Multiplicity and the Hunter Gatherer Zeitgeist

This is another good example of what I am talking about. We tend to see a manufacturing company, in dualistic terms as, those in management and the office (white collar), and those in the factory (blue collar). But just as hillbillyhippy describes a multiplicity of blue collar job titles within the factory, there is a multiplicity of white collar job titles in the office, from managers, accountants, salesmen, to designers and all kinds of other professionals. There is a multiplicity of jobs. But we still identify them in value terms in a dualistic manner, and I do not need to tell you how this plays out in labor relations, class structures, and all types of social value concepts. There is always a dualistic division of us vs them, whether it is factory workers vs office workers, all workers vs senior management, workers vs owners, factory labor vs foremen, and so forth.

When I first read hillbillyhippy’s comment, I immediately thought of the humanistic writings of the young Karl Marx, when he expressed that the more you work, the less human you become. The younger Marx was an essentialist, and he saw work as taking away from the essence of being human.

But perhaps the problem with Marx, was also one of duality. He saw industrial society as a place where the market splits man into a duality: producer vs consumer. The problem is that it is the same individual. He then identified the resolution to this problem on another duality: the workers (labor) vs the bourgeoisie. The problem is that both of these concepts (the latter more than the former), are overly simplistic when viewed as a multiplicity. In the latter case, for example, strictly speaking the bourgeoisie class, excluded the true owners of capital, the gentry class, and the other upper class groups. Had Marx understood both of these concepts in a more multiplistic, and therefore realistic, manner then perhaps he would have recognized that the alienating force of the market is not unique to an industrialized capitalistic society, and that it could become even more pronounced in a Socialist framework.

 

The post modern view is interesting but offers very little for the future, as to me anyway, it seems more a critical movement than one which has its own positive agenda. I realize this is a broad categorization, but I think theres some truth to it. The main role of post modernism seems to be to point out the nature of whats wrong, rather than offering any solution.

Another trend is what we could call "post humanism", the idea being that humans will eventually evolve into something better or more advanced. Myself I think this is a possibility, even if we see little sign of it at the moment.

But given the current human situation, I am unsure about the role of technology in helping to create a new order. It seems to me that technology implies an industrial type of society, which by nature will always tend towards being both dualistic and somewhat dumbed down, as people with intelligence and awareness dont generally want to work at rote and meaningless tasks as called for by industrial production. There are also issues around rescources, pollution etc.
The human being embedded in nature takes their cue from the rising sun or the coming of the cold, not the clock, as with industrial society.

I think the idea that we can somehow reintegrate the knowledge or mind set of hunter gatherer cultures in a new way may be the solution. I am not sure exactly how that can be accomplished. But its a problem to keep chipping away at.

 

Just a few more thoughts to add.
I think one of the biggest difficulties in human beings moving forward towards something better is the entrenchment of modern industrial culture and the political control systems it has constructed.
The internet, whilst ok, has not really proven to be any kind of advance. On a small scale, and for a few, its useful. But the majority of usage is really pretty innane in my view. And of course, it is enabling a vast new system of control and monitoring to emerge.

So on one level we have entrenched socio economic systems that are armed to the teeth, and have no intention of letting go of power, whilst at another, but intimately connected level, there is the entrenchment of the human consciousness in old religions, materialism, nationalism etc.

It seems to me that its going to take something very powerful to change any of that.
And I am not sure that there is much time left.

There is a certain allure to the idea of a big collapse leading to the survivors going back to something more acceptable, but as I said earlier, things like the existence of neuclear waste make it a shakey solution, as does the amount of further suffering and destruction that this would entail.
The historical process and science have, it might seem, created problems which only science has any chance of solving. Failing , that is, the interevention of higher intelligence or something like that.

I used to think that it was all a matter of sufficient numbers of people waking up. To some extent I still think so, but unfortunately, although I try, I look in vain for any significant signs of this happening quickly enough to make any difference in the global picture.

But I do think theres hope. Maybe not in my lifetime, but certainly during this next century, which I think is very likely to be make or break time for the current civilization. Maybe a little climate change, further global financial disasters, overcrowding etc will provide enough of a nudge to get things moving.

 

Then you also have the guy in management, who does know what its like for the little guy, so he is always fighting for us, more breaks, water on the floor, more AC, etc etc. Although I am a bit intrigued as to why you called my writing like Karl Marx, because I find many of his policies to be assonine. Although you said his earlier writings were essentialist. Care to explain. This intrigues me.

 

Actually what I meant is not that your writing was like Karl Marx, but that you made me think of Karl Marx, because you were writing of how all these people who worked in the factory were identified by their jobs---in a sense, they were identified by the machine, for example, that they worked. In a sense, Joe is no longer Joe, he is the stamper who works the stamp press (I think there is such a thing in a factory, but for the sake of making an example). Joe has become a little less human, and a little more of something he is not---a machine.

This is not just a factory thing, it is an aspect of the Modern World that is part of the Post-Modern crisis---that humans are abstracted from their human essence, and therefore alienated from their own humanity. In a small factory in a small town, where everyone is friends, for example, it is a lot easier to fire off the stamper than it is to fire Joe (even though he is one and the same).

The young Marx recognized this. He also recognized that the harder one works, the less time one has to be a human. In actuality, the rest of his life was spent trying to free man to return to who he truly is---a human being.

For example, his idea that we all share equally in the work, that Joe could be a stamper, a cutter, a this or a that---that he takes on numerous skills and works as he feels more driven to as an individual---is a communal attempt at freeing oneself from the alienation of becoming a single machine. It is also an attempt to return value to one's life because he is human, not because he is a machine stuck in a hierarchy of machines, managers, and owners of capital, with most people living lives that are valued far less than others.

Of course, Marx had the solution wrong----because his concept was flawed in numerous ways, including that he thought man could be shaped based on the cold objectivistic logic of rationalism. He failed to recognize that rationalism is an alienating force in its own right. We are humans, not machines---and rationality treats us as dead matter (a machine) just as much as a machine does. Therefore, instead of freeing people to be human, he created State slaves, who were less human than their capitalistic counterparts.

As a youth, I believe he was essentialist, just like Hegel who certainly influenced his philosophy. As an essentialist, he believed that being rose out of essence, rather than being rising out of existence. Essentialism makes sense of Idealism (though there are existentialist Idealists). (To confuse matters even more, I am using existentialism in the strict sense of the belief that being arises from existence---not the broader definition of popular existentialism---because there are existentialists that are essentialist. Also not the other definition through which we are all existentialist---a definition that simply means that we can only experience the world through our own existence---as human beings). On the other hand, existentialist belief makes more sense out of materialism. Another way to state this is that, if you believe there is any sort of divine, or spiritual, aspect to the universe you more likely believe that being arises out of essence. If you believe that reality ends where physical reality ends, you most likely believe that existence is the basis of being.

As an essentialist Marx certainly believed, like all Utopianists, that there must be an absolute perfection within the universe. Like Hegel, he thought rationalism and reason was the way to discover that perfection, and that since such perfection can exist, man can live in a perfect society----and thus reason will lead us to that perfection. He believed that, like Hegel, Marx believed that history had a purpose and that as that purpose unfolds we are being lead to a perfect way of life. Also like Hegel, he believed that it was through dialectic that we can discover through rationality, what the ideal--- the absolute---is. This belief certainly defined his mode of thinking the rest of his life.

But somewhere in his twenties or thirties, he broke from the essentialism of Hegel. This is where he embraced materialism. He became less humanist, and more rationally objectivistic----Marxism became a science. Unfortunately, the Modern World embraced science as the unifying truth.