I don’t read much these days, at least by my own standards. I’ve just skimmed and old tract by Freddy Engels (free at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39257) and this reminded me why I don’t read so much now. One of Engel’s main points was that all the worker could expect was indenture as a labourer all his life. One can find the same dross these days, justified by such neo-fascist organisations like McKinsey in their suggestion companies should be evaluated on the profit they make per employee, an old Domesday Book measure. I don’t read literature on the basis it will be turned into a movie with Sandra Bullock in it and I’ll find this odd because she can’t act. Reading other books just leads me into chances to discuss theoretical merits with other people who only care about maintaining a lifestyle doing that.
It’s barkingly obvious we need change and that history has been repeating itself because we can’t be arsed, collectively, to find out what real history is. Work revealing this has been around for over 100 years, so I can’t be bothered with the idea that disseminating it can change anything. I live in a world of debt peonage in which my fellows don’t know what either debt or a peon is.
It’s tempting to despise the ignorant, but as this is almost everyone and includes oneself at times, the strategy looks pathological – and every day I’m reminded that people who don’t know much can be truly splendid and that many intelligent people are absolute bastards. Look how “different” the Cuntilition are, as promised, from Nulabour, as Cameron out Blairs Bliar and his toadies jostle to charge £250K for an audience with the scumbag. Osbourne claims he doesn’t earn enough to pay supertax whilst introducing anti-avoidance measures his accountant presumably already knows how to beat.
I have been seriously considering that argument (with the exception of demonstrated scientific argument) contains the seeds of its own destruction as a means of sensible consensus. One of these is clearly that majorities are nearly always wrong. Another is that even animal consensus is often coerced (as in bees and cockroaches) and ruthlessly enforced through ‘hygiene’. Even if we could establish argument in which only the force of Reason was present, it’s pretty obvious we are forcing most people to be reasonable when they ‘prefer’ irrationality, ‘entertainment’ and the trivialities of gossip. Even our courtrooms are more than occasionally barking (Nico Bento, various Irish cases including the Clegg farce). The case for something other than argument is out there in its failure. What else could we do? I don’t know and any answer would be difficult to communicate through current means (though I believe technology might help); but I do believe there is a case to try.
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