Thankful for . . .

I am thankful for dirt, for our sweet-smelling soil, for the 15,000-year-old Missoula alluvium that organically produces half the food my wife and I eat, that nourishes shrubs in which birds nest, and that shoots up a thick matt of weeds where mice and snakes find balance. Thank you, loam, for the bounty of leaves, their movements and colors, their graceful descent to rejoin you, the homes they assemble for salamanders, earthworms and beetles, for making the perfect seedling nursery. Thank you too for an explosion of flowers all summer, magnets to hummingbirds, honeybees, bumblebees and praying mantises. And with respect to the old-growth firs that shade our house during hot spells and keep inside temperatures as much as 20 degrees cooler, many long sighs of relief. Especially, thank you for letting us give back. By composting our wastes, you sanctify our tiny contributions to your eternal, sacred cycle of Life.


(“My whole life had been spent waiting for an epiphany, a manifestation of God’s presence, the kind of transcendent, magical experience that lets you see your place in the big picture. And that is what I had with my first [compost] heap.” - Bette Midler)

75

On the eve of my 75^th birthday, I think about Corky, the six-year-old who lived across the street from me in 1949. “Mom’s gonna buy a new radio,” he announced, “and it’s gonna have moving pictures on it.” I could not imagine. But ever since our first TV, the ‘impossibilities’ of technological progress have come at a staggering pace.

Black-and-white was soon replaced by color, and a mere fifteen years later Americans walked on the moon. By 1974, the web connected research universities, and within decades the public had personal computers, the internet, smart phones and millions of other world-changing innovations, most of which were beyond the comprehension of someone who as a kid sat before the radio on Saturday mornings envisioning the faces of the rough-and-tumble cowboys whose gravelly voices made it clear that in the battle between good and evil, good would always win.

Technology has no allegiance to good or evil. Technological progress seemed “good” because it shone the light of knowledge into households worldwide. It connected 7.3 billion culturally-diverse people. It built the substructure for us to unite as one people on one small, traumatized, exhausted planet.

But technology buffs ignored the greatest impediment to true progress, which is human nature itself. Techies and investors assumed gadgets would miraculously eradicate flaws in our genetic wiring. Instead, we got viral conspiracies, internet trolls, hate groups and mass shootings. Technology, in effect, put AR-15s in the hands of cavemen.

Had we taken just half the money that went into developing and making high-tech stuff, plus much of the wealth that IPO investors pocketed, plus many of the billions ‘earned’ through rising stock values, if we had taken a hefty chunk of all that money and spent it on understanding human nature, we might be well on our way to stopping the dual threats to human health and survival, namely, the widening social, economic and political divisions, and a rapidly deteriorating environment.

But we didn’t. And it won’t happen soon. Here’s why.

Throughout my life, the country was ‘parented’ by two political parties. Dad was the protector who united his supporters against a foreign enemy. He borrowed money and built up the military. When Mom was voted into office, she united her supporters around the sense of community. She wanted money for schools, healthcare and a safety net for the disadvantaged. Being fiscally responsible, she didn’t want to borrow money, but to tax those who had made money from the war economy. Dad was furious. “Tax and spend,” he hollered. And soon, he was back in office.

The cycle ended in 2017 when our newly elected Dad lacked the courage to stand up to foreign enemies. He still needed to unite his supporters against a common foe, and since Mom had achieved extraordinary social progress, he attacked her.

Obviously, spousal abuse is not the ‘good’ that cowboys promised! The abuser shrugs, “So what? Women have no recourse.”

Women, though, do have recourse. United, the suffragettes secured the vote and passed protective laws. #MeToo held wealthy, powerful abusers accountable and stripped them of sexual ‘privileges’. United, women could secure the institutions essential for a peaceful, sustainable global village - education, healthcare, the environment, a free press, the right to assemble - democracy itself.

Corky. You and I are now leather-faced cowboys. We must champion the ‘good’ cause. It’s time we got off our high horses and backed women. Female leadership qualities befit a filled-up Earth.

Destroy in order to win

It's part of the male gene, the need to get ahead by first destroying something. One man defeats a rival for political dominance. Another crushes a meadow under cocrete as an architectural claim on territory. War. Dam building. Teasing a girl - a put down - as a way to win her.

But what does a man in America do if he has lost every battle? It's not his fault, by the way. He was tricked. Bamboozled. Cheated. Men blame someone else. Trump is the quintessential example: never takes responsibility for anything that goes wrong.

Well, thank god, the defeated man can buy an AR-15, and with it shoot kids in a school or partiers at a club or worshippers in a synagogue. Well thank god the U.S. President is the Commander--in-chief and can orffer up the army. He can feel like a real man by destroying something. Or by killing somebody.

We don't need to ban guns. We just need to prohibit men from having them.

Lies

"A Party Defined by its Lies" - Paull Krugman

Response in the Comments section:

Republicans lie about their agenda because they must. They lie because the greatest threat to human survival cannot be talked about. Look at their policies. Taken as whole, they point to a single objective: environmental sustainability. How to get there? First, secure the power of the wealthy by helping them build legal and political walls around their wealth; make their class unassailable. Second, weaken the masses; reduce food support; take away health care; keep wages low so the poor are so busy making a living that they have no time to protest, or even to know that they are dispensable; take away social security so people have no free time to evaluate what's happening to them; make it difficult for people to vote. Third, close the borders, reduce immigration and cut subsidies to foreign countries; make the dark-skinned people of the world know they too are dispensable. Republicans are dealing with a problem Demcrats refuse to even talk about: overpopulation. The world has five billion more people than it can support sustainably. The rich don't want to curtail their lifestyles, so Republican have come up with a solution: let nature have it way with the masses. Quietly orchestrate a massive die-off. That would return the world to health in a couple of generations. The rich could then hunt elephants and lions with no fear of their going extinct.
The only sensible way to solve the problem of overpopulation is through lower birth rates, but population control is taboo.

NYT Response

(In response to Thomas B. Edsall's "The Gender War, 2018 Edition"

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/opinion/gender-gap-midterms-2018.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage#commentsContainer

It may well be that a major obstacle to women's progress is the belief, especially among women and Democrats, that male behavior is primarily determined by social influences, and that if men were just parented differently, or schooled differently, their behavior would change. Gradually, it is assumed, society would change and eventually women would be safe.

There is no doubt that humankind has already seen this, has already progressed from barbarism to 'civilization'. Fits and starts, for sure. But social progress.

And yet, to thsi day, in spite of mothers telling their sons to be 'good boys', in spite of laws and Golden Rules and parental example, boys go through the hormonal transition and become 'men'. Then, when they're away from Mom, when they're among other boys, each of them obeys genes that tell him to claim his manhood, to take risks, to experience the thrills of hunting, war, violence, conquest and sex.
Throughout humankind's entire 3 million years, societies in which the young men responded to these calls, in which they became the courageous hunters and warriors, these societies had health and security.

But now we've filled the Earth. The tumult we experience is evidence that we are in the process of becoming a global village. The majority of people want peace. They want to save the natural world.

Among the masses, however, are males still driven to invade, conquer and subjugate. The drive will not go away just because society says it should.

Conversation with Robert

P: Rather than bicker over policies, let's see if we can't find a common solution, one that both of us can support. Which means, we need to identify the problems.

For me, the problems that I think that all governments must deal with immediately are

 1. climate change and 2. over-population.

And for you?

R: I agree, a discussion is  called for. Yes,climate change IS a concern; but I think nuclear proliferation is scarier. Just wait til Iran gets the bomb, then the Saudis will have to have it....and sooner or later.....

AND I agree completely about over-population. Already the US is the third most populated country in the world, behind those two environmental paradises China and India. I got back from China last month; I was in India in the '70's, and my impression of the Ganges plain was that it was just pulverized by too many people; the environmental footprint of an Indian is far less than that of an American, but there are so many MORE of them. This was the start of my strong feelings about population control in THIS country.... which segues to the hot-button topic of immigration. We have plenty of people already, and we can't adequately even take care of our own as it is. How about Appalachia, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, the South Side of Chicago....so it's absolute insanity to keep inviting  the world's poor in. (That maudlin poem on the Statue of Liberty has done a lot of damage.) Educated, skilled people with enough money...fine. But mass immigration..over my dead body. This is another reason for me to detest liberal Democrats. A lot of the same folks who run around yelling, "Ecology! Environment! Sustainability!" are the same ones who run around yelling, "Open borders! Abolish ICE!" I guess they're just TOO  GOD DAMN STUPID to understand you can have one - or the other - but you can't have both. Myself, I'll take what Robinson Jeffers called "the dignity of room". So, despite his shortcomings, I applaud Trump for being the first president I can remember to take a stand on this issue, and I wish him success in that regard.

(Oh yes, yawn, I'm such a xenophobic racist. But I don't want a million Nigerians, and I don't want a million Norwegians [but, in a pinch, I'll take the Norwegians].)

P: OK, good start. It doesn't matter whether the life boat is over-filled with criminals of Jesuses, too many will sink the boat. 

(If we can avod vilification of a group of of individualsand blame, the discussion might proceed better.)

As much as I applaud the policy of restricting immigration, it is pointless if it is not accompanied by a clear statement that the restrictions are really about population and not about race. There are already too may people in the US. Complaints of congestion, crowding and in-fill escalate.

Second, it the real reason for restricting immigration is to make immigrants, the countries of origin and their destinations aware of density. We really need to say that clearly. "If you can't control your loins, it is not our responsibility to take in your excesses."

We also need to support the unlimited and unrestricted right of a woman to have an abortion whenever and for whatever reason.

R: Gosh, something close to a little common ground here!!!!!       ....   Abortion is an ugly word for an ugly business, but I somewhat agree with you -- maybe restricted in the last month or so to medical necessity when it's more of a human and less of a developing fetus.

P: When I taught, I asked each of my students to write on a small piece of paper a single number, from zero to nine, representing the month in which a fetus became a baby, then I tallied the numbers on the board. I expected that most of them would write 3, and maybe 6. I was very surprised that the most common number was 8. Only a few students out of hundreds wrote zero. 

Here's an article (slightly revised) that touches on population:

There was a July in Lake Oswego, about 25 years ago, when daily mist and drizzle rotted all our tomatoes and mildewed the squashes. We couldn’t imagine summers hot enough to grow California-size cantaloupe. But this year’s bounty of sweet, Mediterranean foods has convinced even skeptics that climate warnings have been accurate. Now reports of still hotter summers elicit mature concern. If watermelons are in our future, what will happen to our forests? And our way of life?

Oregonians sought relief from the stingy sun by building roofs on decks or putting in a swimming pool. The average Joe, who muscled through the 3-4 days of 90+ weather before, retrofitted his house with a window A/C unit. The foot-loose-and-fancy-free flew south to ski. Retirees took a cruise to islands north of Norway. “Just because it’s getting hotter, doesn’t mean I have to suffer.”

We’re in a quandary though, because the things we do to escape the heat contribute to the heat we’re trying to escape. The more we fly and drive and build, the more fossil fuel we burn. Every time we turn on the air conditioner to cool ourselves we heat the outside air just slightly, which nudges one more person to buy an air conditioner, and so on.

“But,” we ask, “what are we supposed to do? After all, none of us pollutes enough to affect the climate. It’s not as if one more car on an already congested freeway makes congestion worse. And filling the last seat on a commercial flight barely increases the plane’s pollution. Am I supposed to stay home while others are getting away and having fun?”

The climate changes because 7.3 billion people go about their lives, in factories, at backyard barbeques, in malls or on water skis. Trillions and trillions of miniscule acts add up. The result: a polluted environment, extinct species, acidified oceans and forecasts of significantly hotter summers.

We need a social structure suited to humankind’s present relationship with Earth. A hundred years ago, we numbered just 2 billion. We were small and vulnerable to Nature. Now we are a threat to Her. Overpopulation and depleted resources affect humans too, as evidenced by mass migrations, calls for tougher borders, squabbles over in-fill, congestion, etc. We’ve filled the Earth with ourselves and our stuff. Now what?

The social structure that got us here can’t carry us forward any more than Columbus’ ships could carry Lewis and Clark across North America. We’re in new circumstances that require a new vessel.

For millennia, as we multiplied and expanded, our ‘vessel’ was captained by the explorers, warriors and conquerors. Male leadership was indisputable. But now, male leaders have no lands to invade except those owned by the 99%. The strongest leaders give themselves tax breaks and block universal health care, saying in effect, “our lives matter and yours don’t.” They take public companies private in order to keep America’s prosperity in their hands. If they’re allowed to buy parts of our National Monuments, wealth inequality worsens. On a filled-up Earth, leadership focused on expansion and conquest threatens democracy, the globe's health, and ours as well.

There is another option, which is to see ourselves as part of a community, as part of a global village in which all lives share one destiny.

Community has always been the province of woman. The village was always her domain. Woman needs an equal voice now, especially in politics and business.

R: That would probably be a nice Utopia...but dream on.

P: As everyone who has lived several decades, or has read extensively, or has taken note of the foibles of human nature, knows full well, the search for utopia with the expectation of achievement is futile. I, after nearly 75 years on this planet, can however take steps to improve the Whole. And not just my life but all Life. Is this not a worthy endeavor, indeed a noble undertaking? If every time a man proposed a climb, his buddy said, "Look at all the problems, the boulders, the ice, the rock falls, the discomfort. Aren't we better to stay here and do nothing?" And so, the man without aspirations, without gumption, curses from his sofa as others advance the great experiment called Man. Would you be the naysayer throwing stones at the climbers because, damn it, "If I won't do it, you shouldn't be allowed to either"? That is not the Robert Michael who has climbed all 50 14s in Colorado. 

R: Well, of course, better to light a candle than curse the darkness. (And, at last count, it was 54 14'ers.)

P: So, I lit a candle and you tried to blow it out. Perhaps you have a solution to the big problems - overpopulation, loss of habitats and species, climate change, rising seas, gun proliferation and war?

R: No, I don't, and you don't, and history shows us that the human race doesn't. Perhaps, like Candide, better to tend our own garden.

P: So, true. And all of history was oriented to growth, and expansion, and conquest of Nature. And so, of course, history would provide us with no solution. Name a single invention - light, printing, the internet - and see all that happeed after the invention which seemed impossible before, and you can imagine that there is somewhere a switch that can change everything. Here's an example. 

R: That's a delightful optical illusion -- and your magic switch is as illusionary.

P: llusionary or elusory? What you disparagingly call 'magic' is, in many realms, mearly a matter of threshold, such as precipitations in chemical experiments or miraculous recoveries from dependence on drugs or alcohol. That threshold can be negative too, such as the temperature for spontaneous combustion or the salinity for the collapse of oysters' reproductive cycle. One can choose in this time of environmental and social decline to explore all possibilities, to test all metals for that one that will be the filament in the light bulb, or alternately to shoot down all proposals simply because they do not fit the old expectations and customs. But that is the point - we are in a paradigm shift, from Newtonian political and social structures to Einsteinian. It'll be a wild ride. Hang onto your hat. (Where is Cosmic Ray (Alf) when we need him?)

R: Please define "Newtonian" and "Einstinian: political/social structures in rational, not la-la, language.

P: Let's define them together. Or, let's see if you and I can't agree on some, on just a few, of the political/social structures that serve us personally now in what metaphorically might be called a "Newtonian" culture, that serve our interests, but that degrade the political, social and environmental whole, structures that are wrong-headed on a filled-up, overpopulated Earth, that is, in an "Einsteinian" culture.

An article in yesterday's NYT about Paul Volker (an insightful piece, by the way - worth reading https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/business/dealbook/paul-volcker-federal-reserve.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage) shows the consequences of pursuing self-interest without regard to the interests of those outside the circle.

Mr. Volcker is no great fan of the president, but he acknowledged that Mr. Trump had cannily recognized the economic worries of blue-collar workers. Mr. Trump “seized upon some issues that the elite had ignored,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any question about that, in kind of an erratic way, but there it is.”

He wondered how many lectures and presentations he had sat through with economists “telling us open markets are wonderful, everybody benefits from open markets.”

Eventually, Mr. Volcker said, someone in those lectures would always ask, “What about that poor manufacturer in my town?” But that concern was dismissed too easily, with talk of worker retraining or some other solution far easier said than done.

Those with education and position ignored the working man and gave no heed to small manufacturers. Their self-interest prevailed because retraining the laid-off workers would cost money, and that money must come from those who had benefitted from outsourcing jobs and sending businesses overseas. The inner circle would have to pay higher taxes, and they were not willing to impose the burden on themselves. 

Over several decades, pressures built up. Middle America was left out of the profits from global trade. It missed the high-tech boom, trailed in wage growth and never got the soaring real estate values that lifted many land owners along the coasts into the top 5%. Eventually the dam burst. Almost in an instant, there was a paradigm shift - Trump became president.

The long-term problems that many in America and in the world ignore or dismisse or denigrate because the fix is expensive - even a discussion of the a fix is often taboo - the problems caused by overpopulation are brushed aside because those whose lives are truly affected (the poor and other species), whose actual lives are threatened as opposed to the 'threat' to lifestyles, these marginalized lives have no voice. It is easier for the haves to ignore the migrants. It's easier for the rich to buy banned tusks than to curtail, or even worry about, poaching. If I can buy a yacht and fly anywhere I want whenever I want, why should I worry about polar bears? Bears and other species can't vote and they have no economic clout. They don't buy anything, so what's their worth to society or the economy - except when they're dead and turned into a product?

Our current social/political/econoomic structures support short-term self interest. 

Is short-term self-interest immutable? And if so, are the institutions that support it immutable?

R: OK, your move.

P:  Are you being flip, or do you really have no substantive argument that might advance my understanding of the world?

R: Frankly, I'm beginning to tire of this discussion; I think we've said what needs to be said.

P: Thanks.

The Draft Horse

Barom inherited a delivery business, which consisted of a wagon and a horse.

The wagon was in good shape, but the horse had been poorly treated. Weak and near death, it needed rest. Even though curtailing deliveries would cost the man a lot of money, he did just that.

He even borrowed money to pay for doctors, medicines and better food for the horse.

In time, the horse and the business made a full recovery.

Barom, who had other pressing things to do, passed the horse and wagon to his brother, Dontru, who seemed to be a very good businessman.

In fact, Dontru was interested in making money and nothing else. He knew he could make more money if he made more deliveries, so he pulled out the old whip and beat the horse.

And, indeed, the horse moved faster and Dontru made more money.

But many people saw the poor animal and complained, "Look at the pathetic beast. It's suffering."

"I don't care if it's suffereing," said Dontru. "I'm making more money and that's all that counts."

The people pleaded, "Please stop."

Dontru threw back his shoulders and said, "Make me stop. You have no power. It's my horse and I can do what I want."

And so it came to pass, Dontu inflicted irreparable harm. The horse overheated and died. The wagon fell into disrepair. Foods were not delivered and people died.

But Dontru didn't care. He had his money.