Thursday, April 2, 2015

Re: Mind's Eye Re: Soviet Paradise (USA)

Your attempts to join the 90% are duly noted Don, but it's no use mate - we can detect the active brain signals at some distance now.  Marxist dogma is tough once you know the prat was a racist not much worried by slavery in his economically determined cloud cuckoo land, other than that it was good for the US economy and the US was where all the cool revolution would take place. There must have been a chat somewhere between all the economic determinists, when they decided to throw up Marxism as a whipping boy to distract from any real analysis of what we now call neo-liberal lunacy.  You guys probably had a bigger commie grass roots than the Russians.  The Soviets built the myth of the massive revolutionary support with actors in films after the event, much as John Wayne won the West rather than smallpox blankets and less intentional microbes.  The British Empire was a damn fine place and we would have world peace under the Queen's benevolent rule, had it not been for all you Commies!  The Devil used to shit Dutchmen in those days and there were only a few of us between a world forced to speak French and eat garlic by the ton.

Marxism is German idealism and their food is really dreadful.  I wouldn't eat any of that Don.  You end up in search of an Ayrian civilization that didn't exist, and once you have your head up that arse, pretty much any dire behaviour can be justified.  Idealism has problems with the fact Groucho pointed out, which is that reality is the only place to get a decent meal.  Old Karl had worked that one out, but not how to tell the joke.  Hegel was at the foot of a lot of this so-called thinking and he was basically a mystic who thought the number seven had magic power and wrote a paper on the seven heavenly bodies just as Galileo was counting several more with this telescope.  You Americans have followed the easier to understand Commies and standard bearers of the road to serfdom like the Koch brothers and Stalin and Hitler's mate Henry Ford.

On Thursday, 2 April 2015 09:20:31 UTC+1, Don Johnson wrote:
"Thinking this through is tough, so you can bet 90% of people won't try."

HEY! I resemble that remark...

I suppose it all depends what industry you're in and whether you consider what you do "work." If you're making widgits faster and better then your co-workers you should get paid more. That's easy. Pay by the widget. Salesmen get commissions. Some work is harder to evaluate(I reckon teaching is like this, my sympathies) so I get your point about working harder not paying off. Isn't that what teaching assistants are for? Jr. professors and such? Your supposed to wear tweed jackets with patches on the elbows and look over your glasses at the hoi palloi and spout Marxist dogma. Maybe a pipe. Anyways, at my age and seniority I spend more time looking at and evaluating other's work. If I approve of them they keep working for me. If I don't I find a way to transfer them out or make them quit. 

Hard work could be keeping yourself up to date with new tech. I'm sure Chris has to do this or he'd be obsolete next week. I don't need to know what a damn Raspberry Pi is unless I can eat it. He could probably build one with duct tape and bailing wire. 

On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 1:28 AM, <allanh1946@gmail.com> wrote:
You amaze me Neil i see some of your work gas hit the bin..  that is enough to piss off a maggot.

تجنب. القتل والاغتصاب واستعباد الآخرين
Avoid; murder, rape and enslavement of others

-----Original Message-----
From: archytas <nwterry@gmail.com>
To: minds-eye@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, 02 Apr 2015 6:35 AM
Subject: Mind's Eye Re: Soviet Paradise (USA)

Today's bureaucratic organisational forms almost certainly arise in Germany and the United States  We live in a time when we need something more poetic, positive and fantastic.  To understand this we need to see almost everything is not as it seems and as we are told.  By poetic technologies, I mean the use of rational, technical, bureaucratic means to bring wild, impossible fantasies to life.  Universities produce reams of paper telling us all we foster imagination and creativity in an environment in which the barest glimpse of this in the eyes is strangled at birth.  To my shame I have been known to toss research proposals of grad students in the bin, declaring them potentially original.  The kids look bemused when I tell them that to do original research they have to do something already understood, otherwise no one will understand their creativity.  A timid, bureaucratic spirit has come to suffuse every aspect of academic life.  This is cloaked in a language of creativity, initiative and entrepreneurialism, probably from a CEO who is a sex pest and rips off the college for a Bentley, a house loan and job for his unqualified girlfriend.    My view is this is modern Americanism and most of the world has been suckered by it.

The odd student picks her submission out of the bin and asks how she might get the work done while pretending to do something else.  

On Thursday, April 2, 2015 at 3:36:57 AM UTC+1, archytas wrote:
Work looks like it is 90% bullshit these days.  Reward is closer to 99% bull.  We could obviously look sensibly into such matters, establishing what needs doing and apportioning it fairly.  Something is in the way, including our own fears on personal idleness and being made to work harder once management finds out we spend most of our work time avoiding work.  Thinking this through is tough, so you can bet 90% of people won't try.

On Thursday, 2 April 2015 03:16:06 UTC+1, archytas wrote:
Don't make me into a holy liberal Don!  Though I am no longer a believer we remotely do things as you say - such may have been true when we were being dragged up  I never liked losing much.  You'd have to think on whether I want to screw the work ethic or find one that works.  You can't seriously tell me you believe there is much link between bending your back and reward these days, except in hay rolling.

On Thursday, April 2, 2015 at 2:12:40 AM UTC+1, Don Johnson wrote:
Soviet yes, paradise no. Why on God's green earth would you want to destroy the work ethic? The problem with kids today is they don't have one. Not only that, they aren't even ashamed about it! Work still has to be done Neil who's going to do it? Sure the hell not me I'd rather teach others the work ethic I never quite absorbed. Leading by example is too exhausting. That's for younsters. And immigrants. How do we find out who the best and brightest are? Testing? That's infamously unreliable. We find out by giving kids tasks and seeing how well they complete them and how well they deal with failure and what they do to recover. Separates the winners from the losers. There is no existance without losers Neil. They are as necesary as food and water. Fail some today, learn, and succeed tomorrow. Boom and bust. (see what i did there?)

dj
 

On Wednesday, April 1, 2015 at 2:18:56 AM UTC-5, archytas wrote:
Primitive societies are much more egalitarian and murderous than ours.  I've never done first contact.  Playing rugby league in PNG was enough for me.  First contact would be a good place for people who protest at the use of words like primitive to understand it is a mistake to leave the AK-M behind.  The idea that there ever was a paradise to regain is likely tosh, though you can imagine we might have had to regress to enter this universe and evolve to current awareness through various stages - and still carry the baggage of the dinosaurs and so on.

People have strange notions about government.  I can make a case that the USA is now the paradigm case of the Soviet Paradise.  It's pretty obvious that none of us get to vote for government, but rather something more akin to union representatives who negotiate with the bankers and crooks who run the show, though the union concerned is a house or sweet-heart one.  Surely, not even Sartre could come up with a play so dull it was about people seeking freedom through voting Clinton, Bush, Cameron, Milliband or Hollande - Sarkoszy!  You nearly had that utter weirdo who ran a bit of Alaska until it turned out she was banged by a black guy when at college.

Would anyone want to deny the US is now a Soviet Paradise?  I still meet a few Europeans who believe they live in a democracy or might if they vote fascist.  The job looks so screwed to me that I think we should start again.  You'd think this would be pretty straight-forward if we lived in an open and democratic society.

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