In the month of July, —
The Honeybee from Religious Symbolism to Enlightenment
Why was Deity associated with the honeybee?
There’s a sort of speculative fiction book that explores the origin of religion in ancient Mesopotamia through a sort of meta-narrative of science fiction, and on the surface level, I’m drawing from that novel. (Fall, Neal Stephenson.) But storyline aside, there’s an interesting take there on the origin of the connection between Deity and the honeybee, showing how practices of worship situated around agricultural rites eventually foregrounded the importance of the honeybee, and that insect and its hive became a symbol of deity, perhaps brought about through the actions of devotees to a specific Canaanite religious sect, but also through a generalized familiarity among the population of the ancient Near East with the honeybee’s pollination abilities and the honey it produced, which could have strengthened its position as a symbol, even among those who did not believe that it was necessarily the only manifestation of God within their worldview. Even more interestingly, the specific Canaanite religious sect of El that was devoted to the honeybee largely drew from shepherds and spread from that core group. Those who have pieced together the strands of ancient Western history will notice that the Shepherd archetype, as part of the institution of the pastorate, played in Western history the role of infusing Oriental knowledge of individualized attention into the Western ideology of fixed relations, (Foucault, Omnes et Singulatim), which was predominant at the time and remained dominant until the Enlightenment. The honeybee is thus a symbol of enlightenment, but one that appeared contemporaneously with its ancient precursor, thousands of years before the Enlightenment and evolved through the centuries before being reinvigorated by the light of truth at the dawn of the Enlightenment, to whose thinkers it represented the social and productive nature of mankind.
How does the symbol of the honeybee problematize humanity’s ongoing relationship to the divine?
Deity, or our understanding of it, depending on your religious perspective, has grown by a process of selective accretion to a norm of desirable conduct. However, this has always been a flawed human process when it comes to formulating an official understanding of what we believe we understand. Let’s turn again to the honeybee. As a symbol for deity amongst the Canaanite religious sect of El, it displaced other conceptions and their symbols for God. The sect of El illustrates very well the process of accretion by which a polytheistic religion became a monotheistic one. In a time when gods victorious in the eyes of their converts would be declared the fathers of other gods determined by humans to be lesser, it made perfect sense for the sect of El to declare victory in this fashion over rain gods or fertility gods. However, I do not believe they ever had it in their minds when they did so that their sect would in turn become subsumed into the victorious following of Yahweh. This logical leap could have doomed the symbol of the honeybee. But there was a certain primitive but sound reason at play here that shows how humans were building towards a monotheistic universalized conception of deity that could not be humanly impersonated but could only be simulated through transformations in belief. Rain and fertility gods were recognized by a sort of attractive force that held all living things together. At some point, the shepherd’s favorite sect, the certain sect of El, overwhelmed this with the idea of accretion, at the very point where the honeybee and beehive become symbols. Beyond this, accretion becomes the only idea, signaling some limit point at which purpose becomes lost to function. And this limit point is precisely the honeybee and beehive as a symbol and an indicator of social construct.
Demystifying the honeybee: Enlightenment rationality undermines symbol-as-reality, sharpening focus
The honeybee and beehive as a metaphor for human society was nearly unchallenged until the Enlightenment for the simple reason that the behavior of bees had never been scientifically studied. The honeybee and beehive existed in the mind almost entirely in its symbolic state throughout the Middle Ages, with examples from ancient times, such as in the latter half of Virgil’s Georgics. It was not until Enlightenment rationality entered in that the beehive and the honeybee were demystified, and almost as soon as they were demystified, their use as a symbol for various temporal purposes became apparent, and the use of that symbol was critiqued and problematized by various Enlightenment thinkers. You have to start with Voltaire because he lays the groundwork by saying that the social construct of the bee and the beehive as an example for what humans should do is a metaphor—however beautiful it is, it is just a metaphor. “The bee is a symbol of industry, and the honey it produces is a metaphor for the fruits of labor,” he said. The rest of the conversation was mostly centered around critiques of a particularly amoral position taken that we should reject even the good from the comparison between humans and bees. Adam Smith merely wanted to soften this position by advocating not for greed but for self-interest, while Frances Hutcheson dismissed the entire idea as absurd, arguing that we should still have altruism and affection. Rousseau basically said if you are denying the whole thing because there are some dissimilarities, then you are overlooking the fact that there are some similarities and furthermore that they are good similarities. Moreover, John Locke said, “Brutes abstract not,” which might have been a reference to what his rival Hobbes said, which is that, he claims, bees can sometimes live without a sovereign power, but humans never can. However, you may note that this is something that Rousseau might’ve remarked against, saying you are overlooking similarities between the two. Ultimately, I think all involved would agree that bees had positive symbolism that sometimes exceeded the factual nature of bees themselves. Some might even further argue that we should trim off the full-fledged association between the fact and actuality of bees, and leave the rest to science. Overall, you can see that the Enlightenment filter sharpened the symbolism and decreased the metaphor of the honeybee and beehive.
From International to Structural Critique
They finance the one-sided class war with inflation and foreign invasion.
Many have wondered why exactly the US took itself off the gold standard in the 70s, with many incomplete and unsatisfactory theories out there for what impetus actually caused this change. I want to point out that there is a fact associated with this which can be quite instructive, which is that during World War I, a lot of countries took themselves off the gold standard in order to get more flexibility to finance war. The 70s is also approximately when the US began to put itself on a permanent war footing, fighting bush wars across the world without congressional approval. Coincidence? I suspect not. Nixon probably took us off the gold standard to finance the War in Vietnam and Cambodia, and since then, it stands to reason the institutional factors that would prevent a further development in the monetary system that we keep hearing about, must be the objections of the interests of the military-industrial complex, which has raked in the profits of war inflation practically without guardrails since. The next time you think about it, remember that the interests causing a permanent inflationary global economy, and the interests maintaining a permanent U.S. war footing, are the same enemy, driven by the same desire for money and death.
Problematizing the innovation model of economic development
It’s important to note that two other facets of the class analysis, namely, the effect of new technological innovation and the emergence of blockchain distributed ledgers, have a problematic effect on workers, and the analysis of their class struggle should reflect that. New technology drives displacement of workers, and it is often implemented to cut costs by laying off workers. The companies themselves, as we can see in their comportment and intent, adopt new technology specifically for this reason. It harms workers and supports the corporate bottom line at workers’ expense. This is a broken system of economic development, and it is high time to put it behind us. So much for that. The second point gets back to what we were saying at the outset. Blockchain currencies are essentially highly volatile, fungible tokens. Creating copycat cryptocurrencies off of the Bitcoin model has allowed the 1% to not only loot the economy in the case of a crisis, but to create crises that they can then use to pillage and plunder the economy, again at the expense of workers’ financial stability.
Reframing the need for reform initiatives based on economic justice
If anyone liked Zohran Mamdani’s idea of publicly owned grocery stores with lower prices, they should know that the Office of Price Controls (OPC) during the last World War had OPC ceiling prices, describing the maximum amount that something should cost. The price problem then was described in terms of markup and inefficiency, while in these times, we might use the words overhead and carried interest. The idea is the same. Corporate profits are the reason for inflation, and just to recap, the specific interests of the military-industrial complex, the surveillance capitalism public-private apparatus, and financial capital set the goals, which the government in its lust for war pursues on their behalf, to the detriment of citizens’ lives. Furthermore, the whole point of allowing an inflationary economy was to put the US on a permanent war footing, so it serves those corporate interests intentionally and not just coincidentally. People often point out that public socialism only ever seems to appear during wartime in the United States. I would challenge and problematize this, reframing it as follows: disastrous economic policies, serving corporate and wealthy elites, cause this country to be dragged into wars, after which there’s a public outcry against these bellicose policies, which results in people discovering economic justice and plausible reforms to the system. The government during a situation of public outcry and bogged down in some foreign entanglement has no choice but to acquiesce to the will of the people and admit reforms.
From Social Critique to Reframing Institutional Reform
The issue is renewable energy transference of electricity across distances
We’re thinking long-term today, not just fighting back against the abuses of the Trump administration. Who knows how long that will last? Probably not longer than a day. Anyway. Look if you want to transfer large amounts of renewable energy over long distances, you have to build the infrastructure for it. If you want to get desert solar and offshore wind and other renewable power to places that don’t have the climate for it, you have to do certain things to make it work — that’s been established. For undersea cables, you really need DC current, interestingly enough, for the exact reason that it is less lossy than AC over long distances. It is connected to the efficiency of DC current and the same reason it is used in many electric cars. It solves the transference problem, which is that electrical signals can be measured over a length equivalent to the distance of the United States from coast to coast. This is one reason why I could never get why AC current was adopted. It was one of those nonsense measures that corporate America forces upon us. The performative inhumanity of this saga was only heightened by the inhumane treatment of animals. The set piece that was constructed to demonstrate one of the scant safety features of AC current as compared to DC current by shocking to death a live elephant is, of course, what I'm making reference to. Computers use AC but could use DC just fine. Electrical grade would be just fine. But there was a corporate cabal. So we have AC, it's nonsense, and actually, it came from the same kind of PR campaign that you see from climate disinformation. Interesting fact, I wonder where that goes.
Lacunae
I reread Sally Rooney’s Normal People, not too long ago, and I was impressed again by the class-conscious commentary on the writer’s life in this singular book. I also verified my theory that it borrows from the romance of Tolstoy, which is not at all a bad thing, but it does highlight how much better work is when that work is Tolstoy-aware. However, it also highlights how bad some other work is, and I guess that’s unfortunate, but it’s the way of it. Novelists have an almost unique capacity to lengthen their discourse with various narrative elements like quotations, and this only lengthens the journey toward good taste. However, the solution when adapting novels to other formats is not to tear them all out and put in lacunae. Even in very good adaptations, there are these terrible choices to take out the most important elements of the story that justify its place in society and history, and that would be a lapse in good taste. It might be more interesting to take up the question: should some novels be considered too good to adapt to screen? How about this: not strictly speaking yes or no, but it would have to be multimedia to get to a full no and multimedia is where the narrative is going to. In some circumspect way, this might be why Amazon canceled Wheel of Time: because it was not feasible without the textual element.
Jeffrey Epstein was an indicator
Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad honeypot operation that had compromising information on Trump, and it doesn’t matter whether he’s alive or dead because Mossad had the compromising information on Trump — and then we bombed Iran! But we can problematize this by asking for who does Trump’s compromised character represent something beneficial to their interests. And that’s why we’ve got to be thinking long-term because there’s something wrong with the system when there are so many corrupt millionaires and billionaires, and they all seem to be compromised in a big way. Of course, capital is corrupt, and that goes back to the dawn of time; Deleuze will say that the original state of the oedipal relationship is money, but its effect on our politics, work, and intellectual lives is not inevitable. As people start to understand this, which is relatively recent in history, the concept of money is in danger and perhaps this very reason is why we are seeing this massive corruption of billionaires: because the source of their status is in question and may remain so for the foreseeable future.
Truth to Power, from Solidarity
“Don’t tell a lie about me and I won’t tell the truth about you” — Michigan Chamber reproduces injustices of the past for personal financial benefit.
The Michigan Chamber of Commerce should not tell a lie about us if they do not want us to tell the truth about them.
We should never be afraid to go back to first principles and examine whether contemporary formations of institutions, organizations, or businesses conform with first principles. If they do not conform with first principles, we should eliminate them without regret and with no recourse. The Michigan Chamber of Commerce is such an organization. Let's examine it from the perspective of first principles.
In a barbaric and medieval time, the local policy of lords and bishops was to restrict the economic mobility of the common man by limiting his commerce to local areas and his prices to local standards. He could not move around to sell his goods, and he could not sell them at a higher price than the price demanded by the government. This applied to grain prices and led to the destruction of the medieval economy. Let us turn now to the modern Chamber of Commerce. The modern Chamber of Commerce is a local organization that stifles the ability of a common man to live in peace, stability, and safety in his own local area. When the common man organizes to better his lot, the Chamber of Commerce is on the other side, just as the lords and bishops of medieval England and medieval Europe would restrict the rights of the common man to better their lot. The modern Chamber of Commerce is the mercantilist organization that carries on the same repression of the dreams and aspirations of the modern common person that the oppression of feudalism carried out upon the serfs and artisans of pre-modern times. By the same logic that threw off ancient mercantilism, we should simply dismiss and castigate chambers of commerce for any purpose, for other than the perpetuation of inequality, the greed and injustice of corporations and their destruction of the American dream, and the evil designs of faction, corruption, and disillusionment, they have no purpose relevant to a modern world.
Let's compare medieval mercantilism to the modern Chamber of Commerce and see just how similar they are. Let’s look at one comparison in particular. We've described already how medieval fiefs would restrict territorial trade at a fair price for grain, but have you ever stopped to think for whom that benefits? Well, it benefits those who have the money to pay for grain at a fair price but don't want to pay a fair price for it: the Lord's and bishops. Now look at contemporary issues — 20% of all corporate wages are withheld structurally to benefit corporate partners at the expense of workers for the express purpose of denying actual wages to employees. Chambers of Commerce have always supported the idea of carried interest, even when reformers brought the idea of eliminating carried interest to their door. And who does carried interest benefit? The Lords and bishops of modern life, and they pay dues to the Chambers of Commerce out of those same heaps of money.
In conclusion, don't be surprised that this illegitimate, fascist, wage-thieving organization lied to you about a ballot initiative that would increase justice, common humanity, and the well-being of students and our future. Apparently, they oppose that because justice, common humanity, and the well-being of students and our future go against their mission. Only be surprised that they thought we wouldn't fight back.
Standing against manufactured scarcity is leverage across issues
There is a manufactured scarcity created with zoning policies if you accept the idea that zoning can often be done the way it is to protect wealth and status. Resource allocation is done in such a way that some benefit at the exclusion of others, but, as the abundance ideology argues, not everyone benefits in a system where theoretically everyone could benefit if structured properly for the benefit of justice for all. We should know the general trend among points where investigating the narrative shows leverage, like for instance, the carried interest structure as structural wage theft, high healthcare costs as the result of insurance profit maximization schemes, and all educational issues as the result of education as manufactured scarcity. All tend to focus on the illogical nature of scarcity doctrines up to and including austerity, which abundance challenges in every way.
Austerity is less complicated than you think.
A very deep core need in the labor movement is to understand austerity. What happened? There is a narrative. When the idea of the labor movement caught on in the United States, it was seen in other countries as such a good idea, including in Britain, where it caught on, and the Labour Party displaced what used to be called the Liberal Party. However, once labor became thoroughly politicized in Great Britain, there was a reaction from the governing conservatives at a certain period in the 80s, and that was what gave rise to what is currently called austerity. Now, really, it is class warfare. That is an important point to understand because this was explicitly a labor ideology forming the basis of a party, and the opposition simply adopted anti-labor policies as political planks. When the opposition got in charge, all of the policies became anti-worker. Now, this got brought back to the United States, but it’s important to know how this was very much a Tory endeavor. That’s the British conservatives. Furthermore, the success of this was attributed to the support of the royal family because austerity benefits no one but those at the very top. We don’t have kings in this country, but that doesn’t mean those at the top of our system are not unfairly benefiting proportionally to their wealth. So, when we are opposing austerity, we are really continuing in the footsteps of our patriot forefathers opposing the king of Great Britain, yes, but also taking aim at any system that allows for the repression of a tyrant or monarch.
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