Marxian Musings

"And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores" (Luke 16:21).

From the I Ching:

"The destinies of men are subject to immutable laws that must fulfill
themselves. But man has it in his power to shape his fate, according as his behavior exposes him to the influence of benevolent or of destructive forces. When a man holds a high position and is nevertheless modest, he shines with the light of wisdom; if he is in a lowly position and is modest, he cannot be passed by. Thus the superior man can carry out his work to the end without boasting of what he has achieved."

Revolutionary musings to follow. I feel my inner Marx seething.

Even a behaviorist understands that, to prompt a certain response from a rat, say the ringing of a bell, a reward must be given, i.e. a piece of cheese. Using this method, the rat is quickly and easily trained to ring the bell whenever rewarded.

A manager of people surely must understand this basic undeniable fact: your people won't perform as requested without rewards for what they've already achieved. If not, that person is a very poor manager, indeed, and in need of understanding. We see this before our very eyes on a near-daily basis.

A behaviorist experimenting on a rat does not believe in a god or any supernatural agency. He/She only believes in the scientific fact that a rat can be conditioned to perform the requested action.

A man who is a manager of people, and a confessed believer in a god, the one and only god, according to this person, must surely understand that rewarding others for what they've achieved is a good way to ensure that future behavior will correspond to the manager's wishes, and to please their loving and compassionate god. But, sadly, even a rat gets more respect than workers in our modern workplace. At least the rat gets cheese. The lowly worker gets crumbs, which fall, seemingly, from the master's table. The manager is not a modest man, for, if he were, he would shine with the "light of wisdom." Instead, we see a frail, paltry excuse for a man. Such men are not worthy of respect. They should be licking at our heels for crumbs! Perhaps, someday they will.

Z

No False Gods

Actually, of course, there can be no false Gods. For either they are Gods, then they are not false, or they are something else, then they are not false either. The real is simply what it is, and in this lies the unshakable truth of everything that exists. There is no true and false weather, no true and false trees; there are many kinds of weather and trees. "The true God" is about as meaningful as a statement like "Only sunshine is true weather; rain is false weather" (Wolfgang Geigerich).

Blackened

Frozen by Sol, I made my way through the labyrinthine forest, stopping only occasionally to gaze at hoary stalagmites growing upwards toward a blackened ceiling. This was a strange place to be for one in my condition. For, you see, I have a disease known as Discontentitis. Some learn to live with it for many years, to the detriment of all green things. But, me, I am one who has sought to escape its fatal clutch. I have chosen this twisted, tangled road I now find myself on, because of its high magic.

This horrid sickness is terminal, if allowed to fester. So, I continue on, ever searching. Antagonistically, I chose to be frozen by the great Sol and wander this maze until I find the Cure.

After passing through an area where fiery talons reached down from the boughs and tried to snatch me upward, I came to a kind of misty clearing where I saw in the distance what seemed to be a large python slithering away into the deep entanglement. I spotted a many-colored waterfall on its back, where aurora water gushed from its bowels onto the forest floor.

I climbed a nearby flower to see if I could catch the essence of its fragrance, and, perchance, see where the mighty serpent had gone, but I was too late. The python had found me. Its waters engulfed me in a mighty current of its power and I was returned to my point of origin. I would not find the Cure on this day, but I would return, again and again. Next time, I will be ready to traverse the great waterfall.

Z

Coils And Spirals

Perched upon a crag of the mind, I watched intensely as a turgid serpent coiled and slithered its way through the decrepit landscape. On its back were anachronistic symbols I was unfamiliar with, not being an anachronistic man. This troubled me to the point of nearly hurtling myself from the crag onto the serpent's back, but, not being born a free man, I thought better of it. The symbols spoke to me, however, in a chimerical voice, so gentle I thought it was the boughs of tall trees swaying to and fro. The sounds they made intrigued me to the point of turbidity and I lay down to see if the vision would clear. Much to my dismay, it did, and I lay motionless as the serpent coiled about me.

Inherited Memories?

I recently ran across this quote by Carl Jung on The Shattered Realm blog. It has to do with Jung's idea that our psyches are linked in some inexplicable way with our ancestors. It's a fascinating passage from Jung's autobiography.

Our souls as well as our bodies are composed of individual elements which were all already present in the ranks of our ancestors. The "newness" in the individual psyche is an endlessly varied recombination of age-old components. Body and soul therefore have an intensely historical character and find no proper place in what is new, in things that have just come into being. That is to say, our ancestral components are only partly at home in such things. We are very far from having finished completely with the Middle Ages, classical antiquity, and primitivity, as our modern psyches pretend (Memories, Reflections, Dreams - pp. 235-236).

We all have heard about Jung's collective unconscious. Here, he seems to be saying that our individual souls and bodies contain residual fragments and echoes from the past, according to our specific ancestors. I don't think he is necessarily referring here to the universal archetypes because he is talking about "individual elements" of our ancestors passed down to us. Of course, it's genetic memory. The decoding of the human genome seems to lend support to Jung's ideas of genetic memory and the archetypes of the collective unconscious.