We anchored for the night within sight of NASA’s vehicle assembly building; impressive, imposing, and sad. The US of A is no longer in the manned space business. Americans will not be going to the stars. Within one hundred years there will be people living on the moon and maybe on Mars. They will probably be speaking Chinese but that is okay. Americans don’t have the will, the curiosity, or the courage to go. That’s the way it works.
The more I think about it the more I realize that nearly all of the failures of American society are simply symptoms of this underlying cravenness. Fear is the fundamental characteristic of American conservative culture; fear of change, fear of the new, fear of the other, pretty much fear of everything. It is the reason they love their guns, like a child clinging to his security blanket. Fear is why they so often kill by mistake, frightened by a perceived threat where there is none. (Only the true coward feels the need to prove his manhood by “standing his ground” and shooting an unarmed person.) It is why they bankrupt a nation to fund the world’s most outrageously expensive and destructive military – even though that military has done little to protect them. And fear is why they gladly hand the freedom they claim to love so much to the Department of Homeland Security without regret or complaint.
When history records the demise of the United States of American it will write that the people scared themselves to death.
Cowards are irrational when it comes to their fear. No amount of reason, no marshaling of facts, no logic, can penetrate their frightened minds. The fear is inescapable and all consuming. When hooked to their fright no claim is too outrageous or too stupid to be believed. Obama is a Muslim / terrorist / Marxist / communist / non-citizen bent on making slaves of White People. Gay people will ruin straight marriage. Muslims are all terrorist out to destroy “our freedoms”. Atheist worship Satan.
Oddly enough the most fearful are the Christian fundamentalists, the very people who think god is watching over them and controls the universe. If anyone should be unafraid it should be these. Why should they care if gays get married, people smoke pot, or women have sex without meaning to make babies? Isn’t their ticket to heaven already punched? Isn’t their god fully aware of who is doing what to whom and why? The cowardliness of American Christian fundamentalism is clear evidence that their faith is a hoax they play on themselves.
The craven delusion of America’s political leadership nearly matches that of the American Christian Fundamentalist. American’s politicians cannot even summon the courage to talk to each other, all hiding behind the walls of their own “caucus”. The very thought that their ideology might not survive the challenge of debate or the test of informed scrutiny terrorizes them into complete impotence. Watching the disintegration of the American political system is to see nothing but fearful little people trying to pretend that they have courage. (The “courage of conviction” is nothing but fear hiding behind assumption – a sad fact of both politics and religion.)
One might think that, in the land of the craven, the brave reign as kings. But fear breads hate. There is nothing the coward hates more than courage. No group of cowards will endure having their failure of character back lit by the brave. In the land of the craven the brave keep their own council and do the best they can for those they love and care for. Eventually though, their bravery and loyalty will out them. Standing by the gay son, daughter, or friend; defying the police state; walking away from a hate filled religion … in the dark land of the craven no candle of courage can long remain hidden. But by these acts of courage the brave just might save the cowards from themselves.
Monday, December 30, 2013
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Illusions
I have long been way off the edge of our society in a philosophical, (anti-)religious, and anti-capitalism sort of way. Now I am physically located just off the edge as well, living in a small sailboat that is normally under way or anchored off shore. Though the actual distance may be just a couple of hundred feet; the mental image is of me being "here" and most of the rest of the world being "over there". There are a bunch of us "here", a whole tribe of gypsy boaters that wander north and south to escape the hurricanes of summer and the Nor'easteners of winter (either of which can easily disassemble a boat and leave the gypsy homeless). My world is different in another sense as well, it never stops moving. Even when at a quiet anchorage moving around the boat causes the boat to move; the wind and tide will swing the boat, and wakes from other boats will rock the boat. After a few days of this, when I do step back on land, the motion continues. My inner ear isn't sure how to interpret a floor that stays level or a wall that remains vertical so imaginary motion gets added to make things seem "normal."
Living on a small sailboat also means living outside a lot. The steering station is in the cockpit and there is usually someone nearby that station when underway, even with the wind vane helm engaged. At anchor we are often out on deck for meals, reading, and (when far enough south) swimming. Our human ancestors lived outside as well, concluding that the earth was the center of all things by watching the stars, moon, and sun wheel overhead; an illusion that persisted right up to modern times. In spite of all their advances even the Greeks were mystified by these asters planetai (wandering stars). It has only been in the last few hundreds of years that the illusion gave way to understanding; everything in the cosmos moves at nearly unimaginable speeds all the time, including earth.
Knowing that, for me anyway, chases away the illusion. In my normally moving world the earth is not standing still, it is rolling through the universe at a breakneck pace taking all of us along for the ride. Being stationary with the world around us appearing unchanged, that is the illusion. One that rarely colors my world view anymore.
Because of that some ideas are even less attractive then they once where. It is impossible for me envision a god unchanging, the same "yesterday, today, and forever". I can say the words, write the sentence, but can't add it up to having any meaning. In much the same way I can't understand the lure of conservative ideology. Nothing can stay the same, especially human society. Trying to keep it the same is beyond the realm of possibility. The best we can do is try to keep the changes in line with what we are learning to be truth. All human kind is one species; we are all the same "tribe". This planet is the only place on which we can (currently anyway) survive for more than a few minutes. (A very few people live on the space station for months, but only with constant resupply from earth.)
To me religion and conservatism have, as their foundation, the illusion that the earth is fixed.
Living on a small sailboat also means living outside a lot. The steering station is in the cockpit and there is usually someone nearby that station when underway, even with the wind vane helm engaged. At anchor we are often out on deck for meals, reading, and (when far enough south) swimming. Our human ancestors lived outside as well, concluding that the earth was the center of all things by watching the stars, moon, and sun wheel overhead; an illusion that persisted right up to modern times. In spite of all their advances even the Greeks were mystified by these asters planetai (wandering stars). It has only been in the last few hundreds of years that the illusion gave way to understanding; everything in the cosmos moves at nearly unimaginable speeds all the time, including earth.
Knowing that, for me anyway, chases away the illusion. In my normally moving world the earth is not standing still, it is rolling through the universe at a breakneck pace taking all of us along for the ride. Being stationary with the world around us appearing unchanged, that is the illusion. One that rarely colors my world view anymore.
Because of that some ideas are even less attractive then they once where. It is impossible for me envision a god unchanging, the same "yesterday, today, and forever". I can say the words, write the sentence, but can't add it up to having any meaning. In much the same way I can't understand the lure of conservative ideology. Nothing can stay the same, especially human society. Trying to keep it the same is beyond the realm of possibility. The best we can do is try to keep the changes in line with what we are learning to be truth. All human kind is one species; we are all the same "tribe". This planet is the only place on which we can (currently anyway) survive for more than a few minutes. (A very few people live on the space station for months, but only with constant resupply from earth.)
To me religion and conservatism have, as their foundation, the illusion that the earth is fixed.
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Taking the human out of human endeavors
I have a young friend who is a teacher. She tries to do her best by her students hampered by an education system that is, by any metric, failing. She has a position for the coming school year, hired to fill one of four positions. Unfortunately the district has only enough budget to fill one of the four positions, leaving three empty for the coming year. She will, of course, be expected to pick up the slack without complaint since, "she is lucky to have the job".
In addition to be hampered by an completely unrealistic work load she is saddled with a "program" she is supposed to use. She tells me it is a really bad program, poorly written, poorly researched, and pretty much butchering the subject she is supposed to teach. But it is the approved program so she will have to do the best she can. And the truth is she will do pretty well for a simple reason, she is a good person who loves her job; she will do it well regardless of the challenges.
(Next year will be her last though. After that she and her new husband, an abused worker in the health care industry, will be shedding the American dream and making the same alternate lifestyle choice I made. There may be no industry that takes the human out of human endeavors more effectively than American health care.)
The failings of our society are assaulting her on several fronts, but the one that caught my attention was the program. The claim is that following the program will achieve the desired result without regard to the person using the program. Good person, bad person, good teacher, bad teacher; none of it makes a difference to the success of the program. And while hers is the world of primary education, this worship of "program" over "person" had permeated our entire society.
In the case of my teacher friend, what she is supposed to concentrate on, what she is supposed to be "good" at, is administering the program. There is no focus on developing her own abilities as a teacher or in her learning to relate to and help her students. Even worse there is no focus on her students. If they all fail to learn as desired the assumption would be that the program wasn't administered properly. In all probability the students would be "held back" to be subjected to the same program, though likely administered by a different "teacher".
This dehumanizing suffuses our entire society. It doesn't matter much of a product actually performs a particular function well, so long as the advertising for the product entices a lot of people to buy it. (American cars of the 1960s come to mind.) The human experience with the product is mostly ignored. If, somehow, your experience with the product isn't satisfying ( say, thinking a 1969 Mustang was a piece of shit car) that wouldn't matter at all.
We like programs partly because we are lazy. If one program (say for teaching math) can claim to fit all then teachers and administrators only have to contend with a single "student body". This is much easier than being responsible to and for 100 individual students who each have a different affinity for math and who would blossom under different teaching styles.
Another false plus for programs is that they seem efficient. One teacher + one program / one student body (2) is much simpler than math * 100 students * 100 "programs" / 5 teachers (1000). Two somethings is clearly more efficient than a thousand somethings and obviously much cheaper.
Which is the main reason we fall for programs. It is far cheaper to administer a program than it is to teach 100 students math. In addition the program originator likely has far more political clout than do teachers, and certainly much more clout than do students. Creating and selling programs is directly profitable for a few. Teaching students math is a calculation very hard to add to anyone's bottom line.
In our society we count money and reconcile that as having some direct correlation to human endeavor. Anyone who makes a lot of money must be good at something important. Anyone who doesn't make a lot of money is obviously not good at anything important. This is a myth but, like all myths, has just enough of a basis in reality to linger on. People who are really good at something often do make a better than average living at doing that thing. Unfortunately the relationship between the person, the ability, and the thing is twisted by a society that has very strange views of what is important. (The best example here is that we think the ability to make money, all by itself, is somehow important and beneficial to society.)
Ours is a society failing in almost every measurable way. The root of that failure may be nothing more complicated than we have worked, and succeeded, in taking the "human" out of human endeavors.
In addition to be hampered by an completely unrealistic work load she is saddled with a "program" she is supposed to use. She tells me it is a really bad program, poorly written, poorly researched, and pretty much butchering the subject she is supposed to teach. But it is the approved program so she will have to do the best she can. And the truth is she will do pretty well for a simple reason, she is a good person who loves her job; she will do it well regardless of the challenges.
(Next year will be her last though. After that she and her new husband, an abused worker in the health care industry, will be shedding the American dream and making the same alternate lifestyle choice I made. There may be no industry that takes the human out of human endeavors more effectively than American health care.)
The failings of our society are assaulting her on several fronts, but the one that caught my attention was the program. The claim is that following the program will achieve the desired result without regard to the person using the program. Good person, bad person, good teacher, bad teacher; none of it makes a difference to the success of the program. And while hers is the world of primary education, this worship of "program" over "person" had permeated our entire society.
In the case of my teacher friend, what she is supposed to concentrate on, what she is supposed to be "good" at, is administering the program. There is no focus on developing her own abilities as a teacher or in her learning to relate to and help her students. Even worse there is no focus on her students. If they all fail to learn as desired the assumption would be that the program wasn't administered properly. In all probability the students would be "held back" to be subjected to the same program, though likely administered by a different "teacher".
This dehumanizing suffuses our entire society. It doesn't matter much of a product actually performs a particular function well, so long as the advertising for the product entices a lot of people to buy it. (American cars of the 1960s come to mind.) The human experience with the product is mostly ignored. If, somehow, your experience with the product isn't satisfying ( say, thinking a 1969 Mustang was a piece of shit car) that wouldn't matter at all.
We like programs partly because we are lazy. If one program (say for teaching math) can claim to fit all then teachers and administrators only have to contend with a single "student body". This is much easier than being responsible to and for 100 individual students who each have a different affinity for math and who would blossom under different teaching styles.
Another false plus for programs is that they seem efficient. One teacher + one program / one student body (2) is much simpler than math * 100 students * 100 "programs" / 5 teachers (1000). Two somethings is clearly more efficient than a thousand somethings and obviously much cheaper.
Which is the main reason we fall for programs. It is far cheaper to administer a program than it is to teach 100 students math. In addition the program originator likely has far more political clout than do teachers, and certainly much more clout than do students. Creating and selling programs is directly profitable for a few. Teaching students math is a calculation very hard to add to anyone's bottom line.
In our society we count money and reconcile that as having some direct correlation to human endeavor. Anyone who makes a lot of money must be good at something important. Anyone who doesn't make a lot of money is obviously not good at anything important. This is a myth but, like all myths, has just enough of a basis in reality to linger on. People who are really good at something often do make a better than average living at doing that thing. Unfortunately the relationship between the person, the ability, and the thing is twisted by a society that has very strange views of what is important. (The best example here is that we think the ability to make money, all by itself, is somehow important and beneficial to society.)
Ours is a society failing in almost every measurable way. The root of that failure may be nothing more complicated than we have worked, and succeeded, in taking the "human" out of human endeavors.
Monday, October 7, 2013
T-party terrorists (revised)
The bad guys on the planet, those of the Islamic murdering type, would love nothing more than to derail the American experiment in democracy and thus argue that an Islamic theocracy is a better option. If, while doing so, they could also put a major hurt on the economies of most of Western society, that would be an added bonus. They have no real capability of reeking such havoc in spite of their claims and propaganda. But no mind ...
...they have the T-party to do it for them.
It isn't clear that the T-party will succeed either. They have certainly done more real harm to more actual people than their paranoid illusions of the harm Obamacare will do. If they succeed in shoving the country over the default cliff there will be no comparison at all. And they are paranoid illusions. After all, this is a group that often claims the earth is 5000 years old, that evolution doesn't exit, that scientists are engaged in a liberal conspiracy by pointing out the climate is changing and the glaciers melting, and that teachers aren't important but derivatives are. These are also the people who claim that Obama is a socialist / terrorist / Muslim / non-American who was going to lose in a landslide to Mitt Romney. Their capacity for delusion is infinite, including the claim that attempting to overhaul an already failed health care industry is going to do more harm then shutting down the government and defaulting on the debt.
The good news is that the T-party may have finally burned one too many bridge. The rich people, who wrote the checks that got the T-party loons were they are, may be having second thoughts. Should the country default some of these same people are likely to take losses in the millions and millions of dollars. That would make the T-party a very bad investment indeed.
Which would be some weird kind of justice. At the moment it seems about 22% of Americans identify as "Republican" and, of that group about 40% identify with the T-party. That would mean less than 10% of the people in the US of A identity with the T-party. Without the big money provided by the Koch Brothers and their ilk, no one would ever have even heard of the T-party, let along voted a bunch of these fools into public office. Big money, pure corruption, and unabridged influence pedeling (thank you Supreme Court) brought the T-party to the fore. For the T-party to turn around and seriously fuck the wealthy elite who were trying to buy out democracy isn't without its humor.
A real puzzle is what a nation does to survive such an inside insurgency. They can't be ignored. They can't be removed from office quickly enough and they can't be arrested and put on trial. It may be that the country staggers through this T-party terrorism; coming out the other side seriously bloodied but still alive. Maybe, then, America finally rejects conservative ideology and crony capitalism as the colossal failures they have proved to be. Even this Supreme Court would be unable to stand against such a sea change; and they would certainly be replaced with Justices who have also rejected the old, failed ideology that legalized corruption instead of prosecuting it; that worked to restrict the civil and voting rights of Americans, and who insisted that their particular god was actually a follower of their particular political ideology.
Then again, since I tend to think the country is already lost, maybe we don't survive and this is just the last chapter in the fall of an empire. Should the T-party succeed in derailing democracy; temporarily inflicting their demented view of society on the 90% plus that is the rest of America, it would be a form of dictatorship regardless of what the media might call it. When THAT failed, and it certainly would, with it would go any remnant of the old America, its constitution, its capitalism, or its elitism. Perhaps even the old boarders would be lost. California, the East Coast, Hawaii, and Alaska would certainly break from a T-party dictatorship with its power base in Texas and the mid-West. Washington DC itself would be a T-party enclave near the southern end of a progressive leaning East Coast and lose any claim of being a political capital of a dismembered nation. The new "T-party / America" of the old Confederacy would be a backward, uneducated, utterly untenable society unable to survive long without the money flowing in from the rest of the country. Surrounded by progressive societies unfettered by T-party lunacy, even that last distorted remnant of the old America would fade from history rather quickly.
It would be a mess, for sure. But is is going to be a mess anyway sometime soon. Maybe the time is now?
...they have the T-party to do it for them.
It isn't clear that the T-party will succeed either. They have certainly done more real harm to more actual people than their paranoid illusions of the harm Obamacare will do. If they succeed in shoving the country over the default cliff there will be no comparison at all. And they are paranoid illusions. After all, this is a group that often claims the earth is 5000 years old, that evolution doesn't exit, that scientists are engaged in a liberal conspiracy by pointing out the climate is changing and the glaciers melting, and that teachers aren't important but derivatives are. These are also the people who claim that Obama is a socialist / terrorist / Muslim / non-American who was going to lose in a landslide to Mitt Romney. Their capacity for delusion is infinite, including the claim that attempting to overhaul an already failed health care industry is going to do more harm then shutting down the government and defaulting on the debt.
The good news is that the T-party may have finally burned one too many bridge. The rich people, who wrote the checks that got the T-party loons were they are, may be having second thoughts. Should the country default some of these same people are likely to take losses in the millions and millions of dollars. That would make the T-party a very bad investment indeed.
Which would be some weird kind of justice. At the moment it seems about 22% of Americans identify as "Republican" and, of that group about 40% identify with the T-party. That would mean less than 10% of the people in the US of A identity with the T-party. Without the big money provided by the Koch Brothers and their ilk, no one would ever have even heard of the T-party, let along voted a bunch of these fools into public office. Big money, pure corruption, and unabridged influence pedeling (thank you Supreme Court) brought the T-party to the fore. For the T-party to turn around and seriously fuck the wealthy elite who were trying to buy out democracy isn't without its humor.
A real puzzle is what a nation does to survive such an inside insurgency. They can't be ignored. They can't be removed from office quickly enough and they can't be arrested and put on trial. It may be that the country staggers through this T-party terrorism; coming out the other side seriously bloodied but still alive. Maybe, then, America finally rejects conservative ideology and crony capitalism as the colossal failures they have proved to be. Even this Supreme Court would be unable to stand against such a sea change; and they would certainly be replaced with Justices who have also rejected the old, failed ideology that legalized corruption instead of prosecuting it; that worked to restrict the civil and voting rights of Americans, and who insisted that their particular god was actually a follower of their particular political ideology.
Then again, since I tend to think the country is already lost, maybe we don't survive and this is just the last chapter in the fall of an empire. Should the T-party succeed in derailing democracy; temporarily inflicting their demented view of society on the 90% plus that is the rest of America, it would be a form of dictatorship regardless of what the media might call it. When THAT failed, and it certainly would, with it would go any remnant of the old America, its constitution, its capitalism, or its elitism. Perhaps even the old boarders would be lost. California, the East Coast, Hawaii, and Alaska would certainly break from a T-party dictatorship with its power base in Texas and the mid-West. Washington DC itself would be a T-party enclave near the southern end of a progressive leaning East Coast and lose any claim of being a political capital of a dismembered nation. The new "T-party / America" of the old Confederacy would be a backward, uneducated, utterly untenable society unable to survive long without the money flowing in from the rest of the country. Surrounded by progressive societies unfettered by T-party lunacy, even that last distorted remnant of the old America would fade from history rather quickly.
It would be a mess, for sure. But is is going to be a mess anyway sometime soon. Maybe the time is now?
Monday, September 23, 2013
It's about time ...
I have gone so far off the reservation as to be pretty much off the grid as well; and have put even more distance between myself and the society and politics of the current US of A. Such distance has provided a different focus.
There appear to be three parties in the US political system now; Democrat, Republican, and T-Party. The Republican and T-Party have only two things in common; they loathe the current President with utter abandon while hating Democrats with slightly less of a fever. Dig a little deeper and it appears the T-party also hates Republicans, but finds the Party necessary as a doorway to power. Left to stand on their own as a political Party, it isn’t likely there would be more than a small hand full of T-Party types on the national stage. In fact, given a three way open election in any congressional district, where the T-Party and the Republican candidates split the conservative vote, it is likely the Democrats would control all branches of the Federal government into the foreseeable future.
It is just barely possible that such a Democratically controlled future would allow the US to become a tenable and functioning democracy once again; barely possible but still unlikely. The roots of America’s decline go much deeper than Democrats or Republicans or T-party. Access to money controls all three and the money flows uncontrolled, unreported, and uninterrupted by any considerations of vice, bribery, or influence peddling. So long are there are no controls restricting the buying of political power by the wealthy few, democracy is on life support and fading fast.
It takes a fully functioning and strong democracy to keep the moneyed interests at bay and allow the economy to function to the benefit of all. Capitalism only works when it is tightly controlled and carefully regulated. There have to be strong unions (or some other mechanism that protects the interests of those who actually do the work), banks that do not function like gamblers in the stock and commodities markets, and judges who realize that economic justice is inseparable from social justice. Business is just a part of a fully functional society. Governing is much more than running a business.
Unfortunately most Americans, and certainly virtually all American politicians (even Democrats), suffer from the illusion that “capitalism” is equal to liberty; all evidence to the contrary. So long as that illusion persists (and is reinforced by the relentless propaganda machine of the capitalists) America will continue to fade from the leading edge of human history. Such history is clearly flowing away from the rule of the power elite as information becomes readily available to more and more people. Yet the US falls every more deeply into the control of business interests unfettered by a weakened and dysfunctional government.
The continuing decline of the US based on the worship of wealth and greed is being enhanced by the worship of war and violence. Gun laws are not so much a means to curb violence as a reflection of a society’s attitude toward violence. A society which values the life and liberty of its citizens will enact gun laws that reflect those values. A society that values violence, war, and above all the profit margins of gun manufactures, will enact gun laws reflecting those values. People who love guns love violence. People who love violence are not long for the world. Societies who love violence will leave a short arc in history. The love of violence alone, or the worship of capitalism alone, would be enough to bring down a democracy. The US is lurching along doing both.
So the current disarray in the Federal and many state governments shouldn’t be a surprise. What else would a failing democracy look like? Corruption, bribery, propaganda, a falling living standard, faltering education standards, a return to religious fanaticism and the belief in various kinds of magic; this is exactly what should be expected as a society turns away from reason and democracy and embraces the “leadership” of soothsayers and witchdoctors, popes and preachers, strongmen and robber barons.
Eventually though, these false prophets will be unmasked. The US has, for generations, believed in the promises of unregulated capitalism. The vast majority are poorer, hungrier, sicker, live shorter lives, and knows less joy as a result of their faith, and they fully expect their children will not have it any better. They have voted for the politicians vetted by a capitalist system and their promises of liberty and prosperity and a glowing future have proven false as well. Religion has failed as well. Instead of love of peace the various worshipers of the god of Abraham have engaged in the wholesale slaughter of the innocents. From the all-out wars launched by a Christian America on a string of Muslim countries, to the terrorism of Islam against all reason, to the continued land-grab of the Zionists, no one on earth is safe from a religious extremist seeking to kill at the command of a demented god.
As the prophets fall people will find liberty and build a new society. Religion claims to be stronger than ever, but the claim is suspect and the support maybe shallow. How many murdering Islamists will it take to discredit Islam? How many poor will it take in America before the capitalists are rejected? How far back will the civil rights of women and minorities be shoved before all liberty loving people cry, “Enough”?
I’m finding more and more people out here, off the reservation and near the edge of the grid. The near universal world view is one of rejecting top-down power structures in any guise. Capitalism and American politics have done personal and real harm to people; often being the catalyst for their change of heart. Retirement funds have been stolen, houses lost, medical care denied, and no politician anywhere notices, cares, or talks of changing the system. And while many exhibit a deep spirituality and love, only a hand full regularly step foot in a church.
This system is failing, but, out here, that is not only expected but applauded. Out here the feeling is, “It’s about time.”
There appear to be three parties in the US political system now; Democrat, Republican, and T-Party. The Republican and T-Party have only two things in common; they loathe the current President with utter abandon while hating Democrats with slightly less of a fever. Dig a little deeper and it appears the T-party also hates Republicans, but finds the Party necessary as a doorway to power. Left to stand on their own as a political Party, it isn’t likely there would be more than a small hand full of T-Party types on the national stage. In fact, given a three way open election in any congressional district, where the T-Party and the Republican candidates split the conservative vote, it is likely the Democrats would control all branches of the Federal government into the foreseeable future.
It is just barely possible that such a Democratically controlled future would allow the US to become a tenable and functioning democracy once again; barely possible but still unlikely. The roots of America’s decline go much deeper than Democrats or Republicans or T-party. Access to money controls all three and the money flows uncontrolled, unreported, and uninterrupted by any considerations of vice, bribery, or influence peddling. So long are there are no controls restricting the buying of political power by the wealthy few, democracy is on life support and fading fast.
It takes a fully functioning and strong democracy to keep the moneyed interests at bay and allow the economy to function to the benefit of all. Capitalism only works when it is tightly controlled and carefully regulated. There have to be strong unions (or some other mechanism that protects the interests of those who actually do the work), banks that do not function like gamblers in the stock and commodities markets, and judges who realize that economic justice is inseparable from social justice. Business is just a part of a fully functional society. Governing is much more than running a business.
Unfortunately most Americans, and certainly virtually all American politicians (even Democrats), suffer from the illusion that “capitalism” is equal to liberty; all evidence to the contrary. So long as that illusion persists (and is reinforced by the relentless propaganda machine of the capitalists) America will continue to fade from the leading edge of human history. Such history is clearly flowing away from the rule of the power elite as information becomes readily available to more and more people. Yet the US falls every more deeply into the control of business interests unfettered by a weakened and dysfunctional government.
The continuing decline of the US based on the worship of wealth and greed is being enhanced by the worship of war and violence. Gun laws are not so much a means to curb violence as a reflection of a society’s attitude toward violence. A society which values the life and liberty of its citizens will enact gun laws that reflect those values. A society that values violence, war, and above all the profit margins of gun manufactures, will enact gun laws reflecting those values. People who love guns love violence. People who love violence are not long for the world. Societies who love violence will leave a short arc in history. The love of violence alone, or the worship of capitalism alone, would be enough to bring down a democracy. The US is lurching along doing both.
So the current disarray in the Federal and many state governments shouldn’t be a surprise. What else would a failing democracy look like? Corruption, bribery, propaganda, a falling living standard, faltering education standards, a return to religious fanaticism and the belief in various kinds of magic; this is exactly what should be expected as a society turns away from reason and democracy and embraces the “leadership” of soothsayers and witchdoctors, popes and preachers, strongmen and robber barons.
Eventually though, these false prophets will be unmasked. The US has, for generations, believed in the promises of unregulated capitalism. The vast majority are poorer, hungrier, sicker, live shorter lives, and knows less joy as a result of their faith, and they fully expect their children will not have it any better. They have voted for the politicians vetted by a capitalist system and their promises of liberty and prosperity and a glowing future have proven false as well. Religion has failed as well. Instead of love of peace the various worshipers of the god of Abraham have engaged in the wholesale slaughter of the innocents. From the all-out wars launched by a Christian America on a string of Muslim countries, to the terrorism of Islam against all reason, to the continued land-grab of the Zionists, no one on earth is safe from a religious extremist seeking to kill at the command of a demented god.
As the prophets fall people will find liberty and build a new society. Religion claims to be stronger than ever, but the claim is suspect and the support maybe shallow. How many murdering Islamists will it take to discredit Islam? How many poor will it take in America before the capitalists are rejected? How far back will the civil rights of women and minorities be shoved before all liberty loving people cry, “Enough”?
I’m finding more and more people out here, off the reservation and near the edge of the grid. The near universal world view is one of rejecting top-down power structures in any guise. Capitalism and American politics have done personal and real harm to people; often being the catalyst for their change of heart. Retirement funds have been stolen, houses lost, medical care denied, and no politician anywhere notices, cares, or talks of changing the system. And while many exhibit a deep spirituality and love, only a hand full regularly step foot in a church.
This system is failing, but, out here, that is not only expected but applauded. Out here the feeling is, “It’s about time.”
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Freedom
Being an American automatically means being an expert in freedom, yes? We take pride in being the "Leaders of the Free World", of supporting freedom and democracy in the "developing world", and of our efforts an "building" democracies after toppling tyrants. (That last isn't working out so well, but we had good intentions, yes?) We are a freedom loving people, demanding our civil rights (though we are often slow in granting other people their civil rights) and making sure we have enough weapons on hand to protect those freedoms from all "enemies, foreign and domestic". (We are particularly afraid of the "domestic" ones though we gladly sacrificed a bunch of our freedoms so the NSA could protects us from some of those "foreign" ones.)
Then I turned in my "American Consumer" card and am now on the verge of living one of those "alternate" lifestyles people love to talk about without understanding much about them. Closing down an entire way of living, making a 180 degree turn, and taking up an entirely new way of living is the biggest challenge I have ever undertaken. There is no aspect of my life that isn't being drastically altered, all the way down to the kinds of shoes I put on my feet. The changes in my world view are even more dramatic than those of my wardrobe, and it turns out I didn't know nearly as much about "freedom" as I assumed.
Like most Americans now days I have had several jobs taken away from me. In every case we faced a near iminate disaster. Kids needed food and clothes, a roof over their heads, and medical care. The way I provided those things for the people I loved had been snatched away by "changing markets" or "right sizing" or because "things just aren't working out". It was bullshit. In almost every case someone figured they could make themselves just a tiny bit richer by taking something away from others. In some cases I found another job nearby; in others the family was uprooted and moved hundreds or thousands of miles to another job. Jobs that, in many cases, were then taken away yet again. We did okay in spite of these repeated assaults; partly by dogged hard work, partly by a determination to survive, and partly by luck. Not everybody gets the luck they need and more and more are becoming casualties in our failing society.
And then they came and took my last, and in some ways my best, job away. It was good pay. It had good benefits. It had a matching 401K program. Me doing my job well made it easier for other people to do their jobs well. But someone decided that taking my job away and making those other people work that much harder to do their jobs would make that someone just that little bit richer and (in this particular case) prove to some other rich people just who was really in charge. That they were hurting people who had done them no harm, people who, in fact, had given them their best efforts, didn't matter at all. It was ugly. It was evil. When the revolution comes it wouldn't bother me at all if the someones lose everything; end up pushing a shopping cart down the street wondering which bridge will keep the rain off of them this night. Evil is as evil does and those who have pushed thousands of working Americans into the ranks of being poverty stricken have no complaint coming when the devil knocks on their door and hands them an eviction notice.
But in my case (and sadly, so far as I know, my case alone in this particular corporate event) we do not face the looming disaster of other jobs that had been taken ... for I was about to give this one back to them. And I discovered a big part of freedom I never knew existed; that of not being threaten with a job loss. My ability to care for those I love no longer depends on the whims of those who would hurt me with casual indifference so long at it puts a few more pennies in their pockets. I can go about my business without being threatened by business.
Freedom, it turns out, is found by walking away from the American Dream.
Then I turned in my "American Consumer" card and am now on the verge of living one of those "alternate" lifestyles people love to talk about without understanding much about them. Closing down an entire way of living, making a 180 degree turn, and taking up an entirely new way of living is the biggest challenge I have ever undertaken. There is no aspect of my life that isn't being drastically altered, all the way down to the kinds of shoes I put on my feet. The changes in my world view are even more dramatic than those of my wardrobe, and it turns out I didn't know nearly as much about "freedom" as I assumed.
Like most Americans now days I have had several jobs taken away from me. In every case we faced a near iminate disaster. Kids needed food and clothes, a roof over their heads, and medical care. The way I provided those things for the people I loved had been snatched away by "changing markets" or "right sizing" or because "things just aren't working out". It was bullshit. In almost every case someone figured they could make themselves just a tiny bit richer by taking something away from others. In some cases I found another job nearby; in others the family was uprooted and moved hundreds or thousands of miles to another job. Jobs that, in many cases, were then taken away yet again. We did okay in spite of these repeated assaults; partly by dogged hard work, partly by a determination to survive, and partly by luck. Not everybody gets the luck they need and more and more are becoming casualties in our failing society.
And then they came and took my last, and in some ways my best, job away. It was good pay. It had good benefits. It had a matching 401K program. Me doing my job well made it easier for other people to do their jobs well. But someone decided that taking my job away and making those other people work that much harder to do their jobs would make that someone just that little bit richer and (in this particular case) prove to some other rich people just who was really in charge. That they were hurting people who had done them no harm, people who, in fact, had given them their best efforts, didn't matter at all. It was ugly. It was evil. When the revolution comes it wouldn't bother me at all if the someones lose everything; end up pushing a shopping cart down the street wondering which bridge will keep the rain off of them this night. Evil is as evil does and those who have pushed thousands of working Americans into the ranks of being poverty stricken have no complaint coming when the devil knocks on their door and hands them an eviction notice.
But in my case (and sadly, so far as I know, my case alone in this particular corporate event) we do not face the looming disaster of other jobs that had been taken ... for I was about to give this one back to them. And I discovered a big part of freedom I never knew existed; that of not being threaten with a job loss. My ability to care for those I love no longer depends on the whims of those who would hurt me with casual indifference so long at it puts a few more pennies in their pockets. I can go about my business without being threatened by business.
Freedom, it turns out, is found by walking away from the American Dream.
Monday, August 12, 2013
Calm, clear, content, compassionate, curious ...
I have made the transition to living "off the grid". We have reduced our personal holdings to one modest sailboat and the things that will fit inside her hull. (We were unsuccessful in selling the house so it is rented at basically a "break even" price. When the current lease runs out we will try to sell it again.) With expenses reduced there is no need for to work for anyone else in any form; not as independent contractors, not as business owners, not as employees nor as consultants. We don't need "part time" or seasonal work. A modest amount of savings coupled with the money we have invested in Social Security should see us through. (Sorry T-party / Republicans, that is not an "entitlement" and I am not a "taker." Should you succeed in privatizing it and taking it away from me then you will be a thief. Should you do such a thing it is my hope the nation will rise up, burn your house down, and drive you into the wilderness.)
There is a transition period, moving from land to water. The boat is on the hard while we do final preparations for putting it in big, blue water. Our days are filled with relentless work; 8, 10, sometimes 12 hours at a time. The work is physical and demanding; sanding the hull, breaking down the rigging, pulling the propeller for overhaul, installing a wind vane, endlessly climbing the 12 foot ladder needed to get aboard - there is nothing easy about it. But it is completely different from working for a living. Everything we do is directly tied to how we live. This transition is a time for toughening up a body whose only exercise for the last couple of decades was found at the gym, parsed out a couple of hours a day a few times a week. Now activity is day long and already, just a couple of weeks into it, my body is adjusting. It was, however, an adjustment I had not anticipated.
In a like minor my heart and mind have to adjust as well; an adjustment also not anticipated. One that came as a complete surprise was a literal change in mind set. In these last few weeks something akin to a meme has become a mental habit. Calm, clear, content, compassionate, curious ... at any given moment I seek to have some combination of these as the ground state of my experience. When it isn't so, when some task at hand is proving utterly frustrating, when the day's efforts have left cramping muscles or a headache in their wake, or some bit of news has sparked an appropriate outrage, just repeating the five words helps restore the balance. The task will still be at hand, the muscles still ache, the anger still linger - but a different view will prevail. The task will get done, the ache is both honestly earned and will eventually fade, and the anger?
Well, anger is often the only response to injustice and evil. But being calm does not mean being passive. Clear thoughts are essential for getting from one place to another, for confronting an evil and finding a cure. Muddied thinking leads to dead ends and bad decisions and is often the cause of evil in the first place. It is possible to be utterly content with one's small part in engineering fundamental and drastic changes. Compassion is always good and particularly necessary when confronting an enemy. Without it one becomes what one opposes. And it is only the curious who make anything happen at all.
There is a transition period, moving from land to water. The boat is on the hard while we do final preparations for putting it in big, blue water. Our days are filled with relentless work; 8, 10, sometimes 12 hours at a time. The work is physical and demanding; sanding the hull, breaking down the rigging, pulling the propeller for overhaul, installing a wind vane, endlessly climbing the 12 foot ladder needed to get aboard - there is nothing easy about it. But it is completely different from working for a living. Everything we do is directly tied to how we live. This transition is a time for toughening up a body whose only exercise for the last couple of decades was found at the gym, parsed out a couple of hours a day a few times a week. Now activity is day long and already, just a couple of weeks into it, my body is adjusting. It was, however, an adjustment I had not anticipated.
In a like minor my heart and mind have to adjust as well; an adjustment also not anticipated. One that came as a complete surprise was a literal change in mind set. In these last few weeks something akin to a meme has become a mental habit. Calm, clear, content, compassionate, curious ... at any given moment I seek to have some combination of these as the ground state of my experience. When it isn't so, when some task at hand is proving utterly frustrating, when the day's efforts have left cramping muscles or a headache in their wake, or some bit of news has sparked an appropriate outrage, just repeating the five words helps restore the balance. The task will still be at hand, the muscles still ache, the anger still linger - but a different view will prevail. The task will get done, the ache is both honestly earned and will eventually fade, and the anger?
Well, anger is often the only response to injustice and evil. But being calm does not mean being passive. Clear thoughts are essential for getting from one place to another, for confronting an evil and finding a cure. Muddied thinking leads to dead ends and bad decisions and is often the cause of evil in the first place. It is possible to be utterly content with one's small part in engineering fundamental and drastic changes. Compassion is always good and particularly necessary when confronting an enemy. Without it one becomes what one opposes. And it is only the curious who make anything happen at all.
Friday, July 19, 2013
Americans and America
Not guilty.
I'm not sure I know where it is I live anymore. Whatever the US has become, it is not a first world society in any of the things that matter. Trayvon was killed by a wanna-be cop packing a concealed weapon. I would like to refer to the killer as a "murderer" but the jury found that what he did was within the laws of FL. Therefore I can't really call him a murderer, though I reserve the right to think of him that way. Come to think of it that puts him in pretty good company. Killing people tens of thousands of miles away by remote control, who are no real threat to anyone but themselves, is legal according to US law. So Obama isn't a murderer either.
The truth is I expected nothing else to come out of that courtroom in FL. In every instance of decision or action on any level (local, state, or national) and involving any government body or institution (courts, legislative bodies, or executive offices) I expect nothing but the most inane outcome possible. It doesn't always happen that way so there is the occasional pleasant surprise. But the more important the issue, the bigger the case, the larger the potential damage, the more likely it is that inane will prevail. I expect state governments to restrict woman's rights; even passing laws requiring utterly unnecessary medical procedures. There is no surprise when laws, blatantly written to keep Americans from voting, are passed and then approved by the Supreme Court. Twist the tax laws even worse to favor the rich and punish the poor? Of course, why would anyone think any other choice would be made?
It must be, if America is as screwed up as it is, Americans must be as well. And yet that doesn't seem to be at all true. The people I interact with, day in and day out, are tolerant, helpful, kind, and thoughtful. I know people who are dementedly enthusiastic about having the right to "concealed carry". They never brandish their weapons; never talk of stalking anyone and killing them. I know people who are blatantly homophobic. Yet they would never seek to harm a gay person and, when pushed a bit, admit that gay people getting married isn't going to hurt anyone. I know religious fundamentalists. They would never dream of making it a law that everyone follow their religion. They will even admit (with an occasional exception) that freedom of religion really does include freedom from religion. Pretty much anyone would write better tax, campaign finance, and banking laws than those currently on the books. (Think on that for a bit; our laws often seem to be as bad as they could possibly be. Any change would be an improvement.) No one thinks the oil will last forever and everyone will agree that humanity is, to some degree, poisoning the only home we have.
I suspect that some politicians, even those best known for pushing the inane positions whenever they can, might, in the privacy of their own thoughts, be more Americans then they are America. But somehow they ignore the leanings of their own minds and the view of the Americans they represent. Once in office all they do is serve the dysfunctional and destructive institutions that are America.
It is no secret that I think America has become a rouge nation doing more harm than good, and I have no doubt history is about to dump it on the trash heap. But oddly, the idea that America is one thing, and Americans quite another, gives me a little hope. Somewhere, sometime, some one is going to start making a change, talking a new talk, sharing a new vision; a vision that Americas recognize as their own. It is going to be a vision of civil rights, a vision of individual liberty and responsibility, a vision of economic fairness that errs on the side of compassion. (It maybe "unfair" that the rich person pay a little more in taxes, but that is better than a poor child not having enough to eat.)
On the surface it may not appear to be much of a radical vision. America's propaganda machine is full of words like civil rights, liberty, responsibility, etc. America's politicians are big on touting the same words. But words are not vision. Right now these words are part of an elaborate charade to keep Americans from rising up tossing those who serve the institution into the sea. But America's vision is not the same as the dreams of Americans. America's hate and greed and war loving are not often found in the homes of Americans.
My wife and I have sold out of the dream propagated by America. Most of what we own has been sold or given away. We have saved enough to live a few years light and mobile, to explore a small part of our planet from a different perspective. Virtually everyone who learns of our choice wishes us well and most speak of doing something similar. Americans support the idea of rejecting America; even if they don't often think of it that way.
But someday soon they might.
And if so then all will be well.
I'm not sure I know where it is I live anymore. Whatever the US has become, it is not a first world society in any of the things that matter. Trayvon was killed by a wanna-be cop packing a concealed weapon. I would like to refer to the killer as a "murderer" but the jury found that what he did was within the laws of FL. Therefore I can't really call him a murderer, though I reserve the right to think of him that way. Come to think of it that puts him in pretty good company. Killing people tens of thousands of miles away by remote control, who are no real threat to anyone but themselves, is legal according to US law. So Obama isn't a murderer either.
The truth is I expected nothing else to come out of that courtroom in FL. In every instance of decision or action on any level (local, state, or national) and involving any government body or institution (courts, legislative bodies, or executive offices) I expect nothing but the most inane outcome possible. It doesn't always happen that way so there is the occasional pleasant surprise. But the more important the issue, the bigger the case, the larger the potential damage, the more likely it is that inane will prevail. I expect state governments to restrict woman's rights; even passing laws requiring utterly unnecessary medical procedures. There is no surprise when laws, blatantly written to keep Americans from voting, are passed and then approved by the Supreme Court. Twist the tax laws even worse to favor the rich and punish the poor? Of course, why would anyone think any other choice would be made?
It must be, if America is as screwed up as it is, Americans must be as well. And yet that doesn't seem to be at all true. The people I interact with, day in and day out, are tolerant, helpful, kind, and thoughtful. I know people who are dementedly enthusiastic about having the right to "concealed carry". They never brandish their weapons; never talk of stalking anyone and killing them. I know people who are blatantly homophobic. Yet they would never seek to harm a gay person and, when pushed a bit, admit that gay people getting married isn't going to hurt anyone. I know religious fundamentalists. They would never dream of making it a law that everyone follow their religion. They will even admit (with an occasional exception) that freedom of religion really does include freedom from religion. Pretty much anyone would write better tax, campaign finance, and banking laws than those currently on the books. (Think on that for a bit; our laws often seem to be as bad as they could possibly be. Any change would be an improvement.) No one thinks the oil will last forever and everyone will agree that humanity is, to some degree, poisoning the only home we have.
I suspect that some politicians, even those best known for pushing the inane positions whenever they can, might, in the privacy of their own thoughts, be more Americans then they are America. But somehow they ignore the leanings of their own minds and the view of the Americans they represent. Once in office all they do is serve the dysfunctional and destructive institutions that are America.
It is no secret that I think America has become a rouge nation doing more harm than good, and I have no doubt history is about to dump it on the trash heap. But oddly, the idea that America is one thing, and Americans quite another, gives me a little hope. Somewhere, sometime, some one is going to start making a change, talking a new talk, sharing a new vision; a vision that Americas recognize as their own. It is going to be a vision of civil rights, a vision of individual liberty and responsibility, a vision of economic fairness that errs on the side of compassion. (It maybe "unfair" that the rich person pay a little more in taxes, but that is better than a poor child not having enough to eat.)
On the surface it may not appear to be much of a radical vision. America's propaganda machine is full of words like civil rights, liberty, responsibility, etc. America's politicians are big on touting the same words. But words are not vision. Right now these words are part of an elaborate charade to keep Americans from rising up tossing those who serve the institution into the sea. But America's vision is not the same as the dreams of Americans. America's hate and greed and war loving are not often found in the homes of Americans.
My wife and I have sold out of the dream propagated by America. Most of what we own has been sold or given away. We have saved enough to live a few years light and mobile, to explore a small part of our planet from a different perspective. Virtually everyone who learns of our choice wishes us well and most speak of doing something similar. Americans support the idea of rejecting America; even if they don't often think of it that way.
But someday soon they might.
And if so then all will be well.
Monday, June 24, 2013
Cynic
cynicism
A. An attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others: the public cynicism aroused by governmental scandals.
B. A scornfully or jadedly negative comment or act: "She arrived at a philosophy of her own, all made up of her private notations and cynicisms" (Henry James).
C. Cynicism The beliefs of the ancient Cynics.
I am pretty often accused of being a cynic; particularly when the issue at hand is religion, American Politics, or American Capitalism. When I am it is pretty clear that, usually, the people doing the accusing are thinking of "A" and / or "B". And what can I say? Though I wouldn't think of myself as a cynic in all things and at all times, when it comes to those three arenas the label definitely fits. But I never really think of myself as a cynical person.
But "C" got me curious. I was vaguely aware that cynicism had it roots in Greek Philosophy going back to Socrates, but that was pretty much it. Looking it up lead to this description;
... For the Cynics, the purpose of life was to live in virtue, in agreement with nature. As reasoning creatures, people could gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which was natural for humans, rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, sex, and fame. Instead, they were to lead a simple life free from all possessions.
Sadly, is seems the ancient Greek Cynics went a bit off the rails. Diogenes of Sinope is reported to have lived in a barrel and taught that all the trappings of human civilization be rejected. Living like an animal and off the money gathered by begging just doesn't strike me as a path to wisdom, joy or understanding, at least not for most of us. It also strikes me a more than a little hypocritical. (I am unimpressed with the Buddha for the same basic reason.)
Still, when placed against the background of our civilization, one that has surly gone off the rails itself, it seems those old cynics might have found a kernel of wisdom that we would be well served to plant and tend. Living in virtue ... set that against a society awash in guns, that worships violence and loves war. Living in harmony with nature ... does anything more need to be said? Who would argue that unbridled lust for wealth, power, sex, and fame have been good for our society and are leading to a future of justice, peace and joy?
Maybe, with an eye toward a little moderation, it is time for the ancient cynicism of the Greeks to make a comeback. In any case, it would appear I am more of a cynic than I first thought.
A. An attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others: the public cynicism aroused by governmental scandals.
B. A scornfully or jadedly negative comment or act: "She arrived at a philosophy of her own, all made up of her private notations and cynicisms" (Henry James).
C. Cynicism The beliefs of the ancient Cynics.
I am pretty often accused of being a cynic; particularly when the issue at hand is religion, American Politics, or American Capitalism. When I am it is pretty clear that, usually, the people doing the accusing are thinking of "A" and / or "B". And what can I say? Though I wouldn't think of myself as a cynic in all things and at all times, when it comes to those three arenas the label definitely fits. But I never really think of myself as a cynical person.
But "C" got me curious. I was vaguely aware that cynicism had it roots in Greek Philosophy going back to Socrates, but that was pretty much it. Looking it up lead to this description;
... For the Cynics, the purpose of life was to live in virtue, in agreement with nature. As reasoning creatures, people could gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which was natural for humans, rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, sex, and fame. Instead, they were to lead a simple life free from all possessions.
Sadly, is seems the ancient Greek Cynics went a bit off the rails. Diogenes of Sinope is reported to have lived in a barrel and taught that all the trappings of human civilization be rejected. Living like an animal and off the money gathered by begging just doesn't strike me as a path to wisdom, joy or understanding, at least not for most of us. It also strikes me a more than a little hypocritical. (I am unimpressed with the Buddha for the same basic reason.)
Still, when placed against the background of our civilization, one that has surly gone off the rails itself, it seems those old cynics might have found a kernel of wisdom that we would be well served to plant and tend. Living in virtue ... set that against a society awash in guns, that worships violence and loves war. Living in harmony with nature ... does anything more need to be said? Who would argue that unbridled lust for wealth, power, sex, and fame have been good for our society and are leading to a future of justice, peace and joy?
Maybe, with an eye toward a little moderation, it is time for the ancient cynicism of the Greeks to make a comeback. In any case, it would appear I am more of a cynic than I first thought.
Friday, June 7, 2013
Inventions
"America as it now exists is untenable. Whatever is rising up to replace it is being invented right in front us."
I put that statement up on a public board during a discussion about the nascent labor movement at Wall Mart. It might be one of those that means more than it appears, and reflects more optimism that I usually express. I think it might even be righter than we yet realize.
America as it now exists really is untenable. At the very foundation of our economic polities are three economic myths, constant exponential growth, trickle down economics, and austerity budgets, that are a triad of failure. Yet the government clings to them because they still (temporarily anyway) allow the unbelievably rich get just that little bit richer. These myths have become so entrenched in American politics that changing any of them would involve fundamental shifts in the public view of government and a radical re-alignment of the power structures in Washington. Do away with all of those three and you do away with America as we have known it since the days of Reagan.
Some think we could go back to the days before Reagan. Not a revolution but a return to policies that worked. I don't think this is an option. There was no real Internet before Reagan. Though having unions turned out to be a far better thing then not having unions, it isn't like unions don't have their own massive problems with corruption, oppression and a power elite. Many Americans, even union Americans, shrugged when Reagan cut the balls off the air traffic controllers. The unions burned up their share of the public trust and have yet to regain it. The days of Reagan were the days of the cold war. Religious terrorism was a regional problem, not a threat to society. Mostly though, Reagan's world was a world where corporations took control of the propaganda machine and colored themselves as the true champions of human progress. Only now is the spell just starting to ware off. All in, the world is a much different place than it was on January 20, 1981.
Going back will not make room for a better future. One thing that must happen to go forward is that working people will have to band together to get their share of say in the future. Trade based unions were the tool of choice once upon a time, but have too narrow a vision to be of use now. Trade based and focused only on the wages and benefits of select groups of people spread out around a nation is not a broad enough view. All issues of quality of life need addressed, and those issues very often have a local bias. Environmental issues for desert workers are different than for those working coasts or flood plains, even if they labor is the same industry. The desert worker needs fresh water at her house as well as at her factory. The flood plain dweller needs his house protected from rising waters even as the flood gates are closed to keep his factory dry. Solving those problems with have an impact on wages and benefits unique to each location. At the same time all labor needs to be included in the power sharing. Plumber and maid, factory worker and health care provider, all have more in common with each other than they do with Wall Street financiers or corporate management. But just as Wall Street and Corporate America cooperate in keeping power, all labor needs to cooperate to get their fair share of that power. A "Reunión PolÃtica de Trabajadores" would be a start, but Americans have been brain washed to equate anything "Labor" with "communist" and therefore "bad".
So current policies have and are failing. The policies of the past were often abandoned for very good reasons. There is nothing left but to face the future knowing a whole new economics, new systems of government, are new ways of organizing and sharing power, must be invented. We face definable problems but we have no answers. Income distribution is outright immoral. Environmental choices are proving disastrous and perhaps fatal. International politics of confrontation and war put our entire civilization at risk.
We need utterly new ways of being a civilized people on this little planet. There doesn't appear to be much hope of such on the horizon. But I take solice in the fact our horizon, particularly in the propaganda soaked West, is obscured by the very forces desperate to ride the fall to the very end. It will be hard to spot the new things until they have grown strong enough to sweep away the old. Then it will appear that they "came out of nowhere." But that will not be the case.
Somewhere they are being invented even as we look.
I put that statement up on a public board during a discussion about the nascent labor movement at Wall Mart. It might be one of those that means more than it appears, and reflects more optimism that I usually express. I think it might even be righter than we yet realize.
America as it now exists really is untenable. At the very foundation of our economic polities are three economic myths, constant exponential growth, trickle down economics, and austerity budgets, that are a triad of failure. Yet the government clings to them because they still (temporarily anyway) allow the unbelievably rich get just that little bit richer. These myths have become so entrenched in American politics that changing any of them would involve fundamental shifts in the public view of government and a radical re-alignment of the power structures in Washington. Do away with all of those three and you do away with America as we have known it since the days of Reagan.
Some think we could go back to the days before Reagan. Not a revolution but a return to policies that worked. I don't think this is an option. There was no real Internet before Reagan. Though having unions turned out to be a far better thing then not having unions, it isn't like unions don't have their own massive problems with corruption, oppression and a power elite. Many Americans, even union Americans, shrugged when Reagan cut the balls off the air traffic controllers. The unions burned up their share of the public trust and have yet to regain it. The days of Reagan were the days of the cold war. Religious terrorism was a regional problem, not a threat to society. Mostly though, Reagan's world was a world where corporations took control of the propaganda machine and colored themselves as the true champions of human progress. Only now is the spell just starting to ware off. All in, the world is a much different place than it was on January 20, 1981.
Going back will not make room for a better future. One thing that must happen to go forward is that working people will have to band together to get their share of say in the future. Trade based unions were the tool of choice once upon a time, but have too narrow a vision to be of use now. Trade based and focused only on the wages and benefits of select groups of people spread out around a nation is not a broad enough view. All issues of quality of life need addressed, and those issues very often have a local bias. Environmental issues for desert workers are different than for those working coasts or flood plains, even if they labor is the same industry. The desert worker needs fresh water at her house as well as at her factory. The flood plain dweller needs his house protected from rising waters even as the flood gates are closed to keep his factory dry. Solving those problems with have an impact on wages and benefits unique to each location. At the same time all labor needs to be included in the power sharing. Plumber and maid, factory worker and health care provider, all have more in common with each other than they do with Wall Street financiers or corporate management. But just as Wall Street and Corporate America cooperate in keeping power, all labor needs to cooperate to get their fair share of that power. A "Reunión PolÃtica de Trabajadores" would be a start, but Americans have been brain washed to equate anything "Labor" with "communist" and therefore "bad".
So current policies have and are failing. The policies of the past were often abandoned for very good reasons. There is nothing left but to face the future knowing a whole new economics, new systems of government, are new ways of organizing and sharing power, must be invented. We face definable problems but we have no answers. Income distribution is outright immoral. Environmental choices are proving disastrous and perhaps fatal. International politics of confrontation and war put our entire civilization at risk.
We need utterly new ways of being a civilized people on this little planet. There doesn't appear to be much hope of such on the horizon. But I take solice in the fact our horizon, particularly in the propaganda soaked West, is obscured by the very forces desperate to ride the fall to the very end. It will be hard to spot the new things until they have grown strong enough to sweep away the old. Then it will appear that they "came out of nowhere." But that will not be the case.
Somewhere they are being invented even as we look.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Social revolutions on a quantum scale
In my neck of the woods, and remember just how far off the reservation I can go, very little credence is given to the idea that American society can heal itself from the inside. The political / economic system is simply too corrupt to allow that to happen. The bad guys can't be voted from power because only bad guys are allowed on the ballot. Public information is distorted beyond any chance of finding the truth by many factors, a government hostile to a free press, a corporate power structure which controls most public media, and all media - including "news" - becoming just another commodity marketed for profit. The Internet is the Wild-Wild-West where more actuate reporting can be found and ideas freely rampage around, but avoiding the dross is near impossible. The judicial system is a wreck. And religion, which can sometimes be a focus of progressive social change, (i.e. the abolition of slavery and the civil rights movement, Catholicism's liberation theology, etc.) is now as compromised as the political system - lusting mostly for power and money.
None of this is absolute. Political figures who truly seek to serve the public interest sneak through. Not all corporate decisions are as abusive of workers / suppliers / customers / environment as they can possibly be. I suspect (and/or hope) there is a rather large number of pro-compassion / anti-abuse and anti-violence believers growing in many religions - even in some corners of Islam and the American Christian Right. (Okay, maybe not the American Christian Right. Those folks are, almost by definition, homophobic, racists, sexist, anti-education and tribal to the death. But there is an American Christian Left. Really. You could look it up.)
The institutions are corrupt, but the people? Not so much. Weird, I know, but human beings are messy, jumbled up bits of consciousness adrift in a massive cosmos. All together we act more along the lines of quantum mechanics than we do classical physics. Any individual has a range of probability when it comes to any particular choice. Those choices are not consistent and there is no way to predict exactly where any one of us will land on any particular issue.
(Human beings are literally quantum sized bits in the larger universe. Quantum effects are noted at sizes of 10(-14.7) meters. Human beings are sized around 10(-.2) meters. The Hubble deep field looks out to something like 10(+26.1) meters without reaching the boundary of the cosmos. So the scale difference between human beings and quantum effects is less than half the scale difference between human beings and the cosmos itself. I'm sure this doesn't mean anything, but I find the scale difference fascinating. We are to the cosmos what 1/2 of an atom is to us.)
So what does a quantum, social revolution look like? We are taught that, in the quantum world, things exist only as a probability until some interaction, some application of force, requires a resolution. People are a bit like that, not making a choice until some application of force from the outside, makes it unavoidable. So I can envision the pressure building in our society but so far it hasn't reached the trigger point for most people. When it does, what probability will become the new reality?
I think there is a good chance it can be peaceful. The anti-war movement of the 60s, civil rights, women's rights, even the early labor movement, started out as peaceful revolutions that changed society for the better. Sure there was some violence, mostly a result of the power structure seeking to defend itself against a loss of influence, but none of these degenerated into open, society wide, civil war. Replacing the current government / corporate structure will not be entirely without violence since they will not go away without a fight. But the violence need not be reciprocated.
How? By a massive movement that is more than shear numbers, a movement of probabilities. Not an "Occupy Wall Street" or even an "Occupy America" (though it might look like that on the evening news) but a fundamental shift in the bell curve as individual possibilities coalesce around a different peak. Instead of violence, control, and greed being at the top of the curve we see tolerance and liberty and compassion. Such a thing seems unlikely, human beings being human beings after all. But in the quantum world unlikely things happen. A whole lot of people are poor, and getting poorer. A whole lot of people long for the ability to actually care for themselves and the people they love without being burned by corporate greed and brutality. (A thousand people died making clothes - I still can't quite get my head around that. One thousand people deliberately put at risk and ultimately murdered for profit. One third the number lost on 9/11, one third. And this at the hand of corporate masters not Islamic terrorists.)
A whole lot of people will soon be suffering directly from climate change. A lot more people are going to go hungry. Many are going to hold children as they take their last breath due to disease. Disease that the well-to-do cure with a single pill or avoid with clean water. Not just in the "third world" but in our world, this world, the US of A world. Amongst our failing infrastructure are water and sewage treatment systems. Health care is out of reach for more and more, and one quarter of our children are born into poverty. This is an American reality.
More than enough pressure for a quantum change in human choices and possibilities.
None of this is absolute. Political figures who truly seek to serve the public interest sneak through. Not all corporate decisions are as abusive of workers / suppliers / customers / environment as they can possibly be. I suspect (and/or hope) there is a rather large number of pro-compassion / anti-abuse and anti-violence believers growing in many religions - even in some corners of Islam and the American Christian Right. (Okay, maybe not the American Christian Right. Those folks are, almost by definition, homophobic, racists, sexist, anti-education and tribal to the death. But there is an American Christian Left. Really. You could look it up.)
The institutions are corrupt, but the people? Not so much. Weird, I know, but human beings are messy, jumbled up bits of consciousness adrift in a massive cosmos. All together we act more along the lines of quantum mechanics than we do classical physics. Any individual has a range of probability when it comes to any particular choice. Those choices are not consistent and there is no way to predict exactly where any one of us will land on any particular issue.
(Human beings are literally quantum sized bits in the larger universe. Quantum effects are noted at sizes of 10(-14.7) meters. Human beings are sized around 10(-.2) meters. The Hubble deep field looks out to something like 10(+26.1) meters without reaching the boundary of the cosmos. So the scale difference between human beings and quantum effects is less than half the scale difference between human beings and the cosmos itself. I'm sure this doesn't mean anything, but I find the scale difference fascinating. We are to the cosmos what 1/2 of an atom is to us.)
So what does a quantum, social revolution look like? We are taught that, in the quantum world, things exist only as a probability until some interaction, some application of force, requires a resolution. People are a bit like that, not making a choice until some application of force from the outside, makes it unavoidable. So I can envision the pressure building in our society but so far it hasn't reached the trigger point for most people. When it does, what probability will become the new reality?
I think there is a good chance it can be peaceful. The anti-war movement of the 60s, civil rights, women's rights, even the early labor movement, started out as peaceful revolutions that changed society for the better. Sure there was some violence, mostly a result of the power structure seeking to defend itself against a loss of influence, but none of these degenerated into open, society wide, civil war. Replacing the current government / corporate structure will not be entirely without violence since they will not go away without a fight. But the violence need not be reciprocated.
How? By a massive movement that is more than shear numbers, a movement of probabilities. Not an "Occupy Wall Street" or even an "Occupy America" (though it might look like that on the evening news) but a fundamental shift in the bell curve as individual possibilities coalesce around a different peak. Instead of violence, control, and greed being at the top of the curve we see tolerance and liberty and compassion. Such a thing seems unlikely, human beings being human beings after all. But in the quantum world unlikely things happen. A whole lot of people are poor, and getting poorer. A whole lot of people long for the ability to actually care for themselves and the people they love without being burned by corporate greed and brutality. (A thousand people died making clothes - I still can't quite get my head around that. One thousand people deliberately put at risk and ultimately murdered for profit. One third the number lost on 9/11, one third. And this at the hand of corporate masters not Islamic terrorists.)
A whole lot of people will soon be suffering directly from climate change. A lot more people are going to go hungry. Many are going to hold children as they take their last breath due to disease. Disease that the well-to-do cure with a single pill or avoid with clean water. Not just in the "third world" but in our world, this world, the US of A world. Amongst our failing infrastructure are water and sewage treatment systems. Health care is out of reach for more and more, and one quarter of our children are born into poverty. This is an American reality.
More than enough pressure for a quantum change in human choices and possibilities.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
How far have we fallen?
There is the usual Republican blather going on about impeaching the Democrat in the White House. It is pathetic; really, really pathetic. These are the same people who cheered on the Bush / Cheney horror show of ineptness, propaganda, war, torture and economic collapse. These are some of the same people who, unable to beat Bill Clinton in two elections, impeached him and succeeded only in making him one of the most popular Presidents ever. At least, in the Clinton case, they had an actual - as in real - scandal to start with. With Benghazi they are taking a true national tragedy and trying to fabricate a scandal to exploit to their advantage. (Just typing that sentence reminds me of how loathsome the T-party / Republicans have become.)
And yet ...
... there are days, more and more of them actually, when I wonder if Obama shouldn't be impeached. Not for Benghazi, and not by the mad hatters of the T-party. But for truly criminal acts, and by people who actually support democracy and justice in the world.
For if Bush and Cheney are war criminals, and there is little doubt that is true, then Obama is one as well. Not only did he continue the debacles that were Iraq and is still Afghanistan, but he expanded the Bush drone wars beyond the point of no return. Another layer of murder and aggression has been added to the world, that of machine killers roaming the skies undetectable, virtually unstoppable, and totally outside the purview of any democratic oversight. By all accounts Barack Obama picks people, people who live half a world away whose arsenal is basically battered pick-up trucks and home made bombs, declares them a threat to National Security, and has them executed. I would think murder is an impeachable offence.
It is hard for us to grasp just how horrible this drone war is, but try to imagine this. Obama discovers the Boston bombers and is on to their plan. They haven't done anything yet and no one in the neighborhood knows what they are about. But in the middle of the night a massive explosion suddenly destroys the house they are in. Houses nearby are also badly damaged or destroyed. The two bombers are obliterated, a few of their friends (even those not in on the plot) are also vaporised. A couple of children sleeping next door are killed by the concussion. A few more houses away several more die from shrapnel wounds. Dozens are injured, some losing limbs, others blinded for life. But "National Security" has been served. Can one imagine for an instant that Obama would not be impeached the very next day? Certainly jailed. Perhaps executed?
In spite of all of the talk to the contrary, the Obama White House and Wall Street criminals are two peas in a pod. Some of the very people who crashed the economy and belong in jail are, instead, ruling the roost at 1900 Pennsylvania Ave. The Obama Justice Department (a misnomer if ever there was one) has dismissed any notion of upholding the law when it comes to the financial big-wigs of New York. One would think that appointing criminals to high office and helping them to perpetrate one of the most massive acts of fraud in human history, is an impeachable offence.
Not many actually think of the President being a direct beneficiary of criminal acts. But imagine that some of this loot could be traced and was found deposited directly into one of Obama's bank accounts? Is there any doubt he would be hounded from office within days, if not hours? Yet how much money is Obama going to make giving speeches to these very same people after he leaves office? How well is he going to be paid for "access"? That money came from the IRAs and out of the mortgage payments looted by the very same bankers what will be writing the checks, which will go directly into Obama's bank accounts.
It is no mystery why, by all accounts, the Obama White house is so secretive it makes the Nixon regime look like the choir boys of openness. The activities of this government couldn't stand the scrutiny of a candle, let alone the blazing light of day.
The Obama White House is a criminal organization. Sadly the T-party / Republicans who want to impeach him are even worse criminals, and bat-shit crazy to boot. The idea of agreeing with them on anything, even the idea of impeaching a President who probably should be impeached, just makes my skin crawl. Removing Obama from office becomes a bad idea because it gives a political victory to people who are worse. So leaving a war and Wall Street criminal in office is the best option we have.
See how far we have fallen.
Is is hard to envision a way out of this hole. A corrupt government attracts corrupt people, who then debase the political system even more. Even should the occasional honest person slip through the cracks and be elected to national office, the corrupt people surrounding them limit their influence to the occasional sound bite and way off the reservation blog post. When city hall is run by criminals justice has no chance. When the insane asylum is run by the inmates there is no hope that anyone can be cured. When a nation is run by the criminally insane?
When many nations are run by the criminally insane?
But, perhaps, therein lies our hope. There is a growing, stark contrast between the nations who have lost their collective minds and those that have not. In a world tied together by communications and travel the crazy are finding it harder and harder to hide while the non-crazy can start to ask questions. World wide there just might be the first shoots of individuals and small groups starting to ask the questions all tyrants fear. As technology reaches further and further down the economic pyramid even the poorest can join in the questioning. Pretty soon technology will talk and listen. Even those so poor that a basic education in literacy has passed them by will be be able to access information from around the world, and reach out to people across the globe.
When that happens "nations" don't mean much. Which also means political agendas don't mean as much either. It is becoming easier and easier to exchange ideas, much less easy to impose them. I can, and have, shared the thoughts of people who want nothing more than to live unmolested, to care for those they love, and be at peace with those they don't know. It doesn't matter where they live they are my allies, I can consider them friends, and we have much more in common than I will ever have with a T-party mad-person or a Barack Obama. At some point, when a drone missile falls into a neighborhood, I will be able to reach out and touch the family living next door to the impact sight, see the devastation wrought, watch the funeral of their kids who were out playing in the front yard. They will be able to ask me directly,"Why?" And I will have to come up with an answer that will define my humanity.
All of us will.
And then we can start climbing out of this hole.
And yet ...
... there are days, more and more of them actually, when I wonder if Obama shouldn't be impeached. Not for Benghazi, and not by the mad hatters of the T-party. But for truly criminal acts, and by people who actually support democracy and justice in the world.
For if Bush and Cheney are war criminals, and there is little doubt that is true, then Obama is one as well. Not only did he continue the debacles that were Iraq and is still Afghanistan, but he expanded the Bush drone wars beyond the point of no return. Another layer of murder and aggression has been added to the world, that of machine killers roaming the skies undetectable, virtually unstoppable, and totally outside the purview of any democratic oversight. By all accounts Barack Obama picks people, people who live half a world away whose arsenal is basically battered pick-up trucks and home made bombs, declares them a threat to National Security, and has them executed. I would think murder is an impeachable offence.
It is hard for us to grasp just how horrible this drone war is, but try to imagine this. Obama discovers the Boston bombers and is on to their plan. They haven't done anything yet and no one in the neighborhood knows what they are about. But in the middle of the night a massive explosion suddenly destroys the house they are in. Houses nearby are also badly damaged or destroyed. The two bombers are obliterated, a few of their friends (even those not in on the plot) are also vaporised. A couple of children sleeping next door are killed by the concussion. A few more houses away several more die from shrapnel wounds. Dozens are injured, some losing limbs, others blinded for life. But "National Security" has been served. Can one imagine for an instant that Obama would not be impeached the very next day? Certainly jailed. Perhaps executed?
In spite of all of the talk to the contrary, the Obama White House and Wall Street criminals are two peas in a pod. Some of the very people who crashed the economy and belong in jail are, instead, ruling the roost at 1900 Pennsylvania Ave. The Obama Justice Department (a misnomer if ever there was one) has dismissed any notion of upholding the law when it comes to the financial big-wigs of New York. One would think that appointing criminals to high office and helping them to perpetrate one of the most massive acts of fraud in human history, is an impeachable offence.
Not many actually think of the President being a direct beneficiary of criminal acts. But imagine that some of this loot could be traced and was found deposited directly into one of Obama's bank accounts? Is there any doubt he would be hounded from office within days, if not hours? Yet how much money is Obama going to make giving speeches to these very same people after he leaves office? How well is he going to be paid for "access"? That money came from the IRAs and out of the mortgage payments looted by the very same bankers what will be writing the checks, which will go directly into Obama's bank accounts.
It is no mystery why, by all accounts, the Obama White house is so secretive it makes the Nixon regime look like the choir boys of openness. The activities of this government couldn't stand the scrutiny of a candle, let alone the blazing light of day.
The Obama White House is a criminal organization. Sadly the T-party / Republicans who want to impeach him are even worse criminals, and bat-shit crazy to boot. The idea of agreeing with them on anything, even the idea of impeaching a President who probably should be impeached, just makes my skin crawl. Removing Obama from office becomes a bad idea because it gives a political victory to people who are worse. So leaving a war and Wall Street criminal in office is the best option we have.
See how far we have fallen.
Is is hard to envision a way out of this hole. A corrupt government attracts corrupt people, who then debase the political system even more. Even should the occasional honest person slip through the cracks and be elected to national office, the corrupt people surrounding them limit their influence to the occasional sound bite and way off the reservation blog post. When city hall is run by criminals justice has no chance. When the insane asylum is run by the inmates there is no hope that anyone can be cured. When a nation is run by the criminally insane?
When many nations are run by the criminally insane?
But, perhaps, therein lies our hope. There is a growing, stark contrast between the nations who have lost their collective minds and those that have not. In a world tied together by communications and travel the crazy are finding it harder and harder to hide while the non-crazy can start to ask questions. World wide there just might be the first shoots of individuals and small groups starting to ask the questions all tyrants fear. As technology reaches further and further down the economic pyramid even the poorest can join in the questioning. Pretty soon technology will talk and listen. Even those so poor that a basic education in literacy has passed them by will be be able to access information from around the world, and reach out to people across the globe.
When that happens "nations" don't mean much. Which also means political agendas don't mean as much either. It is becoming easier and easier to exchange ideas, much less easy to impose them. I can, and have, shared the thoughts of people who want nothing more than to live unmolested, to care for those they love, and be at peace with those they don't know. It doesn't matter where they live they are my allies, I can consider them friends, and we have much more in common than I will ever have with a T-party mad-person or a Barack Obama. At some point, when a drone missile falls into a neighborhood, I will be able to reach out and touch the family living next door to the impact sight, see the devastation wrought, watch the funeral of their kids who were out playing in the front yard. They will be able to ask me directly,"Why?" And I will have to come up with an answer that will define my humanity.
All of us will.
And then we can start climbing out of this hole.
Thursday, May 9, 2013
It has been reported that more than 40% of registered Republicans think that, in the next few years, an armed insurrection will be required in order for Americans to protect their freedom. Except for the "armed" part, I agree, but my guess is me and the 40% are going to be on opposite sides since I'm pretty sure we are not talking about the same kind of "freedom". The country I hope we are evolving into - hell, the planet I hope we are evolving into - is as much freedom "from" things as it is "of" things.
For example, I hope for a world where black people are free from being, "niggers"; gay people from being "faggots", and Latinos from being "spics". Whatever the derogating names any race or tribe has for any other race or tribe need to all fade away into the dark ages of history. We will (probably) always break up into tribes, but that doesn't mean my tribe has to think of yours as being inferior or somehow less than human. "Niggers" and "faggots" are both descriptions I have overheard in the last 12 hours, and both from people who fall into the 40%. What ever it is they are going to protect with their armed insurrection, universal civil liberty certainly isn't included.
That same 40% appear to be mostly Christian with a kind of even split between Catholics and American Protestants. Their idea of "freedom of religion" is the freedom to impose one particular religious ideology on everyone else; an idea so utterly twisted up I'm not sure how they actually say it without cackling like mad people. How they work out between them which particular religious ideology gets the nod would be an ugly thing to watch, a second armed insurrection to figure out who really won the first one would be my guess. The best thing is to hope they never get the first one.
Given that the 40% are largely made of T-baggers, and T-baggers are largely (even the ones so stupid as to not realize it) serve at the pleasure of the Corporate elite, will they be fighting to protect a 40 hour work week, over-time pay, sick leave, workplace safety, and vacation time? I suspect they will be fighting to end those things in the name of "free enterprise" and "capitalism". My hope is that a peaceful insurrection protects and expands all of these at the expense of corporate profiteering. As the drug and insurance corporations are making huge profits off the of the current health care system, I wouldn't guess the armed insurgents would be fighting for universal health care either.
These are also the folks who make up the anti-science, anti-education contingent of our floundering society. What is the chance they will be fighting for a quality education for every child, public financing for education through 4 years of collage, and to keep creationism out of the science class? If history shows us anything it is Stupid always teaches more stupid.
But it may be that something else is going on. A free society doesn't need, and in fact can't survive, the kind of robber baron capitalism currently dismantling the American economy. Nor can a free society exist with a government working against the vested interests of the majority. The armed insurrection the 40% of Republicans see coming may actually lead mostly to the dismantling of those crumbing foundations. The 40% may succeed in bringing down their masters to the benefit of all, then self destruct in a orgy of infighting. Catholics and Protestants, supply-side worshipers and working poor with guns and attitude; just being old (or late middle aged) white guys is not going to be enough to keep them from each other's throats.
But the chances of this actually happening are slim. Self described Republicans make up roughly 27% of Americans, 27 out of 100. Only 40% of that group is bat-shit crazy enough to dream of an armed revolution. So that 27 would round up to 11 whole people. Barely 11% think an armed insurrection might be necessary. How many of them would actually pick up a gun an aim it at a fellow American? I know they are fucked up, but are many of them that fucked up? The first people they will be shooting at are cops and military types ... and in that gun fight, (particularly with the military) they are sure to loose. So when the armed insurrection starts about 11 out of 100 are going to get mowed down pretty quickly, and for the most part those will be the bat-shit crazy fringe of the far right T-party nut cases. And they will have started it.
Sad, I know. Tragic even, the deluded lead to their demise by the likes of the Brothers Koch, Rush, Ted, Sarah, Glen, Michele, and the Fox News propaganda machine. How much do you want to bet on two things; 1) none of the aforementioned will actually be in the line of fire, and 2) Fox News finds that their access to the public airwaves has been revoked? After the gun smoke clears Rush and Co. are going to have a far smaller audience, Ted will be short some votes (assuming he isn't in jail for treason) and Glen will have surly lost what little remains of his mind and find himself in a institution getting the help he so desperately needs.
On the other hand 89% of Americans will have watched a corporate backed, right wing Christian insurgency open fire on cops and military boys and girls in order to restrict civil rights and force their brand of religion on a free nation. The backlash will be wonderful. Not only will civil rights and freedom FROM religion be at the top of the national consciousness but so will rational gun control (since all of the insurgents will look bat-shit crazy in the aftermath). And should corporate money be traced to backing the insurgency with the avowed attempt of bringing down a democracy? So much for crony capitalism...most of the cronies will end up behind bars. And really, who is it that thinks the military has not already hacked a copy of the NRA membership list? Once the shooting starts anyone on that list is likely to find themselves being treated as an "enemy combatant". (Another reality waiting for the bat-shit crazy? There are a lot of progressive people who actually do love freedom and democracy, who desire rational gun control, who own guns, and who wouldn't hesitate to shoot corporate insurgents bent on taking their freedoms from them. Surprise!)
An armed rebellion by the bat-shit crazy would be a truly horrible thing. Fortunately the odds of it happening appear to be vanishingly small. It isn't that I don't think they are stupid enough to try it. But stupid enough to try it needs to be coupled with brave enough to die for it. And I doubt they are brave enough. Bullies and blow hards mostly, good at shooting targets and unarmed animals. Shooting at cops and military personnel with a pretty good chance of getting killed in return, and pretty quickly at that? I don't think they have it in them.
Which, I suspect, is something their corporate masters think as well.
For example, I hope for a world where black people are free from being, "niggers"; gay people from being "faggots", and Latinos from being "spics". Whatever the derogating names any race or tribe has for any other race or tribe need to all fade away into the dark ages of history. We will (probably) always break up into tribes, but that doesn't mean my tribe has to think of yours as being inferior or somehow less than human. "Niggers" and "faggots" are both descriptions I have overheard in the last 12 hours, and both from people who fall into the 40%. What ever it is they are going to protect with their armed insurrection, universal civil liberty certainly isn't included.
That same 40% appear to be mostly Christian with a kind of even split between Catholics and American Protestants. Their idea of "freedom of religion" is the freedom to impose one particular religious ideology on everyone else; an idea so utterly twisted up I'm not sure how they actually say it without cackling like mad people. How they work out between them which particular religious ideology gets the nod would be an ugly thing to watch, a second armed insurrection to figure out who really won the first one would be my guess. The best thing is to hope they never get the first one.
Given that the 40% are largely made of T-baggers, and T-baggers are largely (even the ones so stupid as to not realize it) serve at the pleasure of the Corporate elite, will they be fighting to protect a 40 hour work week, over-time pay, sick leave, workplace safety, and vacation time? I suspect they will be fighting to end those things in the name of "free enterprise" and "capitalism". My hope is that a peaceful insurrection protects and expands all of these at the expense of corporate profiteering. As the drug and insurance corporations are making huge profits off the of the current health care system, I wouldn't guess the armed insurgents would be fighting for universal health care either.
These are also the folks who make up the anti-science, anti-education contingent of our floundering society. What is the chance they will be fighting for a quality education for every child, public financing for education through 4 years of collage, and to keep creationism out of the science class? If history shows us anything it is Stupid always teaches more stupid.
But it may be that something else is going on. A free society doesn't need, and in fact can't survive, the kind of robber baron capitalism currently dismantling the American economy. Nor can a free society exist with a government working against the vested interests of the majority. The armed insurrection the 40% of Republicans see coming may actually lead mostly to the dismantling of those crumbing foundations. The 40% may succeed in bringing down their masters to the benefit of all, then self destruct in a orgy of infighting. Catholics and Protestants, supply-side worshipers and working poor with guns and attitude; just being old (or late middle aged) white guys is not going to be enough to keep them from each other's throats.
But the chances of this actually happening are slim. Self described Republicans make up roughly 27% of Americans, 27 out of 100. Only 40% of that group is bat-shit crazy enough to dream of an armed revolution. So that 27 would round up to 11 whole people. Barely 11% think an armed insurrection might be necessary. How many of them would actually pick up a gun an aim it at a fellow American? I know they are fucked up, but are many of them that fucked up? The first people they will be shooting at are cops and military types ... and in that gun fight, (particularly with the military) they are sure to loose. So when the armed insurrection starts about 11 out of 100 are going to get mowed down pretty quickly, and for the most part those will be the bat-shit crazy fringe of the far right T-party nut cases. And they will have started it.
Sad, I know. Tragic even, the deluded lead to their demise by the likes of the Brothers Koch, Rush, Ted, Sarah, Glen, Michele, and the Fox News propaganda machine. How much do you want to bet on two things; 1) none of the aforementioned will actually be in the line of fire, and 2) Fox News finds that their access to the public airwaves has been revoked? After the gun smoke clears Rush and Co. are going to have a far smaller audience, Ted will be short some votes (assuming he isn't in jail for treason) and Glen will have surly lost what little remains of his mind and find himself in a institution getting the help he so desperately needs.
On the other hand 89% of Americans will have watched a corporate backed, right wing Christian insurgency open fire on cops and military boys and girls in order to restrict civil rights and force their brand of religion on a free nation. The backlash will be wonderful. Not only will civil rights and freedom FROM religion be at the top of the national consciousness but so will rational gun control (since all of the insurgents will look bat-shit crazy in the aftermath). And should corporate money be traced to backing the insurgency with the avowed attempt of bringing down a democracy? So much for crony capitalism...most of the cronies will end up behind bars. And really, who is it that thinks the military has not already hacked a copy of the NRA membership list? Once the shooting starts anyone on that list is likely to find themselves being treated as an "enemy combatant". (Another reality waiting for the bat-shit crazy? There are a lot of progressive people who actually do love freedom and democracy, who desire rational gun control, who own guns, and who wouldn't hesitate to shoot corporate insurgents bent on taking their freedoms from them. Surprise!)
An armed rebellion by the bat-shit crazy would be a truly horrible thing. Fortunately the odds of it happening appear to be vanishingly small. It isn't that I don't think they are stupid enough to try it. But stupid enough to try it needs to be coupled with brave enough to die for it. And I doubt they are brave enough. Bullies and blow hards mostly, good at shooting targets and unarmed animals. Shooting at cops and military personnel with a pretty good chance of getting killed in return, and pretty quickly at that? I don't think they have it in them.
Which, I suspect, is something their corporate masters think as well.
Thursday, May 2, 2013
The greatest generation
Sometimes it is a real struggle to get one's head around the things happening in the country and around the world. It seems so increasingly bizarre, as if human kind has reached some tipping point of shared insanity. Terrorism, the deliberate targeting of non-combatants for bombings, airstrikes, drone attacks, rocket barrages, and (apparently) chemical assaults, is a daily occurrence. The psychology, history, and social forces behind such atrocities are surly complex to the point of being unfathomable, but in the end some twisted up individual pulls the trigger that leads to the immediate butchering of people who were not, themselves, butchers.
Slightly down the scale of crazy lay the policy choices of government officials the world over. Places where government is actually functioning more or less to the benefit of the population it governs are distressingly few. There are utterly failed states of mayhem and anarchy. There are empires of brutal dictators and populations suffering under religious tyranny. On a list of risk for failure there are thirteen nations counted as "sustainable", i.e. little or no risk of failing. Thirteen, of one hundred seventy seven. There are thirty eight listed as having a "moderate" chance of failing, including the US of A. Just on the surface it would seem that the nation/state is turning out to be a pretty poor choice as a way to structure human society.
In many cases, as it is in the US, the risk factor compromising the sustainability of a society seems to be rampant corruption with the resulting coalescence of wealth and power into the hands of the very few. Sometimes such imbalances are corrected though the political process. Laws written by the elite to serve the elite get re-written to serve the majority. Officials and moguls guilty of bribery and being bribed, of buying influence and selling same, are voted out of office and (very rarely) jailed. International and domestic policies enacted at the expense of the general population for the benefit of the ruling faction are abandoned by those answering to the call of being public servants. Instead are offered policies aimed at the public good.
There is a small chance that such inside-the-system reformation could still happen in the US, and one hopes such a righting is in our near future. If it doesn't happen soon though, it will not happen that way at all. At some point the power is so concentrated, the society so skewed, and the general population so disenfranchised that the political system breaks down. Some form of open revolt becomes the only option for change. Politicians are driven from office rather than voted out. Judges are hounded into hiding. The concentrated wealth of the elite is mostly confiscated and redistributed though, inevitably, some of it is simply destroyed. Once the fires have burned out new wealth is created in a more equitable manner.
Those same fires tend to burn down the political structures as well. New ones are created with the hope that the flaws in the old that weakened the system to the point of collapse are corrected. Any such reworking of the American system would surly dismiss the idea of an Electoral College. The ranking of a Senate as the primary governing body with its unequal representation might also disappear. (The two Senators from Wyoming represent 288,206 people each. The two Senators from California? Nineteen million, twenty thousand, seven hundred and fifteen ... each. Yet they all wield equal power.) A Supreme Court, appointed for life and vested with the power to sell the political system to the highest bidder, is ripe for overhaul. Gerrymandering congressional districts would hopefully fall into the trash bin of bad ideas as well.
The flaws built into the current American government structure are pretty fundamental. The Electoral College, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the gerrymandering of Congress are all at the very core of a political system gone awry. Thus is seems even less likely that renewal can come through somewhat benign political processes. Maybe, if a new party was swept into power with a mandate to overhaul these very flaws using the Amendment provisions provided in the Constitution, a party that had the support of like minded State governments, change could happen inside the boundaries of politics. But given the propaganda capabilities of the current two party / corporate / media coup d'état, such an organized and thoughtful path into the future is unlikely. Some form of open citizen's rebellion is more likely.
Unfortunately such rebellions are much more likely to succeed if undertaken by an unarmed population as opposed to an armed one. An unarmed people bring down a government by a collective force of will; general strikes and mass demonstrations supporting a common goal. The society's shared wealth of infrastructure is not destroyed. Community sized political structures often remain to help with the rebuilding. The military can stand aloof as a kind of referee and a deterrent to other nations being tempted to move in to scoop up some of the loot.
Armed populations in revolt rapidly degenerate into various embattled camps, of which the soon-to-be-ex-government and its military is the best equipped. Most of the collective wealth of the nation is destroyed during the struggle, taking generations to rebuild. War lords become the new elite and the people end up trading one form of oppression for an even bleaker future.
A tendency which does not bode well for the renewal of the United States.
Making getting one's head around the whole current situation even more difficult. How can a free and somewhat knowledgeable people vote in a T-party, listen to a Rush Limbaugh, or tolerate a Michele Bachmann? Who is raising kids that kill in the name of a god? How is it the money is spent to keep the planes flying on time but kids and old people are going without food, cancer patients are going untreated, the bridges are falling down and the water systems are falling apart? The failures of "austerity" politics are shrugged off though millions are unemployed and the vast majority still working have seen wages stagnate or shrink for more than a decade. Some eight or nine out of ten of us want to reign in the madness of the NRA and gun manufacturers. The response given by the Senate of the United States to the desires of their constituents, "Fuck off".
We could vote them out but any likely replacements will be vetted by the same special interest elite and presented to the public by the same corporate media. But should the people of the United States take to the streets to demand renewal the camps of the NRA, T-party, and religious extremists will surly gather up their guns and hijack any attempt to move into a better future. Though they might claim to be part of the rebellion the true goal would be strengthen some part of the current government. The NRA and weapons manufacturers need a society of violence and war. The T-party is opposed to social and economic justice with the idea of expanding the power of democracy to all constituencies being their worst nightmare. The religious right, (the "god loves the NRA, hates fags, and created women to have babies" crowd) want nothing to do with universal civil rights or an open and tolerant society.
It may well be that the path to a better future for most people lies outside the boarders of the United States. The Arab Spring has failed, but that does not mean Australia or New Zealand are falling into the hands of religious dictatorships. The nations of South America, with a firsthand view of what happens when capitalism goes off the rails, could forge a different path. Canada seems to have far fewer crazies than the US and, if they can avoid the fallout from a major nation folding along a shared 3,987 mile border, could be part of a democratic future for the world. The sheer weight of the populations of China and India may force those governments onto a more open path. India has a few step lead on China, but no government can face down a Billion+ pissed off people who can access Facebook, Twitter, and the Web. (The people of China and India are not very heavily armed, giving social unrest in those nations a much better chance of succeeding in going forward rather than backward.)
For those inside the US things may not be as grim as it appears. People in my generation have seen the fruits of an entire working life siphoned off into the coffers of Wall Street and small faction of the obscenely rich. But we are nearly as wedded to capitalism and religion as were our parents, and can barely see over the boarders of America. The generation after mine struggles just to get a finger hold on any promise for a better future and for them capitalism is a system that seemed to work, almost, at some time in the past. Institutionalized religion still sways their world view but for them the world is a smaller place than it is for us. The generation after, that of my grand kids ... I think they are the first generation of Americans most likely to take to the streets with some hope of going forward rather than back.
All indications are that they are a generation that is not homophobic, racist or sexist. There will be no majority of race or religion to bully the rest. Tolerance will be as natural to them as breathing. For the most part they will not grow up gun owners or hunters. An urban history rather than rural background will frame their lives and the only economy they will know is that of failed capitalism. They will be a social generation having been city dwellers and having had access to the Web from the day they were born. For them boarders will not be nearly as broad nor "other peoples" very far away. Anyone will be able to communicate with everyone speaking any language, and religion? It is hard to imagine many of them insisting that theirs is the religion of the one true god.
They may well be the true "greatest generation". When they take to the streets the future will look bright indeed. And they will start coming of age in less than 20 years.
I can get my head around that.
Slightly down the scale of crazy lay the policy choices of government officials the world over. Places where government is actually functioning more or less to the benefit of the population it governs are distressingly few. There are utterly failed states of mayhem and anarchy. There are empires of brutal dictators and populations suffering under religious tyranny. On a list of risk for failure there are thirteen nations counted as "sustainable", i.e. little or no risk of failing. Thirteen, of one hundred seventy seven. There are thirty eight listed as having a "moderate" chance of failing, including the US of A. Just on the surface it would seem that the nation/state is turning out to be a pretty poor choice as a way to structure human society.
In many cases, as it is in the US, the risk factor compromising the sustainability of a society seems to be rampant corruption with the resulting coalescence of wealth and power into the hands of the very few. Sometimes such imbalances are corrected though the political process. Laws written by the elite to serve the elite get re-written to serve the majority. Officials and moguls guilty of bribery and being bribed, of buying influence and selling same, are voted out of office and (very rarely) jailed. International and domestic policies enacted at the expense of the general population for the benefit of the ruling faction are abandoned by those answering to the call of being public servants. Instead are offered policies aimed at the public good.
There is a small chance that such inside-the-system reformation could still happen in the US, and one hopes such a righting is in our near future. If it doesn't happen soon though, it will not happen that way at all. At some point the power is so concentrated, the society so skewed, and the general population so disenfranchised that the political system breaks down. Some form of open revolt becomes the only option for change. Politicians are driven from office rather than voted out. Judges are hounded into hiding. The concentrated wealth of the elite is mostly confiscated and redistributed though, inevitably, some of it is simply destroyed. Once the fires have burned out new wealth is created in a more equitable manner.
Those same fires tend to burn down the political structures as well. New ones are created with the hope that the flaws in the old that weakened the system to the point of collapse are corrected. Any such reworking of the American system would surly dismiss the idea of an Electoral College. The ranking of a Senate as the primary governing body with its unequal representation might also disappear. (The two Senators from Wyoming represent 288,206 people each. The two Senators from California? Nineteen million, twenty thousand, seven hundred and fifteen ... each. Yet they all wield equal power.) A Supreme Court, appointed for life and vested with the power to sell the political system to the highest bidder, is ripe for overhaul. Gerrymandering congressional districts would hopefully fall into the trash bin of bad ideas as well.
The flaws built into the current American government structure are pretty fundamental. The Electoral College, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the gerrymandering of Congress are all at the very core of a political system gone awry. Thus is seems even less likely that renewal can come through somewhat benign political processes. Maybe, if a new party was swept into power with a mandate to overhaul these very flaws using the Amendment provisions provided in the Constitution, a party that had the support of like minded State governments, change could happen inside the boundaries of politics. But given the propaganda capabilities of the current two party / corporate / media coup d'état, such an organized and thoughtful path into the future is unlikely. Some form of open citizen's rebellion is more likely.
Unfortunately such rebellions are much more likely to succeed if undertaken by an unarmed population as opposed to an armed one. An unarmed people bring down a government by a collective force of will; general strikes and mass demonstrations supporting a common goal. The society's shared wealth of infrastructure is not destroyed. Community sized political structures often remain to help with the rebuilding. The military can stand aloof as a kind of referee and a deterrent to other nations being tempted to move in to scoop up some of the loot.
Armed populations in revolt rapidly degenerate into various embattled camps, of which the soon-to-be-ex-government and its military is the best equipped. Most of the collective wealth of the nation is destroyed during the struggle, taking generations to rebuild. War lords become the new elite and the people end up trading one form of oppression for an even bleaker future.
A tendency which does not bode well for the renewal of the United States.
Making getting one's head around the whole current situation even more difficult. How can a free and somewhat knowledgeable people vote in a T-party, listen to a Rush Limbaugh, or tolerate a Michele Bachmann? Who is raising kids that kill in the name of a god? How is it the money is spent to keep the planes flying on time but kids and old people are going without food, cancer patients are going untreated, the bridges are falling down and the water systems are falling apart? The failures of "austerity" politics are shrugged off though millions are unemployed and the vast majority still working have seen wages stagnate or shrink for more than a decade. Some eight or nine out of ten of us want to reign in the madness of the NRA and gun manufacturers. The response given by the Senate of the United States to the desires of their constituents, "Fuck off".
We could vote them out but any likely replacements will be vetted by the same special interest elite and presented to the public by the same corporate media. But should the people of the United States take to the streets to demand renewal the camps of the NRA, T-party, and religious extremists will surly gather up their guns and hijack any attempt to move into a better future. Though they might claim to be part of the rebellion the true goal would be strengthen some part of the current government. The NRA and weapons manufacturers need a society of violence and war. The T-party is opposed to social and economic justice with the idea of expanding the power of democracy to all constituencies being their worst nightmare. The religious right, (the "god loves the NRA, hates fags, and created women to have babies" crowd) want nothing to do with universal civil rights or an open and tolerant society.
It may well be that the path to a better future for most people lies outside the boarders of the United States. The Arab Spring has failed, but that does not mean Australia or New Zealand are falling into the hands of religious dictatorships. The nations of South America, with a firsthand view of what happens when capitalism goes off the rails, could forge a different path. Canada seems to have far fewer crazies than the US and, if they can avoid the fallout from a major nation folding along a shared 3,987 mile border, could be part of a democratic future for the world. The sheer weight of the populations of China and India may force those governments onto a more open path. India has a few step lead on China, but no government can face down a Billion+ pissed off people who can access Facebook, Twitter, and the Web. (The people of China and India are not very heavily armed, giving social unrest in those nations a much better chance of succeeding in going forward rather than backward.)
For those inside the US things may not be as grim as it appears. People in my generation have seen the fruits of an entire working life siphoned off into the coffers of Wall Street and small faction of the obscenely rich. But we are nearly as wedded to capitalism and religion as were our parents, and can barely see over the boarders of America. The generation after mine struggles just to get a finger hold on any promise for a better future and for them capitalism is a system that seemed to work, almost, at some time in the past. Institutionalized religion still sways their world view but for them the world is a smaller place than it is for us. The generation after, that of my grand kids ... I think they are the first generation of Americans most likely to take to the streets with some hope of going forward rather than back.
All indications are that they are a generation that is not homophobic, racist or sexist. There will be no majority of race or religion to bully the rest. Tolerance will be as natural to them as breathing. For the most part they will not grow up gun owners or hunters. An urban history rather than rural background will frame their lives and the only economy they will know is that of failed capitalism. They will be a social generation having been city dwellers and having had access to the Web from the day they were born. For them boarders will not be nearly as broad nor "other peoples" very far away. Anyone will be able to communicate with everyone speaking any language, and religion? It is hard to imagine many of them insisting that theirs is the religion of the one true god.
They may well be the true "greatest generation". When they take to the streets the future will look bright indeed. And they will start coming of age in less than 20 years.
I can get my head around that.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
As expected ...
The attempt at rational gun control failed to get over the filibuster of the Senate Republicans. Anyone who thought any other outcome was likely is clearly living in the delusion that the United States of America is a functioning democracy. There will be much hue and cry, the right wing, NRA, and gun manufactures will gloat, and Obama looks like the weak excuse for a President that he has always been. The government has been owned by corporate interests for a long time now, particularly weapons manufacturers, and nothing has changed.
The people who have lost loved ones to gun violence and who were hoping for even a hint of understanding and justice must be deeply hurt. My heart goes out to them as they have been wounded with a callous disregard bread by corruption that is as evil as anything I have ever seen. They are on the front line of a people betrayed and many of them will never be whole again. Their tragedy is a microcosm of a failed society.
Any of us can be the victims of gun insanity at any time, the only bright spot in this dim reality is that the odds are still in favor of not being on the wrong end of a gun. One is much more likely to die of health complications resulting from obesity or smoking (1 & 2 on the list of killers), heart disease (3), cancer (4), respiratory disease (5), or stroke (6). Getting killed by a gun falls into category 7, "accidental", where it lies behind poisoning and car accidents.
The facts also show that one is even less likely to be the victim of gun violence if, a) one lives in a state where gun ownership is less prevalent and, b) one lives in a house that has no guns. (The NRA / gun lover arguments for a society awash in guns is pure bullshit, but you knew that already.) A lot of us live in the state we grew up in or the state where we could find a job, so "a" isn't always something we have much control over. "B" however, I kind of like. If there is a gun in your home and someone you love is killed or wounded by that gun (which is the most likely scenario if the thing is actually fired) well ... fuck you. Sad? Sure. Just like its sad when someone who has smoked their entire life is felled by lung cancer. Sad, but they have no bitch coming.
Of course most of the time those who actually die from a gun are more like the person who got cancer from second hand smoke or their work environment. Being victimized by other people's choices is a strange kind of "freedom", one I doubt the Founding Fathers were trying to protect. But then I doubt they imagined a government owned by multi-national corporations, or that those corporation would be judged by the Supreme Court as being "people" either. I suspect they would be surprised that, in a body made up of 100 people (101 if you count the VP) it takes 60 votes to get a majority. And I suspect gerrymandering would be a puzzle to them.
Of course women and blacks voting would be a surprise to them as well, but at least they set up a system for amending the Constitution that allowed for such progress to happen. No, I doubt they would count the government we currently endure as being remotely related to what they tried to create.
The people who have lost loved ones to gun violence and who were hoping for even a hint of understanding and justice must be deeply hurt. My heart goes out to them as they have been wounded with a callous disregard bread by corruption that is as evil as anything I have ever seen. They are on the front line of a people betrayed and many of them will never be whole again. Their tragedy is a microcosm of a failed society.
Any of us can be the victims of gun insanity at any time, the only bright spot in this dim reality is that the odds are still in favor of not being on the wrong end of a gun. One is much more likely to die of health complications resulting from obesity or smoking (1 & 2 on the list of killers), heart disease (3), cancer (4), respiratory disease (5), or stroke (6). Getting killed by a gun falls into category 7, "accidental", where it lies behind poisoning and car accidents.
The facts also show that one is even less likely to be the victim of gun violence if, a) one lives in a state where gun ownership is less prevalent and, b) one lives in a house that has no guns. (The NRA / gun lover arguments for a society awash in guns is pure bullshit, but you knew that already.) A lot of us live in the state we grew up in or the state where we could find a job, so "a" isn't always something we have much control over. "B" however, I kind of like. If there is a gun in your home and someone you love is killed or wounded by that gun (which is the most likely scenario if the thing is actually fired) well ... fuck you. Sad? Sure. Just like its sad when someone who has smoked their entire life is felled by lung cancer. Sad, but they have no bitch coming.
Of course most of the time those who actually die from a gun are more like the person who got cancer from second hand smoke or their work environment. Being victimized by other people's choices is a strange kind of "freedom", one I doubt the Founding Fathers were trying to protect. But then I doubt they imagined a government owned by multi-national corporations, or that those corporation would be judged by the Supreme Court as being "people" either. I suspect they would be surprised that, in a body made up of 100 people (101 if you count the VP) it takes 60 votes to get a majority. And I suspect gerrymandering would be a puzzle to them.
Of course women and blacks voting would be a surprise to them as well, but at least they set up a system for amending the Constitution that allowed for such progress to happen. No, I doubt they would count the government we currently endure as being remotely related to what they tried to create.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Guns and fury
I am surprised that the gun debate has gone as far as it has. Obama is actually showing a little backbone on the issue and citizen groups are flexing unexpected muscles. Even some of the folks at Fox news are giving way to a tide of reasonableness and looking, at least at this moment and on this issue, like rational human beings with a functioning brain. NRA leadership is being portrayed as loopy extremists and a good many people, even gun lovers, are having to admit that Wayne Lapierre is likely bat-shit crazy and truly paranoid to the point of needing some medical attention.
But it looks like the reality of an American political system sold to the highest bidder is about to reassert itself. Republicans in the Senate will filibuster any weapons bill and thus derail any exercise of democracy that threatens the profit center of weapons manufacturers. The true curiosity is, what happens next?
Of course, in all probability, nothing happens next. Rational gun control dies on the vine of a corrupt government. Dozens of people continue to get killed every week by gun violence. And a large percentage of those killed and murdered continue to be children. But there must be a small chance that something will start to happen. After all, every change in society starts as a barely noticed footnote to that day's headlines. Perhaps, this time around, Americans will realize that their collective desire for a rational gun policy has been thwarted by a corrupt government. Not in some vague, the government is always corrupt, kind of way. Rather in a These-Fourteen-Senators-and-T/Party Representatives-bought-off-by-the-gun-lobby kind of way. Focused. Angry. Infuriated.
Infuriated, that is the key. At some point people are going to get angry. Not just irritated. Spitting mad. Furious. The kind of fury that takes to the streets. The kind of public fury that every politician of every type in the whole world dreads. The fury that has the Chinese government moving carefully so as not to put a dent in the improving life of their billion + citizens. The kind of fury that has North Korea's idiot savant of a "leader" talking war to keep his people from seeing the real enemy. (On the one hand I loathe this clown, on the other I fully realize that our government is doing the exact same thing to us.) The kind of fury the Ayatollahs tap into to topple tyrants, and that will some day turn on them as well.
The kind of fury it takes to bring down a corrupted government.
That kind of fury is like a forest fire. Once it gets going there is no real way to stop it. We have realized that is the way nature works. Fire is a natural part of renewal. Without it the forest decays, smothered in the detritus of past generations. The generation currently in power (mine) has left a pile of debris that includes the worship of greed, crony capitalism that loves nothing but profit, selfishness, an addiction to violence and war, and a religious fanaticism pounded into us in our youth (late 1940s and 1950s Leave it to Beaver morality) that we never quite managed to shake off. Our society is being choked to death by it.
Granting civil rights for gay people, ending the drug war, realizing only the rich profit from laws passed, sickened by the violence of the gun culture, tired of war, knowing the environment is changing, embracing and not fearing multiculturalism, understanding that a free society must be a just society, admitting that "our god" is probably not "the god", these are all struggling to grow out from under the pile of trash that is our current society / government. That trash pile needs to be burned away.
Maybe it starts by burning down the careers of politicians spitting in the face of Americans at the command of the gun lords.
But it looks like the reality of an American political system sold to the highest bidder is about to reassert itself. Republicans in the Senate will filibuster any weapons bill and thus derail any exercise of democracy that threatens the profit center of weapons manufacturers. The true curiosity is, what happens next?
Of course, in all probability, nothing happens next. Rational gun control dies on the vine of a corrupt government. Dozens of people continue to get killed every week by gun violence. And a large percentage of those killed and murdered continue to be children. But there must be a small chance that something will start to happen. After all, every change in society starts as a barely noticed footnote to that day's headlines. Perhaps, this time around, Americans will realize that their collective desire for a rational gun policy has been thwarted by a corrupt government. Not in some vague, the government is always corrupt, kind of way. Rather in a These-Fourteen-Senators-and-T/Party Representatives-bought-off-by-the-gun-lobby kind of way. Focused. Angry. Infuriated.
Infuriated, that is the key. At some point people are going to get angry. Not just irritated. Spitting mad. Furious. The kind of fury that takes to the streets. The kind of public fury that every politician of every type in the whole world dreads. The fury that has the Chinese government moving carefully so as not to put a dent in the improving life of their billion + citizens. The kind of fury that has North Korea's idiot savant of a "leader" talking war to keep his people from seeing the real enemy. (On the one hand I loathe this clown, on the other I fully realize that our government is doing the exact same thing to us.) The kind of fury the Ayatollahs tap into to topple tyrants, and that will some day turn on them as well.
The kind of fury it takes to bring down a corrupted government.
That kind of fury is like a forest fire. Once it gets going there is no real way to stop it. We have realized that is the way nature works. Fire is a natural part of renewal. Without it the forest decays, smothered in the detritus of past generations. The generation currently in power (mine) has left a pile of debris that includes the worship of greed, crony capitalism that loves nothing but profit, selfishness, an addiction to violence and war, and a religious fanaticism pounded into us in our youth (late 1940s and 1950s Leave it to Beaver morality) that we never quite managed to shake off. Our society is being choked to death by it.
Granting civil rights for gay people, ending the drug war, realizing only the rich profit from laws passed, sickened by the violence of the gun culture, tired of war, knowing the environment is changing, embracing and not fearing multiculturalism, understanding that a free society must be a just society, admitting that "our god" is probably not "the god", these are all struggling to grow out from under the pile of trash that is our current society / government. That trash pile needs to be burned away.
Maybe it starts by burning down the careers of politicians spitting in the face of Americans at the command of the gun lords.
Monday, April 8, 2013
Good people and evil acts
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." Steven Weinberg
For many years this was a favorite quote for me. Religion, particularly the monotheism of the Jewish / Christian / Muslim traditions, demean humanity as failed and fallen, with most of us destined to an eternity of torture at the hands of a loving, but vengeful, god. This view has validated much of the evil that people do to one another. In our time Islam is the poster child for murder in the name of god, but they are just the latest to join the party. Christianity has a 2000 year history of war, torture and murder that lasted right up until the 1990s battles in Northern Ireland. Before them, at least according to the Old Testament, the Jews were ordered to put entire civilizations to death - well, sometimes they got to keep the young girls for their own amusement. Jews are still killing Muslims. Muslims are still killing Jews (and other Muslims and Christians). Thanks to Misters Bush and Obama many Muslims are convinced that the Christians are on another Crusade, this time using drones. Though the violence of the god of Abraham is most familiar to me, stories of Hindu and Buddhist violence make the news as well. Mr. Weinberg's quote would seem to find support in at least one headline a day.
Yet my fondness for his observation has faded. It is certainly true that good people do good things and bad people do bad things, with or without religion. That is, after all, how we tell them apart ... the good and the bad that is. And clearly religion muddies the water when it comes to what is good and what is bad. Religious leaders of every stripe continue to demand that denying civil rights to gay people and restricting the freedom of women is what god demands of human kind. Suicide bombing is an exclusively religious exercise at this point in history. Racism is alive and well in many religious traditions, as are calls for ethnic cleansing and the ritual mutilation of babies. Without religion all of these would be considered evil by any normal human being.
Mr. Weinburg's quote would suggest that there are good people doing these evil things, good people who think they are obeying the dictates of a god when they kill, maim, and demand discrimination for this group or that. But are they good people who have been fooled into doing evil things, or are they evil people doing an evil thing using religion as a cover?
The older I get the more I think it is the latter.
I know good people. I know of and have, on occasion, gotten cross-wise with evil people. It seems to me that the two groups are mutually exclusive. It isn't that no good person has ever done anything wrong or no evil person anything right. Human beings are not two dimensional cardboard creatures. But at the point of doing real evil, of doing actual harm to another human being, good people will hesitate and then back away. God or no god they will find a way to sidestep the demand. I think that's one of the main causes for the rifts inside religion, good people seeking to find a doctrine that provides a path away from what (it must be admitted) would appear to be clear calls to do evil. Slavery is a good example, as was (and is) demands for civil rights. More esoteric fights (at least to this unbeliever) include arguments over hell and what, precisely, it takes to be "saved." And esoteric though they might be, these still appear to me to be efforts of good people trying to avoid the evil inherent in very idea of "hell" and the tribalism and conflict born of the claim to being "god's chosen."
Good people who chose to remain religious fight a continuous battle against the evil inherent in the ideologies. I'm not sure why they cling to the religions in the first place, but I cheer their constant efforts to limit the evil that religion tries to do. To a large degree though, I fear they are fighting a losing battle. In the thousands of years that organized religion has bedeviled human kind the good people in religion have never managed to limit the evil very much at all. Millions of good Catholics can't convince the Church that women are equals or that birth control is not only a civil right, but the only moral choice in a world currently trying to carry more than 7 billion of us around the sun. Millions of Christians of all sects have been unable to drag Christianity away from its stand against gay people. An admittedly smaller portion of American Christians have failed to save the church from various "prosperity" doctrines or driven the hucksters from the TV and radio airwaves.
Millions upon millions of Muslims have failed to prevent Islam from decaying into a death cult.
The evil that religion does continues to expand in spite of the best efforts of the good people in religion to do the right things. Why is that?
Religion's major flaw is that it can so easily be manipulated by evil people. Once wrapped in the mantel of the authority of a god they can find a myriad opportunities to practice evil without being caught, condemned or punished. They can hack away at the vagina's of screaming baby girls, rape and abuse as many woman as they please, profit from the slave labor of orphans, stir up war and hatred and watch cities burn, and send children wearing bomb vests into stores to kill other children. They indulge in the evil like any other addict, and no one does these things who can be thought of as "good".
Religious leaders can live in the finest palaces, eat the best food, and have the best health care all paid for by the back breaking labor of others; all "tax free", and all without having to do any real work themselves. They get to dictate how people live, who they are allowed to love, what they can eat, where they can go, and what they can wear. They can picket funerals and heap verbal abuse on mourning families. None of these are the acts of good people either.
The good people in a religion don't take advantage of these opportunities, something that must be okay with the evil people. The good people do a lot of the grunt work required to keep the whole operation running and financed. They make good cover. Often they are well aware of the evil but "faith" blinds them and keeps them from speaking out. But there is nothing special about that. Good people don't take advantage of opportunities to do evil outside of religion either.
I don't think religion takes good people and makes them do evil. I think the religions are primarily designed by and run for the advantage of evil people from the very start. A lot of evil people know a good thing when they see it.
And I think the good people are not doing themselves any favors by staying involved. In fact, if there were a just and caring god out there, it would certainly not tolerate much of what passes as religion among human kind.
For many years this was a favorite quote for me. Religion, particularly the monotheism of the Jewish / Christian / Muslim traditions, demean humanity as failed and fallen, with most of us destined to an eternity of torture at the hands of a loving, but vengeful, god. This view has validated much of the evil that people do to one another. In our time Islam is the poster child for murder in the name of god, but they are just the latest to join the party. Christianity has a 2000 year history of war, torture and murder that lasted right up until the 1990s battles in Northern Ireland. Before them, at least according to the Old Testament, the Jews were ordered to put entire civilizations to death - well, sometimes they got to keep the young girls for their own amusement. Jews are still killing Muslims. Muslims are still killing Jews (and other Muslims and Christians). Thanks to Misters Bush and Obama many Muslims are convinced that the Christians are on another Crusade, this time using drones. Though the violence of the god of Abraham is most familiar to me, stories of Hindu and Buddhist violence make the news as well. Mr. Weinberg's quote would seem to find support in at least one headline a day.
Yet my fondness for his observation has faded. It is certainly true that good people do good things and bad people do bad things, with or without religion. That is, after all, how we tell them apart ... the good and the bad that is. And clearly religion muddies the water when it comes to what is good and what is bad. Religious leaders of every stripe continue to demand that denying civil rights to gay people and restricting the freedom of women is what god demands of human kind. Suicide bombing is an exclusively religious exercise at this point in history. Racism is alive and well in many religious traditions, as are calls for ethnic cleansing and the ritual mutilation of babies. Without religion all of these would be considered evil by any normal human being.
Mr. Weinburg's quote would suggest that there are good people doing these evil things, good people who think they are obeying the dictates of a god when they kill, maim, and demand discrimination for this group or that. But are they good people who have been fooled into doing evil things, or are they evil people doing an evil thing using religion as a cover?
The older I get the more I think it is the latter.
I know good people. I know of and have, on occasion, gotten cross-wise with evil people. It seems to me that the two groups are mutually exclusive. It isn't that no good person has ever done anything wrong or no evil person anything right. Human beings are not two dimensional cardboard creatures. But at the point of doing real evil, of doing actual harm to another human being, good people will hesitate and then back away. God or no god they will find a way to sidestep the demand. I think that's one of the main causes for the rifts inside religion, good people seeking to find a doctrine that provides a path away from what (it must be admitted) would appear to be clear calls to do evil. Slavery is a good example, as was (and is) demands for civil rights. More esoteric fights (at least to this unbeliever) include arguments over hell and what, precisely, it takes to be "saved." And esoteric though they might be, these still appear to me to be efforts of good people trying to avoid the evil inherent in very idea of "hell" and the tribalism and conflict born of the claim to being "god's chosen."
Good people who chose to remain religious fight a continuous battle against the evil inherent in the ideologies. I'm not sure why they cling to the religions in the first place, but I cheer their constant efforts to limit the evil that religion tries to do. To a large degree though, I fear they are fighting a losing battle. In the thousands of years that organized religion has bedeviled human kind the good people in religion have never managed to limit the evil very much at all. Millions of good Catholics can't convince the Church that women are equals or that birth control is not only a civil right, but the only moral choice in a world currently trying to carry more than 7 billion of us around the sun. Millions of Christians of all sects have been unable to drag Christianity away from its stand against gay people. An admittedly smaller portion of American Christians have failed to save the church from various "prosperity" doctrines or driven the hucksters from the TV and radio airwaves.
Millions upon millions of Muslims have failed to prevent Islam from decaying into a death cult.
The evil that religion does continues to expand in spite of the best efforts of the good people in religion to do the right things. Why is that?
Religion's major flaw is that it can so easily be manipulated by evil people. Once wrapped in the mantel of the authority of a god they can find a myriad opportunities to practice evil without being caught, condemned or punished. They can hack away at the vagina's of screaming baby girls, rape and abuse as many woman as they please, profit from the slave labor of orphans, stir up war and hatred and watch cities burn, and send children wearing bomb vests into stores to kill other children. They indulge in the evil like any other addict, and no one does these things who can be thought of as "good".
Religious leaders can live in the finest palaces, eat the best food, and have the best health care all paid for by the back breaking labor of others; all "tax free", and all without having to do any real work themselves. They get to dictate how people live, who they are allowed to love, what they can eat, where they can go, and what they can wear. They can picket funerals and heap verbal abuse on mourning families. None of these are the acts of good people either.
The good people in a religion don't take advantage of these opportunities, something that must be okay with the evil people. The good people do a lot of the grunt work required to keep the whole operation running and financed. They make good cover. Often they are well aware of the evil but "faith" blinds them and keeps them from speaking out. But there is nothing special about that. Good people don't take advantage of opportunities to do evil outside of religion either.
I don't think religion takes good people and makes them do evil. I think the religions are primarily designed by and run for the advantage of evil people from the very start. A lot of evil people know a good thing when they see it.
And I think the good people are not doing themselves any favors by staying involved. In fact, if there were a just and caring god out there, it would certainly not tolerate much of what passes as religion among human kind.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Camps
A strange thing has happened on the way to civil right for gay people. Liberal politics and the secular community sided with the gay community under the banner of equal rights and love. Conservative politics and a big part of the religious community ended up as a coalition of bigotry and hate. The real fun thing is the traditional Christian god has been dragged to the hate side of the argument and is losing ground. The Catholic church gets most of the credit for presenting the Christian god as an unsavory character, something they have been perfecting since the Inquisition. They can't claim all the glory though, the Protestant arm of the political religious right has done their part as well. There, down in the mud of human bigotry and glorified violence, the Christian god joins that of the Muslim's. They merge actually, looking to be the same "God of Abraham" after all.
It never seemed to me that the Muslims ever made the claim that theirs was a god of love. For me Islam first made the headlines in 1972 with the murder of the Israeli Olympic team in Munich - I was 17. (I vaguely remember the Six Day War of 1967 but that was Nation against Nation.) Munich was Muslim terrorists in an - until then- unimaginable act of depravity acted out deliberately to stun the world with hate. From 1972 until 9/11/2001 and on until this week's headline bombing, Islam has portrayed itself as a religion of murder and hate, making the news every with every act of terrorism more perverted than the last. Indeed, if tomorrow a band of Islamic terrorists, acting in the name of their god, set of a dirty bomb in NYC that resulted in the eventual deaths of tens of millions of people, no one in the world would be the least bit surprised. Which, seems to me, is pretty much the last word on Islam and love. Any Islamic claim of worshiping a loving god should rightly be met with a hoot of laughter. And really, any Islamic claim of worshiping any kind of god beside one of unrelenting evil should be met with the same hoot of laughter.
For a long time Christians have claimed to have a kind of exclusive understanding of love. To them the redemption story is the greatest love story of all time, demonstrating a love far superior to anything human kind could fathom. It is their mythology so of course they are free to make any claim they like. Should it come to pass that their religious institutions actually reflect such a claim they might actually become part of the good guys in the human family. But they have had 2000 years or so to try, and haven't managed it yet.
In fact the Christians are well on the way to matching the Muslims when it comes to stripping any vestige of love from their god. Claiming god is love while supporting the oppression of women and gay people strikes a discord that many are starting to notice. Protecting child molesters does the same thing. Let us not forget, President Bush II wrapped the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the Christian flag and started his own Crusade. When he did I don't remember hearing may Christians disagree with him. The born again President Obama continued those wars. The Protestant sect of Christianity is solidly behind robber baron capitalism, is outspoken in its attack on science, and dismisses any education that doesn't bow a knee to Bible Study. (More like Islam than they know). The Catholic sect does a better job of talking about economic justice for the poor and protecting the earth, but ... the Koch brothers are Catholics, as is Newt Gingrich, Bill O'Riely, and Justice Roberts. American Catholic Bishops can be counted on to campaign directly for Republicans come election time. What ever else they might be, say the word "love" and no one in this group comes to mind.
Some might suggest that religion has lost its way, that it let love slip its grasp by reaching for influence and power. I don't think it worked that way but it doesn't matter. Had it and lost it, never had it but claimed it and got found lying, thought they had it but discovered all they had was myth ... all ends up in the same place. Religion is in one camp.
Love is in another camp.
I am pretty pleased to find that love, compassion, and tolerance are words no longer associated with the religious / conservative crowd and now reside firmly in the secular / progressive camp. People working together to make life as good as possible for as many as they can is what democracy is supposed to be. It is what people who care about each other do.
Where are those caring people now? They are supporting civil rights for gay people, voting rights for all people, protecting the environment for the generations to come, and fighting a rear guard against those who want to put women back under the thumb of men. They are progressive, liberal, and mostly secular, on the right side of history.
One the right side with love.
It never seemed to me that the Muslims ever made the claim that theirs was a god of love. For me Islam first made the headlines in 1972 with the murder of the Israeli Olympic team in Munich - I was 17. (I vaguely remember the Six Day War of 1967 but that was Nation against Nation.) Munich was Muslim terrorists in an - until then- unimaginable act of depravity acted out deliberately to stun the world with hate. From 1972 until 9/11/2001 and on until this week's headline bombing, Islam has portrayed itself as a religion of murder and hate, making the news every with every act of terrorism more perverted than the last. Indeed, if tomorrow a band of Islamic terrorists, acting in the name of their god, set of a dirty bomb in NYC that resulted in the eventual deaths of tens of millions of people, no one in the world would be the least bit surprised. Which, seems to me, is pretty much the last word on Islam and love. Any Islamic claim of worshiping a loving god should rightly be met with a hoot of laughter. And really, any Islamic claim of worshiping any kind of god beside one of unrelenting evil should be met with the same hoot of laughter.
For a long time Christians have claimed to have a kind of exclusive understanding of love. To them the redemption story is the greatest love story of all time, demonstrating a love far superior to anything human kind could fathom. It is their mythology so of course they are free to make any claim they like. Should it come to pass that their religious institutions actually reflect such a claim they might actually become part of the good guys in the human family. But they have had 2000 years or so to try, and haven't managed it yet.
In fact the Christians are well on the way to matching the Muslims when it comes to stripping any vestige of love from their god. Claiming god is love while supporting the oppression of women and gay people strikes a discord that many are starting to notice. Protecting child molesters does the same thing. Let us not forget, President Bush II wrapped the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the Christian flag and started his own Crusade. When he did I don't remember hearing may Christians disagree with him. The born again President Obama continued those wars. The Protestant sect of Christianity is solidly behind robber baron capitalism, is outspoken in its attack on science, and dismisses any education that doesn't bow a knee to Bible Study. (More like Islam than they know). The Catholic sect does a better job of talking about economic justice for the poor and protecting the earth, but ... the Koch brothers are Catholics, as is Newt Gingrich, Bill O'Riely, and Justice Roberts. American Catholic Bishops can be counted on to campaign directly for Republicans come election time. What ever else they might be, say the word "love" and no one in this group comes to mind.
Some might suggest that religion has lost its way, that it let love slip its grasp by reaching for influence and power. I don't think it worked that way but it doesn't matter. Had it and lost it, never had it but claimed it and got found lying, thought they had it but discovered all they had was myth ... all ends up in the same place. Religion is in one camp.
Love is in another camp.
I am pretty pleased to find that love, compassion, and tolerance are words no longer associated with the religious / conservative crowd and now reside firmly in the secular / progressive camp. People working together to make life as good as possible for as many as they can is what democracy is supposed to be. It is what people who care about each other do.
Where are those caring people now? They are supporting civil rights for gay people, voting rights for all people, protecting the environment for the generations to come, and fighting a rear guard against those who want to put women back under the thumb of men. They are progressive, liberal, and mostly secular, on the right side of history.
One the right side with love.
Monday, March 18, 2013
Social evolution
I tend to think of the biological evolution of our species of humans and the evolution of our social structures as a symbiotic relationship. The biological evolutionary trait of speech lead to the social evolution of cooperative groups. The success of that cooperation encouraged further development of speech and then other means of communication. Which, in turn, influenced social evolution along the lines of widening that communications net until it encircled the globe. That this is true seems painfully obvious, which is why the right-wing / conservative worship of the "rugged individual" and "individual achievement" always strikes me as off-key. No one is really a "rugged individual", particularly in today's interconnected and crowded world. And no one achieves anything independently of the society around them. As individuals we succeed and fail within rather tight parameters that are completely outside of the our control.
One aspect of evolution is the tendency of something completely new bubbling up out of the established. Biological forms fit into every niche that can support life, even ones we found unimaginable until we stumbled across them. (Black smokers were just such a discovery. Geologists and biologists discovered amazing colonies of complex life at crushing depths in frigid, dark water - a place where life wasn't expected.) Life evolves new capabilities to exploit changing environments. Eyes say, and then different eyes that see different wave lengths of light. Bats and whales echo-locate, a hippopotamus sweats its own sunscreen, and deep sea creatures make their own light.
The diversity of social evolution isn't nearly so stunning or obvious. All human societies seem to exhibit similar structures where the powerful live a lifestyle enhanced by exploiting the labor of the less powerful. The degree of comfort between top and bottom varies from structure to structure and society to society. In a poor society living at the sustenance level the gap between top and bottom is small. But, even though I am just a casual observer and not a sociologist, I'll bet a good cup of coffee even the poorest societies still have a "top" and a "bottom". There have been attempts to construct social structures that are not skewed so,communism and socialism being the most obvious attempts to protect the providers from being abused by the managers. So far both have failed spectacularly when it comes to building a just and fair society.
Democracy coupled to capitalism is often offered up as the system that has managed to reduce the disparity between top and bottom most effectively, with capitalism regularly touted as "THE" economic system, particularly those who have benefited from it the most. In America we have gone so far as to declare our capitalism as the very economic system approved by god. And though the right wing declares itself as the true followers and protectors of capitalism, I haven't heard any national or state level politician even so much as hint that capitalism isn't the answer to our problems but the reason for our problems. All of American politics is joined at the hip to capitalism.
Unfortunately capitalism has proved to be as susceptible to corruption by the powerful as was communism under Stalin or nationalism under Hitler. America's capitalist system has been utterly corrupted by the capitalists which, when one thinks about it, isn't really a surprise. It might have worked out differently had a democratic government been able to keep the capitalists reigned in, balancing the motivation of greed with the need for a stable society to be just and fair. Sadly, the government simple sold itself to, (or was bought by) the capitalists. The failure of American capitalism, and the society built on it, is as inevitable as that of the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany.
Insofar as American capitalism is simply one arm of western capitalism, most of western Europe as well as North America is equally at risk. A once prosperous middle class impoverished for the benefit of the very few will eventually react with anger and violence. The resulting fires will leave little of the original structures in place. (The failure of Islamic societies, even more top heavy than western societies, is far advanced. I can't think of a single Islamic state that doesn't fit the definition of "failed". Totalitarian, sexist, violent, impoverished, hungry and corrupted to a level that would embarrass even some American politicians, they are all tottering on the edge of collapse.)
Which is where social evolution crops up once again. Human society has never been in this place before. On the one hand corrupted, undone by endless wars and religious violence, burning through limited resources seemingly unable to stop, and unbalanced by the discovery that we are neither center to the universe's efforts or important to it in any way. On the other hand we have discovered that there is no being in the universe that will save us from ourselves, that we are responsible for our future. In addition we have developed communications systems that will soon overwhelm the ability of anyone to censure what anyone else can know or learn. (Just sitting writing this essay I have taken to the Internet to review the history of black smokers, read some of what other people think about social evolution, taken an admittedly quick tour of the state of Islamic societies, and come up with a couple of addresses.) That type of power sharing has never existed before.
Technologies for point producing power and using that power efficiently are blossoming all around us. Smart people are tackling the world's need for local access to clean water and making good progress. The unsustainable consumerism that is the backbone of western, and particularly American culture, is loosing its allure. A growing number of people are moving to reclaim their lives by rejecting the influence of Madison Ave, Wall Street, K street, East Capitol Street, Pennsylvania Ave, and the Apostolic Palace Vatican City. If one looks carefully one can find people who are learning to live outside of or in defiance of the power structures being used against them.
Admittedly these are small rays of hope easily overwhelmed by the storms that seem to continuously roll over the world. But evolution often acts that way. Not so long ago on this little world a small environmental niche was filled by a species of tribal ape that learned to communicate. A blink later in the time frame of the cosmos and its descendants have overwhelmed the planet, walked on the moon, and sent machines out of the solar system. A like threshold in social evolution certainly seems possible. Somewhere a small society forms that actually figures out how to govern itself well, provide for it members in a sustainable way that includes treating everyone fairly and justly, who also learn to protect themselves from the abuse of power wielded by others both inside and outside of the society. This small group would be overwhelmingly successful. Even without any imperialistic impulses of its own, surrounding groups would copy the successful formula. Given the speed of worldwide communications it isn't hard to image this new society sweeping around the world in just two or three generations.
Exactly what this new society would look like is impossible to say from this side of the threshold. But taking a bit of hope from the idea that the threshold might already be upon us doesn't feel like a bad idea. All the chaos loose in the world today could be seen as not much more than the final frenzy of a whole raft of bad ideas about to be swept away. Religion and tribal politics, war and endless violence, greed and the lust to have more than the person sitting next to you when you already have everything you need, the hypocrisy of demanding "freedom" is the right to tell other people how they should live, all ideas that simply are not working. The religious, the professional politician, the war lords, the corporate masters and tin pot dictators large and small; even some of them must realize that it isn't working, that the party is almost over.
The evolution of the universe teams with new and unexpected things bursting onto the scene.
Maybe we just need to hold on for a little longer.
One aspect of evolution is the tendency of something completely new bubbling up out of the established. Biological forms fit into every niche that can support life, even ones we found unimaginable until we stumbled across them. (Black smokers were just such a discovery. Geologists and biologists discovered amazing colonies of complex life at crushing depths in frigid, dark water - a place where life wasn't expected.) Life evolves new capabilities to exploit changing environments. Eyes say, and then different eyes that see different wave lengths of light. Bats and whales echo-locate, a hippopotamus sweats its own sunscreen, and deep sea creatures make their own light.
The diversity of social evolution isn't nearly so stunning or obvious. All human societies seem to exhibit similar structures where the powerful live a lifestyle enhanced by exploiting the labor of the less powerful. The degree of comfort between top and bottom varies from structure to structure and society to society. In a poor society living at the sustenance level the gap between top and bottom is small. But, even though I am just a casual observer and not a sociologist, I'll bet a good cup of coffee even the poorest societies still have a "top" and a "bottom". There have been attempts to construct social structures that are not skewed so,communism and socialism being the most obvious attempts to protect the providers from being abused by the managers. So far both have failed spectacularly when it comes to building a just and fair society.
Democracy coupled to capitalism is often offered up as the system that has managed to reduce the disparity between top and bottom most effectively, with capitalism regularly touted as "THE" economic system, particularly those who have benefited from it the most. In America we have gone so far as to declare our capitalism as the very economic system approved by god. And though the right wing declares itself as the true followers and protectors of capitalism, I haven't heard any national or state level politician even so much as hint that capitalism isn't the answer to our problems but the reason for our problems. All of American politics is joined at the hip to capitalism.
Unfortunately capitalism has proved to be as susceptible to corruption by the powerful as was communism under Stalin or nationalism under Hitler. America's capitalist system has been utterly corrupted by the capitalists which, when one thinks about it, isn't really a surprise. It might have worked out differently had a democratic government been able to keep the capitalists reigned in, balancing the motivation of greed with the need for a stable society to be just and fair. Sadly, the government simple sold itself to, (or was bought by) the capitalists. The failure of American capitalism, and the society built on it, is as inevitable as that of the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany.
Insofar as American capitalism is simply one arm of western capitalism, most of western Europe as well as North America is equally at risk. A once prosperous middle class impoverished for the benefit of the very few will eventually react with anger and violence. The resulting fires will leave little of the original structures in place. (The failure of Islamic societies, even more top heavy than western societies, is far advanced. I can't think of a single Islamic state that doesn't fit the definition of "failed". Totalitarian, sexist, violent, impoverished, hungry and corrupted to a level that would embarrass even some American politicians, they are all tottering on the edge of collapse.)
Which is where social evolution crops up once again. Human society has never been in this place before. On the one hand corrupted, undone by endless wars and religious violence, burning through limited resources seemingly unable to stop, and unbalanced by the discovery that we are neither center to the universe's efforts or important to it in any way. On the other hand we have discovered that there is no being in the universe that will save us from ourselves, that we are responsible for our future. In addition we have developed communications systems that will soon overwhelm the ability of anyone to censure what anyone else can know or learn. (Just sitting writing this essay I have taken to the Internet to review the history of black smokers, read some of what other people think about social evolution, taken an admittedly quick tour of the state of Islamic societies, and come up with a couple of addresses.) That type of power sharing has never existed before.
Technologies for point producing power and using that power efficiently are blossoming all around us. Smart people are tackling the world's need for local access to clean water and making good progress. The unsustainable consumerism that is the backbone of western, and particularly American culture, is loosing its allure. A growing number of people are moving to reclaim their lives by rejecting the influence of Madison Ave, Wall Street, K street, East Capitol Street, Pennsylvania Ave, and the Apostolic Palace Vatican City. If one looks carefully one can find people who are learning to live outside of or in defiance of the power structures being used against them.
Admittedly these are small rays of hope easily overwhelmed by the storms that seem to continuously roll over the world. But evolution often acts that way. Not so long ago on this little world a small environmental niche was filled by a species of tribal ape that learned to communicate. A blink later in the time frame of the cosmos and its descendants have overwhelmed the planet, walked on the moon, and sent machines out of the solar system. A like threshold in social evolution certainly seems possible. Somewhere a small society forms that actually figures out how to govern itself well, provide for it members in a sustainable way that includes treating everyone fairly and justly, who also learn to protect themselves from the abuse of power wielded by others both inside and outside of the society. This small group would be overwhelmingly successful. Even without any imperialistic impulses of its own, surrounding groups would copy the successful formula. Given the speed of worldwide communications it isn't hard to image this new society sweeping around the world in just two or three generations.
Exactly what this new society would look like is impossible to say from this side of the threshold. But taking a bit of hope from the idea that the threshold might already be upon us doesn't feel like a bad idea. All the chaos loose in the world today could be seen as not much more than the final frenzy of a whole raft of bad ideas about to be swept away. Religion and tribal politics, war and endless violence, greed and the lust to have more than the person sitting next to you when you already have everything you need, the hypocrisy of demanding "freedom" is the right to tell other people how they should live, all ideas that simply are not working. The religious, the professional politician, the war lords, the corporate masters and tin pot dictators large and small; even some of them must realize that it isn't working, that the party is almost over.
The evolution of the universe teams with new and unexpected things bursting onto the scene.
Maybe we just need to hold on for a little longer.
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