I come to you tonight to summon you to your true vocation, Living In
The Past, which you indisputably do far better than The Other Thing(s).
Of the present, where we nominally dwell for document-reception purposes,
subsuming thereunder currency debiting, crediting, and dunning beyond our
remotest capacity to pay up, we thereby attain wisdom in one respect. At
the level of Organism, capitalism enforces, as Primordial Moral Principal,
Principle, plus interest, of no intrinsic interest by itself but intensely
stimulative in its nonintrinsically interesting, insufferably boring, that
is, quality of simultaneous deductibility and being situate beyond our means,
nay, beyond all reason. Whilst on the aggregate level, it be duly required
that the system be in such debt to itself, no greater calamity may befall
than it pay itself back. For the nonce, let us indulge the "theologians,"
as E.J. Hobsbawm felicitably called the Economics Profession, in their
certainty of knowing the Meaning and Purpose of Existence, as this delusion
must be held dear by someone or some Thing; Else, who darest think on the
level and quantity of hyposemia to ensue. An Oecumenical Movement, extending
from Krugman to Friedman, has unified the sects; all we hold, with reasonable
certainty, is that the regnant (Foo on "hegemonic," we have heard, read, writ,
and thunk it far too much/often.) Grand Unity of Unthinking Thought, or should
one perhaps venture, rather, Overthought Unthinkable (by which is meant,
where there's Broadest Agreement, there's something most sedulously-ignored
impending-doomwise ticking away such that, in the immortal - qua 2000 year
old man - words of Carl Reiner, "*Who knew*?"). So much for the present.
We're no good at it; and we mix up such wonderful metaphors, undrinkable
as they are. I shall not mention names, as I'm not unkind as once I was.
Still unkind enough, of course.
"...the cancerous growth hormones would be removed from the corporate
gene pool." I love that, it sings to me. Understand, that's not the worst
of the genre; it's merely the latest. What's more, it's at the very end of
the text of said latest. The end continued:
> A corporation lives within an economic ecosystem.
....WHOA! A corporation is not a protoplasmic entity. Not, I think, if it's
chartered under the laws of New York State. Delaware may be different. Must
check that. What are protoplasmic are corporate lawyers. Who are not of the
same vested interest; though vested the suits may be. Suits of clothes, not
of law. Suits of cards after work. Excuse me, too much of a bad joke is even
worse than too much of no joke at all; sorry. Next thing I see, there's two
words which cannot be found together, Else the language needs be traded in;
but who's buying. I'm pretty sure there's an Indo-European Corporation which
owns the rights to the language; isn't it so that, if this is capitalism,
some body or Thing owns the rights to anything. Which must, therefore, charge
by the word for this post. Or by the byte, full or fractional, ie, bitwise.
Ion Ascii, a good Communist, would turn over in his grave. [Warning: Not
serious. Trouble with this list, too few have the foggiest about what isn't
serious, by intent of by substance.]
Stretching it, there's one commonality as between an ecosystem, say, a
swamp, and a capitalist economy. This is, that the green scum on the top
suffocates and strangles the already tough life of the organisms once much
better off without that covering of green scum, but now by some inverted
telos are found having as their be-all and end-all supporting the green-
scum's parasitism. Gordian-knotted analogies, along with reddiwip-metaphors
don't help, so forget the preceding.
I am getting reminded *very much* of an oldtime horror movie called NIGHT
OF THE REIFICATIONS. The latter, who made the boxoffice profits, started out
just plain old Living Dead, then got worse. You could see, for example, a
Pepsi bottling plant eating people. Why, it was hungry, of course. Why not.
The author of the quoted text to whom I profusely apologize, having had no
idea when I started in on the discourse that I'd get so heavy into it, says
right out that a corporation, just like you and you, and the other one, gets
hunger pangs, "It has its appetites." Gwan. Let's consider appetites. It is
an indisputable fact that corporate executives have far better table manners
than I do. Few are ignorant of how to hold a fork. Have any among you ever
seen me use a fork? Of course not; and that's because I have sense enough to
not let any of you, or anyone, period, look at me while eating. Especially
when fork-lift is called for. Don't believe me? Watch:
>It has its
>appetites and its competitors, and can work out its niche in the
>marketplace. Some will die, some will thrive, and new ones will
>arise. Reasonable stability and harmony are achievable.
>
There's an orthogonally related problem with agreement, rather, lack
thereof, in grammatical number, but the protoplasmic business enterprise
is more alive in the above than I am, generally speaking. Cigarettes did
me in. Finally, something did. Yahoo. Truth to tell, it was the judicial
construction of the fourteenth amendment to the US constitution, supplemented
by anaologous treatment of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which got
corporations recognized as mock-persons under the law, which differ, most
notably, from protoplasmic life in that they cannot die. Go broke, yes; plotz,
no, no, no.
The final passage of the end of the text, I throw up my hands. I didn't
say, throw up. Those who mistake an infection by microorganisms for an HGH
deficiency may, however, do so; that's not under my control. Nothing is,
actually. Of any kind whatsoever. Who can tell what sort of damnation for
Internet decorum violations this'll get me. After all, didn't there used to
be peace and quiet? But I wallow in selfpity.
> But a corporation infected with capitalist growth hormones
>can never be happy with its niche. It must always have a larger
>niche. It can never be satisfied, but only temporarily appeased.
>The capitalist infection should be stamped out for the benefit of
>society, the health of the economic ecosystem, and to relieve the
>treadmill stress under which corporations currently operate.
>Everyone benefits.
If only it'd been so easy, the Thing was all along just a bacterial or
viral infection, doing nothing much, and that repetitively; that's what
the treadmill image says. Business suffers so from stress, how sad. Not
anyone else. Clearly, if we know anything at all, it's the employees of
the Thing who've got forcibly emplaced without hope of escape on the
selfsame treadmill, and they are the Stressed. What would the Broad Masses
do without wives to abuse. Start in on children and pets, perhaps. All
pity for the tormented rich and-or powerful is rendered ludicrous by the
most obvious of all principles of social-hierarchical inequality cum
differential distribution of privilege:
IF MONEY DID NOT BUY HAPPINESS, WHAT'S THE SENSE OF HAVING ARMENIA.
What's more:
Rare and ill-documented cases are rumoured about wherein or whereby money
failed to adequately purchase love. No such instance, however, has ever been
adduced such that the lack of money failed to buy unlove.
Let us all flunk ourselves, I mean, mark a big red F on our report cards,
in matters present. We don't know what is, and we damned well have no adequate
incentive to find out. In a couple of centuries, maybe, the digging around in
musty archives, computerized-database and website variants, that is, will show
the Thing for the disgusting charnel house it is/was. I've been around for
five thousand years of history, and it always happens, the going grand and
glorious Civilized world of the time is found jsut a bit later to be crawling
creepy worms, nothing more. What's Out There's nothing less than the mostest
and worstest irrationalest Thingie ever, anywhere, whose sole meaning and
purpose of existence is sustaining the emotionally compelling character of
a metaphysical construct called *scarcity*, such that, if the feared erosion
of that construct ever eventuated, there would be wild running amok in total
primal chaos of those who'd been forcibly deprived of societal resources,
material or elsewise, on account of that whereof they'd been deprived having
been supposed to have been SCARCE RESOURCES. Which was illusionary in the
lowest. And on this basis, a terroristic horror of social discipline for
social discipline's sake was erected. Where there was a Them who accorded
you the accolade of Normality if and only if they were positive of the physical
location of your corporeal, protoplasmic body at any time of the day, which
is called "functioning." And where 90% had their humanity defined away by
getting defined Stupid so the other 10% at most could have their attribution
of Smartness, notwithstanding we are all the same and the Stupidity is made
in and by society to make meaningful (not objectively real of course) the
existence of the Smartness. 90-10 is usual for Civilizations; they never
show the slightest improvement. Cruel, savage, the Romans and their arena
games aren't so different.
You know what that "wild running amok in primal chaos" is about, what
it *really is* or, in the best-case scenario is gonna be?
Freedom. Just a word you can't pin a meaning to if you got your arms
twisted. Something associated with introductory offers of products, or
have the meaning, without pecuniary cost or, worse, *cannot be sold in
any market at any price above zero*. Garbage. Human included.
entertain the selfevidently psychotic delusion they can Think? Horrible.
Don't even think about it. We all wanna sleep tonight.
What I'm saying is, IT'S ALL GOTTA GO BEFORE WE KNOW WHY IT HAD TO GO.
Elsewise, the delusions, the fantastic miasmas, the misrepresentation of
life to the allegedly living (and this allegation has gotta be searchingly
picked apart), all the other artifical colourings and packagings, the media,
the tinkertoys, are just what fakes you out. Wait a coupla hundred years, and
it'll all be clear. Provided, of course, what's going on now doesn't become
the Tradition for those a coupla centuries hence. In which case, you can be
damned sure They will fix up the Dirty Parts; you'll never know until you
fit the pieces together as if the Dirty Parts were still there. Like Tom
Jefferson's sex life. Truly the Father Of His People. Taking loving care
of his private property, little Sally, from age 14 or before.
"Let us not go backwards into the future, but forwards, into the past."
I said that in 1971, and it's as true today as it was back then.
Now, I was gonna talk some past tonight, but there is no spacetime for it.
You lucked out, I guess.
Daniel A. Foss