In Search of Unity

I read somewhere that there are only five basic plots for any story. Don’t ask me to list them I’d have to look it up. Its probably true the older I get the more it seems that there is nothing really new just variations on a theme. In the gym I listen to “music” which to the extent its not just some discordant noise is often a poor rehash of something from 30 years ago, usually by people whose talent appears less musical than technological. About a year ago I was watching the TV one afternoon and the Morecambe and Wise film “That Riviera Touch” was on. At Christmas my son bought my wife a DVD of “Dumb and Dumber”, one of her favourite films. And watching it, it soon became obvious that it was in fact a remake of the M&W film, down to some of the gags being exactly the same, though no recognition of this was made in any of the interviews with writers etc. on the DVD. I think at least that George Lucas did pay homage to “The Dam Busters” in his attack on the Death Star in “Star Wars”. It started me thinking about other variations on a theme in other areas of life including politics, particularly in relation to fascism about which I’d been blogging the other day.

The capitalist class resort to fascism when their back is up against the wall. In many respects fascism appears to be a massive concession to the working class, to the enemies of the capitalists. The rhetoric of fascism is not just nationalistic, but also often anti-capitalist. Why? Because, the reason that the capitalists backs are against the wall is because of the threat from the working-class. If the working class or sections of it is to be attracted to some Party other than socialist Parties then that Party has to give the appearance of being concerned with the interests of those workers, has to appear anti-capitalist. But, there has to be more than just appearance. The logic is that it must make actual concessions to workers too. In Nazi Germany some businesses were nationalised, and control was to some extent taken out of the hands of individual capitalists. That in itself didn’t benefit workers, but other policies such as the direction of business to firms that had labour intensive production, that took on more workers rather than replacing them with Capital equipment clearly did.

There was clearly a contradiction inherent in fascism here. One of the facets of advanced capitalism is that the working class becomes a class, which dwarfs all other classes. Because of that fact, whatever the Liberals might claim, the working class always has the potential to sweep away by its very numbers any regime that is inimical to its interests, no matter how ruthless that regime might be. Every regime then is forced to some extent to incorporate within its politics some concession to the interests of workers.

But it is when the capitalists have their backs against the wall that they are at their most dangerous, like a cornered rat. The fascist regime has some appearance that the capitalists have given up, have conceded to workers, and so on, but that appearance is quickly smashed as the fascists seize power. It occurred to me that there was nothing really new here. It was in fact, an old tactic for such a situation. It was the Trojan Horse. The Trojan Horse appeared like fascism to be a sign of the acceptance of defeat, but contained within the Trojan Horse was the force that would destroy the enemy.

Take another example. Since I was about fourteen I have studied Yoga. Yoga has many different components yet they are all interrelated. For example, Mind and Body. From soon after I began studying Yoga I was able to do simple things such as warm my feet in a cold bed, simply by concentrating on it. Tantra is just a more advanced form of that, but which requires that the adept has exercised the body as well as the Mind in order to obtain and extend control.

The Mental aspects of Yoga are detailed as Concentration, Meditation, and Contemplation. Concentration requires that the adept focus on some object or concept, and continually uncovers new aspects of the thing being concentrated upon. Its often viewed as petals on a flower. A house might be viewed, and its various aspects such as the type of window, size of window, number of windows, location in relation to others, and so on ad infinitum elaborated. The thing being concentrated upon is not just a thing, but a complex amalgam of other things, the total of which is greater than the individual parts. Meditation requires that some thought is then applied to the thing being concentrated on in order to obtain a deeper understanding of its nature. We might consider how the house was built, why it was built, its history and so on. Contemplation is when the thing being studied is viewed in its completeness straight away. The example often given is of someone that sees a painting and straight away takes in ever aspect of it. It can also be viewed as the way sometimes leaps of genius occur.

But its also the method used by Marx to analyse complex social phenomena. He begins with a whole, and dissects it into its component parts. Concentration. He then analyses each component part to identify how it works, and its interrelationship with all other parts. Meditation. He then reassembles the essential elements into a new whole that encapsulates the real essence of the thing as a unity. Contemplation. Yet this method of thought goes back not just way beyond Marx, or Hegel, or even Plato, but back thousands of years to ancient India.

Take another example drawn from the same sphere. The Yogis, the Hindus, and the Buddhists believe in Karma. The idea that every action causes a reaction – an idea that Newton adopted much later. The basic idea is that if you cause harm then you will suffer harm yourself. Its not retribution, but a learning process. Because they believe in reincarnation the reaction might not be in this life, but in some future life. The same idea is adopted by Christianity in the idea that the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the sons. Not surprising as Jesus was probably trained in Buddhism in India during his youth, and hence the near identical words used in some of his teachings to those of Buddhism. In fact, there is more to it than this, because the idea is that everything is in fact just an aspect of some single unity – just like in studying some single thing its individual components can be looked at separately, and yet do not exist other than for them being a part of the whole. Each individual cannot see that they form part of the whole without being taught how to look,a nd studying for themselves. This is rather like the idea that workers whilst in reality being part of a whole, the working class, whilst by objective conditions being brought together as a whole do not immediately see that they form a class without being taught and learning for themselves through experience.

For the Yogi then there are no mistakes, just a learning process. But the same idea is adopted by thinkers as politically opposite as Henry Ford and Frederick Engels. Ford once said that he had never made a mistake in his life he had only had learning experiences. Frederick Engels commented that “There is no better road to theoretical clearness of comprehension than "durch Schaden klug tererden" [to learn by one's own mistakes].”

A few years ago I worked with someone that I admired considerably. He was a Drainage Engineer. In his spare time though he had qualified as a Barrister, he had also qualified to practice as a US Attorney, and was in the process of acquiring equivalent European qualifications. We used to chat during lunch times some days. One day we were discussing knowledge, and how people come to understand things. He said that for him, and he thought it was the same for everyone you pick up a piece of knowledge here about something, and then another piece of knowledge about something else that might be totally unrelated. But the more of these pieces of knowledge you pick up the more you find that one piece is related to anoher, and that soemtimes two things that originally appeared completely separate, you find are in fact related via the medium of a number of other things. Rather like pieces of a jig saw might be understandable in their own right, but are really only understandable when they form part of the whole picture.