[Xmca-l] Re: vygotsky's theory and symbolic interactionism

Wed Apr 2 09:49:58 PDT 2014

May I suggest that you-all emphasize your own questioning and thinking rather than mainly referring to great innovators and thinkers of the past. By concentrating on what has already been said by recognized authorities, one stays mired in the past. It is natural for intelligent, conscious beings to have their own wonderings/questions. What are yours? Do you wish to remake the world in any way? Would you like to have a peaceful planet for your grandchildren? What needs to be done in order to achieve that? How about a new perception, an updated world-view, based upon our best current knowledge of human nature? Just as many Christians look backward to Jesus to chart their course, academicians in this current corporate state tend to remain stuck in the already accepted arguments and premises established long ago. Please break free and really accomplish something useful with your wealth of knowledge rather than mostly engaging in "small talk" among your cohorts in an isolated ivory tower. We (humanity) need all the help we can get. It seems you should be able to do more than split hairs among yourselves while the real needs of the world go unaddressed. Get back to the basics and build from there, using what you really believe to be true as your navigational instruments. Think for yourselves! Be original! Be relevant! Be useful!

		Joseph Gilbert

On Apr 2, 2014, at 8:27 AM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:

> Seems like you nailed it, Robert, (and Benjamin read it there?).
> 
> The lesson I take away from this is that we are all "so-called thinkers" by
> virtue  of the fact that our consciousness is mediated through culture. The
> imagined present never precisely matches the encountered future.
> 
> In so far as there is an antidote to this characteristic of humans, so far
> as I can figure out, it is develop cultural practices that might be called
> "critical" in that they diverge from the common imaginary worlds. Having
> criticized, the preferred next step would be to test out your imagined
> world in practice in order to discover its flaws.
> 
> What do others conclude?
> mike
> 
> 
> On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 7:56 PM, Robert Lake <boblake@georgiasouthern.edu>wrote:
> 
>> See highlighted phrase below :-).
>> 
>> Marx-Engels Correspondence 1893
>> Engels to Franz Mehring Abstract
>> ------------------------------
>> 
>> Source: *Marx and Engels Correspondence*;
>> Publisher: International Publishers (1968);
>> First Published: *Gestamtausgabe*;
>> Translated: Donna Torr;
>> Transcribed: Sally
>> Ryan<http://www.marxists.org/admin/volunteers/biographies/sryan.htm>in
>> 2000;
>> HTML Markup: Sally Ryan.
>> ------------------------------
>> London, July 14, 1893
>> 
>> Today is my first opportunity to thank you for the *Lessing Legend* you
>> were kind enough to send me. I did not want to reply with a bare formal
>> acknowledgment of receipt of the book but intended at the same time to tell
>> you something about it, about its contents. Hence the delay.
>> 
>> I shall begin at the end -- the appendix on historical materialism, in which
>> you have described the main things excellently and for any unprejudiced
>> person convincingly. If I find anything to object to it is that you
>> attribute more credit to me than I deserve, even if I count in everything
>> which I might possibly have found out for myself - in time - but which Marx
>> with his more rapid *coup d'oeil* (grasp) and wider vision discovered much
>> more quickly. When one has the good fortune to work for forty years with a
>> man like Marx, one does not usually get the recognition one thinks one
>> deserves during his lifetime. Then if the greater man dies, the lesser
>> easily gets overrated, and this seems to me to be just my case at present;
>> history will set all this right in the end and by that time one will be
>> safely round the corner and know nothing more about anything.
>> 
>> Otherwise there is only one other point lacking, which, however, Marx and I
>> always failed to stress enough in our writings and in regard to which we
>> are all equally guilty. That is to say, we all laid, and *were bound to
>> lay*,
>> the main emphasis, in the first place, on the *derivation* of political,
>> juridical and other ideological notions, and of actions arising through the
>> medium of these notions, from basic economic facts. But in so doing we
>> neglected the formal side -- the ways and means by which these notions,
>> etc., come about -- for the sake of the content. This has given our
>> adversaries a welcome opportunity for misunderstandings, of which Paul
>> Barth is a striking example.
>> 
>> Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously,
>> indeed, but with a false consciousness.
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 9:24 PM, Martin John Packer
>> <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co>wrote:
>> 
>>> Wikipedia attributes the phase to Engels.
>>> 
>>> Martin
>>> 
>>> On Apr 1, 2014, at 8:13 PM, Douglas Williams <djwdoc@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Hi--
>>>> 
>>>> The term false consciousness is from Walter Benjamin in a 1930 review
>> of
>>> Siegfried Kracauer's Die Angestellten, drawing from Marx. The idea in
>> Marx
>>> is described in terms of alienation and estrangement from real objects
>> and
>>> activity.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>> https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> ________________________________
>>>> From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
>>>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>>>> Sent: Tuesday, April 1, 2014 5:14 PM
>>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: vygotsky's theory and symbolic interactionism
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Tom, so far as I know, the term "false consciousness" was invented by
>>>> feminists in the 1970s and was never used by Marx, and I don't think
>> the
>>>> concept is consistent with his ideas, as expressed in the Theses on
>>>> Feuerbach which you quoted, for example.
>>>> Andy
>>>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> *Andy Blunden*
>>>> http://home.mira.net/~andy/
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Tom Richardson wrote:
>>>>> ... In the first place, it should be noted that Marx, like Spinoza and
>>> later
>>>>> Freud, believed that most of what men consciously think is "false"
>>>>> consciousness, is ideology and rationalization; that the true
>>> mainsprings
>>>>> of man's actions are unconscious to him.
>>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 