NOTES ON PRIVILEGE

there is something in social/political/economic systems that enshrines privilege. this quality of inequity has various roots in surviving custom and by conscious design and is ubiquitous. why is that? is it inherent in the human animal and therefore inevitable? i don’t know the answer. i have tried to observe not only humans but also other animals of our planet, without conclusive results, but tentatively i would have to say that i think such a condition is most likely evolutionarily designed, that it is rooted in the individual and species’ common urge to survive and procreate.

ideas, like individuals, also compete. one idea that seems to run against the current is the idea of limiting ideas that compete with present mores. much effort is given to thwarting new thought by those who administer and profit from present assumptions and practices. this seemingly contrary behavior may endure because it promotes stability at the expense of adaptability, that change is in itself dangerous and needs to be controlled for the safety of the species. or it might endure simply because some are selfish and concerned more with their own survival, comfort and pleasure than their society in total. in my experience i would have to say the latter reason is supported by more evidence, though even if true it may have ineluctably produced increased fitness.

whether anything can be done to effectively make cooperation, more than competition, a fundamental first principle in the minds of the peoples of earth i am not sure, though i do think that, to the degree humans have survived to dominate the planet, that domination is not largely the result of competition, unbridled or otherwise, but owes its success much more to the continuing (and growing) influence of cooperation.

YES, EVOLUTION HAS AN ARROW

when defending egregious behavior among the humans, many resort to the claim that it is only human nature that men (especially men) do this or that, (like making war and other intimidation displays) as though somehow so-called human nature is not evolving continually like every other phenomenon in the universe, that using the past to justify the abysmal present is normal and correct.

it is not. it would be better for individuals, society and the prospects of both if we would try to consult the near future, with its obvious known challenges, in order to assess what behavior is likely to be the most useful, or at least the least harmful, in the present moment.

HALF A TWO-BIT PHILOSOPHY

here is one bit of two-bit philosophy for you:

i have watched over the years some people who are hypercritical of others, even and maybe especially their so-called friends. it strikes me that underlying this depressing behavior it is quite likely they are primarily and mainly critical of themselves.

these opinions of others are almost always framed around actions and motivations, and condemnation is justification for not liking or respecting them.

it took me many years to understand that it is quite possible to love people while not loving all the things they do.

i think that might be the same for oneself. the two cases are probably more inextricably linked than the hypercritical among us understand.

anyway, it's worth a try.

HEARING MR KAVANAUGH

hearing mr kavanaugh testify yesterday afternoon was a revelation. he sounded angry, childish, petulant, beligerent, uncomposed, unthoughtful, and worst of all, entitled. i suspect that is what he is.

those qualities may resonate with mr trump and people like him — including much of the republican old guard, who are themselves largely privileged men used to their eminence, but they are not going to resonate with the majority of americans because those are not the qualities america needs in its elected official representatives of the people, for starters, and they are certainly not the qualities needed to serve those same people on the supreme court, which is the ultimate judicial arbiter and safeguarder of american rights, both collective and individual.

HUMILITY NOW

mr pinker, in his poorly titled Enlightenment Now, has based his optimism on some dubious assumptions, the principal one being that mankind and the earth will both be well-served by humans becoming about ninety percent urban and that is where we are heading.

in this work there are a number of unsupported declarative sentences about the future (example: the sun will expand in a billion years). this book is better (but not unarguably better) at portraying the past, but in conceiving of the earth and humanity as a single economic system (though he is not an economist) and assuming the future is inevitable, he has polluted the entire roster of conclusions and remedies that might have made a book of this scope useful. real solutions lie elsewhere:
reducing the production of useless things to satisfy aggrandizing humans' consumption of both energy and material; reducing runaway expectation in favor of more thoughtful lives, more peaceful lives; reducing on a personal level one's own carbon footprint (something you can do alone without the need of meetings and endless talk). 

the problems are not technological. humans are great at technology. when humans fail, the failure is ultimately one of intent, of understanding what life is; the errors are philosophical and the remedies can be found in scientific enquiry.

nuclear powerplants cannot fix this planet. everyone living in cities, removed from the natural world, cannot secure this planet or its people a future, at least not a future free of catastrophe. we should not blithely assume that large-scale problems will abate spontaneously, that markets somehow have a magic quality of super-intelligence. we need a different kind of attitude, a different more inquisitive, more open and patient response to our self-created problems. we need, not to tell the earth what we will do, more to ask the earth what we should do. and that inquiry, that is the real role of science, which predates and postdates the enlightenment with its emphasis on humanism. unless humanism is widened to include all life — something that was not done during the enlightenment and is not yet done today — it is itself just another form of blindness. 

the most satisfying part of this book is the section on science. the least satisfying part is the section on the environment. mr. pinker wants us to feel good about doing nothing, or doing the wrong things because they are generated spontaneously without informed guidance. if one really internalizes the assumptions of Enlightenment Now — that life on earth is all about humans — we are dooming all life here to oblivion. you could argue that one little nuclear picnic or a fatally polluted planet in the cosmos is a trifle of no importance on the grand scale of events, but i don't think that will comfort many in their quest for reasons to remain optimistic in the face of existential threats.

LITTLE THINGS AND BIG THINGS

this morning i am smiling because it has just occurred to me that i can put some gel insoles in my slippers, slippers i wear around the cabin during the morning and evening — which cabin has a cement floor and may not be the best for my ageing knees. 

writing at my desk, making notes wherever i am during the day, i spend time trying to wrestle the big ideas to the ground (though i don't waste much time on the questions that can never be answered) and i consider it worthy of my time, but the things i do that cheer me in the moment are more the little things — the things that improve and perfect my personal life. that is the best antidote i have found for the general malaise of our changing times. that is the balance i need in order to confront the big ones, which so often seem, sadly, to be retrograde.

I'M ALRIGHT, JACK — NOT GOOD ENOUGH

there was a time when private capital was the fastest way forward at the scale of nations (though one can point to some very fast, if brutal, forward leaps made in the early twentieth century by communism) but at the moment the effects of capitalism on societies at large represent a retarding force for progress. the system was never meant to produce equality — it is founded on the principle of inequality, which is the gravity in the system that makes things move — and the most pressing need now all around the world is a more egalitarian order, one that gives equal access and equal justice to all its members and produces less useless stuff and less movement of same.

for that, a whole new system of governance, production and distribution will have to be cobbled together from the remains of a shredded world order that has produced or at least not abated endless divisions, rivalries and hatred, and failed utterly in what should be the prime goal and duty of every nation and all nations collectively — égalité.

the costs of division are unmeasurably high; the costs of nations fighting nations both in trade and war, corporations fighting corporations, religions fighting religions, ethnicities fighting ethnicities, are killing the future.

we have an opportunity to free mankind from most tedious work, to free us from most disease, ignorance, prejudice, to free us from the past that clings to us so destructively, the past that retards the natural evolution to new and better paradigms and leaves us stuck on a path to destruction.

the old order is dying. we can try just endlessly fixing it but i am skeptical. the people in positions to do so are the very same people who have profited from the old system and few are willing to give up even a small modicum of privilege that all should have a better and more sustainable life, even if it means wiping out all of mankind in the bargain, themselves included. and you cannot reason with people who do not decide what to do based on objective reason or what is best for the planet.

a new order may emerge before the final calamity makes it all inutile. we can hope. it beats despair.

ONE SIGNAL BENEATH THE NOISE

can we cut to the chase here? at the base of a pile of problems deep enough to sink the planet is the inability of humans to identify with a group containing all humans, even all animals, all living things, all things both living and non-living in the cosmos.

there was a time (being a darwinian enforces this view upon me) when identity of origin, tribe, nation, religion, caste, ethnicity, politics, school ties and country clubs must somehow have aided our survival. otherwise, why have it?

but what i have seen in my time with my eyes is that all these divisions are contrary to natural sense and honest science. there is only one story called 'life' (thank you, molecular geneticists), there is only one animal called 'human' (thank you ethnologists). acceptance of others on equal terms with ourselves is the obvious conclusion of a less narrow understanding of life and in an increasingly populous and energetic world it is becoming obvious that these past divisions that cling to so many will only bring ruin on us all.

it's time to be honest. it's time to be fair. it's time for justice, truly egalitarian justice, to become the guiding principle of all human organization. 

a friend once exclaimed to me, 'i'm so proud of my grandchildren!' my automatic response was, 'i'm proud of everyone's grandchildren.'

STORIES

everything is too simple. stories. they all want to have bad guys and good guys. it's not really like that. we all do some bad things and some good things. sometimes we don't know which is which. not that we are confused. we just really don't know. we don't think we are confused. but we are. we really get it wrong. our good things are bad. or our bad things are good.

i want to read stories like that. i'm sick of simple bullshit. if we have to write bullshit, at least we could make it subtle. complicated. surprising. i want to read stories where you and the characters aren't so damn sure who is right and who is wrong. and when.

WHY I DON'T LIKE THE PIPELINE

the pipeline debate in british columbia and canada fails to account for what exactly this pipeline promotes — the use of tar sands oil. proponents of the pipeline say that if we don't use tar sands oil it will just be replaced by oil from saudi arabia. i wish that were true. saudi arabian oil, while we still need some during this transition period, is much cleaner, cheaper and safer to extract, refine and ship. the worst oil in the world from a pollution perspective, in both production and shipping, is tar sands oil from alberta. unfortunately, it will actually be replaced if it can be stopped, by fracking shale oil in the US, which is nearly, though not quite, as harmful.

why does the federal government in canada insist that this is good for canada and the canadian people? by any rational yardstick this is not in canada's interest. most of the ownership is american, norwegian, chinese and other. canadian ownership is actually minor. even the pipelines are not candian owned. the only thing remotely canadian about it from the getgo has been its accidental location on the earth and its labor force. well, we need massive amounts of labor right now to help us transition to wind and solar energy. this is the biggest growth industry in the world and every dollar wasted on obsolete energy production could be redirected toward that end. that might not only save alberta, and canada, it might even save the planet we ignorant humans cling to.

BIAS

it is sometimes difficult to see our own blindness. there is much acceptance in most of the industrialized world that guns have potential for much harm and should be highly regulated. in canada it is safe to say that much harm has been done by alcohol, not only but particularly among first-nations communities, but there is not much acceptance for the idea of highly regulating this behavior. is there some reason to ignore the possibility that regulating alcohol more highly might improve the lives of many? 

most canadians have never considered the idea that more information and education about the dangers of guns might be all that is needed. they assume regulation is necessary regardless of any information program. but they do not feel the same way about alcohol. i wonder why that is.

in assessing my own bias, i notice that i do not think most activity humans engage in should be regulated by prohibition. making illegal certain substances like alcohol and even all drugs has always seemed to me the wrong way to go. so why do i feel it is right and proper to limit public access to firearms by prohibition?

i don't know. the argument is advanced that alcohol over-consumption mainly injures oneself, whereas guns represent a threat to others. but first, others are greatly impacted and often injured by one's alcohol consumption and, second, most gun deaths are from suicide, a self-inflicted injury. 

there is more overlap between guns and alcohol (or all drugs) than is comfortable to admit.
i wonder why that is.

could it be that alcohol injury usually takes place over a protracted time and presents many opportunities for self-regulation and improvement, whereas gun injury can be sudden and instantaneous and often impossible to redress, that the sudden finality of gun injury makes it much more difficult to address with programs of education to improve awareness?

MAN AND MOSQUITOES

man constructs himself exactly the same way mosquitoes construct themselves but he does not invent himself any more than mosquitoes do.

ELITE POWER

elite power is the single most retarding force resisting the necessary changes in the human endeavor on earth. it is poor in most nations, bad in china, america, russia, most south american countries; it is horrible in places like syria, saudi arabia, egypt, iran and many of the countries of africa. forgive me if i have forgotten notable offenders, but you get the idea: social democracy truly needs to be tried somewhere at least once beyond scandinavia and new zealand before we give it up and look elsewhere. 

and don't talk to me about capitalist democracy, an oxymoron. private accumulation of capital is a system entirely structured around endless growth on a finite planet with a limited carrying capacity. when i was a small child there were less than two billion living humans on earth; now that i am old, there are over seven billion. do you think the small children alive today will see a growth factor in human population of four by the time they are old? do you think we are heading for a planet of twenty-five or thirty billion?

think again. and think again about elitism, including its growth-dependent private capital iteration.

LOOK UP

listening to american public discourse one would imagine there are no other countries on this planet. they never seem to look up, look out and see what other nations are doing when there is a problem america is handling badly. 

health care comes to mind. gun ownership comes to mind. there are many places on this planet where people have better health outcomes for much less expenditure, there are places very like america, in terms of history of democracy and modern technology, capitalist nations like great britain, who not only have a more efficient system of healthcare but also have very little gun violence, in schools or anywhere, including one of the saddest results of the availability of guns in the US, gun suicide.

A LEAST HARM VIEW

beneath the superficial left-right political dynamic resides a fundamental personality difference (in varying degrees) in most people. it is reflected in one's ability to embrace change. citizen/voters are basically born with a left/right divide, and the tendency to lean left or right depending on how insecure one feels in the light of the great searchlight of change approaching has a genetic component. if you are fearful, nervous, reluctant to change your ideas and your behavior — insecure, maybe sometimes verging on the paranoid — you will reject new ideas from wherever they come, left or right, and you will consider your own needs much more than the general good. if you are more confident, secure and open in your basic personality you will consider new ideas — one would hope rationally — and be willing to accept and promote change that seems to solve emerging problems for the majority of people.

the middle, if there is one, is where the pragmatist who changes his alignment depending more on issues and perceived need than ideology exists.

in the end, darwinian nature is profoundly pragmatic and the model that best suits that understanding of life in all its forms is to think of public actions and political directions from the vantage point of the 'least harm model'. there are times when to hold to the existing way of living against threats of change is the safest path. there are times when to hold to the existing way of living is suicidal. it is up to us to think about it, to think about what is truly needed, not for ourselves alone, but for the majority and the planet.

[though debate is healthy, natural and necessary, selfishness rarely does improve society. greed is seldom good. more thoughtful and empathetic people already know this. it is time for protectionist, nationalist gun-owners, and other single-issue citizens, along with all those megalomaniacs, to stop shouting and step aside.]

MR TRUMP AND TRUTH AND UNDERSTANDING

the salient feature to remember about mr. trump is that he is not very bright and not educated and not really intellectually curious, and his ideas about what america should do are naive in the worst sense of the word. for instance, he says if a shooter knew that a school had armed teachers in it the shooter would not enter, because shooters are cowards (who presumably want to save their own skin). this is a comical assertion; potential school shooters are, if anything, patently not rational actors acting objectively in their own interest, they are sick individuals, and many of them are suicidal (incidentally, gun suicide is one of the worst features of a country awash in weapons). it's just as likely that knowing a school has many arms in it might increase its desirability as a target to someone in the particular state of mind it takes to want to mow down your peers. it certainly is no solution to the problem, which is precisely that there are so many many guns in america.

emma gonzalez, the student who, in a reasoned and passionate and effective speech, called out mr trump, a man who defends the NRA's interest in selling guns and the politicians and citizens who support him in doing so, has done what the corrupt american political system has failed utterly to do — she has simply told the truth.

THE OTHER NAOMI

naomi klein has been an important and useful individual in the war against reason in this world, especially the american corner of it, whose tentacles reach almost everywhere, and she has a great ally in the form of naomi oreskes, an academic with an uncommon ability to inject common sense and even a sense of humor into the struggle. her knowledge and deep understanding of the politics of special interests, along with an irrepressible optimism, is precisely what the public, the american public, and especially the american student public, needs most in this time of trumpism, a tired and not-at-all new set of assumptions that have never been less elegantly promoted or less appropriate or useful in addressing the very real existential threats that exist today.

WHAT DO HUMANS DESERVE?

i can't imagine a more poorly managed or frightening government than the present iteration of the US. and the fact that this nation controls half the world's military and most of its nuclear weapons, along with much of the global economy, is truly incredible. the childish, narcissistic and profoundly unintelligent racist hate-monger who apparently has ultimate control of this military edifice and its potential for annihilation is a disgrace not only for the people who support him, and all americans, but for all the world's complicit people and governments.

this is a profoundly poor time for anyone anywhere to cling to a past order that is patently incapable of solving the problems of the present or the future. people of the world, if you are waiting for your government to save you, you are doomed.

are we a race that even deserves to survive? we have lately acquired so much knowledge of the natural world and its history in the cosmos, we have solved so many critical problems of continuing life on earth and we know now so much about who we are, what life is and what we must do, it should be easier than ever in our history to put earth and all its life on a sustainable path.

time to prove we can do it. and, unfortunately, it seems to depend on the poorly educated and often deliberately misled american public to anoint the process that is necessary to make it happen; another frightening thought.

APOLOGIES

sorry to be saying this and it may undo alot of what i have been trying to do in the way of objectivity, but i am afraid i face an inescapable conclusion: it does not serve the world well to have followers lead.

NEW RULES, NEW RULERS

as gore vidal famously said a long time ago, america is ruled by the wealthy for the wealthy. any person who votes for the status quo who is not truly wealthy is voting against his own interest. 

a lot of conservative votes seem to be based on a kind of faith-based thinking, ideologically driven rather than employing a pragmatic understanding of both the global situation and the personal. this is maddening. one cannot reason with a voter who is not voting based on reason.

this was not the situation (quite) when i was young. in the US nixon proposed a negative income tax in the early seventies; in canada stanfield proposed it in the sixties. both these men were old-fashioned conservatives who just believed in going forward with changes to governance cautiously. they did not resist all change. sadly, they have little in common with what passes for conservatism in the present political climate.

looking for solutions to the present malaise, in north america at least, suggests ridding ourselves of the influence of money in elections especially and in governance more generally. whether the fault lies with individuals or corporations (who are also made of individuals) is not important to discern — the solution is the same in any case; elected representatives of the people need to represent all the people and political parties need to renounce absolute control of both the system of governance and its elections in favor of temporary coalitions based around shared beliefs in solutions to specific problems as they arise.

that we can identify these problems and so easily conceive solutions is the best, maybe the only, sign of hope for a viable and sustainable future on this declining little orb. that we seem, so far, unable to implement these changes is the worst.

THE TRUE ELEPHANT

how can any country in the world prosecute acts of terrorism involving a handful of people and then engage in war? the national armies of the world account for nearly a hundred per cent of the human-caused terror on this planet, yet they are legitimized even at the level of international law. 

this is truly the most enormous elephant in a not-well-hidden corner of human society and anyone with an even slightly detached and rational voice would necessarily come to the same conclusion — war is the single most destructive deadly criminal and unethical activity in the history of the world. anyone in any government waging war for any reason outside its borders should be tried as a criminal actor in a world court. any people in any government waging war against its own people for any reason should also be tried as criminal actors in a world court. 

the rights of individuals supersede the rights of nations. the rights of individual people are primary and universal, and they are the natural rights from which all other (group) rights derive. anyone, no matter in what uniform or flag they are wrapped, who harms or kills other people is a criminal and the size of the offense is the size of the damage they do to others. instead of being lauded as heroes, the people who plan and execute these large-scale atrocities should be condemned and their efforts dismantled.

how will order be kept at the scale of nations? a world body (which is already present in its nascent form) is the only organization capable of ensuring war between nations will not occur, and it should be the only organization allowed to maintain a standing army, a small mobile force to be legitimately deployed to arrest perpetrators anywhere on this globe as soon as they even attempt to acquire the technical means to wage war, or even by threat attempt to usurp the rights of others. belief in the rule of law is widely understood and there is less to be feared in this arrangement than any other we have tried on this planet, as long as men continue to attempt to dominate and harm one another.

whether we come to this arrangement after a global conflict that devastates much of the planet, or we come to this in our maturity as an ethical actor, i cannot say. that we will come to it, provided we survive as a species on a viable planet, i have no doubt.

CORPORATIONS (AGAIN)

corporations need to be conceived, constituted and regulated in different ways than they are presently; they need to make central the value of utility at the level of society entire instead of just at the investor level; they need to evolve around a core value of usefulness to society instead of the narrow and unethical focus on themselves. as they presently operate, they are sociopathic, even psychopathic, and that is a sickness that needs remedy. 

however, the idea of eliminating corporations is not a useful reaction to their present inutility. though they are certainly not individuals in any sense of the word, either morally, ethically or (properly) legally, they are naturally occurring manifestations of emergent organizational principles and have proven to have many practical uses that ensure they should be preserved as long as their natural life cycle permits. they just need to be regulated, and regulated by an independent collective societal voice that is not owned or regulated by them.

GOD IN THE UNIVERSE

intelligence and understanding are global not atomistic properties of mind. they no more exist — nor are they concentrated — within a single neuron or small circuit of neurons as overseers than a termite colony building a mound has a single architect or building committee, and noone has a set of drawings or any form of plan that exists prior to and separate from the action that creates the thing. the same is true of the way entire single organisms self-assemble; there is no architect and there is no pre-existing plan, there is just the continual division into ever more complex assymetrical structures arising out of the simple actions of the simpler structure that preceded it; the plan is an integral and emerging property of the organism that is developing and is parallel to it. ditto the cosmos.

so much for god in the universe.

GENES, HISTORY AND CULTURE

there are people in the world who think that certain populations are prone to certain maladies of behavior. they say things like 'chinese people all lie and cheat' or 'italians are all loud' or iranians are all 'fundamentalists' or 'christians are all this, or jews are all that...' (i could go on). they think it is somehow bred in the bone and they apply it to whole peoples. how then would they explain the germans? after the second world war (it seems strange that we even own that phrase) the east germans were supposedly known to enthusiastically denounce each other with accusations of being anti-government; the same is true of the north koreans. how then would these people explain the fact that nothing of the sort was going on in west germany and it is not going on now in a unified germany on either side of the old divide? same for korea. these german and korean people share an identical gene pool; in fact, many of them are related across borders. the chinese people share the same gene pool with the japanese, koreans and many other people of asia; not only that, the whole world shares the same gene pool. you who are reading this, that is you and me.

it is true that different countries with different governments and different histories manifest different cultures and that some governments and some cultures are more brutal and some people more inured to a hard life, but this is historical and situational, not genetic; there is nothing unique about the individuals living there compared to individuals living elsewhere. you could find your counterpart in any country; you could find someone with opposite views of life and society in any country.

it is a dangerous form of ingroup/outgroup hostility which is more likely to be believed by people who have not known enough people from other places and cultures, or who are themselves rather fundamental in their thinking. it does not promote harmony and understanding on this tiny little orb, and promoting harmony and understanding on this tiny little orb is the only thing that will save it (and the mostly similar individuals who live on it) from oblivion. 

if you are hoping armies and power and domination of others will save you, or your country, you are hoping in vain.