Not Left To Chance

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote these bits in 1961:

The European elite undertook to manufacture a native elite. They picked out promising adolescents; they branded them, as with a red-hot iron, with the principles of Western Culture; they stuffed their mouths full with high-sounding phrases, grand glutinous words that stuck to the teeth. After a short stay in the mother country they were sent home, whitewashed. These walking lies had nothing left to say to their brothers; they only echoed.

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.

I went to the Philosopher’s Café tonight at Cafe Kathmandu on Commercial Drive. The topic was "Empiricism and the State of Evolutionary Biology in an Age of Faith-Based Fundamentalism." It was a discussion about ways of knowing that pitted the knowledge of science against the knowledge of God. The discussion is never-ending. Listening tonight, hearing the old familiar lines, it occurred to me that maybe the church isn’t the obstacle to enlightenment it’s made out to be. Over the past 150 years the values of Capitalism have replaced the values, however similar, of the church. So I asked the question: "Can it be a fluke that children are in the capitalist state run school system from the ages of 5 to 17 and at the end of those twelve years have no understanding whatsoever of their material reality?" The way I see it, Darwin’s Origin of the Species is a revolutionary work, and a true understanding by the population would change the world. What’s so scary about evolution?

This Café was part of the Vancouver Evolution Festival.

The idea that both religion and capitalism might have a stake in keeping quiet the notion that free and uncontrolled variation, the variation that makes evolution possible, has been considered. Check this out: from Jihad vs. McWorld:

To the extent that either McWorld or Jihad has a NATURAL politics, it has turned out to be more of an antipolitics. For McWorld, it is the antipolitics of globalism: bureaucratic, technocratic, and meritocratic, focused (as Marx predicted it would be) on the administration of things—with people, however, among the chief things to be administered. In its politico-economic imperatives McWorld has been guided by laissez-faire market principles that privilege efficiency, productivity, and beneficence at the expense of civic liberty and self-government.

For Jihad, the antipolitics of tribalization has been explicitly antidemocratic: one-party dictatorship, government by military junta, theocratic fundamentalism—often associated with a version of the Fuhrerprinzip that empowers an individual to rule on behalf of a people. Even the government of India, struggling for decades to model democracy for a people who will soon number a billion, longs for great leaders; and for every Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, or Rajiv Gandhi taken from them by zealous assassins, the Indians appear to seek a replacement who will deliver them from the lengthy travail of their freedom.

From the CBC indepth profile on Svend Robinson:

1999: Alexa McDonough relegates Robinson to the backbenches after he tables a petition calling for the word "God" to be removed from the preamble of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Svend Robinson at the March for Peace in 2004.

From the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:

Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:

From Deleuze and Guattari:

Sexuality is the production of a thousand sexes, which are so many uncontrollable becomings. Sexuality proceeds by way of the becoming-woman of the man and the becoming-animal of the human: an emission of particles. (ATP p278)

As Faulkner said, to avoid ending up a fascist there was no other choice than to become-black. (ATP p292)) note: See William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust (New York: Vintage, 1948), p.216. Speaking of Southern whites after the Civil War (not only the poor but also the old monied families), Faulkner writes, “We are in the position of the German after 1933 who had no other alternative but to be a Nazi or a Jew.”

Here’s a quote taken from the Arcade Project:

"What! Because a woman would rather not take the public into her confidence concerning her feelings as a woman; because from among the men who would lavish their attentions upon her, only she could say which one she prefers — is she then to become the slave to one man? What! In such cases a woman is exploited. For if she were not afraid of seeing them tear themselves to pieces, she could give satisfaction to several men at once in their love. I believe in the need for a freedom without limits, a freedom founded on mystery, which for me is the basis of the new morality." Claire Demar, Ma Loi d’avenir (Paris, 1834), pp. 31-32

The moment freedom is realized, in Spartacus is the moment it is given up:

"Do you realize… nobody can ever sell you again? Nobody can sell you or give you away. Nobody can ever make you stay with anybody.

I love you, Spartacus. I love you.

I still can’t believe it.

Forbid me ever to leave you.

I do forbid you. I forbid you"

From Chaia Heller’s The Ecology of Everyday Life:

From the Declaration of Interdependence (1989):

“It is our belief that man’s domination over nature parallels the subjugation of women in many societies, denying them sovereignty over their lives and bodies. Until all societies truly value women and the environment, their joint degradation will continue…Women’s views on economic justice, human rights, reproduction and the achievement of peace must be heard at local, national, and international forums, wherever policies are made that could affect the future of life on earth. Partnership among all peoples is essential for the survival of the planet.”

From Google News:

Muslim Khan, the militants’ spokesman, said they would not allow any girls’ schools to operate until the army withdraws from the valley and Islamic law is imposed. "These schools are being run under a system introduced by the British and promote obscenity and vulgarity in society," Khan told AP by telephone from an undisclosed location. Khan said a system of girls education would be developed in line with the teaching of Islam.

Paul Cezanne  via The Revolutionary Carrot

The day is coming when a single carrot freshly observed will set off a revolution.

This is modified Marcuse from The Essential Marcuse:

The awareness of the transcendent possibilities of freedom must become a driving power in the consciousness and the imagination which prepare the soil for this revolutionary carrot.