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Parliament? - It's History! by Colin Baker The role of Parliament as an institution here in the UK must now radically change. [1,398 words]
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The Poisonous Dart Frog, Politics And History by Colin Baker - [2,477 words]
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How It Feels To Be Vegetarian Me by Tori M Modeled after "How It Feels To Be Colored Me" by Zora Neale Hurston [1,716 words]
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Britain's Festival Of The Juggernaut.
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In 1968 - From A Letter To A Friend by Charles Turner I had arrived in New York in the same year that Robert Kennedy and Martin L... [799 words]
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Baptism Testimony by Desi Williams - [901 words]
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TITLE (EDIT)
Britain's Festival Of The Juggernaut. |
DESCRIPTION
Capitalist Britain and the Hindu tradition of Vishnu's incarnation have much in common.
[1,277 words] |
AUTHOR
Colin Baker |
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
-
[October 2014] |
AUTHOR'S E-MAIL ADDRESS
clnbkr@tiscali.co.uk |
AUTHOR'S OTHER TITLES (117)
25 Years On (Poetry) - [85 words]
2 Am (Poetry) - [115 words]
A Bus Commuter's Sonnet (Poetry) - [107 words]
A Choreographed Breakfast (Poetry) - [68 words]
A Dreamer's Song (Aka Wishful Thinking) (Poetry) - [85 words]
A Fibber's Prayer (Poetry) A short poem about making good some porkies. [291 words] [Humor]
A First Class Service (Poetry) - [15 words]
A Lost Generation ? (Poetry) - [52 words]
A Pious Gent (Poetry) - [11 words]
A Restraining Order For Jesus (Poetry) - [258 words]
A Smoker's Pledge Of Allegiance (Poetry) - [98 words]
A To Z Of Adolescence (Poetry) Ever been a parent ? Of three daughters ? [21 words]
A Visit To The Planetarium (Poetry) - [31 words]
Africans, Westerners And Intelligence. (Essays) A reply to Dr. James D. Watson's recent assertion that Africans are of inferior intelligence when compared to Westerners. [7,297 words]
An Apple A Day (Poetry) Fun poetry. [36 words]
Believe In Better (Short Stories) A philosophical alternative to the current mindset. [804 words]
Beneath Her Window (Poetry) - [34 words]
Benefit Cutting For Dummies (Non-Fiction) Benefit cutting is politically and ideologically motivated. [2,411 words]
Bill Gates Should Take A Tip From Karl And Fred (Essays) Bill Gates recently criticised capitalism. Hooray! one might be minded to cry out! But all is not as straight forward as it seems. [872 words] [Drama]
Bill The Bus Driver (Poetry) - [61 words]
Blackvein (Poetry) - [103 words]
By Night When Others Soundly Slept (I'd Pinch Lots Of Stuff) (Poetry) - [114 words]
Christmas Conundrum (Poetry) Christmas can be a confusing time for some children. [197 words]
Coming To Terms (Poetry) Extolling the virtues of the human brain. [177 words]
Contradictory Deliverance (Poetry) - [37 words]
Cost-Effective Indifference (Poetry) - [29 words]
Cough & Drop (Poetry) - [114 words]
Debt (Poetry) Debt, Emily Dickinson style. [178 words]
' Doc ' (Poetry) A very brief reflection of the continued erosion of free health provision in contemporary Britain. [80 words]
Douglas R.I.P. (Poetry) - [270 words]
Ends And Means (Non-Fiction) The world we currently live in is a topsy turvy place. [215 words] [History]
Evening Class For A Grownup (Poetry) - [58 words]
Favour (Poetry) - [21 words]
Fruit And Vegetable Shortages (Non-Fiction) A spurious argument [269 words]
Get On Board, Iraqi Children (Poetry) Allah's train keeps a-comin' for thousands of Iraqi children. [181 words]
Good News Is No News (Short Stories) Good news isn't always what it seems. [470 words] [Literary Fiction]
Growing Up (2006) (Poetry) - [28 words]
Hey John! How Are Things My Friend? (Poetry) - [134 words]
Hit The Sack (Poetry) - [299 words]
If I Die (Poetry) Inspired by a conversation one evening at bedtime between my 6 year old daughter and I. Suddenly, she wanted to explore the concept of dying. [129 words]
Imperialism Dear Boy, Imperialism (Poetry) Limerick on the theme of the current Gulf conflict. [27 words]
In A Seaside Street (Poetry) - [167 words]
In The Top Right-Hand Corner (Poetry) - [21 words]
In The Union Of Myanmar (Poetry) - [38 words]
It's Like Hurricane Ike... (Poetry) - [112 words]
Kidney Stones (Poetry) - [13 words]
Killing At Camp - Justice? (Poetry) - [55 words]
Labour Pains (Poetry) - [93 words]
Last Wednesday: Peterchurch, Herefordshire. (Poetry) - [31 words]
Little Donkey - Revised (Poetry) A poem for christmas [16 words] [Humor]
Lovers Walking In A Lane In Summer (Poetry) - [126 words]
Margaret Thatcher's Funeral (Non-Fiction) - [270 words]
Meop Citsigoloen A (Poetry) - [28 words]
Milton! Art Thou Dying (Again)? (Poetry) Is Milton Friedman's free-market mantra now in tatters? [28 words]
Monday Morning (Poetry) - [59 words]
Moral Instruction (Poetry) - [107 words]
My Child X 3 (Poetry) - [23 words]
Newport - Stow Hill (Poetry) - [4 words]
Norman's Unemployment Policy - Britain, Summer 1981 (Poetry) - [158 words]
Oh Jesus! (Poetry) - [18 words]
Oh La La ! (Poetry) - [118 words]
On The Beach! (Poetry) - [48 words]
Over My Dead Body (Poetry) - [52 words]
Pardon Me But................... (Poetry) - [11 words]
Parliament? - It's History! (Essays) The role of Parliament as an institution here in the UK must now radically change. [1,398 words]
Partnership (Poetry) - [30 words]
Playing Pétanque (Poetry) - [141 words]
Pleasure Island (Poetry) - [114 words]
Poem Of The Cross (Poetry) - [32 words]
Poetry - No Doubt (Poetry) - [8 words]
Potential Human (Poetry) - [33 words]
Pregnancy And Politics (Non-Fiction) An argument against capitalism [1,096 words]
Prophecy (Poetry) - [28 words]
Psalm 17-30 (The Rush-Hour Psalm) (Poetry) - [261 words]
Psalm 23 (New Labour's Psalm) (Poetry) - [108 words]
Psalm 23 (The Mcjob Psalm) (Poetry) McJobs abound in capitalist society.... [122 words]
Rain Heading In From The West (Poetry) A poem written to mark the many innocent deaths brought about by Western political aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan. [243 words]
Raining Cats And Dogs (Poetry) Do you believe in metaphors coming true ? [187 words]
Reflections On God's Actions (Poetry) - [62 words]
Remembering (Poetry) - [144 words]
Saturday Night Dilemma (Poetry) Saturday nights out are not what they used to be. [92 words]
Saviour Self (Poetry) - [86 words]
School (Poetry) - [107 words]
Screwball Scramble (Essays) There is a good reason for the phenomenon of frenzied shopping in the Western world. [2,381 words]
September 03, 2007 (Poetry) To mark a particular President's recent visit to Iraq [18 words]
Social Inequality Is Not One-Sided (Non-Fiction) - [1,035 words]
Society, The Family And A Thatcher. (Essays) When UK conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher asserted in 1987 that 'there is no such thing as society', she overlooked all that it is to be human. [5,380 words]
Something For Nothing (Short Stories) The irony of political correctness [90 words]
Sometimes (Poetry) Sometimes, contemporary work roles seem to necessitate wishful thinking in a person. [69 words]
Spitting (At) Images (Poetry) - [28 words]
Take O Take Those Chips Away (Poetry) - [44 words]
Taking Leave (And All That) (Poetry) - [36 words]
The B B C (Poetry) - [12 words]
The Chair (Poetry) - [235 words]
The Chinese Medicine Shop (Poetry) - [43 words]
The Lords (Poetry) - [28 words]
The Poisonous Dart Frog, Politics And History (Essays) - [2,477 words]
The Religious Sum Of The Iraq War (Poetry) - [14 words]
The Retrospective Chicken (Poetry) Introspective journey of a chicken. [255 words]
The Sack Race (Poetry) A short poem, written to mark the occasion of my youngest daughter's recent triumphs in her school sack race. [207 words]
The State (Poetry) - [22 words]
The Sum Of Amon Goeth's Execution (Poetry) - [14 words]
The Valleys (Poetry) - [68 words]
The Western Alpha Bit (Poetry) Topic of Iraq [182 words]
Thoughts On The Evolutionary School Of Life (Poetry) - [177 words]
Thoughts On Youth Crime (Poetry) - [16 words]
Topsy Turvy (Poetry) - [33 words]
Up! (Poetry) - [64 words]
Up-Hill (Till M4 Junction 3, Then Head South) (Poetry) - [138 words]
We'd Sit And Sing Alway (Then Came A Barratt Team) (Poetry) Greenbelt, in certain parts of 21st century Britain, is a dwindling phenomenon. [71 words]
We'll Go No More A-Dogging (Poetry) - [70 words]
What Do We Want? Concrete Fairness! When Do We Want It? Now! (Essays) Live Aid and Live 8 failed because they made metaphysical appeals to fairness and justice. [4,232 words]
While God........... (Poetry) - [15 words]
Why And How We Spoke God Into Existence (Poetry) Have you ever wondered how God came to be? [234 words]
Why Bother At All? (Non-Fiction) Why bother struggling to save a decaying economic system like capitalism? [483 words]
Withdrawn Loners And Sparkling Drops (Non-Fiction) The recent shooting at Sandy Hook school in Connecticut USA is tragic beyond question, yet also revealing in some ways. [856 words] [Crime]
Yesterday (Poetry) (Inspired by one of Brittany's recent tree-climbing experiences, she being our youngest daughter) [177 words]
|
Britain's Festival Of The Juggernaut.
Colin Baker
In Hindu tradition, Vishnu's incarnation, Krishna, assumes an earthly form each year in the summer Juggernaut festival. During this cultural celebration, a giant hand-built cart is pulled through the given town or village by hundreds of people. Sometimes, worshipers throw themselves beneath the huge, unstoppable wheels of the cart as it passes, thus making the ultimate sacrifice to their god.
This Hindu festival is a useful metaphor to draw upon, in order to help us understand life in Britain today. Britain is a capitalist country based on private ownership of the material means of production and the exploitation of human labour for profit. Having quite naturally and spontaneously adopted this way of life, and lacking any semblance of a scientific conception of social evolution, successive generations spend their lives endlessly producing, distributing, exchanging and above all, appropriating commodities, or the monetary values thereof. As far as most people are concerned, it's simply in the nature of things. Having unwittingly brought this specific socio-economic form into being, people have also necessarily instituted all kinds of institutions and organisations so that their given economic pattern can be maintained. These in turn, function to exact service. In such a natural state of affairs, ends and means are reversed both concretely and ideologically. Only humans should be ends and everything else means. However, because people are daily obliged to use one another in order to appropriate the things they require, they necessarily conceptualise one another as merely means through which such ends can be realised. Similarly, institutions and organisations not only exact service from people on a daily basis, they are also thought of as being ends in themselves, as utterly natural and endearing. People quite unconsciously come to reify, that is to say transform their ideas about their various institutions and organisations into Platonic-like absolutes, assuming as they do, that such institutions and organisations are in fact, merely manifestations of their ideas and principles when in fact, their various ideas and principles are nothing but the reflection of their evolving material circumstances. Thus, institutionalised forms of capitalist morality, economics, national and local politics, law, work and so on are conceptualised by people as everlasting phenomena, the needs of which must be (and indeed are in this alien culture of ours) daily served by human beings. Thus, just as the human-built juggernaut comes to rule supreme over the lives of those who built it, so too in capitalist Britain, objects and in particular organisations and institutions as we shall see momentarily, do likewise. The poetic words of A E Housman perfectly sum up this topsy-turvy alien world that humans themselves have quite naturally and spontaneously created for themselves.
"I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong".
In particular then, this suggested institutional and organisational dominance over people's lives is painfully evident in austerity-hit Britain at the moment and perhaps nowhere more so, than in the activities of our local and national political institutions. On page 19 of Saturday's i newspaper, the headline read - 'Manchester set to cut another 900 jobs'. It referred to the City Council's decision to cut yet more jobs to save money, despite already having cut 2,000 within the past two years. Moreover, Manchester Council is not alone. For example, (and this is barely a snap-shot) Southend Council anticipates 120 job cuts; Southampton Council plans at least 300 job cuts as do Councils in Medway and Ealing; Gloucestershire Council intends cutting 1,000 jobs; Somerset Council aims to cut 1,500 jobs; Warwickshire Council is considering axing almost 2,000 jobs; Southwark Council plans to axe 3,000 jobs, and so it continues.
At a national level, the political institution we know as 'the state' is also busy exacting service from people. Above all, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has recently announced yet more economic pain by way of pay freezes for public workers, benefit cuts for those individuals and families who are already living like paupers, and a host of other spending cuts directed at things like hospitals, schools, youth centres, social policy research, public transport, coastguard provision, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Refugee Council, flood defences, adult education, the National Council for Voluntary Organisations and many more besides. Moreover, it is anticipated that in today's autumn statement, the Chancellor will announce the axing (political pruning?) of around 13,000 civil service jobs. Such institutional austerity at both a local and national level, inevitably means the widespread loss of jobs and in some cases no doubt, the destruction of human lives.
Our institutionalised work structures also function to exact service from all working people to varying degrees. Having adopted a mode of life as hitherto noted, a majority of working people must constantly sell their respective personal capacities to one or other employer in exchange for a wage or salary. This is the only way for them to make a living. Moreover, the function of this necessary control over labour-power is to press such working people into serving either directly or indirectly, the expansionary needs of capital. The production of ever-greater profits is the essential purpose of work in Britain. And this is achieved by way of human exploitation, by paying working people less than the values they directly or indirectly play a part in creating. Workplaces are therefore institutional sites of human oppression and alienation not only because they exact the service (and thus limit the development) of people's various personal capacities, but also because they necessitate relationships of exploitation in pursuit of profit.
I think there is one other kind of national institution worth mentioning which, once created by people, functions like the Hindu juggernaut but in an extremely subtle manner this time. Such institutions are often distinctly cultural in form, and include 'national treasures' like The Jeremy Kyle Show, Children in Need, The Royal Variety Performance, The National Lottery, the BBC, The British Royal Family, the Queen's Speech, Comic Relief, Sport Aid, Parliament, the Ministery of Defence, the Inland Revenue and many more besides. These kinds of institutions exact service from the population at large inasmuch as they imply the essential rightness and inevitability of the existing socio-economic order, thus fostering uncritical patterns of thought. As far as these kinds of institutions are concerned, this exploitative and alien way of life is as good as it gets.
Finally, even at a supranational level, we can remark the same topsy-turvy world in which institutions rule over the lives of people. Thus, the European Parliament, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other such bodies function to exact service. Just ask the millions of human beings who are currently suffering at the moment, especially in Spain and Greece, on account of the draconian rulings indirectly bestowed upon them by the IMF.
All the examples in this brief article then, are of institutions which were created by human beings, and which subsequently function in various ways to exact service from those very same human beings and subsequent generations thereof. This entire upside down state of affairs is inevitable in a society in which a way of life has been adopted, obliging each and every individual by degrees, to devote their lives to the pursuit of things, and consequently, to think of people as means, and institutions and objects as ends. Only the abolition of private property and with it, human exploitation, will result in the world being turned right way up once more. Only then will people be able to institute one or other institution and use the myriad objects at their disposal to peacefully meet their own needs, along with those of their fellow human beings.
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE
© 2012 Colin Baker |
STORYMANIA PUBLICATION DATE
February 2013 |
NUMBER OF TIMES TITLE VIEWED
1846
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