Here's a wonderful list of liberal talking points for the Thanksgiving table, a re-branding of the word, if you will.
It's odd why you need the political trade winds to shift so much before any of these come to light. Three years ago, you'd have heard few people on any sort of mainstream media defending what it is and means to be liberal, but since 2006, and then crescendoing after the liberal's wet dream, Barack Obama, was elected president of the united states, you've heard a lot more of this.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Thursday, November 27, 2008
The Meaning of Life.
From Wikipedia.
I just like how it says, "This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject."
Whoever that is, I'd like to meet them.
I just like how it says, "This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject."
Whoever that is, I'd like to meet them.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Peter Fenner, Radiant Mind
Peter Fenner gives about as good, simple and natural an explanation to the space of consciousness as just about anyone I've come across.
A short dialogue, here.
A short dialogue, here.
More on the "End of America."
If you don't have time to watch the video, here's a nice synopsis of Naomi Wolf's 10 steps to closing a society.
The main thing I want to say, connected with yesterday's post about unintended consequences, is that the powers that Bush put into play during his presidency are still valid.
Obama may restrain himself from using some of them, (say, signing statements) but to truly ensure the survival of American democracy, we have to expressly remove certain of these powers, like the ability to declare anyone an enemy combatant, or to use the national guard as a police force, things any president would love to have in an emergency, and keep afterwards.
The question to be determined in Obama's first year or so is, what is he working for? If it is for the good of American democracy, we should see an unequivocal reversal of many of the president's arbitrary and un-american war powers. If it is for the capitalist class, expect no rescinding of these powers, instead some soft words and talk of how it's unecessary to change anything at this point, for whatever concocted reason.
We're in some shit.
The main thing I want to say, connected with yesterday's post about unintended consequences, is that the powers that Bush put into play during his presidency are still valid.
Obama may restrain himself from using some of them, (say, signing statements) but to truly ensure the survival of American democracy, we have to expressly remove certain of these powers, like the ability to declare anyone an enemy combatant, or to use the national guard as a police force, things any president would love to have in an emergency, and keep afterwards.
The question to be determined in Obama's first year or so is, what is he working for? If it is for the good of American democracy, we should see an unequivocal reversal of many of the president's arbitrary and un-american war powers. If it is for the capitalist class, expect no rescinding of these powers, instead some soft words and talk of how it's unecessary to change anything at this point, for whatever concocted reason.
We're in some shit.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Unintended Consequences
An article on National Geographic.
Real quick: unintended consequences. Any system is in a constant state of cyclical flux, (feedback loops, if you will) that is in balance at any point in time. The more complicated the system, the less obvious the connections between individual constituents of the system. For example, the dynamic of a two-child family is more complex than the heating system of their house, and the operation of their society is infinitely more complex than the family.
The more complex the system, the less likely it is that consequences of changing one element can be predicted.
We're seeing this across the board when it comes to climate change, which is why certain pundits now prefer the phrase "global weirding" to "global warming."
Again: 1- the earth's ecosystems are about as complex as they come.
2- We are seriously screwing with them.
3- Anybody who does not take this uncertainty (or, looking at historical examples of assuredness in the face of complete unknowability, the relative certainty of disaster) as the number one most important thing in any talks about climate change has the race handicapped poorly.
Of course, we're not just fudging with one or two things at a time here. We are fudging with everything in the global ecosystem, upon which humanity is precariously balanced. Who knows what's going to happen? Nobody. But, rather than write it off and say, "well, whatever happens isn't likely to be that big," we should be saying, "we're in a balance that has suited us well for thousands and thousands of years, and the likelihood of a new balance being in our favor is probably small."
It's ironic that this conservative value is so outside the mindset of the majority of today's political conservatives.
And, though this is an environmental example, it relates to almost every human choice. At the outset, options may appear clear, but one can never correctly judge what the consequence of the first choice will be. Instead of blindly trudging forward through ever changing circumstances, we need a much more flexible way of operating, one that makes a choice, looks at what happens, and only then moves on. Kaizen: my favorite Japanese word.
Real quick: unintended consequences. Any system is in a constant state of cyclical flux, (feedback loops, if you will) that is in balance at any point in time. The more complicated the system, the less obvious the connections between individual constituents of the system. For example, the dynamic of a two-child family is more complex than the heating system of their house, and the operation of their society is infinitely more complex than the family.
The more complex the system, the less likely it is that consequences of changing one element can be predicted.
We're seeing this across the board when it comes to climate change, which is why certain pundits now prefer the phrase "global weirding" to "global warming."
Again: 1- the earth's ecosystems are about as complex as they come.
2- We are seriously screwing with them.
3- Anybody who does not take this uncertainty (or, looking at historical examples of assuredness in the face of complete unknowability, the relative certainty of disaster) as the number one most important thing in any talks about climate change has the race handicapped poorly.
Of course, we're not just fudging with one or two things at a time here. We are fudging with everything in the global ecosystem, upon which humanity is precariously balanced. Who knows what's going to happen? Nobody. But, rather than write it off and say, "well, whatever happens isn't likely to be that big," we should be saying, "we're in a balance that has suited us well for thousands and thousands of years, and the likelihood of a new balance being in our favor is probably small."
It's ironic that this conservative value is so outside the mindset of the majority of today's political conservatives.
And, though this is an environmental example, it relates to almost every human choice. At the outset, options may appear clear, but one can never correctly judge what the consequence of the first choice will be. Instead of blindly trudging forward through ever changing circumstances, we need a much more flexible way of operating, one that makes a choice, looks at what happens, and only then moves on. Kaizen: my favorite Japanese word.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Four Philosophical Questions on the BBC
This is a response to a piece on the BBC's website, containing four knotty philosophical questions. I can answer each of them to my satisfaction, so I'd like to put my answers out there.
It would be helpful to read the original piece, as I'm not going to put the whole, lengthy questions here.
1- Should we kill healthy people for their organs?
No. While, in all three cases, the phrase "saving five people by killing one" applies, in the first case, "Bill" is in no jeopardy. It would be wrong to kill someone healthy who is not in danger of death against his will. In the second case it is not immoral to kill the individual, because all six people are already in jeopardy. If you don't kill one of them yourself, that person will die anyway, whereas Bill is in no such danger.
Now, in the third case, while the choice of which track to set the train rolling down seems to be taking someone who is not in danger, the single person tied to the alternate track, and killing him/her, it is not equivalent to Bill's case because Bill isn't tied to any train tracks! So, although in both cases you appear to be making a deliberate choice sacrificing one person (kill Bill for his organs, flip the switch to kill the individual on the tracks) to spare five people, the fact that the individual in the train example is tied to active train tracks places him or her in a danger that Bill is not in. I think this is why most people intuitively answer that it is not okay to kill Bill, but okay to let the train kill the individual tied to the tracks, and okay to kill the one hostage to set the five free.
2- Are you the same person who started reading this article?
The dichotomy between the statements "everything is constantly changing" and "nothing changes" is false, as the two statements of truth are only apparently different. In reality, all of these concepts we think of as being fundamentally opposed (say, motion and stillness, or freewill and fate) are different ways of looking at the same phenomenon, "being." Concept and language view separate phenomena, and the mistake is to say that they are separate, and therefore NOT UNIFIED. The paradox in "everything is in constant change" is, of course, that that rule itself is not subject to change, but this paradox doesn't mean there's something wrong with the world, or that this truth itself is wrong, it's pointing to the inability of language to grasp the nature of reality as being constantly changing, continuously unchanging, both constantly changing and unchanging, and neither changing nor unchanging, and all necessarily so. There is no possibility of "being" being anyway other than this, a can of worms for another time.
Similarly, the dichotomy between the subject and the object is conceptual/ perceptual, and built into the structure of reality, but not itself ultimately real. Again, reality is neither subjective nor objective, it is both at the same time. Everything in the phenomenal world is in constant change and only a part of the whole, and also at the same time ultimately the same as what does not change, being itself. The sense of unchanging identity comes from this center of your unchanging being, and this does not change, though everything phenomenal is fluid and changing.
So, what you think you are is totally different from what it was at the beginning of the article, and even from moment to moment. What you actually are, everything, has not changed.
3- Is that really a computer screen in front of you?
Closely related to the above, this question hinges on the belief in some "thing" that is "real," as opposed to "things" that are not real.
There is no "independent" check on your senses because there is no true "independence." There is no "thing" in the universe with any reality separate from the reality of the rest of the universe, a sticking point of materialism. There's no getting outside the system, because everything conceivable in any time point in space or dimension is the system.
But it's not just that it's impossible to verify what's really really real (say, where exactly the buck stops,) it's that the idea of something being really really real independently is mistaken.
Basically, the sentence "There is a computer screen in front of me" loses any meaning if it is meant in an ultimate sense, and not a practical one. Practically, there is a computer screen in front of you, right now. Ultimately, reality doesn't work this way.
4-Did you really choose to read this article?
Again, closely related to the above two questions.
All of these "stickler" questions come at the logical conclusions of two seemingly obvious lines of thought.
Again, we're placing too much emphasis on the "really real, independently real, truly and ultimately real" nature of our concepts and what they refer to. Free will and determinism are not contradictory, they are two ways of looking at determination of process, and are each shortcuts.
All is the Universe, and you are this as well, so, whatever you do is determined, ultimately, by whatever it is that determines everything, and that is also what you are in any real sense, so, really, you have ultimate free will, enough to seriously frighten most people. Saying that all of your choices are pre-determined doesn't rule out that you determined them yourself, but, again, our concept of the free agent of choice is only a shorthand. On the other side of the coin, let's say that the result of a choice is one of two extreme possibilities, either at that moment the universe splits and BOTH happen, ultimately meaning that every infinitely small moment creates an infinite amount of second-moments, and so on (which, though it seems perhaps counter-intuitive that there could be infinite to the infinite worlds out there, is less so if you remember the fact of infinity), or only one thing happens, and all the other possibilities fall back into nothing. Either way is entirely handcuffing the very free will affirmed above. Either every choice is played out in every possible fashion, in which case who "you" are is just an accident of whichever line you happen to be watching, or you can never un-choose what has happened, and can't say whether (since there is only one universe) what happened ever actually had a choice option, both deterministic in their ways. At the end of the day all of this conjecture is meaningless, it all rests on the incorrect assumption that free-will and choice are different possibilities. Things happen. You are a part of what makes them happen, in fact what "you" are is also what this is, so you have free-will, and further, you are not different from what is happening. Even the idea of acting on something different from you is mistaken, it is practical. There is also never any real alternative to what is, so there is no free will. These are both true at the same time, and really, neither of them is true at all, they're only ways of talking, of wrapping words (though not fruitlessly) around something that cannot be corralled. The universe is not what it appears, and, it is. Everything is oneness, everything is nothingness, oneness is nothingness.
Okay, feel free to add your own thoughts.
It would be helpful to read the original piece, as I'm not going to put the whole, lengthy questions here.
1- Should we kill healthy people for their organs?
No. While, in all three cases, the phrase "saving five people by killing one" applies, in the first case, "Bill" is in no jeopardy. It would be wrong to kill someone healthy who is not in danger of death against his will. In the second case it is not immoral to kill the individual, because all six people are already in jeopardy. If you don't kill one of them yourself, that person will die anyway, whereas Bill is in no such danger.
Now, in the third case, while the choice of which track to set the train rolling down seems to be taking someone who is not in danger, the single person tied to the alternate track, and killing him/her, it is not equivalent to Bill's case because Bill isn't tied to any train tracks! So, although in both cases you appear to be making a deliberate choice sacrificing one person (kill Bill for his organs, flip the switch to kill the individual on the tracks) to spare five people, the fact that the individual in the train example is tied to active train tracks places him or her in a danger that Bill is not in. I think this is why most people intuitively answer that it is not okay to kill Bill, but okay to let the train kill the individual tied to the tracks, and okay to kill the one hostage to set the five free.
2- Are you the same person who started reading this article?
The dichotomy between the statements "everything is constantly changing" and "nothing changes" is false, as the two statements of truth are only apparently different. In reality, all of these concepts we think of as being fundamentally opposed (say, motion and stillness, or freewill and fate) are different ways of looking at the same phenomenon, "being." Concept and language view separate phenomena, and the mistake is to say that they are separate, and therefore NOT UNIFIED. The paradox in "everything is in constant change" is, of course, that that rule itself is not subject to change, but this paradox doesn't mean there's something wrong with the world, or that this truth itself is wrong, it's pointing to the inability of language to grasp the nature of reality as being constantly changing, continuously unchanging, both constantly changing and unchanging, and neither changing nor unchanging, and all necessarily so. There is no possibility of "being" being anyway other than this, a can of worms for another time.
Similarly, the dichotomy between the subject and the object is conceptual/ perceptual, and built into the structure of reality, but not itself ultimately real. Again, reality is neither subjective nor objective, it is both at the same time. Everything in the phenomenal world is in constant change and only a part of the whole, and also at the same time ultimately the same as what does not change, being itself. The sense of unchanging identity comes from this center of your unchanging being, and this does not change, though everything phenomenal is fluid and changing.
So, what you think you are is totally different from what it was at the beginning of the article, and even from moment to moment. What you actually are, everything, has not changed.
3- Is that really a computer screen in front of you?
Closely related to the above, this question hinges on the belief in some "thing" that is "real," as opposed to "things" that are not real.
There is no "independent" check on your senses because there is no true "independence." There is no "thing" in the universe with any reality separate from the reality of the rest of the universe, a sticking point of materialism. There's no getting outside the system, because everything conceivable in any time point in space or dimension is the system.
But it's not just that it's impossible to verify what's really really real (say, where exactly the buck stops,) it's that the idea of something being really really real independently is mistaken.
Basically, the sentence "There is a computer screen in front of me" loses any meaning if it is meant in an ultimate sense, and not a practical one. Practically, there is a computer screen in front of you, right now. Ultimately, reality doesn't work this way.
4-Did you really choose to read this article?
Again, closely related to the above two questions.
All of these "stickler" questions come at the logical conclusions of two seemingly obvious lines of thought.
Again, we're placing too much emphasis on the "really real, independently real, truly and ultimately real" nature of our concepts and what they refer to. Free will and determinism are not contradictory, they are two ways of looking at determination of process, and are each shortcuts.
All is the Universe, and you are this as well, so, whatever you do is determined, ultimately, by whatever it is that determines everything, and that is also what you are in any real sense, so, really, you have ultimate free will, enough to seriously frighten most people. Saying that all of your choices are pre-determined doesn't rule out that you determined them yourself, but, again, our concept of the free agent of choice is only a shorthand. On the other side of the coin, let's say that the result of a choice is one of two extreme possibilities, either at that moment the universe splits and BOTH happen, ultimately meaning that every infinitely small moment creates an infinite amount of second-moments, and so on (which, though it seems perhaps counter-intuitive that there could be infinite to the infinite worlds out there, is less so if you remember the fact of infinity), or only one thing happens, and all the other possibilities fall back into nothing. Either way is entirely handcuffing the very free will affirmed above. Either every choice is played out in every possible fashion, in which case who "you" are is just an accident of whichever line you happen to be watching, or you can never un-choose what has happened, and can't say whether (since there is only one universe) what happened ever actually had a choice option, both deterministic in their ways. At the end of the day all of this conjecture is meaningless, it all rests on the incorrect assumption that free-will and choice are different possibilities. Things happen. You are a part of what makes them happen, in fact what "you" are is also what this is, so you have free-will, and further, you are not different from what is happening. Even the idea of acting on something different from you is mistaken, it is practical. There is also never any real alternative to what is, so there is no free will. These are both true at the same time, and really, neither of them is true at all, they're only ways of talking, of wrapping words (though not fruitlessly) around something that cannot be corralled. The universe is not what it appears, and, it is. Everything is oneness, everything is nothingness, oneness is nothingness.
Okay, feel free to add your own thoughts.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Hmmmmmm, I knew that tasted fishy.
An excerpt adopted from "Fast Food Nation," by Eric Schlosser.
Two things I want to say:
1- When you have to over compensate for doing something it should be clear that the original thing is probably the result of ridiculously tortured thinking, and a better and more efficient solution is out there: exhibit A here, you need to add chemicals to processed foods to make them taste like real food (or, for that matter, to keep them from decomposing.) Solution: eat real food. Food that needs chemicals to taste like food is not, in the first place food. This is entirely different from spicing, which you'll surely notice if you read the article.
exhibit B, an example from Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma:" waste products at factory farms. Where waste used to be used as fertilizer, it is now too far from farms to be used as such, and, in the gigantic quantities that you accumulate when your feedlot consists of tens of thousands of animals, is poisoning the water supplies for hundreds of miles. In addition, chemical fertilizers must be used to replace the nutrients in the soil no longer naturally replaced by "waste."
This is not just silliness, it is indicative of a way of thinking that is destroying the very things humans need for their survival. Five hundred years ago, there was no such thing as waste. When there is only so much on the planet to make waste out of, isn't there a predestined end to that?
2- If you want to know what you're eating (say, if you're vegan, vegetarian, keep kosher, halal, etc., simply conscientious) it's impractical if not entirely impossible to do this and eat any processed foods. As an example: I bet you didn't know (if you hadn't read this book or the article) that you've ingested parts of thousands if not millions of bugs called "Dactylopius coccus Costa" whose dessicated shells are used as red and pink coloring in such obviously meat laden products as pink-grapefruit juice and Dannon Strawberry Yoghurt.
Oh yeah, not to mention that we really have no clue what most of the thousands of chemicals the average person ingests on any given day actually do to the long-term health of the human body.
Things aren't this complicated, and there's hope on the horizon. People are finally starting to realize, in large numbers, that things aren't this complicated in the real world.
We just make it that way.
Two things I want to say:
1- When you have to over compensate for doing something it should be clear that the original thing is probably the result of ridiculously tortured thinking, and a better and more efficient solution is out there: exhibit A here, you need to add chemicals to processed foods to make them taste like real food (or, for that matter, to keep them from decomposing.) Solution: eat real food. Food that needs chemicals to taste like food is not, in the first place food. This is entirely different from spicing, which you'll surely notice if you read the article.
exhibit B, an example from Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma:" waste products at factory farms. Where waste used to be used as fertilizer, it is now too far from farms to be used as such, and, in the gigantic quantities that you accumulate when your feedlot consists of tens of thousands of animals, is poisoning the water supplies for hundreds of miles. In addition, chemical fertilizers must be used to replace the nutrients in the soil no longer naturally replaced by "waste."
This is not just silliness, it is indicative of a way of thinking that is destroying the very things humans need for their survival. Five hundred years ago, there was no such thing as waste. When there is only so much on the planet to make waste out of, isn't there a predestined end to that?
2- If you want to know what you're eating (say, if you're vegan, vegetarian, keep kosher, halal, etc., simply conscientious) it's impractical if not entirely impossible to do this and eat any processed foods. As an example: I bet you didn't know (if you hadn't read this book or the article) that you've ingested parts of thousands if not millions of bugs called "Dactylopius coccus Costa" whose dessicated shells are used as red and pink coloring in such obviously meat laden products as pink-grapefruit juice and Dannon Strawberry Yoghurt.
Oh yeah, not to mention that we really have no clue what most of the thousands of chemicals the average person ingests on any given day actually do to the long-term health of the human body.
Things aren't this complicated, and there's hope on the horizon. People are finally starting to realize, in large numbers, that things aren't this complicated in the real world.
We just make it that way.
Smile! Ten Things Science Says Will Make You Happy!
From Yes! Magazine: 10 Things Science Says Will Make You Happy!
The title, deciphered, means "10 things supported by scientific research that people who tend to be happy do."
Of course, there's the problem of cause and effect, that is, does this MAKE people happy, or do happy people just tend to do these things more often?
My observation about this comes from experience with number seven: Smile, even when you don't feel like it. A few months ago I had been in a funk for a few days, when, in reading a website about Tai Ji to refine my form, I saw a note: Qi Gong Practice: Smile!
Don't just smile, break out a achingly wide happy-smile, like a proud papa watching his son learn how to ride a bike, the article said, giving step-by-step instructions as if it were a complicated movement in Tai Ji. Doing this, it's hard not to feel happy, or at least to bring that sensation of smiling in contact with whatever and wherever in your body isn't feeling the smile. Repeat. I found that as I smiled, as I remembered to smile, whatever sensation of unpleasantness was in my body was relaxed away, and whatever unnaturalness I had felt about smiling similarly left, and that it was hard to stop smiling! Right now as I write I'm having the same problem: smiling makes me feel too good! I'm literally beaming, for no reason at all, just because I smiled once, purposely and concentratedly, at the beginning of writing this, and I just can't stop.
This dovetails into the first recommendation: Savor everyday moments. Just stop and smell the roses, as it were, or watch children playing. That smiling might just come back of its own accord. That bursting happiness from smiling any other time of the day will also help you to focus on just what's in front of you, the breathtaking beauty of the terribly mundane.
So, is it one, or the other? Does being happy make you do these things, or do these things make you happy?
As with everything, it's both. Being happy makes you do these things freely and joyfully, which makes you happy, which makes you do these things freely and joyfully. What a world!
Really, of course, remembering to smile, remembering to appreciate the littlest moments, is what awareness practice is, and is all about. There is nothing wrong with the world. We get caught up in ourselves, and neglect this simple and ever-present sensation of joy that is the base of everything else.
So, if you are alone, (don't want to look foolish, now,) smile, uncompromisingly, smile as wide as you can, let your eyes come together at the sides, your scalp pull back, and open your mouth up and smile! Then, repeat as necessary.
The title, deciphered, means "10 things supported by scientific research that people who tend to be happy do."
Of course, there's the problem of cause and effect, that is, does this MAKE people happy, or do happy people just tend to do these things more often?
My observation about this comes from experience with number seven: Smile, even when you don't feel like it. A few months ago I had been in a funk for a few days, when, in reading a website about Tai Ji to refine my form, I saw a note: Qi Gong Practice: Smile!
Don't just smile, break out a achingly wide happy-smile, like a proud papa watching his son learn how to ride a bike, the article said, giving step-by-step instructions as if it were a complicated movement in Tai Ji. Doing this, it's hard not to feel happy, or at least to bring that sensation of smiling in contact with whatever and wherever in your body isn't feeling the smile. Repeat. I found that as I smiled, as I remembered to smile, whatever sensation of unpleasantness was in my body was relaxed away, and whatever unnaturalness I had felt about smiling similarly left, and that it was hard to stop smiling! Right now as I write I'm having the same problem: smiling makes me feel too good! I'm literally beaming, for no reason at all, just because I smiled once, purposely and concentratedly, at the beginning of writing this, and I just can't stop.
This dovetails into the first recommendation: Savor everyday moments. Just stop and smell the roses, as it were, or watch children playing. That smiling might just come back of its own accord. That bursting happiness from smiling any other time of the day will also help you to focus on just what's in front of you, the breathtaking beauty of the terribly mundane.
So, is it one, or the other? Does being happy make you do these things, or do these things make you happy?
As with everything, it's both. Being happy makes you do these things freely and joyfully, which makes you happy, which makes you do these things freely and joyfully. What a world!
Really, of course, remembering to smile, remembering to appreciate the littlest moments, is what awareness practice is, and is all about. There is nothing wrong with the world. We get caught up in ourselves, and neglect this simple and ever-present sensation of joy that is the base of everything else.
So, if you are alone, (don't want to look foolish, now,) smile, uncompromisingly, smile as wide as you can, let your eyes come together at the sides, your scalp pull back, and open your mouth up and smile! Then, repeat as necessary.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Barack Obama, and Freedom
Fair enough to say that no one will know exactly what last week's election means for a long, long time. Perhaps this is part of the reason that I've had such trouble articulating what effect it has had on me, and what it has made me feel, beyond an incredible giddiness, and an outpouring of emotion. I think I have finally figured out just why Barack Obama moves me as much as he does, and it starts with the words in his victory speech that moved me the most, playing with Lincoln's (second?) most famous excerpt from the Gettysburg address, that "government of the people, by the people, and for the people," has not perished from the face of the Earth.
There were other moments, seeing the first-family-elect step onto the stage for the first time was another, but this moment made me choke up the most. I think this is why:
I believe in American exceptionalism. I think that America introduced something new into world politics, something fundamentally new. This does not mean, of course, that I support every interpretation of this, far from it. I think most of the problems we get into involve some romantic idea of American righteousness, and so while I don't and cannot support "my country right or wrong" thinking, I do think that America introduced something critical for the future wellfare of mankind, something that no other country could have, and something that is slowly leaking out elsewhere (I do not think another country in the world could have elected Obama, (or an equivalent) for those who disagree with the "slowly" part of that) and something that is overwhelmingly beneficial for humankind and civilization.
Obviously, I am an idealist.
Over the last eight years, my idealism has been tempered by a great deal of cynicism and skepticism, (not two words for the same thing, though there are overlaps in certain situations) two other modes of thought that I am quite comfortable with, despite my core of idealism. What the idealist loves about our country, the cynic/skeptic is terrified we are losing, or have already lost. This has not been partisan (i.e., I'm not simply "anti-republican") rather it has been the fear that certain philosophies of governing embraced by the current administration have been threatening to government for the people. The road to fascism is paved with good intentions. Fascism, here, means government that uses its power to subjugate its own people. Not culturally, mind you: I would argue that conformity to cultural practices and, say, death camps, are two entirely different phenomenon. Culture is, at the same time, much more benign a form of "subjugation," if you wish to call it that, and much more insidious, built into the fabric of what people's identities are. But it is not being billy-clubbed for talking negatively about the government. I am following Naomi Wolf here. For a laundry list talk about the road to fascism, watch the following, or read her book, "The End of America."
In any case, for me, this has been the most important thing about the Obama candidacy, and the election. It is the key element that holds everything else in together: the appearance of an unabashedly rational, intellectual candidate; the major step taken for civil rights; the potential return of moral and political authority to america; returning america from the brink of modern-day laissez-faire economics; the face of america returning as being young, optimistic, inclusive, practical, idealistic (at the same time,) humble, etc. etc. opposed to the face we've seen in the last eight years; the excitement and participatory level in politics; the understanding of the importance of issues (the economy, energy, and the environment,) as trumping divisive politics (and the media, by the way;) the emergence of an interconnected citizenry plugged into the media but not dependent upon it: all of these aspects, and more, I see as the natural outcome of a (relatively) free and (relatively) open society in crisis.
Had McCain won the election despite the popular push for Obama apparent in everything and in nearly every demographic and the above, it would have been a symbol to me that the American Dream, not of a chicken in every pot, but of the enshrined ability to say and be and feel whatever one wants, and the belief that this leads to a better world for all, was either being threatened by the powers that be, or was dead already, killed when we all weren't looking.
It is, in a word, the ability to freely agree or disagree without repercussion.
America brought the sense that a country and its government are separable, and that patriotism is not love of government, but love of country, something, under the Bush administration, that was smeared two hundred years into the past. In China this has been one of the most dumbfounding aspects for me, that there is no separation, theoretically or practically, between what "the government" is and what "the country" is. There's an awareness, sure, and a line I often get from people who start interrogating me about how America could be so stupid (often a line of questioning starting with Iraq and Bush) is that "okay, okay, American people are good people, Chinese people are good people, but governments everywhere are bad." Of course, what I couldn't say, because I had had no evidence for it, was "when the people are good, and allowed a large degree of participation, the government can't but be good as well." I have some evidence for that now.
Are we being hoodwinked? Is Obama a Manchurian candidate working to support a global elite against (an important word) the citizens of the planet? A quick reversal of tone and policy by his administration in the areas that Bush has done the most and potentially permanent damage to the fabric of the country would do much to silence those two voices, skepticism and cynicism, so essential to freedom, and well-trained in the last eight years.
It is up to us to keep watch, and our power to keep the world moving towards an open and free society, inclusive and supportive of all. It is our power. And power concedes nothing.
There were other moments, seeing the first-family-elect step onto the stage for the first time was another, but this moment made me choke up the most. I think this is why:
I believe in American exceptionalism. I think that America introduced something new into world politics, something fundamentally new. This does not mean, of course, that I support every interpretation of this, far from it. I think most of the problems we get into involve some romantic idea of American righteousness, and so while I don't and cannot support "my country right or wrong" thinking, I do think that America introduced something critical for the future wellfare of mankind, something that no other country could have, and something that is slowly leaking out elsewhere (I do not think another country in the world could have elected Obama, (or an equivalent) for those who disagree with the "slowly" part of that) and something that is overwhelmingly beneficial for humankind and civilization.
Obviously, I am an idealist.
Over the last eight years, my idealism has been tempered by a great deal of cynicism and skepticism, (not two words for the same thing, though there are overlaps in certain situations) two other modes of thought that I am quite comfortable with, despite my core of idealism. What the idealist loves about our country, the cynic/skeptic is terrified we are losing, or have already lost. This has not been partisan (i.e., I'm not simply "anti-republican") rather it has been the fear that certain philosophies of governing embraced by the current administration have been threatening to government for the people. The road to fascism is paved with good intentions. Fascism, here, means government that uses its power to subjugate its own people. Not culturally, mind you: I would argue that conformity to cultural practices and, say, death camps, are two entirely different phenomenon. Culture is, at the same time, much more benign a form of "subjugation," if you wish to call it that, and much more insidious, built into the fabric of what people's identities are. But it is not being billy-clubbed for talking negatively about the government. I am following Naomi Wolf here. For a laundry list talk about the road to fascism, watch the following, or read her book, "The End of America."
In any case, for me, this has been the most important thing about the Obama candidacy, and the election. It is the key element that holds everything else in together: the appearance of an unabashedly rational, intellectual candidate; the major step taken for civil rights; the potential return of moral and political authority to america; returning america from the brink of modern-day laissez-faire economics; the face of america returning as being young, optimistic, inclusive, practical, idealistic (at the same time,) humble, etc. etc. opposed to the face we've seen in the last eight years; the excitement and participatory level in politics; the understanding of the importance of issues (the economy, energy, and the environment,) as trumping divisive politics (and the media, by the way;) the emergence of an interconnected citizenry plugged into the media but not dependent upon it: all of these aspects, and more, I see as the natural outcome of a (relatively) free and (relatively) open society in crisis.
Had McCain won the election despite the popular push for Obama apparent in everything and in nearly every demographic and the above, it would have been a symbol to me that the American Dream, not of a chicken in every pot, but of the enshrined ability to say and be and feel whatever one wants, and the belief that this leads to a better world for all, was either being threatened by the powers that be, or was dead already, killed when we all weren't looking.
It is, in a word, the ability to freely agree or disagree without repercussion.
America brought the sense that a country and its government are separable, and that patriotism is not love of government, but love of country, something, under the Bush administration, that was smeared two hundred years into the past. In China this has been one of the most dumbfounding aspects for me, that there is no separation, theoretically or practically, between what "the government" is and what "the country" is. There's an awareness, sure, and a line I often get from people who start interrogating me about how America could be so stupid (often a line of questioning starting with Iraq and Bush) is that "okay, okay, American people are good people, Chinese people are good people, but governments everywhere are bad." Of course, what I couldn't say, because I had had no evidence for it, was "when the people are good, and allowed a large degree of participation, the government can't but be good as well." I have some evidence for that now.
Are we being hoodwinked? Is Obama a Manchurian candidate working to support a global elite against (an important word) the citizens of the planet? A quick reversal of tone and policy by his administration in the areas that Bush has done the most and potentially permanent damage to the fabric of the country would do much to silence those two voices, skepticism and cynicism, so essential to freedom, and well-trained in the last eight years.
It is up to us to keep watch, and our power to keep the world moving towards an open and free society, inclusive and supportive of all. It is our power. And power concedes nothing.
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