Well, there you have it. Eisenstein has been dismissed as a gentle dreamer and all his ideas have been thrown into the trash can.

Meanwhile, our world, which is filled with, and run by, those who love killing and endless war, who love dominating, who love controlling, who love exploiting and manipulating the masses, continue to have a field day invading and occupying and plundering while they live lives of obscene affluence while much of the world's people starve or live in poverty.

Yes, such psychopathic types in a 'capitalist-democratic' system end up very rich and very powerful and it is obvious to anyone with half a brain that such people are leading the world towards a nuclear Armageddon as Empires clash.

But let's not worry about that either, eh, Banjo and the do-nothing cliche who love to posture and debate as long as they don't have to do anything?

When the nukes start falling we'll suddenly have all manner of Chicken-Littles rushing about in alarm making shrieking noises. The same thing occurred in Nazi Germany when Hitler began his war against the world and it will happen again when the U.S. makes its grab for world domination.

Anyway, so be it! Humans, who are collectively dumb as a thumb, deserve all they get!

This, from page 4, was overlooked/ignored/unanswerable and is resubmitted for consideration...

"Here's a suggestion which might help, David G...

Since your comment that

"And if honesty, compassion and generosity again became values that people embraced,..."

implies - by saying *again* - you know something about human history which isn't apparent to the rest of us, perhaps you could tell us where and when this nirvana existed - and maybe what happened to the people concerned?

Couldn't hurt the discussion."

[Posted Thursday, 17 January 2013 9:46:43 AM]

We know through repitition what your complaints are -- but haven't heard how you would implement Eisenstein's gentle dreams.

Banjo,

Aka Jung, a synchronicity has occurred. My bi-monthly copy of The London Review of Books arrived yesterday and lo and behold contains a book review of Thomas Nagel's, "Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost certainly False".
It deals with the hard problem of consciousness, which remains unresolved, and Nagel postulates what he calls "neutral monism" to account not merely for it but for the apparent spontaneity of consciousness in nature generally--think Darwin's worms! The idea is that mental and physical properties are manifestations of something more basic. This is not dualism, neither property can be reduced to one or the other, and both are speculated to be teleologically driven. Nagel apparently also makes the claim that "moral values are objectively real"!
The reviewer is somewhat critical, and I must say I'm sceptical. But Nagel is a respected philosopher of mind and I'll have to acquire the book.

In your last post you seem to draw back abruptly into a conservative shell. And conservative idealism tends to take forms like nationalism, elitism, racism, inequality, intolerance and broad-scale indifference. In Marx's defence let me say that idealism of any kind was his abhorrence. He was a true materialist and was fighting against our ideological (and actual) enslavement, and not in pursuit of utopia. Since a true materialist dismisses idealism and even consciousness altogether, he is forced to postulate that human society evolves either randomly (which is belied by history) or via some other fact of its collective strategy. For Marx this was the mode of production--which was/is inherently unsustainable. It is surely this, or some variation on the theme, that supervenes over idealism and drives our expansion without let. We are not in control of our runaway development, but subject to it.
Though idealism is still a factor by attrition, as more and more of the human race, which never had it so good, succumbs to "mental illness". This isn't like the biological spread of facial tumours in Devils, it's an ideological disease, born of a pathological materialism we're coerced from birth to partake of.

Of course you realise that by "pathological materialism" I mean the vulgar materialism--indulgence, sloth, consumption etc., and not that we're coerced into a philosophically materialist world-view. We're all materialists now, from evangelists on the take to intellectuals to idealists.

WmTrevor, thanks for your comment. Let me make the following points:

- Humans are capable, given the right nurturing, of living many different ways. History is replete with information about different civilizations and tribal groups.
- Humans, if their minds were freed from the capitalist idea that greed is good and making so much money that you can’t spend it is a worthy goal, could become entirely different creatures.
- Humans, if they were, from birth, taught that all war is evil and that those who engage in it are psychotic barbarians, would adopt a different, more peaceful mindset.
- If humans were taught that giving is a virtue and being rich is a crime against humanity then avarice would disappear.
- If humans were shown that spending 20 years being ‘educated’ for a job then spending 50 years working your guts out so that an employer or corporation could be obscenely rich was a gross waste of human potential and human life, most people might spend their lives differently.
- If humans returned to living in small, semi-rural communities, their tribal instincts would be satisfied whereas living in cities is stressful. Their identification with nature and reverence for their planet would also be enhanced.
- If human were encouraged to pursue artistic pursuits such as writing, art, sculpture, carving, playing musical instruments, composing music, reading the great books, etc, and dumped television altogether their lives would be immeasurably enriched.
- If humans were taught philosophy from a very early age they would question everything and not be so easily manipulated.
- If humans engaged in physical work they would be more healthy and less stressed.
- If humans identified with nature and elements of spirituality (but not religion) they would spend a few hours each day meditating or in reflection which would lead to less stress.

These are just a few thoughts but the bottom line is that humans can become whatever they want to be. We just need to join together to get rid of the Monied Masters then change the current human stereotype!

.

Dear David G,

.

I sympathise with you but I think you will agree that it is better to look before leaping. No sense jumping from the frying pan into the fire. That can hardly be a wise move.

Please don't think that I wish to dissuade you or anybody else for that matter from reading "Sacred Economics", and even studying it carefully. That is a personal decision.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Eisenstein means well and that his intentions are perfectly noble.

I think Nick has summed up the problem quite well:

"My main difficulty with this book is that it glosses over the concrete struggles that will be required to bring about any of the redistributive macro-economic proposals discussed, let alone all of them. Powerful and ruling classes have never at any time willingly ceded their wealth, privilege and status, and there is little reason to expect them to do so now. This is a book mapping out a post-capitalist economy, but it lacks a post-capitalist politics. How we actually get from here to there is the chapter yet to be written ...".

Eisenstein did not finish the job. But as he is intelligent and highly educated there can be little doubt he knew the task was impossible.

Whichever way you tackle the problem the end result is the same: check and mate.

The end game, as I see it, offers four possibilities:

1. Impossible to implement the ideas by democratic means
2. Forceful implementation of the ideas by dictatorship
3. Decide not to publish the book in its present form
4. Write another book with ideas which are possible to implement by democratic means

It is important not to lose sight of the fact that Eisenstein is supposedly talking seriously about the world economy. If he is not then there is no need for us to take him seriously.

Whatever the case, I personally consider there are more effective ways of combating the deviations, abuses and excesses of financial capitalism than reading Eisenstein's book.

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