On Fri, 23 Sep 1994, anne jordan dashiell wrote:
>
> what i cant help but "argue" is that without the spiritual base, any of
> the things we talk about here are futile, and band-aid solutions. and
> capitalism as far as i can see a dead-end system. and really i dont put
> much stock in socialism either...cuz no matter what economic organization
> we use, if the human beings using them are detatched from nature were
> gonna use them foolishly. economic systems have been oppressive to most
> involve since at least the dawn of yaweh..if not way way before. but not
> always!! did native americans or africans destroy their ecology before
> europeans colonized them? NO! cuz people who are in tune with nature know
> that what we do to nature we do to ourselves!!
>
I still don't see a definition of spirituality here, beyond the vague
sense that we're all connected, like they used to say in the NYNEX ad.
What Native Americans and pre-imperial Africans did is really irrelevant
right now; we can't go back to that "unfallen" state. (Not that I'd want
to. I like living longer than 30 years and being able to read and travel
beyond the village I was born in.) So capitalism's out, and socialism's
out, and I assume any other existing -ism's out too. What does that
leave? How do humans get alienated, and what can be done about it, beyond
mere moral/spiritual exhortations to repair the frayed connections?
As Adorno said, the image of undistorted nature arises only in
distortion, as its opposite.
Doug
Doug Henwood [[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Left Business Observer
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