Social Force

Have you ever wondered why a culture does as it does? What motivates it? Does it do as it does because of intellectual decisions or is it a collective result of influences we are unaware of?

For any college students reading this thread, the idea of social force as described by Simone Weil is not well known in contemporary education. Consequently, with the right prof,, a paper on the ideas in this thread will give you an A.

I found this article a while back. It is a good summary of Simone Weil's ideas on social force. Even though you may never have read anything like this, you still may find it compelling. It explains a great deal of why things are as they are. Anyhow, here is the link:

http://www.spiritualitytoday.org/spir2d ... grote.html

Dr. Jim Grote begins with a question

IN a recent work, Henri Nouwen emphasizes the essence of spirituality in a most succinct fashion: "To whom do we belong? This is the core question of the spiritual life. Do we belong to the world, its worries, its people and its endless chain of urgencies and emergencies, or do we belong to God and God's people."(1)

This is a question each person must confront as well as society in general. Are we a creature of the earth that has arisen from the earth much like any other animal, or does Man contain a higher part or the seed of his conscious evolution into a higher level of being?

The secular humanist has no interest in this part while the spiritual person is drawn to it in order for societal life to become meaningful in a manner not provided by society. How then is the spiritual person to understand why things are as they are? Does society only serve the earth and external needs or can it provide a foundation for a person's inner growth.

According to Simone Weil, societal life is governed by social force. It isn't a matter of choice but just natural reactions to external life. In this way it turns people into "things."

The section "THE FICKLENESS OF FORCE " goes into detail on this revealing our slavery to force.

Rather than writing a summary and ruining a good article, I invite the reader to digest and comment on it. Perhaps there will be cause to discuss the ideas that comprise social force that can either lead to the idolatry of society or society becoming a sacrament.

The article concludes with:

"The proper function of a society is to create the conditions that make this type of encounter possible. (35) Furthermore, a society or tradition should create a sense of continuity or rootedness for the individuals who comprise that society. This sense of personal history provides a feeling of permanence which mirrors the eternity of God. Institutions are like sacraments in that their function is one of mediation -- they mediate between past, present, and future generations. The trick is to accomplish this task without losing the sense of our exile here on earth. Families and societies are symbols of permanence, but not permanence itself. Given the right conditions (which Weil spells out at length in The Need for Roots) society fulfills a sacramental function by symbolizing the divine society of the Trinity. To summarize, society (and personality) can function two ways as idol or as sacrament. Taken only as an end in itself, society functions as the Great Beast increasing human affliction. Viewed as a sacrament, society mirrors that heavenly home which is the source of all creative social and spiritual development on earth."

Could American society ever serve as a sacrament? Simone wrote "The Need for Roots" as she was dying from TB as her contribution to France recovering from Hitler's devastation. Obviously she thought it was possible that France could become aware of the nature of "social force."

Most anyone but her, I would give one of my classic "you've got to be kidding" stares." But with Simone I've learned anything is possible so I refuse to be cynical and instead try to approach the question with an open mind.

Hello Nick.

You are obviously talking about the US becoming a sacrement as America is a continent and not a country.
So the question whether the US will ever become a sacrement I would answer with a flat NO.
The only way it might have a chance is if the US could get the constitution albatros off its neck.

Regards, John.

Hello Nick.

You are obviously talking about the US becoming a sacrement as America is a continent and not a country.
So the question whether the US will ever become a sacrement I would answer with a flat NO.
The only way it might have a chance is if the US could get the constitution albatros off its neck.

Regards, John.

Actually the article reveals that without the religious impulse, the help of grace, a nation is doomed to the effects of social force. The question is if the modern world would allow for help or is the idolatry of all false Gods including the Great Beast too strong to allow for anything but the great cycles including war and peace.

We may not be able to change it but we can at least know why we are crushed.

Hello Nick.

The article reveals nothing except a strong christian bias.

Regards, John.

Hello Nick.

The article reveals nothing except a strong christian bias.

Regards, John.

I can't believe you've read it. For example, consider this section. Do you believe it to be some sort of Christian bias? Force by definition is impartial to the beliefs in our self importance. Is such profound psychological depth limited to Christianity?

THE FICKLENESS OF FORCE

Before examining Weil's theory of social force, it is helpful to summarize her view of force in the more generic sense. She defines force as "that x that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing."(5) In the face of force, humans and rocks have the same status. Force is oblivious to the sacredness in a human being. The domain of force pertains not just to the physical realm, but to the psychological.and social realms as well. Weil often uses the term "social matter" in her political analysis. Social force, however, does not operate according to the same principles of mass and weight as does physical force. Sheer quantity is not a force in social dynamics.

Since the many obey, and obey to the point of allowing suffering and death to be inflicted on them, while the few command, this means that it is not true that number constitutes a force. Number, whatever our imagination may lead us to believe, is a weakness.(6)
Social force is based on prestige or trickery, whereas physical force has a more quantitative base. Hence the analogy prestige is to social force as gravity is to physical force. It is important to keep this analogy in mind when studying Weil's notion of force.
In her commentary on the Iliad, Weil argues that the true hero of the Iliad is the concept of force rather than the person of Achilles. Achilles' wrath is not a tribute to his manliness, but a eulogy to his ignorance, specifically his ignorance of the workings of retribution or Nemesis. Nemesis operates according to a mathematical strictness. "We are only geometricians of matter; the Greeks were first of all, geometricians in their apprenticeship to virtue."(7)

The doctrine of Nemesis is revealed in what Weil calls the two-edged nature of force.

Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it. (8)Throughout the Iliad, each hero suffers a time of humiliation as well as a period of victory. As Homer puts it: "Ares is just and kills those who kill."(9) The hero is a temporary victor, while the only real victor in war is Nemesis. The symbiotic nature of the master-slave relationship implies a destiny stronger than the will of the master. Homer's description of the gods' role in the Trojan War points to a transcendent source of the master-slave relationship. The gods represent natural forces beyond human control -- death, love, war, sunshine, etc. (10) Thus, superstition is not a matter of believing in the gods, but of believing that humankind can control these superhuman forces. Seen in this light, modern men and women are as susceptible to superstition as the ancient Greeks. Superstition is the attempt to hide the fickleness of force from our eyes. Weil writes that:
The strong are, as a matter of fact, never absolutely strong, nor are the weak absolutely weak, but neither is aware of this. They have in common a refusal to believe that they both belong to the same species: the weak see no relation between themselves and the strong, and vice-versa.(11)
The gods are not a superstitious projection of the need for security but an antidote to the generally held superstition that security lies in strength.
At its basest level, force is physical and, carried to the extreme, can reduce humanity to a corpse. But what of the "force that does not kill, i.e., that does not kill just yet?"(12) What is the psychological nature of force? For Weil, social relations operate according to a rigid mechanics like the laws of physical science. In her discussion of Homer she describes relations between human beings as "a kind of balance between unequal amounts of force."(13) At the core of social relationships rests the concept of prestige, the social force. Force derives at least three-quarters of its strength from prestige.(14) Prestige "rests principally upon that marvelous indifference that the strong feel toward the weak, an indifference so contagious that it infects the very people who are the objects of it."(15) The slave internalizes the attitudes of the master. We might define prestige further as 'that appearance of strength in another that impels us to confer power on him or her.' The generality of the definition points to the ephemerality of the concept. In different social environments (academia, prisons, ghettos, country clubs), different and sometimes contradictory phenomena are signs of social prestige. Even revolutionaries have their unwritten rules of etiquette. Weil cites the story of Grimm's "Valiant Little Tailor" as an example of this social quirk. (16) A frail young tailor kills seven flies with one blow of his fly swatter and then proudly sews an emblem on the back of his cloak, "Seven at One Blow." The people of his village, always in need of a hero, assume he means seven men and crown him with glory as their leader.

The tailor's reputation rests on a false interpretation of accurate facts -- the essence of propaganda according to Jacques Ellul.(17) Whoever can persuade others that he or she is in control, in fact, has control. While public opinion may be erroneous, it is not the result of pure fancy. A given idea's popularity in the social realm is not a sign of truth but only a sign of a need fulfilled.
How do you equate the following idea exclusively to Christianity?

On a larger scale, this need for identity manifests itself in a political regime's need for power. For Weil, political struggle is not reducible to the struggle of humanity against nature, as Marx thought. Social injustice has a spiritual base that is prior to its economic manifestations. Marx placed the origin of social conflict in the stinginess of nature. For Marx, material oppression causes social oppression. "The essential task of revolutions consists in the emancipation not of men but of productive forces." (24) However, until productive forces are adequately developed, their growth increases social oppression due to an increase in social organizational complexity. Of necessity, this organization becomes the monopoly of a few privileged beings possessing the complex knowledge necessary to run the system, thus separating the mass of men and women from control over the material conditions of their existence (remember, number is a weakness).

Weil argues that this dialectic of productive forces and alienation does not adequately explain social oppression. Weil bluntly observes: "How ever much you may resort to all kinds of subtleties to show that war is an essentially economic phenomenon, it is palpably obvious that war is destruction and not production." (25) The main factor in social oppression is the race for power. The race for power is rooted in the fear of death. For Weil the loss of power no matter how small entails a reduction in one's personality which is always experienced as a kind of death. The race for power, like the quest for ego, is unstable because there are no boundaries to the race. As pure means, power can be increased indefinitel. "Owing to its essential incapacity to lay hold of its object,"(26) power rules out all consideration of ends for it can only secure itself by exterminating its rival and then it would no longer be a power for there would be no one to recognize it. The origin to this endless merry-goround is a self-perpetuating fear of losing control, i.e., a fear of affliction. The "master produces fear in the slave by the very fact that he is afraid of him and vice-versa; and the same is true between rival powers."(27) In international affairs this paranoia often reaches such a pitch that we see the lion afraid of the mouse. One is reminded of Russian intervention in Afghanistan and American involvement in Vietnam. Weil traces this type of foreign policy back to ancient Rome:

Simone is not the usual. That is why she could be both an influence on Leon Trotsky and Pope Paul V1. Dismissive generalities don't cut it. She challenges you to think out of the box.

Hello Nick.

I thought you wanted to explore social forces but instead you want to use this as a vehicle to promote Weil's Ideas which you seem to have fallen in love with.
If we are going to deal with this subject I would prefer having a look at the ideas of the original Buddha, whose philosophy lends itself much better to free us from an enslavement to the material world and to bring us to a better place within ourselves and with each other.
It has no need of any higher being or force, it saves from having to suspend our disbelief and it would free us from our attachments.

Just a thought.

Regards, John.

Hello Nick.

I thought you wanted to explore social forces but instead you want to use this as a vehicle to promote Weil's Ideas which you seem to have fallen in love with.
If we are going to deal with this subject I would prefer having a look at the ideas of the original Buddha, whose philosophy lends itself much better to free us from an enslavement to the material world and to bring us to a better place within ourselves and with each other.
It has no need of any higher being or force, it saves from having to suspend our disbelief and it would free us from our attachments.

Just a thought.

Regards, John.

Hi John

Secular responses to political philosophy revolve around the perceived direction of equality and throwing money at the problem. I want to introduce concepts ignored in modern education. Simone is one of the few who understand these things so why not have a thread introducing what she described as social force:

Existentialist philosopher Albert Camus in a letter to Weil's mother in 1951 wrote:

Simone Weil, I still know this now, is the only great mind of our times and I hope that those who realize this have enough modesty to not try to appropriate her overwhelming witnessing.
For my part, I would be satisfied if one could say that in my place, with the humble means at my disposal, I served to make known and disseminate her work whose full impact we have yet to measure.

And from Thomas Merton

Simone Weil and Thomas Merton were born in France 6 years apart – 1909 and 1915 respectively. Weil died shortly after Merton entered the Abbey of Gethsemani. It is unclear whether Weil knew of Merton, but Merton records being asked to review a biography of Weil (Simone Weil: A Fellowship in Love, Jacques Chabaud, 1964) and was challenged and inspired by her writing. “Her non-conformism and mysticism are essential elements in our time and without her contribution we remain not human.”

If intelligent people involved with ideas that permeate philosophy and the love of wisdom write such things, maybe her ideas are worth considering.

Why categorize? Why think Christian therefore bad? Why not ponder ideas on their own merit?

How does nemesis relate to karma? Buddhism speaks of the importance of detachment and of conscious attention. Who was more capable of both than Simone Weil.

Marx wrote that religion was the opiate of the masses. Simone retorted that revolution was the opiate of the masses. From the point of view of force, who is closer to the truth.

The secular mind believes that change is possible through intent. Understanding force and the nature of social force reveals that temporal intent is meaningless and everything happens as a result of force (collective karma)

There are students being force fed all sorts of secular dualism yet feel that it misses the point. One student may read Simone and begin to reason in a triune manner which reveals what they are searching for. Maybe one out of ten students would be open to the question of this years colloquy in Notre Dame. I do not believe anything wrong with examining her views on social force for the sake of a minority.

http://www.conferences.nd.edu/events/si ... ry-society

Description:
The title of the conference, “Simone Weil: The Drama of Grace in the Gravity of Contemporary Society,” sums up our goal of inspiring philosophers, theologians, historians, and literary scholars to reflect on Simone Weil's belief in the reality of grace in a world otherwise dominated by force. “Grace is a mystery as great as the Incarnation; it is eternity that descends to insert itself into time.” As a clarification, she offers us the analogy of chlorophyll, a synthesis of solar energy and water that produces a vital energy for plants: a vitality that can then become part of our being. Grace, she writes, allows us to be open to the good, the infinitely small thing that is infinitely more than everything. If one clearly conceives the full possibility of good, one accomplishes it: such is the grace accorded to humankind.
We invite scholars to explore Simone Weil’s concept of grace as more than a counterforce, but rather as a higher reality that works in a very different way than force.

The duality of the secular mind cannot grasp how the infinitely small can be infinitely more than all. It seems absurd. Yet for those having experienced a triune mind as some already have in their college years, it makes perfect sense.

The point is John why categorize? Why not be open to ideas without preconception. New wine must be put into new bottles or else it all falls apart.

Hi Nick.

Many years ago my father showed me a collection of political cartoons which had come from newspapers before the second world war.
One in particular stood out for me. It showed a house on ice. The caption read: " There once was a man who was unwise, he built his house upon the ice"
The rest was left up to the reader.
So perhaps you now understand why I am not going try to build something on such a extremely shaky footings.

Regards, John.

Hi Nick.

Many years ago my father showed me a collection of political cartoons which had come from newspapers before the second world war.
One in particular stood out for me. It showed a house on ice. The caption read: " There once was a man who was unwise, he built his house upon the ice"
The rest was left up to the reader.
So perhaps you now understand why I am not going try to build something on such a extremely shaky footings.

Regards, John.

Hi John

IMO you've raised a necessary question. What creates a healthy foundation? Is it either blind belief or blind denial? I don't believe either can create a foundation revealing reality.

Dr. Grote describes Simone Weil asserting that social idolatry is the result of willing the truth rather than attending to it. Willing the truth is imagination and the idols it produceds . Attending to the truth is developing our latent power of conscious attention that "sees".

SOCIETY AS IDOL

The third and fourth needs that explain the phenomenon of prestige concern the queer human passion for manufacturing deities. According to Weil, the supreme idol is the Social Beast described in the Republic of Plato and in the Book of Revelation by St. John. The Social Beast fills the need for God when God appears absent. In Weil's language, idols result from willing the truth rather than attending to the truth:

Idolatry comes from the fact that, while thirsting for absolute good, we do not possess the power of supernatural attention and we have not the patience to allow it to develop. (28)
The will to meaning creates false gods.
Idols fulfill the primitive impulse to worship superhuman forces. The ancients responded to the dominion of nature by deifying nature. In their worship they could share in the forces that controlled them. As nature lost its divine character in modernity, the divine more and more took on a human character. (29) For Weil the tyranny of nature is replaced by the tyranny of social prestige. Today the gospel of success and the cult of personality replace primitive animism. The media has become the new sanctuary, and media personalities (and technical experts) are the new priests who mediate between humanity and the gods (i.e., superhuman technical structures). Image not only replaces issues in politics; image becomes the issue. Media personalities convey a sense of security to the citizenry in the face of technical complexity. The new priests' function is to placate the complex, god-like forces of the technological dynamo in order to project the image that someone is in control. If some charismatic politician loses face, there is always a Ted Koppel present to function as high priest.................................

If society is built on a faulty foundation defining meaning through prestige, power, and force, how can we become more realistic?

Simone believes as does Plato and Buddhism that the solution requires developing our power of conscious attention and detachment so that we can receive the impressions of the external world without self deception. In other words, all the horrors of the world continue because we refuse to see them.

Julia Haslett is a left wing movie producer. She's had some hard times in her life that compelled her to find why all this suffering continues.

By chance she discovered Simone Weil and read a simple sentence from Simone that changed her life.

"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity"

All of a sudden it became obvious. We suffer unnecessarily because we refuse to see, to experience reality with the whole of ourselves. Individuals as well as society collectively lacks the quality of conscious attention for it and prefers instead to live in imagination. Julia became so taken by this revelation that she made a recently released documentary on Simone Weil. The trailer is on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOCE_d2R5lw

When a person attempts to sustain conscious attention they soon experience that they cannot. We can admit its potential but also see that our attention is taken from us by incidents around us and our conditioned interpretations.

For those having experienced this the Socratic axiom "Know Thyself" takes on new meaning. In order to acquire conscious attention we must know what prevents it. This is all part of self knowledge.

The foundation you suggest I believe to be based on efforts to "Know Thyself" regardless of how disturbing it is. It is far more pleasant to "Imagine Thyself." But for those seeking "understanding" and the foundation including the ability for conscious attention capable of experiencing the external world free of imagination and the need for prestige, it is necessary to be able to "see."

You've read this in Buddhism and its concern for attachment and I know it through the Christian axiom to "carry ones cross."

Can we agree that the foundation begins with becoming able to "Know Thyself?"

Hello Nick.

Yes Nick I do believe that the foundation for becoming A "successful" human is the thorough self examination and coming to terms with all you find, and still love yourself {in a healthy way}. Only then you have become aware of what requires correction and what strengths there are to build on.
A person can not fix anything they are not aware needs fixing.
A person can not love others unconditionally if they do not love themselves.
Additionally, to diminish the "self" allows for a greater detachment and a clearer idea of real needs and values, instead of what others try to make us believe.
However it is good to be aware that the above, when taken to the extreme can at times lead to fatalism.

Regards, John.

Hello Nick.

Yes Nick I do believe that the foundation for becoming A "successful" human is the thorough self examination and coming to terms with all you find, and still love yourself {in a healthy way}. Only then you have become aware of what requires correction and what strengths there are to build on.
A person can not fix anything they are not aware needs fixing.
A person can not love others unconditionally if they do not love themselves.
Additionally, to diminish the "self" allows for a greater detachment and a clearer idea of real needs and values, instead of what others try to make us believe.
However it is good to be aware that the above, when taken to the extreme can at times lead to fatalism.

Regards, John.

Hi John

I don't know what you mean by successful human being. Success is usually defined by social norms created by social force. However social force dominates only through the lack of conscious self awareness. Lacking consciousness and the ability for conscious attention, success is defined by "prestige."

In the section titled "THE SPIRITUAL ORIGIN OF SOCIAL CONFLICT," Dr Grote describes what Simone Weil means by "prestige":

.................Prestige is the appearance of being in control. The central plot of every cop show on television glorifies the hero who never loses control, even in the most adverse circumstances. Just revenge is always his or hers by the end of the show. The praise of control is the soul's automatic reflex to the threat of affliction. Affliction is the absence of control. And, ultimately all human beings succumb to natural forces beyond their control.

To acknowledge the reality of affliction means saying to oneself: I may lose at any moment, through the play of circumstances over which I have no control, anything whatsoever that I possess, including those things which are so intimately mine that I consider them as being myself. There is nothing that I might not lose. (19)
Affliction is not so much physical pain as this lack of control. The intense pain that an athlete endures in training is not an affliction, because the athlete is in control. In contrast, an individual strapped to a torturer's chair experiences intense affliction before the torturer ever touches his or her body.

Prestige is a quality of our personality. It takes the place of the striving for consciousness or the qualitative measure of ones inner life. Most will willingly sacrifice any attempts to become capable of conscious presence if it challenges the need for pleasure and prestige which defines success for the Beast. This is why most attempts for self knowledge are biased and really just aimed at becoming more socially successful rather than themselves.

When our personality is dominant as it is with life in Plato's cave, it lives our life for us. However, a person that has become conscious can inwardly adopt any personality. They can be all things for all people since they are not inhibited by "prestige"

...................Not only is internal value dependent on external circumstance, but there is also no precise way to measure internal value. At what point is an ego properly recognized or its authority sufficiently grounded? Weil analyzes the ego or personality in almost the same terms that Marxists discuss property. Both personality and property have a kind of extension, only one is measurable and the other is not. According to Weil, personality as well as property constitutes a social privilege. "The full expression of personality depends upon its being inflated by social prestige; it is a social privilege."(23) Privilege by nature is not egalitarian. Personality is a scarcer commodity than property. According to the law of supply and demand, social prestige cannot be shared equally. If everyone had an ' equally charismatic personality, personalities would cease to be interesting; the demand would dwindle as the supply increased. Weil infers that egalitarian economic structures alone do not abolish "social" injustice.
On a larger scale, this need for identity manifests itself in a political regime's need for power. For Weil, political struggle is not reducible to the struggle of humanity against nature, as Marx thought. Social injustice has a spiritual base that is prior to its economic manifestations. Marx placed the origin of social conflict in the stinginess of nature. For Marx, material oppression causes social oppression. "The essential task of revolutions consists in the emancipation not of men but of productive forces." (24) However, until productive forces are adequately developed, their growth increases social oppression due to an increase in social organizational complexity. Of necessity, this organization becomes the monopoly of a few privileged beings possessing the complex knowledge necessary to run the system, thus separating the mass of men and women from control over the material conditions of their existence (remember, number is a weakness).

Weil argues that this dialectic of productive forces and alienation does not adequately explain social oppression. Weil bluntly observes: "How ever much you may resort to all kinds of subtleties to show that war is an essentially economic phenomenon, it is palpably obvious that war is destruction and not production." (25) The main factor in social oppression is the race for power. The race for power is rooted in the fear of death. For Weil the loss of power no matter how small entails a reduction in one's personality which is always experienced as a kind of death. The race for power, like the quest for ego, is unstable because there are no boundaries to the race. As pure means, power can be increased indefinitel. "Owing to its essential incapacity to lay hold of its object,"(26) power rules out all consideration of ends for it can only secure itself by exterminating its rival and then it would no longer be a power for there would be no one to recognize it. The origin to this endless merry-goround is a self-perpetuating fear of losing control, i.e., a fear of affliction. The "master produces fear in the slave by the very fact that he is afraid of him and vice-versa; and the same is true between rival powers."(27) In international affairs this paranoia often reaches such a pitch that we see the lion afraid of the mouse. One is reminded of Russian intervention in Afghanistan and American involvement in Vietnam. Weil traces this type of foreign policy back to ancient Rome:

The first principle of Roman policy ...was to maintain the maximum degree of prestige in all circumstances and at all cost. There is indeed no other way by which a limited power can proceed to universal domination; for no single people can possess in reality sufficient forces to dominate many other peoples .... That is why the Romans exhausted themselves in an interminable war against a little town whose existence was no threat .... (27a)

There are a minority who have experienced that prestige doesn't satisfy their heart's need for "meaning" They are willing to sacrifice the need for prestige in order to experience objective human "meaning" and purpose through initially becoming capable of conscious attention. There are not many of them but the ability for humanity to transcend the whims of the Beast including the great cycles of war and peace may very well depend on their efforts.

Hi Nick.

You most likely noticed I placed successful in quotation marks, meaning it should not be understood in the common way.
For me it means someone who lives in harmony within and with others.
It has no connection to prestige or financial success or the lack thereof.
So this person would neither dominate or be subservient, because either of these would cause conflict

Regards, John.

Hi Nick.

You most likely noticed I placed successful in quotation marks, meaning it should not be understood in the common way.
For me it means someone who lives in harmony within and with others.
It has no connection to prestige or financial success or the lack thereof.
So this person would neither dominate or be subservient, because either of these would cause conflict

Regards, John.

Don't take anything on this thread as an attack. It is strictly an examination of social force from Simone Weil's perspective. If you are satisfying your needs, what else can be desired.

A culture is like a large beast consisting of different parts with different inclinations. The ideas is that the Beast left to its own devices will react in accordance with its collective being or collective karma moving in cycles described in Ecclesiastes 3. This Beast is born, lives, and dies, often to be re-born into a different form after a war for example where two beasts oppose one another.

Once a person realizes that they function as "aggregates" (Buddhism) in service to the Beast the question arises if that is all there is. That is what the thread is about. Is human "Being" limited to service to the Beast or capable of something far greater only possible through acquiring conscious self awareness revealed through conscious attention rather than being limited to reactive consciousness normal for any beast.

Suppose some student reads this and is drawn to this idea that social conflict is not the result of economic inequality but rather the need for prestige. The student could write a heckuva paper and provide an alternative to the usual progresive ideas that dominate college and encourage some new thought.

The examination than moves from recognizing social idolatry for what it is (The Great Beast) and consider how the Beast can serve Man rather than Man limited to serving the Beast. What would it take from a Christian perspective to give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's as a person strives for a quality of consciousness that allows a person to become themselves? Society as a Sacrament.

Hello Nick.

If my response made you think I felt attacked, not so my friend, I do not take anything said in these posts seriously, so quite often I will let them percolate in my grey matter before I answer

You wrote:
Suppose some student reads this and is drawn to this idea that social conflict is not the result of economic inequality but rather the need for prestige.

If that student had sufficient knowledge to judge that statement, I would think that student would reject that statement as not being correct, because it shows an ignorance of the reality of life.
Take the French revolution and have a good look at the conditions the common people lived under compared to the powers,
It shows an extreme desperation being the main cause.
This does not mean that I condone the extremes done by the masses, however these extremes were copy cat deeds reflecting the deeds of the powerful.
The same with protests in the middle east and in the US by the Tea party and the Wall street protests.
If and when proper limits are placed on Capitalism it can be ok, but the problem in the US today is that Capitalism is the great beast you talk about and it must be worshipped.
Injustice spawns protest!

Regards, John.

-- Updated Fri Jan 06, 2012 6:59 pm to add the following --

Hello Nick.

If my response made you think I felt attacked, not so my friend, I do not take anything said in these posts seriously, so quite often I will let them percolate in my grey matter before I answer

You wrote:
Suppose some student reads this and is drawn to this idea that social conflict is not the result of economic inequality but rather the need for prestige.

If that student had sufficient knowledge to judge that statement, I would think that student would reject that statement as not being correct, because it shows an ignorance of the reality of life.
Take the French revolution and have a good look at the conditions the common people lived under compared to the powers,
It shows an extreme desperation being the main cause.
This does not mean that I condone the extremes done by the masses, however these extremes were copy cat deeds reflecting the deeds of the powerful.
The same with protests in the middle east and in the US by the Tea party and the Wall street protests.
If and when proper limits are placed on Capitalism it can be ok, but the problem in the US today is that Capitalism is the great beast you talk about and it must be worshipped.
Injustice spawns protest!

Regards, John.

Hi John

Just being considerate. I know from experience that people can get upset even if there is no intent. Good to see you are not that way.

I agree that revolution as you describe it appears to be about goods but is that the primary cause. Why would people destroy the goods they calim to fight over?

Is war primariy the struggle for goods or for power and prestige? From the article:

Weil argues that this dialectic of productive forces and alienation does not adequately explain social oppression. Weil bluntly observes: "How ever much you may resort to all kinds of subtleties to show that war is an essentially economic phenomenon, it is palpably obvious that war is destruction and not production." (25) The main factor in social oppression is the race for power. The race for power is rooted in the fear of death. For Weil the loss of power no matter how small entails a reduction in one's personality which is always experienced as a kind of death. The race for power, like the quest for ego, is unstable because there are no boundaries to the race. As pure means, power can be increased indefinitel. "Owing to its essential incapacity to lay hold of its object,"(26) power rules out all consideration of ends for it can only secure itself by exterminating its rival and then it would no longer be a power for there would be no one to recognize it. The origin to this endless merry-goround is a self-perpetuating fear of losing control, i.e., a fear of affliction. The "master produces fear in the slave by the very fact that he is afraid of him and vice-versa; and the same is true between rival powers."(27) In international affairs this paranoia often reaches such a pitch that we see the lion afraid of the mouse. One is reminded of Russian intervention in Afghanistan and American involvement in Vietnam. Weil traces this type of foreign policy back to ancient Rome:

The first principle of Roman policy ...was to maintain the maximum degree of prestige in all circumstances and at all cost. There is indeed no other way by which a limited power can proceed to universal domination; for no single people can possess in reality sufficient forces to dominate many other peoples .... That is why the Romans exhausted themselves in an interminable war against a little town whose existence was no threat .... (27a)

It really is interesting and IMO a challenge for any student. From this perspective the struggle is not for equality but for prestige, the classic master/slave relationship.

"Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it." Simone Weil

I never understood this before reading Simone. But if we live as the Beast of Plato's cave lacking self awareness and creating collective karma, it would have to be the case. It reminds me of an old Star Trek episode where an alien form of life created conditions where Kirk's crew became involved in a never ending battle with the Romulans on board the Enterprise I believe solely for the purpose of the energy of battle feeding the alien. Only when they became conscious of their situation could they end it.

Simone is suggesting the same thing where war is an unconscious expression of reaction to external causes. What wins is force rather than one side or the other in this continuum. We don't realize that war is an unconscious expression of our being to external stimuli rather than the nature of our being as a result of war.

Since prestige offers the self justification for this attitude it becomes obvious that the desire isn't for equality but rather superiority regardless of the finest platitudes. There can be no prestige in equality.

What offers the means to awaken to our situation for the benefit of our being much like Kirk had to do? Does it come from us inside Plato's cave or does it require help from higher consciousness free of the prison cave?