If I ever read "Irrational Man" (Wm. Barrett's study on Existentialism) the first time around, I've forgotten it. Either way I absorbed much more than I imagined, maybe from the reality that provoked it. He makes the point that EXSTNLSM was not a philosophic invention or some kind of French literary fad. It was a genuine, pervasive and widespread human reaction to the torquing of the whole of western civilization around the turn of the century (1890-1910). He even suggests that it was much less of a phenomenon in the East because eastern philosophies already had incorporated some of its principles.
It is both a product of the modern (or modernist) age and a mirror to it. It was a reaction to capitalist materialism and its hidden discontents. It was a deep questioning of the nature of religious experience and belief. And it was perhaps a scattershot reaction to science, both its nuclear power, and its new relativist core. It questioned rationality and its ability to describe or explain existential experience. (References to Bergson much appreciated.) And it was certainly more.
Written in the 50s, Barrett is aware of the difficulty importing any ideology from Europe, France in particular, into the U.S. And the great irony, not only of EXSTNLSM but of the U.S. dilemma in 2011, is that Europe seems to have understood and absorbed its meaning, at least in part. While the U.S. rejected it, more out of fear than anything else. It occurs to me this is a clue to when, and even how, America started to lose its bearings, maybe even its marbles.
In the film "The Battle of Algiers" the French general (leading the attempt to crush the Algerian uprising) comments to reporters about the blistering criticism coming from Jean Paul Sartre in the French press. "Why are all the intellectuals always on the other side?" he ponders, with a piercing and intelligent gaze and with no hint of the irony.
Most of all, to oversimplify, Barrett’s EXSTNLSM represents the willingness of any individual to ask him- or herself the most difficult questions that came ... to mostly everyone ... at the dawn of the 20th century. What is the core nature of existence? What are man and woman to do with their sense of alienation and isolation? What is the nature of meaning and, as the old forms fail us or go missing, must each of us construct our own? Are there rational limits to technology and state power? Doesn’t Art have a coherent cultural core? Or must we all figure each work out on our own? Can we no longer rely on society to tell us who we are? Must we reconstruct our identities from thin air?
Can’t resist quoting the man in this context. “How does it feel to be on your own, with no direction home, like a complete unknown ... ?”
OK, OK. The point being American denial is at the core of our dilemma and it goes back to our rejection of those questions. It’s a signal of how far the conservative mindset has come to dominate the assumptions of our public discourse. Most specifically, once a set of beliefs are established (no matter from when or by whom) and once those beliefs seem to support policies that defend a chosen world view (imperialism, exceptionalism) we must never question them. Never question ourselves, our assumptions, our fears, our myopic obsessions and desires, our anger or our belligerent nationalism. Our power and position, technology and money, give us no option but to use them, to take what we want or destroy what we fear, whether rational or not, just or unjust. Without question.
Come on in Willful Ignorance, sit down. We’ll abide by the window and watch the children play, reflections of ourselves waiting for the deluge or the drought.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
"Get in the game."?
Crazy egocentric fantasies that my predictions will come true. We might imagine that Obama's speech to the Chamber of Commerce, asking them to "get in the game," just might be prescient. I'm predicting that this "radical insight" will occur to a significant global minority and trigger a new global environmental movement, couched in a global, peaceful rebellion demanding TGR, Total Global Reparation. When it sinks in that the damage to the biosphere is directly mirrored, or accounted for, in the held total of global wealth, it will become merely obvious that it's time for mandatory global reinvestment in a new green / sustainable economy, bottom up and top down. By regulation, by taxation, by a moral awakening among the super-rich, by pulpit bullying or whatever. So 2011's ("come on boys") "get in the game" will evolve into "OK you myopic greedy pigs it's time to payback what you stole, exploited, slave-labored, skimmed, gutted, took as subsidies and bailouts, exported and externalized." by investing it in a global economy with a new set of organizing principles. It will become blatantly obvious that so much value has been extracted from the labor force and the planet's resources, and so much toxic waste has been dumped, that the profits from those misdeeds cannot be held as cash reserves, or yachts, or mansions, or furs, or yet more resources bought up as a hedge. Those gigantic profits, resulting in the widest, most obscene gap between rich and poor, and in the disgusting gap between the high rise and the slum, must be reinvested. And when that becomes obvious, the means to get there, i.e. to get the money back, will be trivial, also obvious, wrenching but fair, and will be the path away from global eco disaster.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Weather becomes Climate
One clear difference between the conservative mindset and the liberal attitude: Conservatives are chronically unwilling or unable to question their ossified premises and beliefs. Liberals continually questions themselves, their beliefs and their objectives. Another, a consequence of the first: Conservatives are so adamant in the "rightness" of their beliefs that they justify any means to achieve their ends. Liberals play by the rules, so not to sink to that level of (unconscious?) hypocrisy.
Scientists who have been warning us about climate change since 1958 (that's right) have been all too quick to point out that weather anomalies are in no way evidence of the possibility or the actual emergence of a climatic trend. Even a decade of unusual temperature averages cannot predict global warming or the speed of its approach.
But at some moment, this decade or the next, the evidence will "tip." There will be enough level 5 hurricanes and cyclones, enough floods and droughts, enough cities paralyzed by snow, that the truth, long denied or postponed, will become accepted fact. We passed a half-million year maximum for carbon in the atmosphere in 1900 and the max sustainable in 1950.
In the year we decide we have to radically cut carbon, ten years worth of carbon will still be headed for the upper atmosphere. And it will be way too late for even the most extreme limits to have an effect.
Scientists who have been warning us about climate change since 1958 (that's right) have been all too quick to point out that weather anomalies are in no way evidence of the possibility or the actual emergence of a climatic trend. Even a decade of unusual temperature averages cannot predict global warming or the speed of its approach.
But at some moment, this decade or the next, the evidence will "tip." There will be enough level 5 hurricanes and cyclones, enough floods and droughts, enough cities paralyzed by snow, that the truth, long denied or postponed, will become accepted fact. We passed a half-million year maximum for carbon in the atmosphere in 1900 and the max sustainable in 1950.
In the year we decide we have to radically cut carbon, ten years worth of carbon will still be headed for the upper atmosphere. And it will be way too late for even the most extreme limits to have an effect.
Monday, January 24, 2011
I debate World Trends Research
A good friend posted a link to an essay by Van Wishard, host of the site World Trends Research, on “understanding our moment in history.” I gravitate to anyone’s attempt to present a ‘big picture’ analysis of this unprecedented time and our understanding or lack of it. And Mr. Wishard certainly strikes some major chords, addresses some powerful issues insightfully, and point us to some very wise interpretations, if not solutions. It’s a somewhat long piece, but it’s worth your time. I hope it’s equally worth it to read my areas of agreement and my rebuttal.
What boggles me about so many of such analyses, even the ones that ally with my political, social, spiritual or economic rants, is their inability to recognize or break through the massive environmental blind spot that, I argue, is the REAL threat to civilization.
So I’ll try to be brief. I’ll highlight the many very smart observations and hope you’ll read them in their entirety. I’ll point out what I see as gaps, and try to fill some of them in.
Yes, we are at the crossroads between two ages. Who do we (Mr. Wishard and I) mean by “we”? The whole of the human race and the myriad variations of civilizations and cultures we’ve built, but we in the U.S. and the industrialized West in particular, because it is WE who have turned us all toward this crossroads and stepped on the gas. He defines this threshold in terms of a set of technological, social and spiritual shifts. And he seems to suggest, rather subtly, that the solution, or the proper navigation will depend upon a new “globalized” kind of understanding, a widespread change in “world view,” including a readjustment toward spiritual values. I couldn’t agree more.
He cites three aspects of this changing trend: 1. a shift in our view of the earth, and / or of human civilization as having a unified identity and destiny; 2. technology as the driving force behind “globalization” and as the fundamental factor creating this new age; 3. it is not a war between civilizations, but a struggle within an emerging global civilization. While he thinks the view of the earth from the moon changed fundamentally our view of our lives on this planet, I have my doubts; we certainly have not changed our behavior as a result of a more ‘global’ view. Technology, clearly, YES, is the driving force in the shift from the age we are leaving to the one we are entering.
He cites brilliant minds historic and contemporary who have predicted and defined, and tried to warn and redirect us; minds who saw some of the emerging patterns well before the rest of us. It’s worth it to notice his experts and their observations. He raises issues about whether human technologies are part of “natural evolution,” and suggests, as I would, that they redefine “nature” and skew all the arguments we would otherwise make about nature or technology. To our peril, to the degree we misunderstand. He challenges us to imagine that unfettered technological advancements may obfuscate, some would say obviate, a clear moral order in individual cultures and in the civilization at large.
It’s great to see comments that directly parallel some of the experts I cite. He says, ”In other words, we may be fooling around with phenomena that are, in fact, beyond human awareness; possibly even beyond the ability of humans to grasp.” The International Futures Foundation, which I quote several other places, says, “We (the same “we”) are in a Conceptual Emergency. The world we have constructed expands and accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control it.”
And he makes some wonderful references to the “eternal mystery” and the “sense of wonder” it induces. While I lament our loss of a sense of wonder, so deeply have we come to take the many mysteries for granted.
And he also makes the courageous leap to say that the roots of the problem, the nature of the change of age, and the understanding of it, all lie, in whole or in part, in the unconscious mind, and/or the collective unconscious. Though I disagree with his characterization of the unconscious and the nature of its influence.
But, to my dismay, in a 6000 word essay that covers the issues described here and more, there are only two sentences that refer, rather obliquely at that, to the environment, the global environmental crisis, its expansion, severity and acceleration, and its rapidly increasing risk, not only to human civilization, but to the lives of hundreds of millions, if not billions of our fellow inhabitants.
Every argument he cites, every analysis he offers, every piece of history, every note of technological hubris: they all go by without a mention of the historic impact of the industrial revolution, setting up global warming. With only a side note to Bill Joy, he decries the possibility of more destructive new technologies, without enumerating the unintended consequences of the technologies we have let loose in our myopic drive toward materialist excess. He does come down on materialist values and he does point to some kind of a spiritual re-understanding of our situation, as parts of a proper preparation for these millennial changes we face.
My argument is that YES we are at a threshold between Ages, and YES the age we are leaving is represented on the ground by industrialization, technology and myopic materialism. I’d add, with emphasis, we are also in the middle of the Information Age (“Ages” can and do overlap and intersect) without having much of a clue how information and the lack of it perpetuate the problems by leaving us uniformed.
The nature of a Blind Spot, whether optical, vehicular, mental or cultural, is that it does not merely hide information, it conceals the fact that information is missing.
But the age we are entering is yet to be defined and it will be defined by many more factors than economic and cultural “globalization.” And it will not be defined so much by the dangers of new micro technologies. Nor will the environmental catastrophe be ameliorated or reversed by “geo engineering” (my argument only, not his). We are either entering into the Age of Ecology or we are entering a new Dark Age that will likely last, like the last one, for a millennium.
If we assume that this radical shift in global “world view” will be only about technology, or spirituality, or about reasserting some collection of social values, we’ll be navigating that new age without a compass, fresh water, or a predictable next meal. When we forget the NATURE of the world we stand on, and when we ignore the web of life that has allowed us to evolve, and when we take for granted the stability of our “civilized” systems, we risk launching ourselves, and more critically our children and theirs, into a world of chaos and decline.
My final argument, predicted or echoed in no way by Mr. Wishard: there is a critical and deep-seated equation in the global crisis we face. There is a balance between the total value of the accumulated wealth in the world, concentrated in the industrialized West, and the total damage to the planet and to human rights over the last five hundred years. I think that “Zero Sum” equivalency is all three: the explanation for how we got into this predicament, the reasons we are unable to become informed or make democratic decisions about it, and the key to the remedy. Thanks for your attention.
What boggles me about so many of such analyses, even the ones that ally with my political, social, spiritual or economic rants, is their inability to recognize or break through the massive environmental blind spot that, I argue, is the REAL threat to civilization.
So I’ll try to be brief. I’ll highlight the many very smart observations and hope you’ll read them in their entirety. I’ll point out what I see as gaps, and try to fill some of them in.
Yes, we are at the crossroads between two ages. Who do we (Mr. Wishard and I) mean by “we”? The whole of the human race and the myriad variations of civilizations and cultures we’ve built, but we in the U.S. and the industrialized West in particular, because it is WE who have turned us all toward this crossroads and stepped on the gas. He defines this threshold in terms of a set of technological, social and spiritual shifts. And he seems to suggest, rather subtly, that the solution, or the proper navigation will depend upon a new “globalized” kind of understanding, a widespread change in “world view,” including a readjustment toward spiritual values. I couldn’t agree more.
He cites three aspects of this changing trend: 1. a shift in our view of the earth, and / or of human civilization as having a unified identity and destiny; 2. technology as the driving force behind “globalization” and as the fundamental factor creating this new age; 3. it is not a war between civilizations, but a struggle within an emerging global civilization. While he thinks the view of the earth from the moon changed fundamentally our view of our lives on this planet, I have my doubts; we certainly have not changed our behavior as a result of a more ‘global’ view. Technology, clearly, YES, is the driving force in the shift from the age we are leaving to the one we are entering.
He cites brilliant minds historic and contemporary who have predicted and defined, and tried to warn and redirect us; minds who saw some of the emerging patterns well before the rest of us. It’s worth it to notice his experts and their observations. He raises issues about whether human technologies are part of “natural evolution,” and suggests, as I would, that they redefine “nature” and skew all the arguments we would otherwise make about nature or technology. To our peril, to the degree we misunderstand. He challenges us to imagine that unfettered technological advancements may obfuscate, some would say obviate, a clear moral order in individual cultures and in the civilization at large.
It’s great to see comments that directly parallel some of the experts I cite. He says, ”In other words, we may be fooling around with phenomena that are, in fact, beyond human awareness; possibly even beyond the ability of humans to grasp.” The International Futures Foundation, which I quote several other places, says, “We (the same “we”) are in a Conceptual Emergency. The world we have constructed expands and accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control it.”
And he makes some wonderful references to the “eternal mystery” and the “sense of wonder” it induces. While I lament our loss of a sense of wonder, so deeply have we come to take the many mysteries for granted.
And he also makes the courageous leap to say that the roots of the problem, the nature of the change of age, and the understanding of it, all lie, in whole or in part, in the unconscious mind, and/or the collective unconscious. Though I disagree with his characterization of the unconscious and the nature of its influence.
But, to my dismay, in a 6000 word essay that covers the issues described here and more, there are only two sentences that refer, rather obliquely at that, to the environment, the global environmental crisis, its expansion, severity and acceleration, and its rapidly increasing risk, not only to human civilization, but to the lives of hundreds of millions, if not billions of our fellow inhabitants.
Every argument he cites, every analysis he offers, every piece of history, every note of technological hubris: they all go by without a mention of the historic impact of the industrial revolution, setting up global warming. With only a side note to Bill Joy, he decries the possibility of more destructive new technologies, without enumerating the unintended consequences of the technologies we have let loose in our myopic drive toward materialist excess. He does come down on materialist values and he does point to some kind of a spiritual re-understanding of our situation, as parts of a proper preparation for these millennial changes we face.
My argument is that YES we are at a threshold between Ages, and YES the age we are leaving is represented on the ground by industrialization, technology and myopic materialism. I’d add, with emphasis, we are also in the middle of the Information Age (“Ages” can and do overlap and intersect) without having much of a clue how information and the lack of it perpetuate the problems by leaving us uniformed.
The nature of a Blind Spot, whether optical, vehicular, mental or cultural, is that it does not merely hide information, it conceals the fact that information is missing.
But the age we are entering is yet to be defined and it will be defined by many more factors than economic and cultural “globalization.” And it will not be defined so much by the dangers of new micro technologies. Nor will the environmental catastrophe be ameliorated or reversed by “geo engineering” (my argument only, not his). We are either entering into the Age of Ecology or we are entering a new Dark Age that will likely last, like the last one, for a millennium.
If we assume that this radical shift in global “world view” will be only about technology, or spirituality, or about reasserting some collection of social values, we’ll be navigating that new age without a compass, fresh water, or a predictable next meal. When we forget the NATURE of the world we stand on, and when we ignore the web of life that has allowed us to evolve, and when we take for granted the stability of our “civilized” systems, we risk launching ourselves, and more critically our children and theirs, into a world of chaos and decline.
My final argument, predicted or echoed in no way by Mr. Wishard: there is a critical and deep-seated equation in the global crisis we face. There is a balance between the total value of the accumulated wealth in the world, concentrated in the industrialized West, and the total damage to the planet and to human rights over the last five hundred years. I think that “Zero Sum” equivalency is all three: the explanation for how we got into this predicament, the reasons we are unable to become informed or make democratic decisions about it, and the key to the remedy. Thanks for your attention.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Dear Mr. President, pts 1 and 2
(In response to Mr. Obama's ill-conceived scolding of the Progressive base:)
INEXCUSABLE? IRRESPONSIBLE?
What is inexcusable and irresponsible sir is your having abandoned your stated mission and your most passionate supporters even before you took office. For example putting virtual criminals like Summers in a position of power, like putting oil and gas lobbyists in charge of the EPA, like continuing Bush warmongering and government secrecy. Again, I did not vote for you simply to be the first dark skinned president or for you to be slightly better than Bush. I voted for someone who I imagined would lead us away from an economy based on war, waste and deception and into the light of a sustainable world view. My mistake.
"BUCK UP"? REALLY? We needed you to buck up from day one instead of wasting two years trying to accommodate the right wing fear machine. You have legitimized them when you could have marginalized them. You have settled for health care compromise when you could have created significant change. You continue to ignore the most pressing global issue of the decade because you seem, like Bush and most politicians, to be in the pocket of the moneyed elites. What pressing global issue? If you have to ask, we all are in deeper trouble even than I imagine. The global environmental crisis. If you can't transform an economy organized on principles of war, waste and deception, it will collapse on its own, but by then it will be too late to save civilization.
INEXCUSABLE? IRRESPONSIBLE?
What is inexcusable and irresponsible sir is your having abandoned your stated mission and your most passionate supporters even before you took office. For example putting virtual criminals like Summers in a position of power, like putting oil and gas lobbyists in charge of the EPA, like continuing Bush warmongering and government secrecy. Again, I did not vote for you simply to be the first dark skinned president or for you to be slightly better than Bush. I voted for someone who I imagined would lead us away from an economy based on war, waste and deception and into the light of a sustainable world view. My mistake.
"BUCK UP"? REALLY? We needed you to buck up from day one instead of wasting two years trying to accommodate the right wing fear machine. You have legitimized them when you could have marginalized them. You have settled for health care compromise when you could have created significant change. You continue to ignore the most pressing global issue of the decade because you seem, like Bush and most politicians, to be in the pocket of the moneyed elites. What pressing global issue? If you have to ask, we all are in deeper trouble even than I imagine. The global environmental crisis. If you can't transform an economy organized on principles of war, waste and deception, it will collapse on its own, but by then it will be too late to save civilization.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
On Empathic Thinking
(As posted to AlterNet, in response to an excerpt from Jeremy Rifkin's book on Empathic Civilization)
Rifkin over-hypes the possibilities of Hydrogen, but otherwise presents a great analysis of the evolution of consciousness relative to industrial and communication "ages." I prefer to see this evolution in terms of the human aptitude for flexible thinking. The racist teabag right well illustrates the narrow thinking that the mainstream must transcend if we are to survive, let alone move on. Empathic thinking - the willingness, ability or desire to imagine the world through the experience of others - is very much related, cognitively, to the ability to understand and use irony in particular, and to having a sense of humor in general. It's also related to the ability to question one's own thinking, self-image or world view. It's easy and self-serving for progressives to imagine their position represents a higher level of intelligence, but modesty should not bar this interpretation. There are several "windows" through which to observe and understand the global revolution we face. Rifkin defines more than one. A battle between human fear and ignorance on one hand, and higher consciousness on the other, is equally valid and perhaps more relevant. Higher consciousness is an aptitude for flexible thinking, creativity, irony and humor, though it gets ever harder to take the ironic or sarcastic position on this epochal moment.
Rifkin over-hypes the possibilities of Hydrogen, but otherwise presents a great analysis of the evolution of consciousness relative to industrial and communication "ages." I prefer to see this evolution in terms of the human aptitude for flexible thinking. The racist teabag right well illustrates the narrow thinking that the mainstream must transcend if we are to survive, let alone move on. Empathic thinking - the willingness, ability or desire to imagine the world through the experience of others - is very much related, cognitively, to the ability to understand and use irony in particular, and to having a sense of humor in general. It's also related to the ability to question one's own thinking, self-image or world view. It's easy and self-serving for progressives to imagine their position represents a higher level of intelligence, but modesty should not bar this interpretation. There are several "windows" through which to observe and understand the global revolution we face. Rifkin defines more than one. A battle between human fear and ignorance on one hand, and higher consciousness on the other, is equally valid and perhaps more relevant. Higher consciousness is an aptitude for flexible thinking, creativity, irony and humor, though it gets ever harder to take the ironic or sarcastic position on this epochal moment.
Monday, February 15, 2010
"Robin Hood Tax" !! What next?
Following on the heels of the "Climate Debt" concept touted at Copenhagen, now there are talks of a "Bank Tax" and even a "Robin Hood Tax," which would be levied on all currency, derivative and other speculative transactions. For about five years I’ve been promoting a similar but more comprehensive idea, "Total Global Reparation." I base it on a "zero sum" argument. Big picture: total wealth equals total damage. The accumulated wealth of the world must be more or less equal to the total damage to the environment (cheap and stolen resources, "externalities" and pollution), plus the total human exploitation from slavery and cheap labor. These large scale sums can be calculated, as can the cost of environmental reclamation and the implementation of global human rights. The concept of reparation for slavery is bold and fair in principle, but impossible to apply, to either the payers or payees. But once the principle sinks in, and a legalistic model for implementation emerges, “total global reparation” can be seen as not only justifiable and feasible, but essential. See the funny video, or my "rant" page on "economediapolitics."
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