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TIME TO CELEBRATE MAN'S MIND |
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 JG writes "On Labor Day, We Should Honor Man's Mind, Not Men's Muscles, as the
Real Source of Wealth and Progress
By Fredric Hamber
It is fitting that the most productive nation on earth should have a
holiday to honor its work. The high standard of living that Americans
enjoy is hard-earned and well-deserved. But the term "Labor Day" is a
misnomer. What we should celebrate is not sweat and toil, but the
power of man's mind to reason, invent and create.
Several centuries ago, providing the basic necessities for one's
survival was a matter of daily drudgery for most people. But
Americans today enjoy conveniences undreamed of by medieval kings.
Every day brings some new useful household gadget, or a new software
system to increase our productivity, or a breakthrough in biotechnology.
So, it is worth asking: Why do Americans have no unique holiday to
celebrate the creators, inventors, and entrepreneurs who have made all
of this wealth possible--the men of the mind?
The answer lies in the dominant intellectual view of the nature of
work. Most of today's intellectuals, influenced by several
generations of Marxist political philosophy, still believe that wealth
is created by sheer physical toil. But the high standard of living we
enjoy today is not due to our musculature and physical stamina. Many
animals have been much stronger. We owe our relative affluence not to
muscle power, but to brain power.
Brain power is given a left-handed acknowledgement in today's
fashionable aphorism that we are living in an "information age" in
which education and knowledge are the keys to economic success. The
implication of this idea, however, is that prior to the invention of
the silicon chip, humans were able to flourish as brainless
automatons.
The importance of knowledge to progress is not some recent trend, but
a metaphysical fact of human nature. Man's mind is his tool of
survival and the source of every advance in material well-being
throughout history, from the harnessing of fire, to the invention of
the plough, to the discovery of electricity, to the invention of the
latest anti-cancer drug.
Contrary to the Marxist premise that wealth is created by laborers and
"exploited" by those at the top of the pyramid of ability, it is those
at the top, the best and the brightest, who increase the value of the
labor of those at the bottom. Under capitalism, even a man who has
nothing to trade but physical labor gains a huge advantage by
leveraging the fruits of minds more creative than his. The labor of a
construction worker, for example, is made more productive and valuable
by the inventors of the jackhammer and the steam shovel, and by the
farsighted entrepreneurs who market and sell such tools to his
employer. The work of an office clerk, as another example, is made
more efficient by the men who invented copiers and fax machines. By
applying human ingenuity to serve men's needs, the result is that
physical labor is made less laborious and more productive.
An apt symbol of the theory that sweat and muscle are the creators of
economic value can be seen in those Soviet-era propaganda posters
depicting man as a mindless muscular robot with an expressionless,
cookie-cutter face. In practice, that theory led to chronic famines
in a society unable to produce even the most basic necessities.
A culture thrives to the extent that it is governed by reason and
science, and stagnates to the extent that it is governed by brute
force. But the importance of the mind in human progress has been
evaded by most of this century's intellectuals. Observe, for example,
George Orwell's novel 1984, which depicts a totalitarian state that
still, somehow, is a fully advanced technological society. Orwell
projects the impossible: technology without the minds to produce it.
The best and brightest minds are always the first to either flee a
dictatorship in a "brain drain" or to cease their creative efforts. A
totalitarian regime can force some men to perform muscular labor; it
cannot force a genius to create, nor force a businessman to make
rational decisions. A slave owner can force a man to pick peanuts;
only under freedom would a George Washington Carver discover ways to
increase crop yields.
What Americans should celebrate is the spark of genius in the
scientist who first identifies a law of physics, in the inventor who
uses that knowledge to create a new engine or telephonic device, and
in the businessmen who daily translate their ideas into tangible
wealth.
On Labor Day, let us honor the true root of production and wealth: the
human mind"
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Posted on Tuesday, August 26 @ 04:00:00 CEST by Zhen-Xjell |
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Re: TIME TO CELEBRATE MAN'S MIND (Score: 1)
by chris on Tuesday, August 26 @ 18:35:03 CEST
(User Info | Send a Message) http://www.karakas-online.de | Is this the "Philosopher's Corner"? It seems so. "Off-topic" is too bad a category for such a great post.
I will have to dissect it a bit, though. ;)
But the term "Labor Day" is a misnomer.
No. "Labour" can be extended to mean "intellectual labour" too. Today, there are probably more intellectual "labourers", than other sorts.
Why do Americans have no unique holiday to celebrate the creators, inventors, and entrepreneurs who have made all of this wealth possible--the men of the mind?
Because they don't value their work. They pay lip service to them, but their laws are tailored to service other interests - certainly not those of the "men of mind".
Most of today's intellectuals, influenced by several generations of Marxist political philosophy, still believe that wealth is created by sheer physical toil.
Which "intellectual" is so naive to still believe this seriously? What's your statistic sample when you say "most of today's intellectuals"? Whatever it is, it cannot be representative of "today's intellectuals" (whatever this means).
Contrary to the Marxist premise that wealth is created by laborers and "exploited" by those at the top of the pyramid of ability, it is those at the top, the best and the brightest, who increase the value of the labor of those at the bottom.
Again, you only need to extend the notion of a "labourer" to encompass "intellectual workers" to see that work is indeed created by "labourers". This is actually a tautology for every era: the outcome of "work" (be it intellectual, or physical) can only be attributed to some "worker".
By the way, those at the "top" are not necessarily neither the "best", nor the "brightest". They are those who survived a darwinian selection process imposed by the "ecology" they live in. In the sense of surviving the evolution struggle, yes, they are doing best. But society tends, history shows, to ignore its really brightest minds, as long as they live - and there were times it sent them to fire.
That work can be "exploited", is a consequence of the way the markets work. When trying to meet supply and demand, whenever we have a surplus on one or the other side, there will be "exploitation", meaning that supply and demand will meet in a point that, on one hand, may be the "equilibrium of market forces", but on the other hand it does "injustice" to the resource that happens to be in surplus, making its "price" fall. The "resource" in surplus being either the "labourer", or the "man at the top".
Exploitation can thus occur both ways, but it indeed tends to favour more often those who have the capital, than those who have the "labour" (physical or intellectual). Work or "labour" market is just another market - I should probably say "bazaar".
A culture thrives to the extent that it is governed by reason and science.
Very platonic, this one, but - what is reason? Moreover, "what is this thing called science"? Is it a new religion? Sometimes looks like it. Consider this:
Most of today's science uses mathematics to model its problems. The process is the following: the parameters of the phenomenon in question are "mapped" onto mathematical variables, the relations between the parameters are "mapped" onto relations between mathematical variables. The scientist thus gets a "model". Now, what the scientist does is the modern form of black magic: he applies the laws of mathematics to the variables, arrives at *mathematically* (but not in any other respect) equivalent formulations, until, hopefully, one formulation is of the form "x=something", in which case he claims to have "solved" the *physical* problem.
Why? Because now, *he maps back* to the physical world: if x was, say, the velocity of a vehicle, he is now confident that the velocity is such and such miles per hours.
But who tells you that you can do those mappings between the physical and t
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