Again, as so often, I find your work refreshing and clear.
I've mentioned Quaker philosopher Jim Corbett before. He spoke a lot about the meaning of sabbath. Sabbath is not just a ceasing from endless labor but it is a ceasing from "remaking the world", as he put it. A recognition that things are already good. When one ceases striving it is then that the holy, or wholeness, or the sacred can break in upon our present moment. In Buddhist philosophy, it is the overactive mind that keeps eternity shut out of our experience. So it is not enough to cease from labor, but to quiet the mind. When the mind is quiet, labor or activity can go on but it gains a different quality; becomes an activity that is without slaving, a joy as you spoke of.
There is a relationship between sabbath, allowing the land to rest (jubilee), and redeeming the land. Civilization is man's attempt to bring nature under control for his own purposes. The land becomes, in Corbett's language, enslaved. It is seen as chattel. It is not allowed to have its own glory, freedom and beauty, but everything must be made to conform to the requirements of the culture (the local tribe-mind). In freeing one's own mind, one becomes immediately in tune with the presence of the land itself. Our fellow inhabitants (trees, grass, crickets, brush rodents, spiders, grazing animals) are part of the land community to which we belong, rather than belongs to us. Redemtion is to free our minds from enslaving (ourselves, time, the earth) and to allow the land to be free.
Civilization was Cain's folly. Alowing ourselves time to rest opens a space that, when the mind is quieted may allow us to re-conceive what it means to be alive. What it means to live.
"ceasing from "remaking the world", as he put it. A recognition that things are already good. "
YES: how much damage has been done by trying to 'improve' the world... and how strange that "make a better world" is the probably most common mantra heard in all kinds of exhortations to donate money or take action....
When people and social relations take on the character of things,
... the commodity relation ... stamps its imprint upon the whole consciousness of man; his qualities and abilities are no longer an organic part of his personality, they are things which he can “own” or “dispose of” like the various objects of the external world (Lukacs 100).
Capitalist civilization is conceived in terms of “thingness”: society is defined as commodity relations among material entities. Thingness extends into the being of each participant: in capitalist society, people cannot be except by having. Since the means of having require people to treat themselves as things -- to “market” themselves -- alienability (“freedom of contract”) becomes alienation:
The general staff phrase “human material” increasingly stamps the modern form of self-experience and way of treating oneself. Those who survive must have learned to regard themselves, their bodies, their morality, their will, as things (Sloterdijk 435).
Haven’t seen Lukacs cited in a bit. Cool. Yes, very interesting that Locke situated the origin of private property in the fact that we ‘own’ ourselves. That might not be exactly wrong, but an odd way of formulating it.
Thanks! These are great related ideas.
Again, as so often, I find your work refreshing and clear.
I've mentioned Quaker philosopher Jim Corbett before. He spoke a lot about the meaning of sabbath. Sabbath is not just a ceasing from endless labor but it is a ceasing from "remaking the world", as he put it. A recognition that things are already good. When one ceases striving it is then that the holy, or wholeness, or the sacred can break in upon our present moment. In Buddhist philosophy, it is the overactive mind that keeps eternity shut out of our experience. So it is not enough to cease from labor, but to quiet the mind. When the mind is quiet, labor or activity can go on but it gains a different quality; becomes an activity that is without slaving, a joy as you spoke of.
There is a relationship between sabbath, allowing the land to rest (jubilee), and redeeming the land. Civilization is man's attempt to bring nature under control for his own purposes. The land becomes, in Corbett's language, enslaved. It is seen as chattel. It is not allowed to have its own glory, freedom and beauty, but everything must be made to conform to the requirements of the culture (the local tribe-mind). In freeing one's own mind, one becomes immediately in tune with the presence of the land itself. Our fellow inhabitants (trees, grass, crickets, brush rodents, spiders, grazing animals) are part of the land community to which we belong, rather than belongs to us. Redemtion is to free our minds from enslaving (ourselves, time, the earth) and to allow the land to be free.
Civilization was Cain's folly. Alowing ourselves time to rest opens a space that, when the mind is quieted may allow us to re-conceive what it means to be alive. What it means to live.
"ceasing from "remaking the world", as he put it. A recognition that things are already good. "
YES: how much damage has been done by trying to 'improve' the world... and how strange that "make a better world" is the probably most common mantra heard in all kinds of exhortations to donate money or take action....
Excellent... inspires much thought... one thought I posted as a restock note... more to come when we talk, I think...
Here's something I wrote a few years ago: Being and Thingness: Notes Toward a Critique of 'Christian Civilization' — https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358539018_Being_and_Thingness_Notes_Toward_a_Critique_of_'Christian_Civilization'
EXCERPT:
When people and social relations take on the character of things,
... the commodity relation ... stamps its imprint upon the whole consciousness of man; his qualities and abilities are no longer an organic part of his personality, they are things which he can “own” or “dispose of” like the various objects of the external world (Lukacs 100).
Capitalist civilization is conceived in terms of “thingness”: society is defined as commodity relations among material entities. Thingness extends into the being of each participant: in capitalist society, people cannot be except by having. Since the means of having require people to treat themselves as things -- to “market” themselves -- alienability (“freedom of contract”) becomes alienation:
The general staff phrase “human material” increasingly stamps the modern form of self-experience and way of treating oneself. Those who survive must have learned to regard themselves, their bodies, their morality, their will, as things (Sloterdijk 435).
Ah, you actually get to Locke in there… nice.
Haven’t seen Lukacs cited in a bit. Cool. Yes, very interesting that Locke situated the origin of private property in the fact that we ‘own’ ourselves. That might not be exactly wrong, but an odd way of formulating it.