EMBODIED SPACE

INTERFACING TERMINAL REALITY

2012-01-24T17:38:00.002-06:00

The / is the screen interfacing the new electronified subjectivity (the person) and the simulation, the spectacle, of the digital mediascape that increasingly produces and controls the framing of the real (and performs largely invisibly--think of computer codes and Drone warfare). The / is not a separation, because it instantiates (makes "real") the Terminal Identity of the posthuman cyborg (i.e., all of us), now interiorized/exteriorized so there is increasingly little difference in the human lifeworld on one "side," and the paraspace of terminal "space" on the other. It is the new I/Thou of self as virtual unity, as the / of human/computer interfacing usurps much of the production of fantasy of the former human-to-(non-terminal)-world. The / is the window to (interface) fantasy cum Terminal Reality.

Haiku

2012-01-21T15:38:00.000-06:00

Darkness awaits light
while Earth orbit in motion
prepares springtime flower

COME AND GO THE SAD LAUGHTER

2012-01-06T23:59:00.001-06:00

What kind of world is it that a woman births
a son
and then must sit in a high chair in front
of the casket
to greet all his
friends
who number in the hundreds
alternating laughing
crying that laughs
and laughter that cries
with sad glads
and glad/sad remembrances
of hellos goodbyes
swirling around everywhere
the tears, the tears, the tears.
What kind of world is it?
The kind that laughs and cries
in the finality of the comings and goings.

DENDRITIC CONNECTIVITY

2012-01-06T12:26:00.002-06:00

Bare trees, wispy limbs
like dendrites connecting sky
to moon moving by

POLITICS PARANOID STYLE

2012-01-04T23:17:00.003-06:00

The paranoid-style of politics resurfaces during economic downturns (late 19th century, early 20th), or perceived threats from within (McCarthy era, anti-civil rights groups), or without (1960s, with Goldwater, John Birch Society). (See Richard Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style of American Politics, first written 1965, re-released 2008).

I have Facebook friends, who certainly believe Pres. Obama "radical." Further, someone close to me fervently believed Obama was planning a Nazi-style putsch to overthrow the U.S. government from within back in spring 2010!

Hofstadter defines "paranoid style" as heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy--all part of much of the pseudo-conservative political right of today. This segment is more hard-nosed reactionary than conservative. An example of this is that there were reactionaries in the 1950s who believed Eisenhower a socialist!

Where are real conservatives when we need them?

BEGINS TO LOOK LIKE HOME

2012-01-03T12:22:00.000-06:00

Re any conjectured anthropomorphic sense that the Universe could possess: A pronoiac attitude--that the Universe is at least benign, and not actively malefic--seems to me a good one to have, if no less for the "fact" that surely there is power in positive thinking. I know; it assumes that the Universe is an active force that has teleologic, purposeful design (and not just a random occurrence with random events).

In these matters, I was profoundly influenced by R. Buckminister Fuller, ca. 1970, even attending campus meetings at the University of Kentucky, where I was fortunate enough to have attended a lecture by Bucky himself. I was thoroughly atheistic at the time, until reading Fuller's writings in which he speaks of the "cosmic intellectual integrity at work in the design of Universe." Fuller was a design scientist (otherwise an architect and mathematician by training, and an inventor by vocation) who thought about "design science" both mundane and cosmic.

Starting from the position that Universe has an undeniable overall design based on fundamental design principles that are endlessly repeated and never abrogated, it is appropriate, I believe, to postulate that humans are integrally part of the "design integrity."

When speaking of "God," Fuller said this many times: "God is a verb, not a noun, whether proper or improper." So, that's where I stand: the term "god" is not useful except to replace in a shorthand way the reality of the active, ongoing design integrity of Universe.

If one wants to reify "design integrity" into "Design Integrity," as I do, then cosmic processes begin to have an active, benign design. True, Universe does not "care," but Universe continually designs itself using its always-existing principles of design integrity, even at the level of an individual human who exists and develops within these design principles.

Fuller says humans are "magnificently successful products of design in a Universe the complexity and intricacy of whose design integrity utterly transcends human comprehension, let alone popularly acceptable descriptions of 'divine design'." Yet, that design (or Design) includes, I believe, the development of Homo sapiens sapiens and human consciousness as successful, "designed" events in a non-neutral (even "friendly") Universe where we are integrally designed to belong.

It begins to look and feel like Home.

REPENTANCE

2012-01-03T11:52:00.003-06:00

The Aramaic words both John the Baptist and Jesus (both Jews, of course) used for "repentance" meant "turn to" (or possibly "return to"), as was consistent to that used in the Jewish Bible (Old Testament), about which both John and Jesus were familiar. In the parable of the lost sheep, it is a matter of returning to the fold. The parable does not indicate the sheep should feel bad about it.

The repentance doctrine is likely from one of those pre-Christian practices of some of the "mystery cults" glommed onto the faith in medieval times. It is a difficult logic to equate repentance with love--it isn't necessary to the Christian message of love or at the core of the faith. And it is not a matter of (sometimes false) humbleness or contrition, it is more a matter of spiritual (and psychological) health--"love with all your mind and...strength."

Many preachers set up a message of dualism--usually the case for Christian sermonizing. Make it sound easy, but profound: take this path (the preacher's), not that path (the "wrong" one). Christians, many of them, must stay continually confused about which path they are on, with preachers constantly telling them they are on the wrong one. Alas, so little real spirituality offered in the messages (because so little to give). With so much emphasis on the negative of "repentance," too much spiritual capital is wasted.

SOCIAL EXPERIMENTATION

2012-01-03T11:43:00.001-06:00

Legislation concerning climate-change mitigation, some say, is a "social experiment" "imposed" by politicians. These people then advance the idea that technology will solve our energy and environmental problems.

But the introduction of (any) technology is always a social experiment, too, sometimes radically altering society on a massive scale--think of the telephone, television, or the smart phones my students now see as vital extension of their minds and bodies. It has been the case, also, that technologies (and techniques in the arts) might be available but not used (think of renewable energy sources) because of the social/political milieu, now largely controlled by a techno-corporate state system.

Should we wait until the gargantuan energy industry (and its techno-corporatist state political partners) decides that the time is right to introduce a new socially experimental energy technology, based on its own profit (and political) needs? That likely will come much too late for the global environment and the energy/transportation needs of most people, even as it more than satisfies the profit-making requirements of private enterprise.

Life today is changing so extremely rapidly that all legislation and all technological introductions must be seen as "social experimentation" that will deeply impact society in all areas of existence. Our task is to decide which technologies and legislation are the vitally appropriate ones for survival and sustainability.

It is my opinion that at this point the social experimentation (again, technological and public policy) that is advanced is crucial for survival on a direly short time-scale. Waiting for corporatist decision-making seems a fatal option. Mistrust of government is necessary; but government is the only institution that will, in some degree, listen to the will of the people. If not, then we are entirely at the whim of the profit motive of an Empire of global corporations which could very well take the physical Planet and all people down with it.

Let's hope that social experimentation for survival is even an option left for humanity in the short time-frame that many scientists allot to us.

ALREADY IN THE TEMPLE

2012-01-03T11:33:00.000-06:00

From my perspective and experience, the typical Christian methodology for "drawing closer to God," and diminishing the ego is poorly developed. There is hardly anyone operating in the usual Christian circles, as far as I have observed, who knows anything about it. Most preachers have no clue; their clerical duties and seminary training do not provide them with much, or any, background. Marriage counseling, yes; how to actualize merging with God, little. Intense prayer is about all that is proffered as method. It is an essentially ego-based methodology (even "prayer" which still largely props up the ego) that can go only so far in the usual "Christian walk."

Much of it is pretense, or complacency, in my estimation, fueled by a Medieval dualistic psychology and theology that sees God as residing in some mysterious Elsewhere in the Heavenly Empyrean beyond the celestial spheres, in the sense of God as a separate, thus removed, Being.

Seems to me, the typical Christian is searching for a method to do what she says she wants to do spiritually but with no knowledge provided to her about how to do it. In any case, there is truly no true "searching," as if there is a "something" to be "found": God IS already, always Here. There is nowhere else to search.

So, do not confuse or jump to any invalid conclusion about my supposed "searching" as if Truth has not been found, and I am "lost." The Path (not a "search") is the realization of oneself as a "conscious co-worker of the Divine Plan." Realize, actualize, this, and then one already, always lives in the Temple.

JANUS GAZE TO IRAQ WAR BEGINNINGS

2012-01-01T12:48:00.001-06:00

On any New Year's Day it is good to look backward as does the Roman god Janus, god of beginnings and transitions, and guardian of doors and gates.

My retro-gaze today is on the beginnings of the $2 trillion Iraq War. Remember the hype about the "mobile biological weapons laboratories," part of the massive campaign to sell the war to the always-distracted American public? They turned out to be refrigerated railroad cars carrying slabs of beef; and trucks used to generate hydrogen for weather balloons.

But, you say, it was the best intelligence at the time. Consider this: the single, initial source of the information was an Iraqi who was designated a "fabricator" of disinformation, and unreliable, by Britiish intelligence, German intelligence, and analysts in the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA-- BEFORE the war started. The Bush administration was briefed to this effect. Yet, Bush, Powell, Rumsfeld, and Rice repeated the disinformation multiple times--Bush in a State of the Union address.

See this excellent website: http://www.leadingtowar.com/claims_facts_nomobile.php

I pray for few things. One thing I do fervently pray for is a world at peace. Sometimes this means an awakened American public; one willing to gaze backward to beginnings.

CHINA AND INDIA

2011-10-07T16:43:00.000-05:00

Three observations: Environmental pollution and devastation are so egregious in China they are already a drag on its economy. Human health is significantly impaired and will grow worse, requiring huge spending in health care and environmental remediation. India might grow its economy differently, without the worst of the pollution industries.

The transition to democracy in China is a giant question--about how it will play out. Already Chinese citizens launch protests at polluters who pay off local Party functionaries to bypass environmental regulations. The Chinese governmental system is corrupted at the local level and is the biggest complaint by citizens. So far, the Chinese economy has done well under the Chinese governmental system ("What does it matter the color of the cat, as long as it catches mice?" goes the big-poster slogan by Deng Xiao-Ping), but the future interplay of government (a one-party system) and the capitalistic economy is an unknown. Much instability could result, with capital fleeing the country. India, the world's largest democracy, could end up much more stable, although it has its sectrian troubles.

China is experiencing a worrisome aging of its population, and, I believe, will grow older in average age the fastest in the world, due to the demographic successes of its two-child policy (which it has loosened over the last decade). China's dependence ratio, then, will soon be a huge drag. Too many old people! India sits at a different, earlier, point along the demographic transition, so will have more workers longer than China (although India is in the midst of a population explosion it might not be able to handle well--too many young people!).

How to add up the pluses and minuses of China and India? Seems India looks better because of environment, democracy, and demographics.

ENVIRONMENTAL LITERACY IN SCHOOLS

2011-09-16T20:52:00.001-05:00

I say teaching environmental literacy is legitimate, even vital. It gathers in geography, history, geology, biology; it could also include literature, sociology, even psychology and philosophy. It could easily lean toward existence as a geography course with greater emphasis on the environment. Certainly it would need to focus on local studies, thus it would help students understand where they live. As it focuses on the locality of the community, it would afford students a greater sense of place and how it, and they, fit spatially into the global bio-econo-historico-scheme. Ultimately, with growth in sense of place comes growth in sense of, and knowledge of, self.

SIMULACRUM OF HISTORY

2011-09-01T02:00:00.003-05:00

In 2091, the Anti-HyperRealist Party, also known as the Ahrps, were locked in internecine struggle with the Reformed Baudrillardians for control of the Global Throng (the GTs) and its power to design the next Generation of cyborgs. A few weeks before Double Saints Ronnie Day (although historiography was outsourced to a consortium of BollyHolly interests, every school-cyborg knew of the two saints who were officially merged into a single McReagan), the Reformed Baudrillardians joined forces with the BollyHollians to control the GTs and its design of the next Generation. The design was uploadized to all person-devices, and named "Gagaslacrum," after a long-forgotten, but once influential entertainer-turned-media mogul. Immediately Ahrps were rounded up and sent to various mallparks for rehabilitation. Many were merged with a later version of Gagaslacrum. The original Pre-Cyborgian model was promoted on fast-track to sainthood (by edict of BollyHolly) due to her influence on the design of later Generations.

HOME-CENTERED

2011-08-20T16:44:00.000-05:00

Electronic connectivity to people and places enables a new social form of the Geographic/Cosmological Imagination in which we again reside at the center of it All. Finally, humanity is superseding, hopefully in time, the worldview of the de-centering Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution which promoted the literally "eccentric" view that we reside OUTSIDE everything: nature, our bodies, the Earth (i.e., living ON the surface of the globe of the planet, instead of "dwelling" IN the spherical World).

From the perspective of our lived experience (the lifeworld, including electronic connectivity), we dwell from an experiential center--the center of the World. The global view looks to exploit the spatial substrate of the planet, even to escape from it, and creates an "Earth alienation." The spherical view looks outward from the center, similar to Medieval cosmology.

Science, psychology, and cosmology are coming together to "re-place" the alienation of the last four centuries. Now, we can again live here and now in this spacetime. Call it Home.

MAP HUMOR

2011-07-16T17:34:00.000-05:00

INTEGRATED HISTORY

2011-06-17T18:56:00.002-05:00

Some people segregate historical narratives--e.g., the story of America--into histories of separate peoples. However, they cannot be separated without creating a sanitized, falsified history. A true historiography of America is the history of one country, not separate peoples. (And, yes, part of that narrative IS the legal segregation of "races" who were still in a relation with each other.) Explicitly, you cannot write the (white) history of America, as if there is a such thing, without writing alongside (actually within it) it the history of people of color in America. How would you write the narrative of the founding of (European) America without including the story of Native Americans? History is a fabric in which you cannot look at only the warp without the weave (there would be no "fabric," no substance).

If there is any such thing as a "white history," it can only be understood as a relation with people of color in America. At the level of individual people, many white families in America (mine included) can only properly be understood by including (largely unacknowledged and unwritten) narratives of relations with blacks. No group "deserves" a "place"--that's segregated historiography; but the real story must be written and taught.

Historical themes and strands must be chosen. If a widely lauded and salient theme of America--what we are about and who we are--has been the historical development of freedom, liberty, democracy, empowering the common man, justice, and so on--how could you disinclude the narrative of black struggle for all these things? Is it not logical to make the case that this is one of the most important narratives in American (indeed world) history? This narrative can ONLY be written, not by segregating the story, but by including "black history" as integral to the American narrative.

VIRTUALIZED STUFF

2011-05-15T20:55:00.000-05:00

It is not only teens who prize virtual possessions! I read an article by professors at Carnegie Mellon University (Odom et al., CHI 2011 Advance Technical Conference, Vancouver, BC, May 7-12, 2011), who say the immaterial artifacts of the online world may be as precious to teens as material possessions. In fact, that a virtual possession does not have a physical form may actually enhance its value. Besides online photos, think of the electronic equivalents of books and music, such as e-books, and IPod downloads. Further, computers are now generating artifacts that have never been material: social-networking profiles, online-game avatars, etc.

Personal stuff now has ubiquity: you can look at your photos (and FB account) in bed or at the mall.Then there's the cell phone. To teens, the smart-phone is now a treasure--no, it is their very self!--that gives them access to an "omnitopia" (Andrew Wood, City ubiquitous: Place, communication, and the rise of omnitopia [2009]), an everywhere/anywhere to which they are connected.

ROCKS IN THE MINDSCAPE

2011-05-15T18:20:00.004-05:00

I have rocks all around where I live--inside! I have a rock from the volcanic sill behind my house from when I lived in the Santa Monica Mountains, California (1989-1993). I have a quartzite (crystal) rock I have been toting around since I lived in and around Lexington, Kentucky (1965-1979). I have rocks in the form of Native American arrowheads and axes from southern Kentucky, which are very approximately possibly 2,000 years old, that I have kept with me since the 1960s.

Some people have quipped that they are here to remind me, in case of sudden-onslaught Alzheimer's, of who I am! Get it? (My surname is Stone.)

One thing that pleases me about my imminent move to Nashville, Tennessee, is that there are actual outcroppings (the Nashville Dome) similar to the limestone outcroppings of the Inner Bluegrass--the Jessamine or Lexington Dome, which is geologically part of the Cincinnati Arch, so the stratigraphy is virtually the same. That will begin to feel closer to my sense of home (I am from Kentucky and lived in and around Lexington for 14 years).

Here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast the bedrock is a few hundred feet below surface covered by coastal sediments.

I need rocks in the landscape of my life, specially the 200-million-year-old limestones.

AMERICAN OIL SUPPLY: WHO'S MINDING THE STORE?

2011-05-15T15:12:00.002-05:00

Re the analogy of the U.S. opening its own "store" (representing increased oil drilling in the U.S.): I ask, who is it who opens the new store? The proprietors of the new store opened it to sell on the market to anyone who walks in the door, not only to people in the neighborhood. Unless there is a law that requires dedicated sales to the neighborhood, then the store has opened on the global market. It is NOT a neighborhood store operating in a restricted sales area. In case of shortage of items to sell, the new store will sell to those who can pay the higher prices. The new store does not have loyalty to the neighborhood; after all, it is a business, not a charitable organization. The United States does not produce oil; oil corporations produce oil. So, in the analogy, the U.S. does not open the "store."

Unless the U.S. passes laws requiring oil sales only to the neighborhood (to the U.S), then a global store it is. True, OPEC is instrumental in setting global prices (and insuring a steady supply), and the oil corporations (even the ones who are ostensibly "American") seem to be happy about that. The issue of control is an interesting one. By the way, nowhere do I say that OPEC does not have a stranglehold over the people of the U.S.; indeed it does (with "our" consent because "we" do not pursue serious policies of alternative energy sources), but, importantly, the stranglehold comes with the collusion of ostensibly "American" oil corporations. How are they any different than an Arab sheikdom? I believe it would be no different if all the world's oil were in hands of oil corporations, instead of a mix of private corporations and nationalized companies such as the ones in Brazil, Venezuela and other South American countries, Mexico, Russia, Nigeria and other Sub-Saharan countries, countries in Central Asia, India, Malaysia, and the Middle East.

My point is that the pretense of the "U.S." increasing production is a myth because the "U.S." does not produce oil. If the people of the U.S. want some control over supply (but pricing would still be very difficult to restrict to a single country), then the U.S. government should nationalize the "American" oil corporations, giving back control to the country, and run them perhaps something like TVA.

Otherwise, it is not an Arab sheik to whom we bow, we kowtow also to BP, Chevron, Exxon-Mobile, and the like. I am not bashing the oil corporations. They are what they are, operating on a global market. This latter fact is impossible to counteract, unless there is change in ownership.

DANCING IN THE SPRINGTIME STREET

2011-05-08T12:04:00.001-05:00

Perhaps some of the hopeful vibes of the Arab Spring have wafted around the world affecting the quality of springtime everywhere this year. (I'm simply in an imaginary mode, of course.) Here on the Missisippi Gulf Coast spring seemed more brilliant than usual (past tense, because our spring is palpably short, quickly segueing into semi-summer). But we have about five weeks of near-perfect weather here in spring: dry, breezy, not hot, and very clear and sunny. And, the oddest occurrences: Magnolias, and perhaps some other species, decide to be deciduous in April; the large, dried, brown magnolia leaves clack along on the pavement sounding like a troop of wooden-shoed cloggers and speckle people's green lawns with large brown splotches. It's a great time, springtime, to give thanks.

THE ELITE DO NOT HOLD UP THE WORLD

2011-04-18T21:05:00.001-05:00

Ayn Rand's radical elitism has her character John Galt, in Atlas Shrugged, say about the proposed strike by the "creators of the world," that it would be a "stopping the motor of the world" (thus the "Atlas shrug" of the title). This is pure juvenility. As Austrian economist and admirer Ludwig von Mises approvingly told her, "You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you [the masses] are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the efforts of men who are better than you" (my emphases). I think we would all be in trouble if any number of segments of society went on strike, and possibly least of all some of the elite classes.

But, this is all very silly to even consider. Rand's fictional, elite industrialists are free to practice ethical egoism and lead humankind into an individualist, libertarian utopia. It is an extreme, radical elitist stance, because, it seems to me, that society depends on all segments working together (of course, Rand apparently did not believe in "society"). The Randian position would be to get rid of even Social Security and Medicare (even though she accepted the latter late in life when she was dying of cancer).

I understand Jewish Ayn Rand (pseudonym) experienced injustices in totalitarian USSR before emigrating to the U.S., but she must have read dime novels about the myth of the rugged, individualist American cowboy. If true (at least absorbing the myth of American individualism), then she was not the first to visit the new country and fall for a supposed radical freedom and individualism of the American Frontier and West, where, in fact, altruism was critical. As historian Bernard De Voto said, "The only true individualists in the West wound up on the end of a rope whose other end was in the hands of a bunch of cooperators."

THE PROBLEM IS WHO CONTROLS THE SHIP

2011-04-13T23:21:00.000-05:00

The Boston Tea Party of 1773 was as much a protest by Boston merchants against the trade monopoly of a global corporation--the East India Company--as it was against the continuing controversy of the influence of the British Parliament in the local affairs of the American colonies. By the 18th century there was already a global economic system (in an earlier spasm of globalization) interconnecting Europe with its far-flung, worldaround colonies. The long economic recession period of the 1760s and the great loss of revenue by the East India Company in Bengal induced the Company to look for new markets. The American colonies were an obvious choice for the monopolistic strategy of the Company, much to the economic detriment of Boston merchants.

Unlike the Boston Tea Party merchants and other patriots, I wonder whether today's Tea Baggers are ready to protest the GEs and Exxons of the global capitalist system who pay no taxes, or the corporations who despoil the Planet. To be fair, there seems to be no mass movement in the U.S. that appears ready to resist the "business-run democracy" we have now. We are living in the bowels of an East India Company system that has moved on-shore (and off-shore!), benefiting from "free" trade (and "free market" capitalism) and neutralizing political opposition and resistance by promoting its religion of consumerism--and logic of growth--and blindness to the causes of the converging economic and ecological crises.

There were 19 recessions and 15 major stock-market crashes in the century after 1907 (which followed the "panics" of 1857, 1873, 1893, and 1907). Joseph Stiglitz says there were 124 systemic banking crises in developing countries between 1970 and 2007. It should be clear that capitalism engenders a perpetual, cyclical crisis regime and always will--it is the way it is set up. Currently it is fomenting the next bubble while it delivers an obscene amount of wealth upwards to a tiny segment of society.

Today's East India Company system is happy that we are arguing over the merits and shortcomings of the Democratic and Republican parties. As our attention is diverted, the system can continue its destruction of life on the Planet, and continue creating the greatest inequality in U.S. history.

The tea is not the problem; the problem is who controls the ship.

INTENDED/UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF WAR

2011-03-19T14:28:00.000-05:00

The Libyan engagement is the only U.S. military action I can recall that is preceded by support by not only the local people involved (the Libyan rebels), but also regionally (other Arab countries), and the international community (the U.N. Security Council). This is not a Bush Doctrine preemptive strike, nor a globally-condemned (except by a few countries) action, such as the Iraq War.

I appreciate the lessons-of-the-Vietnam-War sentiment of the U.S. not acting as the world's policeman, but the U.S.--and the world--has clear, possible gains in the success of the overthrow of the repressive Gaddafi regime. This includes the continuation of the historic movement towards democracy in the Middle East. More democratic governments in the Middle East would be a huge, historic transition toward a more peaceful world. Further, if the U.S. does not act against Gaddafi, the U.S. would be in a difficult position vis-a-vis other Middle Eastern governments, such as Yemen and Bahrain, who are at this moment cracking down hard on their democratic protest movements. Otherwise, the U.S. is in a poor position to make demands on the latter two countries.

This is not to say that there are not dangers in implementing and maintaining a no-fly zone, and its requisite elimination of Libyan missile defenses and other surface installations. However, there are no plans to inject ground forces (at least by the U.S.), as in the disastrous, war-of-choice Iraq War.

There are lots of things that bother me about warfare (indeed, I have been a 42-year ideological pacifist, and might have been the only Muhlenberg Countian (in Kentucky) during the Vietnam War era to have been an active war protester and Conscientious Objector).

One of the dangers (as it is in every human endeavor) relates to the Law of Unintended Consequences. Implement one change, and others might be expected, but there are the unexpected and unintended consequences that result. Let's see what transpires. After all, we do live (increasingly, in truth) in an era of the Risk Society, in which actions (and non-actions) are inherently riskier in their potential deleterious outcomes.

ENCLAVES INSIDE AND OUT

2011-03-14T22:16:00.001-05:00

I see a Security First scenario as the overriding response (with weak attempts at the others). Let me add one important twist: With the continuing, severe amassing of wealth at the very tip of the income profile in the U.S. (and worldwide; Forbes last week listed a near doubling of new billionaires in the world, in just the last year alone!), and continuing erosion of the middle class, and continuing additions to lower income groups--I can envision the Security First scenario applied internally in the U.S.

This line of thinking is certainly not original to me. There has been much literature in the science fiction genre that explores themes of societal breakdown, often with a police state (or perhaps private security agencies) enforcing protection of a tiny, enclaved, upper-stratum of society--a gated-community elite--with hoi-polloi left to fend for themselves in overcrowded, spatially segregated, anarchic conditions. The best fictional, visual treatment of this scenario (that I know of) is the film "Blade Runner."

Already, there are major moves everywhere toward an "immobility regime" applied to borders, exercising control and surveillance over migrants, refugees, and other aliens (Bryan Turner, "The Enclave Society: Towards a Sociology of Immobility," in "European Journal of Social Theory" [2007:10(2)]). A re-territorialization of the state apparatus and geographical imagination toward "state thought"--in order to defend the state (the "homeland') against the "barbarians at the gate"--is the order of the day. I am just extending the new spatial, sociological, legal imaginary inward, back onto American society itself--an implosion of spatio-cognitive and political re-territorialization that will change individuals and society from the inside out. Already "the barbarian" is searched for within society, not just at the gates.

The Security First scenario becomes more likely when severely degraded environmental conditions and rapid population growth are added to the rapidly growing wealth divisions. Unless major investments are made in environmental remediation, and in human capital, and in solving real-life human problems. we will be left facing environmental, societal, spiritual, mental breakdowns.

In human history the Chinese Curse is always true, but never more true than will be the coming decades (unless comparisons are made to the 14th and 20th centuries!): We WILL be living in interesting (and trying!) times.

HARDENED BUNKERS OF ANTI-CLIMATE SCIENCE IDEOLOGY

2011-03-13T20:30:00.001-05:00

The environmental crisis--a crisis not only of the Earth, but of ourselves--roils beneath the surface of identity and lifeways, and, perforce, of ideology--economic and political.

Here a friend says about the crisis what we do not want to acknowledge or even hear: "It speaks to the civilization that humans have formed over recent centuries. Recognizing that Earth presents limits to human activity opens Pandora's Box of questioning the foundations of economics, transportation, consumer culture, materialism, and much more. It even extends to the fundamental identities that people hold both individually and collectively (as nations, states, businesses, etc.)."

Because the crisis of the Earth is both existential and spiritual (besides ideological, economic, political, etc.), the presentation of facts by scientists will not do the work that needs to be done, because most people do not allow science to speak to their world views.

And, I am not hopeful that public schooling will do the job, either. Recently I asked teachers in our science department about who teaches about global climate change. Answer: It is very little taught or even mentioned anywhere in the science curriculum. So, denial of the problem due to the "hardened bunkers of ideology," as my friend says--is rampant, even among teachers.

I suspect changes in public attitudes will come only when global climate changes are undeniably severe in disrupting the status quo of lifeways. By then, irreversible climatic tipping points will have been set in motion. Denial will segue into anger. And, the public will ask why it was not warned. The public does not want to believe or even hear it now; later--too late--it will play the blame game.

WHO OWNS OUR OIL?

2011-03-08T22:27:00.001-06:00

Statements such as "our oil" and "we" should increase drilling in the U.S. so that "we" will not be dependent on other countries misses a fundamental point about who "owns" the resources and what happens to them. When oil corporations buy a lease and extract the petroleum, they then sell it on the global market. They have the legal right, and every market inclination, to sell to the highest bidder on the global market, not solely to consumers in the U.S.

"American" oil corporations are not beholden to Americans, any more than GM or any other corporation. There are no laws that stipulate they must sell their products to Americans (there is no "American" market anyway for several commodities--only a global market). They are not even "American" corporations in any but a general sense: global corporations in an era of global capitalism do not (and cannot, if corporate efficiency and profits are primary) have much loyalty to nations and localities, except as their notions of corporate good-citizenship and public relations behoove them. It is their call.

As illustration: When you purchase a fishing license and catch a fish in U.S. territorial waters (antecedent to this point the fish is "owned" by the U.S.), who "owns" the fish (after catching it)? Does the U.S. as a country, or do you? Can you sell it, or do as you want? Of course, you can. The same with petroleum: Drilling in the U.S. does NOT decrease our dependence on other countries (or on the oil corporations). Unless you want petroleum resources nationalized, they "belong" to the U.S. only as long as they are in the ground un-extracted (actually, only before the leases are sold). After extraction, they are not "ours"--they are owned by the oil corporations to sell on the global oil market.

There is a group of politicians who wants Americans to get hot about "our" oil for their own political purposes. When you hear one pontificate in this manner, ask, "Whose oil?"

FOOD PRODUCTION RETURNS HOME

2011-03-08T21:07:00.001-06:00

Wasted food is probably a temporary situation. As energy prices increase, the waste will become untenable for most people's budgets. If we look at the life-cycle of food production--from production to storage to processing to transportation--much of the waste and inefficiencies and costs (including environmental externalities) come in the form of the use of fossil fuels.

Americans spend an average 8% of income on food. Household and societal changes will necessarily occur when that cost doubles and triples. Look for greater local, even household, food production (it has already increased). Von Thunen's theory of peri-urban agricultural zonation might become of greater relevance.

PRODIGAL MILITARY BUDGET RETURNS HOME

2011-02-22T22:06:00.000-06:00

Social Security has a vast cash flow, both intake and outflow, of around $700 billion per year. For this reason, since S.S. pays for itself in taxes (this year might be the first negative outflow; still, S.S. has $2.5 trillion in reserves), it seems logical to me to take it out of the mix for cutting the federal budget. (I do not mean it does not need some adjustment--it does; but, the required adjustments will be relatively minor.)

According to this calculation (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States>), the 2010 U.S. military budget is $1.01-1.35 trillion. This is far above the combined expenditures of Medicare and Medicaid, at $743 billion.

In my view, much of the "defense" budget is misspent on the military and adds little to our national "security." A broader, more rational view of security must include the health of the nation's infrastructure, education, personal health (both physical and mental), and the environment, and research for life improvement. As I see it, funds spent on clean energy and these other areas is wealth invested in our national security.

When the energy crunch hits hard, the national psyche will weep for the trillions that could have been invested in the future well-being of the nation. There will be lamentations over the (budgetary) memory of the prodigal soldier-son, who, in the scenario I'm imagining, will have only an impoverished home to return to.

STEPPING STONES IN THE LAKE OF DESPONDENCY

2011-02-13T09:41:00.002-06:00

In the beginning there was a single stone surrounded by the swirling Waters of Torment; but also always there was an unseen Path of Hope. With the first step, the embodied spirit begins its tentative journey, barely seeing another stone ahead in the murky darkness, which can be reached with a carefully placed step. After several unsure steps, somewhere in the midst of the Lake of Despondency, it becomes all too easy to lose one's way, and even cease attempting to partake of the journey. One could remain on that one stone or another and forever blame and stagnate, looking around with no assurance as to where to step next. Yet, there is always another stone just ahead, which gives one a sure purchase for the next step in the journey (although some of the stones are slippery with guilt and remorse).

After many steps, one can look back and--even if one has fallen off a stone or two, or many, into the Lake of Despondency--those steps have eventually led to the more confidant present. Ultimately they lead to the Shore of Tranquility. There, one may look back, pick up a stone or two, and skip them across the surface of the former Waters of Torment, and laugh at the whole spectacle. It was a small, shallow pond after all. The stones were always there as aids for the journey.

BREAD AND CIRCUSES IN DECLINE

2011-02-08T23:27:00.002-06:00

Hardly at any level is sports not entangled with government. From public parks and urban recreation departments, to public university athletic departments, taxpayers foot at least some, and frequently much, of the bills.

But, especially in professional sports there is a tight relationship with public financing of sports stadiums and arenas. Look at a few: The ball park for the Houston Astros cost $250,000,000 with taxes accounting for $180,000,000. Miller Park, in Milwaukee, cost $367,000,000, with taxpayers paying $277,000,000. Denver Broncos' stadium cost $360,000,000, with the public billed for $266,000,000. The stadium for the Seattle Seahawks cost $430,000,000, with cost to the taxpayer of $300,00,000. I could go on and on--the costs directly to the public run into the double-figure billions of dollars over the last few decades.

After the public financing of a sports venue, the privately-held sports franchise's monetary value skyrockets. Frequently the franchises do not have to pay property taxes on the facilities--Madison Square garden is an example. This means that more profits accrue to team owners, with higher salaries going to players.

It is not clear (probably doubtful, in fact) whether "the public"--beyond the urban elite--benefits economically as the urban elite indulges in their "edifice complex." While the huge sums of public money (yours and mine) go to glitzy venues for sky boxes, public schools starve and languish. As for the other sectors of society, the entertainment is good, especially for people of the urban underclass. For a time, they can forget that they might be part of the low-wage uninsured who are a health problem away from bankruptcy.

Might it be that lavish entertainment, provided at enormous social costs, is what an Empire in decline spends its resources on? As it does, the circus is fun.

HOOP OF MEANING

2011-02-06T18:17:00.001-06:00

A metamorphosis
casts a time-warp
of memories of the past
into a rewriting of narratives
metamorphosing in the present

In reality instead of theoretically
we can comprehend
that rather than an arrow
hurtling through timespace
Time is more of a curvature

A circuit closing on itself
in the future-past-present
curving into spherical spacetime
writing stories as it goes
with prologues rotating into epilogues

Like a rotating hoop
powered by the Universe
and by us its co-authors
meaning is creation
with God at the center enjoying the stories

WHITHER EGYPT

2011-02-05T02:25:00.003-06:00

Some models for positive, radical reform exist: the "people power" movement that replaced Marcos, in the Philippines, in 1986; fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989; and the overthrow of Suharto, in Indonesia, in 1998.

The Egyptian situation is heading toward a very interesting and important political and strategic denouement, due to Egypt's centrality in a critical region. I believe Egypt does have some grassroots, democratic human capital. At least it is not like Iraq with a tripartite Sunni-Shia religious and Arab-Kurd ethnic-group division.

But, even if power shifts, in Egypt, to some form of moderate, semi-democracy, and does not follow the Iranian model, there is frequently a severe letdown afterwards, such as happened in South Africa, when the new government has had such few resources to increase social development, just at a time when expectations are so high. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, many Russians say they had it much better under the old Soviet regime (no freedoms, but more security).

For the U.S. to have been more active publicly in recent events in Egypt (or probably anywhere) is most likely counterproductive. Remember: the U.S. is extremely unpopular in Egypt and generally throughout the Middle East, as polls have shown. Historical evidence for implanting democracy anywhere is, I believe, nonexistent.

SOCIAL CONTRACT FOR HEALTH CARE

2011-01-29T15:05:00.000-06:00

We know that politics rides on waves of historical social currents. In this case, a renewed radical individualism--a la Ayn Rand--is in vogue among the far Right. There has long been an American distrust of government, especially of the federal government. Reagan ratcheted up that sentiment with his rhetoric of "government is not the solution; government is the problem."

There has also been a great lessening of civic involvement as Americans are in the middle of a disidentification with civic organizations and involvement. (Tocqueville marveled at how readily Americans joined social and civic and groups.) Today, membership in everything from bridge clubs to museums is way down. With this radical individualism and disidentification with civic and local social groups comes what I see as the breakdown of the social contract, something that most people have never considered and schools do not teach. (In fact, there are hardly any civics classes any more.) We are losing our social capital.

Two ideas are foundational re people's involvement with government and society: the proper role of government in human affairs, and how much the individual is obligated to society. The former is constantly discussed; the latter is nearly forgotten. Indeed, Margaret Thatcher voiced the "Atlas Shrugged" theme when she said, "Society does not exist."

The point I am getting to is that American society must evolve to the point in which it understands health care as a human right. One that "society" provides for all its members, and as part of the social contract between government and its citizens--and between citizens and citizens. American society, it seems clear to me, is headed towards an anarchic "Blade Runner" society, instead of toward the Swiss model, in which health care was declared a human right and its electorate voted (voted!) for universal health care, with insurance companies providing non-profit policies to the poor.

RUN WIDE, NOT DEEP

2011-01-27T21:13:00.001-06:00

George Carlin repeatedly said "we are circling the drain." I don't go so far in my critique of society. The connectivity that I believe we all are involved in to greater or lesser extent is part of the horizontalization of society that certainly began before the advent of texting. It all generates what's been labeled as the "homeless mind," in a "horizontal society," that has lost the traditional anchors. If our connections do not run deep, they now run wide.

TACTILE FACE OF SNOWSCAPES PAST

2011-01-23T21:02:00.003-06:00

They say that complex feelings
of visceral affinity
one feels
for one’s native place
rarely develop again
in another landscape

If summers were verdant symphonies
of vibrant aliveness
winter snowscapes were spare melodies
of mesmerizing starkness
embodied in remembrance
of blizzardous bare-branched songs

As a boy waking up to big snows
and tracking out into white deepness
those soft sounds of crystallized silence
have now transformed into permanent
memory crystals of snow dreams
of my remembered native place

A slow snowfall of sublime silence
unlocked me to go outside into the
timeless mystic atmospherics
of fluffy water-crystal pillows
floating down
sashaying out of the sky

A hard-falling snow
found me gazing
upward into the skylight
where the flakes seemed to materialize
out of the very fabric of the eye
making tactile the crystal face of Creation

KING OF THE MOUNTAIN, CLING TO HOPE

2011-01-23T00:48:00.005-06:00

I took the virtual tour of the M.L. King National Memorial using this link (<http://www.mlkmemorial.org>). I am quite pleased and thankful that the nation chose to honor M.L. King with a major memorial. It is a good mark on our national character. Obviously, most likely there are significant remnants of Americans who think the honor is unjustified. Dr. King's work really must go on.

The representation of the cleaved Mountain of Despair leading to the Stone of Hope (obviously symbolically cut from the middle of the Mountain) with Dr. King emerging (with hope!) from its interior is symbolism at its finest.

I notice that the four acres are being planted with cherry trees. I wonder why? Must be some stated reason, perhaps a symbolic one. I can foresee that it will be a moving experience to walk through the cleaved mountain and around the wall reading Dr. King's quotes when the cherry blossoms afford an ambiance of springtime renewal and hope. That would be a personal experience of historic significance, perhaps a moving moment of sharing the vision of Dr. King's Dream.

The investigation of my family history entered unexpected territory when my brother Joseph, the family-tree enthusiast, found bills of sale and other documents in several courthouses attesting to my mother's two sets of grandparents as rather large slaveholders (with "large" acknowledged as beginning in the range of 30). This means that my grandfather Durham, born 1866 (yes!), in Kentucky, grew up with former slaves. Something similar is true of my grandmother Durham (nee Stowers), although she was 22 years younger than he. My mother's generation remembers former slaves visiting the house for various reasons, including handouts, well after World War I. That side of the family, with a great deal of formal education, became the Wilsonian Democrats (grandfather Durham was a member of the Electoral College delegation from Kentucky) and lifelong supporters of that Party--pro-Wilson, FDR, Truman, Stevenson, et al.

In stark contrast, my father's family was poor half-Cherokee dirt farmers and coal miners, nearly parent-less and more destitute than most during the Depression (people who knew them have confirmed their sad state). Yet, he and both siblings managed to graduate from college (ca. 1936-38) and were celebrated locally and statewide as rather brilliant journalists. They also tended toward blatant racism and conservative Dixiecrat politics--my father in the extreme.

The point of this account is that the descendants of slaveholders became liberal activists (I have not recounted any of those activities) and teachers (I am a fourth-generation teacher); while the dirt-poor (and mixed race), although formally educated, became their opposites politically and ideologically.

A panoptic view of the history of my family sees that it recapitulates American history: the cleaving of a mountain of despair leading to at least a hillock of hope. Nothing, however, changes the facts of the past--except the interpretation of their meaning.

SPIRITUAL CARTOGRAPHY

2011-01-20T22:26:00.003-06:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/18/AR2011011807034.html

I share the concerns of the ADL and the Birmingham Islamic Society about whether the Alabama Governor can be truly fair and equally concerned about other communities (non-Christian) in Alabama. Would the Governor be concerned equally about rhetorical bashing, even violence, that is Islamophobic or anti-Semitic? After all, those communities do not fall within his spiritual cartography, as non-Christian people, who, according to the Governor, are bereft of God and do not have the Holy Spirit.

We should expect better from public officials, especially in a State that has a long history of lynchings. Today, the Southern Poverty Law Center lists 32 hate groups in Alabama, many of whom claim Christianity as part of their ideology (such as the several neo-Confederacy groups). On the world stage, this kind of thinking has been the source of pogroms.

Admittedly, it is a long way from a mild statement of inclusion/exclusion to pogroms, genocide, Crusades, and hate crimes. But, in the climate of political/cultural rhetoric we have today, the Governor's statement could go some way to give further permission to a hate group or two. There are lots of groups--e.g., in the Patriot movement--who blame "World Jewry" for what they see as the Federal Reserve conspiracy of Jewish-banker control over every aspect of American life, the New World Order, and even 9/11.

Once the boundary is drawn for inclusion/exclusion, it is easy to begin to place on the outside any other groups who would have no inherent characteristics that would warrant that exclusion according to religion. For example, in terms of fighting poverty, would the good Governor be lacking in concern for communities of poverty--part of the citizenry that the Governor might say is mostly non-Christian? The Governor unconsciously might be imbued with the idea that the poor are essentially bereft of God, thus the cause of their plight. This is, after all, a central view of traditional Social Darwinism, which I believe is still extant: The poor deserve their (self-created) place, because God is not on their side.

And, what of anti-gay/lesbian groups, all probably casting some of their beliefs in rhetoric of Christian ideology. Would the Governor be sympathetic to laws against anti-gay crimes, with his beliefs? In Alabama, Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker ran an election ad that said that a federal judge who temporarily ordered the military to accept openly gay recruits should be added to a list of "America's biggest security threats," along with Al-Qaeda terrorists.

As postmodern cartography informs us, the map proactively helps to create the territory. By the same token, a spiritual cartography that draws a line--a border of brotherhood!--between the anointed and the lost creates a conceptual structure--a mental map--of brotherhood and otherness, its opposite. I contend that the boundaries on our conceptual maps should, when they deal with people, be erased of those political and spiritual divisions of inclusion/exclusion.

VIOLENT NARCISSISM

2011-01-13T22:50:00.001-06:00

Seems that the "narcissistic identity disorders" (NID) identified as prevalent in the second half of the 20th Century have met up with electronic mass communication (EMC), enabling the latter to function as (in Freudian terms) the superego, or society's agent in the mind. Logged onto EMC, the NID takes "personal messages" from EMC, and aggrandizes his toxic narcissism by acting out violence, if he is so inclined.

WAR IN AFGHANISTAN

2010-12-30T21:15:00.003-06:00

Leon Panetta, now Director of CIA (with whom I shared a picnic event, in 1986, for about 11 people), revealed (see WaPo link, 6/27/2010) that there are perhaps only 50 to 100 Al-Qaeda operating in Afghanistan. If this is fact, and is significant, would someone remind me, or inform me, just why the U.S. military is fighting in that country?

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/06/panetta-50-100-al-qaeda-remain.ht

In throwing out the question as to the reason the U.S. is fighting in Afghanistan, it was both a rhetorical question to me to spur my own investigation and to any others who might read this. It is bewildering that Americans both seem to show little interest in the country's military adventures, and that the reasons for the war seem so unclear.

I say "unclear" after spending hours now reading several articles in mainstream news sources and web sites such as "The Long War Journal" (< http://www.longwarjournal.org/>) and the Institute for the Study of War (<http://www.understandingwar.org/>).

As an admitted non-expert, I will hazard some observations:

1. There are reports that the war is going both well and unwell.

2. The Karzai government was not elected, is terribly and hopelessly corrupt, and has threatened several times to form an alliance with the Taliban.

3. The main Taliban-affiliated group--the Haqqani Network--is in league with military and intelligence elements in Pakistan because the Pakistani ISI uses Haqqani to counter and attack Indian interests in Afghanistan.

4. After the U.S./NATO finally leaves, perhaps before, the Karzai government--no matter how much the Afghan government forces are strengthened--will increasingly ally with elements of the Taliban, including Haqqani.

5. In the meantime, we are stalling for what reason? Are the former Mujahidin groups that Karzai has allied with that much worse than the Haqqani? After all, the latter can be seen as Muslim, hyper-Sunni, mostly Pashtun, nationalists, who some believe are being encouraged by the ISI to attack U.S./NATO forces rather than Pakistani forces and who might not remain an enemy of the U.S.

6. By this reasoning, are the other tribal forces allied with Karzai any more pro-U.S./NATO? The latter are surely being paid off by the Karzai government (with American money) and currently--for how long?--not fighting the U.S./NATO only for that reason.

7. With the "enemy" and "ally" so unclear, does it make sense to spend a treasure on warfare?

8. I like the reasoning about the U.S. intending to preserve an energy corridor from Central Asia. But, how long could that be maintained? In a world increasingly desperate for energy sources, perhaps the answer to that question--and the reason for the war--is that it would be maintained as long as necessary.

Contrary to what is inherent in the American worldview, the project of nation building most likely must be measured in decades--or never--in a "society" (perhaps "territory" is a better descriptor) such as Afghanistan. This is even though Gen. Petraeus has wisely understood that attention must be focused at the level of the village.

But, the apparently successful build-up of Afghan security forces might not portend any loyalty to the central government. Also, it seems that there is no progression toward a cohesive central government.

U.S. officials state that they understand that there cannot be only, or primarily, a military solution, yet "soft power" does not seem to end the fighting, either. I'm afraid that the U.S. will decide on sending more personnel, rather than withdrawing, as is the stated plan. This would be similar to U.S.involvement in Vietnam.

An alternative scenario (I alluded to it previously) is that the Afghan government reaches some reconciliation with the Taliban (probably against U.S. advice as the U.S./NATO withdraws), brings it into the central government, and subsequently government and society all break down into further sectarian conflict and instability.

GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE MODELS

2010-12-30T15:34:00.016-06:00

Personal observations are one form of empirical evidence, but they can obviously be misleading, and when solely relied upon, approach a solipsistic worldview. To wit: All the models of global climate change I have heard about indicate that extremes in weather events will increasingly become the norm. From that, we can expect more extreme storms of all kinds, including snow and ice storms, and extremes in temperature events, including record freezes. All this at the same time as the overall Planet increasingly becomes warmer, particularly at night and at the poles.

What many people forget is that the models are showing that the global climate, in its regional manifestations, will become more erratic and unstable. How this might play out in your area (and mine) remains to be seen. Yes, it is possible that your region could experience a colder winter as your area becomes warmer overall throughout the year. This is why scientists look at the data, and why we should listen to what climate scientists, as a whole, say.

At this point, you should claim the huge amount of data and the thousands of climate scientists are all suspect, even dishonest.

At what point, and at what level of evidence (yes, including taking into account natural climate cycles), will it require for millions of ordinary citizens to understand the science message that is given to us? I really am curious; is it religion or political ideology or a mass media source or worldview that humans are not capable of changing the Planet in a significant way?

RECTIFY THE PANIC

2010-12-05T15:23:00.001-06:00

In the interest of historical accuracy, I should rectify a point I erroneously made above.

I have a text, pulled off my bookshelves, about historiography I have been carrying since I was a grad student, at Ohio University, 1982-86-- "A Preface to History," by Carl Gustavson, first published 1955, and re-printed 1983. In it Gustavson takes up the idea of the supposed general panic leading up to year A.D. 1000. It did not happen. It was first debunked by a Benedictine monk in the 19th century who examined all available documents from ca. A.D. 1000 and found no allusion to the alleged hysteria in the primary sources. But the untrue story has been repeated many times and re-visited a decade ago leading up to year 2000. The original fabrication (traced back to 1605) only assumed the hysteria. (Look at early European explorers and maps; they assumed much, including monsters of an imaginative variety.) An assumption of the storyteller of 1605 was that the Christian calendar was in sufficiently wide use in Medieval times for most people to realize that a new millennium was approaching. This was a false assumption.

HYPERTROPHY OF SOCIAL COGNITION--THE END TIMES

2010-12-04T02:35:00.006-06:00

I'd say the world is truly in uniquely dire straits. For example, the Planet has experienced previous waxings and wanings of climate changes, but never has it had the huge human population numbers it now has. For example, with the fully documented melting of the Himalayan glaciers, one-third of humanity--in South Asia, mainland Southeast Asia, and East Asia--soon will be lacking in fresh water supplies.

Yet, I'd say, from observing global history, the world has always been in a steady-state "end-times." Look at 14th-century Europe (with its Hundred-Years' War and the Black Death, when one-third of Europeans perished) as explicated by Barbara Tuchmann, in "A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century." What would the Incans have concluded when the Spaniards invaded in 1520, or the Aztecs, or the Mayans, or the North American Native Americans when their civilizations were being destroyed? Or, the people of Alsace-Lorraine when their region changed hands seven times due to seven wars between France and Germany in the four decades before World War I? Or, the tumultuous and mind-boggling events of 20th-century China with its great famines and warlords stalking the land, the invasion of Japan and WW II, and the communist takeover with the human disasters of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution--that affected hundreds of millions of people? Or, Europe from WW I, through the Great Depression, the rise of Hitler, the Holocaust, and WW II?

It seems that any peaceful lull in history was only a time when dark forces were gathering for the punctuated disasters looming over the horizon. It should be obvious that human history over its entire time-frame has rarely been peaceful. Social breakdown? Read about it any time in the 20th or even 19th-century. Economic recession or even depression in America? Nineteen, I believe, since 1776. Wars? Too many to count. Pestilence? How about the plague of London, in 1665, or the 1917 world-around Great Influenza Epidemic, when perhaps 40 million people died?

The quote above, when the Archbishop Wolfstan stated that the world was rushing toward its end, came just 14 years after a great panic in Europe, when it was widely believed the world would "end" with the turning over of the millennium. Seems humans have in their psychological apparatus a great capacity for "hypertrophy of social cognition," which induces us to see purpose, design, even intention when it is not there. As a boy, I spent some wonderful moments in my side yard picking out the faces in the clouds. Studies have shown that when people are presented with truly random numbers, they do not believe the randomicity, as they believe they detect patterns. Think of John Forbes Nash, Jr. (the Russel Crowe character) in the film "A Beautiful Mind." The human mind is beautiful alright--or, at least adept--in imagining patterns in historical events, especially when it has been influenced by 2000-year-old apocalyptic writings, and a belief in teleological programming. Look for patterns, "patterns" will be there.

It has been a rather steady-state apocalyptic times for humanity in most all world regions. The Four Horsemen have always been galloping toward us. When were they ever not?

THIS IS A REAL IMITATION

2010-11-26T14:29:00.004-06:00

According to Baudrillard, if I read him correctly, "simulacrum" is not only imitation of something that never existed, it is the process in which mediatization destroys any originals--they cease to "exist", even from being created in the first place outside of media (or at least we would never know, and value, them).

In this view, everything in a simulacrum society, at least all value and understanding of events, and life and reality itself, are simulacra.

Simulacrum, then, is not an imitation of something that never existed, it is all value that comes to exist in the first place. No imitation is needed (unless it reflexively imitates itself!); nothing else "exists" in society. He says America has already reached this state.

See the next report on the News at Five!

PARTICIPANTS IN THE ULTIMATE BIG DANCE

2010-11-26T13:03:00.003-06:00

It seems to me that the empirical naturalists (other names can be assigned, but it is a hyper-rationality that posits that only what can be "seen," or measured scientifically, i.e., the physical universe, is the sum total of existence)--the best known are Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens, all of whom I disagree with, but admire, especially Hitches, who is now dying of cancer--persist in seeing the universe from the viewpoint of Enlightenment and Cartesian epistemology, in which the universe is "only" a structure, something like a machine (the "clockwork universe"), an object that is removed and independent from our interpretation of it. Twentieth-century science has now shown, I believe, that "reality" does not exist outside our interpretation and, importantly, involvement in it. Even rational empiricism is an interpretation (that truth can be known only through rationality).

From my view, "meaning" itself is the ultimate "meaning" of the universe, contra the empirical naturalists. This brings up the epistemological question, of course, of how to determine meaning. If one starts from the position of the universe as an organic whole, one in which humans are not removed, in which we are an dependent, organic part, in which we are not removed from creating its meaning--then, other metaphorical meaning-positions can be entertained, such as the universe as a song or dance in which we are involved, in which we participate as existential lyricists and choreographers.

Elsewhere I have written of the "Terpsichorean Universe" (my term), in which we are moving in intimate pas de deux with the Universe: the song-and-dance of the Universe is my (and your) created, embodied, Ultimate Meaning. We can sit on the side watching (and measuring!) the Big Dance and pretend we are not part of the event, or we can consciously jump into it and coordinate our bootie gyrations, both metaphysical and actual, with the reality in which we are partners in creating.

From my view presented above, perhaps the best theological statement re the biggest of questions is encapsulated in the title and lyrics of the jazz tune "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got that Swing)"--the universe has no meaning (at least any I can relate to), if it has no swing or meaning, like a song and/or dance in which we partner.

If the empirical naturalists do not hear the Tune, then theirs seems an impoverished view. My Universe is not so insipid. We do not have to ask, "May I have this Dance?" We are already in it.

TRICKLE-UP ECONOMIC HISTORY

2010-11-21T21:41:00.000-06:00

The Reagan administration's campaign to weaken unions was part of its conscious policy changes to redistribute income upwards. The anti-union (and anti-worker) campaign took several steps: pro-management appointments to the NLRB; reduced funding to the NLRB, so that it developed a backlog of cases and a long waiting period for cases to be heard; the firing of air-traffic controllers, which encouraged other employers to fire striking workers or to threaten to. As a result, unions lost much of their bargaining power, which put downward pressure on everyone's wages. Trickle-up economics was well on its way.

Other conscious policies of the Reagan administration led to the progressive impoverishment of middle-class workers: Reagan blocked increases in the minimum wage, which in real terms was 26% less when Reagan left office than when he entered. The large federal budget deficits of the Reagan years (you do remember those?), coupled with high interest rates of the Federal Reserve, led to a rise in the value of the dollar, making imports cheaper and loss of many high-wage jobs in manufacturing. Then, there were the trade agreements--NAFTA and others--placing U.S. manufacturing workers in direct competition with low-wage workers overseas.

All of this was the result of conscious policy decisions. Between 1980 and 1995, real wages declined 0.9% overall; workers at the lower percentiles declined even further. This was taking place while pay of CEOs went from 24 times the pay of the average worker to 300 times. Wall Street fund managers did even better, with some earning hundreds of millions in a good year. Reagan's policies and the "advancement" of the capitalist system at that time meant the creation of more millionaires than ever before. The professional classes and the rich loved Reagan. Others bought into Uncle Ronnie's "Morning in America" with patriotic emotions while their income dropped.

All this changed the economic system that had previously worked in the U.S. in a virtuous circle: rising productivity, wages, consumption, and investment.

During the Clinton years, in spite of the first sustained prosperity in two decades--with productivity gains, job creation, decreasing unemployment, rising wages and broad prosperity, and containment of inflation--the U.S economy saw the beginnings of the bubble economy, which has shifted unimaginable wealth further upward.

Bush's tax cuts added to the trickle-up economics by placing more money into the hands of the rich who, in their incarnations as Wall Street financial managers, Federal Reserve board members, and Treasury Dept. officials, would have us believe they did not understand the stock bubble, the housing bubble, the derivatives market, and sub-prime lending. They will be happy for you to believe that "higher taxes" (Obama has CUT your taxes) and government spending is servitude/slavery. They are laughing all the way to their banks, which have a photo of Uncle Ronnie on their board-room walls.

ACTION BEFORE COLLAPSE

2010-11-07T21:55:00.007-06:00

‎"In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy."

--John C. Sawhill, Pres., Nature Conservancy (1990-2000); frontispiece quote in The Future of Life, by sociobiologist E.O. Wilson, who spent his formative years crawling on the ground near Mobile, AL, looking minutely at ants.

Perhaps proactively and collectively we should begin listing what we refuse to destroy. I fear, though, the process of accelerating ecological destruction has already been set in motion and environmental triage will necessitate saving a few places, habitats, and species, although this museumization of natural places is not assured, either.

It is a pessimistic view, certainly. It sounds like science fiction, but the status as internal, or domestic, environmental refugee might become a normal status, as many millions of people would need to move away from coasts.

I also foresee that many people who look for the fulfillment of "end-time" prophecy, would take a functionalist view. Functionalism, meaning the explanation of a process by reference to its function within some overarching and determining end point; in this case, end-time events seen as set in motion, and teleologically determined, by an inevitable end-of-the-world sequence of preordained events. I might have talked in a circle there! In any case, it is the idea of why do anything if it is preordained and inevitable. If one's eschatology is informed by the Book of Revelations, then just wait for the destruction.

Hopefully, and increasingly, many more people will develop the attitude of cherishing the Earth.

Jared Diamond, at the end of Collapse, sees one aspect of current life as a point of hope: our very connectivity (global communications), unlike previous civilizations that collapsed without knowing about others that previously collapsed or were in the same general time frame of collapsing, will communicate the (last-minute) need to take effective action. At that point, it might become a demand for instantaneous rectification!

REACTIONARY? WHO'S REACTIONARY?

2010-10-29T00:42:00.004-05:00

Reactionary? Tea Partiers? Ultra-conservative tendency toward outmoded public policies treating humans in an inhumane way? How about the idea of dealing with a social problem solely by heavy-handed laws and police enforcement? Have we not had sufficient nauseating examples of this in American history?

Take the Arizona anti-immigration law as an instructive example. An NPR news investigation (link below) has revealed that the billion-dollar Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private-prison company in the country, was heavily involved in drafting the document that became, nearly word-for-word, the Arizona statehouse bill. CCA sees the incarceration of hundreds of thousands of illegals as a potential growth industry, paid for, of course, by taxpayers.

This should satisfy the limited-government, private-enterprise (and uber-nativist) Tea Partiers while they congratulate themselves for a problem efficiently solved. In reality, though, it would be a big step toward a police state--with the stars-and-stripes waving over the guarded compound.

Why would someone say there are reactionary forces stalking the land? After the Tea Partiers, in Congress, vote to gut social programs and vote down or filibuster the raising of the debt ceiling, we could all rejoice in the scorched-earth policy of bringing government and governmental social programs to a standstill. Nothing reactionary in this.

<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130833741>

PRIMAL SACRAMENT

2010-10-27T22:56:00.004-05:00

From "War and Peace," I remember only one passage: Prince Andrei, blown up by a shell at Austerlitz just as he was observing an absurd argument between two soldiers over a mop: "How quiet, peaceful, and solemn...how differently do those clouds glide across that lofty infinite sky. How was it I did not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it at last!"

It was a life-changing perspectival shift.

Out of a nearly 1,000-page tome I always remembered Prince Andrei lying wounded on a bloody battlefield in total silence (probably blown temporarily deaf) gazing in rapture and peace at the expanse of blue sky above (thus war and peace coinciding at the same moment within the same person).

When I remembered that scene yesternight, I recalled Schweikert's epiphanic and synoptic gaze back to the whole of the blue-marble gem Earth.

The two humans in different centuries gazing outward/inward to Earth as home--and really to/into themselves as Earthbeings. One, Andrei, hugs a portion of Earth. The other, Schweikert, wants to give Earth-Home a motherly embrace.

The conceptual blending occurs as each understands himself as a integral part of a whole. Therein lies the experience of the Primal Sacrament.

BECOMING EARTH

2010-10-27T22:50:00.004-05:00

To continue thoughts on the experience of Earth from the ground in "War in Peace" and from extra-earth space of the astronaut experience: the feminist theory of "agential realism" breaks up the ordinary, Cartesian dichotomy between subject and object and posits that material entities in a relationship are not discrete and do not exist ontologically prior to the relation. Thus Prince Andrei and Schweikert experience Earth not as an object but as only constituted in relation. They are in "Earth-relation."

This is a theory of reality that I use in theorizing spatial cognition: We are constituted as in relation to the space (the places and landscapes) we "observe" and in which we live. We are embodied, embedded, and cognize place/space as inseparable knower and known. This is the experience of Prince Andrei literally embracing Earth, and Schweikert who feels he must embrace Earth to bridge the subject/object gap.

But, this does not seem to be the condition of postmodernity, in which people experience profound dichotomous relations of subject and object, in which the world is "pictured" (Heidegger) as "out there," separate from the observer. Therein lies much of the malaise of the current human condition and concomitantly that of the planet. Existentially we live as separate, discrete beings who observe and relate to matter and ourselves as beings rather than as "becomings" in embodied/embedded "intra-relation" to the Universe.

To use the words of the Beatles, we must get back to where we once belonged--the place which we only thought we left.

THEOLOGY OF THE DAMNED

2010-10-24T21:04:00.001-05:00

The usual calculus for industrial efficiency leaves out the "externalities" such as hidden environmental costs--to human health, local and global ecosystems, and to other productive enterprises.

How efficient is a coal-fired power plant if the total gamut of costs is excluded? Costs such as the ecological destruction to the strip-mined areas and to lives of the people living there; acidification of lakes and streams, with loss of fish stocks and recreation; acid-rain damage to forests and crops; the increase in lung ailments (such as lung cancer, emphysema, and asthma); and additions to the build-up of greenhouse gases which is altering global climate and which will cause unfathomable human and ecological disruption and costs?

The true costs of using my computer and the light bulb above it are not solely the bill I pay to the power company. Economic costs to the producer and the monetary costs to the user are not the whole picture of accrued costs.

So-called "efficiency" depends on how it is measured, for whom, and why.

It seems to me that part of the spiritual crisis in America is not comprehending our impact upon the Earth. To the extent that we think it is somehow godly or biblical, and make it part of of our theology, to willingly, gladly, participate in a system that has as its very basis the destruction of Creation seems terribly wrong. It is a theology of (over)production and (over)consumption--and Earth be damned.

MACROECONOMICS METAPHOR

2010-10-22T18:42:00.003-05:00

With 9.6 % official unemployment (and actual unemployment at approx. 17%), the macroeconomics of depression prevention is a difficult sell. Then, the (false) analogy of household budgeting in relation to the national economy makes perfect sense to the average economics-challenged citizen who is tuned in to media that say the (Keynesian) huge deficit (and the people who promote it) is the problem that is ruining their lives. Explanations using simple analogy that relate to everyday life win the political message battle every time.

Can anyone think of a simple, everyday metaphor for Keynesian spending? Joseph Stiglitz this week tried to persuade Britain against austerity measures and for Keynesian spending: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/oct/19/no-confidence-fairy-for-austerity-britain?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter>.

Two Nobel economics laureates (including Paul Krugman) have not breached the wall of media obfuscation. Perhaps a metaphor along the lines of the historical "prime the pump" might work, except who today has a well with a pump (that needs priming)?

AMERICAN DECLINISM, AMERICAN RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGY

2010-10-16T23:28:00.003-05:00

Seems to me that since the founding by Europeans of the American colonies there has existed the Christian thought of "the City on a Bright Shining Hill" which led directly to ideas of American Exceptionalism and even to Manifest Destiny. God was seen as being resolutely on the side of America. America's experiences in the 20th century--acknowledged as the American Century--including the success of the Second World War and more recently the "winning" of the Cold War, reinforced the ideology of that exceptionalism, as if the nation could do no wrong, especially in foreign policy but also in domestic affairs. The fact that America has the world's largest economy and is militarily unchallenged (for now) has been internalized by Americans as reinforcement and proof of its (moral) superiority. The reasoning goes thus (like the Social Darwinists of the 19th century who saw "natural" God-given superiority of the upper social classes): That America is on top means that it was supposed to be on top as pre-ordained by God. This must have been part, then, of what many see as American hubris and some of the exploits of American foreign adventurism, such as both the Vietnam and Iraq wars. If America has been imperialistic, then God must have willed it.

If Christian scripture is accurately describing the current dissolution of American social conditions (assuming you mean to indicate that Scripture was specifically foretelling American history 1,900 years and more into the future from when it was written), then there seems to be some historical cognitive dissonance between the historical idea of America's metaphysical founding, and subsequent singular guidance by God (which surely influenced the conduct of American foreign policy), and the current biblical apocalyptic interpretation of its decline. The American Christian cognitive dissonance results from the belief that America, the New Jerusalem, is now in the throes of evil forces leading to debauchery and imminent demise. All this as if Christian ideology itself had nothing to do with the historical evolution of current conditions.

I understand that there must be a great deal of frustration among some Christian groups, leading to the Religious Right and to a wing of the Tea Party movement. It (the American religious interpretation of America's place in Christian teleology) has at least partly led, I believe, to imperial overreach (two current Asian land wars) and some of the very conditions of its (near) demise. Certainly the lingering costs of the Vietnam misadventure and the already-one-trillion-dollar war in Iraq have been a significant part of the current American malaise. We have seen erosion of civil liberties (the Patriot Act) and the squandering of treasure on needless wars (and a $700 billion military budget this year). American religious ideology has surely been an important contributor to what has led us to the current situation.

In addition, Christian ideology does not seem to value God's Creation, either, since capitalism has been essentialized as a "natural" outgrowth of the Christian worldview of how to conduct human affairs. Capitalism (interpreted as ordained by God as the "natural" economic system), for its part, requires constant growth and search for new markets and resources. Christianity largely endorses this state of affairs, does it not?

Can American Christians let go of some of their religio-political beliefs (certainly not all are destructive), so that capitalism as a globally monolithic system can be jettisoned? So that foreign (mis)adventurism and imperial overreach do not drain our coffers? So that the City on a Bright Shining Hill does not fire destructive military cannonades into the surrounding landscape? I fear not; most likely in times of turmoil the current religious ideology governing the affairs of the economic-governmental superstructure will be clutched even tighter. In that case, we will just wait for the end while we continue to clutch to our bosom the ideas of ordained Exceptionalism. At least we will feel morally superior while we watch the destruction.

SUSTAINABLE DE-GROWTH AND RE-GROWTH

2010-10-04T22:09:00.001-05:00

Seems we have a new period of global history rapidly approaching that will necessitate policies of sustainable de-growth. First, economic de-globalization will occur with the advent of peak oil. Some of it was foreshadowed a couple years ago when gasoline prices shot up to $4 and furniture plants moved back to North Carolina to take advantage of the "neighborhood effect" of locating production near markets so as to save on transportation costs that became too high. This should serve as harbinger of coming systemic changes.

Second, it seems to me, the comparative advantage of production that takes place within a global system of production and consumption is economically viable only in an era of cheap oil. Whether oil is cheap or not, a global system of comparative advantage depends on large multinational corporations that do not owe allegiance to any localized population. In terms of food production, this is the worse system possible, in that the supply chains are insecure economically, ecologically, and politically. Peak oil will force a re-localization of food production (an agricultural neighborhood effect). A world of spiraling risk and disruption will re-energize a von Thunen-like rationalization of the peri- and even intra-urban land-use system (a literal neighborhood effect) for food production. Consumption (in terms of food stuffs) would not necessarily decrease, but "consumption," especially in terms of energy costs, would. This is exactly what sustainable de-growth calls for.

It is less easy to see a de-globalization and re-localization of manufacturing because so many products are not truly necessary. Perhaps an array of 81 different lamps (or name any consumer item) to choose from will be something only to be remembered. However, for many decades it has been possible to de-centralize manufacturing (exactly what Kropotkin called for in the very early 20th century in his "Fields, Factories, and Workshops Tomorrow").

On both theoretical and practical grounds there is much good to say about de-centralization, but peak oil, I believe, will force the issue. When (and, of course, if) that happens, the bio-regionalists and "watershed economics" will be all the rage.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE TO WHAT?

2010-10-02T17:33:00.001-05:00

The Pledge of Allegiance is not the Constitution, of course, so is not binding on anything. But the observation about whether "liberty and justice for all" is understood and truly accepted is the crux of the matter, it seems to me. So, is it allegiance to a mere symbol--the flag, which might mean many things, including American militarism and hegemony to some--or allegiance to actualizing the conception of individual liberty and justice: what I thought America was supposed to be about?

Growing up in the Cold-War 1950s the Pledge was part of the socialization of American nationalism instilled in young minds. It was a major part of the American identity set off in contradistinction to a very real expansionist Soviet bloc. My elementary school in far inland Kentucky had a civil-defense lookout on the roof, under Sputnik skies, apparently watchful for any sign of Russian missiles(!), while Congress and the media were embroiled in the Red Scare. So, the flag constituted part of an identity that was set off from a Communist-Red-Soviet enemy-other. We were Americans because we were not they. It is easier for identity formation to imagine an enemy.

Today, national identity is more difficult to acquire, as I watch my students recite the Pledge: now no godless communism, wars fought for manufactured reasons, and personal identity built on consumerism (the triumph of capitalism!). My modeling the recitation of the Pledge will mean little to nothing to my students as they are set adrift in a placeless world of mediatized reality. In a simulacrum world, to what does one identify (besides the consumer-self)?

My conclusion is that the "end-of-history" winning of the Cold War also means an end of easily formed American nationalism and identity. In the resulting vacuum political movements can exploit the loss. The Tea-Party movement, I believe, steps in to create imagined enemies to rally around the flag against. This time, enemy-creation imagines an internal ruinous, un-American godless, Marxist (as they see it) liberal-other; and an external Muslim-terroristic-crazed religious-other.

As I recite the Pledge five days a week, I'll think more of potential American justice and to what I should dedicate allegiance, while others look for enemy-others to help create their identity.

BLINDERS IN ECONOMIC HISTORY

2010-08-19T22:15:00.000-05:00

One type of blindness is temporal: the inability to see, to remember, what came before in time, a particular affliction of Americans as a nation. Let's review: One major cause of the current economic crisis was the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (1933) which wisely separated investment banking from commercial banking activities. Glass-Steagall was repealed by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (1999) during the period (now hopefully deceased) of market fundamentalism. Each of the sponsors (the heavy pushers) was Republican as were the majority of its supporters. This led to the economic pathologies of the casino capitalism we saw during the Bush years (most likely we still have the same system with the next bubble now being formulated. Hey! There's fortunes to be made on the backs of ordinary people!).

Second, some simple facts: The national debt increased during the Bush adm. by 71.9%, mushrooming by more than $4 trillion, the biggest increase in U.S. history at that time. If you believe that the debt is a problem now (I'm skeptical as to the morbidity of debt), then you will want to remove the temporal blinders

Next, your taxes were cut whether you realize it or not. See Wall Street Journal (not your liberal rag): <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123111279694652423.htm>. The tax cut was massive, perhaps $284 billion, and probably the largest tax cut in U.S. history. Why do the blinkered not know this? Perhaps because Faux News decided to cover more important news at that moment, such as Michelle Obama's whisper of "whitey" that no one seems to actually have heard. But, oh, what an absorbing, emotive news item the rumor made that went on and on for about two weeks with the patriots at Faux News.

"Frail economic recovery"? Yes, absolutely! Many things were not done in the best manner, as Paul Krugman, the harshest critic (from the left) of the Obama adm. writes in nearly every one of his columns in the NYT. Krugman says we are in a depression. Taking the simple definition of a depression as a recession that lasts longer and has a larger decline in business activity--then one criterion (deeper decline) is certainly true. Since the current recession began at least as early as December 2007 under Bush (some push it further back into spring 2007), then the 14 months at the end of the Bush adm. added to the 18 months of the Obama adm. gives us about 32 months. Which brings up the depth of the decline: 700,000 job losses as Obama came to office. Yep,
Depression! When Obama says "avoided depression," I think he means we avoided the horrific scare of a total financial meltdown and the near total stagnation of the economy that would have ensued--an instant depression that would have gone global and possibly lasted an entire generation. All economists that I have read say this is true. I personally think we should have nationalized ("restructured" might be a term you would prefer) the top banks ("too big to fail" should mean too big to exist) and broke them up and sold them to private interests. No, the Geithners et al. (including probably every single Republican and most Democrats) were not of that mindset. Perhaps you and I could have agreed on this point. But, would Faux News have cooperated? Ha!

But, Don, the article you supplied also quotes a senior economist who points out that a different indicator--the drop in continued unemployment claims--"is an encouraging sign....it's not all bad news." In fact, from hemorrhaging job losses at 700k per month, Obama's statement is at least partly factually true. There has been job growth in manufacturing and other areas.

So, has the financial system been stabilized? Yes, it has. Maybe not to my liking, but stabilized, yes.

We are right on course for the usual capitalist progression during a deep downturn: Corporations are making record profits and instead of investing in jobs, they are taking their huge reserves and buying up other corporations. Today, Intel announced its biggest profits in 10 years and buys McAffee for $7.68 billion. Yep, the Bush-Obama adms. saved capitalism. The rest of us can wait while the titans of capitalism continue to rake in billions and consolidate power as they adjust to the new conditions. It has always been so.

EMBRACE THE MYSTERY

2010-07-20T19:15:00.004-05:00

I read that someone prayed through the space of all the millions of galaxies to Heaven, where God resides." Since childhood, as have many people, I wondered where Heaven and God were located, especially at night when gazing up at the Milky Way. It was good practice for gazing into Nothingness. Many people think of Heaven as upward through the sky and beyond the galaxies. Ancient civilizations did the same: They thought the stars were actual lights from the abode of the Gods.

Explanation of one's personal theology. That, of course, is quite a project which few people have done. In fact, though, I have written a fair amount concerning my personal theological beliefs, scattered among various poems and short essays. Really, poetry in face of the Ultimate Sublime is a legitimate refuge for what normally is ineffable. Here is an sample I wrote ("Pyrenean" refers to the mountains; "transhumant" refers to moving sheep up and down mountains following the seasons):

--"Like transhumant Pyrenean shepherds

my thoughts at times nourish in lowlands

revolving about quotidian physicality

such as whether Cajun seasoning works

in adzuki bean soup simmering on my hearth

or whether Roncal sheep cheese

will make my palate zing

--make it zing and zing.

At times my mind migrates upslope

to nourish seasonally at montane heights

on alpine meadow flowers and forbs

of rarified thought

such as whether black holes sing

or on the topology of the Universe,

whether space curves back onto itself

returning to where it all began

with no edges or ledges falling into nowhere

and whether as it circles around

it sings

--circling around it sings.

I’d like to think that space-time,

matter, light and thought all sing

as they zing upslope and down

and round and round.

And, like alpenglow at dusk and dawn

irradiating empyrean heights in lights

of life and thought flowing up, down, around

in a knowable Universe of arcing shape

that thinks, knows, and sings

--it thinks and knows

and knows

as it sings and glows." --

"Transcendental" is a curious word and speaks to my personal religious project over the last decade. However, I would say I have been attempting to what might be (or not) the opposite: to "DEtranscendentalize" my thinking. A familiar example of this thinking comes from the well known poem by William Blake:

--"To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour."--

This is not to say I am a Naturalist, with Naturalism the view that the only things that exist are matter and energy and that which supervenes upon matter and energy--in a word, an atheist. "Supervene" is interesting here; an example is the quality of "wetness" is a supervention of the molecules of oxygen and hydrogen. Another example is the science view of epiphenomenalism, that the mind, for example, is only the product of the material brain. Tried that for a while during years of spiritual anomie in my very early twenties while undergraduate at U. of Kentucky. It didn't fit well.

But, here it gets complex--that is, if I can explain it at all.

Let me back up to outline my own religio-bio-narrative. In Christian shorthand, I was "saved" twice, first as a nine-year-old, convicted partly by the God-as-Adjudicator sentiment, and later as part of the Charismatic Jesus Freak movement during the very early 1970s. I remember we danced in the spirit looking like bearded Apostles and Mary Magdelenes with tambourines and bathed-in-the-spirit rapturousness. Later, I flip-flopped and became intrigued with Buddhism, meeting first with a group of Japanese Buddhists, later with Tibetan Buddhists, gazing, again, into Nothingness (it looked familiar!). The Christian group with whom I feel the most affinity is the Quakers, with whom I have met during several different periods of time. Also, I was initiated into a sect of Taoism in Taiwan.Zen continues to appeal to me with its irreverential stance. But, a large influence in my spiritual life has been initiation into Sant Mat, an ancient Indian practice that has much similarity to Gnosticsm, traveling to India four times to a desert ashram in Rajastan and to California many times for extended meditations. But, I won't bring in the extremely esoteric teachings of Sant Mat.

Let me revert to some formal theology (before flying off!): Paul Tillich defines God as the "ground of Being." If so, then its realization, for me, becomes an interplay between a transcendental/detranscendental state of consciousness. I do not mean to imply a pantheism (although, it seems to me that the most promising work being done today in theology is in eco-feminist theology), but a consciousness in which the mysterious facticity of existence itself is deeply internalized in a realization of a blessed state--the mysterium tremendum.

So, it's another of the numerous paradoxes (paradox constitutes a big part of my worldview): we must transcend by descending into wonder; wonder of the material Universe, that experience of the radical and ineffable mystery of Being encountered at the boundaries of understanding. I see it gazing into the night sky; I experience it when I gaze deeply inward. The inward gaze into Nothingness is also to contact with Ground of Being.

As I like to say, I strive to be a conscious co-worker of the Divine Plan, even though I might not know the Plan, and sometimes expressed it as having faith in non-faith. That's okay, I know that I am but a drop in the Ocean of All-Consciousness and the "ground of Being" is deep within.

With the Being I dance an unfettered pas-de-deux with the terpsichorean, Embracing Universe.

INFO-FRIGHTMENT

2010-07-18T23:38:00.002-05:00

I always wonder about those people who use talk radio and cable news as if were legitimate sources of news. Journalism they are not--with journalism defined as a discipline of verification, which separates it from propaganda. Entertainment and propaganda they are. The political-entertainment media outlets are what they are, and that is an ongoing political campaign which uses sensationalism and scare tactics for the intentional project of spreading disinformation for a narrow political end. Fox, for example, lets its editorial policy set its "news" presentation. When do you EVER hear a fair discussion of issues on Fox or on talk radio? Ever?

Yes, the middle-liberal news outlets, such as the NYTimes, WashPost have their political views, but overwhelmingly they are relegated to the editorial pages where they belong! And, don't forget: they have their op-ed pages filled with conservative pundits. I frequently go to those two newspapers to read conservative views. Compare that with Fox and you get an idea of what Fox is: a one-sided, ongoing political campaign that has discovered a winning formula of dishing out "info-frightment." I would like to hear you argue otherwise. All you can argue is that they are "correct," not that they are fair and balanced. Whenever a media outlet makes you fearful (using code messages about race, your personal economic outlook, you personal safety, your religion, etc.), ask yourself what is going on. If it made you fearful, the message was purposefully intended. And, it worked.

For example, if you listened to the media outlets I am referencing, you would have believed there was going to be a NAZI take-over of the U.S. government last year! Or, that the Obama adm. was going last year to confiscate guns, even entering people's houses. Remember the run on guns sales? Why did that come about? Or, that Obama adm. is rife with Marxists! Or, that history does not count when it comes to understanding the current economic problems! It never stops with the talk radio and cable news campaigning. Why? It is monetarily profitable. Look at Rush's salary or Fox's balance sheet.

No, the current economic problems are complex, not limited to three items; but those three are huge. Current budgetary deficit spending is NOT the problem. In fact, we need INCREASED spending for now. Think back to the Great Depression. We now, as then, have a global downturn--just the time to NOT decrease spending (or raise taxes). But, the anti-deficit hysteria is simple to relay in the media. It's simple to understand and it causes fright--just the right formula for the media propagandists! Reminds me of the WMD scare leading up to the Iraq War, about which Paul Wolfowitz admitted was a false pretext.

So, why do you trust those media outlets? Which of your deep-seated fears are they speaking to? That the Anti-Christ is now in charge? That you will lose your religion? That dark-skinned foreigners will overrun the country? That a different race is getting more than its share? That traditional marriage is being destroyed (because someone else wants the same rights)? That deep concern for the environment is a conspiracy by "wackos?" That your [fill in a freedom] is being taken away? All of these come from the media outlets I am referencing.

And more: That the current president hates whites, hates the country, in un-American, is a Muslim, is radical, is a socialist, is a Marxist, is a Nazi--all these I have heard on those media outlets.

Why?

FEARMONGERING ABOUT ILLEGALS

2010-07-17T10:35:00.005-05:00

The nativist goon-bloggers have been out in full force lately.

Here are some facts that might be useful in countering the nativist fearmongering. The 1996 welfare reform bill disqualified illegal immigrants from nearly all means-tested government programs including food stamps, housing assistance, Medicaid and Medicare. That means none of those services are available to illegals.

In reality, two-thirds of illegal immigrants PAY Medicare, Social Security and personal income taxes. And, don't forget: they pay any state sales tax, as well, thus contributing to financing roads, schools, etc.

In its 2008 annual report, the Social Security Administration said "undocumented immigrants" actually benefited Social Security, because many pay in but never collect benefits. In 2005, undocumented immigrants paid in $5 billion to SS.

In another counterintuitive area, the IRS says about 8 million (of the approx. 12 million) illegals file personal income taxes (!), because, also in 1996, the IRS began issuing identification numbers to those who do not have SS numbers. They contribute billions of dollars to federal coffers by paying federal income taxes.

Illegals--actually only those children who are born in the U.S. (they ARE U.S. citizens, of course)--are eligible for public K-12 education, food stamps, and the TANF program (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families which succeeded the AFDC program) which now has a five-year maximum eligibility.

The nativists want to stir up fear, which a politician (or actually many) can exploit by stepping up to the Media and claiming he/she is against those people who they say are ruining the country. Makes great politics. Unfortunately, they spread unreasonable fear--and lies.

PHANTOM RESPONSE

2010-07-10T09:57:00.001-05:00

Both the ongoing Exxon Valdez disaster, lingering for 20 yrs, and the one just beginning with BP in the Gulf, have had "phantom response" plans, according to an expert involved in both areas. Neither corporation had a plan for potential accidents. Reminds me of the Bush administration's lack of plans for the aftermath of routing Saddam Hussein's guard in Iraq. The sitcom-like attention span does not extend beyond the next laugh.

THINK WHAT WE MEAN?

2010-07-10T09:54:00.000-05:00

Found this in an article by David Orr, in Utne Reader (Aug. 2000). He writes that, "in the past 50 years, by one reckoning, the working vocabulary of the average 14-year-old has declined from 25,000 words to 10,000. This is a decline not merely in words, but also in the capacity to think. We are losing the capacity to say what we mean, and ultimately to think about what we mean, about the things that matter most."

STEADY-STATE CAPITALISM?

2010-07-06T20:11:00.004-05:00

Every recession or depression--none excluded--over the last 221 years was preceded by a government surplus (but not national debt; as I said earlier, its elimination occurred only once in all of American history--1835-37). The Clinton budget surplus of 1998-2000, itself, ended with today's recession, only delayed by the massive consumer debt amassing then and during 2000-2006. In any case, the need for tax cuts and large budget surpluses, instead of reduced spending and higher taxes, is what the U.S. economy must have in the short-run. Surely we can look to the Hoover budget to understand the potential dire aftermath. I understand some people's concern that the spending spree and run-away consumption (which is historical for our capitalist economy, whether government, corporate, or private) is the reason we are living in a civilization that seriously looks doomed--as it takes consumption (and environmental destruction) as its birthright.

The much bigger question is how government, corporate, and private spending articulate with what, if we are paying attention to what scientists are saying about the question of human survival. From many quarters the scientific message is that civilization is headed for disaster. The regressive political crowd denies it all. The average person has no clue.

What is even more interesting is the macroeconomic model many (including Bill McKibben) are assuming is the way to go. It is the model for which Herman Daley, in the 1970-80s, was the foremost proponent, sometimes called "steady-state capitalism."

It should be obvious that the capitalist system is SYSTEMICALLY based on growth; a "no-growth" capitalist system is a contradiction, an impossibility. For many reasons--actually, for every reason--at all levels of the system growth is organically constituted: from the CEO who does not own the firm and must grow the firm for shareholders, to the consumer who must have growth for jobs, so must consume in a big (wasteful) way to promote jobs. We have an economic system that is as efficient as can be (for productive forces!), one that is efficiently liquidating planetary resources--from mountaintop removal to strip-mining of the oceans. From Adam Smith to Karl Marx this was understood. In fact, for Marx, the market-propelled internal motor of growth was what so sharply distinguished the capitalist mode of production from all previous. It must constantly expand markets, constantly expand consumption. It is an iron law of capitalist development.

Where dos this leave us?

BUDGET-DEFICIT HYSTERIA

2010-07-03T23:09:00.000-05:00

The budget-deficit hysteria always returns--like the summer monster movies and with the same amount of hype--whenever there is an economic downturn. As always the hysteria is based on misunderstandings of the macroeconomics of a country such as the US with a sovereign economy. "Sovereign" means that the currency is "sovereign," in that it is a national currency with, since 1973, a floating exchange rate (unlike most countries), and with no promise to convert at a fixed exchange rate to another currency.

This means that the federal government does not need to run like a household--and should not. There is no resemblance of a sovereign government to a household or a firm. Incidentally, long-lived firms allow their outstanding debt to grow year-by-year, with no final retirement of debt (unless the firm goes out of business). Firms, however, keep separate capital accounts for this debt and must service their debt. But, a modern sovereign government does not have to have a balanced current account, partly because it will never "go out of business." Thus, the sovereign government is not constrained as are household and firms because it issues its own currency and commands that payment be made in that currency.

In an economic downturn fiscal expansion is needed. Importantly, prolonged deficits do NOT threaten our future--they never have. However, tax increases and reduction in government spending WILL wreak havoc. We are not about to become the next failed state--Zimbabwe or Weimar Republic. Those countries were/are not sovereign, meaning they could not control their economies.

In the 221 years in the existence of the federal government, it has been in debt EVERY YEAR except a brief time beginning in 1835 when the public debt was retired and a budget surplus was run for two years. Not unrelated, in 1837 the economy collapsed into a deep recession. The federal government has been in debt ever since. The record should be long enough to demonstrate that the deficit system has staying power and works.

The important point is that the U.S. federal government is the sole issuer of the dollar, which is always accepted as payment, thus the federal government is not constrained in its ability to "finance" spending because--this is key--it does not need tax and bond revenues in order to spend. Modern sovereign governments do not really spend tax revenues, nor do they borrow by selling bonds.

They spend by crediting bank accounts. So, budget deficits lead to net credits to bank accounts. Government spending increases private disposable income, while taxes reduce spending.

Today's deficits do not burden future generations with debt that must be repaid, not do they crowd private spending now or in the future. The deficit scare restrains the political climate from allowing a democratic government from doing what is democratically beneficial for its citizens.

PLUMING AND FUMING

2010-06-28T18:38:00.000-05:00

On TV I see oil plumes under the sea
Washing tar balls over the booms
Competing with soccer balls kicked
Into nets; and netted birds with their plumes
Oily as I step outside breathing the fumes
On the Coast once again kicked
Toward the next tarring and feathering
By the storm always approaching
From the drilled and greased behind.

CHEAP OIL, POST-EASY OIL, AND DEMAND DESTRUCTION

2010-06-04T22:23:00.003-05:00

Cheap oil has passed, never to return. Lots of oil is locked up in oil shale, true, but it is exceedingly expensive to extract and refine. The production costs of oil shale and Canadian tar sands are such that energy-industry corporations understand that it would probably cost more energy to extract and refine those two sources than the energy produced. The only way they will ever be (theoretically) profitable to use those two sources would be when the price of energy is so high it might pay to develop them. Yet, "demand destruction" would also ensue: Demand nosedives because of the high price.

Same with future production of "plentiful" reserves of oil: There are huge amounts left that will never be used because of the price of extraction and refining. There will be all the oil we ever care to use at a price that will increasingly negate our use of it--demand destruction, again. That day will come soon, or so say many oil economists.

What you label as "environmentalists" are resource scientists, marine and conservation biologists, State tourism officials, the fishing industry, and State and local leaders who want to preserve biodiversity, marine habitat, fish stocks, local tourism, public health and a clean environment. Take a look at the preservation of the California Channel Islands and the myriad forces who were all for preserving the islands and surrounding habitat. It has never been only about "environmentalists."

Let me ask you a question. When an "American" oil corporation takes out a lease for future oil exploration and develops it--to whom must it market? If I obtain a fishing license from Mississippi (like an oil lease), and catch a fish (like extracting oil)--to whom do I sell my catch? It is a global market that the oil corporations market to; none of the oil is reserved for the U.S. market. It is a global market, not a dedicated one. (And, I sell my "American" fish to the highest bidder.)

The easy oil reserves are no more and the U.S. demands way too much for our economic viability. If you read Forbes, it marshals data recently that say lots of oil reserves remain in the U.S. True, as I said above; but those recent, extremely short articles and the data they use are oversimplifications which include oil shales and reserves on the outer continental shelf and even deeper waters that probably will never be extracted, not because of environmentalists, but because of economics.

Cheap oil is no more; and sufficient alternative-energy sources are probably many, very uncomfortable, years away. In the meantime we are sleepwalking through a hallucinated petroleum-based economy in which Nature will increasingly bite our butts in a deadly combination of destructions: environmental, resource, demand, economic, and social. Can psychological be far behind?

I have said that the rampages of global late-capitalism is a like a disease. More accurately it is not so much an "-ism" (or a disease) as it is a set of practices that, of course, has as its (unthinking) basis the making of profit no matter the environmental consequences. Disease, instead, is confined to social forms, cultural beliefs, economic practices, and human lifestyles which are non-sustainable. Surely, this does not require being 'liberal" or "conservative." Not when it is a matter of life and death.

The (mental) disease, then, is not knowing how to survive on a long-term basis. For that we can look to past civilizations, none of whom we can ask directly what they did wrong. Always, though, it probably was a matter of energetics: They depleted their energy sources (including food) without prescient and timely adjustments to their lifeways.

If we are counting on oil from the near (or even outer) continental shelf, then there is serious concern about the future of civilization as we know it now.

SILK ROAD OF PURE THOUGHT

2010-05-25T19:55:00.001-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ulc51ZOGQk&feature

The Kitaro music soars in this rendition. With the addition of the violin, it flows rapturously and transports me to empyrean places along the silk road of pure thought.

SEVEN DAYS AND COUNTING

2010-05-16T04:49:00.000-05:00

Scientists might explain that the ancient Hebrews did not have a cyclical seven-day week until after Exile in Mesopotamia where they were exposed to Mesopotamian stargazers who were observers of the seven traditional planets of the zodiac. (Egyptians had a 10-day week based on the solar cycle.) It was the Hellenic world, after Alexander's conquest of Mesopotamia, that developed the seven-day week, especially at Alexandria, in the second century BCE.

Scientists might say that the Sabbath cult within ancient Judaism, after the Exile, borrowed and developed their week as a cyclical time measure unrelated to any natural processes, especially the lunar cycle. This suited the Hebrew development of a god that was unrelated to any personification of any natural process, including natural cycles and came when the Hebrews were dropping their own worship of celestial bodies, particularly the moon.

Having both a cyclical week and god outside the natural world aid in developing a civilization that is removed from the natural world. Perhaps this is a partial explanation of why Christian-Judaic civilization is so dissociated from the natural world. Some even maintain that humans cannot in any significant way permanently harm the Earth. A dualistic worldview that removes a supreme being from the natural world and posits that the "home" of humanity is elsewhere off the Planet, easily denies anthropogenic global climate change.

In English, of course, the days of the week are named for the sun, moon, Mars (later the Nordic war god Tyr), Mercury (later Woden), Jupiter (later Thor), Venus (later Fria), and Saturn.

So, for the seven-day week, we must recognize the complexity (as always!) of human history and apportion credit to the Chaldeans, Hellenistic Greeks, and Hebrews. It is no more god-given than the vegisimal or the decimal systems of counting.

AMERICA'S AFRICA

2010-04-30T01:06:00.005-05:00

"To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi."

--William Faulkner

To the above quote, a friend said, "To understand Mississippi, you must first understand William Faulkner. Frankly, who cares."

To the comment above: That is pretty much what some scholars say: you have to understand Absalom, Absalom!, in particular, to understand the South. But, if my comprehension of the South depends on my reading Faulkner, then I'll never know. Those novels are unreadable, in my estimation, or at least interminable.

Still, I agree with the core of Faulkner's observation (although overstated). For example, what do the Blues mean? What does it say about the human spirit under conditions of oppression? And, why did that genre develop in the Delta (that's the Yazoo-Mississippi inland watershed), that "most southern of places," where Natchez, in the 1820s-40s, had the richest citizens in the U.S., but now the subregion is economically peripheral and bypassed and has (as does much of Mississippi) many socio-economic indicators (e.g., infant mortality rate), the worst in the U.S., on the level of Brazil or Trinidad-Tobago? The Delta is America's Africa.

Faulkner's observation is overstated, I believe, because one would not have to understand Mississippi to understand the world. But, if one CANNOT understand Mississippi, then the world--as abstraction and real places--would be incomprehensible.

FOXANOIA AND RECENT HISTORY

2010-04-28T22:32:00.002-05:00

Read no further, if you believe the Obama administration is beginning to arrest people for using incandescent bulbs. Read no further, if you believe Obama raised taxes when, in fact, he lowered income taxes on 95% of tax payers (probably you), and that middle-class median income taxes are now the lowest since 1955. Read no further, if you believe Obama is a socialist (67% of Republicans), or wants to take away Americans' right to own guns (61% of Republicans), or is a Muslim (57% of Republicans), or was not born in the US (45% of Republicans). Read no further, if you believe, like Rush (8/26/2009), that Obama, "with dangerous intentions," "wants to create a crisis," so that "the Obama army," "given marching orders," can "seize power overnight."

Read no further, if you are unwittingly part of a new McCarthyism, in which inflammatory language and tactics are used to stir fears that the nation is being destroyed from within. The language? How about Mike Huckabee on the Obama budget: "Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff." How about Sen. Inhofe on Obama's speech in Egypt: "I just don't know which side he's on." How about Beck: Obama hates white people. The McCarthyite attacks are legion. If you do not think so, then do not read on.

If you do not understand that history is important, then you will discount the fact that the Obama budget has taken place in the middle of a recession, coming after the biggest downturn since the Great Depression, and was seen as absolutely necessary by nearly all economists in order to pull the economy out of a financial meltdown in which the global economy was spiraling, plunging, downward into a catatonic state of no lending, no spending, and no production--toward a depression--in which 700,000 jobs were lost just in the month Obama was inaugurated. If you are so amnesiac to recent history, or do not understand that the financial meltdown required drastic and rapid measures, by both the Bush and Obama administrations to turn around the all-important global confidence in the workings of the US economy, then you do not understand the extreme situation the US and global economy were in. And, you have probably forgotten the economy grew at 3.5% in the last quarter of 2009. A depression was avoided. But, you are fuming because you believe Obama resents America's heritage (47% of Republicans)?

Does it mean anything to you that Obama moved at once to categorically renounce torture, a big stain that Bush-Cheney left on our national honor? Or, that the administration is on schedule to withdraw troops from Iraq? Or, that truly landmark health-care legislation was passed, a hundred-year quest, with provisions that will ensure health insurance to nearly everyone while, according to the CBO, not adding to budget deficits?

If you have historical amnesia and, further, do not understand the critical impact of the Bush tax cuts while the economy was weak which left the present administration with $2 trillion in lost revenue; and the two Bush-Cheney wars of choice that will cost a few trillion dollars--then, I'd say you are feeling comfortable lounging in the easy chair of Foxanoia watching the buffoon Beck draw his guilt-by-association charts of supposed communist connections of White House officials. Yes, forget recent history, and revel in the smears of the McCarthy clones.

MILITARY BUDGET

2010-04-24T13:32:00.004-05:00

No one is suggesting cuts in defense spending that would lessen our security (see the next entry below). But, much of military spending is useless, if our enemies are North Korea (with a $5 billion defense budget) or Iran ($4.8 billion), and to conduct asymmetrical warfare in various places, and even to maintain an adequate defense posture vis-a-vis China. The ultimate assessment of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, most likely, it seems to me, is that they are mostly pointless (as was the Vietnam War). If the type of military we have is to fight those kinds of pointless wars, then we would not need whole defense hardware systems that we have.

Interesting about the recent Chavez military purchases from Russia: those are big dollars ($5 billion, $2.2 billion lent by Russia) which yet another government could use for more productive--human--purposes. The quality of Russian military hardware has been suspect for some time (see this article in "NY Times": http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/business/global/13ruble.html?pagewanted=1). Seems Russia, itself, is buying from overseas. It would be difficult, too, for Venezuela to do training and maintenance on its purchases. Still, the loose cannon in Venezuela must be watched. It might be a fitting place for our next pointess war!

The claim that military spending amounts to 53% of the federal budget (see next entry below) does not include the funds collected for Social Security, which is about 42% of federal funds collected. The argument to not include SS collections is that, since the Vietnam War, the Social Security Trust Fund was included in the budget as a way to dilute the percentage of military spending in the budget--to make it appear smaller to the American public. Also, the usual compilation of numbers would not include $400 billion for interest payments on debt due to previous military spending, nor the $100 billion on veterans' benefits and health care, nor the $94 billion in non-DOD military spending. Yet, these are all military costs for which we pay and they total to $1.6 trillion next fiscal year, according to this accounting. The Vietnam War still costs real money today, as is evident with the Vietnam vet several doors down who is in and out of rehab. In any case, the 2011 military budget is, according to my source, the largest in US history, in both actual and inflation-adjusted dollars. Not sure if it is the largest in percentage of the total budget. Probably not.

But, the point is the ginormous defense spending itself. Particularly with looming, massive budget deficits coming around in the mid-term future, we will, as a society be forced to decide what to cut. Without rather drastic cuts in defense spending (at least 25% according to some in Congress), there is no way to make it work.

STUDENTS OR HELICOPTERS?

2010-04-23T20:18:00.005-05:00

Next time you hear of funds running out for student loans, or for supplemental unemployment payments, or for retaining teachers; the next time you hear that the government needs to cut Social Security benefits, or Medicare benefits, or raise the SS retirement age to 70--think of the 53.3% of the federal budget that goes to financing the most enormous war machine the world has ever seen.

This gargantuan figure, which works out to $1.6 trillion out of an estimated $3 trillion budget (for fiscal year 2011), includes interest payments for prior wars and standing army, veterans benefits and health care, non-DOD military spending, "black box" intelligence agency funding, supplemental funding for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the $708 billion Pentagon budget request.

In the next budget and future ones, is this where you want your money to go? The opportunity costs of spending vast amounts of money on unneeded military expenditures, more than 10 times the amount of the next highest spender (China at $130 billion) is a wicked enormity, a barbarity of our time and doing. The money which will be spent next year on replacing helicopters ($4.8 billion) would go a long way to fully fund student loans.

Which is it going to be: fund students or buy helicopters employed in dubious use in again killing nearly 600 Afghan civilians?

WHAT PASSES FOR JOURNALISM TODAY

2010-04-18T11:57:00.002-05:00

Perhaps we should separate out from journalism two practices rampant today: propaganda and gossip. If journalism is a discipline of verification and verification is what separates it from propaganda, then much of what we have in the sports-politics-entertainment complex is propaganda.

Much of the remainder is gossip--malicious talk which meddles in personal business and should have no place in news reporting. It stems from the need to have news cycles continually churning with prurient interest to satisfy the mentally-challenged American audience.

Blatherskiting media entertainment is now the norm, in political reporting and sports.

CATCH A FALLING PLANET

2010-04-10T21:54:00.000-05:00

A fairly good number of articles in the Academic Search Complete database mention the search and circumstantial evidence for Planet X, including an article in New Scientist (1/31/2009) by Govert Schilling who wrote the 2008 book The Hunt for Planet X (Springer [a respected academic imprint]). Physics Today (and others) reviewed the book in its Sept. 2009 issue.

That the hypothesized Planet X has not yet been found could soon change. In December 2008, the first prototype of the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) was brought into service at the Haleakala observatory on Maui, Hawaii. Soon, four telescopes equipped with the world's largest digital cameras, at 1.4 billion pixels apiece, will search the skies for anything that moves. Its main purpose is to look for potentially hazardous asteroids bound for Earth, but inhabitants of the outer solar system will not escape its eye.

Lots of circumstantial evidence, though, for its existence. It's thought that the Kuiper Cliff (the abrupt edge of the Kuiper Belt) could have been swept clean by the gravity of Planet X. Indeed, that brings up one of the criteria for planetary status (formulated since the downgrade of Pluto to dwarf planet): It must sweep its orbit clean of debris. That's why Planet X is thought by some to lie well beyond the Kuiper Belt, at least as far out as 60 a.u. (astronomical units); others think at 50 a.u.

As an interesting aside (which brings the matter literally back to Earth and much closer to my interests), I looked at an article about Planet X, in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (9/21/2002), which mentioned that the periodicity (at 30 myr) of Earth cratering and some fossil records has led to speculation that periodic changes in Planet X's aphelion and perihelion (closest and farthest points of orbit) might set off Kuiper Belt Objects, resulting in periodic comet showers. Watch out! It's the flybys that are dangerous.

Why speculate a government cover up? When the evidence is in, as it soon will be in 4-5 years, we will all know about any new discoveries through the academic pipeline. Could you imagine a massive conspiracy to keep anything secret that involves researchers in many countries who are NOT working for any government, who would love to have their name ballyhooed? That's one of the goals of the academic types: Gain status through research and publishing.

PATRIOTIC INSIGHT INTO PERDITION

2010-04-08T22:35:00.006-05:00

Obama, you might know, is a deranged, evil usurper! But, the always rational American people, the REAL people, are onto his wily ruse. Why, just look at the Harris Interactive Poll, of 24 March 2010, which was splashed across cable news, including Fox:

67% of Republicans think Obama a socialist;

61% that he wants to take away the right to own guns;

57% that he is a Muslim;

55% that he has done many things which are unconstitutional;

51% that he wants to turn over sovereignty to a one-world government;

45% that he was not born in the U.S. (and, thus not eligible to be president);

41% that he wants to use economic collapse or a terrorist attack as excuse to take dictatorial powers;

38% that he is doing many of the things Hitler did;

and, as a topper, 24% that "he may be the Anti-Christ." Let me repeat: one quarter of Republicans think Obama just might be the long-awaited Anti-Christ.

These numbers give one great confidence in the ratiocination of the American public and that they see through the Goebbels-like, evil deception. And, these beliefs--obviously accurate--just descend on them from heavenly places with only minor help from disinterested Earthly sources. Oh, one more: 22% of Republicans believe that Obama "wants the terrorists to win." Should we really wait for the ballot box, if the country is in such imminent danger?

But, the nation is blessed with a large group of true Americans who can tap into their powers of seeing through the artifices of the Obama socialist-Hitlerist-terrorist regime. Only these patriots can save the country.

On the other hand, and unfortunately, a USA Today/Gallup Poll, of 3/24/2010 (see <http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-03-23-health-poll-favorable_N.htm>), found that, re Obamacare,

49% (versus 40%) considered it "a good thing," rather than bad, that Congress passed the health-care bill;

one half described their reaction to the bill as "enthusiastic" or "pleased";

and, 48% called the legislation "a good first step" that needs to be followed by more action. Just consider for a moment: half of those polled, in a recent, scientifically-conducted survey, think Obamacare a good thing! It's appalling! The subterfuge! Don't they get it? Don't they see he is leading the nation like lemmings over the statist cliff of progressive, failed policies that historically have always failed?

See? That's what an accomplished acolyte of Hitler (and possibly Satan) can do: Fool (some of) the people.

At least we have astute and concerned citizens like the one who held the poster (I saw it tonight) at a rally, across which she had scrawled (apparently without conscious irony), "Do not steal from Medicaid to pay for your socialist programs." I can rest in bed tonight confident that a multitude of informed Americans, such as this patriot, will rise up blessed with insightful comprehension. But, with continuing Obamination, soon she will be--with a little help from the patriotic press-- appropriately frothing at the mouth.

URBAN LEGEND ABOUT NEW ORLEANS LAND TITLE

2010-04-07T15:39:00.004-05:00

I enjoy urban legends because of the challenge they present in examining the truth of their claims. The one copied below has been identified as originating as far back as 1955 (there are numerous web sites debunking it), but now with a Hurricane Katrina twist. I place it in the ridicule-of-government category, which has a long tradition in the U.S., especially of the proverbial hapless bureaucrat.

Even though the essentials of urban legends are made up (in this case, the denial of a loan by the HFA because of the supposed lack of title before 1803), frequently, they contain other factual errors, as does this one, that are used to propel the story. For example, France did not acquire the Louisiana Territory by conquest from Spain. In 1800, Spain willingly traded it to France, by the Treaty of San Ildefonso, for a small kingdom in northern Italy (essentially present-day Tuscany), elevating the son-in-law of the King of Spain to the title of king, rather than merely duke.

Second, Spain did not acquire rights to North America by way of Columbus, but through claims associated with Spanish explorations from 1513 to 1543, culminating in those of Hernando Desoto (he might have traveled through a part of Mississippi).

Third, Queen Isabella did not sell her crown jewels to finance the first voyage of Columbus; he was financed by Luis de Santangel, a member of a Jewish converso family (his grandfather had converted to Christianity). (Jewish web sites crow that it was not Isabella’s jewelry but Spanish Jewry which made Columbus’ discoveries possible!)

As far as the central claim of the story, that it is impossible to have land titles before 1803 when the U.S. took control of New Orleans--this is not true. Go to the web site of The Historic New Orleans Collection (<http://www.hnoc.org/>), a museum, research, and publications institution (on Royal Street) and its Manuscripts Division and you can see that it possesses numerous land documents (available online) showing land ownership, some originating as Spanish colonial land grants. Land was occupied, surveyed, licensed and recorded by the Spanish and French governors. When the U.S. took over in 1803, there were four boards of commissioners established, the last in 1812, to settle all claims.

Part of rebuilding New Orleans caused residents often to be challenged with the task of tracing home titles back potentially hundreds of years. With a community rich with history stretching back over two centuries, houses have been passed along through generations of family, sometimes making it quite difficult to establish ownership. Here's a great letter an attorney wrote to the FHA on behalf of a client:

You have to love this lawyer........

A New Orleans lawyer sought an FHA loan for a client. He was told the loan would be granted if he could prove satisfactory title to a parcel of property being offered as collateral. The title to the property dated back to 1803, which took the lawyer three months to track down. After sending the information to the FHA, he received the following reply.

(Actual reply from FHA):

"Upon review of your letter adjoining your client's loan application, we note that the request is supported by an Abstract of Title. While we compliment the able manner in which you have prepared and presented the application, we must point out that you have only cleared title to the proposed collateral property back to 1803. Before final approval can be accorded, it will be necessary to clear the title back to its origin."

Annoyed, the lawyer responded as follows:
(Actual response):

"Your letter regarding title in Case No.189156 has been received. I note that you wish to have title extended further than the 206 years covered by the present application.
I was unaware that any educated person in this country, particularly those working in the property area, would not know that Louisiana was purchased by the United States from France, in 1803 the year of origin identified in our application. For the edification of uninformed FHA bureaucrats, the title to the land prior to U.S. ownership was obtained from France, which had acquired it by Right of Conquest from Spain. The land came into the possession of Spain by Right of Discovery made in the year 1492 by a sea captain named Christopher Columbus, who had been granted the privilege of seeking a new route to India by the Spanish monarch, Queen Isabella.

The good Queen Isabella, being a pious woman and almost as careful about titles as the FHA, took the precaution of securing the blessing of the Pope before she sold her jewels to finance Columbus's expedition...Now the Pope, as I'm sure you may know, is the emissary of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and God, it is commonly accepted, created this world. Therefore, I believe it is safe to presume that God also made that part of the world called Louisiana . God, therefore, would be the owner of origin and His origins date back to before the beginning of time, the world as we know it, and the FHA. I hope you find God's original claim to be satisfactory. Now, may we have our loan?"

The loan was immediately approved.

SAVIOR ARCHETYPE

2010-04-04T12:18:00.001-05:00

The story of the Savior Archetype is an ancient one shared by many cultures throughout the world reaching back into the mists of time. Their accounts--the objective data of the world's sacred scriptures--show that the Savior Archetype, or motif, with significant parallels among many of the world's religions, must spring from some deeply human psychic structure that is ahistorical and rather universal. Probably there was independent development in each culture--from ancient Peru to China--except possibly the Zoroastrian influence on Judaism during the Babylonian captivity and the later Hellenistic Age.

In any case, Easter is a day of renewal and hope that springs eternal.

Peace, be still, and revive; and know that the holy sentiment comes to us from a deeply empyrean place in deep time.

HOLY DAY FAITHING

2010-04-04T12:05:00.005-05:00

The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.

Faith is probably best looked at (and practiced) as if it were a verb--practicing, developing, living. I do not "have" it, or possess it, as a system of religious beliefs, handed to me or even accepted whole, complete, by me at a point in time. Instead, I reside, in active living, in active questioning, in that place where faith "lives" and develops in directions that surely will be different next year than today.

I have faith that faith requires my active participation, not my passive acceptance; and that faith will always recognize uncertainties and understand that doubt is part of faith--even drives it. Otherwise, certainty is the easy way and leaves less room for faith.

I have faith that faith is an effervescent bubbling up from a deep place that is connected to the core of the Universe and all that exists. My project is to live in that Fountain.

Today, I am "faithing"--may it always be so.

PROPAGANDA VERSUS NEWS

2010-03-15T15:38:00.003-05:00

Finally, someone in the mainstream media has evaluated in a public forum the truth about Fox News Network. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/11/AR2010031102523.html

Journalism has as its basis the verification of facts; otherwise, it is propaganda. I could list a page of untruths that Fox has allowed to suffuse its evening "opinion" shows (when most Americans are watching) which it knew to be false. In some cases, it later claimed it never said they were true. Many times it allows its "contributors" to tell the lies without correction. Other times Fox says it was covering a "rumor" as important "news" (with the news "value" of many people believing the rumor, partly due to Fox stirring up the rumor), later asserting that it never claimed the rumor's veracity. (Sure keeps it in the public awareness, though.)

As far as knowing the difference between straight news and opinion shows, I'd say many Americans do not distinguish between the two (although they might "know" the difference), especially if the opinion shows--Fox's entire evening format--conforms to viewers' ideology and preconceived biases. Also, the bottom-of-the-screen news runner sometimes does the trick of editorializing.

In sum, Fox's overall modus operandi is not journalism--requiring verification--but at best editorialization and at worst propagandizing. Fox is what it is--a political campaign. That's okay, but journalism it is not.

GREEN INVESTMENT

2010-03-09T16:27:00.001-06:00

The U.S. does not have to go heavily into investment in green technology which can produce green jobs. But, China WILL and already has, in a big way. The Wall Street Journal reported in February that, in 2004, foreign firms controlled about 80% of China's wind-turbine market. Now, only six years later, Chinese companies own three-quarters of the market. Chinese wind-turbine makers are even starting to export. Already, Shenyang Power Group is supplying 240 turbines to the 36,000-acre wind-farm project in Texas.

If the U.S. does not invest heavily in the future of energy technology--green energy--we will leave it to others to do so.

If you oppose investment in green technology, I would like to hear from you whether your stance is ideological posturing; or is it simply shortsightedness? You will need to explain why you say investment in green technology and jobs is ideological. On this matter, I do not understand.

Anthropogenic global climate change, which includes global warming, has not been called into question, except by right-wing politicians and media personalities. It has continually been substantiated, even recently since the stolen emails from CRU.

HURT-LOCKER NATION

2010-03-06T15:15:00.007-06:00

See the New York Times-online (3/6/10) for this op-ed opinion piece--"Home Fires: The Bomb within Us," by an American veteran of the Iraq War, now poet and teacher (<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/home-fires-the-bomb-within-us/?tham=&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a3>), about the recent Hollywood film The Hurt Locker.

Seems the social psychology of America--our national psyche--is like a diffused "hurt locker," abstract for most, yet nightmarishly real for some individuals, a hurt locker in which we store our fears, obsessions, and psychic pain. A nation at war overseas also battles itself at the home front, especially in interior psychescapes haunted by war experiences, war tragedies, and lingering images of war. Dismembered bodies make for both dismembered individual psyches and a roadside-bomb sociological imagination.

To the politically motivated admonition that "we fight them there, so we will not have to fight them here," I say that in the globality of war the combat and slaughter return home anyway. A geographic imagination de guerre attempts to restrict preventive warfare to far away battlefields, but, the movement of people and images will not stay at the battlefield. They return to the home front to create new psychic battle lines.

For many of us, the battlefield noncombatants, we do not fight war, any war, consciously, yet subconsciously, living in a thoroughly mediated environment, the war plays out anyway. The hurt locker is there before us, in us as a nation, whether we consciously acknowledge it or not. We are the Hurt-Locker Nation.

FOXY TO A TEA

2010-02-28T12:40:00.000-06:00

As a close, conservative Republican friend of mine admitted, "If the Republican Party had won the last presidential election and Congress were controlled by Republicans, they would have had to do nearly the same with the economy as did the Democrats." In our discussion he said that Republicans, if in power, could not have let the economy go into a Depression, just as the Democrats could not. There would necessarily have been deficit spending--no way around it, or let the economy tank.

My friend says he is glad the Democrats won the last election, because now they will take the unthinking blame for the problems created mostly in the Bush Administration when it inherited a budget surplus and then started two unfunded wars while it cut taxes for mostly the rich and extended a hugely expensive, unfunded Medicaid drug-benefits package, all during a shaky economy. All this left Obama holding the bag for a trillion dollars, plus what will turn out to be a two trillion-dollar war in Iraq. Americans are amnesiac vis-a-vis the political past.

The party in power now should get credit for saving the American economy. History does matter.

The horrendous deficits that run out ahead of us are the real problem, not so much current government spending that pumps the economy so that we have a chance for the longer-term future. Those long-term deficits are truly horrendous. Will those who do not understand our situation be ready to make the drastic and painful changes, such as increased taxes and drastically cut benefits and programs, including Defense? It is now unimaginable the changes that will be required. When that time comes, the Fox-Tea Party might have its wishes come true: nearly non-functioning government at all levels, with few services, extremely high unemployment, and people scraping out a meager existence. If we are to have a chance in that medium- to longer-term future, we must have spending now. Go ahead and blame the Democrats; the Republican-Fox-Tea Party will have its chance at controlling the disaster. Perhaps add another war? Give further tax cuts to mostly the rich? All while waving the American flag and creating lots of billionaires and blaming the poor?

Pelosi's comments about the Tea Party movement (TPM) and the Republican Party are obviously political. But, it is still true that there are some connections and overlap between the TPM and the GOP, which the latter hopes to control for its electoral benefit.

What is also salient are the connections and overlap between the TPM and Fox Politico-Entertainment Network. It is truly difficult to disconnect where one ends and the other begins. Does anyone deny this? Hannity, Beck, and another Fox host staged their shows at TPM rallies. Fox gave inestimable free publicity to the TPM. In truth, it is the Tea-Fox Movement.

WILDE LIFE

2010-02-27T21:50:00.004-06:00

Late Victorian playwright and critic Oscar Wilde said, "...beauty reveals everything because it expresses nothing." This points to his philosophy of the importance of the individual, called "subjectivism," in artistic and literary criticism, and which Bashford (see source below) sets within the larger context of philosophical humanism (a portmanteau term [it has various meanings]), but indicating a focus on human meaning created by humans.

To Wilde, meaning always belongs to someone, attached to and embodied in a person. Any particular meaning is not necessarily inherent in the work of art; instead, it is "revealed" by the critic, and, by extension, by the viewer of the art or reader of the literature or listener to the music. Not only is the work of art creative, but also the critic (the viewer, reader, listener) must enter into a condition of creativity when experiencing the work of art.

As indicated by the quote, Wilde sees the art (he says, "form") as not containing content--"it expresses nothing"--but as potential for releasing limitless expression by the critic--and anyone experiencing the form (the art).

All this applies to life, in that life has meanings that humans give to it. Indeed, the meaning of life, in a humanistic sense, is the finding of meaning in life, which is done by an individual.

Source:

Bashford, Bruce. 1999. "Oscar Wilde: The Critic as Humanist." Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses.

I SING THE PROCESSION ELECTRIC

2010-02-17T21:41:00.003-06:00

Many Americans, including myself, did not grow up with much diversity. But, historically, in America's cities, people could walk out their doors and see the America that Brooklynite Walt Whitman saw and eulogized. From Whitman's I Sing the Body Electric:

The man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred,
No matter who it is, it is sacred—is it the meanest one in the
laborers' gang?
Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf?
Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as
much as you,
Each has his or her place in the procession.

(All is a procession,
The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.)

SMASHED EGG IRAQ

2010-02-15T10:21:00.000-06:00

Two buffoons argue over an egg dropped on the floor. They both claim responsibility as they call it a wonderful culinary creation. The two erstwhile kitchen technicians are former V.P. Dick Cheney and current V.P. Joe Biden. The smashed egg ovum is the political situation in Iraq; the splattered albumen the Iraqi people; the shell fragments Iranian involvement.

Biden, on Larry King recently, said, "You're going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government." In reality, the current Iraqi elections (set for March 7) are quickly descending into brutality, bombings, and assassinations. An unelected election panel headed by an Iran-linked terrorist barred 500 candidates from running, including numbers 2 and 3 in the main opposition bloc, headed by former prime minister Iyad Allawi.

This is what we get for $1 trillion wasted: thorough Iranian infiltration of Iraq's economic, political, and military institutions, 4,000 Americans dead, several hundred thousand dead Iraqis, more than 2 million refugees, and what looks like a repeat of Afghanistan--rigged elections.

The two actor-buffoons want to argue over this, the current state of the worst foreign-policy disaster in U.S. history? It's a raw, volatile, already putrefying mess.

YESTERSUMMER WE LIVED NATURALLY, THEN WE BECAME ENLIGHTENED

2010-02-13T13:22:00.005-06:00

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7013764.ece

Not being British nor living there, I do not understand the venom leveled at Charles Windsor (see the London Times article linked above, about Prince Charles' criticism of the legacy of the Enlightenment period). I suspect that it is a combination of dislike for the perceived anachronistic monarchy itself (but, which is powerless in the political sense), skepticism of environmental activism (in which he is involved in the extreme), and a product of the times we live, in which public figures are targets of hatred by one side or another, even making fun of his use of homeopathy (learned from his Queen mom), organic gardening, and so on. My fiancee Diann dislikes him because of his former relationship peccadilloes with her beloved Princess Di. For my part, I feel some affinity for a guy who tills a garden outside a Scottish castle and listens to classical music and tries to save old buildings (even if he does wear a kilt!), and ponders the relationship of humans with nature.

If I were a public figure, virtually every aspect of my own life, present and past, would easily garner spitfire ridicule by one faction or another. Charles has my respect for assuming the responsibility of using his role in British society for what he so obviously believes is right. He could retire to his castle (he will probably be bypassed as king) and live a life of closeted ease. He is no faint-hearted Royal.

When I was in England yestersummer (I just now coined this word), I watched a speech of his on the tele and was knocked-over impressed with his acumen and ease in discussing the difficult and arcane topic of the philosophical relationship of humans to the natural world. I have never heard it better stated. Perhaps this is where some of the anti-Charles vituperation comes from: Who wants to hear an effete, privileged Royal lecture us about our disjointed life vis-a-vis the natural world? I for one really like, and respect, Charles.

Americans, also, have a tendency to dislike the professorial-sounding public figure. I think that was some of the problem with both the Gore and Kerry presidential campaigns: It felt a bit (perhaps others think "a lot") like they were lecturing the body politic. Obama has some of that, too; so did Franklin Roosevelt. But, the best example of an upper-class, professorial politician was Adlai Stevenson, he of Chicago-Boston and Harvard law school, hated by a certain Dixiecratic crowd in the U.S.

The Times article (linked above) does not (nor the other British online news agencies I checked) give us enough to understand what Charles has found problematic about the legacy of the Enlightenment period--surely it is not everything. But, from what I have said above, it must have to do with the dualistic separation it engendered between humans and the natural world. The environment became the subject of scientific study and thus set off humans from the world in which they live, in a nature-as-object worldview. Humans began to see themselves as living separate from nature, IN the world with nature there to exploit, as opposed to living embedded WITH the web of the world, with nature as protective home.