The Rag Blog

There will be more to this series. rdj

Maybe you have no time for all this, as you say in the last line of your post, because you complicate things and it takes a long time to sort them out, attributing ideas to scholars, tracing the geneology of ideas and generally taking an academic approach.

After conceeding much of what I say, you start making a case for reason. “If we give up on reason, on what basis do we set policy?” you ask in a quite rhetorical way.

Maybe you look for reason to uphold you, but I wouldn’t expose myself to that.

Reason, if such exists, was on the side of racial integration, but white folks in the South, who could ostensibly have been reached by reason, never did properly come around. What brought down segregation was not reason but the self-interest of black folks, their willingness to rebel in pursuit of their interests, and among other things, the self-interest of the Soviets and their willingness to propagandize the existence of racism in the U.S. : i.e., brute force and the threat of it, domestic and foreign.

The Vietnam war was not “reasonable.” What ended it was the brute force of the Vietnamese people, with backing from the Soviets, not any reasoning in the imperial country, which is repeating the error in Iraq, because reason is puny.

No “we” on this list sets any social policy, as you suggest. The System’s “reasonable men” do that: is it that you want to qualify as a candidate for their number?

Were I to be able to set social policy, my guide would not be “reason” by itself or “truth” or “science” either. It would be: what´s good for me, what kind of world do I want? (Call that Desire if you want; with that word you can start a whole new geneological-historical exposition.)
Reason is polite and fine, but, as winner or loser, give me self-interest and brute force any day! With those as my guides, the world seems “reasonable.”

Everbody is pursuing his or her own self-interest and those who garner the most brute force for their interests, win.

Dick J. Reavis

Wow. What strikes me most about your case against reason is how you use reason to articulate it. Do you not recognize that you refute your argument in the very act of making it?

Now, I agree that many heinous things have been done historically in the name of reason. This is not the fault of reason, but of the heinous people who evoke reason to rationalize actions motivated by self-interest and enabled by their access to brute force.

You should direct your argument against the use of reason to rationalize self-interest, not against reason itself. The appropriate remedy for the misappropriation of reason is to use reason to expose it. You have done this, and it’s what post-modernist social critics typically do. I have no problem with it, so far as it goes (it doesn’t go far enough, in my view, because it offers no alternative). But to lay the blame on reason seems wholly inappropriate. You want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I take your point about the importance of action to realize racial integration in the South. No amount of reason can convince some people. But, in order to take those actions, a mass political constituency had to be mobilized. Civil rights leaders used reason to do that. Appeals to self-interest wouldn’t do, owing to the compelling self-interest of prospective participants to free-ride on the civil rights movement — to enjoy the benefits of its success without contributing to the costs of attaining that success. If the civil rights leaders relied on the self-interest of their constituents, there would not have been a civil rights movement, much less a successful one.
This problem — the free-rider problem — is the reason your appeal to self-interest is mistaken. When we rely on self-interest, small groups that can easily police their membership to prevent free-riding tend to form, while large groups that cannot police their members do not. This is why producers of goods are organized, while consumers of goods are not. It’s why teachers are organized, while students are not, etc. I expect you already know this anyway. In any event, you should reconsider your appeal to self-interest in light of it.

By the “we” who set social policy, I mean “all of us.” I’m not naive enough to presume that we live in a democracy, but I’m not cynical enough to deny that we can have voice, should we choose to exercise it.

I would want your “what’s good for me” maxim for “what best promotes human flourishing.” Your maxim is the one that has produced all the ills you enumerate. Mine is the norm that should (if it doesn’t) motivate inquiry, social and natural.

See Bacon, Wittgenstein, and (Hilary) Putnam.

I won’t apologize for taking an academic approach, as that pays the bills around here.

Gavan Duffy

Ah, Duffer, you soar with the eagles. What fun that you’re occasionally willing to take time from your busy schedule to swoop down and shred a few of us groundlings.

But, hey, boy-o! Some of us ain’t going down without a struggle (as you’ve already noticed). Being a journalist, and therefore more practiced at brevity than you academic types, I have just four points.

First, you can stop grappling with postmodernism. It’s dead. PoMo performed a useful function in destroying the metanarrative of modernism (and it was never designed to be anything but a deconstructive force, so don’t hassle the pig for its failure to give good milk), but now that PoMo has effectively done its work, it’s finished. We’ve begun moving into construction of the next story. Difficult to say what our next metanarrative might be, but my guess is that it’s likely to be fueled by some of the insights being gleaned from research into complex adaptive systems. Anyway, better to invest your limited time in that construction work than flogging a dead horse. A lot of people haven’t recognized PoMo’s death yet because they’re distracted by all the residual zombies of modernism — the walking dead — some of them in high places.

Practical advice. There’s widespread agreement that you can’t kill a zombie, because it’s already dead, but you can permanently disable it by cutting off the head. (In case Bert Gerding is still watching, that is only a figurative allusion, Bert.)

Second, reality. I won’t quibble too much with your words, because I think you’re pretty much on target. Most consciousness theory these days acknowledges that while “the truth” is probably out there, our view of that is just so much amateur homebrew. It is (and probably always will be) largely inaccessible to us. But, as you suggest, there’s no point in going all grumpy about that. Better to dance with the one what brung ya than to sit there sulkin’ because you can’t get nowheres close to the prom queen.

Third, truth. I kind of hate that word. Mostly because it’s always shacked up with belief, and belief is so riddled with insecurity that it becomes completely obsessed with stomping out the non-believers and contrary-believers. Humility is in order. Better to acknowledge that all this truth stuff is just so many aging hypotheses, many of them still doing useful work, but generally just hanging on until they’re forced into retirement by some younger, more vigorous hypothesis. Even all the supposedly factual data and observations that support our hypotheses… homebrew at the end of the day. But, again, drink up. No margin in going thirsty all night. Just don’t get all huffy about this brew’s being the end-all and be-all.

Fourth, reason. Aw, shit! Now I’m going to be camped out somewheres apparently closer to that Reavis guy than to you, Duffer. But maybe only apparently. I’m not sure you’re actually contradicting each other. We’re talking about an appropriate instrument for managing human systems. Dick says self-interest and force are the prime movers. You counter that that’s exactly our problem. And that we need to let go of the “what’s good for me” maxim in favor of “what best promotes human flourishing” — i.e., the application of reason. But, hold on now, didn’t we already establish that there’s a synergy between those two a few millennia ago? In the overall scheme of things, what’s best for us is best for me (or, at least, for the collective me’s, if not necessarily and always me personally) and, by implication, vice versa. Clumsily applied as it often is, collective human self-interest rules. And it rules by force — consensually in the better circumstances but, in any case, inevitably. Are we collectively flourishing? Qualitative aspects aside, just ask all those extinct species we’ve elbowed out of the way to create more parking space. Will we continue to flourish — and hopefully to flourish in better as well as (or perhaps instead of) bigger ways? That’s where you and Dick ought to be able to find some common ground. Especially in our rapidly globalizing reality (so-called), it is a failure of reason not to recognize that the decimation of Africa’s population (to cite just one example) is not in my long-term, flourishing self-interest. And it is a failure of reason not to recognize that an inequitable distribution of power (i.e., the potential for exercising force) is not in my long-term self-interest. I think there’s no contradiction, at least in the longer term, between self-interest and applied reason. We’ve just gotta disable some of those zombies who can’t figure out how to put the two together in a more effective fashion. (Figuratively, Bert, figuratively!)

Dennis Fitzgerald

How I’ve enjoyed this discussion. None of us are as far apart as we might presume, and the talk is still civil!

I especially enjoyed Fitzgerald’s post: I wish I could write like that! The first mention of Gerding really had me laughing.

On another subject: I don’t know how many people know me or have kept up with me, but in 1995 I wrote the book of record about what happened at Waco with David Koresh and the FBI. I said that the FBI negligently killed innocent people, and that the press bought the government’s story rather than studying the events. I was effectively blacklisted, couldn’t find a job for three years and am still suspect. Some of my liberal friends decided that I’d finally gone around the bend (others may have decided that of late!)

Well, on Nov. 11, 2005, in Hempstead, N.Y., according to the New York Times, Bill Clinton said that he’d changed his mind about Waco. He said:

“I think we made a mistake letting the forces go into Waco instead of waiting them out, and I will always regret that. This is another thing you need to analyze as President: When do you take your experts’ advice and when do you do what you think is right? How do you know when to follow your gut and when do you listen to others? I think the answer is when your gut feels strong, and when it’s an area you know something too. If you’re blind ignorant then you ought to listen to someone else, and if you don’t have a real strong feeling. I had a real strong feeling. I dealt with problems like Waco when I was Governor and we should have waited them out. Janet Reno was new on the job. She got enormous pressure from the FBI to go ahead and go in there. And I am responsible for that, because I told her if that’s what they want to do and she thought it was right. It was a mistake and I am responsible. And that’s not one of those things you get A for effort on.”

I just learned of Clinton’s recantation tonight. It’s been a good night for me!

Dick J. Reavis

My point about saying that I have no time for this: I knew you would respond forcing me to respond, etc. I really can’t get that involved. I am not retired, Dennis.

Here are some BRIEF responses to Dennis.

— First, you can stop grappling with postmodernism. —

Postmodernism has always been at the margins, where it wants to be. But it’s hardly dead. As neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism.

— Difficult to say what our next metanarrative might be, but my guess is that it’s likely to be fueled by some of the insights being gleaned from research into complex adaptive systems. —

Do you mean John Holland and friends? If so, I’m skeptical. Genetic algorithms, neural nets and the like are pretty good at learning. The trouble is this: when you open them up and inspect them, all you see are a bunch of nodes (or units or whatever you want to call them) and some weights governing their interactions. That doesn’t comprise a theory or anything else that can be expressed propositionally. So what good is it?

— Anyway, better to invest your limited time in that construction work than flogging a dead horse. —

I do this in my work. But this is the Raglist.

— Practical advice. There’s widespread agreement that you can’t kill a zombie, because it’s already dead, but you can permanently disable it by cutting off the head. —

Now you’ve become incoherent.

— Second, reality. —

We are all blind pilgrims feeling our way through the world. We are so susceptible to illusion (and delusion) that we must consult one another. What we call “true” is just what coheres with everything else we think is “true.” But we may have it wrong, so we must be prepared to give it up. We are more prepared to give up propositions on the periphery of our knowledge than those nearer to the core. But we are always prepared to give up any proposition, if in doing so we advance the global coherence of our knowledge.

— Third, truth. —

Well, yes, I agree. But I will insist that there’s a truth to the matter, regardless of whether we know what it is. Else, it would make no sense to seek a truth of the matter or to posit truthful claims.

— Fourth, reason. —

No. The individual pursuit of self-interest does not necessarily maximize collective self-interest. At some point, those initially successful in attaining their interests enhance their chances even more by exploiting others.

— Clumsily applied as it often is, collective human self-interest rules. —

Even collectively, people organize into competing groups. If by “self” in “self-interest” you mean “all of humanity present and future,” then there may be no difference between pursuing self-interest and promoting human flourishing. I can’t see how you can posit that equivalence though.

Maybe you are confounded by my use of “promoting human flourishing,” which, by the way, is a phrase of Wittgenstein’s. By this I mean (and I take Wittgenstein to mean) the flourishing of all of humanity, not of particular individuals and groups.

Bentham identified the good as the sum of returns to expected utility for all persons present and future (where utility is total pleasures minus total pains, recognizing that for some pain is pleasurable.) But this doesn’t work, because we maximize that sum by allowing the better-off to exploit the worse-off. We get justice, argues John Rawls, only if we attenuate Bentham’s conception by arranging inequalities such that the prospects of even the worst off in society are still improving. This implies that we lower aggregate returns to expected utility (or collective self-interest) to achieve fairness for the worst-off members of society. Yet this ENHANCES human flourishing because it removes the incentive of the worst off to destroy society altogether. This is the liberal argument at least. Whatever you think of it, it trumps the Benthamite self-interest argument that you and Dick appear to advocate. Dammit, I’m not being brief.

— And it rules by force — consensually in the better circumstances but, in any case, inevitably. —

Being responsible caretakers of the environment promotes human flourishing. Making them extinct to create parking spaces does not.

— Will we continue to flourish — and hopefully to flourish in better as well as (or perhaps instead of) bigger ways? That’s where you and Dick ought to be able to find some common ground. —

You can create these recognitions only through the application of reasoned argumentation. But these aren’t failures of reason. They’re failures of people to use reason.

— I think there’s no contradiction, at least in the longer term, between self-interest and applied reason. —

There’s no contradiction if you redefine the terms so that they’re more or less equivalent. That’s what you seem to be doing here. Yes, it is in every individual’s long-term self-interest to promote human flourishing. But that’s not what Dick meant by self-interest. He meant what’s good for Dick.

Anyway, Dennis, Go tell it to Halliburton.

When I worked for KPFT, I had occasion to interview George Brown, founder of Brown and Root, now a main subsidiary of Halliburton. I asked Brown if he regretted building the tiger cages for use in the Vietnam War. I’ll never forget his answer. He said, “No, whatever the Navy wants us to build, we build it.” Now there’s self-interest.

I apologize for being more didactic than brief.

Gavan Duffy

I feel almost insulted by Mr. Duffy, who says, “it is in every individual’s long-term self-interest to promote human flourishing. But that’s not what Dick meant by self-interest. He meant what’s good for Dick.”

What? My self-interest is not the universal self-interest of humanity? Isn’t it patent that I represent all of humanity? How could any reasonable person doubt that?

I insist that what I want is, ipso facto, what’s best for humanity, and further, that if everybody respected himself or herself in the same way, the world would not be run by Halliburton.

These guys on top blind us by getting us to believe in things like “reason” instead of our own self-interests.

Dick J. Reavis

— Do you mean John Holland and friends? If so, I’m skeptical. Genetic algorithms, neural nets and the like are pretty good at learning. The trouble is this: when you open them up and inspect them all you see are a bunch of nodes (or units or whatever you want to call them) and some weights governing their interactions. That doesn’t comprise a theory or anything else that can be expressed propositionally. So what good is it? —

A much more fruitful source of emergent-systems theory is the work of Stuart A. Kauffman (collected in “The Origins of Order” and popularized in “At Home in the Universe,”) which uses chaos theory to explain the emergence of qualitative and structural system features that are inaccessible to incremental adaptation. While Kauffman’s primary focus is on biology, his coherent-novelty-out-of-chaos analysis explains a great deal about revolutions, political or cultural. (I applied it to education in this.)

Hunter Ellinger

Chaos theory never got very far in political “science,” although there was a group at Wisconsin-Milwaukee that was very into it.

Systems theory needs revitalization in the social sciences generally. The trouble was that the cold warriors got ahold of it and mistakenly (perhaps on purpose) construed societies as closed systems. So they focused on homeostatic “pattern maintenance” — maintaining current equilibria, or the status quo — instead of change, homeorhesis.

Exceptions are Karl W. Deutch’s “The Nerves of Government.” Also, Walter Dean Burnham on political realignments. Deutsch is long dead, but Burnham is emeritus at UT and lives in Austin. I was a student of both, years ago, and helped recruit Burnham at UT.

I am reminded also of Ilya Prigogine, the Nobelist, I believe, in biochemistry, who when he was alive would enthusiastically regale all who would listen about order-from-chaos and dissipative structures outside the PCL at UT.

Gavan Duffy

I have no idea what any of you are talking about these days, but I find it highly amusing. A free dinner to the person who can explain it to me so that I understand.

Lori J. Hansel

I’m fairly sure that your remark is facetious, but I’ll give you my take anyway.

Gavan says that Reason is a good approach to life, and we should use it more. Dick says that this approach will waste our time; let’s just go for it. Think old-school SDS intellectuals (Hayden, Thiher, Calvert) vs. PLP; praxis-axis vs. action-faction.

Alan says that self-interest is equivalent to navel-contemplation. Dennis wants to avoid a conspiracy-to-murder rap. Hunter is trying to move the discussion toward a dialectical synthesis (i.e., take the best parts of the debate and move forward.) Michael wants to look for political/philosophical/moral progress in technical progress.

Do I get dinner?

I have enjoyed the Ragstaff letters, and this has been the most fun of the whole list. I stand with Gavan, Alan, Dennis, Hunter, and Michael (dialectical synthesis.) I am certainly glad that Gavan has taken the time to be didactic with us.

I’ve been reading Reavis for 30 years, and I am amazed that he would throw back to PLP at this juncture. At any rate I agreed with him about Waco, and I’m glad that he sees vindication now.

Paul Spencer

These bumper stickers were compiled by Jerry Paull, a former Methodist minister in Lakeside, Ohio, who writes: “The following actual bumper stickers are now on cars. I didn’t write any of them. I’m only the messenger. If they make you laugh, good. If they make you cry, good.”

*AT LEAST IN VIETNAM, BUSH HAD AN EXIT STRATEGY

*BLIND FAITH IN BAD LEADERSHIP IS NOT PATRIOTISM

*IF YOU’RE NOT OUTRAGED, YOU’RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION

*IF YOU SUPPORTED BUSH, A YELLOW RIBBON WON’T MAKE UP FOR IT

*POVERTY, HEALTH CARE & HOMELESSNESS ARE MORAL ISSUES

*OF COURSE IT HURTS. YOU’RE GETTING SCREWED BY AN ELEPHANT

*BUSH LIED, AND YOU KNOW IT

*RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM: A THREAT ABROAD, A THREAT AT HOME

*GOD BLESS EVERYONE (No exceptions)

*BUSH SPENT YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY ON HIS WAR

*PROAMERICA, ANTI BUSH

*WHO WOULD JESUS BOMB?

*IF YOU SUPPORT BUSH’S WAR, WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE? SHUT UP AND SHIP OUT

*FEEL SAFER NOW?

*I’D RATHER HAVE A PRESIDENT WHO SCREWED HIS INTERN THAN ONE WHO SCREWED HIS COUNTRY

*JESUS WAS A SOCIAL ACTIVIST – THAT IS, A LIBERAL

*MY VALUES? FREE SPEECH. EQUALITY. LIBERTY. EDUCATION. TOLERANCE

*IS IT 2008 YET?

*DISSENT IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF PATRIOTISM — Thomas Jefferson

*DON’T BLAME ME. I VOTED AGAINST BUSH — TWICE!

*ANNOY A CONSERVATIVE; THINK FOR YOURSELF

*VISUALIZE IMPEACHMENT

*HEY BUSH! WHERE’S BIN LADEN?

*CORPORATE MEDIA = MASS MIND CONTROL

*STOP MAD COWBOY DISEASE!

*GEORGE W. BUSH: MAKING TERRORISTS FASTER THAN HE CAN KILL THEM

*KEEP YOUR THEOCRACY OFF MY DEMOCRACY

*DEMOCRATS ARE SEXY. WHOEVER HEARD OF A GOOD PIECE OF ELEPHANT?

*ASPIRING CANADIAN

*CORPORATE MEDIA: WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION

*DON’T CONFUSE DYING FOR OIL WITH FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM

*STEM CELL RESEARCH IS PRO LIFE

*HATE, GREED, IGNORANCE: WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

*HONOR OUR TROOPS – DEMAND THE TRUTH

*REBUILD IRAQ? WHY NOT SPEND 87 BILLION ON AMERICA?

*FACT: BUSH OIL
1999 – $19 BARREL
2006 – $70 BARREL

*THE LAST TIME RELIGION CONTROLLED POLITICS, PEOPLE GOT BURNED AT THE STAKE

*I’LL GIVE UP MY CHOICE WHEN JOHN ROBERTS GETS PREGNANT

*SUPPORT OUR TROOPS – IMPEACH BUSH

This is the inauguration of a new weekly column. Everyone is invited to play. Since we all have to eat, my philosophy has always been that we may as well eat like royalty. It doesn’t have to be expensive or time-consuming to do so these days, and farmers’ markets have made our cooking lives a joy. So here’s the newest game in town.

Richard Jehn

Star Wars Ribs (Wuxi Paigu)

This is almost fun to prepare as the kitchen aromas are intoxicating. The Chinese name can be translated as “Vinegar Stewed Pork Ribs” if you want. The recipe is changed significantly from the one I read in Saveur. If I were to give it a more traditional English language name, it would be “Asian Braised Ribs,” but I like the “Star Wars” thing for what I hope is an obvious reason.

1-3/4 pounds country pork ribs, excess fat removed
Fresh-ground pepper
3 whole star anise
2 tablespoons olive oil

Heat the oil in a Dutch oven, season the ribs with pepper, then add them and the anise pods to the hot oil. Brown the ribs on all sides, then add:

2 tablespoons fresh ginger, minced (or 2 teaspoons dried)
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/2 cup mirin (sweet rice wine)

Reduce the wine until almost gone, five minutes, then add:

1/4 cup soya sauce
1-1/4 cups no-salt chicken stock (homemade from leftover barbequed chicken makes it really good)
1 small Spanish onion, diced

Simmer this mixture, uncovered, for half an hour, then add:

1/2 cup red wine vinegar
More pepper to taste

Simmer the ribs for about 1-1/2 hours, covered, skim fat, then add:

1 tablespoon sugar

Simmer 30 minutes (but no more than 1 hour), covered, until very tender, then remove cover and allow liquid to reduce until thickened, about 15 minutes.

Serve with rice and steamed peas, and generously ladle sauce over the ribs and rice. Garnish with diced scallions.

This summer the Denver Justice and Peace Committee finally became convinced to risk sponsoring one of our benefit Maya textile sales. Back to Colorado one more time. And while there, it’s only natural that one would take advantage of the opportunity to commune with a bit of nature, which they have in such splendid profusion. The Denver sale made money for the Committee, but Sally had to catch a plane back to Austin just beforehand to start work on a new TV series. This wilderness backpacking trip would be accomplished alone, so it would be judicious just to go back to the old familiar Conundrum Hot Springs, a popular trail that I have hiked many times before. Besides, it’s hard to beat. The Conundrum Hot Springs may be the ultimate wilderness thermal hot springs. For me, the springs have become a regular pilgrimage site. With eight to 10 visits over the past 33 years, I claim the record for the number of visits by a flatlander. But over those years, the culture and atmosphere around those remote springs has either radically changed or I have or both.

The Conundrum Hot Springs are located in the Maroon Bells/Snowmass Wilderness Area between Aspen and Crested Butte. By far, the easiest access is to hike up Conundrum Creek from the Aspen side. From Aspen, go west on Colorado 82 across the Castle Creek bridge on the western edge of town to the traffic circle, where you take the Castle Creek Road about three miles to the Conundrum Creek Road on the right. You follow that as it turns from pavement to good dirt road to bad dirt road for a distance of about a mile, which brings you to the end of the road and the trailhead. From there, it’s about nine and a half miles uphill on a strenuous trail to the springs, with an elevation gain of about 3,000 feet. The springs sit at about 11,600 feet, in an alpine meadow that in July is a sea of wildflowers. At that elevation, you are just below the tree line and the spruce and the fir have already thinned out and become stunted on exposed ridges. The meadow is laced with little hot streams oozing from the ground. Some of these outflows have been dug out and dammed to create a series of pools. The largest is 15-18 feet in diameter and up to three feet deep with water of more than 100 degrees bubbling up in the middle.

The springs are located in the center of a cirque, at the head of the valley surrounded on three sides by towering peaks, with the drainage of Conundrum Creek stretching off to the north. The surrounding ridgeline seldom drops below 13,000 feet and is crowned by Castle Peak, Conundrum Peak and Pyramid Peak, all above 14,000 feet. Along the ridge to the east of the valley is Electric Pass, once the tallest “pass” in Colorado with a hiking trail through it, a trail now no longer maintained by the Forest Service and therefore gone. It earned its name with lightning strikes on summer afternoons and hence they don’t want you to go that way.

Walking up the Conundrum Creek valley, you cross the creek four times by the time you get to the hot springs. The first two crossings have double log bridges with handrails. No spills, no thrills, but lovely to watch the water rush by from midstream. The third crossing is just a shallow ford where you have to wade the creek. Best to change briefly to the Tevas there to save untreated hiking boots from saturation. The last crossing is only about 25 yards from the main pool of the springs. Until recently it was a single log, worn somewhat flat on top, 18 inches in diameter, 15 feet long and four feet above the very fast, very cold stream. For the acrophobe, this last crossing was cruel. Having busted your butt to get up there, now you had a serious balance test with the springs in sight, languid bathers watching, doubtless prepared to smirk at the slightest hesitation. Testosterone time.

This summer’s trek to the springs was unique in that I went alone for the first time. Once started I was quickly reminded that wilderness hiking alone is fundamentally different from wilderness hiking with other people. There is no back up. You must not slip and sprain an ankle. Your margin for error is very much diminished and every responsibility is yours. A cell phone that worked in remote mountain valleys might partially mitigate the problem, but I don’t have one. Besides, going into the wilderness with a cell phone has an oxymoronic quality. The situation demands caution, alertness and judiciousness and no smoking before the springs.

Considering my advanced age, I decided to buy a high tech, telescoping, titanium walking stick in Aspen before departure, the first time I have ever hiked with such a device. After this experience, it will forever be among my essential hiking equipment. It’s essentially a cane, principally useful for balance. This sometimes very steep and rocky trail made obvious its utility, if not its necessity. By the time I finished the hike, it was clear that I would never do this again without one. But my fancy cane was also a continuous reminder that previously I had been able to do without it and of one potential negative aspect of my future life as an actual elderly person.

Since I had a large pile of Maya textiles that some might consider valuable in the camper, I asked the nice young lady who sold me this walking aid if there were any theft issues with cars at the trailhead. She said that the problem there was not people, even considering my several inflammatory bumper stickers, which she assured me, might instead earn anonymous garlands of wildflowers on my hood. The problem was bears that were increasingly moving into the area and developing the habit of breaking out car windows to get to good-smelling stuff inside. So what do you do with the food you don’t carry? And what do you say to Mister Bear when you meet on the trail carrying your food not enclosed in bear canisters? Especially if you are alone and thus exponentially less able to “look big.” On the previous hike up to the hot springs, Sally had heard what was very likely a bear on the trail going up. I bought a loud whistle to go with the hiking stick.

One result of these ruminations was the desire to make it all the way up to the springs in one day. Near the springs, there are many established campsites and usually a bunch of pretty cool people. The idea was that the same species in large numbers equals security. No camping alone somewhere half way up to break up the hike, a practice I often had followed previously when hiking with inexperienced companions not enamored of the joys of stress walking. This time, the plan was hot springs or bust.

Bears will focus your mind that way. Some have said that without bears, there is no wilderness. Wilderness should humble you and for the essential experience, you need a little competition for the peak of the food chain. There also was the “can I still do it?” factor, a perpetual problem of the aging ego. The judgement is that without the new cane, the answer might have been a resounding no. Going up this time took more than seven hours. No matter how well I paced myself, that was way at the outer limits of my endurance. I tried to walk systematically for 50 minutes and rest 10. It quickly became apparent that 10-minute breaks were not enough time to eat trail food, drink water, get out the poncho because it’s starting to rain, spray on more bug spray to deter the deer flies, doctor nascent blisters, etc., and rest. Then 50 minutes became hard to sustain. Break times lengthened and walking time shortened. During the last half hour stage, I was staggering under my pack, as usual filled with far too much food and clothing, eyes fixed on the trail immediately at my feet, counting steps, becoming slightly delusional with fatigue, but aware that I was getting close.

Arriving with still two hours before dark, there was plenty of time, just no energy. In my exhaustion, cooking and setting up the tent were the only reasonable accomplishments. Making it up the last 200 yards from my campsite to the springs, even without a pack, seemed daunting. After downing a big bowl of hot processed gruel, I passed out in the tent before darkness fell. Of course, still thinking of Mister Bear, all my food and cooking gear were in a bag at the end of a rope, swinging in space from the lower branches of a fir tree growing on the edge of a cliff 100 feet away from my tent.

The day before starting this hike, I had lunch with my old Boulder architect friend, Clifford Bravin, the first time we had met in more than a decade. We had once hiked to the hot springs together in what was the most memorable of all my hikes up there. Back then in the late 80’s, the problem with Clifford was that he always had some very promising romance it was crucial that he attend to up to the moment of departure. In the case of our hike to Conundrum, she lived in the high mountain town of Ashcroft, just over the ridge in the adjacent Castle Creek valley. All we had to do was hang at her little cabin the first night, me alone under the stars outside, him and her inside. Then we would just pop over Electric Pass the next morning, drop down into the neighboring Conundrum Creek valley and already be halfway up the valley to the hot springs. Seemed reasonable at the time.

The mountains will quickly relieve one of the hubris that this will be easy or safe. At the time, we were strong, experienced hikers and getting up to Electric Pass, although physically demanding, turned out not to be the big problem. We had waited just a little too long for Cliff to tear himself away from those loving arms back at 9,000 feet, so we arrived from the east side of the pass in the early afternoon with a thunderstorm rapidly building to the west and headed our way. Not a good time to be at Electric Pass. No stopping to admire the view from 12,900 feet.

We hurried along the very faint trail across the barren rock landscape of scree slopes leading down into the valley of Conundrum Creek. Within less than a half-mile we confronted a hard, crusty snow field across what was left of the trail, at best a faint indenture across the rocks. The icy stretch was probably 50 yards wide, no previous hikers had kicked out steps and we had no ice axes or crampons or ropes. It had about a 60-degree slope and extended downward for a couple of hundred yards to a point where it disappeared at what looked from above like the edge of a cliff. We could easily envision sliding out of control all the way down it and beyond into the great unknown, with a high probability of a rough landing. The growing threat of lightning strikes required going down fast, but not that fast. Instead, we left that remnant of a trail and descended straight down through the scree, steep fields of fist-sized rocks where you take one step and the rocks slide with you for another. It’s a controlled slide down on mini-avalanches. This, too, led to something that looked like the edge of a cliff, but unless the whole slope gave way, it was likely to be easier to stop yourself beforehand on scree than on ice. Hopefully, when we got to the edge, we would find a way down. If not, climbing back up through the scree in a thunderstorm was going to be a challenge. Luckily, we did find a way to climb down, with rain falling ever harder and lightning bolts dancing above us on the ridgeline for inspiration, demonstrating how Electric Pass got its name and why they don’t want you to go that way. At our recent lunch, Clifford shook his head and acknowledged that he’d never forget that experience or do it again. My theory is that as you get older, it becomes more reasonable to take chances.

The greatest trip to Conundrum was probably the first, but they’ve all been good. It was about 1973 and I was wandering west to California with rock drummer David Fore his girlfriend, Sherry, and her friend, Jackie, in two cars. We had stopped by Boulder for Steve Fromholtz’s wedding on the way. Somehow, we heard about Conundrum and decided to go. It was like that era in general; if you remember much about it, you probably weren’t there. What I do remember is that at the hot springs in those days, clothes were an option rarely chosen, standard dress when not in the water being hiking boots and bandana. Recreational drugs were also an ever-present option that most people repeatedly exercised, psychedelics in various colors, shapes and forms being de rigueur. Like a tea party with invisible cups, nude groups of relative strangers sitting in the springs kept one hand elevated above the water so as not to moisten the passing joints. Discussions of the relative merits of your Moroccan kif compared to my Oaxacan red hair filled the idle hours. Others spent hours engrossed in close up wildflower photography, oblivious of having run out of film.

If you became excessively languid and needed instant revitalization after hours of strenuous psychic activities while sitting perfectly still in 100-degree water, you changed your paradigms radically by doing very quick push ups in the stream of 40-degree white water that flowed nearby. And when it started pouring rain in the late afternoon, as it has always been prone to do, we all gathered in the old doorless, windowless one room ranger cabin to whip up a big communal feast. My hazy memory assures me it was somehow delicious, a hippie gourmet extravaganza, and that there were more flowers then, too.

In 2006, although there are still a lot of flowers, things have changed. People always say, “This place ain’t like it used to be.” That applies to almost everywhere, even Conundrum, more than nine miles back in the wilderness. When I arrived at the springs on a Tuesday evening, totally blown out, there were only a couple of other campsites occupied, out of about 20. It was the middle of the week, but I remember there being more people up here, especially in July, peak wildflower season and probably the best month for non-problematical weather. Heavy use had caused the Forest Service to designate campsites about 20 years ago. First thing the next morning, the people who had been there when I arrived left too. I finally made it up to the hot springs that Wednesday morning, a beautiful sunny mountain moment. There are now two logs over the final crossing. That last test removed, they had made it too easy. I only used the old one. No one was in the springs. I stayed for an hour before anyone showed up; four 20-somethings whose idea of a transcendent drug experience at the hot springs was to hike up and down in the same day while killing a fifth of whiskey. I suggested that wilderness backpacking was conducive to lighter weight drugs. They eyed me with some apprehension, even in a bathing suit, were distant and totally boring, even to each other. I gave up the springs to them and returned to my camp for a bite of lunch.

While descending to my camp, I came upon a group of a dozen Christian teenagers arriving with a bearded preacher-leader and setting up at the site next to mine. I could have been pissed by their noisy intrusion but for the fact that I had first encountered wilderness on the 1961 North Texas Methodist Youth Trail Hike with a bearded preacher-leader, in this very same mountain range, back when Aspen was funky and we were cool sneaking off to drink underage 3.2 beer. My spiritual life had been much enlivened by the experience, despite the futility of the Jesus rap.

These young Christians’ apparent attempt to get closer to God quickly bore fruit as it began to rain, then hail, then hail harder and bigger with strong winds, booming thunder, lightning strikes close by and plunging temperatures blowing down the slopes. They got their little tents up just in time and sat it out singing hymns from several tents simultaneously, audible between the bolts. Worked for them. The ground became covered with little ice balls. I watched from inside the dilapidated log cabin, cooking more processed gruel and alone. The rain dribbled on until after dark.

Thursday morning, my last in the mountains, was more or less clear again, so it was off to the springs for one more soaking before heading back down. On the walk up to the springs from my campsite, the Christian girls trooped by, headed back to their camp with wet hair. They regarded me as if I were a possible close relative of the abominable snowman. They had apparently gone to the springs in gender-segregated groups in the early a.m. Guys first. The springs were mine alone again.

I floated for a long time just above the place in the middle of the biggest pool where the bubbles rise. There are two rocks under the water there that you can use to maintain your floating body with the least effort in just the precise position above the outflow of the hottest water. Thus suspended, you ponder how far down the lava is and how it is the whole system could be so balanced and stable that the emerging flow is always the same temperature. The warm morning sun beat down and there was no sound other than a background of wind whispering through conifers and water cascading in the distance. A massive horseshoe of glaciated mountain ridge towers 2,000 more feet above, enclosing this perfect bath in a wildflower-strewn meadow among scattered spruce. You are centered in the warm pool centered in the bowl at the head of the valley. For awhile, I drifted away in splendid solitary serenity.

But it was fleeting. Eventually, this reverie was broken by gray clouds and rumbles that reminded me that I still had to walk nine and a half miles that day, albeit downhill. Most hiking accidents happen going downhill. I would be alone and it would very likely rain. Mister Bear could be there and fresh out of berries. Time to get it together, shoulder the pack and responsibility and head for Austin. Just enough time to drive non-stop so as to get there by the time Sally gets off work Friday. As you leave such a place, you always turn to look back on it one more time, wondering if this will be the last time you see it? Maybe I’ll take my grandchildren up there some day, but they haven’t been born yet and may need to hurry up. Maybe I’ll again feel the need to renew the ritual. I just won’t count on some youngsters to bring the party.

David Hamilton

I started a conversation with Charlie by sending him one of Fred’s (of Fred on Everything) columns titled “Jane Fonda’s Wall – Thoughts On The Chatter Of Candy-Asses.” I thought he might appreciate the dark humour. I guessed wrong. Here is the last paragraph of it that triggered some of Charlie’s response.

“If I were designing a memorial to my own taste, I would want an enormous bronze hand rising from the ground, making a rude gesture — no flag, no inscription, just a raised finger. Some might think it vulgar, but soldiers are vulgar. It would perfectly express my feelings about the war, the country, Washington, and the commission that designed Jane Fonda’s wall.”

Richard Jehn

I see the point. I have been to the wall three times and I have been to Arlington National Cemetery and I am always awed by the place. I feel a bond with the names inscribed on the wall. I have found guys I knew, my flight commander is there. I don’t think the way the writer thinks. War is the culprit; the soldiers aren’t vulgar at all, they are usually very young and they are doing what an adult told them to do.

As for Barbarella, she was pretty cute and fell for a line or two and got to have her say. Some hate her, some don’t. For awhile I wouldn’t go and see her films but got over it, freedom of speech I think it is. John McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton for many years, he could have gotten out any time he wanted. His father John Sr. was Commander of all Pacific forces. All he had to do was say the thing they wanted him to, but he wouldn’t. John McCain’s grandfather launched his planes in the Battle of the Phillipine Sea knowing they didn’t have gas to get back to the carriers, but they had to save the invasion force in the unprotected ships heading for Luzon.

War is interesting and it is amazingly enough always going on. Today there is a war brewing in Somalia and Ethiopia, and in Nigeria, the Sudan, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Nepal, Georgia, and Bosnia isn’t done, Turkey will have its way with the Kurds. China will eventually do in Taiwan and North Korea is a fun idea, and that leaves out three that the Americans are in. The Canadians are in Cyprus and in Afghanistan. And maybe Mexico will blow up and Nicaragua again if the elections go the way I think they will go.

Charlie Loving

I’m reading “War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.” The journalist, Chris Hedges, wrote it in 2003 after reporting in the former Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Iraq, Central and South America, and every other place where war has been for the past 35 years. He says some rather powerful things in it. FWIW, it’s an anti-war book. And the notion that you seem to maintain, that war is a grand and glorious thing, never did, and never will, fly with me.

–the soldiers aren’t vulgar at all–

I think that’s debatable. Especially in Iraq right now, there have been some incredibly vulgar things that have happened. The rape and murder of that girl in Mahmoudiya (and the murder of her entire family to try to hide the fact,) the massacre in Haditha, Abu Ghraib, and the numerous other atrocities. Hedges actually argues that war brings out these vulgarities, and perhaps that’s true. It makes them no more acceptable.

But you’re absolutely right that war is always going on. The mystery is, “Why?”

Richard Jehn

About the vulgar comment, soldiers are a cross section of society and mostly the poorer of that. Rape and murder are quite common on the streets of Seattle and San Antonio and I presume that Canada is not immune.

I think this debate is one that is good. As to the “Why?” Well, I can’t tell you why. I have some ideas, but that is a long book.

A soldier who has been sent to a place, Iraq, and told he will serve for six months and has been there a year and is still not going home can become psychologically demented. I saw it in the returning soldiers from ‘Nam — they were nuts, but no one seemed to pick up on it.

The enemy has no uniform. There is no front line. Anyone from anywhere could be coming to kill you and they really do want to. The Iraqi soldier might not be an Iraqi soldier. He might be a bomb. The lady might be a bomb, too. It is stressful. Why do so many of the guys I see at the VA hospital where I volunteer at times seem crazy? In group sessions they burst into tears and collapse in a heap. They have been mind-fucked, if you will pardon that expression. The best of the real guys have been hurt in ways we can’t conceive, so when they do things like Abu Ghraib, it doesn’t suprise me.

John Charlie, my son, was a Navy medic for four years; he is out now. He was at Gitmo and he went to Haiti, where they set up their small clinic and the line of patients was more than a half mile. The bad guys would beat up the patients to get their meds and so forth. It was horrible. The bad guys were the Haitian police who were supposed to make things safe. One night the Marines (Navy medics are Marines) blew up the police barracks. No one ever knew except them and the patients were safer.

He was on the USS Guadalcanal when they deployed to Liberia. The Marines set up a perimeter around the embassy. The enemy were naked kids spurred on by adults. They were doped up and naked except for their AK-47s. They were 10 and 12 years old. It was totally nuts. He then went back to Guantanamo. He is crazy on one level even today and there is not a damn thing that meds or anything can do. It is like a branding iron has marked part of his brain with this evil that can’t be removed.

My father, who flew B-17s in WWII, was afflicted by the syndrome, too; for years and years he would go into a sort of state of contemplation, which is what we thought, but when I turned 30 he told me one night over a bottle of Jack Black that he was guilty of murder. He had dropped tons of bombs on people he never saw. He was a POW and he also saw that side of the war after the Germans shot his plane out of the sky. He could not resolve the crisis in his mind, no matter how honorable the press, president and all made that war against the Nazi machine.

Charlie Loving

Hedges suggests that it hardly takes an extension of the tour of duty to make these guys crazy. I would tend to agree – it is the constant death and destruction that they must dole out that does it.

After I went to Canada, Mom always said that if I’d gone to Vietnam, they never would have seen me again. She believes I would’ve died. She’s probably right. I don’t think I would raise a weapon against another human, Charlie, no matter the consequences to me. I tried to explain that to the Selective Service Board in Austin, but they were some of the most closed-minded people in existence.

It is likely the same today. Look at what they are doing to the Seattle fellow who has principled reasons for refusing to go on a tour of duty in Iraq. He offered to go to Afghanistan, but they said, “No, you have to go to Iraq.” And now he refuses, because the US is in violation of international law, and they’re going to throw him in the brig for nine years.

I appreciate you relating your father’s story to me. I’m sure you recall that I knew him, even before I met you. He was my student teacher in grade four or five. I told Mariann about it; here is what I wrote to her:

“I met his father before I met Charlie, when I was 10 or 11. We didn’t sort that out for quite awhile after I made Charlie’s acquaintance. Mr. Loving was the student teacher in, I think, my grade 5 class. I had the same teacher for both grades 4 and 5 – Mrs. Sayers, at Highland Park Elementary in the northwest of Austin. It’s by the old Hancock Shopping Centre on Hancock and Balcones. I remember liking Mr. Loving a lot – he was very kind, mild-mannered, and knowledgable. That’s good for kids.”

Richard Jehn

I am totally dismayed by the policy of the EEUU. We love Israel for some reason that escapes me. We would let them do anything they want. Perhaps we should do another exodus and send them all to North Alberta and let them fight the people in Yellow Knife and Fort Nelson. Or maybe the bears?

Our foreign policy is such a failure as to be insane. We screwed the pooch in ‘Nam and now we are doing the same thing in Iraq. Well duh? Declare victory, folks, and run away.

Charlie Loving

This was a great read. The RAG was clearly an early predecessor of the “Journalism as Assertion” tendency later developed by Cable News, free papers like the Chronicle and the Web Blogs. My experience with the Queer Cultural Center’s non-commercial Web site over the past eight years begs many questions. This Website was entered by 500,000 people in 2004-05. It is funded by a grant and has no advertising. It is clearly directed at a like-minded audience, i.e., it’s niche marketing. Our visitorship increases by about 50,000 people every year because it comes up as the first item in every Google search including the words “Queer” and/or “art and culture;” we do not publicize the site or advertise its existence–the search engine does all that for us. We pay someone $15,000 a year to expand and maintain it; it contains more than 10,000 pages of material. I have learned to ask the basic questions about Websites and audience development.

These same issues are relevant to politics and Web-based publications. Could a left-wing Internet publication develop a national readership of more than half a million for a mere $15,000 a year?

Jeff Jones

Ragamuffins –

Hope everyone managed to enjoy the Day of Orgiastic Feasting without doing too much damage to liver and lights – and has managed to stay the hell away from the 5 a.m. mall riots, as Amerikkka begins its annual Month of Religious Spending!

I’m responding late to some things both Alice and Dennis posted earlier. Dennis’ was about working with different interest groups and how people’s perspectives change as their sophistication increases, and I say, “WOW!!!” That piece totally tracked my 10 years’ (1981-91) experience on Austin’s Cable Television Commission in the heady days of municipal regulation. And Alice asked us to write about things we’ve achieved, successes, what worked.

So OK, two birds with one stone: I chaired the Commission during years two and three, arguably our biggest window of opportunity to take advantage of the city’s fleeting authority. It was a never-ending challenge to move programs forward which required as little compromise as possible from competing entities and interests. Fortunately, I served with a stellar group of individuals, and we managed to come up with creative solutions to a lot of supposedly intractable problems, never quite doing the “expected.”

The public access studio in East Austin, which belongs to the people of Austin and is built on public land, is the achievement, largely, of four East Austin residents, one black and three whhite, of which I was one. Tommy Wyatt, Brenda Trainor, Larry Waterhouse and I stood firmly together on that issue (while disagreeing on lots of other things); had we not done so, access producers would have had a rented studio for a few years and nada-zip-zilch now. Many producers opposed building on the east side, citing their fear of crime (indigenous black people.) The cable company opposed building anything they didn’t own. The city had other unsuitable parcels of land it would have rather offered to us than the one we got. It was a three-ring circus getting the damn thing built, and I’m really, really proud of it.

But yeah, watching the process in others, and feeling it in myself, of coming into a situation with a strong-but-limited perspective and perceived constituency, and then having to modify that as other people’s legitimate concerns and constraints become apparent, while still trying to “dance with who brung you”, was absolutely fascinating. Sitting in the middle chair in the old Council chambers – oh, yeah, the Ham here loved every minute of it!! – I had to hear what folks on all sides of an issue were really saying, setting aside my own thoughts, at least temporarily, re-state their often inflammatory language so that the crux of arguments could be revealed and understood, be the calm mediator, until everybody knew as much about the issue as anyone else; then, after the question was posed as fairly as it was gonna get, revert to my own view to argue for or against and vote it up or down.

Under Madame Chair Wizard’s polite (but steely!) thumb, without ever calling it such, the Commmission adopted the principles of democratic centralism. (We had bylaws which enshrined it, in fact!) Once we made a decision on what to recommend to Council, EVERYBODY either ACTIVELY SUPPORTED IT or SHUT THE HELL UP, and we went in assigned teams (someone I trusted plus someone I didn’t on each) to do so! Any commissioner who voiced criticism of a Commission decision after the fact faced hostility, criticism, and ostracism from everyone else, mainly because, once we went through our exhaustive, open, public, extremely long-winded hearings and deliberations, NOBODY wanted to EVER re-visit an issue! And we were one of the most effective commissions in City history, imho, in terms of getting what we wanted from Council!

Amazingly, to me, the single issue on which we spent the most hours, over the entire 10 years I was involved, was free speech on the public access channels. Time after time, various very emotional people opposed extending Constitutional protection to atheists, the Ku Klux Klan, nasssty music videos which mock Jesus, fake Hallowe’en news programs (“There’s a slime monster in Town Lake, ooooooo-eeek-eeek!”), discussion/depiction of numerous sexual practices, church services, and on and on and on. The key concept that public access channels ONLY EXIST AS AN EXTENSION OF the First Amendment, which ought therefore to be guarded very zealously, was elusive to some, as was the notion that no one is forced to watch television they don’t like. But on this issue, unlike some where I maybe saw the Company’s p.o.v. a little too sympathetically, or was trying to butter up another commissioner to secure their support for something else down the line, I was NEVER tempted to compromise on Free Speech.

What Dennis said is really important to understand when we consider political process. We also need to know what our CORE VALUES are; the things that are non-negotiable. In my case, these appear to include rampant exercise of free speech; rejection of racism in any public policy; and group processes which result in group decisions, to be upheld and worked for unless and until they are generally seen to be defective.

Al, I dunno if that adds anything to what you were getting at, but it is something I did for a long time that I was pretty good at, and this is pretty much what I think about it now, in terms of what worked and why. People who served with me knew that everybody would get a fair hearing; that we would take however long we needed to get to where we needed to go; and that if they were gonna get stabbed, they would get stabbed in public rather than in the back. We kept no secrets, even when city bureaucrats begged us to do so; our process was utterly transparent; and even the oddest folks who came to the commission were treated respectfully and given eye contact.

Also, the chair still didn’t wear a bra, even tho she was on TV every month, and came to virtually every meeting for the entire 10 years absolutely REEKING of her favorite vegetable matter; again, core values, some things just don’t change!

Happy Month of Excess,
Mar•

Dick Reavis wrote:
— As for the “attack on science,” the important part comes from within science. No theoretically-current scientist, I would think, believes that science turns up an “objective” truth. Science was never a body whose theory all held together. What science produces are bits and pieces of practical knolwedge, dependent upon different theories of what knowledge might be. It’s a postmodern thing. For the Marxist interpretation, see David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, a very sensible book.

My thoughts on this:

The “post-modernist” rhetoric about the impossibility of perceiving objective truth, while still fashionable in some academic circles, is (and has always been) completely out of touch with the reality of scientific work and with the attitudes of the people doing such work. This is not because scientists are not “theoretically current” — it is because many (but not all) of the theories that scientists work with both are true beyond sane doubt and are very broad and unifying in their explanatory power. Atomic theory is the poster child for this, but there are many other areas (e.g., plate tectonics, special relativity) that are similarly well established.

Of course there are still plenty of incomplete or tentative scientific theories. In fact, these are the areas where research scientists direct most of their attention, since their job is to extend the established core of science. But these theories are investigated with confidence that objective answers exist. It is philosophers (most of whom are scientifically illiterate) who are afraid to believe in things — not scientists.

The theories of science hold together quite well, as far as they go. Physics, chemistry, geology, biology, and astronomy all reinforce each other. The “social sciences” do not do as well, but that is because they are a mixture of objective, subjective, and prescriptive elements. Most of politics is a “How do we want things to be?” design argument rather than a “How do things work?” scientific investigation.

Also, science is still far behind the most advanced religious and artistic traditions in its investigation of human thought. But most working scientists are well aware of this, and look to music, poetry, and art for spiritual support, not to psychiatrists.

— Contemporary evolutionary theory has a problem: it doesn’t provide straightforward answers, like the theory that we were taught under the name “evolution.” (Accidents as well as survival of the fittest lead to where we are — and that means that there’s no virtue in where we are.)

Evolutionary theory has always acknowledged a central role for chance — it was the chance survivals and subsequent varied adaptations on the Galapagos islands that Darwin used as his leading illustration of the process. Don’t be distracted by the minor novelties or refinements of evolutionary theory that fame-seekers put forth as fundamental changes. Darwin’s theory has had a couple of holes filled (genetics in the 1920’s, complex systems in the 1990’s), but remains little changed (and of course is now massively supported by data).

In any case, I fail to see how virtue could be conferred by being descendants of the proto-Republican organisms most efficient at killing their peers, grabbing things, and spreading their seed. It is this legacy that constitutes the original sin that any thoughtful person must see in himself and other people. But there is also an evolutionary basis for the cooperation that is the most striking feature of human culture, and perhaps for the altruism and hunger for justice that arise repeatedly, even in some middle-class Americans.

Hunter Ellinger

I don’t think that you and I would much disagree, except that I would take exception to your comment knocking postmodernism.

I didn’t come to that view through the usual route of literary studies. Instead, like everything else, I came to it through the wisdom of the 60’s.

Everything one might say about the “truth” of science passes for “truth” because someone “reasonable” believes it. Some people also believe that the world is flat. Belief doesn’t prove the truth of anything. Some people hold “unreasonable” beliefs.

Science passes for “truth” because a lot of “reasonable” people believe in it, and because authority of various kinds backs it up. Not many of us know, for example, that the world is round. How could we prove that to unbelievers? We believe, “on good authority,” that it is round, or something roundish.

Authority is the civilized face of force. The “reasonable man,” the common test of truth, is the docile citizen of whoever holds power. As Mao would have said (had he been consistent), “Truth flows from the barrel of a gun.”
Or at least that’s way I see it. Since people who agree with me do not hold any power, my ideas are, of course, “unreasonable,” “extreme,” and the like. I speak for a “truth” that on its face is not true.

Dick Reavis

Yes, there is another “attack on science,” coming from yahoos in the U.S., the “intelligent design” folk and such. If the yahoos win, their victory will only be another revival of the backwardness of the U.S., not anything of great global significance, I think.

See, I think it’s more entrenched than that, with the Intelligent Design people being only the latest wave pushing the de-education of American kids. Why are daily papers really failing? Jonny cain’t reed, y’all. Look at everything deleted from US curricula over the past, what? 30 years? and it’s a wonder more jobs haven’t been exported to India. “Kids today” aren’t taught spelling or grammar, so they don’t understand their mother tongue; they aren’t required to obtain even rudimentary knowlege of any other language, so they are less capable than multilingual people of understanding differing points of view; and instead of scientific inquiry and independent thought, we teach technical dexterity and mental adaptability to circumstance. When a person educated in such a system is called upon to evaluate theories such as evolution vs. I.D., he or she is most likely to apply lessons learned in kindergarten: “I’m OK; you’re OK,” if for no other reason than that reading all that science stuff is yucky.

Then, Hunter comments on scientific knowledge:
Many (but not all) of the theories that scientists work with both are true beyond sane doubt and are very broad and unifying in their explanatory power. Atomic theory is the poster child for this, but there are many other areas … that are similarly well established.

Of course there are still plenty of incomplete or tentative scientific theories. In fact, these are the areas where research scientists direct most of their attention, since their job is to extend the established core of science.

… Physics, chemistry, geology, biology, and astronomy all reinforce each other. The “social sciences” do not do as well, but that is because they are a mixture of objective, subjective, and prescriptive elements …

Also, science is still far behind the most advanced religious and artistic traditions in its investigation of human thought. But most working scientists are well aware of this, and look to music, poetry, and art for spiritual support, not to psychiatrists …

Darwin’s theory has had a couple of holes filled (genetics in the 1920’s, complex systems in the 1990’s), but remains little changed (and of course is now massively supported by data). —

And I have to say I agree with all of that 100%, despite the fact that I’ve spent a lot of time over the last couple of years seriously questioning the nature of “reality” as it applies to people’s perceptions and recollections, and to history, as written by victors and survivors…

But, in talking about the relative “virtue” of one’s family tree, I didn’t think Dick J. Reavis was talking about any “descent,” whether from plain old monkeys or Hunter’s “proto-Republicans.” Intelligent Design, along with its parent Creationism and most world religions, offers the appeal of saying, “Human beings exist for some purpose; were created for that purpose by a power greater than themselves.” I think this is deeply appealing to most of us at least sometimes, not so much because it is more dignified than being a monkey’s nephew, but because, if there is a power greater than us which is responsible for our existence, then we are, really, when push comes to shove, off the hook for how it all turns out. If it’s all in God’s hands, hey, I can watch a lot of basketball this week! That is the “virtue” of having a Creator who is running the show!

(Of course, I know that folks in this group who are believers also think along the lines that “God helps those who help themselves (and others),” and aren’t looking to religion for an escape clause, so I hope I’m not offending anyone; the appeal of “letting go and letting God” is felt by non-believers and lukewarm agnostics as much as anyone else, and maybe more so.)

Dick, thanks for the info on weekly newspapers; and no, I’m not talking just about the Chronicle-type, events-listings plus metro-chic papers, though there are a lot of them around the country. But they exist in all sorts of small rural places, too. On a seven-week road trip through NM, AZ, CA, NV, UT, CO and West TX last spring, I picked up dozens of ’em. I stayed off the interstates for all but 1,000 of 7,000 miles, so I was in some nicely out-of-the-way places, as well as Santa Cruz, San Francisco, and Phoenix. Most of the stuff I saw was totally locally written (except for, say, astrology and/or self-help columns) by a combo of owner-publisher-writers, paid stringers and staff, and jus’ folks. In a lot of places, the nearest metropolitan daily has very little of interest or accessibility to small town residents. Ads in the local weekly are other local businesses, and there’s always a heavy civic pride component, but that doesn’t preclude criticism. I found a surprisingly strong environmental content in a lot of the little Western papers in areas where mining, timber, and ranching are still important.

Just last weekend I picked up two little rags over in Chappell Hill, TX. The “Round Top Register” is a quarterly, nice paper, full-color cover of onion domes in Red Square headed, “Government! Can’t live with it, and you can’t live without it,” there is a HUGE article on the publisher’s extended European trip which included a visit to Russia and another on the guvmnt’s lame response to Katrina; the cover also sports an Ambrose Bierce quote, “Politics is the conduct of public affairs for private advantage,” and is labeled the “Throw the Bums Out Issue.” Lots of ads from Brenham through Giddings, real estate, auto dealers, antiques, restaurants, B&Bs. The other one, simply “The Press,” is a weekly; the cover of this issue, also full-color, is a “Saluting Veterans” photo of middle-aged black vet in striped overalls and a camo hat, nice; but inside, it is mostly ads, including eight pages of 24 total classifieds, listings, and columns by a variety of individuals, including Bartee Haile on how racism caused something called the “Cart War” in the Rio Grande Valley, right after the Texas War of Independence!

I will try to contact him; photo looks amusingly the same as ever and I’m theorizing he’s teaching history someplace in the Piney Woods.

There are a lot of weeklies in Austin, too, including at least one by and for that under-30 crowd which finds the Chron stale and predictable; I’m thinking there’s still some hope for basic literacy.

Mar•

The bias of western science is its certainty of its superiority over all other peoples. Unfortunately it all falls apart where the rubber meets the road.

Number one cause of death in this country is going to the doctor, just adding up AMA figures.

Drug side effects (100,000), mistakes (40,000), diseases caught in hospital (40,000), unnecessary surgery.

We are number 37 in world health, despite spending way the most money. Any nation on the “Western diet” of corporate-grown food has huge epidemics of auto-immune disorders.

And now, sadly, I read today that tens of millions of Chinese are leaving the farm.

Soon they too will have these epidemics, and the American pharmaceutical companies will get richer, hiding the symptoms, as they cannot “cure” dietary deficiencies.

Janet Gilles

OK, I have just eight things to say.

First, we have no proof of the existence of reality, much less that anything in it is true. I have discovered, however, that I have much more pleasant hallucinations when I presume that what I am hallucinating is, in fact, real. That there is a truth of the matter is a fundamental presumption without which there can be no science.

Second, if we give up on truth, we give up on reason. If we give up on reason, on what basis do we set social policy? Brute force. Sometimes policies ARE set on the basis of brute force, of course. We can all cite numerous examples. My point is that reason is our sole bulwark against brute force in policy formation. We should be reticent to jettison it. Is it any wonder that many of the leading postmodernists of their generation (e.g., Heidegger, DeMan) turned out to be Nazi collaborators?

Third, postmodernism is just critical theory without its positive moment. It wants to (and usually can) find ideological content in theoretical formulations. But they follow up this critique of ideology with absolutely nothing, for fear of creating new forms of ideologically-laden formulations. In other words, they reject responsibility for postulating potentially emancipatory formulations. They do the easy job of tearing down without dirtying their hands in the hard job of building up.

Fourth, post-modernism is trivially self-refuting. To say that truth is relative is itself a truth claim.

Fifth, it is “true” that “Everything one might say about the ‘truth’ of science passes for ‘truth’ because someone ‘reasonable’ believes it.” This is not to say that truth is relative, but only that belief is. I would agree that belief is relative. I take Hunter to be saying (with, for instance, W.V.O. Quine and Hilary Putnam) that we count as “true” those propositions that, if true, would maximize the global coherence of our knowledge (not just our beliefs,)including our empirical observations, as well as our theoretical knowledge. We are always ready, however, to revise such judgments on the basis of new information. There is no better criterion than this for theory-selection judgments. Falsificationism just doesn’t work (Feyerabend is right about this, even in his postmodernism.) But falsificationism’s failure does not justify jumping to no criterion at all, as would Feyerabend and, apparently, Reavis.

Sixth, knowledge is not in the head, it’s in the library (and increasingly on the Internet.) Knowledge is fundamentally a social product, not an individual product. To ensure that we maximize the global coherence of our knowledge, we should and must encourage diversity in the community of knowledge producers. As my colleague and feminist epistemologist Linda Alcoff once put it, “The justification for diversity in the academy is not sentimental. It’s epistemological.”

Seventh, although I agree with Hunter about the difference between natural and social science, I want to add two comments. First, natural scientists don’t have to worry about what Aristotle called formal cause and final cause. They can unproblematically impose meanings (formal causes) on the objects of their science. Since the objects of social science are potential subjects of science, this is trickier for social scientists. Natural scientists do not study entities that have intentions. This makes causal attribution a whole lot easier for them. Second, and relatedly, the objects of social science — people and their communities — can read the products of social science and change their behavior accordingly, appearing to invalidate a theory that actually had merit. Every Marx has his Keynes. This of course doesn’t happen to natural scientists. The natural sciences should never be called the hard sciences. They are in fact the EASY sciences.

Eighth, I have no time for any of this.

Gavan Duffy

Beware of anyone who would try to convince you with reasonable arguments that reason has no basis in reality. Language cannot exist without a reality we exist in together. If there is nothing, then there is nothing to speak of and no one to speak of this nothing. One must exist in an objective world in order to have a hallucination. The solipsistic fallacy has had a long run. Zeno had his argument about why the arrow would never reach the target. Analysis can never grasp the whole. The eye cannot see itself without reflection. The limitation of science is not a definition of reality.

I think solipsism has had such a long run because people like word games, they like to be baffled by bullshit. Also, mortality is not popular. Many, many people are not happy with cause and effect when it comes to their own existence. Let them jump off tall buildings and tell me about the experience later.

Alan Pogue

Zeno might have something to say about the impossibility of reaching the ground after that jump off a tall building.

Daun Eierdam

This is another remarkable exchange that took place between some of the membership last late Autumn.

Richard Jehn

Mike Eisenstadt writes:

— Hardworking and neighborly folks, knowing more or less what the neighbors know, stretch as far as possible what little they do know, to make up a plausible world view for themselves. This they ground their opinions on. That is THEIR heuristic.

Sociologists can get funded to look at this phenomenon in depth. Political activists, hoping there is a way to get folks to understand their own interests better, will get nowhere with this. —

Most amusing! I think there is a bit of truth on both sides of this discussion, as usual; Mike is correct in that the whole concept of heuristics can be fluffed up, it appears, into something incomprehensible and irrelevant to those it analyzes, and Steve and Dennis are absolutely correct in that the Left has been ridiculously inept in being able to talk to people “where they’re at.” In periods when the American Left has shown signs of life, it has been when it has been a reflector and creator of cultural values, i.e., the WPA-funded murals, photographic documentation, parks and museum construction, and other cultural assets and products of the 1930s from Woody Guthrie to Steinbeck.

The trick is that it IS a two-way process of creation and reflection, and thus a dialectic, as Mr. E. characterizes it. In the 60s, if y’all will recall (smile), WE were the culture, but I can’t claim to be any kind of cultural innovator myself; I wore the clothes, listened to the music, smoked the dope, adopted the speech patterns and ultimately the political values of the subculture which accepted me, and in which I found a home. Other people then modeled themselves after US! We talked about this a lot at the reunion.

If the question is, “How do we get that back,” the short answer is WE DON’T, but by maintaining a connection with the “happening” culture of today’s 20-somethings, we can maybe still take part in the reflection-and-creation process. If we can’t understand rap, hip-hop, or dub music, we are just like the parents who thought Elvis was hideous and couldn’t understand a word Jerry Lee Lewis sang.

There is ALWAYS a progressive element among youth, and whatever they are listening to (i.e., everything which affects the material conditions of their lives: where do they work? what do they eat? what do they learn?) is where the Left needs to be, first LISTENING, then RESPONDING, within THEIR cultural milieu.

It’s not just the Right that knows how to do this real well; the advertising industry taught them; it’s called co-optation and we were all there for it. Never will forget the day I saw the Benz commercial using Janis’ song –SHIT!!!! But you don’t even see the Left using the PLETHORA of peace and justice-oriented musicians at all effectively, much less the artists, dancers, poets, blah-de-blah… Much less the “ordinary” people who are the real cultural mainstays in their communities (the folks whose houses are always full of their kids and their kids’ friends, even though some grown-ups are usually at home.) Instead, we seem to have fallen into some kind of crack in the Very Fabric of Time where it’s not polite to talk politics at dinner…

Maybe it’s time to revive Mother’s Grits… with a new cast and crew… an all-star revue? BTW, country music sales are down this year due to hurricane losses throughout the South and high gasoline prices. Good time for a “revivalizing” message to the people?

Mariann Wizard

Mariann talks about “getting it back.” We won’t. She’s right. We won’t be the agents of social change in the youth culture. We can get out of our own comfort zone and find younger allies as Mariann suggests. We can also speak authentically to our own issues as aging baby boomers on social security, health care, the war, the appropriate response natural disasters, gay marriage amendments, etc.

I found the “in the U.S. or not” debate to be very interesting. Anyone want to chime in now that France has displayed its own immigrant contradictions to the world? My take on that is that problems are everywhere and the only solace you may have in a foreign country is that you don’t understand them in much depth. But, solutions are everywhere, too. Health care is not rationed (according to insurance or wealth) in MOST industrial countries.

I am not so interested in what has failed to work. I face that everyday and become mired in it if I watch the news. I am interested in experiences people have had that worked — that fostered dialogue and change. We had a great opportunity in the 60’s to reach lots of people on the mall or at the student union or in meetings on campus. Even that isn’t as true as it used to be. UT students don’t live near the university. They commute on shuttle buses. More of them have jobs off campus. And we aren’t on campus anyway. So, where — in what circumstances — have you felt you have reached out to the most people recently? In unions, in elections, as a teacher….??

Obviously, people are changing in their attitudes on the war. That doesn’t seem to be happening (as it did before) through antiwar organizing. There are occasional moblizations of people, but few community debates or teach-ins or opportunities for dialogues. So, is that happening through the blogs seeping into the straight media??

What are your thoughts?

Alice Embree

Alice wrote: “Obviously, people are changing in their attitudes on the war. That doesn’t seem to be happening (as it did before) through antiwar organizing. There are occasional moblizations of people, but few community debates or teach-ins or opportunities for dialogues. So, is that happening through the blogs seeping into the straight media??”

If you look at the polling history on the war and on Bush’s presidency, you’ll see that people haven’t just recently changed their opinions. They’ve been moving from pro to con for several years along a steadily-declining trend line. The reason this has lately captured more attention is that public sentiment has now finally crossed the line from majority approval to majority disapproval. That crossing of the line in re the war occurred sometime in the Spring of ’04. And in June-August of this year we saw approval of Bush’s overall performance slide below 50% for the first time.

Ostensibly, that’s good news for the good side. But it’s a shaky situation, mostly because the Dems in opposition don’t have any agreed, coherent, clearly-articulated strategy for an alternative course. So what happens in that situation if, for instance, there’s another major terrorist attack in the US? Some people might rally round the leader like they did after 9/11, and Dubya would get some of his support back. But a lot of analysts think the more likely public reaction is outrage at the government’s failure of due diligence, much like we saw after Katrina. With no clear progressive alternative at the ready, that could then mean broad public support for even more aggressive us-versus-them strategies, which could make the McCarthy era look like the good old days. Scary.

Why is this erosion of Bush support happening, even in the absence of such organizing efforts as Alice mentions? Actually, it’s exactly the same trend we’ve seen for almost every president — especially over the last 40 or so years — with or without well-organized opposition. It seems to be the bloom’s-off-the-rose phenomenon as applied to our national significant other. There’s a little honeymoon after the election, then a steadily-growing disaffection. Even those presidents who manage re-election to a second term usually find their approval rating subsequently sinking to somewhere around 40 percent or lower. It may be that the army of volunteer bloggers has hastened George’s fall from grace, but given that this is a recurring phenomenon, it’s difficult to give anyone too much credit. It may just be the way these relationships work.

On the other hand, since it is always in the left’s self-interest to claim credit for these things, I have come up with an explanation that proves George’s decline is the result of another successful communist plot. Bear with me….

Like I said, this declining relationship thing seems to be especially pronounced beginning about 40 years ago. And what other significant relationship thing was beginning to bubble to the surface 40 years ago? No-fault divorce. Just a coincidence? I don’t think so. The passage of no-fault divorce legislation in one state after another made it far easier for people to acknowledge and terminate bad relationships without the heavy evidentiary burden of having to prove their partner guilty of some sinful act. Things not going according to your expectations? No problem. Give ’em the boot. And if there’s no longer any deep-rooted need for abiding loyalty to an unsatisfactory spouse, why should we stick with that guy in Washington if he’s not performing up to expectations? You see? Not a coincidence.

Where did no-fault divorce come from? It was invented by the Bolsheviks after the 1917 revolution. And how did it enter the US? The first no-fault divorce act in the US was signed into law in 1969 by that infamous commie dupe Ronald Reagan, then governor of California — who thereby ensured via the social domino effect that every subsequent president, himself included, would be entitled to no more loyalty than any other abusive partner.

Is there any way to copyright this brilliant insight? It took me probably 35 minutes worth of intense research and I hate to waste that.

Dennis Fitzgerald

— It was invented by the Bolsheviks after the 1917 revolution. And how did it enter the US? The first no-fault divorce act in the US was signed into law in 1969 by that infamous commie dupe Ronald Reagan, then governor of California — who thereby ensured via the social domino effect that every subsequent president, himself included, would be entitled to no more loyalty than any other abusive partner. —

Himself, may one hasten to point out, a DIVORCED MAN?? By gosh, Fitzgerald, you may have hit the nail upon the head! Perhaps this “covenant marriage” thing is really a GOOD idea!!!

You crack me up, Red; reminded me of a WONDERFUL article in the NY Times a couple of months back, an open letter to the Kansas School Board on the subject of intelligent design, specifically, the ONE TRUE Intelligent Designer, The Spaghetti Monster. See venganza.org, where the author, Bobby Henderson, proves that global warming is directly linked, via a statistically significant inverse relationship, to the decline of pirates over the last 200 years.

LOL,
Mar•

Okay, in a more serious vein than my last… Alice also asked for examples of experiences that have worked. Here’s one of mine.

Regional multi-stakeholder sustainability group

Objectives of the group include:

• To define long-term goals and short-term performance targets for local economic, social and environmental well-being. (I find well-being to be a clearer concept for most people than sustainability.)
• To define measurable indicators for assessing progress towards the goals.
• To annually collect indicator data and prepare a public report on local progress (or lack of progress).
• To use the findings of the annual reports to identify local priorities (i.e., those aspects of local well-being that are most deficient and, therefore, most in need of improvement).
• To engage in an on-going discussion of actions and strategies that various local groups (businesses, governments, non-profits, unions, etc.) might take (or have taken) to support progress.
• To use the collective influence of the group (and the findings of the annual reports) to pressure all elements of the community to support and work towards progress on well-being.
• To facilitate on-going education of group members and the broader community in re issues and strategies.
• To promote cooperation among various sectors of the community, continual improvement and active adaptive management.

One significant positive in this approach is that it moves the focus away from what to do (or how to do it) and puts the focus on results (what is achieved). It’s something like, “That’s good your organization is spending a million dollars on ‘x’ program, but let’s take a look at our indicator results and see if you’re moving the dial.”

As long as the focus is on how to do something, people will always have different opinions and there will always be irresolvable disagreements. But when you focus on a measurable result and when you have agreed on a performance target, that changes the whole discussion. It becomes clear and indisputable that what’s being done either is or is not working.

I started out on this path with lots of trepidation. It looked like a certain formula for dysfunction. How could you possibly put the union federation, the chamber of commerce, government, the Indian band, the environmental coalition, etc., etc. all together at one table and expect anything other than riotous arguments? But – surprise! – there are ways to make it work. It is certainly tricky, particularly at the beginning. There are lots of steps forward and backward. But, ultimately, it is possible to reach substantive agreement on a lot of desired results – and to find ways to work towards those.

In fact, I found that one of the bigger problems is not dysfunctionality, but a tendency for the process to work too well.

Over time, people in the group form friendly and respectful relationships with each other, and they develop an increasingly more sophisticated understanding of the complexities in advancing multiple, often competing objectives. That’s all positive, but it can result in members changing their views to the extent that they cease to be representative of the interests they’re supposed to be representing. It can also result in members no longer challenging and pushing each other as vigorously as they used to – and sustaining that tension is a necessary part of the exercise. So, you have to start easing out old members who have become too moderate and recruiting new members who will be less well-informed but more passionate.

Sorry… I’m straying into the minutiae. I’ve seen so many failures and successes in these things that I could easily write a 500-page how-to and how-not-to manual. But maybe the above is enough to give you the general idea.

Here are a few relevant links for some very different groups working in this general area. I won’t waste your time with my critiques of what or how they’re doing. Enough to say that I think they’re all interesting, but if I were King of the World, I’d make some fundamental changes to each of them.

Fraser Basin Council Home; Indicator Reports

North Island Woodlands Advisory Group Home; Plans & Indicator Reports

Portland Multnomah Progress Board

UN Millennium Development Goals Home; Indicators

Dennis Fitzgerald

Once again, Dennis has hit the nail on the head in my opinion. (Thanks)

Until or unless there is some catastrophic even that changes the nature of the world we live in, which may or may not happen and is certainly not something to be wished for, the process Dennis outlines is the way in which change is going to occur. It is, indeed, probably the only way in which a critical mass of support can be generated.

David P-H’s earlier message rightly quoted Frederick Douglass that “if there is no struggle, there is no progress,” but Dennis drops the other show. After the struggle comes the process of creating change. If we are not engaged in that process – as participants and facilitators – then we leave it to those with other interests. It is at that point that we have to shift the focus to objectives – what can (not should) be done – and to engage everyone in the process to the extent they can be engaged. And, yes, that’s where compromise and concessions to the reality of the moment come into play.

And, as Dennis so rightly notes, we also have to be aware of the co-opting nature of that process and constantly work to encourage new demands and new passion from below.

Either path alone – only “struggle” or only “compromise” – is a dead end.

Enough of theory.

On another note, those of you who see each other all the time know the importance of personal connections to keep the spirit alive and thriving. The rest of us have to rely on less frequent encounters. So my thanks to Mary Walsh and David P. Hamilton for two extremely enjoyable and life affirming lunches last weekend here in the DC-area. I was amazed at the power, confidence and wisdom they had to share.

If you are in the area, come visit.

Doyle Niemann

The “debate” concerning Social Security came and went rather quickly in 2005 – mainly because a large majority of working people know a reasonably well-run program when they see one. As in all such programs, adjustments have to be made to match up with changes in our national situation. The large “bubble” of population growth called the “baby-boom-generation” will require an adjustment. Insurance companies use “actuarial” tables to predict costs; this is essentially the task for the Social Security Administration and Congress now.

“Actuarial tables” is a term that means what it sounds like it means. It contains the actual statistical data for rates of death, injury, property damage for overall populations and, often, for specific subgroups of people. Insurance companies use the data to estimate pay-out for different types of loss, then add a fudge-factor for unpredictable loss, throw in operating expenses, and add in profit to derive a price for insurance for you and me. Of course, they also fund a squadron of lawyers to fight pay-offs to you and me, when their tables and calculations do not adequately cover extreme conditions.

So, basically, an insurance company is like a bank in that they don’t actually do anything for their money. They just take it in, sit on it (actually invest it in hopes of increased profit), and dole out less than they take in – most of the time. In another sense an insurance company is like a government agency. Both the overall cost of insurance and, particularly, their profit are more like a tax than a market transaction. The majority of us get nothing for our money. Even people who have certain kinds of loss, such as a fender-bender, often avoid requesting reimbursement from their insurer, because their auto insurance rate (cost) will probably increase. We only put money into their system, because we have little emergency back-up in the U.S.A. nowadays.

How about if we combine the relatively well-run Social Security system with the notion that other forms of insurance are essentially an overpriced tax? That is, let’s socialize insurance in all forms – automobile, life (death), health, property. There would actually be little change noticed by insurance company staff or customers. Staff would still be needed to administer the system. Customers would still pay in – except at lower rates – and would still have to prove loss.

Some differences would be seen, though, soon after the start-up. First, there would be less quibbling and legal wrangling over payments for loss or for healthcare – that is, tactics designed to make the customer give up. Second, there could be more counter-pressure on medical costs with a monolithic, customer-oriented insurance provider. Third, some lawyers would be unemployed – almost always a good thing.

My viewpoint is that such an agency would insure only the basics and would not insure high-risk items, such as real estate below sea level and on sand islands. These would be left to the private insurers. Would we allow private insurers? Why not? We’re not talking state control of business here – I am recommending a competitive approach. People should be able to join or leave. The government agency (or co-op) would simply provide the capability. If the private, capitalist approach works better for the customer, fine. The real problem, however, is that creation of a program like this takes something like that which created the Social Security system in the first place – i.e., a socially-responsible government.

We are, of course, aware that we have no such thing currently. Most of us probably doubt that there has been more than one socially-responsible government in this country for the last century. And some of us might argue that this one example was responding in as small a way as possible to political necessity. Social Security works, but 1) it barely covers the rent; 2) it is now a slush-fund for the fiscal irresponsibility (read ruling class grants, breaks, graft, etc.) of our federal officials; and 3) the benefits are attacked regularly by the same officials (they must hope that they never win the argument, since their federal-level slush-fund would disappear).

Speaking of slush-funds for the ruling class, that is what insurance companies are. Almost all of the big insurance companies were started or taken over by the minions of the usual suspects (banks and investment houses owned/controlled by the petroleum/mineral/chemical/weapons/transportation conglomerate that has run this country since the Civil War). These folks figured this scam out about the same time that they realized that wage-slaves were actually better for their interests than property-slaves. Here was another perfect type of exploitation: the ruling class could get working people to put their own meager money into a non-interest-bearing account owned by members of the ruling class; the ruling class could then use this money for expansion of the interests/property of the ruling class; and the ruling class could skim a percentage of the funds for – I don’t know, how about “keeping it safe”?

Wow. What a scheme. And it’s not only worked perfectly, the ruling class has improved it by having their politicians create laws to make certain forms of insurance mandatory and to bring in government assistance when the pay-out might be above normal levels. It’s all so well-established by now that the only debate one hears is about which insurance company charges the lowest premiums.

Well folks, I think that it is time to bring this up to the forefront. We have some momentum on our analyses of international affairs; we have some traction on economic disparities; we have a lot of fellow-travellers with disrespect to politicians and their “mainstream” ideologies. By and large we don’t have elements of a practical plan, other than get out of Iraq – which is, of course, first and foremost. We need to develop the elements of a plan, and I strongly suggest that “socialization” of insurance is an obvious element that will be well-received by a broad segment of our citizenry.

Paul Spencer

I want to alert you all to the Austin Peace Action Thursday, July 27th. See below. Also, Code Pink Austin is participating in a rolling fast through September 21 (Bring the Troops Home Fast) with fasters who have volunteered for each day. We’ll try to get publicity for this fast each Friday 5-7 at the Capitol. And as Rich Bowden says below, Willie Nelson is fasting with Cindy Sheehan as well. PLEASE LET FOLKS KNOW ABOUT JULY 27TH.

Alice Embree

Musicians and all People of Peace:(From InstrumentsforPeace.org) Thursday, July 27, from 5:30-6:30 pm (rush hour!), Instruments For Peace (a network of Austin musicians and other creative people) invites your participation in a rally on the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge, 1st Street and Lamar, Austin, Texas.

Instruments for Peace is calling for everyone to come and protest the carnage of the ongoing war in Iraq, and the rising tensions in the Middle East. We want as many people as possible to bring musical instruments, banners, home made signs, American flags, etc. and/or costumes. Bring your organizations’ flyers to hand out to joggers. Some ideas: Iraqi flags over child-size “coffins”? Some women will be wearing Iraqi style clothing and will be carrying simulated dead babys. US flag-draped coffins?

Part of the marching brass band from the Million Musicians March are assembling to play. We’re wanting to be as big and loud and creative as possible. A Veterans For Peace banner? A listing of Iraq War casualties? Large signs/banners perhaps can be reused at future events.

Media will be alerted. We encourage folks to alert their media contacts also – and we invite everyone to spread the word via text messaging and email.

Let’s raise our Voices to end the War in Iraq, and focus this event on the innocent civilians, mostly children, who are the victims of our corporate war-making machine.

Instruments for Peace

P.S. Something else you didn’t hear in the corporate media: Willie Nelson is fasting for peace with Cindy Sheehan and thousands of others!

I wanted to update you on the lawsuit I have filed against George W. Bush and members of his administration, referred to in legal parlance as Conyers v. Bush.

You are likely familiar with a number of steps I have taken to challenge the legality and constitutional grounds of the Administration’s actions. From the lead up to Iraq, to the Downing Street Minutes, to the outing of a CIA agent, to warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens, I have called loudly for the Bush White House to explain itself.

I decided to file suit against the President in Federal Court in Michigan, along with 11 Senior Democratic Members of Congress. This suit was necessary because of a clear violation of the constitution. When the President signed the Deficit Reduction Act (which “reduced” the deficit by cutting taxes, health care benefits, and student loans), he signed into law a bill that had not passed the House and Senate. A different version of the bill passed each house of Congress with a multi-billion dollar difference in funding for life-saving medical equipment.

Anyone who ever watched Schoolhouse Rock knows this to be a problem.

Given the stakes involved I felt it was imperative to aggressively take this fight to the courts. The President’s lawyers tried to get the bill dismissed, but late last week I responded with legal filings that stand up for the rule of law and the Constitution and hope to bring the President, and our United States government, back under the rule of law.

…

John Conyers, Jr.

Having been associated with a viewpoint called internationalism, allow me to describe a recent event in which Sally and I participated, the International Folk Art Market, sponsored by the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe. It just completed its third year and will doubtless continue to occur the second weekend in July for the foreseeable future. It was perhaps internationalist in a more conventional and benign sense, but it was an inspiring spectacle regardless.

The market takes place on the large plaza in front of the museum and in the adjacent parking lots. It was designed to provide a money-maker for the museum and a venue for folk artists from all over the world and has succeeded in both objectives. It started in 2004 and was a huge and instant success. That first year, they sold about 15,000 entrance tickets, three times what they had expected to sell. The next year attendance jumped another 5,000 with 300 one-hour early shopper tickets selling out at $50 each. This year’s attendance jumped another 5,000. It has now joined Indian Market and Spanish Market to become one of Santa Fe’s signature events.

This year, there were 106 rather spacious booths for artisans from 36 countries. There is a selection process that remains somewhat opaque to me after a year of discussing potential candidates from Guatemala. There are now hundreds of applicants. It’s like getting a band in SXSW [South-by-SouthWest]. Successful applicants all have Santa Fe sponsors who help with travel arrangements, housing and visas. We are joining the museum partially because we feel it may improve the chances of Guatemalan Maya nominees we sponsor.

Regardless, the market ends up with a fantastic collection of people and artistic talent in many different mediums from almost every corner of the globe. At this point, adjacent booths might be from Peru, Malaysia, Botswana and Romania. Next year they may go for continental groupings. Many of the vendors are in traditional dress, often quite elaborate. But there were also the lady basket makers from the Sudan who looked exactly as if they had just stepped out of a Darfur refugee camp because they had.

They always sat on the ground working, neither chairs nor inactivity being within their normal experience, and looking about at the admiring and wealthy American folk art lovers in total amazement, some heavy culture shock was going on. We heard that they originally wanted to sell their baskets for ten dollars each but their sponsors made them sell them for more, hopefully much more. They were perhaps at the extreme end of the vendor sophistication spectrum, but it was doubtless the culmination of a lifetime’s work for many artisan participants. The one vendor from Guatemala, a sculptor and painter of ceramic birds and figures, almost made enough at this event to support his family for a year. I talked to a Haitian tin sculptor who sold out the first day.

Besides the artisans and their wares, there are ethnic foods and a continuous entertainment schedule that aspires to the same authenticity and diversity as the folk art. The peak internationalist moment is at the post-market party for vendors and sponsors in the museum auditorium. It’s a big cocktail party with an extensive food buffet and music where the most incredibly eclectic groups of people are mingling and sharing experiences with their global colleagues. It usually ends in a spirited conga line like no other you have ever imagined.

Sally and I are not artisans and so we don’t have a booth. We participate as guests of the museum shop selling our collection of Maya traditional textiles. Scott and Arina Pittman attended this year and will attest to this being an uplifting event showcasing a fascinating array of artists, mostly from humble origins and traditional cultures. It may not change the world, but it powerfully acknowledges the work of a deserving few.

David Hamilton