A little Fromm for you (with some Humboldt thrown in)

Erich Fromm was a scholar from the Frankfurt School. Here's a quote from one of his books, The Sane Society:

'As long as there was overt authority, there was conflict, and there was rebellion – against irrational authority. In the conflict with the commands of one’s conscience, in the fight against irrational authority, the personality developed—specifically the sense of self developed. I experience myself as “I” because I doubt, I protest, I rebel. Even if I submit and sense defeat, I experience myself as “I”—I, the defeated one. But if I am not aware of submitting or rebelling, if I am ruled by an anonymous authority, I lost the sense of self, I become a “one,” a part of the “It.”'

This is from Von Humbolt (Wilhelm) book, The Limits of State Action:

If we consider the position of man in the universe,—if we remember the constant tendency of his energies towards some definite activity, and recognize the influence of surrounding nature, which is ever provoking him to exertion, we shall be ready to acknowledge that repose and possession do not indeed exist but in imagination. –Von Humboldt, “Limits of State Action”

The ancients devoted their attention more exclusively to the harmonious development of the individual man, as man; the moderns are chiefly solicitous about his comfort, his prosperity, his productiveness. The former looked to virtue; the latter seek for happiness. And hence it follows, that the restrictions imposed on freedom in the ancient States were, in some important respects, more oppressive and dangerous than those which characterize our times. For they directly attacked that inner life of the soul, in which the individuality of human being essentially consists; and hence all the ancient nations betray a character of uniformity, which is not so much to be attributed to their want of higher refinement and more limited intercommunication, as to the systematic education of their youth in common (almost universal among them), and the designedly collective life of the citizens. –Von Humboldt, “Limits of State Action”

Both are talking about similar things. I like the way they put them.

Organizing relief organizations

Question: Is it possible to have an anarchist relief organization?
Ans: Maybe, I haven't seen one yet.

Question: Is it possible to have a hierarchical organization relief org?
Ans: Sure, there are plenty of examples.

Question: How about one in between the two; one that is devoid of patriarchy, and racism and all the things that plague the larger society, and a really good mission,yet one that still has a top down structure; one in which those that volunteer are not included in the decision-making process?
Ans: Yes I think the constraints on this organization, especially the temporality of the majority of volunteers, make this decision-making structure necessary.

Question: Can we get done what needs to get done in a relief organization, while living the principles we'd like to see in our utopia?
Answer: The idea of relief is to provide people with their immediate and long-term needs to get back on their feet (in the absence of government help) and assist in making the community more sustainable than it was before. We don't need patriarchy to acheive this. It will probably hinder the effort ultimately. Of course we don't want to hinder the mission (ie relief) from some misconceived notions of patriarchy. But whom is to arbitrate here? Who is to decide what is right or wrong? People still steeped in notions of patriarchal culture or a small core of activists who have unwrapped their layers. Hmmm. No answer here.

One Perspective on perspectives: New Orleans

A friend here in New Orleans has been working some tough social work cases in the past two weeks. He's very young, but he has already taken on the responsibility for finding jobs and homes for many New Orleans residents.

I talked to a man who lost everything he had in the flood, and had come back here to try and start over. His family is still displaced in different states. He told me "they" blew up the levees so the Lower Ninth would flood. There is historical evidence for this theory for they blew up the levees back in the twenties so as to save the French Quarter from a flood. In 1965 Hurricane Betsy provided another opportunity for those in power to decide who lives and who dies when they blew the levees once again.

I was in the Lower Ninth for a day last week. I got to see the rebuilt flood walls atop the levees. So as not to confuse the two, levees are mounds of earth, flood walls are concrete structures built on top of the levees. Anyway I was at Ground Zero, and the remains of the Lower Ninth were still in disarray, desite the official rhetoric of rebuilding and all the good work that independent groups like Common Ground have done so far.

One person from CG told me he came from Houston to help people in the flood, but was turned back at the state line. He tried crossing into Louisiana again, this time with white men (first time was with men of color) and he got through. He found himself feeding people who refused to leave their homes. As this was after the flood, he would get food to people holed up in their attics. One elder woman whom he had gotten food to regularly was found raped and killed in her attic.

The stories are surreal and horrible, and I know that I know only a fraction of a percent of the whole story.

It's funny, but my daily existential experience has been anything but horrible. One doesn't have to pay attention to any of the horrible stories generated by the flood and by extreme poverty.

What I want to say is that society has made it easy for mainstream society to forget/ignore the savagery imposed on the most vulnerable in our midst. I guess it's necessary for that amnesia, that whitewashing of memory and experience to occur if society is to not question itself, and to allow it to happen again, and when it does, to be totally floored that anything like that could happen in this society.

Forget the talk about 'Katrina fatigue'. The margainalized people here are tired of being forgotten.

I will keep my ears and my eyes open.