Our philosophy discussion group convened virtually last night , via zoom video.  We discussed an essay by Olufemi O Taiwo, a philosopher who teaches at Georgetown University.  The Who Gets To Feel Secure essay treated the down-to-earth security that all human beings need in order to survive, to preserve their humanity.  I mean the security that comes with having clean water to drink, a reliable means of enough to eat, education that is adequate that one can afford, and yes, included is “safety,” freedom from fear of being accosted, or worse, struck down by a random bullet in one’s neighborhood.  Táíwò offered a Marxist analysis that these goods are hard to come by if you are working class, and particularly if you are a person of color.  Paradoxically such benefits are taken for granted by individuals who are upper class, experiencing a form of life where all of the above are available, and affordable because they are obtained at the expense of their fellows who by dint of gender, race, and class are preyed upon by the system. Race and class intertwine.

The system is capitalism.

As you can imagine, the thesis provoked controversy, and a certain amount of focused push-back.  It is something that one sees, or one doesn’t.  There is little point to argue ‘for’ or to argue ‘against’ when one’s partner in conversation is playing another language game.  Reality comes down to language in an important sense.  If I believe that America and Americans are fundamentally decent, well intended people; if I believe that capitalism, that style of thinking about the role of money, and about the use of people, is a righteous, morally neutral system, — any Marxist analysis sounds as gibberish.  I am blind to things for which I have no language.  And so our exchange went last night sparked by Táíwò’s ideas .

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This poem comes to mind this morning.  It fits our discussion of the evening, as well as the condition of American society at this point in time.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

~Wendell Berry

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As to the backstory of the poet:

Wendell Berry was born in Henry County, Kentucky, in 1934. The author of more than 40 works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, Wendell Berry has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1962), the Vachel Lindsay Prize from Poetry (1962), a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship (1965), a National Institute of Arts and Letters award for writing (1971), the Emily Clark Balch Prize from The Virginia Quarterly Review (1974), the American Academy of Arts and Letters Jean Stein Award (1987), a Lannan Foundation Award for Non-Fiction (1989), Membership in the Fellowship of Southern Writers (1991), the Ingersoll Foundation’s T. S. Eliot Award (1994), the John Hay Award (1997), the Lyndhurst Prize (1997), and the Aitken-Taylor Award for Poetry from The Sewanee Review (1998). His books include the novel Hannah Coulter (2004), the essay collections Citizenship Papers (2005) and The Way of Ignorance (2006), and Given: Poems (2005), all available from Counterpoint. Berry’s latest works include The Mad Farmer Poems (2008) and Whitefoot (2009), which features illustrations by Davis Te Selle.

(“Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” from The Country of Marriage, copyright © 1973 by Wendell Berry)