From: storeyd (storeyd@bc.edu)
Date: Sat May 29 2004 - 16:15:31 BST
Hey all,
David M wrote:
>I think the first big problem is that we seem to value
>material possessions over cultural and intellectual ones.
Yes, but I would go further and say that the even bigger problem is valueing
possession, period. material craving is an effect of and possibilized by
biological desire, which exerts a downward pull on intellectual frution, which
itself exerts a downward pull on any sort of existential/spiritual vertical
movement, any dancing with the sublime. It's not that we don't have
intellectuality in our culture; quite the opposite, we have a dangerous
surplus. the problem is that that great cognitive advance is highjacked by
the lower levels--and what do we get? corporate scandals, politics governed
by special interests, environmental negligence, a blatant disregard for social
welfare programs, and not too mention a crisis in marital, familial, and
invididual psychic coherence. all of this is bound up with grasping, whatever
we want to call it: greed, pride, possession. greed is the lowest, because
its pure materiality; its the individual level doing the work of the inorganic
level, which is almost the ugliest moral regression. its the least human.
But my point is that the root of all these different forms of evolutionary
regression is possession per se, that is, grasping itself, which is always and
can only be the work of the ego-I, at the intellectual level...that is why the
i-level is the heaviest double edge sword of the bunch, because it has all the
levels at its disposal, AND IT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE WELL-BEING OF ALL THE
LEVELS BELOW IT. that is the trouble with capitalism: it only focuses on the
INDIVIDUAL component of its considerable sociopolitical advances (bills of
rights, private property, free enterprise, etc.), and, in practice, neglects
the COLLECTIVE responsibilites that accompany those advances. in the
evolutionary spiral, there is no free lunch, anywhere, ever. in fact, that
higher you go up the totem, the higher the level, the greater freedom, but the
greater responsibility. I think a problem with capitalism is that its soft
and easy, it enables moral neglect; its like the serpent in the garden. It
coos to the senses...but this is nothing new...it's all samsara no matter
which way you slice it. the real deal is that nothing CAN ever truly be
possessed, not a person, not a bauble, not the tiniest grain of sand. the
picture is always, always more than the frame. So we could say that
capitalism induces one of the basest and grossest cultural instantiations of
this possessing/grasping drive, but that that drive itself is what causes ALL
of the m, cultural, political, and psychic strife in the universe, and all of
these are moral hemorrages
Best,
-Dave
>?
>
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