The very deliberate(d) and well-orchestrated attacks ( there was surely nothing "irrational" about these acts) on the symbolic heart of the imperialistic U$ Capitalist system and its awesome military enforcement arm (we can`t really say defense, can we!) The Pentagon, reveals the appalling level of alienation besetting and further dividing ' homo sapiens' at the very beginning of the so-called 22nd century.
Alienation is an idea with ancient origins that has been given prominent attention in nearly all the classical philosophical trends in both the East and West....' the tragic fate of man.' Argued by some to be the result of a flaw in the very nature of human beings, or at least within individual members of the human species, such puerile ' explanations ' - with their emphasis on the ' fallen ' or ' flawed ' individual - fail dismally to adequately explain (let alone re-solve) the burgeoning range of widespread socio-economic, political and ecological pathologies threatening the future of life of the planet. Subsequent explanations, such as those revolving around the idea by the eighteenth century German philosopher Hegel that ' man is alienated because human labour is alienated ', open the way to a much more ' grounded ' analysis by Marx who, in rejecting the idea of the alienation of labour as a universal anthropological characteristic, asserted that the alienation of labour is not bound to human existence in all places and for all future time but (rather) is a specific result or outcome of particular forms of social and economic organisation. Indifference and alienation are today at the heart of the ever-widening gulf between ' the haves' and ' the have-nots ' now dividing not just the citizens of U$, English and Australian etc society, but the world community as a whole - wherein countless millions of human beings are being relegated as ' cheap labour ' and used or exploited in the (over)production of a mind-numbing array of commodities to be sold within a now globalised mode of production and marketing, with the surplus (profits) from same being concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority of fabulously wealthy (and thus politically powerful) elites....the 357 ' billionaires ' around the world, the 5 million or so ' millionaires' in the U$A and their counterparts in Asia, Australia, China, Russia, the ' United ' Kingdom and so on. At the same time, however, several billion other world citizens - in both the so-called ' underdeveloped ' Third World - AND the so-called ' advanced, civilised democracies ' - are being thrown on the scrapheap of involuntary un-employment, under-employment or unpaid labour (such as that provided 24 hours per day x 365, by family Caregivers of people with dependent disability ), and forced to subsist in a marginalised status - having an increasingly diminished and largely irrelevant place in either sphere of production or consumption of the massive outputs from the globally dominant system of production for profit (as opposed to need). Whilst the division of labour in society (and resulting alienation) may well have begun, "probably ...in the early theocratic "civilizations", as Brad McCormick suggests (although social and economic anthropologists such as Karl Polyani would most likely disagree), both phenomena have increased exponentially since the development of a Capitalist mode of social production and re-production overthrew the ' less-than-optimally-efficient ' Feudal system some 300 or so years ago in Western Europe. Among the results, for our contemporary social formations, are narrowly proscribed and fiercely contested notions of ' work ' and ' value ' dictated to the majority of us by highly-credentialled - but usually appallingly ignorant - econocrats and others of the Managerial/Administrative Class, aided and abetted by the spin doctors from the parasitic PR and Advertising industries....not to forget members of the parliamentary and legal ' professions ', who legislate and uphold The (industrial) Law(s) that regulate/control the pay rates and conditions of the Working Class in an otherwise anarchic ( ie ' free' ...of interference by government, unions, religious ' do-gooders ' or anybody else) market-place. Thus, how many of the obscenely-overpaid members or ' executive ' employees of, e.g., the New York Stock Exchange, the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank, IMF, the OECD, giant Insurance and Accounting firms and so on, are even aware of (or the least bit interested in) the poor working conditions and level of remuneration for the symphony orchestra workers and other artists (whose labour ' entertains ' them) alluded to by Brad McCormick and Ray Evans Harrell? What hope, then, for the countless millions of indigenous campesinos and peasant workers throughout the ' under-developed ' world, whose exploited and alienated labours enable First World ' executives ' (and their families) to enjoy their imported coffee and other exotic foods, fossil fuel products, building materials (exotic timbers and marbles etc.), precious metals and gemstones....all shipped or flown across the world for their privileged indulgence, whilst their own children die of easily preventable diseases because of sub-standard working and living conditions? And while nurses and music therapists who work to ease the suffering of the terminally ill are forced to work double shifts or leave their noble professions because of low pay, overwork and disillusion, ' professional ' football players, golfers, pretty TV news-readers, financial ' consultants ' and the like rake in millions, if not tens of millions of dollars PER YEAR for their ' work ', travelling the globe in THEIR ' private ' jet aircraft, designing/building/owning exclusive sporting-resort facilities that consume enough water and financial capital (money) to maintain many thousands of " The Needy" in either the ' Third World ' or their own ' rich country '! Protecting the god-given rights and privileges of these parasitic ' elites' are the war-mongering ' executives ' who ' manage ' the giant weapons-manufacturing TNCs and various branches of the State military and para-military apparatus`, and whose role it is to protect the ' private ' property interests of their ' superiors ', the ruling elites. In anthropological terms, then, the exceptionally well-planned and executed destruction of the WTC and attack on the Pentagon reflect the deep-seated anger and total indifference/alienation by those responsible towards their mostly innocent victims, in a reciprocal payback for often decades or more of gross injustices and cruelties imposed upon their people, and rapacious exploitation of their labour and the natural resources located within the land of their forebears, under the ideology of bringing ' progress ', ' freedom ' ,' and ' democracy ' to their lands. john foster
