I’m wanting to show that Wittgenstein was not concerned to exorcise his inner demons. An inner demon problem is like, “Is it a pimple? Will it spread? Am I gonna hurt?” He was not interested in philosophy made up of these kinds of problems.
What kinds of problems was he concerned about?
One would be the mind-body problem where the world was said to consist of mental stuff on one side and material stuff on the other. The problem we have in understanding reality was that it was very difficult to see how these two fundamental stuffs interacted. Another problem would be about society. What are the basic ideas extant about society? I want to say one of them is the idea we are like kids on a playground run by bullies.
When Wittgenstein goes to see Frege, or then to study with Russell, he has in mind the idea that philosophy might provide some better response to the claims that life is accurately described by these ideas. And, I take it, Wittgenstein was motivated to find some better response to these ideas than the ones which he had come in contact.
What do I mean by these philosophical ideas, these seemingly fundamental descriptions of what our civilization is about, and how it works?
I want to start with George Carlin’s take on this question.
George Carlin has this piece on You Tube where he talks about the owners of the country. He means by these “owners” the richest and most powerful people who hide behind the scene and manipulate our lives.
He goes on and on in detail about how these “owners” have their control, who they control, and what they want to do with their control.
Well, Carlin goes on…
He’s here very much talking about the bullies in my allegory of the playground, as I put it. That is, the allegory is that we are like kids on a playground run by bullies. Carlin is just putting a little more meat on the same idea.
This wasn’t just a comedic story for Carlin, apparently. He went on about it in public, where he criticized others who didn’t take his account of society seriously.
I have my own take on this comic rant. …It wasn’t new with Carlin, for one thing. It’s the kind of that’s been around for a long time. So, Thrasymachus says to Socrates:
Tell me, Socrates, have you got a nurse?
Why do you ask such a question, I said, when you ought rather to be answering?
Because she leaves you to snivel, and never wipes your nose: she has not even taught you to know the shepherd from the sheep.
What makes you say that? I replied.
Because you fancy that the shepherd or neatherd fattens or tends the sheep or oxen with a view to their own good and not to the good of himself or his master; and you further imagine that the rulers of states, if they are true rulers, never think of their subjects as sheep, and that they are not studying their own advantage day and night. Oh, no; and so entirely astray are you in your ideas about the just and unjust as not even to know that justice and the just are in reality another's good; that is to say, the interest of the ruler and stronger, and the loss of the subject and servant; and injustice the opposite; for the unjust is lord over the truly simple and just: he is the stronger, and his subjects do what is for his interest, and minister to his happiness, which is very far from being their own. Consider further, most foolish Socrates, that the just is always a loser in comparison with the unjust. First of all, in private contracts: wherever the unjust is the partner of the just you will find that, when the partnership is dissolved, the unjust man has always more and the just less. Secondly, in their dealings with the State: when there is an income-tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income; and when there is anything to be received the one gains nothing and the other much. Observe also what happens when they take an office; there is the just man neglecting his affairs and perhaps suffering other losses, and getting nothing out of the public, because he is just; moreover he is hated by his friends and acquaintance for refusing to serve them in unlawful ways. But all this is reversed in the case of the unjust man. I am speaking, as before, of injustice on a large scale in which the advantage of the unjust is most apparent; and my meaning will be most clearly seen if we turn to that highest form of injustice in which the criminal is the happiest of men, and the sufferers or those who refuse to do injustice are the most miserable—that is to say tyranny, which by fraud and force takes away the property of others, not little by little but wholesale; comprehending in one, things sacred as well as profane, private and public; for which acts of wrong, if he were detected perpetrating any one of them singly, he would be punished and incur great disgrace—they who do such wrong in particular cases are called robbers of temples, and man-stealers and burglars and swindlers and thieves. But when a man besides taking away the money of the citizens has made slaves of them, then, instead of these names of reproach, he is termed happy and blessed, not only by the citizens but by all who hear of his having achieved the consummation of injustice. For mankind censure injustice, fearing that they may be the victims of it and not because they shrink from committing it. And thus, as I have shown, Socrates, injustice, when on a sufficient scale, has more strength and freedom and mastery than justice; and, as I said at first, justice is the interest of the stronger, whereas injustice is a man's own profit and interest.
And here, Thrasymachus tells us he’s talking about the owners of society who get to make the laws and through the politicians and judges that they own and control, get to say that their crimes are just and a service to mankind.
In talking about the owners of society, Carlin is also stating an idea common to Karl Marx’s view of society, where the owners of the means of production take advantage of their workers, and the workers, in order to protect and free themselves, must organize together against their enemy the owners.
One response to the idea that there are owners and workers, was the see the plight of the workers and get them to work together to throw off their oppressors.
There are other responses, however. Another is to argue that the real enemies of the workers, a.k.a., the kids on the playground, are those who would take away the freedom of the bullies, because they are few, so that they can take away the freedoms of the many, those being the mass of kids on the playground, or workers in a society, so that they, the few agitators, can seize power for themselves.
In this way, the right wing response to Carlin’s idea of the owners, versus Marx’s left wing response response, made those who would organize workers against the owners the enemy.
Here’s an infamous proponent of this view:
Hitler went to factories to speak to workers as part of his effort to persuade those same workers to turn away from Communist Party organizers.
The argument that Hitler made was that the Communists, and for his purposes that meant Jews, were working against the interests of German workers in arguing for Marx’s program of workers organizing against the owners of the means of production.
It has been claimed that powerful interests in the capitalist world in the United States and Europe supported Hitler and other attempts to undermine Communist efforts to fight against “Owner” oppression. So, here is a story about wealthy people in America who thought that Hitler and his “right wing” arguments were worth supporting in their effort to preserve their interests.
Strange to think that American politicians would support Nazi-isms? The idea, I suspect, was to promote an argument that would be a strong response to Marx’s argument that the kids must organize against the “capitalist” owners of society.
The Bush family was not alone in supporting and profiting from this “right-wing” idea.
The point here, however, is not to raise questions about who may or may not have been taken in by any of these ideas. It seems that if one could find Carlin’s notion that there are owners who run things, one might also be taken by the idea that you should respond somehow to that account of things.
There has to be more to respond than just shouting, “I won’t take it anymore.”
You have meddled with the primary forces of nature, Mr Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear?
You think you merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tide and gravity. It is ecological balance.
You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no Third Worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems. One vast and immense, interwoven, interacting, multi-varied, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rands, rubles, pounds and shekels.
It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic, and sub-atomic and galactic structure of things today.
And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature. And you will atone.
Am I getting through to you, Mr Beale?
You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.
What do you think the Russians talk about in their Councils of State? Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, mini-max solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.
We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bye-laws of of business. The world is a business, Mr Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime.
And our children will live, Mr Beale, to see that ... perfect ... world in which there is no war nor famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company for whom all men will work to serve a common profit. In which all men will hold a share of stock.
All necessities provided. All anxieties tranquilized. All boredom amused.
Not being able to take it anymore, or getting angry, will not adequately respond to the forces of nature…as these ideas are portrayed.
Wittgenstein had these theories, or pictures, in mind when he set out to come up with a better response to them by studying philosophy.
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