Steve
> wrote:
>
> >Is it in my interest to have the
> > weekend off or to accumulate an extra 150$ a week? Is it in
> my interest
> > to exploit other people to enhance my comfort, or to develop
> meaningful,
> > communicative relationships which will allow for genuine peace
> of mind.
>
> A tricky and perennial problem. One cannot achieve
> peace of mind without some material security. Should the poor
> be content? Surely Steve doesn't mean that. Perhaps he'd agree
> that it is more fruitful to focus on the existing inequalBities
> and hard conditions faced by the billions of poor rather than
> suggest that people will be happier with communicative;[A
> relationships.
>
>
> elson
> (formerly) SUNY Binghamton, New York
> eeb@HKnet.com
>
>
To reiterate--I wrote the above to challenge the notion, floated by
Chase-Dunn, that culture reflects people's 'material' interests. Aside
from the fact that this formulates things in terms of a thoroughly
outdated mind-body division (all thoughts being nothing more than the
material product of electrical activity in the brain), it just doesn't
make any sense. The question about what 'I' should focus on (Elson, reread
it) refers, as one might suspect, to me, a graduate student in the US.
Again, is it in my interest to embrace the racism that might benefit me
in some ways? It was not a question about the priorities of the poor.
Today, in the US, we have a medical establishment that
tries to tell us exactly what we 'need' to consume to be 'healthy'. Are
these scientifically determined standards (revised and disputed
constantly) what people have been or should have been striving for? When
workers in the very near past (not more than a hundred and fifty years
ago) put beer at the center of their diets, and often wanted it as part of
demands on employers, were they exercising false consciousness? Did
they
'really' want a 'healthier' diet because this was in their 'interest'.
Personally, I don't see all that much evidence that people invariably put
aside concerns about what they want out of their relations with other
people until they have reached some official standard of living. In the
US, for example, one can find all kinds of evidence that the desire undo
the stings of historically created cultural hierarchies is at least as
important as 'raising living standards' (itself a very culturally
specific way of understanding people's needs). Until I see any evidence
that any
class or groups actions can be explained through material interests of a
pre-determined sort, I will look at the notion of 'interests' outside of
some cultural context, as a fallacy. To me, the sort of 'communicative
relationships' we very urgently need, mean that the determination of
political priorities come from a dialogue with different groups. Any
effort to 'focus on historical inequalities and hard conditions' without
such a dialogue will lead either to the sort of authoritarian political
structures that kill some of those they are allegedly helping, or
completely irrelevant proposals for World Parties, World Governments etc
with no obvious political, social or cultural base.
STeve Sherman
SUNY at Binghamton