Better

What should become part and parcel of our character, and first and foremost on our minds? Simply this: To make it a better world for more of us than for fewer of us.

Embrace of Illusion

“Know your enemy, know yourself; in a hundred battles you will not be in peril.” Sun Tzu

America knows neither.

The Spirit of Irony

An ironic thing: Religion should help spirituality, but often enough, it instead gets in the way.

Circle of Toxicity

It is unnatural to be under constant stress, as people in our society often are, especially in these economically trying times. Being under constant stress first compromises, then degrades, then exhausts the immune system. We then become susceptible to all sorts of things. Add to that how thoroughly we have contaminated our environment and our food and water, utterly overloading our ability to neutralize and expel toxins, and you have a prescription for toxic excess to tick like a time bomb.

We have to address things holistically if we are to do anything more than run exhausted from one crisis to another—or to make the connections that most of those crises are…connected.

Gathering of Hunters? Or the Hunted, Gather?

How many of us proudly awake early like hunters and gatherers of yore, to hunt and gather “bargains” like $8 mixers (that will likely break in 6 months) on the morning after our feasting holiday?  We thrust ourselves forward in the battle for supremacy, then come back to our modern caves with our “game” (doubly, triply, ironic, eh?) and our “gatherings,” like it was some accomplishment worthy of our homestead and our humanhoods.   

Public Servants of...

While many local leaders close pools, libraries, police and fire stations, they often build multimillion dollar new clubhouses on golf courses.  Who they really serve might be a bit obvious. 

Thoreau Explanation

"These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them according to his ability, by his words and by his life."

Henry David Thoreau, "Reading," in the book Walden

Getting To Know "Them"

I say to those who rail against the “deadbeats” and “takers” and “moochers” and “dependency-heads”: How many do you PERSONALLY know?  And how well do you know them?  Do you know their story? 

Because it’s easy to be against something in the abstract.  Be specific.  And about more than just a few glaring cases.  One can’t single out a few and imply a mass problem, while ignoring the scraping many who want dignity and the chance for a livable wage in exchange for their hard work.

We rarely get to know those who we condemn.

Things Change And They Don't

One highly important subject you didn’t hear much about this campaign season, and effectively squat during the four mainstream debates: Climate Change.

Scientists and environmentalists say we are fighting over deck chair places on the Titanic, instead of figuring a way to get to some lifeboats or fashion things to help us, and maybe, just MAYBE, plug the hole and avert catastrophe.

And yet we say nothing when the candidates don’t even discuss the subject.

There’s a reason that the quote above remains week in and week out.

From The Square Deal to New Deal to Fair Deal to No Deal or Raw Deal

A fairly big lack of political enthusiasm hangs over America at a time when its politics have rarely been more important.

In the (race? crawl? slugfest?) for the top dog spot, one man is somewhat narcissistic, insecure and in need of affirmation, self-trumpeting, overly pragmatic, and excessively afraid of being perceived as weak and ineffectual (as a certain one of his predecessors was labeled).  The other is a vacuous man who wants his past hidden, who doesn’t want to run on specifics, but only vague promises that leave the electorate nothing to evaluate, but whose proclivities favor more of the criminally disastrous rich-serving policies that have brought us ruin and extended deep recession.

We are “shocked”, “offended” and “threatened” by marginal or transitory things, and make THOSE things important while our real threats go unnoticed or uncared about.

When one examines history, one finds that when a culture is not mass offended—neither among the masses nor among the elites—by the things which are true threats to the body politic, the society, and the civilization, then decay and downfall have begun.  When that culture is instead diverted by spectacle or a series of mostly meaningless “scandals” or momentary buzzings, then the decay has accelerated.

When future historians look back at us, they will see turning points.  For example, witness the country—and its elites—who were near uniformly shocked and revolted by what Nixon did (including illegal wiretapping and other spying).  Thirty years later, witness little shock and almost no revolt at illegal wiretapping, indefinite detention, torture, etc.  Then, to cement for us how much power has shifted and how little we seem to care, we at most faintly whimpered when a Vice-President (Cheney) declared the Vice-President “not a part of government” and so not accountable to the people, nor to its investigators when they want copies of emails and other documents and communications.

It is a scene played out in sickening similarity to the long decay of the Roman Republic.  One does not have to wait until the end of the Republic in witnessing the demise of its defenders (including the quite imperfect Cicero).  It was a long and steady decline, with one thing after another occurring that in previous times would have called forth both the people and its elites to set to rights.  A people’s character can change over time, and it is often not for the better, especially when the country becomes richer and more powerful.  The Roman Republic’s long decline of a century and a half, from the Second Punic War to when Julius and Octavian finally effectively finished it off, was marked by character decay in the patrician class certainly, but in the plebeian class as well.

And they too had their Pogos who spoke out yet not enough listened, cared, or acted.

Doubling Down On Yet Another Dose Of Double Bull

“Double taxation” is mostly a straw-man argument.  Lots of people and situations are double or triple taxed:  Income taxes, payroll taxes, and sales taxes.  Every time you pay your repairman, or well, practically ANYBODY, you do so with money you have already paid taxes on.  And that repairman will pay taxes on the money you give him or her, and so on.

So capital gains and corporate taxes are not the big deal of disparate treatment they’re made out to be by the right-wing, although the flow of capital and investment PERHAPS needs consideration. 

Lower capital gains don’t create jobs here either.  We’ve had them for many years and few livable wage jobs have been created by it.  They mostly just enrich the rich further, while the secretaries who serve the rich pay a higher rate on an incredibly smaller income.

We have to quit being manipulated by these deflective, deceptive lines of bull.  History is going to record us as self-destructants willingly conned into acting against our interests and for the interests of those doing the conning.  The people of the future will say those words: “How could they let that happen to themselves?”

Unless we start questioning more and accepting less.

The No-Coddle Zone

In my undergrad days, we all complained about the amount of work that teachers gave us, how out of touch they were, how they didn’t coordinate the amount of work or the timing with other teachers, how uncaring they were whether we had any quality of life, etc.

And the faculty, rightly so, mostly ignored us.

Because all students complain.  It’s not that there doesn’t need to be real transformation in “higher” education; there DEFINITELY does.  But elevating the student to coddled prima donna status is not the needed reform.

Why was society smarter back then?

Who Benefits, Who?

Ask the question.  Ask as you observe the continual assault on things that actually work, even things that work relatively cheaply.  Assaults by those who, despite all the demonstrated mess of contractors and privatization, want to continue to privatize more.  People like to deceive themselves that privatizing brings so many more efficiencies and cost savings.  It usually doesn’t, and any comparisons are usually slanted anyway.  For instance, the assault on the USPS.  W and his ilk passed the Postal Act of 2006 which mandated that USPS prefund 100 percent of future retirees’ health benefits.  No other government or quasi-govt agency has to do this, nor any publicly traded corporation.  This was just an obvious attempt to first weaken the USPS, so that it could be carved to pieces.  If this law were lifted, USPS would be turning a profit.  And this bellowing about how the USPS retirement system is dramatically underfunded is agenda-driven too: One has to compare both the FERS and CSRS systems of the USPS, and in the net accounting, it’s pretty favorable (and certainly so in comparison to a lot of other places).  And one more thing: USPS employees are not making a killing.  Sure, a few supervisors and management types are doing well, maybe excessively so.  But the rank and file are just that, pretty average for the most part.  And if you had to do their job, you wouldn’t be so envious.

Government and Society Are, Directly Or Indirectly, Our Reflections

One of the clearest things that poll after poll reveals is the profound civic, political, and historical ignorance and apathy of most Americans.

In The Daily Struggle for "Advantage"...

Issues get shoved aside.  While corporations and the top 1% swim in more and more money, there is none for the pressing needs of everyone else.  Those wealthy not only refuse to contribute what they USED to contribute, they actually want to contribute LESS than what they do now.  They have decoupled themselves, just like the wealthy of ancient Rome.

History can’t scream. It is a silent pointer.  But we have to look.

A Noble Character in Fantasy Fiction With Instruction For Us

“Guilt resembles a sword with two edges.  On the one hand it cuts for justice, imposing practical morality upon those who fear it.  Guilt, the consequence of conscience, is what separates the goodly persons from the evil.  Given a situation that promises gain, most drow can kill another, kin or otherwise, and walk away carrying no emotional burden at all.  The drow assassin might fear retribution but will shed no tears for his victim.  To humans—and to surface elves, and to all of the other goodly races—the suffering imposed by conscience will usually far outweigh any external threats.” Drizzt Do’Urden, pp. 63-64 of Sojourn.

The Hegemon US in Slow Decline Is Like a Frog in Heating Water

Being in a slow decline is like a frog in slowly heating water.  If the water was hot immediately, it would jump out.  But gradually?  It will allow itself to be boiled to death.  

A Different Kind of Patriotism

Oftentimes, people who are critical of this nation and this society’s actions, including me, are told: “You don’t love this country, so get out.”  Fellow citizen, you are wrong. It is precisely because I love this country so much that I am so deeply disappointed in it.  So amply blessed, so richly advantaged, this country should be ENORMOUSLY better than what it has demonstrated.

Indiana, Mr. Jones

I was in Indianapolis over the weekend.  The city is often poorly lit, from street lights, to exit signs, to businesses.  Why?

I also saw a high number of young, seemingly able bodied (both Caucasian and African-American) panhandlers (beggars).  Was it con artistry?  Lack of economic opportunity (jobs, start-ups)?  True homelessness (and if so, what caused that—veteran maladjustment? Job disruption? Mental challenges)?

In retrospect, I should have taken time to ask.  Maybe that’s a key challenge of our times—we don’t take the time to ask. 

Ethic-less Youth or Rational Response?

It would appear our youth are in large part embroiled in illusion and delusion. 

Or is it because the system itself, both the school system and the larger society, is not doing anything relevant or real anymore, not doing anything to have faith in?  Kind of like the old joke in the Soviet Union, “the government pretends to pay us, so we pretend to work.”

The reader can decide.

US high school students are, at best, “apathetic” about ethical standards (there’s good spin).  64% of students said they cheated on a test in the past year, and 30% said they stole from a store.  Yet they also reported they were “satisfied with their personal ethics and character,” and “when it comes to doing what is right, I am better than most people I know.” From a Josephson Institute survey, 2010.

Feel The Strings In Your Back

Want an example of how corporate America runs things?  On Sirius satellite radio, supposedly one of the “few restrictions,” “say anything,” media outlets, the commercial programming is often the same.  Sure, there are fewer commercials on the Right’s channel (is that because they don’t need as much money, or get more listeners that generate more revenue?  Or do they get more subsidies or donations?  Unknown), but both it and the Left’s channel are often surprisingly the same in their commercials.  For instance, a certain anti-tax commercial promoting a tax accountant firm.  It aired frequently on BOTH right (“Patriot”) and left (“Left”) satellite radio channels.   So does one about selling  gold. While I do not believe the two sides are equally to blame for the spiral the country is in, both ARE to blame, and sometimes there isn’t enough difference.  Because in back of them, with hands on the controlling strings of money, are the plutocratic elite.

America, How Do You Like Being Played?

Chick-fil-a: Much ado about little to nothing on all "sides."  We Neros fiddle while Rome burns.  We are the perfectly diverted, our energies turned to fringes--and on each other--while our common adversaries cement their control.

Those adversaries have found in culture issues the easy emotional lever to perfectly divert, divide, and subjugate us.  And then we wonder why nothing ever gets done about corporate control, money in politics, jobs that are gone forever, the plight of the shrinking middle class, etc. etc.

A Roar A What?

The shootings have people fixated on this incident, which is tragic, but not in a major way.  Hundreds of thousands didn’t die, not even thousands or even hundreds.  More happens each day, both directly and indirectly, to affect far more people, and far more significantly.  But let’s look at this incident anyway:

1.     Who was the perpetrator?  Another loner white young male.  What does that say about our society?  That maybe we’ve lost our connection to each other and our affection for and responsibility to the greater society?  That maybe we can’t distinguish illusion and diversion from reality?  That too many feel powerless, that their lives are put upon or have no meaning?  That our very culture (and its vacuousness or exploitive nature) spurs mental illness—violent mental illness—too often?

2.     The proponents of, and those against, gun control, line up and start spouting.  What if the very premise of their argument is off?  Lots of societies (Finland, Sweden, Britain, etc.) have few to no guns, and have few problems of mass murder.  Others have a lot of guns, and also few problems.  An example of the latter is Switzerland, which is not a homogenous society, but has a “well-regulated militia.”  Switzerland’s pretty safe. 

3.     Handguns deserve separate consideration.  Since handguns have little to no function outside of offensive or defensive use against humans (and only secondarily in warfare behind assault rifles, etc.), societies with profusions of them tend to be more violent than others.

4.     As we become less trusting of each other, as we know each other less, as we find less in common, we have become what Vance Packard warned us about in his 1970 book, A Nation of Strangers.   A nation whose inhabitants lock themselves behind their doors often.  More gated communities.  More worrisome overprotection, which isolates even further.  We have become hyper-individualistic and increasingly non-communal.  This is likely reflected in opinion polls about handgun control.  Around 70% favored such  measures 40 years ago.  Barely 25% do today.  Fear and distrust, that.  We are a disconnected and afraid society.

5.     Still, is it an “epidemic” of mass murder violence?  Not statistically, not by a long shot (yes, another pun), and the chance of it happening to you or yours is really, really small.  But it does contribute to more fear, more suspicion of fellow citizens.  And the more focus on it, the more it is sensationalized, the greater chance some copycat will be moved to action.  And the rule of terrorist-type impact is to try to outdo one’s predecessors.

6.     Would more armed people have prevented it?  Unlikely.  The loners are usually ready to die, for starters.  More importantly, since they get to fire the opening salvo (where most casualties usually happen), that’s not going to be prevented outright.  Especially if sophisticated tactics (like the tear gas employed) are used.   And while the shooter MIGHT have been shot down by other armed members, does that really make you all feel safer?  What if it becomes a crossfire situation?  Even if you’re armed, being in a crossfire sucks, and can be even more deadly.  And how exactly are first responders (police) going to sort out “the bad guy(s)” when they arrive?  In general, having a population armed while “in public” creates more problems than it solves.  For example, misunderstandings, misperceptions about actions or movements, etc. can trigger (pun intended again) a violent reaction to…nothing.  More people would get hurt or killed with dozens or hundreds of these “misunderstandings” in a year than in 20 years of mass murders like what occurred in Aurora.

Everyone wants a simple answer, to “fix it.”  There aren’t any for this.  We have to, in this, as for many things, come to the realization that life is better when low risk is assumed, rather than extreme efforts to mitigate that low risk.

But the bigger issue is, what kind of society do we have and are perpetuating?  Correcting that will do more to secure us than anything.  It is also the hardest road.  The result will be worth it though.  However, it does takes more courage and determination than just buying more guns.  

It Can't Last

It can’t last.  The truly aware know it, and even the vaguely aware sense it at some level.    But they don’t know how to get from here to a better world.  They’re afraid of the pain.  Too late for that, Americanos.  You f’d the relatively “painless” escape valve up a long time ago.

We are in Doom Drift on a near-endlessly wide river.  If we drift all the way to the Fall(s), we go over the edge—Civilization Doom.  A strong, wrenching, all-out exertion by us can avert that, but we have to jettison a lot to have a chance at success—and to our detriment we continue to let the selfish, shortsighted, and criminally foolish be in control, as they have been for decades.

The other likely possibility is that a violent storm blows us way off course, and we smash into uncharted territory.  Many of us may perish in that, and many more as we struggle to survive in a harsh new reality.

I think this is a reason that books like World War Z (and obsession with “zombie apocalypses” in general) are so popular.  Like the sleepwalking populations of past political-economic entities such as the Roman, Ottoman, and Austrian-Hungarian empires, we recognize the signs of decay and the lack of any real measures by “the elites” to stop it.  In fact, we recognize that those elites are prime center of the decay.  Whether war, revolution, plague, famine, or disaster of some kind, wrenching change becomes acceptable to the populace at some level, even if not desired.

[By the way, World War Z is, in addition to widely informed—and worldly in the truest sense—insightful social commentary, it offers glimpses of possibility for a better future out of catastrophe, even while it condemns our present sloth and illusion embracing.  Maybe it is a best seller for more than just zombies. :)]

If drought continues, if climate change and its resultant destruction really does proceed past the tipping point (as many in the scientific community fear), if national economic and fiscal criminality proceed, if resource consumption accelerates while environmental destruction and pollution continue, if we at the same time remain married to finite fossil fuels and the ills that flow in every direction from them, then the cascade will have begun. 

We are doing next to nothing to recognize these interlocking threats (of which I have mentioned but a few!) and change course.  Will history—and our descendants—curse us?

Irony Boom

We’re creeping toward a billion in trade deficit just for the matter alone of celebrating our “Independence” Day.  Try not to miss the irony that we import most of our fireworks from our biggest competitor/rival/potential enemy, China.  We give them money so we can celebrate how “independent” we are.

If we were doing okay overall, this would be no bother at all.  China apparently has a competitive advantage in fireworks making; okay then, we’ll buy from them.  But we’re also buying a lot of other things as well.   Even with our increased export situation of the past few years (a weak economy makes your goods a bit more competitive, other things being equal, which they never are), we’re still not far from a trillion dollar a year trade deficit.  That’s wealth transfer to others.  Others who may not have your best interests at heart.  And you, America, get weaker every day it happens.  You don’t make enough here that gets sold elsewhere.  Hence the problem. You’re a net consumer, not a net producer, not even a break-evener.

All in service to what the corporate masters and plutocrats, who worship at the altar of unregulated, unthinking globalization, call the wonders of the “free market.”

"They got used to it"

Isn’t that how we’ve become? We keep adapting to changes—everything from roads and stations and buildings that don’t get repaired to pensions that disappear in favor of “voluntary contribution plans” (and, insult to injury, for people who aren’t paid enough to save).  These changes are wrought by our “elites.”  We have time for everything else in the world—TV, internet, video games, eating out, movies, boating, driving, and on and on—but we have no time to push back, to question, to try to change, all the things that are being forced upon us. 

Sort of a “That sucks; I’m going to do X to make me feel better or take my mind off it.”  So no discussions ensue.  We are left with the scream domination competitions of the fervent believers of the various political philosophies.

Fail.

Can's End

To the kick-the-can-down-the-road American public and “their” Congressional legislators, the highly respected Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has delivered this: The CBO’s computer model can’t envision an American economic and budgetary model that can function past 2027. 

Compare and Contrast

After listening to superintendent, principal, education board directors and just walking around watching and listening to people at a high school graduation, I got the feeling that people are just trying to manage lives and situations, not fashioning their society.  I sensed no energy-infused purpose, for themselves or their society. 

I contrasted that with viewing Chinese TV, which, despite its occasional heavy hand of government interference, seems to reflect a society that, despite its deep problems, feels it is going somewhere, that it is making progress, that it is doing things that infuse pride.   Oh, they have problems, deep ones, some of character, but being economically sound gets you breathing room to deal with that.

We Americans get excited about things that divert us, not things that propel us, as individuals or society.  How will Americans react when they wake up down the road to find they are not number 1, maybe not even in the top 5 anymore?

REMEMBER

Given what today is, the message is all on the Professor and Housewife side of this blog...

Pleading With Their Tormentors Because "Their" Servants and Protectors Are Neither

Want an indication that the environmental battle is being lost?  The National Resource Defense Council’s best answer (and Robert Redford’s) to strip mining on public land is to ask you the citizen to write a letter to the CEOs of the strip mining companies. They aren’t even bothering to ask you to write a letter to your Congressman, or to the President, or the Secretary of the Department of the Interior. 

Perhaps ownership of the country has become nakedly apparent.

50th Anniversary

This year marks the 50^th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s seminal book, Silent Spring.  In re-reading it after all these years, I am shaken, jolted, struck, shocked, and disturbed, all over again.  Why?  Because although we congratulated ourselves at having cycled back half a notch, we have in reality changed no ethic at all.  Sure, there are some bright spots, some successes, and our air, water, and soil MIGHT overall be a bit better than they were then, and yes, certain chemicals are banned (in the US) and rivers are rarely on fire anymore.  But we have no true environmental ethic.  We have slowed down—maybe—our descent into environmental self-poisoning and self-degeneration.  But we haven’t stopped, let alone reversed course.  We produce poisons, and continue to diffuse them everywhere, and they come back to do us in, as individuals and civilization.  When she dedicated her book to Albert Schweitzer, and his quote,“Man has lost the capacity to foresee and forestall.  He will end by destroying the earth,” she hoped we would really wake up.  We merely cracked one eyelid—and, with a few notable exceptions, went right on as before. 

Extraterrestrial and other existence beings must look on us as the most bizarre and unwise supposedly sentient creatures anywhere.  It is bad enough that we are a species that preys upon itself, but we also consciously poison ourselves, our habitats, and our posterity, not to mention the life around us.

Where are you, homo sapiens sapiens (wise, wise, humans)?  Do you really think you are separate from nature? Our self-destructive path is evident, yet we choose to ignore, instead embracing denial, diversion, escapism, and illusion.  We are not stewards of creation, we are monsters—mindless, selfish, destructive monsters.

Something to think—remember that seldom used faculty?—about the next time we have to choose, in another false dichotomy, “between jobs/money/foreign dependence/etc. and the environment.”

General Dislike and General Despising

People think I’m easier on the Democrats because I like them.  Uhm, no, I don’t.  I just despise what their opponents do, and that tends to seem to let them off the hook, but only in comparison.  

Press On It

Anyone miss me? :)

The things we accept at face value often fall apart when we press on them even a little.  I thought about this in all the traveling I’ve done lately.  You see these little placards in hotel rooms about all the “Earth responsible water and detergent savings” initiatives at hotels.  How it will save so much if you hang your towels, etc. up so they can be used again.  In my experience, either the hotels don’t REALLY care, or they don’t do any follow up.  Because in what I’ve seen traveling to a lot of different places, it doesn’t work.  Your towel doesn’t get hung up.  It gets replaced with a fresh one, and the one you hung up gets washed.  Why?  I can only speculate that the (largely) immigrants who provide maid service at many hotels—immigrants who are poorly educated, maybe illiterate (at least for English)—are in any case a bit overworked.  So whether it’s can’t read, won’t read, don’t have time to read, or maybe wouldn’t care if could and did read, it’s easier to just replace the towel.  But my main feeling is that if it was REALLY important to the hotel and its management, the maids would be trained, with follow-up.

What did you think, that they just used the hair dryer to dry the towel so it wouldn’t feel wet when you touched it? :)

Spank Daddy

A prime reason the country is in bad shape because you, the citizen, probably know WAY more about:

Your favorite sports and sports teams

Your house and homes in general

Your car and cars in general

Shopping and bargains and stores

Clothes

Pets

Food

Grilling and barbecuing

Drama

Video games

TV, internet, social media, and entertainment and diversion in general

Making money

You get what you focus on, because that’s what you consider important.  And what you don’t focus on gets dictated to you.  And then you claim you are “powerless,” to do anything about it.  Which converges to be self-fulfilling prophecy, manufactured reality, and dictated result.

Absolutely Speaking

“I am done.”

“We are through, forever.”

“My biological father made his choice to not be a part of my life.  I don’t care about him anymore.”

“I’ll never be like that again.”

Oh, humans, and their funny words.  Spoken into the ether, into the universe, into eternity. 

The ether, the universe, and eternity all laugh back.

When it comes to relationships, nothing is so certain as uncertainty.  In fact, what becomes unusual is when someone actually fulfills, to the letter, what they say.

Because:

You probably aren’t done.  You might be momentarily frustrated, furious, hurt, or something else, but when you calm down, you’ll likely be back in (sometimes illogically or even incredibly) for another round.

Forever is so long your puny and time-bound consciousness can’t even adequately conceive it.  But it seems to make you feel better to thunder about finality, although disinterested observers probably only think it makes you look silly.

Of course you care about your father.  No matter how bad or absent he has been, he’s your father.   You would forgive him a thousand times for a chance at acceptance, at connection, at love.

Those who issue guarantees about the future spit in the wind, and often set themselves up to be liars. But we seem to have a desire for ourselves of the fortitude of futuristic pronouncements, and so the solitary, biological, limited-senses, mortal unit presumes to pronounce what he or she cannot even see, let alone have certainty of power to determine!

Ever get the feeling that otherworldly beings might somewhere be chuckling endlessly at us? :)

Not Failed Yet, But Failing

We are failing as a people.  Because we cling to illusion, to our emotionally anchored beliefs and false “facts.” Because, in Jack Nicholson’s character’s words, we “can’t handle the truth.”

And so the climate swirls in changes, summer arrives bizarrely early, the rhythms of nature are perverted, the economic guts of the country are eaten out. 

But hey, the game’s on.  Return to the anesthetic. 

Correcting the B.S. Machine

The tremendous amount of misinformation about “energy” being infused into the media outlets:  I often wonder how much  the transmitters really believe, how much is just fed to them, how much they do just to deliberately deceive and deflect, and how much they do solely because it’s their job. 

For instance, the current drivel, pushed by Levin and his ilk, about “the nation’s energy being controlled by the government,” and “nothing has been done by this administration, even when they controlled all the government.”

And to heap bizarre absurdity and outrageous falsehood upon bizarre absurdity and outrageous falsehood, the duplicitous then accuse others of being duplicitous.

Let’s just look at one small piece of ONE of the many assertions:  “Control of the government.”  Leaving aside what government really “controls” in a capitalistic economy dominated by wealthy and powerful corporations, “control’ of the (national) government means what exactly?  This current administration, of which I am no great fan, has found opposition in the judicial branch, especially at the top, so one of the main three branches has never been in its corner.  When its party “controlled” the Congress, the other of three branches, it didn’t really, because the vagaries of Senate rules allow a minority of 41 senators to block anything significant they want.  It is MUCH easier to obstruct and to subvert than it is to actually accomplish something.

The purveyors of disinformation are banking on people not knowing how their government “works.” 

And so the republic suffers in its ignorance.  And we get mindless clamoring for oil pipelines that will create few jobs, bring little oil to use here, do little to change prices, and, most importantly in our disconnected-from-results illusory culture, have no consideration of the perpetuation of how we poison ourselves and our biosphere.  And avoids TRANSFORMATION to a better world, to solve the problems of the present and future.  No, we would rather reach for the “easy” solutions offered by the visionless, the corrupt, the greedy.  Pay no attention to the climate effects of more oil. Particularly pay no attention to the incredibly polluting extraction methods of this “new” tar sand/shale oil supply.  Pay no attention to how heavily corrosive it is.  Pay no attention to how, when it spills--and it WILL spill, in both pipelines and tankers--it can’t really be cleaned up in any effective manner.  There is a 40 mile stretch of the Kalamazoo River in Michigan which is still off limits to use because of a “small” spill of this “new” oil TWO YEARS AGO.

And don’t find out what pair of brothers have their hands in many aspects of the proposed pipeline.

And don’t figure out that the price of gas is in large part a reflection of hedge funds, speculators, futures contracts, and international demand.  Or that there are taxpayer subsidies for refining, not just drilling.  Or that refined oil is our biggest manufactured export.

And don’t realize that climate change, unchecked, will cost, from weather devastation alone, greater than WW1, WW2, the Great Depression, and the Cold War, COMBINED.

Americans have become exceedingly proficient in straining at gnats and swallowing elephants.  And, of course, accepting most of the illusions that come their way.

The Ancients

The ancient philosophers took a great deal more opportunities to truly THINK than we usually do.  Consider, in this political season of hyperbole but without further comment, this quote from Aristotle’s Ethics, on what people should do in their behavior and their thinking “in order to become happy or to avoid unhappiness, the principal emphasis being placed on the cultivation of the virtues, both moral and intellectual, although other goods are also recognized as necessary for happiness, such as wealth, health, friends, and a just society in which to live.”

Our challenge is to holistically see and value all the parts of what he said, and not just pick out pieces.

Whispering Back To Power

At the rate that has been demonstrated, and the lack of concern on the part of so many, we may lose most of what was obtained by the longest and hardest struggles (see your history fellow citizens!). What rights that workers have obtained will have to be fought for long and excruciatingly all over again.

Congress is not a collection of representatives “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” but instead a club of, by, and for millionaires, billionaires, and corporations.  Working for, or at least compromise for, the common good, is so rare it is effectively inconsequential.  We have a one-party system with two factions, effectively controlled by a five letter word, MONEY.

A system that, on its present path, cannot deliver the one thing that the most extensive worldwide polling ever done has revealed is the most ardent desire of the present-day adult the world over:

A good paying (livable wage) job.  The very thing that this corporatist, maximum short-term profit, world system is least capable (and least desirous) of delivering.  And because the system doesn’t do that most foundational thing it NEEDS to do, nearly every other problem we have cascades into near insolvability.  The system is on track to so monumentally under-deliver, it doesn’t take a soothsayer to see the problems coming at us.

And yet we keep thinking the “magical market”—yes, the twisted, manipulated, corporate-and-plutocrat-controlled “free market”—is somehow going to deliver for us what we desperately need.  But it is the same system whispering its continuous barrage of weakening diversion and subjugation: “Embrace The Illusion.”

Boy, do we need a lot of people to, with quiet but firm determination, whisper back: “Not Me.”

Childish labors and smokescreens and diversions

Consider the deceiving smokescreens of concern about “child labor,” and how little Johnny and Mary are being prevented from working for Granny and Granddad on the farm or the like.  No parent or grandparent has been arrested, in my research, for employing their child or grandchild, and it is deliberately misleading to try to whip up people that they have, and that “laws need to be changed.”  The family business is mostly left alone, as is much ag really temporary labor. 

But that’s not what others would have you believe.  Therefore, when you hear their rhetoric, tell yourself you will look at motives inside of what is being said, and who is saying it, and who is behind saying it.

When they cease to be able to intellectually and emotionally whirl us around at their whim, we will have taken a giant step toward getting ourselves and our democracy back from what one commentator, borrowing from Transformers, terms “the Decepticons.”

Inside Your? Valentine

Refusing to accept something does not make it untrue.  How many women (and men) find it incomprehensible “how he/she could ‘cheat’ on me.”  This “cheating” (I despise the word for a whole host of intellectual and presumptive/insinuative reasons) is a complex thing, much of it biology driven (drive of men for sexual conquest and subliminal procreation), some of it relationship and missing needs driven, some of it thrill-seeking and excitement driven, and even a bit of it at times a reaction to psychological-emotional damage of the past in one or more of those involved.

And now comes one more contributor: Oxytocin.  Apparently, new research suggests, the presence (or lack) of this emotional attachment hormone helps plays a large part in determining how monogamous someone FEELS (which, as we know, often, although not always, determines how one acts).  “Cads,” “players,” “sluts,” “cheaters,” etc.—the reasons for their behavior may be a lot more understandable now.  Conversely, the relative ease that some couples and individuals have with monogamy may also be a lot more understandable.

But I can hear the significant others now: “I don’t care if you did get tested as low on the hormone; if you do anything, it’s CHEATING, and you’re SCUM!” :)

And so it goes. :)

What’s really interesting is to observe one person in a relationship “cheat” on their “significant” other, and then be hurt and incensed when they find out that the other has done the same thing.  The hypocritical outrage and condemnation is truly a thing to behold!

Ah, the genders.  Never a dull moment!  Of history repeating itself. 

Over and over and over and over…

The original drama?  Long before the Greeks “created” it, certainly! :)

Envisioning the Non-Spectacle

We have, at state and national level, complex problems of a complex society.  But with legislators spending between 1/3^rd and 2/3rds of their waking hours on fund raising (by necessity), where do they find the time to read the lengthy bills, do the research, absorb the briefings?  The answer is:  they don’t.  Just when we need them to work full time on our problems!

What would help? Shorten the campaign season.  Radically.  Ban ads; they’ve become mostly corrupt twisted lies spreaders.  Don’t discourage debates, sure.  Encourage forums and town halls for direct questions, yes.  But also, especially, encourage written (truly thoughtful, non-sound bite) answers to questions put forward by journalists, academics, League of Women Voters, etc.

It would be a start in the right direction away from the spectacle that passes for our political process.

Channeling Eisenhower

The Framers’ reading of Roman history was correct, and their marked fear of, and guarding against, militarism was justified. If they were around today, they would remark that the limitations they put in place were not strong enough, and that Rome was being repeated. They knew that having large standing armed forces is a danger to both economy and democracy/the republic. It causes threats to be inflated or invented; it colors both perceptions and options in regards to international affairs; it breeds wars of aggression; it produces enemies from those who might be neutral or even friendly; it tempts its unwarranted use by policymakers; it obscures true self-defense and true national interest; it promotes and enriches selfish, corrupt, and connected individuals and organizations; it feeds, infuses, and justifies itself; it breeds non-producers and penalizes and weakens the non-producers, to the utter detriment of economic and social health; it drains vitally needed resources from the infrastructural and social needs of the society; it separates the population from the responsibility and involvement and meaningfully felt consequences of military actions taken; out of arrogant power, it fosters conflict instead of cooperation; as the social and economic society decays around it, it becomes the proficient and respected force that people look to for some sort of salvation, leading to further increase in its power; and its members, and especially its leaders, come gradually to both lose respect for civilian decision makers (and their authority), and to insert themselves further and further into the processes of politics.

America needs to shake off the obscuring hegemonic dust from its eyes, dust that is as old as WW2, and realize that it MUST both envision and make happen—soon—a much smaller standing military. Rather than structure itself for some nebulous “war on terrorism,” while simultaneously structuring for some big WW2/Cold War pan-conflict, and all the large forces that postulates, it needs to go in the opposite direction. It needs a very small, highly proficient force of special operations and related troops that can address the asymmetrical warfare likely, and leave to the National Guard (the militia; remember, those folks the Framers spoke of in the Constitution?) having cadres of specialized instructors and officers who can plan and provide for the possibility of needing to mobilize large numbers when true threats to the defense of the US and its true interests arise.

This would break the military-industrial complex, will lose some established expertise, and comes with it some risk. But the risk to continuing on our present course is no risk at all—it is certain self-decay and self-destruction.

It's A Fraud All Right

7 federal prosecutors were fired during the Bush administration because they raised objections to wasting precious resources looking for voter fraud when they knew there was next to none. 

The rest of the Justice Dept looked.  At a cost of several tens of millions of dollars.  They found 30 cases.  Most of those were explained away by people who had completed a prison sentence, and then voting in a state where they couldn’t anymore.   Now, completing a prison sentence normally restores voting rights.  But for these former prisoners in the few states where voting rights disappear for good, some few people didn’t know that and attempted to vote.  30 people, out of 250 million.  So one has a greater chance of being struck by lightning than voter fraud happening.

Is there some evidence that I am missing?  Because unless I am, it appears that campaigns against “voter fraud,” campaigns manifesting as highly restrictive, obstructive, bureaucratic roadblocks that use “anti-voter fraud” as cover, appear to have a sinister motive.  As in taking away a person’s right to vote (Constitutional violation of a fundamental/foundational right).

Energy For Non-Reality and Little to None For Reality

There was a recent Korean study of people who played computer games more than 30 hours per week.  The subjects reported they couldn’t reduce their playing even though they wanted to.  When they were given an MRI while shown things that reminded them of the game, their brains had virtually the same reaction as drug addicts when shown something about their addictive drug. 

As psychologists and sociologists have been warning, to no avail, the country is awash in an epidemic of obsessive video gaming.

Neil Postman said over twenty-five years ago that we were going to amuse ourselves to death.  One of the questions I have, though, is: How much is the allure of virtual reality, and how much is the depressive outlook of so much of reality—that the society is offering little real opportunity, let alone truly exciting avenues, for what should be the up and coming?

The Boxer Who Never Took a Month Off to Rest, The Woodcutter Who Never Sharpened His Axe

Post World War 2 America inserted itself into every manner of international involvement, and that injecting of itself into center stage demanded much from a people and a society. 

The American people did not deliver, either domestically or internationally.   They remained in the main unengaged and uninterested, acquiescing to interventionist impulses of those they put in power and then promptly ceased vigilance on.

As strategies and strategists go, pretty much a failure.  The most they would get from a generous but unbiased grader is a D- or D, but that would be due more to lucky events and the inherent flaws of enemies than to forethought and will.

The US has blown the lull period.  Sure, in the Cold War.  But beyond that, especially, when so much money and effort should have been made to rest and recuperate and even advance.  Instead, we got bases, intervention, power projection, and general militarization, along with money funneled in effectively corrupt trainloads to defense, intelligence, “security,” etc. contractors.  We built navies and air forces that not only were largely effectively unused (and certainly not for vital American interests), but wouldn’t have been regardless, probably even if they had been the right type and amount (and they were neither).  We DO need a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) naval force for addressing piracy and keeping open the seas, but little else.  We MIGHT need a UNSC air force. 

There IS no perfect security.  Everything you do to make your country MORE secure militarily comes at a cost—a steep cost—to the very economic and social health that is the true power of your society. 

Can our Framers look any wiser?  Or we any more foolish?

Historians are not going to be kind…

Where did all the men go?

“I am tired of meeting BOYS who tell me what they think I need to hear, make and break promises, and aren’t ready for something serious.  If you are dealing with unrequited love, childhood anger, or emotional dismissiveness, stay away.  I have dealt with many people who carry baggage and seem to think it is okay to ‘put themselves out there.’  Two words…Get help.”

The above frustrated female poster to an online forum might at first appear to be singing the same dirge of frustration at males’ commitment avoidance as has been sung for many years.  But it’s a bit more involved than that.  On to the (or rather, an) analysis!

America men wait longer and longer to get married, on average, than they used to.  No longer are the majority of men married by their late 20s.  The reasons are likely complex, despite all the tie pullers on inflammatory radio who would have you believe in a (their) single cause. 

Yes, young men may have paid attention to how marriage has become in a culture that throws so much burden on the nuclear family and gives next to nothing in support of it.  Even when divorce hasn’t been the observed result of years of slogging, marriage may not look all that appealing, especially with the selfish undertone of the culture poisoning the well.  And that’s even without the observed woman or women being controlling, manipulative, or any of the other things examined previously in this forum, which would obviously throw a big negative bone into the mix.

That the young men (extended boys, really, in many cases) are often socially stunted, is in little dispute.  Whether it’s the proverbial “playing video games in their (indulgent) parents’ basements” for the same endless hours a drug junkie devotes , or other evasions of manliness and responsibility, socialization is lacking.  Without socialization, semi-isolation is too easy, especially with the pseudo-connectedness (and pseudo-reality) of the internet—and all amid a culture that seems to teach or at least okay manipulation, exploitation, and other things that poison honest relationships.

Their average testosterone has also taken a nosedive, and that only accentuates most of the problems.  Difficult to be the complete man when the very foundational hormone that both makes someone a man and drives nearly every aspect of physical and psychological make-up, is lower.  Add to that the atrocious nutritional quality of much food and drink, and it only magnifies the problem.

In the female-dominated social structure, men, married men especially, and fathers in particular, are portrayed as stupid, foolish, simple, malleable, etc.—the target of jokes in sitcoms, comedy routines, and real life.  THERE’s certainly some low bar expectations to live down to—or avoid altogether.  A lack of respect also gets reciprocated by the way.  You ladies who are wondering where the Mr. Darcy’s, and Noah’s, and others of romantic literature are—while your expectations may have perhaps always been a bit excessively magnified due to literature’s ideal portrayal, your chances are often slim of getting even a remote semblance if respect is missing from the cultural equation.

Economically, the real job prospects, and especially the exciting ones, have gone away for probably a majority of men in the culture.  Few things are more emasculating and depressing to a man than having his work identity gutted.  Evasion of the society that wants to give him no good options, or force him into poor ones, doesn’t look quite as completely irresponsible as it might have before considering that.  Even when he can find a job (FAR less than a certainty today), the chances of finding one at a livable wage (and mostly forget about one that can provide for two or more people) are much reduced.  And that he knows that he alone can’t care for a wife and children, does something to his psyche, probably unrealized.  If the women in Grapes of Wrath were looking at and testing their men to see if they’d given up, perhaps many young men today have—deep inside their psyches—given up before they start.

That there is a general underlying feeling of driftlessness, shallowness, off-the-track inertia in this culture only reinforces the problems exponentially.

William Bennett has a new book out (“The Book of Man”) about the demise of manliness.  It’s a start.  We need a discussion on it, and a whole lot of related subjects in this culture.
 
Are there other probable causes of the changes in young men’s behavior?  Certainly.  We may have barely scratched the surface.

Only the fact that the human pair-bond is one of the strongest, if not the strongest, chosen relationships around, keeps marriage in the running.