This article strikes me as entirely resonant with some of the themes we've kicked around the circle these past few days. Goodspeed starts at a crescendo, but finishes rather more weakly than I would have hoped.
The crux of his piece, and I believe, of our collective identity and image paradox sums thus; "I think that the greatest tragedy of our collective affluence has been the inevitable loss of human connectedness, or COMMUNITY, which can only exist when individuals recognize their intrinsic dependence on one another."
No, I am underscoring interdependence with the distinction between prey and predator. It's non zero-sum however, and some relationships across capitalist rifts between consumer and producer are more fundamentally important to civilization than others.
Still I think Goodspeed is right that we in the West have generated millions of suckers of the Barnum variety. But it's also true that PT Barnum himself is out of business and nobody cares about his circus any longer. So the interdependency is always real. Markets mediate this interdependency and it is permanent. It's just that people often lack the skills to navigate it - liberals and socialists tell them that the market itself is their enemy, making them feel like a permanent victim, and thereby cauterizing their ability to recognize the market for what it is.
What people need is the ability to connect to other people who are distributed across various segments of society. They need new kinds of relationships to counterbalance the strength of the new relationships on the predatory side of human ecology. I'm going to make some money enabling this.
The affinities of the Old School are more important today even though we are living in an age that doesn't explicitly permit the values. We need the value of your father spanking me when I'm out of line, more than we need the value of a 'tip drill' or the various perversions of intimate relationships exemplified in much of hiphop culture. The Old School is black nationalistic and forged a brotherhood out of a dysfunctional Negrohood. It took Community and moved it up to Nation. We are now the diaspora of the black nationalism, all within the US. We have to aggregate in order to preserve the enduring values of black nationalism.
At the same time, I understand that successful integration will deliver many of the same goals, but only to a different soundtrack. I think blackfolks have too much pride to accept that with grace, but the substance is the same.
Posted by: Cobb at December 4, 2004 01:40 PMMDCB - "No, I am underscoring interdependence with the distinction between prey and predator. It's non zero-sum however, and some relationships across capitalist rifts between consumer and producer are more fundamentally important to civilization than others."
If I understand you correctly, the relational model of the "market" has proven itself more fundamentally important to civilization than the relational model of "identity"?
"Market" and "identity" are distinct relational modalities. "Identity" is a subset of the American-relational and now global-relational superset "market"?
You have consciously elected to operate on the level of the global-relational superset, and, you are in process of asserting a multipoint identification with that mode of operation?
MDCB - "The affinities of the Old School are more important today even though we are living in an age that doesn't explicitly permit the values." We need the value of your father spanking me when I'm out of line, more than we need the value of a 'tip drill' or the various perversions of intimate relationships exemplified in much of hiphop culture. The Old School is black nationalistic and forged a brotherhood out of a dysfunctional Negrohood. It took Community and moved it up to Nation. We are now the diaspora of the black nationalism, all within the US. We have to aggregate in order to preserve the enduring values of black nationalism."
Is it because the "market" has historically and will for the forseeable future continue to ruthlessly and increasingly innovatively commodify humanity - from the rooter to the tooter - that the "identity/community/nation" subset of self-organization retains enduring value? Is "identity" the only bulwark against total commodification by the "market", and, a fundamental determinant of one's potential self-realization as a predator?
MDCB - "At the same time, I understand that successful integration will deliver many of the same goals, but only to a different soundtrack. I think blackfolks have too much pride to accept that with grace, but the substance is the same."
Is the substance really the same?
I ask this over our shared historical backdrop in the American Black Nationalist diaspora - a context in which "black gold" meant something completely different 150 years ago than it means today...,
Posted by: cnulan at December 4, 2004 03:34 PMThe basic thrust of your comments, cnu, is inescapable. Humans as a species are ultimately interdependent. And yet we exist as individuals in a culture that depreciates humanity.
The question becomes, how does a disaffected and/or dispossessed class of persons establish and maintain the value of humanity in the post-industrial West? Are the aesthetics of the Jim Crow era sufficient? I don't really take issue with the notion Af-Ams placed a higher value on life and community prior to the Info Age. But I believe this embrace of 'retro' is essentially a nostalgia for a time Blacks in America didn't experience.
I also believe Blacks as a class are those whose humanity has yet to be acknowledged. As with 'negro' and 'colored', 'black' is a characterization assigned to a conspicuous and subordinate group. 'Black' telegraphs to the casual observer one whose place in society has been, and largely continues to be determined by someone else.
My intent here is to contribute something that might spark an affirmation (or better, a reaffirmation) of humanity amongst those known as 'Black'. I would think a person that first identifies themselves as 'human' values that condition over material and/or mental constructs. Therefore humanism becomes the paradigm that precedes gender, creed, complexion, genotype or point of origin.
I concede American society at large embraces capitalism, and thereby the challenge of affirmation will not enjoy popular or institutional support. However, it is incumbent upon those of us who realize the dichotomy (and its effects) to make our investments into our communities when possible. Some may characterize this as a form of nationalism (or tribalism), but such behaviors are normative and need not act exclusively to produce positive results.
Posted by: MIB at December 6, 2004 01:04 PM
Thanks to the never failing magic of the quantum mechanical aether, Michael's piece "The Vector"
http://www.mdcbowen.org/cobb/archives/003058.html#comments
goes to the heart of the Goodspeed's thesis and defies the notion of intrinsic dependence on one another. I was pleasantly surprised by the strength of this divergence - and having slept on it - now find myself asking, could we as individuals, our institutions and our collectivity be facing an identity and image crisis rooted in the simple fact that we no longer need to, nor in a sense should we reflexively seek to depend upon one another?
Perhaps segregation into apartheid communities engendered a false sense of community. Perhaps the thought of an old school, or high black culture in America, is only mythic after all.
Posted by: cnulan at December 4, 2004 10:46 AM