#181 / An Elitist Leftist Revolution? - How Great!

 

Victor Davis Hanson, a conservative commentator and a fellow at the Hoover Institution, is really worried about an "elitist leftist revolution" in the United States of America. He appears to think that such a revolution is imminent - or, actually, that such a revolution is already here. I mean it. Hanson is serious (and/or somewhat deranged)! 

 

Hanson's opinion column in the June 11, 2021, edition of The San Jose Mercury was titled, "This isn't your father's left-wing revolution."

Definitely not! Not a bit! That '60s thing (to which Hanson compares what is happening today) was just "silly." This is serious. This is real!

This time around, their offspring’s left-wing assault is different — and far more ominous. The woke grandchildren of the former outsiders are now more ruthless systematic insiders. The woke and wired new establishment knows how to use money and power to rebirth America as something the founders and most current Americans never envisioned.

Name one mainline institution that the woke left does not now control — and warp. The media? The campus? Silicon Valley? Professional sports? The corporate boardroom? Foundations? The K-12 educational establishment? The military hierarchy? The government deep state? The FBI top echelon?

The left absorbed them all. But this time around, members of the left really believe that “by any means necessary” is no mere slogan. Instead, it is a model of how to disrupt or destroy American customs, traditions and values (emphasis added).

 

I haven't, myself, observed the left's extensive "control" over the American institutions that Hanson claims have now been achieved by young, "woke" lefties. Is the "left" now controlling the "corporate boardroom" and "the military hierarchy?" I never would have guessed it! What am I missing?

 

The picture used to illustrate the online version of Hanson's column (see the photo above) lets us understand that the "American customs, traditions and values" that Hanson is worried about are the customs, traditions and values articulated by Ronald Reagan and all those who have come after him. You do remember Reagan's central premise, I assume: "government is the problem." 

 

That idea, that "government is the problem," has become a kind of tradition, I guess, with both Republican and Democratic Party presidents jumping on the "government is the problem" bandwagon. The prevalence of this idea has allowed those corporate boardrooms to operate our economy to privilege only those at the very upper end of the income scale. Other maladies are also associated with the extreme individualism that Reagan promoted, denigrating and deferring any effort to develop cooperative, collaborative, and collective approaches to our challenges and opportunities. 

 

After all, "government" is how we make choices, together, about what we want to do, and let's be clear: despite the rhetoric about "government is the problem," those corporate boardrooms and the military are quite content with a "big government" approach - just so long as they're in charge of it. The kind of customs, traditions, and values that Hanson wishes to promote are the anti-democratic ones that suggest that all those institutions in Hanson's list should be insulated from any popular pressure coming from ordinary people. 

Popular pressure coming from ordinary people is how I would define the "revolution" that Hanson is hyperventilating about. Is something like that really happening? My reaction is, "don't I wish!" 

 

It may be that at least some young people are ready to make fundamental changes in the way things work (though those young people are not very "elitist," as far as I can tell). Let's call these changes that the young people are working for "revolutionary," to be nice to Hanson. But let's see if we can use that word without having to adopt the kind of "Revolutionary Derangement Syndrome," that is so evident in Hanson's column.

 

Something does seem to be happening, but I don't believe that it's what Hanson describes.

 

What I am talking about is that "Markeyverse" that I wrote about on June 12, 2021. Click the link to revisit my blog posting on that date. In that blog posting, I came down on the side of those who feel quite comfortable "scaring" the establishment. 

 

Scaring the establishment is all to the good, in my view - especially if there is some follow through!

 

To me, it looks like Hanson is scared, and I say: That's great!

 

 

Image Credit:

https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/06/11/hanson-this-isnt-your-fathers-left-wing-revolution/

 

#180 / Pruned? A Sad Story About Trees

 

 

I have previously written in this blog of my love for The Trees Of Santa Cruz. As I am walking around the city, I am taking pictures of especially notable specimens. If you click the link above, you can see a small sample of some of the lovely trees I have found as I have taken my walks. 

When I wrote my "Trees of Santa Cruz" blog posting, back on the last day of December, 2020, I noted that the City of Santa Cruz is not as protective of our heritage trees as I think it should be:

Santa Cruz is blessed with some very lovely trees, and from my point of view, the City doesn't do enough to protect and preserve them. Hopefully, the tree photos that are displayed in this blog posting will help inspire local folks to make sure that we honor trees by insisting that property owners and developers preserve and protect the truly extraordinary ones. That is, actually, what the City's "Heritage Tree Ordinance" is supposed to require. But too many loopholes have let too many property owners and developers chop down way too many trees. That is my opinion, at least, and this may be considered a bona fide editorial comment.

 

I am sorry to report that I can now confirm this judgment from my recent personal experience, since a nearby neighbor has just extirpated a magnificent black walnut tree, and has severely damaged a formerly lovely redwood tree, all for no especially good reason. This is, obviously, my personal view. Not everyone in the neighborhood saw it that way. Lots of people believe that "property owners" should be able to do whatever they want on their own property. Those who want to consider the "legalities" might want to read this book by Christopher D. Stone: Should Trees Have Standing?

 

In fact, the "legalities" do allow local governments to protect and preserve significant trees located on private property. But, of course, the local governments actually have to do that! As much as I deplore what that neighbor did, the responsibility for what I illustrate below is really on the City of Santa Cruz. The city's Heritage Tree Ordinance is without strong standards, and the City Forester/Arborist is not an advocate for trees, but routinely acts as a facilitator for the desires of the property owner or the developer.

 

Here is what happened to the redwood tree (see the picture below). NO permit was obtained for what was done to this tree, and no penalty was imposed for what was done to this tree, either:

 

Then there is that Black Walnut tree, no longer gracing my neighborhood. Here are the before and after pictures: 

Before

 

 

After

There WAS A PERMIT allowing work to be done on the Walnut tree - but there was no permit for what was actually done to it. You can see a copy of the permit below. The permit was to "prune" the tree, which means "to cut off branches from a tree, bush, or plant, especially so that it will grow better in the future." 

 

 

Extirpate has a different meaning: "to destroy completely: wipe out." That is what happened to this heritage Black Walnut. 

 

The City Forester/Arborist was informed. 

 

No penalty was imposed. 

Image Credits:

Gary A. Patton, personal photos

 

#179 / The "Constellation Mindset"

Matthew Rees, in a book review published in  The Wall Street Journal, tells us this:

After winning the Iowa caucuses in January 2008, Barack Obama’s campaign officials faced a tough decision. A surge of volunteers had signed up to help the new frontrunner, but any effort to make full use of them would require giving them access to the campaign’s super-secret voter file, with its data and calculations of candidate preferences. Some of the volunteers were expected to be spies for Hillary Clinton, eager to use the list to advance her candidacy. After initially resisting, the officials made the list available, which led to a blossoming of the Obama campaign’s volunteer corps and a furthering of outreach to prospective supporters.

Matthew Barzun, who was a top fundraiser for Mr. Obama at the time, says that the decision was key to Mr. Obama winning both the Democratic nomination and the presidency. It’s a centerpiece of [Barzun's book] “The Power of Giving Away Power,” a manifesto ... that urges leaders to do what the Obama officials did: relinquish power by dispersing it. It’s true that taking such a step may foster uncertainty—but in Mr. Barzun’s view uncertainty is an asset: It sparks the “energy that drives diverse groups of people to build unbelievably big things together.”

Mr. Barzun ... begins his case by describing an obscure episode from America’s founding—when, in 1776, a committee was formed to create the country’s logo, officially the Great Seal of the United States. Six years of on-and-off debate led to Congress adopting an image that showed—above an eagle gripping arrows and an olive branch—a cluster of stars.

Mr. Barzun assigns great meaning to this particular detail. The stars, he says, represent “independent bodies freely choosing to behave in concert to accomplish something bigger than each could alone.” The best kind of leadership, he adds, will take its cue from the metaphor and favor a “Constellation mindset,” one in which each element of an activity or enterprise is allowed to take its place within a larger unit. No one star stands out; no particular design or destination is determined in advance. With this mind-set in place, writes Mr. Barzun, “leadership flows as dictated by evolving needs. With vision and reciprocal commitment, power is given away, then grows, then more is given back (emphasis added).”

 

I am pretty much a sucker for metaphor (it's the way I tend to think), and I certainly liked this metaphor, the "Constellation Mindset." We are - when we consider the fact that we inevitably live our lives together - that "larger unit" that Barzun mentions in his interpretation of the American project. But we are each unique and independent, as individuals, as well. We illuminate our own individual lives, and the world around us, when both aspects of our human condition are mobilized in action and are on full display.

There is, of course, another metaphor in symbols, associated with the American Republic, the second one pictured in the illustration at the top of this blog posting: 

The counterpart to the constellation mind-set, in Mr. Barzun’s scheme of things, is the “Pyramid” model. (A pyramid was also considered by the founders; it ended up on the dollar bill in 1935.) He portrays this model as decidedly more structured and hierarchical, with objectives such as “detailed plans,” “working backward from a set destination,” striving to “lock in predictable output,” and trying to “eliminate uncertainty” by focusing on “structure, efficiency, and predictability.” Mr. Barzun, it is clear, feels something close to contempt for such thinking. He even warns darkly that the Pyramid mind-set “obscures our ability to see outside the sharp lines it imposes” and can lead to “authoritarianism, patriarchy, and slavery.”

 

I am not willing to follow Barzun all the way to this conclusion. I have a different interpretation of the pyramid associated with our Revolution, as pictured on the back of our dollar bill. Unmentioned in what is said above is that the pyramid to which Barzun raises an objection is not complete. It is unfinished. It is, in fact, a unique symbol that seems to indicate (at least to me) that the pyramid building task is not now - and never is - complete. It identifies a "process," not a "product." It is not "authoritarian" at all, the way I read the signs. Our democratic aspirations are symbolized by the eye - shooting out the rays of enlightenment and vision - and telling us that our task of bringing forth and building a "New Order in the World" is never finished, and is always underway. 

I have long loved the unfinished, visionary pyramid of our Revolution - and of our country. Out of many, one. Out of those separate stars, seen in a "Constellation Mindset," we are directed to our common work, always progressing, always aspiring, never quite finished. 

We certainly know, today, that our work to realize the promise of the Revolution is far from complete. Together, separate stars in a firmament that unites us, we must continue to build that "New Order in the World."

Image Credit:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-power-of-giving-away-power-review-the-stars-look-down-11623277080

#178 / The Whisper And Scurry Of Small Lives

 

 

That's beautiful, isn't it? The picture, I mean. Perhaps you might think that it would be even better without the aircraft carrier, which is on its way to the Port of Guam. That would definitely be my own preference! Photo editing software could probably take that aircraft carrier out in a jiffy and improve the photograph. But how about taking it out in real life? That would definitely be my own preference!

The picture above comes from a recent article in Boston Review, "No Country For Eight-Spot Butterflies." Julian Aguon, who wrote the article, is "a human rights lawyer working at the intersection of international indigenous rights and environmental law. A native son of Guam, Julian founded his own law firm to advocate for the myriad peoples of the Pacific region. Julian lectures at the University of Guam and the William S. Richardson School of Law (located in Hawaii), where he teaches International Law and Pacific Island Legal Systems." 

 

I highly recommend Aguon's article in Boston Review, which alerts its readers to the following: 

The U.S. Department of Defense is ramping up the militarization of my homeland—part of its $8 billion scheme to relocate roughly 5,000 Marines from Okinawa to Guam. In fact, ground has already been broken along the island’s beautiful northern coastline for a massive firing range complex. The complex—consisting of five live-fire training ranges and support facilities—is being built dangerously close to the island’s primary source of drinking water, the Northern Guam Lens Aquifer. Moreover, the complex is situated over several historically and culturally significant sites, including the remnants of ancient villages several thousands of years old, where our ancestors’ remains remain.

As Aguon says, "if only superpowers were concerned with the stuff of lower-case earth—like forests and fresh water. If only they were curious about the whisper and scurry of small lives. If only they were moved by beauty."

 

Taking that aircraft carrier out of the picture - by taking it out of the picture in real life - would be a big deal! Demilitarizing the United States' economy and society would be a big deal, too. If, however, we care about the fate of the world - the Natural World, with its whisper and scurry of small lives, and our human world, as well, because our human world does depend on the World of Nature - we are going to have to find the courage to start deleting the aircraft carrier pictured, and all our apparatus of war and destruction.

 

One more big item on the "To Do" list!

 

Image Credit:

https://bostonreview.net/science-nature-global-justice/julian-aguon-no-country-eight-spot-butterflies

 

 

#177 / Hey, Jammer!

 

Adbusters is the magazine that kicked off the Occupy Movement. Pictured above is an advertisement for the latest issue. As you can see, Adbusters is still trying to get something started. Specifically, the magazine is now hoping to lead us in "taking back our sovereignty," overthrowing the domination of the massive corporations that now seem to be running the world. 

That's a very good idea - though I'm hoping that I can learn about the plan without having to shell out $15.00 for the advice, which is what a single copy of the magazine seems to cost. 

While I am not so sure I can really endorse that "Hey, Jammer" salutation, I am absolutely in agreement with the idea that the corporations are not really "persons," like you and me, but that they are legal creations, and that we can set the rules by which they operate. In other words, it is absolutely possible to "make corporations work for us, not the other way around."

That's good news! Might even be worth that $15.00!

Image Credit:

https://4eomt.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/mr/l2vQUlD5k5iAXug0AvxOQo3EgY7O97cZ8yQl_M8IOWZMibhV1ZKxe6UBfk2f1rCn-0aFtdiyNFemD8Ee6b7cHDQiunDktRviCCFroy6KS_rEWhiy

#176 / Or So We Thought

 

 A New York Times article from May 14, 2021, is headlined this way: 

The Hoover Dam Made Life in the West Possible. Or So We Thought.

"Or so we thought!" That second sentence is the killer. We have been in the habit of bending Nature to our will, and have become accustomed to using our intelligence and our science to force the natural world to deliver for the human civilization we have built upon it. 

It is now quite clear that we need to change our way of thinking - and the water crisis facing all of the Western United States is only one example. We need to allow Nature to shape our civilization (and thus live within its limits), rather than trying  to do the opposite, and attempting to allow our civilization to shape Nature itself.

Same message as my blog posting from yesterday, right?

Image Credit:

https://www.viator.com/Las-Vegas-attractions/Hoover-Dam/d684-a11

#175 / Shorting The Future

I recently read what I thought was an extremely interesting discussion about how energy is used within the biological world upon which we all ultimately depend, and how insights from a study of the natural world can give us some guidance for what we need to do in our own, human world. This discussion came in two installments, both delivered by way of a blog/website entitled, The Great Change, The World Beyond Petroleum.

The first installment of the discussion is found in the Sunday, June 6, 2021, blog posting, and is titled: "The Great Pause Week 64: New Hope Creek Journal, Part One - Wading Back in Time." This first posting tells about the academic investigations of a biologist named Charles Hall, starting when Hall was a graduate student in 1968: 

In 1968, Charles Hall was trying to come up with a topic for his doctoral dissertation. "Most of us were focused on ecology with a small ‘e,’ that is, on trying to understand how nature operated. This was before the first Earth Day, and usually when you were talking up some young lady at a party you had to explain what the word ‘ecology’ meant."

In a textbook published in 2020, Hall put this period of his higher education into the 1967–71 social context:

While we were in graduate school, there was an explosion of information and predictions about the environmental problems and the degrading state of the Earth, including Paul Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb and the original renditions of The Limits to Growth as well as general environmental concerns expressed by George Woodwell, Kenneth Watt, Garrett Hardin, and others which could not help but get the attention of graduate students in ecology.

***

Concepts such as “limits” and “carrying capacity” were transferred from ecology to predicting the human condition. One had the sense that ecology was going to take its rightful place among the very most important disciplines, and that systems ecology was going to be leading the effort. Along with the hippies of the time, ecology students aspired to “change the world.”

Hall knew that he wanted a stream to study, and he imagined that with time, care, and the appropriate tools, he might be able to completely inventory its energy flows, or as he later described it. “looking at nature… in its actuality and complexity and in its biotic and abiotic entirety.” He just needed a suitable test site to show it could be done. Hiking with friends back to New Hope Creek, where he undertook his dissertation research, he recorded his memories from 50 years ago:

And what you find is that during the daytime the oxygen increases due to photosynthesis. And at night, the oxygen goes down due to no photosynthesis. In the daytime the oxygen increase is a net increase, because oxygen is being simultaneously pulled down by the respiration of the ecosystem. Respiration means using oxygen to burn organic fuels. We’re respiring right now — we’re using oxygen to burn fuels from our last meal or last several meals within our bloodstream or the sugars stored in our liver or whatever. And so the whole stream too has a metabolism — we call it ecosystem metabolism. And, in New Hope Creek you have about about twice as much respiration as there is energy supplied from photosynthesis, indicating that there’s twice as much energy that is being used as produced from sunlight.

Where is that additional energy coming from? From the forest, as leaves and insects falling into the stream. As you go upstream, the proportional amount added from the forest increases…. The oxygen went up in the day because plants catch sunlight, and it went down at night. The system uses energy. Nature is a balance of taking energy from the sun and using it, and it is in rough balance.

Except New Hope Creek was not. About half the energy that was running this stream was coming from the forest, from the leaves and bugs falling in. Someone at Duke had measured them independently and this gave the same number in calories that I had figured out, from the oxygen, used above the amount produced. So we can say that the stream energy budget is subsidized by the forest (emphasis added).

What Hall discovered was that the sunlight received by ... the stream could not support the population of fish without some external subsidy. That subsidy came in the form of leaves and insects that fell from the forest. Big fish swam upstream to lay their eggs into shallow environments with concentrated energy resources and collect that subsidy, even though they had to expend energy to swim against the current. Little fish swam downstream to be in deeper, less stressful environments with easier escape from predators until they, too, made the migration.

Next week I will continue this story and show how it relates to the work we must all undertake in the years to come. For now it is enough when you are shopping for whatever it is you feel the need to shop for, you think of fish moving in a stream from pool to pool. Sunlight probably won’t be enough to pay for your shopping. You will need some insects and leaves, too (for humans it comes in the form of fossil sunlight) or you will have to cut back your shopping ... renewable energy in all its many forms is unlikely to support global civilization at its present scale (emphasis added).

The second installment, as promised, came in the Sunday, June 13, 2021, edition, titled, "The Great Pause Week 65: New Hope Creek Journal, Part Two - Shorting the Future." The discussion in this second part focused on the concept of EROI - "Energy Return On Investment."

A simple analogy to explain EROI is that if a fox spends more energy to catch rabbits than those rabbits return in calories, it will not live very long. Hall and associates showed repeatedly that once the energy return on a petroleum well, field, or province drops below some generous energy return, typically 5 to 10 barrels out for each barrel in, it will no longer be economical to get energy from that source and you can’t run a complex society on that — at least not for very long. The same goes for colonies on Mars, robot factories, unlimited prisons, Space Force, and artificial trees that suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to pump deep underground or into the ocean depths. The arithmetic doesn’t work. As we sift through the array of solutions being developed for the climate emergency, it is great to have EROI in our toolkit and Charles Hall still around to “talk a lot (emphasis added).

 

The "bottom line," if the "arithmetic" that Hall and others provide is correct, is that we are not going to be able to use advanced "technology" to solve the global warming crisis that confronts us. 

 

As Hall's studies of the fish in New Hope Creek demonstrated, sunlight by itself was not able to provide enough energy to operate the biological economy of that river. A subsidy was needed. 

 

Similarly, says Hall, our existing human civilization - as currently configured - cannot exist on sunlight and renewable resources alone. It, too, would need an energy "subsidy" beyond what is available from solar and other renewable resources. Currently, we are using petroleum to provide that subsidy, but we know we need to stop doing that. Our continued combustion of hydrocarbon fuels is what has caused the "climate emergency" that we now confront.

 

Given the realities of EROI, says Hall, we should not be searching for more high-tech ways to "subsidize" a human world that has been way overbuilt on the combustion of hydrocarbon fuels. Instead, we are going to have to redesign that human world so that we can truly live on the energy resources available from solar power, wind, and other renewable resources. 

If that "arithmetic" is right, and Hall has "done the math" correctly, we have a daunting task ahead. For instance, we should be aiming not for "electric" cars, but at "no cars."

That's my own example, not an example advanced by Hall, but I think I am saying something he would say, too. Read those two articles yourself, and see what you think!

Image Credit:

https://peaksurfer.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-great-pause-week-64-new-hope-creek.html

 

#174 / Not Your Trail

 

Students enrolled in my UCSC class, "Property and the Law," were assigned to read an article by Dr. Jonathan Severy. Severy is an emergency medicine physician and a serious runner. His article was entitled "This Trail Is Not Your Trail." The article outlined the problems that Dr. Severy had with a few of his neighbors because the doctor did his running on trails that crossed his neighbors' properties. The subtitle on the article reads: "On trail running, trespassing, and what your neighbors do or don't owe you." It's kind of a fun article, and you can click the link if you'd like to read it for yourself.

 

As my students had already learned, before reading the article, one of the "rights" that accompany property ownership is the "right to exclude others." Severy didn't think it was very "nice," or "neighborly," for his property-owning neighbors to stop him from running on a trail that also crossed Severy's own property, but then did continue on to cross the properties of others, as well. Severt wasn't hurting anyone, and wasn't really disturbing any of the neighbors, either - these trails didn't run right by their front door, or anything like that. Why couldn't they just let it go?

 

Those neighbors who "couldn't" let it go didn't "want" to let it go. In fact, while only a few of the neighboring property owners sought to stop Severy's use of the trails on their properties, every one of them had a legal right to do so. It's hard not to sympathize with Severy, but it is also pretty hard not to sympathize with the neighbors who objected. They had moved to a rural area to get away from other people, and they had paid good money for their right to insist that they would have complete privacy on their property. What's unfair about that?

Actually, nothing is really unfair about that, though a few of the objecting neighbors did demonstrate more hostility than was strictly necessary, one of them implicitly threatening to shoot Severy if he ever came back.

The article that Severy wrote, to document his experience, didn't really report any resolution of the conflict. No legal actions were apparently undertaken by either Severy or any of the objecting neighbors, and Severy wasn't gunned down, either, since he lived to write the article. 

 

At the end, Severy philosophized about the situation in which he found himself, calling upon his experience as a medical doctor as he did so:

Undoubtedly, there will be tensions between neighbors, and people will be difficult, but we need each other to exist. Relationships give value to our lives. This is even more apparent now, in the midst of a pandemic. A crisis like this risks exacerbating our worst inclinations. Fear, mistrust, selfishness, and entitlement are as dangerous and contagious as a virus.

 

More than ever, we need to remember that we are all in this together, vulnerable neighbors on a vulnerable planet, all sharing the same basic needs—food, livelihood, dignity, toilet paper, access to medical care, and compassion. We are going to be forced to carefully consider our own mortality as others around us get sick and some die. We are going to be forced to reexamine our values. Such dire circumstances tend to reveal one’s true character. What can we hope to learn about ourselves? What is our responsibility to one another? Who are we if we succumb to fear and panicked self-preservation? Where will we find meaning when we are at risk of losing everything? 

 

As we look into ourselves during these trying times, I can only hope that we will find the answers in each other. If you can’t, well, keep running. Tell the ravens about it. 

 

Look carefully enough, however, and you will see yourself in your neighbor. All alone together, quarantined here on earth (emphasis added).

 

This rather poetic summation speaks to me. It utilizes one of my favorite phrases, frequently found in these blog postings ("we are all in this together"). However, poetic though it is, Severy's summation avoids the "legal" issue, with respect to which Severy is clearly on the wrong side of the law. An appeal to human solidarity is terrific, but is there some "legal" way to let trailrunners have access to trails that cross properties owned by other individuals? 

One possibility that comes to my mind is what England has done with its National Trail system, which provides legal access to members of the public to use trails that are not always on public lands, but that cross private lands, too. Click right here to read about The Cottswold Way. I have personally hiked in the Cottswolds, and the trails I followed went, sometimes, right through the middle of a farmer's private land, right by his barns and stables. Through collective action, England has made "legal" the kind of "neighborly" responsiveness that Severy has been hoping for. In taking that action, England has demonstrated a "legal" recognition of the point that Severy insists upon: "We are all in this together, vulnerable neighbors on a vulnerable planet."

Finding ways to make that principle apply - with respect to trails and everything else - is a task worth undertaking. 

AND PS: I really do recommend a multi-day hike through the Cotswolds!

The Cotswolds

Image Credit:

(1) - https://www.outsideonline.com/2411222/private-trails-neighboring-properties-dispute

(2) - https://www.hillwalktours.com/hiking-england/cotswold-way/

#173 / Art As Infection

 

A "Little Free Library" book attracted my attention, as I stopped on one of my walks around the city and took a look at what was on offer. The book was titled, If You Want To Write, by Brenda Ueland. I found, after getting it home and looking into it, that it's a classic, and that Ueland's book has been recommended by Carl Sandburg as "the best book ever written about how to write." 

Ueland, like me, thinks highly of the "Russian authors," Tolstoi, Chekhov, and Dostoevsky. Here's one of her observations about Tolstoi: 

I was very much helped by something Tolstoi said about writing. I tell you because it may help you. First, he said that there is nothing in the world that should not be expressed in such a way that an affectionate seven-year-old boy can see and understand it. I often think of this and it is a guide and help. I take down a book by Tolstoi and see that he does as he advocates.

Then in a famous essay called "What is Art?" (which made everybody very angry) he said something like this: Art is infection. The artist has a feeling and he expresses it and at once this feeling infects other people and they have it too. And the infection must be immediate or it isn't art.

 

I kind of like that - and I think she's right. I got infected by Bob Dylan, early on!

 

Image Credit:

https://www.abebooks.com/Want-Write-Book-Art-Independence-Spirit/30776275898/bd

#172 / Slow Growth Gamble

 

 

William Galston, writing in the June 2, 2021, edition of The Wall Street Journal, suggests that President Biden is making a "Slow-Growth Budget Gamble." Given the paywall protection that might well prevent non-subscribers from reading Galston's analysis, I am providing an excerpt from his column at the bottom of this blog posting. 

Galston sees the "gamble" in the fact that the Biden Administration is not doing more to increase the growth of the economy. Our current two-percent annual growth rate is unacceptably low, from his perspective. 

 

From my perspective, the "gamble" is trying to increase economic growth at all, given that economic growth, as currently defined, is absolutely linked to an increase in the greenhouse gas emissions that are bringing us hurricanes, flooding events, droughts, immigration crises, wildfires, and heat deaths, with crop failures and food scarcity expected to arrive soon. 

 

The preceding list, of course, does not mention the species extinctions which are proceeding apace. We focus very little on anything that does not directly affect human beings (with the emphasis on "directly"). Despite our failure to pay attention, however, the "indirect" impacts of the Sixth Mass Extinction that is now underway profoundly affect humans, not just those living things we don't notice, and don't even know about. We are, as all living things are, dependent on the overall health of our planetary environment, and on all the various other species that inhabit it. What is bad for the butterflies, coral reefs, and the polar bears is bad for us, as well.

In a debate about what is most important for our future - the protection of our global environment or the growth of the national economy - I am not big on "betting." Less growth, not more, seems like the safest - in fact, necessary - course for us to pursue. 

oooOOOooo 

 

Biden’s Slow-Growth Budget Gamble

William A. Galston

 

President Biden’s proposed budget would represent a sea change in American fiscal policy. If enacted, outlays over the next decade would increase by about $8 trillion and revenues by $6 trillion, bringing the deficit to $14.5 trillion from $12.3 trillion projected under current policy. The share of the economy flowing to the federal government would rise to about one-quarter, up from one-fifth, and the budget deficit would average about 5% of gross domestic product. By 2031 national debt held by the public would stand at $39 trillion, a record 117% of GDP....

 

But commentators have mostly overlooked the biggest surprise, and core conundrum, of the president’s proposal: Despite trillions of dollars of additional expenditures—some of which are investments, others not—the projected rate of economic growth increases only modestly, and most of the bump comes in the early years before tapering off.

 

During the next two years, Mr. Biden’s spending surge would help return the economy to full employment faster than staying at the status quo. This is a good thing. But between the beginning of fiscal 2024 and the end of fiscal 2031, the administration’s projections show GDP rising by $8.9 trillion, barely distinguishable from the $8.8 trillion in CBO’s baseline.

 

The bottom line: The economy will stay stuck at 2% growth, extending the period of slow growth that began early in the 21st century. Even during the first three years of the Trump administration, large spending increases and an enormous tax cut yielded growth averaging 2.5%, well below the 3.5% level of the 1990s....

 

Getting America back to faster growth will take resources and focus. But if growth remains slow, Mr. Biden’s honorable effort to improve the lives of working- and middle-class families may end up hobbled by the well-known difficulties of zero-sum politics. 

 

 

Image Credit:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-slow-growth-budget-gamble-11622566765

#171 / That, Too!

 

This "Puzzle of the Week" came to me from a Facebook Friend. Having recently written in this blog about "Memento Mori," which means that we should "remember that we must die," I quickly solved the puzzle the way the first graders did (see below). 

When I read the explanation that came with the puzzle, I was forced to admit, "OK. That, too!"

oooOOOooo

 

Image Credit:

https://www.facebook.com/miriam.plotkin.5

 

 

#170 / From Spectators To Strategists

 

Alicia Garza, pictured, is the co-founder of the international Black Lives Matter movement. She is also the author of a recent book, The Purpose Of Power.  

 

I think Garza would probably agree with Anand Giridharadas, about whom I have written previously. Garza would likely join Giridharadas in saying that the various philanthropic organizations that have stepped forward, both nationally and internationally, and which proclaim their earnest intention to solve all of the world's most pressing problems, are engaged in an "elite charade." 

 

Garza believes that power is "the ability to make decisions that affect your own life and the lives of others, the freedom to shape and determine the story of who we are [page 186]." She is, in the pursuit of such usable power, focused on grassroots organizing, working from the "bottom up," not from the "top down," as those philanthropic organizations do it. 

 

I like the way that Garza conceptualizes the effort: 

Building a movement requires shifting people from spectators to strategists, from procrastinators to protagonists. What people are willing to do on social media doesn't always translate into what they're willing to do in their everyday lives. Movement building and participation require ongoing engagement, and the levels of engagement must continually shift and increase - from just showing up to signing a petition to getting nine friends involved to helping design strategy to pressuring a legislator to leading a group, and so on [page 144] (emphasis added).

 

I very often say that if we want to continue to have a system of democratic self-government, then we are going to have to get engaged in government ourselves. We are going to have to, in other words, convert ourselves from "spectators to strategists," and then continue on from there. 

As the world is demonstrably falling apart all around us, is there anything you can think of that might be more important?

 

 Image Credit:

 https://deadline.com/2020/08/black-lives-matter-co-founder-alicia-garza-inks-deal-with-icm-partners-1203019086/

 

#169 / When The Day Comes...

 

Heather Cox Richardson, who teaches history at Boston College, writes "Letters From An American," a daily commentary on American politics and government. On May 23, 2021, she wrote a lovely tribute to Frederick Douglass, who is pictured above:

Frederick Douglass wrote his autobiography three times, but to protect the people who helped him run away from enslavement, he did not explain how he had managed to get away until the last version.

Douglass escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1838. In his twenty years of life, he had had a series of enslavers, some harsher than others, and one who almost killed him. But by 1838, he was a skilled worker in the local shipyards, earning good money for his master and enjoying a measure of freedom, as well as protection. He had good friends in the area and had fallen in love with the woman who would become his wife.

It was enslavement, but within that existence, it was a pretty good position. His peers in the cotton fields of the Deep South were beaten like animals, their deaths by violence unremarkable. Douglass himself had come close to being "sold down the river"—a term that referred to the slave convoys that traveled down the Mississippi River from older, worn out lands in the East to fresh, raw lands in Mississippi and Louisiana—and he knew that being forced to labor on a plantation in the Deep South would kill him.

His relatively safe position would have been enough for a lot of people. They would have thanked God for their blessings and stayed put. In 1838, Frederick Douglass was no different than they were: an unknown slave, hoping to get through each day. Like them, he might have accepted his conditions and disappeared into the past, leaving the status quo unchanged.

But he refused.

His scheme for escaping to freedom was ridiculously easy. In the days of slavery, free black sailors carried documents with them to prove to southern authorities that they were free, so they could move from northern and foreign ports to southern ports without being detained. These were the days before photos, so officials described the man listed on the free papers as they saw him: his color, distinguishing marks, scars. Douglass worked in shipyards, and had met a sailor whose free papers might cover Douglass... if the white official who looked at them didn't look too closely. Risking his own freedom, that sailor lent Douglass his papers.

To escape from slavery, all Douglass had to do was board a train. That's it: he just had to step on a train. If he were lucky, and the railroad conductor didn't catch him, and no one recognized him and called him out, he could be free. But if he were caught, he would be sold down river, almost certainly to his death.

To me, Douglass's decision to step aboard that train is everything. How many of us would have taken that risk, especially knowing that even in the best case, success would mean trying to build a new life, far away from everyone we had ever known? Douglass's step was such a little one, such an easy one... except that it meant the difference between life and death, the difference between a forgotten, enslaved shipyard worker and the great Frederick Douglass, who went on to become a powerful voice for American liberty.

 

This is almost all of Richardson's text from her May 23, 2021 letter. I am saving her closing words - the best part - to follow my own comment. 

My comment is this. We who are alive today, and I think particularly Americans, must summon up all of our personal courage - above every other thing. We need courage because we are called - we are required - to step away from the familiar existence in which we find ourselves. We are called upon - we are required - to transform our world. 

 

If we don't summon the courage to make radical changes in how we live, global warming is going to destroy our world - our human world, as well as the World of Nature.

 

Our nation's long history of racial injustice must also be rectified in some fundamental way. We must move beyond the accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement, as significant as they were. They were not enough. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. got us to the mountaintop. We need to move down to the promised land he spoke of, and we need to move together. No more delay!

The domination of our society and economy by the corporations and those of great personal wealth must also be overcome. We cannot allow that proverbial "one percent" of the population to gather in and sequester the overwhelming majority of the resources that flow from a society and economy that depends upon the contributions of us all. 

We must disarm. We must end the perpetual wars in which we are engaged. We must end the nuclear terror that threatens our world and all of us who are alive right now. This terror is, as William Faulkner said in accepting the Nobel Prize in 1950, a "tragedy ... a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it."

None of these things - and there are others, too, of course - will be easy to accomplish. But they must be done, and none of these things can be achieved if we don't have the courage to change, to risk ourselves, to risk our current lives, and to leave behind what seems to be a "pretty good position" to arrive at the place where we need to be. 

Here is how Heather Cox Richardson ends her story about Frederick Douglass:

Tomorrow, my students will graduate, and every year, students ask me if I have any advice for them as they leave college or university, advice I wish I had had at their age. The answer is yes, after all these years of living and of studying history, I have one piece of advice:

When the day comes that you have to choose between what is just good enough and what is right... find the courage to step on the train.

 

"When the day comes...."  

But don't we all know, really, that the day has come? Don't we all know, deep down, that the time to travel on has now arrived? Now is the time in which we need to summon up our courage to make great changes. Individually. And together. 

 

Let's not pretend that our "pretty good position" (for those lucky enough to be in such a position) is a "good enough" place to be. 

Step On The Train

 

Image Credit:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/28/david-blight-on-frederick-douglass-i-call-him-beautifully-human

 

 

#168 / Relational Theory And Our Political World

 

Werner Heisenberg, pictured above, revolutionized physics. He is perhaps best known for his articulation of what has been called the "Heisenberg uncertainty principle." If you click on that link, to learn more, you had better be pretty adept at mathematics!

Not being pretty adept at mathematics, I have to rely on words, as I keep trying to understand the essence of quantum physics. A book review in The Wall Street Journal has helped (at least somewhat). The review is by John Banville (and, yes, this means the Irish novelist John Banville, who I guess is interested in physics, too). Banville's review is titled, "The Paradox of Particles" and discusses a recent book by Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli, Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution. 

 

Here are Banville's concluding paragraphs: 

 
Mr. Rovelli follows the trail of quantum theory through some delightfully unorthodox byways, including Buddhist mysticism and Russian revolutionary politics, to arrive at last at the notion that is most dear to him, that of the “relational” interpretation of quantum theory. Although he explains this version of ultimate reality at the atomic level with characteristic flair and enthusiasm, he does not pretend it is easy to understand, or any less counter-intuitive than Heisenberg’s matrices or Schrödinger’s hovering cat.

“Everything,” he writes, “is what it is only with respect to something else.” The electron is manifest only when it interacts with another object, even if that object is only the questing eye of the observer. Reality in the quantum world is tenuous, fleeting, “intricate and fragile as Venetian lace. Every interaction is an event, and it is these light and ephemeral events that weave reality,” not the manifold of whizzing billiard balls envisioned by the old science. “Reality, including our selves, is nothing but a thin and fragile veil, beyond which . . . there is nothing.”

This is not a counsel of despair; quite the contrary. Mr. Rovelli’s is a radiant void, quick with potential, in which objects, or “objects,” have their being through contact with and dependence on each other. And in this interdependent, interlocked world, the way to enlightenment is through co-operation not confrontation. For all his delicacy of touch, Mr. Rovelli is a man, and a scientist, of large ambition. It is time, he declares, to bring the relational theory into general discussion, “beyond the restricted circles of theoretical physicists and philosophers, to deposit its distilled honey, sweet and intoxicating, into the whole of contemporary culture”... (emphasis added).

 

If we count politics, law, and government as aspects of our "contemporary culture," Heisenberg, by way of Rovelli, by way of Banville, is suggesting that they must all be understood as "relational," having existence only as we acknowledge that our political, legal, and governmental world is "interdependent," and that we must live in it "through cooperation not confrontation." 

 

Do I know more about quantum physics now, having read this review? Not really. 

 

Still, it's nice to think that there is a genuine validation in quantum physics for my views on our human world! That's how I am reading Banville, on Rovelli, on Heisenberg!

 

 

Image Credit:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/helgoland-review-the-paradox-of-particles-11622231175

 

 

#167 / Status Quo Bias

 

Rebecca Solnit, pictured, has written an engaging article in The Guardian, "Stop Glorifying 'Centrism.'" The points she makes are related to the points made in my recent blog posting, "The Sasquatch Of American Politics." Here is an excerpt from Solnit's article that will give you the flavor of her argument: 

The idea that all bias is some deviation from an unbiased center is itself a bias that prevents pundits, journalists, politicians and plenty of others from recognizing some of the most ugly and impactful prejudices and assumptions of our times. I think of this bias, which insists the center is not biased, not afflicted with agendas, prejudices and destructive misperceptions, as status-quo bias. Underlying it is the belief that things are pretty OK now, that the people in charge should be trusted because power confers legitimacy, that those who want sweeping change are too loud or demanding or unreasonable, and that we should just all get along without looking at the skeletons in the closet and the stuff swept under the rug. It’s mostly a prejudice of people for whom the system is working, against those for whom it’s not (emphasis added).

The "rarely seen but fervently sought" ideal of "bipartisanship," a demand that there be general agreement before changes are made, is, just like "centrism," a snare and delusion. A search for general agreement, or "bipartisanship," is the "Sasquatch of American politics" that I wrote about earlier, and "bipartisanship" is definitely an example of status quo bias. What we need is neither "bipartisanship" nor "centrism." What we need is the courage to make real changes that will address the looming dangers that we have failed to acknowledge as real, and that are heading our direction.

Solnit gives an example:

A decade ago, when I went to northern Japan for the first anniversary of the Great Tohuko Earthquake and tsunami, I was told that the 100ft-high wave of black water was so inconceivable a sight that some people could not recognize it and the danger it posed. Others assumed this tsunami would be no bigger than those in recent memory and did not flee high enough. A lot of people died of not being able to see the unanticipated (emphasis added).

I have written, previously, about the "Great Wave." I said then, and say again now: "the alarm has been given. There will be no time but this present time in which to choose. The Great Wave is on its way."

If we are to succeed in "fleeing higher," as we must, any demand that we find our solutions "in the center" is to dismiss the possibility that our ability to make real change, and to avoid the dangers coming our way, will not, in the end, be found in the center at all, but will be found somewhere else.

Image Credit:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/21/rebecca-solnit-interview-recollections-of-nonexistence-hope

#166 / Hello, Neighbors

 

The heartfelt appeal, below, comes from a posting on the web-based application Nextdoor: 

 

Hello Neighbors, I have a question. What is driving up home prices in Santa Cruz? What is driving prices up 30%-50% over the past two to three years? Who is buying these homes? ... I keep a close eye on houses and have a great real estate agent, but now that I am in a position to buy a house the prices keep going up with multiple offers over the asking price and I wonder how anyone from Santa Cruz County can keep up. A standard raise at work is between 5%-and 8% each year - nowhere near the increase in home prices. Several houses on Zillow on the market now are priced above 50% of what they sold for a few years ago. Congratulations to all the people who bought homes and are making a 50% profit in such a short period of time, that is great for you. And I don't blame anyone for taking the advantage of increased demand and making such a handsome profit on their investment. My rent is more than many mortgages (over $5K a month) and I am grateful I can afford this but am losing hope that I'll be able to buy a house in my hometown. My young adult daughters were born and raised here and I always thought Santa Cruz would be our home, that I would have a home base for them to return to. I would like to know though, where sellers are going and who is able to afford to pay $1,500,000 for a modest home? Thank you for your answers and insights.

 

Over a hundred comments were promptly posted in response. They included the following: 

 

• Wealthy workers from Silicon Valley (and elsewhere) are buying second homes in Santa Cruz and outbidding local people. 

• Wealthy workers from Silicon Valley, who can outbid local residents for housing, are moving over here because they can now work remotely and who wouldn't rather live in Santa Cruz?

• Wealthy workers from Silicon Valley, who can outbid local working families for housing, are choosing to buy in Santa Cruz because the prices here are less than in the Silicon Valley, and who wouldn't rather live in Santa Cruz?

• Wealthy workers from Silicon Valley are cashing out stock, and think Santa Cruz real estate is a good investment. It's a great place to park their money. With all those dollars, they can easily outbid local residents.
  

 

My sense is that all of these responses are right on target. The common element is that in a "market economy," which is where we live, those who can pay more than others get the goods that are available. Those who can't pay more don't get the goods! With few exceptions, Santa Cruz residents trying to buy a home in Santa Cruz are simply unable to outbid those from the Silicon Valley (and elsewhere) whose incomes are vastly greater than the incomes of Santa Cruz workers. A working family relying upon a Santa Cruz income will almost inevitably be unable to purchase a home here. They will simply be outbid. This is what gave rise to the heartfelt appeal I have reprinted from Nextdoor.

Is there anything to be done? 

 

As many, if not most of us, have noticed, our economy does not distribute its economic benefits anywhere near equally. Though we are definitely "all in this together" where our economic system is concerned, a very small percentage of the population gets almost all of the money that the economy produces. Others get hardly anything. Since we do live in a market economy, it's natural that those with more money get to buy what they want, while others are not able to buy even what they need. The only real solution to this problem is to change the massive income inequality that makes it impossible for ordinary working families to buy a home. I support national legislation to accomplish just that. That's what it will take.

 

Unfortunately, the Santa Cruz City Council is trying to solve the problem by placing faith in what is often called the "law of supply and demand." That is another "market solution." If we just build a lot more new housing, the Council reasons, there will be more supply, and surely that will bring the price down. The census bureau tells us, however, that Santa Cruz County has a total population of about 273,000, and that the median income of Santa Cruz County residents is about $82,000 per year. Given this, there is simply no way to provide a supply of housing that could let Santa Cruz County residents, with their rather modest incomes, outbid the 7,000,000+ residents of the Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area, many of whom have incomes far greater than $82,000 per year. 

 

In fact, trying to lower prices by letting the developers build more (and the State Legislature, like the City Council, is trying to advance this agenda) does not mean appreciably more affordable housing for local residents. Instead, it means more local impacts on water, traffic, parking, and public services, more local costs for taxpayers to absorb, and more existing neighborhoods made less congenial. And the kicker is that these new developments quite often demolish existing, modest single family homes, to make way for housing that will be sold to non-Santa Cruz residents, those from the Silicon Valley (and elsewhere) whose incomes let them outbid working families with Santa Cruz level incomes.

When I think of the massive challenges that we must face and overcome, global warming always comes to my mind first. I next think of the massive wealth and income inequality that is undermining national unity, and that is destroying our local communities from within. 

 

Including my own local community. 

 

The heartfelt appeal from Nextdoor is a cry of anguish. We need to make that cry of anguish resound from the lowest to the highest levels of our politics and government, and we need to deal with the wealth and income inequalities that are not only driving Americans apart, but that are helping to destroy our local communities.  As with global warming, the extent of the changes we must make are daunting. 

But that is what we need to do!

And in the meantime, let's stop destroying our neighborhoods in the false hope that "market solutions" for our affordable housing crisis will work. For-profit developers are the problem, not the solution. When developers want approval for a new development, here's what I think the rule should be. For nonprofit developers planning to produce new housing units - housing that will be permanently price-restricted, and that can be rented or purchased by local residents who have local incomes - I think the answer should probably be "yes." Build it.

 

When for-profit developers ask for approval, urging on their mega-projects, designed for the market economy (the economy in which those with the most money will get the goods) I think the answer should probably be "no."

Image Credit:

https://www.mysantacruzrealestate.com/mls-santa-cruz-ppc/900000-1000000/