#92 / Is All Politics National?

Tip O'Neill said, "All politics is local." I tend to think he is right. 

Nonetheless, as someone who is "tuned in" to politics (and as a registered member of the Democratic Party), I am noting that the political communications I receive are virtually all "national" in their focus. The claim that "all politics is local," in other words, may be more of a "theory" than a reality, in today's political world.

I get almost daily appeals from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), Organizing For America, which is a project of the Democratic National Committee, and which is operated as a subsection of President Obama's website. Plus, I regularly hear from the Democratic Governors' Association (DGA), whose logo I have placed in today's posting. Here is the message from the DGA that set me to wondering whether or not that "all politics is local" statement still has any genuine applicability: 

Gary,
The backwards-thinking, crazy-talking Republican governors aren’t going to like this.

Public Policy Polling’s got Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett trailing three Democratic opponents – three! – by 11 points. In Florida, Governor Rick Scott’s down by 12. And we’ve got pickup opportunities in Virginia and Michigan, too.

But don’t celebrate just yet. Karl and the Kochs are coming to the GOP’s rescue and the Tea Party Super PACs are getting richer than ever. Their malicious, misleading ads have started flying. Outrageous voter suppression is already underway.

It all means we have to be ready, if we still want to get ahead when it counts. A donor’s just told the DGA he’ll match any contribution you make, 2-1, before the FEC deadline March 31. But only if the DGA reaches its $120,000 target. We only have $45,273 to go, but we need your immediate contribution to get there.

Nothing against the Democratic candidates for Governor in Pennsylvania (and in Florida and Virginia and Michigan, too), but I don't know any of those people, and if elected none of them will actually represent me, since I am from California. The premise that I should put my limited resources into those races is based on an idea that all political is "national," not "local," and that party identification is the most important thing. In fact, I have a very strong hunch that I would be getting comparable communications from the Republican National Committee, and other Republican Party organizations, were I registered in that party.

If we wonder why our politics isn't working (and many do), this transformation in focus from local to national (and from issue and candidate based politics to a politics based on party identification) could be a major reason. Individual, personal participation, and individual, personal relationships, are the foundation of any genuine politics. Read what Tip O'Neill has to say about politics; he makes that pretty clear. That is why any genuine politics has to be "local."

Politically speaking, we are in a bit of trouble, here!

Image Credit: 
http://abcnewsradioonline.com/politics-news/2010/10/7/democrats-raise-new-questions-about-news-corps-1-million-don.html

#91 / Nationalism

Pictured are Hannah Arendt and her husband, Heinrich Blücher. The blog posting from which I obtained this picture, written by one of Blücher's students, is worth reading, to get a sense of their relationship. Arendt, whom I consider to have been one of the greatest thinkers of the Twentieth Century (and why stop there) called Blücher the "love of her life," though many would say the love of her life was Martin Heidegger, the German philosopher who took up Naziism, and whom Arendt, in the end, apparently forgave for that.

I am currently reading a book about Arendt, Stranger From Abroad, which focuses particularly on her relationship with Heidegger. In that book I found the following quote from Blücher. Reading what he says here, about nationalism, makes clear to me how Arendt could have developed her passionate attachment to him. The kind of nationalism that Blücher discusses might be considered as a kind of political "virus," to which the United States, because of its unique political history, was initially immune. But is it still immune, or has the virus mutated within the American body politic, so we are now infected? This is a question worth considering: 

Nationalism began when every individual, every small spirit, saw in it his chance to embody something higher than himself and to feel himself, as a German or whatever, to be greater than he could feel alone. What now marks the end of nationalism is that it has become impossible to be both a human being and a German, a Frenchman, or a Jew (in Israel, in any case) or whatever. On the contrary, as a representative of this or that nationality, one will be forced sooner or later to become an inhuman monster.  

So we are obliged today to try to become human beings only as ourselves - aided by those friends who have been moved to make this same decision and supported not by the "great spirits" of Romanticism but by the great human beings of all our national pasts. And one's own as well as other "nations" should be judged solely ... in terms of the question: Where is the human being's person held inviolate?"

      Stranger From Abroad, pp. 224-225

Image Credit: 
https://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2007/05/23/heinrich-blucher-and-hannah-arendt/

#90 / Wonder

If you haven't seen the film, Searching for Sugarman, featuring singer and songwriter Sixto Diaz Rodriguez, I definitely recommend it. It did win an Academy Award. Best song of the film, I think,  is "I Wonder," played live in the YouTube clip above. The lyrics to the song are below. 

It strikes me that "wonder," in general, is probably a most appropriate attitude to all of life. 

Rodriguez - I Wonder 

I wonder how many times you've been had
And I wonder how many plans have gone bad
I wonder how many times you had sex
I wonder do you know who'll be next
I wonder l wonder wonder I do

I wonder about the love you can't find
And I wonder about the loneliness that's mine
I wonder how much going have you got
And I wonder about your friends that are not
I wonder I wonder I wonder I do 

I wonder about the tears in children's eyes
And I wonder about the soldier that dies
I wonder will this hatred ever end
I wonder and worry my friend
I wonder I wonder wonder don't you? 

I wonder how many times you been had
And I wonder how many dreams have gone bad
I wonder how many times you've had sex
And I wonder do you care who'll be next
I wonder I wonder wonder I do

Image Credit: 

http://afistfulofculture.com/2013/01/17/rodriguez-announces-new-zealand-tour/

#89 / Self-Help

I read a lot more book reviews than I read books. In These Times, a great political magazine, recently carried a review of Sidetracked, a new book by Francesca Gino. Gino is on the faculty of the Harvard Business School. Sidetracked is what might be called a "self-help" book.  

I haven't read Sidetracked (and I doubt I will). I do, however, recommend the review, by Richard Greenwald, cleverly titled, "No Self-Help Wanted." Greenwald is a writer who describes his efforts as focused on "the intersection of work, urban culture, economics, business and American politics." Here is his takeaway summary of the message in Sidetracked: 

[Gino's] logic contains a basic, and serious, internal flaw endemic to self-help literature: It assumes that the only thing holding us back is ourselves.

You can see what I like about this review (reserving my judgment about the book itself). We live in a "political world." In other words, we live in a world we create by cooperative action, not by individual endeavor. It all goes back to that "unit of analysis" idea.

If you find yourself as hesitant and unenthusiastic about the "self-help" genre as I do, it turns out there is a reason for that. Greenwald notes the problem. It's not just about the individual.

We are in this together!

Image Credit: 
http://inthesetimes.com/article/14714/no_self_help_wanted/

#88 / Mortal

While the Urban Dictionary says "mortal" means "drunk," the most common meaning is this: "subject to death." "Mortal" in its ordinary definition pretty much describes the reality of everything that is human, from our individual human lives to the civilizations we construct. We can add ancient Egypt and its civilization to that list already highlighted: the Maya Civilization, the Glory That Was Greece, and the Grandeur That Was Rome. 

In the World of Nature, death also makes its appearance, on a continuing basis, but in a somewhat different way. In the World of Nature, the world we don't create ourselves, and the World into which we are born, as mortals, death is always the first step to more life. 

The religions of the world, it seems to me, have all tried to reconcile the rule of "life equals death/death equals life" with the mortal circumstances of our human existence. As Paul Simon says, our efforts have not really provided an acceptable solution to the puzzle: 

God only knows
God makes his plan
The information's unavailable
To the mortal man

Image Credit: 
http://www.learner.org/courses/globalart/theme/6/index.html

#87 / Thomas

In the Gospel according to John, the story is told of a disciple named Didymus (and also called Thomas) who was not with the other disciples when Jesus appeared to them after the Resurrection. The other disciples told Thomas that they had seen Jesus risen from the dead, but Thomas was not convinced. He said, "except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe (John 20: 24-29)." 

Richard Dawkins, definitely more than a "doubter" where religious questions are involved, calls Thomas the "patron saint of scientists." Of course, if you believe the Bible, Thomas' researches turned out to verify the truth of what he had been told by his friends. Nonetheless, while I am sure Dawkins' respect for the methodological approaches demanded by Thomas are sincere, Dawkins has not professed a belief in the divinity of Jesus, or that Jesus rose from the dead. The "scientific" report from Thomas has not been enough.

I tend to be willing to base my beliefs on "theory" as much as "experience," and am therefore not of that "scientific" persuasion that Dawkins thinks is so important. But I am fine with experience, too. 

Questions about the divinity of Jesus aside, I have found that my "ideas" about reality often turn out to be correct, or that I can "make" them correct, because we create human realities based on the beliefs we have, and upon our willingness to act upon those beliefs. Since we do, actually, create our own reality, within the human world, our ideas about what we want reality to be can be more important than a "scientific" review of the apparent realities around us. 

That's my idea, anyway. Or as my father put it, "unless you have a dream, Gary, you can't have a dream come true."

Image Credit: 
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Guercino_-_Doubting_Thomas_-_WGA10951.jpg 

#86 / In Our Names

Smoke covers Saddam Hussein's presidential palace compound during a massive US-led air raid on Baghdad, Iraq on March 21, 2003. Allied forces unleashed a devastating blitz on Baghdad, triggering giant fireballs and deafening explosions and sending huge mushroom clouds above the city center. Missiles slammed into the main palace complex of President Saddam Hussein on the bank of the Tigris River, and key government buildings.(Ramzi Haidar/AFP/Getty Images)

The Atlantic publishes online pictures two to three times a week, in a feature they call In Focus. Very often, the images published are both striking and powerful. The image above comes from an In Focus series on "Iraq War's 10th Anniversary: The Invasion." The other photos in this series are equally powerful and dramatic. 

My wife, and I, and tens of thousands of others, marched in the streets of New York City, just days before President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq. We were protesting this proposed war, but our protests were unavailing. A war against Iraq was carried out in our name, and to our enduring shame. 

Whether we protested or didn't, the credit for the invasion and war goes to the United States of America. To all of us. Click on the link to see our handiwork. 

Image Credit: 
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/03/iraq-wars-10th-anniversary-the-invasion/100475/?utm_source=Atlantic+Media

#85 / Earth Island

Our ability to see our real situation, to see the Earth from space, should be a game changer. Our behavior should be different, now that we know just where we really are. Many of our kitchens boast a refrigerator magnet with a picture like the one above, and with the following notation arrowed in: "You are here."

Yes, here we are! And we had better be careful. This Earth we inhabit is both finite and frangible. The phrase "Earth Island" is another way to make the point.

The Earth Island Institute  is a non-profit, public interest, membership organization. For twenty-five years, the Institute has helped initiate and support grassroots campaigns "dedicated to conserving, preserving, and restoring the ecosystems on which our civilization depends." 

"Civilization" is the name we give to the world we create. That world depends on the Natural World we don't.

The most recent edition of the Earth Island Journal is available online. The cover proclaims, "Welcome to the Anthropocene." The premise of this title is that we have now entered a completely new era in the history of the Earth, one dominated by human action, and an era in which humans have assumed that they can, and should, substitute their own works for the World of Nature. More and more, the physical realities of the Earth and its environment are manmade. The editorial is titled, "Arrogance Is Bliss."

Arrogance? Yes. Bliss? Not really!

I recommend the Journal as an antidote to arrogance. It is more good reading for those who are looking for ways to get human frogs to jump. 

I recommend the Earth Island Institute, too. 

Image Credit: 
http://www.prembababoulder.org/music/chants/earth-from-space/

#84 / Getting The Frogs To Jump

Readers of these postings are almost certain to have heard about "how to boil a frog." The Rapture Ready Website, from which the above illustration was taken, is preoccupied with a perceived "breakdown in moral values." My preoccupations tend to center around our human interactions with the natural environment and the evaporation of genuine self-government in the United States, which more or less invented the concept, a couple of hundred years ago. However applied, the warning lesson taught by the "how to boil a frog" story is clear: 

A frog placed into a pan of water with a low flame under it will slowly be boiled alive, the temperature change being too small for the frog to notice. If we were to toss the frog into water that's already boiling, the frog would leap out. This scenario is exactly what is occurring today ... 

If we are, in terms of moral breakdown, or global warming, or in some other way, truly being boiled like frogs in a pot, the question I keep asking myself is how to find a way to get those frogs to jump?

Image Credit: 
http://www.raptureready.com/rap52.html

#83 / Sonya

My daughter Sonya (shown with her children, and my grandchildren, Dylan and Delaney Drottar) is what you might call a "hard worker." She is a bilingual hospital social worker; she sells fashion clothes; she runs a thriving eBay store that actually makes money; she teaches courses that show families how to overcome domestic violence; and she does on-call social work for her own, and sometimes other hospitals. Five jobs. Plus that mother thing. 

Today, the Santa Cruz Sentinel ran a self-promoting advertisement that said, "Words Make Worlds."

I agree with the Sentinel (in this observation, anyway), and believe that this insight about how we create the world that we most immediately inhabit is actually a profoundly important statement of what it means to be human.

"Work" makes our world, too. Creating a human world that has never seen before is what we "do," as human beings, and our "work" is what brings that world into reality. Dreaming of, and creating the human world: that is our glory.

Am I a proud parent?

Oh, yeah! 

Proud of Sonya. Proud of Philips.

Image Credit: 
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/c83.0.403.403/p403x403/167486_1727682587456_6639955_n.jpg

#82 / Representative

I have never been as happy in my work as I was when I was an elected member of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. In thinking about why that is so, I realize that those who elected me, and whose representative I was, were my "reason" for doing what I did, and thus convinced me of the "legitimacy" (and value) of what I was doing. 

In many ways, I was able to be quite self-directing during the twenty years I spent on the Board of Supervisors, representing the Third Supervisorial District, but I always felt (and I think correctly, since I was elected five times) that I was doing what the majority of the people wanted me to do. Not all the people were happy with my work; not by a long shot, but the majority were!

Writers need an audience. Those engaged in the political life need to represent someone besides themselves. Doing that, at least for me, brought satisfaction.

Image Credit: 
http://larrydoyleesq.blogspot.com/2012/01/ab-1208-approved-by-assembly.html

#81 / Audience

My wife, who teaches English literature, who is writing a book on how to teach English literature, reminds me that all successful writing is aimed at a particular audience. Without an idea of who your audience is, your writing will not be compelling.

#80 / What We Have Lost

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals … We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err … They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves within the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.

                   
- Henry Beston

Henry Beston  (1888-1968) was an American writer and naturalist. The quotation above was snipped from an article by Lewis Lapham, published in the March 2013 edition of Guernica. I commend that article to you. Lapham was formerly the editor of Harper's Magazine, and this recent article is titled, "The Conquest of Nature." Also worth reading, I think, would be Beston's most famous work, The Outermost House, which documents "a year of life spent on the Great Beach of Cape Cod." Sounds like Thoreau on the seashore. According to Wikipedia, Rachel Carson asserted that Beston was "the only author who ever influenced [my] writing." 

Speaking now only of Lapham's article, I found it almost painful to follow his discussion of how humans have driven away Nature, and destroyed it, to replace the World of Nature with a human created substitute. His conclusion mirrors my own thoughts: 

The environmental casualty reports filed from the four corners of the earth over the last two hundred years don’t leave much ground for argument on Montaigne’s question as to who is the beast and who is the man. Whether attempted by men armed with test tubes or bulldozers, the conquest of nature is a fool’s errand. However it so happens that the beasts manage to live not only at ease within the great chain of being but also in concert with the tides and the season and the presence of death, it is the great lesson they teach to humanity. Either we learn it, or we go the way of the great auk.

Image Credit: 
http://www.guernicamag.com/daily/lewis-lapham-the-conquest-of-nature/

#79 / A Long Way Just To Explain

Slip-slidin' Away

Words & Music by Paul Simon 

Slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away

I know a man
He came from my home town
He wore his passion for his woman
Like a thorny crown
He said Delores

I live in fear
My love for you's so overpowering
I'm afraid that I will disappear

Slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away

I know a woman
Became a wife
These are the very words she uses
To describe her life
She said a good day
Ain't got no rain
She said a bad day's when I lie in bed
And think of things that might have been

Slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away

And I know a father
Who had a son
He longed to tell him all the reasons
For the things he'd done
He came a long way
Just to explain
He kissed his boy as he lay sleeping
Then he turned around and headed home again

Slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away

God only knows
God makes his plan
The information's unavailable
To the mortal man
We work our jobs
Collect our pay
Believe we're gliding down the highway
When in fact we're slip slidin' away

Slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away

Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away
Mmm...

#78 / Philips

My son is still linked to the civilization that we have created (that plastic bottle!). But he is learning to live in the World of Nature. Thinking ahead.

Though our civilizations come and go, Earth abides.

#77 / The Road Not Taken

DIVINE INSPIRATION

by Francisco X. Alarcón

a wise cardinal
at the Papal Conclave
dares to speak up:

“let’s leave Peter’s
Holy See in Rome
vacant for now

let the Holy Spirit
guide humankind
to Jesus’ path – amen”

Francisco X. Alarcón
February 12, 2013

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

INSPIRACIÓN DIVINA

por Francisco X. Alarcón

un sabio cardenal
en el cónclave papal
se atreve a hablar:

“dejemos la Santa Sede
de Pedro en Roma
vacante por ahora

que el Espíritu Santo
guíe a la humanidad
camino a Jesús – amén”

Francisco X. Alarcón
12 de febrero de 2013

#76 / We Real Cool

The pool players
Seven at the Golden Shovel

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

This poem is by Gwendolyn Brooks. Written in 1960. Pre-Rap. It is acknowledged as a masterpiece. "The pool players" is about another kind of ending, the ending of the "civilization" that precipitates around an individual person. You can listen to it here.

I have been thinking about the Maya Civilization, and about Greece and Rome. I have been thinking about our own civilization. Maybe we are not as cool as we think. 

Image Credit: 
http://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/1329720842_prci8994.jpg

#75 / The Grandeur That Was Rome

The worlds we create, our civilizations, come and go. 

There is a poignancy in that.

But new worlds can be built.

Just look at this picture.
Just look around.

Image Credit:
http://famouswonders.com/colosseum-of-rome/

#74 / The Glory That Was Greece

That famous phrase, the "glory that was Greece," as celebrated in the poem by Edgar Allen Poe (below), or in the book by J.C. Stobart (illustrated), recognizes the timeless and enduring contributions of Hellenic culture to our own civilization. 

We celebrate still, in all its glory, the art of Greece, its architecture, its sculpture, and its philosophy. The poignancy of the phrase, however, "the glory that was Greece," comes from the telling use of the past tense. While much is remembered, and some retained, the glory that was Greece, however great, is gone. 

To Helen

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
to his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have broght me home
To glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window niche
How statuelike I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!

Image Credit: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/0283484551/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

#73 / Maya Civilization

The Maya Civilization disappeared.
No one knows exactly why.
It could be a drought that took it.
We count on water from the sky.


Image Credit: 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rf_pix/6957302304/sizes/m/in/photostream/

#72 / Stop And Think #2

I have written quite a bit about the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, and when I was teaching Environmental Law and Policy at the University of California at Santa Cruz, the casebook I used described CEQA as a "Stop And Think" statute. The purpose of the law, in other words, is to make decision makers "stop and think" before taking an action that might have an adverse impact on the environment. Direct regulatory control is not a feature of the law.

Lots of people don't understand this "stop and think" approach, and they think that the objective of CEQA must be more directly and typically "to protect the environment" by establishing regulatory standards to which proposed projects have to conform.

That more typical and regulatory approach is emphatically not the way that CEQA is intended to work, and current attacks on CEQA, in the California State Legislature, are making use of this misunderstanding. CEQA opponents have couched their opposition to CEQA in terms of "reforming," or "modernizing," or "updating" the law (all of which sound quite reasonable), and they are criticizing CEQA because it leads to "delays" in the decision making process. Another ground of attack is that CEQA is no longer needed, since lots of laws to protect the environment have been passed since CEQA was first enacted. Because that is true, CEQA is now supposedly outdated and unnecessary. 

In fact, the basic way that CEQA works is by delaying decisions through a public review process, so that the public and decision makers can focus on both the "cons," as well as the "pros," of a proposed project. "Delay," in other words, is not a "flaw;" it is a basic feature! Furthermore, the "protection of the environment" that CEQA certainly hopes to achieve is to be achieved not by the kind of direct regulations found in the Clean Air Act, or the Clean Water Act, but as the outcome of this "stop and think" process. CEQA specifically mandates that after CEQA review is finished (the purpose of this review being to uncover problems that may have been overlooked), any feasible measures to eliminate or reduce identified environmental impacts must be implemented. "Standards  based" laws, like the ones that CEQA opponents say are now able to take CEQA's place, don't do that at all. Quite the contrary, in fact. 

I started thinking about CEQA, and its "stop and think" approach to environmental protection, because I read something about Socrates in a recent posting in the blog published by the Hannah Arendt Center. Presuming that we think Socrates was a great philosopher (and even CEQA opponents would probably concede that), maybe we could learn something important by studying his techniques. According to Plato, Socrates' greatness was illustrated by three of this personal characteristics: First, Socrates acted as a "gadfly;" second, he acted as a "midwife;" third, he acted as a "stinging ray." I had heard of the "gadfly" and "midwife" comparisons before, but I had never heard (or didn't remember) the comparison of Socrates to a "stinging ray."

In what way was Socrates (the great philosopher) like a "stinging ray?" According to the article linked above, it is the "paralysis" that occurs when a person encounters a stinging ray that led Plato to the analogy: "as stinging ray, Socrates ... makes you stop and think."

Let's take some advice from a great philosopher. No need to "reform" that "stop and think" approach. It is actually good for us.

Image Credit: 
http://karlwebster.com/2010/09/stop-and-think/

#71 / Facebook Friends And Real Friends

"Social Media," with Facebook being a prime example, promote human connections and interactions. I have found that a frequent question, particularly one raised by those who are not themselves active on the social media, is whether the connections and interactions that come from the social media are "real." The image here is from an article with this headline: "NEWSFLASH! Your Favorite Facebook Friend Could Be A FAKE..."

So are those Facebook friends my "real" friends or "fake" friends?

I approach this question from a background that is somewhat different from the background of many people. When I was twenty-nine years old, I was elected to the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, and for twenty years thereafter I served as the elected representative of the residents of the Third Supervisorial District. By virtue of my position as their elected representative, I  was officially connected to about 45,000 people in the Third Supervisorial District, and to about 200,000 people in Santa Cruz County. I always thought that every one of them had a claim on me, and that my connection to them was definitely "real," though I certainly didn't know them all, personally. 

I have pretty much the same kind of feeling about my Facebook Friends, now numbering about 1744 "Friends," according to the account that appears on my Facebook page. These "Facebook Friends" aren't all people I know personally, but they all have some sort of connection with me - at least that is the way I think about it. Usually, if I don't know them personally, they are residents of the Monterey Bay Area, and they obviously know who I am (since they asked to be "Friends"). I assume that the "Friends" that I don't know personally have become aware of me because of my past service on the Board of Supervisors, or because they know of me through my work for LandWatch, in Monterey County, or because I am on public radio, each weekday morning, on the KUSP Land Use Report.

I think these kinds of connections are "real," and if I can refer to that "unit of analysis" topic that I have discussed in an earlier posting, it is my opinion that we are making a mistake if we assume that the "real" unit of analysis is the individual. In fact, we are connected to people we don't know, and the genuine "reality" is a collective one. It is a benefit to have a mechanism, like the social media, that makes these "real" connections more apparent, and that can actually turn them into practical realities.

While I am sure that there are "fake" personalities on the social media, and there may even be a few "fake" people included among my Facebook "Friends," the ties that bind us are "real," and I am happy to be reminded of that, as I watch the Facebook "News Feed" go by, revealing to "me" what "we" are all about!

Image Credit: 
http://straightfromthea.com/2012/08/02/facebook-millions-fake-accounts/

#70 / Making Ourselves Crazy

The picture here comes from an article in the Thursday, March 7th edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. I read the Chronicle, in print, every morning. The headline for this article, in the print edition, was phrased like this: "Bill OKd to keep government open through Sept. 30." What an accomplishment! Without the bill, the government is supposed to "shut down" on March 27th. 

It is not "news" that our government is seriously malfunctioning. In order to address the problems that the nation confronts, we need our elected representatives to "focus in," and to be seriously involved in both defining the problems, and in working out solutions to the problems as defined. One reason that our elected officials don't seem to be doing that is illustrated by the Chronicle headline. A significant number of elected representatives actually seem to think that it might be possible to "shut down" the government. "Shutting down" the government, however, (on whatever date) is not a serious possibility.  By entertaining that possibility as a matter for discussion, and acting like this could be a real option, we distract ourselves from the actual task at hand. 

Mr. Boehner, Tea Party, and other Republican legislators should stop making themselves, and us, crazy. Let's take "shutting down the government" off the table, so we can duke it out, legislatively, on the real choices we have. If Americans are disgusted with Congress (and the pollsters tell us that we are), it's pretty clear why. Members of Congress are not doing what they are paid to do. 

"Shutting down the government" is not a serious proposal. So, why don't we stop making ourselves crazy? Let's stop talking about "shutting down" government, and focus in on the real questions: should we raise taxes (or not), and on whom? Should we cut spending (or not ), and where should we cut it? If our elected representatives were focusing on those questions, it would give us all the impression that Congress understands what it is supposed to be doing. 

As a postscript, for Monterey Bay Area residents and Leon Panetta fans living elsewhere, you can listen to Leon Panetta's bipartisan criticism (more or less making the same point I'm making) by clicking this link. 

Image Credit: 
http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/House-OKs-bill-to-avert-government-shutdown-4334772.php

#69 / Doxology

Wikipedia defines "Doxology" as follows: 

Among Christian traditions a doxology is typically an expression of praise sung to the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is common in high hymns for the final stanza to take the form of a doxology. Doxologies occur in the Eucharistic prayers, the Liturgy of the Hours, hymns and various Catholic devotions such as novenas and the Rosary.

The "Common Doxology" is a song that I remember from my Episcopalian childhood. It begins: "Praise God..."

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
Praise him, all creatures here below;
Praise him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Amen.

The following Doxology, however, which I also remember from my youth, is the one I want to comment on today: 

Glory be to the Father
And to the Son
And to the Holy Spirit;
As it was in the beginning
Is now and ever shall be,
World without end.
Amen.

I think this prayer might be seen as articulating a deep, and enduring, human hope, one generally shared, whether a person is individually religious, or not. I cannot, of course, speak for others. Speaking for myself, though, at some profound level, I know that I long for a world that could be "as it was in the beginning...." Our human actions have severed us from the World of Nature, a World that God created (or, for those not liking the idea of God, a World that we most emphatically did not create ourselves). 

Perhaps it is to overcome our sadness in this separation from the World of Nature that we state a hope that this World truly "is now and ever shall be." To gain access to such a World, I know, we must submit to its laws. 

And this is a hard wisdom, for truly to build our world within the World of Nature, and to conform our world to the laws of the World of Nature, we must be willing to recognize that in the World of Nature, the law of life is death.

Image Credit: 
http://www.worshiphousemedia.com/song-tracks/13349/New-Doxology-Iworship-Flexx

#68 / Pound Foolish

"In a society where salaries have stagnated and fallen, net worth has plunged, even as the costs of things like healthcare, housing and education have gone up at rates well beyond that of inflation, it’s not surprising most of us have financial problems. But most of us still don’t see that we have a societal problem. Instead, we listen to people and organizations that insist our problem is an individual one."

This quotation comes from an article that appeared on AlterNet. 

Once again, that "unit of analysis" issue seems to be right at the heart of a proper understanding of reality. "Personal finance" isn't the problem. The economic structure of our society is!

Image Credit:
http://www.alternet.org/economy/everything-youve-been-told-about-personal-finance-dead-wrong-heres-truth?akid=10148.250386.L3TEFg&rd=1&src=newsletter804872&t=3&paging=off

#67 / Collective Action

When the unit of analysis is the group, or the "collective," genuinely political action becomes possible. If I am right that it is our "political" actions that create the human world that we most immediately inhabit, then it is only through collective action that we can truly change our circumstances.

If you would like to listen to some "lunchtime talk" about this very topic, at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, then please click this link. 

Marianne LeNebat, who is writing about Arendt, does say that my favorite political philosopher thinks that "collective action" is the basis of all politics.

Image Credit: 
http://webpages.scu.edu/ftp/tmallen/collective%20action.html

#66 / Unit Of Analysis

I read an article in a recent edition of The Wall Street Journal that says that smiling is good for your health. That sounds about right to me. If you are interested, by the way, I guess you are supposed to be aiming for a "Duchenne smile" (not to be confused with the "Duquesne Whistle" referenced in a new Bob Dylan song). 

The article on the benefits of smiling assumed that the proper "unit of analysis" was the individual. Not considered very important, apparently, was the effect that smiling might have on the larger society, or on a group.

The picture I have used in this posting is from another article, which I uncovered by typing the phrase "unit of analysis" into my favorite search engine, and scanning the results. The article is titled, "The Afghan Individual as a Unit of Analysis." The complaint made in this article is that there is a "bias towards group analysis," in our efforts to understand Afghanistan, and that proper attention is not being paid to the Afghan individual. 

It would be hard to argue that individuals are not supremely important. They are. Everything that exists in our human world begins in the heart and mind of an individual human being. But we are not only individuals. We are part of the larger society, and a part of various smaller groups. If the "individual" is our only "unit of analysis" we are missing the bigger picture - and shortchanging our understanding of the reality we actually inhabit. 

I can remember the first time I concluded, based on no scientific study, but referencing my own experience, that the fact that I smiled at unknown persons, on the street, changed the reality of my community, and the world. I still believe it. 

And I still believe that "the individual" is not the only unit of analysis for understanding our world. Maybe not even the most important one. 

Image Credit: 
http://easterncampaign.com/2008/04/07/the-afghan-individual-as-a-unit-of-analysis/

#65 / Strawberry Fields

In Central Park, in New York City, you can find this place.
Surely, New York City is a wonder of the world.
And we imagined it all!

#64 / Patents, Patients, And Property Rights

A March 3, 2013 editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle made this observation: "The most intuitive response to one's own tissues - that they are our personal property - is actually wrong. According to current law, people have no property rights when it comes to their own 'discarded' cells ..."

The phenomenon discussed in the editorial (the patenting of human genetic materials, and the establishment, through patent law, of a legal right for a corporation to "own" our genetic composition), is another example of our confusion about who we really are. 

In the human world, which is a world that we create ourselves, whatever the "current law" may be, that law can be changed. Unlike the "laws" of nature, which are called "laws" only insofar as they perfectly describe what will and must inevitably happen, human "laws" are subject to change, as we may choose to change them.

We can't legislate away the law of gravity, but we can legislate away any human law that may exist. Rather than being "descriptive" of what must happen, as "natural laws" are, human laws are "prescriptive," and simply make a statement about what we have decided that we want to do. Since our world is defined by the laws we establish, and then implement, and since our laws result from a process that begins with politics, we live, most immediately, in a "political world." In that human-created and "political" world, "rights" are not absolute. What we call "rights," including "property rights," are just statements about how we intend to act in various situations. And, of course, we can change our minds about that.

The genetic material that determines who we are, as human beings, is not part of the "human world" that we create. That material is part of the Natural World, into which we are born, and which we do not create ourselves. In that Natural World, "property" has no relevance. "Property" is a legally defined relationship, established by human laws, and relevant only within the human and political world that we create ourselves, and that we most immediately inhabit. 

Seeking to impose laws applicable to "property" to human beings (and to their genetic materials) is a profound error. In the United States, we rejected long ago the idea that a human being could ever be "property," bought and sold like a physical artifact. We fought a long and bloody war over that very question.

The Chronicle editorial suggests that the "current law" is wrong because our own tissues should be considered our individual and personal property - not property that can be owned by someone else. In fact, our tissues are not "property" at all. Human beings, and the genetic materials that make them what they are, individually and collectively, are not and never can be "property," because we are creatures that come to life before and outside of any human law. 

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

#63 / Jurassic Pigeon

A researcher working at the University of California has extracted passenger pigeon DNA from the toe pad of a museum specimen of the now extinct species, and has sequenced it. According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, efforts to revive such extinct species are "getting serious." An organization called The Long Now Foundation has initiated a "Revive and Restore" project, the objective of which is to make this kind of restoration of now extinct species possible.

In my view, this is just one more example of our confusion about who we are, as human beings. We are creatures, within the World of Nature. We are not the creators of the Natural World. It is a bad mistake to think that we are, or that we should be.

Image Credit: 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324338604578326554277689768.html

#62 / Kenning

Once in awhile / We talk about poetry / And so it was / I learned a new word.

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

China

By Jane Hirschfield

Whales follow

the whale-roads.

Geese,

roads of magnetized air.

To go great distance,

exactitudes matter.

Yet how often

the heart

that sets out for Peru

arrives in China.

Steering hard.

Consulting the charts

the whole journey.

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

In this poem, the word "whale-roads" is a kenning, a type of literary trope. As Wikipedia notes, a kenning is a circumlocution, which presents itself in the form of a compound (usually two words, often hyphenated) that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse and later Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon poetry. 

"Whale-roads" is a kenning, and that circumlocution means nothing more, nor less, than "the ocean."

This being true, what does that fact say about Hirschfield's poem? Did Hirschfield not understand that while humans can follow a "road," and maybe Geese can even follow some magnetic force that steers them straight, a "whale-road" is "the ocean," and it therefore makes no sense to say that Whales "follow" the ocean, because far from constraining their choice of destination, the ocean itself is freedom pure?

Or, is that the point of the poem? We think we steer by a chart and have a straight course, but when our hearts end up in China, instead of Peru, that may be a demonstration of a fundamental truth: whatever "road" we think we are following, that road does not constrain us, no matter how hard we steer. We are free to follow our hearts, wherever they take us, finding "whale-roads" of boundless opportunity. 

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

Here is my favorite poem:

Proverbios y Cantares

By Antonio Machado 

Caminante, son tus huellas
El camino, y nada más;
Caminante, no hay camino,
Se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace camino,
Y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino,
Sino estelas en le mar.

***

Walker, your steps are the only path you have.
Walker, there really isn't any path;
You make your path by walking.
Walking, you make your own path,
And when you turn around and look back
You'll see a path you'll never walk again.
Walker, there really isn't any path
Just your footsteps on the sea.

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

Antonio, meet my new friend, Jane.
Jane, meet my old friend, Antonio.

Image Credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tml/4862996161/

#61 / I = PAT

Nicholas Arguimbau, an old friend, has written an article about global warming (and what we should do about it). His article is worth reading. Arguimbau utilizes a formula to measure the impact of human activities on the natural environment. That formula, discussed in a Wikipedia article, was apparently developed in the 1970s, during the course of a debate between Barry Commoner, Paul Ehrlich, and John Holdren. 

I = P x A x T

Where "I" is the measure of impact, "P" is the measure of population, "A" is the measure of affluence, and "T" is the measure of technology. 

It think it does boil down to the conclusion that Arguimbau reaches: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Image Credit: 

http://eco.goo.ne.jp/business/event/env_report/web_sympo2007/report03-5/04.html

#60 / Eurozone

The Wall Street Journal carried a story in its February 27, 2013 print edition that had the following headline: "Uncertain Election Results Rekindle Euro-Crisis Fears." 

Here is the statement that grabbed my attention: "Democracy 'is the euro zone's Achilles' heel,' said Charles Grant, director of the London-based Centre for European Reform."

So true! Democracy has a tendency to get in the way of those who focus first and foremost on money. 

Some of us think that's not a bad thing!

Image Credit: 
http://usahitman.com/split-up-eurozone/

#59 / Working From Home

And a decree went out from Marissa Mayer (the still relatively new CEO at Yahoo) that all Yahoo employees should come into the office, and work from "work," instead of remotely from "home." 

That's the news story. As might be expected, this executive order has caused great consternation among the punditry. While Scott Herhold, columnist at the San Jose Mercury News, is sympathetic, other news pundits (like Mike Cassidy, also from the Mercury News) are quite a bit less so. Cassidy, in fact, calls Mayer "superrich," and suggests that her edict on remote working probably seems appropriate to Mayer only because of Mayer's elevated economic status. 

Back to the news story. The Yahoo directive opines that "speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home." And some academic professionals, like Joseph M. Pastore, a professor at Pace University's Lubin School of Business, say, "it's nearly impossible to supplant the basic unit of communication in an office setting ... Most of life's experiences are human experiences...."

Let me divert your thinking right there, and address another topic: democratic self-government. One our our major "work assignments," as citizens, is to participate in the functional direction of our society by getting engaged, ourselves, in the political life of the community. This "work" ultimately creates the world in which we most immediately live. 

I do not think that "democracy" or "self-government" can be done "remotely." 

It's all good and well to fire off letters and engage in petition drives from the comfortable chair in front of our computer screens, but if we want "quality" politics, we need to have that person to person contact that is, indeed, the "basic unit of [human] communication."

Guess I am coming down on the side of Marissa Mayer, whether she is "superrich" or not. In the action arena I care about most, the arena in which our "work" is defined by taking political control of the decisions that govern our society, there is no substitute for face to face personal involvement.

Democracy doesn't work in "remote."

Image Credit: 
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-06-25/what-people-really-do-when-theyre-working-from-home