PeggyDobbins.net

For years and years I tried to interest academic colleagues and activist comrades in two or three notions I think are so and if so, important for others to know.  Finally I resorted to drawing pictures, and then to get people to look at the pictures, I performed the titles which are written in Arabic in front of them (cf dwelling in tents) in sign language and English.  Rehearsing for the occasional opportunity to show what I think is so became a pretty good physical exercise.  Now, since according to my fitness friends we all need to pick some form of exercise we enjoy, I thought I'd share it with friends whom I know also enjoy mental exercise more than physical.  But I never got around to doing it.  I talked about it though.  One friend, Connie Hunt, who is a very good bridge player and as far to the right as I am to the left, just took it upon herself to tell Lucy Huddleston that Dr. Dobbins would offer a Mind and Body Exercise Class on Wednesdays and Fridays beginning next Wednesday. 

And that was that.  I thought I'd ask people to do what I'd done: ponder down something they think is so that they think everyone should know to a short epigram that I could find sign language gestures for.  I wasn't sure it would work, so I asked Kathy Leabo if she'd just think about it.  A couple of days later, she said she had, and Something she knew is true, she wished everybody knew is  LIFE IS GOOD.   So that was our first exercise.  Then I tried it out on my Tai Chi teacher, Tina Wu, and she translated it into Chinese.  Robert Ojeda leader of the Bronze Band, translated it into Spanish, Mr. Schoener into German, Chris O'Neil into French, and Elery translated it into the language of Port LaVaca's newest immigrant community, Kiren.  One of the exercises, which I may eventually get around to posting,  is even translated into Karankawan.   So here we go.  See what you think, and as my sons rolled their eyes when I dropped them off at school and said, "Have fun and concentrate."

1 Law of Human Evolution:  a series of negations of notion that Might Makes Right

                                     

2 Evolution of Sexual Division of Labor:  expendable sex socialized to risk lives

3 Evolution of Specialization of Labor, Interdependence & Conflict:  One's labor, weeding or herding, is another's luck, gathering or hunting

4 Evolution of Agriculture, Marriage & Incest Taboo:  Marriage exchanges between matri-kin cultivators of different species and skills
 
5 Evolution of Surplus Labor Time: (thence Surplus Value, Profit, Social Surplus, Common Wealth) fromequitable exchanges of different forms of labor time, the productivity of which develiops unevenly inevitably

6 Evolution of Classes, the State, and many other things:  Increases in J's productivity in time J owes L, enriches L who creates and enforces law to preserve that State

7 Evolution of Patriarchy:  Some women of indebted matri-kin buy in to patrilineal patrimonies creditor matri-kinextend some men of poor matri-kin to defend state.  Others are slaves

8 What is to be done

Epilogue:  Another round of "Solidarity" with old John Brown is due.  Strange words today were understood back then when they were new