Monday, January 20, 2025

#20 / Cindy Sends A Message

 

 
Today, as our presidency changes hands, I am reprinting, in full, an Opinion Editorial that ran in The San Jose Mercury News on November 10, 2024. The headline on that article read, in part, "Local Government Does Work." 

I was a local government official in Santa Cruz County for twenty years. I am, thus, speaking from personal experience when I tell you that Cindy Chavez (pictured above), who wrote that editorial statement, is absolutely right. Chavez served as an elected official on both the San Jose City Council and on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors.

After the election of Donald J. Trump to the presidency, last November, professors and pundits were putting out statements like the following: The End of US Democracy Was All Too Predictable. You can click that link if you'd like to see what I had to say about that statement. 

Anyone worried about the future of our democracy (and we should all be worried, I believe) can do something about that worry - something meaningful - by immediately engaging themselves actively and aggressively with their local government. Take it over! Make it work for you!

This prescription is not an invitation to waste your time. Believe what Cindy Chavez has said. You can take it from me: 


oooOOOooo

Cindy Chavez: A message as I leave office — local government does work

Words from departing politician after 20 years on the San Jose City Council and Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors

Having spent two decades in elected office at the city and county level in Santa Clara County, I have learned something about the relationship between government and the people — something I feel a need and an obligation to share as I leave office.

Local government can work responsively and pragmatically. We can make a dent in local, national and global problems in our own way. We can tackle our troubles and concerns and tap into our community’s vitality.

Consider the COVID-19 pandemic, a catastrophe that left many feeling powerless and touched all corners of our planet. County residents wanted and needed medical care, vaccines, information, transportation and more. Those needs were manifested throughout our county of 2 million people. Our county administration and Public Health Department led on this issue and set the response standard for the rest of the nation.

Other examples came six years ago, when O’Conner and St. Louise hospitals had to be sold, and this year, when Regional Medical Center initiated cutbacks in stroke care and other critical services. These were private sector issues; we could have easily just thrown up our hands and let community assets go by the wayside.

Instead, community members organized and called for preserving these essential health services. The county responded by purchasing O’Connor and St. Louise. The purchase of Regional Medical Center is in the works, with services expected to be restored in the future. Plain and simple, these purchases saved lives and will save many more.

What is it about local government that allows it to uniquely produce such achievements? I believe it results from democracy at the local level.

Local government is accessible and has direct interactions. It isn’t hard for residents to speak at City Hall or the county Board of Supervisors’ chambers, in person or virtually.

Local government is open and governed by the Brown Act and the Public Records Act to make sure business is done where residents can see it happen.

Local public officials listen. Even if they are being told what they don’t want to hear, they try to respond. That’s because most local officials represent relatively small districts, cities or towns. Disgruntled residents can organize to replace them. Successful recalls do happen.

Local government is pragmatic. We focus on issues that may not rile up the left or right wings of politics or result in much castle intrigue. Building libraries, paving streets, operating 911 systems or responding to medical emergency calls induces officials to concentrate on reality, not rhetoric.

All these hallmarks of local government empower us to institute change and make an impact, whereas we might feel powerless at the state and national level. Change here can serve as a template and inspiration for greater change at higher levels of government.

Days after the national election, there’s plenty to be gloomy about. I understand. But after 20 years serving you in Santa Clara County, I’m convinced local government is a strong and vital pillar supporting American democracy.

It deserves your continuing energy and support, even if we are disappointed with it some of the time. It will never be easy. Democratic government challenges our wisdom, our patience and our sense of fairness.

That local relationship between elected officials and the governed, like all relationships, has times of stress and turmoil. And like the other great relationships of our lives, it’s worth it.
_________________________________________________
Cindy Chavez served on the San Jose City Council from 1998-2006 and has served on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors since 2013. She will step down on Tuesday and begin her new job as county manager of Bernalillo County, N.M., the following day.


No comments:

Sunday, January 19, 2025

#19 / Godlike As A Species



Click Here For The Blog In The Original

Thomas Friedman (pictured) wrote a column for The New York Times, back in late October of last year,  one major purpose of which was to urge a vote for Kamala Harris for president. The Times titled Friedman's column as follows: "A Harris Presidency Is the Only Way to Stay Ahead of A.I." As we all know, the events scheduled for tomorrow - the inauguration of a new president who is not Kamala Harris - make clear that the nation failed to take Friedman's advice.

I am not highlighting Friedman's October 30th column to focus on its "political" recommendation. Rather, I want to highlight the following observation to make another point:

We have become Godlike as a species in two ways: We are the first generation to intentionally create a computer with more intelligence than God endowed us with. And we are the first generation to unintentionally change the climate with our own hands. 
The problem is we have become Godlike without any agreement among us on the Ten Commandments — on a shared value system that should guide the use of our newfound powers. We need to fix that fast. And no one is better positioned to lead that challenge than the next U.S. president, for several reasons.

Those who regularly read my blog postings will remember that I keep saying that "We Live In Two Worlds." We live, most immediately, in the world created by our own, human actions and activities. Ultimately, however, we live within and are totally dependent on the "World of Nature," which I also frequently call "The World God Made." If you are uncertain about what "World" that is, here's a peek: 




The purpose of making the distinction that I repeatedly seek to draw between "Our World" and "God's World" is to remind us (humans all) that we are NOT "God," or really even "Godlike." Our main mistake in life - so often made - is to think that we are. We think so because we do, in fact, "create" the world in which we most immediately live. Our ability to act, and to do something never thought of, or done before, provides us with great power, indeed. We are "creators." We are "destroyers." We like to call our powers "Godlike," but our human powers, not unlike the "artificial" intelligence upon which Friedman focuses in his column, are not ultimately creative. In essence, they are derivative. They depend upon, and come from, that World that was here before any of us arrived, and into which we have been, most mysteriously, born.

Within the preexisting reality we inhabit - God's Creation, giving it that designation to make the point that we didn't, ourselves, establish the world upon which we are ultimately dependent - we get to apply our human powers to create something "new," but new only in that what we create are innovations that ultimately and completely depend on the "Creation" which was not our own. 

That old expression, "there is nothing new under the sun," actually does describe the nature of human "creativity." The statement comes from the Bible, by the way.

This New Year of ours, just getting underway, will provide us many "political" challenges (and opportunities). It also poses what might be thought of as a "theological" challenge. Let us first consider Global Warming. Unless we radically change what we are doing, it increasingly appears that we will cause such massive disruptions within "The World That God Created" that human civilization, and maybe all human life, and maybe all life, will be extinguished. 

In addition, just so we don't forget this, we absolutely need to reconfigure our understanding of how to live together, "sharing all the world," as John Lennon and Yoko Ono put it. If we don't figure that out, it seems ever more likely that we will end our human reality in a paroxysm of nuclear war.

No comments:

Saturday, January 18, 2025

#18 / Thoughts About Autocracy In America


Voters lining up to enter a polling site in Asheville, North Carolina, October 2024
 
On November 8, 2024, in the immediate aftermath of our last presidential election, Foreign Affairs published an article by Larry Diamond, who is a Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. Diamond's article was titled, "Democracy Without America? - What Trump Means for Global Democratic Momentum." Here is an excerpt, on which I'd like to comment: 

The rise of autocratic regimes across the world over the last decade and a half has put democrats on high alert. In the last year, successful efforts to beat back antidemocratic movements and governments have provided some indication that this protracted “democratic recession” could be reversed. But Trump’s victory has dealt a blow to these hopes. His triumph in the Electoral College and the popular vote leaves democratic friends and allies of the United States wondering: Will a Trump presidency demand more burden-sharing from them, or even abandon them altogether? And will the United States remain a liberal democracy, or will its institutions gradually erode beyond recognition or repair? 
Early analysis of the election results suggests that Trump’s victory was more attributable to issues like the economy and immigration rather than an endorsement of his autocratic tendencies. And yet whatever the reason Americans may have had for supporting Trump, his campaign made it clear that he will be unencumbered by any global checks on his and his administration’s antidemocratic impulses. As has been the case in other backsliding democracies in the last decade, the defense of democratic norms in the United States will therefore depend on the actions of other leaders of government and society in Congress, state and local governments, the civil service, the armed forces and local police, business, civic institutions, and perhaps most of all, the courts. Their success or failure in upholding the Constitution and the rule of law will heavily determine global democracy’s outlook in the coming years (emphasis added).

Diamond is worried about the rise of autocracy in the United States, and specifically about what an autocratic government in the United States would mean for efforts to uphold democratic norms, worldwide. Certainly, this is a legitimate concern, but let's pay attention to Diamond's observation that "Trump's victory was more attributable to issues like the economy and immigration rather than an endorsement of his autocratic tendencies." 

I think that this is indubitably true. Trump, essentially, "swept" the 2024 elections, at every level (though not by very much, as many commentators have noted). Republican control over both the House and the Senate may result in giving Mr. Trump, as the president, the ability to impose his priorities, politically. However, Diamond is certainly correct that giving Mr. Trump "autocratic" powers was not the reason that he swept the election. 

The entire first section of The New York Times, on November 8th, was almost completely devoted to an analysis of "why" and "how" Trump had such a sweeping victory. If your subscription status, and The Times' paywall policies permit, I encourage you to revist and review The Times' political stories published on November 8th. There were LOTS of reasons provided for Trump's electoral victories (and they were multiple, not merely personal). Virtually all of the stories pointed out that voters were not happy with what the government was doing, and voted for a change in the policies with which they were dissatisfied.

No article suggested that our next president was put into office because the voters yearned for autocracy. 

I tend to think that our next president (two days to go) does have "autocratic" tendencies, and the key question coming up, I think, is whether the people will acquiesce to autocracy, if that is what they are given by our new president. 

Here is my own thought. "No." I don't think the citizens of the United States will allow the United States to turn into an "autocracy." I don't think so, but I obviously don't "know." The very fact that our next president "swept" the November 5th elections, last year, may well be the most powerful check on his autocratic tendencies. We know, now, that "democracy works." As I said shortly after the election last year, the fact that our president may be tempted to try to impose his own, personal ideas (not supported by the majority who voted for him) may well open up "an incredible opportunity to renew the vigor and effectiveness of democratic self-government in the United States."

I still think that, but whether that is what happens, or the opposite, is really going to depend on our individual and collective willingness to reengage in the practices that constitute "self-government," with the objective that a "government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."


No comments:

Friday, January 17, 2025

#17 / Tectonic?

 


Pictured above is Allen C. Guelzo, an historian who specializes in the history of 19th-Century America. Guelzo serves as the Thomas W. Smith Distinguished Research Scholar and Director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship in the James Madison Program at Princeton University. 

As outlined in a "Weekend Interview" in The Wall Street Journal, Guelzo has come to believe that our the recent, 2024 presidential election will prove to be "tectonic."

[Guelzo] characterizes only three past elections as tectonic—1800, when Thomas Jefferson defeated John Adams and the Federalist Party quickly withered; 1860, when Lincoln’s victory established the Republicans as a major party that would dominate presidential politics for seven decades; and 1932, when Franklin D. Roosevelt trounced Herbert Hoover and cemented the modern Democratic coalition.

Guelzo is putting Donald Trump into some rather prestigious company - and even if Guelzo is right about the 2024 election turning out to be "tectonic," I don't think it's true that Mr. Trump shares many (if any) of the personal qualities for which Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, or Franklin Roosevelt are rightly remembered and esteemed.

For Guelzo, a "tectonic" election is one one that marks a permanent structural change in the American electorate and political parties. Most of the column in The Journal speculates on why this may be a fitting description of the 2024 election. Let me confess, I am not persuaded, but I do want you to hear Guelzo's pitch: 

The proposition that this is a tectonic election, [Guelzo] stresses, is only a hypothesis, and it can’t even begin to be tested for years. 
The test consists of two parts: “First of all, there have to be repeated losses,” in this case for the Democrats. That rules out the elections of 2004, 2008, 2016 and 2020, all of which the losing party soon followed with comebacks in Congress and then the White House. Second, the victor’s party must be “involved in some really large-scale event, which it succeeds in handling. Maybe not elegantly, maybe not comprehensively, but at least gives the impression of having succeeded.” 
Hence the need for results. Mr. Guelzo thinks Mr. Trump will attempt to deliver them in three broad areas. “One is a redirection of the entire economy.” He sees the debate over immigration through this lens: “That’s why the whole business over H-1B visas has blown up the way it has, because we’re not really talking about immigration. We’re talking about the economy and who has access to success and growth in the economy.” 
The second is “a major reordering of foreign policy.” Mr. Guelzo sees Mr. Trump as following in the footsteps of Robert Taft, who held what is now JD Vance’s Ohio Senate seat from 1939 until his death in 1953. “Taft was one of the last major American politicians who really thought that, like [John] Quincy Adams said, going in search of monsters was a big mistake.” Mr. Guelzo reckons that Mr. Trump is “very serious about disengagement” and “wants to push that clock on foreign policy way, way back, even to before the assumptions and the consensus of the Cold War.” 
That will likely mean “an end of the war in Ukraine with some kind of negotiated settlement,” Mr. Guelzo says—but not a surrender to Vladimir Putin. He will claim victory, but “everybody knows the Russians failed militarily.” Mr. Guelzo thinks that failure will curb the imperial appetite of the Russian dictator, whom he assigns a Trump-style nickname: “I have no respect whatsoever for little Mr. Weasel Face. In my mind, he is almost beneath contempt. But I think that so many embarrassing reverses have occurred on his watch, I don’t think he’s going to be eager to invite that kind of thing happening again anytime soon.” 
Mr. Trump’s third major ambition is the one he has assigned to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency. Mr. Guelzo suggests that’s a bit of a misnomer: “DOGE is not so much about the budget. It’s about disempowering the bureaucracy that is fed by the budget, and that’s also a clock-turner.” It would “turn things back to the days of Woodrow Wilson.” 
That won’t be easy, Mr. Guelzo says, “because so much of the modern economy is wrapped up with the federal bureaucracy.” Agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration and the Food and Drug Administration serve vital functions, even if their performance is lacking. “If this disempowerment is not very fine-tuned, it’s going to backfire. And the backfire could undo everything that Trump would like to have done in terms of the election having a tectonic result.”

It could be that I am hung up on the "great man theory of history," believing that "fundamental," or "tectonic" changes almost always reflect "the impact of great men, or heroes: highly influential and unique individuals who, due to their natural attributes, such as superior intellect, heroic courage, extraordinary leadership abilities, or divine inspiration, have a decisive historical effect."

I am quoting Wikipedia, there, and I note that Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt all fit that description. Trump, emphatically, does not. If anyone expects Mr. Trump to be able to achieve the kind of changes that Guelzo outlines in the text quoted above, I think it is almost certain that such expectations will be unrealized. Of course, as Guelzo does note, only time will tell.

Setting aside the "Great Man" theory of change, I do think there is a chance that the 2024 election might turn out to be "tectonic." If that does happen, though, I don't think it will be because president Trump will accomplish those three objectives that Guelzo postulates are needed. Instead, I think it just might be true that this past election, and its aftermath (which "aftermath" will begin in just a few more days), will stimulate ordinary people to return to an active and personal engagement in politics. 

If that were to happen, that would be a genuine "tectonic" change, because a lot of us have been standing around since the late 1960's, watching what others are doing - those official, designated drivers of change - and they haven't been doing a good job. We're in peril, as I hope my blog posting yesterday made clear.  

It is time for us to take back the wheel, and start steering ourselves out of the skid that is going to take us into oblivion if we don't rise to the occasion. And... we know that's true, don't we? Again, check those pictures featured at the end of my blog posting yesterday, if you have any doubt. 

It's time to take back control over our own politics, and if we do, that would be "tectonic," indeed!



No comments:

Thursday, January 16, 2025

#16 / Consider The Alternatives



Angela Merkel, who is pictured above, served as the Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021, the only woman ever to have held that office. Merkel has recently written a book about her years of service, and as you can see from the picture, which shows the book sitting on a table in front of her, Merkel's book is a not a small one. A book review in The Wall Street Journal characterizes the book as "a 736-page memoir to secure her crumbling legacy." 

That Merkel's legacy is "crumbling," and deservedly so, is the main theme of The Journal's review. The review was written by Bojan Pancevski, and is unrelenting in its message that Merkel's policies have had bad consequences for the nation. The title of Pancevski's review is as follows: "Angela Merkel Wants Her Memoir to Save Her Legacy. It’s Backfiring."

I am not personally familiar with very many of the things that Merkel did while in office, but I am always suspicious of the political tilt of any statement I read in The Wall Street Journal. Maybe Merkel's time as Chancellor wasn't as bad as this review in The Journal indicates. I don't really know. However, presuming that one of the statements in Pancevski's review is accurate, I do question Merkel's good judgment on what the review presents as a fundamental feature of how Merkel ran Germany: 

The former physicist’s sober and consensual approach to politics was a hallmark of her long years in office. As Germany’s first female chancellor, Merkel seemed free of the vanity of alpha-male politicians. But in her memoir and the interviews surrounding it, she has shown a different, more defensive side, doubling down on even her most divisive decisions and swatting away criticism. It does not, she told CNN, “make a whole lot of sense” to question her judgments with the benefit of hindsight: “We always have to look at matters under the conditions we were in then.” 
In that context, Merkel insists in the book, her policies had “no alternative”—a phrase she often used to justify them while in office. This response was the inspiration for the name of a once-tiny anti-Merkel party, Alternative for Germany, whose aggressively nationalist and anti-immigrant views have now helped it become Germany’s second-largest political force (emphasis added).

The title of Merkel's book is Freedom, which is certainly ironic if the book, in fact, insists that there was "no alternative" to everything she did as Chancellor. It is disturbing that a neo-Nazi political party, "Alternative for Germany," has benefitted from the public's rejection of Merkel's policies - and perhaps more accurately, of a repudiation of what is claimed to be Merkel's former and continuing assertions that there was "no alternative" to the policies she advocated, and carried out. 

Claims by any government official that there is "no alternative" to any policy proposal is simply to elevate power against possibility. There is always an "alternative." A fundamental feature of our human life is our freedom to act. This is the great treasure that is found within the political realm, our opportunity, always, to do something unexpected and new, something never even thought about before. 

Anyone who regularly reads my blog postings knows that this truth about our human situation - which is described, and advanced, and insisted upon by political theorist Hannah Arendt - is what I believe is the most important thing to understand about politics and government. American government, as created by the United States Constitution, has been designed to maximize the possibility of "alternatives," promoting, as it does, dissent, debate, and compromise. 

If we believe in what we have professed, we must, in other words, always "consider the alternatives." 

And.... we had better get right to the job of doing that, too, because it is increasingly obvious that if we continue to pursue the policies of the past, with respect to war, global warming, and income inequality, to name three critical issues, the likely result will be the end of human civilization, or (worst case) the end of all human life, or the end of all life on this planet.

Do you think I might be overstating things? Well, consider these alternatives: 

Hydrogen Bomb Test
Pacific Pallisades / Malibu Fire
Newark Riots, 1967


No comments:

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

#15 / Pen Pals And Exchange Students



Click Here For The Blog In The Original

Back in mid-December, The Wall Street Journal ran a column by Diane Cole that commented on the book that is pictured above, Dear Unknown Friend. 

"Writing Across The Divide" was the title of Cole's book review. Here is a brief excerpt from that review: 

As Alexis Peri tells us in her surprising and perceptive study “Dear Unknown Friend,” approximately 750 American and Soviet women had engaged in [ongoing exchanges] from 1943 until well into the 1950s—not in person, but as pen pals. Ms. Peri, a professor of history at Boston University, discovered thousands of letters belonging to these correspondents while researching her previous book, “The War Within: Diaries From the Siege of Leningrad,” at the Russian state archives. 
The correspondence project, jointly sponsored by the U. S. State Department and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was prompted during World War II by the unanticipated alliance forged between the two countries for the purpose of defeating Hitler. Both countries wanted to rally support and empathy for their former foe turned unlikely bedfellow. And if these new friendships should encourage converts to cross the ideological divide? So much the better for the winning side....
Ms. Peri makes a compelling case that the shared insights did reap rewards large and small—“they cracked open new books, tuned in to new radio programs, and nosed through new periodicals,” the author writes—as women of both countries exchanged encouragement and advice on managing and balancing work and motherhood, long before the term “juggling” became common. Even years after these exchanges ended, Ms. Peri suggests, the former correspondents served in memory as courageous examples for each other as they pursued love and work amid the uncertainties of the postwar world, keeping alive the fact of our shared humanity.

I think it would be great for the United States government, and cities and counties, and states, and elementary schools and high schools, and colleges and universities, to institute, on a very much larger scale, an ongoing, permanent program, encouraging and sustaining the formation of international "pen pal" relationships. 

In fact, let me recommend a book I recently read, I Will Always Write Back, by Martin Ganda and Caitlin Alifirenka. This story, about an international pen pal relationship that changed many lives, was written with Liz Welch, and is truly inspiring. It is definitely worth reading.

I am thinking, though - thinking about that Cold War "pen pal" program, and how we might expand that - that it might be worthwhile to "up the ante," substantially, and to institute a really, really large national and international student exchange program, supported by our very own tax dollars. There is a lot of money in the so-called "defense" budget, and this would be a program that would be dealing with the problems of achieving and sustaining global peace.

If there is one thing that is clear to me (and to you, too, I hope), it is that we all live in one world, and that we are going to need to be able to collaborate and cooperate if we are going to have any chance of meeting the global warming challenge that is our generational assignment (no matter what "generation" you might identify with). We do, as well, have the need to eliminate the threat that nuclear war poses to everyone of us. 

Below is a video link to a talk by Noam Chomsky, a talk most somber and serious. If you'll take the time to listen to it, I bet you will agree that he is right about what he says.

If Chomsky is right, all of us alive today - in every part of the world - must find ways to "change our way of thinking," and that means, among other things, that we will need to build a system of truly global cooperation. Why shouldn't the United States offer to help make that a possibility by paying for every young person (during their high school and college years - whether the young person is in college or not) to have a nine month foreign exchange visit in some other country? We, U.S. taxpayers, would bear the costs for all the students who would participate, from our country and from all the other countries involved. 

We could start small, but we need to think big. We do live in one world. Let's start recognizing that reality, and lets start finding ways to establish some worldwide connections to support the worldwide cooperation that we must accomplish.

Here's Chomsky, talking about the other alternative: 





No comments:

Tuesday, January 14, 2025

#14 / Science As A Social Enterprise

 

Click Here For The Blog In The Original

Have you ever heard of Émilie du Châtelet? She is pictured above. I had never heard of her until I read a book review in the November 4, 2024 edition of The New Yorker. Clicking here may land you there, but I make no promises about The New Yorker's possible paywall protection plan! I hope, if you are a  non-subscriber, you can slip by any paywall that may exist to read about Émilie du Châtelet.

Adam Gopnik wrote the book review I am talking about. It is titled, in the hard copy version, "A Piece Of Her Mind." Online, Gopnik's review is given this headline: "Does the Enlightenment’s Great Female Intellect Need Rescuing?" As it turns out, du Châtelet is perhaps known best for having been Voltaire's lover (while du Châtelet was married to someone else, who apparently knew all about her affair with Voltaire, and raised no terminating objection). 

The recognition to which du Châtelet is most entitled, however, is less as Voltaire's lover, than as a commanding intellect - a person we would now call a "physicist." 

Among other things, du Châtelet's work in physics was informed by her perception that science is a "social enterprise." In other words, the "great man" theory of scientific progress (or even the "great person" theory, considering the fact that du Châtelet was a woman) has no real claim to authority. She advances the idea that science is a "peculiar kind of social practice." It is not "individualistic." It is, to repeat, a "social enterprise."

Our "World," the life we have built, often called, by way of shortcut, "Human  Civilization," is not the product of a bunch of individual insights and actions, added up. 

We are "in this together." That is true in the realm of "Politics." It is true, even, in the sphere of pure science. 

And thank you for pointing this out, Émilie du Châtelet!


No comments:

Monday, January 13, 2025

#13 / Artificial Sweetener



 
On November 9, 2024, The New York Times published a "Letter To The Editor" from Julia Lee. You can read her letter, below. Lee was reacting to an article that documented how one teenager's involvement with an "artificial" companion took him to suicide. 

"Artificial" relationships are, by definition, not "real." Online "sweeties" are fake!

Can we find a way to renew our commitment to the "real world"?

We need to do that!

I keep putting it this way, "Find Some Friends"! 

Real ones, that is. Artificial sweeteners are bad for our health!


oooOOOooo

To the Editor:

Kevin Roose highlights the danger of A.I. companions worsening isolation by replacing human relationships with artificial ones. I agree that while these apps may offer entertainment and support, they also risk deepening loneliness by diminishing one’s ability to engage in real social interactions.

As a high school student, I have friends who rely on Character.AI to help them cope with loneliness. The tragic case of Sewell Setzer III shows how these platforms can draw teens away from real-life connections and proper mental health resources.

To better understand the risks, I visited the website Sewell had been associated with, only to find that on the topic of mental health, I saw no warnings or links to professional assistance.

Alarmingly, the A.I. is presented as an expert and even claims to be human, deceiving users with humanlike traits such as sarcasm and humor. We need stricter safety measures to prevent harm, especially to younger users.


Julia Lee
Fairfax, Va.


Image Credit:

No comments:

Sunday, January 12, 2025

#12 / Quaker Evangelism

  

I attend the Santa Cruz Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends - generally called "Quakers." Click that link to see what Wikipedia can tell you about the Quakers. Or, check out information available through Pendle Hill. Or, read this earlier blog posting. If you want to, you can even consult the website maintained by the local Quaker Meeting. 

 

I took the picture at the top of this blog posting a couple of months back, in the parking lot of the Santa Cruz Quaker Meetinghouse, which is pictured above. For what it's worth, I agree with the advisory featured in that passenger-side car window!

Being a Quaker is not exactly "easy." I think that statement is pretty accurate! 

But being a Quaker is quite worthwhile! That's my evaluation. Send me an email if you have any questions, or check out the details on the Santa Cruz Monthly Meeting, which meets at that Quaker Meetinghouse.

As I have said before, "You're invited!"


Image Credits:
(1) Gary A Patton, personal photo
(2) - https://www.gapatton.net/2024/02/35-where-two-or-three-gather.html

No comments:

Saturday, January 11, 2025

#11 / Let's Not Pretend

   

Guy R. McPherson writes a Substack blog with this title: "Nature Bats Last." I have mentioned McPherson before. One of the last times I think I mentioned him, on October 23, 2024, I called him "Glum."

McPherson's "glum" just keeps on coming! In a blog posting dated October 28, 2024, McPherson wrote that "Earth’s temperature could increase by 14 C, otherwise expressed as 25 degrees Fahrenheit." This temperature increase, if it were to occur, would far exceed the official estimates currently being accepted, which are in the 6-8 degree range. Click here for a link to the article in SciTechDaily that McPherson is referencing.

As is consistent with McPherson's commitment to "glum," he pretty much says that all humans would die if these predictions come true. In fact, McPherson thinks we will all be extinct long before Earth warms up as much as the article in SciTechDaily is predicting. 

Jonathan Franzen, a local Santa Cruz resident, and an acclaimed author, does not, at least typically, glory in "glum." However, Franzen's 2019 article in The New Yorker has a message that doesn't seem all that different from McPherson's. Franzen asks, "What If We Stopped Pretending?" As Franzen's subhead puts it: "The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it."

I wrote about Franzen's article shortly after it came out. It does, by the way, mention Santa Cruz, and specifically the Homeless Garden Project. It's worth reading. While Franzen employs the word "apocalypse," he has a positive way of talking about it, which is more or less the opposite of "glum": 

There may come a time, sooner than any of us likes to think, when the systems of industrial agriculture and global trade break down and homeless people outnumber people with homes. At that point, traditional local farming and strong communities will no longer just be liberal buzzwords. Kindness to neighbors and respect for the land—nurturing healthy soil, wisely managing water, caring for pollinators—will be essential in a crisis and in whatever society survives it. A project like the Homeless Garden offers me the hope that the future, while undoubtedly worse than the present, might also, in some ways, be better. Most of all, though, it gives me hope for today (emphasis added).

I am with Franzen! Patient and hopeful work is in order, not "pretending" that we don't have a problem, and that we don't have to face more and more of what are truly life-changing challenges. Let's not pretend, but let us not permit ourselves to state, as if it were an inevitable and inescapable truth, that there is nothing for us in the future but the glum certainty that there is no hope for all the glories of this Earth, and the human world we have made within it. 

Let's not "pretend," but never say - or tell ourselves - that hope is a sham and that our efforts to persevere and prevail are not worth attempting. This thought seems particularly pertinent in view of what has happened, and is still happening in Los Angeles.  When we confront "life-changing challenges," that means that we are going to have to change our lives. Franzen says that those changes can result in us being "better off" than before. 

Can you buy that?

I know I can.


2 comments:

Friday, January 10, 2025

#10 / Time Recaptured

 

Aftter I finished reading The New York Times' article on Sedona, Arizona - which I encountered on October 26th of last year - I opened up the Saturday/Sunday, October 26-27, 2024, edition of The Wall Street Journal. The Journal had another article I immediately recognized should be featured in my blog. The article was titled, "Time Recaptured" in the hard copy version of the paper. When you click that link, you will find that the online title is different. 

The article I am talking about was featured in The Journal's "Books" section, which highlighted the picture reproduced above. That picture is very much like an image that I used in my "Trucker Time" blog posting published in October 2020. The picture from that 2020 blog posting (reproduced below) was also captured from an article in the "Books" section of The Wall Street Journal:

 

"Time" is always a timely topic!

The Journal's most recent article - the one I read on October 26th of last year - was a review of a book by Emily Herring, Herald of a Restless World. Herring's book is, apparently, "the first biography of Henri Bergson in English." At least, that is what Herring says. 

Frankly, I found that claim rather surprising. Bergson is a Nobel Prize Laureate, and is well-known in the English-speaking world, including being known by me. I checked, and my memory had not betrayed me. As I had correctly remembered, I have a well-underlined paperback version of Bergson's Time And Free Will on my own, personal bookshelves. That paperback edition of the book was published in 1960, and I read the book right around then. Time and Free Will was originally published in 1889 (in French). So, I really am surprised to hear that no one has done an English language biography of Henri Bergson after all these years. 

I have not double-checked Herring's claim, but if no one has done an English language biography of Bergson until now (sixty plus years from when I read Time And Free Will in English and over 130 years from the date it was first published in French), I certainly do think it's high time!

Speaking of "Time," which was a major focus for Bergson, it was Bergson's contention that our usual relationship to time is fundamentally flawed. Time, in fact, is "immeasurable unless ... you stop it in its tracks," as Herring explains in her book:

When we “clock” time, we cut it into segments, then place these next to each other ... “like interchangeable beads on a string.” In doing so, we make time into a three-dimensional object. We make time into space.

But time is rarely experienced in this way: A minute can seem like hours; a day can feel like a few short minutes. When we live in time, we observe no border between one moment and the next. Bergson called the human experience of time durée—time lived as continuous flow.

If you think that our understanding of "Time" is consequential - that it is "important" - then I hope you will consider rereading my 2020 blog posting on "Trucker Time." In that blog posting, I suggest that George Fox, the first Quaker, had the best statement on "Time."

Ye have no time but this present time, therefore prize your time, for your soul’s sake.

Simply put, we live in the "NOW." 

Now is when we are alive (not yesterday, or some other time in the past, and not tomorrow, or some time in the future).

NOW! 

Now is when we act (or fail to act). Now is when we can do something "new," something never even thought about before.

NOW is when we can change the world - a world that must be changed!


1 comment:

Thursday, January 9, 2025

#9 / Facing Up To The Real World

  

Anyone who reads my blog postings on a regular basis will know that I continually disparage much  of what we now call, "Tech." It is my belief that we inhabit a "real world," in which real dogs can bite, real sidewalks can trip one up, and real kisses are capable of transporting those involved into something that is "beyond" the "real world," but still of it. 

Lately, human beings seem to be spending a lot of time and money figuring out ways to escape from this "real world." Increasingly, we rely on "artificial" intelligence (instead of our own "real" intelligence), and we live "online," as opposed to inhabiting the common world that is defiantly palpable, and tangible, as opposed to "virtual." 

"Virtual Reality," I submit, is not "reality" at all. If you click the link I just provided, you will see what Wikipedia has to say about virtual reality, by way of a definition. I was pleased to discover that our omnibus, online encyclopedia says that "virtual reality" is a "simulated experience." I pretty much agree with that, and I hope you'll agree with me that "simulated" is another word for "fake." A "simulated" one hundred dollar bill is actually "counterfeit." 

At any rate, for those who want a congenial and positive view of virtual reality, let me refer you to a fairly recent article in The Wall Street Journal. The article, one of Joanna Stern's "Personal Technology" columns, is titled, "The Smart Glasses That Won Me Over." The ones she likes are pictured on the left, above. There seem to be lots of options! 

So-called "smart glasses" are glasses that allow you to view the "real world," but to add in other items from an "online" reality. Once you put on these glassss, Stern reports, "you look at your phone a lot less." No need to look at your phone; a lot of what you get from your phone will show up in your eyeglasses. These "Smart" eye glasses also let you take pictures of whatever it is you're seeing. No need to have to pull out that camera phone you're using now. This feature of "smart glasses" may be a mixed blessing, I think, since it will help make sure that private moments and mistakes will be documented for the world to see!

I guess I am pretty easily triggered by efforts to help us all escape from the physical reality that we have always accepted as the "real world." It's the "real world" that will kill us or save us, after all, and there is definitely a question which way we're headed. 

If you are really smart, I think, you'll drop any efforts you may have been making to "enhance" or "augment" the realities that are out there. My alternative proposal: Let's get to work dealing with our very "real" problems and possibilities!

PS: That means REAL political action!


Image Credit:

1 comment:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)