In a world and time such as ours it is not unusual to be outraged by human conduct, but sometimes the outrageous event provides insight into just how bad things are and why they are that way. The so-called budget deal reached by California's governor and its legislature is one of these. 500,000 children will no longer have health insurance and thousands of infirm elderly people will no longer have home care. Meanwhile a proposed severance tax on oil to redress some of the budget shortfall was eliminated and the oil companies were allowed to resume offshore drilling after 40 years of protecting our environment against this practice. In the midst of the legislative struggle caused by a Republican minority the wealthy Republican governor provided the perfect paradigm for what has gone wrong with this society when he said that he would wait out the legislative battle by basking in his jacuzzi while smoking a favorite cigar. This is the modern equivalent of Nero playing his fiddle while Rome burned.
The need to control wealth for societal benefit is a world-wide priority on a par with the need to reduce human population. Contemplate this. Let the enormity of the implications settle in: The 1996 U.N. Human Development Report report gave the mind-boggling statistic that the net worth of the 358 richest persons in the world was equal to the combined income of the poorest 45 percent of the world's population, that is, of 2.3 billion people. The aberrant distribution of wealth in the United States has resulted in an unresponsive government, a munitions-for-profit industry second to none and war without even a credible pretext. This kind of maldistribution of wealth is an ancient problem for humanity, but technology and a vastly overpopulated planet have made its elimination critical to human survival.
One of the greatest bastions of wealth is private property. The old myths of private property will have to be mitigated if not abandoned. Notably, private property, while taken note of in the Constitution, was never mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. This would imply that private property is not essential to freedom, which is the burden of the Declaration of Independence. This planet is our species' only home. Nobody can own it. “It” will be here after we are long gone. Ownership is after all a social convention expressed in law. Some societies, including those of Indigenous Americans, did not have this notion. As a human convention it can be changed. Perhaps we will have to develop some system of “right to use” to replace ownership. This was a hot topic for philosophers of the 18th century when the United States was founded. I think this was so, in part, because Europeans were still finding their way out of centuries of feudalism. Initially transcontinental trade followed by the manufacturing of the Industrial Revolution created great wealth for non- aristocrats.. Private property was thus viewed as a hedge against the land-based dominance of the aristocracy and the crown. In brief, private property was a defacto banner of individual freedom. Is property a right as John Locke contended or is it a human convention as David Hume argued? Because property now has global significance and has become so powerful an influence on human well being it is, in my judgment, high time we began a reconsideration of the full implications of property ownership. Simply consider that Coca Cola can deprive Indian farmers of the aquifer they have used for centuries. Shell Oil can pollute African jungles with impunity. And Goldman-Sachs and the other money-manipulating corporations of Wall Street can cause a global economic collapse.
We can begin the kind of reform that is needed by defining property as a right of use conferred by society for purposes it deems useful. This, in effect, is what the corporation was intended to do. Incorporation is a grant by society to engage in a specified kind of business for specified purposes and, initially, for a specified period of time.
Enhancing this concept of the corporation so as to insure that the public good said to result from the approved incorporation is clearly defined would be a large step in the needed direction. Society should reserve the right to retract incorporation when the public good ceases to be served. This should be accompanied by the removal of corporate personhood illegitimately obtained by corporations in the 19th century. After all, if they are persons the repeal of their incorporation would be a form of homicide.
Bob Newhard
Postscript: As I was finishing this column David Sirota posted on Alternet an article on how the richest 1% of Americans are trying to subvert universal health care. It can be found at http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/141520/how_the_ultra-rich_are_trying_to_kill_health_reform/ health care
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Sunday, July 12, 2009
The Perils of Boredom
I have often wondered what has allowed our affluent country, under no undue stress, to become so fundamentally polarized? There was no major depression, no unpopular war. Even the Cold War had settled down to an agreed-upon detente. I don't think it is sufficient to say Ronald Reagan or Newt Gingrich or Grover Norquist did it. I suggest people such as these were merely catalysts, who for their own purposes tapped into a pervasive social phenomenon: boredom.
When a society becomes sufficiently affluent the necessities that drive human beings are diminished. The greater the affluence and the wider its distribution the more profound is this loss of necessity, which people like Bill Bennett have glossed and misused as the loss of a “moral compass.” This cultural loss of focus is a byproduct of affluence and results in a heavy emphasis on amusement as an antidote to the boredom that ensues. It also makes a society more vulnerable to political manipulation.
Notice that Ronald Reagan's main message was not greater affluence. It was not even overcoming the Russians, although this was prominent. It was that Americans should “walk tall.” That they should move in the world independent of other nations and cultures. That they personally should be self-sufficient and forgo the securities of government support. Shortly before Reagan was elected, President Carter drew attention to America's cultural boredom in his “malaise” speech of 1979, which subsequently played a significant role in his defeat in the election. Americans did not want to hear the truth: they wanted to feel good about themselves. Reagan and/or his advisers were aware of the same phenomenon and used it to gain office and turn the country over to corporate rapine and religious bigotry. What Reagan did was persuade Americans that they were still the self-dependent pioneers that their forebears presumably had been. People did not ask how the criteria of the frontier might play out in a nation of hundreds of millions and a world facing nuclear weaponry. This was the reinstilled purpose, benighted though it was, for American political life. Americans, so devoid of historical awareness, did not see that we had been through what Reagan proposed before. The age of the Robber Barons had amply demonstrated what an economy dominated by the frontier dog-eat-dog encounters between economic goliaths who had no regard for the common good was like and what its consequences were, e.g. repeated recessions and depressions.
Robert Nisbet in his book Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary
observes that “The range of cures or terminations of boredom is a wide one: migration, desertion, war, revolution, murder, calculated cruelty to others, suicide, pornography, alcohol, narcotics. Tiberius relishing those he tortured, or Sherlock Holmes taking to the needle, the pains and results of boredom are everywhere to be seen, and nowhere more epidemically than in Western society at the present time.”
Obviously the political process was one of moving the country from a common interest politics to a self interest politics. Once the pressure of the Great Depression was off and the prosperity following World War II had taken effect, people thought they no longer needed government except for military purposes. A public hubris set in, massively encouraged by the corporate financial sector eager to weaken the people's control of them. We are now living with the consequences.
The social hazards of affluence are many. Among the most subtle, yet dangerous, is the tendency to boredom. Barbara Tuchman, I believe in her book The Guns of August, notes that the Great Powers of Europe were armed to the teeth and had detailed plans for invading each other prior to World War I and that this was commonly known. She describes one episode in which German. French and English college students are congenially noting that they would probably be fighting each other soon. Such is the absolute idiocy of boredom. In a world bent on massive introduction of technology, with the resultant removal of necessity, this poses an ominous portent for future generations. What the antidote might be I am not sure. We know that social purpose can address boredom, whether for good or ill. However, purpose as a motivator is very risky in its reliance upon the emotions and difficult to maintain for the same reason. Perhaps we will wind up breeding boredom-resistant humans as Aldous Huxley suggests in Brave New World.
Bob Newhard
When a society becomes sufficiently affluent the necessities that drive human beings are diminished. The greater the affluence and the wider its distribution the more profound is this loss of necessity, which people like Bill Bennett have glossed and misused as the loss of a “moral compass.” This cultural loss of focus is a byproduct of affluence and results in a heavy emphasis on amusement as an antidote to the boredom that ensues. It also makes a society more vulnerable to political manipulation.
Notice that Ronald Reagan's main message was not greater affluence. It was not even overcoming the Russians, although this was prominent. It was that Americans should “walk tall.” That they should move in the world independent of other nations and cultures. That they personally should be self-sufficient and forgo the securities of government support. Shortly before Reagan was elected, President Carter drew attention to America's cultural boredom in his “malaise” speech of 1979, which subsequently played a significant role in his defeat in the election. Americans did not want to hear the truth: they wanted to feel good about themselves. Reagan and/or his advisers were aware of the same phenomenon and used it to gain office and turn the country over to corporate rapine and religious bigotry. What Reagan did was persuade Americans that they were still the self-dependent pioneers that their forebears presumably had been. People did not ask how the criteria of the frontier might play out in a nation of hundreds of millions and a world facing nuclear weaponry. This was the reinstilled purpose, benighted though it was, for American political life. Americans, so devoid of historical awareness, did not see that we had been through what Reagan proposed before. The age of the Robber Barons had amply demonstrated what an economy dominated by the frontier dog-eat-dog encounters between economic goliaths who had no regard for the common good was like and what its consequences were, e.g. repeated recessions and depressions.
Robert Nisbet in his book Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary
observes that “The range of cures or terminations of boredom is a wide one: migration, desertion, war, revolution, murder, calculated cruelty to others, suicide, pornography, alcohol, narcotics. Tiberius relishing those he tortured, or Sherlock Holmes taking to the needle, the pains and results of boredom are everywhere to be seen, and nowhere more epidemically than in Western society at the present time.”
Obviously the political process was one of moving the country from a common interest politics to a self interest politics. Once the pressure of the Great Depression was off and the prosperity following World War II had taken effect, people thought they no longer needed government except for military purposes. A public hubris set in, massively encouraged by the corporate financial sector eager to weaken the people's control of them. We are now living with the consequences.
The social hazards of affluence are many. Among the most subtle, yet dangerous, is the tendency to boredom. Barbara Tuchman, I believe in her book The Guns of August, notes that the Great Powers of Europe were armed to the teeth and had detailed plans for invading each other prior to World War I and that this was commonly known. She describes one episode in which German. French and English college students are congenially noting that they would probably be fighting each other soon. Such is the absolute idiocy of boredom. In a world bent on massive introduction of technology, with the resultant removal of necessity, this poses an ominous portent for future generations. What the antidote might be I am not sure. We know that social purpose can address boredom, whether for good or ill. However, purpose as a motivator is very risky in its reliance upon the emotions and difficult to maintain for the same reason. Perhaps we will wind up breeding boredom-resistant humans as Aldous Huxley suggests in Brave New World.
Bob Newhard
Friday, June 26, 2009
On a Proper Frame of Reference
At our recent Citizens for Democracy meeting we had a discussion of plans for medical care in the United States. As the discussion progressed I was struck by the extent to which other issues became important in the discussion, especially cost.
Human beings, I believe, have a proclivity for thinking about the immediate and working their way to tangential issues as necessity seems to demand. This style of thinking, which I shall call “inside out” may be found less appropriate as the magnitude of human concerns becomes global. In what follows I want to explore a bit what happens when we think “outside in” global concerns first.
Suppose we approach the issue of health care from a global perspective. First there is the issue of health itself. Health means different things on a global, as distinct from a a national, point of view. The health of Americans, for example, may depend far more on global pandemics spawned in the massive slums of Africa, Asia and Latin America, than it does on single payer versus multiple payer health care schemes. Mike Davis discusses the dire consequences of a bird flu pandemic in his book The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu which describes the potential, if not immanent, destructiveness of such a pandemic. This global perspective strongly suggests that we get clear about the social value of health care before we start talking about the cost of health care. This shift in priorities allows us to begin addressing the issue in terms of health rather than cost. It suggests that we in the United States need to address the social consequences of NOT having universal health care. This, in turn requires that we have a primary focus on the prevention of illness. One of the anomalies of U. S. health care is that the United States, despite its expenditure on medical services, ranks 50th out of 224 nations in life expectancy according to 2009 estimates from the CIA World Factbook.
From the point of view of the human species public sanitation, for example, has been responsible for saving more lives and extending the useful life span of more individuals than the introduction of life-extending devices, e.g. pace makers and stents, into the bodies of the elderly. A 2002 study of Medicare expenses for those 65 and older found costs averaged $37,581 during the last year of life versus $7,365 for non terminal years. If prevention were the primary target of health care large proportions of the population, including the poor, would be the focus of the heath care debate now going on, not who pays for what.
From a species point of view health is closely related to survival. This suggests that a major focus of health concern and investment should be on improving the health environment of the earth's multi-million resident slums. The world's largest slum is the 2.2 million Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya. As the world's population continues to grow, these will be the breeding grounds of major health calamities.
The potential (inevitability?) of these slums to breed global catastrophe raises a second fundamental health issue: overpopulation. We know that the more interaction between animals, the more likely it is that the pathogens that infect them will be transmitted. This fact is compounded by the ability of these pathogens to mutate often and unpredictably. The closer that humans live to each other, e.g, the slums or the more often they come in contact, e.g. the global movement of people, the more likely a global pandemic will be created. Population growth has to be seen as a primary health issue and addressed as such. The health of the human species has to be a primary focus for reducing human population. I say this because our species has demonstrated a remarkable ability to abstract, symbolize, understand and apply our experience. There is a deeper meaning to René Descartes' “I think therefore I am.” To my mind it can be understood as I think therefor I am human.
While the above comments are by no means exhaustive, they do point, in my judgment, to something like the health care debate we should be having. We have not even established the value of health care. We have let the market do that, which is heavily biased toward those who have the money, not toward meeting health needs. We need to break out of this small box of health versus cost to health for human survival and optimization. We need to confront those institutions, whether religious or nationalist, that advocate population growth, as threatening human health. In brief, we need to keep our eyes on the fundamental meaning of health for our species, consider more specific issues in these human terms and, finally, not confuse the immediate with the real. Mankind must learn that it is its own worst enemy and its only salvation.
Bob Newhard
Human beings, I believe, have a proclivity for thinking about the immediate and working their way to tangential issues as necessity seems to demand. This style of thinking, which I shall call “inside out” may be found less appropriate as the magnitude of human concerns becomes global. In what follows I want to explore a bit what happens when we think “outside in” global concerns first.
Suppose we approach the issue of health care from a global perspective. First there is the issue of health itself. Health means different things on a global, as distinct from a a national, point of view. The health of Americans, for example, may depend far more on global pandemics spawned in the massive slums of Africa, Asia and Latin America, than it does on single payer versus multiple payer health care schemes. Mike Davis discusses the dire consequences of a bird flu pandemic in his book The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu which describes the potential, if not immanent, destructiveness of such a pandemic. This global perspective strongly suggests that we get clear about the social value of health care before we start talking about the cost of health care. This shift in priorities allows us to begin addressing the issue in terms of health rather than cost. It suggests that we in the United States need to address the social consequences of NOT having universal health care. This, in turn requires that we have a primary focus on the prevention of illness. One of the anomalies of U. S. health care is that the United States, despite its expenditure on medical services, ranks 50th out of 224 nations in life expectancy according to 2009 estimates from the CIA World Factbook.
From the point of view of the human species public sanitation, for example, has been responsible for saving more lives and extending the useful life span of more individuals than the introduction of life-extending devices, e.g. pace makers and stents, into the bodies of the elderly. A 2002 study of Medicare expenses for those 65 and older found costs averaged $37,581 during the last year of life versus $7,365 for non terminal years. If prevention were the primary target of health care large proportions of the population, including the poor, would be the focus of the heath care debate now going on, not who pays for what.
From a species point of view health is closely related to survival. This suggests that a major focus of health concern and investment should be on improving the health environment of the earth's multi-million resident slums. The world's largest slum is the 2.2 million Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya. As the world's population continues to grow, these will be the breeding grounds of major health calamities.
The potential (inevitability?) of these slums to breed global catastrophe raises a second fundamental health issue: overpopulation. We know that the more interaction between animals, the more likely it is that the pathogens that infect them will be transmitted. This fact is compounded by the ability of these pathogens to mutate often and unpredictably. The closer that humans live to each other, e.g, the slums or the more often they come in contact, e.g. the global movement of people, the more likely a global pandemic will be created. Population growth has to be seen as a primary health issue and addressed as such. The health of the human species has to be a primary focus for reducing human population. I say this because our species has demonstrated a remarkable ability to abstract, symbolize, understand and apply our experience. There is a deeper meaning to René Descartes' “I think therefore I am.” To my mind it can be understood as I think therefor I am human.
While the above comments are by no means exhaustive, they do point, in my judgment, to something like the health care debate we should be having. We have not even established the value of health care. We have let the market do that, which is heavily biased toward those who have the money, not toward meeting health needs. We need to break out of this small box of health versus cost to health for human survival and optimization. We need to confront those institutions, whether religious or nationalist, that advocate population growth, as threatening human health. In brief, we need to keep our eyes on the fundamental meaning of health for our species, consider more specific issues in these human terms and, finally, not confuse the immediate with the real. Mankind must learn that it is its own worst enemy and its only salvation.
Bob Newhard
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Brave New World a la Corporate Capitalism and Corporate Deception
Aldous Huxley delivered his view of our future technologized world in his book Brave New World. In its May 25, 2009 issue Time Magazine delivers a Special Report detailing its view of the emerging world of work. I quote from its cover: “You can kiss your benefits goodbye too. And your new boss won't look much like your old one. There is no longer a ladder and you may never get to retire, but there is a world of opportunity if you can figure out a new path. Ten lessons for succeeding in the new American workplace.” This is a world of me-first, aggressive entrepreneurs in which everyone is responsible for themselves. Time tells the inhabitants of this inevitable and immediate future that they can forget the benefits that accompany employment such as social security, health, etc. As entrepreneurs they will buy their own “benefits.” The report is replete with statements from experts, reports from government agencies and statistics. There is no external goal to all this “creative” activity. It is Adam Smith's invisible hand writ large. Whatever the market, that monstrous creation of money, wants it will get. If people's needs cannot find a suitable place in the market, usually the needs of the poor, they will not be met.
Interestingly, the report envisions many opportunities for entrepreneurs to create franchising corporations, thereby betraying the implicit conflict between small business and small-business-destroying corporations. As has often been observed, the mark of insanity is to repeat the same thing over and over and expect to get a different result.
By way of buttressing its argument, it says that the cost of startup companies is decreasing constantly, making this form of economic effort affordable to more people. It does not mention that startups fail at a rate as high as 90% after two years. While there are many critics of this figure, mostly from business sources, a constant failure rate of even 50% would create a very unstable economy. We Americans do not appreciate the value that long-term stable companies and especially, governmental entities,contribute to the stability of our society.
Underneath all of this however is the insidious societal fragmentation that modern capitalism has introduced into our society. This is a dog-eat-dog world of survival competition between individuals, which no society can long tolerate and remain a democracy. As always it will produce top dogs who will dominate the society. This kind of raw capitalism is inimical to democracy.
There is an effort to take the edge off this economic horizon by noting that, to a significant extent, the leaders of these enterprises are likely to be women because their softer feminine style of leadership is more productive in this economy of team effort – understanding the team may consist of members scattered around the world. While women are certainly capable of management, if their's is a softer form of leadership somebody should tell Meg Whitman ex CEO of Ebay and now a Republican candidate for California governor. Meg would cut 30,000 state jobs. For this billionaire woman this is obviously preferable to going after the excessively wealthy at a time when the gap between the rich and the poor is greater than it has been in the last hundred years. So much for the softer feminine management style. It is also rumored that Carly Fiorina, ex CEO of Hewlett-Packard will seek to replace Barbara Boxer.
Why, one may ask, is a mainstream national publication publishing such an article in view of the obvious current failure of just this kind of economics? This is Milton Friedman's capitalism with a vengeance dolled up as our inevitable future. I suspect this is part of the corporate media's attempt to divert public attention from the non-market solutions to the debacle that unregulated capitalism has wrought. It is an attempt to dazzle the public, especially the young, with the manifold opportunities for wealth through entrepreneurship. What is neglected, as it so often is, is the impact on the social fabric of our society. If we let the marketplace and the wealthy who dominate it prescribe the economic system of the future we thereby let them prescribe the social welfare of the people. We have had more than enough of this gross deception. It is high time we made a major issue of the danger unfettered capitalism poses to democracy and the welfare of its people.
This then is the consummate duplicity of the corporate media: to sell the populace on a future of an entrepreneur-dominated economy, which of course would leave no room for multinational multi-product corporations. They feel safe in doing this because they have the resources to buy up any untoward competition that might develop. The bottom line is that progressives must vigorously challenge this future. First, we need to clearly and energetically demonstrate how the market is being used to structure our society. Second, it is necessary to show people why the market is a lousy paradigm for organizing a humane society. Its goals are not to create a better, more just society, but to maximize profit, which alone creates its values. Third, we need to clearly articulate an alternative to the “free market.” This latter can be done by articulating a mixed economy of regulated capitalism for social benefit. Economies such as those of the Scandinavian countries are examples. However, some believe leaving even a remnant of capitalism in place would allow it cancer-like to gain control again as wealth becomes increasingly aggregated by the few. An economy of, for and by the people needs to keep capitalism at the periphery of society. The early citizens of this country were very distrustful of corporations. Some of the colonies were themselves corporations controlled by investors in England. Hence they strictly controlled corporations, which were authorized mainly for building infrastructure, e.g roads and canals. These corporations were sunsetted at the termination of the project. Are we still wise enough to make corporations subordinate to the accomplishment of social goals?
Bob Newhard
Interestingly, the report envisions many opportunities for entrepreneurs to create franchising corporations, thereby betraying the implicit conflict between small business and small-business-destroying corporations. As has often been observed, the mark of insanity is to repeat the same thing over and over and expect to get a different result.
By way of buttressing its argument, it says that the cost of startup companies is decreasing constantly, making this form of economic effort affordable to more people. It does not mention that startups fail at a rate as high as 90% after two years. While there are many critics of this figure, mostly from business sources, a constant failure rate of even 50% would create a very unstable economy. We Americans do not appreciate the value that long-term stable companies and especially, governmental entities,contribute to the stability of our society.
Underneath all of this however is the insidious societal fragmentation that modern capitalism has introduced into our society. This is a dog-eat-dog world of survival competition between individuals, which no society can long tolerate and remain a democracy. As always it will produce top dogs who will dominate the society. This kind of raw capitalism is inimical to democracy.
There is an effort to take the edge off this economic horizon by noting that, to a significant extent, the leaders of these enterprises are likely to be women because their softer feminine style of leadership is more productive in this economy of team effort – understanding the team may consist of members scattered around the world. While women are certainly capable of management, if their's is a softer form of leadership somebody should tell Meg Whitman ex CEO of Ebay and now a Republican candidate for California governor. Meg would cut 30,000 state jobs. For this billionaire woman this is obviously preferable to going after the excessively wealthy at a time when the gap between the rich and the poor is greater than it has been in the last hundred years. So much for the softer feminine management style. It is also rumored that Carly Fiorina, ex CEO of Hewlett-Packard will seek to replace Barbara Boxer.
Why, one may ask, is a mainstream national publication publishing such an article in view of the obvious current failure of just this kind of economics? This is Milton Friedman's capitalism with a vengeance dolled up as our inevitable future. I suspect this is part of the corporate media's attempt to divert public attention from the non-market solutions to the debacle that unregulated capitalism has wrought. It is an attempt to dazzle the public, especially the young, with the manifold opportunities for wealth through entrepreneurship. What is neglected, as it so often is, is the impact on the social fabric of our society. If we let the marketplace and the wealthy who dominate it prescribe the economic system of the future we thereby let them prescribe the social welfare of the people. We have had more than enough of this gross deception. It is high time we made a major issue of the danger unfettered capitalism poses to democracy and the welfare of its people.
This then is the consummate duplicity of the corporate media: to sell the populace on a future of an entrepreneur-dominated economy, which of course would leave no room for multinational multi-product corporations. They feel safe in doing this because they have the resources to buy up any untoward competition that might develop. The bottom line is that progressives must vigorously challenge this future. First, we need to clearly and energetically demonstrate how the market is being used to structure our society. Second, it is necessary to show people why the market is a lousy paradigm for organizing a humane society. Its goals are not to create a better, more just society, but to maximize profit, which alone creates its values. Third, we need to clearly articulate an alternative to the “free market.” This latter can be done by articulating a mixed economy of regulated capitalism for social benefit. Economies such as those of the Scandinavian countries are examples. However, some believe leaving even a remnant of capitalism in place would allow it cancer-like to gain control again as wealth becomes increasingly aggregated by the few. An economy of, for and by the people needs to keep capitalism at the periphery of society. The early citizens of this country were very distrustful of corporations. Some of the colonies were themselves corporations controlled by investors in England. Hence they strictly controlled corporations, which were authorized mainly for building infrastructure, e.g roads and canals. These corporations were sunsetted at the termination of the project. Are we still wise enough to make corporations subordinate to the accomplishment of social goals?
Bob Newhard
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Leadership in an Age of Accommodation or When Humans Think More About Each Other Than They Do About the Real World
Politics, unlike science, has an inherent and intense focus on other human beings. It consists primarily of persuading other human beings by whatever means to act as the persuader wishes. This means, among other things, that politicians and much of the public believe that problems and their solutions are resolvable by persuading other people to one's own view.
There is, however, a third element in the problems and opportunities human beings face--the real world. Humans and their societies exist in a natural world that sets its own conditions for human welfare and survival. Yet this third element is often taken for granted and rises to the political surface only as a last and often too late resort.
A leitmotif of the Obama administration has been bridging the gap between the left and right in this polarized society. The method has been to accommodate the demands of both sides, although there has been, in my opinion, far more “reaching out” to the right than to the left. This effort at accommodation has thus been intensely focused on the human beings that comprise both sides. As a result the real world external to human concerns with other humans continues to take a back seat, although lip service to the inexorable demands of the real world continues to be heard. This process of trying to get both sides, each focused on its own beliefs and values, to in some sense become one can, given the fantasy and deviousness that inhabit the human mind, go on forever.
As an alternative, I suggest that the Obama administration needs to shift its focus to the real world which conditions human existence. In so doing it must enlarge its scope and begin developing policy from a global, species-survival, point of view rather than the narrowness of the “national interest.”
To do so it must aim for a knowledge-based society, which is the only basis we have for keeping the real world in focus. We have the disingenuous, knowledge-subverting corporate media and the faith-based (ignorance-based) powers to contend with. If this goal is pursued the government would actively promote knowledge. Obama has at his disposal the wherewithal to launch a massive campaign to get people to understand knowledge, the fascination it can hold for humans, the degree of reliability it provides compared to any other method for dealing with our fate as humans. People would understand that knowledge, while it it tentative as distinct from certain, offers the highest degree of reliability. It will no longer be enough to base global warming decisions on a lack of certainty as distinct from overwhelming probability as G. W. Bush and self interested corporations have.
As people learn to rely on knowledge they will see why it is necessary to apply this approach to human beings themselves. The American people were gulled into a war of aggression basically because they did not know how to assess the outrageous corporate interests at work in promoting that response. Had they effectively known that corporations have repeatedly used the American military for their own purposes (read marine general Smedly Butler's early 20th century account) they would have known where to look.
If the Obama administration were to begin using the resources of the federal government to massively promote knowledge as a primary value, by making the extent of human knowledge effectively known to people, if every challenge to knowledge, e.g. creationism, was challenged for its lack of evidence by the government, were people taught what constitutes evidence, how to evaluate claims of fact and the necessity to do so and supported in that effort,we might begin to develop a knowledge-based culture.
Such an undertaking would require the consummate statesmanship that Obama has the oratorical gifts to enunciate and motivate. One wonders however,whether he has the conceptual gifts to grasp the fundamental requirements of our time. Mankind's technological capability will overwhelm it unless humans understand the context in which it is to be employed. Notably, people who know what to do in an emergency do not pray or indulge other myths, they act on what they know. In global warming, global resource depletion, and overpopulation, humans face the greatest emergency they have ever faced. This, at root is why knowledge must be given priority, as Socrates observed so many millenniums ago.
Bob Newhard
There is, however, a third element in the problems and opportunities human beings face--the real world. Humans and their societies exist in a natural world that sets its own conditions for human welfare and survival. Yet this third element is often taken for granted and rises to the political surface only as a last and often too late resort.
A leitmotif of the Obama administration has been bridging the gap between the left and right in this polarized society. The method has been to accommodate the demands of both sides, although there has been, in my opinion, far more “reaching out” to the right than to the left. This effort at accommodation has thus been intensely focused on the human beings that comprise both sides. As a result the real world external to human concerns with other humans continues to take a back seat, although lip service to the inexorable demands of the real world continues to be heard. This process of trying to get both sides, each focused on its own beliefs and values, to in some sense become one can, given the fantasy and deviousness that inhabit the human mind, go on forever.
As an alternative, I suggest that the Obama administration needs to shift its focus to the real world which conditions human existence. In so doing it must enlarge its scope and begin developing policy from a global, species-survival, point of view rather than the narrowness of the “national interest.”
To do so it must aim for a knowledge-based society, which is the only basis we have for keeping the real world in focus. We have the disingenuous, knowledge-subverting corporate media and the faith-based (ignorance-based) powers to contend with. If this goal is pursued the government would actively promote knowledge. Obama has at his disposal the wherewithal to launch a massive campaign to get people to understand knowledge, the fascination it can hold for humans, the degree of reliability it provides compared to any other method for dealing with our fate as humans. People would understand that knowledge, while it it tentative as distinct from certain, offers the highest degree of reliability. It will no longer be enough to base global warming decisions on a lack of certainty as distinct from overwhelming probability as G. W. Bush and self interested corporations have.
As people learn to rely on knowledge they will see why it is necessary to apply this approach to human beings themselves. The American people were gulled into a war of aggression basically because they did not know how to assess the outrageous corporate interests at work in promoting that response. Had they effectively known that corporations have repeatedly used the American military for their own purposes (read marine general Smedly Butler's early 20th century account) they would have known where to look.
If the Obama administration were to begin using the resources of the federal government to massively promote knowledge as a primary value, by making the extent of human knowledge effectively known to people, if every challenge to knowledge, e.g. creationism, was challenged for its lack of evidence by the government, were people taught what constitutes evidence, how to evaluate claims of fact and the necessity to do so and supported in that effort,we might begin to develop a knowledge-based culture.
Such an undertaking would require the consummate statesmanship that Obama has the oratorical gifts to enunciate and motivate. One wonders however,whether he has the conceptual gifts to grasp the fundamental requirements of our time. Mankind's technological capability will overwhelm it unless humans understand the context in which it is to be employed. Notably, people who know what to do in an emergency do not pray or indulge other myths, they act on what they know. In global warming, global resource depletion, and overpopulation, humans face the greatest emergency they have ever faced. This, at root is why knowledge must be given priority, as Socrates observed so many millenniums ago.
Bob Newhard
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Technology and the Puritan Ethic
One of the more fruitful ways to think about humans and their societies is in terms of what Karl Marx called "contradictions" and their consequences. While not formal logical contradictions, they referred to practices, tendencies or beliefs that were incompatible with each other. One of these, in my judgment, is the "contradiction" between technology and the puritan ethic, both of which hold sway in America.
The puritan ethic, sometimes called the protestant ethic, called for hard work to achieve monetary success as a sign of God's approval and, per Calvinism, election to salvation. This association of protestantism and capitalism created the work ethic that has so dominated our society. How this association developed is detailed in R. H. Tawney's Religion and the Rise of Capitalism and in Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The fact that these books are both early 20th century publications indicates how long this association has been understood.
Technology is also a deeply rooted value in our society. It is a source of American pride and of a profound faith that it can save us from any unfortuitous events of the future.
However, technology produces to make life easier, so we don't have to work as hard. This obviously "contradicts" the puritan ethic of hard work. The interesting thing is what effect this contradiction has had on us.
The progressives of the 19th century saw technology as the root of progress because, among other things, it continued to reduce the labor of industry and daily life. Few asked themselves the question "what then?" Let us look at some of the consequences of this contradiction. What happens when technology requires less and less effort in a society devoted to the work ethic?
• Leisure: Progressives of the 19th century looked forward to the improvement of mankind as it was freed to develop its higher potential. Indeed, the Chautauqua series of lectures and cultural events that sprang up around the country evidenced that this was happening. However, as technology itself began to redefine leisure, this effort at self improvement gave way to motion pictures, then television, then the computer as an entertainment device. The profound impact of this transformation is captured in Neil Postman's book Amusing Ourselves to Death. We have substituted passive visceral and emotional titillation for the thought and learning of the Chautauqua.
• Work: While the drudgery of work has been greatly alleviated, its intensity has increased. There is a profound understanding of mankind's future to be found in what our society has done with its cultural value of work. As technology freed us from physical drudgery we began to work harder at the mind-deadening repetitiveness of factories under their maximal-profit-driven regimes in which time pressure replaced muscle exertion pressure. The continual speed-up of production lines, so pointedly illustrated in Charley Chaplin's movie Modern Times, became a dominating feature of the production world as the machine replaced human muscle. As this process of substituting the mind for muscle progressed we entered a world in which there were fewer and fewer limits to work. Unlike physical labor in which the body has obvious limits (we can only lift so much weight) there were no obvious limits to mental labor. People generally believe mental labor is much less demanding then physical labor. Also what constitutes mental labor is less determinable than what constitutes physical labor. It is rather easy for humans to distinguish between the recreational expenditure of physical energy and the work expenditure of that same energy. The difference between mental work and play is less determinable for society. The result of this amorphousness in the world of mental work, known as the knowledge industry, is that people are worked harder and harder. The idea is that you can't overwork the mind. It is one thing for labor unions to object to production line speed-up, and rightly so, it is another thing to make the same charge stick if a middle manager is overloaded with assignments and deadlines. These are some of the processes by which we have surrendered the increase in human improvement that so may saw in technology to the idiocy of making ourselves work even harder. Such is the insidiousness of the puritan work ethic.
• Abandonment and retribution: There are two sides, at least, to every ethic; the good and the bad. If in the puritan ethic, hard work and a rewarding wealth are evidences of God's approval and the achiever's salvation, then the absence of hard work and wealth is an evidence of sin and God's displeasure. This plays out in our time when we justify neglecting the needs of the unemployed by calling them "losers." We can imprison thousands of young men because their lack of jobs and our cultural proclivity to blame them for this state of affairs, which leaves them little alternative but crime if they are to have a life even remotely like those on the other side of town.
• Politics: American politics is where this dichotomy in American culture has probably found its greatest impact. Any cultural contradiction of this sort will always play a prominent role in a culture's political life. Political parties in their effort to control a society love nothing better than a fundamentally divisive element in the national culture. In the case of America the welfare of the society has been repeatedly hampered by the appeal to personal responsibility. This is derived from the Puritan ethic and is often used by the affluent to hold onto or expand their wealth at the expense of the poor. It is a not too subtle a way of saying the wealthy deserve their wealth as the (sinful) poor deserve the consequences of their implied indolence. I am reminded of those financiers of our current economic debacle, for which they are significantly responsible, decrying the demand that they give up their $1 million bonuses. As one of them said "he had worked his ass off for that bonus."
• Population: In no other area has technology had so dramatic an impact on the human species as it has had on their sheer numbers. Prior to the advent of science and its offspring technology humans had lived close to nature and nature's products. Their life span was considerably shorter than it is now. One source I read many years ago said the average life span in ancient Greece was 35 years due substantially to the high death rate in childbirth and the first few years of life. As science improved our understanding of human health and sanitary measures were introduced, e.g. Louis Pasteur's work on pasteurization, more humans survived their early years and they began to live longer. In 1850, twelve years before Pasteur invented milk and wine pasteurization, the world population was 1 billion 262 million. Today it is 6.9 billion and projected to reach 9 billion by 2050.
What are the consequences of the puritan ethic for a population of this density? Can we reasonably believe that an ethic of individual responsibility can prevent the catastrophes that the resource shortages, inflamed ethnic differences and the presence of nuclear weaponry present? So far the puritan ethic has been used to justify the rights of the wealthy to control humanity. The bottom line is that the puritan ethic has induced us to treat social problems as personal moral problems, usually of character.
• An ethic for our times: We badly need an ethic that will avoid the catastrophes the puritan ethic has and will continue to breed. This new ethic must be, I believe, an ethic of the common good. I would point out that any ethic, being at root a moral system with all the arbitrariness that implies, is not above its own form of abuse. Ayn Rand made much of this in her book Atlas Shrugged, a bible of sorts for libertarians. Obviously the majority, e.g. the common, can crush the individual. However, understanding how easily the cult of the individual has been manipulated for the benefit of the wealthy and their crushing of the poor and how irrelevant such an ethic is to the needs of billions of people, we do need an ethic that accepts the problems of the many as its focus, else our species perishes. An ethic of the common good focused, as Jefferson understood, on insuring that each individual realizes her or his potential, remains the best hope of humankind.
Bob Newhard
The puritan ethic, sometimes called the protestant ethic, called for hard work to achieve monetary success as a sign of God's approval and, per Calvinism, election to salvation. This association of protestantism and capitalism created the work ethic that has so dominated our society. How this association developed is detailed in R. H. Tawney's Religion and the Rise of Capitalism and in Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The fact that these books are both early 20th century publications indicates how long this association has been understood.
Technology is also a deeply rooted value in our society. It is a source of American pride and of a profound faith that it can save us from any unfortuitous events of the future.
However, technology produces to make life easier, so we don't have to work as hard. This obviously "contradicts" the puritan ethic of hard work. The interesting thing is what effect this contradiction has had on us.
The progressives of the 19th century saw technology as the root of progress because, among other things, it continued to reduce the labor of industry and daily life. Few asked themselves the question "what then?" Let us look at some of the consequences of this contradiction. What happens when technology requires less and less effort in a society devoted to the work ethic?
• Leisure: Progressives of the 19th century looked forward to the improvement of mankind as it was freed to develop its higher potential. Indeed, the Chautauqua series of lectures and cultural events that sprang up around the country evidenced that this was happening. However, as technology itself began to redefine leisure, this effort at self improvement gave way to motion pictures, then television, then the computer as an entertainment device. The profound impact of this transformation is captured in Neil Postman's book Amusing Ourselves to Death. We have substituted passive visceral and emotional titillation for the thought and learning of the Chautauqua.
• Work: While the drudgery of work has been greatly alleviated, its intensity has increased. There is a profound understanding of mankind's future to be found in what our society has done with its cultural value of work. As technology freed us from physical drudgery we began to work harder at the mind-deadening repetitiveness of factories under their maximal-profit-driven regimes in which time pressure replaced muscle exertion pressure. The continual speed-up of production lines, so pointedly illustrated in Charley Chaplin's movie Modern Times, became a dominating feature of the production world as the machine replaced human muscle. As this process of substituting the mind for muscle progressed we entered a world in which there were fewer and fewer limits to work. Unlike physical labor in which the body has obvious limits (we can only lift so much weight) there were no obvious limits to mental labor. People generally believe mental labor is much less demanding then physical labor. Also what constitutes mental labor is less determinable than what constitutes physical labor. It is rather easy for humans to distinguish between the recreational expenditure of physical energy and the work expenditure of that same energy. The difference between mental work and play is less determinable for society. The result of this amorphousness in the world of mental work, known as the knowledge industry, is that people are worked harder and harder. The idea is that you can't overwork the mind. It is one thing for labor unions to object to production line speed-up, and rightly so, it is another thing to make the same charge stick if a middle manager is overloaded with assignments and deadlines. These are some of the processes by which we have surrendered the increase in human improvement that so may saw in technology to the idiocy of making ourselves work even harder. Such is the insidiousness of the puritan work ethic.
• Abandonment and retribution: There are two sides, at least, to every ethic; the good and the bad. If in the puritan ethic, hard work and a rewarding wealth are evidences of God's approval and the achiever's salvation, then the absence of hard work and wealth is an evidence of sin and God's displeasure. This plays out in our time when we justify neglecting the needs of the unemployed by calling them "losers." We can imprison thousands of young men because their lack of jobs and our cultural proclivity to blame them for this state of affairs, which leaves them little alternative but crime if they are to have a life even remotely like those on the other side of town.
• Politics: American politics is where this dichotomy in American culture has probably found its greatest impact. Any cultural contradiction of this sort will always play a prominent role in a culture's political life. Political parties in their effort to control a society love nothing better than a fundamentally divisive element in the national culture. In the case of America the welfare of the society has been repeatedly hampered by the appeal to personal responsibility. This is derived from the Puritan ethic and is often used by the affluent to hold onto or expand their wealth at the expense of the poor. It is a not too subtle a way of saying the wealthy deserve their wealth as the (sinful) poor deserve the consequences of their implied indolence. I am reminded of those financiers of our current economic debacle, for which they are significantly responsible, decrying the demand that they give up their $1 million bonuses. As one of them said "he had worked his ass off for that bonus."
• Population: In no other area has technology had so dramatic an impact on the human species as it has had on their sheer numbers. Prior to the advent of science and its offspring technology humans had lived close to nature and nature's products. Their life span was considerably shorter than it is now. One source I read many years ago said the average life span in ancient Greece was 35 years due substantially to the high death rate in childbirth and the first few years of life. As science improved our understanding of human health and sanitary measures were introduced, e.g. Louis Pasteur's work on pasteurization, more humans survived their early years and they began to live longer. In 1850, twelve years before Pasteur invented milk and wine pasteurization, the world population was 1 billion 262 million. Today it is 6.9 billion and projected to reach 9 billion by 2050.
What are the consequences of the puritan ethic for a population of this density? Can we reasonably believe that an ethic of individual responsibility can prevent the catastrophes that the resource shortages, inflamed ethnic differences and the presence of nuclear weaponry present? So far the puritan ethic has been used to justify the rights of the wealthy to control humanity. The bottom line is that the puritan ethic has induced us to treat social problems as personal moral problems, usually of character.
• An ethic for our times: We badly need an ethic that will avoid the catastrophes the puritan ethic has and will continue to breed. This new ethic must be, I believe, an ethic of the common good. I would point out that any ethic, being at root a moral system with all the arbitrariness that implies, is not above its own form of abuse. Ayn Rand made much of this in her book Atlas Shrugged, a bible of sorts for libertarians. Obviously the majority, e.g. the common, can crush the individual. However, understanding how easily the cult of the individual has been manipulated for the benefit of the wealthy and their crushing of the poor and how irrelevant such an ethic is to the needs of billions of people, we do need an ethic that accepts the problems of the many as its focus, else our species perishes. An ethic of the common good focused, as Jefferson understood, on insuring that each individual realizes her or his potential, remains the best hope of humankind.
Bob Newhard
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Fear Doth Make Fools of Us All or the Courage to Be a Citizen
How is it that the citizens of the most powerful country the world had ever known are so given to fear that they permit the shredding of their Constitution, the launching of a war against innocents and the uncivilized use of torture that had no U. S. precedent? Have they lost confidence or purpose?
The New York Times (April 22, 2009) quotes a memo from Adm. Dennis C. Blair, Obama's National Intelligence Director, to his staff in which he states "high value information came from those (torture) interrogation measures." While this declaration was proved false by an actual interrogator, I asked myself at the time how this nation finds torture acceptable when in the midst of World War II with the devastating attack on Hawaii and the occasional shelling by Nazi submarines we did not find it either necessary or desirable? I have felt for some time that ordinary citizens of this democracy have lost the courage of earlier generations. When London was being bombed to smithereens, the British had 200 detainees, and Winston Churchill said, "We don’t torture." Today people in this country are prepared to destroy our Constitution out of fear. One measure of maturity is an ability to accept risk and persist in a human manner. Our citizens accept far greater risk when they drive down the street than they do from terrorists, yet they enter the danger of the "driving zone" casually every day. That we need to take precautions is clear, and that we do. That we need to shred our Constitution in response to terrorism betrays a citizen weakness fatal to democracy. Those who still approve of G. W. Bush most often argue that he kept us safe, which betrays the weakness we suffer from.
This defense of Bush administration torture has been made before. Unfortunately the argument has been couched in terms of whether valuable information was obtained rather than what are the full consequences of torture. Suppose we grant that "high value information" was obtained. Without knowing the value of that information and without bringing in all the other consequences of torture the phrase "high value" is meaningless. Was the information of such value that using the rack or singeing the victim at the stake would be warranted?
The defense of this torture has been based solely on American national interest. What if, in pursuing our national interest in this fashion, other countries felt either justified or compelled to torture also? Would a world addicted to torture be an advance for humanity? That is what the Geneva Convention is all about.
If I am correct in finding a difference in citizen courage between earlier generations and now, what could be the cause? Among the causes for this change I think the Cold War has had a lot to do with it. The baby boomers as children had to "duck and cover" and regular civil defense sirens built into them at a very young age. We lived for decades with immanent Soviet attack kept as a background for our daily lives. Many people built bomb shelters. Our movies were often based on what would the world be like after the nuclear exchange had taken place. Our leaders often talked of using the nuclear option. We had the face-off of the Cuban missile crisis. This partial litany should indicate how thoroughly fear was instilled in the American mind during these years. We have become a society of incipient panic. We need to understand what has happened to us and begin the process of readjustment before we do ourselves and the world irreparable damage. (Some interesting thoughts along this line may be found in the article Farewell to the American Century by Andrew Bacevich at http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/04/30/bacevich/print.html.)
If Americans could ever get it through their heads that they are not masters of this planet; that what we do others will also do; that we must always weigh our decisions in terms of the kind of world we are likely to generate; then perhaps we could contribute to a world that humanity, ourselves included, would find much more conducive to our happiness than it has been.
After I had finished this post I discovered an excellent article by Gary Kamiya titled America's Necessary Dark Night of the Soul. It is his view of what we must do to overcome what fear has wrought. It can be found at Salon.com at http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2009/05/01/torture_investigations/print.html.
Bob Newhard
The New York Times (April 22, 2009) quotes a memo from Adm. Dennis C. Blair, Obama's National Intelligence Director, to his staff in which he states "high value information came from those (torture) interrogation measures." While this declaration was proved false by an actual interrogator, I asked myself at the time how this nation finds torture acceptable when in the midst of World War II with the devastating attack on Hawaii and the occasional shelling by Nazi submarines we did not find it either necessary or desirable? I have felt for some time that ordinary citizens of this democracy have lost the courage of earlier generations. When London was being bombed to smithereens, the British had 200 detainees, and Winston Churchill said, "We don’t torture." Today people in this country are prepared to destroy our Constitution out of fear. One measure of maturity is an ability to accept risk and persist in a human manner. Our citizens accept far greater risk when they drive down the street than they do from terrorists, yet they enter the danger of the "driving zone" casually every day. That we need to take precautions is clear, and that we do. That we need to shred our Constitution in response to terrorism betrays a citizen weakness fatal to democracy. Those who still approve of G. W. Bush most often argue that he kept us safe, which betrays the weakness we suffer from.
This defense of Bush administration torture has been made before. Unfortunately the argument has been couched in terms of whether valuable information was obtained rather than what are the full consequences of torture. Suppose we grant that "high value information" was obtained. Without knowing the value of that information and without bringing in all the other consequences of torture the phrase "high value" is meaningless. Was the information of such value that using the rack or singeing the victim at the stake would be warranted?
The defense of this torture has been based solely on American national interest. What if, in pursuing our national interest in this fashion, other countries felt either justified or compelled to torture also? Would a world addicted to torture be an advance for humanity? That is what the Geneva Convention is all about.
If I am correct in finding a difference in citizen courage between earlier generations and now, what could be the cause? Among the causes for this change I think the Cold War has had a lot to do with it. The baby boomers as children had to "duck and cover" and regular civil defense sirens built into them at a very young age. We lived for decades with immanent Soviet attack kept as a background for our daily lives. Many people built bomb shelters. Our movies were often based on what would the world be like after the nuclear exchange had taken place. Our leaders often talked of using the nuclear option. We had the face-off of the Cuban missile crisis. This partial litany should indicate how thoroughly fear was instilled in the American mind during these years. We have become a society of incipient panic. We need to understand what has happened to us and begin the process of readjustment before we do ourselves and the world irreparable damage. (Some interesting thoughts along this line may be found in the article Farewell to the American Century by Andrew Bacevich at http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/04/30/bacevich/print.html.)
If Americans could ever get it through their heads that they are not masters of this planet; that what we do others will also do; that we must always weigh our decisions in terms of the kind of world we are likely to generate; then perhaps we could contribute to a world that humanity, ourselves included, would find much more conducive to our happiness than it has been.
After I had finished this post I discovered an excellent article by Gary Kamiya titled America's Necessary Dark Night of the Soul. It is his view of what we must do to overcome what fear has wrought. It can be found at Salon.com at http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2009/05/01/torture_investigations/print.html.
Bob Newhard
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