Comments on: Yes, Clive, “all that is solid melts into air”, you just don’t get it…

By: steve owens

steve owens — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:31:04 +0000

Yes Barry you are correct, to be clearer I should have said moral dilemma rather than moral conflict. Wrestling presents many moral conflicts but few moral dilemmas.

By: barry

barry — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:47:05 +0000

“Good guys versus bad guys” – sounds like “moral conflict” to me. (But, hey, I enjoy the wrestling).

By: steve owens

steve owens — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:55:51 +0000

Arthur I went to that Kasama site and read 17 entries about Avatar, none of them said anything like what I thought of Avatar, your not making stuff up are you?
All I thought the movie needed to make it interesting was to give the miners a reason other than greed.
If the miners had said that the trillion people on earth needed unobtanium or they would have to go back to burning coal and billions would die then that would be interesting.
For me movies are interesting if there’s a moral conflict rather than just good guys versus bad guys that maybe enough for my nine year old sons and it may be enough for you.

By: Arthur

Arthur — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 07:24:44 +0000

The kasama discussions was full of weird stuff like Steve’s too. Glad to hear his kids haven’t got all twisted too.

By: steve owens

steve owens — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 05:49:56 +0000

I didn’t like Avatar because to me it was a story about America and Indians. It had to be pitched into the future because there was no Indian happy ending in the past. I think Americans must be troubled by genocide towards Indians so its a bit soothing for good Americans to defeat bad Americans (gee doesn’t Hollywood do a good bad American)
I also didn’t like the idea of the incompetent American joining the Indians and then in a short period mastering all their skills and becomes the super Indian.
PG O’Rourke in an old TV programme noted that the Indians had to go to make way for progress so guys like him could drive Ferraris. The good part of his crass statement was that it made the point for America to develop the Indians had to go. Jefferson tried to trick them out of their land but failed. We had to wait for Grant to unleash genocide. Now that would make a good movie how the heroes of the civil war Grant, Sherman and Sheridan unleash genocide but I still don’t see how we can get a happy ending unless there are Ferrari’s for every one. There’s the conundrum it was progressive to develop America but to develop meant genocide. There’s no way around it those Indians of America just like those of Pandora weren’t going away without a fight.
On the up side my kids liked the movie.

By: Arthur

Arthur — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 02:08:22 +0000

I really liked Avatar, despite the strong green theme, because it was primarily about people rising up against oppression and winning. Even the living planet stuff didn’t bother me since the planet was in fact alive (unlike ours) – a feature of many scifi stories.

Hard to tell how much of the popular appeal relates to the rebellion and how much to the “back to nature”. There’s certainly a very deep current confusion between the two.

A lot of the reviews praised the 3D effects but dismissed the story as trite and predictable because “sophisticated” films don’t have “simplistic” victorious rebels but instead “deep” themes of cynicism and despair. Critiques at Kasama were pretty weird with other comments seizing the opportunity to prove to themselves that at least they weren’t quite as off the planet as the weirdo critics (so can remain comfortably smug while unable to engage with people here).

By: jad

jad — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:42:19 +0000

Yes I think in part the “back to nature” yearning reflects a yearning for a state of primitive communism free of alienation, commodification and wage slavery (eg the Avatar movie, about which much has been said over at Kasama). Though the anti-human tendencies of green thinking are more than just anti- the social relations of capitalism, and also have some deeply atavistic and reactionary aspects.

By: Arthur

Arthur — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:42:52 +0000

Hi Jad, thanks for the link to Lafargue’s “The Right to be Lazy” – it was an interesting read. Some of it dated in view of subsequent proletarian gains and shrinking bourgeoisie with corresponding shrinkage of domestic servants, and some of it romanticized (see Veblen on “Theory of Leisure Class” for less romantic view of ruling class contempt for work as slavery). But the fundamental point against the bizarre “left” demands for a “right to work” and “jobs” instead of abolition of wage labor remains both fundamental and delightfully expressed.

Especially relevant today with so little decline in hours and increase in leisure despite further massive increases in productivity and new forms of unproductive work and consumption (bureaucracy etc) surpassing the old forms.

I just read Hamilton’s piece in the light of your comments and still see him very much as one of the priests etc Lafargue was lampooning – complaining about the “narcissism” of youth who want to enjoy life more and work less and consequently feel more and more that they are not in control of their lives (because they have higher expectations and greater self regard as “important” compared with the past rather than because society is actually getting worse). Hamilton definately wants them more docile – especially telling is preference for feminizing men ie making them more docile as opposed to “girls with balls”.

On the other hand a lot of the support for green “simple living” etc among people who one would want and expect to become radical leftists instead does seem to be related to yearning for something more meaningful than the “lifestyle” offered by corporate marketing vultures. Key issue is how to reclaim that yearning for progressive rather than reactionary ends.

By: jad

jad — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:33:36 +0000

I didn’t read Hamilton’s piece as lamenting that “all that is solid melts into air” so much as that the vacant territory thereby created was colonised by marketers, merchants and other vultures.

Their is much I don’t agree with in Hamilton’s politics but I think he has a point about the cult of work (although of course it is technology and not going “back to nature” which will free people from overwork).

On the subject of work, I’ve enjoyed reading “The Right to Be Lazy” http://www.marxists.org/archive/lafargue/1883/lazy/index.htm by Marx’s son in law Paul Lafargue. It has some nice passages. eg:

….Aristotle foresaw: “that if every tool could by itself execute its proper function, as the masterpieces of Daedalus moved themselves or as the tripods of Vulcan set themselves spontaneously at their sacred work; if for example the shuttles of the weavers did their own weaving, the foreman of the workshop would have no more need of helpers, nor the master of slaves.”

Aristotle’s dream is our reality. Our machines, with breath of fire, with limbs of unwearying steel, with fruitfulness, wonderful inexhaustible, accomplish by themselves with docility their sacred labor. And nevertheless the genius of the great philosophers of capitalism remains dominated by the prejudice of the wage system, worst of slaveries. They do not yet understand that the machine is the saviour of humanity, the god who shall redeem man from the sordidae artes and from working for hire, the god who shall give him leisure and liberty.

By: patrickm

patrickm — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 21:56:14 +0000

‘but better to just put it here than wait till I have the time and inclination to do any more work on it . So here it is:’

Yes I like that aproach that you are taking, for yourself.