Poemworld

a small adjustment

2011-11-21T08:29:00.000-08:00

a small big change

2011-01-27T19:42:00.001-08:00

Poemworld is home

2010-12-29T17:06:00.000-08:00

Justice, Freedom and The Lord’s Prayer

2010-07-10T13:29:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder at the sheer power of common, ordinary human language. It can pack an enormous amount of meaning, emotion and information into relatively few words. Newton’s three laws of motion, Euclid’s axioms, the preamble to the Constitution of the United States, Shakespeare’s sonnets, William Blake’s poetry are all examples and there are many others. The Tao Te Ching is a remarkably brief work of language for a universal belief system. But sometimes the meaning of a text can become obscured by over-familiarity and formality or may simply be so far ahead of its time that it has never been well interpreted or understood. Holy texts are often victims of the former. I consider the Lord’s Prayer to be the latter. What follows is an ordinary language inquiry into this millennia-old meditation.

I was taught the Lord’s Prayer by my great aunt Earna, when I was only five or six years old. I’ve contemplated it throughout my life, intrigued by the sense that its text secreted an interpretation of some considerable value, but only if I could see it, understand it. I also wagered that Jesus was a pretty smart guy, who hid his treasure in plain sight. As I began to work on my own value system, Poemworld, and inquired into other philosophies, ideologies, value and belief systems and practices for insight and critique, I began to develop that understanding. This is a personal appreciation of a text and is not intended to stand as an academic theological or philosophical treatise, simply my position vis-à-vis this prayer. Regardless, I would like to express that understanding now, for what it’s worth.

Wikipedia has an interesting piece on the Lord’s Prayer, which I will take as representative of the standard interpretation, including both scholarly and religious components. There is much that I agree with and think is doubtless close to the mark. I just don’t believe this interpretation registers everything that is there. Hence, I want to address all of the prayer, but focus on certain parts for what I see as their undervalued roles in the text. Then I’ll move to the impact this interpretation has on the Beatitudes.

“Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.”

I don’t have much to say here. The text encodes language from Judaism containing tropes of family/patriarchy, tribute, royalty, command/intent and astrology. This language humanizes the divine by relating to it, locating it, honoring it, submitting to it, and obeying it. This is basically an encomium.

“Give us this day our daily bread”

This is a fascinating and revealing leadoff for this single sentence, which forms the core of the Prayer that I want to examine. It is described as a petition but reads as a demand. Jesus isn’t asking God, he’s telling God to provide the material sustenance of life, to make real the right to live. Without this day our daily bread, humanity is at war with itself, as parents try to feed children and families, friends and communities try to feed each other. It is the very foundation rendering possible what follows in the Prayer. There is much symbolic wrangling about what else this means, but Occam’s razor says the simplest explanation is the best. Take the man at his word. Further, this line is a refreshingly substantial break from much spirituality, which is more concerned with souls than bodies, more oriented towards the ephemeral than the corporeal. With the amount of needless hunger and starvation in the world, it is a command that is honored mostly in the breach.

“and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”

This line is where the concept of justice enters into the prayer. There are basically two pieces at work here. The first is a variation on the Golden Rule, you know, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” In this phrasing, the Golden Rule is acting somewhat like an algebraic equation with the word “do” acting as the variable. In fact, the structure of this line in the prayer is a little different from the standard Golden Rule’s anticipatory reciprocity. It’s more of a “do to us as we do to them.” This is “tit-for-tat” reciprocity, or natural reciprocity. Jesus is basically telling God to forgive us just as we have, or have not, forgiven others. It also sets up a three-way relationship between God, self and others, soliciting forgiveness from God in equal measure to the forgiveness shown to others. This formulation permits the forgiving person to have some hope of good coming from their forgiveness, for letting go of grievances, and for doing the hard, often thankless work of initiating and catalyzing justice in a world quite short of the stuff. This can be rather difficult when one has been the victim of real injustice. Having the Lord on your side might make it a little easier to do.

Then there is the second part: forgiveness itself. I take forgiveness to be a fundamental form of contributive justice. It can be usefully contrasted with two other more commonly known forms of justice, namely, retribution and distribution respectively, or the justice of punishments and the justice of rewards. Now, forgiveness is almost a pun for contributive justice (a contribution is for-giving, get it?). Forgiveness, along with what I recognize as its complement, redemption, is not a blanket “get out of jail free” card. I’ve noticed that Christians setting out to practice Jesus’s words often overshoot the mark in this respect and forgive too much, which in the end tends to have them forgiving too little. I believe it is perfectly ethical to forgive the trespasser and to forgive the trespass. What I don’t think is appropriate is forgiving the trespasser’s responsibility for their trespass. The trespasser’s responsibility is not the aggrieved’s to forgive. That is where the trespasser’s redemption, or redemptive contribution to justice, comes in. Justice, in this sense, can thus be started by either side of the injustice, a feature that assists its use and spread. The trespasser can offer redemption (an apology is a common example as well as various modes of restitution, penance or other ways of giving to do justice) and the trespassed-upon can offer forgiveness and the cooperative, non-vindictive spirit it originates from.

This highlights another feature of contributive justice, namely its harmony with equality. Equals can perform acts of forgiveness and redemption, whereas retributive and distributive justice both require and demand an inequality in power between the punisher/rewarder and the one being punished or rewarded. If I’m more powerful than you, I’m not likely to let you punish me; if you’re more powerful then me, then you can just take, or not even need, any reward I may wish to offer. Further, this shows how retribution and distribution, punishment and reward, can be seen as flipsides to the same coin of inequality, control and domination. The withholding of a punishment is often experienced as a reward while the withholding of a reward can be felt as a punishment. One cannot help but notice the close fit between retributive/distributive justice and classical behaviorism, operant conditioning, reinforcements, etc. There exists a sharp power distinction between the one providing the conditioning and the one receiving it. These characteristics make this, the most traditional approach to justice, an instrument of something other than freedom, which is the somewhat surprising subject of the next part of the Lord’s Prayer. Regardless, this affinity for egalitarianism demonstrates one of Christianity’s genealogical linkages to Islam, where equality makes a manifest religious appearance.

In sum, combining the modified Golden Rule context with the forgiveness/contributive justice content, one arrives at a sophisticated theory of justice, that is, reciprocal contributive justice (RCJ). I believe RCJ to be a singularly robust conception of justice for reasons already suggested. It finds theological justification and support for forgiving (and I submit redeeming) actions between individuals and among people; it creates, or at least hypothesizes a bridged reciprocity of forgiveness between self and other mediated by God; and it comports well with equality if not actually amplifying it and being amplified by it. By its example, it also throws into sharp relief the intrinsic and pragmatic flaws in traditional retributive/distributive justice schemes, especially how they tend to corrupt into tools of coercion, manipulation and social control in the hands of dominators, whether individual or institutional. I believe that justice itself should aim for higher than the peace of a locked-down prison or the security of well-fed domesticated animals. Such is the style of justice we have now. I think Jesus was recommending a significantly higher quality version of the same idea with much better fruit to show for itself. That is, the result when forgiveness and redemption bridge the chasm of injustice, restoring justice itself and creating what I think can best be called atonement, because grievant and respondent stand together as one again, at one, their just relationship reborn. This is the true meaning of atonement, being “at one.” What injustice rends, justice mends. Finally, this is a much more activist, assertive form of justice that recognizes that it is something made by human intention and action. It is definitely not “what comes around, goes around,” “que sera, sera” or a swinging pendulum moving from one side to the other. That is my understanding at least.

“and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

The close to the wonder sentence of the Lord’s Prayer is simply pregnant with meaning awaiting interpretation. I believe that this is where Jesus introduced his concept of freedom in the form of its natural boundaries and necessary constraints. There are two parts to address distinctly, then how they complement each other, and finally how they interact with RCJ.

First, “and lead us not into temptation.” Much is written about the status of the word “temptation” and who exactly is in the “lead.” I want to examine the gist of this phrase and ask the question, seemingly obvious, of not being led into temptation to do what? What possible candidates for temptation avoidance does Jesus have in mind? I think one can safely rule out ideas like good, right, duty, etc. Conversely, it is quite credible in my opinion that he’s referring to avoiding being seduced to do harm, wrong, injustice, sin or evil. In fact, the second phrase gives us that clue. It is directing God to turn us away from actively doing or causing wrong or evil or passively permitting it to occur. Since RCJ is concerned with state of relationships between individuals and people, I think we can also safely generalize all of these moral and ethical negatives under a general category, namely domination. Further justification of this interpretation comes from the fact that Roman domination was in all likelihood a signal concern for Jesus. This in turn leads to my interpretation of this part of the Prayer as speaking to a negative conception of freedom, which I take as non-domination. Domination can also usefully be thought of as the causing or experience of unnecessary, certainly unjust, constraints, as well as a describing a set of human relationships that intrinsically exclude freedom. I take freedom itself as a form of human relationship that necessarily excludes domination. I will clarify these forms of relationship as we proceed. Let’s just recap by saying that “lead us not into temptation” can be well-interpreted as “lead us to not dominate others.” I tend to further interpret this statement as an affirmation of autonomy, of being autonomous, of ruling one’s self and not ruling others, of self-control. Thus, in its fullness, the phrase “lead us not into temptation” is the negative lower bound of a call for moral and ethical autonomy.

Second, “but deliver us from evil.” This phrase, in addition to clueing us in on the “temptation” phrase’s target, also provides us with the natural complement to its predecessor. Borrowing the same interpretive schema as before, we can transform “deliver us from evil” into “help us to not be dominated by others.” My tendency is to characterize this style of relationship non-negatively as independence, of not being subject to another, dependent upon another, dispossessed by another. Independence is a priority because it is the greater demand upon others, “Do not dominate me.” Autonomy is a way of preserving that independence by acting such that you clearly demonstrate, “I won’t dominate you.” This suggests a reciprocity, “Do not dominate others so as to not be dominated by others,” or “be autonomous so as to be independent.” If it were only that simple. We live in a dog-eat-dog, dominate or be dominated, kill or be killed world. This is clear and represents the practical reality that Jesus confronted in the military occupation of his homeland by the Roman empire with all of its attendant consequences. I believe this was the genesis of his ministry and what he was struggling to displace and replace. The condition he was confronting is still very much with us, even more refined and exponentially more lethal. Thus, the struggle for a humanity that possesses any instinct for freedom is to establish our independence from our animal instinct to dominate. I believe our survival as a species depends upon it.

We now possess a quite powerful complementary moral and ethical duality: Autonomy and Independence; not dominating and not being dominated by others; letting others be free and being free. I suggest that what Jesus has roughly sketched out here are natural boundaries and necessary constraints of human freedom. If freedom and domination are actually antonymic, then this seems to follow ineluctably. There may be quibbles about pairing up the active/passive voice details with independence and autonomy, but given the interpretation I’m offering, I can’t think of better single word descriptors.

These ideas, independence and autonomy, thus comprise the city limits of the kingdom of heaven. If one complies with these constraints, is within the envelope of freedom described by these boundaries, then one is home free. Because we are all fallible (fallen), when we inevitably screw up, violate the constraints, fall beyond the boundary of freedom, we have a way to restore the good and the right, to restore ourselves mutually to freedom, but most importantly, by freedom. That is justice of the RCJ type. This doesn’t require the police or the courts, but can always use the wise and the strong. The Lord’s Prayer doesn’t require moral saints to implement it. To the contrary, it seems Jesus designed it with the fallibility of humanity in mind, in fact as a corrective for our unavoidable catastrophes. This is something that reasonable people can begin doing anytime. But what motive could persuade people to begin, authentically, genuinely to begin the project of liberating humanity from the cycles of violence spurred ever onward by fear, vengeance, avarice, hatred and jealousy? This is truly an almost thankless task, except for the thanks that will be garnered from the generations who may get to exist if we try and succeed. But what could motivate humanity to take this Prayer seriously and try to live up to it? This is where the Great Commandment comes in: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love is a necessary and sufficient condition for justice of the kind found in the Lord’s Prayer. Thus the shocking absence of justice in the world (and manifest vindictiveness and possessiveness masquerading as justice) is a sign of the shocking absence of love in the world. We know that the whole world depends on love, but it seems to be in exceptionally short supply. How this state of affairs came to pass is a fascinating, frustrating question all its own.

So, to summarize where we are so far, the Lord’s Prayer demands the right to live and provides a theory of justice able to sustain and restore the conception of freedom that it spells out. This, in my opinion, is a stunning achievement in political theory, philosophy and ethics. Jesus’s divinity seems to be entirely beside the point here (and almost like an advertisement) if we take the man at his word. And to hearken back to what I said at the beginning, it is truly astounding how much meaning can be packed into so few words. I do find it interesting, no, actually bewildering, that I’ve never heard this preached before. Why not? Some interpretations of the Lord’s Prayer characterize it as simply a way to pray, not for its words or meanings in themselves. Once, at a campus meeting of evangelical Christians, I practically had to implore the male leader of the group to close their ministry with the Lord’s Prayer. He was willing to make his own prayer, and go on and on about it, but seemed somewhat dismissive if not actually contemptuous of the Prayer itself. This is why I sometimes ask self-professed Christians if they think they really understand what Jesus was trying to say and do. But, as Jesus said, by their fruits you shall know them. We can look at the fruits of contemporary Christianity as well as historically and see vast orchards of poison as well as pockets of ripened nourishment. Again, there are reasons for this that implicate the Lord’s Prayer but go beyond the scope of this paper. We now proceed to the doxology.

For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.

Again, not much to say here. Like the encomium to God that opens the Prayer, the doxology, added later, closes it in praise to the Lord. I do like the meaning of “amen” though, “so be it.” Indeed, so be it.

...and yet again

2010-04-29T15:28:00.000-07:00

I felt this change coming from a mile away. The past two changes have slowly forced me to look for a better word than "Welcome" in the second sentence in the ethics text and also in the ethics map. That word is "Relation". Funnily enough, equality is a particular, specific form of relation in mathematics. Math comes to the rescue again!

Poemworld has changed again

2010-04-14T01:43:00.000-07:00

I replaced "respects" with "recognizes" in the sentence which is now, "Welcome recognizes an individual to share a value." This is a generalization and strengthening of how welcome actually works, which is to express a measure of equality, both in establishing and receiving an egalitarian moment. It has some interesting effects that I'm still sorting out. Enjoy!

Poemworld has changed...

2010-03-01T16:41:00.000-08:00

...and it's a quite significant change in my opinion. I exchanged the first and last words of the former "Duty resolves an individual to do a good" sentence, which is how I measure justice as defined, resulting in the new arrangement, "Good resolves an individual to do a duty." This further changes the context sentence to, "Autonomy becomes community by justice or protects right by good from people to approve our collaborations." The idea of mixing the deontological idea of duty with the virtue ethic of good in order to create an ethical defense of right seems simply stunning to me right now. This points towards a way of more tightly constraining ethical imperatives, using "good" as a resolving motivator of duty on behalf of right. "Right" in Poemworld is an well-supported argument in defense of and advocating for a value, e.g. the right to free speech. Defending right by a duty initiated by good seems to me to be a way to exclude ideas like "redemptive violence" as well as a path to linking up with ideas from Christ's admonition to "turn the other cheek", Gandhian non-violent resistance and the U.S. civil rights movements. It also advances an idea I have of replacing the concept of violent revolution as a means to individual liberation and human freedom with a notion of "social implosion" or the collapsing of the "master-servant" dichotomy into the stable center of free people. Whew!

...just to add, this is a nice way for me to derive "might for right" inside of Poemworld. It boils down to "Autonomy... protects right by good resolving an individual to do a duty" which captures nicely what I've always felt is the proper relationship between right, good and duty. "Might" equals both good and duty here.

Poemworld ice prince

2009-11-24T20:24:00.000-08:00

Meet ice princess

2009-06-23T08:13:00.000-07:00

Poemworld has undergone two changes since ice goddess, both occurring in the ethics text and both in one sentence. Originally, the sentence after the "Equality" sentence said, "Acceptance receives an individual to share a value." That became "Acceptance respects an individual to share a value." The final version is now "Welcome respects an individual to share a value." This sentence is how I measure equality as defined in the sentence preceding it. The empirical/experiential measure of equality has always been very difficult for me to pin down. I've significantly strengthened the sense of actualized equality by making both "welcome" and "respect" core components of the sharing of value which has characterized an important part of equality's expression or instantiation.

Poemworld - an artist's interpretation

2009-04-27T18:20:00.000-07:00

My very cool artist friend Anna just provided me with a wonderful description of Poemworld, which I've never considered before: "verbal cubism". Ahhh, Picasso. Thanks Anna!

A new version of Poemworld, ice queen, is soon to be presented. Stay tuned!

Poemworld's latest incarnation - ice goddess

2009-03-24T17:38:00.000-07:00

Poemworld keeps right on changing, getting better and better. My nickname for this version is "ice goddess", for interesting reasons. The last changes involved rotations of the logic and ethics maps; this change is a corresponding rotation of the aesthetics map. Now, if someone would just give me a job...

Global Jubilee then Economic Democracy - a modest proposal

2009-03-09T07:25:00.001-07:00

[cross-posted at Daily Kos]

The global economic disaster, both its causes and cures, has prompted much head-scratching amongst the kept intelligencia, but also between those of us fellow travelers working in the progressive arena. I would like to therefore offer the following modest proposal about our current predicament and a plausible way out and way forward.

But first, a salutary word from John Maynard Keynes, who will be discussed further below:

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.

This shouldn't hurt too much. Onward below the fold...

First, "global jubilee" is borrowed from the biblical meaning of a "time of celebration or rejoicing" and in particular of a time when "debts are forgiven" and "slaves and prisoners freed". In this context, "global jubilee" means a wiping away of world debt, especially between rich and poor nations, as has been the project of Jubilee 2000, but also and importantly between debtors (debt slaves) and creditors (credit masters) in the industrialized world. Please note that the collapse of our financial systems of debt and credit in numerous ways at numerous levels (nobody has explained it better than billmon here) has led to the current situation of failure of money, in essence, to work anymore.

My own opinion is, I think, pretty straightforward. Basically, money, especially in its forms of credit and debt, has been used as a weapon of social control and thus ultimately of privilege and domination, instead of as a tool and instrument of economic utility and thus ultimately of liberty and freedom. This misuse and abuse of the money tool has brought us to the sorry state of affairs we see before us today. But as Keynes observed during the previous great crisis [ht to the shrill one],

This is a nightmare, which will pass away with the morning. For the resources of nature and men’s devices are just as fertile and productive as they were. The rate of our progress towards solving the material problems of life is not less rapid. We are as capable as before of affording for everyone a high standard of life—high, I mean, compared with, say, twenty years ago—and will soon learn to afford a standard higher still. We were not previously deceived. But to-day we have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand.
[italics mine]

Keynes is, of course, correct regarding "the resources of nature and men's devices" and the rest. We still have the resources, knowledge, ability, experience, talent and the rest, that we had before the crisis. What has collapsed are the outmoded resource allocation systems, formerly known as the financial system. I would depart from Keynes (and Krugman) at the "We were not previously deceived." As analysts and commentators from the ultra-shrill end of the spectrum (Chomsky, Herman, Zinn, Ehrenreich, Goodman, et al.) have repeatedly demonstrated, mass deception has been part and parcel of the misuse of money as a weapon of social domination instead of as a tool for social liberation and liberty. For various reasons, including historical (by now just about all the profit that can be extracted has been extracted, aka the falling rate of return on investment) and technological (e.g. the internet as a tool liberating information and communication) as well as economic, the ruse has apparently run its course. The boss has hollered "WOLF" a few too many times to keep the sheeple in line. This isn't to say that mass manipulation has been rendered impotent. Not in the least. Given a perilous enough threat, Goering's law probably still applies. But certain lines of propaganda have, for the time being, rendered themselves obsolete.

I would also disagree with Keynes regarding our being in a "colossal muddle" but partially concur with his "blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand." Adam Smith's "masters of mankind" and their "vile maxim",

All for ourselves and nothing for other people

have been the operant actors and priciple for centuries, even millenia. Witness the favorite maxim of John Jay, founding father and first chief justice of SCOTUS:

The people who own the country ought to govern it.

Or James Madison's admission that he designed the Constitution to

protect the minority of the opulent from the majority.

The point is that our present situation is NOT an accident of well-meaning but blundering financial servants valiantly struggling to make our global financial systems work for the betterment all of humanity. Rather, our contemporary "masters of the universe" have consciously sought to use every instrument and institution within their reach (including but not limited to our putative democracies themselves) to defend, consolidate and advance their hegemony over as much of the material and financial wealth of this planet as they can. Just as every generation of master/ruler/pharaoh/king/boss/bully/etc., has done. Once again, Chomsky says it best, discussing the failed global hegemony project, the "Multilateral Agreements on Investment" (MAI) from the 90s as well as Madison's regret at seeing what he had created:

The operative values of the powerful are rarely articulated with such candor and precision. To be fair, they are not a U.S. monopoly. The values are shared by state/private power centers in other parliamentary democracies, and by their counterparts in societies where there is no need to indulge in rhetorical flourishes about "democracy."

The lessons are crystal clear. It would take real talent to miss them, and to fail to see how well they illustrate Madison's warnings over 200 years ago, when he deplored "the daring depravity of the times" as the "stockjobbers will become the pretorian band of the government--at once its tools and its tyrant; bribed by its largesses, and overawing it by clamors and combinations."

And though they often contest and compete amongst themselves, one would be truly deluded to think that they are not united in their vigilance against what the Trilateral Commission described in the 70's as the threat to global order, namely "the excess of democracy" represented by the civil rights, women's rights, and environmental movements, which struggled to participate in elite decision-making processes they saw coming into their reach. [TocqueDeville has an excellent rec'd diary on our lovely elite's response to the collapse of their most current hegemonic project.]

Part of the remedy to the accelerating global financial freakout is to simply disarm the planet's "owners" by dismantling that form of dominant social relationship, debtor/creditor, which has ceased to function but which Tim Geithner and Larry Summers seem intent on reanimating. Money domination has run its course. Plutocracy, rule by the rich, has again brought the world to the brink of the murder-suicide of our species and the ecocide of our environment, as it always has. Thus, global jubilee, the wiping out of debt, and concomitantly of debtors and creditors, is simply the first step in the complex transformation of the global economy. In fact, "transvaluation" is probably a better term because the next step, "economic democracy," will involve just that, the transformation of value and of valuing on the local-to-global scales.

And, as one friend of mine put it, it's an invitation to one helluva world party!

"Economic democracy" is, I humbly submit, the most dangerous concept facing corporate financial capitalism today. As a category, it includes unions, credit unions, and cooperatives. It can also include other forms of social/economic organizations that adhere to democratic principles, including faith communities and community organizations serving their fellow citizens. Economic democracy is intrinsically and fundamentally opposed to what Noam Chomsky has called "private tyrannies" like corporations, private financial institutions such as banks, and other forms of human institutions running the gamut from undemocratic to virulently antidemocratic. Dismantling unaccountable, uncontrollable institutions of social control and domination is a primary function and goal of economic democracy, insofar as the advancement of human freedom and the retreat of human domination are desirable goals. The renowned American marxist theorist, Abraham Lincoln, captured this sense brilliantly:

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.
The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume II, (August 1, 1858?), p. 532.

Lincoln also pointed out that:

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
Lincoln's First Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1861.

British literary theorist and critic Terry Eagleton put the matter succinctly in his wonderful philosophical introduction to Marx:

Marx's final vision would thus seem somewhat anarchistic: that of a cooperative commonwealth made up of what he calls "free associations" of workers, who would extend democracy to the economic sphere while making a reality of it in the political one. It was to this end - not one, after all, very sinister or alarming - that he dedicated, not simply his writings, but much of his active life. (Marx, Terry Eagleton, 1999, pp. 56-57)

The basic idea here is that democracy, its principles and practices, must become the default organizing process of humanity and its institutions, both political and economic. The vertically-integrated management (i.e. dominance) structures characterizing transnational corporations, et alia, are simply too unresponsive to material and symbolic reality and too wedded to narrow self-interest to be permitted to continue, especially in their huge merged conglomerated forms. As Michael Moore wrote, "If you're too big to fail, then you're too big to exist." With the exception of humanity itself, he's right.

On the other hand, democracy provides humanity with the organizing processes and potentials to permit and promote a new organizational structure, namely, radially-integrated cooperation and collaboration, universally egalitarian and libertarian, and ranging from the local, to the regional, to the interregional (aka national) to the international, to the global, and back again. Democracy, in this context, is much more than voting and representation. Rather, this conception can be described as "deep democracy" and includes practices derived from such sources as Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation, the movement which trained President Barack Obama in community organizing and which developed the concept of "relational organizing". Relational organizing refers to organizing people around the idea of "public relationships" in which the participants hold each other accountable to goals and objectives arrived at mutually and cooperatively. Deep democracy also includes other modes, such as participatory, situational, direct, industrial, environmental, etc. In contrast, the developmental democratic stage of most western industrialized nations can be usefully described as "polyarchy". Though polyarchy is a democratic advance over monarchy, the rise of dominating/dominant institutional forms such as corporations has led to resistance to democratic development and stagnation of movements to alleviate the poverty and misery of much of humanity and protect and preserve our environment and thus, our survival.

Is global economic democracy a pipe dream? Some empirical evidence revealed by the current crisis gives us clues that the world's economic system is driving to this end by itself as of this writing. First, the banks, corporations, insurance companies and others, in their financial distress and insolvency, are running to the democratic governments, i.e. the people, for support and survival. They can't continue without money secured by the willingness of humanity to work, struggle and create. Second, the people themselves are running to democratic governments for relief from the failures of the so-called "private" alternatives, from employment to health care to education and so on. Third, every attempt to stem the crisis by the political-economic masters of the universe has so far failed to reverse the economic decline. Astute economists like Paul Krugman have repeatedly pointed out that our governments' resistance to democratic action and ownership, such as the nationalization of banks in favor of the continuation of evermore futile bailouts, has to this point failed to restore fiscal health to these institutions and they continue to flounder in what investor Warren Buffett has described as a "shambles". We are witness to the ghastly spectacle of servile servant governments desperately attempting voodoo economics to zombify the dead carcasses of departed businesses, their once-wealthy patrons. Monty Python's dead parrot sketch, with John Cleese as the taxpayers, Michael Palin's shopkeeper as Tim Geithner/Larry Summers/Ben Bernanke, etc., and the dead parrot as AIG, Citi, BofA, etc., is probably as close to a pure satirical take as is billmon's brilliant read of Joseph Heller's Catch 22. So, the people, our governments and the economic institutions supposedly serving both, have come to a loggerhead. Who will prevail? Which story will be told? Whatever direction is ultimately chosen, economic democracy or a more extensive, more relentless economic domination, is up to us and the power that we, as an aroused humanity and engaged citizenry, can organize and wield to secure our liberation from economic domination.

I will sketch a brief view of how I see this new economic democratic order. In it, money, a public utility and medium of exchange between otherwise variable and varying values, is no longer abstractly based upon exchange rates, gross domestic products, central bank monetary policies and the like. Instead, a new quantum of value is introduced, that of the human individual. Basing the money system on humanity itself and its discrete unit, the individual, will help to remind us that we are the ones who ultimately "value" and are the "value" that the economy runs on. After all, humanity creates all the value and worth esteemed by the market. Our desiring and choosing in the market drives demand. Our labor and struggle in the material world create the supply to attempt to meet that demand. Further, this change in the very basis of value itself will permit humanity to replace a broken economic paradigm of "growth", which treats the world as "an infinite resource and an infinite garbage can" (Chomsky) with a new economic paradigm of "development", an idea for more suited to sustaining and enhancing life on Earth.

The old system of dominative capitalism simply appropriated the value people created, keeping and accumulating the surplus and passing on just enough money-value to meet subsistence needs, if that, while socially and psychologically disciplining people to accept money-rule, first in the workplace and market, then ultimately throughout in society. An open philosophical question that can be posed at this juncture is whether or not human creativity, upon which domination has flourished through its exploitation, is creative enough to liberate humanity from the very means of domination that our masters have directed humanity to construct, such as money-rule. I don't know the answer to that question, but I believe our survival depends upon how it is finally answered.

In an economic system built upon the value of the individual in the context of collective humanity on lifeboat Earth, human and civil rights form the bulwark of economic demands upon the system itself. Namely, the rights to life, health, liberty and property, to shelter, food, medicine, and education, to participation in mutual self-management of social enterprise, political determination and economic action, all form the necessities to be met by the system before any other pursuits are engaged. You have to do your chores before you can go out to play. Further, the value of the individual can be the basis for a new monetary system, where the wealth of society is equally distributed to its members, and which they can invest for the development of society and realize a new kind of profit which enhances the status of individuals but NOT at the expense of their peers. Gain in this conception can be accumulated by individuals and groups but is constrained to prevent the growth of new dominant individuals and institutions. Loss is constrained to a minimum inalienable worth that guarantees the individual all the necessities of life, if not the superfluities. And one can always start over.

To summarize, the vision I am advocating begins with the resolution of our poltical-economic dilemma by a global economic jubilee and the conclusion of this phase of dominative capitalism and the initiation of a new global economic order based upon free democracy and the intrinsic worth of the individual as described.

In close, few can put matters as candidly as Noam Chomsky, whom I will give the last words:

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued - they may be essential to survival.

Some more of my crazy ideas...

2009-01-27T11:19:00.000-08:00

I now believe that John Locke was wrong about his “spoilage” argument, i.e. one is justified in using property before it spoils, such as food, or should be prohibited from hording same (that part I still agree with). Locke, however, said the invention of money, which he claimed wouldn’t/couldn’t spoil, countered the spoilage argument. My thinking is now that horded money can and does indeed spoil if it is not used to do what money is supposed to do, which is act as a means/medium of exchange to distribute otherwise incompatible or incommensurate use values. Looking at our economy today, I think one can argue that our money has “spoiled”. This supports my argument that money is only incidentally “private property” and is primarily a “public utility.” Further, this monetary spoilage has been aggravated by the deployment of money as a weapon of domination instead of a tool of contributive justice and liberty.

Here’s a modest proposal I made recently on DKos. I think a global economic transvaluation is currently underway. The hollowing out of the use value of money, i.e. its “spoilage”, by its being abused, indicates that it is now time to replace the abstract “exchange” use-value of money (to manipulate/transform Marx’s concepts) with a real, concrete basic unit, that is, the human individual as the basic unit of use value. I think this would help end the wage slavery of humanity to our benevolent corporate overlords, while simultaneously reminding us where all value comes from, namely human beings that have the power to value. Further, such a change would challenge “growth” as the end-all, be-all of economic theory and provide impetus to replace it with “development” as the hallmark of the amplification of value.

Just sayin’.

[This comment, now slightly edited, was first posted on Matt Yglesias's blog at "Think Progress".]

Happy New Year, New President, New Poemworld

2009-01-21T09:47:00.000-08:00

My New Year's resolution is to never again say Poemworld is finished. It keeps surprising me with changes when I do. That said, here is the new Poemworld. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have!

The post of this version of Poemworld is dedicated to Charli, who gave me the courage to do it. You picked me up and turned me around, just like the changes I made to Poemworld. (I told you that you changed me.) Thanks Charli and all love to you.
The photo of Poemworld's 3-dimensional form in the previous post hasn't yet been updated to accommodate the changes in the logic and ethics maps. I'll provide it when I have an opportunity.

Update: A friend, Sandra, turned me on to this quote:

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
Paul Valery
French critic & poet (1871 - 1945)

Well said, Paul, well said. But I hope I don't abandon Poemworld. It will always be a work in progress.

Voilà, Poemworld 3d

2008-11-11T09:10:00.000-08:00

Here is the 3d structure of Poemworld, finally. This is the "actual" appearance of Poemworld, the 2d maps and text forming the blueprint and content respectively. I completed it on 1 September 2008, Labor Day, and I've been monitoring it ever since. It has turned out to be much more than I ever anticipated. It showed me the natural configuration of the 3d structure and revealed that I had been looking at Poemworld's back for the past 14 years or so! I'm also getting wonderful insights into the 2d maps and texts and how they interact inside of the axiological superstructure (the 3x3x3 Rubik's cube) and between the superstructure and the ontological base (the 3-legged, tri-cubic base). In toto, Poemworld is an axiontology, or theory of value being, or a theory of being value.

I'm dedicating this post to my father, Ted Banner, on his 70th birthday today. I love you Dad.

I believe this is it

2008-09-08T23:44:00.000-07:00

This structure has been stable since June 27, the first anniversary of my mother's passing. I've also reconstructed the 3d version of Poemworld and was pleasantly surprised by its appearance. I will post pictures soon.

Poemworld 2KJAZ - new, maybe finished, maybe not

2008-05-17T18:37:00.000-07:00

Here is the new Poemworld. The aesthetics and logic changed between February 3 and March 18-19. New interpretations of these structures came in April. I've also made changes to the dedication and my own name, which is now spelled out completely. Plus, my life has essentially blown up in my face, but that has always happened when Poemworld changes. I'll add more about the details soon. Enjoy!

(Click on the image to enlarge.)

Can we talk value systems? - An Intro to Poemworld

2008-01-12T22:20:00.000-08:00

This post is dedicated to my mom, Sue Abernathy Banner, on her first birthday since her passing last summer. I love you, Mom.

Cross posted at Street Prophets.

Value systems, and their apparent inadequacies, seem to be at the heart of the problems that humanity is currently struggling with. Their diversity yet ubiquity amongst every human community means that they're probably here to stay. Yet their incompatibilities create the friction and heat of violence and conflict, somewhat undermining the notion of these phenomena as being "valuable". This post is in inquiry into value systems, about how we approach and deal with value systems, while introducing what may be a rather interesting, if not novel, new value system I've been working on for some time: Poemworld (Click on image to magnify).

Why do we believe the things we do? Why SHOULD we believe the things we do? What should we believe? Why do we DO the things we do? What is the often honored-in-the-breach relationship between our professed values and manifest acts, i.e. between our words and our deeds, our walk and our talk? And why are we yet quite often willing to kill over value system differences? How can some people use their value systems to dominate others, or to justify killing, or disenfranchising, or firing another?

These are just a nearly random sample of the kinds of questions an inquiry into value systems can generate. The very idea of a value system is itself quite intriguing. Could one build such a thing? Or is the authentic item only transmitted by prophetic vision? How would you know when you have one? The self-referential nature of value systems pops up again - don't you need a value system to evaluate a value system? And is it even appropriate to use the word "nature" in this context regarding value?

The notion of value systems also seems to contains some rather interesting qualities and challenges. For example, how do we evaluate value systems? Wouldn't that require a value system in itself? Can we create or choose our own value systems or are they only transmitted from God, or society, or our parents? Can we change our value systems, as conversion or values clarification attempt, or are they "hard-wired"? Are value systems about ends (teleology), means (instrumentalism, pragmatism) or both? Are value systems subjective or objective or both or neither? One can examine the component words, "value" and "system" for further questions which are already part and parcel of philosophy, theology, axiology, etc. Why "value"? What is the status of "value" itself? Is there, in fact, a singular "value" or are there only "values" plural? The invocation of "fact" raises the whole issue of the "fact-value dichotomy", a particularly Western way of looking at value. Why should "value" present itself as a "system"? Is value an "integrated whole," like a system? Is so, why? If not, why not and how then does value manifest itself or selves? Value systems get weird fast.

But I think that one can usefully grapple with the notion. I want to explore some ideas that I've found helpful in pursuing my own value system, Poemworld, with a little bit of the back story around my own effort.

First of all, I must reveal myself as a methodological naturalist by inclination, with just a touch of the mystical, or my experience of my own ignorance, to keep me both humble and wondering. In this framework, just as we all have a language faculty (discounting pathological examples) that is an evolutionary and genetic inheritance, so I believe, along with folks like Noam Chomsky, that we all have a moral-ethical faculty which is also a product of genetics and evolution. If you've had the opportunity to watch young children on a playground, you'll see many more instances of cooperative or empathetic interactions than competitive and aggressive ones (even amongst American children, I submit!). The linguistic and moral-ethical faculties are in turn part of a broader, deeper human nature. As parts of a natural system, they can be studied, theorized about and even experimented upon, as is currently the case, e.g. experimental philosophy.

I use this argument to address the question of how we can assess or evaluate (judge) value systems. I propose that we use our inherited, built-in, though inarticulated, natural human value system. This makes "man the measure of all things," as Protagoras said, at least regarding value systems. But the methodological naturalist framework is a little more useful in dealing with the radical relativism of Protaoras. The principles of a natural human value system should be fairly constant and stable across the species, though superficial differences can be induced by the setting of certain parameters in different ways. But to invoke a "universal grammar" of human morality, ethics and civics will hopefully not be in and of itself controversial.

Borrowing further from my methodological naturalist tradition, I use "Occam's Razor" as a design criterion. Occam's Razor mandates simplicity and elegance in theory wherever possible. This provides a useful tool in cutting through the thicket of the extraneous and unnecessary and getting to the heart of the matter.

Personally, my own pursuit of a value system was motivated by, amongst other things, the desire to create a "bullshit filter," an honorable idea advocated earlier by punk rock band Crass. I began to realize that the value system I had been indoctrinated with, standard patriotic Americanistic chauvinism, was at variance with the truth, much less value itself, and was pretty harmful to my life and happiness. I started to look elsewhere while at the same time performing something of a value audit on my received white male Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americanism, to see what there was worth salvaging. So yet another approach I use is that of an art connoisseur - I know what I like. But borrowing from my rationalist Enlightenment tendencies, I like to figure out why I like what I like.

These and other approaches are how I began, over 20 years ago in the March of 1987, to create Poemworld. Other hugely significant influences included most profoundly American philosopher and polymath Charles Sanders Peirce (pronounced "purse") and his architectonic philosophical speculation that a complete philosophy could be built out of aesthetics, ethics and logic; American philosopher Robert Nozick, his book The Examined Life and his notion of "non-coercive philosophy"; Noam Chomsky's linguistics and cognitive science on the one hand and his political writing on the other; and British literary theorist and critic Terry Eagleton, whose resonant impact literally helped to "shape" Poemworld into what it is today. Eagleton also provides the quote which explains my very motivation in writing this post, from his luminous The Meaning of Life (2007):

Should the lonely Protestant spirit groping fearfully in the dark be a cause for concern for those who believe that life is what you make it? Yes and no. No, in the sense that making your life meaningful, rather than expecting its meaning to be pre-given, is a perfectly plausible idea. Yes, in so far as it ought to serve as a sober warning that to shape the meaning of one's life for oneself cannot be a matter of fashioning just any meaning that takes your fancy. It does not exempt you from justifying whatever it is that makes your life meaningful at the bar of common opinion. You cannot just say "Personally, I find that the meaning of my life lies in asphyxiating dormice" and hope to get away with it.

Thus, I submit Poemworld for your consideration, and hopefully comment.

Finally, a few remarks. Yes, my real name is Bruce B. Banner. I am not The Incredible Hulk (but how about that World War Hulk this summer!) I am a union officer in Austin, Texas and you can read a news story including me here to verify my existence. If I've whetted your appetite for this kind of thing, check out my blog, http://poemworld.blogspot.com/ for more about Poemworld. And in close, I would like to stipulate that I'm probably wrong. That's what makes me reasonable.

A reorientation of Poemworld's axiological superstructure

2008-01-07T15:38:00.000-08:00

After this past spring and summer's (2007) reorganizations of, first, the aesthetics map, and then the ethics map, I saw an opportunity to better orient the axiological superstructure (the 3x3x3 cubic matrix that looks like a Rubik's Cube) in relation to the ontological base. The axiological superstructure is composed of the aesthetics, ethics and logic maps stacked in layers. As can be seen in the earlier posted photos of the 3d Poemworld sculpture, the aesthetics map was formerly the topmost, forward layer, with the logic map in middle layer, and the ethics map at the lower, back layer interfacing with the ontological base. Before the reorgs, for example, the "Love" set was at the pinnacle and the "Duty" set was at the foot interfacing with the ontological base. The new orientation switches the places of the aesthetics and ethics maps, leaving the logic map in place in the middle layer. (This is fitting enough because the logic map is the only part of the entire structure that remains unchanged. Include the poetics and only the aesthetics text and the logic map went through last year's metamorphoses and transformations unaltered.) Now, the new arrangement has the "free" set of the aesthetics map interfacing quite auspiciously with the ontological base while the elevated ethics is led with a freshly reemphasized "Equality" set at its apex, also quite appropriately.

To summarize, last year between late-March and early-August, Poemworld 2K, as I knew it, radically evolved. These changes in order include: the reorganizational convergence of the aesthetics map to a unique, "Love"-centered arrangement; the exchange in places of the prepositions in the "Independence" and "Autonomy" sentences of the ethics text (which may have foreshadowed the ethics map's fate); the thickening of the boundary line between the "Self" and "World" sets in the ontology, creating an ontological barrier between Self and World; the sudden transformational convergence of the ethics map to its own unique, "Independence"-centered matrix (which miraculously resolved some long-standing design issues with the ethics map while simultaneously asserting a fundamental and far-reaching reinterpretation of both the ethics text and map); a minor print format change in thin line thickness; and finally, the rearrangement of the axiological superstructure itself and how it interfaces with an altered ontological base.

I feel this is worth discussing for the following reasons, which are probably not exhaustive. First, I've been playing with/working on Poemworld since March of 1987, over 20 years. Changes over at least the last dozen years have been very gradual and local. I thought it would always be a work in progress that I would endless tweak it to my grave. But the stunning sudden evolution was not only an fair instance of poetic/artistic punctuated equilibrium, but it signaled the completion of Poemworld itself. In no uncertain terms, the work feels finished, or in a play on words, "I killed it." Poemworld definitely went out with a bang, not a whimper. Second, it is difficult to express the personal experience of these deeply transformative events. The closest I've come is describing it as an artistic epiphany resulting in aesthetic ecstasy that I've never experienced before. The interiority of the relationship between artist and creation over two decades is profound, especially when the work is one's own value system. Third, the "perfection" of Poemworld has now motivated me to push this thing out into the world and see what happens. Terry Eagleton has a splendid quote about this in his recent book The Meaning of Life:

Should the lonely Protestant spirit groping fearfully in the dark be a cause for concern for those who believe that life is what you make it? Yes and no. No, in the sense that making your life meaningful, rather than expecting its meaning to be pre-given, is a perfectly plausible idea. Yes, in so far as it ought to serve as a sober warning that to shape the meaning of one's life for oneself cannot be a matter of fashioning just any meaning that takes your fancy. It does not exempt you from justifying whatever it is that makes your life meaningful at the bar of common opinion. You cannot just say "Personally, I find that the meaning of my life lies in asphyxiating dormice" and hope to get away with it.

Stay tuned.

Poemworld 2K.pdf

2007-07-15T21:54:00.001-07:00

For a printer suitable version, here is Poemworld_2K.pdf. Simply click on the "Download Now" button at the FileFront.com webpage.

Poemworld 2K

2007-07-15T11:27:00.000-07:00

The structure of Poemworld 2K

2007-07-14T08:53:00.000-07:00

This is the basic structure of Poemworld 2K, an axiological superstructure resting upon an ontological base, or in simpler terms, my value system. This model was made many years ago and hasn't been updated with Poemworld 2K's latest content, but the 3d structure over all is identical. Please ignore any words that are legible as they're probably no longer the same or in the same place.

I'll try and post Poemworld 2K itself tomorrow.

Apology

2007-07-10T21:40:00.000-07:00

I have just discovered that I've been emailing around a horribly misnamed file of my value system Poemworld 2k. For any whom I may have offended or may offend, I apologize.

Institutional Domination

2007-01-15T13:27:00.000-08:00

I read a great post (which I can't find now) regarding corrosive and corrupting effects of institutional domination. I appreciate completely the concepts described, as I am a teacher union officer in Texas. I see the mutilating effects of institutional obedience everyday, not the least in myself.

My analysis starts from a concept of "domination," and from that everything else flows. I've come to the conclusion that domination is THE bug in our common human software. Literally every form of abuse, neglect, harm, etc., seems to be one mode or another, or mixed modes, of domination.

My notion of human freedom is built up in contrast to what I think is a simple observation of what domination objectively is -- a form of human relationship. Thus, I consider freedom to be that set of human relationships in which at least two constraints apply: 1. one isn't dominating another or others (autonomy); and 2. one isn't being dominated by another or others (independence). Meeting those two constraints is the beginning of human freedom. After that, one is confronted with an unbounded set of problems of freedom, which places significant demands on human creativity to address.

Some of my posts to Chomsky's blog at ZNet...

2005-01-01T23:23:00.000-08:00

hi bwong, realpc, Robert Allen, r4d20, joeblogs56, et alia,

I've been following this thread for a few days and it seems to have jelled into a socialists v. capitalists argument, and somewhat far afield of Chomsky's original post. It's also gotten somewhat tired, i.e. both sides' positions aren't moving and no one seems to be persuading the other.

I would like to take up nohope's earlier despair regarding the meaning of freedom, iirc, and see if the issue of freedom can't be usefully reframed. [First, I would like to recommend Ian Carter's two-part "The Concept of Freedom", an excellent review: http://mason.gmu.edu/~ihs/hsrfall96.html#Freedom and http://mason.gmu.edu/~ihs/hsr/w96hsr.html#freedom] I wasn't very clear on the meaning of freedom until I counterposed what I think is its opposite -- domination. Now, I know what domination is, it's a form of human relationship, something individuals and groups do to and with each other. Importing this observation back into a meaning of freedom, one can reasonably see that freedom is a form of human relationship, in particular one that obeys at least two constraints. Constraint #1: the individual or group is not being dominated by others (independence); and Constraint #2: the individual or group is not dominating others (autonomy). If freedom is a form of relationship and if domination is freedom's opposite, then it seems to follow that these constraints must hold for a self-consistent concept of freedom to be possible.

I raise this observation because my interpretation of this thread's disagreement is over to what extent domination is necessary or reasonable, especially economic or market domination. realpc seems to think that as long as the marketplace isn't coercing or discriminating against one, then one is "free" (negative freedom) and any government intervention will result in "Berlin's paradox, whereby people can be 'forced to be free'". Robert Allen is clearly opposed to any market domination ("oppression") whatsoever and proposes basically a democratic socialist intervention into the political economy to ameliorate the effects of capitalism, if not eliminate them altogether, a "positive freedom" project. Further, Chomsky's post talked about whether freedom was a claim or a moral thesis. Chomsky says moral thesis and places the responsibility for justifying domination (slavery, patriarchy) on those who would dominate. Thus, my proposed reframing of this thread's argument would be to replace the capitalism v. socialism fight with a discussion of domination, especially economic, which seems to pass muster with US society, even be encouraged, and seems to be ever more confused with freedom itself. That is, "freedom" in the US seems to be some form of social-political-economic dominance. Anyway, I believe this reframing may be fruitful because I hope it will create a dialogue that can circumvent a useless "left-right" shouting match. FWIW.

hi bwong,

Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I'm not trying to broaden or narrow the scope of the discussion. Rather I'm suggesting that it might be useful to refocus it. Interestingly enough, the concepts of "capitalism" and "socialism" have been batted around without precise specification, especially considering the difference between the pragmatic vs. propaganda meanings. The ownership of the MOP is not well-defined. But I don't believe one needs to proceed with mathematical rigor in order to productively discuss these matters. They're not rocket science or brain surgery and what people can confidently assert seems pretty thin to me so I think it is safe to speculate. I don't think you need any qualifications to talk about freedom, domination, democracy, tyranny, socialism, capitalism, etc. In fact, in a real and substantive democracy these would be topics of manifest importance.

I appreciate your statement that, "Personally I think domination is a human condition if you want to use the word in its broadest sense(as understood by philosphers). Chances are everytime when you have two people interacting with each other one person would dominate even in the absence of any social structure(to varying degrees depending on the parties involved) A sort of thought experiment is described in William Golding's 'Lord of the flies'." It rather makes my point for me. If this is really your position, that "domination is a human condition", then why try to mitigate the harms inherent in the status quo, regardless of what you call it? You said you find the core of capitalism's immorality its demand that individuals "justify their worth by proving their 'usefulness' for capital". This capital can only do from a position of dominance. Chomsky says that departures from freedom must be justified. I agree. That's why I'm suggesting that we examine this issue from a framework of freedom vs. domination.

Here's an example of what I'm suggesting: both the public AND private ownership of the means of production can be and have been used to liberate, dominate or both (this could lead one to examine the concept of "ownership" as well as the public-private dichotomy). Both capitalism and socialism have been used as excuses to dominate whole societies and now one is used as justification to subjugate the planet. I've also noticed that most things in life -- power, language, technology, money, labor, human nature itself -- are morally and ethically neutral, they're neither good nor bad in themselves. It's human agency, i.e. what we choose to do with power, language, etc., that adds a moral and ethical dimension to these other concerns. Fundamentally, I see humanity's choice as freedom or domination. All human progress, as far as I can tell, has been the expansion of human freedom and the contraction of human domination, not always at the same time. Again, I recommend at least a complementary discussion of freedom vs. domination to go with the left-right, socialism-capitalism conflict.

Thanks for the compliment, joeblogs56. Like bwong, I do believe that domination is part of the human condition, especially male domination from sexual selection, which I believe has become infused throughout human culture globally and historically. Dominating and being dominated also have physiological and psychological effects which I do not believe should be discounted. But being a part of human nature doesn't make domination immutable. Rapid human social and cultural evolution and the evidence of human progress itself suggest that domination can be mitigated, though I view freedom itself as inherently unstable, sort of like a pencil balanced on its tip. There is a stability point where the pencil can stand on its tip and not fall over, but it's very vulnerable to perturbations and thus one must always be available to restore freedom's stability should it begin to corrupt into domination. If one desires freedom, then one must accept the concomitant unbounded set of problems of freedom, first and foremost of which is domination.

I agree that a dialectical process of human consciousness working on human institutions and vice versa might possibly advance towards a vision of universal human freedom, but human institutions, or structures, are clearly working overtime to mystify, deceive, intimidate and manipulate humanity to forestall that future. Contemporary corporate communications as I see it are designed to eliminate the back-and-forth of a dialectic (as I understand dialectical process from Terry Eagleton). Basically, what I see is this: all of the problems facing humanity at this historical juncture are forms of domination. Racism, sexism, classism, environmental degradation, fundamentalism (both secular and sectarian), jingoism, etc., are either modes of domination itself or instances of supremicist ideologies that pose as justifications for domination.

Btw, I am an individualist as well as a socialist. I don't see them as antagonistic though they can be placed into opposition. Most of the "bad" individualism I encounter is actually egoism, which I try to clearly distinguish from individualism itself, which I take as a concept of integrity. I like the word freedom because it captures in the affirmative what anarchism captures in the negative, namely the absence of archism, or domination. FWIW, I actually have a somewhat broader framework than freedom vs. domination that I work within. I like using the concept of freedom with a concept of value and I analogize value as something like mass-energy and freedom as like space-time. Value and freedom are clearly different things. But in the limit as both approach zero, I believe that freedom becomes domination and value becomes "evil", or the absence of value. I have a hypothesis that I've been working on that domination and evil are the same thing, that "domination is evil" -- what I call the DIE hypothesis. I'm always looking for refutations of the DIE hypothesis, which should include examples of evil that are not simultaneously domination or examples of domination that are not evil.

This blog is about freedom and domination...

2004-12-01T09:25:00.000-08:00

...and my thinking on what these ideas mean. Since the end of the election and the pervasive feeling of doom that I and others are feeling, I want to start posting more and hopefully engendering some discussion on what I believe is THE problem of human existence at this stage of our history -- domination. I think that domination is the fundamental problem of human freedom. At this point in human social development, it is clear that as a species we have the wealth, the resources, the knowledge and the ability to provide food, clothing, shelter, health care and education for all of humanity on Earth, that is, we live in the era of post-scarcity, which formerly pitted people against each other in the struggle to survive. If this is a post-scarcity period, then the fact that billions of people live in misery and poverty is due to human domination.

I also want to use this blog to share with you readers the authors, thinkers, organizations and ideas that I've found useful in exploring how we can expand human freedom and contract human domination. The man most responsible for the development of my thinking along these lines is Noam Chomsky. He has an analysis of the election that I found very original and even hopeful, as usual.

In close, I want to point out something that is mentioned in Mark Hayes's dissertation on domination, i.e. how little is actually written about this idea itself. He has some pretty pithy comments about how performing websearches under "domination" yields mostly sex sites with people doing strange things to each other. I want to foreground domination and try and get people to start seeing all of the control and oppression that routinely goes on in their lives that I believe is almost totally unnecessary and usually harmful. I'll also share my own value system, which this blog is named for, that I've been working on for about 17 years (as soon as I figure out how to post it).

So I hope this is the beginning of something cool that will contribute to humanity realizing our true potential and hopefully avoiding the murder-suicide of our species, as well as a whole bunch of other species with us.

Some links that I've found interesting...

2004-07-09T23:17:00.000-07:00

if you're interested in learning about freedom and domination.

Prof. Ian Carter has a two-part paper on "The Concept of Freedom. Part I: Background, Methodology, and the 'Positive-Negative' Debate", Humane Studies Review Online, Autumn 1996; and "The Concept of Freedom. Part II: Classical Liberalism and Contemporary Debates", Humane Studies Review Online, Winter 1996. [Readers may have to check Google's cache of these articles.] Prof. Carter's papers are exceptionally well written and catch one up with current research pretty quickly.

Prof. Mark Hayes has published his Ph.D. thesis "Domination and Peace Research" online. Prof. Hayes's thesis is a bit harder slogging but worth the effort.

I'll have more on my own thinking in due time.

Ecce blog

2004-07-08T14:08:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog. I hope you will find your visits to poemworld enjoyable now and in the future. Poemworld is interested in ideas of freedom and domination in the context of value. More to come...