Another fine mess: Laurel and Hardy did it this time

There aren't many who didn't find Laurel & Hardy knee-slapping funny. Yes, their humor was mostly visual. And yes, they were a couple of sad sacks who never had a plan to achieve their ends, in fact it was clear from the start they'd most likely never even get started. But, we loved them in spite of all their innate shortcomings, for they never hurt anyone, not even themselves.

Oh, how different in the farce of epic proportions that just played out on the British Isles.

When I see Boris Johnson and Niall Farange, I can't help but think of the famous hapless duo, but the hard-hitting reality of it is: they are willing to exact any cost to serve their own ends, and before it's all over millions of us are going to have to pay for it, in more ways than one. Oh, don't get me wrong, as the old saw goes, "the people have spoken" ... or at least they think they have. For all the ranting, raving, ravaging, and in the end, death, that was perpetrated on all of us, it's pretty the same, old, same-old. Except for the nice mess you've put all of us in.

Even if you draw a personal analogy and look at Great Britain and the EU as old married couple, you realize that it's hard to live too long with an abusive partner: one who's in he marriage, but not really; one who declares his fidelity, but within limits; one who loves it when things go well, but tries to blame you for his own shortcomings; one who always wants more than he gives, well, because he always gives you the feeling that he's somehow better than you and deserves just a little more.

Divorce papers have been filed, and now 40 years of almost togetherness has to be unraveled. If that's not a fine mess, I don't know what it. On the Continent, we all knew that's what's coming. My reaction from taking in the news from several sources in several countries is that this was apparently not so clear to the British electorate. The number of Google searches regarding "what happens next" after the Brexit more than tripled. You'd think you'd have worked that out ahead of time.

Of course, Mr. I'll-give-you-a-referendum Cameron, who is typical British-EU style was for leaving then staying then letting everyone else decide and then staying again, it politically cowardly fashion didn't resign as promised, he decided to postpone it till October. Why? What's still to decide? Everyone knows what needs to be done now, but Cameron doesn't appear to be the one who wants to do it.

What is more, our Stan & Ollie stand-ins are claiming there's no need to rush into exit negotiations. I might not have liked them before, but should this turn out to be true, it will only confirm my suspicions that they just might be what I took them for before: snake-oil salesmen. The farther to the right you go on the old political spectrum, the more oily they become. You wanted out. The people said "out", so get on board and see that you go. That's how it's supposed to work. But, I can't say I can see a real plan at work there, but it would be hard to make out amongst all the posturing the supposed winners. Not a word of substance from a one of them. But I didn't expect any.

The result of the referendum was fairly close overall, but the regional distribution of in-and-out votes was revealing. England, except for London voted out; Gibraltar, Scotland and Northern Ireland voted in. In other words, the referendum showed the rest of us quite clearly just how unified the United Kingdom is at heart, namely not at all, and that is going to bring us yet more time-consuming trouble before the exit negotiations even begin, if they ever do.

The most crucial knock-on issue of this whole debacle, of course, is Scotland. The vote had hardly been tallied with the Scottish prime minister let us all know that her country's independence referendum is back on the table. They'll probably even get busy about it and push it through again. (Rumor, not unexpectedly, had it Northern Ireland was considering its options in this regard as well.) To top everything off, they'll likely vote to leave Great Britain. And then? What then? The EU can't in good conscience take them in. It's not just that all the agreements which now need to be unraveled have been agreed to with a third party and therefore cannot be legally binding, and it's not just that there is no rulebook for parts of a whole doing anything.

I don't know if it's clear to everyone that for the past two years, the United States, in particular, but the EU (against its own best interests and suffering under the undue neoliberal pressure being exerted by -- you guessed it -- the UK) have been trying to sanction Russia into submission for doing precisely that: accepting the vote of a quasi-autonomous region and taking them into their fold. Over there it was a violation of human rights and international law; over here, it's going to be what? Democracy? I don't see that the EU can do a damn thing for anyone in the UK any more and the integrity of the UK itself has been threatened.

And then there's my favorite side effect that not a single politician, talking head, or journalist on either side of the Channel even mentioned during the last month, but it should have been on everyone's mind: NATO. The UK voted to leave the EU, that is true, but they aren't leaving NATO, that's for sure. They, like their across-the-pond heroes, love waging war too much to even consider that. The crisis within the EU has become a potential military crisis. Should the exit negotiations get too difficult -- in common parlance, if the divorce should get too messy -- there are always ways to get everyone rallying around the flag. NATO should know, it's what they do best, and so now, at this very critical juncture in history (and the Brexit isn't the biggest issue), when the USA and NATO are so openly provoking Russia that even American and toe-the-line European politicians and journalists are starting questioning their true motives this biggest of all side shows had to take place. They say that in comedy, timing is everything, and right now, I don't hear anybody laughing.

Great Britain will now have the dubious distinction of electing what will without a doubt be the most far-right national government in Europe. Yes, yes, we have practiced having ultra-right factions in supposedly democratic governments ever since the coup in Kiev, and we're more comfortable with the idea now, but it's much easier to shrug off a second or third-world country, is it not? It's something we've very good at in the West, and now all the rest of those self-seeking, self-serving, militaristic crypto- and neo-fascist elements have found the legitimacy they have long sought but never deserved. They will feel energized and, worst of all, legitimized, so that's yet another major factor that the rest of us are going to have to deal with in the near future as well. Well, perhaps we should be thankful for the fact that we can now address the issues that need to be addressed to preclude this nonsense from spreading ... if we're wise enough to see the opportunity we've been given. (But of course we can't get to that as long as the Leavers are hanging around and why aren't they now so keen on leaving?) Oh well.

Politically, socially, economically, militarily: what a fine mess we have.

Pogo nailed it ... on Orlando, even

For my younger American and for my European readers, I should tell you: Pogo was an opossum, a marsupial native to North America, who lived in the Okefenokee Swamp. He was the central character of a comic strip of the same name, a comic strip known for it satirical look at American social and political issues of the time.

The graphic on the right is the comic strip from Earth Day 1971, in which Pogo utters what is arguably his most well-known, and certainly most quoted line: "We have met the enemy and he is us.". Though made in the context of our own human destruction of our life environment, it is applicable to a much wider range of issues.

Let's face it folks: whether we like it or not, whether we want to admit it or not, we human beings are our own worst enemies and as well as every other living creature on this little planet of ours. We are apparently too short-sighted to realize how dangerous we are, to others, of course, but also to ourselves. If we weren't the dominant living species on the planet, I'm sure we'd be contained in some hazardous materials box on a rocket ship to nowhere in particular somewhere out there in space.

The latest reason good ol' Pogo sprang to mind has nothing to do with the environment, however. No, to be perfectly honest, the Parisian climate change fiasco at the end of last year was so much business as usual, so utterly ignorant of anything serious that poor ol' Pogo never made it into my head. It's too easy to ignore the environment and the climate. A couple of sunny days and everyone wants to go to the beach; let is snow unreasonably somewhere and the environmental blockheads will be making lame jokes that no one can even laugh at. I was so busy facepalming myself then that I almost charged myself with assault. Yeah, that's a different matter altogether.

No, I had to think of Pogo again because of the two key notions in his quip: "enemy" and "us". "We have met the enemy and he is us." I suppose the events of this past week also called forth the irony involved in the quotes source, which is, a many know, a parody of a message sent in 1813 from U.S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to Army General William Henry Harrison after his victory in the Battle of Lake Erie, stating, "We have met the enemy, and they are ours." In those days wars were wars and battles were battles and there was a certain clarity to life, I suppose. Things have changed quite a bit in the meantime, and these days we find ourselves inextricably caught in a hodge-podge of sticky, clammy, and utterly revolting ideas that breathe new life into Pogo's poignant words.

Imagine this: a seriously disturbed and obviously psychopathic individual, who is known to have frequented a nightclub teeming with alternative lifestyles, but whose family's cultural heritage we love to denigrate, and who is known to federal authorities for his bizarre behavior yet is classified more or less as "harmless" (but probably useful as well) and so can still legally acquire a semi-automatic, and appropriately designated, "assault rifle", and who was working as an armed security guard anyhow, goes to that nightclub and kills and wounds over 100 people before the police "take him out". And, to make the madness complete, Daesh wants to take credit. How bizarre is that? And just how bizzare is the aftermath "discussion", or is it simply a media frenzy, with no beginning, no middle, and Lord knows, no end?

The thing about reality is, you can't make this stuff up. Now every hollow talking-head, every no-nothing pundit, and every armchair expert with a social-media feed is telling us who did what to whom and why and for what reason, complete with Constitutional justifications, foregone conclusions, and not an ounce of common sense. Jaws are dropping, heads are shaking, fingers are pointing, tongues are wagging, bile is spewing, presumptive presidential candidates are tweeting, political nobodies are trying to capitalize, hysteria is rising, fear is being mongered, and the world is watching.

Let me make myself clear: this incident was a tragedy; it doesn't matter who was targeted, the attack was unwarranted and unnecessary; it was hateful, despicable, and cowardly; it was a senseless waste of life and cause of pain, not only for those directly involved, but for their friends, family, and all the rest of us. Our fellow human beings were needlessly and pathologically ravaged, and there is not a religious belief, allegedly sacred text, or misplaced ideology that justifies this in any way. The merest "yes, but" reveals you as the insensitive, cruel, and heartless idiot that you are. That's not harsh. It's just that simple.

But what we're seeing (again), of course, is the unabashed, shameful, disgusting, and reprehensible instrumentalization of others' tragedy for our own less-than-honorable ends. The terrorized see only the looming threat of radicalized Islam (even though the perpetrator probably didn't know any more about Islam than they do); the holier-than-thou religionists see only the righteous infliction of overdue punishment upon the iniquitous (though, thankfully, the majority of religious people don't); the deluded 2nd-Amendment worshippers see only Obama's black hand reaching for their guns; the NRA-lobbyists see untold possibilities for more influence; the purveyors of global terror see new opportunities for exploitation and further justifications; the paranoid see conspiracies, the candidates see votes; and the military-industrial complex sees dollar signs. Oh, how proud we must be.

And all this ranting, raving, accusing, weeping, moaning, wailing and gnashing of teeth gets us no where, of course. We'll spend the rest of what little time's left to us fixing the blame without once thinking about fixing the problem(s). Once again too many people are slain and traumatized for absolutely no reason at all, because we resolutely refuse to own up to one simple fact: tragedies like this are, by and large, avoidable, because -- and this is key -- they are of our own making.

Events like this happen all over the world, but they don't happen as often nor on such a scale as they do in the United States. There is something to the perception that everything is simply bigger there. The only thing really different about American events are the gun-nut reactions. Just about everyone else around the world sees guns for what they are: sports equipment, not some glorified extensional illusion of something they never really had. The right to own a gun has little, if anything, to do with freedom.

Real rights and guarantees of freedom were given up willingly in America in the wake of 9/11 and in accord with what the so-called American leadership wanted: suspension of habeas corpus, the ability to monitor, search and seize without warrants or just cause, the elimination of special considerations for American citizens and the legal authority to declare them terrorists – through mere suspicion -- and extract them from the civil judicial system, increasingly brutal and capricious law-enforcement agencies. Those are signs of authoritarianism. Only the justifications are different these days. But I didn't see Americans resisting even a little when all that was taken away from them. They just went on yelling "we're free, we're free ... we've still got our guns". I can tell you that when seen from the outside, it come across just a wee bit pathetic.

What events like Orlando bring into the harshest light is where people are willing to draw their lines, and how quickly, too. It is in times of crisis that people's true character comes to the fore. It's then you can see just how responsible all of us are for such things happening. It's no longer possible, it would seem, for us to see things for what they are. The facts mean nothing when you've got your prejudices and opinions to guide you. Yet, at first, and foremost, we're ready to blame anything and everything but ourselves for the tragedies that befall us. It's our rights being threatened (to have guns, of course ... to hell with the rest of them), it's our culture that's under attack (the one that is open and tolerant ... I don't think so); it's our alleged "values" that are being threatened by these others (but we have to ask ourselves which "values" are these and who are the "others").

In this case, as in the majority of terrorist attacks in most recent history, the perpetrator was one of our own: born and raised in the US, radicalized, yes, but maybe not from sources we would like to admit. In the end, the shooter was just another psychologically unstable person, someone who failed to make it in that violence-steeped morass we call American society and who had access to weapons that should have been beyond his reach. But it doesn't matter as long as it keeps the fear alive.

Most Americans, it seems to me, are scared to death, and death is then what finds them. An adolescent longing for good old days that were good for only a part of society; the yearning for law and order, whereby those sworn to uphold the law become ever more brutal and oppressive; the craving for any kind of protection in ever more situations that can never be secured. When you're scared out of your wits, you'll see a threat in every corner, beneath every shadow. And let's face it, most of us live in constant fear these days: the media work long and hard at telling us how to feel and what to think and what to be afraid of. Big, moneyed interests let us know whom to fear.

When you're at a loss for answers, when you can't talk or discuss any more, as I've said before, your only answer to such senseless violence is even more violence. When are we going to get it? When more toddlers kill more people than terrorists, well it's time to do something about gun access first not terror. When law enforcement kills more unarmed people than terrorists, then it's time to do something about law enforcement not terror. When prescriptions drugs kill more people than illegal ones, then it's time to do something about Big Pharma, not petty drug dealers made out to be thugs preying on our children. We've got our priorities all screwed up, that's for sure.

To me it's clear why: Americans killed their society with individualism a long time ago. It's every person for themselves. Only the losers, weaklings and leeches want help from others. Only bleeding-heart liberals would even think of giving them anything anyway. Why in the name of all that's holy would I want to lend a helping hand, ensure that the hungry get fed, the thirsty are given drink, that naked get clothed, the homeless sheltered, or that the sick get healed? And because such things are anathema to us (for even if most polls show that most Americans would like to deal with such things, I haven't seen or heard of a single protest or nationwide movement to address any of this ... well, of course, except Sanders' failed nomination bid, which was doomed from the start as the recent managed selection of Clinton unerringly showed), we allow all this other stuff to happen again and again and again and again. I have little hope that we're going to learn anything from this one either.

No, Pogo nailed it a long time ago: we have met the enemy, and he is us.

The Wisdom Abyss

To a great extent, we all-so-clever modern may have sacrificed Knowledge on the altar of the jealous god of Profit. That's not exactly what I said in my post last week, but it was certainly in the back of my mind. Too many of us are too willing to do whatever it takes if the cash prize is big enough. It's a sad state of affairs, I know, but what do we expect? It's the easy way out. We love to value people based on the perceived size of their bank accounts. That old Puritan notion of wealth as a sign of God's Elect has never gone away. We simply swapped out gods in the meantime.

Let me just say this much about the "Elect" before I get to my actual concerns for today: it's always easier not having to earn what you have. I know, I know, the wealthy elitists today like us to think they work hard, but they don't. The vast majority of the fabulously wealthy inherited their wealth, they didn't work for it. So when their lackeys and mouthpieces start moralizing about working hard and getting ahead, I can only sigh and get on with my life: they condemn themselves by their own mouths. No, I'm more concerned about why we've come to think these days that we can do without knowledge and why Wisdom is for all intents and purposes -- at least in public life -- reviled. Don't you find that odd? I do.

What I was alluding to toward the end of my post last week first struck me when I first came to Germany and realized what a big deal most Germans make of the distinction between "studying" (studieren) and "learning" (lernen). Most English-speakers use the words interchangeably, yet considering their differences can be an enlightening exercise. Americans have been so taken in by (and I'm guessing unconsciously revolted by) Pavlovian "operational" and Skinnerian "behavioral conditioning -- you know, getting dogs to salivate even though they won't be fed or getting rats to run mazes in ever shorter times -- that is, the whole system of positive and negative rewards for desired behavior) that they simply take this type of "learning" for granted. That's just how it's done. Gold stars, trophies, medals, ribbons, graduation stoles, certificates of achievement, special ceremonies and lots of cheers and applause are just a few of the tools of the conditioning trade. So, when we see little Emma or Noah in their rooms memorizing all the information their teachers are throwing at them so they can get good grades, we like to say they're studying, but they're not, they're learning.

The Germans, we should note, are just as short-sighted about all of this, even if it was their language that got me thinking about this. In common parlance a person learns as trade but goes off to university to study. If you look real hard at what's going on behind the scenes, you'll see that apprentices are learning, primarily through hands-on practice and endless repetitions of the same things. They are given specific tasks and jobs and they practice and practice getting it right till one day, at least here in Germany, the folks from the Chambers of Trade and Industry show up and watch them do them so they can get their journeyman's certificates. If you look at the average college student these days, they spend a lot of time memorizing (these days, Powerpoint slides or clearly defined algorithms, etc.) so that come exam time, they "get it right".

There was a time when things were quite different at university. One of the most readable and insightful accounts of how it was "back then" (and here we're talking about the early years of the 20th century), can be found in R.G. Collingwood's delightfully entertaining An Autobiography. Eventually going to take a degree in Ancient History and Philosophy, he found himself in his first few terms having to find some topic in Ancient Greek literature that would be worth exploring and then working up papers on that topic (based on original sources, it was understood) that he would have to present in person to his tutor. The book reveals the travails of a bright, young man trying to find his way in his new world, on the one hand, but it also reveals how a university-degree program was organized in those days: the student spent a lot of time figuring out what s/he wanted to know, and had to spend even more time trying to figure out to find, process, and assimilate what s/he needed to gain that knowledge. When I hear the word "studying" (in whichever language or conjugated form) that's what's going on in my head.

Two things are particularly worth noting here: first, there were a lot of basics needed for Mr. Collingwood to be able to go about his work (he had learned Greek in secondary school obviously) and this no doubt entailed a lot of rote work, practice, and memorization), but, in contrast to what we too often find today, those activities were part of the overall educational process, not its end; and second, while Mr. Collingwood was doing most of his work in his head, studying, in the sense presented here, is certainly not restricted solely to abstract or purely intellectual pursuits.

If you've ever encountered a master craftsperson, you know exactly what I'm talking about. There are cabinetmakers, just to name one trade, who can make furniture that can bring tears to your eyes: the aesthetics of the design, the interplay of light, shades and hues in the finishing, the sensuous feel of a particular combination of textures, the precision of the joining and assembly, all let you know that here is a person who "knows" wood and "knows" what s/he's doing.

What student Collingwood was doing in his head, our master cabinetmaker was doing with her hands. And end product is conceived, the required conditions analyzed, appropriate methods, techniques and procedures were identified, and the knowledge of appropriate resources and tools were applied when and however necessary to reach the desired end. What these two examples have further in common, we should note, is that though each already "knows" a lot going in, at every step along the way they are gaining knowledge, improving and refining skills (perhaps even acquiring new ones) and gaining in experience and becoming more competent at what they "do". They're certain not merely acquiring information. Put perhaps a bit more metaphorically, their hearts -- not just their heads and hands, if you will -- are in what they are doing. There's one helluva lot of emotion involved. They are passionate about what they do. Just how many of our young people today have a passion for school?

It was the Enlightenment that raised Reason to the non plus ultra of human existence. Even the short-lived counteraction of the Romantics (Goethe, Beethoven, Delacroix, Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, etc.) couldn't stem the rise to dominance of reason. By suppressing all that even smacked of "feeling" or emotion, the Industrial Revolution (and all its consequent ravages and destruction) was made possible. We were made to feel as gods but without all that effeminate claptrap about "others" and "values" and such. We were masters of our fates and the progress brought on by technology would cause a tide of prosperity that would lift all boats ... or so the reasoning goes. Unfortunately, although many strides have been made, the reality hobbles along pitifully behind the vision. The reasons for this of course, is that we let our subjectivity and our feelings get in the way. Yes, we've got all the information we need to make a better world, but we can't somehow. What could possibly be wrong?

Young Collingwood and our competent cabinetmaker, as we have seen, add a healthy portion of passion to their work. The work primarily for the thrill of the chase, for the increase of knowledge that comes from their doing, for the satisfaction you get when you know you've done something well. They know as well that at the end of the day, there is no amount of money that would (or could) compensate them for what they have actually put into their projects. They work for something that money, for example, can never compensate. The knowledge they have and gain is literally and truly priceless.

It's the feelings, the passion that drives them to do a "good" job, for what is "good" is not determined by something or someone external to the process, it is an intimate and essential part of it. That standard of "good" will vary from scholar to scholar, craftsperson to craftsperson, but they will recognize the "goodness" of the other nevertheless. They speak similar languages of knowledge and skill, not necessarily the same cultural language. They recognize their peers by their fruits, not by their words alone.

What our examples do writ large is accomplished by untold individuals in all walks of life, each in his or her own way. Maybe its the hobby gardener next door, the shade-tree mechanic down the street, or the alto in the local barbershop quartet or the hobby cook whose zucchini casseroles should be featured on TV. There is more knowledge "out there" than the current state of the world would have us believe, but it is too often overlooked, if not simply ignored, because you really can't make a lot of money from knowledge. (Some people do, no doubt about it, but they don't do what they do for the money, that's for sure, and I'd be willing to bet a considerable sum of money that they'd be the first to tell which lucky break (not their own hard work) that got them the money-making opportunity. In the end, exceptions always confirm the rules.)

That dimension of feeling and passion, that longing for "good" overflow both easily and readily into everyday life. A fundamental notion of "good" easily changes and develops into notions of what is right and proper and what is not. Before you know it, we find it is the knowledgeable or are reflecting morally while the informed go about business as usual. The link between knowledge and wisdom is most likely just as strong as the one we saw between data and information. This is certainly not to say that you can only get to wisdom via knowledge, but that there's been a good healthy dose of feelings, emotions, and experience involved.

In the end, it would seem that the old, oft-neglected, if not forgotten, adage is true after all: our feelings tell us what to think. You can combine, categorize, reorganize and shift, sift, sort and shake data and information without having to suffer the "irrationality" of emotions, and this is why computers are the ultimate information-processors. Whether anything good or bad, worthwhile or worthless, or beneficial or harmless comes of it ... well, that's only something a knowledgeable person might know. A wise person, of course, would know for sure. There are not objective criteria for any of those pairs. There's more than a mere cost-benefit analysis or risk-reward calculation or an arbitrarily determined utilitarian output involved.

If a bridge across the abyss is to be built, it would seem that knowledge has to build it.

Even P.T. Barnum would be ashamed

The circus owner and operator P.T. Barnum once remarked that he didn't care what you wrote about him as long as you spelled his name right. He was a man of questionable character and less than scrupulous, but he billed his circus as "the greatest show on earth". Whether it was the "greatest", or whether it was just more colorful, louder and gaudier than all the others, I don't know. It doesn't matter, he was a shameless peddler of illusions, but I'd bet even he'd be gob-smacked by the even greater circus going on in his home country right now: that circus we Americans call our presidential primaries.

The jig is up. You've been found out. All that prattle about democracy and democratic process and the people's choice and even government by and for the people has been exposed for what it is: prattle: loud, hollow, foolish talk. America has just shown that by all reasonable standards, it has about as much to do with democracy as the old Soviet Union had to do with rule by the peasants and workers. Empty assertions, like lies, if repeated often enough, sooner or later are held to be true, but eventually, the truth will out, and when it finds its way to the light, the clowns of that particular circus reveal themselves to be Chuckys not Clarabells.

It's not just that they've turned a serious undertaking (the selection of public leaders) into a an adolescent popularity contest (I can't remember the last time I heard my fellow countrypeople actually discussing or debating an issue ... well, come to think of it, I can't remember the last time I heard them discussing or debating anything), and it's not just that they've scraped the bottom of the personality barrel (Trump and Clinton, just to name the most front-running mispicks) ... no, it's the shameless, disregard for the whole notion of democracy and democratic process that makes me ask myself whether it might not be something in the water in America that has blinded the whole country to what they are doing.

OK, I know that the United States was never intended to be a democracy, and that's fair enough, considering when it was established. I know that Benjamin Franklin is alleged to have told one of his local constituents that they had been given a republic, if they could keep it. But even a republic is a representative form of government, so it's supposed to represent someone, and I know as well that the likes of people like James Madison, one of our oh-so-revered founding fathers did his utmost to ensure that it would be the elite who's be represented. After all, the common folk are just to pesky, fickle, if not downright unfit, to govern themselves. Madison and his ilk have been patronizing that common folk ever since, but this time, it could just be that they went to far.

I mean, Citizens United should have been a tip-off, but apparently it wasn't. How can money be declared free speech? It boggles my mind, that is true, but I don't have access to the same water supply as my back-home compatriots. Money calls all the shots in American politics, and the few "independents" (by which I mean independent of major corporate campaign funding) are allowed to exist to "prove" to the world that Americans are still "free" to choose.

And now we watch how one of the most eminently unqualified candidates conceivable has secured the necessary delegates to gain the nomination, and his party is now scrambling and wringing their hands and distancing themselves from the man because he's unsavory even to them. It should be interesting to see how they are going to handle this in Cleveland next month. And just yesterday we have the other party prematurely declaring the front-runner the winner, even though all the votes haven't been counted. How is this considered even remotely democratic? Oh ... I almost forgot: in America you don't have to count all the votes, only the ones you want to count; just as the Supreme Court confirmed when Bush the Lesser was anointed president in 2000. It would appear the exception became the rule. But, I'm wondering how all those feeling the Bern are going to behave in Philadelphia next month as well?

I suppose I should be grateful, even thankful. The mask is finally off. All that pretense that you have to wade through when talking about anything political in America has vanished. It has become blatantly obvious, at the latest yesterday, when Clinton was crowned queen that both mainstream political parties in the United States have nothing but desultory disregard for anything democratic.

Emma Goldman got it right: if voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal (which the Republicans are still working on, quite openly, to be sure), but yesterday at the latest, all other illusions were shattered. America isn't a democracy and isn't democratic. Its true oligarchic face has been revealed. But, I know there are still quite a few fellow country people who will refuse to acknowledge that they have been exposed. Unfortunately, these people simply need more hope than the rest of us can give them. And the oligarchs apparently don't care. It seems that they have recognized that they don't even have to put on a show any more.

What would P.T. think? And what happens next when there's no show to go on?

Between Mr. Eliot's "Rock" and a hard place

Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
-T.S. Eliot, from "The Rock"

Those are big questions. In fact, they're ones I ask myself a lot. Maybe I'm expecting too much.

Back when I was striving to maintain my sanity in Silicon Valley, we made a distinction between different levels of "head stuff", for lack of a better word.

Most everyone started with data: bits of pieces of this and that, sometimes numbers (1, 0.5, pi) or letters (a, b, c, x) or facts of a sort (25 people answered question 1 correctly) or something that could be used as an attribute (red, large, miniscule), or maybe a date even (2016-06-04). We recognize things like that, but we can't do much with them. They're just there. They have no real meaning in and of themselves and we find ourselves trying to put them into some sort of context for without one you really didn't know what to do with what you have. Maybe that's why Mr. Eliot didn't even bother to mention it.

Collecting data and placing it in a context, however, made that data more substantial, and that's what we then called information. Collect data together in some kind of sensible chunk and you can do something with it. In the business world, folks liked (and probably still do like) to think that you can use information to make decisions (e.g., stock levels are below the minimum threshold ... hence, we need to order more.) I find that too limiting. I see the difference between data and information more in the meaning realm. The date 2001-09-11, for example, is just a date like any other. But when we say, "On 11 September 2001, the largest terrorist attack in the United States took place," we have some context and hence meaning and we can start thinking about it in some way.

Mr. Eliot was writing and wrote our lead-in quote, he even then he was pointing out that information was overwhelming knowledge. What would the poor man be thinking today, in our 24/7-online-wired-interneted world? We're no longer just overwhelmed, we're awash in information, we're drowning in information. You can find the right, wrong, reasonable and outrageous answer to any two-bit question you can think of. Smartphone, wifi, swipe, type and in a fraction of a second you've got it. I'm not sure we do much with those answers once we have them, and I'm not sure how much can be done with them. But I can relate to Mr. Eliot's sentiment: where's the knowledge?

Now, I certainly don't want to break open an epistemological debate here, but it doesn't hurt to ask ourselves, "Just what is knowledge? What are we talking about when we use the term? We saw how data differs from information (at least in one way), so what is the difference now between information and knowledge? Don't know? I'm not sure that I do either, but following the conceptual trajectory already established, it would seem to me that knowledge is more encompassing (broader, deeper, richer) than information. If we took the step from non-sense to sense so far, what's the next step toward knowledge? Well, for the sake of argument, I'd like to suggest it is significance, whereby we've not just moved up a level, we've changed dimensions. Always take heed when you change dimensions.

One way of looking at this next step is that data and information are, in a sense, quantitative. You can, for example, glue together some data and come up with information, but you can't just glue information together and come up with some knowledge. You can also separate data and information into classes or domains: this is an economics statistic, that's a rule of logic, this is a history fact, that is the second law of thermodynamics. We can memorize all these kinds of things and we can call them up when we think we need them. But even doing that: memorizing and recalling really doesn't add much value to anything; data and information are things you can have, in your head, say, but possessing data or information can never make you smart. At best, you'll be informed, but that's all.

Knowledge, on the other hand, feels more qualitative. Some stock-market indicator is rising, unemployment is falling, tax revenues are declining, poverty is increasing ... this is information that we encounter everyday, but what does it tell us? Getting the answer to that question isn't necessarily something you can google. Is there a (or perhaps even several) relationship(s) among these pieces of data and information? What kinds of relationships are they? How strong are they? How do they change over time? Have there ever been situations where the relationships among these data and information have been similar, and if so, what was it telling us then? How comparable are these situations? And these are just the first questions that come to mind, and none of them are easy to answer nor can they simply be googled. We may never be able to get a final, definitive answer to all of these questions at the same time, but we're changed somehow by trying to find them: the search, the reflection, the further questioning, the further searching all make us aware of something that might be useful in trying to address the issues that questions like that raise. I'd say that here we're in the realm of knowledge.

For one, we can only get at it by actively doing something (e.g., looking for connections, searching for additional information, drawing inferences, reorganizing the data and information, asking new questions, etc.) What is more, pursuing the answers takes both time and effort, you just can't look in your crystal ball (or Google) and find what you need. Even more importantly, you start to realize along the way that there may not be "an answer" to any of the questions, let alone all of them together. You do, however, start to get a feel for what kinds and how strong certain relationships are, and you recognize that there are many factors involved and that you find that relating things you're finding out to other experiences you've had and read and heard about may provide support for lines of thought you are having. In other words, what you "know" is constantly changing, it is dynamic. The data and information you acquire is always the same, but what you know certainly isn't.

Back in my Silicon-Valley days, we didn't talk a lot about knowledge. It was a messy notion, slippery, always just slightly beyond one's reach. It was much easier to just deal with data and information and identifying rules for manipulating them. Over time, a good number of people starting referring to that manipulation as "knowing" and sometimes even "knowledge" until it became just accepted practice that when you were talking about (mostly abstract) information and rules and principles, you simply used the word "knowledge". Before you knew it, there weren't many people who had any idea of what knowledge really is any more. And we're certainly deep in that place today.

Like a lot of you, I like to think that I keep myself well informed: I read, watch and listen a variety of news sources. I read a lot of articles and books from various fields and in many genres. (OK, perhaps I'm a bit of an exception in that I can read Adam Smith, Stephen Hawking and Kurt Vonnegut all in the same afternoon, but that's beside the point.) What I'm finding, however, and what's disturbing me is the fact that the more contemporary the material I'm engaging, the less knowledge (or knowledge-like notions) I'm finding. Oh, information en masse, practically buried alive in facts, figures, data and information, but damn little knowledge. I find that not only bothersome, but, to be honest, downright unsettling.

Knowledgeable writers (or presenters) are sharers. They not only let you know what they know, they let you follow how they got there, how they went from unknowing or puzzled to knowledgeable. You can follow the line of argumentation, get a peek behind the curtain of assumptions and presuppositions that otherwise would simply be taken for granted, glossed over, or ignored all together. You're shown the data and information, you're given reasons why certain questions were asked and not others, you're brought into the process, and you're given a feeling of inclusion. You never get the feeling you're being lectured, looked down on, or put in your place. You get the feeling your mind is being opened, that you are being stimulated to think along, reflect, consider and encouraged to inquire further on your own, should you so desire. They make the complex much less intimidating.

Oh, how different are how many (too often, self-proclaimed) experts (if writing) or pundits (if presenting). In your face from word one, focused (often claustrophobically so: I'm talking about unemployment, leave the stock market out of this), direct, unwavering, certain, dogmatic, a maximum of statements and a minimum of questions (other than rhetorical ones, of course), the only unknowing involved is in the heads of the readers/listeners), no revelations of givens and just-taken-for-granteds, no wishy-washy maybe's and what-if's, just here-it-is, this-is-how-things-are, and this-is-what-needs-to-be-done-about-it. No sharing, just telling; if you don't agree, you're obviously mentally or intellectually unfit for the task; you never have the feeling your mind is being opened, just filled, and many seem to revel in making the complex so complicated that it's downright intimidating.

(With the summer upon us and you, with perhaps a bit more time on your hands, may like to actually experience what I'm talking about. Try reading Graeber's Debt or Proudhon's What is Property? and Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom (and the order doesn't matter, by the way). Or try Zinn's A People's History of the United States and Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard. Or perhaps Wilson's Consilience and Thompson's Coming into Being.)

Unfortunately, I know as well that this is a situation that isn't going to change any time soon. I've been to and in enough educational institutions (of all levels) to realize that information processing is being massively pushed and that knowledge has been all but forgotten. Oh, I know there are exceptions -- there are always exceptions to the rules -- but these are too few, too far in-between and not in the "system". Mainstream education, both public and private, has bought into the information-rich-knowledge-poor paradigm. Look at the No-Child-Left-Behind-test-'em-till-they-drop or Common Core disasters in the US; look at the OECD favoritism for objective testing and academics over crafts and trades here in Europe; look at the overscheduled, over-requiremented box-ticking that passes as bachelor (and I would suspect the majority of) master-degree programs (i.e. "higher education"), more and more of which is being dictated by "industry" so they can get the graduates they claim to need.

We poor saps out here in society are the ones who will foot the bill and pay the price for this short-sightedness and by the time most of our highly schooled but hardly educated young people finally awaken to the realization that they're full of information but don't know a thing, it just may be too late to turn things around. Who's going to solve problems when there's no one left who can think?

And no, I never even got to wisdom ... I wouldn't know where to start. We live in a world, governed by a mind-set that is willing to destroy the environment to make more money, that is oblivious to have-nots and ever-fewer have's, that is incapable of distinguishing between price and value, that is thrilled by show, even when there's no where left to go. Where is the wisdom in that?

But, as Mr. Eliot so aptly pointed out, we're so busy just living (with the lack of wisdom, absence of knowledge, glut of information and data) that we've lost sight of Life.