Hard to find any analysis that casts the Industrial Revolution in a negative light. There’s one book, I bought it once, but it was hard to read because it was so full of profanity – even though the subject matter is totally profane. The author was very angry. It’s basically the story of our enslavement to mechanization and to money. I think it was recommended by Chomsky. I’m not finding it in his book, but I do find a similar reference, to Norman Ware’s The Industrial Worker, 1840-1860. The publisher’s comment for this book reads…
“Besides the slavery issue, one of the major notes of American life in the years preceding the Civil War was created by the Industrial Revolution. It produced remarkable social and industrial upheavals which were repugnant to an astonishingly large numbers of Americans. Despite national prosperity, industrial workers suffered severe losses of economic status and independence; in protests grounded in religion and politics, they sought to hold on to what they had, and later to win material gains. Mr. Ware s illuminating book analyzes the conditions which brought on the Industrial Revolution, and traces and interprets the labor struggles that developed in response to the factory system.”
Which is curious because 1840-1860 is very close to the span of the previous Neptune in Pisces.
Noam also refers to David Noble’s Progress Without People: New Technology, Unemployment, and the Message of Resistance that seems to cover the same ground, but I don’t think that’s the one I was thinking of – I think I bought that one too and as I recall it bored me to death.
But the whole reason I bring this up is cuzza an interview in Seattle’s homeless paper, Real Change, with Charles Eisenstein on “Life After Money.” Here’s a quick video summary. Eisenstein’s book, Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition, is serialized at
http://www.realitysandwich.com/homepage_sacred_economics
Here’s an excerpt, from chapter 5…
“When I ask people what is missing most from their lives, the most common answer is ‘community.’ But how can we build community when its building blocks-the things we do for each other-have all been converted into money? Community is woven from gifts. Unlike money or barter transactions, in which there are no obligations remaining after the transaction, gifts always imply future gifts. When we receive, we owe; gratitude is the knowledge of having received and the desire to give in turn. But what is there now to give? Not the necessities of life, not food, shelter, or clothing, not entertainment, not stories, not health care: everyone buys these. Hence the urge to get away from it all, to return to a more self-sufficient life where we build our own houses and grow our own food and make our own clothes, in community. Yet while there is value in this movement, I doubt that many people will start doing things the hard way again just in order to have community. There is another solution besides reversing the specialization of labor and the machine-based efficiency of the modern age, and it springs from the fact that money does not meet many of our needs at all. Very important needs go unmet today, and money, because of its impersonal nature, is incapable of meeting them. The community of the future will arise from the needs that money inherently cannot meet.
“You can see now why I call money ‘the corpse of the commons.’ The conversion of natural, cultural, social, and spiritual capital into money is the fulfillment of its power, described by Richard Seaford, to homogenize all that it touches. ‘In reducing individuality to homogeneous impersonality,’ he writes, ‘the power of money resembles the power of death.’ Indeed, when every forest has been converted into board feet, when every ecosystem has been paved over, when every human relationship has been replaced by a service, the very processes of planetary and social life will cease. All that will be left is cold, dead money, as forewarned by the myth of King Midas so many centuries ago. We will be dead – but very, very rich.”
Some of us, anyway.
The Angel of Helichrysum heals bruises of all kinds, including bruises inflicted by money. Like Citrine, she can help release old angers. She detoxifies heavy metals, and stimulates the Liver, the Pancrease, and Lymph drainage. She can even dispel Sciatica. She’s “generally regarded as safe” for adults in dilution of one drop of her essence to a half-cup of liquids, or you can use her topically. You may know her better as Strawflower, or Everlasting. When you grow her (she’s easy), don’t forget to clip the Flower before the Bud opens, cuz she’ll continue to open after she’s picked.
Tags: Boundaries, Identity, Mars Outabounds, Neptune in Pisces, Victim/Responsibility
