I ran across an absolutely fascinating article in the Huffington Post, by David P. Gushee, an evangelical Christian academic (yes, there is such an animal!) on abortion, law and morality. Here is the link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-david-p-gushee/abortion-culture-and-the-_b_813002.html though I don’t know if it will be still there when you access it. Here is the author’s HuffPo bio page and blog list: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-david-p-gushee since the article may be available there later. This one is near the top of the “I wish I’d said that” file.
Dr Gushee makes the case that three trends in Western culture make the legal battle over abortion, while not irrelevant, unlikely to solve the basic problem in Western cultures. The trends are:
1) “The collapse of any cultural assumption that sex is to be reserved for marriage and that marriage is the best context in which to conceive and raise children.”
2) “The devolution of male-female relationships from a striving for a mutual lifetime covenant to short-term use of one another for individual sexual and emotional needs.”
3) “The overall transition from a focus on doing what is right to an emphasis on my rights.”
I hate to have to say it, but this article deepened even further my fear and hopelessness for American society. I can see what he points out, especially since in my misguided youth I helped the growth of these trends. Sigh, more guilt. Having seen and lived a better way since then, I greatly regret my early embrace of ideas 1 and 2. But 3 is arguably the most critical, and as Dr. Gushee points out, has been growing for much longer.
The idea of liberty, that everyone should be free to live a life of their own choosing, goes back to at least the eighteenth century Enlightenment movement. It’s pretty hard to argue with, especially considering the thought prevailing before then: that everyone was either free or slave. A lot of Western thought, at least, taught or implied that one’s estate was divinely ordained. You don’t like being a slave? Hard cheese, property. Think you know better than God? Dr. Gushee expressed it this way:
"My claim here is that the western intellectual heritage -- I speak especially of historic Christianity and Judaism -- trained people for a very long time to orient their lives around living rightly, as right living was prescribed by their faith. There was a given moral framework to the universe and our responsibility was to fit our lives to that framework, which, of course, these faith traditions believed came from God. "
When the Enlightenment intellectuals began to question this attitude towards life, Liberty became the prime value: if God is not defining my life, then I should be. At least, I want to be. But this makes a real problem: how do people live together? What do we do when my freedom conflicts with yours? And conflict it will.
This, I think, inescapably results in a system of radical selfishness. Whether the “enlightened self-interest” of the secular humanist or a naked sociopathic “me-first”, anyone else’s interest must be secondary to mine. After all, it’s my “right!” I’m only seeking justice! This strikes me as a terrible, ultimately suicidal way to run a society. Dr. Gushee describes it thus: “Society becomes a chaotic collision of rights-claims, with everything ending up in court.” This cannot be a stable situation; as the famous Mr. Dooley said “the supreme court follows the election returns.” I know judges greatly respect precedent, but they’re only human. They make mistakes, which either higher judges or subsequent judges must correct. And they have personality conflicts, like any group of people. Mr. Dooley again: “An appeal is asking one court to show its contempt for another court.”
The only solution, I believe as a Christian, is love. God was exactly correct in commanding that we love our neighbor as we love ourselves. In love, the other’s happiness is what makes our own happiness possible. When I act in love, I ignore my rights. My concern is for the rights of the ones I love. No one needs a court; we strive to make our lovers happy. And if this works against our own interests, so be it. It’s worth it to make them happy. But even among Christians who believe in an afterlife, in heaven, this requires trust. It requires trust that the ones we love also love us, and have the same care for our happiness that we have for theirs. And trust is a very fragile commodity.
In this world of Original Sin (as we Catholics call it), where we cannot count on love, we have no clear and obvious way to run a stable society. Probably the best human-only system is something like capitalism, where competing selfishnesses balance against each other. But capitalism is not ultimately stable; it is a balance which can be lost if one actor becomes too strong. The current economic times demonstrate that pretty clearly.
And on the original topic, abortion, who would be the Lorax for the unborn? If justice, and even existence, can only be secured by screaming for “My Rights!”, how can the voiceless survive?
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Peel some Spuds
“I just think it’s important to be fair – “ the man began.
“Yeah, Reg. I understand. But there’s a time and a place, you know? Maybe the best way to build a bright new world is to peel some spuds in this one?”
Terry Pratchett, Night Watch
I was happy to read this little part of the novel. Night Watch is one of the darker, less going-for-laughs Discworld novels. Copyrighted 2002, I suspect that, like most Westerners, Pratchett was in a somber mood, wondering what would become of our world. Dave Barry's first column after 9/11/2001 began "No humor here today. I can't write it, and you couldn't read it." I've heard depressingly few "good news" things since then. Like Vietnam, Afghanistan has become an unwinnable quagmire. Also like Vietnam, changing the political party in control didn't really change anything.
So often I wish that I could take control of this screwed-up world and straighten out all the dysfunctions, confusions and cross-purposes. But as the poet (Friedrich Schiller) said, "against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." And I'm a good Catholic boy; I understand about Original Sin and its consequences. Still, I feel like one of the characters in Jack London's The Sea Wolf who says "...God is noddin' and not doin' His duty, though it's me as shouldn't be sayin' it." Why do we have to sort things out ourselves? We’re no good at it.
But this bit of Sam Vimes' wisdom helps calm me down. Like Reg Shoe (the “man” in the quote, later the first zombie constable in the City Watch,) I want to save the whole world. Also like Reg, I can't save very much. I have joined movements that I hoped would improve life, maybe perfect it. As a hippie I tried to revolutionize our culture so that everyone would be happy. Later I wanted the Charismatic Renewal to revolutionize the Church and through it the world. The second failure hurt worse; I really thought we were God's agents in our world. I withdrew a little too far after that. It was good to concentrate on raising my kids and supporting my wife, but I felt too hopeless even to try anything much bigger.
I’m still hopeless, as you can probably tell from this blog. But I need to light the proverbial one candle. It won’t illuminate the whole world, but maybe somebody won’t stumble.
(“Peeling spuds” is a bit ironic, though. I’m one of those folks that think tater skins are good for you.)
“Yeah, Reg. I understand. But there’s a time and a place, you know? Maybe the best way to build a bright new world is to peel some spuds in this one?”
Terry Pratchett, Night Watch
I was happy to read this little part of the novel. Night Watch is one of the darker, less going-for-laughs Discworld novels. Copyrighted 2002, I suspect that, like most Westerners, Pratchett was in a somber mood, wondering what would become of our world. Dave Barry's first column after 9/11/2001 began "No humor here today. I can't write it, and you couldn't read it." I've heard depressingly few "good news" things since then. Like Vietnam, Afghanistan has become an unwinnable quagmire. Also like Vietnam, changing the political party in control didn't really change anything.
So often I wish that I could take control of this screwed-up world and straighten out all the dysfunctions, confusions and cross-purposes. But as the poet (Friedrich Schiller) said, "against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." And I'm a good Catholic boy; I understand about Original Sin and its consequences. Still, I feel like one of the characters in Jack London's The Sea Wolf who says "...God is noddin' and not doin' His duty, though it's me as shouldn't be sayin' it." Why do we have to sort things out ourselves? We’re no good at it.
But this bit of Sam Vimes' wisdom helps calm me down. Like Reg Shoe (the “man” in the quote, later the first zombie constable in the City Watch,) I want to save the whole world. Also like Reg, I can't save very much. I have joined movements that I hoped would improve life, maybe perfect it. As a hippie I tried to revolutionize our culture so that everyone would be happy. Later I wanted the Charismatic Renewal to revolutionize the Church and through it the world. The second failure hurt worse; I really thought we were God's agents in our world. I withdrew a little too far after that. It was good to concentrate on raising my kids and supporting my wife, but I felt too hopeless even to try anything much bigger.
I’m still hopeless, as you can probably tell from this blog. But I need to light the proverbial one candle. It won’t illuminate the whole world, but maybe somebody won’t stumble.
(“Peeling spuds” is a bit ironic, though. I’m one of those folks that think tater skins are good for you.)
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Things I'm Thankful For
It occurred to me that I'm writing a lot of pretty negative stuff here, and I want to balance that a little. There are, after all, a lot of things I've been given that are true blessings and I'm thankful for them. Here is a short list.
It occurred to me recently that for most of my life, I've had a job that I liked doing. I currently work, however irregularly, as a reference librarian, and I really like it! It is the work I like best of my jobs so far. Programming was fun, and pretty satisfying. I loved being part of a Catholic institution at U. D. But as a reference librarian, I help people directly and immediately. I love the thanks I get, right away. Most of the work at UD was too much time alone with a keyboard; it got lonesome. But at the library, I get the psychic reward right away; I hope that this lasts a good long time.
I was born to a very good family, both immediate and extended. I hear so much in this culture about disfunctional families, and I see stats about the breakdown of families, and I am so glad that I have no personal experience of it.
Betty wasn't very easy to catch, but I'm soooo glad I caught her. We have so many good times together; our tastes mesh so well. We hardly disagreed on child-rearing, even. She also was born to a good family; I love her family as much as mine. It hasn't always been easy, but it has always been good.
Tom and John are two different men, and were two different boys, so it pleases me no end that they get along with each other so well. And it is so good to see some of the things about them that Betty and I worked to give them. And Tom found a wife who suits him at least as well as Betty suits me. I profoundly hope that John can do as well.
These are the immediate thankfuls. I'm running out of time here, so maybe next year I'll list some larger ones.
It occurred to me recently that for most of my life, I've had a job that I liked doing. I currently work, however irregularly, as a reference librarian, and I really like it! It is the work I like best of my jobs so far. Programming was fun, and pretty satisfying. I loved being part of a Catholic institution at U. D. But as a reference librarian, I help people directly and immediately. I love the thanks I get, right away. Most of the work at UD was too much time alone with a keyboard; it got lonesome. But at the library, I get the psychic reward right away; I hope that this lasts a good long time.
I was born to a very good family, both immediate and extended. I hear so much in this culture about disfunctional families, and I see stats about the breakdown of families, and I am so glad that I have no personal experience of it.
Betty wasn't very easy to catch, but I'm soooo glad I caught her. We have so many good times together; our tastes mesh so well. We hardly disagreed on child-rearing, even. She also was born to a good family; I love her family as much as mine. It hasn't always been easy, but it has always been good.
Tom and John are two different men, and were two different boys, so it pleases me no end that they get along with each other so well. And it is so good to see some of the things about them that Betty and I worked to give them. And Tom found a wife who suits him at least as well as Betty suits me. I profoundly hope that John can do as well.
These are the immediate thankfuls. I'm running out of time here, so maybe next year I'll list some larger ones.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Is Everything Miscellaneous?
Been reading "Everything is Miscellaneous" by David Weinberger recently. It's pretty good; it helped me understand some things about the Web/Internet that I hadn't understood, or hadn't appreciated, before. One thing is Wikipedia. He showed how its community generated entries, when controversial and fought over, will eventually come to a consensus on the entry and the vocabulary to describe it. Of course, this pushed my centrist, compromising, consensus-builder buttons big time. But even after slowing down and thinking it over, I still agree that this technique will produce valid knowledge at least as often as reliance on experts. God knows "experts" have pulled some amazing stunts in the past; that's a source of material for lots of web sites and stand-up comedy routines. But Weinberger, like most writers on new technology, seems to take the technology he writes about (the WWW) as the only source of all truth, beauty and goodness. He seems to me to say that in this brave new world knowledge itself is different and better. He throws around the phrase "third order", short for third order of knowledge, with great gusto; the Web has made all things new.
Not that Third Order doesn't make a lot of sense. The first two orders of knowledge can be summarized as data (descriptions of the real world) first, and metadata (data describing data) second. Both of these orders have definite limitations. Weinberger's favorite example of metadata is the Dewey Decimal Classification, especially as implemented in the good old card catalog. These two, while they are vast improvements over simple lists of books, have definite limits to their usefulness. He describes these limits as inevitable consequences of their physicality. I find it a persuasive argument. The card catalog is especially convincing. When I was young it was how you found anything in the library, and it had limits. Subject terms have to be assigned by an educated professional, and if too many books have too many subject terms, the catalog swells to unusability. Conversely, when you kept the catalog to a manageable size you inevitably left out a lot of useful information. Plus, having studied indexing myself, I know that the best educated expert in the world can’t anticipate everyone’s needs.
It is certainly true that new information technology has enabled a drastic increase in what is possible and what is practical. On the Internet we are not hobbled by many of the physical limits on how we link things, and how we label them. But he sometimes seems to me too rapturous about what these changes and new powers mean. He almost seems to say that reality itself has been re-created. To be fair, he explicitly denies that in the last chapter, but his re-definition of "knowledge" is still much too sweeping for my taste.
Probably my biggest beef with the book is the chapter in which he states that meaning is now a social process. I don't buy that, at least not without a whole lot of nuancing and limitations. It reminded me of a humorous article from many years ago, when I was writing SPSS jobs for UD faculty research projects. SPSS stands for Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. It had commands to perform statistical calculations specially designed for social science research. You would usually start with a GET FILE command, to fetch the file of data you wish to analyze. Surveys and other such data-gathering instruments and techniques usually have gaps, where for instance a respondent declined to answer a question. In such cases you would enter a special number, and then tell the system to treat occurrences of this number as missing, not real data. The command ASSIGN MISSING did this.
This article started out by observing that sometimes, sociological research just doesn't go well. You blow through a whole pile of grant money, and nothing correlates, regresses, or lines up with anything else. So he invented some new SPSS commands for when this happens. Instead of GET FILE, use FAKE FILE. You enter the variables and the coefficients you want, and the system generates a data set where everything fits the way it should. Way easier and cheaper, right? But this is a data set with no meaning. So, use the ASSIGN MEANING command. After each variable name, enter a description of its meaning. There; perfect research every time. Of course, the journal editors or referees might balk at "fake data." So you describe your data set as "stochastically inferred data." Problem solved!
I can't hear anything about "assigning meaning" without flashing back to that article, and I just can't take the concept seriously. But this post is long enough; maybe I'll ruminate sometime about meaning, and what it means.
Not that Third Order doesn't make a lot of sense. The first two orders of knowledge can be summarized as data (descriptions of the real world) first, and metadata (data describing data) second. Both of these orders have definite limitations. Weinberger's favorite example of metadata is the Dewey Decimal Classification, especially as implemented in the good old card catalog. These two, while they are vast improvements over simple lists of books, have definite limits to their usefulness. He describes these limits as inevitable consequences of their physicality. I find it a persuasive argument. The card catalog is especially convincing. When I was young it was how you found anything in the library, and it had limits. Subject terms have to be assigned by an educated professional, and if too many books have too many subject terms, the catalog swells to unusability. Conversely, when you kept the catalog to a manageable size you inevitably left out a lot of useful information. Plus, having studied indexing myself, I know that the best educated expert in the world can’t anticipate everyone’s needs.
It is certainly true that new information technology has enabled a drastic increase in what is possible and what is practical. On the Internet we are not hobbled by many of the physical limits on how we link things, and how we label them. But he sometimes seems to me too rapturous about what these changes and new powers mean. He almost seems to say that reality itself has been re-created. To be fair, he explicitly denies that in the last chapter, but his re-definition of "knowledge" is still much too sweeping for my taste.
Probably my biggest beef with the book is the chapter in which he states that meaning is now a social process. I don't buy that, at least not without a whole lot of nuancing and limitations. It reminded me of a humorous article from many years ago, when I was writing SPSS jobs for UD faculty research projects. SPSS stands for Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. It had commands to perform statistical calculations specially designed for social science research. You would usually start with a GET FILE command, to fetch the file of data you wish to analyze. Surveys and other such data-gathering instruments and techniques usually have gaps, where for instance a respondent declined to answer a question. In such cases you would enter a special number, and then tell the system to treat occurrences of this number as missing, not real data. The command ASSIGN MISSING did this.
This article started out by observing that sometimes, sociological research just doesn't go well. You blow through a whole pile of grant money, and nothing correlates, regresses, or lines up with anything else. So he invented some new SPSS commands for when this happens. Instead of GET FILE, use FAKE FILE. You enter the variables and the coefficients you want, and the system generates a data set where everything fits the way it should. Way easier and cheaper, right? But this is a data set with no meaning. So, use the ASSIGN MEANING command. After each variable name, enter a description of its meaning. There; perfect research every time. Of course, the journal editors or referees might balk at "fake data." So you describe your data set as "stochastically inferred data." Problem solved!
I can't hear anything about "assigning meaning" without flashing back to that article, and I just can't take the concept seriously. But this post is long enough; maybe I'll ruminate sometime about meaning, and what it means.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
A Question of Balance
It struck me recently in a Facebook discussion with one of Betty's cousins (technically a first cousin once removed, if anyone cares) what the real problem with the current conservative "small government" idea is. The problem is checks and balances, arguably the wisest thing our Constitution writers ever did. In the problems of their day - big states vs. little, legislative vs. executive, etc. - they set up a system where neither side had control. The bicameral legislature and other structures made it very difficult for one side to dominate the other. One side could not tyrranize the other. This concept is a very large factor in the success of our republic so far. Indeed, it is a major reason that our government is not even larger than it is now.
But we have a problem now. Business, specifically "Big Business", is now effectively out of control. In the recent banking crisis, the government bailed out several of the largest banks, because if they went out of business the ensuing chaos could have ruined the entire American economy. They were making high-risk loans, and why not? It wasn't their risk. Either the borrowers repaid, or the government covered the loss, lest the entire country collapse. The automotive industry got a similar bailout, for a similar reason. So the Fortune 100 are immortal; if they screw up, no matter how stupidly, they have the U. S. Treasury to fall back on.
Someone, somehow, has to provide a balance. In the late 19th century, as America transformed from primarily agricultural to primarily industrial, we had a similar situation. Corporations and industrialists simply went to Congress or the state legislature with bags of cash, and went home with empty bags and favorable legislation. Bosses and supervisors followed their employees to the polls and directed them how to vote. These abuses were overcome, but only with great difficulty. Not coincidentally, the labor unions began organizing in this time. After the Roosevelt era reforms, labor unions were strong enough to be a counterbalance to corporate power.
But now, the unions are too weak to be an effective balance to the corporations. This is unfortunate; Big Labor is the most economically sensible balance for Big Business. So what is left? Only Big Government. This is hardly ideal, but I see no better alternative. Benito Mussolini himself said that Corporatism was a more accurate name for his system than Fascism. I really don't like living in a system where a CEO can move a headquarters, disrupting thousands of lives, just because he wants to.
But we have a problem now. Business, specifically "Big Business", is now effectively out of control. In the recent banking crisis, the government bailed out several of the largest banks, because if they went out of business the ensuing chaos could have ruined the entire American economy. They were making high-risk loans, and why not? It wasn't their risk. Either the borrowers repaid, or the government covered the loss, lest the entire country collapse. The automotive industry got a similar bailout, for a similar reason. So the Fortune 100 are immortal; if they screw up, no matter how stupidly, they have the U. S. Treasury to fall back on.
Someone, somehow, has to provide a balance. In the late 19th century, as America transformed from primarily agricultural to primarily industrial, we had a similar situation. Corporations and industrialists simply went to Congress or the state legislature with bags of cash, and went home with empty bags and favorable legislation. Bosses and supervisors followed their employees to the polls and directed them how to vote. These abuses were overcome, but only with great difficulty. Not coincidentally, the labor unions began organizing in this time. After the Roosevelt era reforms, labor unions were strong enough to be a counterbalance to corporate power.
But now, the unions are too weak to be an effective balance to the corporations. This is unfortunate; Big Labor is the most economically sensible balance for Big Business. So what is left? Only Big Government. This is hardly ideal, but I see no better alternative. Benito Mussolini himself said that Corporatism was a more accurate name for his system than Fascism. I really don't like living in a system where a CEO can move a headquarters, disrupting thousands of lives, just because he wants to.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
The Class War in the USA
{Okay, back to hell-in-a-handcart rants.}
It has been a tactic of the fright-wing demagogues to shout “class war!” whenever someone notices that the middle class is shrinking, and that this shrinking is encouraged by government policies. Is class warfare a bad thing? Yes, especially when it is in progress and my side is losing, because we have been convinced that the war isn’t happening. People have been convinced that policies that help the rich get richer are somehow magically good for them too. What is frightening is the persistence of this belief even after the experience of the 21st century so far.
The zero decade had massive parallels to the 1920’s – uncontrolled financial system, bubbles in land and stocks, rapid introduction of new technologies, growing acceptance of formerly unacceptable behavior. The teens are shaping up as a replay of the 1930’s – massive unemployment, economic stagnation, a growing sense of fear in the employed and of hopelessness in the unemployed. I just cannot shake the fear that the late teens or early 20’s will see a replay of the 1940’s. And this time with nukes. Yes, I fear that the end of civilization, or even life as we know it, is again a real possibility.
The class war? It is a major contributor to the trajectory I see our society moving along. It is happening because the upper class, like nearly everyone else in this country, has no awareness of history. Yesterday is old news; last year is antiquity. Henry Ford was far from perfect as a human being, but he did one of the best things anyone has ever done for America. He paid his workers much more than he needed to. He was no altruist; he did it for perfectly selfish capitalist reasons. But, unlike so very many business people, especially now, he thought past the next quarter’s balance sheet. This high pay rate did two long-term things for Ford and his company. They could get the cream of the workforce, which forced other manufacturers to follow suit. And with the extra pay, workers could afford luxuries, which at the time a Ford car definitely was.
The result was that Henry Ford got fabulously rich, richer by orders of magnitude than he would have been had he not paid his workers so well. And the workers, indeed the whole country, got much richer. Of course the real world never runs smoothly; the consequences also included the boom of the 1920’s and crash of the 1930’s. But after the reforms of the Roosevelt administration, enabling the rise of the big industrial labor unions in the 1950’s, the middle class grew to a near majority of the population. Even with the Cold War and the Vietnam war, the 1950’s and 60’s were a happy time in America. Many of the good things of that era, most notably the civil rights movement and the War on Poverty, were made possible by the affluence of the large, stable and comfortable middle class.
The oil shock of the early 70’s followed by the inflation of the late 70’s, on top of the Vietnam defeat, shook the confidence of the country. The upper class, meanwhile, had felt put upon by the Roosevelt reforms that kept relatively tight control over financial institutions. When Ronald Reagan was elected, the campaign began to convince people that government was the root of all evil. This could not have succeeded if all Americans were not so ignorant of history. The rich did not realize that a big and healthy middle class made them richer, and that a regulated financial system gave them greater security. The middle class forgot their parents’ stories of the Great Depression; they forgot that while labor unions were far from perfect, overall life was better with them than without. And large numbers of the poor bought the line that social conservatism and economic conservatism were the same thing.
The result of these factors is the devastation of the middle class. While most of the loss of high-paying low skill jobs is the result of foreign competition, the widespread disrepute of labor unions is a major factor. But now the educated middle class also sees itself in danger. I’ve gone into this elsewhere. Ariana Huffington is one of the few known people who have seen the likely end of this trend: the USA as a third world country, where the rich have nearly everything and everyone else is poor.
Ironically, the loss of the middle class will reduce the wealth of the wealthy. The rich in third world countries have less than the rich in developed countries with a healthy middle class. Why? The middle class is the class that spends money, and thus keeps the economy moving. If no one has any spare cash after food, clothing and shelter, then economic activity ends there. The supply-side vs. demand-side debate of the eighties was easily the silliest public discussion since the founding of the republic. You need both; that this isn’t obvious to anyone astounds me.
Many people have said that for a lot of acquisitive people it really isn’t about the money; it’s a grand game and money is how you keep score. Such people are much less interested in what they have than in having more than others: where do I rank? These are the people who don’t mind a class war and the end of the middle class. Whether I get more or everyone else gets less, I win! Only relative wealth matters, not absolute. This attitude, and those people, will be the death of the USA as a major country.
It has been a tactic of the fright-wing demagogues to shout “class war!” whenever someone notices that the middle class is shrinking, and that this shrinking is encouraged by government policies. Is class warfare a bad thing? Yes, especially when it is in progress and my side is losing, because we have been convinced that the war isn’t happening. People have been convinced that policies that help the rich get richer are somehow magically good for them too. What is frightening is the persistence of this belief even after the experience of the 21st century so far.
The zero decade had massive parallels to the 1920’s – uncontrolled financial system, bubbles in land and stocks, rapid introduction of new technologies, growing acceptance of formerly unacceptable behavior. The teens are shaping up as a replay of the 1930’s – massive unemployment, economic stagnation, a growing sense of fear in the employed and of hopelessness in the unemployed. I just cannot shake the fear that the late teens or early 20’s will see a replay of the 1940’s. And this time with nukes. Yes, I fear that the end of civilization, or even life as we know it, is again a real possibility.
The class war? It is a major contributor to the trajectory I see our society moving along. It is happening because the upper class, like nearly everyone else in this country, has no awareness of history. Yesterday is old news; last year is antiquity. Henry Ford was far from perfect as a human being, but he did one of the best things anyone has ever done for America. He paid his workers much more than he needed to. He was no altruist; he did it for perfectly selfish capitalist reasons. But, unlike so very many business people, especially now, he thought past the next quarter’s balance sheet. This high pay rate did two long-term things for Ford and his company. They could get the cream of the workforce, which forced other manufacturers to follow suit. And with the extra pay, workers could afford luxuries, which at the time a Ford car definitely was.
The result was that Henry Ford got fabulously rich, richer by orders of magnitude than he would have been had he not paid his workers so well. And the workers, indeed the whole country, got much richer. Of course the real world never runs smoothly; the consequences also included the boom of the 1920’s and crash of the 1930’s. But after the reforms of the Roosevelt administration, enabling the rise of the big industrial labor unions in the 1950’s, the middle class grew to a near majority of the population. Even with the Cold War and the Vietnam war, the 1950’s and 60’s were a happy time in America. Many of the good things of that era, most notably the civil rights movement and the War on Poverty, were made possible by the affluence of the large, stable and comfortable middle class.
The oil shock of the early 70’s followed by the inflation of the late 70’s, on top of the Vietnam defeat, shook the confidence of the country. The upper class, meanwhile, had felt put upon by the Roosevelt reforms that kept relatively tight control over financial institutions. When Ronald Reagan was elected, the campaign began to convince people that government was the root of all evil. This could not have succeeded if all Americans were not so ignorant of history. The rich did not realize that a big and healthy middle class made them richer, and that a regulated financial system gave them greater security. The middle class forgot their parents’ stories of the Great Depression; they forgot that while labor unions were far from perfect, overall life was better with them than without. And large numbers of the poor bought the line that social conservatism and economic conservatism were the same thing.
The result of these factors is the devastation of the middle class. While most of the loss of high-paying low skill jobs is the result of foreign competition, the widespread disrepute of labor unions is a major factor. But now the educated middle class also sees itself in danger. I’ve gone into this elsewhere. Ariana Huffington is one of the few known people who have seen the likely end of this trend: the USA as a third world country, where the rich have nearly everything and everyone else is poor.
Ironically, the loss of the middle class will reduce the wealth of the wealthy. The rich in third world countries have less than the rich in developed countries with a healthy middle class. Why? The middle class is the class that spends money, and thus keeps the economy moving. If no one has any spare cash after food, clothing and shelter, then economic activity ends there. The supply-side vs. demand-side debate of the eighties was easily the silliest public discussion since the founding of the republic. You need both; that this isn’t obvious to anyone astounds me.
Many people have said that for a lot of acquisitive people it really isn’t about the money; it’s a grand game and money is how you keep score. Such people are much less interested in what they have than in having more than others: where do I rank? These are the people who don’t mind a class war and the end of the middle class. Whether I get more or everyone else gets less, I win! Only relative wealth matters, not absolute. This attitude, and those people, will be the death of the USA as a major country.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Traditional Rock
On the radio today, classical WDPR, I heard an interview with the Blue Man Group, who have a performance in Dayton soon. During the interview the music that accompanies their performance was mentioned. One of the troupe referred to it as rock - "well, maybe not traditional rock."
Dear Lord, I must be old. Rock is now traditional. Chuck Berry, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney - give it up; get your rockin' chairs ready. You're trad now. Though, I suppose, since so many of the originators of the genre are dead, maybe it's just as well. We can just ignore how young most of them were at their deaths.
In a way, it's kind of healthy, and I've seen few enough signs of cultural health these days. Young people, including young musicians, know and have some appreciation for the rock masters of the Eisenhower through Nixon years. When I was young, it wasn't done to admit to any taste for or appreciation of our parents' music. It was yet another not-so-smart attitude from the Baby Boomer generation, and I'm glad our kids did not continue it. Thanks, youngsters!
Dear Lord, I must be old. Rock is now traditional. Chuck Berry, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney - give it up; get your rockin' chairs ready. You're trad now. Though, I suppose, since so many of the originators of the genre are dead, maybe it's just as well. We can just ignore how young most of them were at their deaths.
In a way, it's kind of healthy, and I've seen few enough signs of cultural health these days. Young people, including young musicians, know and have some appreciation for the rock masters of the Eisenhower through Nixon years. When I was young, it wasn't done to admit to any taste for or appreciation of our parents' music. It was yet another not-so-smart attitude from the Baby Boomer generation, and I'm glad our kids did not continue it. Thanks, youngsters!
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