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Hegemony
Philip II of King of Macedon, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek via Wikipedia
Hegemony is a political science term with ancient roots.
In the Greco–Roman world of 5th century European Classical antiquity, the city-state of Sparta was the hegemon of the Peloponnesian League (6th – 4th centuries BC); King Philip II of Macedon was the hegemon of the League of Corinth, in 337 BC, (a kingship he willed to his son, Alexander the Great).¹
In the 19th century historians used the term to describe one nation’s power over another, and by implication, the whole notion of Imperialism.
The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891 – 1937) was the first to use hegemony to describe the idea of a ruling class socially and economically dominating others within a given society.
The contemporary sociological meaning of the term hegemony points to an entire system of cultural values and practices existing within interconnected and (apparently) legitimate social institutions (e.g. markets, legal system, government, education, religion and media) which the powerful allegedly use to oppress the powerless.
Image by AFSC Photos via Flickr
Along these lines, the French social thinker Bourdieu, Pierre (1930-2002) introduced the idea of “cultural capital” to try to explain the complex relations contributing to societal inequity, discrimination and domination.
For all its flaws, the recent “Occupy movement” (where protestors are sweeping the globe in protest of being “have-nots” apparently marginalized by a few wealthy “haves”)² raises the question of institutional legitimacy, which just a few decades ago, was certainly not a mainstream issue and hardly questioned by most people in the G8.
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¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony
² http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_movement
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Malthus, Thomas Robert
Malthus' "An Essay on the Principle of Population..." (at APS' Dialogues with Darwin exhibit) by Colin Purrington via Flickr
Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) was a British economist, professor and clergyman stationed in a parish at Cambridge, where he was educated.
He’s known in economics for his theory of population, outlined in An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).
For Malthus, population usually increases faster than the means of subsistence (i.e. available food supply).
According to his theory, whenever the rate of population growth slightly exceeds that of food production, an even higher rate of population growth follows. But if the population growth rate is a great deal higher than that of food production, population growth is limited by famine, pestilence and war.
Malthus’ ideas challenged the accepted early 19th century view that population growth meant economic growth. Malthusian theory encouraged decreasing the birth rate, a view that became somewhat popular.
On the down side, his work was often taken up as a weapon against attempts to improve the lot of the poor. But Malthus’ legacy contributed to the development of contemporary demographics—the statistical study of society. His outlook also had a profound influence on the economist David Ricardo. And Charles Darwin wrote that Malthus’ work influenced the theory of natural selection.
I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long- continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The results of this would be the formation of a new species. Here, then I had at last got a theory by which to work”.¹
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¹ Charles Darwin, autobiography (1876), cited at http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/malthus.html
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Malthus’ “An Essay on the Principle of Population…” (at APS’ Dialogues with Darwin exhibit)
Malcolm X
Image via Wikipedia
Malcolm X (1925-65)
Formerly Malcolm Little, he was arrested and imprisoned for burglary. While in jail Little converted to The Nation of Islam, a religious group founded in Detroit.
At one point in his career he taught that whites were devils, inferior to blacks and doomed to disappear from the globe. In his own words:
Thoughtful white people know they are inferior to Black people. Even [Senator James] Eastland knows it. Anyone who has studied the genetic phase of biology knows that white is considered recessive and black is considered dominant.¹
This strange and hostile brand of scientism was based on the teachings of Fard Muhammad (1891-?), the controversial founder of The Nation of Islam.
Watched by the FBI, Fard Muhammad claimed that the morally inferior “blue-eyed devils” would be destroyed by the appearance of a space ship, an event that would mark global Armageddon.²
Little came to take up the new name “Malcolm X” and ultimately became a Sunni Muslim and black leader, believing that Islam was the religion of choice because it was non-racist.
Malcolm X also advocated a black nation – that is, racial segregation – in the southern USA.
Later, however, his views became more moderate. Instead of focusing on a separate black nation he became a spokesman for human rights, especially among blacks.
Malcolm X toured the United States promoting black solidarity and was assassinated in 1965 by a group of three rival Muslims in Harlem. Since then he has become something of an icon for political activists, artists and pop musicians.
To this day he remains controversial. Some see him as a racist and black supremacist with leanings towards violence. Others see him as one of the greatest and most influential blacks in American history, inspiring figures like Muhammad Ali, liberation movements like Black Power and emancipatory slogans such as “Black is Beautiful.”
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¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_of_Islam
² Melanie King, Prophets, Seers & Visionaries, 2009, p. 130.
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Pollution
Impure Spirits Disappearing Before the Rising Sun: Cornell University Library
Since the late 1960s and 70s, awareness of global environmental pollution has increased dramatically. In the new millennium the so-called ‘Green’ movement has become almost a religion.
Public figures like Al Gore present themselves as objective reporters of scientific fact while promoting their particular agendas on global warming. Meanwhile, the scientific debate on this and other pollution related issues remains far from closed.
Although the media tends to emphasize environmental pollution generated by highly industrialized countries, organic pollution from human and animal waste in densely populated, economically underdeveloped countries is a major contributor to early death and preventable disease.
In addition to its ecological meaning, the idea of pollution takes three main, potentially related forms.
First, we have social movements or trends that an opposing group, usually a ruling group, says ‘pollute’ the existing social body, as in the case of China.
“The same people that are cracking down on issues like democracy and Falun Gong are concerned about things like ‘spiritual pollution,’” Economy said. ”And every several years — maybe five to seven years — China is likely to have a ‘spiritual pollution’ campaign and ‘anti-spiritual pollution’ campaign which means that they don’t like what they perceive to be coming from the West: sex, the freedoms, drug use; all of these very sensationalistic television programs.”¹
Second, in religious scripture and practice we find the idea of ritual pollution, as indicated in the Bible‘s Old Testament. According to Leviticus 15: 19-23, women are impure and can even spread this impurity for a certain period during and after the menstrual cycle:
When a woman has a discharge, if her discharge in her body is blood, she shall continue in her menstrual impurity for seven days; and whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening. Everything also on which she lies during her menstrual impurity shall be unclean, and everything on which she sits shall be unclean. Anyone who touches her bed shall wash his clothes and bathe in water and be unclean until evening. Whoever touches any thing on which she sits shall wash his clothes and bathe in water and be unclean until evening. Whether it be on the bed or on the thing on which she is sitting, when he touches it, he shall be unclean until evening.
Even more dramatically, Eric Lafforgue says the idea of ritual pollution has deadly consequences among the Hamar in southern Ethiopia.
Twins, a child born outside of formal marriages are considered to possess mingi (abnormality, pollution, unclean) and, for this reason, they are abandonned into the bush to die.²
Third, we have notions of spiritual ‘purity’ and ‘impurity,’ not necessarily linked to any particular social or physiological taboo.
As evident from the works of the Indian holy men Sri Ramkrishna and Sri Aurobindo, this distinction is made in Hinduism on an individual basis.
The Hindu guru (Skt. = spiritual teacher) normally must keep a proper distance from his disciples to avoid being overwhelmed by their spiritual impurities. The guru allegedly intercedes for disciples to help purify them of their polluting sins. This process is experienced by the guru as taking on another person’s spiritual heaviness which must be washed away, as it were, through meditation, ritual and prayer.
The poet Kálidása (c. 5th century CE) mentions a similar dynamic involving spiritual pollution and purity in his Shakuntala.
It is natural that the first sight of the King’s capital
should affect you in this manner;
my own sensations are very similar.
As one just bathed beholds the man polluted;
As one late purified, the yet impure:-
As one awake looks on the yet unawakened;
Or as the freeman gazes on the thrall,
So I regard this crowd of pleasure-seekers.³
Likewise, Jainism employs the popular metaphor of iron filings (representing the alleged impurities of non-liberated souls) flying to a magnet (representing the allegedly pure and liberated soul).
We find similar ideas about subtle yet tangible pollution in Christian mysticism with St. Francis of Assisi, St. Teresa of Avila and St. Faustina Kowalska.
Most spiritual perspectives differs on some points but all agree that subtle impurities may transfer from one person to another.
Along these lines, Buddhism speaks of karmic weights and skandhas that transfer and cluster over space and time, contributing to, so it’s believed, the illusion of individuality.
In Jungian thought, the notion of a subtle transfer of light and dark qualities is most clearly found in the discussion of alchemy, where Jung and his followers liken human relationships to complex chemical interactions.
Implicit to any discussion of pollution, be it of the social, scriptural or spiritual sort, is the realm of ethics. Here, the scholar of religion Rudolf Otto says that a morally evil action is “self-depreciating” and “pollutes,” leading toward imagery that suggests the need for “washing and cleansing.”4
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¹ Nikola Krastev, “China: Report Says Media Control Is Tightening,”Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Thursday, February 23, 2006.
² See commentary for photo at flickr.com/photos/mytripsmypics/3231940994.
³ From the Shakuntala by Kálidása, circa 5th century CE, in A Treasury of Asian Literature, ed. John D. Yohannan. New York: Meridian, 1984.
4 The Idea of the Holy, second edition, trans. John W. Harvey, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973 [1923], p. 55.
On the Web:
- Concering the idea of religious and spiritual pollution: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual_purification
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Politics
"From politics, it was an easy step to silence. " Jane Austen | thanker212 / S G
According to the Oxford English Dictionary the first English usage of the word Politics can be traced back to 1450:
Aristotle..componede..the book of Etiques and of Polettiques.
Although a distinction is often made between small-p and capital-p politics, at times it’s unclear if this distinction is valid.
Small-p politics refers to competitive human interactions within a workplace, organization or home.
Capital-p politics refers to the dynamics within a government system–be this local, municipal, provincial, state, federal, hemispherical (e.g. NATO, NORAD) or global (e.g. the United Nations).
To say that an environment is ‘political‘ might sometimes be a euphemistic way – and political in itself – of saying something quite different.
Perhaps another distinction could be made not between small and capital-p politics but between honorable and dishonorable politics, or between fair and unfair play, human decency and human indecency.
» Corruption, Politically Correct, Nineteen Eighty-Four
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Paranoia
In most schools of psychology, paranoia is a disorder where one holds a delusional belief that one is being persecuted or in some kind of danger when, in fact, they are not.
Paranoia is sometimes accompanied with inflation.
The term might not always be used correctly because those using it might hold naïve views or possibly conceal their true and dishonorable personal or political agendas.¹
Particularly in the West, some critics of contemporary culture say we live in a “culture of fear.” They maintain that a wealthy and powerful few manipulate the media to try to generate just enough social paranoia to justify political acts (such as wars) or perhaps to sell goods and services that apparently solve fear-related issues.
These social critics add that the rich and powerful don’t want to generate too much fear because society could lapse into collective paralysis or possibly chaos, which definitely would not be good for political agendas, corporate profits and the overall economy.
Reality, however, is usually more complicated and open-ended than tidy conspiracy theories, making this view seems simplistic but not completely unworthy of consideration.
Actual cases of paranoia can be found with highly intelligent personalities. The Austria–Hungary (now Czech Republic) born mathematician, logician and philosopher Kurt Gödel (1906-1978) for instance, tragically starved himself to death in later years. At that stage in his life he wouldn’t eat anything that his wife, whom he used as a human guinea pig, didn’t taste first because he feared it would be poisoned. When his wife was hospitalized for six months he refused to eat and simply wasted away and died.
In the 1970′s the ‘New Wave’ band Devo released a popular song “Too Much Paranoia.”
More recently, some believers in extraterrestrial mind control have taken to wearing tin foil hats that apparently block the evil aliens from controlling people. To outside observers this seems to be a pretty clear case of irrational behavior arising from paranoia, not because ETs don’t necessarily exist (probably no one really knows if ETs exist or not), but to think that tin foil would protect against whatever technologies they might be capable of seems absurd.
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¹ See for instance, psychcrime.org and mindhacks.com
» Corruption, Devo: Too Much Paranoia French TV 1978, Melanie Klein, Politics
Ryle, Gilbert (1900-76)
ghost in the machine: Mathieu Bertrand
Gilbert Ryle (1900-76) was an English philosopher who taught at Oxford from 1945-68 and edited the journal Mind from 1947-71.
Ryle advanced the idea that philosophy could and should be expressed in ordinary language. If an argument cannot be expressed in a universally understandable manner, he argued, it’s probably not clearly understood by the person advancing it.
Indeed, some philosophers seem to get so caught up in their special language that they develop blind spots to the ambiguities, limitations and sometimes absurdity of their claims. And some view simpler language as not really counting, when arguably this is more accurate, given the vast amount of uncertainty and mystery inherent to human existence.
One potential problem with Ryle’s sort of democratic approach to philosophy is that life is perhaps never so simple as one person living in a kind of charmed isolation, trying to figure out the riddles of existence. And rarely do we find the much promulgated ideal of a consciencious group of scholars happily working together in a conflict-free environment.
As Michel Foucault argues, it seems scholars always operate within some kind of social and political system, one often characterized not just by collaboration but also struggle. And certain language styles (and all the connotations that go with them) may be an important factor in getting one’s ideas across, being effective, advancing one’s career, and so on.
In short, anyone who says that small-p politics doesn’t play a significant role in the quest for knowledge is probably a scam artist or possibly a naive person in need of a reality check.
Ryle published a well-known work in 1949, The Concept of Mind, challenging Descartes mind-body dualism. Ryle said that Descartes describes the mind as a metaphysical ghost in a material machine, hence the enduring phrase, “ghost in the machine.”
Rousseau, Jean Jacques (1712-78)
Voltaire & Rousseau: I like / Anne
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) was a French political writer and educator born in Geneva, Switzerland.
After taking various odd jobs this self-taught intellectual moved to Paris in 1741, meeting up with Denis Diderot and the Encyclopedists.
A kind of romantic naturalism pervades much of his work, best illustrated by the idea of the “noble savage” where stultifying conventions and religious promises of an afterlife are dismissed in favor of spontaneous desires and worldly affections.
In 1754 he wrote Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Amongst Men, outlining the apparently innate goodness of human beings in contrast to the corrupting powers of institutions.
In Luxembourg from 1757-1762 he wrote The Social Contract, which had a significant bearing on the French revolution, as exemplified by Rousseau’s cry for ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.’
That same work produced the famous line, “man is born free, but everywhere is in chains.”
In 1762 he published the novel, Emile. Its critique of the monarchy and government bureaucracy compelled him to retreat to Switzerland, ultimately to end up in England with the support of the philosopher David Hume.
Rousseau later wrote his Confessions and returned to Paris in 1767, where he continued to write but apparently became delusional, believing that Hume was conspiring against him. » Enlightenment
Saint-Simon, Comte Henri de
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon
Saint-Simon, Comte Henri de (1760-1825)
Aristocrat and founder of French socialism, placed in jail during the French Revolution.
Saint-Simon’s writings remain influential in sociology. He had particular impact on the political views of Auguste Comte (1798 – 1857), especially with regard to progress.
Comte in turn influenced Emile Durkheim, one of the founding fathers of Sociology.
Saint-Simon reacted against the brutality of the French Revolution and advocated a society where science and technology would guide the workings of religion and politics.
His work included a belief in God but he wanted to strip away the dogmas of both Protestant and Catholic Christianity to get to the core of Jesus’ message as he saw it. He was particularly interested in the plight of the poor, believing that theory and practice should go hand in hand to elevate all peoples to the highest possible good.
Unfortunately he squandered his money and lived out his last days in severe poverty.
Tumba de Saint Simon by Cosmovisión / Juan Luis Sotillo
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Wells, H.G.
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George, 1866-1946)
British author born in Bromley, Kent, who once taught at a Grammar School.
He went on to study biology and taught at the Universal Tutorial College while writing short stories on the side and dabbling in liberal-progressive politics and human rights issues.
The success of his short stories lead him to pursue a full-time writing career that produced over 100 books and articles.
Wells is regarded by many as the father of modern science fiction, a title also given to Jules Verne.
He is credited with authoring several classics, such as The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898), The First Men in the Moon (1901), Men Like Gods (1923) and The Shape of Things to Come (1933).
Wells enjoyed immense popularity during his lifetime, although this began to diminish somewhat during his final years.
Concerning religion, in one letter he wrote
I can’t – in my present state anyhow – bank on religion. God has no thighs and no life. When one calls to him in the silence of the night he doesn’t turn over and say, ‘What is the trouble, Dear?’
Source » http://www.libidomag.com/nakedbrunch/archive/sexbiowells.html
Wells, however, did seem to have a mystical side:
At times, in the lonely silence of the night and in rare, lonely moments, I come upon a sort of communion of myself with something great that is not myself.
Among many other successful comedic and dramatic works, he additionally wrote an impressive two-volume Outline of History (1920).
Image Source:
» Alien Possession Theory (APT)
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