The PRINCIPLE of HEALTHY & MEANINGFUL LIVING

[alanjjohnstone]

http://www.countercurrents.org/Just in case you have not heard of it, Countercurrents is an Indian (Kerala) based website with a very open and inclusive policy when it comes to publishing articles. They have published a number of my own. Binu Matthews is a very welcoming editor. Perhaps you could submit your article to them. http://www.countercurrents.org/countercurrents-submission-policy/

[Prakash RP]

I'd like to add the following few words to my comment made on 31March 2017  in reply to ALB's comment ( dated 27/03/2017 ).I said I expect a true communist to lead a decent lifestyle that will be healthy and meaningful too, and I wish it would be an example for the born poor and vulgar millions who I wish weould be inspired and interested in communism by it. Therefore, I wish a communist's mission in life would include leading a healthy and meaningful life ( such a lifestyle has to be decent necessarily ). You may justifiably question the practicability of this proposition in a capitalist world. So far as I'm concerned, I don't believe it's possible for the overwhelming majority of the working people in the present world. Nevertheless, I don't think this fact forms good-enough grounds for abandoning the Principle of healthy and meaningful living outright and indulging in silly luxuries such as drugs, drinks, gambling, matrimony, et cetera. There truly exists NO good reason why the sensible fail to see the basic distinction between a meal ( both the decent one and the poor man's dish ), medicine, clothes, shoes, a house, a car, a PC, books, pens, songs, dance, drama, etc and drugs, drinks, gambling, etc. The former group consist of stuff you need, some of which form the bare necessities that you must be able to afford just to stay alive while the rest are meant to add some meaning, beauty, decency, dignity, and delight to your existence and thus make your living not only worth living but befit a human, the only being that happens to be superior to all non-human beings. On the other hand, drugs, drinks, matrimony etc are stuff that you don't at all need to live unless you're incurably addicted to such silly stuff. I think communists are sensible people, and so I wish communists would make the Principle of healthy and meaningful living their life principle and try their utmost to remain true to it. I also wish communists would awake to its significance. A communist, by my view, must appreciate that their way of living, like their words and actions, ought to be inspirational for the benighted millions, the born poor and deprived, that sweat blood, like beasts of burden, to produce all wealth and luxuries but lead a hard and humble existence themselves throughout their life.

[Bijou Drains]

Prakash RP wrote:

 I said I expect a true communist to lead a decent lifestyle that will be healthy and meaningful too……….. There truly exists NO good reason why the sensible fail to see the basic distinction between a meal ( both the decent one and the poor man's dish ), medicine, clothes, shoes, a house, a car, a PC, books, pens, songs, dance, drama, etc and drugs, drinks, gambling, etc.  drugs, drinks, matrimony etc are stuff that you don't at all need to live unless you're incurably addicted to such silly stuff…………………………….. I think communists are sensible people, and so I wish communists would make the Principle of healthy and meaningful living their life principle and try their utmost to remain true to it. I also wish communists would awake to its significance. A communist, by my view, must appreciate that their way of living, like their words and actions, ought to be inspirational for the benighted millions, the born poor and deprived, that sweat blood, like beasts of burden, to produce all wealth and luxuries but lead a hard and humble existence themselves throughout their life.

You take the dictatorial, non-democratic view, that the things that you see as of being of value, must be the things that all "true" communists must see as of being of value. However you fail to see the irony of you claiming to be a socialist/communist (which necessarily is democratic in nature) whilst at the same time dictating how others should behave! It is not for you to decide how another human being should live their life, it is not for you to moralise and judge the actions of your fellow workers. Your definition of what is sensible or wholesome, is not every other worker's definition of sensible and wholesome. To shock your sensibilites even further I can tell you that I even indulge in the occasional pork pie!You state that things such as dance and drama are worthwhile things whereas drink and matrimony are silly. Given the choice of an evening in the pub with a couple of my friends sinking a few beers, or the choice of going to a theatre and watching a load of people poncing about in tights and telling me its ballet, I would be in the pub every time. I don't however insist that those who enjoy ballet, etc. should live their life the way I dictate. As to the areseholes who go to the theatre to watch Shakespeare and laugh at the appointed time, at jokes they've heard a thousand times, that weren't even funny when they were first written, just to prove that to everyone else there that they are "cultured", don't get me started!You talk about the luxuries of life, you think that we should leave the finer things in life, good food, first class travel, indulgences, etc. to be enjoyed by the parasites of the capitalist class! Only they, you say, should enjoy the fillet steaks, the lobster thermidore, etc. etc. Bollocks to that. My view of a socialist society, isn't one of fasting and abstinence, I want the best to be available for all, on the basis of their self determined needs and wants. In the meantime, nothing is too good for the workers. So if I can get back enough of my surplus value to get the odd fillet steak or bottle of premier cru Chablis, I will and I'll enjoy every bloody sip!

[Anonymous]

I have said similar things in the past when I first joined the forum and I was very surprised at the reaction to me wishing to have a cheese burger in socialism. If you like the ocassional pork pie then you may need to keep your own pig. Apparently some believe that we won't be allowed to slaughter animals to eat them in socialism.  We will all be vegitarians.Harry Young said we were only interested in beer and bingo up here in the north east and we ew don't care for ShakespeareBring socialism on! More beer, bingo, pork pies and cheese burgers! We can ban Shakepeare instead 

[ALB]

Harry Young also said that vegetarianism was a capitalist plot to reduce wages by getting the workers to eat grass.

[Anonymous]

Vin wrote:

 Bring socialism on! More beer, bingo, pork pies and cheese burgers! We can ban Shakepeare instead 

Perhaps you should re-name it Slobcialism.

[ALB]

Prakash RP wrote:

A communist, by my view, must appreciate that their way of living, like their words and actions, ought to be inspirational for the benighted millions, the born poor and deprived, that sweat blood, like beasts of burden, to produce all wealth and luxuries but lead a hard and humble existence themselves throughout their life.

There seems to be a bit of a "culture clash " here. Is there some tradition in India of "holy men" who live like this and are respected by "the benighted millions"? I don't know. In any event, it is only the "masses" who can establish/socialism by and for themselves and not by following some minority of right-behaving socialists/communists.

[Anonymous]

I do not know where it has been said, or writen  that in order to be a communist, you must be a monogamist, or celibate. 

[Bijou Drains]

Vin wrote:

I have said similar things in the past when I first joined the forum and I was very surprised at the reaction to me wishing to have a cheese burger in socialism. If you like the ocassional pork pie then you may need to keep your own pig. Apparently some believe that we won't be allowed to slaughter animals to eat them in socialism.  We will all be vegitarians.Harry Young said we were only interested in beer and bingo up here in the north east and we ew don't care for ShakespeareBring socialism on! More beer, bingo, pork pies and cheese burgers! We can ban Shakepeare instead 

Got nothing against Shakey, just some of the pseudo inellectual posers who pretend that every word he wrote was a pearl drop from heaven and that every joke he wrote was the funiest thiing ever written, he only had two jokes, joke no 1 a man dresses up as a woman and is mistaken for a real woman and no 2 a man prentends to be someone else and gets into trouble for it.

[Anonymous]

Bob Andrews wrote:

 Perhaps you should re-name it Slobcialism.

Or in your case 'nobbism' 

[moderator1]

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[alanjjohnstone]

If you want a small allotment with a few chickens and a couple of pigs and goat or two, i am sure you will be able to. However on the bigger picture production (and that includes food) will be a social process. Your individual tastes will be just that , mostly individually produced or at most, net-worked by like-minded hobbyists.I am in no doubt that meat-eating smoking and drinking will decline dramatically. Because of the environmental damage and demands, and the need for a  more sustainable farming industry, live-stock will drop in numbers, so i do think your pork-pies will become a luxury dish to be savoured on special occasions and festivals.Do you know how to slaughter and butcher a pig? I doubt very much that the existing workers will continue in the abattoirs – read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair – and conditions have scarcely improved over a century as the oft-repeated exposes regularly and frequently revealThat chemicalised piss will be replaced by micro-breweries in local speciality beers. Moon-shine will once more make a re-emergence but this time it won't be made out of anti-freeze and industrial ethanolTobacco plantations will disappear as most likely will tea and coffee (i have talked about it before) as workers migrate to more rewarding farm-work of producing food and not cash-crops. (I believe a tobacco farm existed in Berwickshire during WW2 so not only will it be roll your own it will be grow your own) Local cultures will no doubt carry on traditions. Cubans will smoke their havanas. Mind altering drugs will probably be used on the same scale as today and for the same purpose…relaxation and recreation. But glue-sniffing will go the way of meths-drinking. I think Bolivians will still chew the coca leave and Africans eat Khat as older Asian chew betel nut. But newer generations will maybe less inclined to follow these traditions since i do think as the title of the thread infers, men and women and children will be more desirous of a healthy meaningful life and the advertising and sponsorship industries won't be promoting sugar-addiction and fat-saturated junk-food. I image a completely new mind-set in people. To be honest, i recognise it now in younger folk's behaviour the older i get and the old fogie i am becoming. Those who indulge will perhaps have a garden shed with solar-power lights and hydroponics and again there will be the regionalisation of types. But will pharmaceutical factories produce E and other manufactured synthetic highs? Again, i think society will decide to forgo such and concentrate upon the life-saving and enhancing drugs. But once more, perhaps a few self-taught chemists will make and circulate pills.We can only speculate on marriage and sexual relationships but even these days as the economic chains are loosened for women, no longer is the ring on the finger the same as the ring through the nose. No longer are women slaves to the kitchen and with an increase in communal eating and the end of consumer white household appliances will increase social-living. I still recall the neighbourhood laundry-house, the old steamie,  not the launderette but same applies…work will be where people meet and talkLGBQT will liberated people from imposed sexual roles and so-called norms. We will become accustomed to more than one sex or gender.Anyways, i think we should go a bit lighter on Prakash. I think he come from a country that is in transition culturally…a country where dowry and honour killing are common in marriage, where caste determines what you eat and cannot eat, what you work as and where you live. A country where prohibition is still a political issue and with an alcohol problem that makes us all seem like tee-totallers. So give Prakash some slack.Thinking back, our own WSP India expelled a member for attending a religious wedding of a relative (i  stand to be corrected on that) because locally they feel a need to be particularly anti-religion. Now, how many members would we have if mere attendance at a religious do was grounds for expulsion. But on the otherhand, I know of one Glasgow member who was brow-beaten by his sectarian family into  going on an Orange Walk and when spotted could never again show face at his branch ever again (a VV tale)How peoople in socialism will conduct daily life is not for us to determine but just as sexism, racism and nationalism is something we deal with in our own lives at present, perhaps we can add life-style issues to behaviour that is becoming to or not nbecoming for a socialist. Closer to socialism, Prakash strictures on what we should do and not do will become more prominent and a member who chooses to munch on a pork-pie in public will be frowned upon as much as a member who lights up a cigarette at the EC table. Who knows…

[Prakash RP]

Would like to add the following text to my comment dated 01 April 2017.I wish British socialists would NOT fail to take cognisance of the following two points.( 1 ) There exists an irreconcilable contradiction between your matrimonial mission and your communist mission. By your matrimonial mission, I mean your duties and obligations towards your wife, supposing you're a man, and children, and your matrtimonial ( or familial ) duties and obligations are, in my view, ensuring the social and financial security and well-being as well as a decent lifestyle of your family members each and decent upbringing of the kids and decent livelihood of the grown-up kids. Nevertheless, the brute and inescapable truth is men are pitifully defficient in their capacity and calibre they need be possessed of in order to make a worthy husband or a worthy father.  A man is NOT a lion of a man. An individual's capacity is too limited to make him match up to his matrimonial mission. That means it's impossible for a guy to accomplish fully and duly, even if he uses up all his money, time, and energy for this purpose, his matrimonial mission just because it happens to exceed his capability. This holds true for 99 per cent of world's manhood ( i.e. all those men that do NOT belong to the 1 per cent that possess at least as much wealth as all the rest do together ). Therefore, the brute and inescapable truth is a guy ( one of the 99 per cent ) can't have any spare time or wealth for the accomplishment of his communist mission. I feel the irreconcilability of the contradiction between a guy's matrimonial mission and his mission in life he must accomplish as a communist ought to be clear as day to the sensible now.( 2 ) A communist's mission in life essentially includes leading a healthy and meaningful life ( which necessarily includes a decent lifestyle in harmony with communist ethics ) too. Because communism is fundamentally opposed to asceticism, and because a communist must show the benighted, vulgar millions of the born poor and deprived that are used to leading an existence befitting beasts of burden what the healthy and meaningful living means and thus interest them in communism and communist revolution, a communist's mode of living must be healthy and meaningful.  

[Bijou Drains]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

If you want a small allotment with a few chickens and a couple of pigs and goat or two, i am sure you will be able to. However on the bigger picture production (and that includes food) will be a social process. Your individual tastes will be just that , mostly individually produced or at most, net-worked by like-minded hobbyists.I am in no doubt that meat-eating smoking and drinking will decline dramatically. Because of the environmental damage and demands, and the need for a  more sustainable farming industry, live-stock will drop in numbers, so i do think your pork-pies will become a luxury dish to be savoured on special occasions and festivals.Do you know how to slaughter and butcher a pig? I doubt very much that the existing workers will continue in the abattoirs – read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair – and conditions have scarcely improved over a century as the oft-repeated exposes regularly and frequently revealThat chemicalised piss will be replaced by micro-breweries in local speciality beers. Moon-shine will once more make a re-emergence but this time it won't be made out of anti-freeze and industrial ethanolTobacco plantations will disappear as most likely will tea and coffee (i have talked about it before) as workers migrate to more rewarding farm-work of producing food and not cash-crops. (I believe a tobacco farm existed in Berwickshire during WW2 so not only will it be roll your own it will be grow your own) Local cultures will no doubt carry on traditions. Cubans will smoke their havanas. Mind altering drugs will probably be used on the same scale as today and for the same purpose…relaxation and recreation. But glue-sniffing will go the way of meths-drinking. I think Bolivians will still chew the coca leave and Africans eat Khat as older Asian chew betel nut. But newer generations will maybe less inclined to follow these traditions since i do think as the title of the thread infers, men and women and children will be more desirous of a healthy meaningful life and the advertising and sponsorship industries won't be promoting sugar-addiction and fat-saturated junk-food. I image a completely new mind-set in people. To be honest, i recognise it now in younger folk's behaviour the older i get and the old fogie i am becoming.  

I see Alan, so your recent post about becoming the leader of the party and being carried around in a sedan chair whilst you make all of the decisions was not mere jest. Apparently you decide what future food production will entail, no room for debate what you think is how it will be.With regards to slaughtering and butchering a pig, actually yes I do know how to this, I often get a half side of park or a half side of mutton and break them down myself. I also make my own pork pies, sausages, black and white puddings and brawn (can't get the bits you need to make haggis properly but I am going to give it another go) . In terms of meat production, I am quite sure that animal conditions would massively improve once the profit motive has been removed, but the idea that meat production can be replaced by agrarian farming is not always the case, sheep farming for instance makes use a great deal of land that cannot be usefully cultivated. A nice leg of mutton is bloody lovely, when you can get it.I also see no reason why large scale beer, whiskey, wine production and distribution would not continue in a socialist society it is an efficient and non labour intensive way in which to produce beer. It is more labour intensive to use micro breweries. The Caledonian Brewery in Edinburgh is a large scale beer producer and produces many, many fine brews. That's not to say that small scale production will not develop, unhindered by the licencing laws, again that's something I would be keen to get invovled with (apparently my grand father had a small poteen still running in the outside netty of his house in Byker.)I think that intesive farming and the development of new ways of producing food would be a far more sensible way to deal with food shortages, (I have no objections to GM useage, if this is democratically controlled and not carried out in the interests of profit), but we already produce more than enough food to feed the world at the moment.I actually think that what you are putting forward could possibly hasten the end of a socialist society. Take the example you give, pork pies (and presumably other enjoyable things) become "a luxury dish" the likely hood is that someone will decide that they can mass produce the desired luxury dish and exchange it for other luxury dishes (perhaps red wine for those living in non grape growing countries, or fine cuban cigars). Very soon they will need some means of universal tally which will mean the reemergence of money and the market place. The revolution over turned by a bloody pork pie!

[alanjjohnstone]

I  understand that inside socialism no one size will fit all. We have the Prairies, the Pampas and the Steppes where agriculture in on a large-scale and industrialised with much chemical inputs to maintain the productivity. I have no reason to think that we are capable of dividing these enormous tracts into small-holdings and handing over to a population who currently do not possess any farming skills. Therefore i do foresee them continuing.Not so, though, in the regions where the land is now in the hands of many small-farmers who have been feeding populations in a fairly sustainable manner for generation after generation. Transforming those farms into "economy of scale" plantations as the current land-grabbing in intent upon accomplishing and encouraging the surplus rural workers to urbanise, i do not consider a worthwhile objective. ALB has previously drew my attention to the fact that much uplands is only suitable for goats and sheep.  i am no expert but i can envisage such rough pasture may well be turned into arable fields. The crofts of Scottish Highlands were producing oats and potatoes and kale and turnips before being turned over to sheep during the Clearances. Here may well be where GM will have a useful role…increasing the adaptability of different varieties. No matter how you honey-coat it by saying animal husbandry will improve and become more humane, ham involves the killing of a sentient life-form when there is no life or death reason for doing so.It is the continuation of the religion that man has been given dominion over all life, rather than more enlightened religions that talk of harmony with nature. But please note, though, the blog has been currently posting critically on the p anti-cow-killing hindu fundamentalism happening in India."Pork Pies or Socialism…we want our pork pies…"I recall when a kid, getting chicken only at Xmas, can't remember it ever progressing to revolutionary demands for chicken every day. Same with satsumas and mandarins…seasonal fruits that were a once a year treat…but with global market, they are always on the shelf. But again the blog has been criticial of the carbon-footprint claims of the local food movement

Quote:

your recent post about becoming the leader of the party and being carried around in a sedan chair whilst you make all of the decisions was not mere jest. Apparently you decide what future food production will entail, no room for debate what you think is how it will be.

And what i said was 

Quote:

How people in socialism will conduct daily life is not for us to determine

And i thought i used plenty of caveats to leave ample room for debate and discussion. 

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