I have been reluctant to write much in the last few weeks for several reasons—mostly I want to avoid sounding like a cassette tape stuck on rewind and play of the same passage. At the moment, the future of the economy is the largest issue most people are dealing with. Unfortunately, most discussions concerning the economy are abstract. That is, they focus on surveys, market prices and figures and ignore the human cost of economic realities. Frankly, the dehumanization of economic realities is the bane of free market ideologies. (See! I sound like a broken tape deck!)
The auto industry bailout is the current media darling story with the spectre of deflation rapidly coming to the forefront from behind. Why no one seems willing to comment on the fact that the present cost of buying and operating an automobile are the two main reasons sales have fallen to nearly zero would be a mystery if I were not such a cynic. We are presently experiencing a period of economic readjustment, a moment when the economic excesses of the elite few are in the process of rectification by the economic and social sacrifices of the working class many. Banks are cheerfully taking federal money without loosening credit restrictions. Auto manufacturers are taking federal money without appreciably changing the way they do business. I await breathlessly for the predictable fingerpointing by management to the “outrageous” benefits and wages of auto workers. No one will even begin to address the economic cost to our society of auto part outsourcing to foreign manufacturers.
Our wonderful governments will continue to threaten us with service cutbacks and berate us with the necessity for tax increases without ever addressing the way they do business. Employment initiatives will continue to focus on luring corporate jobs to an ailing economy rather than seeking entrepreneurial solutions of both the mini and maxi kinds.
In short, we will see business as usual in 2009 and the average worker will unequally suffer the consequences of lackluster leadership and the greed based world perspective of those leaders.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Sunday, December 7, 2008
The Roots of Social and Personal Depression
I haven’t written in a few weeks for several reasons. One, of course, is that personal commitments all clamored for attention at once and took several weeks of undivided attention to meet. Another is that, frankly, I watch the government response to the economic disaster unfold and I become severely depressed. I watch the same old solutions that have managed to drive us to the present point of distress tarted up in fancy rhetoric and presented as necessary solutions to the endemic social conflicts that are the real causes of our present difficulties.
Somehow, economic issues have become separated from civic issues in the social consciousness. Perhaps the so-called collapse of Marxist Socialism with the fall of the Berlin wall in ’89 functioned as defacto proof of the necessary division between the acts of government and the pursuit of personal wealth. The fact that the old CCP in Russia and the PRC in China are far from Marxist in their politics and policies means little in the common perception. What is also forgotten or misunderstood is how the generation who fought the Second World War pursued economic policies that were consciously rooted in their sense of civic duty. Make no mistake, their social/civic record was not spotless or idyllic. Their racism was an undercurrent that tainted all their decisions until the late 1950s. But even in regards to their racist failings, members of that generation took action that was rooted in civil rights and which brought an economic benefit to all citizens of the US. LBJ, for all his faults, did wonders in bringing that hidden undercurrent to the surface of the social and governmental mainstream by establishing legal tools for its civic redirection and civic redress. His War on Poverty was a magnificent effort that assisted millions of Americans move from abject poverty and hopelessness into the mainstream of American civil and economic life. The effort was gutted and destroyed by those who believe the same “free market” nonsense that infects the politicians of the present generation.
We have ideologically/intellectually separated business decisions from civic consequences. The dramatic rise in unemployment is simply a figure not a story of despair and hardship for those who suddenly find themselves unemployed and unable to financially meet their family's physical needs. The worldwide rise in food prices is an economic phenomenon of an impersonal, mechanical market not the story of millions who exist on the brink of starvation because their income cannot cover the increase in staple food prices. The destruction of the industrial manufacturing base in the pursuit of a high profit “service” economy is not seen as an assault on the livelihood of the minimally educated or traditional craftsman. The consequences of such decisions are framed as impersonal forces at work in a “bottom-line” economy. The social and civic consequences of such “business” decisions are ignored.
Our congress votes billions to bailout greedy billionaires in order to save “jobs” and perpetuate an economic world-view that is destructive of human dignity. Truly depressing.
Somehow, economic issues have become separated from civic issues in the social consciousness. Perhaps the so-called collapse of Marxist Socialism with the fall of the Berlin wall in ’89 functioned as defacto proof of the necessary division between the acts of government and the pursuit of personal wealth. The fact that the old CCP in Russia and the PRC in China are far from Marxist in their politics and policies means little in the common perception. What is also forgotten or misunderstood is how the generation who fought the Second World War pursued economic policies that were consciously rooted in their sense of civic duty. Make no mistake, their social/civic record was not spotless or idyllic. Their racism was an undercurrent that tainted all their decisions until the late 1950s. But even in regards to their racist failings, members of that generation took action that was rooted in civil rights and which brought an economic benefit to all citizens of the US. LBJ, for all his faults, did wonders in bringing that hidden undercurrent to the surface of the social and governmental mainstream by establishing legal tools for its civic redirection and civic redress. His War on Poverty was a magnificent effort that assisted millions of Americans move from abject poverty and hopelessness into the mainstream of American civil and economic life. The effort was gutted and destroyed by those who believe the same “free market” nonsense that infects the politicians of the present generation.
We have ideologically/intellectually separated business decisions from civic consequences. The dramatic rise in unemployment is simply a figure not a story of despair and hardship for those who suddenly find themselves unemployed and unable to financially meet their family's physical needs. The worldwide rise in food prices is an economic phenomenon of an impersonal, mechanical market not the story of millions who exist on the brink of starvation because their income cannot cover the increase in staple food prices. The destruction of the industrial manufacturing base in the pursuit of a high profit “service” economy is not seen as an assault on the livelihood of the minimally educated or traditional craftsman. The consequences of such decisions are framed as impersonal forces at work in a “bottom-line” economy. The social and civic consequences of such “business” decisions are ignored.
Our congress votes billions to bailout greedy billionaires in order to save “jobs” and perpetuate an economic world-view that is destructive of human dignity. Truly depressing.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
The Insane Tax Burden of Average Americans
I recently drove to visit my granddaughter and daughter in Florida and spent an evening in Knoxville, TN. I was stunned at the 9 ¼% sales tax I paid on a meal and a $12.00 rape the visitor tax on a $40 a night room. The jolt began me wondering about how much actual tax we, as Americans, pay each year. We sometimes forget the hidden taxes we pay as a matter of course in conducting our daily business, such as the excise tax on a gallon of gasoline.
I live in Nashville, Indiana where I pay a greater amount of tax on my monthly water bill than I do for the actual water. Last month I was charged $31.47 for the amount of water used and $51.48 in a sewer usage tax. The insanity of such a situation is self-evident. So, I decided to calculate, approximately, the amount of tax, both hidden and evident, an average middle class family of four pays in the state of Indiana over the course of a year.
According to the latest census the average household income in the US is $47,000 per year and an average household consists of a family of four (plus a decimal child, which we will ignore since partial children only serve to bloody the floor).
Let’s begin with actual income tax charges. In the State of Indiana citizens pay a federal income tax, a state income tax and a county income tax. The present federal tax rate for $40K plus a year is 25%. Thus, a family of four taking standard exemptions and filing as married filing jointly pays a federal income tax of $8,500. Indiana’s income tax rate is 3.4%; thus, the state income tax totals $1462. The Indiana County tax for Brown County, Indiana is .014875% for a tax total of $639.63. Total raw income tax due in Indiana for a family of four is $10,601.63.
Now, the same family must pay a 6.2% FICA tax that totals $2914. Thus the accumulated total of straight income taxes becomes $13, 515.63. But, we are far from done paying tax. Sales tax in Indiana is a flat 7%. The average family of four spends $8600 per year on food, says the GAO. Thus, 7% of $8600 equals $602, bringing our tax expenditure total to $14,117.63.
Now a modern middle class family of four must have two vehicles in order to operate. Vehicles at an average $25,000 purchase price entail a $1750 per vehicle, or $3500 total sales tax, which we can amortize over a 60 month loan for a total $700 per year, for an annual tax total at this point of $14,817.63. In Indiana the state charges an annual excise tax plus a fee for automobile registration. The excise tax is on a sliding scale but two new cars over a five year period will average approximately $225 per vehicle per year, for a tax total at this stage of $15,267.63.
The average household vehicle averages 15,000 miles per year. If the vehicle averages 25mpg it will use 600 gallons of gasoline. For a middle class family of four with two vehicles the total usage becomes 1200 gallons of gasoline a year. The average excise tax on a gallon of gasoline in Indiana is $.184 federal and $.317 state for a total of $.501 tax per gallon or a total tax expense of $601.20, raising our tax expense total to $15,868.83.
We are not yet finished, not by a long shot. The average cost of clothing in the US is $624 per child, slightly higher for adults. The sales tax on this amount is $174.72, for a tax expense total of $16043.55.
Finally, Indiana has a property tax of .014% on privately owned real estate and recently passed a 2% cap on rental property and 3% cap on business property. If an average family of four owns a house valued at the national average of $187,000 their annual property tax bill is presently $2618, for an expense total of $18,661.55. If they rent, the tax bill they pay increases to $3740, unless their landlord is an exceptionally generous individual who just loves sheltering people for the Christian love of it, which brings the rental family’s total tax expense to $19,783.55. Most obviously, businesses will pass on the 3% property tax to their customers but the actual cost to a family is impossible to calculate.
Given these figures, we see that a family of four making the average househould income of $47,000 a year pays $18,661.55 in tax if they own their house in Indiana and $19,783.55 if they rent. This means their actual disposable income is $28, 338.45 or $27,216.45, respectively, which translates into a tax burden of 39.7% and 42% respectively.
I understand that by finagling deductions and some creative bookkeeping these tax bills could be reduced by a few thousand dollars. Even so, something is seriously out of kilter here.
I live in Nashville, Indiana where I pay a greater amount of tax on my monthly water bill than I do for the actual water. Last month I was charged $31.47 for the amount of water used and $51.48 in a sewer usage tax. The insanity of such a situation is self-evident. So, I decided to calculate, approximately, the amount of tax, both hidden and evident, an average middle class family of four pays in the state of Indiana over the course of a year.
According to the latest census the average household income in the US is $47,000 per year and an average household consists of a family of four (plus a decimal child, which we will ignore since partial children only serve to bloody the floor).
Let’s begin with actual income tax charges. In the State of Indiana citizens pay a federal income tax, a state income tax and a county income tax. The present federal tax rate for $40K plus a year is 25%. Thus, a family of four taking standard exemptions and filing as married filing jointly pays a federal income tax of $8,500. Indiana’s income tax rate is 3.4%; thus, the state income tax totals $1462. The Indiana County tax for Brown County, Indiana is .014875% for a tax total of $639.63. Total raw income tax due in Indiana for a family of four is $10,601.63.
Now, the same family must pay a 6.2% FICA tax that totals $2914. Thus the accumulated total of straight income taxes becomes $13, 515.63. But, we are far from done paying tax. Sales tax in Indiana is a flat 7%. The average family of four spends $8600 per year on food, says the GAO. Thus, 7% of $8600 equals $602, bringing our tax expenditure total to $14,117.63.
Now a modern middle class family of four must have two vehicles in order to operate. Vehicles at an average $25,000 purchase price entail a $1750 per vehicle, or $3500 total sales tax, which we can amortize over a 60 month loan for a total $700 per year, for an annual tax total at this point of $14,817.63. In Indiana the state charges an annual excise tax plus a fee for automobile registration. The excise tax is on a sliding scale but two new cars over a five year period will average approximately $225 per vehicle per year, for a tax total at this stage of $15,267.63.
The average household vehicle averages 15,000 miles per year. If the vehicle averages 25mpg it will use 600 gallons of gasoline. For a middle class family of four with two vehicles the total usage becomes 1200 gallons of gasoline a year. The average excise tax on a gallon of gasoline in Indiana is $.184 federal and $.317 state for a total of $.501 tax per gallon or a total tax expense of $601.20, raising our tax expense total to $15,868.83.
We are not yet finished, not by a long shot. The average cost of clothing in the US is $624 per child, slightly higher for adults. The sales tax on this amount is $174.72, for a tax expense total of $16043.55.
Finally, Indiana has a property tax of .014% on privately owned real estate and recently passed a 2% cap on rental property and 3% cap on business property. If an average family of four owns a house valued at the national average of $187,000 their annual property tax bill is presently $2618, for an expense total of $18,661.55. If they rent, the tax bill they pay increases to $3740, unless their landlord is an exceptionally generous individual who just loves sheltering people for the Christian love of it, which brings the rental family’s total tax expense to $19,783.55. Most obviously, businesses will pass on the 3% property tax to their customers but the actual cost to a family is impossible to calculate.
Given these figures, we see that a family of four making the average househould income of $47,000 a year pays $18,661.55 in tax if they own their house in Indiana and $19,783.55 if they rent. This means their actual disposable income is $28, 338.45 or $27,216.45, respectively, which translates into a tax burden of 39.7% and 42% respectively.
I understand that by finagling deductions and some creative bookkeeping these tax bills could be reduced by a few thousand dollars. Even so, something is seriously out of kilter here.
Friday, November 7, 2008
A Personal Experience of the Disaster of American Higher Education
I had a problem with windows a week or so ago and had to have the system wiped and reinstalled. Of course, all my internet tabs disappeared, including the one for this blog. I googled my name in an effort to find the address and an old Rate Your Professor site dating from four years ago came up. I quit teaching at the college level because writing instruction for nearly all universities consists primarily of Freshman Composition. When I began teaching in 1993 I quickly fell in love with the Freshman I taught but as time passed that love affair turned as ugly as a 20 year marriage of convenience.
The shift came in 1998. Instead of one or two troublesome students every two or three of years I began having three or four troublesome students per class every semester. By 2001 I was dealing with mass rebellion in ALL my composition classes with only one or two of the brightest students attempting to comprehend the act of composition as the act of selecting and executing rhetorical strategies. The change came that quickly.
The act of composing in writing requires an intellectual athleticism not unlike the physical athleticism of working athletes. And, like working athletes, a successful writer must compose and draft everyday and rewrite, rewrite, rewrite in the same way a working athlete must run and practice, run and practice, and run and practice until every muscle in their body cries for relief. Writing is work and learning to compose a successful and competent text is extremely hard work. Unfortunately, most first year students’ experience of composition instruction consists of relating in text personal experiences or simply recapitulating simple instructions or information. Unfortunately, most first year university writing programs consist of more of the same with a “research” paper as the capstone project (usually on some run-of-the-mill topic, such as abortion, teen drinking, etc., in the name of “Relevance”) Drafting is generally unheard of unless it happens during class.
I expect resistance, but I also expect a full court press effort, which means the student accepts responsibility for their learning. If a student is unclear on a concept or assignment they should ask for clarification. They should accept that not every effort results in outstanding success and that no one gets an “A” for simply putting forth an effort. The “A” comes about as a result of an outstanding performance, which is proof of a student’s effort.
Since I view composing as a process my teaching requires a considerable amount of rewriting, at least three to four rewrites per assignments, with peer reviews and assessments on each draft. Such an approach requires the student to write at least one draft per week. Today’s students rebel at such work. Consequently, days of work are lost because at least 50% and more of each class refuse to draft consistently. In the face of such resistance an instructor has limited choices. Most abandon such a rigorous approach. Those who do not are condemned to student ridicule, abuse, accusations of incompetence, and emotional and intellectual inconsistency. Students are much more adept at manipulating the administrative system and human emotions than their earlier counterparts. They understand that negative finger pointing does not generally need proving in corporately structured environments and the suggestion of discord carries far more weight than the fact of competence or incompetence.
Frankly, I blame outcome based assessment and an unhealthy focus by administrators on student product satisfaction.
Outcome based evaluation is fine if what you wish to measure is a quantifiable amount of information. However, OBE practices are incapable of measuring or quantifying process. Traditional assessment methods of a college student's text consist of identifying a thesis statement, identifying proper citation practices and conforming to standard grammar practices. These markers are clearly quantifiable. However, such markers fail to identify solid process habits, solid research skills, solid intellectual judgment and an effective understanding of rhetorical strategies.
Secondly, education is not a product. It is not a consumable manufacture, like, say, cheese. The well-being of any society, whether political, social or economic, depends upon the quality of the education of those citizens who make the decisions that determine the moral and physical well-being of a society. To propagate the belief that an education is a marketable consumer product is incredibly irresponsible, in my opinion.
A quality college education implies an individual with honed thought skills and a command of an intellectual wellspring of the best thought, practices, and methodologies in human history. Anything less leads the community as a whole into slow disintegration and social disaster.
The shift came in 1998. Instead of one or two troublesome students every two or three of years I began having three or four troublesome students per class every semester. By 2001 I was dealing with mass rebellion in ALL my composition classes with only one or two of the brightest students attempting to comprehend the act of composition as the act of selecting and executing rhetorical strategies. The change came that quickly.
The act of composing in writing requires an intellectual athleticism not unlike the physical athleticism of working athletes. And, like working athletes, a successful writer must compose and draft everyday and rewrite, rewrite, rewrite in the same way a working athlete must run and practice, run and practice, and run and practice until every muscle in their body cries for relief. Writing is work and learning to compose a successful and competent text is extremely hard work. Unfortunately, most first year students’ experience of composition instruction consists of relating in text personal experiences or simply recapitulating simple instructions or information. Unfortunately, most first year university writing programs consist of more of the same with a “research” paper as the capstone project (usually on some run-of-the-mill topic, such as abortion, teen drinking, etc., in the name of “Relevance”) Drafting is generally unheard of unless it happens during class.
I expect resistance, but I also expect a full court press effort, which means the student accepts responsibility for their learning. If a student is unclear on a concept or assignment they should ask for clarification. They should accept that not every effort results in outstanding success and that no one gets an “A” for simply putting forth an effort. The “A” comes about as a result of an outstanding performance, which is proof of a student’s effort.
Since I view composing as a process my teaching requires a considerable amount of rewriting, at least three to four rewrites per assignments, with peer reviews and assessments on each draft. Such an approach requires the student to write at least one draft per week. Today’s students rebel at such work. Consequently, days of work are lost because at least 50% and more of each class refuse to draft consistently. In the face of such resistance an instructor has limited choices. Most abandon such a rigorous approach. Those who do not are condemned to student ridicule, abuse, accusations of incompetence, and emotional and intellectual inconsistency. Students are much more adept at manipulating the administrative system and human emotions than their earlier counterparts. They understand that negative finger pointing does not generally need proving in corporately structured environments and the suggestion of discord carries far more weight than the fact of competence or incompetence.
Frankly, I blame outcome based assessment and an unhealthy focus by administrators on student product satisfaction.
Outcome based evaluation is fine if what you wish to measure is a quantifiable amount of information. However, OBE practices are incapable of measuring or quantifying process. Traditional assessment methods of a college student's text consist of identifying a thesis statement, identifying proper citation practices and conforming to standard grammar practices. These markers are clearly quantifiable. However, such markers fail to identify solid process habits, solid research skills, solid intellectual judgment and an effective understanding of rhetorical strategies.
Secondly, education is not a product. It is not a consumable manufacture, like, say, cheese. The well-being of any society, whether political, social or economic, depends upon the quality of the education of those citizens who make the decisions that determine the moral and physical well-being of a society. To propagate the belief that an education is a marketable consumer product is incredibly irresponsible, in my opinion.
A quality college education implies an individual with honed thought skills and a command of an intellectual wellspring of the best thought, practices, and methodologies in human history. Anything less leads the community as a whole into slow disintegration and social disaster.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
The Hidden Promise of Death
Earlier in the week I visited a small town about fifty miles away to look at a Geo Tracker for my daughter. The price was within the range I wanted to pay, and the Geo had the airbags and other safety equipment I feel she needs for her and her daughter to feel protected. The address turned out to be a small, post WWII shotgun bungalow with old aluminum siding—the kind of house I grew up in during the early 50s.
The sun had just set, and the only light came from the full moon and the outside porch light left on to help me identify the house. The neighborhood was so quiet that when I pulled up and left my truck the owner of the Geo and his wife were leaving their house to greet me. These look like the people who were my parent’s friends when I was a young child, I thought, blue collar workers with a minimum high school education.
We went through the formalities, and I took the Geo for a test drive. The car had some problems I was not willing to repair, and, as the husband and I stood in front of the SUV as his wife looked on, I asked, “Why are you selling?”
The man looked at the ground before answering and said, “We bought the thing from a woman in Indy a few weeks ago for my wife to get back and forth from the warehouse where she had just got a job. But, she was let go last week. I worked at the stint plant in Bloomington, but I was laid off a few days ago. I had a pancreas and kidney transplant a while back, and we need the money to pay for my monthly medicine.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, “but I’m not interested in the car.”
“I understand,” the man said. “If you know of anyone else looking I would appreciate you sending them this way. My medicine is $800 a month and that ain’t covered by unemployment. I need the medicine so my body won’t reject the transplants.”
“I’ll do my best,” I promised.
Our short conversation has troubled me from the moment it occurred to today. This man and his wife were convinced by the purveyors of modern science that his life would be saved by replacing the dying organs within his body with those from some unfortunate individual who would have no further need of them. I’m sure the surgeon and doctor who administered the procedure informed both the man and his wife of the absolute necessity of taking the antibody regulators regularly and the consequences of not doing so. I’m also equally sure they were not informed of the monthly cost beyond, “the medicine is expensive.”
From all that I could see these were good, if minimally educated, people who were living their version of the American Dream—a small house in a small town with a regular job that financed those very small “luxuries.” I say “luxuries” because in other parts of the world, and in this very spot a little over a century ago, an 800 square foot frame house with aging aluminum siding would have been the equivalent of a mansion on the hill. But, we have a belief in this society that a clean, healthful life is a basic human right, and that belief precludes living in a mud wattle hut or a tin can covered cardboard box. I am also aware that the man and his wife may well be degenerate meth amphetamine dealers corrupting other organ transplantees and giving the prospective Geo sucker/buyer a song and dance designed to pluck at the heartstrings and loosen the wallet. Maybe so, but I think not.
Given that the man was honest, and I believe he was, how can we, as fellow members of an enlightened society, condone giving this fellow human and his life partner the promise of extended life with one hand and then threaten to take it away with the other if he has been denied the means to earn the outrageous monthly cost of the medicine that the promised extension requires? Such an action is truly evil because a promise was made but with hidden clauses that if not met, regardless of circumstance, is tantamount to a death sentence. As a society, we treat serial killers more humanely.
The sun had just set, and the only light came from the full moon and the outside porch light left on to help me identify the house. The neighborhood was so quiet that when I pulled up and left my truck the owner of the Geo and his wife were leaving their house to greet me. These look like the people who were my parent’s friends when I was a young child, I thought, blue collar workers with a minimum high school education.
We went through the formalities, and I took the Geo for a test drive. The car had some problems I was not willing to repair, and, as the husband and I stood in front of the SUV as his wife looked on, I asked, “Why are you selling?”
The man looked at the ground before answering and said, “We bought the thing from a woman in Indy a few weeks ago for my wife to get back and forth from the warehouse where she had just got a job. But, she was let go last week. I worked at the stint plant in Bloomington, but I was laid off a few days ago. I had a pancreas and kidney transplant a while back, and we need the money to pay for my monthly medicine.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, “but I’m not interested in the car.”
“I understand,” the man said. “If you know of anyone else looking I would appreciate you sending them this way. My medicine is $800 a month and that ain’t covered by unemployment. I need the medicine so my body won’t reject the transplants.”
“I’ll do my best,” I promised.
Our short conversation has troubled me from the moment it occurred to today. This man and his wife were convinced by the purveyors of modern science that his life would be saved by replacing the dying organs within his body with those from some unfortunate individual who would have no further need of them. I’m sure the surgeon and doctor who administered the procedure informed both the man and his wife of the absolute necessity of taking the antibody regulators regularly and the consequences of not doing so. I’m also equally sure they were not informed of the monthly cost beyond, “the medicine is expensive.”
From all that I could see these were good, if minimally educated, people who were living their version of the American Dream—a small house in a small town with a regular job that financed those very small “luxuries.” I say “luxuries” because in other parts of the world, and in this very spot a little over a century ago, an 800 square foot frame house with aging aluminum siding would have been the equivalent of a mansion on the hill. But, we have a belief in this society that a clean, healthful life is a basic human right, and that belief precludes living in a mud wattle hut or a tin can covered cardboard box. I am also aware that the man and his wife may well be degenerate meth amphetamine dealers corrupting other organ transplantees and giving the prospective Geo sucker/buyer a song and dance designed to pluck at the heartstrings and loosen the wallet. Maybe so, but I think not.
Given that the man was honest, and I believe he was, how can we, as fellow members of an enlightened society, condone giving this fellow human and his life partner the promise of extended life with one hand and then threaten to take it away with the other if he has been denied the means to earn the outrageous monthly cost of the medicine that the promised extension requires? Such an action is truly evil because a promise was made but with hidden clauses that if not met, regardless of circumstance, is tantamount to a death sentence. As a society, we treat serial killers more humanely.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
The Poisonous Mixture of Religion and Government
I read today that civilian Christians are being attacked and killed in Mosul, Iraq. One report blames the Kurds. Conservative Islamic groups condemn attempts by the secular Iraqi government to sign a new US military mandate, and threaten violence. Afghanistan and Pakistan are ripped apart by conservative Islamic militia. These Islamic militia are murdering peaceful village elders in the tribal areas of Pakistan in an attempt to destabilize civic structures.
A born again Evangelical president of the US states he knows God is beside him in his decision to invade a country that has not physically attacked any US citizen or US facility. Drug wars that rip societies apart and drain governments of precious revenues needed for civic improvement are justified in moral terms by both secular and theocratic governments.
Thousands are tortured and executed in the sixteenth century to purify the one true religion of Christ. Europe is ripped apart and hundreds of thousands die over two hundred plus years in the theocratic pursuit of the “one, true way.” Europe is again ripped apart and millions die in a “racial purification” that targets members of a religion as a “racial” group.
How long is this madness to continue? Would God create life and “intelligence” only to destroy it in pursuit of some kind of “perfect purity” that differs from one mad sect to another? How could any sane individual believe such intellectual/emotional poison?
A born again Evangelical president of the US states he knows God is beside him in his decision to invade a country that has not physically attacked any US citizen or US facility. Drug wars that rip societies apart and drain governments of precious revenues needed for civic improvement are justified in moral terms by both secular and theocratic governments.
Thousands are tortured and executed in the sixteenth century to purify the one true religion of Christ. Europe is ripped apart and hundreds of thousands die over two hundred plus years in the theocratic pursuit of the “one, true way.” Europe is again ripped apart and millions die in a “racial purification” that targets members of a religion as a “racial” group.
How long is this madness to continue? Would God create life and “intelligence” only to destroy it in pursuit of some kind of “perfect purity” that differs from one mad sect to another? How could any sane individual believe such intellectual/emotional poison?
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Faith, Glory and The American Dream
She sat on the curb as the crowd of tourists flowed around her. Normally, such a sight would not affect me in any way, just a woman in a crowd, but I know just enough about this woman to surmise that the expression on her face is a reflection of a feeling of alienation. Of course, the expression may be just the manifestation of a bad case of gas, but I think not. This woman lives alone with two boys, ages 12 and 8. The youngest was recently hospitalized as the result of a car accident while with his estranged father. She works as a clerk in a convenience store and lives in a small apartment in a converted business building. Surely, the life she is living is not the life she dreamed of as a child.
Her image and associated history, for me, illustrates the dark side of the so-called American Dream and the truth of the Fall from Eden.
An odd connection? Not really. America was Europe’s new Eden in the beginning. The newly discovered continent seemed to offer Europeans the chance to regain God’s Edenic grace and European Christianity the chance to redeem its failure to establish the Kingdom of God on Earth in Europe. In the new world, America, Christians could achieve a harmonic dominance over the wild, which was thought the fulfillment of Adam’s original task in the Garden. God’s bounty would fall into the hands of those created in his image, and Christians could establish a Christian “City on the Hill” worthy of Christ’s return, a society clearly established on Christ’s commandments and worthy of God’s bounty. An exaggeration of how America’s promise was conceived by emigrant Europeans? Perhaps, but the mythic principles informing such ideals are clearly evidenced in the many royal charters granted the early emigrants, and the influence of those principles on modern American thought is clearly evident in the Depression-era political slogan, “A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.”
The error in such thinking is that the Fall as reported in Genesis makes quite clear that the bounty and harmony Adam and Eve enjoyed in Eden flowed from God’s grace, and their naively intelligent awareness of his grace was his special gift to humanity. Animals exist and live according to the natures God created within them but without the intelligent awareness of the spring of Grace their nature flowed from and the potential of wonder and love that accompanied that awareness. When God banished Adam and Eve from the garden he allowed them to keep the intelligence that gave them the ability to sense and understand God’s gift of grace. The ability to know and understand the loss of the immanent and immediately evident connection to that Grace is the curse of the Fall. Christian and Jewish theology teaches us that human society and human ingenuity can never replace the peace and wonder of the experience of the constant presence of God’s grace that was the true bounty of Eden.
But, dear God, we do try. The experience of glory must hold a psychological shadow of the experience of God’s grace since we, as a species, do love to pursue it. The seeking of glory is at the root of our most venal dreams. For example, when a young child dreams of being a pop music star, she dreams of basking in the glory of evident affection. The adulation of millions demonstrated by the purchase of the musician’s music, the roar of human adulation at massive concerts and the millions of dollars earned seem proof of the granting of special favor and everlasting love to the misguided, uninformed and ignorant. In the obverse, the denial or absence of that adulation is de facto proof of an individual’s unworthiness of favor and love.
So, the young woman sits in the crowd celebrating the moment of ease their money can buy them. She is within the crowd but not part of it, denied access because of her financial obligations and inability to fully meet them successfully. The dreams and ideals presented to her in her childhood mock her in her “failure” to achieve social glory and inclusion. She withdraws emotionally and appears as a living ghost, lost to a lie she did not create but is forced to live. Her only hope is faith, which I do not know she has. I pray she does.
Her image and associated history, for me, illustrates the dark side of the so-called American Dream and the truth of the Fall from Eden.
An odd connection? Not really. America was Europe’s new Eden in the beginning. The newly discovered continent seemed to offer Europeans the chance to regain God’s Edenic grace and European Christianity the chance to redeem its failure to establish the Kingdom of God on Earth in Europe. In the new world, America, Christians could achieve a harmonic dominance over the wild, which was thought the fulfillment of Adam’s original task in the Garden. God’s bounty would fall into the hands of those created in his image, and Christians could establish a Christian “City on the Hill” worthy of Christ’s return, a society clearly established on Christ’s commandments and worthy of God’s bounty. An exaggeration of how America’s promise was conceived by emigrant Europeans? Perhaps, but the mythic principles informing such ideals are clearly evidenced in the many royal charters granted the early emigrants, and the influence of those principles on modern American thought is clearly evident in the Depression-era political slogan, “A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.”
The error in such thinking is that the Fall as reported in Genesis makes quite clear that the bounty and harmony Adam and Eve enjoyed in Eden flowed from God’s grace, and their naively intelligent awareness of his grace was his special gift to humanity. Animals exist and live according to the natures God created within them but without the intelligent awareness of the spring of Grace their nature flowed from and the potential of wonder and love that accompanied that awareness. When God banished Adam and Eve from the garden he allowed them to keep the intelligence that gave them the ability to sense and understand God’s gift of grace. The ability to know and understand the loss of the immanent and immediately evident connection to that Grace is the curse of the Fall. Christian and Jewish theology teaches us that human society and human ingenuity can never replace the peace and wonder of the experience of the constant presence of God’s grace that was the true bounty of Eden.
But, dear God, we do try. The experience of glory must hold a psychological shadow of the experience of God’s grace since we, as a species, do love to pursue it. The seeking of glory is at the root of our most venal dreams. For example, when a young child dreams of being a pop music star, she dreams of basking in the glory of evident affection. The adulation of millions demonstrated by the purchase of the musician’s music, the roar of human adulation at massive concerts and the millions of dollars earned seem proof of the granting of special favor and everlasting love to the misguided, uninformed and ignorant. In the obverse, the denial or absence of that adulation is de facto proof of an individual’s unworthiness of favor and love.
So, the young woman sits in the crowd celebrating the moment of ease their money can buy them. She is within the crowd but not part of it, denied access because of her financial obligations and inability to fully meet them successfully. The dreams and ideals presented to her in her childhood mock her in her “failure” to achieve social glory and inclusion. She withdraws emotionally and appears as a living ghost, lost to a lie she did not create but is forced to live. Her only hope is faith, which I do not know she has. I pray she does.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
New Lows of Despicableness
Although I do hold certain political tenants as inviolable, I do not believe a particular political ideology provides a universal framework for solving human problems. In other words, I’m a pragmatic Jeffersonian Democrat. In the past, I have enjoyed watching the political process play itself out but in the last fifteen years or so the ideological gridlock in nearly ALL US political venues and the political tactics that have arisen from that gridlock have not only conspired to destroy the health and well-being of the body politic but of the citizenry as well. I always voted a split party ticket when I voted, making my decisions on priority assessments of social needs of the moment and the candidate’s stated approach or solution in addressing those needs. In the 80s, almost overnight, sound bite campaigning put an end to considered decision making on the part of voters as all the information provided was designed to feed into pre-existing ideological platforms. In the 90s push polling made the situation worse. Today, negative campaign ads have created a new level of cynicism in political campaigning.
Both political parties engage in negative campaigning but the Republicans have attained a level of cynical character bashing that I would never have thought possible in a civilized, first world democracy. The ad hominen attack on Barack Obama via a “guilt by association” fallacy is a new low in presidential campaigning. Implying that Obama is corrupt because of his life in Chicago politics and casual working association with ex-Weatherman William Ayers is like saying George Washington was a traitor because he commanded and worked with Benedict Arnold. The fallacious strategy is as ancient as human politics and succeeds only among the woefully ignorant. I cannot help but believe the decision to launch such a smear by association campaign was motivated or enhanced by the ever-present racism of American society (for the record, I’m not African-American). The Republicans have succeeded in completely alienating me from accepting any of their party’s political platform. GW’s announcement of a direct line to God a while back is indicative of the incredible hubris of a party that has been the dominant power in American politics for far too long. This latest tactic simply proves, to me at least, the complete ethical, if not moral, corruption of a party that was founded in the pursuit of human rights .
Both political parties engage in negative campaigning but the Republicans have attained a level of cynical character bashing that I would never have thought possible in a civilized, first world democracy. The ad hominen attack on Barack Obama via a “guilt by association” fallacy is a new low in presidential campaigning. Implying that Obama is corrupt because of his life in Chicago politics and casual working association with ex-Weatherman William Ayers is like saying George Washington was a traitor because he commanded and worked with Benedict Arnold. The fallacious strategy is as ancient as human politics and succeeds only among the woefully ignorant. I cannot help but believe the decision to launch such a smear by association campaign was motivated or enhanced by the ever-present racism of American society (for the record, I’m not African-American). The Republicans have succeeded in completely alienating me from accepting any of their party’s political platform. GW’s announcement of a direct line to God a while back is indicative of the incredible hubris of a party that has been the dominant power in American politics for far too long. This latest tactic simply proves, to me at least, the complete ethical, if not moral, corruption of a party that was founded in the pursuit of human rights .
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Just Have to Say It
Even the remotest prospect of Sarah Palin as President of the United States creates an involuntary pucker in my shorts.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Living in a verifiably insane world
I take a daily medication for hypertension. Sam’s club recently placed the type of medication on their $4 list, and I decided to give the medication a try. Yesterday, I noticed the pills are manufactured in India. India!!! I have no issues with importing products from India or any other country --- providing those products meet US standards are in direct competition with US made products, not replacing US products.
What surprises me here is the amount of energy required to move those tablets from India to Indiana. Aside from the annoying fact that the Indian workers who manufacture those tablets must be paid next to nothing, the use of dwindling world oil resources makes the logic of transporting tablets literally halfway around the world can only be called insane. I don’t use that word lightly. Greed is an insanity, no matter how many so-called capitalists wish to call the pursuit of unbridled profits desirable. When the obsessive pursuit of a goal or objective creates a harmful environment for the community and the individual the mental state created by that obsessive pursuit can only be called insane.
Using dwindling world oil resources to fuel a so-called global economy is short sighted at best and suicidal in any sense. We hear repeated predictions about how few years are left in the world’s oil reserves at present levels of consumption (about a generation) and how present levels of development in Asian and Latin American countries exacerbates the dwindling supply problems. We are now experiencing a vicious downturn in the economy arising from dwindling credit reserves that came about by the obsessive pursuit of wealth. What kind of crash can we expect when the fuel that drives the present forms of industrialization dries up?
As globally oriented humans we need to focus on developing strong, stand alone, energy efficient national economies. Global trade has existed for millennia. It won’t end regardless of what economic theory is prevalent among government planners at the moment. Any amount of thought given to the situation recognizes that until ALL national borders fall and ALL areas of the globe are administered by a single, central government a global, free market economy merely shuffles the geographical site of the exploitation of centers of wealth and poverty stricken workers from one hapless society to another.
What surprises me here is the amount of energy required to move those tablets from India to Indiana. Aside from the annoying fact that the Indian workers who manufacture those tablets must be paid next to nothing, the use of dwindling world oil resources makes the logic of transporting tablets literally halfway around the world can only be called insane. I don’t use that word lightly. Greed is an insanity, no matter how many so-called capitalists wish to call the pursuit of unbridled profits desirable. When the obsessive pursuit of a goal or objective creates a harmful environment for the community and the individual the mental state created by that obsessive pursuit can only be called insane.
Using dwindling world oil resources to fuel a so-called global economy is short sighted at best and suicidal in any sense. We hear repeated predictions about how few years are left in the world’s oil reserves at present levels of consumption (about a generation) and how present levels of development in Asian and Latin American countries exacerbates the dwindling supply problems. We are now experiencing a vicious downturn in the economy arising from dwindling credit reserves that came about by the obsessive pursuit of wealth. What kind of crash can we expect when the fuel that drives the present forms of industrialization dries up?
As globally oriented humans we need to focus on developing strong, stand alone, energy efficient national economies. Global trade has existed for millennia. It won’t end regardless of what economic theory is prevalent among government planners at the moment. Any amount of thought given to the situation recognizes that until ALL national borders fall and ALL areas of the globe are administered by a single, central government a global, free market economy merely shuffles the geographical site of the exploitation of centers of wealth and poverty stricken workers from one hapless society to another.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
One can only hope
It has been a busy week in politics what with a proposed bank bailout, a presidential candidate debate and at least two overseas terrorist bombings. Economic hardships always seem to bring out the worst in people. Understandably, I suppose when the certainty of your next meal is in doubt. Why we, as a species, insist on treating our fellow humans worse than we treat the lowest feedlot animal is beyond my comprehension. (Not really, I have my convictions and if you read between my lines they become obvious) For most Americans, the economic downturn is the premier issue of their daily lives. In truth, the daily inconveniences and terrors of our domestic lives are almost all directly associated with economic concerns.
Since the Democrats abandoned the no bankruptcy provision of their proposal in response to Republican demands I am inclined to side with the House Republicans who flaunted their free market ideology by pulling out of the bailout negotiations on Thursday. Let the bastards who created the present stew cook in the juices of their own making. Why the Democrats did not counter with a repeal of the Republican backed bankruptcy reforms passed a few years back is beyond me. And, since the Bush administration wants to let foreign banks, foreign institutions that were all too wiling to profit from the speculation, participate in the bailout I am experiencing another knee jerk reaction against a national government dedicated to serving its citizens bailing out wealthy foreign nationals. The whole bailout stinks of corporate and class-based socialism.
Contrary to global, free market ideologues, government intervention in capitalist market policies is as old as capitalist empire building. In the US alone the unprecedented period of economic growth we are seeing coming to an end is the direct result of government policies that began in the Great Depression. When Wall Street capitalists screwed the pooch through excessive market speculation on very small credit margins in 1929 the US government under the presidential administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt began direct infusions of government capital in massive and not so massive infrastructure projects, such as the Hoover Dam and the WPA. The onset of WWII created more economic opportunities for US industry, initially through the Lend Lease Program and eventually through the massive production of war material.
After WWII, the US began the unprecedented period of national economic growth that we are now seeing end. For the first twenty-five years after the end of the War the US supplied the goods and material needed to rebuild the infrastructure of both Europe and Asia that was nearly completely destroyed during the conflict.
In the thirty five or so years since the end of the period of reconstruction, the US has pandered to industrial and financial capitalists whose only goal has been to feed their own pockets and the purses of Wall Street coupon clippers. Ideologues conveniently forget that the US had an efficiently functioning health care system prior to the Reaganization of US politics. Consumer savings and spending were in a satisfactory balance prior to the Reagan era free market deregulation of banks. I can name a dozen other areas of economic disaster we presently deal with that began as ideas and lobbying campaigns of powermongering influence peddlers in the Nixon administration and came to actuality during and following the Reagan years.
As a nation of independent and free citizens we have stood by and allowed the rich and powerful to dismantle the largest and at one time the most efficient manufacturing complex in the world in order to funnel ever larger percentages of the world’s wealth into their own pockets. The Democratic demand that caps be placed on executive compensation and “golden Parachute” buy out programs be eliminated in those companies doing business within the bailout’s legal provisions is a step in the right direction, but so much more needs done.
Since the Democrats abandoned the no bankruptcy provision of their proposal in response to Republican demands I am inclined to side with the House Republicans who flaunted their free market ideology by pulling out of the bailout negotiations on Thursday. Let the bastards who created the present stew cook in the juices of their own making. Why the Democrats did not counter with a repeal of the Republican backed bankruptcy reforms passed a few years back is beyond me. And, since the Bush administration wants to let foreign banks, foreign institutions that were all too wiling to profit from the speculation, participate in the bailout I am experiencing another knee jerk reaction against a national government dedicated to serving its citizens bailing out wealthy foreign nationals. The whole bailout stinks of corporate and class-based socialism.
Contrary to global, free market ideologues, government intervention in capitalist market policies is as old as capitalist empire building. In the US alone the unprecedented period of economic growth we are seeing coming to an end is the direct result of government policies that began in the Great Depression. When Wall Street capitalists screwed the pooch through excessive market speculation on very small credit margins in 1929 the US government under the presidential administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt began direct infusions of government capital in massive and not so massive infrastructure projects, such as the Hoover Dam and the WPA. The onset of WWII created more economic opportunities for US industry, initially through the Lend Lease Program and eventually through the massive production of war material.
After WWII, the US began the unprecedented period of national economic growth that we are now seeing end. For the first twenty-five years after the end of the War the US supplied the goods and material needed to rebuild the infrastructure of both Europe and Asia that was nearly completely destroyed during the conflict.
In the thirty five or so years since the end of the period of reconstruction, the US has pandered to industrial and financial capitalists whose only goal has been to feed their own pockets and the purses of Wall Street coupon clippers. Ideologues conveniently forget that the US had an efficiently functioning health care system prior to the Reaganization of US politics. Consumer savings and spending were in a satisfactory balance prior to the Reagan era free market deregulation of banks. I can name a dozen other areas of economic disaster we presently deal with that began as ideas and lobbying campaigns of powermongering influence peddlers in the Nixon administration and came to actuality during and following the Reagan years.
As a nation of independent and free citizens we have stood by and allowed the rich and powerful to dismantle the largest and at one time the most efficient manufacturing complex in the world in order to funnel ever larger percentages of the world’s wealth into their own pockets. The Democratic demand that caps be placed on executive compensation and “golden Parachute” buy out programs be eliminated in those companies doing business within the bailout’s legal provisions is a step in the right direction, but so much more needs done.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Where there is a will there is always a way
The government bailout of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, AIG and the impending bailouts of several other greedily run banks has everyone I know talking of nothing but money. Nearly all of us oldsters, myself included, have taken a huge hit in our mutual fund retirement programs. Unless Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and a few other multibillionaires decide to donate their huge fortunes to be divided up between each of us there will be no retirement for this old man, not that I expected one anyway.
The murder rate among young men in major metropolitan areas is at an all time high. As I pointed out in an earlier post, a direct statistical correlation exists between a rising unemployment rate in 18-25 year old males and a rising crime rate. Let’s face the truth—a high school diploma will not get a person decent work so a high school dropout will get a kid NO work, ever, in an economy whose movers and shakers have seen fit to deny the legal means of economic self-sufficiency to any citizen of low to average intelligence or from a poor, working class background. In such hopeless circumstances tempers of young, physically robust males become hair trigger short and since most money making opportunities in poor neighborhoods and bad economic times are firmly grounded in illegal activities, the seeds of desperation and cynicism fall on fertile mental ground and lead to an eventual harvest of violence.
Even those young men who have the native intelligence and financial resources to secure a BA degree have little opportunity for gainful, long-term employment after graduation, especially if they come from families whose annual income is less than $60K. The largest, single NATIONAL market (the US, dummy) that drove the international economy has been raped and left beside the road to die by the multinational corporations it spawned. Until we, as members of a failing society/economy/political structure, decide to swallow the bitter medicine and work for the benefit of all our neighbors and friends that injured roadside corpus will become a roadside corpse.
In my estimation, the will to build a successful economy and political system on the ruins of the present one is strong. More than one casual observer has made the comment that all that is necessary is a visionary government and the stepping/pushing aside of the corporate megaliths who have engineered this present international disaster. Frankly, as jingoist as what I am about to say sounds, I’m all for the economic success of my foreign brethren but not at the expense of the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of family, friends and future generations of my immediate acquaintance. I believe equanimity in all areas of human endeavor is possible if all work to achieve it.
The murder rate among young men in major metropolitan areas is at an all time high. As I pointed out in an earlier post, a direct statistical correlation exists between a rising unemployment rate in 18-25 year old males and a rising crime rate. Let’s face the truth—a high school diploma will not get a person decent work so a high school dropout will get a kid NO work, ever, in an economy whose movers and shakers have seen fit to deny the legal means of economic self-sufficiency to any citizen of low to average intelligence or from a poor, working class background. In such hopeless circumstances tempers of young, physically robust males become hair trigger short and since most money making opportunities in poor neighborhoods and bad economic times are firmly grounded in illegal activities, the seeds of desperation and cynicism fall on fertile mental ground and lead to an eventual harvest of violence.
Even those young men who have the native intelligence and financial resources to secure a BA degree have little opportunity for gainful, long-term employment after graduation, especially if they come from families whose annual income is less than $60K. The largest, single NATIONAL market (the US, dummy) that drove the international economy has been raped and left beside the road to die by the multinational corporations it spawned. Until we, as members of a failing society/economy/political structure, decide to swallow the bitter medicine and work for the benefit of all our neighbors and friends that injured roadside corpus will become a roadside corpse.
In my estimation, the will to build a successful economy and political system on the ruins of the present one is strong. More than one casual observer has made the comment that all that is necessary is a visionary government and the stepping/pushing aside of the corporate megaliths who have engineered this present international disaster. Frankly, as jingoist as what I am about to say sounds, I’m all for the economic success of my foreign brethren but not at the expense of the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of family, friends and future generations of my immediate acquaintance. I believe equanimity in all areas of human endeavor is possible if all work to achieve it.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Babby Boomers, Liberty and Freedom
I recently read a Kenyan blog (http://kenyaimagine.com/Politics-and-Governance/The-looming-class-war-in-Kenya.html) about the class differences that are growing in Kenya and how the writer expects the differences to lead to an explosion of class violence, as has happened recently in South Africa, Canada, and the US. (In the US we call such explosions a crime wave) I generally deplore violence. Unfortunately, however, the privileged few seem unable to comprehend the inhumanity that arises from their indifference to the struggle to survive of those born less fortunate than they. The practices of government and social institutions are designed and operated by the socially advantaged and those from lower social classes may not understand or be able to adjust to rules and regulations that often seem, and often are, meant to discourage those who are in the most need of assistance to survive.
At one time in the US, we managed to destabilize those violent, class based undercurrents through business practices and social legislation that recognized the responsibilities we all share in the well-being of our neighbors in a democratic society (unless they are of a different skin color, of course. The race issue in the US is closely tied to class issues but we refuse as society to acknowledge the relationship). The wonderful baby-boomer generation (of which I am a member) has managed to forget those responsibilities, choosing, instead to pursue freedom as an economic issue rather than a political one. The generation’s confusing of liberty and freedom has lead to our present circumstance where the havenots get less and less every year and the haves seem to do everything possible to make sure they can wash their hands of their political/ethical responsibility to their fellow citizens of lower social rank, lower education, and different life values.
The conceptual confusing of freedom and liberty and the perversion of a political/ethical issue into an economic one has led the Bush administration into their pursuit of a “free market” empire dedicated to “democracy.” The ill-conceived Iraqi/Afghani war that the 9/11 acts of terror brought about was stimulated by a love for liberty not freedom. Terrorists do not constrain freedom. They constrain liberty in the hope of gaining the political advantage necessary to constrain freedom. The present economic downturn caused by energy price inflation restricts liberty of movement rather than freedom of movement. As of yet, citizens of the US do not need national ID cards or papers of movement to travel or move about in their daily affairs. We are free to go where and when we please. However, economic concerns created by the increasing cost of energy hampers our ability to exercise that freedom. For all but the wealthy, our liberty to travel when and where we wish has been constrained by economic concerns.
To some extent this economic constraint on liberty has always been present in a socially stratified society. In the past, free men without the financial means to own a horse or boat were economically restricted in their movement to where their legs could carry them and their ability to feed themselves as they traveled. The latter restraint was and in some areas of the world remains the greatest restraint against liberty. Deny or restrict a regular supply of food and drink and the liberty of movement is denied or restricted through a physical inability to move or through the knowledge that movement will deny access to a meager but sure supply of biological fuel. In the most basic sense we can see that social stratification begins with an economic restriction of the liberty of movement.
Until recently, all these constraints against liberty were sites of class conflict within the US that were resolved politically through a rule of law dedicated to the democratization of freedom and liberty. In the last forty years the forces that have always struggled to restrict both liberty and freedom for their own gain have shifted the battleground between classes from the political arena to the economic. Their tactic was simple and brilliant. They declared the political battle for democratic equality won in the US and shifted the battle to controlling the means of production. Baby boomers were so busy pursuing the false promise of eternal sexiness they failed to recognize or oppose the economic erosion of the hard won civil rights of the class wars fought in this country in the 19th and 20th centuries.
In fact, the accumulation of wealth is a disease that enables personal liberty at the expense of political freedom. The stoics of both the oriental and occidental ancient worlds recognized moderation as the way to true freedom and liberty. When the spirit is free and unfettered by the concerns of wealth the body will benefit. When we citizens of the US finally realize that true liberty and freedom exist independently of the accumulation of wealth we may make strides to ensure that a true democratic freedom will exist for as long as humanity survives.
At one time in the US, we managed to destabilize those violent, class based undercurrents through business practices and social legislation that recognized the responsibilities we all share in the well-being of our neighbors in a democratic society (unless they are of a different skin color, of course. The race issue in the US is closely tied to class issues but we refuse as society to acknowledge the relationship). The wonderful baby-boomer generation (of which I am a member) has managed to forget those responsibilities, choosing, instead to pursue freedom as an economic issue rather than a political one. The generation’s confusing of liberty and freedom has lead to our present circumstance where the havenots get less and less every year and the haves seem to do everything possible to make sure they can wash their hands of their political/ethical responsibility to their fellow citizens of lower social rank, lower education, and different life values.
The conceptual confusing of freedom and liberty and the perversion of a political/ethical issue into an economic one has led the Bush administration into their pursuit of a “free market” empire dedicated to “democracy.” The ill-conceived Iraqi/Afghani war that the 9/11 acts of terror brought about was stimulated by a love for liberty not freedom. Terrorists do not constrain freedom. They constrain liberty in the hope of gaining the political advantage necessary to constrain freedom. The present economic downturn caused by energy price inflation restricts liberty of movement rather than freedom of movement. As of yet, citizens of the US do not need national ID cards or papers of movement to travel or move about in their daily affairs. We are free to go where and when we please. However, economic concerns created by the increasing cost of energy hampers our ability to exercise that freedom. For all but the wealthy, our liberty to travel when and where we wish has been constrained by economic concerns.
To some extent this economic constraint on liberty has always been present in a socially stratified society. In the past, free men without the financial means to own a horse or boat were economically restricted in their movement to where their legs could carry them and their ability to feed themselves as they traveled. The latter restraint was and in some areas of the world remains the greatest restraint against liberty. Deny or restrict a regular supply of food and drink and the liberty of movement is denied or restricted through a physical inability to move or through the knowledge that movement will deny access to a meager but sure supply of biological fuel. In the most basic sense we can see that social stratification begins with an economic restriction of the liberty of movement.
Until recently, all these constraints against liberty were sites of class conflict within the US that were resolved politically through a rule of law dedicated to the democratization of freedom and liberty. In the last forty years the forces that have always struggled to restrict both liberty and freedom for their own gain have shifted the battleground between classes from the political arena to the economic. Their tactic was simple and brilliant. They declared the political battle for democratic equality won in the US and shifted the battle to controlling the means of production. Baby boomers were so busy pursuing the false promise of eternal sexiness they failed to recognize or oppose the economic erosion of the hard won civil rights of the class wars fought in this country in the 19th and 20th centuries.
In fact, the accumulation of wealth is a disease that enables personal liberty at the expense of political freedom. The stoics of both the oriental and occidental ancient worlds recognized moderation as the way to true freedom and liberty. When the spirit is free and unfettered by the concerns of wealth the body will benefit. When we citizens of the US finally realize that true liberty and freedom exist independently of the accumulation of wealth we may make strides to ensure that a true democratic freedom will exist for as long as humanity survives.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Mom and Pop Operation
My father and mother were children of the Great Depression. They were born and raised in the Appalachian hills of western Pennsylvania at a time when moving from town to town was done most efficiently on foot or by horse, when survival for a family depended on getting a deer before the snows set in. My mother had her first child (not by my father) when she was 15. My father had to put aside his ambitions to become an artist because such talents were not conducive to feeding a large family of siblings and cousins. As a boy I remember my father trying to save an ailing fruit tree by reciting an incantation during the full moon while urinating in a perfect circle. My mother read auras and believed their color indicated good health or impending illness
My father eventually became an analytical chemist, and my mother spiraled ever deeper into schizophrenia. Both hustled and embellished their past in order to survive in a world that demanded they forget their past and tailor their lives to the demands of an ever changing present in the hopes of profiting in an as yet to be determined future. In the end they both achieved what they set out to achieve, which was to eat regularly and keep the poverty wolf away from the door.
The point? I sat in a barber’s chair a few days ago and heard stories of my father’s talent for developing specific products and goods that I know he purchased from a wholesaler as a marketable end product. I also know that my father’s formal education became more extensive with each graduate degree I earned. Pop was the consummate salesman/hustler. He manufactured an authoritative social standing appropriate to making the sale of the moment. His products were always legitimate and of good quality and value. He never, to my knowledge, cheated anyone and always stood 100% behind whatever he sold. What he had learned as he moved from his Appalachian, backwoods upbringing was that people are driven to action by perception not actuality. People must believe before they act.
My mother was the perfect believer. She constructed a world that differed from my father’s only in the intended audience. My father’s audience was those around him while my mother’s audience was herself. He built himself in order to survive in the world. She built the world she could survive within.
We all have strategies for coping with the everyday challenges of the world. In every circumstance, we must move those around us to believe in the truth of our existence. Without that belief, we drown.
My father eventually became an analytical chemist, and my mother spiraled ever deeper into schizophrenia. Both hustled and embellished their past in order to survive in a world that demanded they forget their past and tailor their lives to the demands of an ever changing present in the hopes of profiting in an as yet to be determined future. In the end they both achieved what they set out to achieve, which was to eat regularly and keep the poverty wolf away from the door.
The point? I sat in a barber’s chair a few days ago and heard stories of my father’s talent for developing specific products and goods that I know he purchased from a wholesaler as a marketable end product. I also know that my father’s formal education became more extensive with each graduate degree I earned. Pop was the consummate salesman/hustler. He manufactured an authoritative social standing appropriate to making the sale of the moment. His products were always legitimate and of good quality and value. He never, to my knowledge, cheated anyone and always stood 100% behind whatever he sold. What he had learned as he moved from his Appalachian, backwoods upbringing was that people are driven to action by perception not actuality. People must believe before they act.
My mother was the perfect believer. She constructed a world that differed from my father’s only in the intended audience. My father’s audience was those around him while my mother’s audience was herself. He built himself in order to survive in the world. She built the world she could survive within.
We all have strategies for coping with the everyday challenges of the world. In every circumstance, we must move those around us to believe in the truth of our existence. Without that belief, we drown.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
More Rants
Today, I want to write about how the capitalist notion of globalization diminishes all of us as full, well-developed human beings. First, I want to clear up any objections anyone has about my being anti-capitalist. I am not anti-capitalist. I am, however, anti-“one philosophy meets every human need and aspiration.” Life and its demands are far too complex to be “answered” by a single ideological concept. In human history nearly as many different ways to approach life and succeed have existed as humans. A successful human life is successful because the consciousness aware of that life has met and experienced a joyful outcome to an existential challenge. When the followers of a one-size-fits-all “ism” or “ity” become so powerful that the rest of humanity must accommodate those beliefs in order to simply survive a serious imbalance is in evidence and should be resisted in as many ways as possible. Corporate Capitalism is an economic practice that has become a political ideology after the set back western socialism experienced with the fall of the Russian Soviet socialist dictatorship. That Soviet socialism offered beneficial survival strategies for those living under its influence is evidenced in the rapid political and economic recovery of Russia after the economic collapse of the Soviet empire. For those of us living within the influence of 21st century Corporate Capitalism the time required to recover from such a collapse as that experienced by the citizens of the late Soviet Republic would be far greater, if we could recover at all.
Although hardcore capitalists will deny the following truth, Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels clearly nailed the relationship between the organization of the means of economic production and the resulting human social order. How we manage the resources, both human and non-human, needed to produce and distribute the goods we all need to live both is shaped by the society in which those goods are produced and distributed and eventually reshapes it. The US and the UK are the two oldest practitioners of capitalism as a national economic policy. Over the years capitalism has taken many different forms but the single distinguishing characteristic of the private possession of excess monetary resources for capital investment remains constant in all the forms of capitalism practiced by the US and the UK. I think a strong argument can be made for the connection between the practice of capitalism in these cultures and the development of competitive individualistic societies. Capitalists embrace competition among participants as a central feature of capitalism. However, capitalism has little to do with competition. Capitalism does, however, thrive amongst competitive Alpha humans who actively seek to acquire and hold the excess monetary resources necessary for capitalism to work. Money is a satisfactory substitute for ears, horns, and other body parts once displayed by Alpha males in earlier societies as signs of their physical, and therefore, social superiority over other males. Thus, capitalism blends easily with the symbols and practices of a political and social elite that claims superiority by the right of divine trial. Those of us not in possession of excess resources become lost in the daily struggle to simply survive. We are forced to exchange our labor for survival goods.
Humans have long since developed a civic infrastructure that negates the necessity of the biological survival drive for species preservation that underscores competitive behavior. In fact, competitive behavior could very easily provide the force needed to fuel the lemming-like tendency of self destruction that seems to be the hallmark of contemporary empire building. Capitalism by its very nature is ultra conservative in its practices. Capitalism encourages ultraconservative behavior as a safeguard against the loss of the excess economic resources that make capitalism possible. Tried and proven strategies are the preferred strategies of capitalistic investors. Prior to the environmentally destructive practices of late twentieth century industrialism, the only real fall out of this consequence of capitalist economies was confined to creating human misery. The American reform movements of the early twentieth century were direct responses to the abuses of unbridled market capitalism in the late nineteenth century that bred such monsters as Diamond Jim Brady, John D. Rockefeller and Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Today, the consequences are far greater. Contemporary industrial practices are literally depopulating and defoliating the Earth. As China becomes an economic giant its water, earth and air are becoming less and less supportive of any life, let alone human life. The inherent ultraconservative behavior of capitalism is magnified in capitalism’s latest manifestation, Corporate Capitalism. Until a sure fire profit is seen in green conservation practices, global corporate capitalists, whether clothed as private industry executives or single party national dictatorships, the deforestation of our continents, the depopulation of wildlife and the oceans, and the gradual poisoning of our atmosphere and water in the pursuit of private profit will continue.
As a species, our biological success is the result of our natural ability for rational thought. We have survived through the development of abstract systems of thought, not physical prowess like, say, the alligator. However, those systems of thought have collided head on with the biological drives that were once necessary for species survival in an indifferent environment where the competition for survival among all life forms was dependent upon either sheer, overwhelming numbers of individuals or superior predatory power. The adaptive, survival behavior of humans of developing abstract systems of thought to dominate a given threat to survival has placed the very source of our survival in danger. As a species, we now dominate the very source of all that is necessary for our physical lives. As is our want, we have fetishized our desires and transmogrified a system of thought into a first premise truth of human life. The actual truth Corporate Capitalism is finally bringing to life is that as a species we all must work together to survive or we shall all die together.
Although hardcore capitalists will deny the following truth, Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels clearly nailed the relationship between the organization of the means of economic production and the resulting human social order. How we manage the resources, both human and non-human, needed to produce and distribute the goods we all need to live both is shaped by the society in which those goods are produced and distributed and eventually reshapes it. The US and the UK are the two oldest practitioners of capitalism as a national economic policy. Over the years capitalism has taken many different forms but the single distinguishing characteristic of the private possession of excess monetary resources for capital investment remains constant in all the forms of capitalism practiced by the US and the UK. I think a strong argument can be made for the connection between the practice of capitalism in these cultures and the development of competitive individualistic societies. Capitalists embrace competition among participants as a central feature of capitalism. However, capitalism has little to do with competition. Capitalism does, however, thrive amongst competitive Alpha humans who actively seek to acquire and hold the excess monetary resources necessary for capitalism to work. Money is a satisfactory substitute for ears, horns, and other body parts once displayed by Alpha males in earlier societies as signs of their physical, and therefore, social superiority over other males. Thus, capitalism blends easily with the symbols and practices of a political and social elite that claims superiority by the right of divine trial. Those of us not in possession of excess resources become lost in the daily struggle to simply survive. We are forced to exchange our labor for survival goods.
Humans have long since developed a civic infrastructure that negates the necessity of the biological survival drive for species preservation that underscores competitive behavior. In fact, competitive behavior could very easily provide the force needed to fuel the lemming-like tendency of self destruction that seems to be the hallmark of contemporary empire building. Capitalism by its very nature is ultra conservative in its practices. Capitalism encourages ultraconservative behavior as a safeguard against the loss of the excess economic resources that make capitalism possible. Tried and proven strategies are the preferred strategies of capitalistic investors. Prior to the environmentally destructive practices of late twentieth century industrialism, the only real fall out of this consequence of capitalist economies was confined to creating human misery. The American reform movements of the early twentieth century were direct responses to the abuses of unbridled market capitalism in the late nineteenth century that bred such monsters as Diamond Jim Brady, John D. Rockefeller and Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Today, the consequences are far greater. Contemporary industrial practices are literally depopulating and defoliating the Earth. As China becomes an economic giant its water, earth and air are becoming less and less supportive of any life, let alone human life. The inherent ultraconservative behavior of capitalism is magnified in capitalism’s latest manifestation, Corporate Capitalism. Until a sure fire profit is seen in green conservation practices, global corporate capitalists, whether clothed as private industry executives or single party national dictatorships, the deforestation of our continents, the depopulation of wildlife and the oceans, and the gradual poisoning of our atmosphere and water in the pursuit of private profit will continue.
As a species, our biological success is the result of our natural ability for rational thought. We have survived through the development of abstract systems of thought, not physical prowess like, say, the alligator. However, those systems of thought have collided head on with the biological drives that were once necessary for species survival in an indifferent environment where the competition for survival among all life forms was dependent upon either sheer, overwhelming numbers of individuals or superior predatory power. The adaptive, survival behavior of humans of developing abstract systems of thought to dominate a given threat to survival has placed the very source of our survival in danger. As a species, we now dominate the very source of all that is necessary for our physical lives. As is our want, we have fetishized our desires and transmogrified a system of thought into a first premise truth of human life. The actual truth Corporate Capitalism is finally bringing to life is that as a species we all must work together to survive or we shall all die together.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Enough with the Police
I dithered all week about what to write for the blog. My initial thought was to write about preparing for the coming economic collapse, and make no mistake a collapse is coming. I read a very good analysis of the United States' ability to survive a total economic collapse like the one the old Soviet Union suffered with the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. The analysis is performed by Dmitry Orlov and entitled, “Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US.” (Orlovv's analysis may be found at http://www.energybulletin.net/node/23259) Orlov's work caused me to think about how to prepare for the coming US collapse and, perhaps, help it appear a little more quickly, since I am convinced such an economic collapse would ultimately be in the best interests of the survival of American democracy.
However, as I drove into work today everywhere I turned I encountered a cop who, in each case, scrutinized my car as I passed to make sure I was wearing a seat belt and my turn signals, etc. worked (It’s a very old car in need of new paint). I truly dislike police. The role of police in the US has changed from a force of officers held in check by a federal system of checks and balances on their power to a force of adrenalin junkies underwritten by federal laws designed to fund a series of poorly conceived federal initiatives, such as the disastrous “war on drugs.” A strong statement? Not in my experience. I grew up on the ‘wrong side of the tracks” (what the ghetto for poverty stricken whites was called in the ‘50s) and saw more than my share of the abuse of power by “law enforcement” officers. Once I hit puberty, I was routinely stopped, searched and questioned for “walking while poor.” When I was in my twenties I was arrested twice for “vagrancy,” locked in a cell and cavity searched, released without an apology or an explanation when no drugs were found. Trust me. The anger and humiliation of such treatment never leaves you. I can not imagine the anger I would feel if I’d had to experience racial prejudice along with the humiliation. When I reached my thirties I was working for the local newspaper and my association with the counter power of the public press brought most of those arbitrary humiliations to a stop. I say ‘most’ because the legal system never forgets your past, even when it has no reason to remember. One of my arrests for “vagrancy” forty years ago routinely appears on criminal background checks, even though the court dismissed the charges as unfounded after a preliminary hearing.
Today, the threat of law enforcement’s power is flaunted by those in power. Enforcement campaigns that threaten “We will catch you” rather than advise against detrimental behavior have a disturbingly Big Brother note to them. Because of seat belt laws if you drive an older car you will be closely scrutinized by law enforcement officers every time you drive by one. If you have the misfortune to park near a manned cruiser or to be stopped for some small traffic infraction your vehicle will be scrutinized for “drug possession” indicators. All actions that, in my opinion, violate traditional American practices concerning the relationship between the individual and state power.
All of this gives testimony to the growth of what the Critical Resistance movement calls the “prison industrial complex.” (The Critical Resistance movement website may be found at http://www.criticalresistance.org) The US has the largest percentage of its population behind bars than any other country in the world, and that includes some of the most repressive dictatorships known to humanity. As a country we imprison more of our youth than any other couintry in the world in order to "make the streets safe." Even though study after study has convincingly shown that crime rates rise and fall in close coordination to the employment rate of young males between the ages of 18 and 25, law enforcement administrators and politicians still scream for a need for more law enforcement officers to curb the “rising crime rate.”
As citizens, we need to recall law enforcement initiatives that have clearly failed, such as the war on drugs, and reevaluate our legal and social priorities. We can not change human behavior by imprisoning those with little hope or little education. If private individuals were to act in response to negative human behavior in the way our government does they would summarily be arrested for physical abuse. Where's the justice?
However, as I drove into work today everywhere I turned I encountered a cop who, in each case, scrutinized my car as I passed to make sure I was wearing a seat belt and my turn signals, etc. worked (It’s a very old car in need of new paint). I truly dislike police. The role of police in the US has changed from a force of officers held in check by a federal system of checks and balances on their power to a force of adrenalin junkies underwritten by federal laws designed to fund a series of poorly conceived federal initiatives, such as the disastrous “war on drugs.” A strong statement? Not in my experience. I grew up on the ‘wrong side of the tracks” (what the ghetto for poverty stricken whites was called in the ‘50s) and saw more than my share of the abuse of power by “law enforcement” officers. Once I hit puberty, I was routinely stopped, searched and questioned for “walking while poor.” When I was in my twenties I was arrested twice for “vagrancy,” locked in a cell and cavity searched, released without an apology or an explanation when no drugs were found. Trust me. The anger and humiliation of such treatment never leaves you. I can not imagine the anger I would feel if I’d had to experience racial prejudice along with the humiliation. When I reached my thirties I was working for the local newspaper and my association with the counter power of the public press brought most of those arbitrary humiliations to a stop. I say ‘most’ because the legal system never forgets your past, even when it has no reason to remember. One of my arrests for “vagrancy” forty years ago routinely appears on criminal background checks, even though the court dismissed the charges as unfounded after a preliminary hearing.
Today, the threat of law enforcement’s power is flaunted by those in power. Enforcement campaigns that threaten “We will catch you” rather than advise against detrimental behavior have a disturbingly Big Brother note to them. Because of seat belt laws if you drive an older car you will be closely scrutinized by law enforcement officers every time you drive by one. If you have the misfortune to park near a manned cruiser or to be stopped for some small traffic infraction your vehicle will be scrutinized for “drug possession” indicators. All actions that, in my opinion, violate traditional American practices concerning the relationship between the individual and state power.
All of this gives testimony to the growth of what the Critical Resistance movement calls the “prison industrial complex.” (The Critical Resistance movement website may be found at http://www.criticalresistance.org) The US has the largest percentage of its population behind bars than any other country in the world, and that includes some of the most repressive dictatorships known to humanity. As a country we imprison more of our youth than any other couintry in the world in order to "make the streets safe." Even though study after study has convincingly shown that crime rates rise and fall in close coordination to the employment rate of young males between the ages of 18 and 25, law enforcement administrators and politicians still scream for a need for more law enforcement officers to curb the “rising crime rate.”
As citizens, we need to recall law enforcement initiatives that have clearly failed, such as the war on drugs, and reevaluate our legal and social priorities. We can not change human behavior by imprisoning those with little hope or little education. If private individuals were to act in response to negative human behavior in the way our government does they would summarily be arrested for physical abuse. Where's the justice?
Friday, August 15, 2008
Academia Trauma
I had something of a personal revelation this week. I had accepted as teaching position at a small college in the South and reported for new faculty orientation on Wednesday afternoon of this week. As I sat through the orientation I experienced two incidents, not incidents, really, they were more like traumatic psych observations. The first was the simple fact that NO ONE spoke to me. No one introduced themselves and all but one scrupulously avoided eye contact. In regular business meetings participants at least acknowledge your look and at least regularly introduce themselves to those sitting next to them. I found this avoidance very disturbing.
The second traumatic psych experience came when the VP of Academic Affairs announced we had three mandatory ceremonies a year where we had to wear academic regalia. I immediately dug in my psyche heels. I hate academic regalia. I hate wearing academic regalia. I hate everything academic regalia stands for. I had no idea when I began my academic graduate work that I would have to dress as the Grand Poohbah or the Assistant Grand Poohbah to impress the locals. I avoid any and all manners or mannerisms designed to indicate social rank. As a consequence of my avoidance I detest ritual as ritual is designed to emphasize those social distinctions. Now, if social distinctions were customarily interpreted as, “I am a store clerk,” or, “I am a lawyer,” and was left at that I would have little problem. But, most would interpret someone who is a lawyer as socially superior to a store clerk. (Well, may be not a lawyer! A bottom feeder is a bottom feeder.) In any case, I immediately began formulating schemes for avoiding attending these mandatory ceremonies. Had a simple business suit been required I would have had no difficulty accepting the requirement.
That is when I realized I wanted nothing more to do with academia. I used to teach Freshman Composition and was happy to do so. But in the last eight years I have increasingly become a high school freshman English teacher rather than a college Freshman Composition Instructor. Composition Instructors are now expected to teach reading skills to students who can barely read, grammar skills to students who cannot identify an adjective, and critical thinking skills to students who have no clue as to what a syllogism may be. In addition, college freshman are increasingly materialistic and so full of self-esteem that earning an A with less than 2 hours of homework a semester in their high school studies is absolute proof of their intellectual skills and value. Earning any grade less than an A with more than the two hours a semester of homework is evidence of the Instructor’s incompetence not the student’s lack of preparation or drive. And, if they have not fallen into the high school A trap they are members of the “too cool for school” crowd. These students have learned that an outrageous offense is the best strategy for passing a course by exerting the least amount of intellectual effort. For example, young women failing a course make sexual harassment accusations against their 80 year old professors emeritus or some other outrageous accusation they cannot substantiate or have any intention of substantiating. They suffer no consequence from their accusations and often are granted some consideration that makes their work load easier.
I realized as I sat in that meeting I cannot trust anyone in academia for any kind of personal support. As an academic faculty, I have only my disappearance into the pack as protection against a feckless administration and recklessly vicious students. Survival in Academia depends upon complete social camouflage, a total disappearance of the self into a Wal-Mart inspired mural of departmental collegiality, of a silencing of your voice in the background noise of endlessly recycled theses as original work, and of your dreams of changing the world in endlessly recycled PowerPoint lectures offered as inspired teaching.
In short, I declined the position and will never step into a college classroom again. AMEN!
The second traumatic psych experience came when the VP of Academic Affairs announced we had three mandatory ceremonies a year where we had to wear academic regalia. I immediately dug in my psyche heels. I hate academic regalia. I hate wearing academic regalia. I hate everything academic regalia stands for. I had no idea when I began my academic graduate work that I would have to dress as the Grand Poohbah or the Assistant Grand Poohbah to impress the locals. I avoid any and all manners or mannerisms designed to indicate social rank. As a consequence of my avoidance I detest ritual as ritual is designed to emphasize those social distinctions. Now, if social distinctions were customarily interpreted as, “I am a store clerk,” or, “I am a lawyer,” and was left at that I would have little problem. But, most would interpret someone who is a lawyer as socially superior to a store clerk. (Well, may be not a lawyer! A bottom feeder is a bottom feeder.) In any case, I immediately began formulating schemes for avoiding attending these mandatory ceremonies. Had a simple business suit been required I would have had no difficulty accepting the requirement.
That is when I realized I wanted nothing more to do with academia. I used to teach Freshman Composition and was happy to do so. But in the last eight years I have increasingly become a high school freshman English teacher rather than a college Freshman Composition Instructor. Composition Instructors are now expected to teach reading skills to students who can barely read, grammar skills to students who cannot identify an adjective, and critical thinking skills to students who have no clue as to what a syllogism may be. In addition, college freshman are increasingly materialistic and so full of self-esteem that earning an A with less than 2 hours of homework a semester in their high school studies is absolute proof of their intellectual skills and value. Earning any grade less than an A with more than the two hours a semester of homework is evidence of the Instructor’s incompetence not the student’s lack of preparation or drive. And, if they have not fallen into the high school A trap they are members of the “too cool for school” crowd. These students have learned that an outrageous offense is the best strategy for passing a course by exerting the least amount of intellectual effort. For example, young women failing a course make sexual harassment accusations against their 80 year old professors emeritus or some other outrageous accusation they cannot substantiate or have any intention of substantiating. They suffer no consequence from their accusations and often are granted some consideration that makes their work load easier.
I realized as I sat in that meeting I cannot trust anyone in academia for any kind of personal support. As an academic faculty, I have only my disappearance into the pack as protection against a feckless administration and recklessly vicious students. Survival in Academia depends upon complete social camouflage, a total disappearance of the self into a Wal-Mart inspired mural of departmental collegiality, of a silencing of your voice in the background noise of endlessly recycled theses as original work, and of your dreams of changing the world in endlessly recycled PowerPoint lectures offered as inspired teaching.
In short, I declined the position and will never step into a college classroom again. AMEN!
Friday, August 8, 2008
The Disaster of Professional Education
Everywhere I have gone in the last few days the subject of education has come up, along with the ever present, “What in the hell are our politician’s thinking about?” I can’t even begin to relay how many times the latter topic has become THE topic of conversation within the last year. Education is an idea that everyone agrees with but most are willing to “leave to the experts,” which is the attitude that has made “ignorant and self-serving” politicians the number one topic of conversation among middle class Americans.
In truth, education should be the number one topic of conversation for everyone because the present state of the nation is directly tied to the presently insane conception of education in the US. In the last 50 years the focus of a public education, indeed, any US based education, has shifted from the Liberal Arts to that of professional preparation. A great many forces are responsible for this shift but the greatest force, in my opinion, has been the commodification of specialized information. With the shift away from an agrarian economy and the present shift of industrialization from a national economic base to a global economic base, the ability of any individual to gain access to the means of survival depends upon their access to highly specialized information. A citizen can no longer prowl the forests for meat to get the family through the winter or scratch the surface of the earth to grow a crop of grain, beans, or vegetables. A citizen can no longer travel to an industrial center a few hundred miles away and gain employment on the line of a factory that requires little more than the ability to read at a sixth grade level. The intellectual goals of public elementary and secondary education in the US that were developed in the late nineteenth century are no longer sufficient for supplying the intellectual skills that a critical democracy needs to survive or that employers consider sufficient for consideration of employment. In addition, the situation at the primary and secondary levels of education is made worse by the belief that ALL students should be prepared for careers or jobs that no longer exist or exist for a very few highly trained individuals.
In the past, specialized information was reserved for those workers new to the marketplace who committed to a lengthy apprenticeship program. Generally speaking, those who completed the apprenticeship were well-versed in the complexities of the trade or business they apprenticed. Even the most untalented could at least gain access to the knowledge necessary to effectively function as low level laborers. However, apprenticeship programs are expensive to initiate and maintain. Organized business was more than happy to surrender that expense to professional and technical schools. Today, public elementary and secondary schools prepare students for surviving within an economy that no longer exists. The focus, allegedly, is academic, with the implicit understanding that public school students must continue on to college in order to secure the professional knowledge required to be considered employable by US businesses.
Unfortunately, three major difficulties accompany this shift from intellectually preparing students to become responsible students in a critical democracy to preparing students to become employable commodities:
1. Not all students are intellectually capable of the higher thinking skills thought necessary to survive in a “post-industrial” society
In truth, education should be the number one topic of conversation for everyone because the present state of the nation is directly tied to the presently insane conception of education in the US. In the last 50 years the focus of a public education, indeed, any US based education, has shifted from the Liberal Arts to that of professional preparation. A great many forces are responsible for this shift but the greatest force, in my opinion, has been the commodification of specialized information. With the shift away from an agrarian economy and the present shift of industrialization from a national economic base to a global economic base, the ability of any individual to gain access to the means of survival depends upon their access to highly specialized information. A citizen can no longer prowl the forests for meat to get the family through the winter or scratch the surface of the earth to grow a crop of grain, beans, or vegetables. A citizen can no longer travel to an industrial center a few hundred miles away and gain employment on the line of a factory that requires little more than the ability to read at a sixth grade level. The intellectual goals of public elementary and secondary education in the US that were developed in the late nineteenth century are no longer sufficient for supplying the intellectual skills that a critical democracy needs to survive or that employers consider sufficient for consideration of employment. In addition, the situation at the primary and secondary levels of education is made worse by the belief that ALL students should be prepared for careers or jobs that no longer exist or exist for a very few highly trained individuals.
In the past, specialized information was reserved for those workers new to the marketplace who committed to a lengthy apprenticeship program. Generally speaking, those who completed the apprenticeship were well-versed in the complexities of the trade or business they apprenticed. Even the most untalented could at least gain access to the knowledge necessary to effectively function as low level laborers. However, apprenticeship programs are expensive to initiate and maintain. Organized business was more than happy to surrender that expense to professional and technical schools. Today, public elementary and secondary schools prepare students for surviving within an economy that no longer exists. The focus, allegedly, is academic, with the implicit understanding that public school students must continue on to college in order to secure the professional knowledge required to be considered employable by US businesses.
Unfortunately, three major difficulties accompany this shift from intellectually preparing students to become responsible students in a critical democracy to preparing students to become employable commodities:
1. Not all students are intellectually capable of the higher thinking skills thought necessary to survive in a “post-industrial” society
2. Professional education neglects the critical thinking skills necessary for a truly democratic society and government
3. Most students who do manage to attend college are saddled with a huge student loan debt that, in truth, belongs to the society that will ultimately benefit from their labor. This debt clearly shifts the social responsibility of any given individual away from the society and its members that the student eventually will work within to an extremely localized social sphere of acquaintances and family that functions socially as a tribe.
As a society, we already see the repercussions of this shift in educational objectives. As more and more of our youth are relegated to low skill employment futures, even with college degrees, the very fabric of a coherent, democratic society is beginning to shred. Is the trend reversible? Of course, but like all difficulties any society faces the solution depends upon a radical shift away from strategies designed to benefit only a privileged few.
Friday, August 1, 2008
The Problem with Meritocracy
I recently ran across a libertarian blog that discussed the Labor Theory of Value, or mutualism, at The Silent Liberal’s Blog. http://silent-radical.blogspot.com I find any discussion of an alternative to the present economic ideology of value but, in the end, I found the concept of mutualism disturbing because it appears as a cloaking of destructive capitalist ideology. Mostly, my concern stems from the association with the Libertarian Labor Theory of Value with the concept of meritocracy. Meritocracy is a social concept that denies the human propensity toward the inequality of social opportunity. It stems from a mystical disgust at the concept that someone may get something for “free” in a viable economic community. It is the same disgust that Reaganomics ideologues used to establish the “workfare” system of government assistance for those in dire economic straits. I am not interested in debating the benefits or problems of “workfare” as a system but the problematic concept of meritocracy as a system for determining division of the economic pie in a society. The idea of meritocracy arises from a uniquely American belief rooted in Ben Franklin’s “by the bootstraps” philosophy of upward social mobility.
This particular philosophy has been around for generations, being especially popular among white, blue collar proletarians and petty bourgeoisie. It’s recent resurgence among Libertarians and cybertechies strikes me as a backlash against the failure of corporate capitalists to keep their implied promise of perpetual prosperity among the newly educated technical elite. That most of these technical elites benefited from a kind of corporate noblesse oblige escapes their notice or never entered their thoughts.
This particular philosophy has been around for generations, being especially popular among white, blue collar proletarians and petty bourgeoisie. It’s recent resurgence among Libertarians and cybertechies strikes me as a backlash against the failure of corporate capitalists to keep their implied promise of perpetual prosperity among the newly educated technical elite. That most of these technical elites benefited from a kind of corporate noblesse oblige escapes their notice or never entered their thoughts.
The despicable concept of noblesse oblige that once mitigated class power discrepancies in Western, liberal democracies has fallen to the incredibly pernicious concept of meritocracy, which ignores the very real cultural and social obstacles to the economic well-being of poor, lower class citizens. In truth, in today’s Western societies individuals in positions of power who profess that contemporary citizens of western democracies live within a meritocratic society structure opportunity for economic and professional advancement in ways that only members of their shared social class may access. When members of a disadvantaged class or ethnicity use capitalist techniques to advance themselves economically but refuse to adopt the trappings of the social elite they will eventually face legal charges of some sort. When members of a disadvantaged class or ethnicity appear in the ranks of the elite rest assured those individuals are masters of social gamesmanship who have altered, drastically camouflaged or otherwise buried the distinctive practices and beliefs of their non-elite background. Should such individuals display aspects of their socio/cultural background after their acceptance into the ranks of the social elite, rest assured they will be brought to task for their indiscretion and publically condemned for their lapse, as has been repeatedly demonstrated in the current US presidential election.
One of the true beauties of the American political experiment is that the founding fathers recognized and attempted to compensate for the failures of the human spirit. Fail safes and catch clauses were incorporated into the federal system of government to guard against the kind of unfairness and incompetency that would most surely appear within any enterprise tasked with governing and monitoring human affairs. That meritocracy is subject to the same human failings as any other system of human justice is evidenced in the American attempt to establish a civil service system based upon personal merit and performance. Any visit to nearly any BMV of any state in the nation will clearly demonstrate the success of that experiment.
One of the true beauties of the American political experiment is that the founding fathers recognized and attempted to compensate for the failures of the human spirit. Fail safes and catch clauses were incorporated into the federal system of government to guard against the kind of unfairness and incompetency that would most surely appear within any enterprise tasked with governing and monitoring human affairs. That meritocracy is subject to the same human failings as any other system of human justice is evidenced in the American attempt to establish a civil service system based upon personal merit and performance. Any visit to nearly any BMV of any state in the nation will clearly demonstrate the success of that experiment.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Predatory Government and Democracy
As a child in the 1950s I traveled with my family extensively throughout the US. We drove and camped nearly everywhere a highway or dirt road could take us. We read avidly of accounts of motorized gypsies who traveled in their trucks and station wagons in Mexico, Central America and Canada. Exotic adventure was but a short drive away in the family station wagon. The simple act of crossing the Ohio River deposited me and my family in a culture radically different from the one we spent the non-traveling days of the year within. Moving from state to state in the pre-Holiday Inn as the Nation’s Innkeeper era entailed an ability to keep quiet, observe and go with the flow of strange and wonderful ways to cope with the realities of day to day life. Sometimes, the differences were so slight as to escape notice in the short time spent visiting the natural and artificial wonders of a visited area. Other times, practices so alien to our daily way of life were encountered that we learned at an early age that even questions arising from innocent ignorance could lead to catastrophic relations with locals and, sometimes, local law enforcement authorities.
All that began to change in the late 60s, as the US became increasingly homogenized with the meteoric expansion of corporate retail franchises such as McDonald’s, Holiday Inn and Winn-Dixie across the nation. Today, we live in a cultural and social environment so homogeneous that if we were to be blindfolded, flown in circles for a few hours and dropped in the center of nearly any American, suburbanized city we would have to rely on the questioning of those we encountered on the street to figure out WHAT city we had landed in. In almost any spot in almost any US city the chances would be better than even that the person who provided us with the requested information was either a temporary visitor or a short term resident. Though each region in the US celebrates some cultural practice considered idiosyncratic to that area, the truth is that true cultural differences within the US survive only as private practices shared with family members rather than public practices shared with fellow residents and citizens. The concept of federalism, at least as it once pertained to securing specific regional practices and differences, has become an administrative abstraction rather than a political adaptation to differences in social and cultural practices among a diverse citizenry.
The economic and cultural homogenization of America has resulted in an ethnic cleansing of sorts. If Americans maintain their ethnic identities as celebrated differences, they are more likely to be excluded from the economic promise that once was the hallmark of “The American Dream.” A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage are the bribes “free market” capitalism offers to every individual wondering how they will manage to survive in a post-agricultural world. But, bribes work on a tit- for-tat, quid pro quo method of exchange that demands far more of the parties involved than an even exchange of labor for goods. In order to maximize profits “free market” manufacturers must streamline product lines in order to cut labor and material costs, which entails potential customer education in the benefits of the “one true way.” Simple, physical survival in an industrialized (and a so-called post-industrial) world requires a streamlining of social and cultural practices to accommodate the pressures of surviving within a society in which the tools for survival are increasingly placed in fewer and fewer hands. The wealthy become wealthier and the poor become poorer while the middle class, wherever it may exist, becomes smaller and less distinguishable from upper class capitalists in all ways but in the amount of ready cash to be found in their bank accounts or bed springs.
As the fictions of “globalization” and “free market enterprise” serve to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, governments around the world become increasingly predatory in their drive to formalize “sweetheart” relationships with large, multinational corporations, a pattern first observed in the US during the corporate expansions of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. State, county and city governments in the US during those years fell all over themselves to offer large corporations property tax breaks, to enact union breaking legislation, and to establish education programs designed to serve the labor needs of the moment rather than the discretionary intellectual habits a citizen of a democracy needs for an effective, empowered and abundant life. Corporate interests and government interests became more and more intertwined until a kind of “common law” marriage between government and business became the norm in America. The perpetuation of that marriage at all costs has become the paramount objective of nearly ALL US political party ideologues.
The overriding objective of political party ideologues is always first and foremost the preservation and enhancement of an existing structure of power, which invariably leads to predatory government practices. Invariably, citizens not promoting or working to preserve the existing power structure will find themselves penalized or punished for opposing the structure, often without even realizing they are opposing anything. Country after country the world over enact laws designed to force large segments of a nation’s population into altering generations of cultural patterns that the political and social elite see as antagonistic to a carefully engineered one way flow of wealth. The US is not an exception. Large ethnic, but politically minor, populations around the world are being coerced into serving the interests of predatory governmental structures that have camouflaged themselves as “democratic” by operating as democracies. The disparate realities inherent in the grammatical function of a noun and an adjective have never been more apparent. Thousands of intellectuals around the world are beginning to understand that citizens voting for political candidates who share similar social and economic backgrounds may qualify a government using a voting process as a democracy but the lack of socioeconomic diversity in the candidates standing for office sabotages the standing of the resulting government as democratic. At the moment, theocratic democracies are the most obvious practitioners of predatory democracy, but “free market” capitalist ideologues presently have a political death grip on nearly every Western democracy, including the US. A truly democratic democracy functions to better the life situation of ALL citizens and residents living within its jurisdiction, without exception.
Can we truly say that a truly democratic society is the objective of our present government? Can we say that a truly democratic society has ever been the objective of any government anywhere in the world?
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Cordovan Shoes
I have toyed with the idea for a number of years of writing an apologia, an explanation as to why I have chosen not to vote since 1984. To set the record straight from the beginning: I am not apathetic. In fact, I follow national, international and local politics fairly closely. I must admit, however, that the task of keeping tabs on the political scene in the US has become increasingly difficult in the last few years as public media becomes increasingly corporatized. Our fourth estate watchdogs have become ideological partners with US ideologues who, in my opinion, are responsible for the malaise of US politics. Consequently, the political issues tracked in commercial media are those of concern to corporate America. With the exception of local tragedies that reinforce the growing culture of fear, substantial reporting of issues affecting US citizens is generally superficial or ignored. The reporting of overseas news is generally restrained to events and issues that reflect current US foreign policy. Those citizens who propose solutions to local or international problems that ignore or are intellectually or morally antagonistic to the capitalistic objectives of contemporary political elites have an increasingly smaller forum and likelihood of being heard and responded to.
Consequently, candidates for political offices with national status or exposure are consistently cut from the same cultural cloth. The social conventions of corporate society are extremely conformist, and to be successful in a corporate environment an individual must conform in even the smallest, seemingly inconsequential ways. Who can imagine a presidential candidate campaigning daily without wearing a tie? A Spongebob Squarepants tie, perhaps? Or, high top sneakers and a sport coat? Such apparel may be acceptable in extremely private moments in the corporate world but never when someone other than immediate family may be encountered, unless, of course, for a photo opportunity designed to demonstrate what a “regular Joe” our corporate candidate is in “informal” situations. They dress the same. They cut their hair using the same military template. Their social backgrounds are so similar as to be of little relevance to developing an understanding of their political positioning.
The lock on national and international politics held by former employees and business associates of corporate capitalism should be alarmingly distressing to every free thinking individual in the world. Such people are not people who can provide truly visionary solutions to never before encountered problems. For them, thinking outside of the box is something anyone who is not homeless can do. All such individuals can provide is a canned response presented in a clever way. Why would we expect these people to perform in ways that are advantageous to all?
I really hoped for change in the 2008 election. Unfortunately, I hear little of substance coming from either presidential candidate that entices me to rethink my principled abstention. Over the next few months I’ll offer some general thoughts on the political situation in the US and, perhaps, some commentary on specific issues and incidents that seem to invite discussion of positive political value.
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