It doesn't matter which way round you mix these two nouns with a preposition or conjunction, it's all a caricature about blindness: the drug war, the war on drugs, the drug of war, the war drug, drugs and war, drugs for war. They have something in common, drugs and war. They tell the same story about us, they are facets of the same coin, no matter which way you flip it.
Both are savage. Drugs savage the lives of addicts and their families and the innocents caught up in the melee, as the individuals descend into the dehumanity of substance addiction and its consequent compulsions. Wars savage the pasts and futures of their survivors, not to mention the unspeakable horrors attendant to those that don't.
These savage destructions eat away at the very foundations of human society. Depriving us of many of our greatest minds and talents, at the same time as they demand copious quantities of love and resources to heal the wounds inflicted on all around. The dehumanization of both war and drugs festers in our societies long after the events have passed. Much of the pain and many of the scars living on in the remaining souls, with nowhere to go but to the grave with their bearers. Those who have lived through drugs and war, and emerged the other side, know this. Those still at war and in drugs cannot see it from where they are. There is no more point asking a soldier in a tank if war is worth it, then there is asking a heroine addict if they really need their next fix. Neither can answer the question because they do not see a choice, and neither would you if you were in their place.
These observations and understandings are as old as literature and repeated telling has not given them the weight of history, as measured by lessons that could be learned. It is the similarity of war and drugs that peeks my interest and leads to asking for answers that might apply to both.
For one thing, they betray our deep desire to retain for ourselves the certainty of our sanctity, even in the face of facts. Is our certainty so precious to us, so valuable to our psychology, that we will pervert everything we know to sustain it? Evidently so. So if not for ourselves, will we care for others enough to let their suffering move the veils from our eyes? No, apparently not. For in both war and drugs, we have the capacity to dehumanize the victims in order to maintain our righteousness. So don't tell me we are fighting wars or drugs to save anyone other than our own illusions of our purity, and I won't tell you that you're defiling the humanity of your soul if you do.
Such is our savage selfishness. We destroy ourselves to protect our illusions and in the process destroy countless innocents. For thousands of years our most ancient traditions have understood the connection between illusory thinking and drugs and violence. There are five addictive and destructive behaviors spelled out, they are: hurting, stealing, lying, substance abuse and sexual abuse. The key to understanding these is that they are not just harming, they are also compulsorily reproductive. In their very action they inspire the illusion that their action necessitates and so drive a spiral of repetition and deeper and deeper illusion.
This is not a hopeless affair. It is our task to break the cycle. It is our opportunity to grasp, as it has been for our forebears, and will be for our posterity, if we do not. The task at hand is to stop the delusion. To stop our own self-delusion with all the care, forgiveness and love we have.
In the matters of drugs and war, today, here in this moment of our world now, we must drop the illusion that it is we who are the victims of others. We are not perpetrated against, we are the masters of our destiny and the creators of our fate. If we cannot stop ourselves from desiring and consuming substances, we have no business punishing others for providing them. If we have made ourselves dependent on resources we do not have, we have no right to subjugate others for owning them. The severed heads rolling across the disco floors of Mexico and the severed family links floating down the Tigris are both a direct result of the savagery of our savage selfishness.
Enough! We must own our own responsibility if we are to regain our right to our integrity. The drug of war and the war on drugs are the same tales of two coins. On the other side we can find people, humans in all their imperfect frailty and as worthy and deserving of our love and forgiveness as they are of our calling to them to take the higher road to land light side up.
Now think of Afghanistan...
We savage the people we fight, whose fighters we support by illegalizing the violence we import that savages our own social fabric. What price this selfish delusion?
Monday, September 22, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Glass in Pocket
Curiously, I have noticed myself becoming ever more conscious of my impact on, and use of, the planet in the last year. A more rapid onset than can be explained by the steady stream of films, news and observations; this has culminated in the recurring theme of my Mother's wrapping paper habits.
When I was a boy, my Mother's insistence on saving the wrapping paper on Christmas Day, so that it could be flattened and reused the following year, became the defining signal of our generation gap. Along with my Father's "butter or jam" story, it came to symbolize, in my eyes, their stilted disconnection from the modern world that I was growing up in. Such resources are plentiful and cheap, and human efficiency was the mast on which we flew our flags. Materials were the object, people the subject, and any action that used more of the former and less of the latter was the definition of progress.
Curious then, for me, that I find myself saving paper bags for reuse and having an inner dialogue anytime I rip a clear plastic bag from a roll in the supermarket, to wrap a vegetable for its journey from the shelf to my kitchen cutting board. And yet I have no reservations about the obvious logic and important necessity of my newly heightened awareness about material consumption.
I now see that it is my attitudes that are stuck in a time warp. A warped time in which the world moved from a labor shortage to a planet shortage with such breathtaking pace that human culture, despite its much vaunted adaptability, has failed to keep up. There really is a finite limit to the amount of paper we can make, oil we can burn and money we can make. Limits that were there all the time but briefly hid behind a pink chiffon négligée, and looked so pretty doing it that I was distracted.
Now we know. Not only are we short of planet, but there is also a limit to our tolerance of our own complexity. There is a tipping point, beyond which our ingenuity does not make up for our ignorance, beyond which there is no escaping the very laws we relied upon to build our machine in the first place. In the year my Mother was born the first banking collapse of the modern capitalist system rocked the US economy and Messrs. Glass and Steagall drafted legislation to help protect the trust that underpins the whole concept of capital markets. The law protected the system from its own propensity to convoluted machinations by insisting on the separation of the complex and opaque from the simple and verifiable. There followed the most fantastic increase in human productivity since the birth of mankind, fastened by two generations that had not forgotten that this was just a mechanism, not founded on a gold standard. An innovation of human thought and therefore imperfect, frail and requiring protection from itself.
Time passed and generations raised in the machine from birth did not fathom their obvious reality to be anything other than the natural way of things. Chiffon realities clothed the new body of human endeavor, and spoke with disdaining impunity about qualities of self-reliance, ingenuity and the triumphal ascendance of the model machine. The occasional rebuke by older hands, like those from my parents, were easy for us to dismiss and were no doubt softened by their own awe at the wondrous spectacle the machine was unfolding on the landscape of the modern world.
As the century drew to a close, we threw off the shackles of yesteryear's Glass-Steagall so that we could truly jet propel ourselves into the bright new future that was so evidently our assured destiny. The model had proved itself through thick and thin and inoculated itself from the fragility of human infections. What it needed was oxygen. The glass was tossed in with the gold and, so long as we kept throwing more money into the pockets, all fared well.
Then one day, someone put their hands into their pocket to get a little of the gold back out. Not much, you know, just a little to repay a small bet on the wrong horse. Ouch! The glass was now so thoroughly mixed with the brass that it was quite impossible to get one without the other. If this was true of one pocket, who could know how much glass was in everyone else's pockets? The trust was gone and the rest is today's history in the making. The gold is still in there, but washing out the shards of sparkling silicon will be painstaking work, and very unfamiliar to the machine jockeys of the modern generation.
Perhaps I should have been saving my wrapping paper all this time, and kept a keen awareness of the fragility of my mind and its tendency to believe itself. We are, after all, imperfect creatures of a finite planet, living from day to day by the good graces of one another and dependent on a mutual trust that we will help each other pick out our pieces of glass, when we can no longer see them.
When I was a boy, my Mother's insistence on saving the wrapping paper on Christmas Day, so that it could be flattened and reused the following year, became the defining signal of our generation gap. Along with my Father's "butter or jam" story, it came to symbolize, in my eyes, their stilted disconnection from the modern world that I was growing up in. Such resources are plentiful and cheap, and human efficiency was the mast on which we flew our flags. Materials were the object, people the subject, and any action that used more of the former and less of the latter was the definition of progress.
Curious then, for me, that I find myself saving paper bags for reuse and having an inner dialogue anytime I rip a clear plastic bag from a roll in the supermarket, to wrap a vegetable for its journey from the shelf to my kitchen cutting board. And yet I have no reservations about the obvious logic and important necessity of my newly heightened awareness about material consumption.
I now see that it is my attitudes that are stuck in a time warp. A warped time in which the world moved from a labor shortage to a planet shortage with such breathtaking pace that human culture, despite its much vaunted adaptability, has failed to keep up. There really is a finite limit to the amount of paper we can make, oil we can burn and money we can make. Limits that were there all the time but briefly hid behind a pink chiffon négligée, and looked so pretty doing it that I was distracted.
Now we know. Not only are we short of planet, but there is also a limit to our tolerance of our own complexity. There is a tipping point, beyond which our ingenuity does not make up for our ignorance, beyond which there is no escaping the very laws we relied upon to build our machine in the first place. In the year my Mother was born the first banking collapse of the modern capitalist system rocked the US economy and Messrs. Glass and Steagall drafted legislation to help protect the trust that underpins the whole concept of capital markets. The law protected the system from its own propensity to convoluted machinations by insisting on the separation of the complex and opaque from the simple and verifiable. There followed the most fantastic increase in human productivity since the birth of mankind, fastened by two generations that had not forgotten that this was just a mechanism, not founded on a gold standard. An innovation of human thought and therefore imperfect, frail and requiring protection from itself.
Time passed and generations raised in the machine from birth did not fathom their obvious reality to be anything other than the natural way of things. Chiffon realities clothed the new body of human endeavor, and spoke with disdaining impunity about qualities of self-reliance, ingenuity and the triumphal ascendance of the model machine. The occasional rebuke by older hands, like those from my parents, were easy for us to dismiss and were no doubt softened by their own awe at the wondrous spectacle the machine was unfolding on the landscape of the modern world.
As the century drew to a close, we threw off the shackles of yesteryear's Glass-Steagall so that we could truly jet propel ourselves into the bright new future that was so evidently our assured destiny. The model had proved itself through thick and thin and inoculated itself from the fragility of human infections. What it needed was oxygen. The glass was tossed in with the gold and, so long as we kept throwing more money into the pockets, all fared well.
Then one day, someone put their hands into their pocket to get a little of the gold back out. Not much, you know, just a little to repay a small bet on the wrong horse. Ouch! The glass was now so thoroughly mixed with the brass that it was quite impossible to get one without the other. If this was true of one pocket, who could know how much glass was in everyone else's pockets? The trust was gone and the rest is today's history in the making. The gold is still in there, but washing out the shards of sparkling silicon will be painstaking work, and very unfamiliar to the machine jockeys of the modern generation.
Perhaps I should have been saving my wrapping paper all this time, and kept a keen awareness of the fragility of my mind and its tendency to believe itself. We are, after all, imperfect creatures of a finite planet, living from day to day by the good graces of one another and dependent on a mutual trust that we will help each other pick out our pieces of glass, when we can no longer see them.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Why the Right looks right
And the Left doesn't
As we witness another political campaign in which the tawdry appeal of the Right to the basest fears and aspirations of the electorate appears to be succeeding again, we would do well to mollify our exasperation with some understanding of how and why this works.
First, we need to map the political spectrum on to what we know and understand to be the intrinsic makeup of the universe and everything in it. For the sake of this discussion we will simplify the universal makeup of all things into four layers. Our basest natures, what Freud would've called the id, is made up largely of our instincts and its primary role is to guide us when we deem ourselves to be in uncharted territory without a valid reference point. The heart layer is where we touch closest to our humanity. The intellect is the layer of mental constructs that, were it not for the heart, would have little connection to the world we live in. Above the intellect exists the netherworld of our spiritual connection, whatever we believe that to be.
Politics, which is, after all, about the relatively simple business of organizing societies, can be readily and easily mapped onto the lowest three layers of that universal model. The Right readily identifies itself in the basest layer of the universal model and extols the virtues of "gut" thinking, survival instincts and the most crudely simplistic descriptions of issues and concerns. The Left, on the other hand, readily identifies itself in the intellectual layer with appeals to the electorate's ideals and grand plans for solutions that are too complex to be easily explained to the man in the street but which settle comfortably in the halls of academia.
The people, the electorate, the man and woman in the street are not in either of these places. They live real lives in which they have come to understand and appreciate the value of heart connections above their basest instincts, and busy lives built with hard work that has not afforded them the opportunity for meandering intellectual pursuits. This is the middle ground, the middle way that leads to real progress. It is also not the home turf, nor the comfort zone, of either the Left or the Right.
So why is this middle ground, the heart layer, so difficult for both sides to occupy? It is difficult because to reach this place requires that they disengage from being right and step above themselves to connect with their own hearts. It is unfamiliar territory, without the safety of their respective bolt holes, in which they have to reach beyond their easy positions to formulate real solutions. You see, in their home territories neither the Left nor Right have to reconcile their positions with reality; while mixing with their own ilk, as they foster and develop their policies, they are not challenged with the practice of implementation nor its long-term consequences. Yet it is precisely the implementation and the consequences that concern the hearts of ordinary people.
This hurdle of stepping out of one's comfort zone to bridge the gap between rhetoric and reality is so rarely attempted, let alone cleared, that our political landscape is most often best described as attempts by both sides to reach into the middle ground without actually going there. Each stands on their own side of their fence and spins a yarn to woo what they affectionately refer to as the "middle classes". You'd think that both sides would be equally unsuccessful in this endeavor, and over the long run they are, but often it is the Right which gets the marginal advantage and seeking an explanation of this is, is the purpose of this text.
One of the primary reasons is inherent to the intrinsic nature of each side's home base: the Right aspire to and use the most simplistic definitions and explanations they can, while the Left, by the very nature of its intellectual homeground, necessarily uses more complex and "nuanced" language and communications. Furthermore, intellectual understandings are constructed on top of other understandings and assumptions and those who engage most deeply in this process understand the fragile nature and susceptibility to alternative perspectives that this entails. So, especially when subjected to cross-examination, representatives of the Left tend to waver or caveat more than those from the Right. While at first blush this might seem a relatively minor debating point, it is in fact crucial to how each side is perceived.
Referring back to the universal model; we all operate, all the time, on all levels but certain situations drive us to seat ourselves in different places along the spectrum. When we encounter situations that demand comprehension of matters we do not understand or are too complex, we can only reach a conclusion or opinion by referring back to our instincts. This is a highly successful evolutionary tool that allows us to adapt to and to cope with unknown situations and unfamiliar territory -- this is not learned behavior, this happens automatically.
So when we are confronted with a situation which requires us to make a decision and the information for which we are asked to do this is beyond our comprehension, we fall back on our instincts. One of those instincts is to be highly suspicious of things that are not constant, moving objects in our field of view need to be determined to be, rather than assumed to be, safe. Our evolutionary instincts lead us to be distrustful of moving objects and shifting positions. This innate suspicion does not rationalize or accommodate because it is already operating in territory outside of the person's comfort zone.
We hear often of the average person's distrust of "shiftiness" and their appreciation for people who "stick to their guns" and if you have ever been tempted to dismiss those attitudes, you might do well to try and understand why these are such commonly held and ubiquitous reactions. The natural tendency of the Left's communications to allow for nuance and alternative perspectives, triggers this same evolutionary response in many people, especially so, the more complex the matter at hand. On the other hand, the Right's tendency towards simplistic statements often results in more constantly unequivocal communications, that are less likely to trigger those evolutionary instincts.
Another aspect of attempts to reach into the middle ground that triggers this same evolutionary instinct is the clarity and detail of the proposal. If a proposal or policy cannot be clearly understood then it is filed in the same "shifty" category as equivocal communication. Because both sides are reaching into unfamiliar territory, neither of them is able to formulate solid and detailed policies based on principles. Again, the Right tends towards the most simplistic, sometimes even dismissive, explanations of their policy whereas the Left tends towards more long-winded explanations. The lack of clarity, detail and principle is more easily exposed, the longer the explanation.
Lastly, it is endemic to the nature of the mind and its output, intellectual discourse, that it considers itself to be superior because it is more complex. This superiority, even when not actively cultivated, is often present in the proponents of the Left and readily apparent to all observers. It is, quite properly, a distrusted attribute and triggers a mirroring disassociation.
So perhaps these factors help to explain why on the apparently level playing field of the middle ground, where both the Right and Left fail equally to deliver sound policies it is more often the Right that walks off bloodied but holding the trophy.
Once again, we must understand that it is not an imbecilic electorate that is at fault here, it is the failure to find and stand on principles that respect others. A failure that affects us all and reflects on all of us.
As we witness another political campaign in which the tawdry appeal of the Right to the basest fears and aspirations of the electorate appears to be succeeding again, we would do well to mollify our exasperation with some understanding of how and why this works.
First, we need to map the political spectrum on to what we know and understand to be the intrinsic makeup of the universe and everything in it. For the sake of this discussion we will simplify the universal makeup of all things into four layers. Our basest natures, what Freud would've called the id, is made up largely of our instincts and its primary role is to guide us when we deem ourselves to be in uncharted territory without a valid reference point. The heart layer is where we touch closest to our humanity. The intellect is the layer of mental constructs that, were it not for the heart, would have little connection to the world we live in. Above the intellect exists the netherworld of our spiritual connection, whatever we believe that to be.
Politics, which is, after all, about the relatively simple business of organizing societies, can be readily and easily mapped onto the lowest three layers of that universal model. The Right readily identifies itself in the basest layer of the universal model and extols the virtues of "gut" thinking, survival instincts and the most crudely simplistic descriptions of issues and concerns. The Left, on the other hand, readily identifies itself in the intellectual layer with appeals to the electorate's ideals and grand plans for solutions that are too complex to be easily explained to the man in the street but which settle comfortably in the halls of academia.
The people, the electorate, the man and woman in the street are not in either of these places. They live real lives in which they have come to understand and appreciate the value of heart connections above their basest instincts, and busy lives built with hard work that has not afforded them the opportunity for meandering intellectual pursuits. This is the middle ground, the middle way that leads to real progress. It is also not the home turf, nor the comfort zone, of either the Left or the Right.
So why is this middle ground, the heart layer, so difficult for both sides to occupy? It is difficult because to reach this place requires that they disengage from being right and step above themselves to connect with their own hearts. It is unfamiliar territory, without the safety of their respective bolt holes, in which they have to reach beyond their easy positions to formulate real solutions. You see, in their home territories neither the Left nor Right have to reconcile their positions with reality; while mixing with their own ilk, as they foster and develop their policies, they are not challenged with the practice of implementation nor its long-term consequences. Yet it is precisely the implementation and the consequences that concern the hearts of ordinary people.
This hurdle of stepping out of one's comfort zone to bridge the gap between rhetoric and reality is so rarely attempted, let alone cleared, that our political landscape is most often best described as attempts by both sides to reach into the middle ground without actually going there. Each stands on their own side of their fence and spins a yarn to woo what they affectionately refer to as the "middle classes". You'd think that both sides would be equally unsuccessful in this endeavor, and over the long run they are, but often it is the Right which gets the marginal advantage and seeking an explanation of this is, is the purpose of this text.
One of the primary reasons is inherent to the intrinsic nature of each side's home base: the Right aspire to and use the most simplistic definitions and explanations they can, while the Left, by the very nature of its intellectual homeground, necessarily uses more complex and "nuanced" language and communications. Furthermore, intellectual understandings are constructed on top of other understandings and assumptions and those who engage most deeply in this process understand the fragile nature and susceptibility to alternative perspectives that this entails. So, especially when subjected to cross-examination, representatives of the Left tend to waver or caveat more than those from the Right. While at first blush this might seem a relatively minor debating point, it is in fact crucial to how each side is perceived.
Referring back to the universal model; we all operate, all the time, on all levels but certain situations drive us to seat ourselves in different places along the spectrum. When we encounter situations that demand comprehension of matters we do not understand or are too complex, we can only reach a conclusion or opinion by referring back to our instincts. This is a highly successful evolutionary tool that allows us to adapt to and to cope with unknown situations and unfamiliar territory -- this is not learned behavior, this happens automatically.
So when we are confronted with a situation which requires us to make a decision and the information for which we are asked to do this is beyond our comprehension, we fall back on our instincts. One of those instincts is to be highly suspicious of things that are not constant, moving objects in our field of view need to be determined to be, rather than assumed to be, safe. Our evolutionary instincts lead us to be distrustful of moving objects and shifting positions. This innate suspicion does not rationalize or accommodate because it is already operating in territory outside of the person's comfort zone.
We hear often of the average person's distrust of "shiftiness" and their appreciation for people who "stick to their guns" and if you have ever been tempted to dismiss those attitudes, you might do well to try and understand why these are such commonly held and ubiquitous reactions. The natural tendency of the Left's communications to allow for nuance and alternative perspectives, triggers this same evolutionary response in many people, especially so, the more complex the matter at hand. On the other hand, the Right's tendency towards simplistic statements often results in more constantly unequivocal communications, that are less likely to trigger those evolutionary instincts.
Another aspect of attempts to reach into the middle ground that triggers this same evolutionary instinct is the clarity and detail of the proposal. If a proposal or policy cannot be clearly understood then it is filed in the same "shifty" category as equivocal communication. Because both sides are reaching into unfamiliar territory, neither of them is able to formulate solid and detailed policies based on principles. Again, the Right tends towards the most simplistic, sometimes even dismissive, explanations of their policy whereas the Left tends towards more long-winded explanations. The lack of clarity, detail and principle is more easily exposed, the longer the explanation.
Lastly, it is endemic to the nature of the mind and its output, intellectual discourse, that it considers itself to be superior because it is more complex. This superiority, even when not actively cultivated, is often present in the proponents of the Left and readily apparent to all observers. It is, quite properly, a distrusted attribute and triggers a mirroring disassociation.
So perhaps these factors help to explain why on the apparently level playing field of the middle ground, where both the Right and Left fail equally to deliver sound policies it is more often the Right that walks off bloodied but holding the trophy.
Once again, we must understand that it is not an imbecilic electorate that is at fault here, it is the failure to find and stand on principles that respect others. A failure that affects us all and reflects on all of us.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
What are we waiting for?
Change?
The specter of yet another Democratic Party presidential election defeat is looming over the country in the wake of an almost flabbergasting and yet predictable and well orchestrated appeal by the Republican Party to the electorate to choose their candidate rather than their policies.
We've seen this before and, I guess, it should therefore be less surprising and less shocking than it is. As my teenage son remarked in the kitchen last night "they elected Bush for a second term", in response to my exasperation on hearing that McCain is now ahead in the polls and that the demographic of "white women" has swung by 20% from the Democrats to the Republicans since the announcement of Sarah Palin as their vice presidential nominee. He is right and I shouldn't be so exasperated because the reality is that there is so little substantive difference between the Democrats and the Republicans that it is just too easy to make the election about choosing personalities.
Both parties are in favor of continuing and escalating war, neither party has any concrete strategy to reinvigorate the democratic process and tackle corruption and the platitudes of "creating jobs" spring is easily from the mouth of either candidate. It struck me when I heard Democratic Party consultants, during the conference in Denver, say that one of the great defining differences between Obama and McCain was that Obama would bring the troops home. How easy it is to erase that difference. The Republican president announced this week that he had authorized the return of 8000 troops from Iraq -- now what was that great difference again?
Let's look at some of the other "big differences" between the parties and their candidates. Healthcare: the Democrats would like to extend the opportunity to buy private medical insurance to everybody, the Republicans can argue that everybody has the right to buy private medical insurance today and simply legislating that they will HAVE to is not really a solution at all. Wait, hang on a minute, I'm just trying to remember what the other big differences are... I'm sure it'll come to me soon, I mean, I've been paying really close attention to this whole election cycle... wait, oh dear, they have escaped me.
Oh, that's right, there are all those foreign policy differences! Obama will talk to our foes before bombing them, whereas McCain will talk to our allies before bombing them. McCain will personally go to the caves in Afghanistan to find Osama bin Laden and Obama will personally coordinate US military adventures inside Pakistan. Russia is everybody's new/old enemy and best dealt with by taking sides in tribal clashes around the world, preferably as close to Russia's borders as possible. Did I miss something? Neither of them have a strategy for Palestine or, for that matter, anywhere in the Middle East and neither of them has either the faintest clue how or the dimmest intention to de-privatize the US military-industrial complex.
How about labor relations and business, surely this is a fertile area for distinctive differences? Everybody supports NAFTA when they're not standing in Ohio, the unions are great when they're not picketing my sponsors head office and the rising tide of trade will lift all boats, especially when shepherded by my gentle and caring hands, which you may have noticed are oh so similar to yours.
So it's not so surprising at all if all that's left to choose between is gender, race, religion and personal history. We ask for what we got, an inspiring candidate with his heart in the right place and just the right amount of give to be enveloped in and adopted by the party's establishment and their established policies. You could pretty much say that about either candidate for either party. We are looking for change but are so uncertain about what that looks like, that we fall victim to fear and fall back on what is known as we justify those choices as being "electable".
What turns out to be "electable" is not actually any policies, because we gave up on those when our fear told us not to be too bold. Instead what we proffer as a candidate for election is merely a vision of change, a pretty doll symbolizing change but not actually any change. The trouble with pretty things is that there's always something prettier, the trouble with comparative benefits is that the comparison is so temporal. So roll on and roll up, vote for your prettiest candidate! Vote for the one that will bring you the most comparative benefits with the least comparative disadvantages!
The good news is the sad news; it probably wasn't going to make much difference anyway.
The specter of yet another Democratic Party presidential election defeat is looming over the country in the wake of an almost flabbergasting and yet predictable and well orchestrated appeal by the Republican Party to the electorate to choose their candidate rather than their policies.
We've seen this before and, I guess, it should therefore be less surprising and less shocking than it is. As my teenage son remarked in the kitchen last night "they elected Bush for a second term", in response to my exasperation on hearing that McCain is now ahead in the polls and that the demographic of "white women" has swung by 20% from the Democrats to the Republicans since the announcement of Sarah Palin as their vice presidential nominee. He is right and I shouldn't be so exasperated because the reality is that there is so little substantive difference between the Democrats and the Republicans that it is just too easy to make the election about choosing personalities.
Both parties are in favor of continuing and escalating war, neither party has any concrete strategy to reinvigorate the democratic process and tackle corruption and the platitudes of "creating jobs" spring is easily from the mouth of either candidate. It struck me when I heard Democratic Party consultants, during the conference in Denver, say that one of the great defining differences between Obama and McCain was that Obama would bring the troops home. How easy it is to erase that difference. The Republican president announced this week that he had authorized the return of 8000 troops from Iraq -- now what was that great difference again?
Let's look at some of the other "big differences" between the parties and their candidates. Healthcare: the Democrats would like to extend the opportunity to buy private medical insurance to everybody, the Republicans can argue that everybody has the right to buy private medical insurance today and simply legislating that they will HAVE to is not really a solution at all. Wait, hang on a minute, I'm just trying to remember what the other big differences are... I'm sure it'll come to me soon, I mean, I've been paying really close attention to this whole election cycle... wait, oh dear, they have escaped me.
Oh, that's right, there are all those foreign policy differences! Obama will talk to our foes before bombing them, whereas McCain will talk to our allies before bombing them. McCain will personally go to the caves in Afghanistan to find Osama bin Laden and Obama will personally coordinate US military adventures inside Pakistan. Russia is everybody's new/old enemy and best dealt with by taking sides in tribal clashes around the world, preferably as close to Russia's borders as possible. Did I miss something? Neither of them have a strategy for Palestine or, for that matter, anywhere in the Middle East and neither of them has either the faintest clue how or the dimmest intention to de-privatize the US military-industrial complex.
How about labor relations and business, surely this is a fertile area for distinctive differences? Everybody supports NAFTA when they're not standing in Ohio, the unions are great when they're not picketing my sponsors head office and the rising tide of trade will lift all boats, especially when shepherded by my gentle and caring hands, which you may have noticed are oh so similar to yours.
So it's not so surprising at all if all that's left to choose between is gender, race, religion and personal history. We ask for what we got, an inspiring candidate with his heart in the right place and just the right amount of give to be enveloped in and adopted by the party's establishment and their established policies. You could pretty much say that about either candidate for either party. We are looking for change but are so uncertain about what that looks like, that we fall victim to fear and fall back on what is known as we justify those choices as being "electable".
What turns out to be "electable" is not actually any policies, because we gave up on those when our fear told us not to be too bold. Instead what we proffer as a candidate for election is merely a vision of change, a pretty doll symbolizing change but not actually any change. The trouble with pretty things is that there's always something prettier, the trouble with comparative benefits is that the comparison is so temporal. So roll on and roll up, vote for your prettiest candidate! Vote for the one that will bring you the most comparative benefits with the least comparative disadvantages!
The good news is the sad news; it probably wasn't going to make much difference anyway.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
The Upstart month
August takes its place in history again.
The traditional month for starting wars has not disappointed in 2008. Although the war in Georgia is hardly any more of a war than America's invasion of Panama was, it is equally shrouded in the veils of disinformation and breast-beating egotism that is part of the long tradition of the War on Neighbor that punctuates the trajectories of empires.
August also gave us the first Communist Olympiad in China and the wettest August in Europe for nearly 100 years. We saw the first person of color elected to lead the presidential bid of a major American political party and hundreds of thousands of people gathered at festivals around the world to celebrate the global appeal of neo-tribal, post-hippie techno dance music.
It's a funny old world, eh? Not sure whether to laugh, smile or cry at least half of the time.
The Democratic Party has made a strong bid for upstart status by nominating Barack Obama as their presidential candidate and they, like many of us, are not quite sure just how racist America really is. They have paired him with an old, white, silver-haired guy in the VP slot to see if that helps, but frankly nobody knows just how many people in battleground states will sit at home or vote against their interests, based simply on the inherited prejudices of their isolated social environments. It's quite a nailbiter really, just about everybody with at least half a brain and peripheral semi-awareness of the state of the nation and the state of the world, knows that another presidential term for the incumbent party would be at least disastrous and quite possibly catastrophic. It's quite surreal to watch the world's fate hang in the balance, to be decided by a handful of some of the most sheltered and ill-informed people on the face of the planet. (No wonder the Goths finally rode south to burn Rome.)
Funnily enough, the Olympics in Beijing threw up the same kind of questions about the state of national identity that have been blowing through the halls of Westminster and are now mixing with the confetti at the US party conferences. Just what kind of a state is China nowadays? It is certainly part capitalist, and that was the part that seemed to be on most prominent display in the fantastic physical and material achievements, wrought in such a short time, in that most ancient cities. Yet the ruling party still clings firmly to a self-identity as communists while simultaneously being unable to explain how the suppression of trade unions and massive corruption of the ruling elite are really part of a global enterprise whose core purpose should be the social welfare of the working proletariat.
These vexing questions of political identity are, by no means, the sole domain of the East. As Mr. Brown's Labour government in London is starting to resemble a paper bag left out in the rain, there are real questions about what the essential nature of the New Labour enterprise ever was. Now that it has reached a testing time, it seems unable to find the firm ground of principle or the guidance of established standards. Can it really be that, for the last decade, Mr. Blair and Mr. Brown's New Labour enterprise was always just a sham that rode a lucky wave of post-Thatcherite reactionism, while squandering the windfall revenues of North Sea oil and pandered to the business class as a substitute petticoat to cover up for a ball-less, soul-less political marketing rhetoric?
And now the final weeks of the 2008 American presidential campaign bring those same questions to the hallowed shores of that great continent. The good and the greats of the Democratic Party seem at their most confident and their most strident when they proclaim that there are clear and distinct differences that separate them from their Republican rivals and yet when they describe these differences, they point to different outcomes that will become manifest in the future, over the course of the coming president's term. Or sometimes they claim to be more "in touch" with the common man, or more attuned to the needs of the "middle" and working classes but somehow they escape the opportunity to be able to paint their political identity in a truly unique or markable fashion. This is not because they don't want to, it is because they don't know how to.
The Americans, just like the Europeans and the Chinese, are struggling to formulate or even conceptualize a principled political philosophy and identity that marries the hurtling pace of 21st century change with the massive and complex societies that we are coagulating into. Until this conundrum has a solution, we are left to witness the spectacle of power structures grappling infantilely with the building blocks of 20th century political philosophies in an attempt to reconstitute a coherent strategy for these modern times, and instead only producing Frankensteinly grotesque and ineffective, origami models.
So have some empathy for Mr. Obama, Mr. Brown and Mr. Jintao while they flail around in search of firmer ground and temper any enthusiasm you may feel for the apparently decisive nature of actors like Mr. Putin and Mr. Netanyahu, who have decided that they would rather seek solace on the discredited islands of yesterday's flawed and broken apparitions. Mr. Obama is certainly an inspirational leader, and it cheers the heart enormously to see a younger person commit themselves to the difficult task of improving the situations of many at a difficult time, the attempt alone is worthy of praise, rising, as it does, from a recent history of go along, get along ineptitude and inaction.
August has seen the flame of hope thrown up high on both sides of the planet but one can't help but feel that rather than setting the world alight, those flames will dim and fade just like the Olympic flame, not dead but kept burning in the background waiting for another chance. Without a coherent direction founded on principles even the inspiring leadership of Mr. Obama is unlikely to survive the tumult of the coming storm of internecine, elitist backstabbing that is the predominant feature of all political landscapes that are devoid of new ideas and new directions. We can but hope that his best visions prevail but we must not allow ourselves to fall victim again to the ill ordered sequence of dreaming and then awakening.
The summer has given us stuff for dreams but we must commit to fully awakening to the reality of our situation before we allow ourselves to dream again. A full and honest appraisal of where we are, what we have achieved, what we have failed to do and where we have completely screwed up, is a necessary precondition to fruitful future dreaming. One aspect of that wakefulness is reaching the understanding that we must forge a new political philosophy for the 21st century, based on sound principles that can provide the terra firma on which new leadership can stand and provide direction even in the midst of stormy seas and global warming.
A "thank you" to August for starting up the fires and a "tally ho" to all of us as we take the inspiration of those flames to our hearts and start our own enwakened dreaming of a future worthy of our destiny.
The traditional month for starting wars has not disappointed in 2008. Although the war in Georgia is hardly any more of a war than America's invasion of Panama was, it is equally shrouded in the veils of disinformation and breast-beating egotism that is part of the long tradition of the War on Neighbor that punctuates the trajectories of empires.
August also gave us the first Communist Olympiad in China and the wettest August in Europe for nearly 100 years. We saw the first person of color elected to lead the presidential bid of a major American political party and hundreds of thousands of people gathered at festivals around the world to celebrate the global appeal of neo-tribal, post-hippie techno dance music.
It's a funny old world, eh? Not sure whether to laugh, smile or cry at least half of the time.
The Democratic Party has made a strong bid for upstart status by nominating Barack Obama as their presidential candidate and they, like many of us, are not quite sure just how racist America really is. They have paired him with an old, white, silver-haired guy in the VP slot to see if that helps, but frankly nobody knows just how many people in battleground states will sit at home or vote against their interests, based simply on the inherited prejudices of their isolated social environments. It's quite a nailbiter really, just about everybody with at least half a brain and peripheral semi-awareness of the state of the nation and the state of the world, knows that another presidential term for the incumbent party would be at least disastrous and quite possibly catastrophic. It's quite surreal to watch the world's fate hang in the balance, to be decided by a handful of some of the most sheltered and ill-informed people on the face of the planet. (No wonder the Goths finally rode south to burn Rome.)
Funnily enough, the Olympics in Beijing threw up the same kind of questions about the state of national identity that have been blowing through the halls of Westminster and are now mixing with the confetti at the US party conferences. Just what kind of a state is China nowadays? It is certainly part capitalist, and that was the part that seemed to be on most prominent display in the fantastic physical and material achievements, wrought in such a short time, in that most ancient cities. Yet the ruling party still clings firmly to a self-identity as communists while simultaneously being unable to explain how the suppression of trade unions and massive corruption of the ruling elite are really part of a global enterprise whose core purpose should be the social welfare of the working proletariat.
These vexing questions of political identity are, by no means, the sole domain of the East. As Mr. Brown's Labour government in London is starting to resemble a paper bag left out in the rain, there are real questions about what the essential nature of the New Labour enterprise ever was. Now that it has reached a testing time, it seems unable to find the firm ground of principle or the guidance of established standards. Can it really be that, for the last decade, Mr. Blair and Mr. Brown's New Labour enterprise was always just a sham that rode a lucky wave of post-Thatcherite reactionism, while squandering the windfall revenues of North Sea oil and pandered to the business class as a substitute petticoat to cover up for a ball-less, soul-less political marketing rhetoric?
And now the final weeks of the 2008 American presidential campaign bring those same questions to the hallowed shores of that great continent. The good and the greats of the Democratic Party seem at their most confident and their most strident when they proclaim that there are clear and distinct differences that separate them from their Republican rivals and yet when they describe these differences, they point to different outcomes that will become manifest in the future, over the course of the coming president's term. Or sometimes they claim to be more "in touch" with the common man, or more attuned to the needs of the "middle" and working classes but somehow they escape the opportunity to be able to paint their political identity in a truly unique or markable fashion. This is not because they don't want to, it is because they don't know how to.
The Americans, just like the Europeans and the Chinese, are struggling to formulate or even conceptualize a principled political philosophy and identity that marries the hurtling pace of 21st century change with the massive and complex societies that we are coagulating into. Until this conundrum has a solution, we are left to witness the spectacle of power structures grappling infantilely with the building blocks of 20th century political philosophies in an attempt to reconstitute a coherent strategy for these modern times, and instead only producing Frankensteinly grotesque and ineffective, origami models.
So have some empathy for Mr. Obama, Mr. Brown and Mr. Jintao while they flail around in search of firmer ground and temper any enthusiasm you may feel for the apparently decisive nature of actors like Mr. Putin and Mr. Netanyahu, who have decided that they would rather seek solace on the discredited islands of yesterday's flawed and broken apparitions. Mr. Obama is certainly an inspirational leader, and it cheers the heart enormously to see a younger person commit themselves to the difficult task of improving the situations of many at a difficult time, the attempt alone is worthy of praise, rising, as it does, from a recent history of go along, get along ineptitude and inaction.
August has seen the flame of hope thrown up high on both sides of the planet but one can't help but feel that rather than setting the world alight, those flames will dim and fade just like the Olympic flame, not dead but kept burning in the background waiting for another chance. Without a coherent direction founded on principles even the inspiring leadership of Mr. Obama is unlikely to survive the tumult of the coming storm of internecine, elitist backstabbing that is the predominant feature of all political landscapes that are devoid of new ideas and new directions. We can but hope that his best visions prevail but we must not allow ourselves to fall victim again to the ill ordered sequence of dreaming and then awakening.
The summer has given us stuff for dreams but we must commit to fully awakening to the reality of our situation before we allow ourselves to dream again. A full and honest appraisal of where we are, what we have achieved, what we have failed to do and where we have completely screwed up, is a necessary precondition to fruitful future dreaming. One aspect of that wakefulness is reaching the understanding that we must forge a new political philosophy for the 21st century, based on sound principles that can provide the terra firma on which new leadership can stand and provide direction even in the midst of stormy seas and global warming.
A "thank you" to August for starting up the fires and a "tally ho" to all of us as we take the inspiration of those flames to our hearts and start our own enwakened dreaming of a future worthy of our destiny.
Monday, September 1, 2008
It's all so confusing, where do you start?
Are we just too dumb, too blinkered, too blinded to find our way out of this?
If you’re anything like me, sometimes it all seems so broken on so many levels, that you don't know where to start. The environment is obviously important, the poverty is morally unconscionable, political corruption is muddying the waters, ‘war’ runs off the tongues of so many so easily and that’s before we even start on the global interactions of nations. And yet we instinctively know it's not all completely broken -- after all we have increased the overall wealth of our societies and some of us do get to vote once in a while.
That’s what makes it so confusing. Our societies are so monstrously large and complex nowadays, the problems so multilayered and yet despite all the chaos, bloodshed and waste we have not, at least so far, managed to wipe ourselves off the face of the earth. So we haven’t completely failed yet but on the other hand, were not scoring much higher than the E- on reaching either our potential or our aspirations. We can do better! But where do we start? How do we know what’s broken and what we need to change? How do we change what's broken, without destroying what's working?
To get the answers to these questions, we have to understand how it all works, what the basic, underlying, fundamental process is and how it's supposed to work.
Take a deep breath and ask yourself a question: "What is it all for? Why are we engaged with each other in mutual societies?"
Isn’t it all about creating sustainable peace and sustainable prosperity?
Isn’t my peace and prosperity is intertwined with the peace and prosperity of everyone I live around?
Now, still breathing slowly and deeply, ask yourself how we create that sustainable peace and prosperity. (Bear with me, we’re really going back to basics here.) I think the answer is that we create rules, within which we all operate individually and collectively to create the wealth, that allows us to build the infrastructure, that supports the rule making process. This is the virtuous cycle of society.
Let's explore that in a little more detail. We emerge from the swamp figuring that we would be better off working with each other, than against each other, to create a future. We sit around the campfire on the first evening and decide that we better have some rules about how we are going to behave with each other and we all pretty much agree on not hurting each other, not taking what is not freely offered and that kind of basic framework for friendly interaction. As we look around the campfire at the faces of our neighbors, we realize that this process of making the rules by which we are going to operate is going to be subject to the participation of and dependent on the cooperation of the vast majority of the group, if it is going to succeed. So that success is in turn dependent on all of us being able to bring our best selves to the campfire for these rule-making sessions. If Joe and Mary, over there, are the only ones starving the next time we meet, they're not going to have much input about anything that doesn't relate to getting them some food. So it's in all of our interests to make sure that Joe, Mary and everybody else is well enough supported by the common wealth of our society that they can positively contribute to the rule-making process.
As our group grows it is no longer practical for all of us to meet around the campfire and so we start to send representatives to the rule-making sessions, who we trust will act on our behalf. Now the whole society is dependent on the quality of those representatives and it remains true that the use of our common wealth to support all of our citizens sufficiently such that they can positively contribute to the representative selection process is just as important as it was when every citizen was sitting around the campfire themselves.
It seems that the whole business of living with other people is dependent on the rule-making process and therefore is equally dependent on the sharing of the fruits of the society to support quality rulemaking.
The cycle looks like this, in various of its manifestations:
The rule making process involves the selection of leaders, who act on behalf of the greater society in deciding what the rules should be. The whole premise of a peaceful and prosperous society rests on the quality of the rules and the process by which rule makers are chosen. If the selection process breaks down, the society is doomed to drown in a quagmire of malapropos rules. Rule making is such a skilful and nuanced activity, that surely any society that fails to leverage the collective wisdom of its people will most certainly fail to select good leaders.
So the vital link in the virtuous cycle of a society is that the wealth that is created must be used to support the citizenry, so that they can make good leadership selections. If the wealth of the society is only being used to support the few at the top, then it will soon seem pretty natural that only those at the top should do the leadership selection. If the wealth is used only to support those at the top but the power to vote remains with all the members, then it is almost inevitable that those at the top will deem it necessary to manipulate the mass electorate so that they don’t make such poor leadership decisions that they endanger the whole game for everyone.
Okay, to observe where we are in our own society, let’s stop the circle spinning and have a look at what's working and what isn't.
We do seem to have enterprise, business and wealth creation happening and there are some rules but we have a generally poor record on choosing leaders and making choices. Hmmm, why is that? Is it because the closing step of converting wealth into social infrastructure is the most broken part of our cycle? Are our citizens sufficiently supported and informed to choose quality representatives that will set the rules appropriately? Perhaps not, eh?
In considering what can or should be the focus of any change, many are scared that if we change the rules, we will break the one part of the cycle that seems to be the most functional – wealth-creating business and enterprise.
The truth is that the health of our enterprise is dependent on good rules. Without good rules enterprise will destroy itself, in the same way that every innovating small business has a natural tendency towards becoming a large monopoly. Without good rules, it is in the fundamental nature of enterprise to influence the entire system towards a stagnating, inefficient process designed only to protect the entrenched status quo, thus squeezing innovation and efficiency out. It’s called ‘beating the competition’. Unforeseen events and time will eventually see the stumbling giant fall to its knees, broken by the rigidity of its own rules and the lack of innovation in the face of new circumstances.
What's broken is that we haven’t been using our prosperity and wealth to develop the infrastructure of our societies, to support the making of good choices in the selection of our rule makers. That is where we need to change things.
Without the supporting infrastructure that yields an informed and active citizenry, the tendency is to lose trust in the ability of citizens to make good choices, so their ability to choose is taken away (central state control) or their decision-making process is manipulated (consumerist demoncracy i.e. the manipulation of the masses by distracting them with consumption and manufactured demons). Either way, we lose the collective wisdom of the citizenry and inevitably make worse and worse decisions, that result in worse and worse rulebooks, until we break the system completely. This is the fate of empires but it is not the destiny of humankind.
We can and must act to restore the virtuous cycle of our societies to its full and complete state. We can do this without breaking what is working because the process is about adding and restoring, not taking away and destroying.
We must act on as many aspects of the cycle as we can, as soon as we can, but it is the restoration of the social infrastructure of our societies that needs the most concentrated attention. The restoration of our collective ability to choose good leaders, who will help us create good rules, must be the beacon that guides us.
So, it’s not too confusing after all! We can arrive at a clear understanding, that it is through investing in the infrastructure of our society that we can heal the system as a whole. An infrastructure that lifts the citizenry out of survival mode and provides access to the information necessary to make informed choices, is our hope for survival and progress. It’s not rocket science but it does help to know where we need to start, what we need to focus on.
It is the lack of social infrastructure that threatens our collective survival, not the quality of our citizenry.
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