My Indian friend Vam says there could be a day when this economic rot falls away and we can see some truth of what we are and can be. His following translation from the Vedas makes one wonder:
O Scholars exalted of learning Of merit high and divine! Engage not to violate Nor deepen the divide Nor act to please Nor them appease Who aim unjust By their desires deviant. Live simple, as the Vedas lay Hymn on lips, heart on the Way By the light of seers who trod before This love warm in each being’s core. Subsist on gifts that folks make Ease their burden for all our sake. Toil in concert and in tandem exert With the weakest hands at the work. [O Scholar! RV 10.134.07 (RigVeda Part 10, Section 134, Verse 7) translated by a friend] There’s good stuff in antiquity. Vam takes his own way. I want to know what we have forgotten in the long history of slavery and the legitimation of a ruling-class. Economics can’t even teach us what work needs doing and how much of it there really is to do. ‘So, when I hear of ancient humans described as barbarians, uncultured, lawless, and what not ... I wonder’, says my friend. We work our way from the big bang and through evolution from self-catalysing chemical scum to a point we can see human history with thoughts of radical peace and dire failure to action peace. I imagine us as a bacteria colony poisoning itself before food has been used up or living as social mice with most disabled by a brutal king. I see economics unchanged since Xenophon longing for Greek leisure at the expense of slaves. Is it possible to dream of democracy other than in magic realism when we are still in the Greek trap about its mythical origins? When we are expected to revere chimera like Winston Churchill as the Iraq he created still burns and on the graves of 3 million Indians he left to die in WW2? Is this a man ‘who saw us through the war’, or a spectre of current thanatocracy, of Undead rule? How changed are we over these eons from Xenophon? -- --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
