The Qabalistic Tree of Life is a map to the cosmos. All of the manifested and unmanifested Light can be explained through this symbol. There are two paths that can be followed: the Thunderbolt Way, which travels from top to bottom, and the Way of the Serpent, which travels from bottom to top.
The top-most trinity explains the fundamentals of Creation. The Light (Brahman), through changeless change, becomes the names-and-forms in space-and-time. We call the changeless change a pattern, and the appearances we consider matter. Through a process of veiling-and-revealing, the projecting power, comes the multitude of creatures and scenery. These three aspects are also described in alchemy in the following way:
You are in the bottom circle, known as Malkuth in Hebrew. In your confusion, you are identified with your body and its sense perceptions, and you seek pleasure and avoid pain. You may be aligned toward physical creation, an extroverted orientation, or you may be more introverted and a thinking type. In following either path, the logical end of study proves that the realm of phenomenal appearances and sensate perceptions is an illusion. This is the foundation for spiritual enlightenment, and following the middle way, you encounter the first veil; through detachment from the objects of the world and restraint of desire, you tame your instinctual animality and gain abstract thinking skills and intuitive feeling. In passing the first veil, you gain the powers to discern the Real from the unreal, and also mercy and right action based on knowledge of the interrelation of all things. This makes you fit to wear the Crown of Truth as you fully realize your creative soul potential.
The animal man was a scavenger who became a hunter, which demanded skillful weapon-making and keen observation. By mastering irrigation techniques and the control of plants, man became a gardener and the abundance of wheat, barley, sesame, dates, figs, olives, almonds, apples, apricots, grapes, and other vegetables allowed for the proliferation of crafts and inquiry into the mysteries of nature; more co-operative than competitive, mankind divided labor tasks and founded political processes both to negotiate control of territories and resources, and also to inculcate norms and values of the group. Some were weavers, others made shoes; a few became miners, potters, gem-cutters, and masons; there were fishermen and farmers; a class of knowledge-workers organized trade relations, introduced money as a symbolic unit of exchange, and founded a priesthood not only to preserve and transmit literacy, mathematics, and astronomy, but also to guide character development through life stages and moral questions.
Ethics
1. The Taboo Against Wisdom and Philosopher-Kings
A. Working Definitions
1. Society is…
- co-operation to share water, food, goods, services, information, crafts and duties in a natural meritocracy
- co-operation to share water, food, goods, services, information, crafts and duties in a natural meritocracy
2. Government is…
- the management of the modes and supplies for production, trade relations and unions, distribution and methods of credit to enjoy security, goods, services and information
- the management of the modes and supplies for production, trade relations and unions, distribution and methods of credit to enjoy security, goods, services and information
3. Class Identity is…
- role, rank and rights in the social order, according to psychophysical merit or natural predisposition
- role, rank and rights in the social order, according to psychophysical merit or natural predisposition
B. The Philosophical Foundation of Society
1. Knowledge of Plants, Minerals, and Animals…
- Control of food, medicine, craft (energy, tools, shelter, transportation, cloth, dyes, paper and ink)
- Social power (security, healthcare, media and information, lifestyles, superhuman mastery of space and time)
- Control of food, medicine, craft (energy, tools, shelter, transportation, cloth, dyes, paper and ink)
- Social power (security, healthcare, media and information, lifestyles, superhuman mastery of space and time)
C. Philosophical Government
1. The Intent of Management
- The goal is to live by each other’s joy and well-being in the conditions favorable to the realization of superhuman powers and soul potential.
- The goal is to live by each other’s joy and well-being in the conditions favorable to the realization of superhuman powers and soul potential.
2. The Reward of Hierarchy
- Abundance of food, and security of the necessities for life
- Variety of goods and services
- Freedom for arts, craft and science
- Nurture of the common welfare and relief of excessive suffering
- Growth of the soul, of and in the world
- Abundance of food, and security of the necessities for life
- Variety of goods and services
- Freedom for arts, craft and science
- Nurture of the common welfare and relief of excessive suffering
- Growth of the soul, of and in the world
3. The Problems of Sharing and Hierarchy
- Instinctual ignorance and materialism breeds separatism and confusion
- Natural scarcity, social pretensions and exaggerated artificial needs
- Political intrigue, mismanagement and malpractice
- Instinctual ignorance and materialism breeds separatism and confusion
- Natural scarcity, social pretensions and exaggerated artificial needs
- Political intrigue, mismanagement and malpractice
Though the symbolic behavior is variable and collective institutions can be redefined, the social hierarchy is consistent in the history of civilizations, whether Egyptian, the Indian caste system, medieval feudalism of Europe, or the modern capitalist class stratification.
Karl Marx (1818-1883) proposes man is motivated first by the need for food and shelter. Surplus of crops led to trade and eventually capitalism, the individual ownership of the resources and means for production in society and the use of such assets to gather more private wealth in a money-game that buys only to sell for greater personal gain. He proposed in the course of civilization that workers as a collective would control the resources and production capacities of society and share in common.
In the midst of the Industrial Revolution, a few capitalist merchants, the bourgeoisie, controlled and exploited the working class, the proletariat. Marx “saw the world as divided between a class of people who labor to produce goods and who sell their labor, and another class, people who have capital, use their capital to purchase the labor through wages, and exploit the labor to accumulate wealth for themselves” (Parker 189). Before industrial capitalism, workers used the objects they produced (use value), and could feel pride in their finished work. But in the division of labor, workers experience alienation, meaning their specialized labor function is far removed from the end product, a commodity with exchange value, and which falsely signals the arbitrary status of those who purchase them.
Workers exchange labor power, their commodity, for money in a specific ratio. The free laborer sells her labor power, really hours of her life, not to any one capitalist, but “to the whole class of purchasers, the capitalist class” because she must live (Marx 661). Work, and commodity fetishism, becomes an uncriticized life activity. “He works in order to live. He does not even reckon labor as a part of his life; it is rather a sacrifice of his life. It is a commodity which he has made over to another” so that he may survive: as if merely to exist is to live (Marx 660). Education in industrial capitalism therefore serves primarily as a mechanism to perpetuate prevailing conditions and produce new workers as old ones depreciate and expire. Alienation worsens by commodification, as people themselves are regarded as numbers, statistics and the human resources of an abstract economic structure (Parker 192). Decent social relations and regard for actual people is abandoned as the life of the commodity economy and commodity culture intensifies with false consumer choice. Money transforms from a symbol for a network of practical social relations and means of exchange to the embodiment of wealth in itself, an object with an intrinsic value.
Workers exchange labor power, their commodity, for money in a specific ratio. The free laborer sells her labor power, really hours of her life, not to any one capitalist, but “to the whole class of purchasers, the capitalist class” because she must live (Marx 661). Work, and commodity fetishism, becomes an uncriticized life activity. “He works in order to live. He does not even reckon labor as a part of his life; it is rather a sacrifice of his life. It is a commodity which he has made over to another” so that he may survive: as if merely to exist is to live (Marx 660). Education in industrial capitalism therefore serves primarily as a mechanism to perpetuate prevailing conditions and produce new workers as old ones depreciate and expire. Alienation worsens by commodification, as people themselves are regarded as numbers, statistics and the human resources of an abstract economic structure (Parker 192). Decent social relations and regard for actual people is abandoned as the life of the commodity economy and commodity culture intensifies with false consumer choice. Money transforms from a symbol for a network of practical social relations and means of exchange to the embodiment of wealth in itself, an object with an intrinsic value.
The values and interactions with commodities in an industrial capitalist society, and the basic assumptions of the totalitarian ideology controlling our social existence, are structured similarly to dreams. “The total product of our community is a social product” (Marx 671) and rather than reforming the exploitative order, the mass of workers accepts the corrupt system largely because we begin “post fetum…the circulation of commodities have already acquired the stability of natural, self-understood forms of social life” (Marx 669). The Frankfurt School, confused by the compliance of the mass with a system against their interests, examined how industrial capitalism reproduces its hegemony, its dominant influence and power to effect conformity, in each successive generation by way of sports, entertainment, and political spectacles.