In the 1860s a new word entered the economic and political vocabulary of the world : capitalism. Although its origin may go back to before 1848, as suggested in The Age of Revolution, but detailed research suggests that it hardly occurs before 1849 or comes into wider currency before the 1860s.
The Age of Capital 1848-1875, is the second of a quartet of history books that E.J. Hobsbawn penned between 1962 and 1994. Eric has authored several books, the last published in 2011; which is pretty impressive considering Marxist Eric will be celebrating his 95th birthday on 9th June!
Last night, I watched the DVD of
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and collected a few pithy observations; no doubt penned by some clever scriptwriter/sage/scamp.
NINJA - no income, no job, no assets.
The mother of all evil is speculation.
...systemic, malignant and global: like cancer.
....everybody's drinking the same Kool-Aid.
You'll have to watch the movie for the context in which these phrases were used, yet in the context of what is going down on Planet Earth right now, one wonders about the traditions and trends that movies invent. Movies, perhaps, being the most accessible vehicle through which malignant narcissism spreads its tentacles of entitlement mentality and infects the collective with those most insidious aspects of base human nature: envy and vanity.
Back in 1983, the concept of invented traditions was made prominent in the 1983 book edited by Eric and T.O. Ranger, The Invention of Tradition. In their Introduction the editors argue that many "traditions" which "appear or claim to be old are often quite recent in origin and sometimes invented." They distinguish the "invention" of traditions in this sense from "starting" or "initiating" a tradition which does not then claim to be old.
The phenomenon is particularly clear in the modern development of the nation and of nationalism.
One implication of the term is that the sharp distinction between "tradition" and "modernity" is often itself invented. The concept is "highly relevant to that comparatively recent historical innovation, the 'nation,' with its associated phenonema: nationalism, the nation-state, national symbols, histories, and the rest." Hobsbawm and Ranger remark on the "curious but understandable paradox: modern nations and all their impedimenta generally claim to be the opposite of novel, namely rooted in remotest antiquity, and the opposite of constructed, namely human communities so 'natural' as to require no definition other than self-assertion." Another implication is that the concept of "authenticity" is also to be questioned.
Goodness! The concept of authenticity is also to be questioned?
The blurb from Wikipedia continues:
One reviewer (of the book) noted that the "'invention of tradition' is a splendidly subversive phrase," but it "hides serious ambiguities." Hobsbawm "contrasts invented traditions with what he calls 'the strength and adaptability of genuine traditions.' But where does his 'adaptability', or his colleague Ranger's 'flexibility' end, and invention begin? Given that all traditions change, is it possible or useful to attempt to discriminate the 'genuine' antiques from the fakes?"
Hobsbawm has been described by one (or some) as arguably the world's greatest living historian, while another (or more) has observed: ... [Hobsbawm is a] professional historian who has "steadily corrupted knowledge into propaganda, and scorns the concept of objective truth", he is
"neither a historian nor professional".
Could such an unkind assessment be the product of a deep-seated professional envy or a slow-simmering vanity on the part of the critic, who believes
their opinion actually carries some weight? A younger man crapping over the shoulders of a giant who has carried him.... Such is the snarkiness of a lesser writer and intellect...the dubious medicine of the shitehawk! I do not presume that Eric will be receiving a
'Happy 95th Birthday!' card from David Pryce-Jones. One never knows though: hypocrisy does abound and breed in the rarefied altitudes of intellectual amnesia
(a little known muse). I do presume that DPJ will take it upon himself to pen an obituary (when the time comes), as snarks cannot resist the temptation to have one last swipe at the tuft on the lion's tail.
After reading
Age of Extremes, Anglo-American historian, Robert Conquest (also rising 95), concluded that Hobsbawm suffered from a
massive reality denial regarding the USSR, while John Gray concluded that Hobsbawm writings on the post-1914 period are
banal in the extreme.
Massive reality denial is an interesting phrase and I come back to the retrospective comment about the original movie,
Wall Street, that spoke
out-loud the paradigm that was trending in the 1980s:
Greed is Good
The Used Chariot Salesman
Apple's Bud Tribble coined the term
"reality distortion field" in 1981, to describe the late Steve Jobs's charisma. Tribble claimed that the term came from
Star Trek. The RDF was said to be Steve Jobs's ability to convince himself and others to believe almost anything, using a mix of charm, charisma, bravado, hyperbole, marketing, appeasement, and persistence. Although the subject of criticism, Jobs's so-called reality distortion field was also recognized as creating a sense that the impossible was possible. Once the term became widely known, it was often used in the technology press to describe Jobs's sway over the public, particularly regarding new product announcements.
Everybody drinking the same Kool-Aid?
Of late I have been pondering on what it is that makes humans so susceptible and prone to being influenced by seeming influenzas of influences. Once a thought or a trend takes hold, it goes
viral and this phenomena has long existed before the term was invented.
Mundane astrology sets the wayback machine. As Pluto was unknown prior to 1930, I do not factor it's influences into charts of the 19th century and consider the influences of Ceres, Pallas, Vesta and Juno instead. Much has been invented about the traditions of asteroid astrology by authors with hypotheses to expound, books to sell and a patriarchal paradigm to scourge.
I am somewhat disenchanted with the
trend of the Divine Feminine which is discrete from the
authenticity of the sacred feminine principle that cares not a whit for RDF and socioeconomic and political agendas of the human species that jumps on every haycart that trundles down the groove in the matrix, which has worn so deep that most are unaware of the bubble of massive reality denial they now inhabit.
Image: Sea Tulips
Early in 1848 the eminent French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville rose in the Chamber of Deputies to express sentiments which most Europeans shared:
'We are sleeping on a volcano...Do you not see that the earth trembles anew? A wind of revolution blows, the storm is on the horizon.'
At about the same time two German exiles, the thirty-year-old Karl Marx and the twenty-eight-year-old Friedrich Engels, were spelling out the principles of the proletarian revolution against which de Tocqueville was warning his colleagues, in the programme they had been instructed to draft a few weeks earlier by the German Communist League and which was published anonymously in London around 24 February 1848 under the (German) title Manifesto of the Communist Party, 'to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages'.* Within weeks, indeed in the case of the Manifesto within hours, the hopes and fears of the prophets seemed to be on the verge of realization. The French monarchy was overthrown by insurrection, the Republic proclaimed, and the European revolution had begun.
* It was in fact also translated into Polish and Swedish in the course of that year, although it is only fair to state that its political reverberations outside small circles of German revolutionaries were insignificant until it was reissued in the early 1870s.
There have been plenty of greater revolutions in the history of the modern world, and certainly plenty of more successful ones. Yet there has been none which spread more rapidly and widely, running like a brushfire across frontiers, countries and even oceans. In France,
the natural centre and detonator of European revolutions, the Republic was proclaimed on 24 February. By 2 March revolution had gained south-west Germany, by 6 March Bavaria, by 11 March Berlin, by 13 March Vienna and almost immediately Hungary, by 18 March Milan and therefore Italy (where an independent revolt was already in possession of Sicily). At this time the most rapid information service available to anyone (that of the Rothschild bank) could not carry the news from Paris to Vienna in less than five days. Within a matter of weeks no government was left standing in an area of Europe which is today occupied by all or part of ten states, not counting lesser repercussions in a number of others. Moreover, 1848 was the first potentially global revolution, whose direct influence may be detected in the 1848 insurrection in Pernambuco (Brazil) and a few years later in remote Colombia.
In a sense it was the paradigm of the kind of 'world revolution' of which rebels were henceforth to dream, and which at rare moments, such as in the aftermath of great wars, they though they could recognise. In fact such simultaneous continent-wide or world-wide explosions are extremely rare.
~ from
The Age of Capital 1848-1875, p.21
Systemic. Malignant. Global.
Like cancer.
Parallels between 2012 and 1848
The planet Neptune was discovered in 1846 - funny about that! The last time Neptune entered Pisces was in 1847 - funny about that too! The last time Neptune was in Pisces:
“This was the period when Charles Dickens wrote his novels of social realism, and social democratic demonstrations shook the capitals of Europe. This was also a time when painters like Renoir, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Cezanne and Monet made their impressionist paintings, expanding the world of fantasy and imagination. On the scientific front Darwin’s theory of evolution completely undermined Christian tradition. The first photographs were taken, ultimately leading to the coming world of the movies. Anesthetics were used for the first time in hospitals. Opium became a socially acceptable drug. The accepted reality of the day was undermined and new spiritual, emotional and political realities took form.” (sourced from Graceastrology)
As always, I am the last one to the party - like Eris, yet the last one to turn up always brings more beer. This from PlanetWaves:
Examining the astrology of this era more closely, I soon realized that the late 1840s shared another major outer planet aspect with us: Uranus and Pluto were making a hard aspect as well. Today, we’re dealing with a square reaching from Aries to Capricorn across the outer limits of the zodiac. Back then, it was a conjunction in Aries. In astrology, similarities like this are no coincidence and call for deeper examination. So I decided to do a little research on this era to find out more. To give credit where a great deal of credit is due, Mike Rapport’s phenomenal work on this era, 1848: Year of Revolution (2008), served as the source for this essay. And as the title of that book would suggest, 1848 saw the onset of a major – but largely forgotten – revolution across the European continent. I hope this short essay will give you, the reader, a taste of what it was all about. (clickum to read full article by Astrogem)
Happy Birthday Mr
Peabody Hobsbawn! May you live to be 100 and receive a telegram from the King.
What? I can dream, can't I?
One does wonder about the connections between the latter half of the 19th century and the current trend of Steampunk and its influences. What is it that the
Steampunkers are actually bringing through the wayback machine ~ romancing the Industrial Revolution? How Neptune! Perhaps they are infatuated with the begoggled and dustcoated Gordon Gecko in the vanity mirror
..........“Steampunk is what happens when goths discover brown.” The fashionably vague...
Indeed, the period post-1914 is redolent with the banalities and absurdities of lapses in
evil moral agency.
Tocqueville worried that if despotism were to take root in a modern democracy, it would be a much more dangerous version than the oppression under the Roman emperors or tyrants of the past who could only exert a pernicious influence on a small group of people at a time. In contrast, a despotism under a democracy could see "a multitude of men," uniformly alike, equal, "constantly circling for petty pleasures," unaware of fellow citizens, and subject to the will of a powerful state which exerted an "immense protective power". Tocqueville compared a potentially despotic democratic government to a protective parent who wants to keep its citizens (children) as "perpetual children," and which doesn't break men's wills but rather guides it, and presides over people in the same way as a shepherd looking after a "flock of timid animals."
More Parallels
Given that the ruling class likes to remain in charge, we can assume that they have infiltrated every movement and organization on the Planet. However, even if they can see the lay of the land, they still have to gamble on what would happen if the demands of the masses are not met. Obviously, it is their intent to use every crisis to consolidate their power, i.e., offer to create a new system with even more centralized power with the promise of checks and balances. Now, we have to ask whether or not we can believe the promises made. (clickum to read full article by Ingrid Naiman)
The WABAC Machine Steampunk Tarot Deck
Where the past and future converge . . .
With a turn of the wheel and a spin of the cog, the oracular machinery
lumbers into action. The curtains slowly draw back; the time has come to reveal
your destiny.
Building a rusty metal bridge to the edge of your subconscious.....
Mind the trolls under the bridge! Trip-trap....trip-trap...trip-trap....
