Can We Call This Progress?

[coberst]

Can We Call This Progress?

Rugged individualism might be an appropriate expression for all the creatures in the world, with one exception. Humans have, in the last few hundred years, moved from being rugged individuals to our present state in which we have fashioned an alien environment in which we have become chess pieces or ciphers. We have invented the Artificial Kingdom where, as Simone Weil once noted, “it is the thing that thinks and the man who is reduced to the state of the thing”.

I think that we, women and men, have become chess pieces. We have become objects to be manipulated by the market and the corporation. We spend our days like the chess piece; we have a quantified value and are placed on the board and used as desired by some one who may be a real person. The real person has still the human characteristics of creativity, spontaneity, improvisation, spontaneously reactive, discontinuous, a mosaic more than syntax or cipher. Just what we find is missing when using the telephone to contact someone out there.

In an effort to understand where we are now it might help to start back in time and move forward. In frontier days each person was very much an individual. Rugged individualism was a popular expression. Each man and woman was a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. Each husband and wife was a team that together could and had to do everything that was needed.

In early America we were an agricultural economy. Most families were farm families we were all rugged individualist. The farmer was very much the jack-of-all-trades and the master of his or her domain.

As we move forward in time we see this team become a man working in a factory or office and the woman was at home raising the children and maintaining the day to day necessities for all family members. She washed, cleaned, shopped, sewed, and was still much of a rugged individual. Slowly the man became a specialized worker in a clockwork factory or office.

Moving forward in history we arrive at the present moment where not only is the man working in the factory or office but the woman joins him there also.

When we examine the factory or office workspace we find a very different occupation for the man and woman than the rugged individualism of emerging history of human evolution. We no longer are masters of our own domain but are ciphers in a clockwork that functions upon modern economic principles.

A pertinent example of this mode of commodification is how we have converted what was political economics into the modern economics. Political economy is the study of social relations. It is the study of culture. Political economy focuses upon the problem of how to regulate industrialization within the context of a healthy society, it worries about the problems of labor within a context of the laborer as an end and not a commodity—an object of commerce.

Economics, however, in its modern form, has replaced political economics. Economics has removed the pesky concern about labor as being human and has replaced labor as being a commodity—an object of commerce. Modern economics is now the study of scarcity, prices, and resource allocation. Economics has legislated that labor, as an end, is no longer a legitimate domain of knowledge for economic consideration. In doing so, over time, society has become ignorant of such concerns. Our culture has replaced concern about humans as ends with humans as means to some other end.

In the rugged individualist mode of living the individual was creative and master even though the domain of mastery was small. An individual’s personality is dramatically affected. Labor has become an abstract quantity and calculated into the commodity produced. We are the only creatures who have completely removed our self from what we were evolved to be. We are the only creatures removed from our grounding in an organic world. We came from a long ancestry of rugged individualist and now reside in the Artificial Kingdom. To what end only time will tell.

Do you feel like a cipher in our culture?

[Undertoad]

Only found on one other forum.

Welcome to the Cellar coberst. I'm not a rugged individualist myself -- I'm a wimpy individualist. I sort of like my alien environment where, instead of breaking my back farming, I get to sit on a very comfortable chair in a very comfortable air-conditioned office, with free coffee and all the spring water I can drink, and type things for a living. If I want a bit of farming, I can tend my garden, but it actually costs more in supplies than the price of the food it returns.

[smoothmoniker]

Originally Posted by coberst

We came from a long ancestry of rugged individualist and now reside in the Artificial Kingdom.

This is a stark rewriting of history. The long ancestry of human beings is tribal, not ruggedly individualistic. In only a few, isolated, idealized instances (the American West, as you say) were people truly self-contained units of individual determination.

To what end only time will tell.

Well, so far, to the end of universal education, vastly extended life-expectancy, a 40-hour work week (instead of every daylight hour of every day), and an embarrassing richness of cultural expression. It turns out, specialization and market economics do good things for human beings.

Speaking as someone who loves their job, there's no possible way I could do what I do unless I trade it at a high value, and then pay other people to do their own specialized work, such as building my transportation, growing my food, providing my medical care, and delivering piping hot DSL service to my house.

Am I a cog in the machine? Fine. It's a beautiful, powerful, progressing and evolving machine that has released us from the burden of subsistence living and has allowed us the possibility of freedom, art, and the flourishing life. It has allowed us these things in spite of race, rank, sex, or class. It has allowed us these things by the very means you revile, by turning labor into a commodity that can be ascribed value in trade for other things.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Being a rugged individualist is still a viable choice. I know people that have an occupation to provide income, and still do most everything that needs to be done to make their lives as comfortable as they desire.
They repair their own cars, remodel their own houses, grow some of their own food, make some of their own clothes, etc.

The choice is still there, for those that are up to the challenge, but it's also nice to have the option to be a specialist. A choice out forefathers didn't have, for the most part. I'd call that progress.


Oh, and welcome to the Cellar, coberst.

[coberst]

Thanks for the welcome. The following is a quote from one of my favorite authors.


“The great characteristic of our time is that we know everything important about human nature that there is to know. Yet never has there been an age in which so little knowledge is securely possessed, so little a part of common understanding. The reason is precisely the advance of specialization, the impossibility of making safe general statements, which has led to a general imbecility.” Ernest Becker, Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction “Denial of Death”

It is my opinion that Americans lack the intellectual sophistication required to comprehend the problems we face let alone to solve them.

[xoxoxoBruce]

What problems do we face, that can be solved, without an intense education in very specific sciences?

[regular.joe]

Wow, coberst, you really threw down the gauntlet there.

Since I'm an American, I lack the intellectual sophistication required to comprehend your statement that Americans lack the intellectual sophistication required to comprehend the problems we face let alone to solve them.

Please help to educate a stupid American.

What is meant by "everything important about human nature"?

Exactly what knowledge is not securely possessed? How does this knowledge differ from "common understanding"? How does this differ from, say, early scientific research during the end of the Dark Ages when such research was seen as heresy by the Church and ruling authorities?

Why is it impossible to make safe general statements. In general, statements about what? What exactly do you mean by general imbecility?

Is it possible for you to participate in this discussion without quoting someone other then yourself?

[coberst]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

What problems do we face, that can be solved, without an intense education in very specific sciences?

I think that if more Americans became self-actualizing self-learners we could slowly overcome the negative legacy of our educational system that has left us unprepared for solving todays problems.

I would like to introduce a concept that perhaps many have not given consideration. I would like to introduce post-schooling scholarship.

I think we have placed scholarship on a too lofty pedestal and in doing so we have placed it beyond reach or consideration. I want to suggest that middle class scholarship is reality that we all should consider as a friend to be embraced as our own.

It appears to me that we give this description, scholar, to the young student in an aristocratic English Academy and to the pipe smoking, dressed in tweeds, English professor or American equivalent.

The development of an economic middle class is the hallmark of success in any mature nation. I think it is possible that the development of a scholarly middle class could represent a similar development in the life of democracy of a nation.

I think that schooling in America has been given the assignment to prepare our young people to enter the work place. Our schools and colleges are required by society to prepare young people as efficiently as possibly to become troopers in the drive to maximize production and consumption. This assignment gives our teachers and professors little time to prepare individuals to become critical thinking mature intellects prepared to understand a rapidly developing reality driven by the technology these graduates are capable of producing.

I am a retired engineer with a good bit of formal education and twenty-five years of self-actuated learning. I began the self-learning experience while in my mid-forties. I had no goal in mind; I was just following my intellectual curiosity in whatever direction it led me. This hobby, self-learning, has become very important to me. I have bounced around from one hobby to another but have always been enticed back by the excitement I have discovered in this learning process. Carl Sagan is quoted as having written; “Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.”

I label myself as a September Scholar because I began the process at mid-life and because my quest is disinterested knowledge. I think of myself as a middle class scholar.

Disinterested knowledge is an intrinsic value. Disinterested knowledge is not a means but an end. It is knowledge I seek because I desire to know it. I mean the term ‘disinterested knowledge’ as similar to ‘pure research’, as compared to ‘applied research’. Pure research seeks to know truth unconnected to any specific application.

I think of the self-actualized learner of disinterested knowledge as driven by curiosity and imagination to understand. The September Scholar seeks to ‘see’ and then to ‘grasp’ through intellection directed at understanding the self as well as the world. The knowledge and understanding that is sought by the middle class scholar are determined only by personal motivations. It is noteworthy that disinterested knowledge is knowledge I am driven to acquire because it is of dominating interest to me. Because I have such an interest in this disinterested knowledge my adrenaline level rises in anticipation of my voyage of discovery.

I hope this is interesting to you.

Chuck

[Undertoad]

Now on three other forums

I too would consider myself to be a self-actualized self-learner, but you have now made me skeptical about using the prefix self in everything. It's nice you are interested in things - "the unexamined life not worth living" and all that.

But we do notice that you are fully concerned with self and not so concerned with other. For example, in the above post you wrote an essay about what you are concerned about, but failed to actually answer Bruce's question. Those posters whom I have seen doing this sort of thing seem to be smart but not wise.

You go to all sorts of forums with no interest in the people there, only looking to poot your essay around. That's fine, and if it's written well we like it, but you're missing the perspective of hundreds of people, available free for the asking, who have seen so much of the world that you haven't. Wouldn't you like to see how rugged individualists can use an ancient tractor and saw to cut up a load of wood in the back country? Wouldn't that be a nice addition to your understanding of the world?

[DanaC]

I'm an individualist....I'm also a collectivist. Certain aspects of life foster individualism and, in my opinion that can be a good thing. Some aspects of life benefit from, and therefore foster, a collectivist approach. 'Rugged individualism' is nice and catchy but overly simplistic in the answers it provides to life's questions. We cannot all be expert at everything, unless the range of things that one can be expert in, and the extent of expertise that's possible, is awfully small. We can all gain expertise in general herbcraft....but we cannot all be experts in brain surgery. Even in the most individualist societies (such as frontier America) not all knowledge is held by everyone: indeed, such universality of knowledge would require far more in the way of collectivism than it would in the way of individualism.

In an effort to understand where we are now it might help to start back in time and move forward. In frontier days each person was very much an individual. Rugged individualism was a popular expression. Each man and woman was a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. Each husband and wife was a team that together could and had to do everything that was needed.

A jack-of-all-[subsistence]trades and a master of none. Those husband and wife teams would no doubt have found it comforting to know that there was a trained doctor nearby should they fall ill with something that cannot be treated with local herbs. I would imagine very few of them were self-sufficient to the point that they never had to engage in purchasing goods or services.

I think that we, women and men, have become chess pieces. We have become objects to be manipulated by the market and the corporation.

So it has always been and so it will always be. The chess players vary, but ordinary people have ever been at the mercy of those who shape the laws and economy in which they live. Look at the origins of your ruggedly individual colonists and you will see many for whom their presence in the New World was a consequence of the chess games of mighty men. At every point in America's history there have been chess players and chess pieces, just as there have been in my country's history. All that differs is the degree to which people are vulnerable to such games: the degree to which their individuality protects them.

Do you feel like a cipher in our culture?

No. I feel like an individual, an individual whose relationship to the culture she lives in is uniquely hers. I feel valued in my individuality; but more importantly, I feel valued as a part of the collective whole. It is my place within that collective whole which means that my individuality is respected, valued and protected.

[Griff]

That is a nice smart essay, but to me the rugged individualist is nothing if not a problem solver. I'm going to hazard a guess that you're talking about global warming and population bombs. It occurs to me that heavy fossil fuel usage is more a result of mass society and collective decision making than individual choice. If you travel rural America you would note that people are beginning to choose wind power and would do so more readily if the collective stopped subsidizing fossil fuels. If population is your bugaboo just consider that without immigration US Americans would have little population growth. As individuals we've decided to have fewer children.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I think it is possible that the development of a scholarly middle class could represent a similar development in the life of democracy of a nation.

A middle class MENSA, in tweed jackets with leather elbow patches, that discuss what's wrong with the world at length, but never actually DO anything.

[coberst]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

What problems do we face, that can be solved, without an intense education in very specific sciences?

Specialized knowledge is useful when developing the means to reach goals. General knwledge and the ability to dialogue are necssary for determining goals.

Dialogue ain’t for Sissies!

Human discourse seldom goes beyond adolescent styled discussion, debate, or argument. Intellectually, judging by our discourse, few Americans have the sophistication to undertake dialogue. I am 74 years old and have never experienced dialogue either as a participant or as a spectator. Our discourse seldom takes us beyond tacit (only a vague feeling) knowledge.

I am convinced that until we can dialogue we will never be safe from self destruction and perhaps even destruction of the planet for any life forms.

Few Americans are prepared to dialogue. Dialogue is much different from discussion and debate. To dialogue requires much preparation and our educational system have not prepared us for the practice of dialogue.

Our educational system is almost completely dedicated to rote teaching. Our system is almost totally a system of teaching by telling. Why is this so?

A didactic technique of educating young people is the most efficient way of inculcating facts into the memory of children. It seems to me that it is necessary to teach facts to children as quickly and as efficiently as possible during their early years.

It is vital that we have knowledge of many and varied types of algorithms. The more our lives are controlled by technology the more algorithms we must know.

However, there are no known algorithms for many problems that we face daily. Where we fail to have algorithms we must find ways to facilitate understanding.

How does the Socratic technique, or as it is more often called the dialogue method, enhance understanding by a student?

A classroom that is focusing on a dialogue technique of instruction would be one wherein there would be the usual teacher and a number of pupils. A question or a matter of interest would be introduced and pupils would be asked to give their opinion on the matter. Each student voicing a point of view would be subject to questions by members of the class and the instructor and each would be expect to defend the opinion as best they can. Such a class program would require, in many cases that the students come to class well prepared and ready to become an active participant.

The subject might be the American war in Iraq, for example. One can imagine in such a case that there would be many different points of view. Some students might be from homes wherein varying political affiliations might be held. Some students may be Muslims or Jews of Protestants. Such a question would elicit many and strongly held views. The views of all students would be subjected to questions focusing upon the quality of the argument supporting a view and perhaps questions that might focus upon the biases exposed by the view. Assumptions would be examined and questioned. The whole process is directed toward establishing a critical habit of thought in all students.

How does a young person who has finished their schooling develop their own value system?

How does a young person develop a sound intellectual foundation upon which to build a life?

What is a sound intellectual foundation?

How does a young person learn to ask the important questions?

[coberst]

Joe

The knowledge about human nature that is available but remains virtually unknown to most Americans is that knowledge that will allow one to answer the question "Why do humans do the things they do that are so harmful to all humans?"

Becker gives us a good look at such knowledge in his books.

[coberst]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Now on three other forums

I too would consider myself to be a self-actualized self-learner, but you have now made me skeptical about using the prefix self in everything. It's nice you are interested in things - "the unexamined life not worth living" and all that.

But we do notice that you are fully concerned with self and not so concerned with other. For example, in the above post you wrote an essay about what you are concerned about, but failed to actually answer Bruce's question. Those posters whom I have seen doing this sort of thing seem to be smart but not wise.

You go to all sorts of forums with no interest in the people there, only looking to poot your essay around. That's fine, and if it's written well we like it, but you're missing the perspective of hundreds of people, available free for the asking, who have seen so much of the world that you haven't. Wouldn't you like to see how rugged individualists can use an ancient tractor and saw to cut up a load of wood in the back country? Wouldn't that be a nice addition to your understanding of the world?

I seek to make my readers conscious of important ideas. Consciousness of ideas is the first step toward gaining the knowledge and understanding required to comprehend those problems and possibly in dialogue with others to solve the problems discovered.