”Make the work, something will come of it.”

Adventures in a gift economy…

I, like many of you, have come to the conclusion that Capitalism is killing the planet. Killing the planet means killing ourselves. We are engaged in species suicide. We don’t seem to be able to help ourselves.

For the longest time I have thought we needed a new system of managing ourselves and our resources, but I have had no idea what it should be. There have been inklings here and there. Buddhist Economics, an essay by E. F. Schumacher that wondered what an economic system based on Buddhist principals would look like. It offered a whole new way of thinking of things. It speculated that the well being of people should be centered. No matter how much capitalist economists try to tell us that capitalism centers the well being of people, that people’s living standards rise wherever its principals are adhered to, it just isn’t true. It creates the conditions it then claims to fix. It exploits people for the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few and leaves too many impoverished.

There were more inklings in Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a woman with Native American ancestry and a American Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology. The book is steeped in Native American ways of thinking about nature. That nature is a commons we all have the right to enjoy and harvest as long as we do so respectfully, don’t claim any part of it exclusively for ourselves, and don’t take more than we need. The bounty of the commons is a gift we receive and share. She places this gift economy alongside the system of capitalist exploitation where the commons has been transferred to private ownership that we buy and exploit for our personal benefit.

Robin Wall Kimmerer knows in her heart that the system her ancestors had was better, but acknowledges that it would be difficult to organize people and resources beyond a tribal or local community level based on it. She delivered a message of hope to me, but not a clear pointer to where we should be going or how we might get there.

Then, a few months ago I read an essay she wrote about serviceberry economics, essentially making the case for a gift economy along the lines her ancestors practiced. In that essay she referenced Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein. I bought it. I read it.

Charles Eisenstein explained to me why Capitalism requires a forever-expanding production and consumption, aka, growth. We always owe more than we produce. The way money is created and distributed is based on debt. Debt that is collateralized by the ability of the economy to grow endlessly. He also showed me a viable way to create an economy that is not based on debt and the accumulation of capital. We create money that has an expiration date. It looses value over time. The incentive to accumulate is removed and the result is that money circulates more freely, which puts more goods and services in more people’s hands. It isn’t practical to horde what looses value. We also eliminate usury, the practice of loaning with interest. The practice of making money from money. We practice a gift economy, where it is more significant to give than receive.

Charles Eisenstein believes that capitalism is set to collapse under its own weight because we are running out of commons (that which belongs to everybody) to convert into private ownership. I am not so sure that is the case. We are exploring outer space and traveling to the Moon and Mars with an eye towards growth through privatizing that commons. Space is comparatively limitless and, assuming we find resources that can be valued, the potential for growth is also limitless.

Even so, Sacred Economics gave me the outline of a system that seems feasible. And Capitalism doesn’t have to fail or be replaced wholesale to achieve it. A sacred or gift economy, which values the commons and people, can grow up alongside the capitalist economy and channel human creative effort in ways capitalism can’t. It may in fact be a necessary adjunct to capitalism, its strength being the building of community on the local level which Capitalism is not at all good at doing. In fact, capitalism is anti local community.

Sacred Economics led me to The Gift by Lewis Hyde. I am five chapters into it and pretty sure it is a transformative text for me. It is an in depth look at the “Gift Economy” as it applies to the artist and creative labor.

Because of the above referenced books and essays, especially Sacred Economics and The Gift, I have decided to run an experiment this year with my art production and distribution. I am planning to make what I call photo chapbooks. Chapbooks are small books or pamphlets that, traditionally, contain poems, stories, ballads or religious tracts. My photo chapbooks will contain a small set of images and sometimes a poem or some relevant prose writing.

I am planning to do a series of these books that propagate and distribute only through a gift economy. That is, I will give them away to family, friends and acquaintances. They will have instructions explaining that the chapbook is a gift from the artist to the wider world. They will specify that the chapbook should never change hands for money, that it is the artist’s wish that they only be passed from person to person as a gift and any receiver of the gift is encouraged to gift it to another person if it doesn’t find a permanent home in their library. If it does find a permanent home, then the receiver is asked to gift something in their possession to someone they know in a similar way. In that way, the gift stays in motion as gifts are intended to do.

One of my favorite quotes is from, I think, John Cage, who told someone somewhere struggling with their creative product and how to live from it, “make the work, something will come of it.” I am interested to see what comes of this work.

What Stood Out, WK 22

The giant elephant of the week was the Uvalde school shootings. There isn’t anything I could write about this that would make it more comprehensible to myself, let alone anyone else. I wish I could believe that this time will be different. That this time the majority of the country will take a stand and face down the gun industry, the NRA and the toxic masculinity that has brought us to this place. Maybe it will happen but I am in a believe it when I see it mode.

I read a number of articles that had meaningful, worthwhile things to say about the latest in a long line of tragedies.

This article in The Atlantic confirms what I believe, that nothing is likely to change any time soon that will restrict access to any kind of gun in any meaningful way:

We Have to Fix America’s Broken Culture of Guns

The most important thing you need to know about yesterday’s tragic school shooting in Texas is that absolutely no laws are going to change as a result of it.

In the 14 years since the Supreme Court found an individual right to bear arms under the Second Amendment in the landmark case of D.C. v. Heller, the federal judiciary has only grown more conservative. The courts will likely bar any meaningful restrictions on the possession of firearms for at least another generation.

We all need to adjust to the idea that unfathomable levels of gun violence, including school shootings, are going to get worse, not better, in the decades to come.

This is America, folks. This is who we are.

The author offers some suggestions about putting more funding into responsible gun handling training. He also suggests that we need to get to work on the culture that has evolved which treats military weapons as fetishistic objects through which masculinity is confirmed. Personally, I think that culture will die if the mostly white patriarchy goes the way of the dinosaur as it well may, or may not. That story is being written as I write.

This article, also from The Atlantic, identifies a lack of collective determination by a majority of the population who haven’t made gun legislation a priority, for whatever reason, in their voting:

America’s Hands Are Full of Blood

Most of us are appalled. But not enough of us are sufficiently appalled to cast our votes to halt it. And those to whom Americans entrust political power, at the state and federal levels, seem determined to make things worse and bloodier. In the next few weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court will deliver its opinion in the case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, a decision that could strike down concealed-carry bans even in the few states that still have them. More guns, more places, fewer checks, fewer protections: Since Sandy Hook, this country has plunged backward and downward toward barbarism.

Whether any particular killer proves to be a racist, a jihadist, a sexually frustrated incel, or a randomly malignant carrier of sorrow and grief, can Americans ever break the pattern of empty thoughts, meaningless prayers, and more and worse bloodshed to follow?

Infuriatingly, the gun industry was aware of the direction they were heading as they embraced, after 911, and especially after Barrack Obama’s election, America’s turn towards a militaristic gun culture. What used to be relegated to the dingy corners of gun conventions and shows became ubiquitous and mainstream. Profit motive overtook common sense in ways not unlike the cigarette industry. This article, written by an ex gun industry executive relates that story:

Even the Gun Industry Knew We Would End Up Here - The Bulwark(https://www.thebulwark.com/even-the-gun-industry-knew-we-would-end-up-here/)

This delicate balance started to erode as Barack Obama rose in the polls beginning in 2007. People like me who sensed the impending danger of this shift towards extremism were shouted down. When beloved industry icons raised concerns, even going so far as to label AR15s as “terrorist rifles,” their careers were immediately terminated. Time and again, these alarms were raised, and time and again, the sound of fundraising hauls, election night parties, and cash registers at the gun counters drowned them out.

Coming as a small light of hope in the wilderness is the willingness of major professional sport franchises to speak openly against gun violence and in favor of gun safety regulations:

May 26, 2022 - by Heather Cox Richardson(https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-26-2022?s=r)

But this evening the New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays announced they would use their social media channels not to cover tonight’s game but to share facts about gun violence. “The devastating events that have taken place in Uvalde, Buffalo and countless other communities across our nation are tragedies that are intolerable.”

Before the Uvalde school massacre unfolded and justifiably dominated the news cycle, another big story was unfolding. An investigative study on sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist world commissioned by the Southern Baptist Convention broke and it was horrific. The nations largest religious organization was shown to be as deeply flawed as the Catholic Church in matters related to sexual abuse. The SBC scandal is more about the treatment of women than young boys but it underscores how the evangelical church has lost its way:

No Atheist Has Done This Much Damage to the Christian Faith(https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/southern-baptist-convention-abuse-report/630173/?utm_source=feed)

“I knew it was rotten, but it’s astonishing and infuriating. This is a denomination that is through and through about power. It is misappropriated power. It does not in any way reflect the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

And this article on the culture of conspiracy and cruelty of the Christian Right by David French also solidifies my dismal opinion of the Christian Right:

A Commitment to Kindness Does Not Mean Surrendering Your Convictions(https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/a-commitment-to-kindness-does-not?s=r)

The Christian civility wars aren’t about competing essays crafted by the tweeting elite. They’re about the emergence, amplification, and valorization of an actual culture of conspiracy and cruelty on the Christian right. 

Moving on to a topic that we need to pay attention to, but which commands little attention in the news cycle even without wars in Ukraine, pandemics and horrific massacres, robotics and the future of work:

Rent-a-Robot and Our Tight Labor Market(https://www.thebulwark.com/rent-a-robot-and-our-tight-labor-market/)

When it comes to automation, we are in what John Maynard Keynes called the “painfulness of readjustment between one economic period and another.” The right policy response is not to interfere with or try to manage this transition from the top down but to incentivize thoughtful, human-centered adaptation, from both worker and employer standpoints. But with 11.5 million job openings (including close to one million manufacturing jobs) and just 5.9 million Americans looking for work, combined with renewed efforts to “re-shore” critical manufacturing, robots may prove to be less of a problem than part of the solution to the nation’s long-term labor shortage.

That will be it this week. Surprised I got anything at all together, I have been so much on the move. We are settled on Block Island for the next two weeks. Can you say Vacation?

What Stood Out, WK 20

This week began with Mother’s day (shout out to all the Mothers out there, hope you had a great week) and this post by Heather Cox Richardson which taught me something I didn’t know about Mother’s day:

May 7, 2022 - by Heather Cox Richardson

“Mothers’ Day”—with the apostrophe not in the singular spot, but in the plural—actually started in the 1870s, when the sheer enormity of the death caused by the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War convinced American women that women must take control of politics from the men who had permitted such carnage.

I wouldn’t mind returning to this concept of Mothers' Day except my faith that women and power are a combination that is any better than men and power has been shaken by the likes of Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert and Sarah Palin.

Concerns about the Supreme Court’s likely decision to overturn Roe V. Wade continued unabated in the early part of the week. As I have read more and more on the issue, a part of me has started to wonder weather it will be a good thing in the long run despite the horror show it will be in the early going. It is interesting to note these thoughts by Ruth Bader Ginsburg:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Offers Critique of Roe v. Wade During Law School Visit | University of Chicago Law School

“My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped the momentum on the side of change,” Ginsburg said. She would’ve preferred that abortion rights be secured more gradually, in a process that included state legislatures and the courts, she added. Ginsburg also was troubled that the focus on Roe was on a right to privacy, rather than women’s rights.

“Roe isn’t really about the woman’s choice, is it?” Ginsburg said. “It’s about the doctor’s freedom to practice…it wasn’t woman-centered, it was physician-centered.”

But then again, there was this article about the stability to abortion brought about by Roe V. Wade:

In Defense of Roe

… for most Americans, Roe led to a half-century of remarkably stable cultural consensus about how to balance the rights of women with the rights of fetuses or, as pro-lifers prefer, unborn children.

And this article attacking Justice Alito’s conclusion that there was nothing in the US Constitution about a woman’s right to an abortion seemed particularly effective in questioning the idea that the constitution is a flawless document as written:

Of Course the Constitution Has Nothing to Say About Abortion | The New Yorker

As it happens, there is also nothing at all in that document, which sets out fundamental law, about pregnancy, uteruses, vaginas, fetuses, placentas, menstrual blood, breasts, or breast milk.

Moving on to a different topic, this article on why achieving equality in our society is so difficult caught my attention:

This Research Explains Why Equality in America Is So Elusive – Mother Jones

Social scientists call this “Vladimir’s choice.” Even as we claim to support greater equality, we are hung up on protecting our relative advantage—even if it costs us in absolute terms.

And now, from the parochial to the universal, there is a new theory about where dark matter comes from:

A Mirror Universe

Scientists say there’s an “Anti-Universe” out there mirroring ours but running backward in time. According to Caroline Delbert of Popular Mechanics, the new theory could explain the presence of dark matter.

The subject of book banning came to the fore towards the end of the week when in conversation with a family member we both swore that it was the other side that was doing it and that “my” side would never do that. It turns out that book banning is a bipartisan issue:

Banning books is a nasty habit, whether it comes from the right or left (opinion) - CNN

For some years, the American Library Association has published annual lists of the most “challenged” books. Most of them offend the self-righteous right, which can’t bear that students should learn about America’s history of racial oppression and bigotry, or read positive depictions of LGBTQ people, or witness the naked face of poverty and prejudice.

But banning books is not just the product of right-wing intolerance. Many liberal parents don’t want their children to encounter the N-word anywhere, not even in what is in my view the greatest American novel, “Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain. And so they fight to ban a novel that eloquently and passionately attacks racism in 19th-century America.

I have maintained for some time now that in order to have a conversation across party lines about anything, one had to talk directly about the issues. In this case, once I acknowledged to this family member that yes, indeed, my side has been guilty of banning books, we were immediately able to agree that all book banning was bad.

On to the world of art. I have been following NFT art for a while now, as I suspect that if I can figure it out some of the photographic work I do might be uniquely suited to being sold this way. This third in a series of articles on the ins and outs of NFTs was interesting as is the whole series:

NFTs Part 3 – The 10k Project – A Photo Editor

August’s great-grandson Julian Sander had put the project together to create a permanent archive on the blockchain where I was told information about the images could be added by the community.

The August in this case is August Sander, a major figure of the photographic community of the last century.

And this article on Louise Bourgeois was interesting because, well, what isn’t interesting about her?

The Monstrous Beauty of Louise Bourgeois’s Late Textiles

The artist’s genius is in how she hints at the deep complexity of human relationships.

And finally, I will end with this article about an exhibition of women photographers (a big interest of mine) at MoMA:

The MoMa’s New Exhibition Surveys a Century of Photographs by Women

The histories of feminism and photography have long been entwined,” curator Roxana Marcoci writes in the exhibition catalogue chapter ‘What Is a Feminist Picture?

What Stood Out, WK 18

It was a week of struggle for me. I have been trying to manage my weight and not succeeding. I was in and out of depression and couldn’t really say why. A combination of little frustrations and big fears. I wrote a quasi mathematical equation to represent it.

-1-3-5-2-7,243=f^$&%k me

Clever I thought. Maybe it’s a micro poem. Did you notice it is all prime numbers? Except for the f^$&%k me. Well, maybe that is prime too, just in a different number system. A parallel universe.

Still, I am reminded by the struggle in Ukraine that things could be worse.

The photography of Boris Mikhailov came to my attention. One of the first photo books I bought as I was getting into photography was Books. It is a reprint of two separate books in one volume. One book explores rock outcroppings through photographs paired with sketches of the outcroppings. The sketches emphasize what he saw in the rocks. Human and animal forms, women’s private parts. Just now, when I looked up the book on the web, I learn that he is noted for his:

“clear-eyed depictions of his homeland, Ukraine–most famously, his portrayals of the everyday struggles of the bomzhes, the homeless, a class that dramatically enlarged after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.[^1]

He was born in 1938 and is still alive apparently. His hometown is Kharkiv. Oh my. I wonder if he is still there. If he got out. Is he making pictures?

The Ukraine conflict inches forward towards a direct engagement between the US/NATO and Russia. The US/NATO is openly supplying evermore sophisticated weaponry and now training of Ukraine soldiers to use the weapons. Current speculation is that Ukraine might be able to win the war. One commentator suggests they already have. Russia, for its part, shakes the nuclear stick clenched in its metaphorical fist. Does anyone think that Ukraine can “win” without suffering at least a limited nuclear attack in the endgame?

The war has apparently been a boon for fossil fuel profits for Russia. If we don’t immolate ourselves first, will we finally give up fossil fuels for less blood thirsty alternatives?

This article about what we have gained since the end of the Soviet Union and what we are now set to loose was interesting. Fans of Steven Pinker will find confirmation of his thesis in Better Angels of Our Nature, but also how it is presently coming apart.

The World is Back on a War Footing and We’ll All Pay the Price

Mourning the resurgence of militarism and the fading of the environment of peace and prosperity the article tells us that:

“The speed of poverty alleviation in the last 25 years has been historically unprecedented,” Alexander Hammond of Britain’s Institute of Economic Affairs wrote in the happier year of 2017. “Not only is the proportion of people in poverty at a record low, but, in spite of adding 2 billion to the planet’s population, the overall number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen too.” He added: “The new age of globalization, which started around 1980, saw the developing world enter the global economy and resulted in the largest escape from poverty ever recorded.”

This article attributes the worlds troubles to the lack of clarity as to who runs it.

When Superpowers Lose Their Power, the Chaos of War Follows

It’s an irony that theorists of war—from Thucydides onwards—recognized. War occurs when it isn’t clear who holds power. War happens when the answer to the question of who is running the world is simultaneously nobody and everybody. War is a result of uncertainty. The fog of war is caused by the fog of peace.

Elon Musks attempt to purchase Twitter was big news this week, with lots of speculation about what it will mean. I found this article interesting:

Rotten to the Core: Why Twitter and Elon Musk Deserve Each Other

Trump isn’t worth banning. American democracy might be in crisis. But it’s not because Donald Trump is or isn’t on Twitter.

On the Democracy crisis front, there is a steady stream of news about how close we came on January 6 to loosing it and how far right conservatives continue to mess with the mechanics of elections to make it more likely they will succeed next time. It would be a cosmic joke if the Ukrainians succeeded in defeating Russia and preserving their democracy but the United States was lost to some form of Authoritarianism. Both Putin and Trump are anxiously eyeing the 2022 and 2024 elections as the solution to their problems.

Heather Cox Richardson posted an interesting article about the threats to democracy that are running in parallel at the moment. Each line of attack is being headed by an individual with presidential aspirations. Donald Trump is pursuing family autocracy. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is pursuing “illiberal democracy” modeled on Victor Orban’s illiberal democracy in Hungary. Texas Governor Greg Abbot is pursuing “soft fascism.” Ms. Richardson concludes:

Trump’s type of family autocracy is hard to replicate right now, and our history has given us the knowledge and tools to defend democracy in the face of the ideology of states’ rights. But the rise of “illiberal democracy” or “soft fascism” is new to us, and the first step toward rolling it back is recognizing that it is different from Trump’s autocracy or states’ rights, and that its poison is spreading in the United States.

And then there was this article on the disinformation problem, which has as much to do with people’s craving for material to support their position regardless of whether it is factual or not.

Amusing Ourselves to Autocracy – Mother Jones

The day after the Giuliani episode aired, former President Barack Obama delivered a thoughtful speech at Stanford University on disinformation. It wasn’t groundbreaking, but it’s worth watching. He discussed the obvious problems presented by social media and offered a few general notions about solutions, noting that Big Tech can do more to restrain the flow of dangerously false information. But what he didn’t confront was the demand side of the equation, the immense desire for disinformation. What do we do when 10 percent, 20 percent, 30 percent, or more of the public craves disinformation to feed and bolster their prejudices, grievances, outrage, and anger?

On a literary front, when H and I moved to Beacon, we contemplated opening a book store. Beacon needed one at the time. We visited numerous independent bookstores in the valley. It was a pipe dream. We never had the money for it. Or maybe just not the true entrepreneurial will. At any rate, this documentary came to my attention this week:

The Profound Impacts of Decency: On ‘Hello, Bookstore’

As pleasurable as the storyline is—getting to watch a good man with a much-loved business triumph—there is also a great joy in simply watching time pass in The Bookstore.

We plan to watch it.

There was also this article revisiting a talk given by Robert M. Pirsig at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He talks about how he and his then wife moved to a small house in a small town in southern Mexico. The idea was to write his great American novel in those idyllic conditions. It turns out he wasn’t ready to write a book. Later in his life, he wrote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which, he tells us, emerged organically from the midst of his messy life. He wrote what he knew.

The reviews I’ve read all seem to regard this as some great act of creativity. It was a very systematic, deliberate act. I was about as creative as an accountant at this point. I was just putting down these slips and comparing them. But this particular form gave me the advantage of being able to expand in the middle, of being able to reorganize at any time, so I had a flexible outline that could grow as my understanding of the story grew. I was never limited. I was free to throw away where I had been and restart again, over and over again, with what was coming in new. And I’m sure that in any creative project you really can’t perceive what the end is going to be, unless it is a very small thing you’re doing. I think the advantage of this particular device was that it always kept me open, it always kept me flexible, it always gave me a kind of a hollowness, so that I could constantly be refilled with new things that were coming in. The result of this was a book of many levels and of much complexity, but whose levels and whose complexity somehow always seem at the last minute to hang together.

I intended this to be a little more polished with some images included, but time has run out and I think it better to go ahead and publish it. Maybe I will revisit it and update. Maybe not. It’s decent reflection of what caught my attention last week either way.

Weekly Edit 13

About Appetite

In the philosophy of Socrates and Plato three parts of the human “soul” are identified. They are reason, spirit and appetite. Reason is the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom and is the province of the philosopher. Spirit is the pursuit of honor and glory—as in battle—and is the province of the warrior/gladiator. Appetite is the pursuit of wealth and the pleasure it affords and is the province of the oligarch.

“Souls” can be fully dominated by one soul-part or another. More commonly, and desirably, the parts express themselves in a variety of dominance/subservience configurations. Indeed, while Socrates and Plato felt reason was best suited to management of the soul of both individual and state, spirit and appetite have important roles. The best human soul is characterized by reason as the moderator of spirit and appetite.

As a basic model for human psychology, it lacks the scientific foundations and clinical efficacy that modern clinical psychology can claim, but i find it an appealing general model for examining the ways people and societies conduct themselves.

One of the conclusions I come to is that presently the vast majority of populations around the world are ruled by appetite, the lowest and most irresponsible of the three soul-parts. This is demonstrated by obsession with wealth, things obtainable through wealth and the willingness to ruthlessly exploit the planet and each other to gain wealth.

Capitalism is the organization of appetite into a global system of wealth extraction through the exploitation of planet and people. I don’t know that it can be said that the broad flow of history has ever produced a society governed by Philosophers.

Though we like to think of ourselves as being far more civilized than our distant ancestors and more recent indigenous societies, we are very little removed from our primal instincts, that is, from being ruled by our appetites.

It’s not through lack of effort on the part of at least some of us. Indeed, this system of the tripartite soul developed by Socrates and Plato is aimed at understanding how one might govern self and society in a more rational way. As a way of establishing a universal good and conducting affairs according to that good.

A contemporary of Plato’s offered an alternative way of looking at things. Thrasymachus challenged the Socratic-Platonic concept of the good as a universal principle, saying that the good is whatever pursues the interests of the more powerful. According to Bertrand Russell this challenge is swatted away like a bothersome fly and not effectively refuted. It’s been a long time since I have read the Republic, so I will accept Russell’s assessment that it stands as an effective challenge to the Socratic-Platonic vision of the world as it could be. Inspection of history and the present state of the world appears, to me, to support the position of Thrasymachus. Appetite has been and is largely immune from any attempts by reason or faith to subdue it.

Unfortunately, we have reached a place where we either moderate appetite or we are destroyed by it.

Weekly Edit #11

sign, Don’t Worry, Be Hoppy

the sun in a cloudy sky

landscape with utility poles

paper strewn along roadside

september 11 front page new york times

taxidermy venomous snake striking

fire hose on the ground

ribbon strewn across the floor

stickers

vase looking a little angry

Love and Strife

Buy, Buy says the sign in the shop window,

why, why says the junk in the yard.

Paul McCartney

I had two revelations from my reading of A History of Western Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell this week.

The first is that at the heart of (almost?) all scientific, philosophical and religious effort is a desire that something, anything, be eternal. We want our lives to mean something even if only that they were a necessary, albeit, tiny part of something grand and purposeful.

The second is that when we ask the question why, we either ask it teleologically, seeking first cause, or we ask it mechanistically, seeking to understand the mechanics of what we observe. The first is a process of induction of universal truths from experience. The second is a process of deduction of rules from experience. Regardless of path chosen, it is impossible to know anything in an absolute way. Consequently, certainty that there is something eternal is beyond grasp.

My wife loves to ask why and then tell me she doesn’t understand when I offer an explanation. Why would anyone like Putin exist (because absolute power makes absolute assholes)? Why would he invade Ukraine (because absolute assholes are assholes)? Why do conservatives want to destroy democracy (because absolute power is worth it)? Why do white supremacists exist (because we are primally disposed to enslave the other)? Why can’t we all just get along (because humans have never just gotten along and there are always power hungry assholes)?

“I don’t understand” she continues to say to any explanation I offer. I love her for being this way. She still has faith in humanity and it doesn’t compute when humanity is not faith-worthy.

When we were young we asked about the sign in the shop window and the junk in the yard. We also asked about the Vietnam war. These days liberals like ourselves ask why as we witness the Enlightenment Liberalist world order we have been comfortably ensconced in decomposing. We are pretty sure we won’t like it if it does decompose fully, any more than Ukrainians are enjoying bombs and displacement.

The ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles believed everything was composed of earth, air, fire and water which were moved into vortices of physical manifestation by love and strife in a cyclical manner.

Love and strife have been playing themselves out in humans since the time before memory. We are lucky if our lives contain plenty of love and strife is rarely life threatening. But it’s a crap shoot. We could as easily be Ukrainian as American. We could as easily have brown skin as white skin. And we could as easily live in an authoritarian form of government as a democratic one.

The struggle between some form of Oligarchic/Authoritarian rule and Democracy has been going on in the west for most, if not all, of recorded history. A prime example is the struggle between oligarchic Troy and democratic Athens, a contest the Trojans won, marking the end of the Athenian Golden Age. It would not be until the Renaissance that anything like that golden age (The Enlightenment) appeared again in the West.

We may eventually turn Putin back in Ukraine. But will we turn back Oligarchic Authoritarianism in the US? It’s not clear and on my bad days I despair. If Authoritarianism wins, it would be in no small measure because of Vladimir Putin. Are we going to win the battle but loose the war?

The United States has been in this place multiple times in the past. The Civil War was the manifestation of one particularly harsh turn in the cycle. So far, the people have rallied to push back the slave holders, the oligarchs and the would be despots to preserve the promise, if not execute the ideal of democracy. If Greek history teaches anything though, it’s that the only thing pre-ordained are the cycles, not the winners and losers.

Bullies with Nuclear Sticks

I have been struggling with depression for much of the past week and probably for much longer than that if I am honest with myself. It’s not a debilitating depression. I can get out of bed. I can pursue my routines of reading, writing, walking, picture making, picture editing, and more. Still it’s a bit like I am moving through a viscous solution as I try to do these things.

Relative to Ukrainians, I have little to be depressed or anxious about, except, I feel deeply that their existential struggle is mine too. The loss of freedom they are threatened with is a loss I am being threatened with.

One of my prime thoughts this week is that the last seven years has been a firehose-shit-stream of angering, worrisome and depressing news. The most salient feature of this news has been the steady decline of Liberalism and Democracy and the steady rise of illiberal Authoritarian tendencies within the United States and around the globe. When Russia invaded Ukraine, it put an exclamation point on this trend towards Authoritarianism.

A vast struggle has broken out into the open in a dramatic way. There is no guarantee of the outcome, though, if we can avoid World War III, I am hopeful that Putin’s aggression will end with his loss of power and serve as a rebuke to Authoritarianism everywhere.

Among the many other thoughts revolving in my head these days:

  • Will it ever be possible to have a world free of nuclear sticks?
  • Is it possible to construct a world in which bullies don’t exist or can never acquire big sticks?

In The Greeks, H. D. F. Kitto describes the golden age of the Greek Polis, the pinnacle of which occurred in Athens towards the end of the 5th century BCE and lasted for a little more than 100 years. The Polis was a reasonably well balanced democratic organization of society where everyman’s opinion mattered, everyman’s participation was expected and status depended on the “excellence” of a man, not as determined by his wealth, but as determined by his character. One cannot overlook that there was slavery, limitations on the rights of foreign citizens and that women had no rights. But among the male citizens there was a relatively small (by today’s standards) distance between the wealthiest and poorest citizen, a common education around the principles of good character as illuminated by the Homeric epics and decision making by consensus. This is the foundational example of democracy, a more inclusive form of which Liberalism pursues today.

H. D. F. Kitto writes this in The Greeks:

It is an interesting, though idle, speculation, what would be the effect on us if all our reformers, revolutionaries, planners, politicians and life-arrangers in general were soaked in Homer from their youth up, like the Greeks. They might realize that on the happy day when there is a refrigerator in every home, and two in none, when we all have the opportunity of working for the common good (whatever that is), when Common Man (whoever he is) is triumphant, though not improved – that men will still come and go like the generations of leaves in the forest; that he will still be weak, and the gods strong and incalculable; that the quality of a man matters more than his achievement; that violence and recklessness will still lead to disaster, and that this will fall on the innocent as well as on the guilty. The Greeks were fortunate in possessing Homer, and wise in using him as they did.1

The truth is that humans get enough right about how to arrange and conduct themselves such that golden ages happen now and again, but, so far, only for brief periods of time. We seem only ever to glimpse utopia, never fully achieve it.

Heraclitus came closest to an accurate description of humankind’s condition, proclaiming fire to be the foundational element of the universe and that flux is the norm. He thought wars (fire) inevitable and even necessary as a change agent. History is a churning beast and nothing lasts for very long. What is good eventually becomes bad which eventually becomes good again.

I don’t know what Heraclitus would have though if nuclear weapons existed in his day. Would he still champion fire? What do we do with a bully carrying a nuclear stick? My deepest fear and sadness at the moment is that it is conceivable to me that the nuclear stick will get used. If not this time, then sooner or later.

Bertrand Russell2 points out in The History of Western Philosophy that since the time of the pre-socratic philosophers a main endeavor of religion and philosophy in the western world has been to establish something, anything, eternal and relevant to the condition of humankind. The nuclear stick is a definitive refutation that anything eternal for humankind exists.

Enter my sadness.


  1. Kitto, H.. The Greeks (Penguin History) (p. 64). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition. ↩︎

  2. It is interesting to note that Russell and Kitto both published their books in the aftermath of the Second World War and they are both, to an extent, nostalgic lamentations through the vehicle of history. ↩︎

Since when did ‘golden years’ planning include a collapse of democracy scenario?

As I look back over the past week in posts, I feel grounded, even if worried about the future. Grounded because having a daily practice of reading, writing, posting, then reviewing at the end of the week, helps to keep my sense of being in the world intact. Worried because I didn’t really expect to be confronting the possible collapse of Democracy in the United States as one of my ‘golden years’ planning scenarios.

In some ways I am bewildered it has gotten to this place, but, I saw the struggle and eventual crescendo years ago. I remember being in a local cafe and talking to somebody about the challenge to white patriarchy unfolding in the country. I am pretty sure this was during the early years of the Obama administration. A young white dude sitting nearby said he was studying that very thing in college and that I was right. He seemed surprised that an older white dude could be aware of it and name it. To what degree either of us white dudes was as enlightened as we felt ourselves to be in that moment is another question.

I am on the most comfortable ground when I am taking in the 360 degree view. I am a generalist. I am good at seeing big pictures, less good at developing detailed plans and seeing them through. The big picture to me has been, for a long time, the challenge of the multicultural promise of our democracy to hegemonic white patriarchal order.

Large numbers of white people, and we should resist the temptation to label them ‘white supremacists,’ favor white patriarchal control, either consciously or subconsciously. It is better understood, I think, as the privileged wanting to retain their privileges. Why wouldn’t they? It has been the state of things since the founding of the country. It has conferred a significant advantage to conducting their affairs which would be hard for any group to give up. It has been the foundation of their identity for as long as they have been living. Nobody likes to loose ground or the foundations of their identity, which is exactly what must happen to white men and women if the multiarchy (as I like to call it) is to emerge.

The entitlement and anxieties of white men and women are not new. They have reached crescendos in the past (Civil War anyone?). However, the present shift in demographics has brought white anxiety and insecurity to the surface in a profound way.

Good leadership could steer us through the transitional rapids to the multiarchy without overturning the boat of our democracy. Unfortunately, that is not what seems to be prevailing right now (though there have lately been some hopeful signs). Instead there is the leadership of desperate, mostly white, men and women who no longer believe in democracy because it won’t maintain their privileges. They are exploiting racial animus and resorting to minority rule tactics to maintain their position at the top.

I believe in the multiarchy. I will do what I can to help birth it, or at least not stand in the way of it. I have no idea which way this struggle is going to go. Some days I am in despair, on others I am hopeful. It’s a continuous effort to take each day as it comes and be grateful for it. Reading, writing and blogging helps.

Things that work…

this ergonomic mouse by Jelly Comb

Ergonomic Mouse by Jelly Comb

… for years i had been trying all kinds of mousing solutions because of pain in my mousing arm and shoulder… for a long time i did mixtures, switching from traditional mouse to track ball and back again periodically in an attempt to use different muscles… this helped, but i was never completely pain free… then i bought this mouse… after several months of use, i was pain free… completely… i have been using the mouse for a couple of years now… the mousing arm pain has never returned, no matter how much time i spend at the computer… your mileage may vary, but for me, this is a thing that works…