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.

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?

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 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

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.

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.

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.