The human soul in the dying Flesh - an additional thought on the Gallup Poll results

["Jurriaan Bendien" <bendien@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

What is really striking about the Gallup survey is how much it reveals that
Americans have a mentality in which the question of winning and losing is
the most important thing. In other words, the hidden framework within which
the polling occurs is a relentless competitive battle in American society,
and success in that competition is the primary motivation in attitudinal
judgements. American learn to love winners, and to hate losers. From birth,
American children are programmed relentlessly into the evaluation of winning
and losing, which becomes a subconscious frame of reference. Consequently,
if you can present yourself as a winner, then by that fact alone you can
increase your success in the eyes of others. In other words, "being a
winner" and "having a positive attitude" are very closely associated in the
American mind, in such a way, that "having a positive attitude" means "you
want to win" and not just that "you want to succeed".

Which leads me to the deep thought of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who
presided over the New Deal: "The credit belongs to the man who is actually
in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who knows
the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy
cause; who at best, if he wins, knows the thrills of high achievement, and,
if he fails, at least fails daring greatly, so that his place shall never be
with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." But
could it be, that the more it becomes acceptable to indulge in pleasures of
the flesh, the more "cold and timid" American souls in reality become, the
more they do not know anymore the difference between a victory for humanity
and a defeat for humanity ?

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson comment in their book Philosophy of the Flesh
(p. 20) that "An embodied concept is a neural structure that is actually
part of, or makes use of, the sensorimotor system of our brains. Much of the
conceptual inference is, therefore, sensorimotor inference". It's sort of
like Bruce Springsteen's lyric "Fire" performed by Babyface, which goes like
this: "You're riding in my car, I turn on the radio, I'm pulling you closer,
But you keep tellin' me no, You say you don't like it, But I know you're a
liar, 'Cause when we kiss, Ooh..., Fire." (one of Lakoff's previous books
was called "Women, Fire and Dangerous Things"). The cars drive on petrol,
the petrol comes from oil, the oil comes from Iraq, if Iraq interferes with
the oil supply, we butcher Iraq. And so we can say that we butcher out of
love.

As regards myself, this is what I wrote to the University registrar when I
abandoned my Phd studies in 1990:

To the Registry

11 September 1990

Dear Mr S.,

I wish to advise you that I am withdrawing from the Phd programme for which
I have been registered for some years. That hasn't been an easy decision to
make, but I am going ahead with it anyway.

I can report that I have intensively studied by chosen subject, viz. the
economic crisis in New Zealand and the education of the working class. But,
to put it in today's terminology, the price of carrying on has become too
high.

Because of my decision to "opt out" at this stage, doubts will probably
remain as to my true academic ability. But I can live with this idea, as I
will now explain.

Our education system conditions individuals through a relentless process of
competition to make their sense of self-worth dependent on badges of
ability. It trains children to divide themselves into winners and losers, to
attribute their success to individual merit, and to blame themselves for
being among the losers.

Educationalists are then paid to assess the fairness and standards of this
competition through tests of educational performance, sociological surveys,
philosophical inquiries and so on. When they do their homework, they find
that workingclass kids (male and female, black and white) figure
disproportionately among the losers, and that educational losers figure
disproportionately in the dole queue.

But thousands of research studies make it quite clear that so long as social
inequalities are perpetuated by adults, schooling will necessarily confirm
and reproduce those inequalities in their children. In this respect, it
really doesn't make a damn of a difference what is taught and how it is
taught.

I believe, that it is the institutionalised competition between individuals
itself which ought to be challenged and overcome in all its respects, since
I know it is the biggest obstacle to learning.

I thank my supervisors, Dr F and Dr S for their support over the years, and
hope they benefited as much from our relationship as I have.

Yours sincerely

Jurriaan Bendien





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