Guns Don't Kill People

Dear Colleagues,  

   Guns Don’t Kill People
 
  Composing on the One Hand,
       Consuming on the Other.
 Anarchist Theory & Gift Exchange
        (to market to market?)
 
Consuming Mode:
 
It is this double conceit,
first, that passion will undo
social life, and second: that
coercion will preserve it—
that anarchist theory and
the tradition of gift exchange
call into question.
 
Composing Mode:
 
Both anarchism and gift  exchange
share the assumption that it is not
when a part of the self is inhibited
but when a part of the self is given
away that community appears.
 
     Lewis Hyde, The Gift 
 
In Life of the Body Politic
as well as Life of the Body,
passion does undo social life
and coercion preserves it.
 
Community does depend on
part of the self being
constrained.
 
Anarchist theory and gift exchange
economies make as much political
sense as Plato’s treatise on VIRTUE
he called “The Republic.”
 
None.
 
The community which emerges when
passion is encouraged,  when part of
the self is given rather than inhibited is
not a political community, state or market,
but some internal spirit,  call it Life of Mind
minding & let it  not be confused with
Church & State.
  
Not hardly an Academic Environment either
god  forbid where  passion is pathological
& self-regulated via assessable aims & goals
& measurable outcomes and transmission
rather than transformation is the name of the game.

         A difference that makes a difference  
            (Gary Hawkins would call these
                   “the 2 Economies” )
 
I just read Councilman Cecil Bothwell’s e-mailed
agenda for “Keeping Asheville Real” —a good
and typical example of consumer values & concerns:
our need to regulate and manage community by
attention efficiency given the homeless, immigrants,
water, transportation, parking, prostitution, drugs…
not that there’s anything wrong with that.
 
No one would expect Cecil’s agenda  to be properly
addressed in terms of “anarchist theory” or
a “gift exchange” community.
 
That would be horses of  another color. Church &
State mode on  the one hand, School mode on the other.
2 economies. Consuming on the one hand. Composing
on the other. Clap & Clap.
 
Can you show and tell the difference? The relationship?
Call it an environmental issue. Sustainability concern.
 
L. Schola:- school and scholarship:
            leisure-time activity,.
              "else it is none."