ALB
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Another article, from 1932, added to the MIA Gilbert McClatchie archive. At the end it sets out our view of what workers and socialists should do in countries where workers don’t have the vote or not enough of them do:
“Workers in India, therefore, should unite on a basis of Socialist principles and organise for the establishment of Socialism. They should take what steps are necessary to secure a franchise for this purpose, but they should not unite with any other parties or give adherence to any other bodies, even those masquerading as pure and simple franchise organisations, as by so doing they would lose independence.”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/mcclatchie/1932/backward_countries.htm
Well, if nobody can tell me what “awe” is or is like I’ll have to have recourse to the dictionaries.
Here are some definitions I found:
“a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder.”
“an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by authority or by the sacred or sublime”.
“an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like”
Sorry but I have never felt that and don’t particularly want to. It seems too bound up with religion.
It strikes me that we are being asked here, with talk of awe, wondrous, nirvana, etc to take the same attitude to the universe as christians take towards their god. They sing “O God, how great thou art”, “I am weak but thou art strong”, “when I survey the wondrous cross I pour contempt on all my pride”. We are being asked to sing “O Cosmos, thou art vast but I am but a speck of dust” “when I survey thou I pour contempt on all my pride” (I feel all ‘umble). You won’t catch singing that.
In other words, we are being asked to take a religious attitude towards the universe. But why? What’s the point? The most you could say is that in worshipping the universe you are at least worshipping something that exists, not a figment the imagination.
Personally, I don’t understand what “awe” is or what it feels like to experience it. Perhaps someone can explain but I doubt it can be done without being either poetic or pretentious.
You are writing as if you don’t consider yourself a human, addressing the human species as “you” !
I am not gloating over the inability of other species not being able to do what humans can. That we can and they can’t is a scientific fact. In fact it places a special responsibility of humans which only we can carry out. There was a discussion about human “stewardship” at our autumn delegate meeting.
You still haven’t explained what “the realisation of cosmic reality” is or is supposed to be.
Well, if it’s not humans who can deal with threats such as climate change which other species can? If we can’t then the other species are doomed, though I dare say ants might survive.
Incidentally, what is “the realisation of cosmic reality”? Or is that a grandiose definition of socialism?
I’ve always thought of the process as one of the universe becoming conscious of itself through our agency.
Isn’t that being a bit Earth-centric or Solar System centric or even Milky Way centric? To make such a claim for our particular life-form we would have to be confident that there are not self-conscious life-forms in some other part(s) of the Universe.
Having said that, I think it does make some sense to see humans as the only life-form on Earth that is capable of looking after the Earth and the other life-forms on it. If you were of a philosophical (or metaphysical) bent you might even describe the evolution of humans are the biosphere becoming conscious.
BD, I wasn’t challenging the view that humans are “pre-programmed” (through their DNA) to grow up and that the environment in which an individual does is crucially important as to how their personality, etc is formed and that this will affect their later individual behaviour. I would include such “instincts” as part of biological inherited bodily functions.
What I was talking about was human social behaviour. It is this that is not “pre-programmed” but depends on the societal circumstances in which they were brought up and live, their “culture” (which is learned, as opposed to inherited biologically)in the anthropological sense. Humans can adapt to living in different types of society precisely because their biological nature allows them as a species to adopt quite a wide range of behaviours. It’s why of course we are confident that “human nature” doesn’t make socialism impossible, as the genetic determinists claim.
If “natural philosophy” is “the study of nature: astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, geology, evolution, etc.” what contribution did Gautama make to it? Perhaps some theory of how a prayer wheel works? From what you say he seems to have been more into metaphysics than physics.
I still can’t see any advantage, even for you, in describing a recognition that humans are part of the cosmos as “nirvana”. You’d just cone across as someone who’s into Eastern philosopher or by them as someone who doesn’t understand their philosophy.
Yes, but we don’t claim that understanding socialism amounts to heaven under capitalism. So why claim that understanding humans’ position in relation to the universe does? It seems like an obvious fact to me, nothing to get ecstatic about.
Another question: what is the difference between “social philosophy” and “natural philosophy” ? In fact, what is this natural philosophy?
So you can achieve ‘nirvana” under capitalism simply by recognising that you are part of the universe? No wonder Buddhism is mocked.
But why do we have to have recourse to Eastern religions’ mumbo-jumbo terms when Western religion mumbo-jumbo already has a word for the same nonsense — bliss?
If anybody wishes to link a new blog on Morocco
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2022/12/moroccos-goal-in-western-sahara.html
Just got round to reading this and a bit surprised at this passage:
“Despite the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination and their right to control their resources and international criticism foreign nations are signing trade deals with Morocco. Nations.” (my emphasis)
This can’t be right as we have always rejected the so-called “right to self-determination” as the “right” of a would-be ruling class to control the resources and rule over the people of an area.
I hope it is not too late to correct this slip.
As you are interested in Victorian atheists and agnostics, this essay refuting the possibility of immortality (and discussing memory) by SDF member Belfort Bax reproduced for his Ethics of Socialism will interest you:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/bax/1893/ethics/14-immortality.htm
Actually, Herbert Spencer was highly regarded by early Party members, not of course for his proto anarcho-capitalism but for his view that society was an organism and his theory of the origin of religion.
With reference to that (too) long quote from Hearn, one view that has been dismissed is the existence of “ether”.
I am sure Stephen Fry is well informed, maybe more so than you or me but he wouldn’t have been speaking as an expert in the field.
All I have been able to find is this blurb from a QI episode. It is not saying that the regeneration theory has been dismissed but that the “energy conservation” theory isn’t an adequate explanation.
“The most mysterious thing you do in bed is sleep, because nobody knows why we do it. People have previously thought that it was to do with energy conservation, but you don’t save that much energy by sleeping, namely 110 calories per night. In comparison, a two-fingered Kit Kat is 107 calories. One theory developed by scientists at the University of Rochester Medical Centre in New York is that our brains are cleaned while we sleep.”
That seems a bit dubious and unscientific as it seems to be suggesting some purpose to evolution. But there isn’t. It just happened as life-forms became adapted to the circumstances in which they found themselves.
It is also not clear what you mean by memory in “a biological sense”. Humans and many other life-forms are born with the ability to “memorise” their experiences but not with particular memories. Perhaps you mean what used to be called “instincts” or biologically inherited behaviour patterns. We know that this scarcely applies to humans beyond bodily functions and that human behaviour, being biologically flexible, is overwhelmingly culturally determined. In fact, much of the behaviour of many other animals has to be learnt too.
Incidentally, what are the references to the view that “the idea that it [sleep] is to regenerate energy has been dismissed”.
Thanks. That was what I thought was the case. In an earlier post you said that
karma too can be taken in the crude, popular, religious sense, or in a different sense, the sense of genetic “memory”, evolutionary “memory.”
I don’t understand the word “genetic” here unless you simply mean the cultural heritage of humanity in terms of acquired technological and other knowledge that is passed down from generation to generation. I don’t see what this has to do with karma and certainly not with genes.
