tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32147251936706034002024-03-15T12:29:54.724+00:00Understanding Life and DebtFor ordinary people struggling against the established powers to gain control over their own lives, lands and liberties.Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.comBlogger160125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-65654620348797054582024-03-15T11:41:00.002+00:002024-03-15T12:29:22.688+00:00What If ?<p> W<b>hat
if we’re the people we’ve been waiting for?</b></p>
<p class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="en-US">The
book entitled </span><span lang="en-US"><i>The Household and the
Planet</i></span><span lang="en-US"> (forthcoming) details the mess
that Western Civilisation has planted on the Planet. The roots of the
problems are not to be found in some distant faraway desert island.
They lie right here, inside our very doorsteps. For decades, the same
refrain has been repeated over and over again. Each and every one of
us is responsible for those choices we make as citizens in the
political sphere, as workers and spenders in the economic sphere, and
as artists in the cultural sphere. To spell it out simply:</span></p>
<p class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="en-US">1.
in the political sphere, it is not enough to cast a vote when
elections are called, only to sit back and leave them to it, so that
blame them when things go wrong. On the contrary, as responsible
citizens we have the duty to support our elected representatives when
they are working for us on the right lines, and to blow the whistle
loud and clear when things are going wrong. How? Well, that's the
duty of the citizen to find out, by attending council meetings at
local, regional and national levels, asking questions, writing to the
press and mass media and studying with others what is to be done
about noise, air and light pollution, food banks and the other
plights facing the same problems as in the Ken Loach film "I
Daniel Blake".</span></p>
<p class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="en-US">2.
as economic agents, it is our duty to consider very seriously our
ecological and ethical footprint. Where and how do our consumer
life choices and the kind of paid work we do, impact upon the life
choices of other households, and upon the planet as a whole/? If we
are happy about it, fine. If not, who is going to do anything about
it? Who </span><span lang="en-US"><i>can</i></span><span lang="en-US">
effect change?</span></p>
<p class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">3.
As cultural agents we have a duty to educate ourselves in arts,
crafts, farming, and other practical skills, not just as a hobby to pas the time, but
as worthwhile practical skills that produce food, clothing and the
other necessities of life. Included in these skills is the ability to
interact with others in music and dance to read, discuss and write
and record thoughts.</p>
<p class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">These
questions are not novel in any way. They have been asked persistently
throughout the twentieth century by groups of individuals with the
common good at heart. Their questioning has been poopooed by the
devotees of progress and materialism - you can't put the clock-back,
that's what the Luddites tried to do. etc etc. Nevertheless, a
substantial bank of sound thinking is to be found if you look for it.
As a start, you might investigate the <a href="https://www.douglassocialcredit.com/">Douglas
Social Credit website</a> https://www.douglassocialcredit.com/ .</p>
<p class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Start
with the HOME PAGE. The column on the right of the page, and the drop
down menus, introduce worldwide bodies of alternative thought, debate
and discussion. Copies of <i>The Social Artist</i> contain
informative articles, views and reviews from well-established groups,
networks and key figures from mainstream media, academia and the
various non-governmental 'voluntary' bodies. Your attention is drawn
to the Autumn 2019 edition of TSA (bottom left on your screen). There
you will find and article by Helga Moss that amplifies upon the above
mentioned comments on the role of the individual household. And, on
page 36 Peter Maurin of The Catholic Worker, explains anarchism.</p>
<p class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">A
guided tour of the rest of the website is to follow in due course of
time. In the meantime, there is nothing to stop you investigating for
yourself.
</p>
<p class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">To
access this Blog try https://understandinglifeanddebt.blogspot.com/</p>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-51316864869799978662023-12-06T14:37:00.001+00:002023-12-06T14:37:36.384+00:00The Machine Age Skidelsky<p> </p><p align="CENTER" class="western" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Age Against the Machine</p>
<p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">by Robert
Skidelsky</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Humans have
always had a fractured relationship with machines. A tool is an
extension of muscles, always under the control of the individual.
Tools can never replace humans in the job market: a row of tools
can't make a car. But machines can make things on their own, and
therein lies their promise and threat: the promise, of multiplied
productive power-versus the threat of human redundancy. This has been
so ever since the Industrial Revolution. And the story is not yet
finished.
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">My new book, <i>The
Machine Age</i>,: <i>An Idea, a History, a Warning</i>, tells three
stories, each with a happy or unhappy ending. The first is the one
just introduced. Machines increase productivity — output per input
of energy - promising a return to Paradise where, "neither Adam
nor Eve span".
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">But what about the
redundancies which would follow machines taking over human tasks? The
factory would be filled not by inert tools but by busy robots, - and
soon offices and retail shops would resound to their whirring. What
would be left for humans to do if practically all their tasks could
be automated? And who would pay their wages?
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black;">The
technological en</span>thusiasts respond by urging us to think of
machines complementing human performance, not replacing it. In 1997,
the IBM computer Deep Blue beat the world chess champion Garry
Kasparov over six games of chess. If a machine could beat the best
human in a game as mentally demanding as chess, what future could
humans look forward to, other than one of growing unemployment? But
it then turned out that computers plus humans could beat humans or
computers on their own, so computers would not replace humans but
enhance them! The threat of redundancy was lifted, and so far, at
least technological unemployment is minimal.
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">A more sinister
possibility is opened up by the spread of surveillance technology.
The promise of shedding a light into dark places, dating from Plato's
famous allegory of the cave, was visualised in Jeremy Bentham's
famous design for a Panopticon in 1786. This was an ideal prison
system, in which a central watch tower could shine a bright light
into all the surrounding cells without the prisoners being aware of
being watched. This would reduce the need for prison guards, since
the prisoners, aware of being continually surveilled, would police
themselves. Why should not schools, hospitals, workplaces, streets —
all of society — be run on these lines? The idea of building an
ideal society based on a prison was made flesh in both Nazi Germany
and Communist Russia. These 'utopias' failed, but Bentham's hopes
lire on.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Today's
technology offers a power of surveillance only dreamt of by the most
powerful autocrat in the past. It operates not through searchlights
but through digital tracking and recognition systems into which we
are all slotted, willingly or not, through our dependence on
computers for everyday services like shopping and banking.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Just think —
no more need for guessing what you might be up to: every desire would
be anticipated by Big Seller, every potential mischief nipped in the
bud by Big Brother. And all this is happening now. Every day improved
surveillance devices are being rolled out and installed to ensure the
consumer and political behaviour desired by a commercial platform or
a state. China leads the way, but the surveillance society is
catching up everywhere.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">But there is
a third possible story even more dreadful than the first-two. This
involves not unemployment nor zombiedom, but physical extinction. Our
planet has always been threatened by natural disasters — the
dinosaurs were probably extinguished 60 million years ago by an
asteroid hitting the earth. Now we can create machine made disasters.
In 1947, two years after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, leading scientists created a Doomsday Clock to monitor=
threats to humanity from unchecked scientific and technological
advances. The clock was set ticking at seven minutes to countdown in
1947. In January 2020 it was set at 100 seconds, its closest ever to
countdown; in January 2023, following outbreak of war in Ukraine, it
was reduced to 90.'Again, we see a vastly increased saving power
intertwined with a vastly enhanced destructive power.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Most of us
have heard of the Luddites, the handloom weavers who in 1811 started
smashing the power looms being installed in factories. The most
famous English economist of the day, David Ricardo, wrote, "the
substitution of machinery for human labour is often very injurious to
the interests of the labourers". Before we allow machines to
take over our future, for better or worse, we must have a long pause
for reflection, though I doubt we will get it.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> <span> </span>Robert
Skidelsky's latest book, <i>The Machine Age</i>: <i>An Idea, a History, a Warning</i></p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">COMMENT: The
Luddites are noted for attacking the machines, whereas, on the
contrary, they were defending a way of life that allowed them to live
in communities that took account of the needs of the soils, plants,
animals and humans, and the world of nature a s a whole. The task
ahead is to account the demands our own individual households are
making on the living planet, and bring an end to the wages system.
Food for thought? Read more in future Blogs.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-85466396705421127492023-12-02T16:29:00.000+00:002023-12-02T16:29:49.155+00:00A Civilization of Technics Part 3<p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>A
Civilization of Technics</b></span><sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="#sdendnote1sym" name="sdendnote1anc"><sup>i</sup></a></sup></p>
<p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> <span style="font-size: small;">Philip
Mairet (1945)</span><span style="font-size: small;"><b> Part 3</b></span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.08cm; margin-top: 0.06cm;">
<span style="color: black;">The present convulsions of civilization are
both a manifestation of this </span><span style="color: black;">degradation
and a violent effort to arrest it. The programmes of the </span><span style="color: black;">warring
parties, Communist, Nazi, Fascist, and Democratic, are all com</span><span style="color: black;">plex
mixtures of ideas, some of which threaten to intensify the
predica</span><span style="color: black;">ment of power-economy whilst
others propose its alleviation, for all men </span><span style="color: black;">are
horrified at the problems into which unrestricted machine-power is
</span><span style="color: black;">leading them. While the whole world is
beating tractors into tanks, some </span><span style="color: black;">rueful
voices are also being raised to ask whether the entire direction of
</span><span style="color: black;">technological progress may not have to
be reversed. In the January 1942 </span><span style="color: black;">number
of </span><span style="color: black;"><i>Harper's Magazine, </i></span><span style="color: black;">for
instance, a learned contributor hails </span><span style="color: black;">the
present struggle as the beginning of the '
Anti-Industrial-Revolution', </span><span style="color: black;">and
prophesies that the strict limitation of technics must be its final
out</span><span style="color: black;">come—a pronouncement
especially remarkable in the United States, </span><span style="color: black;">where
applied technology has reached its apotheosis. Yet there can be no
</span><span style="color: black;">merely negative solution, nor is the
issue susceptible of compromise. The </span><span style="color: black;">exploitation
of solar energy must either be justified at the altar of man's
supreme aspirations, or else it will continue to operate as a curse
on the </span><span style="color: black;">human race.</span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.03cm; margin-top: 0.14cm;">
<span style="color: black;">Before attempting to say what we should hope
and work for, let us con</span><span style="color: black;">sider what
is likely to occur. The only positive solution at present </span><span style="color: black;">envisaged
by very many people is, as we have seen, that a Civilization of
</span><span style="color: black;">Technics should set before itself this
single aim—the distribution of the maximum of wealth and well-being
to all. We may expect that, after the </span><span style="color: black;">war,
there will be a thoroughgoing attempt to realize this aim through
</span><span style="color: black;">planning upon a continental if not
planetary scale—that is, unless the war </span><span style="color: black;">leaves
people too discouraged to give any serious effort to recovery, as the
</span><span style="color: black;">Civil War has left the people of Spain:
but this is unlikely to be the uni</span><span style="color: black;">versal
condition, and if large blocs of population are afflicted with
inertia, </span><span style="color: black;">it may only facilitate the
plans of those who still feel vigour enough to </span><span style="color: black;">take
initiative. From this aim, however, great success is not to be
expected, </span><span style="color: black;">for reasons indicated earlier
in this essay. The effort is to be welcomed </span><span style="color: black;">because
it is positive, and it would seem to lie in the natural line of
</span><span style="color: black;">development. It is for instance in
harmony with important changes now </span><span style="color: black;">proceeding
in the political mentality of society.</span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.02cm; margin-right: 0.02cm; margin-top: 0.02cm;">
<span style="color: black;">The people who will wield the greatest powers
in the society of the near </span><span style="color: black;">future will
be—apart from military leaders and their experts—the
tech</span><span style="color: black;">nological </span><span style="color: black;"><i>elite.
</i></span><span style="color: black;">Those who have hitherto ruled the
world that is now going up in flames have been people of specialized
mentality, expert in accoun</span><span style="color: black;">tancy
and financial politics, organized in rather unstable groups which
were continually engaged in surreptitious dynastic wars, fighting one
another by manipulating stock markets, cornering supplies and
altering </span><span style="color: black;">prices—wars in which the
victories were signalized by mergers and com</span><span style="color: black;">bines
and the defeats by liquidations. In the present world war there can
</span><span style="color: black;">be little doubt that these financial
dynasties are being weakened if not </span><span style="color: black;">destroyed.</span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.02cm; margin-right: 0.03cm; margin-top: 0.03cm;">
<span style="color: black;">At present the financial dynasts are being
compelled to give a last </span><span style="color: black;">exhibition of
their abilities by helping the Governments at war to co</span><span style="color: black;">ordinate
all productive industry in the national interests; but in doing so
</span><span style="color: black;">they must destroy the roots of their own
power. The question is, who will </span><span style="color: black;">succeed
them? Militant politicians will be very powerful, presumably, but
</span><span style="color: black;">modern war is the greatest of industrial
undertakings, and the dominant </span><span style="color: black;">class of
men in a modern war state must be the technicians, whose power is
bound to continue into the peace, in order to fulfil the growing
demand for planned economy and wealth-distribution. We are in for
technocracy.</span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.01cm; margin-top: 0.14cm;">
<span style="color: black;">The ground has been well prepared for this
palace revolution, by the decline of the power of ownership.
Industries, and even the largest com</span><span style="color: black;">bines,
may still be nominally ruled by their shareholders as titular </span><span style="color: black;">owners,
but for a long while past this ownership has been in no real sense </span><span style="color: black;">a
directive function. Management has become more and more a profession
</span><span style="color: black;">in itself, the managers being the
highest class of technicians, and they commonly appoint their own
successors. This is undoubtedly the rising </span><span style="color: black;">class
throughout the Civilization of Technics, whose abilities, aims, and
ideas have done most to shape the development of the modern world. It
is </span><span style="color: black;">a small class, and one can only get
into it by technical knowledge and </span><span style="color: black;">ability
of a high order; but so far its direct political and social control
has </span><span style="color: black;">been small. The political influence
of industrial concerns has been exercised by the financial
class, which overlaps the technical only to a small </span><span style="color: black;">extent.
Now the financial class, considered as a political aristocracy, is
out </span><span style="color: black;">of public favour. It has
conspicuously failed to lead a technological civiliza</span><span style="color: black;">tion
either to plenty or stability; and its relations with the technicians
</span><span style="color: black;">have for some time been hostile. Civil
engineers, scientists, and experts in </span><span style="color: black;">productive
organization have been the leaders in the contemporary revolt </span><span style="color: black;">of
opinion against the financial system as such—and therefore against
the </span><span style="color: black;">prestige of the financial class. The
issue between them has always been </span><span style="color: black;">that
between full production and ' artificial scarcity'; the financiers
having </span><span style="color: black;">habitually imposed limits upon
production in order to fit their financial </span><span style="color: black;">frame,
whereas the technicians work for the abolition of all financial
con</span><span style="color: black;">straints, and for the complete
liberation of industry to fill the world with </span><span style="color: black;">its
products. </span>
</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.02cm; margin-right: 0.02cm; margin-top: 0.02cm;">
<span style="color: black;">The people who will wield the greatest powers
in the society of the near </span><span style="color: black;">future will
be—apart from military leaders and their experts—the
tech</span><span style="color: black;">nological </span><span style="color: black;"><i>elite.
</i></span><span style="color: black;">Those who have hitherto ruled the
world that is now going up in flames have been people of specialized
mentality, expert in accoun</span><span style="color: black;">tancy
and financial politics, organized in rather unstable groups which
were continually engaged in surreptitious dynastic wars, fighting one
another by manipulating stock markets, cornering supplies and
altering </span><span style="color: black;">prices—wars in which the
victories were signalized by mergers and com</span><span style="color: black;">bines
and the defeats by liquidations. In the present world war there can
</span><span style="color: black;">be little doubt that these financial
dynasties are being weakened if not </span><span style="color: black;">destroyed.</span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.02cm; margin-right: 0.03cm; margin-top: 0.03cm;">
<span style="color: black;">At present the financial dynasts are being
compelled to give a last </span><span style="color: black;">exhibition of
their abilities by helping the Governments at war to co</span><span style="color: black;">ordinate
all productive industry in the national interests; but in doing so
</span><span style="color: black;">they must destroy the roots of their own
power. The question is, who will </span><span style="color: black;">succeed
them? Militant politicians will be very powerful, presumably, but
</span><span style="color: black;">modern war is the greatest of industrial
undertakings, and the dominant </span><span style="color: black;">class of
men in a modern war state must be the technicians, whose power is
bound to continue into the peace, in order to fulfil the growing
demand for planned economy and wealth-distribution. We are in for
technocracy.</span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.01cm; margin-top: 0.14cm;">
<span style="color: black;">The ground has been well prepared for this
palace revolution, by the decline of the power of ownership.
Industries, and even the largest com</span><span style="color: black;">bines,
may still be nominally ruled by their shareholders as titular </span><span style="color: black;">owners,
but for a long while past this ownership has been in no real sense </span><span style="color: black;">a
directive function. Management has become more and more a profession
</span><span style="color: black;">in itself, the managers being the
highest class of technicians, and they commonly appoint their own
successors. This is undoubtedly the rising </span><span style="color: black;">class
throughout the Civilization of Technics, whose abilities, aims, and
ideas have done most to shape the development of the modern world. It
is </span><span style="color: black;">a small class, and one can only get
into it by technical knowledge and </span><span style="color: black;">ability
of a high order; but so far its direct political and social control
has </span><span style="color: black;">been small. The political influence
of industrial concerns has been exercised by the financial
class, which overlaps the technical only to a small </span><span style="color: black;">extent.
Now the financial class, considered as a political aristocracy, is
out </span><span style="color: black;">of public favour. It has
conspicuously failed to lead a technological civiliza</span><span style="color: black;">tion
either to plenty or stability; and its relations with the technicians
</span><span style="color: black;">have for some time been hostile. Civil
engineers, scientists, and experts in </span><span style="color: black;">productive
organization have been the leaders in the contemporary revolt </span><span style="color: black;">of
opinion against the financial system as such—and therefore against
the </span><span style="color: black;">prestige of the financial class. The
issue between them has always been </span><span style="color: black;">that
between full production and ' artificial scarcity'; the financiers
having </span><span style="color: black;">habitually imposed limits upon
production in order to fit their financial </span><span style="color: black;">frame,
whereas the technicians work for the abolition of all financial
con</span><span style="color: black;">straints, and for the complete
liberation of industry to fill the world with </span><span style="color: black;">its
products. </span>
</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-right: 0.19cm; margin-top: 0.02cm;">
<span style="color: black;">Is it too much to hope that, from this
necessary development, we may see the natural sciences re-assume
their proper place and their priority to the technical? If so, there
will be a change of mind and mood in which philosophy can once more
flourish and religion regain its rightful sway: </span><span style="color: black;">for
there, in religion alone, is the primary and continual source of the
</span><span style="color: black;">cultural spirit, not in technics indeed
and also not in Nature. Out of </span><span style="color: black;">Nature
are our societies born, in their technics they die, but through
</span><span style="color: black;">Religion they are regenerated. A re-born
society can go on developing </span><span style="color: black;">ever
greater technical powers, so long as it uses, and is not used by
them. But when it succumbs to the fascination and the power and pride
of technics, it loses not only its sense of the supernatural
order, but also its foot</span><span style="color: black;">hold upon
natural life. </span>
</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Chapter from </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Prospect for
Christendom: Essays in Catholic Social Reconstruction</i></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">,
Maurice Reckitt (ed), Faber and Faber (1945/6)</span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.02cm; margin-right: 0.03cm; margin-top: 0.03cm;">
COMMENT: As becomes evident on reading the three-part essay entitled
<i>A Civilization of Technics</i>, Philip Mairet was a key writer
and activist in the network of debates on the social order of the
first half of the 20th century. See Wikipedia. He was a familiar
figure in the emerging guilds, trade unions, social credit,
anthroposophical and cooperative movements of his time, writing key
texts across the range of social thinking on philosophy, politics,
economics and finance.
</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.02cm; margin-right: 0.02cm; margin-top: 0.02cm;">
<br />
</p>
<p><a class="sdendnotesym" href="#sdendnote1anc" name="sdendnote1sym">i</a>
<span style="color: black;">When we speak of a civilization of Technics we
mean a social order so </span><span style="color: black;">shaped and
adapted that it can make the fullest use of the solar energy </span><span style="color: black;">stored
up in mineral form as coal or oil, or obtained by distillation from
vegetable substances. This last source of energy, though it may
increase in importance, is at present too relatively costly to be
greatly exploited; much </span><span style="color: black;">more power is
at present obtained from the world's great water-courses. </span><span style="color: black;">The
stimulus and the means which made possible the present phenomenal
</span><span style="color: black;">developments of machinery began with
the discovery of the energy that can </span><span style="color: black;">be
obtained from the combustion of coal and oil.</span> </p>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-73972698524625702612023-12-01T13:23:00.001+00:002023-12-01T13:23:39.952+00:00A Civilization of Technics Part 2<p> </p><p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>A
Civilization of Technics Part 2</b></span></p>
<p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Philip
Mairet (1945)</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The idea that we should
delegate our material production to the gnomes of power-technics, and
thus free ourselves for lives of leisure, introduces a serious
contradiction if we make the gnomes too clever. It is all right so
long as the gnomes are kept to drudge at such work as galley-slaves
once had to do. But the distinction between work and leisure can be
pushed too far, because as a matter of fact the only thing for man to
do with leisure, over and above his needs for relaxation and
contemplation, is work of his own choice. To serve God and society by
his performance, in the spirit of an artist, by producing something
good, or unique, or doing something well or uniquely—this is what
every human being ultimately needs and desires, because in the last
analysis there is nothing else for him to do. Leisure itself is
mainly an added space or margin that is required to give the
individual latitude for his full performance. Now, if we are going to
produce all the essential services and furniture of life—including
houses which, it is now said, are to be mass-produced in sections and
assembled, like a <i>compactum</i> bookcase, as many rooms as
required—it appears that we shall most of us all the time, or all
of us most of the time, be ' unemployed' but provided with means to
purchase plenty of gnome-work plus the nutritional standard diet.
Most of the theoretical social idealisms of the day appear to be
converging towards this ideal, so that it is not quite an idle
speculation to consider what we should do with ourselves in such
a social milieu; and the first thing that occurs to anyone of any
psychological and social experience is that the wealth with which we
should be provided would be but little esteemed. Some of us might be
tempted to use our plentiful leisure to provide the same things as
the gnomes had made for us, and to make them more to our
idiosyncratic taste, but this voluntary creative work would also have
declined in prestige, as being confessedly 'useless'. There is here
the danger of an altogether excessive opposition in thought between
what is useful and what is good.
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">A categorical
separation of the two ideas has gone too far, with the increasing
mass-production of goods for the masses: already it is noticeable
that pride and pleasure in personal property has declined, and that,
with all our modern emphasis upon making commodities that are
desired, in the sense of being saleable, it has become less and less
fashionable to own them. The homes of the past, often
overcrowded with household treasures which it took so much
household labour to keep clean, are not perhaps to be held up for
example; but there is something very paradoxical in the fact
that our present age, with its plethoric productivity, has induced an
unexpected disinclination to be bothered with possessions, a
reluctance to collect fine books, prints or pictures, to have any
furniture worth treasuring as of more than lifelong utility or
beauty—often indeed, to have any permanent home in which things can
be treasured. All this decline in the valuation of things is due to
the fact that the gnome-work really is less valuable. A thing cannot
hold more value than has been put into it: we cannot have our cake
and eat it: and if we will insist upon developing the skill of the
gnomes until they can produce by the million things superficially as
good as our own handiwork, or better, we cannot at the same time
experience an equal enjoyment in possessing such things— and
certainly not in the tedious work of overseeing their making. To all
appearances the modern gnome-drivers are the most discontented
workers, as a class, that the world has ever seen.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The only cure for this
decline of values both in production and consumption, would be
to restrict the work of the gnomes to relieving human workers of the
most purely repetitive and physically laborious tasks; and to set the
individual workers as free as possible for independent work in making
things or rendering services. We hope that some of the numerous
bodies now planning the post-war world will so far work against the
stream of current theorizing as to base their plans, not upon
standardization and rationalization, but upon the greatest
possible devolution of industry. That would be the only way to
incorporate the gnome-work into human civilization without reducing
the amount of human happiness too seriously. Such an effort will
encounter opposition both from the ignorant and from the interested,
and the plea for human happiness will be denounced as immoral. The
advocates of State industrialism will endeavour to invest with
an ethical superiority the work of organizing, perfecting, and
designing work for the machines, by making out that it is far more
moral to help to make a million things all alike for a million people
than to make one unique thing for one person, or a few things for a
few. This popular fallacy is not even a specious one, but its growing
acceptance is culturally disastrous. If it is ethically wrong to make
one man a means to the ends of another, to make him the mere
instrument of a multitude is just as bad. The social ideal is that
every man's work should be an important part of his own
fulfilment, and not the price exacted for it. Every culture which is
genuine is occupied not so much with adapting right means to right
ends, as in seeking to identify ends and means, for in the perfect
civilization, as in Nature, every function would be performed not
only as a means and a service to the whole life of the society, but
as being in its own degree a manifestation of the very purpose which
life itself is seeking.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">In the opinion of many
good observers—not only of the aestheticians, whose testimony on
this point is not to be ignored—this lack of value in the work done
is the crucial problem in our civilization. An employer of industrial
labour, of long experience and good insight into the minds of
workers, tells the present writer that, in his opinion, the dislike
of the average man for machine-minding—or shall we say his
inability to like it —is so complete that, if it is not cured, it
will bring the civilization of technics to a breakdown. Satisfaction
cannot be injected by any kind of Stakhanovism: that is a sort of
heroics, which makes a bravado of the activity desired, and in
rewarding with money and publicity those who drive their machines
hardest, it really directs attention to the singular tedium that has
to be borne. The political promise that, after the revolution,
or after the war, or after the five-year-plan, the workers shall
enjoy all the proceeds of the conveyor-belts, is effective enough as
a moralistic suggestion, but obviously it does not meet the
difficulty at all. The citizen is not going to be satisfied as an
individual with a life of movements dictated by machinery,
simply because the collectivity has a higher standard of life: rather
the contrary; the idea that production is easy and that there is
anyhow plenty of it, will make him try to get out of the factory and
into a more worth-while occupation.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The one thing that
might keep the mass of workers cheerfully going through the motions
dictated by automata would be a faith or a conviction that such
behaviour was a necessary and essential part of their life and love.
If the age of technics is to be prolonged into the future it will be
because society will have somehow succeeded in providing this
sustaining motive; and we may even ask whether perhaps such a
transcendental reason for their recent work has not been present in
some measure all the time. Should we have been able to proceed as far
as we have towards a mechanized economy, unless men felt, even if
vaguely, dimly, and uncertainly, that our society was doing
something great in this age of progress, and that the technical
miracles were themselves, in some sort, a collective achievement
worthy of human life and love? Perhaps even the machine workers have
more than half believed that in this phase of history men were doing
what men are for—not indeed doing it well enough, nor unmixed
with baser purposes, yet on the whole giving expression to something
inherent in Man and his world-position-—fulfilling a possibility
that ought to be fulfilled.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">For the masses have not
been left in ignorance of what has been happening. At least they
know that the great navigators, astronomers, and geographers have
combined to discover the whole planet, and that the engineers have
linked all its parts together in systems of transport; the attainment
of flight and of wireless communication and many other achievements
are not only well known even to the least instructed factory hand;
they do also furnish a world spectacle at which he is assisting, in
however humble a capacity. The consciousness of every man has been
affected powerfully by this transformation of Man's world, and there
seems no doubt that he has felt its greatness and believed, with
whatever reservations, that it must be right and true to the cosmic
scheme of things that man has attained and is exercising such powers.
That may be a judgement of pride, of course—far too much of such
pride has gone before our present fall—but is not this pride the
defect of a better quality, also present in some degree? Dare we
assert that the feelings which have enabled ordinary mankind to
co-operate in this world-metamorphosis have not had one of their
deepest sources in a kind of reverence and awe?</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">It is at bottom untrue,
I would submit, that the mighty works of this civilization, the uses
it has made of its material power, have come about through the
predatory instinct, the profit-seeking motive or the lust for wealth
and comfort of Economic Man. All these psychic forces have operated
for millennia; have played their part in previous cultures and helped
to wreck them. But the recent transfiguration of Man's world is, as
much as any previous culture, an attainment of spiritual
significance, made possible by certain material conditions, but
inspired, in all its most creative moments, by a wonder akin to
worship not only of the powers within the human intellect (which had
found anew application and expression) but also of the infinity
and variety of the created universe. As the mind of Man was applied,
with a new discipline and method, to the perception of Nature, it was
as though Nature responded with self-revelation: to seek thus
earnestly was to find much more than one sought. In the great
European scientists and naturalists up to and including the early
nineteenth century, there is to be found such a love of the creation,
united with such intelligence, modesty, and finely schooled
perception, as is recorded of no other place or time: it is a spirit
that still worthily reflects and continues the great philosophic
tradition of the West. As the growing body of knowledge that these
men founded was exploited for more and more narrowly practical ends,
something of their sublime afflatus was also transmitted, popularized
and largely vulgarized, but still it was the meaning and the soul of
the Age of Science. In so far as this spirit may have departed, the
very meaning of •what we are doing is misconceived. When men began
to tell one another, and even to believe, that this scientific
revelation grew out of the mere search for profit and comfort, they
lied to themselves, inverted the true relation of cause and effect,
and also perverted the character of their own activity, with
disastrous results. For the process of exploiting Nature, carried on
with such powerful means, threatens the heritage of the entire
race; and by the same process men intensify their competition for the
sources of life to the point at which mutual extermination begins to
appear as a logical—or even a biological—necessity. These
tragic degradations of an Age of Science would have been impossible
if its development had been directed in the spirit of the great
scientists by whose work it was initiated.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Our collective error is
not that we have too much worshipped Science: rather it might be said
that we never worshipped Science half enough. The worst consequence
of the deplorable controversy between Science and Religion during the
last century is not that it weakened religion but that it left
science vulgarized. The natural reverence of Man before the miracles
of Mind and Nature—although that sentiment remained a
half-conscious motive and force in scientific activity—began to be
repressed as an irrelevance which the scientific spirit must discard,
with much else, as mere emotional instability or mental immaturity.
It is a pity we should so have belittled our own works by thus
disconnecting them from their source in the human soul. The immense
railways and bridges, the great swift ships, the flying machines and
radio communications of this age are as great in their own way as the
pyramids of Egypt, the temples and dramas of Greece, the cathedrals
of Christendom in theirs. These are all we shall have to show at the
last judgement as the collective attainments of our age, and in
greatness of conception, devotion in execution, they can hardly be
held unworthy, still less in the team work and co-operation, the wide
international interchange of gifts, that have gone to their making.
So far as they are condemned, it must be for the widely prevalent
unconsciousness of their quality and purpose, due to false
reflections upon essential motives, which has to so great an
extent perverted their purpose and corrupted their use. In truth Man
never had a good idea, scientific or otherwise, because he wanted to
be richer, or in order to make himself more comfortable, individually
or collectively. Not desire, not even necessity was ever the
mother of invention, though necessity may have been stepmother to
some inventions. Ideas are born from love—love of the wonders of
Nature or of the human mind. Sometimes they are also useful, but they
only continue to be so while we remember that their source is more
important than any particular idea or any use which may be made of
it. If we have failed to cultivate, discipline, and direct this
affection of the soul from which research and invention spring, it is
largely because the very existence of it has not been recognized.
Here is the deepest cause of the dilemma of a civilization of
technics, of its ignorance what to do with its brilliant abilities.
For in the first and last analysis, there is nothing to do with them,
except to dedicate them to the Source whence they come.
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">A superabundance of
energy at disposal is the ultimate problem of every successful
society, unless, as in that of the Eskimos, the struggle with natural
conditions absorbs all its strength. The tendency to exploit the
enhanced powers of an improving society for the pursuit of
power-fantasies is the greatest of social dangers; and a main
function of religion in society has always been to canalize the
excess of energies, spiritual, psychic, and physical, into worship of
the majesty and mystery of their origin; for worship not only
inspires men to great collective works of no utilitarian value, but
also to innumerable useful and creative occupations of every kind of
value and refinement. An age in which the physical energies of
society are multiplied many times over could only escape an
extraordinary crisis if the spiritual function of worship were
correspondingly magnified, and unhappily, we live in the former
of these conditions without the benefit of th<span style="color: black;">e
latter: hence a marked and unlooked-for </span>tendency towards
brutalization.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Chapter from <i>Prospect for
Christendom: Essays in Catholic Social Reconstruction</i>, Maurice
Reckitt (ed), Faber and Faber (1945/6)</span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.02cm; margin-right: 0.03cm; margin-top: 0.03cm;">
<span style="color: black;">COMMENT: Part 3 to follow. </span>
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-64019449776365439292023-11-30T21:15:00.000+00:002023-11-30T21:15:40.521+00:00A Civilization of Technics Part 1<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b> </b></span><b style="font-size: large;">A
Civilization of Technics</b></p>
<p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Philip
Mairet (1945)
</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.02cm; margin-top: 0.38cm;">
<span style="color: black;">When Marco Polo was an old man in Venice in the
early </span><span style="color: black;">fourteenth century, his marvellous
accounts of his travels in China, as an emissary to the court of the
Great Khan, were </span><span style="color: black;">not always received
with implicit belief. When he spoke about the black </span><span style="color: black;">stone
that the Chinese dug out of the ground and used as fuel, because it
</span><span style="color: black;">gave a fiercer and more enduring heat
than wood-fuel, the traveller's </span><span style="color: black;">veracity
was doubted: it is even said that the priests tried to make him
recant so palpable a falsehood on his deathbed, and without avail. No
</span><span style="color: black;">doubt such a statement appeared more
than fictitious, almost heretical, as </span><span style="color: black;">a
falsification of the received order of God's creation. It seems
unlikely </span><span style="color: black;">that the priests had any
premonition of the moral dangers that might ensue if the tale -were
true. Yet the possession of so much available </span><span style="color: black;">power
under the earth was destined to complicate the moral problems of
</span><span style="color: black;">society far more than even the mining of
gold had ever done.</span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-right: 0.01cm; margin-top: 0.01cm;">
<span style="color: black;">The cosmic quantities of power lying latent in
the world's supply of </span><span style="color: black;">mineral fuel could
have been put to little use without that development </span><span style="color: black;">of
mechanical contrivances which is still proceeding at an
ever-accelerating speed. It has been a development of machines
primarily, and of tools </span><span style="color: black;">only
instrumentally. The machine, it is true, is a kind of magnified or
</span><span style="color: black;">elaborated tool; but there is a clear
distinction in principle. The tool is an </span><span style="color: black;">instrument
directly wielded by the worker upon his work; whereas the </span><span style="color: black;">machine
introduces an element of automatism entirely absent from the </span><span style="color: black;">tool
as such. There are plenty of hybrid examples—mechanical tools—but
</span><span style="color: black;">the distinction is functionally real and
apparent. A rifle, for instance, is a </span><span style="color: black;">killing
tool; a Lewis gun is a killing machine, although it is also a tool. </span><span style="color: black;">A
power loom, six or ten of which will go on weaving as many different
</span><span style="color: black;">patterns of cloth with only one operator
to supervise their work, is a </span><span style="color: black;">machine
out-and-out: and there are machines which perform, no less
automatically, </span><span style="color: black;">a whole series of complex
operations, ingurgitating several </span><span style="color: black;">materials
at one end and delivering, at the other end, finished articles
</span><span style="color: black;">fabricated, tested, counted, packed, and
labelled, all with faultless accuracy. The ingenuity which has
contrived to get so much of our work done </span><span style="color: black;">by
pure automatism is not in itself of a higher order than mankind has
</span><span style="color: black;">shown in countless crafts and tools of
the past, nor essentially different. </span><span style="color: black;">Our
ingenuity has only been stimulated to far more sustained and
impressive effect by the supply of solar energy in forms
convenient for </span><span style="color: black;">release as required.</span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.03cm; margin-top: 0.08cm;">
<span style="color: black;">The machine, therefore, must not be considered
as the expression of a </span><span style="color: black;">faculty new, or
even newly discovered, in Man; but of a faculty newly </span><span style="color: black;">provided
with greater means of expression than it ever had before. It is a
</span><span style="color: black;">question whether technology has led to
an over-development and an </span><span style="color: black;">excessive use
of this faculty. It has certainly enabled Man to produce a great
superfluity of certain kinds of the goods and appurtenances of his
life; but this also is not a novel social capacity. It has been
apparent for </span><span style="color: black;">ages that, even without
machines, the energies of well-organized societies </span><span style="color: black;">are
capable of producing large surpluses over the elementary needs of
</span><span style="color: black;">their existence. Every great culture of
the past has expressed itself in </span><span style="color: black;">mighty
works of supererogation before wasting itself in works of war or
</span><span style="color: black;">frivolity. But in a merely tool-using
society, the production of this surplus still depends upon the
application of most of its members to heavy manual </span><span style="color: black;">labour,
much of which can be little better than purely repetitive muscular
</span><span style="color: black;">exertion. Where an indefinitely large
proportion of the population accepts </span><span style="color: black;">—or
is able to be kept in—this state of life it is because they are
more or </span><span style="color: black;">less in sympathy with the great
works to which the surplus social production is directed. These
great works of' over-production' are such as to rule </span><span style="color: black;">the
imagination of men, and, in some sort, vicariously to realize their
</span><span style="color: black;">aspirations</span><sup><span style="color: black;"><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="#sdendnote1sym" name="sdendnote1anc"><sup>i</sup></a></span></sup><span style="color: black;">.</span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-right: 0.07cm; margin-top: 0.14cm;">
<span style="color: black;">The question, to what works the surplus energy
of a civilization shall be </span><span style="color: black;">devoted is,
however, altered in form by the discovery of mechanical
</span><span style="color: black;">power-sources. At first sight, there
would seem to be less need for great public works to sustain morale
by their prestige, since a less laborious life </span><span style="color: black;">might
relax the severity of social discipline. On the other hand, the
pro</span><span style="color: black;">blem is magnified because the
surplus energy is so much greater. Society, no longer weighted or
ballasted by the obvious necessity of a slaving or </span><span style="color: black;">even
of a labouring class, yet disposes of collective powers which are far
</span><span style="color: black;">greater than ever. To what ought they to
be applied? What they are in </span><span style="color: black;">fact
applied to is not in doubt. They are applied, for the sake of
exercising </span><span style="color: black;">them and with a sovereign
disregard of other values, to everything that </span><span style="color: black;">they
can conceivably be made to do, useful, useless, or destructive. Thus
</span><span style="color: black;">far society has succumbed to the
fascination of a stimulant which magni</span><span style="color: black;">fies
one of its own faculties almost to the miraculous, and has been
enjoy</span><span style="color: black;">ing itself regardless; but
this orgy has always been deprecated by the more thoughtful, whose
apprehensions that it might have disruptive </span><span style="color: black;">effects
upon society are now being fulfilled beyond their worst fears.</span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.01cm; margin-right: 0.05cm; text-indent: 0.02cm;">
<span style="color: black;">The answer we are giving by our actions is thus
chaotic, but a more coherent reply has been offered by the social
reformers of recent and </span><span style="color: black;">present times.
These powers, they say, collectively generated, should be </span><span style="color: black;">enjoyed
individually and equally: they should be employed in giving the
</span><span style="color: black;">maximum satisfaction to the needs and
desires of every single person. </span><span style="color: black;">This has
been assumed to be the correct reply to the challenge of the
</span><span style="color: black;">Industrial Revolution by its earlier
critics; it is the implicit assumption in </span><span style="color: black;">all
the contentions of Marx and his followers, that the ' surplus value'
</span><span style="color: black;">produced by technological progress
should be distributed equally to the </span><span style="color: black;">benefit
of the machine producers, who have been identified with mankind </span><span style="color: black;">in
general, in a vague confidence, perhaps, that almost all will be
</span><span style="color: black;">machine-minders in good time.</span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.02cm; margin-right: 0.03cm;">
<span style="color: black;">The age of machine-power is thus conceived, not
without some reason, </span><span style="color: black;">to have modified
the status of Man in Nature. We find this notion ex</span><span style="color: black;">pressed
often and in various ways, from the eloquent essay of an aesthete
like Oscar Wilde in the 1890's </span><span style="color: black;"><i>(The
Soul of Man under Socialism), </i></span><span style="color: black;">to the
recent writings of an engineer-economist, Major Douglas, who has
calcu</span><span style="color: black;">lated that the amount of power
generated in the power plants of the </span><span style="color: black;">United
Kingdom is equivalent to the provision of forty mechanical slaves </span><span style="color: black;">to
every household. In this view it would appear that we are in sight of
a </span><span style="color: black;">civilization in which no man's status
is less than that of a master of many </span><span style="color: black;">slaves—inanimate
slaves who can be driven without humanitarian </span><span style="color: black;">scruples.
The expectation that all should accordingly be raised to the level </span><span style="color: black;">of
a leisured class is frequently expressed; and at the least there is a
very </span><span style="color: black;">strong feeling that the meaning of
work has been radically changed.</span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.05cm; margin-top: 0.01cm;">
<span style="color: black;">The demands that social reformers continue to
frame—legitimately enough—for embellishing the lives of the
masses with more of the </span><span style="color: black;">amenities of a
modern economy, have always presupposed as a matter of </span><span style="color: black;">course
that the powers of the new class of' mechanical slaves'—if one may
</span><span style="color: black;">put it so—ought to be thus devoted to
enriching the largest possible </span><span style="color: black;">number of
the people. The question whether this was the right use for the
</span><span style="color: black;">powers in question was never asked until
this answer had been already </span><span style="color: black;">assumed.
But is it the whole truth? If we desire the enrichment of the </span><span style="color: black;">human
race in general, as a thing good in itself, we must consider what
</span><span style="color: black;">goods are comprised in the conception of
riches. The wealth and well-</span><span style="color: black;">being of Man
consists not only in the quantity of goods, but in the balance </span><span style="color: black;">and
proportion between the different kinds of goods at his disposal. We
</span><span style="color: black;">have to inquire whether the employment
of automata has the effect of </span><span style="color: black;">increasing
available goods and services equally or in harmonious pro</span><span style="color: black;">portion.</span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">The answer is in the negative. Given right
conceptions of wealth, and a </span><span style="color: black;">benevolent
but firm management of society, we should presumably employ
indefinitely great quantities of power to social advantage. Those
</span><span style="color: black;">thinkers who have given most study to
plans for distributing the wealth of the power-age to the people have
usually found the most need to postulate </span><span style="color: black;">a
centralized and unified control of production, because they have seen
</span><span style="color: black;">that power of itself stimulates
production very unequally and tends </span><span style="color: black;">towards
unbalanced results. Under the competitive and individualist </span><span style="color: black;">system
of capitalist production this has been clearly demonstrated; there
</span><span style="color: black;">has been a hypertrophy of those economic
functions of which power-</span><span style="color: black;">machinery could
most increase the output and efficiency, whilst other </span><span style="color: black;">functions,
no less valuable or necessary to life but less patient of
stimulation by mechanical power, have suffered proportionately.
This applies especially, though not exclusively, to the basic
function of agriculture, in which a world-wide process of
deterioration has been causing so much </span><span style="color: black;">alarm.
Agriculture would have to be specially protected in a civilization of
</span><span style="color: black;">technics, because technics benefit it
relatively little: the biological pro</span><span style="color: black;">cesses
that agriculture cherishes for use are of a different order from
those </span><span style="color: black;">which technology can control. Even
where agriculture has availed itself most successfully of the work of
the scientists and engineers, the rate of increase in its yields
bears no comparison with the ever-multiplying pro</span><span style="color: black;">duction
of factories producing such things as motors or electric bulbs. This
discrepancy in the acceleration of output, when power is applied to
techno-</span><span style="color: black;">facture and agriculture
respectively, tends to disbalance society alto-together, for a
disproportionate amount of human energy and ambition </span><span style="color: black;">flows
into the occupations which technics make more profitable, and </span><span style="color: black;">others
tend actually to regress, indispensable though they are.</span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-right: 0.12cm; margin-top: 0.14cm;">
<span style="color: black;">The socialist solution is to communize the
ownership both of the sources </span><span style="color: black;">of power
and the means of applying it; so that competing groups would no
</span><span style="color: black;">longer be forcing the pace of whatever
production their machinery put </span><span style="color: black;">them in
an advantageous position to undertake. All production would be
</span><span style="color: black;">planned in advance by a central
authority. This, it is believed, would </span><span style="color: black;">gradually
direct all the energies of an ever more perfectly mechanized </span><span style="color: black;">economic
system to the production of goods and services in general
</span><span style="color: black;">demand—including, of course,
agricultural goods. But so far, in the three </span><span style="color: black;">great
states which have thus assumed control of power and industry, the
</span><span style="color: black;">results are disappointing. All of them
have, in a short space of time, </span><span style="color: black;">devoted
half or more than half of their power-machinery to the production
of military equipment. Nor have they solved the problem of the
regression of agriculture, for although each of them has, according
to its lights, undertaken agricultural reforms with the aid of
power-machinery </span><span style="color: black;">and approved scientific
methods, their land workers have shown the same </span><span style="color: black;">disinclination
as those of other industrial countries to continue in their </span><span style="color: black;">vocation,
so that these governments have had to resort to special inducements,
to compulsion or to the importation of labour from abroad. These
experiences may not discredit the socialist theory; it is still
arguable that </span><span style="color: black;">if states were grouped in
such political and economic federations that </span><span style="color: black;">together
they contained ample resources of power, material, and food, </span><span style="color: black;">they
would not need to arm themselves excessively. The idea that States
</span><span style="color: black;">could thus be grouped in relatively
self-sufficient federations after the </span><span style="color: black;">war
is now receiving intelligent consideration from many people, and it
is </span><span style="color: black;">believed that under these conditions,
nations would be able to exploit </span><span style="color: black;">machine-power
fully to no other end but the enrichment of their citizens.</span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.02cm; margin-right: 0.05cm; margin-top: 0.01cm;">
<span style="color: black;">This dream of wealth through technology will
not, and perhaps ought </span><span style="color: black;">not to be given
up; the attempt to realize it is sure to dominate post-war </span><span style="color: black;">politics.
Indeed it is not only legitimate, but may be realizable if only the
</span><span style="color: black;">thorny problems of agriculture and
fertility can be solved. Their solution </span><span style="color: black;">is
bound to remain difficult, however, as long as the prestige of
technics is </span><span style="color: black;">elevated above that of
cultivation. It is, socially, a question of the dignity of labour; of
the difficulty, if we employ armies of mechanical slaves to </span><span style="color: black;">work
for us, of maintaining equal respect for those who still have to do
work that the machines cannot do. At present there is undoubtedly a
prevailing tendency to elevate the technical means, simply
because they are so wonderful and ever-improving, above the ends they
are supposed to </span><span style="color: black;">serve: and where work is
of a kind which does not lend itself to power-</span><span style="color: black;">technique,
the attempt is made to alter or adapt the work to the means. </span><span style="color: black;">This
does not mean that basic work, such as food-growing, can or will ever
</span><span style="color: black;">be neglected beyond a certain point, but
it does mean that it will be done </span><span style="color: black;">badly,
to the injury of the product and the discontent of the producer. For
</span><span style="color: black;">men as producers are never contented
unless they are allowed to seek per</span><span style="color: black;">fection
in their work according to its own laws and conditions. If men are
</span><span style="color: black;">persuaded that they are only to produce
corn and wine as by-products of social co-operation and technological
progress, the quality of corn and wine, if not their quantity, will
decline slowly but certainly, for men will </span><span style="color: black;">apply
their best will and intelligence to the advancement of the politics
</span><span style="color: black;">and science of production, not to the
art of bettering the products. </span>
</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.02cm; margin-right: 0.05cm; margin-top: 0.01cm; text-indent: 0.05cm;">
<br />
</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Chapter from </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Prospect for
Christendom: Essays in Catholic Social Reconstruction</i></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">,
Maurice Reckitt (ed), Faber and Faber (1945/6)</span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.02cm; margin-right: 0.03cm; margin-top: 0.03cm;">
<br />
</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.02cm; margin-right: 0.03cm; margin-top: 0.03cm;">
<span style="color: black;">COMMENT: Parts 2 & 3 to follow. </span>
</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.02cm; margin-right: 0.05cm; margin-top: 0.01cm; text-indent: 0.05cm;">
<br />
</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.02cm; margin-right: 0.05cm; margin-top: 0.01cm; text-indent: 0.05cm;">
<br />
</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="background: #ffffff; line-height: 0.38cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.02cm; margin-right: 0.05cm; margin-top: 0.01cm; text-indent: 0.05cm;">
<br />
</p>
<div id="sdendnote1">
<p class="sdendnote-western"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="#sdendnote1anc" name="sdendnote1sym">i</a>
<span style="color: black;">e.g., the idea, rather prevalent, that the
Ancient Egyptians were </span><span style="color: black;">driven by brutal
taskmasters to the building of the Pyramids, the colossi, </span><span style="color: black;">and
the temples, is mainly erroneous. These works were often completed
in </span><span style="color: black;">scenes of popular enthusiasm and
acclamation. Cf. Arthur Weigall on </span><span style="color: black;">Ancient
Egypt.</span></p>
</div></blockquote><div id="sdendnote1">
</div>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-41246175430729631102023-11-29T10:22:00.000+00:002023-11-29T10:22:38.609+00:00<p> </p><p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>In the
Absence of the Sacred </i>Part 3</p>
<p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Jerry
Mander</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">While
planning to write these two books, however, it became apparent to me
that their subjects were inseparable. They belonged together as one
book. There is no way to understand the situation of Indians,
Eskimos, Aborigines, island peoples, or other native societies
without understanding the outside societies that act upon them. And
<span style="font-weight: normal;">there is no way to understand the
outside societies without understanding their relationships to native
peoples and to nature itself. </span>
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">All things
considered, it may be the central assumption of technological society
that there is virtue in overpowering nature and native peoples. The
Indian problem today, as it always has been, is directly related to
the needs of technological societies to find and obtain remotely
located resources, <span style="font-weight: normal;">in order to fuel
an incessant and intrinsic demand for growth and technological
fulfilment.</span> The process began in our country hundreds of years
ago when we wanted land and gold. Today it continues because we want
coal, oil, uranium, fish, and more land. As we survey the rest of the
world - whether it is the Canadian Arctic, the Borneo jungle, or the
Brazilian rainforest - the same interaction is taking place for the
same reasons, often involving the same institutions.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">All of these
acts were and are made possible by one fundamental rationalization:
that our society represents the <span style="font-weight: normal;">ultimate
expression of evolution</span>, its final flowering. It is this
attitude, and its corresponding belief that native societies
represent an earlier, lower form on the evolutionary ladder, upon
which we occupy the highest rung, that seem to unify all modern
political perspectives: Right, Left, Capitalist, and Marxist.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Save for
such nascent movements as bioregionalism and Green politics, which
have at least questioned the assumptions underlying this attitude,
most people in Western society are in agreement about our common
superiority. So it becomes okay to humiliate - to find insignificant
and thus subject to sacrifice - any way of life or way of thinking
that stands in the way of a kind of "progress" we have
invented, which is scarcely a century old. In fact, having assumed
such superiority, it becomes more than acceptable for us to bulldoze
nature and native societies. To do so actually becomes desirable,
inevitable, and possibly "divine."
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">But the
assertion that technological society is something higher than what
came before, and that it is bound to bring us a better world, has
lately fallen open to grave doubts. The Industrial Revolution is
about a century old, and we have had ample time to draw a few
conclusions about how it is going. It is not too soon to observe that
this revolution may not be living up to its advertising, at least in
terms of human contentment, fulfilment, health, sanity, and peace.
And it is surely creating terrible and possibly catastrophic impacts
on the earth. Technotopia seems already to have failed, but meanwhile
it continues to lurch forward, expanding its reach and becoming more
arrogant and dangerous.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The next
questions become: Can we expect the situation to improve or worsen in
the future? And what of the people who always told us that this way
would not work, and continue to say so now? Finally, which is the
more "romantic" viewpoint: that technology will fix itself
and lead us to paradise, or that the answer is something simpler?
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</p>
<p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Jerry
Mander, <i>In the Absence of the Sacred</i>, Sierra Club Books,
(1992) p2-7.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">COMMMENT:
The following texts trace the 20th century questioning of the necessity "to
bulldoze nature and native societies" in the name of
technological progress.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-1799646338197611332023-11-28T20:58:00.000+00:002023-11-28T20:58:01.158+00:00<p> </p><p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I<i>n the
Absence of the Sacred</i> Part 2</p>
<p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Jerry
Mander</p>
<p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The second
book was to be a kind of continuation and update of Dee Brown's <i>Bury
My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West.</i>
That book impressed me tremendously when I read it twenty years ago.
In one sense it was a masterful work, detailing in excruciating
fashion U.S. double-dealing and brutality against the Indians. But in
another sense Brown did the Indian cause a disservice by seeming to
suggest that they were all wiped out, and that now there is nothing
to be done. The book put the reader through an emotional catharsis;
having read it, it was as if one had already paid one's dues.
Combined with the popular imagery from television and films, the book
helped remand Indian issues to the past.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Even
liberal-minded people, concerned about issues of justice, who
acknowledge the atrocities committed on this land, tend to speak of
Indian issues as tragedies of the distant past. So ingrained is this
position that when, occasionally, non-Indians do come forward on
behalf of present-day Indian causes - Marlon Brando, William
Kunstler, Robert Redford, Kevin Costner, Jane Fonda - they are all
put into that "romantic" category. People are a bit
embarrassed for them, as if they'd stepped over some boundary of
propriety. When environmentalists such as David Brower occasionally
speak publicly about how we should heed the philosophies of the Inuit
(Eskimos), they are thought impractical, uncool, not politic, not
team players. (And when a specific issue pits native traditions
against some current environmental concern, such as fur trapping, or
subsistence sealing, or whaling, the native viewpoint is not given a
fair hearing.) Literary luminaries like Peter Matthiessen have also
been chastised for books on contemporary Indian issues (<i>In the
Spirit of Crazy Horse and Indian Country</i>), with the implication
that they should return to novels and Zen explorations.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I have had
my own experiences with this. In <i>Four Arguments</i> I reported
several encounters with Indians as a way of revealing bias in the
media. I was surprised at the number of critics who cited those lines
as foolish. Gene Youngblood, for example, a respected radical writer
on media issues, said, "Mander is so naive. . . . My God, that
old sixties chestnut, the Indians."
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I thought
that even Nelson Mandela got that treatment when he spoke about
Indians at his 1990 Oakland rally. The news reports seemed to suggest
that he didn't quite understand "our Indians."
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Indian issue is </span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">not</span></i><span style="font-weight: normal;">
part of the distant past.</span> Many of the worst anti - Indian
campaigns were undertaken scarcely 80 to 100 years ago. Your
great-grandparents were already alive at the time. The Model-T Ford
was on the road.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">More to the
point is that the assaults continue today. While the Custer period of
direct military action against Indians may be over in the United
States, more subtle though equally devastating "legalistic"
manipulations continue to separate Indians from their land and their
sovereignly, as we will see from the horrible events in Alaska,
described in Chapter 16.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">There are
still over one and a half million Indians in the United States today.
Significant numbers of them continue to live in wilderness and desert
regions and in the far north of Alaska, often engaging in traditional
subsistence practices on the same lands where their ancestors lived
for millennia. Contrary to popular assumptions,<span style="font-weight: normal;">
most of these Indians are not eager to become Americans,</span>
despite the economic, cultural, and legal pressures to do so.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Elsewhere in
the world, millions of native peoples also live in a traditional
manner, while suffering varying degrees of impact from the expansion
of Western technological society. In places such as Indonesia,
Borneo, New Guinea, the Amazon forests, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador,
Guatemala, parts of central Africa, the north of Canada, and even
Scandinavia, the Soviet Union, China, and Tibet, tribal peoples are
struggling to defend their ancestral lands. In other places, such as
India, Iraq, Turkey, Mexico, Chile, the Pacific islands, New Zealand,
and Australia, millions more native peoples live a kind of in-between
existence, while they are under cultural, economic, or military
siege.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">According to
Cultural Survival, the Boston-based human rights organization, there
are at least 3,000 native nations in the world today that continue to
function within the boundaries of the 200-odd countries that assert
sovereignty over them. Many wars that our media describe as "civil
wars" or "guerrilla insurgencies" are actually
attempts by tribal nations to free themselves of the domination of
larger nation-states. In Guatemala, it's the Mayans. In Burma, it's
the Karens. In the Amazon, it's the Yanomamo and the Xingu, among
others. In Micronesia, it's the Belauans. In Indonesia, it's the
peoples of Irian Jaya.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Perhaps the
most painful realization for Americans is that in many of these
foreign locales - particularly South America, the Pacific islands,
Indonesia, and the Philippines - the natives' struggles to
maintain their lands and sovereignty is often directed against United
States corporations, or technology, or military. More to the point,
it is directed against a mentality, and an approach to the planet and
to the human place on Earth, that native people find fatally flawed.
For all the centuries they've been in contact with us, they've been
saying that our outlook is missing <i>something</i>. But we have
ignored what they say. To have heeded them would have meant stopping
what we were doing and seeking another path. It is this very
difference in world views that has made the assault on Indian people
inevitable.</p><p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span> </span>Jerry
Mander, <i>In the Absence of the Sacred</i>, Sierra Club Books,
(1992) p2-7.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">COMMENT:
<i>Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee</i> is emotionally draining, yet it
demands to be studied alongside accounts of the fate of indigenous
peoples today, such as those by Jay Griffiths.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-4038229836274281732023-11-27T18:31:00.000+00:002023-11-27T18:31:19.581+00:00In the Absence of the Sacred Part 1<p> Extracts
from <i>In the Absence of the Sacred, </i>by Jerry
Mander</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> Originally
I planned to write two books. The first was to be a critique of
technological society as we know it in the United States, a kind of
sequel to <i>Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television</i>.
Instead of concentrating on TV, though, it would have focused on the
new technological age: "the information, society,"
computerization, robotization, space travel, artificial intelligence,
genetics, satellite communications. This seemed timely, since these
technologies are changing our world at an astoundingly accelerating
rate. Thus far, most people view these changes as good. But are they?</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">That our
society would tend to view new technologies favorably is
understandable. The first waves of news concerning any technical
innovation are invariably positive and optimistic. That's because, in
our society, the information is purveyed by those who stand to gain
from our acceptance of it: corporations and their retainers in the
government and scientific communities. None is motivated to report
the negative sides of new technologies, so the public gets its first
insights and expectations from sources that are clearly biased.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Over time,
as successive generations of idealized technical innovations are
introduced and presented at World's Fairs, in futurists' visions, and
in hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of advertising, we develop
expectations of a technological utopia here on Earth and in great
domed cities in space. We begin to equate technological evolution
with evolution itself, as though the two were equally inevitable, and
virtually identical. The operating homilies become "Progress is
good," "There's no turning back," and "Technology
will free humans from disease, strife, and unremitting toil."
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Debate on
these subjects is inhibited by the fact that views of technology in
our society are nearly identical across the political and social
spectrum. The Left takes the same view of technology as do
corporations, futurists, and the Right. Technology, they all say, is
neutral. It has no inherent' politics, no inevitable social or
environmental consequences. What matters, according to this view, is
who <i>controls</i> technology.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I have
attended dozens of conferences in the last ten years on the future of
technology. At every one, whether sponsored by government, industry,
or environmentalists or other activists, someone will address the
assembly with something like this: "There are many problems with
technology and we need to acknowledge them, but the problems are not
rooted to the technologies themselves. They are caused by the way we
have chosen to use them. We can do better. We must do better.
Machines don't cause problems, people do." This is always said
as if it were an original and profound idea, when actually everyone
else is saying exactly the same thing.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">As
we will see, the idea that technology is neutral is itself not
neutral - it directly serves the interests of the people who benefit
from our inability to see where the juggernaut is headed. </span>
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I only began
to glimpse the problem during the 1960s when I saw how excited our
society became about the presumed potentials of television.
Activists, like everyone else, saw the technology opportunistically,
and began to vie with other segments of society for their twenty
seconds on the network news. A kind of war developed for access to
this powerful new instrument that spoke pictures into the brains of
the whole population, but the outcome was predetermined. We should
have realized it was a foregone conclusion that TV technology would
inevitably <span style="font-weight: normal;">be controlled by
corporations, the government, and the military</span>. Because of the
technology's geographic scale, its cost, the astounding power of its
imagery, and its ability to homogenize thought, behavior, and
culture, large corporations found television uniquely efficient for
ingraining a way of life that served (and still serves) their
interests. And in times of national crisis, the government and
military find TV a perfect instrument for the centralized control of
information and consciousness. Meanwhile, all other contenders for
control of the medium have effectively fallen by the wayside.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Now we have
the frenzy over computers, which, in theory, can empower individuals
and small groups and produce a new information democracy. In fact, as
we will see in Chapter 4, the issue of who benefits most from
computers was already settled when they were invented. Computers,
like television, are far more valuable and helpful to the military,
to multinational corporations, to international banking, to
governments, and to institutions of surveillance and control - all of
whom use this technology on a scale and with a speed that are beyond
our imaginings - than they ever will be to you and me.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Computers
have made it possible to instantaneously move staggering amounts of
capital, information, and equipment throughout the world, giving
unprecedented power to the largest institutions on the earth. In
fact, computers make these institutions possible. Meanwhile, we use
our personal computers to edit our copy and hook into our information
networks - and believe that makes us more powerful.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Even
environmentalists have contributed to the problem by failing to
effectively criticize technical evolution despite its obvious,
growing, and inherent bias against nature.</span> I fear that the
ultimate direction of technology will become vividly clear to us only
after we have popped out of the "information age" - which
does have a kind of benevolent ring - and realize what is at stake in
the last two big "wilderness intervention" battlegrounds:
space and the genetic structures of living creatures. From there,
it's on to the "postbiological age" of nanotechnology and
robotics, whose advocates don't even pretend to care about the
natural world. They think it's silly and out of date.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">This first
book was intended to raise questions about whether technological
society has lived up to its advertising, and also to address some
grave concerns about its future direction. Until now we have been
impotent in the face of the juggernaut, partly because we are so
unpracticed in technological criticism. We don't really know how to
assess new or existing technologies. It is apparent that we need a
new, more holistic language for examining technology, one that would
ignore the advertised claims, best-case visions, and glamorous
imagery that inundate us and systematically judge technology from
alternative perspectives: social, political, economic, spiritual,
ecological, biological, military. Who gains? Who loses? Do the new
technologies serve planetary destruction or stability? What are their
health effects? Psychological effects? How do they affect our
interaction with and appreciation of nature? How do they interlock
with existing technologies? What do they make possible that could not
exist before? What is being lost? Where is it all going? Do we want
that?
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">In the end,
we can see that technological evolution is leading to something new:
a worldwide, interlocked, monolithic, technical-political web of
unprecedented negative implications.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> <span style="font-size: x-small;">Jerry
Mander, </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>In the Absence
of the Sacred</i></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">, Sierra
Club Books, (1992) p2-7</span>
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">COMMENT:
This new series of Blogs is offered for discussion within and between
households, in schools and colleges, in local groups of national and
international societies, in community and faith centres of all
persuasions. The first two were published in 1992, the third in 1945,
is followed by three pieces fro 1925. All are concerned with the
relentless surge of technological power over the political, economic
and spiritual/social spheres of World Society.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Comments
welcome.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-75108504562530822462023-04-17T10:07:00.000+01:002023-04-17T10:07:46.519+01:00Medical Progress?<p> The last few
Blog entries on organ transplants raise fundamental questions: where
on earth is medical 'progress', science and new technology taking
humanity. Do we really want to go there? Who is calling the tune?</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Many of us
have witnessed the distress of parents called to a hospital bed after
an accident when a young person (under 25 years old) seems unlikely
to survive. We can but imagine the further distress at being told
that the young person's organs are required for transplantation into
somebody else's body. It would seem appropriate to open a public
forum on the ethics and desirability, not only of transplants but
also of procedures surrounding abortion, contraception, and embryo
research. For at least the last decade, many girls who have been
prescribed the contraceptive pill to alleviate heavy periods have
taken this as a green light to 'safe' sex.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">In 1989 Pat
Spallone raised the question of ethics in respect of the new
reproductive technologies:</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> "On
25 July 1978, in England, the world's first 'test-tube' baby, Louise
Brown, was born to Lesley and John Brown. The birth marked the
realisation by a research scientist, Robert Edwards, and his
colleague, gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe, that fertilisation of a
woman's egg and a man's sperm which took place outside the female
body and in a laboratory dish could be placed back into the woman's
body and develop to term. The first live birth from 'test tube'
fertilisation, or what scientists call in vitro fertilisation or IVF,
came after years of experimentation: experimentation which included
removing eggs from women's bodies, growing the eggs under laboratory
conditions, and eventually entailed inserting the fertilised eggs
into women's wombs in the hope that pregnancy would result.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">"IVF,
the procedure which first entails physiological manipulation of
women's bodies to extract eggs, was an invention of the natural
science, biology. IVF is one of many biological 'breakthroughs' of
the second half of the twentieth century, along with genetic
engineering. Biological science, like physics and chemistry before
it, has come of age. We are in the midst of a revolution in biology,
where control of human reproductive capacities are considered of
great importance. In his 1968 book, <i>The Biological Time-Bomb</i>,
Gordon Rattray Taylor discussed the IVF research then being
conducted, the implications of 'pre-natal adoption' of embryos
created by IVF [surrogacy?], sex-choice, artificial wombs, and the
future prospect of 'baby factories'. He discussed all these in the
context of other scientific breakthroughs, such as organ
transplantation, genetic engineering, and the creation of living
viruses from non-living molecules. It was a decade before the first
'test-tube' baby was born." (Pat Spallone <span lang="en-GB">(1989)
</span><span lang="en-GB"><i>Beyond Conception: The New Politics of
Reproduction</i></span><span lang="en-GB">, Macmillan Education p8).</span></p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">From
1968 these developments have been researched by employees of
commercial companies with very little, if any, public debate. As a
result, would-be mothers find themselves presented with a range of
recommended procedures they never fully comprehend, only to discover,
more often than not, that they have unwittingly become research
guinea pigs. For many grandparents, the processes in course of
development seem indeed, to be 'beyond conception'.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">COMMENT:
This series of blogs, posted from 10 April 23 (I, Daniel Blake
Reviewed) raises issues crying out for further research by
specialists and non-specialists alike, for group discussion and
practical action at local community level worldwide.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-44730958077781168572023-04-14T08:43:00.000+01:002023-04-14T08:43:19.931+01:00Organ Transplants PART VI and discussion<p> </p><p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Organ
Transplants
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Only
Fully Informed Consent Valid</b></p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">If a fair
offer of organs is to be made by this means, the wording on Donor
Cards must clearly be altered to indicate the true circumstances in
which the offer may be taken up. And, given the lack of relevant
knowledge and comprehension of these matters which seems to prevail
in the general population, it may be that the signatory should be
required to acknowledge that he has received a full explanation and
understands what is involved.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The same
considerations regarding explanation and understanding should, of
course, apply when a relative is asked for the organs of a loved-one
dying on a ventilator. In this tragic context, real comprehension may
be particularly difficult to achieve. However, without it there must
remain serious doubt about the validity of the consent sought and
given. As things are, it may seem paradoxical that such care is taken
to ensure that consent to relatively minor therapeutic surgical
procedures is given on a fully- informed basis while consent to the
evisceration of a relative is usually sought by staff who are not
medically qualified but who - perhaps for this reason and their
sympathetic demeanour - achieve a higher percentage of assents to the
removal of organs than do the doctors.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">It is this
great concern that ordinary, public-spirited people have not clearly
understood which has been one of the great driving forces behind my
efforts to protest during the past decade. Because I feel so strongly
that the "harvesting" of hearts etc. is a totally
unacceptable abuse of the dying which should not be going on in a
civilized society, I have the greatest difficulty in understanding
why it is so tolerated. The likely explanation, it seems to me, is
that the facts are not well enough known. Some of those who do know
and understand - such as nurses and anaesthetists who have been
involved - have simply left the transplant scene, usually without
public comment. Even some of the surgeons who have been responsible
for the removal of the organs have confided to me that they were
uneasy about it and did not like doing what they felt they had to do.
These pangs of conscience, and their expression, give me real cause
for optimism. As one of my advisers commented, some doctors seem to
prefer to fudge the scientific issues rather than face the facts
about what they're really doing. While that attitude is
understandable, it cannot be right or successful in the long term.
Sooner or later the truth will out. When it does, I trust that we
shall see an end to this misconceived and, to my mind, abhorrent
activity — one of the wrong directions taken by Medicine as a
consequence of unrestricted technological advances.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>Original
Editor's Note:</i> Dr. D. W. Evans MD, FRCP retired early from his
position of Consultant Cardiologist at Papworth Hospital because of
his firm conviction on this matter.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black;">FN
:*</span> This refers to so-called "cadaveric" donation. A
technique for the removal of a part of a liver from a healthy
relative, for transplanting into the recipient, has recently been
developed in the U.S.A. While this procedure is not free from ethical
problems, they are not of the kind which this paper addresses.
</p>
<p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">* * * *
*</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Round
Table Discussion</b></p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">True, the
essay on organ transplants was written three decades ago. How has the
situation changed, in law? in practice?
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">How many
parents of a young person dying from an accident are presented with
the demand to cut out vital organs. Is this a 'good thing' to do?
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Note that
"Even some of the surgeons who have been responsible for the
removal of the organs have confided to me that they were uneasy about
it and did not like doing what they felt <i>they had to do</i>".
Discuss the moral implications, especially off the last four words.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">END</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-80851455306453184942023-04-14T08:34:00.000+01:002023-04-14T08:34:48.653+01:00Organ Transplants PARTS IV and V<p><b>More
Rigorous Test Omitted</b></p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">It should be
noted that steps are taken to prevent the donor from becoming short
of oxygen while the ventilator is temporarily disconnected for these
test purposes. This is to preserve the donor organs from anoxic
damage which would impair their suitability for transplantation.
However, this inevitably means that the vital centre in the brain
stem which 'controls the breathing - the respiratory centre - is not
subjected to the ultimate stimulus (lack of oxygen in the blood
reaching it) to see if it can make a last-gasp effort. It is, in
fact,tested only for the ability to respond to the less-powerful
stimulus of a high carbon dioxide content in the blood still reaching
the brain stem.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">It should
also be noted that the vital centres in the brain stem which control
heart-rate and blood pressure are not tested at all under the U.K.
protocol. That they are still active in some, if not most, organ
donors is shown by the fact that many of them continue to maintain
their blood pressure naturally after the declaration of "brain
stem death," and by observations of cardiovascular response to
the trauma of organ removal which are almost certainly brain stem
mediated.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The long and
short of it is that these tests are nowhere near adequate to exclude
residual life and function in a damaged brain. And, as if that were
not bad enough, not even all of these tests have to be done when it
is desired to certify death for transplantation purposes. In other
countries, there is at least some attempt to test for residual
activity in the higher centres of the brain. In the U.K. there is
none. If persisting electrical activity (EEG waves) were sought here,
it is certain that it could be found in many of these so-called
"cadaveric" organ donors. Some would retain function in a
part of the brain which controls glandular secretions. These
discomforting facts are simply ignored by those who wish to call a
donor's brain dead. They dodge the issue of their relevance by not
doing the tests which might demonstrate such activity.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>The
Brief: to Provide Organs in Good Condition</b></p><p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>I</b>n effect,
exhaustive testing for residual life in the brain is proscribed. All
in all, the rules governing the diagnosis of "brain death"in
this country must be seen for what they are - a simplistic code
developed in response to a brief to provide vital organs in good
condition for the transplanters. A colleague has likened the process
of their formulation to the activities of a committee of foxes taxed
with the design of a hen house .....</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">From the
scientific point of view, it is most unfortunate that attempts to
diagnose true death of the brain, while some independent bodily
functions continued, ever became involved with transplantation. As we
have seen, the idea that it might be diagnosable, in some
circumstances,was seized upon by those seeking viable human organs,
long before it had been adequately thought out or tested. The
transplanters simply assumed that what they wanted to believe was
true - and have steadfastly refused to consider, or even see, the
substantial body of evidence that denies their belief. Had they not
become involved, with the consequences that ensued, we might by now
be further along the road towards the possibility of secure diagnosis
of the true and total death of the brain as an independent
phenomenon.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Should that
become a scientific reality, the term "brain death" would
be an appropriate description. And I, for one, would be prepared to
consider the proposition that a patient with a truly dead brain was
no longer a human being, <i>i.e.</i> because there is persuasive
evidence that the brain is the quintessential organ and the home of
the inner self.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">PART V</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>A Better
Criterion</b></p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">However, the
final 'cessation of all activity in every part of the brain would be
a prerequisite for consideration of this proposition because Man does
not yet know very much about the workings of his brain and we cannot,
therefore, safely assume that pockets of residual activity here and
there do not matter. That being so, we should need clear evidence of
the absence of all metabolism, with no possibility of its resuming,
in each and every part of the brain. Reliable evidence of the final
cessation of blood flow (at normal temperatures) everywhere within
the brain would be acceptable for this purpose and it is possible
that techniques with the power to demonstrate this reliably (while
the body is still alive) may one day become available. At the moment,
we can only be sure that the cerebral circulation has ceased for ever
when the bodily circulation has finally ceased, <i>i.e.</i> when the
patient's heart, or some other pump such as those used in operating
theatres to take over the heart's function while it is operated upon,
finally stops. This, of course, is the commonly understood criterion
of death and the one still used by the majority of the world's
doctors to diagnose well over 99% of all deaths.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">To sum up, I
would urge that:-</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">(1) The
attempt to force upon the professions and public the notion that true
death of the brain can be ‘diagnosed reliably, while the body is
still alive, be resisted. Likewise the contingent notion that a
patient pronounced "'brain dead" on current criteria is
truly dead.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">(2) It it be
argued that the state defined by the "brain stem death"
tests is, while not death itself, yet so close to death as to make no
practical difference, let the inaccurate and misleading term be
abandoned in favour of one which makes the situation clear, <i>i.e</i>.
that neither the patient nor his brain stem is really dead at this
time, though doomed he may well be. Full understanding of this
essential point will perhaps for the first time, enable the
opinion-formers of our society to debate the ethics of
transplantation in an enlightened frame of mind. Up till now, the
highly successful confusion of the dying and dead states, andthe use
of weasel-words such as "beating-heart cadavers," has
manipulated thought to the exclusion of serious criticism.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">(3) The
misleadingly-worded Donor Cards be withdrawn immediately.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Many
selfless prospective offers may have been made on a basis of serious
misunderstanding; the signatories may have thought that the words
"after my death" on those cards meant after their deaths in
the commonly-understood sense of the term. Indeed, I know that some
highly-intelligent and otherwise well-informed people have carried
these cards thinking that they were thereby authorising removal of
their organs after the final disconnection of the ventilator and the
subsequent final cessation of their circulation. When disabused of
this cosy notion, some have expressed horror and some disbelief.
Most, when the truth has dawned, have destroyed their cards; a few
have continued to carry them after modification, <i>e.g.</i>
specification that a general anaesthetic be administered during
removal of the organs.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">To be
continued ...</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-30723670111177255132023-04-12T10:14:00.001+01:002023-04-12T10:14:51.388+01:00Organ Transplants Parts II and III<p><b>PART II</b></p><p><b>The Dying
are not yet Dead</b></p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">However,
even if the tests could infallibly forecast death in the
commonly-understood sense of the term within a few hours or days,
would it be right (or logical) to hold that the patient satisfying
these criteria is - to all intents and purposes maybe - already
dead? I maintain that it is not correct, or proper, to confuse this
state in which he is doomed to die soon - however certain that may be
- with death itself. To my mind, a comatose patient without brain
stem reflexes and dependent upon a mechanical ventilator is still a
living human being; as such he is deserving of our every care,
without intrusion of any third party interest, right up to the time
when his circulation finally ceases and he can be truthfully
described as a cadaver.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I continue
to maintain this view despite its being dismissed, by the
transplanters, as reactionary and akin to the stance of members of
the Flat Earth Society The implication is, I suppose, that it is
somehow improper to examine too closely the fundamental concept and
science involved in this novel re-definition of death because it has
made possible such wonderful surgical advances. In other words, the
spectacular achievements are held to justify the means - which (they
appear to suggest) are therefore best left decently veiled. I think
that a very dangerous philosophy. And having said so, I also have to
say that I am far from convinced that transplantation of these vital
organs really does constitute a lasting therapeutic advance. There
is, in fact, no scientific evidence that - taking all relevant
factors into account - these transplant procedures do more good than
harm. As a perceptive colleague remarked, cardiac transplantation
probably increases rather than decreases the sum of human misery. But
the over-statement of the benefits, the impossibility of knowing the
natural prognosis, and the many other clinical and logistic
difficulties are - like the prospects for alternative ethical
treatment strategies - another part of the story.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Correcting
a Misleadingly Rosy Impression</b>
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Had the
public been fully and frankly informed on all the relevant aspects,
it might not have been persuaded that it wants transplantation at
almost any cost. That it has been so persuaded - as I am frequently
assured it has - offers ample testimony to the power of the media in
forming public opinion. My hope is that the many sincere and highly
talented people involved in journalism and broadcasting will, now
that they are beginning to understand the facts of the matter, wish
to use that same power to correct the misleadingly rosy impression of
this really rather macabre activity which they may hitherto have
helped to propagate. But their task will be far from easy, given that
Society seems now to demand of Medicine that it shall provide an
answer to Man's mortality.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">To return to
the fundamental issue, I must record my surprise and disappointment
that theologians, philosophers and lawyers appear to have accepted
the propriety of certifying and treating as dead, a patient on a
ventilator who - though almost certainly doomed to die soon - still
has his own natural blood circulation and other bodily and brain
functions at the time. Some of them, apparently, see no essential
difference between this late stage in the dying process and death
itself; once the tests have pointed to a fatal outcome, he is "as
good as dead," they say, and can be dealt with accordingly -
though few, I imagine, would bury or cremate a man with a beating
heart.....</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Others,
including members of the judiciary I'm told, do understand the
factual difference between the dying state called "brain stem
death" and true death but do not think it matters in practice.
The useful life of the patient on the ventilator is clearly over,
they say, so why should his organs not be removed while there is
still life in him if this is necessary for them to be of use to
others? The fact that the donor has to be certified "dead "
- by some doctors using arbitrary criteria which many or most doctors
would not deem sufficient for the purpose - has to be accepted as a
necessary preliminary to the surgery (to avoid the obvious legal and
ethical difficulties). The rights and wrongs of such certification
are, they say, beyond their understanding and a matter for "the
medical profession."
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">There is, in
the U.K., no legal definition of death and so, where the Law is
concerned, a person is dead when a doctor certifies him "dead."
By this means, the legal profession sidesteps the fundamental issue.
But what would happen, I wonder, if one or more doctors certified a
person dead and others (like me and many more) were willing to
testify that he was still a living human being, and certainly not a
corpse, when he was being operated upon for the removal of his vital
organs? Or if the precise time and date of death mattered very much
in the settlement of a civil action and one doctor said the deceased
was dead at the time when the " brain stem death" criteria
were sought and satisfied while another said he was not dead at that
time and did not actually die until his heart was removed some hours
or days later?
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">PART III</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Where
might it Lead ?</b>
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Such legal
niceties apart, it seems to me that it is important not to allow
confusion of "dying" with "dead" simply to avoid
facing up to the ethical problems, <i>e.g.</i> allegations of active
euthanasia, which beset even today's secular, utilitarian society.
The "slippery slope" argument seems to me to have some
force in this context. If utterly helpless young people being kept
alive by mechanical ventilators today, whom will it be deemed
appropriate to use as sources of organs and for experimental purposes
tomorrow? Newborn babies with little or no forebrain (anencephalics)
but who cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be regarded as
"brain stem dead " have already been used thus ....</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">It occurs to
me that those theologians and others who have accepted the notion
that "brain stem death = death" may have been misled, for
this is the stated basis for the move, in 1979, by those satisfied
there is no function remaining anywhere in the brain and no
possibility of any such function ever returning, whatever may
subsequently be done. It would not be surprising if they had been so
misled for this is the stated basis for the move, in 1979, by the
Conference of the Medical Royal Colleges of the U.K. from use of
the"brain stem death" criteria as a justification for
turning off the mechanical ventilator (so that natural death might be
allowed to occur) to their use as a basis for the certification of
death itself. This change of use was clearly prompted by the
perceived need to provide hearts and livers in a state suitable for
transplantation; it served no other purpose, there being no need to
certify death before discontinuing life-support solely in the
interests of the patient (and his near and dear).</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">It was to
provide a consensus basis for that most onerous decision,<i>i.e</i>.
to terminate what was clearly otiose and unkind therapy, that
so-called "brain stem death" criteria were promulgated by
the Conference in 1976. The criteria were a distillation of those we
had been using informally for some years and in which we had
developed confidence with regard to their ability to forecast death
within a short time of their fulfilment. I did not object to their
propagation for that stated purpose for it seemed to me that their
general adoption would make such decisions more comfortable,
particularly for those faced with the problem only occasionally.
However, in retrospect, I should perhaps have been suspicious that
the stated purpose (in 1976) was not the only purpose even then
envisaged because the Memorandum publishing the criteria acknowledged
the involvement of the Transplant Advisory Panel .....</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Policy
Confuses Prognosis and Diagnosis</b></p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Be that as
it may, Conference - the policy-making body to which the D.H.S.S.
appeals for advice - simply decided, in 1979, that the sesame
criteria which we had been using for purely prognostic purposes
should henceforth be used, without modification, for the diagnosis
(and certification) of death itself,<i> i.e.</i> while the
'circulation and other vital functions continued naturally. The
justification offered for this enormous leap was that by the time
these criteria were satisfied "all functions of the brain have
permanently and irreversibly ceased." The redundant terms are
interesting, and may betray lack of confidence in their momentous
edict. To almost anyone of a truly scientific disposition, and
particularly to those with experience of the biological sciences,
such a claim must have seemed at the very least incautious and -
given that the criteria do not require that the greater part of the
brain be tested at all - perhaps frankly ludicrous. But to understand
the full absurdity of this claim, some knowledge of the tests used to
diagnose "brain death" is necessary and I will therefore
attempt to outline those in use for the purpose in this country.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">It is, of
course, a requirement that the patient be deeply comatose (though
grades of unconsciousness are, in point of fact, quite difficult to
determine) and unable to breathe spontaneously, <i>i.e</i>. air is
being delivered to his lungs by a mechanical ventilator. It is worth
mentioning that this is the only function of this so-called
"life-support machine"; it does <i>not </i>take over the
circulatory function, as a lot of people seem to think. The blood
flow through the body and parts of the brain, in such a patient, is
maintained naturally by the beating heart.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">It is a
requirement that the cause of coma and ventilator dependence be
known; common causes are severe head injury and bleeding into the
brain but in some cases the brain damage is due to a period of anoxia
and its extent may then be less easy to determine. When,after a few
hours or several days, it seems likely that a (fatal outcome will
inevitably ensue, some of the reflexes with pathways through the
brain stem - the stalk that connects the major part of the brain (the
cerebral hemispheres) to the spinal cord - re tested. This involves
looking for eye responses to light and to touch, and to the indirect
stimulation provided by irrigating the ears with ice-cold saline.
There?must be no movements in the head and neck area in response to
stimulation of any part of the body. Nor must there be any response
to stimulation of the throat or windpipe. Finally, to test the all
important supposition that the patient will never again be able to
breathe on his own, the mechanical ventilator is disconnected for 10
minutes; if there is any sign of a spontaneous inspiratory effort
during this time, then the criteria for "brain stem death"
are not satisfied. If there is no sign of any attempt to breathe,
mechanical ventilation is resumed and an unspecified period of time
is allowed to elapse before the brain stem reflexes are again sought.
If they remain absent the ventilator is again disconnected for a
similar test period. If there is still no inspiratory effort, and if
temporary influences such as drugs have been excluded, the criteria
for the diagnosis of "brain death" - U.K. style - have been
satisfied and the patient is certified dead.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Mechanical
ventilation is continued thereafter, sometimes for days, while the
complicated arrangements are made for removal of his vital organs
and, of course, throughout the surgical procedure involved in
acquiring them.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">To be
continued ...</p>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-6287985995759144412023-04-11T12:28:00.000+01:002023-04-11T12:28:06.522+01:00Transplants PART 1<p> </p><p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Discussion
Document</p>
<p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> <b>Organ
Transplants and the "Brain Death" Fallacy </b>
</p>
<p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>David
W. Evans</b></p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i><b>Home
Quarterly: A Review of Policies as seen from the home. </b></i><b>Vol.
XLIII, No. 1. July 1990</b></p>
<p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">PART I</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Let me say
at once that I believe heart, liver and lung transplantation to be
Wrong. This is because, to be useful for transplant purposes, these
organs have to be removed from living bodies, <i>i.e.</i> bodies
which are respiring, pink and warm, and which bleed freely when cut.
The donor's blood circulation is maintained by his own heart - right
up to the moment when it is stilled by a chemical solution and itself
removed.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The body
reacts to the trauma of this evisceration just as it would to
ordinary, therapeutic, surgery. It has to be paralysed with muscle
relaxant drugs to prevent the movements and spasms which, if they
were allowed to occur, would make the procedure difficult or
impossible. Even so, there may be dramatic increases in blood
pressure and heart-rate in response to the incision and the further
trauma of organ removal; these responses are identical with those
seen in lightly anaesthetized patients undergoing ordinary
therapeutic surgery and, in those circumstances, are an indication to
the anaesthetist to deepen anaesthesia in case his patient may be
feeling pain or, perhaps, have subsequent recall of intra-operative
events. It may be that this everyday experience is the reason why
some anaesthetists in charge of organ donors give them an
inhalational anaesthetic as well as the muscle relaxant; others,
being persuaded that the obviously living body is that of a dead
person, may aver that they give the general anaesthetic agent only
for its effects in controlling the unwanted cardiovascular reaction.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">To operate
thus, not for the benefit of the life-long inhabitant of the body but
to acquire his vital organs for the use of others, might seem an odd
thing for a caring surgeon to do. It might even seem a procedure of
doubtful legality. It has been made possible in both respects by the
invention and successful propagation of the notion that, although his
body is undeniably alive, the donor can be regarded (and certified)
as already dead before the operation commences because he appears to
be deeply unconscious and a few simple clinical tests have indicated
that he has no prospect of recovery. This is the syndrome which
has—unfortunately and misleadingly—become known as "brain
death " or, in this country, "brain stem death."</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">It is
fallacious to equate the state so defined with true and total death
of the brain and I am therefore unhappy about the terms used to
describe it; this is no mere semantic quibble but a real concern that
use of these imprecise terms may manipulate thought. Indeed, I know
it has done so in academic circles and I think it likely that a
distraught parent who is told that his son—who looks alive—is
nevertheless dead, because the tests establish "brain death,"
will take this to mean that all possibility of residual life in the
brain has thereby been excluded. This is, of course, not the case.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">It is also
basically fallacious to assume that the tests used have the power to
forecast, with the absolute certainty claimed,. the true death of the
patient (i.e. the final cessation of his circulation) within a few
hours or days of the diagnosis of "brain stem death." There
are, in some ways regrettably, no absolute certainties in Medicine.
And in this context one need perhaps look no further than the reports
of "'brain dead " mothers giving birth to normal babies
several weeks after the diagnosis to provide food for thought about
timed prognoses—and, maybe, about the wider question of live births
to mothers allegedly long dead.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Part 1 of 6:
to be continued</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-84011265092646023732023-04-11T10:00:00.000+01:002023-04-11T10:00:54.157+01:00Beyond Materialism<p>Quite by
accident I recently came across some articles from the 1990s that
have not dated with the passage of time. Thirty years ago many were
debating the ethical issues surrounding vivisection, abortion, spare
part surgery, IVF, the oncoMouse and gene manipulation in general.
(The oncoMouse was specially bred to be susceptible to cancer, in
order to facilitate cancer research). Then, as now, scientific
research in general, and medical research in particular, was
proceeding apace with very little overview of the legal framework
under which such procedures were being introduced and virtually no
public debate about the desirability of such procedures. The general
public were presented with nothing more than the smiling faces of the
happy couple beaming at the babe in their arms. The fact that for
every success there were at least ten failures was never mentioned.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Many issues
are raised that are crying out for public a debate, an urgent debate
that has, time and again, been stalled by clever publicity of
successful procedures benefiting loved ones and their families. Older
wisdom holds true: because something can be done, it does not follow
that it has to be done in practice. All too often, decisions are
being made in times of crisis and stress, things that might, on more
mature reflection, be left to take their course.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">With these
thoughts in mind, I have taken an article written by David W. Evans
and published in <i>Home Quarterly</i> in 1991 as a basis for debate
on these issues. The article, entitled "Organ Transplants and
the 'Brain Death' Fallacy" is long, so it is posted up in seven
instalments.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-14965276675414598202023-04-10T11:12:00.001+01:002023-04-10T11:12:57.382+01:00I, Daniel Blake Review<p> </p><p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> </p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Film Review<i>,
I, Daniel Blake; </i>Mark Kermode</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Ken Loach’s
latest Palme d’Or winner, his second after 2006’s <i>The Wind
that Shakes the Barley</i>, packs a hefty punch, both personal and
political. On one level, it is a polemical indictment of a faceless
benefits bureaucracy that strips claimants of their humanity by
reducing them to mere numbers – neoliberal 1984 meets uncaring,
capitalist Catch-22. On another, it is a celebration of the decency
and kinship of (extra)ordinary people who look out for each other
when the state abandons its duty of care.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">For all its
raw anger at the impersonal mistreatment of a single mother and an
ailing widower in depressed but resilient Newcastle, Paul Laverty’s
brilliantly insightful script finds much that is moving (and often
surprisingly funny) in the unbreakable social bonds of so-called
“broken Britain”. Blessed with exceptional lead performances from
Dave Johns and Hayley Squires, Loach crafts a gut-wrenching
tragicomic drama (about “a monumental farce”) that blends the
timeless humanity of the Dardenne brothers’ finest works with the
contemporary urgency of Loach’s own 1966 masterpiece <i>Cathy Come
Home</i>.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">We open with
the sound of 59-year-old Geordie joiner Daniel Blake (standup comic
Johns) answering automatonlike questions from a “healthcare
professional”. Having suffered a heart attack at work, Daniel has
been instructed by doctors to rest. Yet since he is able to walk 50
metres and “raise either arm as if to put something in your top
pocket”, he is deemed ineligible for employment and support
allowance, scoring a meaningless 12 points rather than the requisite
15. Instead, he must apply for jobseeker’s allowance and perform
the Sisyphean tasks of attending CV workshops and pounding the
pavements in search of nonexistent jobs that he can’t take anyway.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Meanwhile,
Squires’s mother-of-two Katie is similarly being given the
runaround, rehoused hundreds of miles from her friends and family in
London after spending two years in a hostel. “I’ll make this a
home if it’s the last thing I do,” she tells Daniel, who takes
her under his wing, fixing up her flat and impressed by her resolve
to go “back to the books” with the Open University. Both are
doing all they can to make the best of a bleak situation, retaining
their hope and dignity in the face of insurmountable odds. Yet both
are falling through the cracks of a cruel system that pushes those
caught up in its cogs to breaking point.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">“We’re
digital by default” is the mantra of this impersonal new world, to
which carpenter Daniel pointedly replies, “Yeah? Well I’m pencil
by default.” Scenes of Blake struggling with a computer cursor
(“fucking apt name for it!”) raise a wry chuckle, but there’s
real outrage at the way this obligatory online form-filling has
effectively written people like him out of existence. Yet still
Daniel supports – and is supported by – those around him; from
Kema Sikazwe’s streetsmart China, a neighbour who is forging
entrepreneurial links online (the internet may alienate Daniel, but
it also unites young workers of the world), to Katie’s kids, Daisy
and Dylan – the latter coaxed from habitual isolation (“no one
listens to him so why should he listen to them?”) by the hands-on
magic of woodwork. Having lost a wife who loved hearing Sailing By,
the theme for Radio 4’s Shipping Forecast, and whose mind was “like
the ocean”, Daniel carves beautiful fish mobiles that turn the
kids’ rooms into an aquatic playground. Meanwhile, their mother is
gradually going under.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">“A scene
in a food bank in which the starving Katie, on the verge of collapse,
finds herself grasping a meagre tin of beans is one of the most
profoundly moving film sequences I have ever seen. Shot at a
respectful distance by cinematographer Robbie Ryan, the scene
displays both an exquisite empathy for Katie’s trembling plight and
a pure rage that anyone should be reduced to such humiliation. Having
seen I, Daniel Blake twice, I have both times been left a shivering
wreck by this sequence, awash with tears, aghast with anger,
overwhelmed by the sheer force of its all-but-silent scream.”
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">They’ll
fuck you around,” China tells Daniel, “make it as miserable as
possible – that’s the plan.” For Loach and Laverty, this is the
dark heart of their drama, the use of what Loach calls the
“intentional inefficiency of bureaucracy as a political weapon”,
a way of intimidating people in a manner that is anything but
accidental. “When you lose your self-respect you’re done for,”
says Daniel, whose act of graffitied defiance becomes an “I’m
Spartacus!” battle cry that resonates far beyond the confines of
the movie theatre. Expect to see it spray-painted on the walls of a
jobcentre near you soon. <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Mark
Kermode</i></span>
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">COMMENT:
This review was published in <i>The Observer</i>, Sunday 23rd October
2016 and reprinted in <i>The Social Artist</i>, Winter 2016. A DVD of
the film is now available. Also Darton, Longman and Todd have
published a Study Guide by Virginia Moffatt entitled <i>Nothing More
and Nothing Less</i>, based on the film.
</p>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-29744830863502677052022-12-22T12:06:00.000+00:002022-12-22T12:06:23.158+00:00The Challenge of Monopoly<p> Christmas is a time
when friends and families gather together to share time and food. In
addition to singing and acting out charades, a popular activity at
these times is playing board games. Most of these are of the
'zero-sum' type: there is a winner, and the rest are losers. And of
this type <i>Monopoly</i> is perhaps the most well-known.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">First marketed in 1935
by Parker Bros. in the US, <i>Monopoly</i> has entertained, or driven
to boredom, generation after generation of youngsters. At the same
time, the playing of the game has promoted the philosophy of
self-interest that underlies corporate capitalism. Less well known is
the fact that <i>Monopoly</i> was pirated from a series of
'Landlord's; Games' drawn up in Quaker households across the US and
elsewhere. The purpose of the original games was to discuss and
explore local 'win-win' alternatives to the one-size-fits-all
corporate economy. Maggie McGee is put down as the sole inventor of
the original Landlord's Game. This was in no way the case. A little
research will reveal many versions of the game were created in many
different towns and cities over the course of the first two decades
of the 20th century. Many sought to explain the economist Henry
George's Single Land Tax proposals, whilst others explored the work
of other economic philosophers. .</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">See, for example, <i>Brer
Fox 'n Brer Rabbit</i> a version of the Landlord's Game marketed in
Scotland as a children's game in 1913. See my article <em><a href="https://www.douglassocialcredit.com/downloadfile/15937277?open=true" target="_blank"><span style="color: #b83f44;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Towards
a Threefold Commonwealth</span></i></span></span></span></span></a></em><span style="color: #404040;"> </span><span style="color: #404040;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">New
View</span></i></span></span></span><span style="color: #404040;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
Issue 98 Winter 2020-21 for </span></span></span></span></span>a link
to this game.
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The challenge is to
focus attention on <i>Monopoly,</i> as it is played in these present,
troubled times.. Where does the money come from? Who makes it? Who
holds it during the game of <i>Monopoly</i>? In real life? How might
every community have its own public bank?</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> Plenty of food for
thought as the year ends and we sail into 2023.</p>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-43835187539908623822022-12-16T11:03:00.000+00:002022-12-16T11:03:46.606+00:00Asses in Clover<p> </p><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">A century ago, in the
immediate aftermath of World War1, the ordinary man-in-the-street and
woman-in-the-household sought answers to some fundamental questions
about the social order. What on earth was going on? Millions of young
men set out to kill each other for no reason they could explain, save
that they were paid to fight, and that seemed better than being
unemployed because there was no money to employ them. At least they
could (and did) send money back to their families until they were
killed, at which point their pay stopped immediately.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">As the war ended, most
people took time to reflect. Before the war many families lived in
poverty because there was nobody with any money to employ them. As
soon as war broke out, there was the money to pay young men to kill
each other, and to provide them with munitions, food, uniforms horses
and other forms of transport to do so. All of this turned the wheels
of industry and kept the money flowing. As the War ended,
immediately, factory workers were laid off, farmers could not sell
their grain, and there was no work for returning soldiers to do. Many
of them were in a shell-shocked state, needing the lifelong care
which could only be supplied by the now income-less household. Small
wonder that many set about educating themselves through the adult
education movement (about which far too little is presently known.
See Albert Mansbridge and Sheffield Settlement).
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Amongst the people
seeking answers, not only about the finances of the First World War
but also about the Easter Rising, was the poet, playwright, novelist
and campaigner, Eimar O'Duffy. He observed the workings of the
emerging corporate capitalist world order and, in 1925, published the
first book of his Goshawk Trilogy, in which he conjured up King
Goshawk who bought up the whole of the natural world and then, in
effect, rented it out. In 1929 the second book of the trilogy was
published. By this time O'Duffy had set about studying the work of
Clifford Hugh Douglas and other 'New' Economists (eg Henry George),
so that by the early 1930s he was amongst the most knowledgeable
writers on the political economy. He produced two books, both of
which demand our attention under present world circumstances. The
first is <i>Asses in Clover</i> (1933), the third book of the
dystopian trilogy, described on the cover of the 2003 Jon Carpenter
reprint as "a humorous tirade at the follies of twentieth
century economics and politics". The second is<span lang="en-GB">
</span><span lang="en-GB"><i>Life and Money: </i></span><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-GB"><i>Being
a Critical Examination of the Principles and </i></span></span><span lang="en-GB"><i>Practice
of Orthodox Economics with A Practical Scheme to end the muddle it
has made </i></span><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-GB"><i>of
our Civilisation</i></span></span><span lang="en-GB"><i> </i></span><span lang="en-GB">
Putnam (see the second, much edited, 1935 edition). </span>
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="en-GB"><i><b>Life
and Money</b></i></span><span lang="en-GB"><b> opens with a section
on "The Dilemma of Unemployment"</b></span><span lang="en-GB">:</span></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="en-GB">"Now
observe this. The unemployed man has no doubt that, if he can get a
job of work and draw the pay agreed on, the food and clothing will be
there for him to buy. He knows that they are lying for him in the
shops at this very moment. If he cannot get the work, the bread he
might buy will stale and go to waste; the shirt he might buy will
remain a little longer on the shopman’s hands, thus reducing his
profits, and delaying his order to the (page </span><span style="color: #ff00cc;"><span lang="en-GB">20</span></span><span lang="en-GB">)
factory for a new supply. There may be a ‘glut’ in the wheat
market; the cotton growers in America may be desperately resolving to
bum their ‘surplus’ crops, and the Lancashire mill-owners
offering their ‘overproduction’ of shirts at fantastically
reduced prices to the Chinese. Fruit may be rotting on the trees, the
Press clamouring against the ‘dumping’ of fruit from abroad, and
the farmers gloomily wondering how they are going to dispose of their
too generous supplies of milk and vegetables. In fact, there is not
shortage, but abundance of all the things our friend needs.</span></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Nevertheless, he cannot
claim any share of this abundance unless he works for it. No effort
of his has been required to produce it, or will be required to
produce a similar abundance to-morrow. His work, as he has been told
at the gate of every factory to which he has applied, is unnecessary;
but all the same, he must work or starve. To make the situation more
absurd still, and as if to emphasise that he is<i> starving in the
midst of plenty</i>, it is not required that the work he does shall
be productive. It may be utterly useless, or even positively
mischievous. A lady may hire him to give her lapdog (which would be
better dead) an airing. At once the shops are open to him to the
extent of hergenerosity. But if she presently decides to keep the
beast indoors, the man must go hungry again. If now, driven by
despair, he hires himself out as a vendor of harmful drugs, a pedlar
of indecent postcards, a gunman to a racketeer, or a procurer to a
brothel, once again his money is as good in the shops as that of your
honest workman. It is true that in such cases the law may have
something to say in the matter: but that is not the point. The point
is that the goods are there (<span style="color: #ff00cc;">21</span>) without
any productive effort on the part of the purchaser; and if they are
available for the pest and the parasite, they must be available for a
decent man whose work does not happen to be required at the moment."
Extract from Eimar O'Duffy <i>Life and Money</i>, 1935 edition.
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>Asses in Clover</i>
is an exploration of the same themes through comedy. Just waiting to
be turned into a play.
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">COMMENT: Available on
DSC website https://www.douglassocialcredit.com/ . Go to RESOURCES
page, then to SOCIAT ART page and scroll down until you see the
Contents and Chapters of <i>Life and Money.</i></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</p>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-41189599245922973472022-12-11T20:50:00.000+00:002022-12-11T20:50:07.678+00:00Of Partridges and Pear Trees<p>Advent is a
time of preparation for the festivities of the Twelve Days of
Christmas. For many families today that involves buying as much as
possible, which means spending on the mass of goods produced for
profitable sale, boosting the finances of shareholders but without
making anybody truly happy.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">In the days
when Christmas songs and carols were composed ( see Blog 9 Dec 22)
there were no chain stores, banks or credit cards, and the global
corporations had yet to throw their cocoon over the world. Families
prepared to spend Christmas together according to the customs and
traditions of their own particular household. carols were practised,
party pieces polished, including songs, poems recited, dance,
story-telling and musical instruments, played by individuals or
groups. Someone had to act as MC for the party to go well. This was
particularly useful when singing together or playing party games. For
example, The Twelve Days of Christmas was originally a forfeit song.
According to the <i>Christmas Melodies</i> book people took it in
turn to sing a verse, adding a line each time. Thus:</p>
<br />On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me <br />A partridge in a pear tree. <br />The second day of Christmas my true love sent to me <br />???
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">If they made
a mistake, they paid a forfeit. The song probably dates back to the
Middle Ages.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">In
households not entirely hooked up to electronic devices, many of
these practices continue. Games may take the form of quizzes, devised
by family members (or even taken from the Internet). Many play board
games, sitting around the table as family and friends continue eating
and drinking. Probably one of the the most popular board games has
been, and remains, the game of Monopoly. Few will have completely
avoided coming into contact with this game in somebody or others'
household. Nevertheless, Monopoly was <i>not</i> first devised as the
supreme teaching aid for the capitalist values of greed, selfishness
and ruthless competition. On the contrary, it was originally devised
on the kitchen tables of ordinary families across North America as an
exploration of the very opposite. The original "Landlord's
Games" explored the humanitarian economics of the popular
nineteenth century economist, Henry George ( 1839 - 1897). Based upon
the basic values of cooperation, justice, freedom, love and wisdom,
George's economics gave rise to a massive movement throughout the US.
UK versions also emerged, including "Brer Fox an' Brer Rabbit",
the incongruently named Scottish version. (See <i>New View</i>
article. <em><a href="https://www.douglassocialcredit.com/downloadfile/15937277?open=true" target="_blank"><span style="color: #b83f44;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Towards
a Threefold Commonwealth</span></i></span></span></span></span></a></em><span style="color: #404040;"> </span><span style="color: #404040;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">New
View Issue 98 Winter 2020-21</span></span></span></span></span> ).</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Monopoly is
a zero-sum game - winner takes all. During the early decades of the
twentieth century a mass of individuals and groups explored
alternatives to corporate capitalism. See
https://www.douglassocialcredit.com/ for a variety of resources
available for individual study and group discussion of the "win-win" cooperative alternatives to the zero-sum philosophy.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-27890687461313230812022-12-09T11:13:00.000+00:002022-12-09T11:13:24.265+00:00Advent<p><br /><br />Come, Child, into our hearts and still the storm<br /></p><p>made by our selfish wishes wrestling there<br /><br />and weave again the fabric of mankind</p>Out of Thy Light, Thy Life, Thy loving Fire. <br /><br />
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">So writes
Adam Bittleston in his <i>Meditative Prayers for Today</i>. As the
frenzy of spend, spend, spend catapults us towards yet another
corporate capitalist, materialist Christmas, we might, perhaps,
reflect on those words "weave again the fabric of mankind".
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Advent is a
good time to reflect on the technology of the Machine Age, with its
mass production of foods, clothing, entertainment, music, art, news
and artificial sparkles. It is all too easy to find oneself wondering
what on earth it is all about.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">A book
entitled "<i>Christmas Melodies: Carols, Hymns, Songs</i>"
(Price 3/6d) recently caught my attention. It carries a Foreword by
the popular conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent (1895 - 1967). He writes:</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">"IT
IS ONE of the interesting and thrilling pleasures of the musician to
realise that music is not only for the "professional" and
for the "concert hall" but, that it has a willing duty to
fulfil to the amateur and the home. </span></span>
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">"Certain
festivities demand their appropriate music and on occasion the
dullest and least demonstrative of us feel an urge to burst into
song. </span></span>
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">"This
is especially true at Christmas time, when Christmas Carols and Songs
do more to create and maintain the spirit of Christmas than anything
else."</span></span></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">It
would seem that most of the Christmas hymns that we sing today in
churches were composed in the nineteenth century with a church
congregation in mind. However, most of the Christmas carols and songs
are traditional, part of the folk music in general. Almost all the
carols were written between 1400 and 1647, as the Middle Ages, the
era of the Catholic (ie Universal) social order, was drawing towards
its end, and the Protestant Revolution loomed large. In 1647 the
Puritan regime banned the singing of carols. </span></span>
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Nevertheless,
traditional carols and songs survived. According to the </span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Christmas
Melodies</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
book, The Holly and the Ivy is described as</span></span></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">"a
remarkable mingling of the pagan and the Christian. Holly and ivy are
primitive symbols for male and female and the poem probably derives
from a fertility dance. "The rising of the sun" almost
certainly relates to pagan religion. The existing words date back at
least to the 1300s; the carol probably comes from Gloucestershire or
Somerset."</span></span></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Also included in the
<i>Christmas Melodies</i> are: Away in a Manger, Silent Night and
The Coventry Carol, classed as carols (originally composed by lay
people), Hark the Herald Angels, classed as a hymn, and Jingle Bells,
classed as a Christmas song.
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Like
all traditional folk songs and nursery rhymes, Christmas songs were
not sung from hymn books. The verses had to be learned by heart at
mother's knee. It is in the ages old, multi-tasking household that
traditional stories can be told, and notions of value, justice, right
and wrong, good </span></span>
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">and
evil, can be passed on from generation to generation. </span></span>
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">When
families come together to share time during the twelve Days of
Christmas, home cooked food is often the central feature of the
celebrations. Carols are not as commonly sung today, perhaps because
our electronic devices attract our attention, perhaps because we have
never had the time, inclination or opportunity to learn the verses by
heart. </span></span>
</p>
<p class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black;">In
days gone by, winter was a time when the household was very much
thrown back on its own resources. Long nights and low temperatures
forced people to batten down the hatches and share time together
musing over the meaning of life, death and the universe, of "love,
peace, justice and human dignity", as in the verses of the
Christmas songs and carols. Today, as the household is increasingly
invaded by the nebulous network of the World Wide Web, it may be time
to look again at the reasons for the various traditional Christmas
festivities.</span></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The
next Blog will look at the Partridge in a Pear Tree.</span></span></p>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-33754616902015942162022-11-20T11:23:00.000+00:002022-11-20T11:23:00.944+00:00Freedom Part 2: The Sense of Wonder<p><span lang="en-GB">In
an essay first published in July 1956 in </span><span lang="en-GB"><i>Woman's
Home Companion</i></span><span lang="en-GB">, under the title “Help
Your Child to Wonder”, Rachel Carson argued that every child needs
at least one adult with whom to share the earliest experiences of the
natural world, She calls for a sharing of the experience with the
child, for using our senses and emotions with the child, avoiding the
temptation to teach. This is not just a pleasant way to pass the time
in caring for a young child. Towards the end of the essay Carson
asks:</span></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">“<span lang="en-GB">What
is the value of preserving and strengthening this sense of awe, this
recognition of something beyond the boundaries of human existence? Is
the exploration of the natural world just a pleasant way to pass the
golden hours of childhood or is there something deeper? “I am sure
there is something much deeper, something lasting and significant.
Those who dwell as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and
mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the
vexations or concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can
find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement
in living. Those who contemplate the beautu of the earth find
reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is
symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the
ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There
is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature –
the assurance that dawn comes after night and spring after winter.”
(Carson 1965, p88-9).</span></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="en-GB">After
her death, in 1964, the article was published in book form,
illustrated according to RC's wishes. (See Rachel Carson, (1965) </span><span lang="en-GB"><i>The
Sense of Wonder</i></span><span lang="en-GB">, Harper and Row.) In
the article, RC hopes there might be a good fairy to give each child
“a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last through
life”. L</span>ater, in <span lang="en-GB"><i>Silent Spring</i></span><span lang="en-GB">,
(1962) she documented exactly how humanity is poisoning every living
creature on earth, including its own children. </span>
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="en-GB">Writing
over a quarter of a century after the massive public debate which
followed the publication of </span><span lang="en-GB"><i>Silent
Spring</i></span><span lang="en-GB">, Patricia Hynes was moved by
looking at “so much death” to write </span><span lang="en-GB"><i>The
Recurring Silent Spring</i></span><span lang="en-GB">. She expressed
her shock at</span></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">“ … <span style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="en-GB">the
kill-potential of technology and the many ‘silent springs’
throughout the planet; my anger at living in a world in which nature
and women are presumed to exist for the use and convenience of men,
so that the destruction of nature and violence against women are
interconnected, increasingly technologized, and infect all corners of
the earth.” (Hynes 1989, p2)</span></span></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The work of Rachel
Carson, and other women scientists, journalists and academics
circulated in the 'green', anti-war, women's movement of the late
decades of the 20th century, but were airbrushed out of mainstream
press, media and education. Works like that of Pat Spallone's <i>Beyond
Conception</i> explored "the destruction of nature and the
violence against women". But they were silenced, simply ignored,
so that individual women and their families had no forum through
which to express their concerns. RC researched and explained
graphically the effects agri-business chemicals and processes upon
the land, the rivers and the seas. Meanwhile, throughout the 20th
century, unreported and un-noticed, research and development of
medical procedures and pharmaceutical products (IVF), Information
Technology (5G, IT, AI) and so on continued apace. Midwives, and
their traditional expertise, have been systematically forced to
comply with un-natural regulations or face exclusion from employment,
so that, on Monday April 2, 2022 the <i>Daily Mail</i> carries an
attack on the Natural Childbirth Trust as being the cause of
"unnecessary deaths" of mothers and babies. Such little
public debate as has taken place has been conducted by the only
people who know what is going on in the fields of Big Pharma debate,
and that is the scientists, journalists and academics who have been,
or still are being, paid by the corporations who conduct the
research. (See eg the Warnock Report to The Human Fertilisation
and Embryology Authority (HFEA) 1980s)
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">There is, to
date, no unbiased public forum in a position to conduct a free,
impartial, urgently needed ethical debate in this highly emotive
territory. The control over the human body and the health of the
planet are matters that affect each and every one of us. For far too
long we have allowed the profit motive to reign supreme, so that
Forster's Machine looms large on the horizon.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
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</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
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</p>
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</p>
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</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-65557652667027789642022-11-18T17:49:00.000+00:002022-11-18T17:49:24.631+00:00Freedom 1<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Two recent
Blogs are starkly different, and intentionally so. Murray McGrath's
"After Thoughts on Independence" (22 October) is followed
by an extract from a history of political economic thought of a
century ago entitled Social Credit History.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">A century
ago, during the 1920s and 1939s, young people were not only asking
fundamental questions about the social order of the times. They set
about educating themselves to fnd the answers in order to participate
in the social order as workers, citizens, artists, craftsmen and
householders. The dominant feature of those two decades was the
after-effects of World War I. Young people aged 16 plus were sent off
into the trenches to kill or to be killed, and to watch their
comrades die, for a cause that nobody can explain to this day.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Their
families did not forget. They sought the reasons by studying,
privately and in groups, in colleges and universities, adult
education institutes, evening classes, and extra-mural courses, in
pubs and clubs, in towns and cities throughout the British Isles. Men
of letters wrote works of poetry and fiction alongside political,
religious and philosophical tracts that were read, studied and
discussed throughout the land, so that their authors became household
names. Rich and poor studied alongside each other, with a view to
building the free society envisaged by Murray McGrath.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Nevertheless,
World War II followed the 1930s, and concluded with the dropping of
the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Driven by the worldwide
corporations, a basic materialism set in over the rest of the
century. Despite the work of Rachel Carson (1907-1964), and so many
others, the sense of wonder at, and respect for, creation has ceased
to be part of the educational curriculum.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="en-GB">Rachel
Carson became perhaps the most articulate scientist the world has
ever known. In </span><span lang="en-GB"><i>The Sea Around Us </i></span><span lang="en-GB">she
told how human beings, having devised ingenious technologies,
explored our planet’s past and the origins of life itself. A decade
later, in </span><span lang="en-GB"><i>Silent Spring</i></span><span lang="en-GB">,
she documented exactly how humanity is poisoning every living
creature on earth, including its children. A 1994 reprnt of </span><span lang="en-GB"><i>Silent
Spring</i></span><span lang="en-GB"> carries the following text on
the back cover: </span>
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i>"What we have to face is not an occasional dose of poison
which has accidentally got into some article of food, but a
persistent and continuous poisoning of the whole human environment"</i></p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="en-GB">"First
published in 1962, Rachel Carson's scientifically passionate exposure
of the effects of the indiscriminate use of chemicals is still of
vital importance. In her vivid and well-informed text she describes
how pesticides and insecticides are applied almost universally to
-farms, forests, gardens and homes with scant regard to the
consequent contamination of our environment and the widespread
destruction of wildlife. She argues that unless we recognize that
human beings are only a part of the living world, our progressive
poisoning of the planet will end in catastrophe. </span><span lang="en-GB"><i>Silent
Spring</i></span><span lang="en-GB"> remains the classic statement
which founded a whole movement and should be read by everyone who is
concerned about the future of our world."</span></p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="en-GB">Beautifully
written, thoroughly researched and highly readable, </span><span lang="en-GB"><i>Silent
Spring</i></span><span lang="en-GB"> remains an inspiring 'must read'
to all concerned at the corporate take of control over the human body
itself. </span>
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">(See Freedom Part 2 in next Understanding Blog.)</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> </p>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-82577115182295877032022-11-17T14:45:00.000+00:002022-11-17T14:45:12.772+00:00Social Credit History<br /> Extract from <br /><i>The Political Economy of Social Credit and Guild Socialism </i><br />by Frances Hutchinson and Brian Burkitt, Routledge (1997) <br /><br />P80
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The UK
‘social credit movement’ can be described as three movements
which coexisted in an uneasy relationship. First, a self-appointed
‘Social Credit Secretariat’, loosely formed as early as 1921,
produced material for study groups which sprang up throughout the
United Kingdom. Finlay estimates that by late 1922 thirty-four study
groups had been formed across the United Kingdom, centred largely on
guild socialism (Finlay 1972: 122). Douglas was drawn into reluctant
co-operation with this secretariat in the absence of any other
prominent figure. Second, the informal Chandos group encompassed a
number of leading artists, journalists and Church figures who shared
common links with Orage. Third, John Hargrave and his Green Shirts
movement popularised social credit ideas among the disaffected and
unemployed in the United Kingdom.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The
character of the social credit movement, covered in detail in Part
III, heavily influenced the nature of reactions, particularly in the
1930s, when its widespread popularity was perceived as threatening to
the established political scene. Indeed, reactions are more
accurately described as responses to elements in the publicity and
propaganda of the social credit movement than to the Douglas/New Age
analysis as a whole. This, coupled with the search for solutions to
problems of the time from various vantage points in society – the
orthodox liberal economists seeking solutions to depression, the
Labour Party seeking political credibility, the unemployed and
lowpaid seeking explanations and deliverance – obscured the
holistic character of the original texts.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Had the
texts contained merely the maverick meanderings of a single mind, the
subsequent fate of the ideas would be of little consequence. <i>It
is contended here that the Douglas/Orage collaboration synthesised
into a coherent framework a constructive alternative view of the
relationship between economics and society.</i> The ideas
propounded by Orage and Douglas had considerable impact on Meade,
Keynes and other major figures in politics and economics in
subsequent decades. The central theme of the detrimental impact of
the impetus to economic growth and its relentless drive towards the
production of armaments and waste arising from a debt-driven
financial system was often neglected, even by leading advocates of
social credit. In the ensuing debate, proponents and opponents alike
failed to acknowledge an alternative framework for freeing the
productive capacity of developed nations from exploitation for
individual greed and competitive gain. Page 80 The PE
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> p138-9
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">A third
publication, issued by the recently formed Credit Power Press in 1922
with the title <i>The Community’s Credit: a Consideration of the
Principles and Proposals of the Social Credit Movement </i>(Hattersley
1922), arose from a series of papers discussed by the Swinton
(Yorks.) group of the social credit movement during the latter part
of 1921 and the spring of 1922. The papers were based on Economic
Democracy and Credit-Power and Democracy, the authorship of the
latter book being attributed in part to Orage, ‘late editor of The
New Age’. Unlike Cousens, Hattersley asserts that Douglas presents
a ‘permanent solution to the present economic difficulties’ –
in other words, that his purpose is to put the economy right
(Hattersley 1922: i). Two of the three main strands of the social
credit movement began to emerge in these three books by Young,
Cousens and Hattersley. The Swinton group referred to by Hattersley
were one of an estimated number of thirty-four study circles which
were formed across Britain in 1921–2 to study and publicise social
credit (Finlay 1972: 121–2). Although these groups appear to have
centred on the remnants of guild socialism (Finlay 1972: 122), they
subsequently formed the caucus of the later network which held
ambivalent attitudes towards socialism. Cousens, on the other hand,
became a member of the Chandos group of intellectuals who met from
the mid- 1920s to discuss social credit from an Oragean perspective.
Douglas initiated neither of these developments. ..... P138-9</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> p140 <b>
The Chandos Group </b>
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The Chandos
group, the second main strand of the social credit movement, first
met in May 1926 at the invitation of Dimitrije Mitrinovic, a
contributor to the New Age under Orage. The group was formed to
explore the possibility of publicising social credit ideas, and the
original members were joined at their regular meetings by academics,
clerics and business people. G.D.H. Cole, Lewis Mumford and T.S.
Eliot were often in attendance (Mairet 1936: 110).
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">named after
the restaurant at which it invariably met fortnightly, the group was
influential in the many spheres in which the members and their
associates conducted their daily lives. The seven who first dined
together on the evening of the termination of the General Strike were
joined by three or four others and continued to meet throughout the
1930s. According to Reckitt, one of the original members, the core of
the group were W.T. Symons, Philip Mairet and V.A. Demant, with
Egerton Swan, Alan Porter and Albert Newsome attending up to the
publication of their first joint attempt to explain their stand,
Coal: a Challenge to the National Conscience. They were joined by B.T
Boothroyd, Hilderic Cousens, R.S.J. Rand and Geoffrey Davis. The
latter had a background of distributism and was a member of the
Sociological Society. The members of the group were, to a varying
extent, contributors to the <i>New Age</i> under Orage and/or active
social credit supporters. <i>There was a strong Christian influence
within the group.</i> T.S Eliot, ‘that gracious personality of
crystalline intelligence’, attended from time to time (Reckitt
1941: 190–5). The group acted as a focus of its members’ interest
in social credit, and steered through a couple of minor publications
on the social credit theme.<i> Already in the late 1920s, however,
‘it had become evident that “social credit” aroused
considerable prejudice’ and neither publication mentioned the term,
regarding it as counterproductive </i>(Reckitt 1941: 189–95; Finlay
1972: 168–72). As Reckitt noted, the monetary reform ideas in
social credit would not appear attractive to public figures unless or
until they were commonly discussed and accepted by the public at
large. In effect, that is what happened. Within a few years of the
publication of the original texts the ideas were being studied
throughout the British Isles, in the United States, Canada,
Australia, New Zealand and Scandinavia (Douglas 1937: xiii).
Following the economic crisis of 1931, finance became news and the
work of a host of monetary reformers was subjected to public
scrutiny. At this point, the early promotional material enabled the
social credit movement to flourish on a worldwide scale (Reckitt
1941: 172–3) p40</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">See also
pages 158++
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">COMMENT:
Copied for John Carlisle and others interested in the history and
contemporary relevance of Social Credit and Guild Socialism.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</p><p> </p>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-51305452774074252842022-11-12T14:03:00.000+00:002022-11-12T14:03:24.599+00:00Poverty a Political Choice<p>Why do some
people in the UK have more than enough, others have enough, whilst
some have no rights to the basic necessities of life, of food,
shelter and clothing? How can we exercise political choice?</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The
marathon task ahead is for groups of individuals to study the
workings of the financial system within the daily lives of our own
households, our places of waged employment and our local
neighbourhoods. The quest is to develop a worldwide concept of
municipal economics firmly rooted in a sense of place and community.
</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">On
a pluralistic planet of difference, they embrace multiculturalism.
And as our times plead for innovation, they exude creativity. Reasons
enough, – good reasons, why mayors and their fellow citizens can
and should rule the world.</span></span></span></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">In 1949, Huxley wrote
in the foreword to a new edition of <i>Brave New World</i>:</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">“Overall, it looks as
if we are much closer to utopia than anybody could have imagined 15
years ago. At the time, I put this utopia 600 years in the future.
Today, it seems quite possible that this horror will come upon us
within a single century” (Huxley, 1949).
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> Huxley was amazingly
prescient with this prognosis. Given current trends, 2032 seems like
a realistic date for the realization of this dystopia. It seems that
the 21st century is the one in which we have to prevent a dystopia
from becoming reality-one that is already well recognizable in its
contours. We will only be able to prevent it from becoming reality,
if we manage to unmask its dystopian qualities, and the plan behind
it, in time, before people have lost their ability to imagine
alternatives.</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">A possible
route out of this impasse is suggested by Benjamin Barber in his most
thought-provoking book entitled <span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">“If
Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities”
</span></i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">(2013).
He argues: </span></span></span>
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">“<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">As
nations grow more dysfunctional, cities are rising. When it comes to
democracy, they command the majority. Rooted in ancient history, they
still lean to the future. As we reach the limits of independence and
private markets, they define interdependence and public culture. On a
pluralistic planet of difference, they embrace multiculturalism. And
as our times plead for innovation, they exude creativity. Reasons
enough – good reasons why mayors and their fellow citizens can and
should rule the world.”</span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
</span></span></span>
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Barber’s
central question is where lies the best hope for global democratic
governance capable of addressing problems that seriously threaten
humankind and the planet such as ecological sustainability, energy,
food and water availability, migration, economic stability and
inequality. He defines the city as an aggregation of features: dense
population, relational networks, public spaces, voluntary identity,
secularity, cosmopolitan, mobility, multicultural, trade, arts –
overall providing the creative, pragmatic, non-ideological and open
networking that democratic global governance requires. Urban living
is rapidly increasing, encapsulating more than half the planet’s 7
billion population and estimated to reach 70% by 2030. City
populations range from 50,000 to 20 million upwards. There is much in
Barber’s argument seriously to question nation-states’ capacities
to assure the planetary public good and he provides strong
justification for mayors, actively mandated by their citizens, to
help hold nations to account and grow a powerful contribution by
cities to global governance. In this context, reform of the wages
system becomes an urgent priority.
</p>
<p align="LEFT" class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>The wages system</b></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="en-GB">U</span></span><span lang="en-GB">nder
the wages system, the worker has no say in the planning of the work
or in the conditions of work. Workers are engaged to follow orders
given by a superior. The worker is rewarded by a money wage or salary
which is taxed according to the rules determined by the powers at the
top of the centralised pyramids of power. Hence the big banks and the
big corporations of bureaucratic capitalism determine political and
economic policy. As Guild Socialists Maurice Reckitt and C.E.
Bechhoffer explained a century ago:</span></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">“<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-GB">The
fundamental basis of the revolutionary case against Capitalism is not
that it makes the few rich and the many poor – though this is true;
not that it creates social conditions which are a disgrace and an
amazement in a civilised community – though this is also true; not
that it brutalises the rich by luxury, stifles beauty, and frustrates
the hope of craftsmanship for the worker – though, indeed, it does
all these things; but that it denies and degrades the character of
man by the operation of a wage-system which makes the worker of no
more account than a machine to be exploited or a tool to be bought
and sold. The seed of all our glaring social failure and distress
today lies not in any imagined ‘problem’ of poverty, nor in any
inevitable ‘stage’ of economic development</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-GB">,
but in a vile conception of human relationship that has entered into
and now dominates all our social life and has invested it with its
character of injustice and insecurity. This spiritual failure to
which we have come finds its concrete expression in the wages system.
Its assumptions and even its ideals (if we can call them so) have won
so great a victory over the minds and wills of every section of our
countrymen that its creed is the credo of England today. Few
challenge it; few have the spirit even to desire an alternative, far
less to struggle for one. That men should be forced by the menace of
starvation to accept a price for the labour which is all they have to
sell, to subdue all their purposes and all their gifts to the purpose
of others (</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">and
that purpose profit</span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-GB">),
to lay claim to no right of control over the conditions of their
working lives, nor any power of government over those who direct them
in the workshop, to be divorced from responsibility and all the
attributes of free status, to have upheld before them no standard but
that of gain, no incentive but the bribe (often fallacious) of higher
wages – this pathetic distortion of human fellowship, this vile and
perilous imprisonment of the human spirit, is actually accepted as
natural, and even providential, by nearly all those who triumph( by
means of it, and by the vast majority, indeed, of its victims.”</span></span><sup><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-GB">
</span></span></sup><sup><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="en-GB">. </span></span></sup><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="en-GB">
(See:</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-GB">Maurice
Reckitt and C E Bechhoffer (1918) </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-GB"><i>The
Meaning of the National Guilds</i></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-GB">,
Cecil Palmer, London.)</span></span></p>
<div id="sdendnote1">
<p class="sdendnote-western"><br /></p><p class="sdendnote-western"> </p>
</div>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-50833630981580777202022-10-22T11:38:00.000+01:002022-10-22T11:38:24.334+01:00After Thoughts on Independence <br />by Murray McGrath<br /><br />Do you want freedom or security?<div>You cannot have both.<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Security is essential
for a child but requires obedience and containment. Growing up is
becoming independent.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Independence is freedom
to be yourself; to live, love and relate to all life in an
individual, constructive and harmonious way.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Genuine democracy in
small communities, regions and nations would enable individuals to
influence society. Having an influence encourages thinking and
acting for the good of self and others. Without it, thinking for
one’s self is discouraged and conformity prevails. Freedom is
lost.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">“Be a good obedient
consumer. Keep our economy competitive and growing so that we, the
controllers of this fine civilised society, can continue to get
richer. Don’t worry, we will look after you. You are entirely
free to entertain yourselves as you will and do what you like, as
long as it doesn’t interfere with the status quo. Through the
media, we will help you to form opinions and advise you what to
think. To maintain this healthy, happy situation, keep shopping,
enjoy your entertainments and support the establishment with your
votes. Trust us; we know what is best for you!”
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">“No thanks!”</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Although there is a
long way to go to reach real freedom, it is worth striving for and
every opportunity for progress is worth taking. Independence of
small countries is a move in the right direction.
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">A happy healthy society
is like a healthy ecology; a wide diversity of creatures living
together in balanced complexity, free from power and profit oriented
human interference.
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">This cannot work for
large nations. Size results in the temptations of power, the
imbalance of the few, and ultimately the killing fields of war.
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Small democratic units
are more likely to be happy and co-operate peacefully.
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Restrain the expression
of character, and you get selfishness and negativity. If its
diversity is acknowledged and encouraged however, the result is
positive and outgoing. It’s a question of identity.
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Feeling significant as
a person, a family, a community or a country is the basis for health
and happiness. And that encourages good relations among all.
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Being given power is
not what it’s about.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">“Oh, thank you
London, thank you England, even thank you Britain for the powers you
have decided to give us! You are too kind!”</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">“No thanks!”</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">“Just set us free to
be our self!”
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">NOTE: Murray McGrath
composed this homily on Skyros. towards the end of his life.</p></div>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3214725193670603400.post-1922030408793907542022-10-19T12:45:00.000+01:002022-10-19T12:45:11.314+01:00The Good Shepherd Doll's House<p>There was something
magical about yesterday. We were invited to a luncheon for old people
at the Good Shepherd Community Centre. There we met a number of
ageing acquaintances with whom we have collaborated to put the world
right in days gone by. So many have helped others along the way. It
was particularly good to see Y, who for many years came on foot with
a friend to pick and store fruit, and to process windfalls into juice
and wine. They would walk from Keighley town centre up onto the moors
to pick boxes of bilberries and bring them to us to share. Their
English was ropey, to say the least. Y's friend literally could not
speak one word of English, and never did learn any over the decade or
so that we knew her. Like so many people who migrated to Keighley
from so many parts of the world since the end of World War II, they
looked back with longing to their childhoods in peasant farming
households. They described all the processes of food production and
preservation, as also the production and processing of fabrics for
clothing and for furnishing their homes.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Whilst we were at the
Good Shepherd Centre yesterday I was delighted to find a sadly
battered doll's house containing some oddments of furniture. I bought
it and took it home in great delight. Perhaps I'm going completely
senile already, as a result of Parkinson's and creeping old age? But
as I explore the subject of doll's houses more fully (see blog in
this series for 30th September) I find a whole new world opening up.
Doll's houses can tell us a great deal about how we lived in the
past, how we are organising our households at the moment, enabling us
to think our way through to plan how our homes and local communities
might look in the future.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Doll's houses are not
mere toys for the young child or collectors items set in aspic for
the decadent rich. On the contrary, properly organised, they can
provide the focus for discussion of the role of the household as the
foundation stone of the world-wide social order. What rooms could we
have in the future? A lounge for watching big screen TV, for crashing
out when we return from 12 hour stints of waged and salaried
slavery? A music room? A library? A nursery? A fast food kitchen? A
slow food kitchen? An artist's studio? Needlework room? A compost
loo? Does the house have a garden? And so on.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Presently, redundant
doll's houses are ten a penny, as families think their children have
grown out of them. These and their fittings and furnishings can
become the focus for community group discussion about households
past, present and future. Such discussion is nothing new. In the
November 1935 issue of <i>The Catholic Worker</i>, Peter Maurin
advocated the establishment of farm-based communities:</p>
<br /><br />It is in fact impossible <br />for any culture <br />to be sound and healthy without a proper regard <br />for the soil, <br />no matter <br />how many urban dwellers <br />think that their food comes from groceries <br />and delicatessens <br />or their milk comes from tin cans.
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Those words were
written way back, before World War II had even started. Like so many
present day migrants to Keighley from peasant farming backgrounds,
Peter Maurin signposts possible routes to the sustainable household
and community of the future. (See blog for 4th October for reference
to Peter Maurin's <i>Easy Essays on Catholic Radicalism</i>. and the
Catholic Worker movement. The above quote was noted on page 127 of
<i>Peter Maurin: Apostle to the World,</i> by Dorothy Day with
Francis J. Sicius, Orbis Books, 2004). We cannot put the clock back, but we can learn from the past. </p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>Frances Hutchinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03226047157988284833noreply@blogger.com0