How This Book Began. (1)
These blogs in the process of being edited.
In my personal case, the .beginnings of the wish are sourced many years ago, back to the beginning of World War II, when violence was the deux ex machina that disrupted the childrens’ play then being staged on the Main stage of the world, and necessarily reflected in the sandboxes of the children of the ‘main’ actors.
In those early days of my life, the separation and exclusion from my sandbox of children of the poor was obligatory and taken for granted. Until the age of eight, I had met no one who was poor, unless it was the hurdy-gurdy man cranking his music box in the yard five floors below our family apartment. Such parent enforced distancing from ‘real’ life, was part of a training program that would raise children thinking themselves ‘better’ than children of parents of lesser wealth and ambitions.
The stage of this ‘Adult’ Children’s Theatre and my sandbox, however, was closely linked to the governments then ‘ruling’ the world and encircling the grounds of my personal world.
The lead actors’ roles in the world of the 1930s belonged to theSoviet Union and Hitler’s Reich. Hitler’s Reich was socialism for Germans. Because the relatively small group of people involved in the Reich were also those of one nation, this form of socialism became known as fascism, from the Italian word for ‘group, association,’ and from the word for ‘bundle’ (fasces http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=fascist ). The political ramifications of the word were, however, more complex, because it could include both the political right and left http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070717094941AAKC99Q .
The socialism of theSoviet Union had ambitions to encompass the entire planet, and was, therefore, an early ideal for and of globalizers. However, socialism was no less single minded or fascist in imposing its absolutist views than nacism, because ‘actual’ vs ‘ideal’ beneficiaries of the system were the elites or core elements of the ‘fasces’ or bundle. By keeping the children of the ruling classes separated from the children of the ‘populist’ classes, rulers were hoping to create a ‘natural’ caste system that would not cause guilt among the children of the ruling classes. The goal of fascism was class separation as ‘God’ given.
After the WW2 defeat of Hitler, and the Cold War defeat of theSoviet Union , it was discovered that fascism had also cleverly and successfully hid in “democratic” America America
Moreover, in the course of the latter half of the 20th century, corporate fascism, backed byAmerica
Needless to say, the 'children's play' during the showing of which I was born, appears to have been “innocent” only in perverted hindsight. If the violence of seventy years ago is now be called state terrorism, the violence of the state today, controlled by corporations as individuals, has as much potential http://www.salon.com/2011/09/30/awlaki_6/ for violence and terror.
Even so, the public disquiet over fascist violence is increasing because it has become so ubiquitous. This blog is among the “disquieted”.
Because my personal experience with violence is from early years onward, I am not among those who believe that violence can be overcome with violence, but have advocated resistance that is not ‘non-violence’, but “not-violence” or “not-violent terror” as the way of ridding the public stage of violence.
The most effective tool of “not-violent terror” is nothing other than death itself. When I think about death, I think of it as, both, natural and unnatural.
Natural death is death as a result of natural causes: old age, incurable illness, and—I include—unfortunate accident such as falling out of a car or plane.
Unnatural death is almost always a matter of losing life to the will of some other party or agency wishing to be rid of such and such an individual or group of individuals (like soldiers).
‘Not-violent’ death is a matter of taking one’s own life to the end of political effect. The recent ‘suicide’ of a 77-year-old Greek pharmacist protesting the unilateral austerity measures of Greek government is a good example of death by ‘not-violence’. So are the self-immolations of Tibetan monks and nuns protesting the Chinese dictatorship inTibet
Unfortunately, government policies against euthanasia, deny drugs that make death quick and painless. This is one reason why many continue to identify suicide with pain, and pain with violence, while ignoring the fact that freedom of consciousness may lead to a culture in which political suicide or self-sacrifice is what social stability and cohesion call for and is considered ‘natural’.
I advocate that the individual be taught how to and what life-skills help overcome fear of death, which the modern neo-liberal medical industry and the doctors serving it have succeeded in instilling the individual with. The precursor to this fear is the fear of ‘lords’ to lose slaves; which is why the lords put Jesus up as an example of the ‘immortal nature’ of all human beings serving their interests. Violence may also be perpetuated by perpetuating false stories, such as replacing the auto-da-feing of Jesus at the end of 12th century inConstantinople by Byzantine Emperor Alexis I, with a crucifixion more than 2000 years ago.
In fact, death, because it is indeed a “natural” phenomenon is the cessation of a relay mechanism that comes into play when a biophysical object cannot sustain life due to the limitations of matter through which life projects itself from the first. While human beings have sought the “plant of immortality” since the earliest times (for example, the story of Gilgamesh http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh), most early stories and myths are known as “creation myths”, and concern themselves mostly with the creation of human beings and the maintenance of community. No doubt, the “community”, too, is a relay mechanism, but encompases a greater time period than the life of an individual.
Indeed, many individuals appear willing and the community applauds their willingness, to lay down their lives so the community may continue.
No doubt, this is because when looking at and thinking about a community, we perceive it as a continuum (our past and future, parents and children) worth laying down our lives for.
Today, it is possible to also see “continuum” in the individual. Unfortunately, this continuum is achieved only through “cloning” and imagining life thereafter. Though cloned cats, dogs, sheep, and possibly camels is nothing new, the very existence of cloning predicts not only the eventual serial birth of one and the same genetic individual, but the creation also of a very different household than the present ‘nuclear family’ model.
I am basically arguing that social evolution in neo-liberal ideology dominated countries and cultures is being held back by neo-liberal economic and financial policies. The shape, size, and power of the future households of clones is of paramount importance in the shaping of a sustainable future. Neo-liberal corporations, especially its controlled media, self-consciously hold back social evolution, by telling over and over again an outdated story; re Jesus thrown into a pit of fire resurrected by a story of crucifixion and resurrection.
Incidentally, the mystery over the ‘Shroud ofTurin Byzantium
[I will return to the “cloned individual” at the end of this series of blogs.]
Here my attention will focus on the rise of the “wealth virus” and how it infected (through imitation) an entire planet.
* * *
When I was young, I knew nothing of “the wealth virus”. Though I had become infected by it by inheritance from parents, it was many years before I become fully aware of it as real and having notorious side effects on me, the social life round about me, the culture as a whole, even the planet itself.
The virus brought itself to my attention with suddenness, when the Latvian government in the hands of individuals who today we would recognize as neo-liberal sympathizers, was given a shove out the door. The Bolsheviks wasted no time making compromises. Sentences came fast and furiously. It arrived at my door and entered my room in a real-to-life physical manner. I am ever so grateful at the moment it happened, it came only as a warning of things to come.
One day in 1939, when I was six years old, my mother took me by the hand, and she and I walked to the Riga Russian Orthodox Cathedral, which was no more than a twenty minute walk from the home owned by my grandparents on School Street.
My mother had never done this or so with me before, and I was puzzled then, and remained puzzled for many years thereafter, why she did this. But when I was on in years, and hindsight was no longer a matter of guessing, I came to realize that what had impressed me most at the end of our walk, was not an accident, even less a circus.
The Russian Orthodox Cathedral inRiga
That is all that I remember of that time. For a long time, I puzzled why mother had taken me with her. It was a long time before I put two and two together, and realized that this was in 1939 when the Soviets first enteredLatvia Latvia Soviet Union , disappeared from his estate in Priekule , Latvia
Though the above link informs that Karlis Ozols was arrested in August of 1940, in fact, he disappeared from the sight of his family a year earlier. Transferred to Moscow, he was sentenced to be shot on June 21, 1941. Thus, my last contact with him, even though indirect, is this visit to the Cathedral in 1939.
I was lucky to be that young, that unknowing, and that not understanding. I saw the marching soldiers, and the fear of being visited by police. Fear was in the air and it was not there for no reason. Eventually events converged and disappeared from my extended family altogether sight eight people.
After WW2 there was no time to look at this or that family photo. No photo spoke as if by some miracle. But they reminded. All that I was left of the past was a vacuum, an empty place. Unlike in photos, which one sees in history books, for me the past has left its traces in bleaching photos.
The fascistic orientation that I attribute to the German Reich, the Soviet Union, and American corporations, is—in its idea form—the moving force behind tribes, households, and even families, the latter especially if it has dynastic pretentions. Fascism, is “us” against “them”, we exclude them, and “they” shall not exclude us.
* * *
It was not just my family, who were among the one’s on who Bolshevik egalitarianism invited itself over to cause trouble. It was a notable occupation event fuelled by the resentment of not-haves against anyone living beyond his and her means. Among the latter were most Latvians, and if one includes dreams included the Bolsheviks.
At that time history was not yet a matter for slow turning. It was thought of and performed as if it all happens in a flash. The mindset of military generals ruled. One could change from one ‘religion’ to ‘another religion’, one could go cross from neo-liberalism to communism in one violent moment—until the death of Mao Tse Tung.
The opera (its movie version) “Nixon inChina
In an urban environment, everyone lives beyond their means. While one may have a job and an income, an urban environment is inherently unstable and everywhere one smells and breathes insecurity. While Nixon sought to soothe the gonads of “the Wealth Virus” in America with the promise of a market among China’s billion, China exchanged the loss of ideological principle and its leadership the humiliation the loss brought into a Pop style secularist heaven for hundreds of millions Chinese.
In Latvia, neo-liberalist fundamentalism rules: not one minister is not a neo-liberalist, while the story about the sweet teat of Mary, the mother of God, now has for its address Bruessels, ECB, and Washington, IMF.
I read somewhere that the giving of gifts http://books.google.lv/books?id=hGpeQ9lhWm0C&pg=PA144&dq=giving+of+gifts+ended+in+the+sixteenth+century&hl=lv&sa=X&ei=e7hHT7LQJsrZ4QTcnP3SDg&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=giving%20of%20gifts%20ended%20in%20the%20sixteenth%20century&f=false , a natural phenomemon among humans, ended in the West sometime in the sixteenth century. InLatvia
* * *
When I was still age seven, my family left its urban environment and moved to live with relatives in the countryside.
One of the first things that I did when at the farm was to give the two farmboys who I met there, a small jigsaw and hammer set. When my father discovered what I had done, he not only gave me a dressing down, but insulted the father of the boys for raising children who stole. When the Soviets arrested my father some months later, the boys said to me (probably in the words of their father): “He got what was coming to him”.
This is probably why the idea for this series of blogs came to me: because it has ever been on my mind. I was not yet on my mind at an age when I was not prepared to lie to myself.
* * *
Not long ago, I received in the mail an old photograph of my rather corpulent grandfather and pretty godmother. The sender was a relative of an old acquaintance of theirs, a lutheran minister now gone his way. Grandfather and godmother are now many years dead, too, but the photograph [from ninety years ago] reminded me that my experience with the couple, though personal, was never an intimate, nor, for that matter, a happy one.
One cause for the unhappiness is that grandfather left his first wife, my grandmother, and five children, for a much younger woman. They both married for a second time. As my godmother was not my grandmother, she was slated to become my godmother even before I was born.
One of the reasons why my grandfather and godmother married, was that they were both in the newspaper business then. If one had luck, it was a very lucrative business in those days. And luck was theirs. In just a little over a decade, they became one of my country’s (Latvia
Because the 'Wealth Bug' did not leave without causing consequences, it came to mind that I should call this series of blogs “The Wealth Virus”’.
The name, “Wealth Virus”, is not a novel term, but the idea of the content for these blogs came to me spontaneously enough. The seventy plus years which have passed since the outbreak and early stages of WW2, have increasingly suffered from the infection by the Wealth Virus, it being apparently incurable. One wealthy man whom I happen to know in passing, after a long interval of going our separate ways, upon a meeting recently, asked if I had not become "a capitalist" after all. He appeared disappointed, when I indicated 'no'.
It is not that I am against being wealthy, but the problem is that I like to spend my money as soon as I have it and, especially, if there is more behind it. I have never felt compelled to become rich. I like to give money away, as a "gift", because I like the feeling and refuse to think of myself as incapable of working.
My forebears had done the trick of becoming wealthy by going into newspaper publishing. In their days (at the beginning of the 20th century inEastern Europe ), “a penny newspaper” was a novel idea.
The idea was that everyone had or could find a penny. And if the product, the newspaper (hot gossip, families broken up by war and seeking to reunite, and the latest news) was interesting and captivated, then why not spend a penny on it?
ForSale Riga
These blogs in the process of being edited.
 |
| The SAW-CROSS. FOR SALE HERE to like minded parties. Patented. Send inquiry to blog address. |
© Eso A. B., 2012
This blog site is a consequence of my wish to discover the labyrinthine pathways of human desire “to become wealthy” and live life for free and without responsibility. The wish is not because I am wealthy, but at two points in my life, I was close to what most people close to me considered to be so. Since I no longer have anything to do with ‘wealth’ and am personally of the opinion that ‘acquiring wealth’ has caused and is continuing to cause social disaster, a personal and subjective look into the matter may be of some interest to people with analogous experiences.In my personal case, the .beginnings of the wish are sourced many years ago, back to the beginning of World War II, when violence was the deux ex machina that disrupted the childrens’ play then being staged on the Main stage of the world, and necessarily reflected in the sandboxes of the children of the ‘main’ actors.
In those early days of my life, the separation and exclusion from my sandbox of children of the poor was obligatory and taken for granted. Until the age of eight, I had met no one who was poor, unless it was the hurdy-gurdy man cranking his music box in the yard five floors below our family apartment. Such parent enforced distancing from ‘real’ life, was part of a training program that would raise children thinking themselves ‘better’ than children of parents of lesser wealth and ambitions.
The stage of this ‘Adult’ Children’s Theatre and my sandbox, however, was closely linked to the governments then ‘ruling’ the world and encircling the grounds of my personal world.
The lead actors’ roles in the world of the 1930s belonged to the
The socialism of the
After the WW2 defeat of Hitler, and the Cold War defeat of the
Moreover, in the course of the latter half of the 20th century, corporate fascism, backed by
Needless to say, the 'children's play' during the showing of which I was born, appears to have been “innocent” only in perverted hindsight. If the violence of seventy years ago is now be called state terrorism, the violence of the state today, controlled by corporations as individuals, has as much potential http://www.salon.com/2011/09/30/awlaki_6/ for violence and terror.
Even so, the public disquiet over fascist violence is increasing because it has become so ubiquitous. This blog is among the “disquieted”.
Because my personal experience with violence is from early years onward, I am not among those who believe that violence can be overcome with violence, but have advocated resistance that is not ‘non-violence’, but “not-violence” or “not-violent terror” as the way of ridding the public stage of violence.
The most effective tool of “not-violent terror” is nothing other than death itself. When I think about death, I think of it as, both, natural and unnatural.
Natural death is death as a result of natural causes: old age, incurable illness, and—I include—unfortunate accident such as falling out of a car or plane.
Unnatural death is almost always a matter of losing life to the will of some other party or agency wishing to be rid of such and such an individual or group of individuals (like soldiers).
‘Not-violent’ death is a matter of taking one’s own life to the end of political effect. The recent ‘suicide’ of a 77-year-old Greek pharmacist protesting the unilateral austerity measures of Greek government is a good example of death by ‘not-violence’. So are the self-immolations of Tibetan monks and nuns protesting the Chinese dictatorship in
Unfortunately, government policies against euthanasia, deny drugs that make death quick and painless. This is one reason why many continue to identify suicide with pain, and pain with violence, while ignoring the fact that freedom of consciousness may lead to a culture in which political suicide or self-sacrifice is what social stability and cohesion call for and is considered ‘natural’.
I advocate that the individual be taught how to and what life-skills help overcome fear of death, which the modern neo-liberal medical industry and the doctors serving it have succeeded in instilling the individual with. The precursor to this fear is the fear of ‘lords’ to lose slaves; which is why the lords put Jesus up as an example of the ‘immortal nature’ of all human beings serving their interests. Violence may also be perpetuated by perpetuating false stories, such as replacing the auto-da-feing of Jesus at the end of 12th century in
In fact, death, because it is indeed a “natural” phenomenon is the cessation of a relay mechanism that comes into play when a biophysical object cannot sustain life due to the limitations of matter through which life projects itself from the first. While human beings have sought the “plant of immortality” since the earliest times (for example, the story of Gilgamesh http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh), most early stories and myths are known as “creation myths”, and concern themselves mostly with the creation of human beings and the maintenance of community. No doubt, the “community”, too, is a relay mechanism, but encompases a greater time period than the life of an individual.
Indeed, many individuals appear willing and the community applauds their willingness, to lay down their lives so the community may continue.
No doubt, this is because when looking at and thinking about a community, we perceive it as a continuum (our past and future, parents and children) worth laying down our lives for.
Today, it is possible to also see “continuum” in the individual. Unfortunately, this continuum is achieved only through “cloning” and imagining life thereafter. Though cloned cats, dogs, sheep, and possibly camels is nothing new, the very existence of cloning predicts not only the eventual serial birth of one and the same genetic individual, but the creation also of a very different household than the present ‘nuclear family’ model.
I am basically arguing that social evolution in neo-liberal ideology dominated countries and cultures is being held back by neo-liberal economic and financial policies. The shape, size, and power of the future households of clones is of paramount importance in the shaping of a sustainable future. Neo-liberal corporations, especially its controlled media, self-consciously hold back social evolution, by telling over and over again an outdated story; re Jesus thrown into a pit of fire resurrected by a story of crucifixion and resurrection.
Incidentally, the mystery over the ‘Shroud of
[I will return to the “cloned individual” at the end of this series of blogs.]
Here my attention will focus on the rise of the “wealth virus” and how it infected (through imitation) an entire planet.
* * *
When I was young, I knew nothing of “the wealth virus”. Though I had become infected by it by inheritance from parents, it was many years before I become fully aware of it as real and having notorious side effects on me, the social life round about me, the culture as a whole, even the planet itself.
The virus brought itself to my attention with suddenness, when the Latvian government in the hands of individuals who today we would recognize as neo-liberal sympathizers, was given a shove out the door. The Bolsheviks wasted no time making compromises. Sentences came fast and furiously. It arrived at my door and entered my room in a real-to-life physical manner. I am ever so grateful at the moment it happened, it came only as a warning of things to come.
One day in 1939, when I was six years old, my mother took me by the hand, and she and I walked to the Riga Russian Orthodox Cathedral, which was no more than a twenty minute walk from the home owned by my grandparents on School Street.
My mother had never done this or so with me before, and I was puzzled then, and remained puzzled for many years thereafter, why she did this. But when I was on in years, and hindsight was no longer a matter of guessing, I came to realize that what had impressed me most at the end of our walk, was not an accident, even less a circus.
The Russian Orthodox Cathedral in
That is all that I remember of that time. For a long time, I puzzled why mother had taken me with her. It was a long time before I put two and two together, and realized that this was in 1939 when the Soviets first entered
Though the above link informs that Karlis Ozols was arrested in August of 1940, in fact, he disappeared from the sight of his family a year earlier. Transferred to Moscow, he was sentenced to be shot on June 21, 1941. Thus, my last contact with him, even though indirect, is this visit to the Cathedral in 1939.
I was lucky to be that young, that unknowing, and that not understanding. I saw the marching soldiers, and the fear of being visited by police. Fear was in the air and it was not there for no reason. Eventually events converged and disappeared from my extended family altogether sight eight people.
After WW2 there was no time to look at this or that family photo. No photo spoke as if by some miracle. But they reminded. All that I was left of the past was a vacuum, an empty place. Unlike in photos, which one sees in history books, for me the past has left its traces in bleaching photos.
The fascistic orientation that I attribute to the German Reich, the Soviet Union, and American corporations, is—in its idea form—the moving force behind tribes, households, and even families, the latter especially if it has dynastic pretentions. Fascism, is “us” against “them”, we exclude them, and “they” shall not exclude us.
* * *
It was not just my family, who were among the one’s on who Bolshevik egalitarianism invited itself over to cause trouble. It was a notable occupation event fuelled by the resentment of not-haves against anyone living beyond his and her means. Among the latter were most Latvians, and if one includes dreams included the Bolsheviks.
At that time history was not yet a matter for slow turning. It was thought of and performed as if it all happens in a flash. The mindset of military generals ruled. One could change from one ‘religion’ to ‘another religion’, one could go cross from neo-liberalism to communism in one violent moment—until the death of Mao Tse Tung.
The opera (its movie version) “Nixon in
In an urban environment, everyone lives beyond their means. While one may have a job and an income, an urban environment is inherently unstable and everywhere one smells and breathes insecurity. While Nixon sought to soothe the gonads of “the Wealth Virus” in America with the promise of a market among China’s billion, China exchanged the loss of ideological principle and its leadership the humiliation the loss brought into a Pop style secularist heaven for hundreds of millions Chinese.
In Latvia, neo-liberalist fundamentalism rules: not one minister is not a neo-liberalist, while the story about the sweet teat of Mary, the mother of God, now has for its address Bruessels, ECB, and Washington, IMF.
I read somewhere that the giving of gifts http://books.google.lv/books?id=hGpeQ9lhWm0C&pg=PA144&dq=giving+of+gifts+ended+in+the+sixteenth+century&hl=lv&sa=X&ei=e7hHT7LQJsrZ4QTcnP3SDg&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=giving%20of%20gifts%20ended%20in%20the%20sixteenth%20century&f=false , a natural phenomemon among humans, ended in the West sometime in the sixteenth century. In
* * *
When I was still age seven, my family left its urban environment and moved to live with relatives in the countryside.
One of the first things that I did when at the farm was to give the two farmboys who I met there, a small jigsaw and hammer set. When my father discovered what I had done, he not only gave me a dressing down, but insulted the father of the boys for raising children who stole. When the Soviets arrested my father some months later, the boys said to me (probably in the words of their father): “He got what was coming to him”.
This is probably why the idea for this series of blogs came to me: because it has ever been on my mind. I was not yet on my mind at an age when I was not prepared to lie to myself.
* * *
Not long ago, I received in the mail an old photograph of my rather corpulent grandfather and pretty godmother. The sender was a relative of an old acquaintance of theirs, a lutheran minister now gone his way. Grandfather and godmother are now many years dead, too, but the photograph [from ninety years ago] reminded me that my experience with the couple, though personal, was never an intimate, nor, for that matter, a happy one.
 |
| 1922. My grandfather's (c) "other" family, that of my godmother to his left. |
One cause for the unhappiness is that grandfather left his first wife, my grandmother, and five children, for a much younger woman. They both married for a second time. As my godmother was not my grandmother, she was slated to become my godmother even before I was born.
One of the reasons why my grandfather and godmother married, was that they were both in the newspaper business then. If one had luck, it was a very lucrative business in those days. And luck was theirs. In just a little over a decade, they became one of my country’s (
Because the 'Wealth Bug' did not leave without causing consequences, it came to mind that I should call this series of blogs “The Wealth Virus”’.
The name, “Wealth Virus”, is not a novel term, but the idea of the content for these blogs came to me spontaneously enough. The seventy plus years which have passed since the outbreak and early stages of WW2, have increasingly suffered from the infection by the Wealth Virus, it being apparently incurable. One wealthy man whom I happen to know in passing, after a long interval of going our separate ways, upon a meeting recently, asked if I had not become "a capitalist" after all. He appeared disappointed, when I indicated 'no'.
It is not that I am against being wealthy, but the problem is that I like to spend my money as soon as I have it and, especially, if there is more behind it. I have never felt compelled to become rich. I like to give money away, as a "gift", because I like the feeling and refuse to think of myself as incapable of working.
My forebears had done the trick of becoming wealthy by going into newspaper publishing. In their days (at the beginning of the 20th century in
The idea was that everyone had or could find a penny. And if the product, the newspaper (hot gossip, families broken up by war and seeking to reunite, and the latest news) was interesting and captivated, then why not spend a penny on it?
For
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