Theory of the structure of symbols and trans generational teaching /learning

---------- Forwarded message - From: c b Date: Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 4:48 PM Subject: Theory of the structure of symbols and transgenerational teaching/learning Christopher , Here's another brief statement of my theory of the origin of the human symbol as a means of teaching future generations without direct imitation. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. A smart chimp might invent the wheel, but would have difficulty passing it on to future generations. Charles http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2008-June/022333.html CB : See also http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/09/symbolic-inheritance.html?m=1 ///// http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2021/05/culturally-inherited-adaptations-give.html /// http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2020/12/differentia-specifica-of-human-species.html ^^^ CB: The principle of the arbitrariness of the sign or in English, the symbol, is not only from structuralism. Leslie White, a founder of a main school of anthropology also articulated this principle. And symbols in this sense are a main characteristic of culture ( that which socially constructs , to put it in terms of a frequent refrain on this list.) as well as language. Both culture and language are systems of symbols (signs). And , importantly, the human species is defined by its possession of culture or custom or tradition. No other species has language or culture. So, signing or symboling , in the forms of both language and culture, is our species defining activity. And, importantly , also, most of human _learning_ is through symbols, culture, _not_ by imitating, like other species. Not by "monkey-see, monkey do" imitation. Most of our learning ( as opposed to inborn or genetically based knowledge) is through culture, not from experience. And cultural learning is learning from the experience of other people, including learning from people who are now dead. Just to further explain the concept of arbitrariness, it refers to the relationship between the signifier and the signified. So, if the sounds d-o-g are used to refer to things that are dogs, we see that those sounds do not "imitate" or are not naturally related to dogs. The arbitrariness of a sign refers to the fact that in a sign something is used to represent something that it is not. Two _different_ things are arbitrarily identified, treated as the _same_. Note that this is a unity or identity of opposites of the dialectic. So, culture or human social "constructivity" consists in an enormous system of signs or symbols. I have theorized that the reason culture became our unique characteristic is that once some homind discovered them way, way back when, they were highly adaptive because they allowed past generations to pass on their experience to future generations across the "death barrier" . Why ? Because a symbol represents something by something it is not ( the arbitrary relation between signifier and signified) So, a living generation can learn from a symbol about the experience of dead generations, when it could not learn from imitating the dead, since the dead aren't able to demonstrate things to be learned, obviously, because they are dead. But since a symbol uses something, a signifier, to represent something that it is not, the signified, because of this _arbitrary_ ( non-imitative) relation, the dead ancestor's "demonstration" can be learned by the living descendent through the signifier, through the thing (word or cultural object) that is _not_ the dead ancestor. Cultural learning allows us to learn from the experience of many, many...many of our ancestors. This was its main adaptive advantage when our species originated in founding culture. Culture also allowed learning more from other living members of the species. Human children could learn a lot more from their parents than other species, who were restricted to teaching their young by demonstration and imitation. Other species have to "give a picture" or demonstration of what they are teaching. That a signifier is not what it signifies means it communicates by a non-picture or non-imitation of what it represents. You heard it here first (smile) http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2021/05/culturally-inherited-adaptations-give.html

Differentia specifica of human species is symbolic communication and behavior - language and culture .

Differentia specifica of human species is symbolic communication and behavior - language and culture .

BY CHARLES BROWN

I write here a dialectical critique of Engels’ essay “The Role of Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man” in part based on Marx’s claim that human labor is differentiated from all other species “ labor by the role of imagination “! ( (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm ) Otherwise , in his anthropological _The Origin of the Family , Private Property and the State _ , Engels is profoundly correct on the difference between the Stone Age and Civilization and other issues.

My critique of Engels on this point is informed by the current biological ( human evolution) and cultural anthropological facts on origin of tool use , stone tool use ; and the nature of language and culture as SYMBOLIC communication and behavior . Origin of tool use and origin of language and culture is the issue Engels speculates concerning in “The Role of Labour in the transition from Ape to Man“. My basic difference with him is that language and culture allowed the invention of labor with Stone tools created by imagination; not labor created language and culture ( symbolic communication and behavior ; see definition of symbolic signs below ) ; I plead not guilty to the charge of philosophical idealism -smiles .

The origin of humans is the origin of language and culture , NOT the origin of bipedalism and hands freed from walking on all fours . ( see pre-human , habitually bipedal primates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecine) 

“Engels never finished Dialectics of Nature. Haldane, in his preface to the 1939 publication of Dialectics of Nature, regrets that it remained unpublished for a long time, and writes, “Had his remarks on Darwinism been generally known, I for one would have been saved a certain amount of muddled thinking.” One of its unfinished fragments is on the role of labor in human evolution, more specifically the evolution of the hand. It is the evolution of the hand through the process of labor—creating tools—that distinguishes humans from apes. Engels writes, “Thus the hand is not only the organ of labour, it is also the product of labour.” It is not the evolution of the hand that led to our evolution as a species but the coevolution of the hand and labor as a historical process.”

The bottomline of my critique in the blog below is : Language and culture , symbolic communication and symbolically guided behavior, originate 2.5 million years ago and enable homo habilis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_habilis) to make the first Stone tools . ( THE ORIGIN OF HUMANS IS IN THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE AND CULTURE , SYMBOLIC COMMUNICATION AND BEHAVIOR) It is NOT that the ancestral bipedal species (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecine)

to homo habilis started using its hands ( freed by bipedalism ; standing on two feet instead of four freeing the hands ) and that caused them to start symbolic communication and behavior as Engels speculates . ( this is not idealist philosophical error on my part ; I will explain why not below)

Here is Engels’ essay

The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1876/part-played-labour/index.htm

The following is my blog item critiquing Engels‘ essay.

http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/02/more-leisure-is-homo-sapiens-species.html

More Leisure is Homo sapiens species essence ; May Day demand

More Leisure ( than our ancestral primate species had) is our species essence ( See "The Original Affluent Society" by my anthropological mentor and senior anthro major advisor ,Marshall Sahlins , in _Stone Age Economics_ ) . Foraging is a mode of direct appropriation from nature , not a mode of production; making a living by gigging smart not working hard. It was not that bi-pedalism and the origin of hands originated a new labor that caused the invention of tradition , names and words . The invention of culture and language in childcare by mothers ( I’m saying mothers invented names , words , symbolic communication to improve childcare, reproductive labor ) was extended to making a living ( the Darwinian struggle for existence) ; language and culture revolutionized the human struggle for existence by making it smarter, wiser, because of accumulation of knowledge over many generations . Language gives humans the capacity for dead generations to leave communications about their experiences to future living generations) . Also More leisure gives more time to think and thereby work even smarter.

Symbolic communication allows :

Ancestor veneration

The difference between humans and all other species is that through symbolic communication , words and culture, dead generations have a certain immortality and are part of the society of living generations . Living generations share the experiences of dead generations . Thereby knowledge accumulates. All humans stand on the shoulders of giants , as the scientist Issac Newton put it concerning his scientific ancestors .

Engels is wrong in "The Role of Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man" when he says "First labour, after it and then with it speech ..." CB : First long childcare , then names and speech invented by mothers to do better childcare , and then a transition to LESS toil in the struggle for existence , to smarter struggle for existence informed by ancestral experience , and more leisure as compared with primate species ancestral to homo habilis and the origin of the Stone Age . Stone tools were invented to allow making a living less toilsome and more efficient .

Perhaps the topic would be better named the transition in the struggle for existence in the transition from ape to man : the origin of imagination.

Stone Age society is Societas ( anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan’s term in _Ancient Society_ ) beginning 2.5 million years ago ; to circa 6,000 years ago with the beginning of Civitas ( Morgan ) private property, greed , slavery and heavy labor ( as Engels teaches in _The Origin of the Family , Private Property and the State _ ) . Slavery is the origin of Hard work , work ethic. With so-called civilization, hard work ethic comes to dominate cultural ideas . So, hard labour is not our Stone Age, species-being , but civilization-being, which is a small fraction of the full time of our species history.

I think Engels anachronistically projects the determining role of labor on ideas ( the historical materialist principle ) back onto the Stone Age origins of language and culture . In fact the invention of language and culture revolutionized the bipedal primates’ struggle for existence by making it less of a struggle . Toilsome struggle was introduced with _slave_ labor in so-called civilization where historical materialist determination originates.

Nonetheless , Marx and Engels do propose transition from the Kingdom of Necessity to the Kingdom of Freedom . Freedom is Leisure and smart work through technology . Jobs lost to technological invention should be translated into more leisure time for the masses, a May Day demand.

[Marxism-Thaxis] The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man c b Thu, 27 May 2010 05:54:49 -0700

What about the transition in labor in the transition from ape to man ? This essay uses "labor" in the sense that it is something that apes do; it is their struggle for existence , for survival in the Darwinian sense . So, it is not the same "labor" ( or is it work ?) that produces capitalist surplus value in _Capital_I, but the “labor “ more general to all animals that Marx describes in Chapter so and so , where he says the difference between the labor of spiders and bees and that of man is imagining the project as a plan first ( this implies that spiders and bees labor).

“en social conditions. Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature’s productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway. We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere animal. An immeasurable interval of time separates the state of things in which a man brings his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity, from that state in which human labour was still in its first instinctive stage. We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman’s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried on, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his attention is forced to be.”

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm

So, Marx’s implication ( contra Engels in “The Role of Labor “ ) is that in the transition from ape to man, labor transitioned in part by taking on more mental labor, imagination and planning , as a component. Imagination is a form of symbolic thinking . Symbolic thinking defines humans , differentiates humans from all other species despite the false and exaggerated claims for chimps and gorillas by some primatologists

[Marxism-Thaxis] The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man c b Thu, 27 May 2010 13:32:42 -0700 Engels: “But the decisive step had been taken, the hand had become free and could henceforth attain ever greater dexterity; the greater flexibility thus acquired was inherited and increased from generation to generation.”

^^^^^ CB: Ahhh but how ? How did the experience of repetition of use of _a_ hand by one individual get transferred to the brains of the next generation and the next , become the experience of _The_ hand ? If Patriarch uses his hands thousands of times his increasing dexterity is based on accumulated experience in that one individual's brain. The next generation's brains go back to "square one" at birth and childhood . The only way to accumulate the knowledge across generations is by mediating the learning experience with language, imagination, symbolic communication The only way to "stand on the shoulders of giants" is to receive messages from them through a system of symbols, words . ( as in those days there wasn't the technology to take enough pictures) "The" hand is not the hand of an individual, but The Hand, as a concept, an organ of the species.

( Symbolic signs - words being the best example - have an _arbitrary_ relation between the sign and the thing signified . They are using something to represent something that they are not.

In my class , I write my name on the board -Charles Brown . Then I point out that the marks on the board are not me; but they are used to represent me. So a name is using something to represent something it is not . There is an arbitrary relation between a name and the person named .

The opposite of a symbolic sign is an _indexical_ sign . There is a necessary ( not arbitrary ) relationship between the sign and the thing signified . A favorite example is smoke and fire . Smoke is an indexical sign of fire .

Only humans have symbolic signs . Humans and all other animals communicate or read indexical signs ; humans have both -despite the exaggerated claims for chimps and gorillas by some animals rights primatologists.

Symbolic and indexical signs are basic ideas of semiotics .( http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/)

The arbitrary relation between symbolic signs and thing signified gives humans a DISPLACEMENT capacity . Humans can communicate with each other about events that are not in their immediate sensory field , like things that happened a week ago , or things that are on the other side of town

See https://owlcation.com/stem/The-difference-between-animal-and-human-communication

I CLAIM TO HAVE DISCOVERED BY LOGICAL IMPLICATION THAT THE UNIQUE DISPLACEMENT CAPACITY OF HUMANS ALLOWS ACCUMULATION OF KNOWLEDGE OVER GENERATIONS BECAUSE A LIVING GENERATION CAN SHARE THE EXPERIENCE OF DEAD GENERATIONS , SHARE _DISPLACED_ EXPERIENCES .

Therefore , it was the ability to experience the displaced experiences of dead generations, symbolic thinking , that allowed the first humans to make Stone tools ( reverse of Engels’ idea)

Again , Symbolic communication allows :

Ancestor veneration

The difference between humans and all other species is that through symbolic communication , words and culture, dead generations have a certain immortality and are part of the society of living generations . Living generations share the experiences of dead generations . Thereby knowledge accumulates. All humans stand on the shoulders of giants , as the scientist Issac Newton put it concerning his scientific ancestors .

Abolish the fascist Republican Party

Republican Party has cheated to  oligarchic or minority rule through gerrymandering , stealing Supreme Court appointments and minority Presidents . They follow Mussolini's fascist principle : 

"After Socialism, Fascism combats the whole complex system of democratic ideology, and repudiates it, whether in its theoretical premises or in its practical application. Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that it is a majority, can direct human society; it denies that numbers alone can govern by means of a periodical consultation, and it affirms the immutable, beneficial, and fruitful inequality of mankind, which can never be permanently leveled through the mere operation of a mechanical process such as universal suffrage...."

https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/mussolini-fascism.asp

We must focus on the class aspect in our most fundamental definition of fascism. Fascism is open terrorist rule by the most reactionary , racist and bellicose sections of finance capital . The Republican Party represents those sections of the bourgeoisie . It is threatening and executing policies with respect to social programs that will  _foreseeably_ result in premature deaths of 10,000's just as certainly as if they were machine gunned.  The Republican accelerated round up of immigrants , threats to expel Dreamers and others , racist threat against African and Latin immigrants equal the Nazis treatment of Jews in the early years of the regime before the holocaustic level of killing. There is no premature anti -fascism by name . The President has spoken in support of openly Nazi marchers. 

Furthermore, the American fascist tradition is the KKK. The KKK had fascist rule in sections of the US before Italy (!) . The KKK is a core constituency of the Republican base . David Duke regularly endorses Trump's actions. Republicans have leaders like Roy Moore, who says life for Black people was better in slavery. The Attorney General is a political twin of Moore. Statues of  Confederates litter the Southern landscape and rock star Kid Rock waves a Confederate flag in downtown , 85% Black Detroit.

The NRA is also a rightwing militant and armed core group of the Republican base. And another unique feature of American fascism, I'd say , is libertarian fascism. Unlike the European state centered "well ordered " police forces, America has individualist killers doing mass shootings. This is libertarian fascism para-military to the Republican Party. 

The Republican Party is a fascist party. However , even though it holds most government offices , we don't have a fascist government (yet; there is no premature anti-fascism) because of the historical luck that the Republican President is at war with our secret police and spy agencies , the FBI and CIA; and the President is a Russian agent, of sorts ; he stumbled into it. We can't rely on that not changing; we have to warn the people. There is no premature anti-fascism.

How could I forget. The Republicans are also mounting an effort to destroy the trade unions : work-for -less law iin traditional labor union stronghold Michigan, Supreme Court potential blow , Trump attacking.

President supported a Nazi march in which a woman was murdered !

"Fascism" must be used rhetorically , not based on the identity between the current situation in the Republican Party and the fascists in Europe in the 20's and 30's. If we had warned of "fascism" in the time when it actually arose, the term would not have aroused much alarm because fascism had not become what it became : fastest big murdering system of all times. Terms like tyranny, barbarism and savagery had to be used to get people's attention . Of course , technically it was not tyranny, a system in Ancient Greece. But because of the rhetorical need the term was used non-technically. Similarly with fascist today. History does not repeat itself , but it does rhyme sometimes. 

On the other hand , on the technical point, the Republican Presidential contenders all represent the most racist , bellicose, reactionary sections of finance capital. Trump threatens open terrorist rule against specially despised national and racial groups. Bush launched aggressive , unprovoked war against Iraq, a Crime Against Peace, which Hermann Goering was sentenced to death for at Nuremberg.So, Republicans are right on the edge with meeting the technical definition . There is no premature anti- fascism

Republican Party is a fully , openly fascist party now.

Someone says : "The republicans are planning to kill thousands more veterans by yanking life-support and healthcare out from under them. They have to know what they're planning will kill that many, but they just don't care.

The GOP core belief seems to be that if you can't work and pay taxes through working, you do not have a right to life -- even if you lost that ability fighting in one of the pointless wars they started. This is eerily similar to the "euthanasia program" the nazi's were operating in Germany right before the war. The elderly, the chronically ill and infirmed, the maimed (many of whom were veterans of WWI) were sent to "free" clinics to be treated. They were actually murdered, either with gas or an injection, and their survivors would receive a letter reporting about how they died from pneumonia or some other cause. Sometimes the remains were returned, sometimes they weren't."

June 2016 I said , Some like me call the Republican Party fascist, way past a whiff. "Populist"-fascist . Capable of open terrorist rule , especially targeting racial minorities , representing the most reactionary , chauvinist , bellicose sections of finance capital; there is no premature anti-fascism.

CB : Yea better to use "fascist." Fascism started and got its name in Italy. There was fascism in Spain , too. Republican Party has Italian Fascist characteristics like minority rule or oligarchy .

Joe : "I understand the word Nazi is overused, and used poorly, often. Until they kill so many innocents as Hitler did Jewish people, nobody will be in the league with Hitler.

But NOT using the word out of deference to extremist sensitivities, or out of political correctness, clearly benefits whatever group is MOST LIKE the fascists referred to. There's no doubt about that.

And if any group shares the methodology of fear-mongering, racist nationalism, and politically weaponized xenophobia, it is of the utmost importance that ordinary people recognize it.  That because the modern GOP seems to use a similar tool set, and they are very active right now.."

Bull: the Republicans are the liars , cheaters , thieves , unAmericans , not the Democrats. False equivalence of Dems and Reps helps the fascist Republicans.

AMERICANS FOR THE ABOLITION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

AMERICANS FOR THE ABOLITION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

Republicans are a bunch of lying demagogues, tellers of half-lies, prevaricators.

We must get rid of the GOP ! We must get rid of the GOP 1

Like the old, old Whig Party, the ole, ole Republican Party has got to go, go, go onto the garbage heap of American history. It gets worse every day ! Every damn day , some stupid Republican says something fascist , just beyond the pale , unconscionable. There's a rightwing insanity epidemic in the tea Republican Party.

https://take10charles.blogspot.com/2015/03/americans-for-abolition-of-republican.html?m=1

No both parties do _not_ work for the same bosses ! Vote Democrat !

Republicans used to pretend that they hate tariffs , Russians , bailouts , budget deficits and debts: the Grand Ole Party of Liars only cares about getting more of the total amount of money in the system to the rich, the One Percent , the One capitalists , who already have most of it; and beating down the 99% economically and socially. This is socioeconomic fascism.

And budget deficits and debts: the Grand Ole Party of Liars only cares about getting more of the total amount of money in the system to the rich, the One Percent , the One capitalists , who already have most of it; and beating down the 99% economically and socially. This is socioeconomic fascism.

CB: Republicans' war on Women is its central fascist plank.

Jim says : "I’ve been somewhat amused to listen as both old and young progressives argue about whether Trump is a “real” fascist. I love reading about the history of antifascist resistance during the 30’s and 40’s, and have enjoyed greatly my associations with antifascist fighters from that period. But this discussion is pointless and gets us nowhere.

The facts are the Republican Party has waged an unceasing campaign against American democratic institutions for the last eight years, since the election of Obama, who they tried to delegitimize with their birther movement.  You don’t think they have become a fascist movement? Fine! Call it what you want, put whatever label you want on it.

Now days the Republicans don’t even try to hide their nihilism. 

They have tried to shut the government down, destroy Social Security and Medicare and shred the safety net. They have fought tooth and nail against any effort to hold Wall Street and the financial industry accountable for their deprivations against the American people. 

Their scapegoats extend to Muslims, undocumented immigrants, feminists and people of color who they blame for all of America’s woes. They also attack and harass scientists who try to warn us about the dangers and consequences of climate change.

They tried and are still attempting to undermine the Iranian nuclear agreement, going so far as to use the Israeli prime minister as a weapon against our president.

They have had some success in sabotaging health care reform, suppressing voting rights, gerrymandering voting districts, destroying workers’ ability to collectively bargain, and restricting women’s rights to control their bodies.  They continue to vilify gay and transgender people. They have sought to obstruct and undermine the entire federal judiciary, not just the Supreme Court.

They have encouraged their followers to consider violence and taking up arms if they are unable to win at the ballot box. State Republican leaders have threatened succession.

The modern Republican Party is not the party of Lincoln. Nor is it the party of Eisenhower. It’s not even the party of Nixon. It represents the greatest threat to America since the Confederate states succession. 

Let us not be distracted by the Bundy’s, the play-soldier militias, the Klan or the other assorted pathetic pawns. They have no power beyond a few guns and bullets that give their empty lives some purpose. It’s the Republican Party that is the greatest threat to our society, and the sooner we understand that the sooner we will be able to unite to counter their threat.

Is the Left going to discuss the  fact that we are in fascism ? No because the Republicans are the fascist party and the Democrats are NOT a fascist party nor are the Democrats enablers , or fake opponents of the Republicans. So, the Left ( all of it almost , so ultra-left is redundant) can't call out the fascism because that would violate their number one dogmatic principle that there is no difference between the parties.

You both are right on !  Trumpist Republican Party is the Reaganite Republican Party in the nude , revealing it's essence, at its logical conclusion : anti-working class, white supremacist and male supremacist

Thomas : "The  Republican Party is turning into a fascist party much like  Le Pen's National Front in France. The GOP is now so far to the the right from even the GOP of even Barry Goldwater's and dare I say, Ron Reagan."

George : "Goldwater, Nixon and Ronnie Raygun laid the foundation for the current mess. They hid behind lofty slogans, but they were fundamentally saying the same crap!"

Bruce : "We are not allowed to compared the Nazi-like behavior of the Republican Party to Nazis because it upsets them. So here's a question. In the 1930s, who did people refer the actual Nazis to earlier in history? What was the most evil group people would have heard of to call the Nazis?"

CB: Exactly: use of "Nazis" or "fascist" now is rhetorical , even if the Republicans are not just like Hitler or Mussolini's parties. Calling Hitler a Nazi then wouldn't inform people because the Nazis hadn't murdered tens of millions yet. You'd have to say tyrants or barbarians . Rosa Luxembourg said "Socialism or Barbarism " before the Nazis.

Got to call Republicans fascists to alarm people, though Americans are generally very ignorant of history , even World War II history.

CB: US is under a fascist Republican Troika - Congress , President and Supreme Court ; evolved fascism since Reagan  

It continues...

-The Supreme Court just upheld the Trump anti-Muslim travel ban.

-The Supreme Court also just upheld the right of pro-life centers to prevent abortions by deceiving women about their true purposes. To do otherwise, the "Court" claims, would infringe on the centers' First Amendment rights...

Sent from my iPhone

For unity of song and dance

By Leo He Zhao

Zizek and his kind of Western academic leftists have a lot of good things to offer, but when they talk about dance music or dancing they are on a Creationist Museum level of utter stupidity.

They talk of collectivity, conviviality, connection, and empathy, but tragically are hermetically sealed from entire horizons of meaning which is rooted in such things, in social dancing cultures where sisterhood, brotherhood, and solidarity have a physical basis in the creative movement and mingling of bodies.

And this is of course the result of emerging from European cultural traditions entirely dominated by the proto-bourgeois aristocracy, with their "classical" cannon which demonises rhythm-focused musics and suppresses social dancing; and intellectual traditions which proceed from a divorce of mind from body.

And of course these sad, myopic, provincial, ignorant, and arrogant Euro-centrics think dancing is simply not that important a topic, like men born without testicles claiming, as if it's a universal truth, that sex is only a "set of obscene gestures".

https://aeon.co/essays/why-the-western-philosophical-canon-is-xenophobic-and-racist

Western philosophy is racist

Academic philosophy in ‘the West’ ignores and disdains the thought traditions of China, India and Africa. This must change

Bryan W Van Norden

is Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple professor at Yale-NUS College in Singapore, professor of philosophy at Vassar College in New York, and chair professor at Wuhan University in China. His latest book is Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto (2017), with a foreword by Jay L Garfield. 

2,800 words

Edited by Nigel Warburton

REPUBLISHING NOT PERMITTED

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Mainstream philosophy in the so-called West is narrow-minded, unimaginative, and even xenophobic. I know I am levelling a serious charge. But how else can we explain the fact that the rich philosophical traditions of China, India, Africa, and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas are completely ignored by almost all philosophy departments in both Europe and the English-speaking world?

Western philosophy used to be more open-minded and cosmopolitan. The first major translation into a European language of the Analects, the saying of Confucius (551-479 BCE), was done by Jesuits, who had extensive exposure to the Aristotelian tradition as part of their rigorous training. They titled their translation Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, or Confucius, the Chinese Philosopher (1687).

One of the major Western philosophers who read with fascination Jesuit accounts of Chinese philosophy was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). He was stunned by the apparent correspondence between binary arithmetic (which he invented, and which became the mathematical basis for all computers) and the I Ching, or Book of Changes, the Chinese classic that symbolically represents the structure of the Universe via sets of broken and unbroken lines, essentially 0s and 1s. (In the 20th century, the psychoanalyst Carl Jung was so impressed with the I Ching that he wrote a philosophical foreword to a translation of it.) Leibniz also said that, while the West has the advantage of having received Christian revelation, and is superior to China in the natural sciences, ‘certainly they surpass us (though it is almost shameful to confess this) in practical philosophy, that is, in the precepts of ethics and politics adapted to the present life and the use of mortals’.

The German philosopher Christian Wolff echoed Leibniz in the title of his public lecture Oratio de Sinarum Philosophia Practica, or Discourse on the Practical Philosophy of the Chinese (1721). Wolff argued that Confucius showed that it was possible to have a system of morality without basing it on either divine revelation or natural religion. Because it proposed that ethics can be completely separated from belief in God, the lecture caused a scandal among conservative Christians, who had Wolff relieved of his duties and exiled from Prussia. However, his lecture made him a hero of the German Enlightenment, and he immediately obtained a prestigious position elsewhere. In 1730, he delivered a second public lecture, De Rege Philosophante et Philosopho Regnante, or On the Philosopher King and the Ruling Philosopher, which praised the Chinese for consulting ‘philosophers’ such as Confucius and his later follower Mengzi (fourth century BCE) about important matters of state.

Chinese philosophy was also taken very seriously in France. One of the leading reformers at the court of Louis XV was François Quesnay (1694-1774). He praised Chinese governmental institutions and philosophy so lavishly in his work Despotisme de la China (1767) that he became known as ‘the Confucius of Europe’. Quesnay was one of the originators of the concept of laissez-faire economics, and he saw a model for this in the sage-king Shun, who was known for governing by wúwéi (non-interference in natural processes). The connection between the ideology of laissez-faire economics and wúwéi continues to the present day. In his State of the Union address in 1988, the US president Ronald Reagan quoted a line describing wúwéi from the Daodejing, which he interpreted as a warning against government regulation of business. (Well, I didn’t say that every Chinese philosophical 

WE MUST REVERSE REAGANISM BY ABOLISHING THE REAGANITE REPUBLICAN PARTY !

WE MUST REVERSE REAGANISM BY ABOLISHING THE REAGANITE REPUBLICAN PARTY !

Reagan started anti-Liberalism with that “tax-and-spend “ lie ; he exploded the military budget .

He cut LBJ Great Society programs .

Busted the PATCO Union

Came up with Star Wars Monstrosity

401-K’s making people dependent on stock market for pension while stealing money from Social Security

WE MUST REVERSE REAGANISM!

Reaganism is all about destroying yes they did ! Reaganism is all about destroying the New Deal , the War on Poverty and Civil Rights Acts .

Reagan turned New Deal Liberal into a dirty word -“tax and spend Liberals,” “ the government is not your friend, “ , cut welfare , bust PATCO u  ion , anti-Warren Court appointments, tax cuts for the rich  the New Deal , the War on Poverty and Civil Rights Acts .

Reagan turned New Deal Liberal into a dirty word -“tax and spend Liberals,” “ the government is not your friend, “ , cut welfare , bust PATCO u  ion , anti-Warren Court appointments, tax cuts for the rich

Obama was the beginning of the change left with the first reversals of Reaganism. Left in America in the 21st Century is Reversing Reaganism   . The initial reversal change came with Obama.

Sanders proposes to advance further left.

It’s Reaganism being reversed . It started with Obama’s actions . The reversal of Reaganism is the revival of the Great Society and the New Deal and the beginning of a New New Deal.

Reaganism: cut social programs that protect the People; seriously , no exaggeration . Government for Profiteers instead of People .

An important part of the Reaganite assault on FDR's New Deal IS reducing taxes on the Bourgeoisie. The top rate was 90% under the New Deal.

Here Reagan did a one two punch on the New Deal reduce taxes on the One Percent , and tax social security of the 99%

Reaganism is a 40 year Republican assault on trade unions initiated by Reagan’s firing the Air Traffic Controllers .

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/05/reagan-fires-11-000-striking-air-traffic-controllers-aug-5-1981-241252

What is Reaganism in 2016 ? It is rightwing government continuing the War on the Poor, neo-White Supremacy, escalation of the  arms race and warmongering, union busting. It was initiated by Reagan's Presidential leadership , but politically metastasized among millions of Americans , and was continued after Reagan's Presidency in the Gingrich Gang in Congress with its Contract on America; Bill Clinton's ending welfare as we know it, even, sadly; Bush's Crimes Against Peace in Iraq and Afghanistan and tax cuts for the rich;the tea Republicans and all current Republican Party Presidential nominees, and most Republican politicians with power , and Blue Dog Democrats for 35 years .

One of Obama's greatest political achievements is halting and reversing the federal War on the Poor with the first War on Poverty program since LBJ: Obamacare and opposing tax cuts for the rich. Obama has UNstayed the Reaganite course in the Presidency; Reagan's action was only in the Presidency at first; there were Democratic majorities in Congress for all his term. Reaganism spread to Congress and the states later.

Reaganism is all around anti-99% policies of government fraudulently presented as pro-working class; it is tragically successful demagogy.

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WE MUST REVERSE REAGANISM BY ABOLISHING THE REAGANITE REPUBLICAN PARTY !

Reagan started anti-Liberalism with that “tax-and-spend “ lie ; he exploded the military budget .

He cut LBJ Great Society programs .

Busted the PATCO Union

Came up with Star Wars Monstrosity

401-K’s making people dependent on stock market for pension while stealing money from Social Security

WE MUST REVERSE REAGANISM!

Reverse Reaganism has been the task of the 99% since 1980.

Not the Obama administration

Sam : "The "Better Business Climate" political/economic model for every presidential administration

 ( not the Obama administration )

since 1980 has pursued these three policies:

(1) Cut taxes, especially on the wealthy and large corporations,

(2) Cut government regulation, especially on high finance, and

(3) Cut government social spending.

To learn more about how that happened and what we need to do to undo the damage done, register for one of the "Reversing Runaway Inequality," 1/2 day, free workshops sponsored by Southeast Michigan Jobs with Justice, Communications Workers of America and Metro Detroit A. Philip Randolph Institute at semjwj2@gmail.com

Neo-liberalism is better termed Reaganism.  "Liberal" in the US since FDR represents proletarian victories in the contested state power . So, it is confusing and academically sectarianism terminology, counter-intuitive politically for the great mass of American voters to label Reaganism , neo- "New Dealism"/Liberalism.  The proletariat's main political task for 30 years has been to reverse Reaganism, Reaganonmics. Bring back LIBERALISM . That's why neo-liberal for Reaganism is academic disconnect to mass consciousness. It is also academic ultra-leftism , taking a sneaky swipe at the Democratic Party. Of course, Bill Clinton was significantly Reaganite; that's how bad Reaganism got to be. The worse is at the state level in many cases , as in Michigan , Englerites, now Snake Snyder.

With Obama , change has come; the Reaganite direction in the Presidency has been halted , and its reversal begun; the Tea Party struck back; but the All Peoples front and anti -Monopoly Coalition majority persists ; Obama , despite many Pickett's charges by the Neo-Confederates, has accelerated reversal of Reaganism at the Presidential level. So, Obama is a Neo-Rooseveltian.

We must reverse Reaganism !
 
To reverse Reaganism , we must elect overwhelming majorities of Democrats at state and federal levels . Much of Reaganism is at the state level.


“We have to undo the attack on the middle class that started with Reagan if we want democracy back
The destruction of the middle class is destroying democracies and paving the way for authoritarian rule

https://www.salon.com/2019/10/04/we-have-to-undo-the-attack-on-the-middle-class-that-started-with-reagan-if-we-want-democracy-back_partner/

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Women should lead the world

http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2022/03/antoinette-blackwell-quotes.html Kastonivich :

“As the Ignorance Clears
'
I’ve said it again and again
That women should lead the world
Many make leaders with feelings
Against men their insults hurled

While the males had thousands or years
Making females second-class
We’ll think as the ignorance clears
Must give it a second glance

They have organizational skills
And will listen with their hearts
Know when baby’s suffering chills
Intuition off the charts

But mostly because they can talk
While walking at the same time
Fully function even in shock
Right on track with rhythm and rhyme
'
written by Kastinovich
'
Women have a multifaceted array of abilities, especially multitasking; they are, generally speaking, better listeners, communicators (a hearing-speaking connection in the brain), quite forgiving, more willing to put ego aside (for a cause), organizers, caretakers, nurturers, who will always find a way to take care of her people, and will even become mama bear when necessary. Sounds like ideal leaders to me. There’s a place for the men, too; they might focus more on fishing, hunting, cooking, cleaning the house, and tinkering in the garage, while the women focus on running local, state, and federal governments.
'
These posts are more than happy to be shared. Kas🌏💙✍️ http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2022/03/antoinette-blackwell-quotes.html