Greetings Economists, Joanna writes, You also leave out one important social space -- that created by religion. It seems to me that the official religion of the left is atheism and I think this is a huge loss. I think the left needs to recongize that there is a whole spectrum of religious belief in the U.S. -- ranging from the communal meditative practices of Buddhists and Quakers...to extreme Xtian fundamentalism. To put all these practices into the same "basket of delusion" is a big mistake. It completely shuts out many communities that do believe that the right to life is greater than the right to property, and these communities would well be worth working with.
Doyle, And I think you leave out another space that concerns feelings, sex. You mention 'Good Vibrations' once in a while. So I'll comment a little bit about that in a left political context down below. But first I agree with you that emotion structure does allow us to consider religionist space. They also form groups. Meet regularly and as Yoshie writes, Yoshie, In the USA, there is no hard dichotomy between "the left" and "the church," unlike in nations with a history of anti-clerical radicalism due to the established church's functioning as a great land owner itself or an accomplice with fascists. There is no established church to begin with here. The USA has few secular left institutions, so most political meetings have to be and are held in private homes, union halls, college classrooms, and places of worship. In nations where left-wingers have an organized presence, they have their own party offices and buildings where they can conduct their own business and offer public spaces for allied social movement affairs. Doyle, Which makes the left's relationship to religion somewhat different than elsewhere. The emotional relationship of most people to their friends and family reflects theoretical guesses by the religious about social cognition. In a sense for example with regard to homosexuality the Christian Church has on the whole advocated a particular line toward sexual love. Where sexual love is what everyone thinks of as core emotional states for human society. In other words if we could gain some insight to production of emotional structure we could substantially affect what most people consider religious activity. Religion in many cases seems to be postulating what a mass mind is. God being some sort of unified thought process that people can use to address basic social concerns. Why can't the left take on such speculation about the unified cognitive mind? An amazing alternative sexual regime is in a minor ethnic group in China, the NA. They don't have a concept for husbands and fathers. Think about that. Those concepts are invented emotional categories that could be overthrown. The Chinese government has tried for decades to stamp out the NA. Their social structure isn't necessarily appropriate to what I am suggesting, but the Chinese communist have had considerable difficulty in breaking down that assumptions. Women's sexuality control seems to have favored a woman centered society (the NA) in which they chose to pass property through the mother. Back to emotion structure. Religions tends to advocate moral systems in the west. And these then tend to linger in the popular mind about how to organize behavior. A lot of that is non verbal. For example, in sex if one talks about sex with someone, like hey you wanna fuck? Usually that gets one turned down. Usually people approach sex by silently doing things with the body. That shows us how critical feelings are, since the activity depends upon emotions to have sex work. If the left were to try to work in these areas of silent emotion work, is that potentially a break through area for social structure as a whole? Suppose a left really got hip deep into this area that religions traditionally control? My guess is doing emotion work would be the way for women to become a major factor in building the left. Some basic efforts for women to build a woman centered left. It would look substantially different from Pen-L. I'll give you what jumps out at me in current U.S. culture that says women centered social and emotion structure directions. Sim City the video game attracts a majority female audience. There you see the kind of work a woman centered left would arise out of. I'm not talking game playing. I'm talking about how women tend to consider building relationships, and emotion structure that a left might offer. Lastly Good Vibrations tells us something. Again because it has a focus on women's sexuality, what sort of left could absorb and build a social movement that reflects what we see in the grass roots Good Vibrations culture? I believe the key element is emotion structure and an economic analysis. Good Vibrations is a business, and thriving in a difficult time. What is happening? thanks, Doyle Saylor
