The Bern in Bernie Sanders is his viscerally appealing call for humans to live in heaven instead of hell. Hillary, Debbie of the DNC, Trump, the Koch bros and their ilk, they are all calling for most humans to live in hell. These supporters of hellish life on earth are all part of the economic elite and they callously sit back and watch others starve. Who wants to live in such a world?
A friend has just reminded me of the fable of the difference between heaven and hell: in hell, everyone sits before great feasts but they all starve because they can only eat using six foot spoons and no human can feed themselves with a six foot eating utensil. The human arm is not long enough. In heaven, of course, people feed one another. Thanks for reminding me of it. I have always heard it as people having six foot long spoons that they had to eat from. People in that hell could only eat with six foot long spoons!
A friend has just reminded me of the fable of the difference between heaven and hell: in hell, everyone sits before great feasts but they all starve because they can only eat using six foot spoons and no human can feed themselves with a six foot eating utensil. The human arm is not long enough. In heaven, of course, people feed one another. Thanks for reminding me of it. I have always heard it as people having six foot long spoons that they had to eat from. People in that hell could only eat with six foot long spoons!
Heaven is feeding one another. Hell is starving for lack of empathy and compassion, both for others and for one's self, for one is denying one's own need -- for food, for love, for eerything -- when one allows one's self to starve rather than caring for one another. Lovely.
Do you know Riane Eisler's book, "The Real Wealth of Nations". The title, of course, is a riff on Adam Smith's book about economics at the beginning of the industrial era (I think Henry Ford used Smith's ideas as if they were Ford's Holy Bible!), The Wealth of Nations.
In Eisler's book, which did not become the blockbuster it should have been and I believe sexism factored into her great book envisioning a more just economic life but also, the dominator culture (dominator culture is a term Eisler coined in her earlier book, The Partnership Way!) rejects the ideas Eisler wrote aout in 'The Real Wealth of Nations'. Now, we might slip in the word oligarchy for 'the dominator culture' but there are nuanced subtities that distinguish 'dominator culture' from oligarchy. And maybe not all that subtle differences. . . . . look how I am rambling. . .
A truncated summary of the thesis of "real Wealth of nations" was Eisler's call for humans to create an economic life centered around meeting human need. It was, in a way, the ultimate realization of feminism for all: a world dependent on an economy that is grounded in meeting one another's needs is a world I'd like to inhabit. Of course 'the establishment' ignore Dr. Eisler. I have heard she lives in Berkeley. She is also getting on in years, in her nineties.
In 2006, I helped organize a couple events called evolutionary salons. For the second salon that I was involved with (there were other salons), I was the registrar so I interacted with everyone who merely inquired about the event and everyone who registered. Riane Eisler registered! I was thrilled as I anticipated meeting one of my heroes. Her husband's health took a bad turn and she was unable to attend. As you see, I still regret that missed opportunity.
We most certainly could generate an economic life that arises from meeting one another needs. We could remember that greed is one of the seven deadly sins, too.
An aspect of the story that distinguishes heaven from hell that can be, when I am thinking of that story which I don't do regularly, is this: aren't the people with those long arms crazy, denying themselves thoughtlessly and needlessly. Why is no explanation offered for the irrational choice for people in that Hell to allow themselves and others to starve, why does it ot occur to people in such a Hell that they can be different?
And, as I wrote my question just now, I started thinking "this is the question of these challenging times in human history". When we ask ourselves "how can millions conceive, much less adopt, the idea that the lunatic demogogue Trump or the hateful demogogue Cruz should be president? How can people support continued corporatacracy, corruption and warmongering?
And now I am reminded of a course I took as an undergrad, an interdisciplinary, three trimester program called "irrationality". Each trimester, we studied various manifestations of irrationality in humankind. We began that three-term program with the Holocaust. Each week, a humanities professor from a range of humanity disciplines would give a large group lecture and we all read the assigned readings on the prof's topic. In those days, early seventies, there were almost no female faculty so it was all men teaching men and women about what it means to be human -- that still grates! that is an irrational choice, to exclude women from anything. In addition to the large group lecture, which was a new approach at my tiny liberal arts college (the university was known for its very small classes and low student to faculty ratio), we had two small group discussions each week . . on that week's take on irrationality.
It was, for me, a very emotionally demanding, draining program. I kept saying I wouldn't take the next trimester but I couldn't stay away. My young mind and being was being fed something important by contemplating the human seemingly endless capacity for irrationality. Those all white, all male professors had no problem coming up with endless examples of irrationality, most of it manifested by males.
In the spring, in the third and final trimester of my Irrationality studies, which was also my final trimester in college, we finally got around to the Vietnam War. Most students in that class had gathered in the student union for hours and hours, because in those days, students didn't have televisions in their dorm rooms. Each dorm had a tv room but the fall of Saigon drew us together by hundreds of students crammed into our student union to watch it's one small tv (no big screen tv's back then!). I had brought up the Viet Name War repeatedly throughout that year and each time I did, some white male professor would slam my suggestion that if war was irrational, perhaps we might discuss the Viet Nam war. EVeryone knew men who had served in Nam, died in Nam, become maimed for life in Nam. We also all knew draft dodgers and
No comments:
Post a Comment