Hi Barry, > You are way ahead of the best. You say the most important things very well.
Thanks for the compliment, it's nice if somebody says something good about me, but it's bullshit you know. Nobody is "the best of the best", we are all good at some things and **** useless at other things. Well, at least I am. When I did my degree in Education, the ideal was "balanced human development", but the reality was different. Many extremely good people are in positions where they just cannot say, or do, a lot. I think we people who are some sort of libertarian socialists all need to work together to learn from each other, at least that is my belief as a socialist, but I don't even claim to be a very good socialist. I would like to be, but it's a long road, since you have to rethink everything you learnt and experienced, and develop a thicker skin, and stop yourself from being foolish. It is in someways a bit like that Paul Simon song, "when I think of all the crap I learnt in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all". Of course, I actually learnt a lot at high school, I don't regret it, I had this thing where I thought, well, I am there, might as well make the most of it (although as a 16 year old I wanted to drop out and in 1977 I did drop out). But you know what I mean. I deliberately spent quite a lot of time in the last year reading posts and learning from what they were saying, figuring out who was saying the best things on different topics. I would say I learnt a hell of a lot from PEN-Lers, even if they take the piss out of me sometimes, and the same for Louis Proyect's list. But as Bob Geldof said once, "don't believe what you read", what you read is not something you should believe in, rather you should think about it, and form your own thoughts about it, at least that is how I see it, establish the significance of it, do something with it in some way. Half the time when I read something, I think "what does it mean ?". What Timothy Bewes essentially talks about is that all oppressive ideas can be turned around, you always have to keep practising "reversibility" in this sense, so that, when you start to feel locked in a bad idea, you can turn the whole thing around or upside down, and realise there is another way of looking at the same thing. Often, it is really difficult to do, because a person is very resistant to change some of his cherished ideas, to change. People said to me things like "you have to change", or "change is good", but change into what ? This is just silly. Often I think, God I just want to die, but then I think, "well I just don't know, that's the problem". Which is a Lou Reed song, and so you see, pop music can help you out as a sort of therapy sometimes. In this context also, Trotsky observed in his magnum opus that a revolution is something that is the last thing people want to do. They are plunged into revolution not because they want to, but because they have to. Philistines don't understand this, and start to talk about misleaders, betrayals, misguided people, psychopathology, fanaticism, blah blah blah, they cannot understand the laws of motion whereby people are driven into revolt against the things that oppress them. Marx says the same thing - societal conciousness generally speaking is conservative, people's thoughts lag behind what they really do, and then at the certain moment, suddenly consciousness starts to catch up very fast with a changed situation, the changed conditions of life. In a synergic society, this takes new forms, and you have to be a bit careful about what you take on. I've had this experience sometimes a bit like typing a word into Google, and getting fifty-thousand replies, which is more than I can deal with in one go. As an 18 year old, I read this interview with John Lennon, and he said when he was with the Beatles, he had this thing "I want to be the best of the best" and then he added "We killed ourselves to make it", meaning they went beyond their original intention. And I thought, "shit, that is a bit counter-productive really". (I love pop musicians of his generation, because they basically invented modern rock music, and when I was through with "organised religion" in the sense of going to a church and that, of which I had a short spell, I basically felt that pop music was a hundred times better than religion. I still love it, I take a more nuanced view about that now, but I still think pop music is great, I still believe in it, it's like Alice's Restaurant. Maybe it's puberal, I don't know. I mean, I used to play a bit of guitar, mouth organ and that, and when you actually try to play the songs you hear, you realise it isn't so puberal, it takes a lot of work to be able to do the song and do it well, which people forget. I mean, can you actually play Mark Knopfler songs on a guit ? I can't. I had a Turkish flatmate in New Zealand, who could play them, but I couldn't. I didn't want to be the best of the best, I didn't want to be famous or anything, I had a discussion about it with some statisticians once, and I just said, what Andy Warhol said about it you know, "we should all be famous for a day". In reality of course it is not quite like that, and fame is not something you can do much about, although if you happen to be famous, you can manipulate it to an extent. But manipulation was never a strong point of mine really, my parents were hard as nails about truth (not just facts but also emotion) and sincerely finding out what is really the case, even if you don't immediately get there. I just wanted to be one of the group really. Well sometimes you want to do your own thing, but I mean even Keith Richards does his own album once in a while (I love Richards guitar style, I love classical music also, but I personally love rock'n'roll and new wave type stuff especially, I'm oldfashioned like that). Daniel Bensaid said about Anton Pannekoek once, Anton would sit in a political meeting, and he wouldn't say very much, but mostly what he said, was worthwhile, which is a pretty good thing to aim for. My own favourite used to be to stir up meeting s, to get people talking, partly out of impatience with meetings. But that is not what politics is really about for me, it is about providing leadership, you have to take people from A to B in a responsible manner, and I am not always so responsible, and often I wonder what I could be responsible for anyhow, really, in this crazy world, and end up feeling a bit anarchistic. What I was really aiming for in my very brief analysis of price, among other things, is explain how what people call the "commodity form" (Warenform) actually "disappears human labour" and "dehistoricises social reality", but I haven't really got round to it. These days you get a lot of people poking their nose in, and they say you're this and you're that, and so on, and it has nothing to do with me, I have difficulty sorting out my own thoughts often. It is one reason I quit working, because I had this thing, you know, for once in my life I am going to try to formulate an idea about what I think myself, and not be distracted, and concentrate on making a better style. Originally I was disappointed with life, then subsequently I regretted all the things I had not done, then I just wanted to learn from other people, then I hated all the people who put me on the wrong track, I have ended up with a lifestyle I don't like at all, and now I don't really care much anymore, I just want to do my thing, and I don't want to pay too much attention to my detractors, just do things the way I feel like doing them, the way that I consider it is okay for me to do. If somebody shoots you, or you get run over by a truck, well so be it, it's their problem, I mean I will try to dodge it, but if it happens, it happens. What you write, isn't damp drivel to me. I don't mind a bit of dampness really, a person needs his bit of wet and dry I think, I am probably wetter than you are, I don't know. I haven't been very sociable in recent years, and I am not great draw with women, but I am past all that really, they can play all the games they want, but, mostly, to me it is just blah-blah. if they're not sincere I am not interested. If I have a problem, it's probably holding my breath. I met this Buddhist person once who said to me I should "breathe", and I said "what the hell do you mean" and the person just shrugged, said, "don't hold your breath, that's all." Well, just to summarise my rave, I am just one wee guy, and, for what I what I aspire to, it takes millions, billions of people, and basically I don't have a hope in hell of realising very much in my life. I just think that so-called "changing the world" should be fun, inspiring, enjoyable, humorous. It is very difficult to believe that often, and difficult to take seriously, when you think of people crawling around in disgusting poverty or horrible conditions, how could there be any joy in that, how could anything motivate other than anger, aggression or anything like that. Sometimes I lose my cool myself. My older brother took me to meet this wellknown Israeli author once, I forget his name for a moment, I think Amos Oz, he was politically dubious to me, but had written some good books, and anyway this writer said something like, "characteristic of true fanatics is that they find it difficult to laugh, or laugh at themselves", and that rang true with me. I have to be able to laugh, and be able to laugh at myself, at my own follies, or at least smile, otherwise I feel there is something going wrong here. For the rest, I am just not plugged into the correct socket, and so my mails tend to go all over the show, they could be better targeted, but you can only really do that when you're working in a team that you feel comfortable with. But I haven''t found it yet, we'll see. All the best, Jurriaan > > It's not easy to do your own thinking and constantly confront confusion, but from that > we get flowers like your recent post. > > Here's one of many strong points, well said. > > >all you can say is that capitalism is a terrible system which screws people's > >lives, and complain and whinge about it, and the bourgeois just laugh at > >this wet drivel, spy on what your are doing and steal your criticism, so > >that they can improve their own management, and make capitalism work better > > My damp drivel may be worth a glance. However, it's not caught on yet due to my > stunted exposition, its sounding too good to be true, and my stepping on everyone's > toes. Even if those small faults could be corrected, good ideas aren't enough to wean > public opinion from the glass tit. Or, maybe they are. > > http://home.earthlink.net/~durable > > Barry > > > > > > > > > > >
