Sunshine Skyways

An excellent electronic resource for students of classical social theory is the Marxists Internet Archive (MI Archive), found at http://marxists.org. The MI Archive includes archives of Marxist writers, history and subjects, an encyclopedia of Marxism, and a "guide to writers relevant to understanding the concept of Marxism" (http://marxists.org/reference/index.htm. As evidence of the worldwide interest in Marxism and commitment of the volunteer non-profit organization that created and manages the web site, the MI Archive is translated into at least thirty-nine languages, and its servers are found in Asia, Britain, France, Galicia, Russia, and parts of the United States to expand its access.

The MI Archive is visually pleasing and logistically well constructed so that it is easy to navigate. On the home page, equally sized digital images of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky frame large bold letters that identify the site, its primary contents, and other important links such as searches and contact information. A simple click on one of the four images forwards the student to the archive about that marxist author. For example, by clicking on the photograph of Marx, one is forwarded to the "Marx & Engels Internet Archive", which includes date, subject and multi-lingual indices, collected and selected works, biographies and letters, and an image gallery, First International Archive, PDF Index, link to contact the sponsor of the web site, and multiple search options (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/index.htm.

Each archive within the MI Archive contains multiple links to associated topics and texts within and without it to aid the beginning student. For example, someone new to Marx and Marxism can search the web site's encyclopedia for the concept, "class struggle". That search being the student to the section on "class", which defines the Marxism concepts of class and class struggle and includes passages authored by Marx and Engels to illustrate the uses and meanings of those concepts and links to related concepts and suggested further readings within the MI Archive (http://marxists.org/glossary/frame.htm.

For the more advanced student of Marx and Marxism, the links of subjects, authors and writings provide useful insights into the common and divergent threads within the Marxian theoretical tradition. For example, one who is interested in learning more about the rift within the Marxian theoretical tradition regarding the humanism of the young Marx versus the structuralism of the old Marx can begin with a subject search of "humanism". That search results in thirty-seven matches ranked by the quality of the match. Each match has a number of conspicuous yellow starts to denote the quality of the match with the subject search. A click on the first of the two highest ranked matches leads to the document, "Marxist Humanis and the 'New Left'" (http://marxists.org/subject/humanism/index.htm. That document describes the development of Marxist Humanism as an historical event that emerged from rejection of orthodox Marxism, attraction to and growing acceptance of liberal sentiments, and "failure of the Communist Parties to adquately respond to these sentiments." The document also explains that Marxists Humanists usually ground themselves in the humanistic writings of the young Marx, especially the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1988, and to give emphasis to that written explanation, the document includes an image of the young Marx. It also includes links to the Manuscripts, relevant sections of the encyclopedia, archives of Marxist Humanist writers, and other archives, such as the archive of antihumanist Marxist, Joseph Stalin.

Links to the MI Archive can be found in academic, labor, and other web sites, which further demonstrate its quality and widespead appeal and use. For example, a quick Internet search yielded many web sites with links to the MI Archive of which four are listed below:

1. "Guide to Philosophy on the Internet" Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana www.earlham.edu/~peters.philinks.htm
2. "Historical Studies World Wide Web Resources" Historical Studies-Social Science Library, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, New Jersey http://www.admin.ias.edu/hslib/hsres.htm
3. "Labor Studies and Radical History" Holt Labor Library, San Francisco, California http://hll.org/Links.html and
4. "Socialist Links" Chicago Socialist Party http://www.chicagosocialistparty.com/links.html.

Yesterday morning I woke up and saw frost on the ground. In Florida! Here's a photo.

Why do individuals participate in online groups or communities that use bulletin board technology? According to study by Ridings & Gefen (2004), the most popular reason is information exchange.

Symbolic interactionism is a theoretical approach within sociology that contends that one's identity is created through her/his interactions with others. In other words, my identity is (or identities are) socially constructed. Although Herbert Blumer (1900 - 1987) coined the term in his 1937 article "Social Psychology," its foundation can be found in the writings of Charles Cooley, George Herbert Mead, and others. The construction of I necessitates the existence of the Other (or Others), and my experience of I and the Other (or Others) is derived from my interactions with the Other (or Others) and my imagination of the Other's (Others') perceptions and evaluations of me. This idea is found in Cooley's notion of "The Looking Glass Self", which is found in his Human Nature and the Social Order (1902):

In a very large and interesting class of cases the social reference takes the form of a somewhat definite imagination of how one's self — that is any idea he appropriates — appears in a particular mind, and the kind of self-feeling one has is determined by the attitude toward this attributed to that other mind. A social self of this sort might by called the reflected or looking glass self:

'Each to each a looking glass
Reflects the other that doth pass.'

As we see our face, figure, and dress in the glass, and we are interested in them because they are ours, and pleased or otherwise with them according as they do or do not answer to what we should like them to be; so in imagination we perceive in another's mind some thought of our appearance, manners, aims, deeds, character, friends, and so on, and are variously affected by it.

A self-idea of this sort seems to have three principal element: the imagination of our appearance to the other person; the imagination of his judgment of that appearance, and some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or mortification. (pp. 179-185).

In Mead's "The Genesis of the Self and Social Control", it is also clear that the Self exists through interaction with others and a reflexive imagination:

...the self that is central to all so-called mental experience has appeared only in the social conduct of human vertebrates. It is just because the individual finds himself taking the attitudes of the others who are involved in his conduct that he becomes an object for himself. It is only by taking the roles of others that we have been able to come back to ourselves. We have seen above that the social object can exist for the individual only if the various parts of the whole social act carried out by other members of the society are in some fashion present in the conduct of the individual. It is further true that the self can exist for the individual only if he assumes the roles of others. (p. 268)

When one appears in front of a mirror, one sees one's reflection. One sees one's self. Similarly, an individual can perform in front of a mirror and pretend that s/he is watching her/his interaction with someone else. In this example, the individual is both performer and audience, both subject and object. This duality does not appear solely when standing in front of a mirror because my imagination can create it as well. For example, what I do when I am interacting with someone else is affected greatly by what I imagine her/his reactions to be of what I say verbally and non-verbally.

Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self uses a "dramaturgical approach" to study the self. Basically, it is the idea that an individual's interaction with another (or others) can be understood as if an actor was giving a performance within a setting and the other is (or others are) her/his audience. The setting is the location of the interaction, such as a coffee shop, office, or restaurant. In his analysis, Goffman divides an individual's performance into a "front" and a "back" (or backstage). The front refers to "that part of an individual's performance which regularly functions in a general and fixed fashion to define the situation for those who observe the performance" (p. 22). According to Barnhart, the "front acts as the vehicle of standardization, allowing for others to understand the individual on the basis of projected character traits that have normative meanings." Put another way, the front is the part of the performance which is used to persuade others that the performer is the ideal example of an individual in that particular role and situation. Thus, the front is the set of messages that the performer communicates and imagines to be consistent with a norms, mores, and laws of society. The back or backstage is that part of the performance which communicates that the performer is not consistent with the ideal. For example, during an interaction with her minister, Margaret's front is the set of messages that she communicates and imagines to be consistent with that of the ideal mother. Her back is the set of messages that she communicates and imagines to be inconsistent with that ideal, but consistent with herself as a particular individual. How much back or backstage information Margaret gives to the minister is dependent upon what she believes of her self and the mininster's reaction to her being any other than ideal. At one extreme, she may sincerely believe that her front is representative of her self as a particular individual, so there is no back performance that would suggest she is not ideal. At the other extreme, she may believe that she is very much the opposite of the ideal mother, but nonetheless, she may not want to communicate any information that would suggest she is anything but the ideal. Consequently, she may intentionally convey misinformation about her self as a particular individual in an attempt to control the minister's impression of her as a mother (Goffman).

Associated with one's performance are messages "given" and "given off". For Goffman, verbal communication (oral or written) is "given", whereas non-verbal communication is "given off".

The expressiveness of the individual (and therefore his capacity to give impressions) appears to involve two radically different kinds of sign activity: the expression that he gives, and the expression that he gives off. The first involves verbal symbols or their substitutes which he uses admittedly and solely to convey the information that he and the others are known to attach to these symbols. This is communication in the traditional and narrow sense. The second involves a wide range of action that others can treat as symptomatic of the actor, the expection being that the action was performed for reasons other than the information conveyed in this way.(Goffman, 1959, p. 2).

This can be illustrated with a continuation of the prior example. During the interaction with her minister, Margaret may work hard to "give" and "give off" messages that she is the ideal mother. She may "give" by speaking glowingly about her children and how much she loves them, and "give off" by using a tone of voice, body language, and other forms of non-verbal communication to express that she is a wonderful mother. It is easier to control what is given versus given off. Consequently, some authors equate "given" with intended messages and "given off" with unintended messages. However, an individual uses both given and given off messages to create the front and back.

Goffman distinquishes one's "appearance" from one's "manner". Appearance is what the performer looks like, and in face-to-face communication, it is a significant source of information. A person can look at the performer and identify her/his race(s), ethnicity(ies), gender, height, weight, hair color, eye color, age, and other visible features used to label the individual. Appearance is difficult to change, and in many ways, it moves with us no matter what visual setting we are in. For example, Margaret is seen as white and female no matter where she goes in physical space. Manner, on the other hand, is how the performer acts, and that is much easier to change and changes with the setting.

When a performer interacts with another, both intended and unintended messages are communicated. Moreover, intended messages may be include both information and misinformation. For example, a person can intentionally inform a neighbor by saying that s/he is going to San Francisco next month and also misinform the neighbor by purposively lying about the duration of and reason for the trip. Goffman divides the communication of misinformation into two types: deceiving and feigning. A performer deceives another by giving messages that are intended to misinform, that is, by verbally communicating misinformation. On the other hand, a performer feigns by giving off messages that are intended to misinform, that is, by non-verbally communicating misinformation.

In text-only communication, a performer is not seen. Consequently, the performer's appearance and all other non-verbal messages are absent. The performer is reduced to her/his set of given messages, that is, her/his written word. As text, can one unintentionally communicate information that s/he does not want the audience to know? Moreover, as text, does the performer have greater ability to create, conceal, and falsify her/his identity(ies)?


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Bibliography:

Barnhart, Adam D. "Erving Goffman: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life." Obtained online at www.hewett.norfolk.sch.uk/CURRIC/soc/goffman.htm.

Cooley, Charles. 1902. "The Looking Glass Self" in Human Nature and the Social Order. Scribner's, New York, pp. 179-185. Found online at www2.pfeiffer.edu/lridener/DSS/Cooley/LKGLSSLF.HTML.

Goffman, Erving. 1956. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday, New York. Obtained online at www2.pfeiffer.ed/~lridener/courses/GOFFSELF.HTML

Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday Anchor Books, Garden City, New York.

Mead, George Herbert. 1913. "The Social Self" in Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, vol. 10, pp. 374-380. Obtained online at http://spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~lward/Mead/default.html.

-------------------. 1925. "The Genesis of the Self and Social Control" in International Journal of Ethics, vol. 25, pp. 251-277. Obtained online at http://spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~lward/Mead/default.html.

// posted by Sunshine Skyways @ 8:30 PM 0 comments

Ferdinand Tönnies (1855 - 1936) was a German sociologist who explored differences among community (Gemeinschaft) and society (Gesellschaft). The following quotes are from Tönnies's Community and Society: Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft and were found online at www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/courses/GEMEIN.HTML.

Family life is the general basis of life in the Gemeinschaft. It subsists in village and town life. The village community and the town themselves can be considered as large families, the various clans and houses representing the elementary organisms of its body; guilds, corporations, and offices, the tissues and organs of the town. Here original kinship and inherited status remain an essential, or at least the most important, condition of participating fully in common property and other rights. Strangers may be accepted and protected as serving-members or guests either temporarily or permanently. Thus, they can belong to the Gemeinschaft as objects, but not easily as agents and representatives of the Gemeinschaft.

The following quotes by Anthony Giddens appear on the BBC's website.

It is wrong to think of globalisation as just concerning the big systems, like the world financial order. Globalisation isn't only about what is 'out there', remote and far away from the individual. It is an 'in here' phenomenon too, influencing intimate and personal aspects of our lives. The debate about family values, for example, that is going on in many countries, might seem far removed from globalising influences. It isn't. Traditional family systems are becoming transformed, or are under strain, in many parts of the world, particularly as women stake claim to greater equality. There has never before been a society, so far as we know from the historical record, in which women have been even approximately equal to men. This is a truly global revolution in everyday life, whose consequences are being felt around the world in spheres from work to politics.

As tradition changes its role, however, new dynamics are introduced into our lives. These can be summarised as a push and pull between autonomy of action and compulsiveness on the one hand, and between cosmopolitanism and fundamentalism on the other. Where tradition has retreated, we are forced to live in a more open and reflective way. Autonomy and freedom can replace the hidden power of tradition with more open discussion and dialogue. But these freedoms bring other problems in their wake. A society living on the other side of nature and tradition - as nearly all Western countries now do - is one that calls for decision-making, in everyday life as elsewhere. The dark side of decision-making is the rise of addictions and compulsions. Something really intriguing, but also disturbing, is going on here. It is mostly confined to the developed countries, but is becoming seen among more middle class groups elsewhere too. What I am speaking about is the spread of the idea and the reality of addiction. The notion of addiction was originally applied exclusively to alcoholism and drug-taking. But now any area of activity can become invaded by it. One can be addicted to work, exercise, food, sex - or even love. The reason is that these activities, and other parts of life too, are much less structured by tradition and custom than once they were.

As the influence of tradition and custom shrink on a world-wide level, the very basis of our self-identity - our sense of self - changes. In more traditional situations, a sense of self is sustained largely through the stability of the social positions of individuals in the community. Where tradition lapses, and life-style choice prevails, the self isn't exempt. Self-identity has to be created and recreated on a more active basis than before. This explains why therapy and counselling of all kinds have become so popular in Western countries. When he initiated modern psychotherapy, Freud thought he was establishing a scientific treatment for neurosis. What he was in effect doing was constructing a method for the renewal of self-identity, in the early stages of a detraditionalising culture.

The democratising of democracy also depends upon the fostering of a strong civic culture. This is absolutely central. Markets cannot produce such a culture. Nor can a pluralism of special interest groups. We shouldn't think of there being only two sectors of society, the state and the marketplace - or the public and the private. In between is the area of civil society, including the family and other non-economic institutions. Building a democracy of the emotions, of which I spoke last time, is one part of a progressive civic culture. Civil society is the arena in which democratic attitudes, including tolerance, have to be developed. The civic sphere can be fostered by government, but is in its turn its cultural basis.

My identity, that is, who I am, comes out of the community(ies) of which I am a member. In a community that is grounded in an area in physical space, it is easy for me to declare that I am a member of that community when I live within that area, although I may never speak to anyone. One could argue that there can be or is something special about communities in physical space that currently or can never exist in cyberspace. For example, there may be a physical landmark within the geographic boundaries of the community that is a sacred/spiritual and historical place for a community, for example, a mountain. Consequently, it is of great value to the community and to any member of that community. If I were a member of that community, it would shape who I am. Its physical presence would be reflected in rituals and practices. My location in physical space would be in relation to that sacred/spiritual place. Where is or will be the sacred/spiritual in cyberspace?

What effect does technology have on society and persons, families, and communities within that society? Is technology everything, in the sense, that it ultimately determines the kind of society and communities we live in, the structure of our families, and our thoughts and actions as members of that society? If so, when technology changes, do society, communities, families, and our thoughts and actions change as well? Or is technology nothing, in the sense, that it has no effect on the kind of society or communities that we live in, the structure of our families, or our thoughts and actions as members of society? Or still, is the correct answer somewhere in the middle? That is, does technology affect society, communities, families, and our thoughts and actions, AND at the same time, do our thoughts and actions, families, communities, and society affect technology?

According to those who believe in technological determinism, technological change is the cause of social change. Technology determines the kind of society and communities we live in, the structure of our families, and our thoughts and actions as members of that society. In Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy and A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, the following passages are often quoted to argue that Marx was a technological determinist:

Social relations are closely bound up with production forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The handmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist. (itals my emphasis)(Marx, 1963, p. 109)

The general conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached, became the guiding principle of my studies can be summarized as follows. In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which corresponds definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness (Marx, 1975, p. 425).

For Marxist technological determinists, such as the Orthodox Marxists Buzuev and Gorodnov, the evolution of technology is described by stages of technological development, which correspond to stages of social development. Thus, the handmill creates feudal society, and when the handmill is replaced by the steam-mill, feudal society is replaced by the capitalist society. In turn, the ultimate societal form emerges when capitalist technology is replaced by a new technology, which is hindered by the capitalist division of labor and system of private property; and consequently, the new technology necessitates their elimination and birth of a communist society.[1]

For Marx (and Orthodox Marxists), capitalist technology creates a fragmented society. Not only does it produce the system of private property and the division of labor, it also separates workers from themselves as species beings and separates individuals and families from their communities by creating and privileging private interests over common interests (Marx, 1998).[2] The community as a real, organic place of shared interests (and wills) becomes an illusion in capitalist society. What a real community is or should be is relegated to dreams, desires, and works of fiction.

In the 1960s, there was a U.S. television comedy show called The Andy Griffith Show. Andy was the sheriff of Mayberry, a small town in the south, where he lived with his son, Opie, and Aunt Bee. Mayberry was a homogeneous place, and everyone who lived there seemed to be respected as an individual and accepted as having a place in that community, even Otis the town drunk. Mayberry was a romanticized version of community, which had at its roots the vision of community described by Ferdinand Tönnies and Georg Simmel in the late 1800s. For both Tönnies and Simmel, a community was an organic whole characterized by its fellowship, custom, understanding, and consensus of its members and member families (Tönnies, 1963; Simmel, ; Fernback, 1997). Mayberry was an Americanized example of Gemeinschaft at its best, a small area on a map where folks lived together, knew each other, and were not coerced to remain silent or conform to fit into the community. [3]

The Andy Griffith Show was a television comedy show about folks in a community, but what has television as a technology/form of electronic media done for community? According to McLuhan (1964), television and other forms of electronic media are creating community by retribalizing the human race.[4] Satellite communication networks are eliminating differences in time and space, so that a person in Des Moines, Iowa, can see and hear on television what is going on at the moment in Cape Town, South Africa, or anywhere else on the planet. In this way, television is tearing down old boundaries and creating a "global village" of which everyone on the planet is a member. McLuhan's theory is grounded in a belief that the level of communication technology determines society, community, family, and how we think, feel, and act. Thus, it is another example of technological determinism. Moreover, it also presumes the existence of a natural law of inevitable progress.

In contrast to McLuhan, Putnam (2000) argues that television is contributing to the erosion of community, particularly, the erosion of U.S. communities as Americans withdraw from political and civic activities and retreat to their homes to watch television.[5] What it means to be politically involved is being transformed from engaging in political action to watching television news programs. Fundamental to Putnam's analysis of the community and the decline of civic participation in the U.S. after 1968 is the concept of "social capital," which "refers to connections among individuals — social connections and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them" (2000, p. 23).[6] Social capital is essential for community building and maintenance. However, when people substitute time watching television (being "couch potatoes") for time engaged in networks of civic engagement, such as bowling leagues, interfaith groups, or neighborhood associations, both bonding and bridging social capital decline and communities weaken.

Another and related factor in the decline of community in America, according to communitarians, is increasing individualism (Etzioni, ; Sandel, Bellah, ). In the U.S. the excesses of individualism have contributed to the creation of a society of increasing numbers of individuals, who instead of being embedded in community, are isolated from others and not directed by the community to act responsibly and reasonably (Etzioni, 2003).

Similar arguments have been and continue to be made regarding the effect that computer-mediated communication (CMC) has on society, communities, families, and individuals. In 1995, John Perry Barlow placed himself among the cheerleaders for CMC (and among utopians as well) when he stated in A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace:

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel. I come from Cyberspace ... We are entering a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity. Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here ... Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.

Barlow suggests that CMC will create new communities by creating opportunities for bridging social capital that did not exist before because of racism, sexism, and other kinds of prejudice.



ENDNOTES:
1. Critics of Marx and Orthodox Marxists, such as Kolakowski, argue that Marx's technological determinism is grounded in utopian ideals of a better world: it is believed that there is a natural law of technological/social evolution where communism is the end point of that evolution.
2. A person's "species being" is a person's true Self as a social being in a community where individual and common interests are in accord.
3. According to Tönnies, kinship (Gemeinschaft of blood), common place (Gemeinschaft of place), and shared meanings (Gemeinschaft of mind) combined in time and space to create a strong sense of community. Industrialization destroyed Gemeinschaft and replaced it with Gesellschaft, where relations were impersonal and calculative and private actions were favored over public works. Like Marx, Tönnies saw industrialization as a destroyer of community and creator of segregation. Industrialized society weakened bonds of kinship and devalued the importance of the family, which were critical to the strength of a community.
4. McLuhan argued that there are 4 stages of technological/social development: 1) Tribal Age, 2) Literate Age, 3) Print Age, and 4) Electronic Age. Changes in communication technology changes society, communities, families, and the way we think, feel, and act. The last stage retribalizes us all by unifying the planet.
5. Putnam was not the first to be concerned about the decline of communities. Ehrenheit's 1995 book The Lost City: The Forgotten Virtues of Community in America was concerned with the increasing political emphasis on expanding individual choices at the expense of community and civil authority.
6. Putnam's Bowling Alone is about social change, the debate about the rise and fall of community, and public concerns about the decline of U.S. communities. Putnam states,

Of babyboomers interviewed in 1987, 53 percent thought their parents' generation was better in terms of 'being a concerned citizen, involved in helping others in the community,' as compared with only 21 percent who thought their own generation was better. Fully 77 percent said the nation was worse off because of 'less involvement in community activities.' In 1992 three-quarters of the U.S. workforce said that 'the breakdown of community' and 'selfishness' were 'serious' or 'extremely serious' problems in America. In 1996 only 8 percent of all Americans said that 'honesty and integrity of the average American ' were improving, as compared with 50 percent of us who thought we were becoming less trustworthy. Those of us who said that people had become less civil over the preceding ten years outnumbered those who thought people had become more civil, 80 percent to 12 percent. In several surveys in 1999 two-thirds of Americans said that America's civic life had weakened in recent years, that sociall and moral values were higher when they were growing up, and that our society was focused more on the individual than the community. More than 80 percent said there should be more emphasis on community, even if that put more demands on individuals. Americans' concern about weakening community bonds may be misplaced or exaggerated, but a decent respect for the opinion of our fellow citizens suggests that we should explore the issue more thoroughly.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Buzuev, Vladimir and Gorodnov, Vladimir. 1987. What is Marxism-Leninism? Progress Publishers. Moscow.
Etzioni, Amitai. 2003. "Communitarianism" in Encyclopedia of Community: From the Village to the Virtual World, Vol. 1, A-D. Karen Christiansen and David Levinson, eds. Sage Publications, New York, pp. 224 - 228.
Kolakowski, Leszek. 1978. Main Currents of Marxism: Its Origins, Growth, and Dissolution. 1. The Founders. Oxford University Press, New York.
Mark, Karl. 1998. The German Ideology including Theses on Feuerbach and Introduction of the Critique of Political Economy. Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY.
---------. 1975. Early Writings. Ed. Quintin Hoare. Random House, New York.
---------. 1963. The Poverty of Philosophy. International Publishers, New York.
McLuhan, Marshall. 1964.
Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling Alone. Simon & Schuster, New York.
Tönnies, Ferdinand. 1963. Community and Society. Translated and edited by Charles P. Loomis. Harper & Row, NY.

In what Sense is 'I' a Social Conception? — The answer is this is apparently something as follows: 'I' is social in that the very essence of it is the assertion of self-will in a social medium of which the speaker is conscious. A sympathetic study of the early word will, I think, make this quite plain. 'I' is addressed to an audience — usually with some emphasis — and its purpose is to impress upon that audience the power ('I make go'), the wish ('I go play sand-pile'), the claim ('my mama'), the service ('I get it for you') of the speaker. Its use in solitude would be inconceivable (though the audience may, of course, be imaginery). To put it otherwise, 'I' is a differentiation in a vague body of personal ideas which is either self-conscious or social consciousness, as you please to look at it...(Charles Horton Cooley, 1908, p. )

On the other hand, the stuff that goes to make up the 'me' whom the 'I' addresses and whom he observes, is the experience which induced by this action of the 'I.' If the 'I' speaks, the 'me' hears. If the 'I' strikes, the 'me' feels the blow. Here again the 'me' consciousness is of the same character as that which arises from the action of the other upon him. That is, it is only as the individual finds himself acting with reference to himself as he acts towards others, that he becomes a subject to himself rather than an object, and only as he is affected by his own social conduct in the manner in which he is affected by that of others, that he becomes an object to his own social conduct (George Herbert Mead, 1913, p. 375)

It's Wednesday; I'm telecommuting today, and now it's my lunch break. Usually when I telecommute I play some CDs to provide background music while I work. However, this morning I listened to my favorite radio station, WMNF. This morning's programming included a talk by Alan Watts, who I find to be a wonderful speaker. His talks are humorous, insightful, and inspirational. He passed back in the early 1970s, but his thoughts put into words are timeless.