[lbo-talk] Grappling with Heidegger

[Carl Remick]

>From: andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
>
>... I really take H's the main point about death, to put
>it in plain English, to be that the fact of our
>mortality is the central issue in the life of a human
>being -- not merely something one has to come to terms
>with and learn to accept,a s it were, philosophically,
>as the Stoics taught, or as a gateway to heaven or
>hell, as Christian dogma, but as the fundamental
>structuring fact about the lives of mortal beings that
>influences, or ought to influence, everything in our
>lives. His revulsion against everydayness and losing
>yourself in business comes from this, as does, I
>think, his reaction (literally and figuratively)
>against modernity, which he thinks promotes mere
>business and forgetfulness of the fact that for each
>of us our days are numbered.

Amen.  If those are Heidegger's main conclusions (I haven't read him), he 
really did have something to say.  When I was young I thought how awful it 
must have been to have lived in Victorian times, an era with a death 
obsession prompted by both actuarial reality (rampant TB, etc.) and mores 
(Queen V's endless mourning).  However, to my horror I've found that there 
is no engine for generating joylessness like that of the modern corporate 
organization, where human mortality is scarcely admitted and never more than 
an brief awkward intrusion.  The tryanny of 24-7 operation and the 
billable-hour creates an environment where workers are constantly compelled 
to put their personal lives on hold to suit the incessant, limitless needs 
of the immortal corporation.  Employees are *required* to live in a state of 
denial about their ultimate deaths and willingingly squander their limited 
days year after year; they are obligated to put organizational priorities 
ahead of their individual existential needs on a permanent basis.  The 
modern organization is hell on earth in many ways.

Carl