Robert Edgerton wrote Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony. We need to give up the myth of modern harmony. We need to give up the delusion that if we would just tax this, ban that, redistribute that, stop believing in that, become more literate in that, tear down / remove that, enforce that, etc., etc. that everything will be restored to the right order.
President Ronald Reagan said "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem." Well, maybe more capitalism, science, philosophy, etc., etc. is not the solution to our problem. Maybe it is the problem.
Specifically, maybe our reliance on and obsession with rationalism/reason, empiricism, individualism, argumentation/debate, persuasion, competition, innovation, change, "progress", etc., etc. is the problem.
There are plenty of alternatives. Listening. Empathy. Compassion. Cooperation. Contemplation. Quiet reflection. Self-control. One day at a time. The beat of one's own drum. Etc. Etc.
He writes pretty well on philosophy, I have to say. Very impressed with his Gnosis, Doxa, and Episteme. And he has quite a lot to say on the theme of the OP.
An introductory course that I took in the Family Studies department in college was titled "Individual, Marriage and Family".
In other words, it takes healthy individuals to make healthy marriages, and it takes healthy marriages to make healthy families. In other words, we make mistakes when we think marriage will make an unhappy individual happy; when we neglect the relationship between husband and wife and make everything child-centered; etc.
I think that that parallels social life in general.
Work on your own self. Then work on your local community. Then work on your national community. Then work on the global community.
That means only trying to control what you can control: your own self. It means not trying to manipulate and control things and other people through science, business, government, etc.
And it means taking complete, personal responsibility for one's life, not living in constant victim status.
Tune in to one's own self a lot more. Tune in to the people one directly interacts with a little more. Tune in to the non-human elements in one's environment a little more. The remaining balance can then be spent on "news", "current events", etc.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Is it not enough to withstand it and absorb it well enough to keep on ticking?
Attrition rather than revolution, for once?
Let the stone pass through the kidney, and save all of the resources you can for moving on afterwards, maybe?
Quoting Bitter Crank
The important thing is that nobody allow any kind of inertia--even if it is something like our faith in and praise for Enlightenment ideals, values and institutions--to hold him/her in place.
Strength and courage, not a magic ring, are all that is needed.
I believe it was him who I discovered a few months ago and him who inspired a moving blog that I then read, but I can't find it again.
I think there is a big difference between being a more or less oppressed and stressed out worker who can leave their job if they really are determined to, and someone who is imprisoned in a life of forced slavery with little or no chance of escaping it.
Yes, I am certainly not arguing that no one benefits from the smart phone industry, but the fact that many are helped does not justify the inhuman exploitation of many others. If just one person has to suffer unspeakably, so that everyone else may live happy lives; that is unacceptable (unless you are a Consequentialist). Have you read the Ursula Le Guin story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” ?
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/13/opinion/david-brooks-the-child-in-the-basement.html?mcubz=1
Granted: a wage worker can choose the site of his wage slavery; a chattel slave can not.
Everyone is a slave in the sense that they have to somehow earn or otherwise acquire a living or die, BC. Life itself makes 'slaves' of us all in that kind of sense. Some people are smart or lucky enough to accumulate enough wealth to get beyond that necessity. The question is, are they smart enough to manage their lives well enough to keep their wealth or control their addiction to accumulating wealth, power and the notoriety that goes with it?
I think the difference between the conditions of those who are slaves only in this general sense, and those who are forced into slave labour by criminal exploiters is not merely one of degree.
To be enslaved by force is more than merely a matter of "equity". If our slaves are on the other side of the world then no amount of "labor laws, public education, tax policy and so forth" will make any difference to their plight. The only hope for the slaves is via sufficient boycott of the products that are made cheap by exploiting them. The problem of diminishing resources is a separate, but no less real, issue.
https://news.vice.com/article/smartphones-child-labor-cobalt-mines-africa-congo-amnesty-international
The kind of extreme situation described in the above link, as opposed to merely poorly paid workers (which is itself also obviously an important issue), is the kind of thing I wanted to highlight.
Having to earn your living in and of itself doesn't make you a slave, but having a wage under an employer generally does. I've always hated working under someone else, which is why I didn't last long >:O .
The reason for this is that slavery involves control over someone's time first and foremost. Time is the most valuable resource. It's not that an employer doesn't pay me enough, it's that he gets to control what I do with my time, he gets to dictate when I'm in, when I'm out, how I'm dressed, and on and on. Not to mention that he also wields complete control over the results of my work. My labor is essentially stolen. It's much better to accept even a lower pay and be self-employed than to work under another and get a slightly higher pay.
The main problem for the younger generations is that universities typically only train people how to be good (and proud!) slaves. You cannot find training regarding how not to be a slave. That kind of training doesn't exist. It's too subversive. You have to learn it yourself. Which is why I feel that the younger generations are getting poorer and poorer. Most parents haven't understood this either, at least in this part of the world, so too much emphasis is given to school, but people don't actually learn how to be financially independent in school. People have to be taught - outside of school - about it, including how to manage wealth and private property. Many families end up poor when wealth transfers from the parents to the children because the children - out of no fault of their own - don't have a clue how to guard the private property they were given.
One advantage in this day and age though is the internet, since it's much easier to learn to do some useful work by yourself online (like programming) than it is to - say - learn to become a carpenter by yourself. I mean it's not impossible to learn to be a carpenter by yourself, but you'd need a supportive family while you learn, as well as the tools and practice space necessary. I imagine when the internet didn't exist, you were pretty much stuck slaving away for someone for at least the first - say - 5-6 years of your adult life.
This reminds me of a person who worried that insulting another person's grandfather's bad back might be taking things a little too far...
(Y)
I've never worked for anyone else for any length of time. I was hopeless at school because of a total lack of interest, so when I finished year 12 I had to take cleaning jobs, laboring jobs and the like. My first job I worked with a gang of Calabrians as a fettler on the Northern Sydney railway lines.
I couldn't stand full-time work, so I worked as a gardener for private residential clients. Then I taught myself how to build with wood and masonry and became a self-taught landscape designer and creator and carpenter/stonemason. I learned from books and took risks pushing myself to take on ever more ambitious projects which challenged my then current skill level. I am proud to be able to say that I have never come unstuck because of poor workmanship.
What I meant, though, was that we are made slaves in a sense by the very need to earn a living. We can gain a range of degrees of freedom within that necessary pursuit, depending on luck and talent; talent both for the work and for self-promotion. To be effective at the work or at promoting yourself you need to have discipline and application, which means you need to have motivation. I was motivated to the work because I enjoyed learning all the skills, and creating beautiful structures and environments, but I had almost no motivation to promote myself. I was always hated what I saw as excessive sales bullshit. I saw it at work in some of my colleagues; it disgusted me.
At one point in my life as a contractor/designer I had twelve employees in three teams. I hated it because most people are never satisfied no matter how much you pay them and those you employ as foremen or project managers seem to constantly do things the wrong way because their inflated egos make them highly resistant to the idea that they need any guidance, and hence they do not listen. Because I am a perfectionist and insist, at any cost, on delivering what I promise to my clients, I was forever paying workers to fix problems that would never have occurred if they had listened to my instructions. It drove me nuts. I was working 70-80 hours a week and making a lot of money nonetheless; but I chose to go back to just doing the work myself with casual labourers when I needed them.
So. slavery exits along a spectrum from being completely free (in the economic sense) to do whatever you want, all the way down to being literally forced to labour.
One of my best friends reads him too, I won't say "religiously", but with much enthusiasm. Personally, I find his writings on philosophy (which my friend, because of my interest in the subject, has several times recommended to me) to be quite basic and one-dimensional. His writings on collapse I have no interest in, because I believe none of us know, or can even adequately guess, what the future will bring, and I believe idle speculation worked up into conviction is never going to be helpful; it just generally seems to become a kind of fetish.
you think? I find this essay insightful and quite profound, really:
The Clenched Fist of Reason
(Mind you, I'm put off by the Druid regalia.)
This seems to embody an elementary contradiction and confusion, though, insofar as Greer is saying that it is an objective fact that the whole story is being created "moment by moment in our minds", which as a purported fact is itself derived from and supported by the scientific understanding of perception, while at the same time he is saying that the whole scientific story does not reflect an objective reality. In other words what Greer is claiming "depends on the very notion of the objective reality of the world of experience that (Greer claims) they've just disproved".
What do you mean, though, in saying that it is 'underpinned by the human cognitive faculties" ? Are you talking about the brain? The idea that the brain is real and functions as we think it does "depend(s) on the same notion of the objective reality of the world of experience".
The same thing applies to the idea that it's "a plan that’s partly given us by our biology, partly given us by our culture, and partly a function of our individual life experience." That story depends on the posit that biology, culture and individual life experience aree objectively real, causally efficacious things.
If you're not talking about the brain, biology, culture or experience, then what could you be talking about.
Incidentally, I also think that is how cognition occurs, but I grant the objective reality of those things and of the world that they exist in and reveal, whereas Greer seems to contradict himself in denying that objective reality.
Well, I would say the subject is as much of an objective reality as the object is, but science does not concern itself with subjects since they are not empirically observable phenomena. The behavior of subjects is empirically observable and that is the only phenomena that science can go on, as in the case of psychology, to attempt to gain any sort of objective understanding of subjects.
Of course it is generally accepted that there is a reality which is independent of human minds; no other way of thinking about the world makes any sense. This is not to say that thinking about a mind-independent reality is itself totally independent of minds (to say that would obviously be absurd) but that our thinking is not exhaustively produced just by the human mind, (whether we think of that as the brain or something else) but also by real conditions prior to the mind, whatever those conditions might be. (We do not need to know exactly what those conditions are to know that they are real, by any reasonable definition of the word 'real').
I honestly cannot see why so many people seem to have such a problem with this very commonsense, and in truth pretty much inescapable, realization. It has no bearing on religion or spirituality at all, either way. As Peirce would have it we should not "pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts".
Just now I read many paragraphs. I'll have to finish later.
Very informative.
Thank you for that link.
That seems to support the idea that wage labor is slavery in a different form.
Quoting Janus
It's always a difficult thing to decide how ambitious you should be willing to go with the project compared to your skill level though :P It's not easy to decide. I've refused work before that I thought was "too out there" for me.
Quoting Janus
Hmm - I suppose so, but if we are slaves, who is our master then? Because our master wouldn't be society or something external to us, but rather our own drives - our own need to survive, our conatus. So to say we are slaves in this sense entails creating a division in the self. One side of the self (the passions, need for food, shelter, etc.) is divided from the self conceived as a purely rational will. Then we look back at ourselves so to speak, and say that the purely rational self is a slave to our biological drives.
But I think this divided self is a wound, and if this wound was healed, then we would conceive of our own self as in harmony with itself. Then there couldn't be any talk of bondage in this context, but rather of freedom.
There's the other difficulty that when we speak of freedom, we need a standard of freedom. When you extend the meaning of slavery too much, so that there's always a degree of slavery, then we've destroyed the very meaning of the word. It's much like a bird thinking that air resistance is what stops it from flying faster, and if only there was no more resistance from the air it would finally be free to fly as it wants - but of course the truth is that precisely if there was no resistance from the air, the bird would not be free to fly - flying would become impossible.
These are some of the reasons why I think it's difficult to talk about the need to earn a living, or the need to survive, as a form of slavery.
Quoting Janus
Yes, I agree - the selling element is very important. Getting yourself out there gets you to some of the work, but if you need to grow and get bigger selling plays a crucial role. From what I see in my part of the world, business owners tend to focus mostly on recruiting and sales, and relatively little on the actual work, which is a bit strange. I'm also like you and very much of a perfectionist, so I've always been a bit "afraid" of hiring anyone to pass on work to them, because I know there's very few people who actually make sure the work is perfect, especially if they're not working for themselves.
Quoting Janus
Yes that does seem to be a very big problem. Quality always seems to tend to decrease when more people get involved. To a certain extent, in order to grow you need to sacrifice quality and just accept that a certain % of clients will be left with subpar work (and then seek to minimise that). That seems to be in the nature of industrialisation as well, where a certain batch of the products are assumed to end up faulty anyhows (for the sake of producing "in bulk")
Science can continue outside of our present spiritual and intellectual structure, just like religion has continued after the Enlightenment.
People expressed themselves before "I think therefore I am" and the Enlightenment emphasis on the autonomy of the individual. Personal expression does not depend on those things.
How do you listen to non-human life? Go for a quiet walk outside. That's just one way.
The rest of your post is a bunch of straw men at best.
I think that this whole Enlightenment/modernist project of autonomous individual subjects? objectifying things and using reason to manipulate, control and dominate the world needs to now be rejected. Being more in concert with and having greater respect for the non-human world, and employing empathy, compassion, intuition, cooperation, etc. for a change are alternatives I have offered. Unless you can show us an existing spiritual and intellectual plane that frees us from the former--I am now convinced it doesn't exist, I have said (see the part about how Christopher Lasch, postmodernism, the Zapatistas, etc. weren't enough)--and gives us a healthier framework, there is going to, like I said, have to be a complete rupture and departure. Or, if you are happy with the trajectory we are on then tell us something we haven't already heard ad nauseum (the world is more peaceful; the world is safer; life expectancy is greater; etc.) about why we should stay on it.
The point is, the subject is never an object of perception. We never know the subject as something 'in the world' - it's rather more that the world is something 'in the subject'. ('Every one finds himself to be subject, yet only in so far as he knows, not in so far as he is an object of knowledge.' Schopenhauer, 1)
We cannot see the seer - it's like the hand attempting to grasp itself. That might sound trite, but it really isn't, because what we don't see is the very act of seeing. Our seeing is the conditioned consequence of whole chain (of dependent origination, along one axis, and adaptive necessity, along another.) The 'act of seeing' brings all that together, into the subjective unity of consciousness, which is what designates things as "real" or "unreal".
Conscious Realism.
Quoting Janus
In one way, that is true, but in another way it isn't. You're imagining the world outside yourself, with mind 'here', 'inside', and the world 'out there' independently of 'the mind'. But all of this is also taking place in the mind. THE mind is not your mind or my mind - it is the faculty of understanding that exists in every rational sentient being.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
I think, 'understood' rather than rejected - it has to be seen through, transcended. But now that I see what you're getting at, I completely concur with what you're saying. I too have been studying this same point all along.
Well, I would say that's just one way of interpreting the situation. We don't "know" the subject as an object at all. "The subject" is really nothing more than the idea of a knower. And subjects are certainly "in the world"; they always find themselves in a world with others. As Heidegger points out 'being in the world' is the essence of the being of Dasein; Heidegger actually wants to get away altogether from the whole misleading notion of there being a subject in any substantive sense. In any case the world is certainly not something "in the subject"; that idea seems to make no sense at all except in the very limited sense that, looked at from one very artificial point of view or at times of psychological stress, we are all capable of having the subjective impression of inhabiting our own 'little worlds'.
Quoting Wayfarer
We experience the world constantly as "being outside ourselves" in the sense of being beyond the boundaries of our bodies. The idea that the world is "taking place inside the mind" I find quite unintelligible when I think about it; and all the more so the more I think about it. Whose mind is it taking place inside of ? What is "the mind" if it is not "your mind or my mind"? I would say the only possible answer to that would be something like "God's mind". But I also think that such answers have value only in an allusive, analogical, poetic, sense; and not in any intelligible propositional sense. Looked at as a discursive claim the idea is meaningless to me; whereas the idea of certain things (ideas, feeling, volitions and so on, but certainly not the world) being inside my mind or your mind is perfectly intelligible in accordance with my experience, phenomenologically considered. I would say "the faculty of understanding that exists in every rational being" is nothing more than a more or less helpful concept.
Quoting Wayfarer
We don't see the workings of our brains or the 'insides' of our bodies either. The origination of our being, of our thinking, of our feeling, of our seeing is an ineliminable mystery to us. We simply cannot conceptualize such an "origin" in any discursive way at all. Ideas like the "act of seeing" "brings it all together" "subjective unity of consciousness" and so on, all seem hopelessly vague and liable to mislead us into various kinds of substantialist reifications, in my view. It's far better to rest in unknowing when it comes to ideas that purport to go beyond our common-sense understandings of the world, beyond the everyday notions that make perfect sense to us. On the other hand, those more abstruse notions may be good and useful for the creative imagination if we take care not to indulge in hypostatization.
How is the world "in the subject"? :s If the world is in the subject, then I should expect to have some degree of control over it no? Afterall, one thing that distinguishes my body from the rest of the world is the control I have over it. Control is one of the factors I take into account in distinguishing myself from other things. But I have no control over when the sun rises, and the like. Therefore they aren't "in me".
Take a dream. In a dream my environment is in my control to a greater deal than in the real world. That's one of the key factors that enables me to understand that I am dreaming while I'm actually dreaming. If I really concentrate in a dream, I can change the environment, I can take charge of it.
Quoting Wayfarer
If you're just saying that we don't see the conditions that make sight possible, sure. But this doesn't help us very much...
Quoting Janus
I definitely agree with this. Maybe Heidegger does have a point against substance metaphysics of the non-Spinozist kind >:) (although to be fair Spinoza's use of substance is deceiving...)
Do you have any control over your digestive or metabolic processes?
When we see ourselves as a being in the world, then that itself is a representation. Where does that occur? What is the nature of that representation? For further elaboration, see the paragraph I referred to, with which you're surely familiar.
You seem to be conflating the primordial experience with its representation. Being in the world is an experience, the essential human experience, and 'being in the world' is its representation. In this quite different context this distinction echoes the 'use/mention' distinction.
This may also be understood in terms of Heidegger's 'zuhanden/vorhanden' ('ready-to-hand' and 'present at hand', respectively) distinction.The "present at hand" (mention) is secondary to and derivative of the "ready to hand" (use). The present at hand consist in abstractions the ready to hand is concrete. Schopenhauer's analysis is a hopelessly abstract and thus derivative and attenuated (and hence misleading) "present at hand" exercise.
Yes, Heidegger is more against dualistic metaphysics than monistic metaphysics. There are profound problems with monism too, though. Perhaps Spinoza can be saved from these problems by interpreting him as a thinker of non-dualism rather than as a thinker of monism.
I don't know if such an interpretation could be consistently applied to Spinoza's philosophy; that is a problem for the specialist scholars. :)
Yes, actually we do have quite a bit of control over our digestive and metabolic processes. It's true that we don't have absolute control, but we can influence them. Some people, through meditative practices, can influence them to a greater degree than others - like this guy.
Schopenhauer is confused. To wit:
"This proves that the whole of the material world with its bodies in space, extended and, by means of time, having causal relations with one another, and everything attached to this - all this is not something existing independently of our mind, but something that has its fundamental presuppositions in our brain-functions, by means of which and in which alone is such an objective order of things possible. For time, space, and causality, on which all those real and objective events rest, are themselves nothing more than functions of the brain; so that, therefore, this unchangeable order of things, affording the criterion and the clue to their empirical reality, itself comes from the brain, and has its credentials from that alone"
Schopenhauer also states that consciousness is to the brain like digestion is to the stomach. Now let's take the bolded sentence out:
So time, space and causality are functions of the brain - and the brain is located in space, time and causality :s
Quoting Wayfarer
The subject-object divide is derivative though and learned. It's not given in experience but arrived at through a particular interpretation and way of relating to being. So Schopenhauer is reasoning backwards.