No, I didn't say that at all

I have long maintained that the wonder of communication is that we manage to communicate at all. The reaction(s) to the Paris terror attacks have made this clear once again.

There are lots of smart people running around out there and some of them use their brains (at least sometimes) and some of them don't (or not very often), others are more emotional than reasonable, still others have such fixed ideas that no manner or volume of facts or arguments is going to change their minds. Unfortunately, I must say, that's how people are.

What is particularly tough these days, though, is have a view of things that is not mainstream or mainstream-sanctioned. We have arrived at a point here in the West when disagreeing with a given (generally speaking, accepted) point-of-view is automatically interpreted as advocating the precise opposite. This isn't faulty thinking, it's unacceptable behavior, and I don't care how smart you are or think you are, if you make this mistake, you're just being stupid. None of us lives in a world of black-and-white, regardless of how much most people, the mainstream media, the powers-that-be, or anyone else would like it to be so.

Let me repeat what I've said so often in the past few days: what happened in Paris is reprehensible and inexcusable. There is no justification for it; end of story. Let me add what I've also had to say so often in the past few days: I understand all your shock and sadness, but the fact remains that this kind of thing happens to "us" (I'll come back to that) once every couple of years; for too many others on this planet, this is their life every single day. Why is that so hard to understand? Why is it so unwanted when someone -- like me -- brings it up? I think those are legitimate questions.

Our reaction to the tragedy of terrorism should be (and yes, I'm being very prescriptive here), how do we stop things like this (read: acts of terror) from happening? what can we do to make it stop?

This shouldn't detract us from our mourning, but our mourning itself should sensitize us to the real issues involved. We've got a problem, and by "we" I mean all of us, every single human being on the planet. Terror happens everywhere but in some places more than other. We, in the West, have been exposed (NYC, London, Madrid, Paris, to name the most familiar), but others have been immersed (Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, to name the most recent) in it. It matters. It matters a lot that we have to go through it, but it matters that others have to live with it.

While I have never claimed that we don't care about the terror inflicted on others, there is a good bit of factual evidence available that we don't know about it, don't recognize it, don't accept it, and don't feel as moved by it as we should. This "we" is all of us in the West, and all our countries that believe that we know what's better for others than they know themselves, which we claim fear and hate us when they would probably just prefer that we leave them alone, which just happen to be sitting are geographical areas that we have decided -- for whatever reasons -- are in "our interest". Just what the hell is that: our "interests"?

Personally, I'm sick and tired of all the blaming, all the blathering, all the threatening and the theatrics, all the conflict-seeking and the killing. When are we going to get it? When are we going to understand that every act of violence and revenge that we yearn for only makes things worse? When are we finally going to practice what we preach?

The absurdity of neoliberalism, period

Sometimes I don't know if are progressing, in any sense of the word, or if we are regressing, almost in every sense of the word. The signature value of the small vignette I presented last time still haunts me. It is precisely the attitude of two of the most revered political figures of the 20th century: Thatcher and Reagan.

They were absurdists in their own right. Thatcher openly asserted in absurdity that society doesn't exist, and Reagan, the actor in the role of president, thought Milton Friedman was a brilliant man.

For those of you who may be unaware, Friedman wrote the neoliberalist bible, Capitalism and Freedom, though I doubt that many of you have ever read it (I have, but I would like the time back). It's one of those "classic" texts that uses a whole lot of words to say, well, absolutely nothing, which is as much as trickles down from his trickle-down approach to economics ... or "voodoo economics", as it was called before it became "respectable". Thatcher, Reagan, Friedman are mere examples, just like the liberal-arts college president from last time, share one primary characteristic in common: they may be in charge, but at heart, they're know-nothings.

But, know-nothings are nothing new in the United States, at any rate. Mid-19th century they made a name for themselves and a bit of political splash, short-lived as it deservedly was. But what goes around, comes around and it's apparently back in fuller force again. The run-up to the Republican nomination for president is one example; but our college president, too many "educational reformers" on both sides of the Atlantic, the Troika or Quadrika, as they like to call it these days since the Eurogroup is now involved (yes, an informal association with no formal authority and not legitimized in any way is now playing an "important role" in the European debt crisis. It would seem the absurdity has gone full bloom.

We have non-economists implementing nonsensical economic theory and non-educationalists implementing irrelevant educational policy. We have millionaires trying to show how well they relate to common folk. There are experts of all sizes, shapes and colors who love going on TV to show us how little they know, but so many believe them anyway. We have union-busters going on about right-to-work, polluters and fossil-fuel fetishists denying climate change (and getting away with it), and it all boils down to the simple fact that if you can't but a monetary value on it, it has no value at all.

Stated differently, the only value that counts is money value. A step forward? A step backward? Even a step at all?

As usual, the real answer is my favorite, "e) None of the above".

I refuse to accept that as an option. I refuse to acknowledge that money is the measure of all things. I refuse to adjust to a world that is too ignorant to discuss any more. I continue to resist the temptation to just throw up my hands and say, all those absurdities make sense. They don't, and they never will.

The long and short of it all, if you think economics is primary and neoliberalism is the only reasonable approach to the world, you're not part of the problem, you are the problem.

The absurdity of neoliberal education

Shortly after writing the last post, I was pointed to an article which went a good ways toward answering my final question. It is well worth reading in its entirety, to say the least, even though I'm sure most of you won't bother. (If you are interested, however, you can find it here.) William Deresiewicz wrote it for Harper's, and its title tells the story: "The Neoliberal Arts: How college sold its soul to the market". One vignette therein facepalmed me:

A couple of years ago, I sat down with the newly appointed president of a top-ten liberal-arts college. He had come from a professional school (law, in his case), as so many college deans and presidents now seem to.

I started by telling him that I had just visited an upper-level class, and that no one there had been able to give me a decent definition of “leadership,” even though the college trumpeted the term at every opportunity. He declined to offer one himself. Instead, he said, a bit belligerently, “I’ve been here five months, and no one has been able to give me a satisfactory definition of ‘the liberal arts.’ ”

I offered the one I supplied above: those fields in which knowledge is pursued for its own sake. When you study the liberal arts, I added, what you’re mainly learning to do is make arguments.

“Scientists don’t make arguments,” he said (a statement that would’ve come as a surprise to the scientists on the faculty). “And what about painters? They don’t make arguments.”

I tried to explain the difference between the fine and the liberal arts (the latter are “arts” only by an accident of derivation) with little success. “So what do you think the college should be about?” I finally asked him.

“Leadership,” he said.

This is absolutely "brilliant": the "boss", the equivalent of the CEO in the private sector, has no experience "in the business (was at a professional, not an academic, institution), does not know what the "product" is. What is more, He isn't even aware that there are different "arts", let alone arts at all, and in the end, he thinks his institution is about something that he can't even say what it is.

And that my dear readers pretty much sums up the heart of the problem, not only with education, but with neoliberalism in general. Nowhere in its entire ideological realm is competence, intelligence, insight, or actual qualification necessary. Buzzwords suffice along with a big enough paycheck to think that you have something to say.

There are simply too many of these folks "in charge", but how can you discuss or debate with any of them (not to mention those who would like to be like them and would like to emulate them and have even less to offer), if they have no idea what they are doing, and, what's worst of all, don't even know what an argument is.

Buffalo Springfield nailed it

"Nobody's right, if everybody's wrong." A line from a Buffalo Springfield song ("For What It's Worth"). As true now as it was then, maybe even more so. Why? Because a pernicious infection that began so long ago has borne its fruit.

What fruit, you may ask? How about: over-political correctness, either-or thinking, an either-you're-with-us-or-against-us attitude, advocating love-it-or-leave-it, and many, many more. There's so much fruit we don't know whether to make marmalade or some kind of alcoholic beverage. The former might be better for us, but most of us favor the latter.

My point is that this isn't a new phenomenon, it's only taken on a more aggressive and bitter dimension. There was a time we could talk. There was a time we could debate and discuss. There was a time when justified and substantiated views meant something. Those times are gone.

What's so amazing, if you ask me, is that those times are considered to be "the good old days", when everything was anything but good: enforced and dictated conformity, institutionalized racial discrimination, submission to authority, and a-place-for-everything-and-everything-in-its-place thinking carried the day. Yes, for the greatest part we were "told" how to think and feel, yet in those (not-so-) "good old days", there was still a modicum of dissent possible; discussion was still possible, debate was still possible. It was simply accepted that the person with the best argument(s) won. And then it all changed.

Out of that repressive, conformity-seeking "cultural" attitude, out of that forensically-based, argumentatively challenging norm, we created a winner-takes-all, right-or-wrong, in-or-out view of the world. Buffalo Springfield saw it happening. We're living the consequences of the thought.

The most negative form of all of this is, of course, "political correctness". What's good or bad, right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable is dictated from the surface of things. Words, concepts, notions, ideas cannot be explored because some people find some words "offensive". I'm here to tell you that words are nothing more than words. Yes, there are those who are offended when they hear the word "fuck" and there are those who are elated when they hear the word "Jesus", but how do we know where and when and to whom and for what reasons some people are uplifted and others discouraged by such words. Again: they are but words.

Humpty Dumpty taught us that words mean whatever we think they mean. But the words haven't changed, only the "we's". And now, every "we" feels that it deserves equal time and equal treatment and equal consideration, and I believe that that is absolutely correct. What I don't believe is that equal anything means equal acceptance. It only means "you may say". How others deal with it is a whole different issue.

Don't get me wrong: anyone who denigrates or demeans or dismisses what another says simply because s/he "doesn't like it" is as ignorant as s/he who gets upset because someone from another perceptual framework doesn't understand the term as the in-group understands it. It's time for us to get over the words and get down to what we are really talking about. And, to do that, we have to be able to accept, acknowledge, differ, discuss, and debate what we are saying.

Oh, I don't long for "the days", but I do wish for possibility to talk about it. Why is that so hard?

The knowing ignorant

It should be the case that we agree that there's only so much on this planet to go around. To put it in technical terms, there is a finite amount of resources available to humankind. We're clever, that is true, and we have learned to do a lot with our waste, with our garbage and we can do a lot of sustainable things and we can recycle a lot. But regardless of how hard we try, we can't make up for what we don't have.

Last time, I pointed out that if there were only 370% (that is, over three-and-a-half times) more resources than are currently available, everyone on the planet could live as well as we do. We all know, that's impossible, and so I wanted to take the opportunity to point out another impossibility, but one that we believe in just as fervently as we do that hard work and personal responsibility are the key to our salvation.

For those of you who may have forgotten, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the value of all the goods and services produced by a country. For the USA, it's about $17 tr (that's trillion, 1 with 15 zeros after it); for the EU it's around 18 tr; and for the world as a whole it's almost $75 tr. What the GDP tries to calculate is the actual worth of real value in products and services that a country, or the whole world, produces. This is an estimate, to be sure, but it is an estimate about real things, tangible products and experienced services. It's not a fiction, rather it is an attempt to put a number, a (in this case) dollar value on what we make and what we do.

Money, on the other hand, is not really a real thing, rather it is a number linked to an account. The USA, for example, may have a GDP of $17 tr, but that does not mean that there are 17 trillion dollar bills (or their equivalent) floating around in the world. Most of the "money" is just a number on a balance statement or an account statement. Yes, that's how our monetary system works and it is really not much of a problem as long as the money we think we have is backed by something real somewhere (a house, a business, an iron-ore mine, or whatever).

But, here's the kicker (at least to me): in 2008 when the financial crash came, when everything threatened to go belly-up, when the banks screamed bloody-murder and needed to be bailed out, the reason, you may recall were risky investments that threatened to collapse. We heard a lot about so-called "financial derivatives" and, in particular, "CD swaps" (bundled packages of investment papers created by the banks), and how not being able to "honor these obligations" threatened to destroy the entire banking system (i.e., the too-big-to-fail issue).

What most people don't know, and what the banking industry doesn't really want you to know, and what too many are willing to overlook is that the value of the CD-swaps alone (yes, the most precarious, but not the only doubtful, "investment instrument") was six time the WDP (world domestic product). In plain-text: the paper that was a problem, was valued 6 times higher than all the products and services that the world was able to produce at the time. In other words, it was backed by nothing. It was a fiction. It was just a number on a piece of paper, so to speak.

Those in charge at the time knew that this was unreal. Governments around the world (except, for example, in Iceland) acted as if there was no alternative but to save the banks. That there was nothing to save is inconsequential. That the losses were fictitious doesn't matter. They knew, but got us to believe, that the only way "out" was to save them.

And now we have the consequences: the banks are in charge, and the rest of us have nothing to say. Oh we have so much to be proud of, especially of how little we know and how little we are willing to do about it.

The willing ignorant

Every person reading this blog has got it (as good as) made. You've got internet access, food in your fridge, a steady place to sleep, and a roof over your head. That makes you part of the top 25% worldwide. In more absolute terms, there are no fewer than 5,250,000,000 individuals on this planet who are worse off, if not far worse off, than you.

And, still you complain.

Don't get me wrong, you have reason for complaint. I mean, even if you lead a relatively luxurious life, there is an ever so thin slice of elite that makes your life look like one of abject poverty and doing-without. What you share with those below you is disempowerment: you'll never have what "they" have. What you share with those above you, though, is a permanent desire for more, even if it means that those below you will have less. Greed has never known bounds, either in intensity, or in breadth.

The usual "justification" (i.e., rationalization) is that if everyone else worked harder and took on some personal responsibility, they could do better too. This is, I hate to say it, pure, unadulterated bullshit. If hard work were any kind of measure, women in Africa would rule the world, but they don't. And if personal responsibility meant anything at all, large numbers of bankers would be in prison, but they aren't. These aren't reasons. They're only excuses.

But, I'm not here to criticize your lack of comprehension of the obvious, nor am I here to criticize your morals. Those are things you have to come to terms with for yourself and on your own. What I wanted to contribute, however humble, is a mere simple math lesson to hopefully expose the error in your attitude. And it goes like this:

The USA represents about 4% of the world's population, yet they consume 25% of the world's resources. The EU (in whatever sense you may define it) represents about 7% of the world's population and they consume about 40% of the world's resources, and when you throw in Japan, we looking at about 16% of the world's population consuming around 80% of the world's resources. So, what does that mean?

China has a population of over 1 billion people; India has surpassed China as the most populated country on the planet. Thrown in Brazil and Africa and all that's left over and you've got almost three quarters of the world's population trying to make do with 20% of its resources. If we expected them to work hard, take on some personal responsibility so that they could be like us, it would be possible if the world had 370% remaining for them. You don't have to be a math wiz to realize that as it is, and as we're (and I mean everyone reading this and me, and all our friends and relatives and ...) living, there simply isn't enough to go around, regardless of how hard anyone works and irrespective of how much personal responsibility one accepts.

In other words, it's simply time to acknowledge that the problem isn't with "them", rather "we're" the problem. And it's time for us to act accordingly.

A message from the mirror

Though a lot of folks I know don't like to hear it, "facts" in and of themselves mean nothing. They just are. I'm talking about real facts now, such as "grass is usually green" or "the Magna Charta was signed in 1215" or "the atomic number of oxygen is 8". None of these really means anything as they stand. I mean, who really cares one way or the other? They must be placed in some kind of context for them to become meaningful.

There are other "facts" which really aren't facts in the true sense of the word, rather they are beliefs or opinions or the like. For example, "the sun rises in the east" is not a fact, it is a metaphor to describe a phenomenon. Due to the earth's rotation, it looks like the sun is rising in the east but in actual fact the earth is simply turning. Or, "a healthy diet is essential for good health". Well, not in all cases. Some people survive and thrive on what might kill others, and enough people eating healthy diets get sick anyway. There's more here that needs to be considered for the statement to reflect an actual fact.

What the preceding examples all have in common is good, old-fashioned, sloppy thinking. We humans can very often make do with being sort of right and sort of on target and sort of in the know. Life is very tolerant like that. Oh sure, there are times and instances when exactitude means the difference between life and death, but in the grand scheme of everyday things, these are really rather rare. In most cases, "almost" is almost always good enough.

Now, given that this is the case, why do we humans demand so much, especially so much of others? And, as a corollary to that, why are most of us bothered, on the other hand, by others demanding so much of us? I wonder about that a lot these days. Could it be that we're only getting back what we are giving out? Could it be that we are (perhaps unknowingly) expecting more of others than we expect of our ourselves? Could it be that we feel shortchanged in our own treatment as human beings that we're trying to even the score? I don't know. Like I said, it's just something that I've been thinking a lot about lately.

When we look in the mirror all we can see is whatever is there to be reflected, no more and certainly no less. Sure, it's reversed from side-to-side, but we can handle that. The mirror has long been used as an effective metaphor for life and all that happens therein, so it can't hurt to stop for a moment and think about whether we may be expecting to see more in the mirror than the mirror has to offer.

The long and short of it is that whatever you happen to be experiencing, and how you feel you are being treated by everyone else is almost certainly merely a reflection of how you are treating others and what they are experiencing as a result. I'm not saying this is how things are, I'm only saying this is how things could be. Perhaps that's something you can reflect upon.