Let me just come right out and say it: I love to dance. That’s not something most American guys feel comfortable proclaiming, or even admitting. Nor would they feel compelled to, since, for most of them, it isn’t true. In fact, if given a choice between cutting a rug with a pretty girl, or digging ditches, operating heavy machinery, and unloading heavy durable goods from a shipping container, most American men would choose one of the latter options. While this may seem, at first glance, counterintuitive, it is not without logical explanation. The problem American men have with dancing is twofold: first, they fear it compromises their masculinity; second, they are afraid of looking stupid.
The United States is in large measure a homophobic society in which, in spite of myths to the contrary, gender roles are strictly defined, and for the most part followed, to the detriment of both sexes. Some women may contest this assertion, and certainly there are exceptions: men who dance and cook, and love to shop; and women who work construction, and love sports and military history. I’m not taking about gender equity here, or fair pay, but the social roles men and women play. For the most part in America you get women who make their own money but still want a man to take care of them, and men who still don’t dance or talk about their feelings but are confused about what they can give to women who are often more successful economically and better educated than they are. Consequently, American men have developed an aloof stance toward American women, which is based on the fallacy that respecting a woman means not touching her. The mixed message of American female identity which states simultaneously “I’m a woman and can take care of myself,” and “I’m a woman, please hold me,” has dropped the balls off American men and turned them into so many binge-drinking eunuchs loitering in the nightclub.
Beneath the confusion of gender roles that are rendering our society increasing asexual, lurks the problem of our puritanical roots, and the religious shame we have inherited from our forefather and mothers. Christianity holds that the body is the vessel of sin and that it the responsibility of reason, in which morality is couched, to elevate the human being above his or her animal instincts. In other words, anything that presents a temptation to physical pleasure is a no-no, which makes dancing public enemy number one. For as we all know, dancing is the gateway activity to sex. Well, much has changed since those pilgrims got off the Mayflower. But not without a fight by subsequent generations, each of which scandalized their parents with the dance of the moment. In spite of this continual process of innovation, a latent shame and embarrassment exists in regard to dancing in America, primarily for men. Women, to their credit, have not been so easily fooled by religious dogma and those moralizing fuddy-duddies who have forgotten what it was like to be young and looking for love, or, more importantly, that dancing keeps one young. American men, however, have atrophied, opening their hand on a vast inventory of dance styles and “moves.” I can’t stress enough the importance of a solid repertoire of moves, not only on the dance floor, but in all areas of human activity. Now, and rightfully so, American men react with fear when they go to the club and their girlfriend wants to dance, or when faced with the crisis of wanting to meet the girl, who is invariably dancing, and not wanting to look stupid in front of her, for lack of dance practice. This pitiful state of affairs often results in women leading men on the dance floor. In other cases, it results in a mechanical repetition of dance steps without grace, sensuality, or style.
Dancing is an innate human activity and the fear men have of it is unfounded. Looking stupid is an everyday part of life; if you don’t look stupid then you’ll never learn anything new. Also, women secretly love it when men look stupid in front of them; it is a sign that men find them attractive. Aside from the fear of looking stupid, dancing is not an assault on masculinity, but its affirmation. Let me give you some facts that support my thesis. In all pairs dancing the man leads and the woman follows. Dancing is the easiest way to meet women; there is no way to get closer to a woman other than having sex. Finally, to couch it in terms that the average American guy can appreciate: a man who dances is more likely to get laid than one who does not, if that is the objective. Finally, dancing does not make you a homosexual; the only way to do that is to make out and have sex with other men.
Let’s back up to my qualifying statement, “if that is the objective,” regarding sex. Clearly, the ultimate objective of male/female relations is to get together, make love, and reproduce. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. As a form of communication and self-expression, music and dance have been with us since the dawn of human existence. Among other applications, dance helps us to find a mate. Women are in part attracted by smell, and getting close to a man allows them to sniff him out, so to speak. Men are attracted primarily by sight, and dancing offers the ability to get close to a woman in a non-threatening way. But it is not that simple. What is going on beyond that is the process of determining compatibility. In my opinion, if you can’t dance with someone, you shouldn’t be hooking up, dating, or having a family with them.
Cue the alcohol. While alcohol has the benefit of giving some men the courage to dance (lust overriding fear), it can also give the false illusion that one is dancing well, and in particular dancing well with someone else, resulting in the mistaken belief that one has found a suitable partner.
Some may consider me old-fashioned, but I miss simpler times when young people went to the school dance, and when going out on the town didn’t mean standing around binge drinking in bars with no dance floor, but rather going to dance clubs and listening to live bands play music for pairs dancing with a defined set of steps. Don’t get me wrong, free-form, unstructured dancing is great, too. Whether you want to bang you head to some hard rock or metal, trace your hands in the air like you’re weaving a cosmic spider web while listening to pulsing techno beats and clinching your jaw on E, skank it up and wind your body to some reggae vibes, or do your standard knee bend and arm swing to your favorite pop band, any and all of these “I’m not touching you” dances are fine, and most of them invariably lead to America’s favorite dance: freaking, grinding, dry humping, or pantomimed fucking -whatever you want to call it.
America is the land of innovation and irony (which ironically, many Americans don’t understand or appreciate), and it is only fitting that freaking would become all the rage in the land of puritanical values; you know, in the vein of a church on every corner and a whorehouse and liquor store across the street. So the deal is this: dancing is an innate behavior, and even though American men have been conditioned to be robots, they are still robots that want to hook up. If you can rub your junk up against some girl’s ass who ignored you when she walked in the door, then you’d better take advantage of it. While I like the idea of getting my freak on, there isn’t much artistry to it. Occasionally, the liberated American women bends over and touches the floor while you hold her by the hips, or she slides up and down on your jock like it’s a bar of soap, but most of the time you just grind against her until you’re frustrated. At this point, the logical question becomes: how do I get her home? Though some would argue for the efficiency of such an approach, I feel it’s missing the point. A dark dance floor, alcohol, freaking –an unwanted pregnancy?
Now imagine a dance style that requires a modicum of skill and cooperation between two partners. If you can’t dance well with a woman, it’s likely that she’ll find someone more compatible, and vice versa. For me, the real enjoyment of dancing is the game of seduction that takes place between the two participants; it is a highly evolved method of courtship that is enjoyable in and of itself, regardless of the ends previously mentioned. This is why in a salsa club, for example, you will find a constant trading of partners, and even committed couples who come to dance with others. They do this because they want to improve, and because they want to meet and feel a human connection that does not have to be consummated in sex.
Before I conclude, let me give you an interesting cultural comparison. In Brazil, it is not uncommon that during a night of dancing a women or man will kiss several different people, but go to bed with none. In the United States, it is not uncommon that two perfect strangers will hop in bed together with little or none of this preamble, and wake up without remembering each other’s names. This is because the United States is a results-oriented society, while other cultures are more concerned with process, i.e. enjoying the moment.
Some men are only concerned with sex. They go out, get drunk, stand around and wait for suitable prey (usually also drunk) and then try to convince them to come home and go to bed with them. They don’t want to dance; their “game” consists of whatever bullshit they can dream up that a woman may or may not want to hear. They could care less about who she is and what her opinions are. This is what we refer to as sex as sport, and the men and women that practice it ultimately lead lonely unfulfilling lives, or if they are unlucky, lives filled with the regret and resentment they have brought on themselves in a moment of indiscretion.
So my appeal to everyone is to dance for the sake of dancing. Hold another person close and feel the warmth of their skin and the beat of their heart. Appreciate the grace and sensuality of their movements as they match and challenge your own. Stare into their eyes and feel your self-identity replaced by universal love. Life is a dance, as the saying goes. While dancing one is completely in the moment and aware (in the full sense of awareness) of the sensory overload inside and surrounding us that is consciousness. Dancing deconstructs the mind/body duality and frees us from our past regrets, current anxieties and fears, and future plans, even if only for the duration of a song. According to the Zimbabwean proverb: if you can talk you can sing, if you can walk you can dance. So don’t be shy: get your ass on the dance floor, bust a move, and purge yourself of the stress and pressure of modern life. You’ll feel better for it.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
My Girl
I can’t live without her. She knows all my private thoughts, helps me manage my finances, appointments and projects, catalyzes my social life, and is always there to indulge my flights of fancy and hair-brained schemes. She allows me to work in peace, always reflecting that blank expression of hers that is neither approval nor disapproval, but unconditional love. I have become that guy who spends every waking moment with his girl. I find I can’t keep my hands off her. I take her with me everywhere I go and bask in her cheerful glow. I give her my undivided attention and share with her all my thoughts. This is more than just a love affair, it’s an obsession. In my vision I imagine us sitting on the veranda of a vast coastal Mediterranean estate. It is evening, a warm wind blows from North Africa, and we are alone. Briefly, I contemplate diving beneath the static mirrored surface of the adjacent, stylish infinity pool, before returning my gaze to her captivating illuminated screen. I sip my cocktail and continue to edit my manuscript, content with the perfect understanding that exists between us. But, alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Even she, with her fine-crafted silicon chips, boundless memory, and flawless logic could not handle my ceaseless demands and the pressures of my work. It is only now after her breakdown that I wish I had taken better care of her and been more attentive to her needs. If only she had been able to communicate her torment, then I could have intervened before it was too late.
Only after I could no longer turn her on, did I realize that I had fallen in love with her. Perhaps it is a little perverse, to love one’s computer, but in reality no one has ever been more faithful, dependable, honest and open with me. There is no one I have spent more time with and, because she had access to my whole life, no one who knew me better. She kept contact with my friends via email and social networking sites, and archived the pictures of all the important moments in my life. She could quote my writing word for word, and had lovingly saved a copy of every story and article I had ever written. She knew my work habits, employment history, loan obligations, and the addresses and geographic coordinates of everywhere I have ever lived, worked or gone to school. In effect, it’s frightening how much control she had over my life and how much I depended on her.
It’s called codependency. Then you wake up and realize that you’ve spent more time with your computer and other gadgets than your friends or family. The technology you had no need for just a few years ago, you can no longer live without. Now you wear a Bluetooth headset everywhere you go, you interact with your friends or colleagues while listening to your own private soundtrack on your iPod, and you prefer to text friends instead of talking to them, for efficiency’s sake. You add friends on Facebook and then never send them a message. Friends add you and never send you message. With your Palm Pilot or iPhone you are always connected, and though this means no privacy or downtime, you prefer it to being alone with yourself. Your personal network is larger than ever, yet you’re spending more time alone watching Netflix movies delivered to your door, playing first person shooters and surfing your custom cable service on your integrated entertainment system, while streaming music from the internet. You have all information at your fingertips anytime you want, you can locate and connect with anyone at a moment’s notice anywhere in the world, yet you’ve never had less interest in interacting with the reality outside your door. You are married to technology and divorced from life.
The life I describe above is also my own and, like many, I sense where we are headed.
Coming from a family of early adopters, I’ve already considered the possibility and benefits of having some hardware and software added to my own system. Frankly, I’ve been in need of an optimization for some time now in order to reach peak performance. In particular, I would like solar panel skin to keep charged during the day so I won’t have to sleep at night, a switch to turn off my emotions when necessary, a software program that blocks negative thoughts from entering my mind, and selective hearing and vision to sense only the positive and beautiful in life (talk about deaf and blind!). I would also like to be able to replace damaged body parts and organs with new synthetic ones. New liver, anyone? Arm crushed in some heavy machinery? Just pull it off and stick on a new one, like Legos! Ah, but this is a slippery slope and I am losing my footing. Still, though aspects of the fusion of man and machine may appear on some levels to be morally and ethically repugnant, we cannot avoid their reality. Indeed, they are nothing new if we consider existing and beneficial applications such as hearing aids, prostheses, and pacemakers, to name a few. And what is the difference between pill popping synthetic drugs, and installing a bit of synthetic hardware in our brain to alter our mood, behavior, and performance, permanently?
The problem can be traced back to Natasha (my late, lovely laptop). In the end, the demands of modernity proved too much for her. She drowned in an endless sea of information, was smothered by excessive correspondence, paralyzed by the myriad of tasks assigned to her, and exhausted by the innumerable programs she was expected to master. More importantly, she became obsolete as sleeker, faster, more intelligent models came on the market (though I maintain that I have always been faithful, aside from a coerced relationship with an artless PC at work, which incidentally wasn’t any good). I thought Natasha could do it all, but I was wrong. Her screen went black and I’m still ticking. Which makes me proud to be made 100% organic: nothing but flesh, blood, and bone here (oh yeah, and plenty of sinew and that mysterious gray stuff upstairs).
So far, in spite of our efforts to push artificial intelligence to the next frontier, there is nothing that can top the adaptability, stamina, and ingenuity of the human being. I guess it boils down to the fact that a computer is not yet a self-regulating organism that can heal itself and knows when to say when. Because the computer is not conscious of itself, it cannot create the “meaning” that we humans use to justify and legitimize our existence. Still, you have to wonder, like the evolution of transportation (from the palanquin to the ox cart to the Model T to the hybrid), how long will it take before computers become sentient beings. We are in the early stages yet, but in my vision I imagine myself sitting on the veranda of that Mediterranean estate overlooking the sea, staring into the eyes of my replicant cyborg wife, Natasha, as I marvel at what she has become and hope she doesn’t crush my head between her hands with her superior strength, but rather shows me the finer points of the Kama Sutra after a dip in the pool.
Only after I could no longer turn her on, did I realize that I had fallen in love with her. Perhaps it is a little perverse, to love one’s computer, but in reality no one has ever been more faithful, dependable, honest and open with me. There is no one I have spent more time with and, because she had access to my whole life, no one who knew me better. She kept contact with my friends via email and social networking sites, and archived the pictures of all the important moments in my life. She could quote my writing word for word, and had lovingly saved a copy of every story and article I had ever written. She knew my work habits, employment history, loan obligations, and the addresses and geographic coordinates of everywhere I have ever lived, worked or gone to school. In effect, it’s frightening how much control she had over my life and how much I depended on her.
It’s called codependency. Then you wake up and realize that you’ve spent more time with your computer and other gadgets than your friends or family. The technology you had no need for just a few years ago, you can no longer live without. Now you wear a Bluetooth headset everywhere you go, you interact with your friends or colleagues while listening to your own private soundtrack on your iPod, and you prefer to text friends instead of talking to them, for efficiency’s sake. You add friends on Facebook and then never send them a message. Friends add you and never send you message. With your Palm Pilot or iPhone you are always connected, and though this means no privacy or downtime, you prefer it to being alone with yourself. Your personal network is larger than ever, yet you’re spending more time alone watching Netflix movies delivered to your door, playing first person shooters and surfing your custom cable service on your integrated entertainment system, while streaming music from the internet. You have all information at your fingertips anytime you want, you can locate and connect with anyone at a moment’s notice anywhere in the world, yet you’ve never had less interest in interacting with the reality outside your door. You are married to technology and divorced from life.
The life I describe above is also my own and, like many, I sense where we are headed.
Coming from a family of early adopters, I’ve already considered the possibility and benefits of having some hardware and software added to my own system. Frankly, I’ve been in need of an optimization for some time now in order to reach peak performance. In particular, I would like solar panel skin to keep charged during the day so I won’t have to sleep at night, a switch to turn off my emotions when necessary, a software program that blocks negative thoughts from entering my mind, and selective hearing and vision to sense only the positive and beautiful in life (talk about deaf and blind!). I would also like to be able to replace damaged body parts and organs with new synthetic ones. New liver, anyone? Arm crushed in some heavy machinery? Just pull it off and stick on a new one, like Legos! Ah, but this is a slippery slope and I am losing my footing. Still, though aspects of the fusion of man and machine may appear on some levels to be morally and ethically repugnant, we cannot avoid their reality. Indeed, they are nothing new if we consider existing and beneficial applications such as hearing aids, prostheses, and pacemakers, to name a few. And what is the difference between pill popping synthetic drugs, and installing a bit of synthetic hardware in our brain to alter our mood, behavior, and performance, permanently?
The problem can be traced back to Natasha (my late, lovely laptop). In the end, the demands of modernity proved too much for her. She drowned in an endless sea of information, was smothered by excessive correspondence, paralyzed by the myriad of tasks assigned to her, and exhausted by the innumerable programs she was expected to master. More importantly, she became obsolete as sleeker, faster, more intelligent models came on the market (though I maintain that I have always been faithful, aside from a coerced relationship with an artless PC at work, which incidentally wasn’t any good). I thought Natasha could do it all, but I was wrong. Her screen went black and I’m still ticking. Which makes me proud to be made 100% organic: nothing but flesh, blood, and bone here (oh yeah, and plenty of sinew and that mysterious gray stuff upstairs).
So far, in spite of our efforts to push artificial intelligence to the next frontier, there is nothing that can top the adaptability, stamina, and ingenuity of the human being. I guess it boils down to the fact that a computer is not yet a self-regulating organism that can heal itself and knows when to say when. Because the computer is not conscious of itself, it cannot create the “meaning” that we humans use to justify and legitimize our existence. Still, you have to wonder, like the evolution of transportation (from the palanquin to the ox cart to the Model T to the hybrid), how long will it take before computers become sentient beings. We are in the early stages yet, but in my vision I imagine myself sitting on the veranda of that Mediterranean estate overlooking the sea, staring into the eyes of my replicant cyborg wife, Natasha, as I marvel at what she has become and hope she doesn’t crush my head between her hands with her superior strength, but rather shows me the finer points of the Kama Sutra after a dip in the pool.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Happiness, Danish-Style
Happiness. That slippery word and fleeting condition. What is it, really, and how do we attain it? In my opinion, in the United States we’ve missed the point entirely. Every time you turn on the TV and watch the commercials that make up a quarter of every hour of programming, you’re being sold happiness in the form of a car, technological gadgets, make-up, exercise equipment, clothes, pharmaceuticals, and fast food. Let me be clear: happiness is not about posing with material goods for others. Nor is it about convenience, or quick fixes to our problems. Happiness is an extremely complex, subjective condition. When I speak of happiness I’m referring to a general state of being, as opposed to periodic moments of euphoria and bliss. I am interested in the underlying sense of satisfaction with life as it relates to our work, relationships and mental and physical health, and not the temporary emotional highs that come from winning a sporting match, making out with someone you find desirable, driving a new car on a windy country road, or gorging oneself on pizza and burgers. Long-term happiness differs from its short-term counterpart in that it depends on strong and supportive human relationships, a meaningful, fulfilling, and goal-oriented working life, and a balanced lifestyle that promotes physical and mental health.
In 2007, Adrian White, of the University of Leicester in the UK, published a paper entitled “A Global Projection of Subjective Well-being: A Challenge To Positive Psychology?” Using the responses of 80,000 global citizens, she produced the first world map measuring subjective well-being. Without going into detail on the methods used in her study, she determined Denmark to be the happiest nation on earth.
There are several factors that may have a bearing on overall Danish happiness. Denmark is a socialist democracy with all the benefits that such a form of government provides: universal public health care, an efficient, affordable and comprehensive public transportation system, well-funded public schools, generous unemployment and welfare benefits, and social and economic equality (to the extent these are possible). Denmark is also a wealthy nation with a small population, approximately 5.5 million, and a low income disparity among its citizens. Here we find ourselves in one of several chicken and the egg circular cause and consequence situations ultimately pointing back to happiness.
Are Danes happy because they have a high level of education and a small population to share in their wealth? Did Danish wealth allow them to develop a socialist democratic system with the public benefits previously mentioned? Or did a particular egalitarian worldview provide the impetus for economic success throughout their society? And would this worldview have been possible in a large, less-homogeneous population of relatively high density? Can a system of government with comprehensive social services function in a nation with a large population? Finally, is wealth a reliable measure of happiness? Where the Danish model is concerned, only insofar as that wealth is equitably distributed.
Aside from factors tied primarily to economics, according to researcher Kåre Christensen, Danish happiness has also been attributed to low expectations among its citizens. This pessimistic, defensive and, dare I say, Scandinavian perspective is the antithesis of the American attitude of optimism and personal initiative that has produced numerous American innovations and achievements. Still, it’s not every optimistic individual with unique talents and ideas who finds success. It would follow that the cost of dreaming big and failing to achieve is unhappiness. I suppose it’s easier to be satisfied with life when one has the security of a socialist welfare state, but will a happy society really ever achieve greatness? Might unhappiness not be an integral part of the functioning of the American dream factory, where one man’s loss is another’s opportunity, and failure is only an intermediary step to ephemeral success?
Resources:
BBC News. What can the Danes teach us about happiness? April 17, 2007.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6563639.stm
White, A. (2007). A Global Projection of Subjective Well-being: A Challenge To Positive Psychology? Psychtalk 56, 17-20.
http://www.le.ac.uk/users/aw57/world/sample.html
In 2007, Adrian White, of the University of Leicester in the UK, published a paper entitled “A Global Projection of Subjective Well-being: A Challenge To Positive Psychology?” Using the responses of 80,000 global citizens, she produced the first world map measuring subjective well-being. Without going into detail on the methods used in her study, she determined Denmark to be the happiest nation on earth.
There are several factors that may have a bearing on overall Danish happiness. Denmark is a socialist democracy with all the benefits that such a form of government provides: universal public health care, an efficient, affordable and comprehensive public transportation system, well-funded public schools, generous unemployment and welfare benefits, and social and economic equality (to the extent these are possible). Denmark is also a wealthy nation with a small population, approximately 5.5 million, and a low income disparity among its citizens. Here we find ourselves in one of several chicken and the egg circular cause and consequence situations ultimately pointing back to happiness.
Are Danes happy because they have a high level of education and a small population to share in their wealth? Did Danish wealth allow them to develop a socialist democratic system with the public benefits previously mentioned? Or did a particular egalitarian worldview provide the impetus for economic success throughout their society? And would this worldview have been possible in a large, less-homogeneous population of relatively high density? Can a system of government with comprehensive social services function in a nation with a large population? Finally, is wealth a reliable measure of happiness? Where the Danish model is concerned, only insofar as that wealth is equitably distributed.
Aside from factors tied primarily to economics, according to researcher Kåre Christensen, Danish happiness has also been attributed to low expectations among its citizens. This pessimistic, defensive and, dare I say, Scandinavian perspective is the antithesis of the American attitude of optimism and personal initiative that has produced numerous American innovations and achievements. Still, it’s not every optimistic individual with unique talents and ideas who finds success. It would follow that the cost of dreaming big and failing to achieve is unhappiness. I suppose it’s easier to be satisfied with life when one has the security of a socialist welfare state, but will a happy society really ever achieve greatness? Might unhappiness not be an integral part of the functioning of the American dream factory, where one man’s loss is another’s opportunity, and failure is only an intermediary step to ephemeral success?
Resources:
BBC News. What can the Danes teach us about happiness? April 17, 2007.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6563639.stm
White, A. (2007). A Global Projection of Subjective Well-being: A Challenge To Positive Psychology? Psychtalk 56, 17-20.
http://www.le.ac.uk/users/aw57/world/sample.html
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Walk with Me
Let’s talk about awkward moments in public. Picture it, you’re a guy walking up the street and there is a women ahead of you, who is both shorter than you (therefore a shorter stride) and walking slowly. You know by mid-block you’ll overtake her. And you also know that you’re going to creep her out when she hears your footsteps approach, and even more so if you walk quietly and suddenly appear in her peripheral vision just a few feet away. You don’t like the thought of her thinking of you as some psycho or predator. On the contrary: you are a polite young man with no criminal record who is minding his own business. In spite of dragging your feet, you gain on her and consider crossing the street, even though you will have to re-cross up ahead to arrive at your destination.
You think that perhaps the best solution is to address her, pretend you’re lost and ask her for directions to diffuse the situation. You realize that she is attractive and tell yourself that in a bar, at the library, or in a deserted small town bus station, you would have found the courage to chat her up and get her number. You take this bus station scenario a bit further in your imagination: the music kicks in, a nice thumping hip-hop beat, and she starts to sing about catching the last bus ‘cause she’s leaving you for a better life. Nevertheless, you get up on her like a GI Joe action figure flexing in your greasy overalls -a stark contrast to her clean and conservative pantsuit. Abruptly, a cadre of coed dancers explodes into the station and falls into choreographed step behind you, in a style that is vaguely reminiscent of Brazilian capoeira. Needless to say, they are all gorgeous. Pan to the ticket window where the old gray-haired man stares on incredulous at the sudden turn of events. Invariably, the fan starts blowing, agitating her hair and blowing her blazer wide to reveal . . . a swarm of Africanized bees covering her breasts like a bikini top. You find yourself torn between the desire to have them take flight and your fear of being stung to death. Oh, and did I mention that at just this moment soda bottles drop into everybody’s hands and we all take a long, satisfying drink?
Yes, as you gain on her, you realize that you must do something drastic to put her at ease. Perhaps when walking by you should deliberately trip and fall flat on your face in front of her? She couldn’t possibly find you threatening then, especially if you faked an injury to exploit her motherly instinct. And if she lived nearby, she might even invite you in and fix up a bag of ice to put on your “sprained” ankle. And what if she gave you a cold beer, also, to ease your suffering? Well, wouldn’t that be the cat’s meow. And then the two of you would be lonely together standing in the kitchen of her apartment, and there would be a moment when, leaning close, she would want to love you because you are weak and lonely, like all men. And you would let her. And whether you choose to be the man or woman in this scenario, reader, every bit of nudity would be edited out of your imagination, just like it is in soap and shampoo commercials that show everything but the goods, except in Scandinavia. If necessary, there would be little black bars in strategic locations, because this is, after all, a family-oriented blog.
But then, perhaps there is a darker side to the story. Perhaps this young man, who is or isn’t you, is actually a very charismatic psychopath who doesn’t play clumsy and helpless and fake injuries to score with women, but rather to chop them into little pieces to be kept in plastic bags in his freezer along with the other mammal species he hunts for sport. Because people like that exist. It takes all kinds, as the popular saying goes. And because of his charm, wit, and dashing good looks, when he gives his popular summer barbecues no one’s the wiser to the meat on the grill. Well, that’s what she’s worried about when she hears you approaching. Like all of us, she’s seen too much television, and in particular the nightly news, which seems to wallow in that sort of grotesque sensationalism. So before you get within ten feet of her, she has already crossed over to the other side of the street. Inside her purse, the Africanized bees teem like a pulsing can of mace ready to defend her.
You think that perhaps the best solution is to address her, pretend you’re lost and ask her for directions to diffuse the situation. You realize that she is attractive and tell yourself that in a bar, at the library, or in a deserted small town bus station, you would have found the courage to chat her up and get her number. You take this bus station scenario a bit further in your imagination: the music kicks in, a nice thumping hip-hop beat, and she starts to sing about catching the last bus ‘cause she’s leaving you for a better life. Nevertheless, you get up on her like a GI Joe action figure flexing in your greasy overalls -a stark contrast to her clean and conservative pantsuit. Abruptly, a cadre of coed dancers explodes into the station and falls into choreographed step behind you, in a style that is vaguely reminiscent of Brazilian capoeira. Needless to say, they are all gorgeous. Pan to the ticket window where the old gray-haired man stares on incredulous at the sudden turn of events. Invariably, the fan starts blowing, agitating her hair and blowing her blazer wide to reveal . . . a swarm of Africanized bees covering her breasts like a bikini top. You find yourself torn between the desire to have them take flight and your fear of being stung to death. Oh, and did I mention that at just this moment soda bottles drop into everybody’s hands and we all take a long, satisfying drink?
Yes, as you gain on her, you realize that you must do something drastic to put her at ease. Perhaps when walking by you should deliberately trip and fall flat on your face in front of her? She couldn’t possibly find you threatening then, especially if you faked an injury to exploit her motherly instinct. And if she lived nearby, she might even invite you in and fix up a bag of ice to put on your “sprained” ankle. And what if she gave you a cold beer, also, to ease your suffering? Well, wouldn’t that be the cat’s meow. And then the two of you would be lonely together standing in the kitchen of her apartment, and there would be a moment when, leaning close, she would want to love you because you are weak and lonely, like all men. And you would let her. And whether you choose to be the man or woman in this scenario, reader, every bit of nudity would be edited out of your imagination, just like it is in soap and shampoo commercials that show everything but the goods, except in Scandinavia. If necessary, there would be little black bars in strategic locations, because this is, after all, a family-oriented blog.
But then, perhaps there is a darker side to the story. Perhaps this young man, who is or isn’t you, is actually a very charismatic psychopath who doesn’t play clumsy and helpless and fake injuries to score with women, but rather to chop them into little pieces to be kept in plastic bags in his freezer along with the other mammal species he hunts for sport. Because people like that exist. It takes all kinds, as the popular saying goes. And because of his charm, wit, and dashing good looks, when he gives his popular summer barbecues no one’s the wiser to the meat on the grill. Well, that’s what she’s worried about when she hears you approaching. Like all of us, she’s seen too much television, and in particular the nightly news, which seems to wallow in that sort of grotesque sensationalism. So before you get within ten feet of her, she has already crossed over to the other side of the street. Inside her purse, the Africanized bees teem like a pulsing can of mace ready to defend her.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Fluff and Fold
A visit to the laundromat provides a glimpse into the America you don’t see on television, or behind the safety of the deadbolt on your door. At the laundromat you will encounter all manner of Americans different from yourself that you try to avoid by hiding in your house and taking refuge in material comfort. The laundromat disabuses the cultural myth of an America typified by the single family home, two kids, a dog and a yard to play in with a white picket fence; an apple pie cooling on the window sill, baseball games, and backyard barbecues on the Fourth of July; PTA meetings, cherry red convertibles, blond women, and your friendly neighborhood policeman.
Let’s face it, no one goes to the laundromat unless they absolutely have to. It is the most palpable example that the United States is fundamentally a class system where the rich don't mix with the poor. While frequenting a laundromat doesn’t necessarily mean you’re poor, it invariably means you don’t own a home, are on the move or in transition, or recently arrived to stay. So who falls into these categories? People who rent apartments or shared housing without laundry facilities (in particular students), tourists and travelers, immigrants, and the homeless. People who wash their clothes at the laundromat often live unstable, lonely lives, without even a friend with a washer and dryer to borrow.
What’s curious about the laundromat is that people rarely speak to each other or make eye contact, though they are forced to spend hours together in a confined space using shared facilities. This is the result of a pervasive fear and distrust of others, in my opinion a general characteristic of anomic American society, which is palpable in the washed-out neon glow of the laundromat. Furthermore, we are anxious about having to expose our dirty garments, in particular our underwear and bedding, in a public space and to the scrutiny of strangers. We come to the laundromat looking shabby, wearing whatever is left and still clean, and can’t help but feel naked and vulnerable when our name brand and favorite, best clothing, which has become our identity and armor to world, is in the suds. This insecurity is pure vanity. So long as everyone conforms to the status quo, people don’t really care about or pay attention to how others dress and behave in public. The big illusion, which no doubt comes from a visual culture of celebrity worship, is that we somehow matter to strangers. But the truth is that in the public space we are all equally insignificant, provided that we aren’t a threat. Nevertheless, some worry that strangers will be able to read the perversions, eccentricities, and secrets of their lives like tarot cards or tea leaves in their laundry. Neuroses aside, it is always prudent to keep an eye on your belongings in public.
The problem with the laundromat is that it is a no-mans land. Therefore, if you aren’t there, someone can in all fairness take your clothes and dump them on the counter when they are done washing or drying to make room for their own. So if your shirt fell on the grimy floor and got trampled on, can you really blame anyone for it? You were the one who decided in the meantime to pop into the mini mart next door. But what’s worse is when you come back and you find some or all of your clothes missing. This happened to friend of mine once, and in an apartment complex no less. Turned out that the neighbor liked his live-in girlfriend’s designer underwear and kept them for herself. Not that people hang around laundromats waiting for the moment you leave to steal your used clothes that may or may not fit. I can just hear the conversation from the alley, “Hey Frank, look at this guy. He’s just your size and he’s got a big bag of clothes. Hope he steps out later for a pack of smokes. Ha, ha.” Though a rare occurrence, it can and does happen, which brings me to my next point.
I never leave my laundry unattended. My clothes aren’t any fancier than someone else’s, but they’re mine. I’ve established a relationship with them. I’ve worn in those jeans so they fit just perfect, I remember when I wore that shirt to a successful job interview, and those lucky boxers of mine, what would I do without them? So going to the laundromat requires patience if you want to be certain that no one messes with your stuff. It is a lost part of your day, given that eternal vigilance requires you to put your other activities on hold. It is the time-old trade off between freedom and protecting one’s resources. For you followers of organized religion, the laundromat is how I imagine the afterlife: a limbo between heaven and hell. As you watch you clothes spin in the dryer as if they had a life of their own, looking in on that festive atmosphere of dancing, prancing clothing mixed together in a giant orgy of color, you contemplate eternity and your own mortality. In that drab clinical establishment, where the walls are bare and everyone is alone, you learn to accept the frailty and temporality of the human condition. You look at the other customers and feel sorry for them, as they must also pity you. You realize that much of life is a fight against degradation and decay, and that keeping clean is a way to preserve your dignity. Even the homeless man will scrape his change together and forego a meal or a drink for a clean change of clothes. Sitting in that laundromat, you have time to think about yourself and the world you live in. Your distrust of the people around you is replaced by curiosity and compassion as you watch them going about the daily maintenance of their lives. You find yourself wishing that politicians and business leaders could spend a day at the laundromat pondering their own identity and humanity, while appreciating the humble struggle of average Americans with whom they have little understanding or contact and all too often ignore. It would be nice to see these power brokers of our society stripped bare and forced to air their dirty linen to the critical public eye.
Let’s face it, no one goes to the laundromat unless they absolutely have to. It is the most palpable example that the United States is fundamentally a class system where the rich don't mix with the poor. While frequenting a laundromat doesn’t necessarily mean you’re poor, it invariably means you don’t own a home, are on the move or in transition, or recently arrived to stay. So who falls into these categories? People who rent apartments or shared housing without laundry facilities (in particular students), tourists and travelers, immigrants, and the homeless. People who wash their clothes at the laundromat often live unstable, lonely lives, without even a friend with a washer and dryer to borrow.
What’s curious about the laundromat is that people rarely speak to each other or make eye contact, though they are forced to spend hours together in a confined space using shared facilities. This is the result of a pervasive fear and distrust of others, in my opinion a general characteristic of anomic American society, which is palpable in the washed-out neon glow of the laundromat. Furthermore, we are anxious about having to expose our dirty garments, in particular our underwear and bedding, in a public space and to the scrutiny of strangers. We come to the laundromat looking shabby, wearing whatever is left and still clean, and can’t help but feel naked and vulnerable when our name brand and favorite, best clothing, which has become our identity and armor to world, is in the suds. This insecurity is pure vanity. So long as everyone conforms to the status quo, people don’t really care about or pay attention to how others dress and behave in public. The big illusion, which no doubt comes from a visual culture of celebrity worship, is that we somehow matter to strangers. But the truth is that in the public space we are all equally insignificant, provided that we aren’t a threat. Nevertheless, some worry that strangers will be able to read the perversions, eccentricities, and secrets of their lives like tarot cards or tea leaves in their laundry. Neuroses aside, it is always prudent to keep an eye on your belongings in public.
The problem with the laundromat is that it is a no-mans land. Therefore, if you aren’t there, someone can in all fairness take your clothes and dump them on the counter when they are done washing or drying to make room for their own. So if your shirt fell on the grimy floor and got trampled on, can you really blame anyone for it? You were the one who decided in the meantime to pop into the mini mart next door. But what’s worse is when you come back and you find some or all of your clothes missing. This happened to friend of mine once, and in an apartment complex no less. Turned out that the neighbor liked his live-in girlfriend’s designer underwear and kept them for herself. Not that people hang around laundromats waiting for the moment you leave to steal your used clothes that may or may not fit. I can just hear the conversation from the alley, “Hey Frank, look at this guy. He’s just your size and he’s got a big bag of clothes. Hope he steps out later for a pack of smokes. Ha, ha.” Though a rare occurrence, it can and does happen, which brings me to my next point.
I never leave my laundry unattended. My clothes aren’t any fancier than someone else’s, but they’re mine. I’ve established a relationship with them. I’ve worn in those jeans so they fit just perfect, I remember when I wore that shirt to a successful job interview, and those lucky boxers of mine, what would I do without them? So going to the laundromat requires patience if you want to be certain that no one messes with your stuff. It is a lost part of your day, given that eternal vigilance requires you to put your other activities on hold. It is the time-old trade off between freedom and protecting one’s resources. For you followers of organized religion, the laundromat is how I imagine the afterlife: a limbo between heaven and hell. As you watch you clothes spin in the dryer as if they had a life of their own, looking in on that festive atmosphere of dancing, prancing clothing mixed together in a giant orgy of color, you contemplate eternity and your own mortality. In that drab clinical establishment, where the walls are bare and everyone is alone, you learn to accept the frailty and temporality of the human condition. You look at the other customers and feel sorry for them, as they must also pity you. You realize that much of life is a fight against degradation and decay, and that keeping clean is a way to preserve your dignity. Even the homeless man will scrape his change together and forego a meal or a drink for a clean change of clothes. Sitting in that laundromat, you have time to think about yourself and the world you live in. Your distrust of the people around you is replaced by curiosity and compassion as you watch them going about the daily maintenance of their lives. You find yourself wishing that politicians and business leaders could spend a day at the laundromat pondering their own identity and humanity, while appreciating the humble struggle of average Americans with whom they have little understanding or contact and all too often ignore. It would be nice to see these power brokers of our society stripped bare and forced to air their dirty linen to the critical public eye.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Drug of Choice
Sometimes I wonder if Americans could survive without caffeine and alcohol. Our economy and lifestyle are perfectly designed to promote abuse of and dependency on both drugs. First off, the goal of our economy and any other is growth, and growth requires greater productivity and expansion of activity, which means more work. In order to stay focused in our jobs, beyond our normal capabilities or interest, we frequently and habitually resort to an injection of caffeine into our systems. This accelerates us and, we believe, makes us more productive. When the effect wears off, we take another hit and we’re off and running again. Aside from the psychoactive effects of caffeine, it provides workers and employers alike an excuse to take a break. It is also a subject of conversation in the workplace that allows people to connect and show their compassionate side, in other words, their humanity. For example: “How old is the coffee in the break room?” "Oh, I just made some, help yourself.” Or, “I think it’s been sitting there all night.” “No worries, I’m making another pot, you want some?” “Sure.” If you remember this is just the sort of peer pressure and bonding we remember with pot smoking and binge drinking in college. It seems whenever anyone is poisoning their body, they want company. In our professional lives it seems that coffee and the discussion of coffee (how much we’ve had, how much we need a cup, how good it tastes, etc.) is one of the few freedoms we have left, so we make the most of it. When it’s accompanied by cookies and little cakes or chocolate, even better. Then people rhapsodize about how they really shouldn’t have another, that it’s unhealthy or it’ll make them fat, but do anyway and in secret.
But what if we imagine for a moment that caffeine isn’t the motivational cure-all we’ve pretended it to be. If we draw a parallel between a spider building its web, and the average worker performing his jobs duties, the effects of caffeine are not encouraging for competence and productivity. As you can see from the photo posted on the following website (http://www.trinity.edu/jdunn/spiderdrugs.htm) the caffeinated spider’s web is lackluster at best. If I were a bug of prey, I would prefer to be flying through American spider web country so I could take advantage of the gaping holes. In comparison, the peyote web is obviously more effective. While caffeine in moderation has an ergogenic effect, in that it can positively affect physical or mental performance, in excess it results in the sort of physical and mental conditions that are detrimental to optimal performance, such as: nervousness, irritability, anxiety, tremulousness, muscle twitching, insomnia, headaches, and heart palpitations. An overdose of caffeine can result in mania, depression, lapses in judgment, disorientation, loss of social inhibition, delusions, hallucinations, psychosis, and in extreme cases, death. If 90% of Americans use caffeine daily, and assuming the great majority of them are getting it from coffee, how much of the anxiousness, irritability, lack of judgment, and psychosis of our bosses and colleagues and ourselves can we attribute to our excessive and repetitive coffee addiction? Nevertheless, it seems that what our society values above all else in our working lives is that we take action and produce, in favor of reflecting and analyzing to determine if we what we are doing is right, and if not, how we can do it differently, or forego doing it if it is ultimately destructive or immoral.
Which leaves me to second half of this discussion. What do most Americans do when they are done running through their job responsibilities each week like caffeine cracked-out robots? Why, when Friday rolls around they put down the coffee cup and grab a beer, a glass of wine, a mixed drink, or a shot, to slowly depress themselves into a relaxed state that allows them to detox from the frenzy of caffeine. You see, what alcohol and caffeine have done in their private backroom meetings in certain unnamed brothels at undisclosed locations is plotted the takeover of America. Their success is apparent in the shocked expressions of one’s friends or family when you inform them you don’t on principal, or for the time being, drink coffee or alcohol. It’s almost as if your refusal were a personal attack, a deliberate attempt to reject their fraternity because you somehow think yourself superior. Anyone who doesn’t or, for whatever reason, has stopped using these two drugs is familiar with that feeling of not fitting in, of being slightly resented, or the subject of bewilderment and quandary. In Norway, for example, it is nothing short of a crime to refuse coffee when it is offered to you in someone’s home. And it doesn’t help that it is equally rude to refuse a second cup. With your friends, refusing to have a beer is tantamount to saying I’ve decided that I don’t want to have fun, given that “having fun” in one’s time off almost always involves some form of drinking.
In my opinion, there are two types of drunks: happy and angry, though both can become sad when they’ve had too much of laughing and clowning, or shouting and fighting. Drinking helps the happy drunks to become more cheerful and entertaining versions of their sober selves; it allows them to drop their inhibitions and not worry about making fools of themselves. The happy drunk, sober and in daily life, is generally an individual who is self-aware and socially inclined, and as a result is interested in preserving harmony and his/her reputation, at the expense of his/her personality; this is the formula for becoming what is conventionally referred to as “nice.” The happy drunk is in many ways a coward living in fear of what others will say, and of making mistakes. The angry drunk is more of a me against the world type. He/she sees him/herself as a loner and a victim, and this is because he/she is not self-aware and often does not take other people’s feelings into consideration, thereby creating all sorts of problems in his/her daily life, particularly conflicts with other similarly selfish individuals. He/she is furthermore an individual with a sense of entitlement who, for lack social skills, intelligence, knowledge, or competence, has not achieved the status, power or wealth he/she believes she deserves and therefore has become frustrated and bitter. This is the powder keg that is released with alcohol.
The social repression that we all experience and seek escape from by drinking, on occasion results in the happy drunk waking up with some stranger in his or her bed that may or may not be up to standard or taste, and some months later perhaps even an unplanned pregnancy. Meanwhile, the angry drunk wakes up either in jail, or with a few missing teeth, bruises, broken bones etc., or both. In the case that motor vehicle transport is involved, happy or angry, drinking has resulted in many a DUI and the unnecessary death and injury of drunks and innocent third parties alike. Needless to say, I wish we had more public transport in this country. I’m tired of the hypocrisy of a drinking culture with suburban sprawl that requires everyone to get in their car and drive to the bar, and no public transport to get you there or back. It’s a mixed message: “It’s Miller Time!” but “Don’t drink and drive!” This is very problematic for people who don’t drink in moderation when they go out.
In the objective sense you have to ask yourself: what is the point of going downtown for three or four hours every Friday or Saturday night and knocking back as many drinks as you can before last call, so you can go home and go to bed drunk, with an intermittent drunken lay or fistfight? I guess the point is reproduction (even when feigned and just for sport), and if you don’t hook up and you're a guy, you fight. In some cultures they dance (now that’s a healthy way to work out stress, tension, and anger), but let’s face it, America is not a dance culture. Grab the average guy on the street and ask him when was the last time he danced. Do this a few times to prove the reliability of the sample. Chances are that it’s been a while, because American men are afraid to dance, insecure as they are about their masculinity. And to stop worrying about whether their dick is big enough, or if they’ve got enough money in their wallet, they drink themselves into a stupor. Or better yet, to forget the jobs that have left them emasculated (through subordinance or poor pay or both): those same jobs that they need a coffee to find the motivation to perform in the first place. Remember the movie Fight Club? Exactly. It would seem to me that there is a better formula and that we need to find the joy in exploring the altered and enlightened states our minds can achieve by being curious and open to new experience, where the experiences and connections we make don’t depend on abusing each other and our bodies in concert and calling it friendship and even love.
These leads me to the question of whether societies exist, or have ever existed, that do not drug themselves in some way. For it is a very human drive to want to alter one’s reality by external influence. Just look at children in the playground that spin around endlessly until they get dizzy, or that stuff dirt into their mouth wondering what will happen. The desire to alter one’s mind and body is something quintessentially human, and drug use is just one of many ways we do so, though the least rewarding in that it impairs our reasoning and damages our body. There is much more value to be found sober in critical thinking, creative expression, open communication, and novel experience.
But what if we imagine for a moment that caffeine isn’t the motivational cure-all we’ve pretended it to be. If we draw a parallel between a spider building its web, and the average worker performing his jobs duties, the effects of caffeine are not encouraging for competence and productivity. As you can see from the photo posted on the following website (http://www.trinity.edu/jdunn/spiderdrugs.htm) the caffeinated spider’s web is lackluster at best. If I were a bug of prey, I would prefer to be flying through American spider web country so I could take advantage of the gaping holes. In comparison, the peyote web is obviously more effective. While caffeine in moderation has an ergogenic effect, in that it can positively affect physical or mental performance, in excess it results in the sort of physical and mental conditions that are detrimental to optimal performance, such as: nervousness, irritability, anxiety, tremulousness, muscle twitching, insomnia, headaches, and heart palpitations. An overdose of caffeine can result in mania, depression, lapses in judgment, disorientation, loss of social inhibition, delusions, hallucinations, psychosis, and in extreme cases, death. If 90% of Americans use caffeine daily, and assuming the great majority of them are getting it from coffee, how much of the anxiousness, irritability, lack of judgment, and psychosis of our bosses and colleagues and ourselves can we attribute to our excessive and repetitive coffee addiction? Nevertheless, it seems that what our society values above all else in our working lives is that we take action and produce, in favor of reflecting and analyzing to determine if we what we are doing is right, and if not, how we can do it differently, or forego doing it if it is ultimately destructive or immoral.
Which leaves me to second half of this discussion. What do most Americans do when they are done running through their job responsibilities each week like caffeine cracked-out robots? Why, when Friday rolls around they put down the coffee cup and grab a beer, a glass of wine, a mixed drink, or a shot, to slowly depress themselves into a relaxed state that allows them to detox from the frenzy of caffeine. You see, what alcohol and caffeine have done in their private backroom meetings in certain unnamed brothels at undisclosed locations is plotted the takeover of America. Their success is apparent in the shocked expressions of one’s friends or family when you inform them you don’t on principal, or for the time being, drink coffee or alcohol. It’s almost as if your refusal were a personal attack, a deliberate attempt to reject their fraternity because you somehow think yourself superior. Anyone who doesn’t or, for whatever reason, has stopped using these two drugs is familiar with that feeling of not fitting in, of being slightly resented, or the subject of bewilderment and quandary. In Norway, for example, it is nothing short of a crime to refuse coffee when it is offered to you in someone’s home. And it doesn’t help that it is equally rude to refuse a second cup. With your friends, refusing to have a beer is tantamount to saying I’ve decided that I don’t want to have fun, given that “having fun” in one’s time off almost always involves some form of drinking.
In my opinion, there are two types of drunks: happy and angry, though both can become sad when they’ve had too much of laughing and clowning, or shouting and fighting. Drinking helps the happy drunks to become more cheerful and entertaining versions of their sober selves; it allows them to drop their inhibitions and not worry about making fools of themselves. The happy drunk, sober and in daily life, is generally an individual who is self-aware and socially inclined, and as a result is interested in preserving harmony and his/her reputation, at the expense of his/her personality; this is the formula for becoming what is conventionally referred to as “nice.” The happy drunk is in many ways a coward living in fear of what others will say, and of making mistakes. The angry drunk is more of a me against the world type. He/she sees him/herself as a loner and a victim, and this is because he/she is not self-aware and often does not take other people’s feelings into consideration, thereby creating all sorts of problems in his/her daily life, particularly conflicts with other similarly selfish individuals. He/she is furthermore an individual with a sense of entitlement who, for lack social skills, intelligence, knowledge, or competence, has not achieved the status, power or wealth he/she believes she deserves and therefore has become frustrated and bitter. This is the powder keg that is released with alcohol.
The social repression that we all experience and seek escape from by drinking, on occasion results in the happy drunk waking up with some stranger in his or her bed that may or may not be up to standard or taste, and some months later perhaps even an unplanned pregnancy. Meanwhile, the angry drunk wakes up either in jail, or with a few missing teeth, bruises, broken bones etc., or both. In the case that motor vehicle transport is involved, happy or angry, drinking has resulted in many a DUI and the unnecessary death and injury of drunks and innocent third parties alike. Needless to say, I wish we had more public transport in this country. I’m tired of the hypocrisy of a drinking culture with suburban sprawl that requires everyone to get in their car and drive to the bar, and no public transport to get you there or back. It’s a mixed message: “It’s Miller Time!” but “Don’t drink and drive!” This is very problematic for people who don’t drink in moderation when they go out.
In the objective sense you have to ask yourself: what is the point of going downtown for three or four hours every Friday or Saturday night and knocking back as many drinks as you can before last call, so you can go home and go to bed drunk, with an intermittent drunken lay or fistfight? I guess the point is reproduction (even when feigned and just for sport), and if you don’t hook up and you're a guy, you fight. In some cultures they dance (now that’s a healthy way to work out stress, tension, and anger), but let’s face it, America is not a dance culture. Grab the average guy on the street and ask him when was the last time he danced. Do this a few times to prove the reliability of the sample. Chances are that it’s been a while, because American men are afraid to dance, insecure as they are about their masculinity. And to stop worrying about whether their dick is big enough, or if they’ve got enough money in their wallet, they drink themselves into a stupor. Or better yet, to forget the jobs that have left them emasculated (through subordinance or poor pay or both): those same jobs that they need a coffee to find the motivation to perform in the first place. Remember the movie Fight Club? Exactly. It would seem to me that there is a better formula and that we need to find the joy in exploring the altered and enlightened states our minds can achieve by being curious and open to new experience, where the experiences and connections we make don’t depend on abusing each other and our bodies in concert and calling it friendship and even love.
These leads me to the question of whether societies exist, or have ever existed, that do not drug themselves in some way. For it is a very human drive to want to alter one’s reality by external influence. Just look at children in the playground that spin around endlessly until they get dizzy, or that stuff dirt into their mouth wondering what will happen. The desire to alter one’s mind and body is something quintessentially human, and drug use is just one of many ways we do so, though the least rewarding in that it impairs our reasoning and damages our body. There is much more value to be found sober in critical thinking, creative expression, open communication, and novel experience.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Made in America
There was a time when the United States was known for quality. Whether clothes, appliances, or cars, Made in America meant it was built to last and worth paying for. In the not so recent past, the United States possessed a strong manufacturing base and a skilled labor force that took pride in its work; it was a time when blue-collar jobs came with comprehensive health benefits, retirement plans, vacation time and holiday bonuses, and paid enough to raise a family and own a home. Manufacturing plants were locally owned and represented the economic heart of their communities. The money workers earned at the factory supported a secondary service sector of local retail stores, restaurants, car dealerships, and other businesses. As a result, the United States developed into a series of vibrant, self-sufficient towns characterized by their strong sense of community, unique identity, and quality of life.
Today these same communities have become ghost towns as manufacturing moves abroad for cheaper labor, and blue-collar workers are laid off and often have to relocate and gain new skills to find future employment. Those that remain in the manufacturing sector have lost many of their benefits, and their wages have declined relative to inflation and are no longer sufficient to buy a home and raise a family. How did this happen? Without going into detail, after the post World War II economic boom, and coming to a head in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, businesses began to incorporate and conglomerate through hostile takeover or otherwise. The result was shareholder control of businesses that were once local, and the pursuit of profit with disregard for workers’ rights and community life.
We’re all familiar with the film Wall Street (1987) in which Gordon Gekko, the successful stockbroker, speculates on brick and mortar businesses, concerned more with making a profit than producing anything of value. He represents the transition in America from an industrial to an information economy, and the film anticipates well the early ‘90’s high tech boom and the internet boom of the late ‘90’s. Gekko is heir to a long line of corporate parasites that prey on economic producers though anti-competitive or illegal business practices, often in collusion with government, exemplified by the robber barons of the 19th century, the most notorious of which were “The Big Four” of the Central Pacific Railroad, who fleeced agricultural producer by charging exorbitant rates to transport their produce to market. In regard to the collapse of America’s modern industrial economy, corporate shareholder profiteering was abetted by Ronald Reagan’s war on labor, initiated in 1981 when he fired 13,000 striking air traffic controllers and destroyed their union. That was the beginning of the end for workers rights in America. Reagan appointed management representatives opposed to unions to the National Labor Relations Board, which then abandoned its legal obligation to promote collective bargaining and permitted employers to permanently replace workers who exercised their legal right to strike. By repealing many of the benefits American workers had earned through political activism and labor reform, the Reagan administration had effectively set us back nearly a hundred years to the time of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1907), the seminal muckraking novel which depicted the poverty, unsafe working conditions, and hopelessness of a working class that lacked the legal means and political agency to protect their own interests. Relatively speaking, the American worker today finds himself in a similar marginalized position. Now that the bottom limit of wages and workers’ rights have been reached, and with the legal restrictions posed by environmental health and safety laws in the United States, corporations have moved their operations abroad where these restrictions to do not apply, local labor cost is much cheaper as a result of poverty and desperation, and raw materials are readily available for exploitation. In effect, the reality of “the jungle” has simple been exported abroad in order to increase shareholder profits, while blue-collar workers have lost their jobs and done their best to adapt to a service economy.
Service Economy
The myth of the service economy is that it replaces low-wage, low-skilled, manual labor with high-skilled, high-tech, service labor. Industrial jobs were traditionally neither low-wage nor low-skilled. In order to make a product, workers had to have an understanding of the materials and assembly of a product throughout the production process. Alternatively, modern service labor is low-paid compared to its traditional manual counterpart, is not high-skilled, and employs technology at the end user level, in the form of a cash register, credit card machine, word processor, database, etc. When the services are abstract, such as the provision of insurance, the service worker is nothing more than a clerk managing client information, billing, and claims. There is nothing particularly high-skilled or high-tech about this service. The distinction between the service economy and the information economy is consequently porous and vague. Most of what people claim for information economy falls into the information management category, i.e. the above-mentioned insurance example. These are services that have been around since before computers and have subsequently been made more efficient and less personal, often resulting in a lack of quality. High-tech information management is the modern equivalent of copying and filing; no one wants to do it because it is repetitive and boring; nevertheless, it needs to be done. Ultimately, only a small percentage of information jobs are creative, and these are often related to the creation of hardware and programs to facilitate certain lower level tasks performed by high-tech clerks. The hardware may be either primary hardware used for manufacturing, or as an end product; if it is the former and very specialized, it is likely to be produced in the developed world to be sold later to the developing world; if the latter, it is produced in the developing world. So it seems that the reality of the modern service cum information economy is one of administrative work that is neither high-skilled nor creative, and lower paid that the manufacturing jobs of the past. By outsourcing manufacturing abroad, the United States has passed from being a producer nation with skilled labor to a consumer nation with unskilled labor.
Globalization
The problem with the globalization is two-fold: wages have not increased relative to the cost of living, so we have less buying power; and we have become consumers not producers, with our savings replaced by debt. Today, the majority of the products we consume are manufactured abroad with the result that they have become cheaper due to the efficiencies of cheap labor, lack of environmental regulation, economies of scale and global distribution networks. Corporate consolidation means that fewer and fewer companies are providing the products we use, and when this is not the case competing products often come off the same assembly line of factories abroad. In reality, what we get is not greater choice, but the illusion of choice in homogenization and production consolidation. The combination of cost saving measures, including the use of low quality materials, and subsistence wages and high production quotas for workers, results in an inferior product that is not built to last. On the material level, this formula produces a lot of losers: namely, the worker, the consumer, the environment, the small businessman, and the local community. The only winner is the multinational corporation. Taking the corporate growth model the extreme, global free market capitalism begins to resemble communism, in the sense that individual companies seek to monopolize markets, resulting in Brand X for everything from cars to clothes to banking. Because nearly all companies are hierarchical in structure, this produces an increasingly exclusive business elite that can dictate with impunity the price of goods and the wages, benefits, and working conditions of their employees. While a global monopoly of all goods and services has not come to pass, monopoly, or centralized control, is the agenda of all corporations, as certain sectors of the economy demonstrate, and the ultimate goal of capitalism as an ideology. As corporations cannibalize each other to increase market share, quality, privacy, diversity, individuality, personal freedom, consumer choice, labor rights and environment health are increasingly sacrificed.
Throw-Away Culture
We live in a time of ubiquitously available low-priced goods, and as a result we either do not value craftsmanship and quality, or can’t tell the difference at face value between a product made with care and on a small scale, and mass-produced short-lived junk. It seems so-called durable goods aren’t so durable any longer. Corporations have taken this one step further by designing products to be prematurely obsolete, and convincing us that novelty and instant gratification of our material wants supercede the long term utility value of a product. No longer do they produce quality goods, but rather goods that fail, degrade, or break prematurely so as to ensure future consumption. Another strategy to bolster consumption is to produce so called “next generation” goods that are superficially different in design, or in the case of electronics supposedly “improved” in function, where these functions are often unnecessary vanity extras that feed on that human need for acceptance and status. The result is glut of discarded, obsolete, worn-out or fad products that are not only a waste of resources, but an environmental hazard. This philosophy of production is not merely wasteful but a case of criminal negligence. The earth can afford neither overproduction nor waste in the production process. By embracing the reduce, reuse, recycle philosophy product life cycles can be extended, and negative environmental and social externalities can be eliminated. In order to develop a more efficient system of production, a sea change is necessary in the way we perceive our world; this requires that producers and consumers alike accept that the material world is finite and discard outmoded illusory perceptions of abundance. Because we need to consume to produce, and reproduce, it is essential that we find a way to do so that does not exhaust our resources. Technological innovation, coupled with an attitude and behavior adjustment that embraces moderation and thrift, can help us to reach our goal of sustainability.
Consumer Responsibility
Through their cynical marketing campaigns, corporations have taught people to believe their self-worth and individuality is determined not by the content of their character but by their material possessions. Consequently, we have accepted materialism as an ideology. We all know better, but it is much easier to buy a new product to show status to others than to learn a new skill or improve our character. Easy is the operative word of the modern capitalist ethos. Everything is supposed to be easy, but we all know through the management of our daily lives and in our relationships, that it’s not. What is easy is by definition not rewarding. What is easy is ultimately not worth having. Our common sense tells us that there is no fulfillment in conspicuous consumption; if prosperity is what we seek, we should pursue it in the tried and true American fashion of thrift and moderation which allows us to best conserve and apply our accumulated resources where they will produce the most benefit, instead of wasting our time and money on material one-upmanship with the Joneses. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the individual to see the game for what it is, and to have to backbone and strength of character to develop their own identity, form their own opinions, and make socio-economic decisions that reflect a balanced emotional, spiritual, and material well-being. Consumers have the choice to buy products that are sustainable for labor, the environment and the community, and boycott those which are not, thereby sending a message to industry to improve their operations, business practices, and the quality of their products.
Speculative Economy
United States prosperity has come to depend on cheap energy, foreign sponsored debt, and market speculation. Aside from a few prosperous and innovative industries, we are in the unenviable position of being a consumer nation that produces few material goods of its own. As a result we have become reliant on the service sector to create wealth. The services we provide are primarily related to finance, R & D, management, marketing, and distribution of goods produced elsewhere. We have been able to position ourselves as the middleman of global commerce largely because of the trust the world has placed in our currency and our consumer market. The acceptance of the dollar as the global fiat currency is the result of our historical legacy as a producer nation with abundant natural resources and an educated and productive workforce. The value of a fiat currency is based on trust and not concrete commodities or resources of a certain value and scarcity, such as gold. Ironically, our fiat currency has become our Achilles’ heel, given that the federal government can inject or withdraw money from circulation as it sees fit. This speculative addition of “funny money” into the economy resulted in the boom and bust of the dot-com bubble from 1995–2001. The gains made by certain fortunate and connected investors were then transferred to the housing market where they created another speculation bubble abetted by low interest rates and predatory lending policies to average Americans resulting in overvalued housing stock nationwide and culminating in market failure by 2007. Housing was the biggest asset and source of wealth for most Americans, and when it lost its value and could no longer provide equity for additional consumption, or interest rates increased and forced foreclosures, then the economy slowed and the dollar declined. That decline in the dollar was the consequence of government and corporate opportunism and mismanagement that resulted in a fundamental and justified loss of trust in the U.S. economy worldwide. Instead of seeing the light, the Federal Reserve mistakenly continued to lower interest rates to stimulate falling domestic consumption based on job insecurity, low wages, high cost of living and other factors, thereby prompting capital flight from U.S. markets and a further decline in the dollar. The last and perhaps final straw of financial mismanagement can be seen in the proposed $15 billion bailout of Fannie May and Freddie Mac by the U.S .Treasury and the Federal Reserve; this further addition of currency into the domestic money supply will continue to undermine the value of the dollar because it is not backed by tangible commodities or resources. The failure of the housing market was a natural systemic adjustment to a nation living beyond its means. When the majority of the population can’t afford a home unless mortgage lenders give it to them at no money down or rock bottom interest rates, then homes are too expensive. Furthermore, the federal government can’t keep printing money to bail out speculators and promote domestic consumption and expect the rest of the world to continue carrying our debt in the form of excessive dollar reserves of declining worth.
The question that remains is how long is the U.S. economy going to continue to play chicken with reality? Now we are seeing a third stage of asset transfer from housing to commodities. While for many in America and elsewhere in the world these are difficult economic times, according to the Financial Times the very wealth are reporting an increase in value of their portfolios. The result of this speculation, by the wealthy and others who are seeking to protect their money, is an increase in the cost of everything from oil to steel to foodstuffs. According to Global Research, “As much as as 60% of today’s crude oil price is pure speculation driven by large trader banks and hedge funds.” As for food, when the cost of oil goes up so does the cost of transporting food to market. So what’s really happening? Basically, large investors and corporations manipulate financial markets while governments facilitate their operations with lax regulation and at times collusion, prompted by special interests, resulting in a speculative trade of goods and service not based on their true value as defined by the economic fundamentals of supply and demand. This game always ends with market failure where the small investor is left holding the bag while the profits are concentrated in the hands of large investors, banks, and shareholders who have increasing power to manipulate markets for their benefit. Aside from irresponsible and excessive printing of fiat dollars, the money they’re taking is yours and your neighbors.
Back to Basics
It might be unpopular to say it, but we can’t go on like this. In terms of speculation, commodities are the final stop. The market failure that comes from speculating in food, oil, and other natural resources we need to survive, is one that sows the seeds for political instability. It would be a mistake for those in control of the speculative globalized financial and economic regime to think that they are immune from the potential conflicts that could result from artificial scarcity. A prosperous nation is one that effectively manages its natural resources and produces what it can while trading to acquire what it needs and does not already possess. From that model comes a strong culture that is unique to its geography and history. Such a culture bases its wealth on what is tangible, and does not allow the concept of wealth to become disconnected from the land and the labor of the people. Furthermore, this successful culture does not base its value system on individual success, but the success of the community as a whole in all its administrative gradations. In other words, it is not permitted in a healthy society for the individual to be a coward, avoiding the difficulties of social living and political debate in favor of leisure and self-gratification. The America I have just described existed once and can come to exist again. But first we must do some necessary soul searching to properly understand what we have become, and to make the tough decisions that will help us change for the better. This journey to recovery will be facilitated by our impending economic decline, which ironically has the power to bring out the best in people, in terms of hard work, thrift, solidarity, compassion and hope. For some time now, the rest of the world has indicated that it prefers we change course from our selfish, greedy, unilateral, fear-based, and uncompromising attitude and behavior and become the America we once were, and that they looked up to. This process starts with each of us from the bottom up.
Today these same communities have become ghost towns as manufacturing moves abroad for cheaper labor, and blue-collar workers are laid off and often have to relocate and gain new skills to find future employment. Those that remain in the manufacturing sector have lost many of their benefits, and their wages have declined relative to inflation and are no longer sufficient to buy a home and raise a family. How did this happen? Without going into detail, after the post World War II economic boom, and coming to a head in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, businesses began to incorporate and conglomerate through hostile takeover or otherwise. The result was shareholder control of businesses that were once local, and the pursuit of profit with disregard for workers’ rights and community life.
We’re all familiar with the film Wall Street (1987) in which Gordon Gekko, the successful stockbroker, speculates on brick and mortar businesses, concerned more with making a profit than producing anything of value. He represents the transition in America from an industrial to an information economy, and the film anticipates well the early ‘90’s high tech boom and the internet boom of the late ‘90’s. Gekko is heir to a long line of corporate parasites that prey on economic producers though anti-competitive or illegal business practices, often in collusion with government, exemplified by the robber barons of the 19th century, the most notorious of which were “The Big Four” of the Central Pacific Railroad, who fleeced agricultural producer by charging exorbitant rates to transport their produce to market. In regard to the collapse of America’s modern industrial economy, corporate shareholder profiteering was abetted by Ronald Reagan’s war on labor, initiated in 1981 when he fired 13,000 striking air traffic controllers and destroyed their union. That was the beginning of the end for workers rights in America. Reagan appointed management representatives opposed to unions to the National Labor Relations Board, which then abandoned its legal obligation to promote collective bargaining and permitted employers to permanently replace workers who exercised their legal right to strike. By repealing many of the benefits American workers had earned through political activism and labor reform, the Reagan administration had effectively set us back nearly a hundred years to the time of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1907), the seminal muckraking novel which depicted the poverty, unsafe working conditions, and hopelessness of a working class that lacked the legal means and political agency to protect their own interests. Relatively speaking, the American worker today finds himself in a similar marginalized position. Now that the bottom limit of wages and workers’ rights have been reached, and with the legal restrictions posed by environmental health and safety laws in the United States, corporations have moved their operations abroad where these restrictions to do not apply, local labor cost is much cheaper as a result of poverty and desperation, and raw materials are readily available for exploitation. In effect, the reality of “the jungle” has simple been exported abroad in order to increase shareholder profits, while blue-collar workers have lost their jobs and done their best to adapt to a service economy.
Service Economy
The myth of the service economy is that it replaces low-wage, low-skilled, manual labor with high-skilled, high-tech, service labor. Industrial jobs were traditionally neither low-wage nor low-skilled. In order to make a product, workers had to have an understanding of the materials and assembly of a product throughout the production process. Alternatively, modern service labor is low-paid compared to its traditional manual counterpart, is not high-skilled, and employs technology at the end user level, in the form of a cash register, credit card machine, word processor, database, etc. When the services are abstract, such as the provision of insurance, the service worker is nothing more than a clerk managing client information, billing, and claims. There is nothing particularly high-skilled or high-tech about this service. The distinction between the service economy and the information economy is consequently porous and vague. Most of what people claim for information economy falls into the information management category, i.e. the above-mentioned insurance example. These are services that have been around since before computers and have subsequently been made more efficient and less personal, often resulting in a lack of quality. High-tech information management is the modern equivalent of copying and filing; no one wants to do it because it is repetitive and boring; nevertheless, it needs to be done. Ultimately, only a small percentage of information jobs are creative, and these are often related to the creation of hardware and programs to facilitate certain lower level tasks performed by high-tech clerks. The hardware may be either primary hardware used for manufacturing, or as an end product; if it is the former and very specialized, it is likely to be produced in the developed world to be sold later to the developing world; if the latter, it is produced in the developing world. So it seems that the reality of the modern service cum information economy is one of administrative work that is neither high-skilled nor creative, and lower paid that the manufacturing jobs of the past. By outsourcing manufacturing abroad, the United States has passed from being a producer nation with skilled labor to a consumer nation with unskilled labor.
Globalization
The problem with the globalization is two-fold: wages have not increased relative to the cost of living, so we have less buying power; and we have become consumers not producers, with our savings replaced by debt. Today, the majority of the products we consume are manufactured abroad with the result that they have become cheaper due to the efficiencies of cheap labor, lack of environmental regulation, economies of scale and global distribution networks. Corporate consolidation means that fewer and fewer companies are providing the products we use, and when this is not the case competing products often come off the same assembly line of factories abroad. In reality, what we get is not greater choice, but the illusion of choice in homogenization and production consolidation. The combination of cost saving measures, including the use of low quality materials, and subsistence wages and high production quotas for workers, results in an inferior product that is not built to last. On the material level, this formula produces a lot of losers: namely, the worker, the consumer, the environment, the small businessman, and the local community. The only winner is the multinational corporation. Taking the corporate growth model the extreme, global free market capitalism begins to resemble communism, in the sense that individual companies seek to monopolize markets, resulting in Brand X for everything from cars to clothes to banking. Because nearly all companies are hierarchical in structure, this produces an increasingly exclusive business elite that can dictate with impunity the price of goods and the wages, benefits, and working conditions of their employees. While a global monopoly of all goods and services has not come to pass, monopoly, or centralized control, is the agenda of all corporations, as certain sectors of the economy demonstrate, and the ultimate goal of capitalism as an ideology. As corporations cannibalize each other to increase market share, quality, privacy, diversity, individuality, personal freedom, consumer choice, labor rights and environment health are increasingly sacrificed.
Throw-Away Culture
We live in a time of ubiquitously available low-priced goods, and as a result we either do not value craftsmanship and quality, or can’t tell the difference at face value between a product made with care and on a small scale, and mass-produced short-lived junk. It seems so-called durable goods aren’t so durable any longer. Corporations have taken this one step further by designing products to be prematurely obsolete, and convincing us that novelty and instant gratification of our material wants supercede the long term utility value of a product. No longer do they produce quality goods, but rather goods that fail, degrade, or break prematurely so as to ensure future consumption. Another strategy to bolster consumption is to produce so called “next generation” goods that are superficially different in design, or in the case of electronics supposedly “improved” in function, where these functions are often unnecessary vanity extras that feed on that human need for acceptance and status. The result is glut of discarded, obsolete, worn-out or fad products that are not only a waste of resources, but an environmental hazard. This philosophy of production is not merely wasteful but a case of criminal negligence. The earth can afford neither overproduction nor waste in the production process. By embracing the reduce, reuse, recycle philosophy product life cycles can be extended, and negative environmental and social externalities can be eliminated. In order to develop a more efficient system of production, a sea change is necessary in the way we perceive our world; this requires that producers and consumers alike accept that the material world is finite and discard outmoded illusory perceptions of abundance. Because we need to consume to produce, and reproduce, it is essential that we find a way to do so that does not exhaust our resources. Technological innovation, coupled with an attitude and behavior adjustment that embraces moderation and thrift, can help us to reach our goal of sustainability.
Consumer Responsibility
Through their cynical marketing campaigns, corporations have taught people to believe their self-worth and individuality is determined not by the content of their character but by their material possessions. Consequently, we have accepted materialism as an ideology. We all know better, but it is much easier to buy a new product to show status to others than to learn a new skill or improve our character. Easy is the operative word of the modern capitalist ethos. Everything is supposed to be easy, but we all know through the management of our daily lives and in our relationships, that it’s not. What is easy is by definition not rewarding. What is easy is ultimately not worth having. Our common sense tells us that there is no fulfillment in conspicuous consumption; if prosperity is what we seek, we should pursue it in the tried and true American fashion of thrift and moderation which allows us to best conserve and apply our accumulated resources where they will produce the most benefit, instead of wasting our time and money on material one-upmanship with the Joneses. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the individual to see the game for what it is, and to have to backbone and strength of character to develop their own identity, form their own opinions, and make socio-economic decisions that reflect a balanced emotional, spiritual, and material well-being. Consumers have the choice to buy products that are sustainable for labor, the environment and the community, and boycott those which are not, thereby sending a message to industry to improve their operations, business practices, and the quality of their products.
Speculative Economy
United States prosperity has come to depend on cheap energy, foreign sponsored debt, and market speculation. Aside from a few prosperous and innovative industries, we are in the unenviable position of being a consumer nation that produces few material goods of its own. As a result we have become reliant on the service sector to create wealth. The services we provide are primarily related to finance, R & D, management, marketing, and distribution of goods produced elsewhere. We have been able to position ourselves as the middleman of global commerce largely because of the trust the world has placed in our currency and our consumer market. The acceptance of the dollar as the global fiat currency is the result of our historical legacy as a producer nation with abundant natural resources and an educated and productive workforce. The value of a fiat currency is based on trust and not concrete commodities or resources of a certain value and scarcity, such as gold. Ironically, our fiat currency has become our Achilles’ heel, given that the federal government can inject or withdraw money from circulation as it sees fit. This speculative addition of “funny money” into the economy resulted in the boom and bust of the dot-com bubble from 1995–2001. The gains made by certain fortunate and connected investors were then transferred to the housing market where they created another speculation bubble abetted by low interest rates and predatory lending policies to average Americans resulting in overvalued housing stock nationwide and culminating in market failure by 2007. Housing was the biggest asset and source of wealth for most Americans, and when it lost its value and could no longer provide equity for additional consumption, or interest rates increased and forced foreclosures, then the economy slowed and the dollar declined. That decline in the dollar was the consequence of government and corporate opportunism and mismanagement that resulted in a fundamental and justified loss of trust in the U.S. economy worldwide. Instead of seeing the light, the Federal Reserve mistakenly continued to lower interest rates to stimulate falling domestic consumption based on job insecurity, low wages, high cost of living and other factors, thereby prompting capital flight from U.S. markets and a further decline in the dollar. The last and perhaps final straw of financial mismanagement can be seen in the proposed $15 billion bailout of Fannie May and Freddie Mac by the U.S .Treasury and the Federal Reserve; this further addition of currency into the domestic money supply will continue to undermine the value of the dollar because it is not backed by tangible commodities or resources. The failure of the housing market was a natural systemic adjustment to a nation living beyond its means. When the majority of the population can’t afford a home unless mortgage lenders give it to them at no money down or rock bottom interest rates, then homes are too expensive. Furthermore, the federal government can’t keep printing money to bail out speculators and promote domestic consumption and expect the rest of the world to continue carrying our debt in the form of excessive dollar reserves of declining worth.
The question that remains is how long is the U.S. economy going to continue to play chicken with reality? Now we are seeing a third stage of asset transfer from housing to commodities. While for many in America and elsewhere in the world these are difficult economic times, according to the Financial Times the very wealth are reporting an increase in value of their portfolios. The result of this speculation, by the wealthy and others who are seeking to protect their money, is an increase in the cost of everything from oil to steel to foodstuffs. According to Global Research, “As much as as 60% of today’s crude oil price is pure speculation driven by large trader banks and hedge funds.” As for food, when the cost of oil goes up so does the cost of transporting food to market. So what’s really happening? Basically, large investors and corporations manipulate financial markets while governments facilitate their operations with lax regulation and at times collusion, prompted by special interests, resulting in a speculative trade of goods and service not based on their true value as defined by the economic fundamentals of supply and demand. This game always ends with market failure where the small investor is left holding the bag while the profits are concentrated in the hands of large investors, banks, and shareholders who have increasing power to manipulate markets for their benefit. Aside from irresponsible and excessive printing of fiat dollars, the money they’re taking is yours and your neighbors.
Back to Basics
It might be unpopular to say it, but we can’t go on like this. In terms of speculation, commodities are the final stop. The market failure that comes from speculating in food, oil, and other natural resources we need to survive, is one that sows the seeds for political instability. It would be a mistake for those in control of the speculative globalized financial and economic regime to think that they are immune from the potential conflicts that could result from artificial scarcity. A prosperous nation is one that effectively manages its natural resources and produces what it can while trading to acquire what it needs and does not already possess. From that model comes a strong culture that is unique to its geography and history. Such a culture bases its wealth on what is tangible, and does not allow the concept of wealth to become disconnected from the land and the labor of the people. Furthermore, this successful culture does not base its value system on individual success, but the success of the community as a whole in all its administrative gradations. In other words, it is not permitted in a healthy society for the individual to be a coward, avoiding the difficulties of social living and political debate in favor of leisure and self-gratification. The America I have just described existed once and can come to exist again. But first we must do some necessary soul searching to properly understand what we have become, and to make the tough decisions that will help us change for the better. This journey to recovery will be facilitated by our impending economic decline, which ironically has the power to bring out the best in people, in terms of hard work, thrift, solidarity, compassion and hope. For some time now, the rest of the world has indicated that it prefers we change course from our selfish, greedy, unilateral, fear-based, and uncompromising attitude and behavior and become the America we once were, and that they looked up to. This process starts with each of us from the bottom up.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Zombie
It began to worry me the way they wandered around with glazed eyes, scarcely smiling or laughing, working jobs they hated, spending their free time running errands and attending to ceaseless obligations, and then home in the evening to inhale a take-out or processed frozen dinner, before settling down in front of the television to waste the last hours of leisure before bed. They seemed wholly absorbed in their own problems, and did their best to avoid contact with each other, adopting the same mechanical attitude toward social life as working life, blending the two so that both had become unpleasant chores. When they did participate in some activity or interact with others, it was by necessity of economic transaction, or for motive of blatant self-promotion and status mongering. What they claimed for meaningful conversation was confined to pop culture trivia, references to materials goods, and mechanical recitation of the dates and facts of current events. At such a time, it was rare indeed to hear a sincere exchange of feeling, a metaphysical discussion, or an exploration of creative ideas. Such people filled every waking hour with activity, never stopping to enjoy the moment or reflect on where their lives were taking them. And then the horror revealed itself to me: I was surrounded by zombies.
In film we’ve been led to believe that zombies are bloodthirsty monsters that stop at nothing to hunt down and devour their human victims. They have been presented as an outside threat, when in fact the danger lies in becoming a zombie oneself: for zombies are individuals who have died and been brought back to life without speech or free will in order to serve the needs of their masters. Zombies are therefore tools, like machines, performing the tasks required of them without reason or purpose.
In the modern age, materialism has killed off the soul and consciousness of the individual and resurrected him as a zombie for the pursuit of material comfort. The zombie will gladly spend an extra ten or twenty hours a week tapping inanely at the keyboard to market products no one needs, develop land that should be left pristine, or charge for services that were once free, just for the pleasure of driving to and from the workplace in a luxury car he can scarcely afford. He will buy things he does not need and take on new debts to stay within the status quo of his zombie peers because he lacks free will and the courage to express his opinion and make his own choices, until one day he no longer has an opinion. What is truly hideous about the zombie, is that his often professional appearance is merely a camouflage to hide the decay of his internal spiritual, creative, and emotional life. If you pay close attention you will note the empty gaze, plastic smile, and recycled, insincere conversation of a monster. The zombie is primarily concerned with productivity and efficiency: his aim is the make money as quickly as possible so that he may take refuge from society behind the protective walls of his gated community, and find distraction from the lack of meaning in his life through luxury goods, meaningless status parties, mindless entertainment, and travel without purpose. Nevertheless, most zombies end up living from paycheck to paycheck with futile dreams of becoming the bokor, or great sorcerer, of zombies to come. The zombie minion has been duped into believing that soul crushing, mechanical, meaningless, and often immoral or unethical work is justified if it is part of a hazing operation, or due paying, of professional advancement in which the satisfaction lies in becoming master over others and stripping them of their humanity to make them zombies like oneself. But really the modern zombie lives beyond his means, spends his life chasing the abstract dollar, wastes precious time and energy pursuing the latest fads, losing his culture and humanity in the process. As a result the zombie world is one of strip malls, cookie-cutter subdivisions, mass produced poor-quality products, devastating externalities of industrial waste and pollution, social anomie and neuroses, and economies of scale that destroy community life, and local enterprise. This zombie vision has for many years been the United States largest export.
If you notice yourself or someone you love becoming a zombie, don’t despair. The first step is to recognize the problem. Here are some general symptoms and warning signs of the zombie:
1. Motivated by fear
2. Submissive to authority
3. Lacks original thoughts, ideas, and opinions
4. Intolerant of conflicting beliefs, values, and opinions
5. Unable to adapt, change, and grow
6. Works only for a paycheck
7. Lives beyond means and in debt
8. Preoccupied with appearance, status, and material goods
9. Sacrifices values and/or ethics for self-advancement
10. Not accountable for actions and behavior
11. Lacks interest in cultural or artistic activities
12. Exercises infrequently or not at all
13. Lacks understanding and respect for nature
14. Wasteful
15. Poor diet
16. Sleeps poorly
17. Has trouble being alone
18. Must always be busy
19. No sense of humor
20. Poor communication skills
21. Lacks compassion
22. Distrusts and exploits others
23. In free time, engages in hedonistic and self-destructive behavior
24. Obsessed with pop culture and mindless entertainment
25. Believes he/she is a normal and/or healthy individual
The zombie is a victim-perpetrator. While his environment may condition him to exhibit any number of the above-mentioned symptoms, ultimately he becomes an active protagonist in reproducing this inhuman and degraded form of life. This occurs often when he has some form of power over others, and represents an internalized insecurity and fear, which causes him to try to be exemplary in his obedience and lack of humanity. However, in the case where the zombie is not fully under the status quo spell, the doubts he may have about his personal health and that of his community, and of society as a whole, may result in paralysis given the overwhelming scope of the problem and the number of people affected. In this case, he may simply lose hope and faith in humanity, and resign himself to masquerading as a zombie.
Clearly, there are many types of zombies. Possession of a few of the above-mentioned traits and attitudes does not a zombie make; however, it is slippery slope, the danger of which should be recognized and remedied at an early stage. The ability to recognize the mutation in ourselves indicates that we can still recover our humanity. It is more difficult with our peers and those we love, for they may take offense to our desire to help; they may be living in denial of the facts. Zombies in advanced stages often cannot be helped at all and are best managed through legal means, or, if at all possible, avoided, so that they do not infect us with their antisocial and dogmatic worldview.
In short, the best defense against zombification is a critical, curious and creative mind, a compassion for others, the desire to make a contribution to the community through quality work that reflects positive values and is ethically sound, and most of all, to dream and to support and encourage the dreams of our friends, peers and family.
For those who want to know more, here are some interesting zombie links:
Zombie by Fela Kuti
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fela_Kuti
In 1977, Fela and the Afrika 70 released the hit album Zombie, a scathing attack on Nigerian soldiers using the "zombie" metaphor to describe the methods of the Nigerian military.
The Serpent and the Rainbow by Wade Davis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade_Davis
The Serpent and the Rainbow, published by Davis in 1985, is a nonfiction work investigating folk preparations implicated in the creation of zombies in Haiti.
In film we’ve been led to believe that zombies are bloodthirsty monsters that stop at nothing to hunt down and devour their human victims. They have been presented as an outside threat, when in fact the danger lies in becoming a zombie oneself: for zombies are individuals who have died and been brought back to life without speech or free will in order to serve the needs of their masters. Zombies are therefore tools, like machines, performing the tasks required of them without reason or purpose.
In the modern age, materialism has killed off the soul and consciousness of the individual and resurrected him as a zombie for the pursuit of material comfort. The zombie will gladly spend an extra ten or twenty hours a week tapping inanely at the keyboard to market products no one needs, develop land that should be left pristine, or charge for services that were once free, just for the pleasure of driving to and from the workplace in a luxury car he can scarcely afford. He will buy things he does not need and take on new debts to stay within the status quo of his zombie peers because he lacks free will and the courage to express his opinion and make his own choices, until one day he no longer has an opinion. What is truly hideous about the zombie, is that his often professional appearance is merely a camouflage to hide the decay of his internal spiritual, creative, and emotional life. If you pay close attention you will note the empty gaze, plastic smile, and recycled, insincere conversation of a monster. The zombie is primarily concerned with productivity and efficiency: his aim is the make money as quickly as possible so that he may take refuge from society behind the protective walls of his gated community, and find distraction from the lack of meaning in his life through luxury goods, meaningless status parties, mindless entertainment, and travel without purpose. Nevertheless, most zombies end up living from paycheck to paycheck with futile dreams of becoming the bokor, or great sorcerer, of zombies to come. The zombie minion has been duped into believing that soul crushing, mechanical, meaningless, and often immoral or unethical work is justified if it is part of a hazing operation, or due paying, of professional advancement in which the satisfaction lies in becoming master over others and stripping them of their humanity to make them zombies like oneself. But really the modern zombie lives beyond his means, spends his life chasing the abstract dollar, wastes precious time and energy pursuing the latest fads, losing his culture and humanity in the process. As a result the zombie world is one of strip malls, cookie-cutter subdivisions, mass produced poor-quality products, devastating externalities of industrial waste and pollution, social anomie and neuroses, and economies of scale that destroy community life, and local enterprise. This zombie vision has for many years been the United States largest export.
If you notice yourself or someone you love becoming a zombie, don’t despair. The first step is to recognize the problem. Here are some general symptoms and warning signs of the zombie:
1. Motivated by fear
2. Submissive to authority
3. Lacks original thoughts, ideas, and opinions
4. Intolerant of conflicting beliefs, values, and opinions
5. Unable to adapt, change, and grow
6. Works only for a paycheck
7. Lives beyond means and in debt
8. Preoccupied with appearance, status, and material goods
9. Sacrifices values and/or ethics for self-advancement
10. Not accountable for actions and behavior
11. Lacks interest in cultural or artistic activities
12. Exercises infrequently or not at all
13. Lacks understanding and respect for nature
14. Wasteful
15. Poor diet
16. Sleeps poorly
17. Has trouble being alone
18. Must always be busy
19. No sense of humor
20. Poor communication skills
21. Lacks compassion
22. Distrusts and exploits others
23. In free time, engages in hedonistic and self-destructive behavior
24. Obsessed with pop culture and mindless entertainment
25. Believes he/she is a normal and/or healthy individual
The zombie is a victim-perpetrator. While his environment may condition him to exhibit any number of the above-mentioned symptoms, ultimately he becomes an active protagonist in reproducing this inhuman and degraded form of life. This occurs often when he has some form of power over others, and represents an internalized insecurity and fear, which causes him to try to be exemplary in his obedience and lack of humanity. However, in the case where the zombie is not fully under the status quo spell, the doubts he may have about his personal health and that of his community, and of society as a whole, may result in paralysis given the overwhelming scope of the problem and the number of people affected. In this case, he may simply lose hope and faith in humanity, and resign himself to masquerading as a zombie.
Clearly, there are many types of zombies. Possession of a few of the above-mentioned traits and attitudes does not a zombie make; however, it is slippery slope, the danger of which should be recognized and remedied at an early stage. The ability to recognize the mutation in ourselves indicates that we can still recover our humanity. It is more difficult with our peers and those we love, for they may take offense to our desire to help; they may be living in denial of the facts. Zombies in advanced stages often cannot be helped at all and are best managed through legal means, or, if at all possible, avoided, so that they do not infect us with their antisocial and dogmatic worldview.
In short, the best defense against zombification is a critical, curious and creative mind, a compassion for others, the desire to make a contribution to the community through quality work that reflects positive values and is ethically sound, and most of all, to dream and to support and encourage the dreams of our friends, peers and family.
For those who want to know more, here are some interesting zombie links:
Zombie by Fela Kuti
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fela_Kuti
In 1977, Fela and the Afrika 70 released the hit album Zombie, a scathing attack on Nigerian soldiers using the "zombie" metaphor to describe the methods of the Nigerian military.
The Serpent and the Rainbow by Wade Davis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade_Davis
The Serpent and the Rainbow, published by Davis in 1985, is a nonfiction work investigating folk preparations implicated in the creation of zombies in Haiti.
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