Some Preliminary Comments

Here are some preliminary comments:

1. Thanks for all of the encouraging comments. Again, I’m really surprised to see how many people are reading my blog and sharing in my thinking. Your comments are a real inspiration to me to keep going. It’s also kind of sobering.
2. People have repeatedly asked if they can quote me in their websites. I have not copyrighted this material, so that for now, people may quote me in a responsible way. And of course, people are free to share the link to this site with others.
3. There is only one of me doing this blog. I’ve had the generous help of my daughter in setting up this website and showing me how to post to it. I do this blog entirely in my spare time and at my own expense. So I apologize for not posting as often as many readers would like.
4. All of this material is entirely my own thinking and writing. I’m not plagiarizing any other sources. I try to quote and give full credit to those sources whose ideas have influenced my own thinking. 
5. People are beginning to shamelessly exploit this site to advertise their own businesses for free. I’m turning off the public posting of comments for now. I encourage you to keep sending me your comments, however.

This post is the second installment in an attempt to outline basic concepts. So the ideas presented here may seem to some people to very basic. However, in order to intelligently discuss more advanced topics, I feel that it is necessary to have the basic concepts firmly grounded.

In the previous post, I talked about a holistic concept of wellness. I covered Ken Wilber’s four quadrants concept, which is really the framework I currently use to understand and think about people and the world in general. I also tried to present my definition of wellness and how I think about wellness in a holistic sense. In this post I wish to examine the concept of spirituality in more detail since this will have a lot to do with following posts.

The definition of Spirituality

Spirituality is a word to describe connectedness. There is a cognitive aspect – that is, the narrative of who you are and where you came from, and how you are connected to yourself, God, others and to the entire universe. The cognitive aspect of spirituality is concerned with defining Who God is and understanding the nature of God or the Divine. This aspect has nothing to do with a particular religion or even in a lack of religion. Even the atheist who does not believe in a “God” has made a spiritual decision about Who God is (He doesn’t exist.) The atheist is just as spiritual a person as the most devoted Catholic monk. Each expresses their spirituality in a different way, that’s all.

The other aspect of spirituality is the ethical aspect: “good” behavior vs. “bad” behavior. “Bad” behavior is behavior and values that are undesirable, while “Good” behavior is that which is desirable behavior. Spirituality is a word to describe connectedness. Ethics is that aspect of spirituality that describes the nature of how one “ought” to conduct his relationships with the world around him. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality#Defining_spirituality

http://www.district6.nbed.nb.ca/districthealth/definitions/spiritual.aspx

a)      The “cognitive” or “belief system” aspect of spirituality

Spirituality is about connectedness – one’s connections to first of all, him/herself. Then attention is given to the connections to one’s loved ones, to humans all around oneself. Spirituality also covers one’s connectedness to nature, to the universe and of course, one’s connectedness to “God”. One key aspect of this definition is the definition of God. These definitions (or images) of God can vary all over the map, according to cultures, geographical location and ethnicities. But a key function of the cognitive aspect of spirituality is that the concept of “God” is defined. This includes even the atheist who avows a belief in no God. That, too, is a definition of God. In this case, the definition is that a “God” does not exist.

Another key aspect of the cognitive aspect of spirituality is the “narrative”. Another synonym for narrative is “myth”. That word is charged with so much meaning and emotional content these days that I’m not going to use that word much. The word “myth” implies that the truth content of a“myth” is false. “Narrative” is a much more neutral word. The narrative is the “creation myth” or the story of who we are, how we came to be, of how we got here. Most narratives also have one or more stories or myths that deal with man’s relations with the central deities. For instance, the story of Horus and Osiris is a narrative about death and resurrection. Key narratives often serve the function of explaining or giving meaning to different aspects of one’s life and existence.

The key function of the central narrative is that it gives meaning to one’s life and existence, explains one’s role in the world (and/or cosmos), and very importantly, the central narrative enables humans to deal with the question of death. That is why narratives are so important and why they are often imbued with so much emotional content. For example, if a Christian gets angry with someone who doesn’t believe in the Virgin Birth, that is, the belief that Jesus was born of a virgin woman, the Virgin Mary, the source of the anger is not primarily a concern over the factualness of the story. The source of the anger is much more likely to be rooted in the fear that his belief system that gives meaning to his life, is being threatened by a denial of the authenticity of this Virgin Birth narrative.

Don’t confuse spirituality and religion

One must not confuse spirituality with religion. I define religions as formal systems of belief and ethics that are concerned with dealing with issues of spirituality. Religions usually have a key central narrative and quite a few secondary narratives related to the central narrative. Religions are often intimately involved with formal organizations whose function is to “administer” the religion – that is, “safeguard” and maintain the central narrative and belief system. In addition, the formal organization may oversee the definition and administration of the ethical standards of the religion. For example, the Roman Catholic Church has a very clearly defined belief system, the fine details of which are “tweaked” and taught by a whole system hierarchy, scholars, universities, seminaries, etc.  This combined organization accepts and trains the priests and theologians who study the belief system, apply it to everyday matters and administer this system to the laity. In my opinion, it is not uncommon for the religious organization that “administers” the religion to become an end in itself. I feel that frequently the leaders of a religious organization become primarily interested in acquiring and defending the power and privileges that come with being a leader of the organization.

Many adherents to religious systems make the mistake of assuming that their particular system has a monopoly on spirituality. This is most emphatically not the case! Just because a person does not subscribe to this or that particular religion does not mean that he is not “spiritual”. An atheist or agnostic is often labeled as being “unspiritual”, when in fact this person may be a very spiritual. Just the fact that this person has chosen to go against the popular culture implies that this person is very concerned about spirituality, has thought about it a lot and at least has decided this his/her belief system does not conform to other belief systems which espouse a belief in a central Deity. Spirituality is not membership in a church, or adherence to  a formal or even informal belief system. Religion is a subset of spirituality.

It seems to me that many of the central “myths” of earlier religions are the result of storytelling. I am convinced that many of these early stories (or creation myths) were generated in an era before the advent of Western science. And so the function of these stories was to explain why the  world came about and how to relate to the central deity. No effort was made to come up with a factually correct myth. In many cases, these central myths are not even believable to the common sense experience of the area and time. One can only conclude that the primary concerns of these stories are their emotional and spiritual content and their ability to give meaning to life and one’s existence. The need for factual correctness is a wholly modern phenomenon. The ancients were apparently not troubled in the least by the lack of “factual” accuracy.

With the advent of Western science and its discoveries of the creation and evolution of the universe, many of these creation myths have been shown to be factually inaccurate, if not entirely fictional. This is not acceptable to modern sensibilities. The fundamentalist answer to this has been an effort to deny or distort the science to fit their myth (the Creationist movement). I don’t believe that this is a healthy response to the situation. I believe a more healthy response to this situation is to openly accept the findings of serious modern science and incorporate what is known into a new “Creation myth” or “Creation narrative”. To me personally, what modern science has revealed about the nature of the creation and evolution of the universe is a much more satisfying story and has extraordinary emotional and cognitive content and provides a great deal of meaning to my life and existence. I feel that a healthier alternative to denial and/or distortion of the facts is to openly accept the known facts and incorporate them either into one’s pre-existing Creation Narrative, or to use this as a base to build a new Central Narrative upon. I intend to say a lot more about this later.

 Evaluating Religions or Belief Systems

Could there be some kind of “standard” for evaluating the quality or “goodness” of a particular set of Central narrative or Belief System?  At the present time, I am inclined to answer in the affirmative. In order to get started,  I believe that there some considerations that we must take into account:

1. I’m convinced, along with Ken Wilber and other authors, that just as there are different stages of physical development, i.e. infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age in humans, there are also different stages of spiritual development. This topic is covered in great detail by authors like James Fowler and Ken Wilber, to name a few. Sorry, but not all religions or belief systems are “created equal”.  Some belief systems are more advanced and developed than others. I’m sorry if that sounds elitist, but that is where I’m at right now.
2. I’m also convinced that religions or belief systems can be susceptible to a pathological disease process. Much as human beings can be infected with disease organisms which interfere with the functioning of the body, so I believe that religions and/or belief systems can be infected with spiritual disease processes. These “disease processes” can stunt the spiritual growth of their adherents, or lead them to erroneous and dangerous beliefs. Additionally, spiritually diseased belief systems can justify destructive attitudes, prejudices and destructive behavior. The prime case in point is the belief system of a fundamentalist organization like Al Qaeda.
3. Another important consideration in evaluating religions or belief systems is how well this belief system works for the one who holds it. Does this belief system give the person who holds it a stable and positive world view? Does it help him/her make sense of the world and find a constructive place in it? Does this religion provide him/her a healthy place to interact with others, to develop and maintain healthy constructive social relationships? Does it provide comfort for him/her in the time of death, either of oneself and/or his/her loved ones? To me, if the belief system provides for one’s  spiritual, cultural, and social needs, provides a means for one to understand and derive meaning in the cosmos around oneself, and provides one  with a constructive ethics, then it is working for that person. This system works for him/her and is “good” for him/her.
4. I suspect that perhaps another criterion for evaluating a religion or belief system is whether or not the belief system is compatible with the known “facts”, that is, the known body of reliable and proven human knowledge. Does the belief system lead one into conflict with the known facts and lead to a denial of these facts? Does the belief system lead to a greater integration into the greater body of humanity, or does it create divisions and exclusions? The “bigger” (and in my mind) “better” belief system is the more inclusive system, rather than the exclusive system. Does the ethics which arise from a particular belief system result in constructive or destructive behavior? [For example, we could evaluate the belief system of the Heaven’s Gate cult using the criteria given above. ] In this case, the belief system of the Heaven’s Gate cult justified mass suicide, which is very difficult to justify as constructive behavior.

It is necessary to comment on the “goodness” or “badness” of a belief system. Many belief systems very emphatically evaluate or judge the“goodness” or “evil” of other belief systems. It’s done all the time and often is used to rationalize very violent behavior. In fact, I suspect that it is virtually impossible for one to avoid “evaluating” or judging other religions or belief systems. Moreover, the various belief systems have very different criteria for judging the quality or“goodness” of other religions or belief systems. So the key question is not whether or not you judge another system. The key question is, “How do you go about judging the other system?” It is very common for one belief system to judge another one by its own set of beliefs. If the other system does not hold its entire belief set, or holds one or more beliefs that contradict the first system, then that alone, is enough for the adherents of that belief system to judge the other one negatively, to call that belief system “evil”. In the history of Western Christianity, for example, there are now literally hundreds of different religions or belief systems, where splits have occurred literally over just one belief, such as “Was Jesus Christ simultaneously both God and man?” vs. “Was Jesus just a man in the beginning who became God later?”. And arguments got even more esoteric than that. And disagreements over these esoteric beliefs often resulted in one sect going over and burning down the church of the other sect and driving their adherents from the country.

This next argument may be a little subtle: This whole business of judging another belief system according to the dogmas of one’s own belief system is problematic. It’s called “Begging the Question.” To put it simply, “How do you know your religion is right?” We have a classic “chicken and egg” situation here. “My system is right and true, delivered to us directly from God!” That’s the chicken. So you ask the question, “How do you know it’s true and delivered from God?” After all the arguing is over, the usual answer is this: “Just believe it! I know it’s true!” That’s the egg. If all these different adherents to different religions are all arguing “Just believe it!”, then they are all on an equal footing, at least to an impartial outside observer. Each one of them has an equal claim on your credence. How to choose? Certainly not the criterion of who screams the loudest or is the most articulate, or who has the most adherents (in that area and at that period in history). If that were true, then we would be obliged to believe in the existence of and divinity of Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Athena, Hades, etc. That was the dominant belief system in that area of the world in 500 B.C.

a)      The “ethical” aspect of spirituality

If the cognitive aspect of spirituality is concerned with who we are and Who God is, and how we came to be, and our connection to God, other people and the universe, then the ethical aspect of spirituality is concerned with our response and behavior toward others, God and the universe. Again, we should be careful not to confuse specific religions with spirituality in general. Many specific religions have evolved their own ethical standards. While there are many different ethical standards of conduct, most religions hold a large number of ethical standards in common. There are, of course, significant differences between them. Many of these differing ethical standards can become the source of conflict and much of it can become extremely violent.

I will categorically say that everything has spiritual content. All human activity has spiritual content. War, for example, has spiritual content. Raising children is an activity with spiritual content. Economic activity: buying and selling, or manufacturing goods are all activities that are endowed with spiritual content. Operating your iPod or iPhone has spiritual content. Eating is a spiritual activity. Driving your car to work is a spiritual activity.

Every attitude that a person, or organization (governments and corporations are included) holds, and every action that they take are charged with ethical and thus spiritual significance. Every choice and every action is charged with ethical and thus, spiritual content. For example, robbing a bank may be regarded as “unethical” and thus “unspiritual”, but in fact, the act of robbing a bank is highly charged with ethics and spiritual content. The bank robber is engaged in practicing some kind of ethic that he holds and thus demonstrating a facet of his spirituality. We can hazard a guess as to his ethical standard. Perhaps it goes something like this: “I know that robbing a bank is wrong, but it is more important to me to have the money than it is to honor what is right.” The robber has made an ethical choice that his desire to have money is more important than his desire to be “right” or honorable. He has rearranged the priorities in his ethical system. He has made an ethical choice that most of us don’t agree with, but it is an ethical choice and reflects on the stage of his spirituality. It would appear that his spiritual development is in a place where getting away with what he can is more important than honoring what is “good” or the rights and desires of others. One might not be too far from the mark in assuming that the bank robber’s moral horizon does not extend much further than his own wants and/or needs. The bank robber’s value system is “less developed” than, say the value system of an honest citizen who voluntarily reports extra income he made during the previous year on his tax return even though it’s not documented and he could easily avoid paying taxes on it. The value system of the latter person can be regarded as having a larger “moral horizon”, in that he values the needs either of the government or needs of a valued ethical system which is larger than his own immediate concerns. The "honest citizen" might even value his need to see himself as an honest and valuable citizen is greater than his need to have extra cash. Nevertheless, the bank robber is making a very spiritual and ethical statement when he is robbing the bank. I believe that tends to get lost in the strong negative emotional reaction that most of us would have when exposed to that kind of behavior or if our money was getting robbed.

Finally, I believe it is important use discrimination when thinking or talking about spirituality. To say that something is “spiritual”often implies in many people’s minds that it must be “good”. They think or say, “That is a spiritual act” or “Wow, that is a really spiritual idea!” And therefore, anyone who exudes or preaches a brand of spirituality, must, by default,  be “good person”. Nothing could be further from the case. There is both “good”and “bad” spirituality, or more correctly, healthy spirituality and unhealthy spirituality. Many cult members are recruited from those who have not yet been taught to discriminate between healthy and unhealthy spirituality, or between authentic religions and religions which are little more than con-jobs, pitched by cunning spiritual hawkers. I might have the Church of Scientology in mind here. 

Another concept I wish to introduce is the concept of “spiritual diseases”, that is, pathological processes that interfere with healthy spirituality. Examples of spiritual diseases are substance abuse, almost every kind of addiction, and some forms of mental illness. War is a form of collective spiritual disease of the worst kind. And, in my estimation, religious and political extremism, including fundamentalism, are spiritual diseases. For the most part, I regard cults to be spiritually diseased organizations.

Recent examples of unhealthy spirituality are all around us:

a)     Al Quaeda and its attacks on the West

b)     The recent religious and ethnic conflict in Nigeria

c)     Christian and Islamic fundamentalism

Unhealthy spirituality is destructive, interfering with one’s mental health, social health, cultural health (belief systems and life practices) and ultimately, one’s physical health. For example, the unhealthy spirituality of alcohol addiction interferes with the addict’s social relationships, usually resulting in the total destruction of all of the alcoholic’s social relationships, often including the loss of a job. The addiction usually reduces all relationships to the single destructive relationship between the alcoholic and alcohol. The addiction also has a destructive effect on the alcoholic’s cognitive processes (usually called “denial”) and the alcoholic lives in denial of the obvious deterioration of his social health, his mental health, and eventually of his physical health. This spiritual disease process also erodes the sufferer’s ethical development, resulting in destructive and anti-social behavior that he would not otherwise engage in, such as drunk driving, abusing and neglecting his spouse and family members, stealing to support his habit, engaging in prostitution, etc. to finance the habit. Eventually the alcoholic engages in a gradual destruction of his own physical health as he abuses his own body to support the habit. The end result of this spiritual disease is the death of the sufferer: the end of his social life, the end of his normal mental functioning, and ultimately death of the physical organism.

Here are a couple of links related to spiritual health:

http://www.holistichelp.net/spiritual-health.html

http://www.tru.ca/wellness/spiritual.html

(A pretty good start on a holistic concept of healthis to be found at the Wellness Center of Thompson Rivers University (TRU) in Kamloops, B.C. 

A Holistic Concept of Health

 Bibliography:

 Integral Spirituality by Ken Wilber, 2006:  ISBN-13: 978-1-59030-346-7; ISBN-10:1-59030-346-6

 Sex, Ecology, Spirituality by Ken Wilber; TheCollected Works of Ken Wilber; Shambhala Publications, Inc, 1995,  2000:

 http://www.kenwilber.com/home/landing/index.html

 http://www.integralinstitute.org/

I am using this post and the next one to set the stage for later writings. While the material here may seem very basic or elementary, it seems to me that in order to have a good foundation for the topics that I intend to follow, it is necessary to build on a solid foundation of the basics. If people can’t agree on the basics, they will not be able to properly agree or disagree on chosen topics. They will, in effect, be arguing about apples and oranges.

 So I will give a brief introduction to my understanding of holistic thinking. My “prophet” in this area is Ken Wilber, whose writings I have a great deal of respect for. I have found his writings to be the clearest treatments on a whole host of subjects, but especially on holistic thinking, evolution and spirituality in general. Then I will follow up with an attempt to define what “health” means, as I intend to apply that term to a number of different areas, some of which may out of the ordinary. I believe the world “health” is a very holistic term and we can learn a lot if we examine the holistic aspects of health.

 Holistic Thinking

 When it comes to holistic thinking, Ken Wilber is my expert. I regard his writings to be the clearest and most comprehensive on this subject. Ken Wilber has certainly “connected the dots” for me.

 Up until lately, I believe Western culture has been dominated by “reductionism”, that is, the concept that the whole may be understand by breaking (reducing) it down into parts that are small enough to handle and then examining each part. For example, an automobile is a complex machine. But if we break it up into say, the electrical system, the engine, the transmission, the steering system, the running gear, the brake system, the interior system, one can begin to understand how a car operates and thus have a basis for diagnosing its malfunctions and repair it. Nature itself is a complex system, but Western science began to break it up into parts and examine them separately. So science reduced nature to physics and mechanics, to its chemical aspects, or chemistry. Biology examined the life aspect of nature. The “sky” aspect of natural science became astronomy. Understanding and coming up with a language to describe these aspects of nature, especially the physical sciences led to the development of mathematics. To me, mathematics is essentially a language with a logical aspect.

As nature (and humanity) was broken up into various parts for study, this led to very fruitful and productive methods of understanding the whole. These various branches of study discovered much, the field of study mushroomed and became more and more specialized. Biology split into botany and zoology and soon zoomed into many different specialties such as herpetology, entomology, parasitology,  oncology, ornithology, etc. What’s more, lately different specialties have fused into entirely new fields, such as biophysics, psychobiology, biochemistry, ecology,etc.

 While breaking the whole up into various parts for study has reduced the focus and scope of study to a size that can be more conveniently handled by the human mind, it has led to some problems. (Again, my opinion.) Each of the fields has become so complex and so specialized that they have become “alienated” from one another. The language of each specialty is so complex and specialized that one has to study for years just to absorb the language and culture of that specialty. One literally has to earn a PhD in the subject to achieve a working literacy in that field. This reduces the communication between fields, not to mention the general public at large. This is unfortunate. In addition to that, as each field has become so specialized, it tends to develop a myopia characteristic to that field. To a microbiologist, for example, I can imagine that the world appears to be a collection of microorganisms and exhibits various facets of the behavior of microorganisms. A mathematician sees the world more likely in terms of interlocking equations. The specialty and the specialist tend to see the world from their point of view and of course, the solution to the world’s problems will most likely come from their field. In short, “if you’re a hammer, the rest of the world looks like a collection of nails.”

 The aspect of reductionism I wish to tackle here is the tendency to regard everything as a collection of parts. Fix each part and the whole will be fixed, or so it is assumed. Furthermore, each part is assumed to have an existence which is independent of the other parts. Different parts might have an effect on each other, but by and large, these interlocking relationships between the different parts tends to be ignored. This is a subtle result and not obvious or easily perceived. For example, it is hard for us to imagine any connection between us Americans and a poor black woman in Africa. Or how does the way I live affect the life of a blue fin tuna swimming in the Southern Ocean? When I buy a cup of coffee in the morning, do I take time to consider the effects of my purchase on other people? Do I think about the Starbucks employee who served it up, or the farmer who grew the beans, or the crew on the ship that brought the beans to the US, etc.? I don’t really give it that much thought. I have “compartmentalized” my thinking.

 Or take another hypothetical example: illness. I get sick. All I know is that I’m not feeling good – I have lost the feeling in the bottom of one of my feet. I go to the doctor. The doctor examines the foot and announces that he can fix it by giving me a shot of cortisone. But I shouldn’t get too many shots since cortisone is a steroid and overuse of steroids is bad for me. I get a shot, leave the doctor’s office and soon my foot feels good again. Problem over, right? Perhaps not. Maybe I’m 150 lbs. overweight, result of overeating and under-exercising. And this loss of feeling is the incipient stages of adult-onset diabetes. And the reason that I overeat and don’t exercise enough is because I feel depressed. The reason that I feel depressed is because my job sucks. The reason I have to work at a job I don’t like is because I didn’t get the chance to get a good college education after high school. My parents didn’t have enough income and were unable to save up enough to send me to a good college after high school graduation. So I had to find and accept a menial job where I’m overworked, underpaid and my mind is under-challenged. You get the picture.

The doctor just looked at and treated the foot. Most likely he was a podiatrist, rather than a general practitioner. All he saw was the foot. He didn’t see the larger or whole (holistic) picture. He put a band-aid on one of the symptoms of the problem and sent me off. Problem NOT FIXED. It’s going to happen again, because changes of life style and psychology are the real problem. The real problem not only has physical aspects – the foot and incipient diabetes, but also has psychological aspects (depression). Furthermore there are social aspects (low-paying job) and parents unable to save enough for college. This is a big problem, involving not only myself, but people around me and the culture I live in. This is a more holistic view of the illness.

 Ken Wilber introduces the concept of a “holon”. Just as atoms are made up of protons , electrons, and neutrons, etc., so the fundamental “particle” or entity in holistic thinking is a “holon”. A holon is just a name for an entity that is made up of smaller or constituent holons, which in turn are more than likely to be made up of even lower level “holons”. This holon, in turn, is more than likely to be a constituent holon in a large entity, a larger holon.

 For example: Let’s take a blood cell in the human body. The cell (ignoring the nucleus, protoplasm and cell membrane) is made up of smaller constituents called molecules. There are protein molecules, DNA molecules, hemoglobin molecules, etc. These molecules are the constituent holons that make up the blood cell holon. In turn, each of these cell molecules are made up of even simpler holons called atoms: oxygen atoms, hydrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, iron, and carbon atoms for example. And on an even lower level, these atoms have constituent “particles” or holons. Some of them are, of course neutrons, protons, and electrons. There are a whole range of other subatomic particles, of course, including the quarks that hold the nucleus together.

 And now, heading in the other direction, upwards: let’s consider the holon that this cell is part of. This cell is part of a human body. The human body is a collection of cell holons. And we can go upwards another level, if we wish. This human may be a component of even more complex holons. This human is mostly likely a constituent member of a family. If he is employed, he is a constituent member of the organization he works for, say for example, the Frito-Lay Corporation. The family, in turn, is most likely a constituent member of the town it lives in. The levels as you can see, go upwards as well as downwards. The point is the collections of holons make up a higher level holon. And each holon is, in turn, a collection of lower level holons.

 Another important point that Ken Wilber makes is that the new holon that comes into being as the result of a combination of holons, in an entirely new entity. This new entity has its own properties and exhibits behavior which is entirely unlike  the properties of its constituent holons. Again, another example:  water is a simple? holon composed to two lower level holons – hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless gas that liquefies at an extremely low temperature. And solid hydrogen has only recently been synthesized and has been found to exhibit metallic properties. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallic_hydrogen  Oxygen is another colorless, odorless gas. It too, liquefies at a very low temperature. Solid oxygen has only been made recently and a metallic form is now known. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_oxygenb  When these two atoms combine, they give rise to an entirely new substance with properties entirely unlike the two constituents – water. A water  is an entirely new entity (holon) with properties entirely unlike its two constituents. As we know, water exists in its well known three phases: ice, water and water vapor, each with its familiar properties. As far as I know, the physical properties of water can be or have already been explained by examining the properties of its two constituent elements and the nature of their combination.

 Besides a mention of the appearance of completely new properties belonging solely to the new holon, I wish to mention another aspect of the holon which I consider to be very important. This is the aspect that Ken Wilber has explained so thoroughly in the 4^th chapter of his book, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality. This is the idea that holons have an “interior” as well as an exterior. This concept was a little startling at first, but then began to make a lot of sense. When physical science examines the water molecule holon, it looks at the exterior of the molecule or collection of molecules. It looks at the hardness of the ice, or its optical qualities, or its dielectric qualities, etc. It looks at how the holon reacts to or interacts with stimuli coming from the outside. Ken Wilber suggests that the holon has an interior also. In other words, what does the world look like from the interior of a holon like a water molecule?

 This question makes more sense when we discuss holons like human beings or animals. But let’s confine our attention to examining the exteriors and interiors of human beings. There is one other aspect we must take into account before undertaking this examination. We not only ask the question, “What does the world look like from interior of one human being, as well as the exterior of that same person?” We also consider more than one human being. What does the “exterior” of a group of humans look like?” as well as asking the question, “What does the “interior” of a group of humans look like?”

 We then come up with Wilber’s four quadrants: a) The exterior of a single human – the physical body: the head, legs, torso, of course, but also includes the body’s subsystems: the skeleton, the muscular system, the circulatory system, the nervous system, the gastro-intestinal tract, the skin, etc. b) We consider the “interior” of a human being (holon)– the mind, including the cognitive facilities, the perceptive facilities, the emotions, memory, etc. I believe we also must include the spirit and the spiritual makeup of a human being in this category. Next we can ask, “What does the exterior of a group (more than one) of humans look like?”

 We can construct a quadrant, or divide a pizza up into 4 equal slices. Looking at the pizza from the top, we would have the top right hand quarter or quadrant. In Wilber’s layout, this is the “single – exterior” quadrant. In the human holon, this is the physical body of one human. The top left quarter or quadrant is the “single – interior” quadrant. This is the human mind. The entire top half of the “human pizza” is about the single human. Next we turn to the lower right hand quadrant. This is the “plural – exterior” quadrant. This quadrant is concerned with “What does the exterior of a group of humans look like?” Finally we have the lower left hand quadrant. This is the “plural –interior” quadrant. This quadrant is concerned with “What does the interior of a group of humans look like?” At first glance, this question seems to make no sense, but more later. The entire bottom half of the pie is concerned with plural, more than one. The entire right half of the pie is concerned with the exterior. The entire left half of the pie is concerned with the interior. This quadrant picture has given me a useful framework for understanding the world around me.

 Examining the lower right hand quadrant, the “plural –exterior” quadrant, we ask the question, “What does the exterior of a more than one human look like?” When we start examining that, we observe entities like couples: man and woman, man and man, woman and woman. We observe families, both the traditional nuclear family, as well as extended families. We see tribes, towns, cities and nations as entities in that quadrant. We also see all types of economic organizations, such as modern corporations, unions, credit unions, etc. We see clubs, governments, professional societies, football teams, baseball teams, etc. In fact we see every type of entity that can arise when human beings associate together, including mobs and riots. This quadrant is studied by such disciplines as sociology, political science, economics, history, demographics and archeology.

 Next we examine the lower left hand quadrant, the “plural –interior” quadrant and ask the question, “What does the interior of more than one human look like?” At first glance this question doesn’t seem to make any sense, until we realize that the name we give that aspect is called “culture”. Human culture is concerned with the interior aspect of more than one human taken together. Another entity that appears here is “religion”. This is the provinceof areas of study such as theology, philosophy, political science, anthropology (the study of cultures part), etc. I believe this is the domain of art, whether it’s the performing arts, sculpture, painting, music, writing, etc. The arts make little sense if there is only the artist and no audience.

 There are all kinds of cultures: there are “micro-cultures”, such as corporate cultures. I’ve even noticed that the corporate micro-culture can change from building to building in the very same company, especially if the building has distinctly separate functions and have been around long enough to develop its own distinctive culture. There are town cultures and regional cultures. Portland has a very distinctive culture from Tucson, AZ for instance. The regional culture of the Pacific Northwest is very much different from the culture of the Rocky Mountain states and of the Southwest, for instance. The culture of the United States is quite different from the Canadian culture, and very much different from Chinese culture. Cultures, I believe, are just descriptions of ways that distinctive collections of human beings think, live, carry on business, worship, etc.

 Finally, I wish to note that each of the quadrants affect the other three quadrants. The culture that an individual lives in has a profound influence on how that individual thinks and emotes. The culture influences an individual’s perceptions. In other words, the lower left hand quadrant affects the upper left hand side. Another example: if a single human being is physically ill, this has an effect on his mind. A sick person views the world from a different point of view, and may even become depressed. A physical illness may cause a mental illness. That same sick person may not be able to go to work. This affects his company and has an effect on the lower right hand quadrant – the social quadrant. If enough people are sick, the corporation may have to shut down. Obviously the culture, the lower left hand quadrant has an effect on the lower right hand side of the quadrant. A corporate capitalist Western culture, for example, will give rise to corporations, an entity which occurs in the lower right hand side, the “social” quadrant. Obviously an indigenous culture gives rise to far different social structures, such as tribes and clans, which are social features not so common to a Western capitalist culture. 

 Now I wish to introduce a holistic concept of health. I wish to build a framework for thinking about health in general, and from here, to develop certain themes from the standpoint of thinking about what is healthy and what is not healthy. Health is a condition that applies to more than just human or animal bodies. I am claiming that we think and talk about the health of minds, collections of people and/or animals, ecosystems and even environments. I claim that we can talk about the health of cultures and economies also.

Health

Definition of Health

 Here is the definition of health from the Google.comdictionary:

·                        health   /h'elθ/

Synonyms:

o                                               adjective: sanitary

o                                               noun: soundness, well-being, toast

3.      A person's health is the condition of their body andthe extent to which it is free from illness or is able to resist illness. N-UNCOUNT oftwith poss

§                        Caffeine is bad for your health.

4.      Health is a state in which a person isnot suffering from any illness and is feeling well. N-UNCOUNT

§                        In hospital they nursed me back to health.

5.      When you drink to someone's health or drinktheir health, you have a drink as a sign of wishing them health andhappiness. PHRASE V inflects

§                        In the village pub, regulars drank the health of John andhis father.

6.      The health of something such as an organization or asystem is its success and the fact that it is working well. N-UNCOUNT

§                                                Synonym

prosperity

§                        There's no way to predict the future health of the bankingindustry.

Merriam-Webster definition of health

 MainEntry: health

Pronunciation:\ˈhelth also ˈheltth\

Function:noun

Usage:often attributive

Etymology:Middle English helthe, from Old English hǣlth, from hāl

Date:before 12th century

1 a:the condition of being sound in body, mind, or spirit; especially : freedomfrom physical disease or pain b : the generalcondition of the body <inpoor health> <enjoys good health>
2 a : flourishingcondition :well-being <defending the health of thebeloved oceans — Peter Wilkinson> b : general condition or state <poor economic health>
3 : a toast tosomeone's health or prosperity

 Expanded Definition of health

 Let’s expand on this definition of health a little bit. I maintain that the health of an entity (a holistic entity) is its general condition or its state and how well it’s functioning. This implies that the entity is a functioning organism or system of some kind, not necessarily just a biological organism. It is a system, organism, even an ecosystem, or a machine– an entity that has functioning parts or components. Activity of some kind goes on in it and this activity has achieved some kind of equilibrium. The state of health of that functional entity is defined as how well that entity is functioning in the manner that it was “designed” to function in. All of the subsystems in the system or organism are functioning normally and synergistically with one another. Taking the human organism for example: the circulatory system including the heart is functioning normally and supplying needed blood flow to the organs. The gastro-intestinal tract is ingesting food and digesting it normally and supplying needed nutrition to the rest of the body. Last, but not least, the nervous system, including the brain, are functioning normally and processing outside information and making correct decisions that enhance the well being of the rest of the subsystems. All of these subsystems are functioning normally and synergistically and it is maintaining a state of equilibrium. In addition, a state of good health is one in which normal growth can occur. An organism or system, particularly a biological organism, which is in good health, is free to develop and grow normally. Good health is a state wherein normal “growth” can occur, while an unhealthy organism suffers from stunted growth.

 For example, a human being is a functioning organism. There are many complex processes that go on inside a human body. Humans breathe in oxygen, it metabolizes with food and carbon dioxide is exhaled. That is a function. The human body eats food and metabolizes it. That is a function. The healthy human body is in a state of equilibrium: it maintains an internal temperature of 98.6 F. It maintains a constant weight (more or less) from day to day.

 A healthy human body is also one in which growth occurs. A healthy child has normal weight and is growing, both physically and mentally. A healthy tree is one that is growing naturally. An unhealthy person suffers from stunted growth, or even dies. The same applies to plants and other organisms, and even to more abstract systems.

 To generalize to a more abstract example, an ecosystem is a functioning entity, not an organism as such, but certainly a system. A coastal ocean ecosystem would be an example of a functioning holistic system or entity. Sunlight hits the ocean and spurs the growth of plankton, which feeds on the organic nutrients that happen to be in the seawater. As the plankton grows and flourishes, it is consumed by krill, small animal organisms. These krill, in turn, are consumed by larger organisms, such as whales, fish, some seals and some species of sea birds. Some of the fish, in turn, become food for the animals at the top of the food chain, such as the other sea birds, seals and the humpback whales. The entire ecosystem can be thought of as a functioning system in which these processes function normally and has achieved a kind of seasonal equilibrium.

 OK, I wish to mention an additional comment concerning the definition of “healthy”. In a healthy system (or organism), all of the sub-systems (or sub-organisms) are balanced – no one system or aspect grabs dominance over the others, causing the other subsystems to experience maladjusted functioning. All the subsystems work together to maintain proper functioning of all of them. A disease such as cancer, is an unhealthy situation where a group of cells “forget” their normal function and begin to reproduce abnormally. They begin to multiply in an uncontrolled manner and take up space  needed by other organs. This is called a tumor. The cells may metastasize and spread to other parts of the body. They consume resources that are needed by other organs, interfere with their normal functioning and may even kill these organs. Eventually an uncontrolled cancer kills the entire host organism. This is a lack of balance and synergy and is definitely a bad state of health. Cancers are definitely not in a state of equilibrium either.

 So I believe we can summarize good health (or wellness) using the following terms:

1. Balanced subsystems – All the subsystems are in balance with each other. No single subsystem dominates the system to the detriment of the others.
2. Normal growth (developmental growth) is occurring – The entire organism, especially a biological one, grows and develops to its fullest potential.
3. Equilibrium has been achieved and is maintained – There is a steady state of resources and energy being exchanged with the system’s environment.
4. All subsystems are functioning normally and synergistically – Each and every subsystem is functioning according to its “design” and cooperating with all of the other subsystems.

 Perhaps readers can expand on this definition of health and mention other aspects that I have either reported inaccurately and incompletely.

 Four Holistic Aspects of Health

 I wish to mention the holistic aspect of health now. I believe that “health” in general is a holistic entity. I believe we can learn a lot of we think of the holistic aspects of health, or in another way, think about the health of entities or holons, in a multi-faceted manner. Let’s discuss briefly the four quadrants and how they relate to health.

 a)     Physical health: the exterior-individual aspect – th ephysical health of a single person. This is the classic definition of health as evidenced in the Webster and Google definitions of health. It is well covered and we certainly don’t need to go into a lot of detail here. I will add that holistic thinking will recognize the influences that a person’s mental condition, and other external influences such as a person’s social relationships and the environment have on a person’s physical health. A human body doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s not a machine that is a completelyautonomous organism as traditional Western medicine has practiced for so many years. The human body comes with a mind attached and researchers have found that the attitude of that mind that’s attached to the body has a considerable influence on the physical health of that body. That’s just the attitude. Whenyou include the decisions and practices made by that mind, such as choosing to smoke, or over-eat, and drink to excess, or drive an automobile at excessive rates of speed, etc, you begin to get an idea of how profound an influence the human mind has on the physical health of the body. Western medicine is becoming more and more holistic, as you will quickly discover by reading the works o fDr. Andrew Weil of the University of Arizona.

 b)     Mental health: The interior-individual aspect – The mental health of a single person is the primary concern here. Mental health wasa non-entity in the West for quite a long time, and only now is mental illness losing its stigma. Mental health is beginning to command equal amounts of attention and resources from the American culture that used to be reserved solely for physical health. A person’s mental health and physical health are inextricably intertwined. A mentally ill person often suffers bad physical health. In some cases the direct ravages of the mental disease will drag down the physical health of the person also. The sheer stresses and damage of extended psychosis eventually wears down the physical body of the sufferer. I can show before and after pictures of my schizophrenic brother, who at the age of 10, was a good looking kid, quite handsome. In his latest picture after suffering from 40+ years of schizophrenia, the ravages of the disease are quite apparent.

 Another highly overlooked influence of mental health on physical health are the consequences of some of the decisions and choices made by mentally ill people that adversely affect their physical health. They vary from generally neglecting their physical health – not brushing teeth, not eating right, poor personal hygiene, etc. to things like serious substance abuse to outright suicide, which obviously results in the death of the physical organism.

The link between physical health and mental health is often overlooked also. Poor physical health often results in poor mental health. For example, as people age and their bodies become less and less healthy and vigorous, this often results in less social interaction.These people become depressed, which is a mental illness, and this not infrequently will lead to suicide. Depression and suicide are real problems for the elderly. 

 Spiritual Health: There is another aspect of the interior-individual health that may be new to a lot of people. This is the concept of spiritual health. I believe that human beings are not just physical and mental beings, but I am convinced that they are spiritual beings also. As such, there are spiritual functions that take place in a human being, as well as a general state of spiritual equilibrium in a spiritually healthy human being. This is kind of interesting because I need to define the spiritual aspects of a human being. One aspect of spirituality is connectedness. Another aspect of spirituality is the cognitive aspect, that is, a person’s “philosophy” or theology. Spiritual beings form a sense of who they are and how they relate to the people and environment outside of themselves. Another aspect of spirituality is ethics: what is “right” and “wrong”, i.e. which choices are “good” or desirable choices and which choices are “bad” or undesirable choices. Another aspect of spirituality is the concept of spiritual growth or stages of spiritual development. Not every person is in the same state of spiritual development as other persons. There is such a thing as spiritual development and evolution. Again, I regard Ken Wilber as one of the pre-eminent experts on this topic of spiritual growth, development and spiritual evolution. I believe he is one of the groundbreakers in this area of spiritual development. As with health in general, a spiritually healthy person is a person who is growing and developing spiritually.

 I have not yet been able to pull up much material regarding this on the Internet. However I was able to find a Canadian web site which appears to be a school district web site that does mention the concept of and tries to define good spiritual health. http://www.district6.nbed.nb.ca/districthealth/definitions/spiritual.aspx

I found another Canadian website that mentions spiritual wellness and even gives a short self-test to determine the state of one’s spiritual wellness.  http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hrb/hw/spiritual/inventory.htm  Again, interestingly this appears to be a Canadian government website.

 Spiritual diseases: If we can have the concept of spiritual health, then it follows that we can have spiritual diseases also. For example, one spiritual disease that I believe afflicts people is substance abuse or addictions. In this case, the spirit of the person forms an unhealthy relationship with a psychoactive substance such as alcohol or methamphetamines or cocaine. This unhealthy relationship begins to destroy the person’s health in the other quadrants, such as social relationships, his mental functioning and thus his mental health. This eventually results in bad physical health, and if unchecked, will eventually result in the person’s death. Spiritual diseases interfere with a person’s spiritual functioning – the disease interferes with the person’s connectedness, first to himself, then to his loved ones and to other humans, and to nature and his environment.

 I strongly believe that fear (a general religious or philosophical or chronic psychological fear) is either a spiritual disease in its own right, or it plays a key part in the pathology of spiritual diseases. I would posit that spiritual diseases also mess up a person’s moral integrity and his ethical functioning. A spiritual disease, I believe, will result in a person’s moral dysfunction. A spiritually ill person may engage in violence, or murder someone else. A spiritually ill person may steal from, or exploit other human beings. When it is defined that way, I can readily accept that slave owning is a form of spiritual disease. Trafficking in weapons and drugs may be evidence of spiritual disease. Certainly, driving airplanes packed with fuel and people into skyscrapers is strong evidence of spiritual disease.

 For that matter, cult membership is most likely a form of spiritual, social and cultural disease. Cult membership results in unhealthy processes being set in motion which will adversely affect a person’s health in all four quadrants. Cult membership adversely affects a person’s social health, resulting is his being cut off from normal healthy social relationships. Cult membership may adversely affect a person’s cultural health, infecting him with destructive attitudes and perceptions, for example. Certainly cult membership is destructive to a person’s mental health. If the cult is destructive enough, ultimately the cult member’s physical health will be adversely affected. One only has to look at Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple or the Heaven’s Gate cult, or David Koresh’s cult to see how these cults ultimately resulted in death for many of its cult members. I intend to write a lot more about this later.

 c)     Social health: I have not yet mentioned my understanding of social health. But obviously it has to do with a person having healthy relationships with other people, such as family, work, church and country, etc. A lot could be written about that. Many other people, however, are already working with the concept of social wellness. The University of California Riverside has a nice web page covering the basics of social wellness. http://wellness.ucr.edu/social_wellness.html

 d)     Cultural health: I don’t have time here to put down my thoughts on cultural wellness. This is the lower left hand quadrant of the holistic wheel. But others are already thinking about and discussing the concept of cultural wellness. The University of Washington – Seattle has a nice “wellness wheel” on their web site that does go into the concept of cultural health. http://depts.washington.edu/hhpccweb/article-detail.php?ArticleID=85&ClinicID=13

 This is a short entry. I felt that I had to insert links to a couple of New York Times articles that corrobate some statements in my previous post.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/us/politics/16teaparty.html?scp=1&sq=rebellion&st=cse  

Many conservative people in this country, apparently urged on by right wing pundits, including Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, et. al., are beginning to adopt more extreme and apparently paranoid views. There are two disturbing trends in this article:  The first one is that organizations like the Oath Keepers are seeking to recruit law enforcement and military personnel into their organization. And many of these conservative activists seem to be arming themselves.  They seem to be edging closer and closer to violence. The other disturbing item that I read, and it corrobates my own writing, is that this Tea Party movement is waiting for a leader who can unite their rebellion. This is the charismatic leader that I referred to. In spite of this evidence, at this point I'm willing to be wary and wait and see what develops. Predicting the future is a really hazardous occupation. 

 The second article corrobates my expectation of continued political gridlock.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/business/economy/17gridlock.html?scp=1&sq=gridlock&st=cse 

I share the author's opinion. I believe that it is really necessary to resolve the gridlock: each side compromises on their pet positions and adopt a middle course of action that will begin to address the long term problems that are coming at us in a hurry. I am a liberal Boomer, but I'm willing to accept some kind of cuts in my Social Security and Medicare, if that will help move us to a sustainable situation. I will expect the conservatives to compromise also and accept some kind of tax increases, particularly on the upper income brackets. Everybody is going to have to do their share. Every day that we delay doing something makes the corrective action that we do have to take all the more painful. I'm not optimistic that anything will happen soon and the crisis must become more acute before action is taken.

 As time passes and some of my positions appear naive, emotional or just plain wrong, I reserve the right to declare that I was wrong and revise my thinking.  

The following is strictly my opinion – not much research isinvolved:

Regarding the election of a Republican senator fromMassachusetts

a)     Obama is toast:  He’s no Roosevelt. FDR had his program in place in his first 100 days. It’s been a whole year and Obama’s signature program is in jeopardy of dying. Health care reform is most likely dead for at least another 2 decades. With the loss of his signature program, his credibility as a leader is badly shaken and I doubt that he can recover. I hope he proves me wrong.

b)     The US is most likely in for 3 more years of legislative gridlock. The whole Republican plan is to block all of Obama’s initiatives, get nothing done and then blame it all on him. If you don’t believe me, go check Rush Limbaugh’s rants for the past year out. Nothing will get fixed, employment will stay dismal, the looting will continue and social frustration will begin to rise to an intolerable level. Furthermore, real reforms that could fix the problem will be blocked out of partisan wrangling. The social contract that has worked for the past 80 years is quickly unraveling, just as predicted in the 4^thTurning.

c)     The country, in my opinion, with widespread unemployment, foreclosures and loss of retirement savings, combined with a number of years now of no sort of progress is becoming ripe for the rise of a charismatic leader who will “set things right”. We have a whole generation of young people for whom there are no real prospects for imminent employment and prosperity. This is forecast in the 4^th turning and is becoming my own conviction as well. I’m going to read “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”. There appear to be significant parallels between 1930’s Germany and 2010’s America: a decade of ineffective government, widespread unemployment and hyperinflation that wiped out the savings of the middle class. It remains to be seen whether this charismatic leader arises from the right or the left. My fear is that a demagogue from the right will finally triumph. America is a center-right nation and so the natural tendency would be that right wing populism triumphs and delivers to the country a charismatic right wing leader in the mold of Adolf Hitler who will deliver the “Final Solution”. The right has no conception of or real love of democracy. They don’t understand what it is, and if they did, they’d hate it. What they want is order – even at the price of personal freedom, which they will gladly trade for some sort of economic security just like the Germans did.

d)     The housing bubble (or financial bubble) that almost brought the banks down in 2008 is not over. It has just been passed on the Federal government, along with all of its other obligations. The US is not unique among developed countries in that the bubble has been passed along. Many European countries have passed the bubble to their governments and some economies have either collapsed or are in danger of collapse: Iceland, Ireland, Greece, with Spain in jeopardy. Could the collapse of another one of these governments start a domino effect?

e)     One of the bubble’s effects is a huge increase in the public debt. This public obligation, combined with the existing entitlement programs: Social Security and Medicare and a whole Baby Boomer generation about to retire is going to make the retiring of this debt unmanageable. The nation will not accept increased taxation to pay this debt off – the conservative bent of this nation is toward tax cuts, not increased taxes. The nation cannot work its wayout of this debt – most of the nation’s high quality industries and employment has been outsourced to other nations. America no longer is the manufacturing powerhouse that it once was 40 years ago. Just tour Detroit to get an idea. The American economy is not a manufacturing economy – it’s a consumer economy. This will not change overnight. So… what’s left? The government, with the help of the Fed, will take the only course it can – pay its obligations by printing money, just like the Germans paid their post-war obligations. I believe we’re in for a period of extended high level inflation, while simultaneously experiencing an extended period of unemployment– just the kind of thing to build up a huge wave of anger and resulting social instability. This is not an ordinary period in this country’s history – This is a period of Crisis, in the 80 year cycle of the saeculum. By my reckoning, the Crisis period is only half over – 10 more years to go, at least. 

An update after 7 days:

OK,  this is more of my opinion. 

First of all, now that the Obama administration is changing course, the President has announced his intention to cut back drastically on domestic spending.  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/us/politics/26budget.html?hp

Notice in the article that the author hints that the Obama administration may be trying to prepare public opinion for cuts in the entitlement programs. By the way, these general events were predicted almost 10 years ago in the book, The Fourth Turning. What the book predicts is coming to pass, bit by bit. The federal government is running out of options. It is becoming apparent that it is in the same dire financial shape as the states are. However, I’m not sure that cuts in the entitlement programs are going to be any easier than reforming health care. If the Baby Boomers were so vociferous in keeping the government from reforming health care (I am convinced that they are feeling pretty insecure about their health care as it is, and they didn’t want anybody meddling with it – uninsured be damned – period.), what reason do we have to believe that these same Boomers will accept cuts in their Medicare and Social Security. It is a well known fact that most Boomers have not prepared for their retirement years as they should have, and they are counting on Social Security and Medicare to get them through. I suspect that the recent political turmoil over reforming health care will look like kindergarten compared to the widespread protests and turmoil that would result if Congress took on the task of cutting Medicare and SS.

As an additional comment:  I don’t think that it has dawned on most of the general public yet that the drastic job cuts that happened in 2008 till present are most likely permanent. The “experts”, of course, won’t mention this. They’re all saying the same tune: “Jobs recovery will follow the rest of the ‘recovery’.” However, I believe that jobs did not recover all that well after the 2001-2002 recession.  And certainly wages stayed stagnant. The American economy is primarily a consumer economy, unlike the German economy, which did pretty well through this recession so far.What kinds of jobs were lost? I suspect that a lot of the jobs were construction jobs. And of course, automobile related jobs were lost. And most likely many of the lost jobs were in manufacturing in general. I saw a lot of manufacturing and engineering jobs lost in my own workplace. What is going to bring those jobs back? Is construction going to start up again? What will drive it? Consumer spending? The American consumer is broke. They need jobs before they can resume consumption. The jobs are either gone or shipped overseas. Isuspect that most of these job losses were permanent. General Motors is only half its size. Chrysler is probably mostly just a legend now. I suspect that nothing short of constructing a new economy from scratch, like a “Green economy”, perhaps, like in the 1930’s, is going to bring jobs back to this country. And it appears that the country is in no mood to spend (or more accurately, borrow) the money to rebuild the economy. WWII is what brought the economy back from the Great Depression 80 years ago.

But maybe there are too many generalizations here. Maybe we need some more facts to give us more accurate perspective.

Update on the “Three Waves” 

I wrote previously about the 3 “waves”. I offer a brief scorecard on these “waves”. The first wave was the“Housing Bubble” or “Great Recession” wave. The administration dodged the“Great Depression II” bullet so far. They poured a massive amount of government money into the banking system and bailed it out before it underwent a massive collapse. But I’m convinced that the bubble was passed on to the federal government, just as it was in Europe. The weaker governments in Europe are starting to go into fiscal crisis as a result of this massive bailout effort. As I mentioned before, the governments of Iceland, Ireland and Greece are essentially insolvent. The UK government is in deep trouble also. And the US government is also fast running out of options. I am convinced that we are facing the 2^nd round of this “Great Recession” wave. I’m not sure yet what I think is coming, but it appears that currency deflation is in order, maybe wiping out those retirement savings that the stock market crash of 2008 didn’t take.

The second wave, the one I called the “Entitlement Wave” certainly doesn’t seem to have been deal with very well so far. The health care reform that the Obama administration was trying to push was a necessary step in reforming the health care system that will soon bankrupt the Medicare system. So far I give the nation a failing grade on dealing with this on-coming issue. After watching what has happened so far, I am not optimistic that this issue will be adequately dealt with proactively. The country will wait until it becomes an emergency that interferes with the normal working of the country before they do anything substantive about it, much like an alcoholic refuses to face his addiction until his life becomes unmanageable.

The third wave, the one I call the “Limits to Growth” wave is mostly not on the general public’s radar screen, at least here in this country. There appears to be widespread public awareness of climate change in Europe. The recent cold weather and spate of errors and inaccurate reporting by some climate change scientists has set back the climate change effort greatly. The skeptics will be crowing about this for some time to come. Climate change denial has gained a lot of traction. I would characterize the response in Copenhagen as a lot of finger pointing:  “Not my fault”; “I’m not going to go first”; “Let’s do as little as possible and call it ‘progress’”  And of course, the general world-wide recession has sent most of the environmental and climate change issues on the back burner. After all, for example, the farmers in the Sacramento valley who are losing their shirts because of a water shortage are not going to be at all interested in saving a tiny little fish that few people have even seen.

I can imagine that when they cut down those few remaining trees on Easter Island, there was a boatload of rationalizations about why that was necessary, accompanied by a generous dose of denial that this was a serious situation. 

I realize that this is a pretty negative post.

I challenge my readers to prove me wrong. If you can prove that things aren’t as negative as I portray them – that there is hope – please send me an E-mail. I want to be proved wrong. 

References 

Overshoot, the ecological basis of revolutionary change.  by William Robert Catton   ISBN 0-252-00988-6/978-0-252-00988-4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_R._Catton,_Jr.

http://www.relocalize.net/interview_with_william_r_catton_jr_author_of_overshoot

http://books.google.com/books?id=jCKXpv-E5HsC&dq=william+catton+overshoot&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=pZkRS_f4JJXKsAPVqrDmAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Overshoot  

Recently I read the book Overshoot by William Catton. Some of the reference material in the book is dated. The book is older, published by the University of Illinois press in 1982. It’s not a barnburner best seller, but the message seems to be ever more timely as time goes along.

This book made a big impression on me. Catton’s message is basically this:  “Learn to think about things from an ecological point of view”. My big take-away ideas from the book are these:  1. Humans are biological creatures who just as subject to the rules of ecology as are any other biological organisms, such as lions, fir trees and bacteria. 2. Much of what has happened in human history is easily interpreted in terms of basic ecology. 3. The “discovery” of the Western Hemisphere by Europeans was an ecological bonanza for them (and an ecological disaster of the 1st magnitude for the indigenous population.) They immigrated over here in large numbers, took the place over and rapidly multiplied and filled the place up. 4. The exuberant party is over – the continent is now filled up. 5. Humans are currently living beyond their sustainable ecological means (basically we are rapidly using up non-renewable resources.) and littering our environment with our waste products, causing global warming, dead coral reefs, over-fished oceans, stripped out rain forests, etc. 6. Humans can and do quite casually live in denial of their ecological reality, setting up for a future disaster of catastrophic proportions (the Die-off, mentioned by Jan Hanson on his website, Dieoff.org).

What’s more, the book began to make a lot of connections in my mind. While the message is about as grim as one can get, the basic ideas are about as clear and brutal as they can be. I had suspected a lot of this stuff since I was a kid, but now I’m getting clear confirmations of it.

I have a list of ideas that have become clear in my mind as a result of the paradigm shift that this book has caused for me.

Speed-up in the pace of life – Those of you who might have grown up in a small town or rural environment may have noticed that the pace of life in the big city is much faster, even hectic and nerve wracking in intensity. In Montana, people drive fast, but cars are at least a quarter mile apart most of the time. They only go by once in a while. In contrast, I’ve been on the I-5 on the outskirts of LA on Sunday night. All 4 or 5 (sometimes 6) lanes are filled up, bumper to bumper as far as the eye can, both in front of me and behind me. There are red taillights in front of me and white headlights behind me as far as I can see. And we’re all roaring along, all 5 lanes, doing 70 to 75 miles per hour with scarcely a car length between cars. People are changing lanes, passing, and weaving in and out. There is NO room for error – none. One screw-up and dozens of vehicles are going to pile up in a huge crash. In the big city, people are intensely zooming everywhere, honking at each other, hurrying through check-out lines, impatiently waiting for the light to turn, flipping each other off in crowded traffic. And the noise starts fresh again at 4am (at least where I live – probably earlier in Southern California), continues all day, and just barely begins to die down around 11pm.

And it seems to me that as I get older, the pace of life has quickened greatly from when I was a boy. Growing up in small town Montana may have something to do with it, but I’ve lived in major urban areas for the last 20 years. And it seems like wherever I’ve lived, the pace of life is slowly but surely quickening, no doubt aided by new technology. The fact that I’m over 60 and my metabolism has slowed down may have something to do with it. But I check with other younger people from time to time and they too, complain about the quickening pace of life.

The book has made the answer to this clear and simple:  The population has grown considerably over the past 60 years of my existence and humans are crowded closer and closer together on an increasingly crowded planet. This causes increased competition among them for increasingly scarce resources, sometimes just an open space in front of them on the freeway. As the competition increases, so does the pace of everybody seeking to secure the prized resource before the next person. I think it’s a lot like the old days when we went to see a popular movie. As we get closer to the theatre, we see a line already and we glance around and see other people converging on the theatre, all of us intent on getting into the same show. Our pace quickens and we hurry toward the ticket window. Pretty soon we’re shoving and jostling to get a better place in line. You know the syndrome. That’s what is happening – people are sensing the increasing scarcity of resources, whether they be a better home in a better neighborhood, getting into a better school, getting a good paying job, or even getting first in line at Walmart to buy Christmas gifts. This increased pace of life is due to increased competition for increasingly scarce (perceived or actual) resources.

Ecologically caused aggression:  While walking across the campus where I work, I was rudely disabused of a particular liberal notion that I used to have. Canadian geese frequent the campus to feed on the lush young green shoots of grass in the corporately maintained lawns. (It’s nice of the corporation to perform this most likely unintended public service of subsidizing the feeding of migratory waterfowl.) Most days the geese are pretty mellow. This day however I noticed that two geese appeared to be squabbling over a patch of grass. One of them flapped its wings, squawked and chased another one off. There was plenty of grass to go around, but these two were fighting over the same patch. I then realized that geese, too, were “selfish”. I realized that “Holy Cow, even geese fight with each other over resources.” So much for my idea of an altruistic Nature, and that only humans were “selfish”. True, this was pretty small scale. I didn’t see the geese organizing themselves into armies, training young recruits to kill other geese, etc. This was depressing at first, but I believe I’ve come to accept it now, especially after viewing a nature film on TV where a pair of Orcas spent over an hour beating up a seal, even flipping it end-for-end out of the water, before they finally killed it and ate it. Why’d they have to do that …. for fun? And how about that other edifying video where I watched a band of chimps carefully plan and pull off a raid on a group neighboring chimps, attacking, terrifying and beating them up. They even captured, killed and ate one of the children of that neighboring band. What’s with these primates? It was chilling to see the looks in their eyes and their manner of stealth as they approached their intended victims. It so reminded me of human soldiers in war. What’s my point? Some kinds of aggressive behavior has ecological underpinnings – competition for resources.

As a result, I believe that much, of not most of human military activity is ecologically motivated. Our armies, any country’s armies, are organized, maintained and deployed chiefly for ecological reasons. Military activity is directed primarily toward procuring and defending access to resources. American military forces are deployed in the Middle East primarily to secure and/or maintain access to resources, in this case, mostly oil. That is why they will never come home. The American people will be constantly reassured by their leadership that “they will bring the troops home”, but in reality the political leadership has those forces there to maintain America’s foothold, the country’s ability to secure and maintain access to resources. This country isn’t about to cede its ability to get and hold resources to Arabs, Iranians, Russians, especially the Chinese, or any other country.

 I’m not just picking on the Americans. The British built up and maintained their legendary navy primarily as a means of procuring and maintaining off-shore resources: new raw materials, new markets for manufactured products, and safety valves for exporting excess population. The Chinese are building up their military forces, the “Peoples’ Liberation Army”, precisely for the purpose of, besides keeping their own restive ethnicities in check, for the purpose of procuring and maintain access to new resources for their large population which is rapidly increasing their living standards. Nuclear weapons are a prized means of defending resources, and every nation has an ecological motivation to acquire them.

So I am convinced that another cherished liberal dream, that of “world peace” is just another utopian pipe dream. Sure, the existence and purpose of the UN is a noble purpose, which I support. But let’s separate intention from expectation. I now longer expect that there will be an era of “world peace”. Our burgeoning populations, competing for increasingly scarce resources on an increasingly crowded planet virtually guarantees a high degree of military activity and world conflict for as long as those ecological conditions exist – in other words, FOREVER! I am convinced that the best we can hope for is to keep this level of military activity down to a level of something less than hot wars where millions of people die annually. 

Recipe for Sustainability: I would not expect an end to organized warfare among humans until the species comes to grips with its ecological place on the planet. What needs to happen is this:  a) Humans assume control over their own reproductive rates and maintain just enough population that can be comfortably supported by the earth’s carrying capacity.  b) Humans overcome their ecologically motivated inclination to hoard resources and keep them away from perceived competitors. All humans will be assured of an “equitable” minimum share of resources and none will be allowed to accumulate resources far in excess of what is needed for their own personal comfort and survival. “Share your toys”. c) All humans are aware of their connection to the planetary biosphere and their place in it. It will become 2nd nature to humans to maintain the viability of their ecosystem, not only to maintain their survival and prosperity, but also the survival and prosperity of all the other species, both plant and animal on the planet. Resources will be strictly managed for long term viability. It will be a crime to hoard or waste resources.
 
Until the above situation happens, and it should be pretty obvious that won’t happen any time soon, there will no end to warfare. The only reason that we have relatively peaceful “civilized” societies is because those particular societies, i.e. the democratic nations, have access to an abundance of resources. There is relatively enough to go around so that relatively few people feel compelled to commit crimes or become terrorists or start a war or other armed conflict.

In almost every case, I’m led to suspect that the rationale offered by governments for their military and military activity are little more than rationalizations or bluntly, con-jobs, to make it acceptable for lower ranking humans to expend their own resources (tax money) and/or their own or their children’s’ lives to go off and make war. To take just a few rationalizations, for example:  1. “Freedom is not free. We fight to defend our freedom.” 2. “We’re fighting terrorism – it’s a global war on terrorism.” 3. We’re defending people (South Vietnamese people” from the scourge of Communism.” 4. “We’re defending the honor of Islam against the infidels.” 5. “We’re fighting for God and country, just like our fathers and forefathers did. After all, we owe them a debt to do so.”  6. “We have to free the slaves in our country.”  Do I have to go on?  I suspect that nationalism (or “patriotism”), for the most part,  is little more than a con-job to con the gullible into participating in organized attempts to secure more resources or to defend existing access to them. That topic of nationalism is probably worth a lot more space than I’m willing to give it here. 

Ecological origin of terrorism:  Along this same line, I’m beginning to suspect that terrorism is a structural problem. I’m beginning to become more and more convinced that terrorism has its roots in ecological motivations. I suspect that terrorism is the flip side of state sponsored military activity. In this case, terrorism is the poor man’s response to state sponsored military activity. It’s the poor man’s way of waging war. 

 Terrorism and state military activity are flip sides to the same coin. If they are both ecologically motivated, then there’s NO reason to expect that “the war on terrorism will be won” any time soon. I’m convinced that terrorism is a structural problem. Wherever there are human beings who perceive themselves as not having enough access to “their fair share” of resources, or at least a large enough share to assure their own comfort and survival, aggression will be the result, whether it’s organized state sponsored military activity or individual military activity (terrorism). Until the ecological conditions I mention above are achieved, I do not expect an end to terrorism. States, such as the US, or the European Union, or China, or Russia, or even Iran can do their utmost to stamp out “terrorism”, but it will all be in vain. People with ecologically motivated grievances will always manage to find ways to take out their ecologically motivated aggression upon their perceived targets. Terror will be around FOREVER. The “war on terror” is un-winnable. 

Two White Elephants in the Room 

From an ecological point of view, there are two “elephants in the room”. There are two big and emerging issues which a relatively few number are even willing to discuss openly. But I predict that they are become increasingly important and sooner or later, they will break into the open:  a) The wealthy have ownership and control over many more resources than they need for their personal survival. It will become increasingly socially unacceptable to hoard resources. b) Many of the poor are having too many babies who will become future resource consumers. They are adding competitors to the ongoing struggle over limited resources. Having a baby will become a privilege, not a right.

Inequality: Now I have some thoughts on the first of these 2 topics, the accumulation of wealth. First of all, there is a great disparity between wealth between the wealthiest and the poorest of human beings. The world’s richest men control (or own) literally tens of billions of dollars (USD), not to mention vast amounts of power over the lives and economic well-being of many other humans.  The world’s poorest often have literally just their own bodies and perhaps a few rags to clothe that body. Many of them have no health, no place to live and no food. The rich are human ecology’s big winners, while the poor (and there are VERY many of them, are human ecology’s big losers. Most of them are paying for that shortcoming (through no fault of their own) with their lives. Envy is the big word in my mind. That is the reaction of those with fewer resources as they become aware of those who own or control vast resources. 

I suspect that much of the political dispute between the left and right runs somewhat along this line. The political left, I believe, are mostly the voice of those who perceive themselves as those who have not fared well in the ecological struggle for resources. This group, at least in the US, is comprised mostly of the laboring class and intellectuals in the middle class, myself most likely included. They are the “progressives”, that is, those who favor changing the status quo, mostly in favor of redistributing resources downward toward the middle and lower classes. The left thinks,  “A wealthy minority has gained control over a disproportionate share of resources, far in excess of what they need for their own personal survival and well-being. It is only “fair” that some of their excess resources be redistributed to the poor.” I suspect that the left is looking for rationalizations for redistributing that wealth. Some of them:  a) The wealthy gained their excess wealth through abuses of the less wealth. They “stole” it from them. b) The wealthy, including corporations, are using their wealth to exploit other human beings and the environment. c) Less inequality will mean more social stability. d) Marx argued that the laboring classes are really those who generate real “wealth” and the excess wealth generated by the laboring classes is being skimmed off the top by the wealthy capitalist class and it’s only fair to return most, if not all, of that skimmed wealth back to the laboring classes. 

But let’s not leave the right out of these comments. The political right, the conservatives, are basically those who have done well, or perceive themselves as doing well ecologically in the existing system. They resist change, and if given a chance, as we found out during the Bush years, will actually reverse the downward flow of wealth and redistribute wealth upward, into the wealthy class. From my point of view, their rationalizations are more transparent than those of the left. Some of their rationalizations:  a) “We earned it fair and square by our own hard work. We’re entitled to the fruits of our labor.” (I believe this is the big take-away point that Ayn Rand was trying to make in her writings.) b) “It’s unjust to steal from the wealthy and give it away to those who don’t deserve it.”  c) “Redistributing wealth just removes peoples’ motivation to work hard and generate new wealth and progress.”  d) “Redistribution doesn’t work anyway – just look at the financial disaster of the former Communist countries.” There is an element of truth to their criticisms, just as there are elements of truth in the criticisms of the left. 

But as the global population grows and as standards of living rise, increasing the competition for increasingly scarce resources, I believe this argument over the unequal distribution of resources is going to get louder and more strident, and take on more and more moral tones. In many cases this concern has led to violence and in many more cases, it will undoubtedly lead to future violence. One case that leaps to mind is the struggle between the oil companies and government and the indigenous “terrorists” in Nigeria in their struggle to gain access to the oil resources in that country. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/12/19/world/AP-AF-Nigeria-Militants.html?scp=5&sq=militants%20nigeria%20delta&st=cse

I am becoming convinced that this question needs to be discussed more openly as  mankind’s ecological problems grow more urgent. When you contrast the image of a wealthy multimillionaire showing off his 100 foot world class yacht that he bought just to prove that he could with the image of starving Africans who are so weak that they can’t move any more and just go find a tree to lie under to die, I believe a profound moral problem arises. Is this just? In addition to the profound moral problem, I suspect that a profound ecological question arises also. “How much is enough. How much is too much?” The image of a wealthy multimillionaire arouses envy and a feeling of entitlement among those who witness that level of wealth. I believe a sense of entitlement is aroused in those who don’t have it. “I’m entitled to achieve that level of success also, if I can.” Little or no consideration is given to the question of whether or not a planet can support 6 billion millionaires. This alone, I think, should give rise to a continual ecological instability as everyone strives to achieve the same living standard as the wealthy.  As a result, I believe that it’s going to become ever more critical to come to an ecologically sound answer to the 2 questions above: ‘How much is enough?’ and ‘How much is too much?’ These two questions must be answered by every living human being, not only about themselves, but also about their fellow humans in community. Asking and answering these questions is profoundly  integral to one’s personal integrity. 

One late comment on this: It appears that the failure of the Climate Conference in Copenhagen was largely caused by this issue of inequality. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2009/1214/Copenhagen-global-warming-talks-suspended-over-rich-poor-divide

I think our collective moral judgment is pretty clear. I think it’s clearly spelled out in UN charter of human rights.  I think we all believe that every human is entitled to enough of the planet’s resources to assure their own physical survival and some minimum standard of well-being:  adequate shelter, enough food to not be hungry, security from violence, and most likely, a right to meaningful work. What’s the ecological cost of making such a guarantee to all 6 billion of us? Can the planet afford it? As far as the question of how much is too much, I believe that as time goes on and resources become ever more precious, the species is going to have to decrease the standard of what is too much. I’m thinking that we’re all going to have to learn to be content with less. There is evidence, from the Harappan civilization, and from the New Guinea highlanders that ecologically stable cultures do not have extremes of wealth. The headman of the New Guinea tribe has to work his garden patch just like everyone else. I have a feeling that extreme inequality in wealth and power leads to ecologically unstable societies which eventually will end in disaster, as in Easter Island. I believe that going forward, society is going to impose more and more limits on how much wealth and power individuals and/or corporations may accumulate.

Birth Control: There is another “elephant in the room” that most people do not want to discuss openly. There is so much political, racial and ethnic controversy associated with this question. This whole question has to do with biological reproduction, that is , making more humans. I wish to raise a few questions here. First of all, this is the other end of the ecological equation – the balance between resources and consumers of the resources. The reading I’m doing indicates that in times of plentiful resources, a biological species, whether it be algae, lemmings, lions or humans, tend to reproduce plentifully. Thomas Malthus pointed out that biological reproduction tends to be exponential (2*1=2, 2*2=4, 2*4=8, etc.), while the growth of resources tends to be linear. (2+1=3, 3+1=4, 4+1=5, etc.) Presumably we all learned this in high school. Humans tend to reproduce exponentially also.

So naturally the big question is this:  “Who gives you the right to have as many babies as you want when you want?” Babies are future consumers of resources, additional ecological competitors. In our American culture, the birth of a baby is traditionally regarded as a joyous event, a new human coming into the world. A new baby evokes all of the warm familiar images: motherhood, the new family with the radiant new mother, the beaming father, the new household all prepared for the care and nourishment of the new human, the image of life replenishing itself. In a nation with abundant resources, the culture can afford these images. I wonder how much accompanies the birth of new child in Sub-Saharan Africa where another famine is underway. I wonder if the new mother is filled with joy or a sense of desperation and foreboding, concern about how to feed the new mouth. 

My feeling is that this issue of reproduction and birth control is going to become a more and more insistent issue as the planet grows more crowded. Perhaps having a baby is looked upon as a universal human right, but in fact, having a baby is not a private affair. This new human baby has profound effects on the ecology, economy and politics of the society that surrounds it. Having babies is going to become more and more of an ecological, economic and political issue. I have the feeling that the days are coming when more and more people are going to have to apply for permission from the government to have a baby. Childbirth will become a privilege, not a right. It has already happened in China. As we all know, China has instituted a strict birth control policy. It has become a necessity in that country in order to assure the survival of its government and the ultimate stability of its society. 

Now if you are thinking that I’m really premature, consider  the following article from CNS news.  http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/58412 The Chinese have already suggested that a one child (per woman) policy would be very helpful in fighting global warming. The Chinese have already raised the issue. If you do a little more research, you’ll find that this suggestion has raised a hornet’s nest of controversy. But make no mistake about it, this issue is here to stay and it’s going to become more and more  prominent as time goes on. This development should be no surprise to anyone who has started thinking ecologically. 

One more comment before ending this post. The amount of controversy that will be raised by the birth control issue will be vast and very deep seated. The very idea of birth control is anathema to traditional Christianity and, I suspect, to traditional Islam. Many Western religions are very deeply opposed to the whole idea of birth control. Many cultures are also opposed to, or are very uncomfortable to the concept of birth control. I am not a Latino, so it’s a little dangerous to speak for them, but I suspect that Latino culture is deeply uncomfortable with the idea of birth control. It has been suggested that many second generation Latinas in the US are open to and embracing the concept of family planning and reduced family size. They are recognizing the value of education and the burdens and risks of raising extra children. This issue is going to cause a lot of religious and cultural conflict and is going to set a lot of deeply conservative forces into motion. There is going to be a collision of colossal proportions. On top of that, I really expect that this issue of birth control is going be associated with charges of racism. If there are two different ethnicities, one with low birth rates and one with high birth rates, when the low birth rate ethnicity starts to point the finger at the other ethnicity, charges of racism are sure to follow.   I repeat that this will be a collision of colossal proportions.

  It has also been suggested to me and sociological studies indicate that many women are more receptive to the idea of family planning than is generally accepted. I suspect that women, especially mothers, are more naturally concerned with feeding, clothing, housing, educating the children that they bear and preserving the gains they have made. If they do not sense that their children may not be well provided for, they may be more reluctant to bring a new child into the world. We should not underestimate the value of providing access to education for every woman that wants it. Increasing educational opportunities for women may be one of most effective and efficient ways of reducing excessive birth rates, naturally without coercion.

 

About this Blog

1. I am surprised that people are reading this blog. I am encouraged that other people believe that my writing is worth reading and I have been encouraged to keep writing. I have been repeatedly thanked for the information that I have posted. I want to thank everybody for their comments.  Therefore I intend to continue posting to this website.
2. I wish to state clearly what my personal biases and inclinations are. I consider it to be quite disingenuous to claim to be unbiased in one’s writings. It sounds too much like “fair and balanced” or “We report. You decide.” I cannot speak for others, so I will report up front what I believe my biases are. First of all, I consider myself to be fairly liberal. I suspect that my political leanings are currently somewhat to the left of the Obama administration. In fact, some times I wonder if I am a Marxist. I will not deny that some of my writing has a leftward slant in it. I have not voted Republican for quite a few years. 
3. About 20 years ago I would have considered myself to be a Libertarian. And 10 years before that I would have considered myself to be quite conservative. For a while when I was a high school student, I was a card carrying member of the John Birch Society. I was also a Christian fundamentalist during my high school years. I campaigned for Barry Goldwater when I was a high school student back in 1964. During my 20’s I was also a member of a Lutheran fundamentalist cult, which I rejoined for 3 tumultuous years during my late 40’s and then left. So when I speak about the Christian right, about conservatives and cult thinking, I consider myself knowledgeable about whereof I speak. When I write about fundamentalists and the Christian right, I believe I have the right to do so: I was one of them. I believe that my life has been a continuous journey to the left from those fears and convictions during those years.
4. I also consider myself to have a mystical holistic spiritual orientation and I will write my blog from that perspective. By “mystical”, I mean that I had what I consider a mystical experience a number of years ago. I have come to the conviction that there are many phenomena which cannot be immediately explained by science as it is commonly accepted today. I have personally experienced people who had knowledge that they could not have come across using rational means. This is a whole subject in itself. I would recommend the research and writings of University of Arizona doctor and professor, Gary Schwartz (The Living Energy Universe and other writings.) By “holistic”, I mean a spiritual orientation that sees connections between different races of humans, different ethnic groups. I am convinced that these connections run much deeper – I believe there are connections between human and all sentient beings. And in fact, there are connections between all sentient beings and all living creatures. I go so far as to believe there are connections between all living creatures and “non-sentient” matter. I believe that we are, after all, “Children of the Stars”. I’m convinced that the very atoms out of which our bodies are made were most likely born in the death explosion of some ancient star that exploded in a supernova long ago. We are literally the children of that star, which itself was the child of the Big Bang. This too, is a whole subject in itself.
5. As the name of this website implies, I intend that this website have a central theme of overcoming fear. Some of these other topics that I have written about are, in my opinion, digressions from the central theme that moved me to establish this blog. I want this blog to be about detecting, diagnosing and recovering from fear, especially of the political and religious variety. There is a motto of a pest extermination business located not far from where I live that I consider to be quite clever:  “Inspection – Detection – Correction – Protection”  That’s what I intend for this web site: that it be primarily a place where people can come for the “Inspection” – that is, required introspection. As a result of productive introspection, which is quite a difficult practice to achieve, one gradually becomes aware of one’s fear(s) “Detection”.   As a result of the gradually increasing awareness of fear, one can begin the process of recovery from it. “Correction” phase. This involves, at least for me, a lifelong practice of behavior modification, of learning to think correctly, of meditation (applied introspection) and study. As one practices this behavior modification, one begins to advocate this for others and to undertake action to help others recover also. This is the “Protection” phase – this is the advocacy phase of recovery from fear.
6. I’m wanting to make this site a clearing house for the voices of others who have their own encounters with political and/or religious fear and are also taking steps to recover from its very destructive and debilitating effects. As a result, I consider myself open to stories from others who have had their own encounters with fear, their experiences with understanding and overcoming it, and information about understanding and recovering from fear. I’m thinking that it would be a good thing if others send me E-mails sharing their experiences and information about fear and overcoming it. If I regard some of this sharing to be worthwhile, I will post it on this site. Who knows where it may lead?
7. Fear, especially the religious variety, has always been a big part of my life. This is not the place for an autobiography. I will state that I was put in fear of going to hell when I was about 4 or 5 years old. I distinctly remember the experience. I was in a Sunday school class in the basement of a Lutheran church in Bozeman, Montana. The Sunday school teacher earnestly explained to us impressionable little people that God was an angry male deity that hated sin so much that He threw naughty boys and girls into an everlasting fire of torment forever and ever when they died. There was no appeal. And this God knew everything and could even read your thoughts. And I knew that I was already a bad boy (at the age of 4). I realized right then and there that God hated me and was going to throw me into hell when I died and that was all there was to it. I began to cry right there on the spot. This, of course, freaked out the teacher and the pastor had to be called. I remember the pastor coming downstairs and trying to reassure me that God didn’t really want to throw me into hell forever and ever. All I had to do was just be a “good boy”. But I was never totally convinced. What little boy hasn’t told a “fib” or “lie” once in a while?  What little boy hasn’t taken something that didn’t belong to him once in while?
8. My whole life since then has been an on-going experience of trying to live with that fearful God (Whom I now call the “Cosmic Psychopath”) and a path of spiritual recovery from that fear and its misery and debilitating effects. 

Bibliography:

Life, Inc.  byDouglas Rushkoff   ISBN978-1-4000-6689-6

eBook IsBN 978-1-58836-849-2

http://rushkoff.com/videoaudio/

Organizing America:

Wealth, Power and the Origins of Corporate Capitalism

by Charles Perrow

Princeton University Press 2002

ISBN 0-691-08954-X

This past week has been a strange week for me. Let me recall as best as I can:

First of all, I wish to make it clear that I regard my own situation as very mild compared to what has happened to many, many other employees in this and other countries in the last 2 years. I regard myself as very well off compared to other people and I will not use this as an occasion to complain about how miserable my life is. The circumstances given below have become a learning opportunity for me and I want to share my insights with my audience, whoever you may be.

I am deliberately leaving names and places out of this discussion in an effort to protect the innocent. Early this past week, the company announced by E-mail that it was consolidating its factories, shutting down the American factory and locating it in China. This will result in the layoffs of many of the American factory employees. The factory employees were called into a series of meetings to be informed of this by their management. My own management abruptly called a meeting of our department the very next day to talk about “department” business. During the 1-hour meeting, our top manager dealt with the topic of layoffs for a grand total of about 3 minutes. The manager used terms like “current adverse economic situation”, “order rates below plan” and especially the term “right sizing”. The manager succinctly defined which parts of the organization were not being affected and then quickly moved on to how our particular department was doing well and of management’s plans to increase sales. Eventually the meeting evolved into a fairly technical discussion of the department’s target customers and plans and new products being developed to target those customer needs. The white elephant in the room was acknowledged, but almost as on cue from the manager, everybody moved on to other topics and ignored it. 

Then I had occasion to visit the factory and speak to someof its employees. I was informed that these employees have to wait for 3 weeksbefore finding out whether or not they will be laid off. The ones I spoke withdid not really know what the outcome of jobs would be.  Then in coffee shop, I met anotheracquaintance. I had heard a rumor that this person’s job function may have beenterminated. This person informed me in an angry tone about being laid off andthat he/she, who had worked for this company for over 25 years, no longerworked for it. I communicated my shock and sorrow and this person replied thathe/she was not sorry and was glad that the misery was finally over.

And now, being home for a day or two, I’ve had time to contemplate the weirdness of the situation. I want to share my perception of this weirdness with you. I feel like I’m having another “cult” moment.  This corporation, like many corporations, makes heavy use of euphemisms. Employees are referred to as “associates”, as though they were partners with corporate management somehow. Beware of companies who label their employees as “associates”. Although the practices of this corporation are fairly mild compared to others, it is by no means a democracy. It is very clearly a hierarchy managed from the top down. The well-compensated elites who manage this corporation have access to all of the information, make their decisions in a very small group and then propagate these decisions in a manner that they see fit in the time of their choosing. They are very selective with what information they share with us. In the traditional hierarchical manner, employees are informed of the decisions, usually just before they have to be implemented. There is no discussion: immediate enthusiastic compliance is expected.

There is a lot of talk in the corporate propaganda stream about “being a team” and about how important it is for the team to beat the competition. There is a lot of emphasis on how the team must work together to become “leaner” and more efficient. Examples of employees who perform “above and beyond the call of duty” are pushed on the company internal web site. But there is strange stuff happening. In times past, when employees retire from the company, an office party is called, gifts are given and the retiring employee is given a nice send-off. Employees who find a job elsewhere and leave the company were traditionally given a send-off, usually with lesser fan-fare. But employees who are laid off just disappear. You see them one week and the following week, they’re simply gone. No announcements, no notices, no explanations, no send-off – nothing. They just disappear. I guess you’re a member of the team until you’re no longer a member of the team. I presume all “associates” are expendable associates – you’re an“associate” until you’re no longer an “associate”.  They weren’t even important enough to warrant an explanation for their disappearance.

And finally the last strange happening to report concerns my immediate supervisor. Late in the afternoon, I was expecting to meet with him/her about some company business. Shortly before the meeting the department secretary came over and requested that I call his/her cell phone number. To make along story short, it turned out that my supervisor had to take that afternoonoff under strict orders by his/her doctor. Apparently something about the stress of his/her job was becoming dangerous to his/her health. Apparently he’s/she's working too hard. I’m being deliberately vague about the details.

I add one other example of weirdness. Recently all employees received a letter from the corporate leadership. The corporate leadership had hired an outside company, which apparently specializes in such matters, to make sure none of the employees were cheating on their benefits. The letter demanded that legal documentation be produced for every dependent they claim, including spouses. If this documentation is not produced in a couple of months, that dependent would be dropped from benefit coverage. Furthermore, a grace period was given where employees could drop their “illegal” claims. After the grace period expires, the company threatens to sue to obtain reimbursement for “illegal” claims along with the usual threat of termination. 

Now these circumstances are pretty mild compared to what has and is happening to many other people in this country, many of whom have lost their jobs, their homes and a large portion of their retirement savings. I read about it all the time. But what I have experienced has become an object lesson for me.

There is a strange spectacle of insanity playing out. I see a picture of people who are working hard in corporate jobs, getting things done as best as they can, generating wealth as best as they can. They have no expectations beyond a hope of being employed again tomorrow. They don’t complain, at least not publicly. They keep working hard even though their colleagues around them are disappearing, one by one. They work so hard and so long that their family life suffers and their mental and physical health suffer. They cooperate with their bosses by publicly, at least, ignoring the white elephant in the room. Eventually, they too, might disappear and their whole lives are thrown into turmoil by the loss of their job. They will now have to figure out how to make the mortgage payment, the car payment, keep the kids in school and pay the onslaught of bills. It’s turmoil that will tear their lives apart. I knew of one executive just one level above my supervisor who worked so hard and so long that he suffered a heart attack. Of course he “recovered quickly” so that he could return to his job of managing the department. His reward in the end for all of this “selfless” devotion was to be abruptly terminated by his superior. He just didn’t show up one Monday morning and we got an announcement that he was gone. And then I heard public comments by the very same people who had been praising him and his leadership in the past: almost as if on cue, they began to question his leadership and acknowledge “he just wasn’t up to the job”.

All of this is eerily reminiscent of a similar situation I was in years ago – a cult. In this cult too, everybody works hard. They work long, long days, often 16 hours. They work 6 days a week and then sit in church all day long on Sunday. There is little rest. They live in assigned housing and work in assigned jobs. There is no private property. Except for personal affects, the cult leadership holds all property, including cars. No public dissent of any kind is tolerated. And, in fact, those members who can’t quite keep up the pace or a good attitude are ruthlessly and mercilessly criticized in public by the cult leader. Heart disease and especially cancer are common in this cult. People are literally used up, get ill and die in this cult. I managed to escape it, along with my wife. That is a different topic. My point is that the cult shamelessly exploits its members and uses them up. The cult’s demands put an extreme strain on family life and literally drain away the mental and physical health of its people. The entire covert purpose of the cult is to maintain the cult leader’s illusions that he is a very special and holy person, as special to God as Jesus is. Of course this intention is covered up with an ongoing propaganda stream of how “special” this group is to God and how lucky one is to be a member of it. The more faithful members have bought into this illusion and manufacture their own propaganda and offer it to fellow members. Accompanying this propaganda is no small amount of threats and psychological (at this point at least) abuse. It’s a picture of exploitation – pure and simple.

This picture of exploitation is what I perceive is happening right in front of me, although in a milder form than in a cult. At present I subscribe to the idea that the modern corporations is primarily an institution that was invented to extract and concentrate wealth into the hands of a small wealthy elite. According to Perrow, the modern American corporation was organized in a manner that funneled the corporation’s profits and wealth into the hands of a few while “externalizing” the corporation’s liabilities. If a corporation failed, the personal fortunes of its owners would not be at risk. In a bankruptcy, it is true the shareholders will suffer loss. But the small wealthy elite at the top, apart from any losses they incur in their stock holdings (which they always seem to manage to sell off before the failure becomes apparent to the public.), are not personally held responsible for corporate failure. Enron’s failure, if I understand it correctly, was born mostly by its creditors, its stockholders, many of whom were also employees, and, of course, the employees.

It appears to me that the employees are bearing most of the risk and the costs of the current recession. The employees are the ones losing their jobs (and usually their only means of livelihood). The employees are treated not as live human beings, but as disposable assets. All I hear about from management is the “responsibility to shareholders” and to aggressively increase market share, hopefully at the expense of competitors. The voiced concerns are almost always about the health and well-being of the business. In a group context, this appears to be “normal”. But in a human context, this appears to me to be insane. A corporation is not just a business enterprise whose sole responsibility is to its management and shareholders. 

 The worth of a corporation is not measured solely by the profit it makes.  A corporation does not exist in a vacuum. The modern corporation is a social enterprise that also affects its physical environment. For most of the people working in a corporation, the job they hold is their sole means of livelihood. These people aren’t just trading labor for pay and benefits. They have committed their lives to this enterprise. They depend on the corporation to pay their mortgages, make their car payments, and allow them a safe place to live in which to raise their children. The expectation of stable employment allows employees to make all kinds of commitments, which affects the community around them. I could go on and on. The corporation and its activities have a huge social impact, for either good or bad. This needs to be taken into account and enter into the discussions of corporate decisions.

Corporations also have a huge environmental impact. The true costs of doing business also involve the impact on the environment. Corporations devour resources: some examples: employees burn gasoline and put pollution and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when they drive to and from work. My corporation uses huge quantities of electricity. It manufactures products that contain materials and metals that can be very toxic if released into the environment. Part of the cost of doing business is consideration for safelydisposing of these products when their use is over. There are social costs ofthis business. The sheer numbers of people just trying to get to and from their work creates a traffic situation that adversely affects the air quality, noise levels and sheer psychological stress of simply trying to get around in these high traffic areas. When salaries are good, the demand for housing is driven up and this in turn, drives up the cost of near-by housing, driving out the less affluent and creating social stratification.

Over the years, corporations have sought to “externalize” these environmental costs. In Montana, the large copper companies developed huge mines, which extracted the metal from the high quality ores, leaving huge piles of toxic tailings, not to mention a gigantic hole in the ground outside Butte. At the bottom of this gigantic hole in the ground is a lake, which is so toxic that it is reported that any duck or goose that lands in it will not survive the experience. When the high-grade ores were exhausted, the owners simply quietly transferred the company’s assets elsewhere and allowed the mining corporation to go bankrupt. Now the state and the federal government are saddled with the costs of cleaning up the mess. Executives would say that the environmental costs of mining were “externalized”. 

Now it appears that we have huge numbers of “human tailings”being left behind as the corporations “right size” and shed unneeded workers who are now viewed as financial liabilities. And the state governments and federal government, and in consequence, the tax payers and society in general are left with picking up the costs of taking care of these “human tailings”.  The state governments are basically overwhelmed. The state of California, which has the 6^th largest economy in the world, is a mess. The federal government is running an alarming deficit as it seeks to hold things together and prevent a financial and social catastrophe.

What I have pointed out here is not particularly new, is quite controversial, and much more adequately discussed elsewhere. What is new is my awakening to it and what is particularly disturbing to me is the psychological effects, “psychological pollution” if you will. I have become very sensitive to these psychological side-effects as a result of my two cult experiences. I am convinced that corporations are holistic entities. Corporations aren’t just financial entities – they exist as psychological entities, physical entities, of course, but they’re also social entities and cultural entities. Iam referring to Ken Wilber’s 4 quadrant diagram here.

As I pointed out above, corporations are physical entities which have a significant impact on their physical environment. They consume resources and generate waste. This is obvious, and it this point, I believe they have become numerous enough and large enough, that they are beginning to become a serious threat to irrevocably damage the entire planet’s biosphere. But these corporations are also a social entity and as I have pointed out above, have a huge impact on the society where they are found. This is a responsibility which I do not think is being adequately addressed these days. But wait, there’s more.

Corporations have a huge psychological impact, particularly on its employees and consumers of its products and services in general. I would sum up the relationship between a powerful corporation and its employees as a dependency relationship. Frequently the employee is dependent upon his corporate job as his sole means of livelihood. This financial dependency can foster a psychological dependency, which can become just as harmful as say, a chemical dependency. This could be another whole huge topic to explore. Douglas Rushkoff does talk about the psychological damage in his book. As an example that comes to mind:  The employee who is financially dependent on his corporate job is naturally open to all kinds of psychological manipulation. The company will, for example, continually offer him a role model of the “ideal employee” to emulate. The employee will find it easy to rationalize all of the conduct of his company as long as it does not directly adversely affect him, and even in those circumstances, employees can sometimes be counted on to rationalize decisions which do adversely affect them, like forced pay-cuts and unpaid furloughs. Another destructive psychologically toxic practice is the fondness of corporations to manipulate their employees to compete with one another. “We’re all on the same team and work together for common success” except at review time. Now employees are ranked against one another creating winners and losers. Those who are seen as having “competed” more successfully against their peers are rewarded with promotions, more pay, and perhaps a few more square feet in their cubicle. Part of the employee’s attitude is to view one’s colleagues and peers as rivals, whose motives must be viewed with distrust and who must be bested by one’s own efforts in order to win a bigger share of the pie. At the very least, this creates alienation between employees.  I feel that this practice is a quite pernicious form of psychological manipulation and exploitation.

I feel that another harmful effect of this psychological dependency is that it leads employees to blur the boundaries between career and family life. They may feel pressured to put in more and more hours at work, thus depriving them from devoting these hours to their spouses and children. Family and marriage relationships suffer. Children can be neglected and their psychological and physical development impaired from loss of necessary nurturing time with their parents. Marriages can be adversely affected and the stories of divorce are legendary, as we well know. There was just recently a story on the Guardian web site (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/aug/21/us-suicide-work-office) which details an increase in work-place suicides. This psychological dependency can lead employees to neglect their own mental and physical health in a frantic effort to meet real or imagined commitments they made to their employer. I have personal experience of that last situation.

This is already a long post. Let’s bring it to a quick conclusion.

There are two sides to every story. As I look around in my home, I find that I am surrounded by goods and services produced by corporations, most of them from large corporations. Many of the bottled or frozen food-stuffs, and some dry goods, in my kitchen are produced by corporations, although we are trying to buy more and more directly from local farms. My library is filled with corporately printed books. My stereo was manufactured by a large corporation. Indeed the computer I’m writing this on, the very software that I using to write this were produced by large corporations. My car is from a large corporation. In fact my house was built bya development corporation. My health care comes from a large health-care organization. The list is endless.

All in all, these products have created what I regard as a good standard of living. I am a professional. I have been paid fairly well and have managed to accumulate excess wealth. My retirement does not look bleak. I wonder sometimes how much of my good standard of living was extracted from other people by the corporations that furnishes these goods and services. How much do those Mexican laborers that mow grass out front earn? How do they live? Did the person who picked the cucumbers for my salad get paid justly, or was he/she forced to workfor a pittance in a back-breaking sweaty quota-driven farm in the hot sun? How hard does the grocery clerk who rang up my purchases yesterday work for her pay? While we do not shop at Wal-Mart, I know people who do, and I wonder how many of Wal-Mart's “low, low prices” were subsidized by the cheap labor it extracted from its clerks and the laborers who produced its goods? How much of my unrecycleable refuse gets dumped in countries like China?

I don’t believe in throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I realize that large corporations can and do accomplish good things. But all of these good things have a price. Do we really understand and know what the true price is? I’m becoming more and more convinced that much of this is being had at a truly high price. I’ve mentioned some the physical and social toxic waste that these corporations are generating. I haven’t even mentioned the adverse effects that corporate activity has had on our culture. Again, Douglass Rushkoff and Charles Perrow discuss some of these adverse effects. These corporations have a huge impact on our culture. Just have a look at who produces the vast majority of our entertainment, whether it be TV or movies or music. Who is it that determines what news we should be allowed to see or hear?

I don’t know where this is going to end. But in my own life, as I once became aware of the nature of the cult that I once belonged to and then left it, I feel that I’m gaining a deeper awareness of the nature of the corporations that I work for and consume from. I feel a need to increase myawareness of the corporation in general and I suspect that I’m going to leave "the corporation" also. My wife and I are already beginning to disconnect corporate processed foods from our diet and turn directly to the farmer and cut out the middle man. Fortunately, here in Oregon with its CSA and farmers’ markets, that’s becoming much easier to do. It would be interesting to explore cutting out the corporate middle-man standing between me and my doctor. But that’s another subject.

I believe the process of disconnecting from the “corporation” begins with understanding. I’m seeking to understand more and more about the psychology of the corporation and the people it affects. I don’t like what I’m finding.  I would like to continue sharing with you, my audience, my insights and/or at least insights by others as I come across them. The process of disconnecting also involves becoming aware of and understanding the deep penetration of corporations into our culture. In times past, the Church had penetrated deeply into Western culture and had a profound influence on how Westerners thought and lived. I am convinced that the modern corporation has usurped much of the Church’s former influence. Indeed, I suspect that the “corporation” has extended its influence into and usurped many other cultures around the planet, especially indigenous cultures.

So I am convinced that another vital step in understandingand disconnecting is to study and understand the penetration of corporate thinking into our own culture. Again, Rushkoff is the first person I have come across who has dealt with that cultural penetration in depth. I’m sure there are other authors, but I haven’t yet come across them. I suspect that Karl Marx and Frederick Engel had begun to understand how the corporate capitalism of the time was beginning to penetrate into Western culture.  How much does the “corporation” affect my own thinking? As I gain a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of that, I can more effectively disconnect.  I’d like to coin a phrase:  “Disconnect from the Corporate Grid”.

As we disconnect from the corporate grid, we are left in a cultural vacuum. I, and perhaps you, am then faced with a task of rebuilding my own personal culture. What belief systems or culture do you put in place of the removed culture? Again, that is an on-going task and isn’t done overnight. I am convinced that one should do this slowly and carefully. What music do I choose to listen to? What news sources do I choose to read and view? What shows and movies do I choose to watch? When I left the cult, I found myself in a religious vacuum. What do I believe? Where do I worship? What revelation do I listen to? It has taken years to fill that vacuum and that’s another story. I don’t think we should be in a hurry to fill the cultural vacuum that’s left when we begin to disconnect from toxic corporate culture. I think one has to patiently look for that which is honest and true. We look for that which promotes inclusiveness, connectedness and health. We look for that which leads away from all forms of violence and towards coexistence. We look for that which leads away from closed systems and destructiveness and toward that which is open and constructive. We look for that which leads away from sickness and toward health, away from that which is extreme and toward that which leads to balance. And especially, in these times, I believe we look for that which leads away from mindless consumption and toward sustainability.

In some ways, I feel that this task of searching for and rebuilding one’s own culture is what we should be doing anyway. It is a growth process that all healthy human beings have a right and responsibility inparticipating in. All true religion and culture is DIY. 

I welcome your comments, new information and sharings about your experiences with the topics mentioned above, even if you disagree with me. If I feel that one or more of these sharings are worthwhile, I may post some of them here.

OK, a qualification for the following opinion:

I glanced at the headlines about the Israeli invasion ofGaza and felt a flash of anger. I am definitely unhappy about this new Israeliattack on Gaza that started with the bombing a few days ago. Somehow theseIsraeli blockheads think they’re going to intimidate the Palestinians intoquiet submission. I guess they think that with their overwhelming and ferociousfirepower, they’re going to intimidate the Palestinians into giving up on Hamasand adopt a more conciliatory political leadership. Is this illusion based onhistorical precedent? So I make it clear that there is a clear emotional biasin the opinion that follows.

I looked up the definition of Zionism on Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism].You can read it for yourself. The avowed purposed of Zionism is to reclaim“Israel” as a homeland for Jews so they can escape historical persecution andoppression in other countries. So what happened? Jews began to move back to“Israel” after WWII. Eventually political and military confict resulted, inwhich the Jews, with the support of the West, overcame and established the“modern” state of Israel.

To me the result has been the following:  First of all, this Zionist state of Israelforced a great number of Palestinian people off of their ancestral homelands.It is my understanding that Israel is continuing to displace Palestinians offof their land. Furthermore, the Jews seem to have appropriated the larger shareof resources for themselves. Water is a prime example. I prefer to call this“creeping genocide”. The displaced people were forced into refugee camps inGaza, towns and villages in the West Bank and miserable refugee camps inLebanon and Jordan. Not only that, but the displaced people are forced to livetogether in extremely dense misery, deprived of essential land that the Israelihave taken from them. It is repeatedly stated that Gaza is the most denselypopulated place (prison) in the world.

The Israelis must keep these people in check and undercontrol. So they have closed the airport in Gaza (It’s not that there isn’t anairport in Gaza. There is one and it’s modern, staffed and ready to go. It’sjust that Israel won’t permit flights to land and take off there. Israel hasshut off the Palestinian coastline. Shipping is not free to come and go. Theother borders are closed, including the one with Egypt and Jordan. ThePalestinians are being kept in a giant jail. The Israelis have even built agiant wall, complete with guard towers all around the West Bank to keep thePalestinians out. They have criss-crossed the West Bank with high speed,heavily armed expressways to connect Jewish settlements with Israel,effectively cutting off these Palestinian enclaves from one another.

It’s the unspoken assumptions of Zionism that render themovement unsustainable. To me these unspoken assumptions go something likethis:

a)     The world at large hates and persecutes Jews. They need a safeplace to live.

b)     That “safe place” is the old “Biblical” land of Israel.

c)     Because Jews are historically persecuted, they are entitled todisplace the Palestinians who were living in this land before they returned. Anunspoken corollary of this assumption is that the Palestinians who lived herebefore the Jews returned aren’t entitled to live on this land, and that it isright and just to displace these people from their ancestral homeland.

d)     Behind this attitude are two more unspoken assumptions:  1. The Palestinians are somehow not as“human” as Jews. and 2. The Palestinians, somehow, are not trustworthy. Theymust be removed from the land and/or held in subjugation. This unspokenattitude is blatantly racist. It’s underpinnings, are in my opinion, morallyand spiritually invalid, and therefore, unsustainable in the long run. Thereare many statements about retaining the “Jewish nature” of the Israeli state.Those statements, in my opinion, are based in the above two assumptionssomehow. Maybe somebody can disabuse me of this notion. Or maybe they candemonstrate to me the subhuman nature of Palestinians and how they are notentitled to exactly the same rights as Jews. Or maybe, we’re back to the phrase“separate but equal” which was discredited by Martin Luther King four decadesago.

It appears to me that the Jewishpeople live in some kind of paranoid victim mentality. They keep remindingthemselves of the Holocaust, which horrendous as it was, happened over 60 yearsago. It’s time to get over it. But perhaps the people have some kind ofcollective PTSD. They could be excused for that. But it’s time to get over thatcollective PTSD. It’s time to put away those Holocaust memorials with the“eternal” flame burning and the grim silent ceremonies. What they’re doing nowis maintaining the collective trauma (as well as the West’s collective guiltfor letting it happen). Preserving the memories, paranoia and the raw emotions isdangerous.

What it has created is apparentlya nation that lives with a victim mentality. It’s a nation that has becomedangerous. It victimizes others. It answers violence with violence magnifiedmany times over. They drop cluster bombs on refugee camps. They fire TOWmissiles in crowded villages killing many innocent civilians. They taunt andbeat innocent youths just because of the color of their skin. They have createda dangerous nuclear arsenal that has caused a deep sense of insecure paranoiain its Arab neighbors.

Every time the IDF “defends”itself with these overwhelming attacks with superior weaponry and firepower onan impoverished, imprisoned and crowded people, they add to and create animplacable pool of hatred and hostile people who are sworn to destroy thisstate some day. And if these people don’t live to see its destruction, they’ll passthis implacable hatred and desire to destroy this state on to their childrenand grandchildren. These Israeli blockheads have created, are putting intoplace and sustaining the very forces that will eventually destroy the state ofIsrael.

It is an increasingly isolatedstate that is surrounded with hostile populations on all sides: to the North isHezbollah. To the east are displaced Palestinians and hostile Arabs. To thesouth is Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood whom I suspect are quite amenable tothe concept of the destruction of Israel. This hatred is nourished by theviolence the Israeli state wreaks upon the hostile populations that live nextto it, thus sustaining the forces that will ultimately destroy Israel.

It is only a matter of time beforenuclear warheads are pointed at this state. Israel cannot prevent this fromhappening. Neither can the rest of the world. The US will not be able toguarantee the safety of the Jewish state forever. Sooner or later the US (andthe West) will find the cost and risks to itself of guaranteeing the safety ofthe Jewish state unacceptable. These people who have been traumatized by theHolocaust run a real danger of bringing back down upon their heads anotherholocaust, every bit as violent as the one the Nazis brought upon them. Sooneror later, someone may decide to “push the button” and it won’t take too manynukes to nuke that state right out of existence.

In my opinion, these ZionistIsraelis need to let go of the Holocaust, horrendous as it was. It is necessaryto do this for their own survival. They need to close those Holocaustmemorials. They need to close the Masada complex and stop taking their youngpeople up there and inculcating into them this dangerous suicidal thinking. Ifthey don’t do so, they will attract unto themselves another Masada situation.

The Israeli victim mentality makesit easy to victimize others. The abused person frequently becomes an abuserhimself and thus passes on the cycle of violence. It’s time to break that cycleof violence. The Israelis need to start breaking that cycle of violenceimmediately. They should tear down that obscene “Separation Wall” that dividesthem from the Palestinians. They should open the borders they have closed. Theyshould begin to negotiate in earnest with the Palestinians, especially Hamas,their sworn enemy, about the creation of a single state solution where bothpeoples live side by side. Expropriated land should be returned. Education atIsraeli schools should be immediately offered to all Palestinians. The listgoes on and on.

In my mind, the violence needs tocease immediately. Violence takes all forms, from bombing and strafingbuildings, firing home made rockets into settlements, all the way down toforcing people off their land, bulldozing homes and even taunting youths atcheckpoints. The seeds of violence start with the feelings of separation andhate. These seeds are nourished with the remembrance of past wrongs, whether byNazis, or Israelis, or Hezbollah, or Hamas, or whomever. The two peoples also needto start immediately at ending the separation. All travel restrictions must belifted. The two peoples need to go to school together, live together in thesame cities, eat together and yes, even worship together. Jews should beallowed into the Mosque of the Dome to pray and Muslims should be allowed atthe Wailing Wall. Both groups should be invited to pray and worship in theChristian churches there also. In separation are the seeds of violence.

But of course, theserecommendations are so outlandish as to be regarded as downright Looney.“You’re crazy, you idiot!” Yeah, yeah, I can hear it. I’m not going to getinvolved in the back and forth of that exchange. Needless to say, the kind ofchanges I advocate above doesn’t have a bat’s chance in hell of happening. Theviolence will continue. More people will die, be injured, get traumatized. Thehatred and despair will continue. The open wounds will continue to be exploitedby  Iran and the West. Israel willcontinue to live in fear for its existence and the West will continue itshypocritical support for the continued violence.

But the ante is being slowly butsurely raised. Iran is covertly acquiring nuclear weapons. The West will not beable to prevent this without paying an unacceptable price for it. Sooner orlater, Iran will acquire the capability to nuke Israel out of existence. OtherArab states, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia are also moving towards their ownnuclear programs. Israel’s nuclear monopoly will be canceled. Then, in myopinion, things could get extremely dangerous. At the very least, the viabilityof the Jewish state would then be canceled. What sane person would choose tolive at Ground Zero of a Muslim atomic bomb target? People will start movingout.

I don’t want to let the other guysoff the hook either. It takes real blockheads to endanger their own people bylaunching rockets at Jewish settlers, thus provoking the inevitable wrath andviolent retaliation. It seems much more sensible to take a more nonviolentapproach, which would include calling the world’s sustained attention to theirplight. It would seem much more sensible to try to establish a trustrelationship with the other side and see if trade ties can get established. Itseems that equality is much more likely to be successfully won from a positionof economic and educational strength, rather than from a position of povertyand violent despair. After all, it appears that Nelson Mandela, even though hewas in prison, nonviolently acquired an overwhelming moral strength, which heparlayed into political strength. It appeared to me that the fall of apartheidbecame an inevitability precisely because apartheid was morally unsustainable.Is Jewish apartheid a special exception? Are the Jews entitled to a specialedition of Zionist apartheid because the Jews suffered from a Holocaust? Doespast violence justify the present or future violence? I think not.

The present course that theblockheads on both sides are on will not end well. I look inside myself andcannot summon up much sympathy for either side, but my lack of sympathy isespecially reserved for the Jewish side. They have the superior strength andresources. With that military upper hand comes a higher responsibility. I holdthe Jewish state more responsible for seeking and trying to ensure a lessviolent and more just outcome. I reserve the greater part of my scorn for theirself-serving and self-justifying whining about the Palestinian “terrorists”.How is bombing little children in their houses not a act of terror? It ismainly up to the Jewish state which has the military upper hand to ensure thatviolence is avoided and justice is done.

Maybe one or both sides willsurprise me. Wouldn’t that be nice? 

I was watching TV on that historic Tuesday night and watched the historic event in Grant Park in Chicago. I think there was a historic psychic event that night. I could feel its energy. And I read about the “energy bump” that others felt that night and wrote about. I could see it written in the faces of those who were there. I felt a little-felt emotion that night – it’s called joy. Like everyone else, I felt powerfully moved. My wife was on the couch in tears of joy. I felt a deep pulse of psychic energy of incredible power. It felt powerful at the time, but I didn’t know just how powerful it was. Apparently it was so powerful that it swept across the whole face of the planet. I read about it the next day. So I, like the others, luxuriated in that incredible energy pulse of pure power. It was like the whole planet elected Obama.

But in the aftermath of the whole thing, we have to be realistic. I am convinced that what I felt that night was the power of a CHOICE. What power of choice? Flash back to that Matrix movie where the evil robot is about to do away with the hero. But the machine needs to know what it’s like to be human. And so it asks the hero, “Why do you oppose me? You know I can destroy you!”  And back comes that immortal, powerful reply, “Because I CHOOSE to!” To be human is be a Divine participant, and the power of being Divine, to be a God, is the power to CHOOSE! CHOICE is the power to create. CHOICE is the power of immortal beings. And that is what I felt on Tuesday night. The people made a choice. The choice they made was a rejection of fear and authoritarianism and a choice FOR hope, democracy and inclusiveness.

But I think we need to be realistic as well, as the euphoric emotions dissipate. OK, the good guys won and we’re all filing out of the theatre. The only thing that has changed is our choice. This is not a small thing, but that’s all that has changed. The nation is still descending into a very deep and painful recession. When FDR was elected back in 1932, the nation had already had 2 1/2 years of depression. The nation had already hit bottom. Obama has been elected just after the stock market crash. We've got a long ways to go. We need to be realistic about that.

This recession is necessary. To paraphrase Satyajit Das this recession is not a symptom. It is the cure.

http://washingtonindependent.com/11620/de-leveraging-%e2%80%93-fairy-tale-endings, 

 The credit bubble has to “de-leverage”. In a nutshell, we have to get back to living within our means. In the words of that famous Smith Barney commercial featuring John Houseman, “We have to get back to making money the old fashioned way. We’ve got to EARN it!” 

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFpPovznSG8 

The country (and the planet) has to go down for a while. The ride will be rough, make no mistake. When people become miserable, there’s going to be a lot of finger pointing and anger. The disappointed people may begin to blame their newly elected leader for his failure to avert the recession and there will be a temptation to go back to the fear, anger and mud slinging. We must guard against that. I do not expect Obama to rescue us from the consequences of previous immoderate behavior. In a way, we all share a bit of responsibility for what is happening to us now. All I expect of our leaders is that they always tell us the truth, that they be up front with us and treat us like adults. This is not something that we got from Bush.

I’m ready to do my share to help dig us out of the hole we have dug for ourselves. Blaming others for it will not be helpful. What I expect is that our new leaders will have the courage to tell us accurately what the picture is, how we have chosen to deal with it, and how I and all of us can help to deal with it. We’re not kids, we’re adults. Treat us like adults and we’ll act like adults.

We have other holes to start digging out of also, besides the credit bubble and recession hole. We’ve got an energy hole to dig out of. Oil is running out and we need to switch over. We have a climate change hole to dig out of and we need to switch to a carbon neutral economy. We have an entitlements hole to dig out of, where retiring Boomers are going to put an incredible financial strain on the system. We have a healthcare hole to dig out of. There are incredible challenges ahead of us and the way will be difficult. “The party is over.” In order to get through this, we’re going to need some of the following attributes: 

a)      “Truthiness” – the old word was called honesty. We need courageous leaders who are willing to call a spade a spade, who are willing to look beyond their re-election and political expediency to engage in real leadership – empowering people to believe in and help themselves. To solve difficult problems, we’re going to have to have an accurate assessment of the situation and a realistic set of methods to tackle the problems.

b)      Inclusion – Blaming others isn’t going to work here. This is not going to be helpful. These are big problems and we’re going to need everybody’s help. Those who want to criticize and do nothing to help are part of the problem, not the solution. Hear that, Rush Limbaugh? We’re going to need the help of whites, blacks, Asians, Native Americans, Europeans, Russians, Chinese people, Africans, gay people, straight people, men, women, young people and old people, rich people, poor people, Christian, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, Wiccans and everyone else whom I haven’t mentioned. The problems we face are huge and species-wide in scope. To mention another cliché, “No man is an island.”

c)      Communication – We’re going to need a free unfettered flow of information between the peoples of the world, between  the leaders and the governed. This is no time for secrecy. Secrecy is destructive and demeaning. There is less and less meaning for that. The world “enemy” is going to become more and more of a luxury word. Our enemy is fear and the threat of extinction.

I just want to add a personal note. Lately I have become quite generation conscious, as a result of reading the book, The Fourth Turning by Strauss and Howe. I recommend it. It’s a good read. I belong to the Boomer generation, the Baby Boom generation born after WWII. Our parents were part of the Silent Generation who came of age during the turmoil of the Depression and WWII. Our children are the “Gen-X’rs”, the Generation “X” who were born and came of age during the turbulent unraveling years of the late 70’s, 80’s and early 90’s. I call them the “Masters of the Universe” generation. I have always somewhat regarded them as a wild generation with their potty humor and what appears to me to be a blatant disregard for established sexual mores. But I’m also finding out that they don’t carry around the baggage that we Boomers are saddled with. The “X-rs” really are way more color blind than we Boomers. It makes little difference to them whether a person is white, black, Asian, Hispanic, gay, straight, male or female. We Boomers invented the Culture Wars and the X’rs have no use for it. What a refreshing change!

We Boomers are getting old. Right now I work for a dying company. My career feels like it’s in an autumn phase, and has felt that way for years now. I’ve felt like my creativity is slowly being choked off by the corporate immune system. I’ve had it – I’m fed up with it. I’ve had enough. I think I’ve discovered a new concept of living for “old people” – it’s called idealism. That is something that is supposed to be the domain of the young. Well, to hell with that idea. The young don’t have a corner on that market. I think we older people are entitled to be idealistic also, although maybe a more realistic brand that we might have had back in the ‘60’s. I look at some of those old songs and movies and frankly, I’m embarrassed at how naïve we were.

Lately a number of us, including a couple of neighbors, helped me raise an anemometer tower on the family ranch. This is the first step toward putting up wind turbines. We were all voting with our time, our money and literally with our bodies on a different future, a sustainable future. We were betting on a better outcome, not “getting ready for the end.” I think this is where I want to put the rest of my life and my life’s energy – betting on a better outcome. I want to change my career to a “spring” phase. Instead of buying the upscale cemetery plot and purchasing a better coffin than my peers, I’d rather be planting seed in the greenhouse while it’s still snowing outside, in anticipation of the return of the warm sunshine, the rain and the green grass. This choice of life energy better fits my value system. Instead of sitting inside my house, watching TV and waiting for the End to come, I’d rather collapse underneath a clear blue sky sitting next to the base of one of my wind turbine towers, looking up at my legacy to my family and my children.

Personally, I’d like to see all of us betting on a better outcome. Let’s read those horrible books on the Limits to Growth, climate change and overpopulation, End of Oil, etc. and absorb all the sobering information. Not so we can become pessimistic and wait for the End to come. But so we can get real, roll up our sleeves and start changing things. Mankind’s Big Challenge is to turn the corner – from our long adolescence into becoming adults. We must turn the corner from unlimited growth into sustainability – where we come into equilibrium with our planet and the environment. Not a brain dead equilibrium, but a dynamic equilibrium where creativity and change thrives. We must turn the corner from our passionate youth where war, hatred and destruction was the rule. It’s time to put away those adolescent passions and become mature adults – calm acceptance of the facts. Not resignation, but a calm and clear choice to live with what is and inject into it our unique mix of energy, creativity and optimism that is our birthright as Divine Beings. Before we humans came along, Nature had been in equilibrium, for the most part, and I don’t think any of us would call Nature boring.  That’s where I believe I want to pour my remaining life energy – into Turning the Corner into sustainability.

Words are cheap. Will my actions match the words?

For the past 35 years I have made my living in the high technology sector. I started out as an electronic technician, got a degree in engineering and became a more or less successful electronic engineer. I have worked in RF synthesizer technology for the last few years and now hold a patent in that field. So I have credentials and feel entitled to talk about technology.

OK, let me recount a few recent events. First of all, I had an  Erickson cell phone. It had a camera in it and was fairly typical middle level cell phone. After only 1 year of usage, all of a sudden the display went awry and it became unusable. Everything else was functional, but the display broke. AT&T Wireless wouldn’t do a thing for us. So, in disgust, I bought their cheapest model, a $45 Nokia as a replacement. That’s the phone they use for their throw-away pre-paid cell phone cards you see in the grocery and drugstores. I figured that if the cell phone was going to break down again, get  the cheapest one I could and throw it away when it breaks. We bought a CanonPowershot 610 digital camera. After only 1 ½ years of usage, the camera suddenly and promptly died. It too, became unusable. On the web we found out that this is very common with this particular model of camera. $300 went down the hole, instantaneously and irretrievably. We had to go out and buy a newcamera – another Powershot 720, BTW. My 2 year old wireless NIC suddenly died without explanation one day. I bought a USB replacement for $45. Booting up with that NIC is always an adventure. You don’t know whether it’s going to connect to the Internet successfully or not.

Ok, the saga continues. I recently installed a recording anemometer at the ranch to measure wind resources. I paid over $1500 total fora wireless “iPack”, a communications module that would E-mail me the day’s wind readings remotely. I shelled out another bundle of money to purchase wireless service from Verizon. I thought that the wireless communication link was a little tenuous when I tried starting it up. I had to get the “magic incantations” between the phone, Verizon and my ISP just right. There was a add-in sheet that came with the iPack with the latest “incantations”. My first attempts at communication failed. I read and reread and reread the instructions, fiddled with the settings and eventually got the communicationsto work, here in Hillsboro. For a month, the iPack called in faithfully every day at the appointed hour. Then I made a big mistake. I took it out to Montanaa nd installed in it the field. I first had trouble with the Verizon service in Billings, but eventually it worked. Then I had more heartburn at the ranch site. Again, I got it to “call home” successfully. “That’s great!”, I thought and locked up the box and went back home. The iPack (I named it “Rover”, after the two Mars Rovers, because that’s what it feels like.)  failed to call home the first day. Then it called home successfully the 2^nd day and I was elated. But it has failed to call home ever since. Thanks to some kindly and enthusiastic neighbors nearby, Ihave “boots on the ground” who will tend to this anemometer logger the old fashioned way – walk up there, open the box and check on it manually. In the meantime, I wasted a bunch of time and a lot of money on some totally inadequate technology that is too complicated to understand or troubleshoot adequately and is completely, utterly and totally too unreliable to be useful.When I contact Verizon or my ISP, Fibersphere, all they do, of course, is to pass the buck. “It ain’t our fault. Must be the other guy’s fault!” This is totally unhelpful.

OK, on with the rant. Our entertainment center consists of a Sony TV, a Sony stereo, a Sony DVD player (detect a pattern here?) and a Dish Network satellite receiver. By today’s standards, this is a rather simple and antiquated entertainment center installation. Rather than mess with 5+ remotes,I bought a single combination remote and programmed it to talk to all 5 devices. Everything’s peachy except my wife. The interface on the remote is entirely non-intuitive and it drives her nuts. She can barely turn the TV set on, much less tune to a TV channel and/or get the DVD to play a movie. My son-in-law was even worse. He needed help just to turn the TV set on to watch a baseball game. They don’t understand how the remote works, nor how all the pieces are interconnected. They don’t understand this technology nor how to reliably operate it.

OK, I’m going to finish the first part of this rant with an example from work. The company where I work, which shall remain nameless, at least on this web site, is engaged in manufacturing leading edge technological equipment. This has been their forte and what they built their reputation on. And in times past, this company was very successful at it and became quite wealthy.

OK, I’m working on a synthesizer. This device is , as most technological devices are, an intimate combination of hardware (HW) and software (SW). The HW is useless without the SW and the SW makes no sense w/o the HW. OK, so I’m debugging some tuning algorithms which are timing critical.This means that a SW command is sent to the HW and then the SW has to wait for the HW to respond in the expected manner before going on to the next step. In order for this problem to be debugged most efficiently, I as the HW engineer, wanted to revise the SW myself instead of waiting for a SW engineer to get around to doing it. To make a long story short, all I want to do is to change a few lines of code and a few timing variables to adjust the timing and interactively check out the results on the HW, on a the surface quite a simple task. 

Here’s where the trouble began. First of all, the SW that “writes the code” had to be installed on my computer. This process took over 3hours and consumed most of the morning. I suspect that nothing short of about 1 gigabyte of code was installed on my hard drive. It took a veteran SW guy scratching his head to get it installed. At one point he had to call the company expert for help. Finally after taking up the whole morning and installing a god-awful amount of code on my hard drive, we finally got the whole thing working temporarily. I ran my tests and changed the SW. This took about 35 minutes. I pushed the compile button to generate the new code. And Crash! Something went awry and now the compiler doesn’t work any more. I get a series of extremely cryptic error messages that I don’t understand in the least and I’m dead in the water, again.

Is this enough? Or should I mention the brand new GPS receiver that sometimes works and sometimes crashes? It’s brand new, out of the box. Sometimes it boots up just fine and crashes after a few minutes. I have to take the batteries out to get the thing to reboot properly. If I’m lucky, the device will work fine for hours at a time. Other times, I have to go through the battery removal fire drill in order to get it working properly again. Doyou think the Garmin people would be helpful? Or should I talk about the Windows Vista operating system installed on my notebook computer. I’m convinced that the OS was invented in hell. Sometimes the PC boots up, other times it doesn’t boot up at all. Sometimes it will shut off normally, other times I have to take it down with the hard shut-off key. And when it’s just sitting there,the hard drive is busy all the time. It’s not connected to the Internet, no programs are running and I’m not doing anything on it. Yet the hard drive runs constantly. What is it doing? It reminds me of those old America Online installations. My PC just started up and began to run stuff all by itself spontaneously. The final straw happens when I request my PC to do stuff for me and it just refuses to respond. It’s off doing stuff all by itself, and somebody somewhere has decided in their infinite wisdom that whatever the PC has been told to do by some other program is far more important than what the owner wants to do. Who in the hell is controlling my PC?!  Me or some SW weenie separated from my PC in the space-time continuum?

OK, by now you are getting my point. It is this: technology is overextended. It has outgrown its usefulness to society. It is in danger of collapse. I am reading a book by Joseph Tainter called The Collapse of Complex Societies. He’s an archeologist, so he as studied ancient cultures to determine why they collapsed. He has put forth a theory that has caught my imagination:  In the early stages of aculture or civilization, everything is in a primitive state. You go to the creek to get your water. Along comes technology and adds some complexity to the process. The benefits for a small amount of added technology results in a big payoff. You use a bucket to haul the water out. You add a little more technology and again get a big payoff. You put in a cistern so you don’t have to make repeated trips to the creek. You add some more technology and get another payoff, though perhaps not quite as big. You add chemicals to disinfect the water and don’t catch disease any more. Well, if a little technology is agood thing, then let’s add a lot of technology. So now you add an electric pump to extract the water from the creek automatically when the cistern levels drop.You add another pump and an intricate piping system to get the water to your house so that all you have to do is turn the tap to get fresh safe water. Now you add automated pumps to pump in the disinfectant chemicals automatically. You add an intricate computer system to monitor the levels of the chemicals, the water levels in the creek, the pH of the raw water and exiting water. Nowyou need a mini-lab to monitor the chlorine and turbidity levels. You have to collect samples and send them off a high-tech lab in some other corner of the state to monitor other pollutants that have been introduced into the water by high technology factories and agriculture upstream. Now you’ve got to send people to school to get certified in the use of this mini-lab and water treatment. And, oh, BTW, you might have to get up in the middle of a rainy wintry night to go out and dig a deep muddy hole in the dark to repair a burst water line that got broken by a growing tree root. You are getting the picture now. We’re adding a lot of technology, most of which seems necessary, but not getting much added benefit. In fact, the opposite is beginning to happen. As technology is being added, it’s costing more and more to install and maintain it. And if it isn’t purchased and maintained, your water supply is threatened. I haven’t even mentioned the computerized wireless links that have been installed on the pumps so that they can be automatically controlled by high-tech wireless links from come central command post, staffed by professionally educated technicians who have college degrees specific to just this discipline. Now it should be plain to see that you have lost direct control over your water system.

Oh crap! Down came a tree in the middle of the night on to the power line which cuts off the power to the water treatment plant. No electricity. Everything comes to a screeching halt. No power! No water! Experts are rolled out of bed in the middle of the night. The system is compromised. You have to boil your water for the next week. No toilet flushing! What do you do now when nature calls? Your whole life has been disrupted by a failure in the intricate chain of technology. You have lost direct control of it. It’s costs have escalated to the point where you can barely pay for it. Its functioning is more easily disrupted.  There is a long intricate chain of functional parts, every one of which has to function flawlessly in order for the whole system to operate. If you understood all the individual pieces in the chain of water treatment chain that have to operate flawlessly, including processes that happen in the brains of the water treatment professionals, you would be truly frightened and amazed that you get any fresh water at all. Pumps with all kinds of intricate parts manufactured in diverse areas of the country. Each of these parts have to work flawlessly. Chemicals and lab equipment, composed of thousands and thousands of parts, each of which was manufactured in a different area of space-time, each of which must operate flawlessly. This doesn’t take into account the computer systems and the wireless devices and intricate software that operate the whole thing. It’s like a house of cards waiting to fall. And this entire super complicated intricate system of technology exists for one simple purpose – to take water out of the creek, make it potable and deliver it to you for your use.

OK, I have at least 3 points to make:  First of all, this technology “bubble” is unsustainable. Our technology “superstructure” is composed of a series-strung pieces, sort of like the old fashioned series string Christmas tree lights, each of which must work flawlessly for the whole entity to function correctly. If one bulb burns out, it’s hard enough to find the bulb, in a 50 bulb string. But imagine that 2 bulbs are burned out. In my water treatment analogy, there are literally thousands of little and big pieces that must work flawlessly, from the tiny little brushes in the pumps, to the IC’s in the wireless link, to the software, to the technicians, to the government regulatory agencies, to the power company, etc.  If any of these little pieces should become defective, or be disrupted by a natural disaster, the whole thing comes crashing down. The creek will flood one winter and wash the intakes out. The tree will fall across the power lines and cut off the power. The diffusion process in one of the IC’s in the wireless link continues and causes a transistor to go bad and the IC fails. The water control software encounters a bug, which was never caught because the software was hurried to market. The only person who knows how to diagnose and fix the bug is the programmer himself who lives in India and has moved on to another company or was killed in the latest Christian-Hindu riot. The water quality technician who currently works in the Water Department is a slacker and begins ignoring a very routine quality check in the water plant checklist because it’s such a pain in the rear to check it and it is always OK.  

And the system is used to only one of these links breakingat a time. Fix the power line broken by the falling tree and everything is peachy again because all the other links are OK. But what happens if another link breaks while the first one is broken. Now we have redundant failures. Now the task becomes even harder because after 1 link if fixed, the system still doesn’t work. Now the other link has to be found and fixed. What if it isn’t obvious which links are broken? It’s easy to diagnose the fallen tree. How easy is it to diagnose the slacker water technician? Is it the RF link that’s broken, or is it the SW in the water control software, or is a pump control broken? Or is the problem caused by an unknown interaction between two perfectly "good" links in the chain that work just fine by themselves. You get the picture. If more than one link goes down, the task gets 4 times as hard to fix. Pretty soon an inordinate amount of resources are being poured into maintaining and repairing the defective technology. The monetary benefits of maintaining the overextended technology outweigh the monetary benefits of the technology itself. The technology begins to collapse and falls by the wayside.  Admittedly, this is alittle simplistic, but I’m keeping it simple to illustrate a point.

The second point I wish to make is related to the first one.The technology is supported and maintained by a series of  connected technological links, many of which are interconnected to other technologies in society. All the technological links are interrelated in an extremely complex fashion that I am pretty sure no single person or entity understands. What i snecessary is that each link in the chain maintain itself to keep the whole thing operating. A failure in an “unrelated” field might cause the failure of the link in question. A drunk driving down the road veers off the road and hits a cell phone tower. Down goes the wireless water link. Down goes a tree in Ohio. Off go the lights in New York City. If one part of the intricately interrelated structure begins to consistently malfunction, it will bring down the whole system. Just like the stock market bubble that just crashed recently, the technology bubble could collapse like this also. I can’t come up with an immediate scenario for right now, but I believe the likelihood of its happening is significant.

Joseph Tainter paints the picture of relatively complex ancient societies, such as the Romans, which had intricate interlocked systems of transportation, water supply, defense and finance, was living beyond its means. The financial system began to fail because it couldn’t get enough money from the provinces. This began to disrupt the defense system which needed a copious supply of money to continue running. This in turn caused failures of the transportation system by repeated raids by barbarian marauders. This, in turn, disrupted commerce which generated the necessary income to maintain the defenses. The breakdown began to become self regenerating (positive feedback) which hastened the collapse of the entire system.

The other thing to keep in mind is that if there is no redundancy built in, then the whole thing will tend to collapse, all the way back down to a primitive state, close to zero. This is what happened to societyin Easter Island after their culture had devastated the local environment.

As a matter of fact, I believe this collapse (or at least leveling off) has already begun. Microsoft, with great fanfare, about 3? years ago, introduced their “killer” new operating system, Vista. Bill Gates characterized this OS as the “lifeblood” of Microsoft. Needless to say, it introduced few new needed features that users just had to have. But it did introduce a new much higher level of complexity. Users now needed bigger computers with huge RAM and ROM just to maintain the OS. On top of that, boot-up times are much longer and there is a whole new set of security problems that has to be plugged, leak by leak. The company I work at has not adopted Vista, but has opted to stay with the “bad old” OS, Windows XP. They don’t have to shell out vast sums of money to install the new OS; XP does almost everything Vista does; most of the bugs have been worked out; the security issues have been worked out, etc. Who wants to pay a huge pile of money for a new set of  problems that pretty much does little more than the old OS did?

Time is drawing short and so I can’t expand on this topic like I want to. I have some recommendations, though.

1. Make the technology easy to use. Don’t add any more features. Just make the ones that are there easy to use and intuitive, especially for non-technical people. Technology should be just as easy to use and intuitive as getting into your car, turning the key and driving it down the road. More software writers should devote their time to simplifying the user interface.

I think that Apple has recognized this problem and is doing something about it. This appears to be the main thrust of their commercials these days. Macs are touted to be more intuitive and easier to use than their PC counterparts, as well as more reliable. The campaign must be effective because it has caused Bill Gates to reply with his own set of ads touting the “universality” of the PC (and the Windows OS, by association.)

I believe there is much money to be made by those people who can give technology a “human” face and make it much easier to use, as well as more reliable.

1. “Do more with less”. There was a time when memory was very expensive. Writing software then was an art. Writers programmed at the text level. A single elegantly written line of code did a lot of stuff. There was little programming infrastructure that went along with the code. It occupied little space in ROM, used minimal amounts of RAM and executed quickly. Nowadays, with memory so cheap, a gigantic software infrastructure has evolved and exists mostly for its own sake, not for the job it does. In Labview, we have an intricate system of boxes and lines and frames and icons to implement a simple For..Next loop. Many times I could have written 3 or 4 lines of code that does the same job as entire screen of “visual” code.

This complexity maxim applies to hardware also. I will become the prophet of “do more with less”, even in hardware. Let’s conserve on expensive energy-absorbing hardware. Let’s learn to build elegantly “simple” hardware that is cleverly designed to do a lot with little. The old radio sets had very few active devices in them – tubes. Theyconsumed a lot of energy and were expensive. Besides they were unreliable. Nowadays, most radios have millions upon millions of active devices in them, ifyou count each transistor to be an active device. They don’t consume much energy either. That may sound like a good thing at first. But consider that if just a few of those millions of active devices fail, the whole thing fails. Theo ld radio sets may not have done as much as the new ones do, but they did most of what the new ones do and were much more reliable. Those old radios lasted for years (with tube changes.) Can you say that about your average iPhone?

I predict that the new winners in the technology field are going to be those people who do more with less. Their SW and HW will simply do more with less. Their reliability will be much higher. It will take longer to bring them to market because it takes time to thoroughly debug HW and SW, but they will remain longer and people will trust them more. The good SW and HW engineers will be perfecting the art of deceptively simple SW and HW which is reliable.

1. Make systems redundant and/or adaptive. They must not be series-wired any more. They must be redundant. If some part of memory fails, or a sensor fails, or a communication path fails, etc., the system must not crash, but keep running, even at a reduced capacity. They must be able to sense the failures and rig up some kind of jury-rigging to keep the system functional.

For example, in WWII, when a ship was hit with a bomb or enemy shell, it didn’t immediately kill the ship. Since everything was not interconnected, many systems could still keep functioning. A bomb might take out the forward turret, but the backup forward turret and the aft turrets were still functioning and could keep heaving shells at the enemy. Just because a turret went down doesn’t mean that the anti-aircraft guns should go down. They kept firing also. The engine room may have survived and the ship still maintained steerage and headway. What’s more, the ships were armored and could take a lot of abuse before they sustained fatal damage. Can we say the same about our computers? Can we lay a cell phone on a hot automobile dash all day long in the summer and come out after work and expect it to work? Could we reach into a trunk where a laptop has sit all night long in sub-zero cold, press the start button and expect it to boot up? If you were living in a remote town in Alaska, which would you rather have? A 2008 SUV with half a dozen microprocessors and God knows how much software just running the spark plugs or a 1978 pickup truck with manual transmission and non-computerized ignition that you can fix yourself?

In conclusion, because I’ve run out of time: Maybe I’m just an old guy and can’t keep up any more. But I believe we are in a technology “bubble”, much like we were in a credit bubble. The present level of complexity in technology, much like the complex financial instruments during the credit bubble, is unsustainable. Technology is consuming too many resources, whether it is money, energy, time or people. Increased levels of complexity are not paying off like they used to. There’s going to be a revamping of technology; call it a “consolidation”, if you wish. People are going to buy fewer and fewer new “gadgets” just because they’re new gadgets. The public is finding that these new gadgets are increasingly expensive and they’re not doing vital stuff that is worth the added expense. Furthermore, the public is finding out that these new gadgets are increasingly unreliable. They don’t know whether they’re going to break 2 years from now or tomorrow. Many products, if not all of them, have been hurried to market without the proper debugging of the HW and SW. The consumer is becoming the “beta” test site, only they are paying full price, like it’s a finished product. They’re going to get tired of this. Like the Marine Corps, the public is going to pull back and start looking for “a few good products”. Again, maybe I’m just becoming a senile old guy.

Coming Attraction!  A blog entry on the cyclical nature of history. Unless President Obama pulls off a miracle, I think we're headed for a global depression or at least a severe prolonged recession. It's truly amazing how much the last 18 years resemble the 1920's in the U.S.! Don't worry, what you see going on today has happened before! Things are crashing down down today almost exactly the same way they did in the 1929 and the 30's. Get set for a ROUGH ride! More later.