Posturing...

This is a short item about slouching and confidence from Scientific American:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=stop-slouching

Stop Slouching!

Good posture boosts self-esteem

By Harvey Black  

"When you were growing up, your mother probably told you to sit up straight, because good posture helps you look confident and make a good impression. And now it turns out that sitting up straight can also improve how you feel about yourself, according to a study in the October 2009 issue of the European Journal of Social Psychology. Researchers asked college students to rate themselves on how good they would be as job candidates and employees. Those told to sit up straight with their chests out gave themselves higher ratings than those instructed to slouch while filling out the rating form. Once again, Mom was right".


So I commented:


There's a difference between a good healthy posture and an uptight ramrod.
The ramrod stiff, chest puffed out position is crippling. It creates enormous stress on the body, especially the spine, and blocks its relaxed natural functioning. Any athlete can tell you that. Wilhelm Reich - a much-maligned psychologist - worked all his life to loosen up what he called the "body armour" encasing most of his patients. This armour is a sure sign of an authoritarian social setting and rigid(ified) attitudes.
Good healthy posture is what our bodies are designed for. The body stands upright of its own accord if we let it. If we use the muscles of our lower back and chest to "consciously" hold ourselves up then this natural capability atrophies. Resulting in straightening followed either by sit-all-day slouching or the rigidity of a tin soldier.
The rich and royal, by the way, make sure their whelps get years of training in standing up straight and walking so they can a) project impressive confidence (as the article says) and b) subject their bodies to as little wear and tear as possible during all the walkabouts and hanging around at cocktail parties they have to do.
In Sweden, where I live, it's taken them 7 long years to train the common-as-muck personal trainer boyfriend of the heiress to the throne so he can walk properly as her consort.

The emptiness of imperialist political manifestos (2)

I was asked a direct question about my comment to Mary's blog on political manifestos
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/04/and-the-prize-for-the-worst-manifesto-goes-to-.html#

Tim W said.:  ...give us a crib to that last line, would you?
I replied: Hi Tim. Now you ask, I see that I expected four words to do more work than they should ;-)
It's a mini-quote from Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, Book I, stanza 1:
"Мой дядя самых честных правил,
Когда не в шутку занемог,
Он уважать себя заставил
И лучше выдумать не мог.
Его пример другим наука;
Но, *боже мой, какая скука*
С больным сидеть и день и ночь,
Не отходя ни шагу прочь!
Какое низкое коварство
Полу-живого забавлять,
Ему подушки поправлять,
Печально подносить лекарство,
Вздыхать и думать про себя:
Когда же чорт возьмет тебя!"
"Christ, what a terrible drag" .. literally "My God, what a bore"
Eugene's going to inherit an uncle so he's got to go to the country and look after him until he dies... take him food and be nice, etc...
A recent English translation (G R Ledger for the internet http://www.pushkins-poems.com/) is:
"My uncle, a most worthy gentleman,
When he fell seriously ill,
By snuffing it made us all respect him,
Couldn't have done better if he tried.
His behaviour was a lesson to us all.
But, God above, what crushing boredom
To sit with the malingerer night and day
Not moving even one footstep away.
What demeaning hypocrisy
To amuse the half-dead codger,
To fluff up his pillows, and then,
Mournfully to bring him his medicine;
To think to oneself, and to sigh:
When the devil will the old rascal die?"
The relevance is that we have to look after this decrepit old society, with its wealthy, murderous  politicians and their lying manifestos till it dies and we can inherit what's good in it. There's an ironic twist to the quote - Eugene is a callous arsehole, cos his uncle is an exemplary gentleman. Our uncle is a vicious vampire condemning us to Life-in-Death - and yet we mollycoddle him by taking part in his cynical rituals and letting him claim we're behind him.
If we fail to put a stake through his heart, we end up broken zombies:
"Two ginscented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was
all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished.
He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."

The emptiness of imperialist political manifestos

Mary B has been very busy blogging recently. Her latest is about the uniformity and superficiality of the party manifestos for the coming general election in the UK.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/04/and-the-prize-for-the-worst-manifesto-goes-to-.html#more


My comment:
Politics on this blog? Oh deary me...
Anyway, has anyone else noticed that once the Soviet Union's bureaucrats/nomenklatura sold themselves to capitalism the imperialist states have had nothing to worry about in terms of rights and freedoms? They no longer have to pretend to they are the champions of decency, democracy, freedom of thought and expression, freedom of religion, and freedom of movement (eg no arbitrary restrictions on travel), that they are promoters of a society free of informers, denunciations, ideological straightjackets, corrupt leaders living lives of luxury unthinkable for the toiling masses, destructive militaristic priorities, and that they lovingly foster a heritage beauty,culture and truth. So the
imperialist leaders have been gleefully doing everything they once criticized (except the good things like the right to employment, universal access to education and health care, free cultural centres, dirt cheap books and music).
And now the aesthetics of repression and lies are stifling us here too. "Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend."
Little poxes on a commons bench, little poxes made of ticky-tacky, little poxes, little poxes, little poxes all the same... And there's blue ones and pink ones and cute little yellow ones, and they're all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.
Bozhe moy, kakaya skuka!

An Indian site against caste

I got a mail from A in India linking to this site:
 http://www.anti-caste.org/ 

on caste, women's oppression, communalism, and class struggle in South Asia from a Marxist perspective

With specific reference to the following article:

http://www.anti-caste.org/2010/03/operation-green-hunt-maoists-india-praful-bidwai.html? 

I subscribed to their emails immediately, and sent the following mail to A:
Straightforward stuff that gives us the conditions for struggle on a more than superficial level. We can contribute to sharpening the perspectives here. Particularly the common lack of trust in the strength of the oppressed classes to fight state repression. Always this emphasis on the "overwhelming" technical (including troops) superiority of the class enemy. If they succeed in their repression, it's because we aren't organizing and mobilizing the way we should. 

The principle here is neither pessimism nor optimism, but a clear understanding of the classes in struggle and the relations of power between them - on the surface and below the surface. Here we can help enormously by bringing in international and historical perspectives - how a determined and conscious struggle has resisted and defeated "overwhelming odds". 

Down with empiricism! Empiricists have never understood history or been able to draw any lessons from it - regardless of what they call themselves. The Manifesto is our touchstone:

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

That should be clear enough. It's the classes that are at war, not the groups of individuals engaged in the battles. These groups do the fighting, but as representatives of the warring classes. The relative strengths of the groups change, often very rapidly. But the underlying social and historical strength of the warring classes is constant over whole epochs. 

China (yet again) is a good example. The liberation armies under Maoist leadership tapped into the strength of the oppressed classes. They survived the apparently overwhelming military superiority of the bourgeois war machine (the bourgeoisie is always mobilized for war and engaging in armed aggression against the working class and its allies - as the current Indian example in the east-central tribal areas demonstrates very clearly), regrouped, mobilized the classes, released their potential power, and swept away the bourgeoisie. 

If they could do it despite the inadequate perspectives of the leadership, we can do it and surpass it, too.

« De l'audace, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace », as the great French revolutionary leader Danton said. "Bold and daring, even more bold and daring, always bold and daring!"

Cheers

C

Meta-bloggery

Mary's blog about bureaucrats turning red tape into straitjackets has seen the comments taking an unexpected turn or two (my previous comment [7 April, Even sheep ...] provoked one commenter to accuse me of "synthetic rage"). I continued the discussion.

http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/04/why-good-practice-can-ruin-good-practice.html#

My earlier comments provoked some response, to which I responded with a "meta-comment":

James Smith writes: "And Xjy, why are so many of your comments about class conflict? I respect your political/sociological views, but is this really the place to expound your theories?"
This is really the place (a good place), James, and I'm not trying to expound anything.
Mary's being considered for the Orwell prize - for political writing! She's even labelled as "subversive" in the blog blurb. Those are establishment invitations to politically "subversive" comments. Num?
However, there is a real political and sociological perspective to Mary's reflections. How do state decisions (via the government and its bureaucracy) affect the acquisition, sharing and passing on of knowledge essential to a good society? This present blog is an example. Comments on the root of these decisions are relevant. If the comments are "outside the box", that's more a reflection on the box than the comments. Do I have to remind everyone that even Reader's Digest has been banging on for decades about the importance of dissident thought to creativity and progress? And if a reactionary US Republican rag does it, why shouldn't an educated and cultured bloghood welcome it? Diversity, stimulation? At my breadmill our last kick-off gave us a whole day of "creativity
I haven't been accused of corrupting youth - yet - though Mary has raised this spectre in blogs about state vetting of anyone with contact with kids. Censorship and paranoia are recurring themes in the blog. Gadflies sting. Hemlock, anyone?
"Here I stand; I can do no other. God help me."
"Dixi et salvavi animam meam."
Of course, if my "rage" is only "synthetic" instead of synthesizing, as Anthony A maintains, then it's Thersites bitching or Diogenes showboating naked in his barrel rather than Socrates or Luther. But hell, rather that and my own place in Hell than wafting about on the banks of the Styx.
A bit of meta-bloggery shouldn't be too out of place now and then, either, innit?

Let there be light!

A wonderful little story by Germaine Greer in today's Guardian. A perfect provocation of manacled minds, yielding a rich harvest of ignorant and bigoted comments.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/apr/11/germaine-greer-federico-fellini


My own comment:

The puppies yelp, the caravan passes...

One of the most liberating things about liberation is fighting for it. Those were liberating days. Fellini, old-style not-so-intellectual but no-holds-barred iconic culture critic and mythologue, meets new-style intellectual and no-holds-barred culture critic and iconoclast Germaine G... Female Eunuch meet Casanova and Citta delle Donne. If this had been filmed (heh) it would be as iconic as the Mailer brawl in New York. Mailer Iliad and Fellini Odyssey.

Out in the sun in the open air. US imperialism getting turfed out of Vietnam, Portuguese imperialism getting turfed out of Africa, Spanish fascism getting turfed out of Spain... Equal Pay Act... Sex Discrimination Act.

We had a few good years left (got rid of the Shah...) till Thatcher and Reagan and Disco started stomping all over us.

Fellini was good at twisting the Zeitgeist by his balls till he showed himself for what he was in relation to real people. So are you, Germaine.

And that generator! What to say...

Fiat lux!

Movin' an' a-groovin'

Here's a comment I posted last year on Scientific American, on a piece about why we like dancing so much. 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=experts-dance

choppam at 08:47 AM on 04/21/09

The parallel with sex is good  here - limber, coordinated, improvisational sex produces its own excitement and release, and good, tight, individual bonding. And D Marchant's comment: "Mirror Neurons are just structural evidence that we are wired for social harmonic unity, and unified rhythmic movement reinforces these social bonds" ties in with his observation about "group synchrony.  So-called "primitive" tribal dance rituals organize individuals into collective group entities that hunt better, resist predation better and act as one larger organism than individuals alone." 

Getting the cacophony of individual conflicting interests, emotions etc (due to status, gender, age etc) into synch is imperative for effective group functioning - think orchestras or sports teams. Music and dance achieve this - the greater the crescendo and the freer the orgasmic release, the better for us and our groups.

Which just shows how inhuman and sclerotic our present puritanical anti-sensual society is and how great the need is to change it to a more liberating and energizing society where schools give our kids a deep confidence and mastery of rhythm and harmony and interaction and creativity in their earliest and most formative years. With this foundation they'll be able to work together better and learn together better later when it comes to more abstract things like science, logic, maths, etc - theoretical analysis and synthesis.

So Wilhelm Reich and his followers were bang on target with the central place they gave orgasmic release in their theory - and the necessity for loosening up, sloughing off body "armour", moving and a-grooving, reeling with the feeling, rocking and a-rolling, etc. 

Excellent!

And of course, a lot of studies that you all know better than I do have shown that music and song target different parts of the brain from less rhythmic more discursive language. 

Which also (since it's all hardwired) shows that attempting to suppress rhythm, dance, music, poetry etc (as certain puritanical sects or regimes do) or to corral them into commercially profitable industrially bullwhipped sectors (Big Entertainment - Hollywood, Recording, etc) or to turn it all into some kind of hyper-exclusive minority activity (Big Art, Dance, Performance, etc) is as hopeless an enterprise as trying to stop the tide coming in, or trying to ban electricity.

Even sheep can help you defeat a monster...

Mary's latest blog is about the neutralization of thought in higher education.

http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/04/why-good-practice-can-ruin-good-practice.html

I made the following comment:

Julian wrote: "When people like you meekly go along with such nonsense, it makes everyone's life harder because "they" continue to impose their petty rules and regulations. For goodness sake, get some backbone and stand up to them."
When you sign off your soul to Mephistopheles, he wins. He's got the enforcers on his side. He puts the food on your table. Nothing 'meek' about this - Faust wasn't meek. He just signed the wrong contract. And back in the 50s and 60s university life (in Britain) had academic freedom, tenure, optimism and excitement. Helen of Troy with a brain (girls - find your own equivalent :-)
Standing up to the Man requires more than spine. It's not an individual thing - unless you're feeling suicidal. It requires organization, hatred of the system, and a clear enough view of a good alternative.
Academics aren't exactly god's gift to the future of humanity, but we need 'em, and at the moment they're being ground into dust and irradiated. In 2000 years they'll be like the bags of shit in Pompeii - only toxic. Their freedom is our freedom. We grow a spine - they grow a spine.
Simple, but not easy...

Brian O wrote: "Perhaps a little deadwood is fine if it lets the rest of us do more work and less documentation of work."
This might sound like a defence of incompetence, time-serving and place-hunting, and we can all give examples - I'll just name Robbo the Fish and G O as my favourites.
When I was a "radical conservative" god help us all I used to think so too. I soon realized that what the British had ever done for us was starvation, slavery, pillage, rape and murder, however, and this put things in a different light. Efficiency and "total quality assurance" in an unjust and anarchistic society where everyone is at war with everyone else is not just a delusion but a ticket to the abbatoir. I give you the efficiency of the extermination camps. Or the pernickity mean-spirited egalitarianism of the social insurance system.
Every flame of freedom is a beacon of hope. The heroic autodidacts of 1850 to 1950 were following these beacons. Some of us Faustian idiots of the 50s and 60s were doing it too, in much better conditions.
Dead wood is better than wood that is cold, black, wet and slimy.

In a just and decent society where work and creativity are rewarded and where everyone has security of income, food and shelter, and culture, it will be possible to promote on merit (in the widest sense) alone, and to pursue efficiency without destroying people. Till then, resist, keep your head down, and drive that hypocritical beam in the eye of the oppressor into his brain.

Use your wits and even a flock of sheep will help you defeat a brutal one-eyed monster.

Go, Trolley Dollies!

Mary B's most recent blog is about BA's cabin staff and their strike, and it's quite reasonable on the whole.

My comment:


How about issuing the BA cabin staff with the carbines toted by the goons patrolling the Heathrow terminals?
All for reasons of capitalist security of course, but these cabin carbines would come in handy when defending workers' security every few years.
Good working conditions grow out of the barrel of a gun.
Go, Trolley Dollies!

(Now there's a wickedly subversive comment to chew on... ;-)