John said:
> 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
>
