Brainless But Not Mindless

Before him in the bend of the river behind the marsh, moved a gaily colored line of peasant women, chattering loudly and merrily, while the scattered hay was rapidly rising into gray, zig-zag ridges on the pale-green stubble. Some adepts attributed a transcendental, quasimystical value to the sexual act itself, when it was performed by such as they. Thereafter, Winstanley faded into the oblivion that ultimately devoured the revolution itself. But more than many proponents of like views, he has received from posterity „the roses of rebels failed.“ As it turned out, when Tabor and the entire Bohemian national movement were crushed by Sigismund, „it was the peasant communism of the Hutterites and Brethren which survived.“ They linger on with us as parochial colonies that still preserved their Reformation traditions and language as the archeological remains of a long-lost world. These social ideals were to find their culmination in the Taborites of Bohemia, a movement that appeared a century or so after the defeat of the English Peasants‘ Revolt.

It also assumes that the strong emphasis on individual autonomy, which our contemporary „modernists“ so facilely attribute to the Renaissance, will acquire unsurpassed reality-but without the loss of the strong communal ties enjoyed by organic societies in the past. Hierarchy, in effect, would be replaced by interdependence, and consociation would imply the existence of an organic core that meets the deeply felt biological needs for care, cooperation, security, and love. Freedom would no longer be placed in opposition to nature, individuality to society, choice to necessity, or personality to the needs of social coherence. If we remain with him too long, we risk trying to explore different forms of reason in purely speculative terms.

Mindless Behavior

Indeed, the ruling classes of the past have dealt with the ruled as children, not merely as toilers — a fit that has its template as much in patriarchy as it does in technics. In more concrete terms, what tantalizing issues does social ecology raise for our time and our future? onlinedatingcritic.com In establishing a more advanced interface with nature, will it be possible to achieve a new balance between humanity and nature by sensitively tailoring our agricultural practices, urban areas, and technologies to the natural requirements of a region and its ecosystems?

We do know that Christianity, with its bargain of eternal reward, came later to the Norsemen than to any other large ethnic group in western Europe, and its roots were shallow for generations afterward. During the Viking raids on Europe, the sacred places of the north had become polluted by gold, and the pursuit of riches was dividing kinsman from kinsman. The clans and tribes were breaking down; the oaths between men, from which stemmed the unity of their primordial world, were being dishonored, and the magic fountain that kept the World Tree alive was being clogged by the debris of commerce. „Brothers fight and slay one another,“ laments the prophetess, „children deny their own ancestry . . . this is the age of wind, of wolf, until the very day when the world shall be no more.“ The same expository problem arises when I deal with the shaman’s role in the evolution of early hierarchies, with the male’s role in relation to women, and so forth. The reader should be mindful that any „fact,“ firmly stated and apparently complete, is actually the result of a complex process — not a given datum that appears full-blown in a community or society.

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The fact that the natural world is orderly (at least on a scale that renders modern science and engineering possible) has long suggested the intellectually captivating possibility that there is a logic — a rationality if you will — to reality that may well be latent with meaning. For some three centuries now, a scientific vision of reality has been solidly structured around the presupposition that we can interpret reality’s orderliness in the form of a scientific logic, rigorously answerable to such rationally demanding systems as mathematics. But no assumption or even suggestion has been made that logic and reason inheres in the world itself.

Around the same time, Mindless Behavior graduated from opening for Janet Jackson to headlining their own U.S. tour. It entered the Billboard 200 at number six but quickly disappeared from the chart and was a disappointment sales-wise. EJ and Mike River replaced the departed Prodigy and Roc Royal and recorded the group’s third album, #OfficialMBMusic. The vocal approach and lyrical content were significantly different from the group’s past, more rap-oriented and explicit.

It is this which distinguishes the ancient mentality from a modern which would have no hesitation in placing the independent artisan above the wage-earner. But, for the ancients, there is really no difference between the artisan who sells his own products and the workman who hires out his services. The peasant is so much closer to the ideal of self-sufficiency (autarkeia) which was the essential basis for man’s freedom in the ancient world. Needless to say, in the classical age, in both Greece and Rome, this ideal of self-sufficiency had long since given way to a system of organized trade. However, the archaic mentality endured, and this explains not only the scorn felt for the artisan, labouring in his smithy, or beneath the scorching sun on building sites, but also the scarcely veiled disdain felt for merchants or for the rich entrepreneurs who live off the labour of their slaves. Here, their subdued adherence to Marxism became a major obstacle to what otherwise could have been a superbly comprehensive critique of instrumental reason.

Eighteenth-century European political economists like the Physiocrats had also given primacy to the „natural arts,“ notably to agriculture over manufactures. Jefferson’s emphasis on agriculture is largely ethical; it is anchored not only in the virtues of husbandry as a technical calling but in the farmer as an independent citizen. By contrast, the „mobs of the great cities“ are corrupted by their clientage, self-interest, and lascivious appetites. They lack the industry, virtue, and moral cohesion that is necessary for freedom and stable republican institutions.

We may eliminate classes and exploitation, but we will not be spared from the trammels of hierarchy and domination. We may exorcize the spirit of gain and accumulation from our psyches, but we will still be burdened by gnawing guilt, renunciation, and a subtle belief in the „vices“ of sensuousness. Marx, whose works largely account for this conceptual obfuscation, offered us a fairly explicit definition of class. He had the advantage of developing his theory of class society within a sternly objective economic framework. His widespread acceptance may well reflect the extent to which our own era gives supremacy to economic issues over all other aspects of social life. Class relationships are essentially relationships of production based on ownership of land, tools, machines, and the produce thereof.

My vision of reality as process may also seem flawed to those readers who deny the existence of meaning and the value of humanity in natural development. That I see „progress“ in organic and social evolution will doubtlessly be viewed skeptically by a generation that erroneously identifies „progress“ with unlimited material growth. I still cherish a time that sought to illuminate the course of events, to interpret them, to make them meaningful. Just as I believe that the past has meaning, so too do I believe that the future can have meaning.

She notes that „since our findings are cross-sectional, it’s important to note that we cannot make any causal conclusions about the relationships between these variables.“ The most significant research in this area dates back to the 1960s and has been developed with great elan by Lynn Margulis in her papers and books on cellular evolution. The eukaryotic cells are the morphological units of all complex forms of animal and plant life.

It is becoming increasingly tenable to suggest that the entire universe may be the cradle of life-not merely our own planet or a few planets like it. Preliterate societies never adhered to this contractual ideal of association; indeed, they resisted every attempt to impose it. Not until hierarchy had scored its triumph in the early world and begun its journey into class society did equivalence, „equity,“ and contract begin to form the context for human social relationships. The quid pro quo of exchange and its ethical balance sheets were simply irreJevant to a community guided by the customs of usufruct, complementarity, and the irreducible minimum. The means of life and community support were there to be had rather than apportioned, and even where apportionment did exist, it was guided by egalitarian traditions that respected age, acknowledged infirmities, and fostered a loving care for children. Only „civilization“ was to put the figure of Justitia on a pedestal and place its purely quantitative weights on her scale.