>I started twice to respond to this, and dropped both. I guess I simply
>don't understand your emphasis on shopping. Shopping would go on in any
>society in which production was not all home production -- i.e., in any
>industrialized social order. Even if the variety were limited by decree
>and all products were free. People would still have to have a stream of
>products into their living quarters, and that would require their going
>to warehouses or the equivalent and shopping for the needed items.
>
Yes, of course. But there's more.
Or have you not noticed how the shopping experience now subsumes everything:
-- I shop for doctors and medical plans -- I shop for schools -- I shop for potential mates and so on.
Where before we were concerned about "freedom" and what that might be about, we are now almost exclusively focused on choice. How one defines and realizes one's freedom has to do with one's ability to become conscious. Consciousness and reflection become the key to growing up into life.
But now we are concerned with choice, which has become the incarnation of freedom. And one makes choices through shopping. Neither consciousness nor reflection are required for shopping, because not shopping is not an acceptable alternative.
I am being my usual thick cryptic self, so I'll stop here and hope that someone else can come in and fill in the blanks.
Joanna
>
>Shopping and over-production are unrelated matters.
>
>And Ian and I were objecting to the arbitrary setting up of a hierarchy
>of human activities -- his "hierarchy thingys" and my "Platonism."
>
>Shopping is just as much living as any other activity.
>
>Carrol
>
>
>
>>Joanna
>>
>>Carrol Cox wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Eubulides wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>----- Original Message -----
>>>>From: "joanna" <123hop at comcast.net>
>>>>
>>>>But there's a deeper point that this volume of productivity sucks our
>>>>lifeblood and destroys the earth. That we're making too much of things
>>>>designed to last ten minutes. And even that man might have been meant
>>>>for higher things than shopping.
>>>>
>>>>Joanna
>>>>
>>>>=============
>>>>
>>>>Meant by whom?
>>>>
>>>>This hierarchy thingy is really starting to bug me...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>My last post was close to Joanna's -- except for this inclusion of
>>>humans being "meant for higher things." That bugs me as well. It is not
>>>necessary to resort to Platonism in order to reject the mad growth
>>>(progressive) dynamic of capitalism.
>>>
>>>Carrol
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Ian
>>>>
>>>>___________________________________
>>>>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>___________________________________
>>>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>___________________________________
>>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>>
>>
>___________________________________
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>
>
>