Tag: Politics

Can Fast Food Cure Obesity?

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The following article is featured in the current issue of The Atlantic. 
 
 
Here’s the summary: Demonizing processed food may be dooming many to obesity and disease. Could embracing the drive-thru make us all healthier?

 

Since I’m a grocer and one of those whom the author refers to as a “Pollanite” (a fan of the work and point of view put forth by Michael Pollan in books like The Omnivores Dilemma), I felt that I should pass the article on with a few comments of my own.
 
The argument that the author presents is one of expediency, and is directed at what he sees as the number one health problem in the United States, that of obesity. He makes a case that the food ethic presented by the natural food business in trendy upscale stores like Whole Foods is not only unrealistic when applied to the general population but actually counter productive. He goes on to cite several examples comparing the nutritional value of the so called ‘healthy’ snacks offered in the elite markets to common examples of mainstream fast food. In these examples he finds that the ‘healthy’ alternatives often contain considerably more of the ingredients (sugar, fat) that contribute to obesity than the cheaper (by a considerable margin) and fast alternatives. 
 
This argument presents a much deserved ‘shot across the bow’ to an industry that I’ve watched or been a part of since 1973. The ‘Natural Food’ biz has grown from a fringe movement into one of the most profitable growth industries in the nation. In the process it’s thrown overboard a great deal of the ethical ‘baggage’ that provided its original raison d’etre. Once upon a time the idea was to provide an alternative to the heavily processed gunk produced in laboratories and offered in conventional grocery stores. Among other things it represented a return to a deeper engagement with the food we eat (cooking). Nowadays the business offers hundreds of new items every month that respond mostly to media fads and advertising campaigns that cater to the very same ethic of processed ‘convenience’ that has driven the American food business since way before the first tofu burger was ever thought of.
 
Nevertheless, the author’s critique of the industry that supports and hypes ‘healthy’ eating, much of which I agree with, represents a serious misreading of the work of Michael Pollan. If the writer had truly read a book like The Omnivores Dilemma he would have noted that Pollan’s take on the Whole Foods mentality in many ways echoes his own. Pollan notes that the key to profitability in the natural foods industry has for decades been that more money can be made by processing food than by growing it, and this has led the industry down some very questionable trails. 
 
Statistically the problem of obesity is greater in poorer communities where elite foods are simply not available. Even if they were, the author asks, would lower income people want to switch from the kind of food choices they are used to more ‘healthy’ alternatives? Wouldn’t we do much better against the scourge of obesity if the fast food industry actually changed its formulas so that the poor and ignorant masses can still eat at MacDonalds but get less that will make them fat? Since nobody has time to cook anyway, given the rat race involved in mere survival, can’t we just program the whole fast food business for less carbohydrates?
 
These argument make sense only when the focus is on obesity as the number one health problem in America. This extremely simplistic view excludes factors like our attitude toward the land, our over-amped and over-extended lifestyles and our largely dysfunctional relationship toward the systems that keep us alive and breathing. The contention that poor people would prefer MacDonalds over healthy food, even if it were made available to them, I find to be incredibly elitist. The people who raised me were poor and grew up in an era before ‘fast food.’ They made due with the basics and they cooked their own meals and they were healthier for it. To assert that the problem of obesity can be solved technologically with a little bit of progressive laboratory engineering, while a typically American approach, is laughable and a little bit frightening, as it calls up an image of the ultimately perfect lab manufactured food source for the masses: it’s called “Soylent Green.”

We Have Been Assimilated

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Summary: Two artifacts of mass media, launched one after another more than four decades gone: Star Trek in 1967 and The Night of the Living Dead in 1968, enjoy continued popularity in this summer’s blockbuster roster. They embody two contradictory poles in America’s current and ongoing psychic dilemma. On one hand is our love affair with technology (and progress) and our earnest desire to merge ourselves with it. On the other is a mortal fear that we will lose our individuality and identity to the vast machinery of the faceless collective. 

 

“…in fact, science fiction in this sense is no longer anywhere, and it is everywhere…”   – Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation

“O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.”  – William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2

 ***

Americans are famous for talking and arguing about something they call freedom. What we actually mean most of the time is control. We have this obsessive need to be in control of our lives all the way to the moment of death and hopefully beyond and this we manage, at least in a virtual sense, through our fetishistic approach to technology. Oddly, the concept of control and that of freedom are opposing functions in the real world, and our obsession with technology has lead us to a world where the human animal is trained to serve the machine rather than the other way around.  

I’m a dweller in cities, as most of us are. Cities are the human container. While the ‘natural’ realm functions as a place of refuge and renewal, much like an elaborately predictable theme park, the real wilderness is a function of cities, where defined boundaries and limited visibility foster an environment filled with mystery. There the human animal, aware that control is nothing but illusion, continually strains against the limits of the maze with unpredictable explosions of novelty. 

Marshall McLuhan coined the term ‘global village’ to describe the environment created by electronic telecommunication that would render physical distance less relevant to our interactions than tribal affinity. What has evolved isn’t really a village at all, anymore than Los Angeles or New York or Tokyo are villages. The Internet is an urban space, differentiated into diverse neighborhoods, each with their respective gangs, territories and exclusive languages. 

The political dialogue going on these days amounts to a gang fight between factions defending opposing versions of the past. We hear overheated rhetoric espousing theoretical positions over hypothetical circumstances while little effective action is taken in the present. Most of us aren’t asked to contribute to solutions, only to take sides. While politics becomes a spectator sport an ongoing revolutions takes place in realms of culture, design and the arts. 

When we step away from the political chatter we see that nothing remains static and everything evolves. While we point accusing fingers at one another every new idea and innovation alters our environment and the way we live. While we fight wars over race and religion the definition of what it means to be human is undergoing constant change. When we address our problems in terms of left and right, Democrat and Republican, conservative and liberal, we confuse symptoms with the disease. While we grow more and more enmeshed in a world where every human interaction is mediated through machines, a deep sense of unease infects the whole world. Our greatest fear is that what defines us as individuals with a sense of purpose is being threatened by something outside of ourselves. All of our tradition, religion, and moral and ethical behavior is called into question by the requirements of advancing technologies. In the name of progress we reduce our world to chaotic wreckage made up of conflicting slogans and unsubstantiated beliefs.

Among these voices and artifacts we roam like refugees in a junkyard of found objects. When we look with eyes wide open we find that the most pressing existential questions are addressed in the mediums in which we most urgently look for escape. In unguarded moments, when listening to music or viewing movies and television we are opened to novel possibilities. In the fanciful stories we tell to one another we find the most accurate reflection of the truth about where we are and where we may be heading. Our lives, after all, are made of stories.   

Like archeologists or anthropologists we dig to discover the truth in threads that weave through our fictions. In the dreamworld we step back from the dense layers of event and information constantly swirling around us in our waking life. There we may discover the designs of our future before bringing them to the light of day.

***

“…and now the machines are flying us.” – Captain Jean Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise

 

On the screen a group of actors sit in comfy looking chairs or stand facing a screen on which images of things taking place in the universe outside the room are projected. We journey with these characters through a series of moral and ethical dilemmas encountered as adventures that take place in virtual space. The boundaries of the “Final Frontier” extend beyond the screen we are watching to include the space in which we are watching it.

This is perfect television.  

It doesn’t matter that the sets and costumes are cheesy or obviously made of plywood and cardboard against painted backdrops, no more than it mattered to us as children playing with sticks in our own backyards. When the onscreen fantasy ends and we leave the room to continue in our lives we become the ‘away team’ proceeding on a mission into alien worlds. 

Those of us who’d grown up in big cities were accustomed to watching heroes sort out good and evil in the exotic landscapes of the western or the familiar perky environments of sitcoms. The heroes went up against the bad guys and those comedic moms and dads were almost always wise and good natured and calmly protective. While it was entertaining and provided models we could measure our own lives against, these still felt like somebody else’s lives and someone else’s adventures. 

Star Trek made us feel like we were part of the crew of the Enterprise, along for the ride. The show spoke in an imaginative language that dreamers could readily understand. Most important, it provided us with an organizing center from which we made sense of the confusing age we grew up in, where change came so fast that the world appeared always perched on the verge of chaos.    

The show made its initial run in 1967 and was cancelled after only one season. It was about ten years ahead of its time and couldn’t find a ready fit among the era’s cowboy dramas and family sitcoms. Of course, we who were ready for the future wouldn’t let it die, so we pounded on the studio doors until it was eventually brought back, again and again. Over forty years later the books, movies, comics and television series still feed a subculture that thrives across at least three generations. 

As the first television generation we rode a gigantic wave of innovation that began more than a century earlier, when the first photographic image was burned into a metal plate and our relationship to time and space was forever warped by the image. Or maybe the wave actually begins in the 13th century when the first factory looms were constructed, or maybe even earlier, when the first books were reproduced with moveable print. From those times machinery became increasingly the vehicle for our imaginations. We drew our dreams out of our heads and reproduced them to be cast out into the world.

Ever since there were storytellers we’ve used fiction to make sense of the waking world. Fiction takes a stream of events and gives them continuity in the form of narrative or plot. The fiction of Star Trek organized itself around our fondest dreams of progress in a time of raging conflict. In its fanciful world the issues of civil rights and foreign intervention were all located in the distant past. The crew of the Enterprise functioned seamlessly, like a hive of bees, totally self-contained in the belly of a huge machine. St. Augustine’s trinitarian scheme of memory, intellect and will was embodied in McCoy, Spock and Kirk. Their authority was unquestioned by the creator, Gene Rodenberry’s decree that there be no significant dissension amongst the crew. Like the branches of government the principal actors balanced one another and everyone knew their place and function (displayed by color coded uniforms) and problem solving capabilities. 

It now appears strange that a generation swept up in so much resistance to authority would accept and even embrace such a militaristic model of the perfect society. Perhaps it was our longing for order in a time of disorder. Still, it was a prophetic foreshadowing of the world in which we’ve come to live, where almost every activity is mediated through technology and the dictates of the machine reshapes every aspect of our lives. One almost has to wonder if it was the machine itself that was dreaming.

While Star Trek embodied our living room love affair with technology, another parallel genre emerged at the same moment in the dark chthonic realm of the midnight drive-in. It concretized our deepest dread of a dystopian future, and like Star Trek it spawned a genre has continued to thrive over the decades.  

George Romero’s movie about a zombie apocalypse, Night of the Living Dead premiered in 1968 and spawned numberless spinoffs and reincarnations that proliferate with ever greater frequency as we continue to plunge into the technological future.

Where Rodenberry’s universe envisioned a life of perfect harmony encapsulated within highly regimented machine culture, Romero’s nightmare is one in which the machinery of social order is rendered useless, and humans themselves loose all sense of aspiration and affection, becoming machinelike incarnations of pure appetite. Successive portrayals of the Zombie Fear have incorporated environmental collapse, worldwide epidemic, the fall of the social order. 

I believe that beneath all of these is a deeper fear, that of being absorbed by the collective itself. In the latest contribution to the genre based on the bestselling novel by Max Brooks, World War Z, initial ‘zombie fear’ of humans being transformed into mindless automatons of appetite has been upgraded to a merging of the automatons into a singular collective nightmare.  

To traditional cultures, bound by history, ritual, human affection and common belief the implacable advance of technological civilization appears like a plague, threatening to destroy all that gives life purpose. From a different perspective the technocratic mind fears most of all a collapse of rational order and an abandonment of the social compact to the demands of selfish individuals. The zombie fear manages to incorporate both extremes in a common terror of being swept up into nihilistic oblivion.   

Here is the real World War Z, where a hopeful vision of a universe run by benevolent uniformed geeks or one determined by the rhythmic rituals and cycles based in tradition and relationship to the natural world are both obliterated by the needs of the machinery we’ve created. 

The majority of humanity now lives in cities where life is no longer governed by the sun and the moon and the passage of the seasons. The dissonance between lives we live in manmade environments governed by the clock and the demands of our bodies as parts of nature continue to generate dreams and nightmares. Thus our summers are increasingly filled with apocalyptic scenarios that depict a world beset by zombies, robots, aliens and supernatural beings. In our collective fantasies the earth erupts or is bombarded by objects from space. Epidemics rage across the globe. Our imaginations are alight with fascination with our own impending doom, but within our nightmares are the seeds of resistance.  

The zombies of World War Z are modeled on the behavior of ants, a suitable representation for the fear on both sides of the political divide that we are being overrun by  something less than human, like a virus, driven by a mindless will. We certainly can’t change the world or redraw the bargains we’ve made when lost in a world of dreams, but maybe in our dreams can summon a possibility of change.

In the meanwhile the zombies will return again and again, the monsters will continue to rise from the deep, cosmic villainy will prevail and the world will appear to hang on the brink. Godlike heroes will manifest to save the day. Maybe one day we’ll come to conscious terms with our creations and the Star Trek vision of benevolent and compassionate societies dedicated to exploration and service will come to be. After all, our actions and designs for living are first born in the imagination and even in our most vivid nightmares we plant the seeds of possibility.   

 

Just when you thought…

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“This theory of political transformation rests on the weaponization (and slight bastardization) of the work by Yale political scientist Stephen Skowronek. Skowronek has written extensively about what distinguishes transformational presidents from caretaker presidents. In order for a president to be transformational, the old order has to fall as the orthodoxies that kept it in power exhaust themselves. Obama’s gambit in 2009 was to build a new post-partisan consensus. That didn’t work, but by exploiting the weaknesses of today’s Republican Party, Obama has an opportunity to hasten the demise of the old order by increasing the political cost of having the GOP coalition defined by Second Amendment absolutists, climate science deniers, supporters of “self-deportation” and the pure no-tax wing.”
 
So, you maybe thought that the election was over. Guess what? The election is never over. This country was founded on a principle of continual political revolution, carried out in the realm of civil discourse. It has survived and thrived through over two centuries and it has continued to move forward even in the face of extreme polarization.
 
If we see the process of governance only in terms of voting in an election or two we will be ground down as petty fodder for those who exploit our ignorance. As a former community organizer our president understands this, and has apparently decided (wisely) to keep the wheels of election politics rolling well past this inauguration.
 
In his first term Obama took on the medical establishment and made a beginning for real health care reform. He took on the issue of gay rights and in the process helped move along public perception in that area. In his second term he will face economic reform, the reduction of military spending and gun violence as well as trying to move along the public awareness of climate change. 
 
Resistance to all parts of his agenda will be massive and well organized. The conservative movement that arose with the election of Ronald Reagan and the Christian Right is currently in disarray. The race is on to pass their agenda to another generation which will be tricky as urban and minority populations grow, white people become a minority and more and more young people turn away from religion. Being well funded and well organized however, they aren’t going down without a hell of a fight.
 
So, the battle continues. First, from Politico is a piece on Obama’s new political initiative. This is the work of community organizing from the ground up. Instead of using the churches, as did the Christian Right, Obama’s coalition will build on the hi-tech tracking and door to door efforts that won the last two elections. 
 
Second, here is a link to an article that appears in Slate which looks at the coming struggle that uses all kinds of refreshingly uncompromising language (I like the word pulverize). 

The Storytellers

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This morning the first thing that I saw in my inbox was a link to the story of how a neighbor of the elementary school in Newtown who sheltered a group of kids and a bus driver for several hours while the horror unfolded next door has been harassed by people who believe that the shooting of 27 people was a government hoax. These are the same people whose obsession is to uncover the “conspiracy” behind every tragic event in order to either line their pockets or to build a case for an overthrow of the powers that be. Of course the fantasy of conspiracy isn’t backed by any sort of political or cultural awareness. All one needs is a superficial, if fantastical view of a world made only of victims and those in control. 
 
A very dark climate is rising in the wings since the election and re-election of a black president and in the wake of a steady repetition of the scenario of mass killings. The cloud of distrust is more extreme than anything I’ve seen since the early seventies, and in several ways is much more divorced from reality. From the buzz that prevails in the news and online I’d make a guess that at least a quarter of the American population is at this moment suffering some form of psychosis. By that I mean that their interpretation of reality is radically at odds with any sort of objective measure of what is really going on. Of that quarter precent probably at least half represent the most heavily armed non-military segment of the population. They are afraid, very afraid. The unfolding of events in the real world so contradicts their expectations that they must go to extraordinary lengths to construct scenarios and story lines that explain it. If they have even a casual relationship with rationality is a matter entirely secondary. I may be that a storm is coming. I can very easily see a scenario of federal troops facing right wing militias as we saw repeatedly throughout the eighties and nineties in rural counties Deep in red state America. There have already been many threats. 
 
Of course Glenn Beck and Alex Jones and David Icke are ready and waiting to feed all of our fantasies of victimization with their fast-growth industry based on the promotion of conspiracy theories. Both on the political left and the right and even among the New Age fantasists of Santa Fe their float variations of essentially the same narrative. In every version of the story somewhere at the nexus of all important world events a single nefarious cabal meets together in various hidden skyscraper penthouses in order to map out the ultimate future for us all.    

 
I recently finished Umberto Eco’s latest novel The Prague Cemetery, an historical fiction about a hypothetical figure in the late nineteenth century who is responsible for the creation of one of the world’s most notorious ‘political’ tracts. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is the most infamous conspiracy document of all time, as it was used by everyone from the Catholic church to the Nazis and the Stalinists as an excuse to persecute and eventually attempt to exterminate the someone (usually the Jews) designated as the servants of evil. It purports to be an account of a secret nighttime meeting between all of the rabbis of Europe in an obscure Jewish graveyard in order to map out their plan for total world domination. Eco’s book, which is based extensively on historical records, indicates that the document was patched together over several years from previous works that attributed the ‘plot’ to everyone from the Jesuits to the Masons to french anarchists…to anyone that someone in power needed to be a convenient scapegoat for covering their own crimes. Eco’s main character is a thoroughly despicable figure named Simonini, who is devoid of moral center or any scruples when it comes to dealing with others, who views everyone else with contempt and whose sole pleasure in life is the consumption of fine foods. As an excellent forger and impersonator he finds himself in the middle of much of the political turmoil of the time, employed by all sides to help incriminate their enemies. The essential revelation he gains along the way is that there is really only a single conspiracy theory which can be reworked to fit any historical circumstance and directed against anyone we prefer to view as our villains. Just give it a few tweaks here and there…
 
I’ve been hearing various variations on the same theory since I was a teenager in Cleveland and peered into the front window of the local John Birch Society office across the street from my church. There were all the familiar players: The Federal Reserve and the IRS, the One World Government, the Rothchilds and the Jews, the Illuminati, etc., etc. The same cast used by Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin and which is now used by tax evaders, gun toting militias and Fox News.  
 
Eco’s character of Simonini is an apt model for modern creatures like David Icke and Alex Jones who make their living by spreading paranoid narratives to the frightened and gullible. Perhaps the biggest irony in the recent Newtown shootings was that the perpetrator was brought up in an atmosphere of conspiracies and end times paranoia laced with automatic weapons, and his first victim was his mother, a true believer who spent her time on ‘prepper’ web sites. I look around me, here in ‘progressive’ Santa Fe, a land of many a mystical fantasy and wonder how any of my acquaintances spend similar hours tracking the unfolding of some ‘master’ plan. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think of this as a conspiracy. Like the work of Simonini it’s really nothing but commerce. However, the product being sold, as can be seen in the vicious threats and attacks on a man who helped people fleeing from the slaughter, is poisonous in the extreme. 
 
_______________________________________________________________________________
 
*Note: It is with some trepidation that I’ve included links to the web sites of those who I regard as some of the worst people in the world. On consideration, if you’re gullible enough to dine on this stuff you’ll have probably discovered them already. 

Surviving Elections

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Ignore pundits. Including me. Ignore anyone who presumes to predict the future with confidence. 
 
Avoid 24 hour news outlets: In order of influence: FOX News, CNN, MSNBC. Their model is the same. The News as Sports. Civic Culture as Civil War. What all of these venues have done is incorporate the methods of advertising and entertainment in order to make the news something other than information to be gathered and more like merchandise to be sold. All of these personalities throwing opinions at you are being paid to advocate certain positions. The length of an average cut is rarely more than 3-5 seconds. We are delivered lot’s of information and tons of interpretation, but are never given a moment to think. 
 
When you are watching FOX, CNN, MSNBC you are watching unrelenting trance inducing marketing strategy. In terms of news, studies have shown that the accuracy of a person’s predictions vis a vis politics is in inverse proportion to the amount of time that person spends appearing on the media. 
 
Watching MSNBC the other night I was hugely entertained, and appalled. An amazing demonstration of the principle of Marshall McLuhan’s famous aphorism: “The Medium Is The Message.” 
 
Everything important in political advertising can be conveyed with the sound turned off. You are presented with iconic representations of all of the things you already feel. A drama. A story. ED, of the ED Show on MSNBC is Uncle Ed the union guy who had to struggle to get by when he was young and emerged a fight and organizer of the common people. He speaks almost exclusively a litany of slogans and talking points. He has this in common with Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. In “ED’s” case the style is less like sportscaster and more like Glenn Beck, evangelistic. He’s the Christ like figure crying out in the wilderness for a modicum of reason. Whatever the political slant the essential message is some variation of, “Fire” “Flood” “Fight!” None of these so-called ‘news’ shows are primarily about information, at least not really useful information. Their message is primarily emotional and anxiety inducing. Whether ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ the intended effects are pretty much the same.
 
You may ask yourself, does watching either FOX News or MSNBC (whatever your flavor) make you feel more confident, more positive about the future? Does it convey to you a sense that you are part of a community dealing positively with common problems or is it the feeling that we are divided into armed camps? Does it make your perceived problems and dilemmas appear more resolvable, or does it give you the sense that we are collectively sinking into an ocean of chaos?
 
A media experience that narrows rather than widens a person’s perspective is not really news, it’s propaganda. My recommendation to everyone is to limit your exposure to television news as much as possible. If you watch the news, stick to shows that feature extended interviews and a variety of viewpoints rather than the daily propaganda feeds of the cable news networks. By merely not watching the parade of hype and salesmanship you will be less misinformed, will appear smarter, and it will relieve much stress.    
 
Television is a drug to which many are addicted. This partially explains the collective absorption with unreality that haunts generations who grew up in worlds defined primarily by television. To a later generation, growing up in what can almost be called the ‘post-television’ era, the variety of available media channels is almost staggering. Young people are used to swimming in a saturated stew of media input that they use individually to create a ‘mixed and matched’ portrait of themselves and of the world around them. They are more aware of the fact that our image of the world is largely made of fictions that each of us cobbles together to make sense of it all.   
 
The demographic of those for whom cable news is their primary source of world information is mostly over 50. As a group they comprise those who are perhaps most distrustful of the present and most apprehensive about the future. They’ve been mostly raised in a world dominated by images of advertising dedicated to the message that we are lacking in something, and if we can only reach over here…we will be happier. Perhaps then our lives will more resemble those whose pretend lives we watch on television. 
 
Meanwhile, the interactive worlds of computer and cell phones are less responsive to conventional modes of social manipulation via media. They are constantly being re-appropriated by those who use it as a tool for organizing ‘outside’ of conventional systems of commerce and government. A younger generation that’s thoroughly saturated in layers of electronic media may be more able to maintain a skeptical distance from the never ending parade of images and sales pitches thrown around by centralized nodes like television and radio. They may be less susceptible to modes of deliberate conditioning that an older, less media literate generation falls more easily prey to.  
 
The cultural division of America is no longer primarily North and South or East and West. On the surface there appears to be cultural conflicts between city and suburb, white and non-white, rich and poor. Underneath all of these is a sharp division between generations in terms of media literacy. The present political drama features a battle royal between a television/cable marketing generation and an Internet/Satellite/Cell Phone generation who have very different ways of processing the information they receive. This explains why each successive election of the past 40 years has been so weirdly and increasingly split down the middle, with almost exactly half of the electorate polarized toward either side. 
 
This time around the Republican campaign is headed by a media guy whose experience is in communications and media spin. He tends to function on the level of television and the movies – heavy advertising and media with enough money to poor into any set of images or counter-images you have a mind to. The Democrat campaign has focused on a more traditional ‘ground game’ that relies on personal contact, by phone or in the flesh. With the help of unions and a well organized network they’ve built three times as many local campaign offices across the country. Republicans are hoping, one way or another, that an election, like everything else in a capitalist country, can be bought with sufficiently clever advertising. It may work. Whatever works, this election will reflect an important decision, collectively made at a critical time, over what sorts of information we value and how we prefer to have it conveyed. 
 
Nobody knows how this is going to come out. The best thing we can do for ourselves and others is to get beyond our fears of the outcome. Whichever way the pendulum swings it will eventually turn and swing the other way, so it benefits us to look forward and not back. Humanity is now largely part of an almost totally integrated system of global energy transfer that enfolds the worlds of government and commerce. We are slowly recognizing who we are as a global collective, and observing that we are all in this together. Whichever direction we choose, forward or back, there will be many struggles ahead. Still, amid the struggle and resistance and denial, we are forced to discover our faith in the future as the inevitable change happens all around.
_____________________________
 
As far as seeing into the future, the best we can do is try to see clearly the present, if possible, unadorned with hype and fantasy. It’s election season and for those paying attention there’s a real tension in the air between all of us. Somebody will win and somebody will lose. The questions then are about how we move on. Personally I hope we decide to embrace the possibilities of the future with courage and persistence, and not choose to return to some vanished fantasies of the past. I’d hate to have to go back to the world as told to us by Reagan/Bush et al. and have to play out this whole circle-the-wagons thing again.
 
A Star Trek interpretation of the race occurred to me today. Embodied in caricatures of Businessman versus Lawyer we’ve got a situation of Doctor McCoy (the Emergency Doctor!) running against Mister Spock (the Cool Science Officer). Now which one would you rather? 
 
___________________________
 
Third Debate Roundup

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   

 
Romney / Presentation / Somewhat Flat / Agitated / Defensive / Almost Plaintive

 
Obama / Presentation / Rhythm Pause Rhythm Pause Rhythm Pause
 
Romney / Demeanor / Frozen Smile / Defensive / Abstract
 
Obama Demeanor / Steady / The tilt of the head which suggests both authority and compassion.
 
Romney through sound and image: Politician
 
Obama through sound and image: President 
 

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Updates

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“You have always taught us that liberty is the same thing as capitalism, as if life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness cannot be crushed by greed. Your American Dream is financial, not ethical. Thank you. You have taught us well.” 

 
– the Chinese Ambassador to C. J. Craig in the 7th season of The West Wing
 
________________
 
In the wake of President Obama’s dismal performance at the first debate in Denver, Colorado, I read the following article in a recent issue of the Atlantic Monthly that, in my mind, begins to make sense of the whole thing. It maps out a case for the near impossibility for a black person to express public anger (even when justified) in our so-called “post-racial” culture without triggering a sense of primal fear in a good portion of the American public. Not that this is an excuse for Obama’s “bad night” (which could conceivably cost the election) but it puts into context the image of Obama staring down at his notes looking rather weary while a white guy looking like he stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting proceeds to dress him down. Perhaps if we could come up with an acceptable form of the phrase “You Lie!” (voiced openly by a white congressman in the middle of one of Obama’s State of the Union addresses) – something like Joe Biden’s “Malarkey” – then a black man could navigate the shoals of national politics without the forced pretense of polite respect.  
 
Another article I liked, written by Bill Clinton, appeared in a recent issue of Time Magazine. It’s an upbeat presentation of a longer view and broader vision which is the key to successful politics and the reason Bill Clinton is one of the most successful politicians of the past half century.  
 
 

A Case for the Longer View

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A Case for the Longer View
 
I’ve found that the best antidote to being overwhelmed by political trivia and the day-by-day struggles of the electorate and their representatives is to step back and allow one’s perspective to embrace a wider angle view of history including past, present and future. Lately I’ve been returning to science fiction, which by its nature embraces the longer view. I’ve been reading Hunters of Dune and listening to an audio version of Isaac Asimov’s classic Foundation Trilogy. Both epics challenge us to think in terms of thousands of years of cause and effect. If nothing else, they provide a useful exercise for stretching our perspective outside of our immediate impulses. 
 
Certainly, in the context of human history the current political struggles are more clearly apprehended as part of a continuing discourse that stretches across boundaries of time, war, religion and empire. Every election and every personal choice at every point in time in fact contains the entirety of our relationship to every other moment. In Buddhism this is known as the principle of interdependent co-arising. Given the principle that everything we do and think is inextricably linked with the ongoing flow of time and with the totality of collective experience, we are either driven toward a helplessly deterministic frame of mind or we fully take on the responsibility of our actions and their consequences in relation to the whole. In this context my frequent but fleeting surrender to the emotions of fear or anger appears somewhat irresponsible at best and extremely counterproductive. 
 
Yes, every election is “the most important election of our time.” Given the almost infinite vectors of historical and personal history colliding at the point where we pull the lever or drop our ballot in the box (or don’t) the potential consequences of the choices we make may appear either overwhelming or meaningless. Here the advice inscribed in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy appears most relevant: 
 
“Don’t Panic.”
 
Over the years, at least since the overthrow of Jimmy Carter, every election season evokes in me feelings ranging from short lived elation to rage and disappointment. It appears that every time America is on the verge of actually grappling seriously with real world situations we collectively surrender to some dream of manufactured reality. While the rest of the world begins to face the consequences of some of humanity’s unfortunate choices (We’ve been thinking and talking about climate change since the late seventies) America pretends that the consequences of our actions (other than financial gain and loss) are mostly irrelevant.
 
However, when I step back and take a few breaths I can see that there is change and even progress over the years and decades. While our politics cycle through periods of vision and retreat our collective awareness of a world beyond our expectations gradually and steadily expands. Awakening proceeds much more slowly than I generally appreciate, given the nature of one short human lifetime. We try and fail and try again and slowly the boulder moves on up the hill. 
 
It appears that the best we can do is to help each other stay awake while urging one another not to surrender to cynicism and complacency. There’s so much to be explored and so many choices ahead of us. We all need help to prioritize and to hold things in proper perspective, as various waves of panic and despair and misplaced enthusiasm roil over the surface of civilization. We need collectively to decide from moment to moment what’s important and what’s better left behind.  
 
In the interest of our common interests I’d like to share with you an interchange between myself and my friend Jason, whose reply to my last post includes a representation of our political situation that’s both simple and clear. He quotes the part of my piece that I believe is the most provocative and open to debate:  
 

“To those who are lost in the kind of cynicism caused by over-exposure to the mind numbing critiques of the left, particularly over issues of foreign policy, I can only say that I don’t believe for a minute “both parties are the same.” The difference, even in foreign policy, is clearly put forth in the rhetoric of the presidential candidates. Mitt Romney forthrightly represents the old colonial assumptions of white supremacy and the just rule of financial elites. Barack Obama’s foreign policy, which has been criticized for being too reactive (rather than pro-active) consistently emphasizes themes of cultural diversity and cooperation and are never mired in the rhetoric of religious and racial bigotry. It’s true, I will concede, that both candidates and both parties support the continued strength and overwhelming superiority of the American military. Both will do what it takes to keep the lights on. Both will use drones (or whatever means necessary) in wars against foreign enemies (with consequential collateral damage to civilians). I do believe, however, that the switch from a rhetoric of domination to the rhetoric of cooperation and defense is more than just a change in vocabulary. It indicates an important step toward new approaches in a world facing enormous changes where cooperation is the only path that can take us beyond disaster.”

Jason replies:
“I think both parties goals are the same, but they have different strategies/ideologies to reach the goal. Reminds me of being a young child in the back seat of the family car and listening to my parents bicker about how to get to a certain destination. Sometimes the gloves would come off when there was a disagreement about the current location or even which direction north was. But you know – where we were hoping to end up was never in dispute.” 
This inspired the following response:
 
Absolutely true. All of us, left, right and center are riding in the same vehicle, toward heaven or oblivion or more likely someplace in between. 

What we expect from our governments and leaders is that they maintain the infrastructure that supports our existence, and that they protect us from those who want to hurt us. ALL of us who choose to live in a particular country agree on these things. 

Some of us may see the destination more clearly and most of us disagree somewhat on the path from here to there. Some of us are extremely short sighted and selfish. Some of us are lost in our dreams.

The war that’s raging in this country and most of those raging around the world are religious wars, dealing with disagreements about the purpose and destination of the journey. In this election two very different metaphysics are represented. The parental metaphor is apt. American politics in fact, has long been characterized as a clash between the “daddy” state and the “mommy” state. 

I see it as a clash between two distinct value sets. One is based on the religious concept that our ultimate destination is another world completely (the Abrahamic religious legacy in the west and the Hindu philosophy in the east). Against this is the view that our natural destiny is one of codependency with the natural world and each other. The latter view flows most recently out of the conclusions of science, particularly as Systems Theory. It also is seen in several religions that emerged out of the so-called Axial Age that began about 2500 years ago. 

If you listen to and analyze the vocabulary used in virtually every speech at the Republican and Democrat Conventions you will see an amazingly stark representation of these opposing metaphysics.

This is a conflict that is much older than America. In a country that’s a melting pot and in some ways a microcosm of the whole world, our political process is a mirror of this ancient struggle. 

Unlike in many other countries in the world, we may be sitting in the back seat, but we ultimately decide, collectively, who will sit in the front.

 
Addendum:
 
As for my comment about “the mind-numbing critiques of the left,” a bit of clarification is in order. 
 
…which leads us to the question of Drones…
 
Oh yeah…and here’s Sarah Silverman with another public service message (uncensored). 

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Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting.

– Alan Dean Foster

 

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Sites of interest:

http://arclist.org/

http://deskript.com/

http://www.openculture.com/

http://open.salon.com/blog/ralph_melcher/recent

http://arclist-ralphmelcher.blogspot.com/

To subscribe to the Arclist send a message to melcher@nets.com

“If you want to find pure gold, you must see it through fire.” – Mumonkan

The Vote

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I haven’t spent much time bloviating about the election this year, but that doesn’t mean I’m not interested. Early every morning, just after sitting and reading a few Buddhist texts, the next thing I do is look up the polls and the best political analysis I can find (usually on the Washington Post app or RealClearPolitics. I check them repeatedly during the day whenever I can get away to my local hotspot at work. There’s so much information and opinion out there that it hardly seems worth the time to add more to the mix. I suppose you can say that I’m a bit more emotionally detached, but this is a natural function of paying such close attention for so long. Over the past year I’ve been getting together about once a week to watch old episodes of The West Wing. It’s almost amazing how little the basic issues have changed in the decade since these shows were produced. (We are currently on the seventh and last season, just before the debates, so our timing has been perfect.) 
 
I must say that this election is the most interesting I can remember. Two candidates are running who aren’t idiots and who are able to clearly articulate their positions. Both presidential candidates and both parties have become clear expressions of two polarized views of the world. The ferment among the population has been a long time coming. This election could mark a decisive defeat for forces of right wing bigotry and religious intolerance that have tried over the past 30 years to turn the country into a racist colonialist theocracy. Or not. I look forward to this inevitable defeat, which will mark the passing of an aging population of baby boomers who are caught in the passing remnants of idealistic illusions that have clashed since the advent of television and the long slow decline of the American Empire. In the midst of all this dreaming the Republican Party made a deal with forces that promoted the extreme dreamworld of Ronald Reagan’s “Morning In America.” This gave rise to a frightened community who see their rights of racial privilege threatened at every turn and would deny the validity of virtually every progressive change that’s emerged since the end of the Civil War and the ‘Guilded Age’. 
 
The elements that represent the worst of America flocked to the Republican party when the Democrats embraced civil rights in the sixties. What were once solid “Blue” states in the south turned bright red and have remained so ever since. Racism and evangelicalism accompanied by assumptions of white superiority aided by voter suppression became the backbone and the curse of the new “conservatism.” The migration between parties won them several decades worth of electoral power over Democrats who were trying to redefine themselves as the party of diversity rather than the party exclusively of labor in the north and segregation in the south. 
 
For Republicans the cost of their bargain has come due. Through the globalization of electronic communication and the consequent liberalization of culture the base of their party has become narrowly white and is aging. As populations have become more concentrated in urban centers a cultural war is being waged between rural and urban America. Superimposed on this are the contradictions of a heavily subsidized (and mostly white) rural sector that hates government against a concentrated and diverse urban population that in many ways is compelled to find more creative ways to enter the future. 
 
Two very different sets of values have taken over each party and in every successive presidential election this split has become more pronounced. The configuration of both parties has now become all but set in stone. Although many will disagree, I believe that the old colonial values that we inherited from England have come to dominate the south and are backed up, particularly among the poorest and least educated class of whites, by Christian fear mongering. What sometimes appears to be a war of religious values is really a war about race and class that has been raging since our beginnings as a nation. Religion is used as the self-justification for the worst kinds of behavior. On the other hand, An increasingly secular and increasingly diverse and progressive (and young) population has become the base of the Democratic party. 
 
The victory of Obama in 2008, by breaking through the previously impenetrable barrier of race allowed the true underlying issues of class and culture to emerge as the driving themes of today’s politics. For me this election has been extremely encouraging. We are making progress in articulating our vision of the future after years of sliding back into denial of the present.
 
To those who are lost in the kind of cynicism caused by over-exposure to the mind numbing critiques of the left, particularly over issues of foreign policy, I can only say that I don’t believe for a minute “both parties are the same.” The difference, even in foreign policy, is clearly put forth in the rhetoric of the presidential candidates. Mitt Romney forthrightly represents the old colonial assumptions of white supremacy and the just rule of financial elites. Barack Obama’s foreign policy, which has been criticized for being too reactive (rather than pro-active) consistently emphasizes themes of cultural diversity and cooperation and are never mired in the rhetoric of religious and racial bigotry. It’s true, I will concede, that both candidates and both parties support the continued strength and overwhelming superiority of the American military. Both will do what it takes to keep the lights on. Both will use drones (or whatever means necessary) in wars against foreign enemies (with consequential collateral damage to civilians). I do believe, however, that the switch from a rhetoric of domination to the rhetoric of cooperation and defense is more than just a change in vocabulary. It indicates an important step toward new approaches in a world that faces enormous changes where cooperation is the only path that can take us beyond disaster. 
 
 

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   

Sites of interest:

http://arclist.org/

http://deskript.com/

http://www.openculture.com/

http://open.salon.com/blog/ralph_melcher/recent

http://arclist-ralphmelcher.blogspot.com/

To subscribe to the Arclist send a message to melcher@nets.com

“If you want to find pure gold, you must see it through fire.” – Mumonkan

Between the Self and the Truth

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“All men are created equal.”

– Thomas Jefferson

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“Money, not morality is the principle of commercial nations.”

– Thomas Jefferson

“…just starting with the question of “What happened to black people?” is not sufficient to understanding that at the end of the day, the very notion of settlement in this country was about procuring resources for the purposes of wealth accumulation. That was true for most who came to this country, maybe not true for a small band of Puritans who landed in Massachusetts, who imagined the recreation of a very special, religious community. But even that vision of American society didn’t last very long…it’s certainly true, as far as I’m concerned, that over the last 225 years, Thomas Jefferson’s second point about money– has far outlasted and triumphed over the notion of freedom.” – Khalil Muhammad

Happy Fourth of July.

Here is a link to the Bill Moyer’s interview with one of our most prominent young black historians. In light of an election that will be, as was the last, decided partly around the issues of race, I think that this is an important perspective for all Americans to understand. Unfortunately this is a time when most Americans will do almost anything to avoid the truths of their own history, a time when the vestiges of white supremacy will attempt, perhaps successfully, to purchase the upcoming elections.

This is one of the best and most informative interviews I’ve ever seen, and given the brilliant history of Moyer’s interviews, that’s saying something. The fair minded clarity of both men is beyond reproach, offering an unmatched glimpse of the undercurrents that run through our culture along with their historical roots.

America has been living a contradiction since its founding, and over 200 years later we have yet to overcome that contradiction. We are at a crux in our evolution as a society. Along one path, the path known as “conservatism”, America continues to be viewed primarily as the “ownership society”, where absolutely everything is valued only as a commodity, including our concept of freedom and speech, our communities, even our closest relationships. Along this road we are a society bought and sold, where human rights are measured only in terms of what we own. In my opinion this path, in the long term, is doomed to collapse and failure.

Fortunately, emerging out of this collapse is another point of view, mostly held by the young, who have grown up in a world where the boundaries between nations and races has been largely broken down through the rise of global digital culture. Surveys have shown that young people are less susceptible to the influence of television and religion, the primary tools used by the ‘Baby Boomer Generation’ for the promulgation of bigotry and paranoia. (I was both surprised and encouraged by a debate I recently listened to on NPR’s Intelligence Squared that asked the question Would The World Be Better Off Without Religion, where both sides were very eloquently argued.)

I recently returned from a trip through the midwest and part of the deep south and was dismayed at the level of ignorance and cultural isolation that I sensed as I crossed this wide and beautiful nation. On the other side I’ve been inspired and uplifted by watching the HBO drama Treme which goes to the true heart of America through the music and culture of New Orleans as it rebuilds itself after Katrina. In these episodes I’ve seen reflections of myself and my own attitudes, both good and bad. There’s the hopelessness that turns into depression and rage, directed both against the outside and against the self. On the other side there’s the sheer joy of being alive and the will to continue on, to celebrate and to be a part of one another. Maybe its only through something dying that something new can be born.

The Rise of Another World

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In light of the irrelevant squabbling that characterizes the fear based struggles of the west, particularly the current election cycle, we should be aware that in important ways the world is ‘moving on.’ As a culture we will either learn to ride the waves or we will fail. 
 
My generation woke up in the sixties to the horrors and injustices of a world overtaken by colonialism and the machineries of global capitalism. We came of age in the first decades of television and the rise of electronic media. The shock of seeing the world from a whole new perspective than that of our parents drove us into a quest for the future that was both hopeful and desperate. We created the hopeful dream of a future dominated by peace and love. We tried to transcend the forces of history and in the process created unfortunate blind spots in our view of the present. 
 
Things have turned out differently than many of us dreamed, at least in the short term. Instead of an Age of Aquarius we appear to have arrived in a world where the dominant reality is one of fragmentation and fear. Instead of universal brotherhood we’ve become isolated into paranoid camps dreaming up ways to attribute our woes to others. Many ‘New Agers’ that I know have taken refuge in bizarre fantasies of persecution and/or redemption that are drawn out of thin air to ‘explain’ the bewildering complexity of the world. We are unable to give up our destructive addictions, so we turn them into religions and defend them with a passion born of fear.    
 
In our struggle to deny the reality of the situations we collectively face, we’ve been caught up in a confusion of contrarian visions, each defending its own turf against all others. The Internet, while opening us to a world of almost infinite diversity has also been a mixed blessing, particularly in the so-called ‘developed’ world. In the domain of ‘social networks’ (read ‘tribes’) we tend to gather into closed networks that reinforce our preconceptions while excluding input from contrary points of view. 
 
In spite of all of this the world continues to change and humans continue to imagine and create. What we need more than ever is the ability to pay attention, to listen to other points of view and other ways of perceiving the reality we face. More than ever we need to be detached and fluid as the world reshapes itself. My advice to us all is, “don’t sweat the big stuff.” We can only effect the enormously complex forces that are reshaping the world by the quality of our everyday interactions.
 
As an illustration of the factors that will effect our future, I offer a link to this important TED talk on China by Martin Jacques, author of When China Rules the World. 
 

Understanding China

 
Mr. Jacques presents a historical outline of the important aspects that we in the western world tend to miss when we assume that a country like China approaches the future in a manner that merely replicates our own and that the Chinese are motivated in the same way that we are. 
 
The main points of his talk:
 
By the end of the next decade China will have an economy twice the size of the United States. 
 
The speaker warns that “the West has lost the sense of the future.” He makes a case that the world of the future will be shaped more by the developing world than through the weakening influence of the long dominant western models.  
 
China’s problem: A huge number of people and no space. 
 
Three crucial differences in China’s sense of itself and the factors that shape its decisions:
 
The concept of the Civilization State (as opposed to the Nation State).
 
The notion of Race (the absolute primacy of a single dominant race: the Han).
 
The State as the defender of Civilization (the state as the guarantor of Unity).
 
The Chinese invented Golf.