Note that your comments on the reduction of work and reducing the pressure of time is exactly the same arguments these anarchists make.
-- adam
>I'm intensely allergic to attempts to describe the (distant) future except
>in the
>most general terms (and to the extend necessary to provide a perspective on
>the present as history). But just examining the present we can see factors
>that might well reduce this "problem" to manageable proportions.
>
>
>Two preliminary observations. One, Adam seems to equate "unpleasant"
>with alienated (and both with lack of intellectual challenge), which is not
>necessarily the case, and secondly he treats alienation as a platonic
>essence: it is all or nothing. This leaves no room for historical consideration
>of it which would see it as partly relative to various surrounding
>circumstances.
>
>
>He leaves out, for example, the tremendous leap which sheer shortening
>of work hours (whatever the work might be) would constitute. And this
>is one of the main factors which link present to future: the battle for
>shorter hours began over 150 years ago, and needs to be picked up
>with renewed vigor. His particular example of airline travel and
>its complexity ignores the fact that the pressure of time generated by
>life in capitalist society is responsible for most of the demand for airline
>travel. We do need to slow up life considerably -- and that is another
>thing which can be battled for in the present. I don't know whether
>such slowing up and a consequent debunking of various demands
>for efficiency would reduce greatly the pressure of alienation or not --
>but I'm pretty sure it would change the nature of the "problem."
>
>
>To arrive at a preliminary summary. I don't know what it would mean
>to eliminate alienation; I don't know whether alienation would be
>alienation under all possible circumstances. And when it is separated
>from the whole of life and made a subject of philosophical inspection
>in the abstract it approaches being an unintelligible concept.
>
>
>Carrol
>
>
>[The scare quotes around problem are because I don't like the
>word but can't offhand think of a better one right now.]