> Please excuse my ignorance, but I don't follow, "follow the bananas" or "J. > Fred Max." I'd appreciate some enlightenment on these burning questions. I don't think ignorance is at issue, just a taste for my jokes and a certain amount of aging. My point was that if human history is two million years long, than the first million and a half would seem to have little relevance to the problems of modern society, except in some very profound psycho/anthro sense that would take extended scholarly work to uncover, and even more trouble to explain to me. Re: "J Fred etc.", before you were born there was a television star named J. Fred Muggs with a taste for bananas. > Actually, Max, I think it does. Prior to agriculture, people hardly worked > at all, and didn't have a sense of "work" as separate from leisure (as far > as we know). The economy as a separate sphere of the world, in particular, > is an invention of capitalism. If capitalism was a logical and progressive stage in history, about which Marx seems right to me, and since Marx's envisioned successor to capitalism is nowhere in sight, then "work" in quotes or something close to it is an inescapable feature of the modern world. > And please don't make me out to be stupid (ignorant, okay, but not stupid): > I'm *not* suggesting we should kill 5 billion or so people, destroy all the > machinery, factories, and buildings, give up agriculture, and practice > hunting and gathering. Not at all. You're racing way beyond what I was talking or thinking about or imputing to or about anybody. I do wonder about alternatives informed by your implied critique of capitalist work and social relations, in terms of their nature and, most of all, their practicality. Maybe we differ in that one impulse is devoted to creating a legacy of a vision which future generations will find illuminating and useful, and frankly I'm interested in work whose beneficial, tangible effects I will live to see, not least because I would like to be assured they are indeed forthcoming. As I've said before, if I was in academia I might have different inclinations. Cheers, MBS
