It's now some time since I read Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate" in which, if I recall, he argued that our brain is not simply a vacuum which can absorb anything put to it in the early phases of childhood. It is something with a built-in capacity for language, numbers, and perhaps beliefs, all of which are essential if a person is to find a path and meaning in life. When it comes to beliefs, it would seem that there is a built-in requirement for mythologizing and explaining ourselves and defining our place in the universe and in society, and hence a need to organize ourselves on the basis of our beliefs. Religious and philosophical beliefs fulfill the purpose of defining ourselves in a cold and hostile universe. Social thinking is essential to organizing our survival here on earth. Theories of social organization such as those put forward by Adam Smith and Karl Marx provide blueprints and explanations for such organization. When supportive beliefs are in decline or absent, all hell can break loose as it did following the fall of Rome and, recently, the collapse of the Soviet Union. New theories - really, a new sense of what things are about - have to become widely implanted in a population if a sense of normalcy is to be restored. And of course there is the ego. Someone must lead, as Putin now leads in recently-chaotic Russia and as Hitler did following the collapse of the Weimar Republic.
But we're not bees! If I remember anything about bees, it's that they're born to perform specific tasks. The individual bee has to be a worker or a drone or, if it is lucky, a queen. It cannot be anything else. The organizational blueprint evolved over the ages and cannot be changed. Bees can't even begin to think about whether they should be communists or capitalists. They're just bees. That's all they can bee. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: "Arthur Cordell" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]>; "'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION'" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 9:56 AM Subject: Re: [Futurework] FW: How M.I.T. Ensnared a Hacker > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fable_of_the_Bees > > Mandeville's fable of the bees (The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, > Public Benefits) had an impact on the thinking of the time and Adam Smith > was influenced by it. > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Spencer > Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 3:51 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: [Futurework] Re: FW: How M.I.T. Ensnared a Hacker > > > Ed wrote: > >> I don't think capitalism is exploitive. > > Not intrinsically. I borrowed money from a friend to buy my first big > studio. She made a few bucks on money she didn't need for anything else > just then. A friend put several years of sweat equity into an alternate > energy company, taking less than market salary. The company failed but he's > not angry as he knew all the principals worked in good faith. > > I just spotted this squib (take a little out of context here): > > This undoing of democracy to which Roy refers, and the dystopian > society that is being created in its place, can be grasped in the > current subordination of public values to commercial values and > the collapse of democracy into the logic and values of what might > called a predatory casino capitalism where life is cheap and > everything is for sale. [1] > >> However, what we've found time and again is that, no matter how nicely >> a system can be explained theoretically, it doesn't really work that >> way. Why? Invariably, the system gets taken over by people who make >> it work to their advantage. > > But one of the axioms of capitalism is that if everyone with capital tries > to make the system "work for their advantage", then such nice certainties > such as the guiding hand, unique equilibria and convexity will guarantee the > best of all possible worlds. At least we can agree that the Soviet > apparatchiki who turned the (putative) communist system into state > capitalism for their own benefit were acting contrary to communist > principles. The capitalists who are exploitive or predatory are just > following the rules. > > Or maybe I just have a jaded view of capitalism as it has been embodied in > my lifetime. > > - Mike > > > [1] > http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13998-the-new-extremism-and-politics-of-di > straction-in-the-age-of-austerity > > > > -- > Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. > /V\ > [email protected] /( )\ > http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^ > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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