The Berkeley Anthropology Dept never wrote me back on the pronunciation; if the Reader thinks s/he has an authoritative source, please go ahead and chime in the comment below...
For generalists, some geeks, and many weirdo thinkers of other stripe, it seems inevitable that we will come to "see" and then ponder quizzically about some What-If notions at the root (i.e, radical) of Things: What if we weren't hung up on sex as some taboo-like Entity? What if, as I wrote about recently, we never accepted that Land could be owned by anyone? What if, instead of alcohol, sugar, caffeine and TV as our main drugs (I know I'm sounding awfully ethnocentric here, but play along?), we had no prohibitions on drugs, but our main ones were cannabis, ceremonial use of psilocybin/DMT/LSD and meditation? What if a main focus in all education for children was a constant, year-after-year study of how language and all media work in our own nervous systems, our interpersonal relationships, and society? What if our banking system was decentralized and we held fast to Aristotle's basic idea about money and economics: that trading one thing for another via the medium of money is economics, but the making of money out of money with no other goods involved in a transaction was considered debased and almost vile "Art" of chrematistics?, id est, speculation and usury? What if, after WWII, the North American countries worked hand-in-hand with the Europeans in a massive project of constant innovation into solar energy?
Pick any one of those scenarios (and any other ones you can think of) and...go ahead: just try and imagine how different our world would be.
But it's not any of those worlds. We look at what's at the end of our fork, right? It's a naked lunch. What are we gonna do about it?
Douglas Rushkoff as (one of) the New (Non) Prophet(s)
Douglas Rushkoff has written one of the more important works of our time, and when it came out I read it and chatted it up to anyone that would would listen, but I couldn't find anyone who'd read it or seemed genuinely interested. It's called Life, Inc: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back. Interestingly, now I've seen it referred to as the "bible of the Occupy movement" in more than one place. Corporations have so thoroughly colonized our modern consciousness that we probably have only the slightest idea the extent. The corporation has become deeply internalized and almost invisible in some ways. If you "ain't got the time" to read a book like this, just read pp.xxiii-xxv. (Rushkoff's book has been released in a 2nd edition with a different subtitle.)
Automation and Its Discontents
When I discussed Philippe Van Parijs's idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) in other posts on Missing Public Discussions (and this is one that remains "missing"), one of the reasons I did so was because of my lifelong fascination with the radical implications of technology on culture, and in particular for our purposes here, automation. The idea of automation, if we go back and read books from the late 1940s through the 1970s (maybe later), was usually, "How wonderful! Automation will free us from drudgery! We will have more free time to do what our creative imaginations guide us to do! Many more of us will be able to self-actualize!" Etc.
Well, yes, we now have automation like a runaway train, and yet the Ruling Class doesn't care: the given Machine, invented by the collected creativities, intelligences, and energies of perhaps a few million people, put 73,000 people out of work? Well, go get Another Job! I own this Machine! I make the rules! What are ya, one dem commies?
And we/they did. Get another job. And again. And some of us, again. And the jobs left the country due to Neo-Liberal "free trade" agreements, just like (sorry, but I have to say this 'cuz it's true) Nikolai Lenin said would happen as capitalism progressed. "It must always be need in search of new markets." Yep, including labor markets.
But what does it mean to have a job nowadays? Almost everyone will think you're insane if you ask them this question. Or the ones that don't think you're insane will give some wry line about a Dog's Life, or something along the lines of Megadeth's "If there's a new way/I'll be the first in line/But it better work this time." ("Peace Sells...But Who's Buying?") But I'm serious: Is life about having a job? How is a job different than working? What does the Protestant Work Ethic and the spirit of capitalism mean in times like this? Were we sold a bill of defective goods when we read about the marvels of automation as a kid? (Kinda like most of the people around me thought NAFTA was just great when they heard the political language from the TV?)
The "work ethic," I will assert but not argue, no longer "works." Oh, feel free to take issue with me, cite some special cases and counterfactuals. But I still say: it's now bunk. The thing is: what to do? What is value? What is today's "make-work"? How long can this last? What happens when a new Epoch seems to tap you on the shoulder and say, "Sorry we got here a bit early...the traffic was great!"?
Wittgenstein Got This Stuff, Too
"The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something - because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his inquiry do not strike a man at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck him. ---And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful."
-Philosophical Investigations, 3rd ed., fragment #129 in Part 1, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe (What is up with the $45 price tag at Amazon? Go to a used bookstore, and I bet you can get it for under $8. Or better yet, be the first person in the last nine years to check it out from your local public library? I include the Amazon links mostly due to the extra info on book and author, and reviews that diverge from my POV.)
Now, some sticklers may say the OG has gone on parole with "paideuma;" if so I confess that to the best of my knowledge the definitions - whether Frobenius's "soul of a culture" or Pound's "tangle of complex inrooted ideas of the time" (I paraphrase from memory, not seeking at this time to re-read my previous warblings from August) or something like a rhizome that runs like ivy up and down the walls of any given culture in place and time...nonetheless, you get the Idea?
