Overcoming Our Values

“Humanity today is like a walking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world.”

“We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.”

E O. Wilson – The Social Conquest of Earth

History has seen science destroy the mythic cosmology of the Catholic Church. Science still finds heavy resistance as its biological evidence destroys a mythic story of divine creation of humanity. Currently there is increasing evidence that the free will that we base our legal and moral systems on is also an illusion. Neuroscientists are pursuing the likelihood that all values are illusory in that they cannot be found in nor reliably represent the world of fact.

Neuroscientists investigating the “living brain” with new technology have discovered that the brain executes a decision and then informs the cerebral cortex, which is the seat of consciousness. Our consciousness labors under the illusion that it is making the decision. We literally do not know we have made a decision until after it has been made. While the time gap between the two events is miniscule, this fact raises fundamental issues for morality and law, both based on the assumption that people know what they are doing.

One of the consequences of values gradually submitting to the rule of fact is that values, which have been a major source of human mayhem (think the Middle East), can be measured against human well-being as it is defined by the real world. A major problem with values is that they can be completely arbitrary and attached to anything, including human fantasies, and for any purpose. Values are beyond any testing or evidence, yet they are capable of marshaling immense force from the people who believe them. They are controlled by nothing and applied to everything. As neuroscience and other sciences reveal more about how they function in the human brain, values will be brought to the bar of fact, hopefully before they destroy us all in some conflagration of ideologues.

But, it may be asked, how would society function without moral values? One suggestion was made by Samuel Butler in his satire of values-ridden Victorian society titled Erewhon published in 1872. Human behaviors in Erewhon  are not morally good or bad, they are healthy or sick. Thus when there was a transgression of Erewhon’s laws the malefactor was sent to the “Straightener” to be healed. It is relevant to note that the law now accepts the condition of the accused’s body and brain as relevant to determining moral responsibility. It was not that many centuries ago that  moral values were so detached from reality that courts were trying animals for transgressing the law, frequently as possessors of evil spirits.

An important thing to notice about Butler’s Erewhon is that it is concerned with reforming society, not the individual. It uses a fictional society to criticize Victorian society and describes what happens to individuals when that change is made. Conservatives generally argue that the individual has to be reformed as a condition for societal reformation. I think this is frequently a cop-out because they know full well that such a prescription will lead to continuing inaction as individuals face the daunting task before them. In a world of 8 billion people social change is the only vehicle for accomplishing the needed changes in mankind if humanity is to survive.

In this connection, E.O. Wilson in his above cited book, points out that social animals and insects have a far greater record of survivability as a species than nonsocial species. In a world where socialization, especially when expressed as a pronounced division of labor, is the best guarantee of species survival, we have a culture focused on the individual, especially, the pronounced individualism of Ayn Rand and the Libertarians.  Legislators in Oklahoma have rejected federal tornado disaster aid on the basis that Oklahoma is a go-it-alone state. We thus have major political movements rejecting, and denying others, the very basis for long-term species survival. Talk about detached values!

In any event, the real world must become the bedrock of our values. We have had enough of competing value systems detached from reality. Free floating fantasies sparking mass slaughter and indifference to the real plight of humanity compounded by the rapidly increasing lethality of our weaponry and the increasing competition for resources insure the end of civilization if not our species. 

This is not to rule out the possibility of converting values to the facts of the real world as distinct from merely basing our values on facts. The feasibility of this can be seen in Carl Sagan’s use of the  “billions and billions” of galaxies in the universe, so immense that human imagination cannot grasp it; we must have mathematical formulae to deal with its immensity. It has many of the properties attributed to god and can by its sheer immensity and complexity engender the awe many people reserve for their deity. It supplies an inexhaustible resource for the human search for meaning and, most importantly, it is rationally addressable.

Humanity’s survival presents a task of unprecedented, multidimensional complexity, fraught with murderously fanciful beliefs and traditions. Our species has much to learn about itself and its environment and very little time to do so. We progressives must be a vehicle for bringing science, its methods and its demand for convincing evidence to the arenas of societal decision making.

Bob Newhard

Quo Vadis Progressivism

Recently the Common Dreams website hosted a conversation with some of their more prominent writers titled A Conversation with Common Dreams: 'Given the Status Quo, What's Needed?' Many of the writers were adamant that what was needed to break the current impasse was a movement. Neither the existing political parties nor the current batch of politicians is up to the task. We could not rely on politicians to lead this society forward until they could be assured that it was politically safe to do so. Regarding the necessity for a movement, John Nichols, a progressive writer for whom I have great respect, pointed out that from Jefferson’s time, through the progressive movements of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries to FDR’s New Deal, we have seen progressive movements rise and make a difference for human well-being. He was of the opinion that we were on the verge of another such an event.

 

As I listened to John I asked myself why these periods of great benefit to the ordinary citizen did not last, being as (supposedly) politics in a democracy express the will of the people?

 

 

Take the end of the New Deal under Ronald Reagan. Granted there was an existing stagflation. Why would people, many of them Democrats,, support Reagan who had made it clear that it was his intention to break the unions and take the American economy back to the unregulated capitalism of the 19^th century. Was an “aw shucks” friendly persona enough to do this? Was a cheery “New morning in America” enough to do it? Was a temporary stall in the capitalist economy enough to do it? The social safety net was in place. There was no depression. Why were masses of people willing to transfer their well-supported trust in government for the self-centeredness and human disregard of a corporatist America?

 

This, I believe, is the kind of question progressives have to answer if they are to create the permanent economic equality that must prevail if this country and this world are to be able to deal effectively with the massive changes society increasingly faces as humans seek to survive the ecological conditions and the untoward social structures they have created.

 

Does this fact mean that progressivism cannot go beyond periods of power and that, like capitalism, it has cycles? Our last progressive era was that of the New Deal. It was brought to an end during a period of economic stagflation by Ronald Reagan who persuaded Americans that the stagflation could be brought to an end only by turning the economy and people’s well-being over to the private sector, aka the corporations.  To show the way he broke the airline controller’s strike by bringing in military air traffic controllers. What we and the world have gone through in the Great Recession is a direct consequence of the American citizenry’s willingness to give up all that had been achieved by the New Deal in order to solve a much more transitory problem.

 

In contrast to much of what was said during the Common Dreams “conversation,” I believe progressives must find a way to make progressivism much less transitory, especially with the need for economic sustainability so imperative. It is wise to remember that, with the rapidly increasing ubiquity and lethality of modern weaponry, economic stability is becoming an imperative for human survival.

 

Progressives need to develop, offer, and push a program for sustained progressivism.

 

For example, when I think of how the catastrophe that was Ronald Reagan’s election and deleterious regime could have been avoided, I think of the preemptive measures that should have been in place when stagflation hits a capitalist economy. As we have reserve funds and pre-developed plans for dealing with natural disasters, so we should have for economic disasters. These should be triggered by stipulated situations and conditions. If society is to retain its multiplicity of interests and energy, this kind of support for economic downturns should be broad and continuously in place.

 

This kind of solution requires planning, as does any complex situation, but we have been fed the myth that planning is anti-democratic; that it does not permit the freedom that innovation requires. The political Right puts planning down as dictatorial control ala Russia’s planned economy. The pejorative distinction used to be their command economy versus our demand economy.

 

The capitalist countries never did acknowledge the accomplishments of the Soviet Union. In less than 70 years they moved from a largely feudal society to putting the first satellite into orbit. Along the way they moved their entire manufacturing establishment east of the Ural Mountains to avoid losing it to the Nazis in World War II and then defeated the Germans. The Soviet Union’s passage from feudalism to an industrial economy can be compared with the nearly 200 years it took the capitalist countries of Europe and America. Of course, it can be said that they had the accomplishments of capitalist industrialization to point the way. While there is obvious truth to that, it should be remembered that the capitalist countries did everything they could to impede Russia’s economic development, including military invasion.

 

The lesson to be learned here is that both Russia and now China have demonstrated effectiveness at dictatorial economic development. Unless the democracies of this planet demonstrate far more responsiveness to marshaling the effort to meet the massive challenges of global warming, impending food and water shortages, and excessive population, mankind may turn to the demonstrated ability of dictatorships to secure its continued survival. Certainly planned economies will become increasingly necessary as the above-noted impending catastrophes unfold.

 

 

But planning requires a perspective; some idea of what the goal is. The political Right has a fairly simple task in this matter, as traditionalists usually do. Pick a traditional belief, make it the goal and do what you have always done. Progressives have a much more difficult task because, in aiming to improve society, we have to be sensitive to the implications of the conditions that confront humanity and figure out ways in which humanity can endure and perhaps flourish in the changed conditions and then figure out how best to bring those changes about. An example of this difference can be found in Hoover’s approach to the Great Depression, namely, let capitalism take its course and Roosevelt’s approach of creating new public programs to deal with the effects of the Depression at all its various levels. These ranged from the Civilian Conservation Corps for unskilled  young men, to reforming agricultural practices, to writer’s projects, to major infrastructure construction. This difference in the complexity of the tasks of the political Right and Left has always pervaded American politics and may account, in part, for more frequent Republican than Democratic governance.

 

As to the nature of a Progressive, some Progressives, people like Cornel West, believe it is necessary to articulate a Progressive value system analogous to the Right’s use of “values” as a political tool. While at some point this may be desirable, I think we should begin elsewhere. Any value system, if we are to avoid the horrific consequence of value systems based on human fantasy and the religious conflict they so frequently spawn, must be based on reality. I suggest this process should begin with the necessity that humans must live in harmony with the planet they inhabit. This is the only home we have ever had and long before we seek habitat elsewhere in the universe we shall have perished if we continue to devastate our home. This planet is the root of whatever commonality we have as a species, a commonality that is essential to our survival. We must keep constantly in mind that we humans are our own worst enemy, accounting for more death and destruction than nature has ever imposed on us. The solutions to the massive problems that confront us are to be found within us, if they are found at all.

 

As an example of developing a Progressive perspective, we might use the work of Lester Brown dealing with the impact of humanity’s suicidal use of the earth. We humans now know enough to undertake this project of environmental harmony. We also know enough about the demands such an adjustment would make on long-standing human beliefs regarding such matters as the right to have as many children as one wants, the right to possess whatever one can legally acquire and the right to enjoy whatever possessions we manage to garner. Our species living in harmony with earth will demand material and psychological adjustments bigger and deeper than mankind has ever experienced, and this in the context of the deadliest weaponry we have ever developed. Deep and persistent thinking will be required for such a foundational effort of Progressivism. Matters such as global warming must be made the concerns of daily living and social planning and inform the founding documents of our changed public institutions.

 

There is an old gospel song containing the line “This world is not my home, I’m just passing through.” This is the mentality that must be vigorously challenged along with the commandment to go forth and multiply. Such cultural sentiments must not be seen as innocent sentiments, but as dangerous misconceptions. That this world is our only home should be one of the major mantras of Progressivism.

 

It seems to me our task, while overwhelming, is clear and only humans can carry it out.

 

Bob Newhard

On Defending Oneself

The National Rifle Association (NRA) argues that the right to own and bear arms rests upon a more basic right than the Second Amendment and indeed is implied by the Second Amendment to the Constitution. That more basic right is the right to defend oneself. Let us examine that asserted right for its logic and consequences.

Notably the ostensive definition of the word “gun” has changed markedly since the Second Amendment was written. This is one consequence of writing any technology into a document intended to be effective or hundreds of years and it is one reason the process of amendment was made available to change the document as needed.

The word “gun”, meant a single shot muzzle loading device at the time the 2^nd Amendment was written and now can mean an assault rifle like the AR-15 which fires at a rate of 800 rounds per minute. The NRA insists that both the ancient 18^th and the 21^st century weapons are equivalent as far as the 2^nd Amendment is concerned. In an article titled All Guns are not Equal in the University of California Davis Law Journal, which can be found at http://chronicle.com/article/All-Guns-Are-Not-Created-Equal/136805/, it is pointed out that a distinction was made between the light fowling, hunting and vermin-killing guns owned by citizens including the light muskets used by state militias, and the heavy muskets issued by the federal government to counter the heavy muskets of the British army.   I found the above referenced long article exceptionally useful for understanding the context in which the 2^nd Amendment was written and ratified. 

As things now stand, an American can own and bear a machine gun. The effort to reduce the idiocy of such a gun-ridden environment was recently defeated by Republicans using an equally idiotic and non-democratic Senate rule allowing a minority of 1/3 plus 1 vote to defeat a majority nearly twice its size. This is a Senate rule and not a law. It has never been approved by the citizens whom it so frequently harms. Even when used to protect the public wellbeing it remains undemocratic.

But the logic of the right to self-defense and, per its supporters, therefore the Second Amendment, has gone substantially unanalyzed. As it now stands, a person can buy and use for self-defense a machine gun. What if a neighbor acquires, to defend his home against an outbreak of gang violence, a shoulder fired anti-tank weapon, as is used in the suburbs of Damascus? Does that mean I also have the right to acquire such a weapon? If so, what would society look like then? Clearly, leaving the definition of “gun” open ended, as it now is and as the NRA insists it must remain, leads to absurdity, i.e. individual self-defense leads to social chaos. “Gun” must be defined in a way with much less disastrous consequences for humanity. Recently, in China, a man undertook a mass attack on a school including its children. Because he did so with a knife, because gun ownership by citizens is not permitted, there were no fatalities. The logic here is you have a right to defend yourself, but only with stipulated weapons.

The upshot of this type of analysis acknowledges society’s right to impose the rules for human activity if such activity is deleterious to its members’ welfare, but leaves the individual free to defend her/himself.

This kind of analysis, and I am sure the above example can be improved upon, is what is necessary to get beyond the state of affairs that is literally killing us.

There is a correlate to the above observation. We often hear the statement that “The end does not justify the means.” To the contrary, the “end” is the only thing that can justify the “means.” Without the “end” the act or thing that is the “means” is merely an act or thing. As with so much of human discourse, we cover up our inadequacies with verbiage. What is generally the case when the above locution is used is that people were unclear about the “end” that has been asserted. In the above case the “end” is self-defense and the “gun” the “means.” However, we have seen that the means has produced unacceptable consequences. The “end” of self-defense requires a social context; otherwise society becomes an unlimited shooting gallery or a jungle, neither of which is acceptable for the security of human beings. Had we been clear on the “end” we would have specified the means as conditional upon whatever other consequences those means do or may entail. The failure of the founders to do so, despite being aware of the massive changes the Industrial Revolution could produce, does not mean that we should not do so now. This kind of effort should be part of a process of bringing the Constitution into the modern age and also increasing awareness of the need to exercise the precautionary principle.

Bob Newhard

Bigger Than We Thought?

A number of years ago Ralph Nader began telling us that there was no essential difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Indeed, he ran as a third party candidate because of this in 2004. I, I suspect like many other progressives, saw the truth of Nader’s statement as money going from the corporations and wealthy individuals to buy support from either party no matter who won. I now think the issue may go much deeper than that.

What led me to this suspicion is the bizarre behavior of Barack Obama, a supposedly Democratic president. The last straw has been his putting Social Security on the bargaining table for the 2014 budget, not to mention that he did so even before anybody had sat down to that table. He has already cut the rate of Social Security contributions by calling such contributions a payroll tax. In addition to this we now find out that the sequestering of funds, which is the immediate source of this problem, was, according to Bob Woodward, Obama’s suggestion in the first place.

In any event, these actions and many more such as the Wall Street bailout, corporation accommodation in his health bill, and the furtherance of an imperial presidency by his continuing attempt to take over the legislative process, have raised the following possibility.

Suppose the Big Banks, much bigger and more powerful than we mere mortals have been led to believe,(e.g. Goldman Sachs was critical to the failure of the Greek economy) wanted to control, and thereby tailor our democracy to their liking. The major roadblock would be a population desirous to continue long-standing publicly-supported programs such as Social Security and Medicare, both of which represent enormous profits if privatized.  This would be additionally desirable because future corporate growth is looking increasingly flatter as global competition increases.

In view of this scenario, I suggest they have funded two political parties, each with a different mission. The Republican Party would become the party of the obdurate insisting on a return to 19^th century capitalism. It prided itself on sticking to the American way, ranging from the nuclear family to the subordinate role of women to capitalism uber alles. The Democrats from Clinton to Obama would be the good guys willing to compromise with  the uncompromising Republican ideologues no matter how far out their demands might be. This political mechanism has allowed the gradual destruction of social services by government and their transference to the profit driven private sector, as the Democrats “reached out” to an intransigent Republican Party. This process is destroying all the civilizing benefits that saw much of the working class become the middle class, which the Democrats following FDR had fought so hard and bitterly for. The welfare of the majority is being sacrificed to the greed of the wealthy and the process has been essentially a “good cop, bad cop” scenario conducted as politics as usual.

In brief, the American public has, and is, being treated to a kabuki dance  aimed at destroying the welfare of ordinary citizens by transferring increasing amounts of money and power to the wealthy and powerful by the posturing Democrats led by Obama (and now joined by Pelosi) “reaching out” to an adamant, increasingly absurd,  Republican Party. All of this is occurring in the context of the greatest economic inequality since the Gilded Age at the end of the 19^th century.

So, assuming this diagnosis is substantially correct, what is to be done?

First let me deliver myself of my utter disdain for Barack Obama. Here is a person who gave well-disposed Americans every reason to believe they had finally found a president who would put people first. What we got is a gifted orator who put money and the power it generates first and the people last, if at all. We got a high-level, Wall Street shill for whom very wealthy crooks are too big to jail. Obama has purveyed deceptions and legal casuistry to a populace victimized by Wall Street, suffering over ten years of war with no end in sight and the loss of their jobs and homes. He has done more to destroy our Constitutionally guaranteed rights than any president in recent history. He has endorsed continued torture and the violation of the Geneva Treaty. He has taken on the role of an assassin with his drone attacks. He has made a mockery of American decency on the world stage and in doing so promoted the spread of uncivilized behavior among the nations of the world.  In short, he has made the world a more dangerous place for humanity and exacerbated its struggle with the complexities of over population and its consequences. It is clear that neither he, nor the Democratic Party, are disposed to put people first.

In effect, the American people have been politically abandoned and, as Jefferson noted, they have to take matters into their own hands, because their governing institutions have failed them. Let us find an effective, 21^st century, non-violent, way to do so.

Bob Newhard

Déjà vu all over again

Let’s get one thing clear. The Tea Party has nothing to offer. It wants power only.

Ample evidence of this can be found in a current Tea Party video that can be found on Alternet at http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/slick-paranoid-tea-party-video-aims-violent-insurrection. There you will find a none too subtle solicitation to overthrow the United States government.

Some of you may recall Senator Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunt of the 1950’s in which he accused the government of harboring communists. One consequence of this Right Wing movement was the loyalty oath that every government worker, federal, state and local, was required to sign as a condition of employment. Thus in the 1950’s, Republican Right Wingers demanded that government employees swear that they did not advocate the overthrow of the government, which this Tea Party now advocates. The video argues  that the government has stolen the citizen’s freedom by making them dependent upon government through social services such as Social Security and Medicare and that violent revolution is needed to recover it. The video implies that the “stealing” began with the acceptance of government benefits.

The real story, of course, is that we began to lose the Constitutional guarantees of freedom in consequence of the wars launched in the Middle East by a G. W. Bush Far Right Republican administration. Why Democrats have tolerated the Obama administration’s continuance of and enhancements to this democracy-destroying process is a matter of deep concern to those who actually do care about freedom.

This form of deception demonstrates that the Republicans, as now constituted, have nothing to offer the American people but lies and deceptions. This pernicious vacuity of public purpose and benefit and the lust for power it betrays, should find a large and continuous response from those who care about humanity’s future, especially progressives who demand the addressing of real human problems.

The emptiness of the Tea Party’s agenda is not only destructive by the distraction it engenders, but is a genuine threat to democracy and human freedom. Where there is power, especially in a country the size of the United States, this kind of functional vacuity can easily breed a raw lust for power, all too frequently playing out as necessary to protect the country from those who protest the power grab. As I have previously mentioned, such a coup d'etat was in the works against FDR until it was revealed.

In the midst of the Great Recession in which large numbers of people are losing their jobs and their homes, the Tea Party makes a major issue of a loss of freedom. This is analogous to the Nazis in Germany who in the midst of the Great Depression, far worse in Germany than in the United States, tapped into German bigotry by blaming the Jews for that depression. When people are desperate, a scapegoat for their suffering can usually be found and used for political purposes by the unscrupulous. In Germany it was the Jews, in today’s America it is the government.

Why the government? It’s because government is the only institution that can prevent corporate takeover of this country. Ever since Ronald Reagan, government has been portrayed as the enemy of the people by the Republican Party. They have now gone so far as to advocate its overthrow, which the Republican Joe McCarthy accused the communists of plotting.

Lest anyone take the Republicans seriously in their concern for freedom, notice how quickly and thoroughly they began to destroy freedom with the advent of the Near East invasions. In short order we had the Republican-appointed majority of the Supreme Court nullifying our vote by appointing the President, the Patriot Act, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in order to funnel military equipment and training into local police departments. The fact that the Democratic Party under Obama has continued and enhanced many of these anti-democratic acts draws attention to the fact that it is in much the same employ of the rich as the Republicans have traditionally been.

Underneath all of the turmoil this country has gone through in last decade is a massive exercise in fear, which has seen everything from color-coded threats from terrorists to the loss of homes and jobs. Pervasive fear is the playground of tyrants and tyranny is what we will get unless we, as a nation, get a grip and face up to the gross deceptions, ranging from unjustified wars to the connivance of the  wealthy and the denial of ecological destruction. There are few greater political contrasts than the fear mongering of G. W. Bush and the fear challenging of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. May we find an FDR for our time.

Bob Newhard 

An Explanation for Passivity

Why, when we had such a massive outpouring for Barack Obama in 2008, have we been unable to eliminate the G. W. Bush practices and policies that were, in large measure, responsible for that outpouring. Why, in short, has the left, except for some sporadic Occupy protests been so passive?

Both Rachel Maddow and Glenn Greenwald place a good deal of the blame on the authoritarian government created by over ten years of the War on Terror. Both point out that war, by its nature, transfers an enormous increase in power to the President as Commander in Chief. To G. W. Bush this meant an uncontested preemptive war on Afghanistan and Iraq. Under Barack Obama it has meant the loss of civil liberties under the Patriot Act and the 2012 Defense Authorization Act, which effectively extinguished the right to due process for any American the President chose to imprison on his order alone and for an unspecified period of time. This is not to mention the continuance of torture and rendition for torture in flat contravention of the Geneva Convention to which the United States is a signatory. In this regard, the Constitution specifies that treaties have the force of law in this country.

While I agree with Maddow and Greenwald that a prolonged period of war has produced a very authoritarian government, I suspect there is more to the passivity of the left in these circumstances than a substantial increase in authoritarianism.

Suppose one wanted to destroy the effectiveness of the left, thereby leaving the country in the hands of corporate America and their legislative henchmen to convert government functions into for-profit free enterprise substitutes. One way to do that would be to trap the left between two of its core values, thereby neutralizing any significant resistance. The Republicans may have done just that by trapping Progressives between their core values of anti-racism and government social programs, notably Social Security and Medicare. The first African American President, fulfilling the dreams of long-oppressed blacks and the aspirations of the political left, sets about destroying Social Security and Medicare, destroying our civil liberties, refusing to prosecute those financiers who caused the Great Recession because it would be bad for the economy, assassination including an American citizen, and torturing people in flat contravention of the Geneva Convention to which this country is a signatory. All of these and more would have generated massive and continuous protests, including calls for impeachment had any other President tried it. However, the left, as a whole has remained placid lest they contribute to the attacks on Obama in addition to those launched by Republicans. Where the left should have forced Obama to fight or lose its support, it has done next to nothing. Only in the last few weeks has a band of Progressive legislators publicly called out Obama on civil liberties issues.

Barack Obama exploded onto the national political scene. A little-known Illinois State Senator was given the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. His oratorical abilities made him an instant political comer. A few years later he ran against the powerful and well-funded Hillary Clinton campaign.  Her vast name recognition and familiarity to the public as a President’s wife and a well-regarded New York senator made her formidable. Yet Obama managed to find the resources to effectively compete and eventually defeat Clinton. I suggest that sort of thing does not happen in the hard-bitten higher reaches of American national politics without the involvement of major political players extracting the services of a president in return for their support. In short, the sharp turn to the Right after his election reflects an inordinate attachment to money. Not only that of major donors like J. P. Morgan, but his early political rise was founded on his ability as a political fund raiser. It was disconcerting to see Obama’s campaign, like  that of billionaire Mitt Romney, focus on the plight of the middle class, not on that of the poor, who would suffer most from his attacks on Social Security and Medicare. My suspicion is that he does not want to be identified with the poor. Why the disdain for the poor? They were a primary focus for the FDR administration. In my judgment Barack Obama sees himself, after his presidency, among the corporate elite, much as Bill Clinton has done.

I find all of this very disappointing in terms of what could have been.

As with our first Black Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshal, I had hopes that Obama would demonstrate the same depth of understanding of the full implications of what remains this country’s greatest dilemma, racism. It poisons us and, because of our power and influence, it poisons a world that so badly needs to overcome its corrupting and lethal divisions. With all he had going for him, he had a better chance than any recent predecessor to change the political demeanor of this country and perhaps the world, given his paternal tie to the victimized African continent. He provided a combination of intelligence, natural leadership ability and biological background to do much to bring this world together. Think, for a moment, what a well-disposed Black leader of the “last remaining superpower” could have meant for world peace--an improved understanding between the ex-colonizers and the aggrieved colonized. Reading Franz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth gives something of the dimension Obama could have brought to the world stage. What we got was the continued killing and economic greed that has for so long poisoned the human dimension of this planet. With every drone killing of an innocent adult or child, hatred for this country mounts. Obama could have given the United States the opportunity to relate to, rather than dominate, the rest of the world. Abused aspirations are hard to disregard.

Bob Newhard 

Here We Go Again: Technological Paradigm Shift with no Planning for Social Consequences

Humans have yet to find a way to live in harmony with their technology. Their heads create what the rest of their being often finds disruptive, dangerous and destructive. Picture the Industrial Revolution accompanied by a Hogarth-depicted London slum.

We know from bitter experience what disastrous impacts technological innovation can have on social structures and human well-being, yet despite repeated episodes we do little or nothing to prepare ourselves and our societies for what we can see coming down the road. This, in my judgment, is one of the more massive failures of so-called advanced societies.

We now have sitting at our collective doorstep yet another technology that may have the power to dramatically change our means of production and the personal and social structures that depend on that structure. This technology is referred to as 3D Printing or Additive Manufacturing and is promising enough to have been mentioned in President Obama’s State of the Union address. In essence, it is a simple production process of depositing successive layers of material on top of each other, as dictated by a computer model, to produce three dimensional objects. The layers can be of varying thickness, down to the micron level, and be made of a variety of plastics and metal.  

This process can create items from pharmaceuticals, to clothing, to fully functioning hypoid gear sets that are created in a single process with no assembly required. The following website will amaze you with objects made by this essentially simple process of layering. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xaj9jx7648.

Because the object is created from a software program production can take place anywhere, even the home. Additionally, production costs are so low that it can be profitable to produce only one item and it can be specific to that individual’s need. There is no need for mass production, warehousing, inventory, and shipping for these products. When all the advantages are added up, especially those affecting labor costs, we are looking at a technology that has the potential to eliminate a very large number of jobs.

Manufacturers call this process, whether using plastic or metal, additive manufacturing to distinguish it from conventional manufacturing, which removes material, e.g. grinding, cutting, milling, etc. to create the manufactured object. One of the great efficiencies of additive manufacturing is that what are multiple-piece assembled products in conventional manufacturing can be a single process with no assembly using additive manufacturing. Up to this point additive manufacturing has been used mainly for quick and inexpensive prototyping of products in their development process. It is beginning to find a role in production itself.

This process as used by individuals to create 3D objects, e.g. plastic jewelry, miniature statuary, etc., using printers costing as little as $139, is generally referred to as 3D printing. Some people are concerned that this could become a major source of junk as producing trinkets becomes as easy as printing paper.

This technology has the potential to deliver products to the consumer, tailored to the individual’s need or desire without the need for mass production, warehousing and distribution. Basically electrons move rather than things. There would be a decreasing need for factories, assembly lines, shipping, warehousing and other materials handling services.

The scope of the potential impacts of this technology can be glimpsed in the following list that can be found on the website of the Atlantic Council.

• Assembly lines and supply chains could be reduced or eliminated for many products. AM can produce the final product—or large pieces of a final product— in one process.
• Designs, not products, would move around the world as digital files are printed anywhere with any printer to meet design parameters.  A “STL” design file can be sent via the Internet and printed in 3D.
• Products could be printed on demand without the need for inventories.
• A given manufacturing facility would be capable of printing a huge range of products without retooling—and each printing could be customized without additional cost. 
• Production and distribution of material products could become de-globalized as production is brought closer to the consumer.
• Manufacturing could be pulled away from “manufacturing platforms” like China back to the countries where the products are consumed, reducing global economic imbalances as export countries’ surpluses are reduced and importing countries’ reliance on imports shrink. 
• The carbon footprint of manufacturing and transport as well as overall energy use in manufacturing could be reduced substantially and thus global “resource productivity” greatly enhanced and carbon emissions reduced.
• Reduced need for labor in manufacturing could be politically destabilizing in some economies while others, especially aging societies, might benefit from the ability to produce more goods with fewer people while reducing reliance on imports.

The United States, the current leader in AM technology, could experience a renaissance in innovation, design, IP exports, and manufacturing, enhancing its relative economic strength and geopolitical influence.

As you can see the potential impact on society is enormous, ranging from massive unemployment to a radical reduction in the human interaction and commonality of the workplace as well as the benefits of massive pollution and waste reduction. What I did not see after a fairly extensive investigation, was any thought or planning for the personal and social impacts of this revolutionary technology.

It appears that this technology will impact society and individuals with the same lack of planning and preparedness as our capitalist system has displayed in the recent past.

The United States used to have the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) to advise Congress on developing technologies as well as existing technological issues. This agency existed from 1972 to 1995. It found disfavor with Ronald Reagan and was terminated by defunding in Newt Gingrich’s infamous Contract With America. Everybody agrees that technology is a, if not the, major influence on societal concerns. That this country has no agency like, say, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention is a fabulous failure of governmental responsibility. In the halls of government we need the greatest cognizance of technological development and its impacts we can get. This agency should also have the mission to inform the public on what technology does and how it will condition their lives. A counterweight to the hype to which the public is so often subjected in these matters is badly needed. To get a feel for what could be done, the publications of the OTA may be found at http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/. From what I have read of them, I think they could have been somewhat more informative both in detail and in the implications for the public. But at least the effort was being made and should have been retained and improved. Gingrich declared the agency a waste when he eliminated it. I don’t know whether this was a reflection of Republican anti-intellectualism or that the business powers that be did not want the Congress and the public to have objective assessments. Its reports should clearly indicate the potential impacts, especially the social impacts, of a significant new technology and recommend the level of oversight necessary to mitigate any significant adverse impacts. We live in an era of increasing rates of change. It is irresponsible not to assess, monitor and, where necessary, influence the rate and direction of change. The Obama administration should be encouraged to reestablish the agency to keep itself, Congress and the public aware of our technological environment as we are made aware (or should be) of our economic environment.

Aside from all the above 3D printing issues, Rachel Maddow reports as I write this piece that 3D Printing is being used to produce “receivers”, which are the only part of a an assault rifle that carries the weapon’s serial number and hence destroys the identity and control of the weapon. Another lesson in understanding that technology can, and often does, cut more than one way.

Bob Newhard