|
PARASITE
Gk; Parasitos, "one who eats at another's table." Para- beside, sitos- grain, food.
Then
if I must estimate the just penalty Socrates
All
around me men are working;
Lao Tzu,
Thou
preparest a table before me 23rd Psalm
Socrates was one of many who considered the role of parasite to be desirable. In fact, Plato, Aristotle, and all of Greek aristocracy, indeed every aristocracy, felt the same. Same with shareholders and management of profitable corporations. Isn't the whole point of capitalist success to live off the labor of others? Robin Hood seemed to think that many of the rich were parasites, and may not have considered retrieving some wealth a crime or sin. Mother Earth's a round table out here on top, heaped with good stuff, set by the mothers, but when I got up from the generous hosting of my own mother, and did some investigating, I observed that the tables were turned. She (my mother) was one golden character thread in the great Aurea Catena, that immense web of mothering, from implantation to the death of offspring in many cases. Let me acknowledge with inestimable gratitude the mothers, including those who mothered the inventors-- sure it was also Necessity who mothered invention-- mothers know a lot about Necessity: necessity for leisure-- for mothers and for all of us. Time for the soul. Time for the world. Necessity for some return on all the investments/inventments.) Wikipedia is always helpful: "Parasitism is an interaction between two organisms, in which one organism (the parasite) attains all the benefits of the close relationship. Parasites that live inside the body of the host are called endoparasites (e.g., hookworms that live in the host gut) and those that live on the outside are called ectoparasites (e.g., mosquitos). A parasite that kills its host is called a parasitoid. Some parasites are social parasites, taking advantage of interactions between members of a social host species such as ants or termites to their detriment. Kleptoparasitism involves the parasite stealing food that the host has caught or otherwise prepared." Take the welfare recipient: if "society" is the host, is the welfare recipient "inside" the host? But then, by definition, parasites are not part of the host but separate organisms, therefore we have to define her as not part of the host. But then, who is "we"? If we decide that she is indeed part of that organism called "society," then the term "parasite" loses its metaphorical potency: biologists don't define inner organs as parasites, do they? The organism of the healthy human body supplies its inner organs, and the function of some of those organs is to produce surplus, stipend to the soil, carbon monoxide for the flora, semen/eggs for new folks, milk for the little parasites-- (or organs of the extended body). Symbiosis n : the relation between two different species of organisms that are interdependent; each gains benefits from the other [syn: mutualism]
"The various forms of symbiosis include parasitism, in which the association is disadvantageous or destructive to one of the organisms, mutualism, in which the association is advantageous, or often necessary to one or both and not harmful to either, and commensalism, in which one member of the association benefits while the other is not affected." At what crossing does symbiosis become parasitism? Parasitism become symbiosis? Is this a distinction for the beholder to ascribe? When the Bing cherry tree platts the sunlight and extracts from the soil: is that parasitism? The sun does not seem to "benefit," but it keeps on smiling anyway. And later on the tree replenishes the soil. When the wasp gorges on the ripe cherry, how about that? Predation: the act of preying by a predator who kills and eats the prey When the lion feasts on the wildebeest at the great round table, depleting the host herd-- is that parasitism? What might some of the differences be between parasitism and predation? When the small thing feeds on the large thing, is that parasitism? When the large thing eats the small thing, is that predation? Parasitism can be considered a special case of predation since their effects on the host are similarly, though not equivalently, detrimental. Is the mother depleted after breast-feeding? The milk supply is, temporarily. How does one measure "depletion of the host," taking into account the psychology of the exchange? Better ask the mother for her measure. There is little doubt that she is tired. But we might look closer to see what tires her. And listen: how might we extend the definition of "host" to include the past, the cumulative cultural heritage of humanity? How can we measure the fullness of that host, in order to decide if we are depleting it? Furthermore, the "cumulative memetic cultural heritage of humanity" is amorphous, vast, immeasureable, and itself feeds, excretes, produces. What host may be supporting that entity? And hey! Check this: In a truly parasitic relationship, the parasite and host live side by side with little or no damage to the host organism while the parasite takes enough nutrients to live on and reproduce without draining the host's reserves. So the definitions clash. Take your pick! Take General Motors as an entity: it eats raw materials and money and excretes SUVs. Host or parasite? Well, you may say, "it is not alive." The chorus sings: "it is legally a person!" Order
based on order - Living matter evades the decay to equilibrium
- It feeds on `negative entropy' ... Organization maintained by
extracting `order' from the environment. So then who is indisputably alive? the CEOs of GM have that reputation, and so do the line-workers. Might either of them fit the mould of "parasite?" And more fully to the point: How can one parasite on an abundance? Note: the abundance available from Mother Earth and Father Industrial Technology in loving co-operation is contingent. It needs maintenance along the time axis. We can quite easily deplete a tremendous supply (ie buffalo) by neglecting this maintenance. Any gardener will tell you that plants take an awful lot before they start "giving." To sustain an abundance, or perhaps we should say "enoughness," to supply all our needs, someone has to keep the wheel rolling. Mother Earth herself, and Jolly old Worker Sun is pretty good at keeping things rolling, and father Industrial Technology directs them to do it for our production needs. The meme is at the core of this. We graduate from Mom to meme. Free Lunch Time! When I came of age of honoring my mother and all mothers, who gave me the breakfast of uterine room and board, babyhood, and childhood for free, it was lunch time. We all took for granted that breakfast was free. Patriarchal authority said "there is no free lunch" but there were those, like Jesus, who strongly disagreed. I chose to sit for my my free lunch at the long,
long time-table of distinguished providers, up to their labs and
workshops from the generous table of their mothers. To call it
"another's" table, though, strikes me as inaccurate.
The table itself extends beyond the horizon of the land of Nod,
where many of us have sweated since Eden. It extends into the
Avalon of Nod. Pictures of the Periodic Table of the Elements
would make good placemats. I sit at the table of the Biro brothers, who labored frustratedly for ten years to create the ballpoint pen. Many summers outdoors catching thoughts out of the air I took out my little hardcover lined notebook and feasted on thoughts with the single chopstick of the Biro boys. How can I pay them for it? In the evening I sit at the table of Thomas A. Edison, a school dropout whose idea lit the world and gave us an eternal cartoon of "getting an idea." 15,000 wrong choices for an element before he found tungsten. How can I pay him for it? I sit at the table of the Greek statesmen who adopted the 24-letter alphabet enabling Greek philosopher-scientists to record and transmit their ideas. Ergo sic. I sit at the table of Archimedes, who worked out the law of displacement of floating bodies in 220 BC. Then go for a hot tub. Pay him! I sit at the round table of the planet earth, conceived as spherical by the Pythagorean Philolaus (410 BC), and by Heraclitus, and Aristarchus (200BC) who conceived of the sun as the centre of planetary revolutions and calculated the earth's circumference, and Crates (150 BC) who made a globe-- until religious and political powers drew the curtains on macrocosmic science for 1700 years. Those Greeks disdained manual labor and gain for gain's sake. Pay them! I sit at the table of the copiers of the Alexandrian library, that carried 700,000 volumes in 47 BC, who copied manuscripts and distributed them around the "civilized world," before 40,000 were burned in a war. Count up their hours when you read a book you bought at a yard sale for a dime. I sit at the table of Arabic numerals and algebra, introduced to Spain by a Moorish invasion in 700 AD. I sit at the table of the makers of the first windmill in Europe in 1100. Then tilt at an idea out of Japan: Giant solar panels over the Sahara desert bringing outrageously bounteous power to the world. I sit at the table of Roger Bacon and his compound lenses. The better to read between the lines, my dear. I sit at the table of the unrecorded inventors of the smelting of metals, the blast furnace, the canal lock. I sit as an honored guest of Leonardo Da Vinci and his centrifugal pump, antifriction roller bearings, conical screw, rope and belt drive, lathe, helicopter, parachute, etc. I sit at the table of Pare and his surgical instruments (1545). Galileo and his pendulum. Pascal and his calculating machine. The discoverers of cobalt and platinum, zinc, bismuth, nickel, tungsten. The periodic table. The spinning jenny, the steam engine, the power loom. Gutenberg and his successors, bringing much enlightenment to the lower classes. Read today's paper, then go pay Gutenberg for his decades of labor. Faraday and electromagnetism. Ohm's law. The inventors and builders of the railroad refrigerator car in 1868, obviating the prognostications of Malthus. I sit at the table of the inventors and developers of the air-brake, the typewriter, telephone (Fuller says the telephone invented the skyscraper), acetylene, silicon carbide, wireless, induction furnace. I sit with Orville and Wilbur, who went away from the mockery and denial to try out their union of gas engine, bicycle, and box kite, none of which they invented. Each inventor, of course, accepted the development of technology up until their time as "given" without earning it themselves. The integrated, cumulative capabilities of all of history's intellects. Know-how. Synergy. Ephemeralization (more with less); re-use, recycling. Good ideas from the ancestors, storable, retrievable and re-mixable, for us to consider and apply. I sit at the table of 20th century science which is more than twenty centuries of science gathered together and its principles free as manna from the ancestors, and its unit costs reduced toward amortization by mass production, also set up by ancestors. I am here, out behind this text somewhere, you might say, because of them. When I ride in a car I ride with all of them, right back to the guy in the BC cartoon who chiseled the first wobbly wheel out of stone. And I sit at the table laden with an immeasurable wealth of culture technology has allowed through. This is what makes it not just a free lunch, but an incalculable feast. I can read the very words of Socrates set down by Plato; or the words of Jesus, or the poems of the Persians, or translations of the Russian; or hear the world's great music; or see the paintings of inspired masters of many ages. Think of the labor: calculate it in workfare increment, minimum wage or maximum corporate executive remuneration. What has your 25 cents got to do with the Biros? How have you "earned" their decade of committment, frustration, labor, or that of the Bic corporation? Or your $1.49 with Edison and his 15,000 failures? Or for that matter what does your $40 or $50 K have to do with the history of science and invention and immeasurable labor and inspiration accumulated in your shiny new Jeep Cherokee? Here's the word from the land of the dead, where all those inventors and laborers went: Amortized! Gerard Piel, publisher of Scientific American, told the world in 1955 that it was technologically easy now to provide a high standard of living for everyone on earth, and increasingly higher standards for growing populations. In 1955! And design science is on an accelerating-acceleration curve! What happened? What can this mean? Why is it that what 120 years ago was considered a failure (as a person and as a citizen)-- to go to work for others and surrender control of one's working life, is now called "success"? Why are parents in Canada with babies as young as 4 months forced to take bad jobs? Why are there 11 million child slaves in Pakistan? 30 million hungry in the US? Why are 1 in 5 kids in Canada not getting enough food? Old women begging in front of the Moscow McDonalds? 100 million "surplus to production" wandering in China? Why are insects one of the major food groups in Mexico? What parasite (or predator) is sucking the life from so many? Is the technological cornucopia really a myth? Did all those inventions not happen? Did somebody unplug them-- are we now "unplugged?" Does the sweat of our brow birth the industrial heritage of humanity magically out of each head, brand new, and "earned" by each of us? Gerard Piel's anouncement of abundance-- was it meaningless? On the round table of the planet earth sits a cornucopia. The "mythical" horn of plenty. Mind, physical principles, storable and retrievable information created it. But it isn't mythical, it's the opposite of myth-- it's "externalized rationale" and externalized labor power at large; and new generations, more powerful and efficient, are on the way. How are you going to "pay for" civilization after civilization and the preservers who carried the light through dark ages? How are you going to pay for what you "own" or use? What debt, if any, to the inventors, the laborers, and their mothers? The flower may be thankful that someone prepared the ground in a garden. But it does not seek out the gardener and offer money or services. It "unfolds beautifully in the air" as Jung said when he analyzed the psychology of the flower. Is this not reward for the gardener? Your contribution to the millenia of labor and invention, to the great cultural heritage and to the mothers, is to unfold yourself beautifully in the air. It is the self that we contribute, us flowers, swallows, cherry trees. Some unfold into inventors, some into gardeners, some into lovers. Some who do this, that, and the other. We don't have to decide in our youth "what we're going to be." We need nourishment, free time, encouragement. Then, as Jung wrote, we "become what we are." It is the self that is stolen, depleting the host of the body politic to serve this enormous destructive depletive parasite called "the economy." Reverse the yoke!
|
||
