Democracy has been defined in our founding documents and in our beliefs about society as equality on the one hand and as merit-based on the other. We have "All men are created equal" in our Declaration of Independence on the one hand and the Horatio Alger myth of the self-made man on the other. Both of these archetypes are rooted in the European rebellion against monarchy and inherited wealth and status. The conflict between these two democratic values has been glossed by asserting that equality means equality of opportunity not equal access to society's resources. Jefferson sought to bridge this gap by using education as a device for creating upward mobility based on accomplishment. This is the duality that underlay Ronald Reagan's attack on the Rooseveltian consensus - the rights of merit versus the rights conferred on humans as such. We are now living with the results of this unresolved duality.
Politically, in England the conflict between egalitarianism and meritocracy played out this way. Prior to the Thatcher government the Labour Party supported programs closely analogous to those promulgated by Franklin Roosevelt in this country. The major domestic thrust was to promote the well being of the population at large. Thatcher, like Reagan, who was in many respects her protégé, set out to destroy the world labour had built since the end of World War II. You may recall her attacks on the unionized coal miners and the privatizing of the British railway system. She did this on the premise that Britain had to free its best talent (the corporations) to energize a new economics driven by profit. Under Tony Blair the Labour Party, seeking to compete with the Tories, substituted upward mobility for equality as did Bill Clinton's substitution of workfare for welfare, which gave us the working poor - exactly the kind of labor that corporations desire. Notice the high incidence of Walmart employees who qualify for food stamps, which means the American taxpayer is subsidizing this commercial behemoth.
This issue is addressed in a recent study "In Pursuit of
Egalitarianism - And why social mobility cannot get us there" by Rebecca Hickman that raises the question whether the value of freedom is better served by a culture based on merit-driven upward mobility, or by a society based on equality. This document may be downloaded at http://www.compassonline.org.uk/publications/ . In this paper Hickman argues that freedom is better served by egalitarianism than by meritocracy. The reason is that freedom is a product of society, which meritocracy by rewarding those having "merit" more than others debilitates. Merit is, by definition, scarcer than the average. Hence a society's wealth will inevitably migrate to those having merit thereby creating a bifurcated society in which not only wealth and power, but freedom itself are agglomerated to those having merit. Hence a meritocracy cannot distribute freedom any more than it can wealth and power. This is why Republicans were so freaked out when Obama said wealth should be spread around a little. They know that wealth is power and spreading wealth around means spreading power around, which is democracy. A meritocracy thus is, in fact, an enemy of democracy. Meritocracy is a version of an old story, going back at least to Plato, in which personal values such as merit, when applied to society as a whole, result in gross unfairness and despotism. With Plato the primacy of knowledge led to the philosopher king, a dictatorship. Perhaps the most revealing statement of the American meritocracy was George W. Bush's message to a banquet of wealthy supporters. He told them "You are my base." This is about as anti-democratic as a politician can get. Yet, tellingly, I have been unable to find any such characterization of that utterance; so deep has become the American acceptance of inequality.
Egalitarianism, contrary to what conservatives would have people believe, makes every citizen a stakeholder and not only distributes wealth, power and freedom more evenly, but it greatly diminishes a society's internal friction and promotes cooperation thereby mitigating such disasters as as the governmental abandonment of Katrina victims. Egalitarianism is an old bugaboo of conservatives that is said to lead to domination by the majority and the stifling of personal merit. This is the burden of Ayn Rand's writing, the ideological roots of libertarianism. And as George Orwell observed in his allegory Animal Farm, some people are more equal than others. However, this is merely to observe that any virtue can be subverted. Obviously in a meritocracy some people are, of necessity, more equal than others. Because Communism used the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat" it does not mean it makes sense. The dictator of the Soviet Union was, for example, Joseph Stalin who was not above murdering dissenting proletarians just as capitalist dictators such as Mussolini, Pinochet and China's leadership have done. Dictatorships can arise in any society, but in a society where fairness and concern for all is the operative narrative it is much less likely to do so.
The failure to grasp the significance of the distinction between meritocracy and egalitarianism in practice has led to Ronald Reagan's war on the poor, the beginning of a massive shift of national wealth to the rich and the debasement of the Democratic party as it fell prey to the wealthy and tried to emulate the Republicans' pernicious use of merit to deprive our society of the resources it needs to assure something of a level playing field to all of its citizens.
Bob Newhard
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Sunday, November 1, 2009
On Reading Ralph Nader's "Only the Super-rich Can Save Us"
I am reading Ralph Nader's new book, a novel, titled "Only the Super-rich Can Save Us." I have not yet finished it, but I believe I am far enough along to discuss Nader's view of the state of the union and its desperate need for radical change, albeit within the constraints of capitalism. Nader's shift to dependence upon the super rich may well reflect his sense of the depth of trouble, both current and immanent, this nation faces. It may even be his non-violent antidote to a plight for which the violence of revolution has so frequently been the result.
Reviewers have drawn attention to the disparity between Nader's decades-long opposition to the role of wealth, especially corporate wealth, in our society and a book with the title Only the Super-rich Can Save Us. What happened? My thought is that Nader has determined that there can be no successful social or political movement in this country without sufficient access to the media. Our society is too big, too complex, and too disparate to do it the way it was done in the 1930s. Then, thousands of people worked in the same plant, where communication and organization were facilitated by that simple fact. Today, technology has scattered workers for the same corporation all over the planet. Because we never required a substantial support for public discourse when we licensed the publicly owned electromagnetic spectrum, todays privately controlled media can trump any public policy it dislikes with a media barrage. For purposes of national discourse we have thus made ourselves hostage to wealth and privilege and the power that goes with it. Nader has fought long and hard for forty years. It is a dire warning for progressives when a person of his dedication, intelligence and knowledge finds no other way to initiate the changes we need without the cooperation of the wealthy. This is an indicator of how bad it really is.
Not only has Nader decided access to wealth is absolutely necessary to a progressive overhaul of government, he has also apparently decided that that Tom DeLay's FreedomWorks approach to generating political clout is desirable. In this book his billionaires group repeatedly undertakes "stunts" ala FreedomWork's Tea Party program to stimulate public involvement on the group's progressive goals. Whereas FredomWorks is funded by the likes of the Mellon fortune's Richard Scaife, Nader's group is dependent upon billionaires and multimillionaires of a progressive persuasion, e.g. Warren Buffet and Ted Turner. In these money terms alone it would seem progressives are bound to lose because most of these kinds of people are very conservative. However, it appears that Nader believes that once the gross injustices and wealth disparity of our society are laid bare and made manifest to the public the desired changes will take place.
One of the questionable premises of the book is that government needs to be brought much more proximate to people's daily lives. While I agree, I have yet to find a way, given our large population, the impact of modern technology and what history and the social sciences tell us about human behavior, that government can be downsized to the community level Nader supposes. One of Nader's fictional groups, which sets itself this downsizing goal, winds up admitting that such functions as national security and dealing with major disasters will require a sufficiently strong national government. My question of this supposed arrangement is what makes Nader think that, over time, wealth and hence power will not gravitate to a national government that controls the military?
All in all, this book, by a very intelligent, beltway knowledgeable and profoundly concerned progressive is well worth reading. Of the 40,000 first edition print run, thirty five thousand sold in the first week. If, after finishing the book, changes in the above perceptions or significant other approaches to creating a just democracy become apparent, I will update this assessment.
Lest I appear too dour and serious about the book I should say it is something of a rollicking romp as the billionaires plot their strategies to initially disrupt the corporate world while employing strategies and tactics to replace it with a citizen-driven economy and politics. It is anything but a boring read and it is focused on initiating and installing a progressive agenda.
One final observation: We now have two giants of the progressive movement Nader and Michael Moore in his "Capitalism: a Love Story"; pleading with progressives to deal with the horrors that corporate capitalism has produced. One of the great civic questions of our time is why so little outrage has been demonstrated. Nader, I believe, thinks it is due to a want of effective communication. Moore has communicated his heart out in his films to the point that if his latest film does not generate something of an uprising, he may give up the effort. What has been done to the American people that when they know they were lied into a war that has killed hundreds of thousands, seen a major city destroyed by hurricane and left destitute and seen how the wealthy and their greed have pillaged their economy to the point of a major depression, remain either cowed or indifferent except for a lunatic fringe that attributes all these calamities to God's will and man's sin. Are we looking at the psychological consequences of almost sixty years of unmitigated prosperity that through technologies such as television have produced a citizenry so given to delusion that they no longer believe there is a reality for which political leaders can be held accountable? If so, the rich have found a way to demoralize a society without the exhaustion of war.
Bob Newhard
Reviewers have drawn attention to the disparity between Nader's decades-long opposition to the role of wealth, especially corporate wealth, in our society and a book with the title Only the Super-rich Can Save Us. What happened? My thought is that Nader has determined that there can be no successful social or political movement in this country without sufficient access to the media. Our society is too big, too complex, and too disparate to do it the way it was done in the 1930s. Then, thousands of people worked in the same plant, where communication and organization were facilitated by that simple fact. Today, technology has scattered workers for the same corporation all over the planet. Because we never required a substantial support for public discourse when we licensed the publicly owned electromagnetic spectrum, todays privately controlled media can trump any public policy it dislikes with a media barrage. For purposes of national discourse we have thus made ourselves hostage to wealth and privilege and the power that goes with it. Nader has fought long and hard for forty years. It is a dire warning for progressives when a person of his dedication, intelligence and knowledge finds no other way to initiate the changes we need without the cooperation of the wealthy. This is an indicator of how bad it really is.
Not only has Nader decided access to wealth is absolutely necessary to a progressive overhaul of government, he has also apparently decided that that Tom DeLay's FreedomWorks approach to generating political clout is desirable. In this book his billionaires group repeatedly undertakes "stunts" ala FreedomWork's Tea Party program to stimulate public involvement on the group's progressive goals. Whereas FredomWorks is funded by the likes of the Mellon fortune's Richard Scaife, Nader's group is dependent upon billionaires and multimillionaires of a progressive persuasion, e.g. Warren Buffet and Ted Turner. In these money terms alone it would seem progressives are bound to lose because most of these kinds of people are very conservative. However, it appears that Nader believes that once the gross injustices and wealth disparity of our society are laid bare and made manifest to the public the desired changes will take place.
One of the questionable premises of the book is that government needs to be brought much more proximate to people's daily lives. While I agree, I have yet to find a way, given our large population, the impact of modern technology and what history and the social sciences tell us about human behavior, that government can be downsized to the community level Nader supposes. One of Nader's fictional groups, which sets itself this downsizing goal, winds up admitting that such functions as national security and dealing with major disasters will require a sufficiently strong national government. My question of this supposed arrangement is what makes Nader think that, over time, wealth and hence power will not gravitate to a national government that controls the military?
All in all, this book, by a very intelligent, beltway knowledgeable and profoundly concerned progressive is well worth reading. Of the 40,000 first edition print run, thirty five thousand sold in the first week. If, after finishing the book, changes in the above perceptions or significant other approaches to creating a just democracy become apparent, I will update this assessment.
Lest I appear too dour and serious about the book I should say it is something of a rollicking romp as the billionaires plot their strategies to initially disrupt the corporate world while employing strategies and tactics to replace it with a citizen-driven economy and politics. It is anything but a boring read and it is focused on initiating and installing a progressive agenda.
One final observation: We now have two giants of the progressive movement Nader and Michael Moore in his "Capitalism: a Love Story"; pleading with progressives to deal with the horrors that corporate capitalism has produced. One of the great civic questions of our time is why so little outrage has been demonstrated. Nader, I believe, thinks it is due to a want of effective communication. Moore has communicated his heart out in his films to the point that if his latest film does not generate something of an uprising, he may give up the effort. What has been done to the American people that when they know they were lied into a war that has killed hundreds of thousands, seen a major city destroyed by hurricane and left destitute and seen how the wealthy and their greed have pillaged their economy to the point of a major depression, remain either cowed or indifferent except for a lunatic fringe that attributes all these calamities to God's will and man's sin. Are we looking at the psychological consequences of almost sixty years of unmitigated prosperity that through technologies such as television have produced a citizenry so given to delusion that they no longer believe there is a reality for which political leaders can be held accountable? If so, the rich have found a way to demoralize a society without the exhaustion of war.
Bob Newhard
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Progressives, Quo Vadis?
I have asked myself repeatedly why progressives have failed to make Rupert Murdoch a poster child for what is wrong with this country. He has spawned the demagogues of hate, e.g. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and now Glenn Beck. He has turned political debate into the emotion-driven rancor usually found at professional wrestling matches or a Jerry Springer show. He has eviscerated American television news by turning it into sex, violence and entertainment. He has done these things while commanding the largest media empire on earth. And yet progressives have failed to pillory Murdoch with a constant well-developed persona. He remains in the background manipulating American politics as he wills. During the great depression there was no hesitation about repeatedly portraying the fat cat J. P Morgan as an enemy of the people. Why have progressives, not to mention Democrats, been so timid in their attacks on this enemy of democracy? MoveOn did bring out a faux edition of the Wall Street Journal in an effort to stymie permission for his purchase of that paper, but this was a one time stunt, not part of a consistent effort to create and provide the public with an appropriate image of the man. Upton Sinclair had no trouble characterizing the railroad barons' control of California politics as an octopus. Presumably the same image would be appropriate for Murdoch and his multiple media tentacles, to effectively articulate and continuously draw attention to his deleterious impact on our democratic processes. This is a man who owns every means of communication and information transfer known to man and seeks to establish his communications control world wide. This is far too much power for a single human being to possess and constitutes a threat to democracy world wide. He has demonstrated his willingness to cooperate with dictatorships in China. He indulges in massive tax avoidance. And he overwhelms the political discourse of this country with his raucous appeal to raw human emotion bent on vilifying those who oppose his agenda of wealth.
Murdoch has been the subject of satire in a John Cleese, of Monty Python fame, movie entitled The Octopus. The British have a much firmer grasp on this man's persona and ambition. We need to stigmatize him with the truth repeatedly, to draw the connection between Fox News and the effort to defeat health care for all. He himself undoubtedly has a personal physician in attendance on demand. Excessive wealth needs to be pilloried as the enemy of democracy and what better icon than Murdoch?
This all needs to be done before democracy sinks in the face of the multipronged onslaught of wealth. Why have progressives not taken up the challenge of a sustained focus on the threat of excessive wealth?
This issue was brought more clearly in focus for me as I recently read the Coal King by Upton Sinclair. This is a novel based on a 1914 Colorado coal mine strike. In it Sinclair portrays the abject lives of poor immigrant miners, most of whom could not speak English. As in his novel The Jungle, Sinclair describes their harsh and dangerous working conditions, low pay and, in the case of these miners, the total control the corporate mine owners exercised over these trapped human beings. He tellingly portrays the struggle of union progressives to bridge the gap between themselves and the illiterate miners, often drawing attention to the erroneous assumptions these well-intentioned people made. The corporate mine owners lived their lives of elegance within 35 miles of their mines.
This latter fact struck a resonating chord with me because I was also reading Thom Hartman's new book Threshold at the same time. In it Hartman draws a distinction between regional corporate CEOs who remain in the main decent human beings for whom it is still important to keep in mind at least some of the human consequences of their decisions and multinational corporate CEOs who lack such concerns to the extent that they are properly regarded as psychopaths. I was recently talking to a marketing consultant for corporations who used the same term to describe major corporate CEOs. The point here is that between 1914 and toddy the regional CEO has become somewhat humanized. It is the large national and multinational corporate CEO that has assumed the mantle of callous indifference as a requirement of business "success." Could this be called progress? Hartman asked himself an interesting question, namely, why are major multinational corporate CEOs paid up to a billion dollars a year? The corporate boards of directors say they have to pay those sums to get the best talent and ability. Hartman asked why the number of these people is so small. Why is there no one available in a large pool of well trained, experienced, MBAs willing to do the job for, say, 800 million dollars? Why, in short, does this kind of money not create a larger employment market? Hartman's answer is that the best profit-generating CEO's of major multination corporations unique qualification is not education or business acumen. The sole major difference between the highest paid CEOs and others is their willingness and ability to treat employees as objects. These people can easily merge corporations, sell off unneeded assets and thereby lay off thousands of people as easily as they can sell off surplus buildings and equipment.
Herein lies, I believe, one of the major reasons progressives have been relatively ineffective. In addition to the obvious fact that movements can be better organized in factories and mines in which thousands of workers are brought together in one place, the corporate decision makers have been so removed from the society of ordinary people that progressives do not know how to deal with them. In the early part of the 20th century one could close down an auto plant, severely impacting corporate profit. How do progressives close down Fox News using people from a wide variety of occupations, sometimes with very different agendas, distributed around the country and increasingly around the world? Do we not need to reconceive the means of progressive change from the job and all it entails to society itself? Instead of the strike do we not need to find the solution in changing our society's preoccupation with money and profit to a people-first use of economic productivity? If we do not undertake such a fundamental revaluation, it will not be long before the coalition of the wealthy will totally dominate humanity and destroy what remnants of democracy we still have.
Bob Newhard
Murdoch has been the subject of satire in a John Cleese, of Monty Python fame, movie entitled The Octopus. The British have a much firmer grasp on this man's persona and ambition. We need to stigmatize him with the truth repeatedly, to draw the connection between Fox News and the effort to defeat health care for all. He himself undoubtedly has a personal physician in attendance on demand. Excessive wealth needs to be pilloried as the enemy of democracy and what better icon than Murdoch?
This all needs to be done before democracy sinks in the face of the multipronged onslaught of wealth. Why have progressives not taken up the challenge of a sustained focus on the threat of excessive wealth?
This issue was brought more clearly in focus for me as I recently read the Coal King by Upton Sinclair. This is a novel based on a 1914 Colorado coal mine strike. In it Sinclair portrays the abject lives of poor immigrant miners, most of whom could not speak English. As in his novel The Jungle, Sinclair describes their harsh and dangerous working conditions, low pay and, in the case of these miners, the total control the corporate mine owners exercised over these trapped human beings. He tellingly portrays the struggle of union progressives to bridge the gap between themselves and the illiterate miners, often drawing attention to the erroneous assumptions these well-intentioned people made. The corporate mine owners lived their lives of elegance within 35 miles of their mines.
This latter fact struck a resonating chord with me because I was also reading Thom Hartman's new book Threshold at the same time. In it Hartman draws a distinction between regional corporate CEOs who remain in the main decent human beings for whom it is still important to keep in mind at least some of the human consequences of their decisions and multinational corporate CEOs who lack such concerns to the extent that they are properly regarded as psychopaths. I was recently talking to a marketing consultant for corporations who used the same term to describe major corporate CEOs. The point here is that between 1914 and toddy the regional CEO has become somewhat humanized. It is the large national and multinational corporate CEO that has assumed the mantle of callous indifference as a requirement of business "success." Could this be called progress? Hartman asked himself an interesting question, namely, why are major multinational corporate CEOs paid up to a billion dollars a year? The corporate boards of directors say they have to pay those sums to get the best talent and ability. Hartman asked why the number of these people is so small. Why is there no one available in a large pool of well trained, experienced, MBAs willing to do the job for, say, 800 million dollars? Why, in short, does this kind of money not create a larger employment market? Hartman's answer is that the best profit-generating CEO's of major multination corporations unique qualification is not education or business acumen. The sole major difference between the highest paid CEOs and others is their willingness and ability to treat employees as objects. These people can easily merge corporations, sell off unneeded assets and thereby lay off thousands of people as easily as they can sell off surplus buildings and equipment.
Herein lies, I believe, one of the major reasons progressives have been relatively ineffective. In addition to the obvious fact that movements can be better organized in factories and mines in which thousands of workers are brought together in one place, the corporate decision makers have been so removed from the society of ordinary people that progressives do not know how to deal with them. In the early part of the 20th century one could close down an auto plant, severely impacting corporate profit. How do progressives close down Fox News using people from a wide variety of occupations, sometimes with very different agendas, distributed around the country and increasingly around the world? Do we not need to reconceive the means of progressive change from the job and all it entails to society itself? Instead of the strike do we not need to find the solution in changing our society's preoccupation with money and profit to a people-first use of economic productivity? If we do not undertake such a fundamental revaluation, it will not be long before the coalition of the wealthy will totally dominate humanity and destroy what remnants of democracy we still have.
Bob Newhard
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Illusions and a Remedy
When I despair of the rampant triviality of our society, the substitution of emotion for thought and the increasing removal from the real world that conditions our species' existence, I find it useful to retrace the path of human development from prehistory on. To see where we came from the proto humans, the species that branched off from the tree that became us; to witness the gradual rise of brain size and organization; to see how we began to apply that increased reasoning ability to our surroundings and to ourselves; these are the realities from which we come. These form the foundation of what we are and what we can be.
Recently Chris Hedges published his new book Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle in which he shares the same despair. With chapters titled the Illusion of Literacy, of Love, of Wisdom, of Happiness and of America, he unleashes a withering analysis of our extremely decadent society. He begins the book with a quote from James Baldwin as follows, "People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster." This is the consequence that people have to understand. Shallowness breeds violence
However, Hedges' remedy for this state of affairs is a return to God. He begins the first chapter with a quote from John Ralston Saul's book Voltaire's Bastards in part as follows, "Now the death of God combined with the perfection of the image has brought us to a whole new state of expectation. We are the image. We are the viewer and the viewed. There is no other distracting presence." As is so frequently the case, even with the Religious Right that Hedges despises, a litany of the ills of our society is followed with a prescription for a return to God. But is not God one of the most pervasive and destructive of our illusions? It is especially dangerous because it asserts an untreatable reality, inevitably imposes absolute values on a world of great variability and thereby leads humans to non-negotiable conflicts resolvable only by violence.
If humans are to achieve the peace they so deeply desire in a culturally shrinking world of increasing population, they will have to appeal to something other than their gods. One possibility I find useful is substituting humanity itself and the context of our development for a deity, not as an object of worship, but as a unifying reference point. Everything we value has arisen in the course of our development. The civilization we seek to preserve and enhance has arisen in the context of this long history of our development as humans. We need badly to understand this development and hence to understand ourselves. We need to understand as well what has propelled us so frequently to disaster and multiply that by our increasing capacity for self destruction. For those who find such an undertaking too mundane, who require something immensely larger than themselves, something mysterious, something spiritual, let them contemplate a natural universe whose immensity Carl Sagan tried to capture in his mantras of "billions and billions of galaxies" and "we are all stardust," which none the less is addressable by human reason. A shift of cultural focus of this sort will make our common humanity, our dependence upon this planet and our shared commonality with the other species of this planet the source for our values and inspiration for our further development. That human beings are capable of this species-wide commonality is evidenced by our response to huge natural disasters such as the Indonesian earthquake/tsunami which disregarded religious and cultural differences that in other contexts have bred enmity and violence. In brief, the remedy for the perils of illusion is not another illusion, but a much better understanding of our humanity and the natural roots from which it has evolved. We had the intelligence to master our environment, now let us use that intelligence to master ourselves.
Bob Newhard
Recently Chris Hedges published his new book Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle in which he shares the same despair. With chapters titled the Illusion of Literacy, of Love, of Wisdom, of Happiness and of America, he unleashes a withering analysis of our extremely decadent society. He begins the book with a quote from James Baldwin as follows, "People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster." This is the consequence that people have to understand. Shallowness breeds violence
However, Hedges' remedy for this state of affairs is a return to God. He begins the first chapter with a quote from John Ralston Saul's book Voltaire's Bastards in part as follows, "Now the death of God combined with the perfection of the image has brought us to a whole new state of expectation. We are the image. We are the viewer and the viewed. There is no other distracting presence." As is so frequently the case, even with the Religious Right that Hedges despises, a litany of the ills of our society is followed with a prescription for a return to God. But is not God one of the most pervasive and destructive of our illusions? It is especially dangerous because it asserts an untreatable reality, inevitably imposes absolute values on a world of great variability and thereby leads humans to non-negotiable conflicts resolvable only by violence.
If humans are to achieve the peace they so deeply desire in a culturally shrinking world of increasing population, they will have to appeal to something other than their gods. One possibility I find useful is substituting humanity itself and the context of our development for a deity, not as an object of worship, but as a unifying reference point. Everything we value has arisen in the course of our development. The civilization we seek to preserve and enhance has arisen in the context of this long history of our development as humans. We need badly to understand this development and hence to understand ourselves. We need to understand as well what has propelled us so frequently to disaster and multiply that by our increasing capacity for self destruction. For those who find such an undertaking too mundane, who require something immensely larger than themselves, something mysterious, something spiritual, let them contemplate a natural universe whose immensity Carl Sagan tried to capture in his mantras of "billions and billions of galaxies" and "we are all stardust," which none the less is addressable by human reason. A shift of cultural focus of this sort will make our common humanity, our dependence upon this planet and our shared commonality with the other species of this planet the source for our values and inspiration for our further development. That human beings are capable of this species-wide commonality is evidenced by our response to huge natural disasters such as the Indonesian earthquake/tsunami which disregarded religious and cultural differences that in other contexts have bred enmity and violence. In brief, the remedy for the perils of illusion is not another illusion, but a much better understanding of our humanity and the natural roots from which it has evolved. We had the intelligence to master our environment, now let us use that intelligence to master ourselves.
Bob Newhard
Sunday, September 20, 2009
The American Way and the Learning Society
In his recent speech to Congress President Obama said “There are those on the left who believe that the only way to fix the system is through a single-payer system like Canada's, where we would severely restrict the private insurance market and have the government provide coverage for everyone. On the right, there are those who argue that we should end the employer-based system and leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own.
I have to say that there are arguments to be made for both approaches. But either one would represent a radical shift that would disrupt the health care most people currently have.”
Aside from erroneously assuming some sort of parity of relevance between these two positions, Obama says that single payer would disrupt the health care that people currently have. This is part of Obama's mealy mouthed approach to the fundamental issue of this society's health care for its citizens. Currently 40 million are uninsured and the cost of health care is skyrocketing. Obviously something “disrupting” has to happen. Further, If social disruption is a significaant factor then why does he continue the adventurism in Afghanistan? The provisions of billions of dollars to bail out banks will be disruptive for this generation's children, but that seems acceptable. It is clear that the current health care “system” is being run in the interest of some of the wealthiest people and some of the most powerful corporations in this country. It is high time some “disrupting” goes on if we are ever to be able to have a reasonably equitable society.
But there is, to my mind, a deeper reason to be concerned by this kind of “reasoning.” It posits that this capitalist society cannot have a form of health care enjoyed by other democratic countries. Obama mentioned Canada specifically. What is so different about Canada? There are few, if any countries, more like the United States than Canada. Is Obama saying that the United States is incapable of learning from other countries? When such an inability occurs in individuals we call it a leaning deficit and seek a remedy. Is Obama saying American hubris prevents us from learning from others? It is long past the time to get over that trait. The world is shrinking very rapidly. We share a planet with nearly seven billion others and the problems we humans present to this planet are many, impending and coalescing. In our own interest, if we cannot consider those of others, we need to grow up and do so quickly. A significant step in this direction would be the adoption of a single payer health care system. Finally, I cannot help thinking that Obama's statement reflects his fear of, or collusion with, the clout of the pharmaceutical, insurance and hospital corporations, as well as the corporate media involved. In a corporation-dominated society like ours this fight is going to have to take place sometime if we are to get our democracy back. I can think of no nobler cause for this president to pursue than the restoration of democracy and civic decency.
There is, however, another possibility for explaining Obama's behavior, at least in part. I suspect that Obama is more cognizant then most of us of the racist potential of this society. We have all seen the bizarre behavior of the Radical Right so far during Obama's presidency. Maureen Dowd in a New York Times column has made it quite evident that racism is a large, if not the largest element in the vociferous attacks by the Far Right orchestrated by Murdoch's demagogic minions, e.g. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and, now apparently becoming the worst of the worst, Glenn Beck. Dowd points out that Representative Joe 'You lie! Wilson “belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol.” She argues that he and the rest of his ilk cannot tolerate having a balck president and are prepared to do anything they can to ruin his presidency. It may be that Obama, aware of the potential for a racist inferno in this country, believes pushing a genuine progressive agenda could ignite it. If so, this raises a question for progressives, Are we prepared to push the progressive agenda at this price? My own view is that we cannot let the welfare of this nation's population be held hostage by threatening radical rightists.
I will add that I think the fundamental flaw in political conservatism is their worship of the past, which as with worship in general, pretty well precludes learning from the past. This singular focus also precludes learning from current experience. The past is definitive of values for conservatives therefore they can only react to changed circumstances by appealing to it. Hence, the denial of global warming, evolution, the humanity of gays and other threats to humanity's future such as a looming food and water shortages of unprecedented dimensions. This is why the responsibilities of progressives to humanity's future have to be thoroughly thought our, articulated, and made politically viable.
Bob Newhard
I have to say that there are arguments to be made for both approaches. But either one would represent a radical shift that would disrupt the health care most people currently have.”
Aside from erroneously assuming some sort of parity of relevance between these two positions, Obama says that single payer would disrupt the health care that people currently have. This is part of Obama's mealy mouthed approach to the fundamental issue of this society's health care for its citizens. Currently 40 million are uninsured and the cost of health care is skyrocketing. Obviously something “disrupting” has to happen. Further, If social disruption is a significaant factor then why does he continue the adventurism in Afghanistan? The provisions of billions of dollars to bail out banks will be disruptive for this generation's children, but that seems acceptable. It is clear that the current health care “system” is being run in the interest of some of the wealthiest people and some of the most powerful corporations in this country. It is high time some “disrupting” goes on if we are ever to be able to have a reasonably equitable society.
But there is, to my mind, a deeper reason to be concerned by this kind of “reasoning.” It posits that this capitalist society cannot have a form of health care enjoyed by other democratic countries. Obama mentioned Canada specifically. What is so different about Canada? There are few, if any countries, more like the United States than Canada. Is Obama saying that the United States is incapable of learning from other countries? When such an inability occurs in individuals we call it a leaning deficit and seek a remedy. Is Obama saying American hubris prevents us from learning from others? It is long past the time to get over that trait. The world is shrinking very rapidly. We share a planet with nearly seven billion others and the problems we humans present to this planet are many, impending and coalescing. In our own interest, if we cannot consider those of others, we need to grow up and do so quickly. A significant step in this direction would be the adoption of a single payer health care system. Finally, I cannot help thinking that Obama's statement reflects his fear of, or collusion with, the clout of the pharmaceutical, insurance and hospital corporations, as well as the corporate media involved. In a corporation-dominated society like ours this fight is going to have to take place sometime if we are to get our democracy back. I can think of no nobler cause for this president to pursue than the restoration of democracy and civic decency.
There is, however, another possibility for explaining Obama's behavior, at least in part. I suspect that Obama is more cognizant then most of us of the racist potential of this society. We have all seen the bizarre behavior of the Radical Right so far during Obama's presidency. Maureen Dowd in a New York Times column has made it quite evident that racism is a large, if not the largest element in the vociferous attacks by the Far Right orchestrated by Murdoch's demagogic minions, e.g. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and, now apparently becoming the worst of the worst, Glenn Beck. Dowd points out that Representative Joe 'You lie! Wilson “belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol.” She argues that he and the rest of his ilk cannot tolerate having a balck president and are prepared to do anything they can to ruin his presidency. It may be that Obama, aware of the potential for a racist inferno in this country, believes pushing a genuine progressive agenda could ignite it. If so, this raises a question for progressives, Are we prepared to push the progressive agenda at this price? My own view is that we cannot let the welfare of this nation's population be held hostage by threatening radical rightists.
I will add that I think the fundamental flaw in political conservatism is their worship of the past, which as with worship in general, pretty well precludes learning from the past. This singular focus also precludes learning from current experience. The past is definitive of values for conservatives therefore they can only react to changed circumstances by appealing to it. Hence, the denial of global warming, evolution, the humanity of gays and other threats to humanity's future such as a looming food and water shortages of unprecedented dimensions. This is why the responsibilities of progressives to humanity's future have to be thoroughly thought our, articulated, and made politically viable.
Bob Newhard
Sunday, September 6, 2009
The Unhinged Society
I know I have written before on America's lost grip on reality, but there is, in my judgment, new evidence of this phenomenon and that it is becoming very dangerous. I have previously remarked the flight to fantasy evident in substituting creationism for evolution and the concomitant use of politics to replace science in the pursuit of that goal. I have also remarked that celebrities have replaced heroes in the minds of children; that the passion to be noticed, Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame, has produced multimillion dollar industries such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter; that millions of people avidly adopt avatars and endlessly play global fantasy games, etc. But, as I said in my last column on this subject, it is dangerous. Witness the recent rash of death “jokes” about Obama by Republicans, e.g. hunting tags for Obama and as I write this column Fox News' Glenn Beck broadcast his hope that poison is added to Nancy Pelosi's wine. The Republicans believe these tactics, including the psychotic but effective assertion that Obama intends, through his healthcare plan, to kill your grandmother, have turned the political tide that ran so strongly against them in the 2008 election—and this in 6 months. If they are right and some liberal writers seem to agree, then the American people are obviously and dangerously unhinged. People now feel free to brandish firearms at political meetings.
Democracy cannot withstand this indifference to reality. It will give way to the chaos generated by emotion-driven conflicts over myths of race, religion, gender and age difference. In the latter case there is a developing effort to pit the young against the old as the movement of wealth to fewer and fewer people deprives society of the resources needed to insure the broad economic base a democracy requires.
Another indicator that this society has lost its bearings can be found in a recently published book The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement in which the authors, two professors of social psychology, are mainly concerned with cultural as distinct from individual narcissism. Their judgment, with an abundance of evidence, is that there has been something like a sea change in American culture and it is not for the good. They list a number of social ills that are attributable to this social narcissism to a greater or lesser extent. These ills range from the mortgage debacle to plastic surgery and the whole makeover industry to the plague of “reality” shows. The major result is, of course, social disintegration and all that can flow from that. Under the best of circumstances there is an inherent conflict in democracy between the individual's liberty and the requirements of the democratic society necessary to assure that liberty. Jefferson sought to bridge this bifurcation by making the aim of the state to assist individuals in realizing their full potential. It was assumed, perhaps naively, that such self realization would be consistent with a democratic society.
In trying to understand why society appears to be falling apart I have begun to wonder if, along with the pressures of over population and the fragmenting effect of technology, a new awareness of human fragility is contributing to this disintegration. Never before in human history have humans known so clearly that their world can be destroyed and perhaps is in that process already and that tey are the cause. Aware of the willingness of humans to destroy each other, mankind now fears that it could, and perhaps will, destroy itself.
I remember a final scene in the movie version of Neville Shute's novel On the Beach, in which a nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States has unleashed an enormous radioactive cloud that was progressively killing all life as it circulated around the planet. Australia would complete the cloud's globe-girdling trip. People knew it was coming. They fragment into those who pray and passionately declare that Jesus is returning, by which method they supposedly escape the impending doom, and those who accept their fate and have an enormous beach party. Mankind is increasingly aware of its destiny. Is it starting to fragment into the religious deniers and the entertainment addicted accepters? I personally think Shute should have had a third group indulging in violence as they displayed their anger at such a fate. Somebody had to be responsible! We keep telling ourselves that there is still time, if we act quickly, to avoid the various catastrophes awaiting us. Can we really expect the bulk of mankind to act quickly? At its best, will not such an effort create massive conflict as humans fight for diminishing resources and this in the context of nuclear destructiveness? If some external intelligence were to observe humanity playing out this scenario, would it not think the efforts of those who seek to avoid the cascading convergence of such species-ending forces pitiful in their irrelevance? We must, in my judgment, be brutally honest before we can be productively progressive, else we too live in a fantasy.
Bob Newhad
Democracy cannot withstand this indifference to reality. It will give way to the chaos generated by emotion-driven conflicts over myths of race, religion, gender and age difference. In the latter case there is a developing effort to pit the young against the old as the movement of wealth to fewer and fewer people deprives society of the resources needed to insure the broad economic base a democracy requires.
Another indicator that this society has lost its bearings can be found in a recently published book The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement in which the authors, two professors of social psychology, are mainly concerned with cultural as distinct from individual narcissism. Their judgment, with an abundance of evidence, is that there has been something like a sea change in American culture and it is not for the good. They list a number of social ills that are attributable to this social narcissism to a greater or lesser extent. These ills range from the mortgage debacle to plastic surgery and the whole makeover industry to the plague of “reality” shows. The major result is, of course, social disintegration and all that can flow from that. Under the best of circumstances there is an inherent conflict in democracy between the individual's liberty and the requirements of the democratic society necessary to assure that liberty. Jefferson sought to bridge this bifurcation by making the aim of the state to assist individuals in realizing their full potential. It was assumed, perhaps naively, that such self realization would be consistent with a democratic society.
In trying to understand why society appears to be falling apart I have begun to wonder if, along with the pressures of over population and the fragmenting effect of technology, a new awareness of human fragility is contributing to this disintegration. Never before in human history have humans known so clearly that their world can be destroyed and perhaps is in that process already and that tey are the cause. Aware of the willingness of humans to destroy each other, mankind now fears that it could, and perhaps will, destroy itself.
I remember a final scene in the movie version of Neville Shute's novel On the Beach, in which a nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States has unleashed an enormous radioactive cloud that was progressively killing all life as it circulated around the planet. Australia would complete the cloud's globe-girdling trip. People knew it was coming. They fragment into those who pray and passionately declare that Jesus is returning, by which method they supposedly escape the impending doom, and those who accept their fate and have an enormous beach party. Mankind is increasingly aware of its destiny. Is it starting to fragment into the religious deniers and the entertainment addicted accepters? I personally think Shute should have had a third group indulging in violence as they displayed their anger at such a fate. Somebody had to be responsible! We keep telling ourselves that there is still time, if we act quickly, to avoid the various catastrophes awaiting us. Can we really expect the bulk of mankind to act quickly? At its best, will not such an effort create massive conflict as humans fight for diminishing resources and this in the context of nuclear destructiveness? If some external intelligence were to observe humanity playing out this scenario, would it not think the efforts of those who seek to avoid the cascading convergence of such species-ending forces pitiful in their irrelevance? We must, in my judgment, be brutally honest before we can be productively progressive, else we too live in a fantasy.
Bob Newhad
Sunday, August 23, 2009
The Shadow Falls
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
So wrote T. S. Eliot in his poem The Hollow Men.
The speculators are back, flipping property. The real revitalization—repairing and renting the homes—will have to wait.
So wrote Alyssa Katz in her article There Goes the Neighborhood in the September 2009 issue of The American Prospect magazine.
There is an amorphousness in the processes of modern societies that was not there for the vast majority human existence. It is that murky, ill-defined area between decision and act. which when institutionalized (think government or corporations), is responsible for much of what goes wrong in our societies. Because of it we are much less sure of how our decisions will eventuate. We consume vast amounts of our resources in this gray area.
Ever since civilization began to appear there has been the gap between what G. W. Bush called the deciders and the rest of society. However, it was quite clear what was the king's or the priest's and what was that of the ordinary person. There was little “grayness” in the difference although there was in the use the king or priest made of his resources. Nowadays however, with huge populations and complicated technology that generates a near impenetrable fog, (some would call it a black hole) mankind has been put adrift in a fog of its own making.
I think the recent rash of anger experienced by politicians as they returned to their constituents, while much of it may have been triggered by the bigots of religion and race and loud-mouthed sound biters, reflected an effort on the part of much of this country's citizenry to penetrate the grayness which confronts them. Who is responsible for our situation? How did it happen? How will it be remedied? These questions are fundamental to people at this time and search as they may they basically get no answers. As Katz points out, massive amounts of public debt incurred to keep people in their homes by reducing their mortgage payments have been waylaid by the institutions that government chose to do this job. They have been largely consumed or made less effective by the grayness. This is among the reasons that progressives much preferred FDR's approach of creating jobs so the necessary remedy is made explicit to the people. The remedy does not trickle down through the very institutions that caused the problem in the first place.
This shadowland is the playground of the devious and manipulative among us. It provides the ability to intercept communication between the governed and the governors and makes for decisions and agreements made in secret. It is the root cause for the continuing call for accountability. Why, for instance, do the wealthy have no three strikes law for fraud or are sentenced to minimum security prisons or house arrest when the common burglar is sent to the harshest of overcrowded jails?
One of the greatest threats in an era of increasing instability is that a “savior” in fascist garb will come riding out of this fog of confusion and increased alienation with a clear and simple message, usually rooted in the society's myths and prejudices. One need only examine the cultural myths and bigotries Hitler and Mussolini appealed to in order to acquire absolute power.
Finally, all of this is compounded by humanity facing global realities it has not faced in 10,000 years and this time we know it in advance.
When one writes in the above terms one is expected, in this wildly optimistic society, to present some sort of remedy. However, every possible remedy seems fraught with its own perils. It is tempting to say, as some have, that our societies are too big. They must be reduced in size so that citizens have at least some acquaintance with those that govern them and the mechanisms employed in governing, but how is this to be done when we have a technology that is global in scale and generates wealth and power on that scale?
There are those who say we need to remove much of the technology we have created and live much closer to the land and elements, which were the cradle of our existence for the vast majority of our species' existence. But even if we tried, there is not enough land and resources left to provide an “acre and a horse” for each family, We are, in short, living on the edge of chaos lost in a miasma of deliberate ambiguity and focused on ourselves rather than our species.
Bob Newhard
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
So wrote T. S. Eliot in his poem The Hollow Men.
The speculators are back, flipping property. The real revitalization—repairing and renting the homes—will have to wait.
So wrote Alyssa Katz in her article There Goes the Neighborhood in the September 2009 issue of The American Prospect magazine.
There is an amorphousness in the processes of modern societies that was not there for the vast majority human existence. It is that murky, ill-defined area between decision and act. which when institutionalized (think government or corporations), is responsible for much of what goes wrong in our societies. Because of it we are much less sure of how our decisions will eventuate. We consume vast amounts of our resources in this gray area.
Ever since civilization began to appear there has been the gap between what G. W. Bush called the deciders and the rest of society. However, it was quite clear what was the king's or the priest's and what was that of the ordinary person. There was little “grayness” in the difference although there was in the use the king or priest made of his resources. Nowadays however, with huge populations and complicated technology that generates a near impenetrable fog, (some would call it a black hole) mankind has been put adrift in a fog of its own making.
I think the recent rash of anger experienced by politicians as they returned to their constituents, while much of it may have been triggered by the bigots of religion and race and loud-mouthed sound biters, reflected an effort on the part of much of this country's citizenry to penetrate the grayness which confronts them. Who is responsible for our situation? How did it happen? How will it be remedied? These questions are fundamental to people at this time and search as they may they basically get no answers. As Katz points out, massive amounts of public debt incurred to keep people in their homes by reducing their mortgage payments have been waylaid by the institutions that government chose to do this job. They have been largely consumed or made less effective by the grayness. This is among the reasons that progressives much preferred FDR's approach of creating jobs so the necessary remedy is made explicit to the people. The remedy does not trickle down through the very institutions that caused the problem in the first place.
This shadowland is the playground of the devious and manipulative among us. It provides the ability to intercept communication between the governed and the governors and makes for decisions and agreements made in secret. It is the root cause for the continuing call for accountability. Why, for instance, do the wealthy have no three strikes law for fraud or are sentenced to minimum security prisons or house arrest when the common burglar is sent to the harshest of overcrowded jails?
One of the greatest threats in an era of increasing instability is that a “savior” in fascist garb will come riding out of this fog of confusion and increased alienation with a clear and simple message, usually rooted in the society's myths and prejudices. One need only examine the cultural myths and bigotries Hitler and Mussolini appealed to in order to acquire absolute power.
Finally, all of this is compounded by humanity facing global realities it has not faced in 10,000 years and this time we know it in advance.
When one writes in the above terms one is expected, in this wildly optimistic society, to present some sort of remedy. However, every possible remedy seems fraught with its own perils. It is tempting to say, as some have, that our societies are too big. They must be reduced in size so that citizens have at least some acquaintance with those that govern them and the mechanisms employed in governing, but how is this to be done when we have a technology that is global in scale and generates wealth and power on that scale?
There are those who say we need to remove much of the technology we have created and live much closer to the land and elements, which were the cradle of our existence for the vast majority of our species' existence. But even if we tried, there is not enough land and resources left to provide an “acre and a horse” for each family, We are, in short, living on the edge of chaos lost in a miasma of deliberate ambiguity and focused on ourselves rather than our species.
Bob Newhard
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