Society « The Ramblings of An Eternal Student of Life

Monday, December 8, 2008

History ... Society ...

When I was in grammer school and high school, I learned about history — as did most of us. Regarding our own nation, I learned about the Revolutionary War, about the Civil War, about WW1 and WW2, about the Founding Fathers, about the adoption of the Constitution, etc. Regarding world history, I was taught about the great empires in China and Rome and the Middle East, about the kings and queens of England, about Alexander the Great, about Genghis Khan and Marco Polo, about the Greeks and the Egyptians with their pyramids, and other sundry events and dates and figures. Unfortunately, I never thought to ask the bigger questions: just why were there kings and nations and wars and trade routes to China? I never stopped to wonder just when and why, in the course of early human history, did people give their consent to being ruled by a king or other kind of government? Just why did they affiliate themselves with a kingdom or a fiefdom or a nation? When did they consent to the idea of war, of putting their lives on the line to bring mayhem and misery to other people who were ultimately like themselves? And when and how did the one or two good things that came from large-scale organization brought on by kings and ruling elders, i.e. trade and shared learning, get going?

Only in my old age did I even think of these things as questions. I have been listening to a CD course from The Teaching Company called “The Wisdom of History” by J. Rufus Fears. I must give Prof. Fears credit for bringing up those questions. In his history of the Middle East, the big professor (Dr. Fears does appear to be a robust man; his “hotness rating” on ratemyprofessors.com is 0) points out that it was in Egypt and Iraq where the first kings and kingdoms occurred. Humans were living there as they were throughout the rest of the world, i.e. in little family-tribes, getting by through a mix of hunting, gathering, and small-scale agriculture.

However, the weather started changing, getting dryer and dryer, and a lot of these little tribes were in trouble. Someone figured out that they could prevent these people from starving by learning how to channel the big rivers and predict their flows, i.e. the Nile and the Tigris / Euphrates system. This would take large-scale organization on the part of those with the right information; and such organization required the ability to boss other people around. Since it was a matter of growing food or starving, a lot of people gave in and pledged their allegiance to the handful of folk with information about the rivers. (Information is the precursor to power.) And so came the birth of kingdom and absolute tyranny. The new kings soon made it clear that they were the boss, not to be questioned. If you don’t like it, go find your own river.

Once we had kingdoms with hundreds and eventually thousands of people willing to do what the king said, it wasn’t hard to take the first steps towards war. Maybe there were still tribal people getting by out beyond the rivers in question; well, why not organize some of the subjects into a fighting group, arm them with sticks and rocks and whatever else could do harm, and go out and conquer those little tribes. It would make the kingdom bigger, give the king more land and people to control, and thus allow more taxes to be levied as to support the material comfort of the king and his family. So, the idea of war and conquering got started. It got especially interesting when one growing kingdom discovered that there were others out there, and that they were becoming interested in the same hills or seas or rivers for future expansion. So, more and more emphasis was placed on training armies and making war. Eventually, war got so popular that it became more than a way to compete with other kingdoms for new turf; if done right, it could conquer another kingdom as a whole, providing a bounty of new lands, slaves, and whatever material comforts the losing kingdom had accumulated.

So, starting with the Middle East but certainly expanding rapidly out from there, the world saw the continual geographic growth of regions where local inhabitants lost their freedom, where they were forced to swear allegiance to a king and give in to his demands (including taxes, service in the army, contribution of free labor for public projects, obedience to general laws of behavior, etc.). There were fewer and fewer places where a small family tribe could just live on the land as they chose. The world was getting organized, but in a rather crude way; there were a handful of big bosses (kings), and thousands then millions of people taking orders from them unquestioningly. (If you did question the king, you were probably a goner).

Still, the geographic growth of all this forced control caused by megalomaniac kings did cause one good thing to happen, something that would eventually give many of the small people the opportunity to gain some level of power and freedom of their own. And that was trade. As kingdoms grew, roads and ships had to be built. Over time, people became more mobile. And people discovered that over those hills or across the bay were other people who had access to local resources that allowed them to make metal plates or pottery or perfume; they might be interested in exchanging some of that stuff for what we have, be it fish or apples or wool or stone tools. Once trade started, many possibilities for individual betterment were unleashed. Numbers and writing were started by kings and their ministers to keep track of taxes; but those techniques eventually got out and were adapted as to help traders. So, with trade was spread the ability to write and understand numbers. Eventually, this spurred the exchange of ideas and techniques. Civilization was on the way.

And thus came about the schizophrenic world that we know: a world of war, a world of power, a world of allegiance demanded by king and country, demands that that too quickly become tyranny. And yet, a world of economic opportunity, intellectual development, and humanistic ideals. The Middle East was the birthplace of our key monotheistic religions, and thus the ethics of individual dignity and rights that eventually stemmed from them. Not far away were the ancient Greeks, who through the leisure and learning allowed to a privileged few (because of trade) were able to develop philosophies and ideals like democracy.

So there it is, the (very rough) story regarding the origins of the best and worst of humankind — if I’m hearing Dr. Fears right. It’s too bad that we are all taught at a young age to take them for granted. If we are going to emphasize our good things and phase out the bad, we need to know where they came from and why they got so popular. History needs to stop being all about dates and people and battles, and start being more about why humankind is the way that it is. You gotta know how you got here in order to get any further.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 7:46 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, November 20, 2008

◊ Responses to the Debunking of Myths

Religion ... Society ...

I watched the recent NOVA science show on PBS about the Bible (The Bible’s Buried Secrets), regarding what archeology tells us about the Hebrew Testament and the formative era of Judaism. To put it bluntly, what archeology tell us is that a lot of what is said in the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament isn’t true. Especially in Genesis, the first book. OK, so we’ve know for a long time that the Earth and heavens weren’t made in a week, and that Adam wasn’t formed out of the mud with Eve being pulled from his ribs. But most of the great stories about Abraham and Jacob and Moses also turn out to be fabrications and retrojections from later events, events such as the Babylonian exile, events which do have historic foundation. Even David, although confirmed as an historic figure, was taken down a few notches from the powerful and glorious king that he is made out to be in scripture.

According to NOVA, the “nation of Israel” most likely gained its identity between 1200 BCE and 1000 BCE as a mix of refugees from southern Canaanite cities that were in turmoil (as Egyptian dominance subsided), and local nomads in the high country around Jerusalem (where the urban refugees were settling). There may well have been former Canaanite slaves in the group who had managed to run off from central Egypt, and perhaps there were charismatic leaders amidst them who inspired the Moses character. And those groups may well have wandered in the desert country between the Nile and the Canaan highlands for many years. So there were folk-tales available from which a narrative of a great past could be weaved, a past that was fabricated to deal with problems of the day (such as the crisis of conquest by Assyria and Babylon).

Interestingly, one of the biggest retrojections onto the days of Moses was the idea of monotheism; archeology shows that the early Jews continued worshiping a variety of gods, including the Canaanite fertility goddess, for many centuries after King David and Solomon. They finally decided that it was best to stick with one god, YHWH, in order to deal with the foreign invaders. That was the god which the Egyptian refugees encountered in their wanderings (being worshiped by villages in southern Sinai, perhaps the Biblical “Midian”), and was thus remembered by them as their protector.

(It would be interesting to research whether the memory of Asherah, the Canaanite fertility goddess whom the early Jews sometimes referred to as the “wife of YHWH”, lasted into New Testament times and contributed to the formation of the Virgin Mary myth in Matthew and Luke’s Gospels.)

The interesting thing is that many of the people who were contributing to this research and offering this interpretation were either from Israel or otherwise had typical Jewish surnames. I’d say that it is a good bet that many of the people who were debunking the great myths of the Jewish nation were and are Jewish. And that impressed me. These people seemed very relaxed about what they were doing and saying. No one was threatening their well being for saying that the great stories of the Bible aren’t literally true. Now compare that with the situation in Islam. Not too many years ago, a very early manuscript of the Quran was found in an obscure mosque in Yemen. Since then, only a handful of western scholars have been allowed to see it. Those who suggest that it may have been an ‘evolving work’ (such as Dr. Gerd Puin) have encountered hostility. You can find strong refutations by Islamic thinkers of the idea that the Yemen verses might show the “official version” of the Quran to have significant differences from what Mohammad or his immediate associates wrote during their lifetimes. E.g.

So, it might be a while until you see a NOVA episode regarding the “buried secrets of the Quran”. And that’s a shame. It is said that Islam is a relatively “young” religion; the NOVA special would indicate that the “Israel nation” identity was formed over 1600 years before the life of Mohammad. Well, the Jews are certainly acting quite admirably and maturely about what science is saying about their most sacred foundational myths and stories. Let’s hope that Islam will learn to live up to this example.

MORE IMMATURITY: I was listening to NPR yesterday and the announcer said that the “liberal blogosphere” (e.g. Daily Kos, Huffington Post) is somewhat upset with President-elect Obama for showing some centrist tendencies, e.g. considering Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State, meeting with Senator McCain, and not committing to the prosecution of Bush Administration officials for torture. Plenty of immaturity out there; and perhaps Barack Obama has aged decades over the past two years. Perhaps.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:45 pm Read Comments (3) / Leave a Comment

Monday, September 29, 2008

◊ A Fractal View of the “Al and the Greenies”

Public Policy ... Science ... Society ...

Here’s an interesting image that I came up with the help of good old Photoshop. The top image is a close-up of a leaf; your basic plant life, with its veins and cells. The bottom image is the same image after some color transformation and contrast modification. Note how it looks a lot like a map of a modern suburban development, with main roadways and side streets and cul-de-sacs. The modern philosophy is to get away from the classic boxy grid of straight-line streets and let the roadways “cooperate” with the natural terrain.

What’s the point? Why, the point comes from chaos theory, from the classic insights derived from fractals. Fractals are those crazy drawings which look pretty much the same no matter how far you zoom in on them. The overall patterns keep repeating themselves whether you are looking at the whole, or at a tiny magnified piece of the whole. Despite the change of scale, some things stay the same. So, we see that an aerial view of a suburban development, and a microscope view of a tree leaf (which may well have come from that suburban development), show patterns that repeat themselves.

Very interesting! I’m not sure just how far you could continue this trend; at the extreme micro end, everything blurs into quantum fuzziness; and at the extreme macro end, it’s clumps and “filaments” of galaxies and vast regions of space with no “normal matter” at all (although there’s still zero-point energy and dark energy, perhaps also dark matter). Perhaps, however, there is still some sort of pattern, a more abstract pattern that is harder (or impossible) to visualize, that holds at all magnifications levels throughout the universe.

I hope that some super-bright physicists and mathematicians are working on that.

Speaking of green, here’s an interesting article from our friends “across the pond” about the recreational travel habits of those who are most concerned about global warming and its environmental effects.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/24/ethicalliving.recycling

It’s about a recent research study showing that people who make the most intentional effort to “live green” (by recycling, buying a Prius or riding a bike to the store, cutting or eliminating meat consumption, using mini-fluorescent light bulbs, etc.) are most likely to take frequent long-distance flights. And their carbon share from those airline flights well exceeds the savings they achieve by their other life-style changes.

Obviously, green-living is still mostly a pass time for the affluent. And the affluent are more likely to require airline travel in their careers. But they are also more likely to fly for vacation purposes. Just a few long-distance flights can swamp out the yearly benefits of living green at home. This supports the allegations of hypocrisy and ultimate futility that are lodged against Al Gore and those who imitate his manner of showing concern about global warming.

My take on all of this: It’s still a good thing for people to become more aware and more concerned about global warming, and the more “little things” that are done, the better. But yes, a person cannot rest on his or her environmental laurels after ridding their homes of incandescent light bulbs and non-hybrid vehicles. Global warming is a huge monster of an issue, and most people are not fully aware of just how big the problem is and how damaging our western lifestyles are. (And how catastrophic it will be if the masses in the developing world adopt our lifestyles, as they are increasingly doing in China and India). As this study shows, even the people who have become concerned aren’t being completely honest about their overall “carbon footprint”, and what sacrifices might be required to reduce it to “sustainable” levels.

I have heard Al Gore’s response to this criticism; he makes up for all the CO2 created by his huge house, his big cars and his frequent jet-setting by giving lavish donations to activist organizations that buy carbon-credits in the market (thus increasing the number and scale of carbon-offset projects like forest restoration and power plant modernization). I think that’s good; I make similar donations, but on a much smaller scale (sorry, but my income and net worth don’t match Mr. Gore’s). But the bigger problem remains: if humankind is going » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 11:19 am Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Friday, September 12, 2008

◊ OBAMA: DOUBLE DOWN, DOUBLE BUBBLE, OR DOUBLE TROUBLE?

Politics ... Society ...

Human beings are herd animals, subject to herd instincts. It’s hard to be a human being and not to start imitating the other humans around you, especially the stronger and more attractive humans. This applies to choice of clothes, choice of mannerisms, and choice of words. At some point these choices pick up social momentum and become fashions. Fashions come and go, to be replaced for no good reason after a few weeks or months by another catchy song or witty phrase or tie width.

A recent fashion in the realm of words is the term “double down”. The expression comes from blackjack, a casino card game. In blackjack, you usually get three cards from the dealer, and the sum point value of those cards determines if you win or lose your bet. After you have gotten two of the three cards, you have the option of “doubling down”, or doubling your bet, based on your revised estimates of winning after knowing what your first two cards are. In other words, doubling down means that you put more at stake.

Within the past two months, this term has become popular in the political arena. You see it or hear it quite frequently from political commentators, especially with regard to the presidential campaign. It’s become what’s known as a “meme”. Here are some examples:

“Does he double down on experience?” (William Kristol, cited in Politico)

“Applying the same double-down formula to Obama, three likely contenders emerge.” (Newsweek)

“Instead of backing down, Obama asked his foreign-policy team to double down.” (American Prospect)

“Okay, so he’s double down here on his own gaffe” (Rush Limbaugh)

“it seems likely that they will want a running mate who enables him to double down on that quality” (NY Times, “The Caucus”)

“That exhausted ‘double-down’ metaphor’s like the signature line of his Presidency.” (comment about G.W. Bush on DailyKos).

“the President wanted to double down and continue an open-ended policy” (Obama, Fox News interview)

“I don’t think the American people can afford to double-down on the failed health care policies of the Bush Administration.” (Obama)

“He wants to continue the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans then double down and give tax cuts to oil companies.” (Obama)

“yet John McCain actually wants to double down on the failed policies that have done so little to help ordinary Americans” (Obama again – hmmm, are we detecting a trend here?)

Yep, it looks as if Barack Obama is the culprit; not long ago he started using this phrase to attack his opponents. It soon became “cool”; everyone else started complementing Obama by parroting him. Obama has had an incredibly powerful effect on his supporters and even his admiring non-supporters; so many people think so much of him that he’s triggered off a language fad. Gee, not even Bill Clinton could do that! Whatever happens to Obama this November, we won’t soon forget him.

But even though more of his cards are now face-up on the table, it remains to be seen whether America will double down with Obama, or pull its bet on him. Stay tuned.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:41 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Thursday, September 4, 2008

◊ WELCOME TO CIVIL WAR II

Current Affairs ... Politics ... Society ...

I was watching the GOP Convention last night, waiting for the grand oration from Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (the “hand grenade in the cultural war”). A little after 9 PM, I noticed a mousy-looking woman in her mid-fifties take the stand and present a mediocre speech. She wasn’t too bad or too good at it; definitely partisan, but hardly inflammatory. This woman turned out to be the Republican Governor of Hawaii, Linda Lingle. The commentator noted that Lingle was in her second term as governor, and had previously served as the mayor of a small town in Hawaii.

So, I wondered – how come Lingle wasn’t picked by McCain for the VP job? (Or even considered!) She’s had more time on the job than Palin, and has maintained a good track record out there in Barack Obama’s home state (i.e., low unemployment rate, budget surplus, high popularity rate). She’s also more cosmopolitan: Lingle grew up in St. Louis, went to high school and college in California, then moved to Hawaii. Her views on abortion are moderate – generally pro-choice, but against partial birth abortion and favoring notification restrictions. She’s also currently unmarried, twice divorced, without children, Jewish, and consults with a rabbi once a week. In effect, she is “Liberman light”. But she’s also a bona fide Republican. McCain would have had to twist a lot of arms had he selected Lingle; he would have made the Christian Right unhappy. And Lingle isn’t all that glitzy or telegenic. But McCain would have attracted a lot of moderates and independents, would have had a better shot with former Hilary supporters. He also may have avoided this damn red state vs. blue state firestorm that Sarah Palin has set off.

Instead, unfortunately, McCain decided to both play it safe (with the GOP conservatives) and at the same time play it cocky (picking someone with lots of political and personal baggage and limited leadership experience). And now, any hope or pretense that this election would “bring us together” and “heal the wounds” of an increasingly bi-cultured America has gone by the wayside. Welcome to Civil War II, thanks to a political bomb dropped by a gutsy attack-plane pilot.

I will note one interesting thing about Sarah Palin – she always wears glasses. In an era when most of the beautiful people wear contacts, this seems rather quaint. Perhaps it is isn’t such an issue amidst the glitteratzi up in Alaska. And some speculate that she’s trying to emulate Tina Fey. Certain of Palin’s “fashion eyewear” selections are a bit gauche. But as someone who has worn glasses since age 11 and who has never owned a pair of contacts, I do appreciate the fact that a major political party is finally running a presidential ticket that includes a fellow “four-eyes-er”. (However, Lingle also wears glasses!)

Here’s another interesting sidenote to the Palin saga, specifically regarding the “Troopergate” investigation into her firing of Alaska’s public safety director Walt Monegan. Recall that the question here is whether Palin abused her discretion by pressuring and then canning Monegan in retaliation for his not firing a state trooper involved in an unhappy marriage and messy divorce with Palin’s sister. One of the allegations of misconduct brought against the trooper was that he illegally shot and killed a moose (no permit, out of season, whatever). To we East Coast people, that doesn’t sound like anything worse than putting a glass bottle into the plastics recycling bin. I mean, Alaska is mostly wilderness, not like our over-crowded cities and suburbs. So what’s the big deal about shooting a moose out in the boondocks? There must be plenty of them.

Well, I’m sure that a wildlife expert could tell me exactly why moose hunting regulations ARE important. But an interesting sidenote to the Troopergate incident was raised by a Native Alaskan (Eskimo) in a comment found on the Anchorage Daily News web site. The comment was submitted in July, before Palin hit the national scene. The writer, “nagayukabraham”, said that if a fellow Native been caught shooting a moose illegally, he or she would be dragged into court, fined, and have their guns confiscated and hunting privileges taken away. He concluded that there are “different sets of laws, one for those that know better and do it anyway, and one for those that are just trying to feed their families.” I doubt that Sarah Palin was taking Native sentiment into account in her efforts against the wayward trooper, but this still shows just how complicated the web of human (and moose) social relationships is. Life isn’t simple anywhere; not even out there in Northern Exposure-land.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 7:37 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

◊ Womens’ Issues

Current Affairs ... Society ...

I’ve read that a lot of Hilary Clinton supporters are unhappy that Barack Obama won the Democratic Presidential nomination. IIUC, they feel that Hilary is a victim of a macro-game and a set of macro- and micro-rules defined by men, and biased against women.

There’s a very interesting and detailed article on politico.com by Roger Simon (Relentless: How Barack Obama Outsmarted Hilary Clinton), which analyzes the rise and fall of Senator Clinton’s nomination campaign over the past eighteen months. Mr. Simon’s analysis indicates that Hilary’s campaign was star-crossed from the start. The key people who needed to make the day-to-day things happen in a presidential campaign just didn’t mesh, either with each other or with Hilary. It was just one of those things.

By contrast, Obama’s team members were meant for each other and for Senator Obama. It looks to me like fate; at some point, any great idea needs real people to make it happen, and if those people just don’t happen to work together well, the great idea is forgotten. You can’t say up front that a team comprised of A, B, C, D and E are going to make magic happen, and a team of V, W, X, Y and Z are never going to get it together. Many dream-teams on paper turn out to be losers, and some groups of losers come from behind to pull off miracles. You never know why. You only know it post-facto. As Hilary Clinton now knows, her team was the wrong one; whereas Obama’s team was the right one. It’s not a sexist issue.

But Simon identifies a crucial moment in the Clinton campaign, one that may well have sexist implications. After her third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses in January, Hilary pulled an unexpected come-back in the New Hampshire primary; most political analysts feel that the ’emotional tear incident’ at the Cafe Espresso in Portsmouth turned it around for her. According to Simon, her staff urged her to keep up the tears, jack up the emotions! The polls indicated that John Edwards and Barack Obama were seen to be “empathetic, sympathetic, caring about me”, whereas Hilary came out more “tough, ready, strong”.

Now that does indeed hint of underlying sexist assumptions and expectations regarding women. Hilary helped pass much more legislation than Edwards and Obama combined to help families and children. Her passion to help needy individuals was clear in her many years of dedicated action. And yet, her unwillingness to satisfy social expectations regarding female emotional vulnerability; and her reward for her one exception to this in New Hampshire, seems to be rather clear evidence of an unspoken double standard in American politics. According to Simon, Hillary refused to play up emotions; she knew that in doing so, reporters would require her to spill her guts about the Monica Lewinsky incident. Senator Clinton wanted to protect her emotional life, and was punished for it.

But — who are the feminists to be mad at? Barack Obama? Howard Dean? Evan Bayh? Bill Clinton? (well, yea, Bill can be a dog). These guys didn’t set the social rules and expectations. The problem resides in all of us, in tiny doses. The situation should be publicly discussed, and may represent a “teachable moment” for our country. But as to taking out anger on Senator Obama because he is a man — well, that seems quite counterproductive.

Next Issue: Above My Paygrade Afterall? In her comment on my last blog regarding the abortion question and my ideas regarding the social determination as to the “start of life” for purposes of human rights under law and social custom, Mary S. says that because I am a man and will never carry a baby, I do not have the standing to discuss abortion policy and the “start of life” question. Mary goes out of her way to express her respect for me, but then says that “if they [men, including myself assumedly] ever had even one period in their life [they] would spend the entirety of the time lying in bed.”

Most interesting. Mary’s views regarding discussion standing are shared by Dr. Leslie Cannold, an Australian bioethicist who has written extensively on abortion and gender issues. Dr. Cannold has a short, readable article about men’s standing in the abortion debate. She concludes:

Men lack moral standing in the abortion debate — indeed are guilty of moral arrogance — when they push for control over a procedure they’ll never have to have because they can’t get pregnant.

Obviously, you can find a variety of views on the blogosphere regarding Cannold’s comments. I believe that there are a lot of good arguments supporting the right, need and duty of men to be part of the social discussion regarding human reproduction. However, I do acknowledge that until the past 50 years or so, the world and its laws and ways were determined almost exclusively by men. And in many places on this earth today, that situation remains. Laws and customs regarding pregnancy that are defined entirely by men obviously aren’t going to consider all of the relevant evidence; they aren’t going to be optimal. As with most things, the extremes are bad, the middle is good. The extreme of men running women’s lives was admittedly injust.

Dr. Cannold’s logic obviously does have an interesting implication, however. Many women have never been pregnant and will never become pregnant, for a variety of medical or social reasons. This would apply to most Roman Catholic nuns. According to Cannold’s reasoning, a Roman Catholic nun should also be barred from the abortion discussion, as much as a Roman Catholic priest and bishop. I myself would think that the voices of both priests and religious women should be considered; sometimes those on the outside, those observing the flow, can point out things that those caught within the flow cannot see.

I do know of one woman who would consider at least one man’s view regarding the point in a pregnancy when full humanity endows itself. That would be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In a recent interview with Tom Brokaw, Congresswoman Pelosi made the argument that “life” does not begin at conception, and cites the opinion of St. Augustine that “ensoulment” begins three months into the pregnancy. Well, I myself am neither a saint nor a doctor of the Church; however, Augustine and I came to similar conclusions, interestingly enough (ditto for St. Thomas Aquinas; but yes, I know, Aquinas never got pregnant either).

Back to Mary’s comment for a moment. Mary approaches the abortion question using an analogy to the growth of morning glory vines. Touche; absurdity reveals absurdity. Both morning glory vines and my analogy, jet planes being built in the sky, are shown to be very inadequate. The human situation is indeed more complex and difficult, by many magnitudes.

Congresswoman Pelosi does point out the complexity and difficulty of the abortion issue. However, she does not conclude that because of these complexities, the issue is legally and ethically indeterminable. Speaker Pelosi does not argue that the courts and the legislatures (like her own US House of Representatives) have no right to make determinations and rules that affect all fertile woman AND men. She seems to imply that it’s more a question of getting the decisions right, or as right as possible in a complex world. And to get it close-to-right, it will take an open discussion from all quarters, young and old, fertile and infertile, female and male. For women to imply that men should be excluded from a critical social discussion because of their grandfathers’ sins, is to repeat the mistake of exclusion and censorship that tho
se grandfathers made.

Mary, will all due respect to you and your interesting and well-considered thoughts. Comments, please.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:33 pm Read Comments (3) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, July 27, 2008

◊ Disillusionment with liberalism

Politics ... Society ...

There is a saying popularly attributed to Winston Churchill that roughly goes as follows: if you’re not a liberal when you’re young, you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative when you’re old, you have no mind. (The phrase actually originated with Francois Guisot, 1787-1874: “Not to be a republican at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head.” It was revived by French Premier Georges Clemenceau 1841-1929: “Not to be a socialist at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head.”)

Well, my own political philosophy has gone something like that over the course of my 55 years. As a young twenty-something, I was an enthusiastic supporter of George McGovern in the 1972 presidential race, and felt that big government and high taxes (especially on the rich) were the answer to the world’s problems. Thirty six years later, I haven’t given in to Rush Limbaugh and the GOP yet, but I certainly would not support George McGovern anymore. And having worked in government for much of my career, I know that government can only do so much good and has many bad side-effects while doing it. There certainly do exist cases where the bad from government intervention outweighs the good.

I was attracted to liberalism because I am concerned about people. I would like to see as many people as possible saved from injustice, oppression, economic calamity, disease, war, and other bad stuff. I really did think that liberalism and its advocacy of socialistic governmental interventions was the best way to achieve those aims. And I still think that governmental interventions are necessary in our modern world to help make life better for as many people as possible.

BUT. I’ve become a lot more pessimistic over the years about just how much good can be done by government before the bad side-effects drown out the original intent. First off, government is a clunky thing. It tried to do too many things and answers to too many masters, and thus gets bogged down with paperwork and rules and uninspired bureaucracy, as implemented by uninspired bureaucrats (like me!). It costs a lot of money to operate, money that causes higher taxes. Higher taxes make a lot of people unhappy; and even worse, they eventually threaten the non-governmental world, i.e. the world of business and capitalism. But business and capitalism are all about greed, and liberal government is all about trying to help people, right? In a perfect world, yes; but in the real world, good intentions often lead to hell, and bad intentions sometimes get us closer to heaven (however unintentionally).

Second off, government can’t be separated from politics. And even the best form of politics, i.e. a balanced semi-democracy as spelled out in the US Constitution, too often goes off the rails and is hijacked for greed and power lust. And even worse, politics involves internecine warfare between factions competing to satisfy their own greed and power lust. In the middle of all that, government has to remain timid and survival-oriented. New ideas and innovations are feared. Old ways become entrenched and remain long after their time has passed. So in the end, the scalpel that liberals would use to remove cancers like racism and poverty and inhumane working conditions from the social body becomes a dull blade.

In some cases, a dull blade is better than no blade. In others, it does more damage than doing nothing. And if liberals took that into account and chose their battles based on a realistic assessment of which of their laudable goals could actually be enforced, I would still be an enthusiastic liberal. But most liberals don’t give much thought to the many side-effects of their remedies. As such, I can’t support the liberal cause wholeheartedly anymore.

Another problem with liberalism is that it is ultimately just another faction seeking political power. Liberals want political power, hoping that it will allow them to carry out their ideologies. And they make many compromises to gain that power. Right now, Barack Obama is the “great white hope” (irony intended) of the liberal cause. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), Obama is himself doing what he has to do to gain such power — including selling out the liberal policy line.

President George W. Bush has been a bad president. But he and his neo-conservative cronies have gotten away with what they have because of the general bankruptcy of the liberal alternative. Liberals have to “get real” with regard to economics and the practicalities of changing society through governmental interventions. They might, for example, be able to improve the schools and the children who are educated in them, but might not be able to assure that all minorities (including women and homosexuals) are given an equal playing field in terms of economic and social opportunities. Liberals would be better off if they would learn to choose their battles. But politically, that means saying no to certain interest groups. And in American politics, the art of saying ‘no’ is almost non-existent. So, I expect that the liberals will remain a very inclusive and very irrelevant political movement into the future, and that the conservatives will continue to rule the day. And that’s a big regret.

PS, with regard to Barack Obama and the so-called liberal bias in the national media: I’m afraid that it’s true. I never gave much credence to conservative GOP complaints that big media favors the liberals (for what little good that it does them historically). But this year, big media has been especially enamored of Barack Obama, most likely for liberal reasons (i.e., his minority status, his pro-big government policies, etc.). The numerical evidence is available: according to the Christian Science Monitor, the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) conducts a weekly news index, surveying more than 300 newspaper, magazine, and TV stories, and has found that in the six weeks since the general campaign began, Obama has had significantly more exposure than McCain. Last week, Obama was found to be a “significant presence” in 83 percent of campaign coverage, versus 52 percent for McCain. You can also see a chart prepared by PEJ on their web site tracking this.

And yes, I do believe this to be unfair to Senator McCain. This is despite the fact that I still can’t embrace the ideas and philosophies that McCain espouses, despite my break-up with liberal orthodoxy.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 7:20 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, July 24, 2008

◊ POPULAR SOCIOLOGY

Society ...

According to the Census Bureau, about 28% of adults in the US have earned bachelors degrees, and another 28% have associate degrees or have taken some college courses. As such, about 55% percent of Americans probably know something about the academic field of sociology. It’s too bad that number isn’t higher.

One of the most important things that sociology teaches, in my opinion, is that we humans do the things we do largely because of social influences. And most of the time, we don’t even know it. A fish in water doesn’t stop to think about water. And a social animal in a society doesn’t usually stop to think about whether the crowd is going in the right direction. As social animals, we mostly go with the flow.

That’s a good thing, in many ways. But there are cases where it causes problems. Take race relations, for instance. I was browsing a page on pollingreport.com recently, which showed the results of various recent polls on race relations. The results clearly show that white people tend to think that racial relations aren’t much of a problem anymore and that discrimination barriers are mostly a thing of the past for blacks. By contrast, black people more often think that race issues have not been settled and that discrimination is still a big problem for them. Another poll appearing in the NY Times a few days ago said basically the same thing. So why the difference?

In my opinion, racism is still alive, but it is manifested in a much more subtle way. The days of “back of the bus” and separate white and “colored” restrooms are long gone. But a lot of white people who make decisions that affect blacks, such as teachers deciding on how to instruct students, or business owners deciding who to hire and promote, could well be influenced by race and not even know it. Social notions and evaluation standards, such as who is more trustworthy or more industrious or more likely to cheat or to be violent, are not formed through overt discussion; they come about through subtle signs and unspoken assumptions, sometimes even through sub-conscious processes. So yes, it is entirely possible that a form of continued racism is going on within white American society in a sub-conscious fashion, and is manifested by people who don’t overtly hold any bad feelings towards people of color.

So, blacks complain about continuing racism while whites aren’t sure what they are talking about. Perhaps they think that blacks are just being political or are being outright ‘whiners’. (As to the political aspect, I do believe that some black political leaders draw the racism card too quickly). But mostly what they are trying to say is that a certain sociology is at work, and that whites need to be more aware of this and work to end it. Unfortunately, sociology is not an easy thing to talk about, especially if half the country isn’t very familiar with it.

I’m not saying that popular sociology is the answer to race relations. But it would at least be a way to get some movement from the present stand-off between whites and blacks, a possible grounding for an open, intelligent discussion. (As part of that openness, common black attitudes about whites would also need to be discussed.)

And here’s another sociology problem: our nation is currently in an economic crisis fueled by too much debt. Over the past ten or twenty years, too many people spent too much on housing and consumer items using borrowed money. And now the banks and investors are sweating because it turns out that a whole lot of that debt isn’t going to be repaid.

There have been a lot of “profile” articles in the papers lately on the people who borrowed all this money and are now in hot water over it. You’ve seen the story, e.g. a couple in their late 40s making around $50,000 bought a big house and an SUV and much other good stuff. Then something went wrong and one of them got hurt or was laid off, and had to take a lousy job paying only half of what they used to make. And then the mortgage payments jumped, and they couldn’t refinance to draw out equity because housing values starting sinking. In the article, the couple is quoted to say that they were duped by the lenders and credit card companies who offered them all sorts of easy loans just a few years ago, and are now pestering them day and night about their past-due balances.

So do we blame the couple or the banks and mortgage brokers who bombarded them with all sorts of tempting loan deals so that they could live even higher on the hog? Well, David Brooks of the NY Times just wrote a very intelligent article that suggested another way to look at such a couple. Brooks feels that we have to consider the “culture of debt” that has been developing in America over the past few decades. In other words, borrowing and spending to the limit has become a sociology thing, a crowd phenomenon. Everyone was doing it, because everyone else they knew was doing it. It’s easy to think that it must be OK to do when no one else is worrying about it. But now things have changed, and social attitudes will eventually adjust to the new conditions. America will go back to a somewhat more frugal and thrifty way of life. Living within one’s means may come back in fashion, although the banks and credit companies will try not to let that idea get too far (through massive advertising campaigns).

Had everyone thought a little bit more about sociology, had everyone been aware that they were following a crowd and questioned whether that crowd was moving in the right direction, perhaps some of this mess could have been avoided.

Sociologists of the world — where are you now that we need you? How about getting out a bit from your ivy-covered halls and making yourselves more accessible to the masses. You too are following your own little academic herd, living in your (relatively) protected world of universities and conferences and journal articles. It’s time to get out there into the evening news and the local papers and the shopping mall bookstores. And maybe even make some appearances in church basements and at evening adult-school courses. American society has some nasty messes to untangle, and we need people who can help us to see the big picture. Elsewise, we’re going to just keep on dancing in circles, thinking everything is fine while an increasingly competitive and hostile world, jealous of our comforts and our past achievements, closes in around us.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:11 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, July 13, 2008

◊ Unpleasant Thoughts

Brain / Mind ... Current Affairs ... Society ... Technology ...

Two thoughts, both of which aren’t all that pleasant:

FIRST: next month (August 11), al-Qaeda celebrates it’s 20th birthday. Some analysts (such as Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown U. and RAND) think that they might have something big planned. Nine-eleven, then eight-eleven? Let’s hope not.

SECOND: This is a longer-term concern. I’ve been a student of the mind-body issue for several years now, and one of the biggest and most interesting questions on that topic is whether machines can ever become conscious and self-aware. I’ve been pondering that question lately in light of my readings and hazily emerging understanding of “neural networks”, i.e. computer simulations of various forms of brain activity. I think that the best answer comes in two parts. First off, with regard to self-awareness, I do indeed believe that computer systems will eventually achieve that. So yes, the Terminator scenario regarding “Skynet” might indeed be plausible, from what I’ve read regarding the capabilities of neural networks.

But the second part regards “consciousness”, as we humans know it. I honestly don’t think that machines can ever attain a human-like form of consciousness. And that is where the “Skynet” problem comes in. Human consciousness was honed by the forces of nature over billions of years of evolution and natural selection process. Despite the seeming randomness and cruelty of these processes, I believe that as consciousness emerged from them, something of an appreciation for being and natural creation came about. This appreciation manifested itself in our attraction to beauty, to songs and rhythms, and to a deeper appreciation of the senses (the smell of flowers, the taste of fresh food, the warmth of sunshine, the coldness of water, etc.). And once aided by our thinking capacity, it inspired ideas such as justice and morals.

Machines will never go through such processes. They are created by humans, mostly by the human “left brain”, the thinking and rational faculty. Computers are not inspired by and are hardly relevant to the human “right brain”, the poetic side, the side that is tied more closely to nature and our evolutionary heritage. As such, a self-aware computer will not have the “lessons of nature” wired into it, as most people do (to varying extents). Once we let them think on their own, computer thinking will be different from ours. In some ways that will be good; but at bottom, they really won’t understand us. So if we let them start making big decisions, we may not always like what they decide. Yes, just like HAL killing David in the movie 2000, A Space Odyssey.

The other problem is that humans will become more machine-like in the future, especially if we keep letting our machines run more and more of our lives. Over a century or two, humans may well be bred to forget the right brain stuff and get on with living in a strictly rational way. Yes, I know that science fiction stories like that have been around for a long time now. I understand that I’m not saying anything new here. But I never took those stories very seriously — until now.

Because I am becoming aware of what neural-networked computer systems can do, it’s really starting to seem possible that the human race could ‘sleepwalk’ into a situation where the machines eventually remake their creators. By ‘sleepwalking’, I mean letting computers and machines do more and more things and make more and more decisions. It’s already happening — no doubt about that; computers and machines make businesses more profitable, war more winable, and daily life more pleasant for many folk. So why not continue down this road? Pretty soon, even the call centers in India will be out of business, as machines become intelligent enough to answer phones for Dell and Amazon and Sears and your local dentist.

It would take a long time, maybe 200 years, to really change us. Despite our notions of civilization, we humans are still a pretty wild bunch. But if this trend continues, I predict that humankind will eventually go thru some major changes. People will be more rational, more orderly, more robot-like. There may no longer be any crime, any wars, any starvation, and a lot less disease. But there might also then be no more poetry, no more song, no more art, no more sex. It’s amazing what kind of worlds we could sleepwalk into, now that our scientists are unlocking some of the computing secrets of the brain (and our entrepreneurs, generals and political leaders are starting to make daily use of them). Time perhaps to dust off some of those yellow, dog-eared science fiction paperbacks up in the attic.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 12:56 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, June 14, 2008

◊ Google, Books and Stupidity

Society ... Technology ...

Here’s a quick review of my “interesting article of the week” for the second week of June (the one with Friday the Thirteenth in it). The article is from the July/August 08 Atlantic, titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, by Nicholas Carr. Mr. Carr is worried that the Internet is changing things for our youth and for our society, in terms of how they get their information and how they do their thinking. He’s worried that people, especially young folk, are relying too much on Google searches and hyperlinks and video clips. They are getting too accustomed to skimming massive volumes of information, flitting from site to site and subject to subject, instead of sitting back and reading deeply on one topic from one author. Carr thinks that perhaps our brains will be re-wired because of this. Because of the social forces and corresponding biological factor set off by modern information technology and its close cousins, the electronic media and the entertainment industry, there will be no going back to the good old days of reading (and finishing) books and long magazine articles. Except for old timers like myself who grew up in the days of libraries with paper card catalogs, no one will even have the ability to sit back and deeply ponder things such as the effects of racism on the deindustrialization of American cities during the second half of the 20th Century.

Well now, there certainly seems to be a lot of truth to this. Blog sites that provide short information blips every hour on the hour seem to be a lot more popular than those publishing longer essays every week or so (which helps to explain why this blog never made it!). But then again, the book isn’t dead yet. Amazon still sells a lot of them on line. Technology still hasn’t come up with a substitute for that good, comfortable feeling that you get when you sit down with an interesting book. I think it’s much nicer to read from something that comes from other living beings, i.e. paper from trees. It’s just not very cozy and comfortable reading from an electronic screen, no matter how light and portable they have now become. You just can’t curl up to a good flatscreen and while away a rainy afternoon.

So the book is not dead yet; it might be around for decades to come. But still, the statistical trends regarding book sales are somewhat disturbing. I checked out the annual sales estimates from the Association of American Publishers (www.publishers.org) going back thru 1992 (with the help of the “Wayback Machine” on archive.org). Anyway, in 1992, the estimated net sales for the book industry in the US were 9.46 billion dollars. Five years later, in 1997, they were at $17.2 billion. So the average growth rate in sales from ’92 to ’97 was 12.7%. Sales for 2002 were $22.40 billion; so the average growth rate for the next five years was 5.4%. In 2007, net sales were estimated at $24.96 billion. Sounds good, but the average growth rate from ’02 to ’07 slowed down to 2.2%. Remember, these are nominal dollars; during this time, inflation was chugging along at around 3% per year. So, after 2002, there isn’t any “real growth” in book revenues. Anyone want to bet that nominal sales will go flat and real sales decline from ’07 to 2012? (I’m surely not betting against it!). You can see why Amazon is expanding into music downloads, electronic goods, and all kinds of other household stuff and personal items.

Carr says that “as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.” Personally, I don’t think that “good old-fashioned intelligence” is done for. But it may become a rarer and rarer trait over the next 80 to 100 years. The masses are already increasingly enthralled with entertaining technologies provided and controlled by a small band of international media corporations and cooperative big governments; meanwhile a small class of really smart people direct those corporations and governments — yep, sounds much like science fiction. According to such fiction, most of those really smart people will get together over time and figure out a way to gain totalitarian control of the brainwashed masses. Meanwhile, a small band of loners and rebels will realize what’s going on, and will seek to “unplug” people from “the net” as to fight back against the powers that otherwise keep them contented. It’s The Matrix without the body vats.

Perhaps that won’t happen; just little old me trying to be dramatic. But if it does, and if somehow my little scribblings floating on the vast digital seas of the Internet are preserved and readable in 100 years (which I doubt will happen, given the fact that Google hardly takes my site seriously), well then. Don’t say that Mr. Carr and I didn’t warn you!

◊ posted by Jim G @ 12:13 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

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