#273 / A Brief Lesson

The image above is one I posted to my Facebook feed, way back in 2019. Someone recently drew it to my attention, by reposting it, all these years later.

The brief "lesson" conveyed above - as briefly stated - is not, really, that hard to grasp. When economic resources are sequestered by those who already have a lot of them, then those who could benefit from collective efforts to provide assistance (through governmental programs that provide health care, for instance - or that provide job training, or subsidies for education, as other examples) will NOT get such assistance, since the government won't have the money to fund the programs. That will make things worse for everybody. 

Those who keep their money safe from taxes don't need assistance, and so leaving them with their sequestered funds, instead of taxing the wealthy for programs that provide assistance to the majority who don't have lots of money, does not provide any stimulus to the economy. The "don't tax the rich" advocates may well see the economy "tank." Providing the funding to provide programs that help the less well-off is a good way to provide economic benefits to everyone. The economy is likely to "boom."

This long-ago Facebook posting illustrates the fact - economically, and otherwise - that "we are all in this together."

Brief lesson now concluded. 

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https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02FSJDXDDagjc7cU5hDTUWESDL6ZDHaM8AifffZcnqaMfSJq14zLczCQ8rFZdhCAKNl&id=1505206237&notif_id=1692034883723414&notif_t=story_reshare&ref=notif

 

#272 / Rise Of The Robotaxi - Time For A Change

 

If you follow what's happening in San Francisco, you are aware that the California Public Utilities Commission has recently approved the unlimited deployment of driverless taxis on San Francisco city streets. Here is a report from the San Francisco Chronicle: 

It’s official: Driverless Cruise and Waymo taxis can now charge for rides in San Francisco at all hours of the day. The new era of robotaxi service could prove to be more transformative and disruptive for San Francisco — and the country — than when the first Uber and Lyft ride-hails arrived on city streets last decade.

The momentous decision by the California Public Utilities Commission to allow for General Motors-owned Cruise and Alphabet-backed Waymo’s full commercialization is effective immediately. 

48 Hills is an "alternative" source of San Francisco city news. Here is its more probing report on what this action by the Public Utilities Commission really portends: 

The Chronicle got this much right:

The new era of robotaxi service could prove to be more transformative and disruptive for San Francisco — and the country — than when the first Uber and Lyft rideshares arrived on city streets last decade.

But the issue goes much further, if that’s even possible. 

One of the impacts of Uber and Lyft was much greater congestion, as people decided to ride in cars instead of taking transit. That has been Uber’s goal all along; the company noted in a public filing that it seeks to replace urban public transportation with Uber cars, something that hardly anyone other than me has reported on.

The driverless cars, even if they’re electric cars, are still cars. They still create more carbon emissions than, say, electric Muni buses or BART trains, which hold a lot more people. 

Next: Robotrucks. From the Teamster’s Union:

“Public safety decisions should not be made by regulatory bodies that are in the pocket of Big Tech. This is blatantly obvious given that Commissioner John Reynolds, who was the lead attorney for Cruise right before his appointment, did not recuse himself from today’s ruling. It’s critical that decisions affecting the safety of California drivers and pedestrians are made by our elected officials. 

“That’s why the Teamsters support Assembly Bill 316, bipartisan legislation that would require a trained human operator behind the wheel of AVs weighing over 10,000 pounds. As state regulators carelessly approve the expansion of AVs in California, it is critically important that AB 316 becomes law.”

We are seeing, right now, on the streets of San Francisco, a critical public policy issue that government at every level is failing to address: What do we do when technology displaces human beings in jobs that aren’t really suitable for “retraining?”

What are we going to do to make sure the companies that make money by getting rid of human employees pay the displacement costs that they are creating?

In past industrial revolutions, technology destroyed jobs but also created new ones. Still, for a lot of workers, it sucked: Independent craftspeople and farmers were forced to become factory workers.

This time around, I’m not so sure.

In a perfect world, the robots would do a lot of the work, and the humans would work 10 or 20 hours a week, and earn what they are now paid for a 40-hour week.

That requires major, major, government intervention. It would require that governments mandate that the companies making money off this technology share the profits with the people whose lives they damage.

That’s the regulatory decision that matters. And nobody is talking about it (emphasis added).

Let me talk about it (if only briefly). 

Business value, and business profits, are produced by those who invest their money in the business, and also by those who invest their work. Both the "owners" and the "workers" contribute to business success. However, it is the "owners" who are "in charge," and thus it is the "owners" who get the biggest say in determining how the profits are to be divided. 

There is nothing new or unexpected in this statement. Corporations are the major players in our economy, and those who "own" the corporation not only get to manage the corporation and its business, they actually are the corporation. It is simply taken-for-granted that the corporate owners have (and should have) a much greater say over how the profits from a profitable business are divided up. It is no surprise that the the "owners" generally decide that the "owners" are the ones who most need to be rewarded, when business success is achieved. Generally, the owners think that their contributions are more important than the contributions of the workers. And if they can eliminate the workers, thus reducing costs and thus increasing profits, so much the better. Pay attention to the current UAW strike against the nation's major automakers, where this approach to dividing up the profits is being challenged.

Tim Redmond, who wrote the article for 48 Hills, is correct in stating that, "major, major, government intervention" would be necessary to change this situation. I think that Redmond is also correct in noting that the latest "revolution" in the world of work is actually different from earlier major changes that have affected the economy and that have determined how we work. 

Now, the "owners," who generally control most of the available money, are interested in eliminating the need for workers completely. It's not so much, any longer, a debate about the correct "split" to be provided to the "workers." Now, the "owners" will be seeking to eliminate the need for "workers" in the first place. Money buys machinery, powered by artificial intelligence, to eliminate any need for "workers" at all. 

"Major, major government intervention," which is what Redmond says is necessary, means "politics." That is where Redmond suggests we focus our attention. We do, actually, live in a "political world," in which the rules that govern, the rules that decide who gets what, and what happens, can be changed. 

About time for a change, don't you think? The United Auto Workers certainly do. Their current strike is based on the idea that workers should "share" in the profits, when an enterprise is successful. 

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Image Credit:

https://48hills.org/2023/08/the-real-problem-with-the-cpucs-robotaxi-decision/

#271 / We Will Never Run Out

 

"Hubris." You know that word? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, "hubris" means "exaggerated pride or self-confidence." So, how would you classify the following headline, gleaned from the July 21, 2023 edition of The Wall Street Journal?

We Will Never Run Out Of Resources

 

Some might consider the headline just quoted as "hubristic" in the extreme. Apparently, the editors of The Wall Street Journal don't think so (or maybe they just don't care about glorying in their hubris), but that headline gave me the shivers. That attitude, I think, would doom us to destruction.

 

It is my idea that we live, ultimately, in the "Natural World," a place into which we have rather mysteriously appeared. You can picture that familiar image of the Earth, taken from space, to get an idea of what that "World of Nature" means to me. I do sometimes call it "The World God Made." The key point, for me, is that we did NOT make the world upon which we ultimately rely for everything we do, and which, by its very nature, is a world of limits. 

 

Mostly, of course, most directly, we live in a world that we have created. That is a world created by human effort, and that we continue to "un-create" and "re-create," time and time again. This is that "Human World" that is our most immediate reality. To build our human world, we rely on the World of Nature - and now we learn, from Marian L. Tupy and David Deutsch, and their column in The Wall Street Journal, that the resources we need to sustain our own creations are not "limited" in any way. 

 

I have utilized this blog, previously, to cite to one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs, a song about the discovery of America. The song is entitled, "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream." In many ways, "America" is an apt metaphor for the larger "Human World," a world that is initially discovered in what was thought of as a "state of nature," and is then transformed by human action into what it is, today.

 

In Dylan's song, Dylan arrives on the Mayflower, right at the start of the song, and he leaves, at the end of the song, as Columbus arrives to discover America. Dylan's dream, in other words, is just as confused and confusing as most of our dreams really are - and just as confused as the reality we dream about. What comes first in time is last in the dream, but if we stick with the song we can get the main idea. 

 

My favorite lines come at the end of the song, as Dylan speaks to Columbus. Dylan is leaving the scene, and is welcoming Columbus, as follows: 

 

The funniest thing was
When I was leavin’ the bay
I saw three ships a-sailin’
They were all heading my way
I asked the captain what his name was
And how come he didn’t drive a truck
He said his name was Columbus
I just said, “Good luck”

 

The idea that we don't have to worry about limits? Well, .... 

I just say, "Good Luck."

 

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Image Credit:

https://www.wsj.com/news/opinion 

#270 / Looking For A New Way To Kill

Alabama is looking for a new way to kill prisoners who have been sentenced to death. Apparently, the state has "botched" recent applications of its "lethal injection" methodology. Alabama needs a new way to kill the people that the state has decided should die. 

The Times' paywall permitting, you can read all about this topic by clicking this link. Clicking the link should take you to a New York Times' opinion essay authored by Bernard E. Harcourt. Harcourt is a professor of law and political theory at Columbia Law School. He began his legal career representing people on Alabama’s death row and he continues to represent people sentenced to death and life imprisonment without parole.

In terms of how to kill people, what is the latest idea from Alabama? Here it is: Death by asphyxiation, utilizing nitrogen gas. The scientific label is "nitrogen hypoxia." This method of killing was (previously) used to euthanize pets; however, as Harcourt tells it, "the American Veterinary Medical Association no longer recommends nitrogen asphyxiation for nonavian animals, citing data that indicates those animals may experience panic, pain and severe physical distress before dying."

The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America provides as follows: 

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

This provision in the Bill of Rights has been there since the beginning, for any "originalists" out there, and I doubt, very much, that the definition of "unusual" has changed in any significant way since 1789. This proposed method for killing people is, clearly, "unusual." A report from the Montgomery Advertiser makes this crystal clear: 

Because no person has ever been executed by inhaling pure nitrogen — there is seemingly no way to humanely test its use — exactly how the state will carry out a nitrogen hypoxia execution is unclear. A deputy state attorney general said the state has developed a protocol for it, but added that it has not been finalized. The state also has not released details of that protocol to the public or even, as of Tuesday, the man who could be executed with it in just days (emphasis added). 

It remains to be seen whether or not Alabama will try to follow through on this proposed new way to kill - and it is also not clear whether or not the United States Supreme Court would intervene to stop the state from doing so (which, of course, the Court ought to do, given the provisions of the Eighth Amendment just quoted). These uncertainties aside, I would like to challenge us all to think about a more "radical" question. 

Here is the question: Is killing another person - deliberately killing them - cruel? "Originalists" would say "no." Official killings were sanctioned all the time in 1789. Nothing "unusual" about that, and there is no indication that the Founding Fathers were trying to change current practices, which certainly included the death penalty. No problem, in other words, for the "originalists" out there.

Still, there is another way to interpret the Constitution, which is to read the words as they appear today, and then to follow what they say, based on how we understand them. My question, thus, is pertinent for any who would not think that "originalism" is the only way to think about the Constitution. 

Is killing another person - deliberately killing them, as a way to impose punishment - "cruel"?

I think it is. In fact, I am kind of an absolutist about that, and take the Ten Commandments rather seriously. 

Our Constitution expects us to apply "punishments" in appropriate circumstances. But not "unusual" punishments and not "cruel" punishments. 

Is it "cruel" to take someone's life away, cutting off all hope of redemption, and terminating any opportunity to correct what might have been an erroneous decision to impose a death penalty?

I am here to argue that it is. When old, tried and true methods of killing people prove to be "cruel" (and that is what has happened in Alabama), let's consider the straightforward option of deciding that we will simply never punish people by killing them - that killing people to punish them is "cruel" in every case.

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Image Credit:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/18/opinion/alabama-executions-botched.html

#269 / Pardon Me

 

Heather Cox Richardson, a history professor at Boston College, writes a daily blog that I consider to be "must read" material. She calls her blog, "Letters from an American." If you click that link, you can subscribe to Richardson's blog - if you don't already do that. The New York Times, which I also read on a daily basis, has said that Richardson is, "more or less by accident, the most successful independent journalist in America." Apparently, over one million people subscribe to Richardson's blog. 

Credit...

On August 9, 2023, Richardson wrote on the events surrounding Richard Nixon's 1974 resignation from the presidency. This resignation came after the Watergate break-ins, part of the president's efforts to "rig" the 1972 presidential election. As she usually does, Richardson placed the "events of today" into a framework supplied by our national history. While there are significant differences between what Nixon did in 1972, and what former president Trump did in 2020, the conduct of Nixon and the conduct of former president Trump were not really that different, if both efforts are seen as an attempt, by a sitting president, to ensure that he would remain in power, despite what the voters might wish.

When President Nixon broke the law, and got caught doing it, the leading politicians in his own party told him that he would either have to resign, or be impeached by the House of Representatives and then convicted by the Senate. Nixon resigned. In resigning, of course, Nixon did not admit any guilt or wrongdoing, and he was subsequently pardoned by his former Vice President, Gerald Ford. Richardson quotes Ford on the pardon, Ford claiming that "the trial of a former president would 'cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States.'”

Richardson's August 9th blog posting is focused on the idea that what Ford did - and what he said - set a precedent that is with us to this day. As Richardson observed, presidents and other high office occupants now expect that they will not be prosecuted, or punished, should they be caught breaking the law:

Only fifteen years [after Nixon's resignation], the expectation that a president would not be prosecuted came into play ... when members of President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council ignored Congress’s 1985 prohibition on aid to the Nicaraguan Contras who were fighting against the socialist Nicaraguan government. The administration illegally sold arms to Iran and funneled the profits to the Contras. 

When the story of the Iran-Contra affair broke in November 1986, government officials continued to break the law, shredding documents that Congress had subpoenaed. After fourteen administration officials were indicted and eleven convicted, the next president, George H. W. Bush, who had been Reagan’s vice president, pardoned them on the advice of his attorney general William Barr. (Yes, that William Barr.) 

The independent prosecutor in the case, Lawrence Walsh, worried that the pardons weakened American democracy. They “undermine…the principle…that no man is above the law,” he said. Pardoning high-ranking officials “demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office, deliberately abusing the public trust without consequences” (emphasis added).

It seems to me (and I think Richardson would agree) that Walsh was right to worry. "Powerful people, with powerful allies" do believe that they can commit serious crimes without any significant consequences - witness how former president Trump has conducted himself.

The upcoming trial(s) of Donald Trump, and perhaps some of those who suggested and facilitated his conduct, provide us with an opportunity to reset our expectations. Those who are currently just "observers," with no formal role to play in the upcoming legal proceedings - which I think includes almost all of us - should make clear that we do expect the Nixon-Reagan precedent to be repudiated. We should, and do, expect that Walsh's warning will now be taken into account.

Any expectation that those holding high office will never be punished, if they break the law, is an expectation that needs to be reset. Past actions have set an obnoxious and dangerous precedent. An opportunity to reset our expectations about our nation's willingness and ability to punish high officials who violate the law (including even the president, when the president does it) is certainly going to be available to the jury, or juries, who will make the final decisions on these matters in the upcoming trial(s).

Let's have some faith in that jury system!

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Image Credit:

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-9-2023

#268 / No Dads?

 

Below, you can see the "Daily Dig" for September 13, 2023. These "Daily Digs" are provided by Plough, which advertises itself as "an award-winning international magazine of stories, ideas, and culture that appears weekly online and quarterly in print." Plough promises that it "asks the big questions: How can we live well together, and what gives life meaning and purpose in a complex world?"

The "Daily Dig" I have included in this blog posing suggests that our "Dads" may have had some good ideas, and may have provided us with some helpful guidance. We shouldn't discard their ideas just because they are "old." The "Been There; Done That" approach to life may not always be the best. "Moving on" doesn't always mean doing things better.

Above, I have pictured my own father, Philips B. Patton, whose birthday is today (though he is no longer around for the cake and the celebration). My Dad would be 109 years old today, if he were still alive. 

I have named my father as one of my "Five Guys," along with Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bob Dylan, and Jesus. Click right here to read a little bit more about my Dad. 

He was a pretty great guy!

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Image Credits:

(1) - Gary A. Patton, personal photo

(2) - https://www.plough.com/en/subscriptions/daily-dig/odd/september/daily-dig-for-september-13

#267 / Fake It Till You Make It

 

Mike Kerrigan is an attorney who practices in Charlotte, North Carolina. His firm's website says that his law practice focuses on "the purchase, sale and trading of loans, securities, claims, derivatives and other interests in domestic and international companies in, near, or emerging from, financial distress." A guy like that, clearly, can be expected to read The Wall Street Journal (but of course, I read it, too - which is maybe somewhat less expected). 

Anyway, Kerrigan not only "reads" The Wall Street Journal; he has written an opinion column for the paper, too, which was published on August 10, 2023. That column presented what Kerrigan calls his "Sweater Theory." 

I am actually more interested in Kerrigan's "Fake It Till You Make It" discussion - part of that same column - but I can provide the following about Kerrigan's "Sweater Theory," since I do think that his point, with reference to "sweaters," is well taken: 

When any of my admittedly fortunate kids has voiced an opinion to the effect of “everything would be perfect if only X,” they invariably confront their dad’s “sweater theory” of life. 

The sweater theory reminds that life is an all-or-nothing proposition, an inestimable gift with no “if onlys.” Like pulling on the loose thread of a sweater, a seemingly innocent endeavor risks entirely unraveling the pullover, leaving things not slightly better but dreadfully worse.  

Imagine my joy to learn that in “Orthodoxy,” G.K. Chesterton’s apologetical masterwork, he warned the following: “Do not free a camel from the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.” There was my sweater theory pithily stated (emphasis added).

Life, Kerrigan is reminding us, is basically a "package deal." We have to "take the bad with the good," and if we aren't willing to do that, and try to unravel one strand of our lives from the whole of it, we're likely to go way off the rails and lose everything. 

Good point! Hopefully, this is not the first time you have confronted that reality of our human existence, even if, like me, this is the first time you have heard this insight characterized as a "Sweater Theory." 

As earlier noted, while I was pleased to get Kerrigan's reflections on his "Sweater Theory," I was more interested in what Kerrigan had to say about a life strategy generally known as "Fake It Till You Make It." You probably well understand this life principle - and perhaps you even practice it yourself, but if that is not the case, and if you happen to be a little hazy on the idea, you can click the link to get a definition from Wikipedia. Here is how Kerrigan presents the "Fake It Till You Make It" idea, which he clothes in the lineaments of spirituality: 

“Fake it till you make it” is motivation I draw on frequently when I know the good I’m supposed to do but in my weakness, I don’t feel like doing it. What a comfort to discover that before I was born, C.S. Lewis had already provided the underpinnings for this philosophy. 

In “Mere Christianity,” Lewis advised: “Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. . . . When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.” What a confirmation: Not only might the faking it be brief, the making it might carry me all the way to heaven. 

It is thrilling when sound theory holds up in practice. It is scarcely less wondrous when sound practice holds up in theory

To my way of thinking, Kerrigan is discussing, in these remarks, a topic that I think is quite important; namely, the relationship between "thought" and "action." Like Newton's "First Law of Motion," about which I have commented before, we can only change the world - and change the realities we inhabit - if we take "action," if we "do something" - usually something new and unexpected. 

Before we can "act," though - at least in most instances - we need to have an "idea" of what it is we want to accomplish, some "theory" that tells us what we think we might accomplish by our action. Such an "idea," or "theory," is a requirement, because we base our actions on the ideas we have. No "idea," no "action." In the end, however, it is the "action," not the "theory," or the "idea," that makes all the difference. 

This observation is accurate with respect to what we do by way of our "individual" actions, and it is also accurate with respect to what we will do "collectively" - or "politically," as I would say. 

Kerrigan's point, however - and it is a rather important point - is that trying to develop the perfect "theory" can sometimes mean that we defer "action," and when that happens, our efforts to perfect our "idea" about what to do can lead us to fail to do what we must do (and what we genuinely want to do). 

This point, I believe, is at least as important as that "Sweater Theory." Really, Kerrigan is telling us, we can call our actions "faking it till we make it," if we want to, but we can't wait around for the "perfect theory," the "perfect plan." Our time is limited, and the challenges we face are real. We need to take "action," not just think about whether we should. We need to be pretty prompt about taking important actions, too, once we have some initial idea of what we think might be called for.

Global warming (on the "collective" front) is a good example of the principle. It is time to "do" something about it, even though we may not have, to our full satisfaction, a perfect "theory" to describe what we think would be the best thing to do. We know some things to do, don't we? Well, let's start doing them!

You can call that kind of approach "faking it till we make it," but the key thing, the most important thing, is to take the actions we can now envision. Let our actions prove the theory!

"Action" is the key, and if you haven't read Hamlet recently, now might be a good time to revisit one of Shakespeare's greatest works. The quotation below, I think, should be familiar, if you have ever read, or seen Hamlet, one of Shakespeare's greatest plays: 

The native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; and enterprises of great pitch and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action.

"Fake It Till You Make It?" Let's not allow our fear of "faking it" - a fear of not really having the perfect solution - prevent us from taking the actions we think may be able to address the dire realities we confront, on so many fronts. We can play "Hamlet" to the world crisis of global warming, but that would be a mistake. 

Take a look at that David Attenborough film I mentioned a while ago, if you haven't yet seen it. 

Let's not miss our chance to save the world.

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Image Credit:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/my-sweater-theory-in-practice-lewis-chesterton-mere-christianity-339337c4

#266 / The Nickle Pickle

 

 

The Wall Street Journal tells us that the world is in a "nickle pickle." Here's how the problem was presented in an article by Jon Emont, published in the June 5, 2023, edition of the paper: 

To make batteries for EVs, companies need to mine and refine large amounts of nickel. The process of getting the mineral out of the ground and turning it into battery-ready substances, though, is particularly environmentally unfriendly. Reaching the nickel means cutting down swaths of rainforest. Refining it is a carbon-intensive process that involves extreme heat and high pressure, producing waste slurry that’s hard to dispose of.

The nickel issue reflects a larger contradiction within the EV industry: Though electric vehicles are designed to be less damaging to the environment in the long term than conventional cars, the process of building them carries substantial environmental harm.

The challenge is playing out across Indonesia’s mineral-rich islands, by far the world’s largest source of nickel. These deposits aren’t deep underground but lie close to the surface, under stretches of overlapping forests. Getting to the nickel is easy and inexpensive, but only after the forests are cleared (see the picture, above).

 

This "nickle pickle," it seems to me, is just one example of a more general problem. In response to the environmental crises that have been caused by human activity (and global warming is certainly the example that comes more forcefully to mind, though it is not the only example, by any means), we are trying to find ways to continue doing what we're doing, but without adding to the specific problem that we have identified. In the case of the "nickle pickle," the problem is the release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, because of the massive emissions produced by gasoline-burning vehicles. 

Solution? Let's make our vehicles electric. We can keep everything the same, but without burning the hydrocarbon fuels. 

Looks like there's a problem with this strategy!

Here's what I suggest. Let's really change what we're doing (by doing less)!

 

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Image Credit:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/electric-vehicles-batteries-nickel-pickle-indonesia-9152b1f

 

#265 / Duh!

 

I have reproduced, above, one of those "inspirational quotes" that I find popping into my email inbox from time to time. In this case, as you can tell from my headline, I think that the sentiment that Mr. Twain expresses is rather obvious. Like... Duh!

If we want to change the future, we need to change what we are doing right now. That is pretty obvious. At least, that seems pretty obvious to me. In fact, isn't there some sort of analogy between what Twain is telling us and one of those "Laws" that Newton outlined? Newton's "Laws" all relate to the "Natural World," of course, not our "Human World," but the short answer is, "Yes." 

Newton is generally credited with having stated three "Laws" related to "motion." Law #1 (relating to "inertia") is formulated as outlined below: 

Newton’s laws of motion relate an object’s motion to the forces acting on it. In the first law, an object will not change its motion unless a force acts on it.

What happens in the "World of Nature," which is the arena in which Newton's Laws operate, is different, oftentimes, from what happens in the "Human World" that we create, since "our" laws are not confined by necessity. Still, the principle that Newton stated as to the motion of objects in the physical world is also a principle that applies when we consider human affairs. If we want to change what's happening, so as to change the future, we need to take some sort of action "in the present." That is what Twain is telling us.

Like I say: "Duh!" Surely, this is no big surprise to anyone. 

Yet.... as obvious as Twain's maxim is, let us admit that we oftentimes don't act as though we actually believe that this is a requirement of the world we most directly inhabit. We act, all too often, as though we really think that something new (and better) might occur if we just wait around for it. 

I am suggesting that while Twain's observation is one of those, "Duh!" type truths, we do not, either individually or collectively, pay enough attention to it - at least not to the extent that we change our behavior so as to change our future. 

If this is admitted, then I don't feel bad about trying to raise to prominence what Twain has to tell us. 

Things are in motion. They are bad and getting worse. Let's list global warming, economic inequality, and environmental degradation as examples (you could pick some other ones, too). 

Do we want the future to be different from what we can reliably predict the future is going to be like, as we review what's happening now?

If the answer to that question is "Yes," then we need to do something different. 

Right now!

Duh!

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Image Credit:

https://www.azquotes.com/quote/848040

#264 / Eisenstein's Film

   

Maybe Charles Eisenstein (who is pictured above) should be called "New Age." I am not really sure. Those not familiar with Eisenstein can click the links to get some background. Here is what the website, "Ions" has to say about him. I guess they want to use the label "counter-cultural."

Charles Eisenstein

Speaker, Counter-Cultural Intellectual, Author

Charles Eisenstein is a public speaker, counter-cultural intellectual, and the author of several books including The Ascent of Humanity, Sacred Economics, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible, and Climate: A New Story.

His on-line writings have generated a vast following; he speaks frequently at conferences and other events, and gives numerous interviews on radio and podcasts.

Eisenstein graduated from Yale University in 1989 with a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy, and spent the next ten years as a Chinese-English translator.

 

I have signed up to get periodic bulletins from Eisenstein, who promises "essays on civilization. myth, politics, [and] ecology." He currently has over 68,000 subscribers, and you can sign up for free. Eisenstein, incidentally, is now officially part of the presidential campaign team for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. 

 

In late June, I got a rather disturbing bulletin from Eisenstein (or, at least, I found it disturbing). His bulletin linked to what Eisenstein described as "the first film that I have written and directed myself." As he told those who got his email, "it's only three minutes long." Here it is: 

As anyone who has read many of my blog postings knows, I want to be sure that we all appreciate the difference between being an "observer" and being an "actor." 

Observers look at the world and describe it. Actors change the world.

Eisenstein's film is his "observation" about the nature of our existence. Presenting this "observation" within a "New Age" or "Counter-Cultural" framework, as Eisenstein's film does, has the effect, I fear, of amplifying the "is" fallacy. This is the fallacy that suggests that an accurate and powerful observation of what "is," is a statement about the essential "reality" of what the observation describes. 

In fact, the world we most immediately inhabit, the "Human World," the "Political World," is a world that we have created ourselves, and that world is a world we can change. In our human world, what "is" is not inevitable, and does not, by any means, define or delimit reality. Thus, any compelling presentation about our reality (like Eisenstein's film) needs to be careful about what message it will send. Unless our ability to do something new, and different, is clear, a compelling presentation about what is "happening" may be disempowering (whether that is intended, or not).

Eisenstein calls his first film, "The Fall," and as depicted in the video, "The Fall" is sending all that is good and pure, and even "holy," into a "black hole" of hatred, violence, and despair. Actually, in the way Eisenstein understands his film, the good and the pure are being sent into Hell (for a redemptive purpose, of course, with our world to be "reborn" in the end). 

 

Eisenstein says that he intends this message to "help you stay sane in a crazy world." 

Wouldn't that be nice!  Ojalá!

But that's not the way I read this film. I read the film as Eisenstein's presentation of his description of "reality," and the "reality" he presents says that we're all going to Hell. Eisenstein's film, in other words, helps advance the "doom loop" perspective.

If my reading is correct, we should "not be enticed" into such a "doom loop" brand of thinking - not any more than we should let ourselves be enticed, the way I see it, by the campaign of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., which has a similar "downbeat" vision of where we find ourselves today.

 

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https://noetic.org/profile/charles-eisenstein/

#263 / Streets Without Buses?

I am from Santa Cruz, California, and I really love our "picture buses," one of which you can see above. The buses feature the outstanding and award-winning photography of Frans Lanting. "Whale Buses," for instance, are now zooming around our local streets, urging us to protect whales "One Ride At A Time." There are some other "picture buses," too, celebrating other aspects of our natural world. 

Frans and his partner, Christine Eckstrom, allied with The National Geographic Society, have been helping us to see the wonders of the natural world through their many years of superlative photography and video. Their recent book, Bay of Life, celebrates the environment of the Monterey Bay Area. There is now a "Bay of Life Project," in fact, which accounts for those "picture buses." The Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County will gladly accept your donations!

Much as I love the "picture buses," the most common observation that I hear about buses in general is that there isn't anyone, really, riding them! This observation, regretably, is pretty much on target; it's accurate. A friend of mind, who has served on the Santa Cruz County Transportation Commission for many years, has always told me that our local transit agency is basically delivering "social services," not "transportation services." The system is really aimed at providing transportation to those lower income persons who can't afford a car. Again, there is some truth to that!

Couldn't we, I have long thought, get more for our money by trying out a different approach? One of my blog postings, back in November 2021, called for "Streets Without Cars." I advanced a specific proposal for a new way of providing transportation services, to help reduce, or even eliminate, the traffic congestion that is so horrendous in my local community. 

My proposal would remove from our streets and highways many of those greenhouse gas-spewing cars that clog them now. Traffic congestion is a big problem for almost everyone, and the Santa Cruz County Transportation Commission is trying to combat traffic congestion through highway widening projects. This is, in fact, a self-defeating strategy, because widened highways actually "induce demand" for more automobile trips, and so make the problem worse. 

My proposed solution was to create a public, demand-responsive approach (like Uber or Lyft), so those who needed to get around our local community would end up "sharing" automobile trips. If you'd like to see what I said about that proposal, you should click this "Streets Without Cars" link.

I was surprised to read - in the Sunday, September 17, 2023, edition of my local newspaper, The Santa Cruz Sentinel - that this idea is actually being tried out in Wilson, North Carolina. The article was titled, "What if public transit was like Uber? A small city ended bus service to find out." 

Probably, unless you are a Sentinel subscriber (whose ever-increasing subscription prices are driving long-time subscribers, like me, to terminate their subscriptions), you'll be blocked when you click the link. Thus, I am providing the following "screenshot" image of the story, which I think should expand if you click on it. You can also get essentially the same story, online, from another newspaper, by clicking right here. 

In our case, here in Santa Cruz, we'd still need buses. LOTS of buses, in fact, because our "City On A Hill" (the UCSC campus) is a major destination for students who either don't own a car or who couldn't afford to park a car on campus. A transit hub, or hubs, could provide direct, express service to the campus. Other trips would utilize the "ride sharing" strategy now being tried out in North Carolina. Financing the system would be one major issue; the newspaper article doesn't really outline that aspect of the system, but there are definitely solutions. 

The big question? Are we willing to share?

I'd like to think so. 

Let's save the whales (and ourselves) "One [Shared] Ride At A Time."

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Image Credit:

https://scmtd.com/en/

#262 / Has The Founders' Remedy Been Forsaken?

 

Back in early August, The Wall Street Journal published an article by Jeffrey Rosen that made this claim: "The Founders Anticipated The Threat of Trump." 

Since the charges against our former president are "unprecedented," I imagine that many Americans would not, really, think that Trump's actions were the kind of actions that the so-called "Founding Fathers" anticipated - and that the "Founding Fathers" hoped they could defend against by the way they wrote our Constitution. 

Rosen is "an American lawyer who served as the acting United States attorney general from December 2020 to January 2021 and as the United States deputy attorney general from 2019 to 2020." Rosen, in other words, was a member of the Trump Administration during the period in which, allegedly, our former president was seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election. During his time as the acting Attorney General, Rosen refused to advance the former president's unsupported claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent.

It seems significant to me that Rosen, as a former member of the Trump Administration, has made clear that he thinks that Trump's actions, as outined in the indictment against him brought by a Grand Jury impaneled in the District of Columbia, raise issues that the Constitution anticipated. Rosen's analysis, in other words, considering the source, seems to suggest that our former president might well be "guilty as charged." 

Here is what Rosen claims in his August 5-6 article in The Wall Street Journal: 

The allegations in the indictment of Donald Trump for conspiring to overturn the election of 2020 represent the American Founders’ nightmare. A key concern of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton was that demagogues would incite mobs and factions to defy the rule of law, overturn free and fair elections and undermine American democracy. “The only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion,” Alexander Hamilton wrote in 1790. “When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper…is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity,” Hamilton warned, “he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’”

The Founders designed a constitutional system to prevent demagogues from sowing confusion and mob violence in precisely this way. The vast extent of the country, Madison said, would make it hard for local factions to coordinate any kind of mass mobilization. The horizontal separation of powers among the three branches of government would ensure that the House impeached and the Senate convicted corrupt presidents. The vertical division of powers between the states and the federal government would ensure that local officials ensured election integrity (emphasis added).

It is comforting - if we choose to look at it that way - that it took so long (almost 250 years) for the nation to have to deal with a demagogue who would "incite mobs and factions to defy the rule of law, overturn free and fair elections and undermine American democracy." Looking at what Rosen says, in the excerpt from his article that I have copied above, I am most interested in what Rosen identifies at the "remedy" for the concerns about what a demagogue might do. 

In essence, Rosen says, the division of power among the separate branches of the federal government is one layer of protection. The second layer of protection is the independent governmental powers of the states (and their local governmental subdivisions).

In fact, what Rosen says, in the excerpt of his article that I have quoted, is exactly what Hannah Arendt contends in her wonderful book, On Revolution. The multiplication of many different sources of political power, and the division of power within our governments, so that the executive, legislative, and judicial branches all "check and balance" each other, is the reason that it has taken so long for the long-feared demogogue to appear. 

For those who accept my argument that we live in a "Political World," and that, therefore, we need to become engaged in government, ourselves, if we want to maintain our system of "self-government," it makes lots of sense for each one of us to engage ourselves in governmental actions at the "local" level, the level of government that is closest to us.

If we care about the future of the Republic, in other words, we ought to be personally engaged in who gets elected to our local City Council, or Board of Supervisors (and to our State Legislature, too, of course). We ought to become personally engaged in the governmental decisions that are made by those governmental bodies. You don't need to run for president, or Congress, to help preserve democracy. Get engaged locally!

Are you, perhaps, already "engaged locally"?

Most of us are not - or not enough! Let's just hope that events during the upcoming year don't demonstrate that the Founders' Remedy has been forsaken.

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-founders-anticipated-the-threat-of-trump-becda1b

#261 / A Monument To Elite Self-Satisfaction?

 

The phrase I am using as a headline is a phrase used by New York Times opinion columnist David Brooks in his column published on August 4, 2023, "What if We're the Bad Guys Here?" 

What the heck is David Brooks talking about? Brooks uses my headline phrase to describe the "story" that so-called "anti-Trumpers" have told themselves about what is going on in our country today. Specifically, Brooks is trying to explain something that seems puzzling to many; namely, why there is such strong and enduring political support for our much-indicted and greatly-flawed former president. 

 

Brooks strongly suggests that one of the phrases that I, personally, use quite frequently ("We're all in this together") does not, in fact, accurately describe our contemporary situation at all. I gather Brooks thinks that it might have described our nation once ( and that it ought to describe our nation), but Brooks suggests those whom he calls the "educated class" have now taken all the best spots at the banquet table, and those who are lucky enough to have qualified don't show much concern, if any concern at all, for those who have been left out. What if we (the "educated class") are the "bad guys?"

Those who have been left out, Brooks would say, consider the "educated class," and those members of that class who count as "anti-Trumpers," to be massively and wrongly self-satisfied. Thus, those who have been left out are going to stick with someone whom they believe has stuck up for them - none other than that much-indicted and greatly-flawed former president:

This story begins in the 1960s, when high school grads had to go off to fight in Vietnam but the children of the educated class got college deferments. It continues in the 1970s, when the authorities imposed busing on working-class areas in Boston but not on the upscale communities like Wellesley where they themselves lived.

The ideal that "we’re all in this together" was replaced with the reality that the educated class lives in a world up here and everybody else is forced into a world down there. Members of our class are always publicly speaking out for the marginalized, but somehow we always end up building systems that serve ourselves.

The most important of those systems is the modern meritocracy. We built an entire social order that sorts and excludes people on the basis of the quality that we possess most: academic achievement. Highly educated parents go to elite schools, marry each other, work at high-paying professional jobs and pour enormous resources into our children, who get into the same elite schools, marry each other and pass their exclusive class privileges down from generation to generation.

Brooks doesn't say it, specifically, but I will. Those in the "meritocracy," and those political candidates whom they support, end up thinking that at least half of those who didn't all get the benefits they did are nothing other than a "basket of deplorables." Yes, I am pointing at you, Hillary Clinton!

I do think that saying "we're all in this together" is to say something that is true. We really are "all in this together." Hillary Clinton seems to know it, too. Just consider her 2016 campaign slogan. That's it, shown right above: "Stronger Together." Again, that is absolutely true!

Our political challenge, it seems to me, is to take this truth - that "we are in this together" - and make that truth "real." Operationally real. As Brooks accurately says, it's not operationally real in today's United States.

You can sing a song, if that helps (one of my past blog postings gave out the lyrics), but when we start "making friends," which I have advised is an imperative, we must do so not only for the joy of it, but as a bulwark about the bad times about to descend upon us. We need, quite clearly, to find some friends across the division lines that now define our politics. If we are part of that "meritocracy" that David Brooks is talking about, then we need friends who aren't. Same thing going the other direction. 

We are, truly, "all in this together," and that means we need to expand our friendship circles. 

Once we do? Well, then we had better help our friends!

I am quite serious in saying that this would not only be a "nice thing," or a "nice idea." I am saying that this is what must happen for our nation to survive. 

Big challenges are coming. 

Let's start finding those friends right now!

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https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/opinion/trump-meritocracy-educated.html