Tuesday, April 30, 2013

#120 / Precaution Meets Democracy


On April 19th, I referenced an article by Mariachiara Tallacchini, pictured, who teaches Bioethics at the Faculty of Biotechnology of the State University of Milan (Italy). The article I mentioned in that posting focused on the "precautionary principle." 

I have since had an opportunity to read another one of Professor Tallacchini's articles, not yet available generally, but destined to appear, soon, as a chapter in an upcoming book. She continues to explore an area that I find not only fascinating, but of great importance, the relationship of science to society. 

How that relationship should be defined is at least one of the major (if unspoken) issues that is raised by the public hearing taking place today, in Monterey, on proposed fracking regulations. As our technical abilities make it increasingly possible for us to destroy the Natural World upon which we ultimately depend, we need to decide how technical knowledge, and our technical abilities, should be governed within the framework of human society.

Tallacchini notes that, "increasingly, the relationship between science and society has moved towards a situation where uncertain knowledge is the rule." She points us to something beyond the "precautionary principle," however. She says that there is a "better foundation of precaution, based on a more democratic and participatory approach to science policy." This is the "Extended Participatory Model." In essence, this model says that "technique" and scientific knowledge should be deployed only after democratic debate and discussion, and that citizen participation must guide how those with access to technical means (the oil companies, for instance) are allowed to deploy them.

In other words, Tallacchini is encouraging us (to use one timely example) to demand full citizen oversight and understanding of "fracking," before the oil companies are allowed to utilize these techniques to transform the natural environment on which our civilization depends. 


Image Credit: 
http://www.fondazionebassetti.org/it/focus/2008/02/science_and_governance_la_prov.html#.UXlq1ivFROE

Monday, April 29, 2013

#119 / Fracking Meets Democracy


California has vast oil reserves, as yet unused. These reserves are not easily accessible, since they are trapped inside the geologic formation called Monterey Shale, which underlies much of the Central Valley and the Central Coast, from Kern County in the south to Monterey County in the north. These oil reserves can be released by "fracking," or hydraulic fracturing techniques. Click the link if you would like to learn more about fracking.

Currently, California has virtually no regulations that specifically address the environmental perils associated with fracking, but the state is considering a suite of new regulations. Many think they are too weak, and the oil companies, of course, think they are unneeded. 

We "legislate" the realities of our political world. The legislative and regulatory decisions we make lead to transformations in the World of Nature. The picture below is how oil rich areas in Monterey County look right now. The picture above is how they'll look if fracking proceeds. Looks aren't everything, of course. The main impacts of fracking are not "aesthetic."

A public hearing on the state's currently proposed fracking regulations will be held in Monterey tomorrow, Tuesday, April 30th. It will be held at the Hilton Garden Inn, 1000 Aguajito Road, from noon to 8:00 p.m. with a dinner break.

Click this link for the state's description of fracking.
Click this link for the current draft regulations.
Send an email to this address to make a comment. 



Image Credit: 
(1) http://blogs.worldwatch.org/sustainabilitypossible/fracking-solution-or-problem/
(2) http://science.kqed.org/quest/audio/with-large-oil-reserve-california-faces-fracking-debate/


Sunday, April 28, 2013

#118 / Why The NRA Won





Public opinion does not equal political power. 
Money does not equal political power. 

My experience in politics confirms this analysis. Political power comes from personal involvement. If we want our system of "self-government" to work, we have to get involved ourselves.



Image Credit: 
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/nra-bloomberg-gabby-giffords-guns-senate-background-check

Saturday, April 27, 2013

#117 / Personal Branding



It used to be that commodification had a rather negative connotation. Turning something that was not a commodity into a commodity was more or less thought to be a bad thing. Turning human beings into commodities would have been the worst. As Wikipedia says, "an extreme case of commodification is slavery, where human beings themselves become a commodity to be sold and bought."

As my friend Mr. Dylan might say, though, "things have changed."A recent edition of the SmartBrief bulletin, published by the International City/County Management Association (ICMA), advises local government leaders to "polish their personal brand," i.e., to "promote themselves," and to turn themselves into a commodity and then push that commodity.

I am going to resist this impulse to try to achieve personal power by personal "branding" - and not just because I am not an official governmental leader anymore. Turning oneself into a branded commodity, like a popular cereal, and then "promoting" that commodity, is not my idea of leadership, and it is not my idea of how human beings can realize their full potential.

Furthermore, even self-inflicted wounds can hurt!



Image Credit: 
http://howlingduckranch.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/cattle-branding-2010/

Friday, April 26, 2013

#116 / What's In A Name?


The City of Santa Cruz has a "Heritage Tree Ordinance." You can click the link if you'd like to review its provisions.

Most City residents undoubtedly assume (as I certainly did, until recently) that the purpose of the City's ordinance is to protect and preserve "heritage trees," which are defined as trees which are more than 14" DBH (diameter at breast height). I also assumed that the ordinance was, in fact, achieving this purpose, and that the City was, by and large, protecting the large trees that have so much value to us - economic value as well as "emotional" value. 

Alas, this is not, in fact, the case. A "tree activist" recently told me that she had asked for City records, and that the City's records show that of about 2,500 applications to remove heritage trees, during the last ten years or so, about 2,250 were approved. 

Bad news if you agree with the sign pictured to the left. Worse news: the City Council will soon be getting a proposal from its staff to weaken the Heritage Tree Ordinance further, to permit even more cutting of big trees. If you are a Santa Cruz City resident, you might keep your eyes and ears open, so you can present your views to the City Council at the appropriate time. 

Meanwhile, what is going on in Santa Cruz, with respect to the destruction of its big trees, provides additional evidence of a political truth illuminated by George Orwell. In his novel, 1984, and in a number of his other writings, Orwell tell us that language can be used to mislead, as well as to disclose. We need to be careful about assumptions we import into our understanding of the world, when we fall victim to words that have been  deliberately chosen to mislead us. 

What's in a name? Maybe a major deception. A "Heritage Tree Ordinance" that facilitates the extirpation of large trees is a great example of the phenomenon. So is "the Defense Department."

Pictured below are trees still standing, as of today's date, but which are slated for destruction under the City's "Heritage Trees Ordinance." They are right in the heart of downtown Santa Cruz.


I like what the sign says: STOP! 

Look closely: it's a four-way STOP, and there are four trees, pictured, that are about to die, unless someone appeals to the City Council, and the Council heeds that appeal, and actually protects these living parts of the heritage of our city.


Image Credits: 
(1) https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=448302931911254&set=a.140461122695438.35463.134756069932610&type=1&theater
(2) http://brattononline.com/

Thursday, April 25, 2013

#115 / Roll On John



Efforts are underway to save some remnant of the American prairie. To do that, the American Prairie Reserve is seeking funds to acquire about 5,000 square miles of land in Montana. 

Reading about these efforts has made me melancholy, thinking about what we have lost, and what we are losing still. 

Of course, we do need to restore what we can. But, even more, we need to stop the damage. Read all about it: No sign of stopping!



Take the righthand road and go where the buffalo roam
They’ll trap you in an ambush before you know
Too late now to sail back home
Shine your light, move it on, you burn so bright, roll on John


Image Credit:
http://futureenergyinvesting.typepad.com/future_energy_investor/2010/03/i-started-out-a-day-or-two-ago-trying-to-track-down-some-information-on-a-new-book-by-a-saskatchewan-author-i-have-enjoyed-in.html

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

#114 / PAC Deficient?


In These Times magazine, whose online masthead reads, "With Liberty and Justice For All...," provides reliable, monthly coverage of progressive politics. 

In the April edition of In These Times, the magazine ran a story on the Congressional Progressive Caucus ("Taking A Stand Against Cuts"). That article was singled out for praise in the "Letters" column of the May edition. The letter from the reader in Shoreline, Washington, praising the April article, went beyond a simple appreciation. His lament was as follows: "Given the problems ... in getting progressives elected, why isn't there a PAC allied with [the Congressional Progressive Caucus]?

Somehow, I don't think that political progressives will ever be able to out fundraise the corporate plutocracy that runs our nation, and I am not convinced that this is where progressives should be placing their main focus. Progressives do need to invest their treasure where their heart is, but I think we actually are going to have to develop a "new kind of politics," a politics that finds a way to win without relying on money as the main way forward. 

If money and PAC success is what it takes, we progressives are out of luck.



Image Credit:
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/03/contribution-to-emilys-list.html

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

#113 / Invisible Blessings



The "Insight" section of the Sunday, April 21, 2013 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle had a story on highway safety. The story was featured on the cover under this title, "The Invisible Blessings of Prevention."

The point made in the article, which was authored by Franklin E. Zimring, a professor of law at the UC Berkeley School of Law, is that "safety engineering" work, focused on both cars and highways, has massively reduced injuries and deaths related to highway driving. "Invisible" to most of us, this work to prevent accidents has had a massive payoff in safety for everyone. 

Where I live, the accident statistics for Highway 17 confirm Professor Zimring's analysis. In a much more general way, however, I think that the title applied to his essay is worth pondering. In fact, to the extent we invest in "prevention," we will secure to ourselves, and to our posterity, the blessings we hope for. 

Precaution and prevention. Two good principles to follow. 


Image Credit: 
http://glitzandglamourevents.blogspot.com/2011/07/car-design-news-20015.html 

Monday, April 22, 2013

#112 / Candid Camera



Here is something new to worry about: total civilian surveillance, all the time. I am talking about the  "Google Glass," the wearable computer that will allow users to be "on" their computer at all times, even as they watch their kids' soccer game, or seduce a co-worker in the break room. This device will permit total time visual surveillance of everyone "seen" by the wearer of the "Glass." Here is a link to an article that discusses the possibilities

I must admit that I hadn't thought about this aspect of Google's new and upcoming technology. I have more or less dismissed this device as going beyond my own, personal needs for constant computer contact. I do have that addiction, true, but my cell phone does just fine in satisfying the need, or so it seems to me. 

The article, however, does make a point. 

On the upside, if there had been lots of "Glass" users at the Boston Marathon, who were all recording their experiences, the authorities might have more quickly apprehended the perpetrators of the bombing atrocity. Or, that whole bombing episode might not even have happened. 

The article talks mainly about the "downsides." Query whether we can truly function as human beings if we are under constant surveillance (potential or actual). At the least, this is something to think about as you start having interactions with users of the "Glass." 

The article calls them "Glassholes," by the way.



Image Credit:
http://www.zdnet.com/google-glass-and-the-emerging-glasshole-culture-7000014187/?s_cid=e539&ttag=e539

Sunday, April 21, 2013

#111 / Serenity Prayer



My name is Gary, but I am not an alcoholic.*

I guess I am reporting in because I am having some problems with the "Serenity Prayer."

My basic thesis about life is that "we ourselves create the human world we most immediately inhabit." That thesis tends to the conclusion that there is virtually nothing that we "cannot change." Like it or not, I have more or less accepted responsibility for changing anything that seems to need it, within our human world - or at least trying to change those things. So, I am having a problem with the Serenity Prayer right off the bat. Not to mention serenity itself, given the world in which we are living!

As to the second part, "changing the things I can," I am finding myself less successful at that than I would like to be, and I am also subject to what I think of as the curse of Saint Paul:

I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want to do is what I do.**

The third part of this prayer seems to make some sense: God grant me wisdom! I would welcome some wisdom, and some serenity, too. Right about now I find I am 0 for 2.

________________________________________________________
*I make that claim with some confidence, but in the spirit of full disclosure, I can no longer claim that I "don't drink." Up until about two years ago, I never drank any alcohol at all. But now I drink one glass of red wine at night with dinner, on the basis of its purportedly anti-cancer properties. I don't think I am an alcoholic, but I do feel pretty inebriated after I drink that glass!
** That's from Romans 7:19.


Image Credit: 
http://www.etsy.com/listing/26356955/the-serenity-prayer-2

Saturday, April 20, 2013

#110 / Responsibility



"Responsibility" seems to require that we actually do something about the problems, challenges, and opportunities that confront us. 

But how do we get to that definition from what appears to be the more literal meaning of the word?

Focusing strictly on its constituent parts, the word "responsibility" would appear to derive from an amalgam of the word "response" and the word "ability." Looking at it from that perspective, "responsibility" should mean an "ability to respond."

That is not, however, the definition of the word, as we actually use it. Our language assumes that if we can respond (and have the ability to respond) then we actually should respond, or even must respond. 

"Responsibility" means that we have "a moral, legal, or mental accountability," according to the definition provided by the  online dictionary I consulted

I have to admit I feel a "mental accountability" for the human world that I (and all of us) have helped create. I get upset with myself when I realize that I am not, at least enough, responding to the problems, challenges, and opportunities we confront. 

The more we know, I guess, the more we ought to do. 

The hole in the boat is always at our end.


Image Credit:
http://geniusinchildren.org/2013/01/17/taking-responsibility-vs-being-responsible/

Friday, April 19, 2013

#109 / Cautious As We Go





















How would you like to read an article about the epistemology of uncertainty in science and law? Here's the full title, with a link: Before and beyond the precautionary principle: Epistemology of uncertainty in science and law. Actually, in the spirit of full disclosure, the link will only to get you to the abstract. Then, you'll have to rent or purchase the full text. 

For my purposes, the abstract has been enough to spur my thinking. I just love the word "epistemology," which means, "the study or a theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge especially with reference to its limits and validity." In more common parlance, "epistemology" is all about "what we (can) know, and how we can know it." Start pondering that question and you do begin to understand that "uncertainty" is pretty much the name of the game where the limits of our knowledge is the topic. According to Werner Heisenberg, in fact, an "uncertainty principle" underlies all our knowledge about everything, specifically including what we understand to be the fundamental atomic reality that has generated the Universe we happen to inhabit.

Given that "uncertainty" is fundamental to our knowledge of the world, maybe we ought to be "cautious" about taking actions that could affect it. That is the essence of the "precautionary principle," which I think is a good way to organize our efforts to create a human world.

If I am right that our world, the world we most immediately inhabit, is fundamentally dependent on the World of Nature, upon which all life ultimately depends, wouldn't it make sense not to do things that might undermine the ability of the natural world to sustain life, until we are sure we know what we are doing? That does seem wise. 

It's what Dr. Mariachiara Tallacchini suggests in her article, too! 

When the "big words" of philosophy and science come to the same conclusion as what we might call "common sense," we probably ought to pay attention.


Image Credit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_quantification

Thursday, April 18, 2013

#108 / What Would Socrates Do?



The Wall Street Journal has just published a review of Earl Shorris' book, The Art of Freedom. Another review, which I found yesterday,  was published in the New Republic. Both reviews are worth reading, and they make me believe (as good reviews should, I guess) that I had better confront Shorris' book directly.

Shorris died in May of last year, and The Art of Freedom was published posthumously. 

Not having yet read the book, I can only quote from the reviews. In the review published in The Wall Street Journal, Shorris quotes a  woman incarcerated at New York's Bedford Hills maximum-security prison. When asked by Shorris why she thought the poor were poor, the woman replied, "Because they don't have the moral life of downtown."

This prisoner presented to Shorris the thesis that the poor were poor because of an inadequate exposure to what the academic world calls "the humanities." Her claim has spawned an educational experiment still going strong, The Clemente Course in the Humanities.

Finding out more about that educational effort seems advisable, as we experience a decline in the ability of our civilization to maintain even the basic rudiments of what we think of as "civilized behavior." (You don't blow up bombs in the middle of crowds, as one for instance).

Asking the question, "What Would Socrates Do?" is probably also good advice for anyone. Rich, poor, or whatever your circumstances. Even those who did take classes in the humanities are probably due for a refresher course. 


Image Credit:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112423/earl-shorriss-art-freedom-reviewed-nora-caplan-bricker#

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

#107 / Not Going Anywhere


Here is an idea that is not going anywhere. It's a good idea, though; at least I think it is a good idea.

We are beginning to understand that our human-built world is having an ever greater impact on the World of Nature, and that our human civilization (and perhaps even our continued existence as a species) is ultimately dependent on the natural world. One way that this is becoming manifest is through our observations of climate change, reflecting the human-caused global warming that is clearly underway, here on Planet Earth. To control global warming, we need to reduce human-generated carbon emissions to the atmosphere. In fact, we need to do it very quickly, too!

Since about 40% of the carbon emissions released in the State of California come from the "transportation" sector (read from our cars), we need to reduce the carbon impact of our driving. In fact, we need to do it very quickly, too!

I attended a conference in Sacramento last week, put on by the UC Davis School of Law Environmental Law Society. The conference was entitled, "California Public Transportation: Are We Moving Forward?" One of the speakers, Ethan Elkind, a Bank of America Climate Policy Associate at the UC Berkeley Law School, and a frequent contributor to a very nice blog, Legal Planet, pointed out that there are, essentially, three strategies for reducing carbon emissions from our cars. First, we can reduce the "carbon intensity" of the fuels we use to power our cars. Second, we can make our cars more fuel efficient. Third, we can drive fewer miles. The currently popular buzzword for achieving the last goal in this list is reducing "VMT," or vehicle miles traveled. According to Elkind (he's right), we can't do what we need to do to reduce carbon emissions related to transportation simply by improving fuel efficiency and by changing the carbon composition of our fuel stocks. Both these steps are essential, but they are not sufficient. We need to stop driving so much. We need to reduce our VMT, and we need to do it very quickly, too!

There could be a direct regulatory approach to controlling VMT. For instance, we could decide that those cars which have "even" license plate numbers could be driven only on "even" dates. We actually tried a system like this, with respect to gasoline purchases, during the energy crisis of the 1970's. This is a directly regulatory and non "market" system that would be resisted. How about a "market" solution? In the arena of water conservation, various communities have derived pricing schemes that provide a certain "baseline" allocation of water to everyone, and then make those who use more than the baseline pay more, on a scale that increases the more you use. What if we tried that with VMT? If every automobile were provided with an initial VMT allocation, and then the automobile owner was charged a rather HIGH additional cost for every mile over that base VMT allowance, people could decide to reduce their VMT (by carpooling, for instance, or taking transit) on the basis they decide themselves, driven by the market mechanism of price avoidance. 

Is this a good idea? Well, it could be. As discussed at the conference, though, the current plan is to provide only "carrots" for reducing VMT, not "sticks," and those carrots aren't really all that compelling. 

My question is this: are we serious about reducing VMT? We ought to be, and if we are, we had better start putting a lot of carrots and sticks in play, and they had better be strong inducements and strong penalties. We need to do it very quickly, too!




Image Credit:
http://utcm.tamu.edu/mbuf/

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

#106 / Second Coming



The Boston Marathon, yesterday, was an occasion of tragedy. Deaths. Horrific injuries. If bad behavior leads to more bad behavior, have we reached some turning point? Have we entered into a kind of death spiral of civilization? It seems that way. Today.

Second Coming
William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?


Image Credit:

Monday, April 15, 2013

#105 / Tax Day


My father liked to pay his federal income taxes. That's right, or at least that is how I remember it. Completing the family 1040 was a big deal, when I was growing up. My father's office was just past the family room, and inside a room that had a pool table installed, and that had a set of big, floor-length picture windows facing out to a swimming pool. I remember the chug-a-chug whirr of the paper tape adding machine, and the brown ceramic jar that held the entire year's tangle of sales tax receipts, which my father had carefully husbanded all year, and then added up as he prepared his return, so he could qualify for the (then available) state and local sales tax deduction. 

That "happy to help my country" feeling that accompanied my father's preparations to pay his income taxes carried over to me. Until recently, that is. 

I have been pretty lucky in my life, including having always been in a pretty good financial situation (with much of the credit for that going to my hard working wife, Marilyn), and I still think, like my father taught me, that it's right to contribute. I am still  happy to do that, too, when I can put myself in the right frame of mind. But I am finding it ever more difficult to get into that good state of mind about the tax payments we make, since it is galling to realize that (1) we are largely living on borrowed money, which my children and grandchildren are going to have to pay off; (2) about half the taxes we pay are going to fund the military, in one form or another, and (3) that our tax payments are helping to perpetuate a state of American imperialism and permanent war that makes George Orwell's 1984 seem like a piece of descriptive journalism instead of a novel.

Plus, I am becoming painfully aware that there are a lot of people (and corporations) that are paying a whole lot less than they could, and should, while profiting exorbitantly. Recent financial events in the United States have made me understand that we are (indeed) the 99%, and that the benefits of our contributions are disproportionately being distributed to the 1%.

I'll feel better about paying my taxes, again, when the country is run for the benefit of, and in response to, the majority of those who are actually paying the taxes. 

Until then, I am simply not going to be able to like paying my taxes, in the way my father did (and in the way I used to). A lot of joy has gone out of my annual encounter with Form 1040.



Image Credit: 
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/13/150549181/why-2012s-tax-day-falls-on-april-17 

Sunday, April 14, 2013

#104 / Earth Day


The person with the phone is almost certainly Dennis Hayes (in earlier days). He was one of the main organizers of the first Earth Day, held on April 22nd in 1970. 

The picture comes from an article by Nicholas Lemann, published in the April 15, 2013 edition of The New Yorker. That article, entitled "When The Earth Moved," compares the 1970 first edition of Earth Day with more recent Earth Day efforts. The comparison is quite unfavorable to our current Earth Day endeavors.

Since Earth Day 2013 is coming up, in just over a week, it is a good time to think about what has gone wrong in the environmental movement. In Lemann's view, environmentalism has moved from a grassroots, democratic movement to an "insider" ballgame played by organizations like the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council, both closely tied to, and funded by, corporate interests. 

What Lemann says about Earth Day can be said about our politics in general. 

Democratic self-government means that we (tens and hundreds of thousands of us) need to get directly involved ourselves. 

No shortcuts allowed.




Image Credit:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2013/04/15/130415crat_atlarge_lemann

Saturday, April 13, 2013

#103 / The World As It Is #2


I have been commenting on Chris Hedges' book as I have been reading along. It is a series of very brief essays. I have definitely been engaged by the arguments he presents, by his "dispatches on the myth of human progress." 

Reflecting on my two comments so far, one stimulated by Hedges' essay, "Buying Brand Obama," and the other comment made yesterday, focusing on the book more generally, I can see that I have been somewhat impatient with The World As It Is. That is not because I don't agree with Hedges' analysis, either. I do.

I am impatient, I think, not with Hedges, but myself. 

As I said yesterday, I am unwilling to admit that the world actually "is" as bad as Hedges paints it - at least insofar as the word "is" is meant to declare that the realities described are the inevitable and ultimate realities of our world. And yet..... I pretty much have to agree with virtually every one of Hedges' essays. His descriptions are accurate; his anger and outrage are legitimate. So, if my reaction to an unacceptable world (and that is exactly the right word to describe the world presented in Hedges' essays), then I have to do something about it.

If I don't do something about it, then I am admitting that Hedges actually does describe "the world as it is."

This book has put me into a kind of panic. I know all these things. But I must say, Hedges does make them vivid.

We have got to change the "world as it is."

That world is not acceptable. It's not right. It's not just. It's life-threatening.

I recommend this book, but this book has made me impatient.

I recommend doing something about what this book describes.

I am going to have to do that. Somehow, I am going to have to do that.

I am getting impatient with myself.


Image Credit: 
http://www.kpfa.org/events/kpfa-radio-present-chris-hedges-world-it-dispatches-myth-human-progress

Friday, April 12, 2013

#102 / The World As It Is


I am enjoying this book, The World As It Is. Chris Hedges has been a war correspondent, and now writes for the online news service Truthdig. He is pretty good at what might be called "rant," though he calls his pieces "sermons." Here is an example: 

When things start to go sour, when Barack Obama is exposed as a mortal waving a sword at a tidal wave, the United States could plunge into a long period of precarious social instability.
At no period in American history has our democracy been in such peril or has the possibility of totalitarianism been as real.  
Our way of life is over.....
      "It's Not Going To Be OK," February 2, 2009
I find that I am mostly in agreement with the substance of Hedges' critiques. They are daunting, however. His critical views of real problems are accurate in their own right, but he provides no immediate or long term "solutions" to the problems identified. Prescriptions for positive action don't jump out from these essays. "Daunting" or "discouraging," take your pick. 

The title of the book reveals the problem that I am having. "Is" is a word that purports to define what is real, and Hedges is making the claim, by giving the book the title he does, that his views properly describe the "reality" of our life (as opposed to the much more rosy misapprehensions that are the view of almost everyone else).

In fact, however, that "is" word is always tricky, when we are talking about politics, and the world we create through our human actions. Perhaps a more accurate title might have been, "The World As It Is Today."

Tomorrow depends on us.



Image Credit: 
http://www.truthdig.com/worldasitis


Thursday, April 11, 2013

#101 / Righteous People



According to Jewish tradition, in every generation there are 36 righteous people in the world whose role in life is to justify the purpose of humankind to God. These righteous ones are called the Tzadikim or the Nistarim. Tradition holds that their identities are unknown, even to themselves, and certainly they are not known to each other. They are responsible for the continuation of the universe. The way I see it, they are somehow able, by their own good behavior, to encourage just enough good behavior in the rest of us that the world can go on.

Probably (though we will never know), those holding high federal office, or the recipients of major grants and awards, are not automatically on the list.

That means that the rest of us might have a chance. 



Image Credit: 
http://eteacherbiblical.com/articles/tzadikim-nistarim

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

#100 / Fossoli




Oh humans, we are so great!
What worlds from within us we create!
Out of our dreams we build a paradise hotel.
Out of a nightmare, a death camp hell.

===============================================

Sunset At Fossoli 

I know what it means not to return.
Through barbed wire I have seen
The sun go down and die,
And have felt my flesh torn
By an old poet's words:
"The sun may set and rise,
But we, contrariwise,
Sleep after our short light
One everlasting night."


February 7, 1946

PRIMO LEVI
Translated by Marco Sonzogni and Harry Thomas

Lines 6-9 are Walter Raleigh's translation of Catullus, Catulli liber, 5,4.


Information about Fossoli can be found by clicking the link. The translation above is from the Times Literary Supplement, February 22, 2013



Image Credit:
https://sites.google.com/site/antoniobutt/fossoli

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

#99 / Animals



I was much moved not only by this image, titled "Anguish," but by the article it illustrated, "One of Us." The article appeared in the most recent edition of Lapham's Quarterly, and discussed the phenomenon of animal consciousness. The article suggests that many of the differences we postulate between animals and humans are not, in fact, based on any real difference. Animals have consciousness, have individual existences, and can communicate. 

But in this we differ. Only humans presume to create a world of their own, separate from (though completely dependent on) the World of Nature, and to proclaim that human world more important than the world that in fact makes our lives, and the lives of all the other animals, possible.


Image Credit: 
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/essays/one-of-us.php?page=all

Monday, April 8, 2013

#98 / Brand Obama


I have been reading a book called The World As It Is, Dispatches on The Myth of Human Progress. The book is a compilation of essays written by Chris Hedges, and published in Truthdig between 2006 and 2012. 

One of the essays, published on May 3, 2009, is titled, "Buying Brand Obama."

Mr. Hedges does not have a lot of nice things to say about our President. He also does not have many good words to say about American politics. In fact, the following statement pretty much sums up his commentary: "The junk politics practiced by Obama is a consumer fraud."

Mr. Hedges is an angry man, or so I judge from reading his book. Frankly, I am not very happy with our current politics (and political leaders) either. 

In the end, though, I think that anger needs to be focused to be effective (if "anger" is effective at all). Perhaps Hedges is angry at Obama. Perhaps he is angry at the "celebrity culture" that he notes has come to permeate our lives and politics. Perhaps he is angry about the advertising industry in general, which uses its sophisticated techniques to dupe us into "doing and supporting a lot of things that are not in our interest."

Wait a minute! If I gorge on processed food that is bad for my health, or succumb to "junk politics," I think the blame ultimately needs to be focused on my own behavior, not on those who are allegedly "duping" me. 

In other words: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!" 

No one who is paying any attention at all should be "fooled" or "duped" by fast food choices, or by Brand Obama. Anyone who thinks that our national and international policies can be changed by voting for (or against) one of the national candidates that are put before us every four years, has not properly understood the obligations of citizenship. The political solutions we need will not be delivered to us. We are going to have to transform our politics from the bottom up. 

Shortcuts won't work. We might as well forget the "anger," and get to the task. 



Image Credit: 
http://what-is-is.blogspot.com/2012/08/crowdwire-brand-obama-vs-brand-romney.html

Sunday, April 7, 2013

#97 / Stranger From Abroad


Hannah Arendt's books can be intimidating. My favorite of her books, for example, On Revolution, comes complete with footnotes in Latin and Greek.

For those who may want an introduction to Arendt that is a little more accessible, I can recommend this book, Stranger From Abroad, written by Daniel Maier-Katkin. Katkin's biography focuses particularly on Arendt's relationships with three important men in her life: Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, and Heinrich Blücher.

In the end, though, this is a book about Arendt, and about her thinking.

Highly recommended.

Image Credit:
http://www.tower.com/stranger-from-abroad-hannah-arendt-martin-heidegger-friendship-daniel-maier-katkin-hardcover/wapi/113802981

Saturday, April 6, 2013

#96 / Patrice



Patrice Vecchione, pictured, is a celebrated local poet (local to Santa Cruz, Monterey, and to the Monterey Bay Region in general). She has a new book out, The Knot Untied, and so has been appearing for readings around the Bay. She has also been appearing in newspaper columns. 

According to the Monterey County Weekly, Vecchione's next reading will be at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, April 7th, at the The Works, 667 Lighthouse Avenue in Pacific Grove. That's tomorrow. It's free. We are all invited.

According to the Santa Cruz Weekly, Vecchione says that "writing a poem is about taking something that is not primarily located in language and locating that thing in language."

I happen particularly to like that observation. It comports with my understanding of how we create the world in which we most immediately live, and it affirms my idea of what it means to be human, for our glory is to bring into reality the unspoken dreams and hopes of the human heart. "Words make worlds," as the Santa Cruz Sentinel has recently begun saying, promoting its advertising space. 

Words matter. Words make worlds. 

May we all find ways to untie the knots that bind us to the dead and weighty worlds of our past, and to create the new worlds and new realities that will allow us, and our children, to have a future.

Poetry, indeed, could help untie those knots, because without the words that will precipitate them into reality our hopes and dreams will remain unrealized.



Image Credit:
http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/events/2013/apr/06/48600/

Friday, April 5, 2013

#95 / Bad Behavior And Good Behavior


I have long believed that most people do what they are expected to do. A recent article in the New York Times cites sociological evidence that this is actually true. 

Robert Cialdini, now a professor emeritus of psychology at Arizona State University, and the author of the book Influence, puts it this way: "when we don’t know what to do, we look around to see what our peers are doing. From that we learn what is appropriate, and what is practical." 

This means that publicizing and punishing "bad behavior" is not the best way to get "good behavior." 

Bad behavior is usually more visible than good. It’s what people talk about, it’s what the news media report on, it’s what experts focus on. Experts are always trying to change bad behavior by warning of how widespread it is, and they take any opportunity to label it a crisis. “The field loves talking about the problems because it generates political and economic support,” says Wes Perkins, a professor of sociology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. This strategy might feel effective, but it’s not — it simply communicates that bad behavior is the social norm. Telling people to go against their peer group never works. A better strategy is the reverse: give people credible evidence that among their peers, good behavior is the social norm.

This sociological truth, that models of good behavior lead all others into good behavior, might also mean that it is actually true that a small number of "righteous" people are in fact sustaining and supporting the continued existence of our human world - just as the Jewish Wisdom books tell us.



Image Credit: 
http://www.teachnet.com/lesson/seasonal/certificates060399.html

Thursday, April 4, 2013

#94 / An Economic Asteroid?



The How Stuff Works website says that while stories of asteroids hitting the Earth are "the stuff of science fiction," they are also "the stuff of science fact." Read the article from which this image was taken if you'd like to know more about the potential for asteroid collisions with our planet.

Today, I have been thinking of asteroids more in a metaphorical sense than in a scientific sense. I have recently been reading articles and listening to online presentations that indicate that a cataclysmic failure of our global economic system could be forthcoming. Since I am a worrier, I have already worried about asteroid collisions with Earth, and the Vermin of The Sky. Now, I can worry about the catastrophe that might be caused by an "economic asteroid," too!

For quite some time (being a worrier), I have worried about the disappearance of my personal financial assets, now that they exist almost entirely in digital form. To be specific, if I have $5,000 in my bank account, I can presumably retrieve those dollars in real form (in printed currency) at any time. Mostly, though, I just look at my bank account balance online, and watch my credit card deductions and the automatic deposits of my income make that balance go up and down. But what if I open my online account, one day, and the balance reads $5.63? What customer service representative do I call? Persons whose identities have been stolen have had this experience. But what about hackers from Russia and China? They might wipe me out, too. And what about simple "glitches" that might have this effect? Worst case: what about a government that decides to control its citizenry by making their individual assets disappear? That could happen. That could even happen here. The disappearance of digital cash could be a financial and economic disaster that affects me individually, or it could affect us all, or most of us. It is certainly not unthinkable, on either a small or large scale. This digital disappearance scenario seems like some kind of legitimate thing to worry about.

According to an article published in a recent edition of AlterNet, titled, "Think Your Money is Safe? Think Again," we do have a good reason to worry about the stability and safety of our financial assets, even without conjuring the spectre of Russian and Chinese hackers, and unexplained "glitches." According to the AlterNet article, banking rules now in force in the United States will permit future bank bailouts to be funded not by the taxpayers (as in the last bank bailout in the United States), but by the depositors in the banks that have failed. In other words, what happened in Cyprus can happen in the United States. Banks can continue to speculate in derivatives using depositors' money; if the banks lose their bets, it will be possible to confiscate money from the depositors' accounts to preserve the banks' financial position. What happens to our financial position? Well, if the article is right, we are out of luck, and the Federal Deposit Insurance system won't help us either. Even if you are not the worrying type, this article is worth reading. It might cause you to change the institution you bank with, to get your money out of banks that are speculating in the stock and commodities markets.

The AlterNet article, however, is only mildly alarmist compared to a presentation I recently listened to online. This presentation, by Porter Stansberry, is forecasting a massive currency collapse in the United States, which Stansberry indicates will be a "specific event" that will bring "our country and its way of life to a grinding halt." According to Mr. Stansberry, we can look forward to a "near complete shutdown of our economy." Life as we have known it will "cease to exist." Governments on both the federal and state level will "shut down."

An event like this, should it come to pass, does sound like it would be the economic equivalent to a collision with an asteroid. Far from saying that this is something that might happen, however, Mr. Stansberry claims that this is "100% guaranteed" to happen. We have better odds with real asteroids! Of course, Mr. Stansberry's credibility may be suspect. He ends his presentation by trying to sign up customers for his investment research business. It also appears that Mr. Stansberry has been convicted in federal court of securities fraud.

Stansberry's conviction doesn't mean that he doesn't make some good points about our macroeconomic situation, and how we can individually prepare for coming economic problems. I am going to take them into account. Somehow, though, his apocalyptic predictions about the total economic destruction that he thinks is certain to be forthcoming have made me want to discard the "economic asteroid" metaphor.

The great thing about the world we create (including our economic system) is that we can, if we want to, do it all over again, and we can do it differently.

The effects of a real asteroid, pertaining to the World of Nature, may not be quite as susceptible to human remediation.


Image Credit: 
http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/natural-disasters/asteroid-hits-earth.htm

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

#93 / Debt




I almost always put an "image credit" listing at the bottom of these blog posts, to let anyone reading my blog know where I obtained the images and illustrations I use. That's true today, and looking up the site where I obtained today's image will provide you with some interesting information on mortgage debt in Canada. I have a very strong suspicion, however, that the image above did not originate with "The Coming Depression" website. In fact, this looks like an Anne Taintor to me. If you are not familiar with the work of Anne Taintor, click on the link. She is really good!

Of course, when I began typing this post, I didn't actually intend to produce a commentary on the works of Anne Taintor, but to make some observations on the topic that Anne Taintor is illustrating here: debt! 

My son Philips has made a conscious decision to go into debt to pursue additional education. This is a person who has been educating himself, more than anything else, in how to live a simple and self-sufficient life. I am nervous on his behalf. He had a unique way to think about debt, however, which I hadn't heard before: "Actually, Dad, I am looking forward to going into debt, because I think that by lending me money, society is telling me that I am worth investing in, and that makes me feel good, and makes me feel happy that I will be working to repay that investment."

I am proud of my son for lots of reasons, including for this observation, but I am still worried about the pressures that personal debt generates. Whether in the context of individual debt, or in the context of social debt, debt is a burden. Debt is better when incurred to finance investments in something that will have long term benefits (either personal or social), and that will increase our individual or collective  productivity. Debt is worse when it is incurred simply to  allow us to consume more than we make, and to "kick the can down the road," as the current expression goes. 

Even "good debt" constrains our freedom, however, and my advice to all young friends, and to our society in general, is to minimize debt, no matter how good the investment may be that the debt is intended to finance. 


Image Credit: 
http://www.thecomingdepression.net/main-street/real-estate/canadians-collectively-past-1-trillion-in-mortgage-debt/#axzz2PKZJ3IoY