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.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

conservatives in general, american conservatives in particular, are just people who are afraid of change. they are so afraid of it that rather than trying to control it, which could occasionally be useful, they just straight out resist. where this voice comes from more-or-less the sidelines there may perhaps be some utility to their actions but where they dominate and control the actions of government they are regressive, and this at a time when change is necessary to aid survival of the whole human fraternity.

but there is a second thing some conservatives indulge in and when they do they are truly dangerous — existentially dangerous — they indulge in magical thinking, they ignore, distort and lie about the very facts that decisions must reflect. and they refuse to examine examples of actions that have been tried successfully in other parts of the world outside their nation. this is more than confirmation bias. it is faith-based thinking and faith-based thinking, along with us-and-them ingroup/outgroup hostility, is ultimately fatal. if they lose their battle they are vicious, if they win we will all suffer hardship and ultimately, death.

what do you do about people like that, people who do not believe in reason or objective truth or the danger of faith-based conviction? i think lying about objectively verifiable facts and events should be a crime for every elected official, and should be prosecutable for any media attempting to spread false information. these are crimes against civilization and they are more dangerous than many of the behaviors we routinely prosecute. they are also more dangerous than any so-called restrictions on our rights to free speech that protect these false statements from censure.

THE LIES

the lies, the lies; i am so sick of the lies. one could make a great start on a new direction for politics if any person elected to any office had to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, just as any person addressing a court of law must do. how can it be acceptable, accepted, commonplace, that when politicians speak we reflexively try to assign a sort of 'truth quotient' to everything they say? declarative statements are either true or untrue. i don't think we need to bother about what they say to their spouses, or children, or neighbors, but what they say to voters — both the ones who put them in office and the ones that tried to keep them out — that should be sacrosanct; there, the truth only should apply, and the penalties for lying (which is often only too easily proven) should be the same as for perjury; it's at least as important as that.

GROWTH ON A FINITE PLANET

in nature, unlimited growth without regard to its utility for the organism as a whole is called cancer. for the humans of earth to cling to a belief in a permanent state of growth model, such as the model that fundamentally underpins capitalist economies, social systems and their politics, is suicidal.

the countries and regions that evolve a more pragmatic and flexible view of systems will be the ones that survive and prosper, if indeed any can prosper in future on such a small planet; a planet which, at the moment, is dominated by mindless adherence to what amount to baseless beliefs.

alternative facts will not save you, us or anybody.

PROBLEM ROOTS AND ROOTS THAT NOURISH

the root of the problem with the present iteration of capitalism lies in corporate culture. some people accept as a given the arcane notion that a corporation's only obligation is to its shareholders, that the only or overriding goal of a corporation is to maximize profits. this idea is worshipped by capitalists without a sustainable strategy or social conscience as if it came down from the mount on a clay tablet. absurd. it was proffered, accepted and promoted by private capital accumulators and their apologists and it has disfigured the system and its supporters, as it is now busy ruining the culture that spawned it.


the real obligation of corporations — as it is the real obligation of all associations of humans, voluntary and involuntary — is to promote the welfare of the society entire and all the people who make up its population, together with the geographical area it controls and the biosphere within. this longterm interest can only be promoted by a sustainable best practice toward the earth and its living inhabitants of every description. and the most important element in ensuring sustainability at every scale of organization is the only, and final, excuse for any state more organized than anarchy, and that is egalitarian justice, stripped of confirmation bias and all impediments to rational thought, from whence peace and reason only can be born and nourished.

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 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.

AAH, GIVE ME SCIENCE

there is more philosophy implied in molecular genetics and the study of animal behavior than there is in hemingway, joyce or faulkner and, among others, kant, hegel and especially, freud.

FERRON

i went to a ferron concert on saturna island last night. she is a great feeler and thinker and singer about life, and more particularly the life she has lived, an uncomfortable life. this life lies beside a knife-edge that separates it from the life of someone very comfortable in her own skin, and it is from the sharp and dangerous edge of this knife that her best thoughts and songs emanate; a singular, original and very beautiful experience for anyone lucky enough to be within earshot.

DON'T ASK

i am walking in wild grass heavy with spiky seedtops
i don't ask the grass 'why did you decide to be grass?'
there is a sleek robin there perched on a stick looking smoothly beautiful
i don't ask the robin 'why did you decide to be a robin?'
there is me thinking these words.

WRITING LIKE HEMINGWAY

i made my little sanctuary. it was beautiful in the sun. it was beautiful in the wind. it was beautiful in the mist and fog and drizzle and rain, my little sanctuary. it was snug and it suited me and i suited it. i made it myself and it suited me.

APPROPRIATION OF VOICE

let me add a couple of cents worth of support for the poor beleagured writers of canada who are enduring an infection that is silly and stupid — appropriation of voice is an incredible nod to narrow tribal thinking at a time in history when we know so much more. i have alot in common with fruit flies. i share emotions with honeybees and fish and all animals. i share affection like slugs, and like slugs i remember these experiences in the same way, with the same brain processes. how big a stretch do you think it is to write about a woman if you are a man? to write about an old man if you are young? why aren't we being ostracised for doing that? why aren't we being ostracised for any fiction? i'll tell you why: fiction is just another tool for getting at the truth, as is imagination, empathy, mirror neurons, group contagion and other manifestations of social thought, dangerous or not.

loosen up, guys, and have a look over your shoulder — you are on the wrong side of history, truth, knowledge and progress.

CURIOUS

there is a curious mixture of sense and nonsense on the radio news that upon reflection i have concluded is a fair typification of the human condition. mixed with news of mr trump these days, in ever smaller proportion, are other news items: of cyberhacking — this time data ransom attacks around the world —  from the vatican, of miracle sightings and canonization, of trump supporters defending their man, to name a few, along with reports of saudi princesses abusing other humans compelled to serve them and chicago mayors all serving jailtime. 

wait a minute; where is the good stuff? come to think of it, it may not be much of a mixture after all. the poor well-fed well-informed well-cared for beleaguered literate middleclass citizen must be barely clinging to life these days. how terrifying.

COMPETITION VS COOPERATION

why are all sports competitive? there didn't get to be seven billion humans on the planet because we are good at competition, lots of failed animals failed while competing with their own kind; more it was because we learned to cooperate. i don't think it takes alot of imagination to conjure up ways people can play a game toward a higher score by means of better cooperation — games where everyone playing is essentially on the same team and cooperation is rewarded, as it so often is in life. 

the highly competitive among us are and always have been mostly doing things that make life better for themselves, and often, much tougher for others. is that really still so valuable to us now, now that what threatens us is not lack of fitness but lack of cohesion?

fighting fires is all about cooperation; the enemy is not a person. the team wins if they can, but there is really no opponent who loses, the fire being a phenomenon without a will. 

soon the earth will be on fire. what do you think can save it for the creatures? competition?

i don't think so.

NAMING IT

the healthcare debate in the US is already tiresome. i hear alot of talk from rightwing politicians who speak for all the world like ideologues. the problem is not only that they are not truthful in anything they say, not only that they abandon pragmatism as well as truth, not only that their agenda is (slightly) hidden from a naive constituency, the real problem is that their ideas are stupid, and if allowed to prevail will soon hurt the people they profess to represent (as opposed to the people they truly represent, of course).

really, we should call them idiotlogues, because that is what they are.

DANGEROUS IDEAS

when i was a young kid, a little catholic kid, i was told by my perfectly sweet shy mother what a shame it was that my friends, who were mostly protestant (along with a jew or two), would never get into heaven. i couldn't believe what she was saying and as was my habit i called her on it. but to her it was a matter of faith, and authority, and one did not question one's faith, or authority in general. she also believed in experts, believed they somehow had a direct link with the truth.

these are dangerous ideas. Us and Them is the most dangerous idea on the present planet earth and the world's only military superpower has just installed at the helm an Us and Them damagogue of epic proportions, who is surrounding himself with others just like him.

this does not bode well for anybody. it is way past time for people to stop rooting for themselves, in any guise, and start rooting for the survival of the planet.

BIAS

humans have frailties that make them vulnerable to extinction and one of the most problematic is confirmation bias. believing that your country, your religion, your city, state or region, your sex, color, generation, even your hockey team, is better than others is just another way of believing you are better than others. and that is a fundamental problem for the species. 

LATE TO THE PARTY

there is a fundamental struggle going on in america which i think could have been resolved about five hundred years ago; that is the struggle for cultural dominance between religion and the scientific method. this debate has been resolved most successfully in europe and parts of the east, and it leaves america deeply late to the party. 

this is dangerous; when the world's only military superpower is embedded in a fractured and still unevolved ethos it will be tempting for them to continue to enforce domination in world affairs by increasingly bellicose military means. 

this is an existential threat to them and the world entire. if americans cannot step up to the reality bar quickly, President Loser, the new demagogue of hate installed in the whitehouse, will have to be stopped by people outside its borders, and that is a threat to the planet of epic proportions.

GAMES PEOPLE PLAY

the people who live within the world of finance are addicted to a game. it is not a game of survival against the elements of the cosmos that are hostile to life, it is not a game of self-reliance or belonging in a global enterprise — what i would label the real games of life — more it is a game like a boardgame. i wish it weren't so, but i am afraid the tired old game they insist on continuing to play is the depression-era game of Monopoly, a game whose ideas and principles were long ago, at least morally, discredited. and like the game, this modern capitalist system will end just as surely as the game of Monopoly ends, and in precisely the same way, when one combatant has acquired all the capital and there is noone else left standing with anything to lose. 

and like people in all places through all time, when there is nothing left to lose, people get ugly.

PRESIDENT LOSER

mr trump is forgetting the first principle of elected office — try not to piss off the people. let's hope it continues. he is a dangerous fascist racist whose constituency is not now and has never been the people, except in the sense of whom to fool, his constituency is corporations and elites around the world.

EARTH MODEL 2003

(from a talk given at a writers' night at the Saturna Café November 02 )

First I would like to erect a model of an earth worthy of our children— second to consider how our current situation differs from that model—third to suggest how our present sorry path can be deflected toward it.

THE MODEL

The place I would like to see my children live in is free of intimidation destruction and murder— it is free of any institutional inequality between individuals and also free of any semblance of group rights or privilege including rights of corporations or religions or political parties and other non-individual entities presently treated as individuals under the law.

In this imagined place the rights of individuals (the only human rights) are enshrined in international law without regard to sovereignty of nations and enforced by the United Nations. Earth itself and the biosphere are also protected by international law which supersedes all regional and national laws. The right to bear arms is restricted to the UN. All weapons of mass destruction— including and especially armed forces— are prohibited to any group smaller than that.

No other laws beyond individual, earth and biosphere rights are declared or enforced by the UN. Regional cultural and ethnic uniqueness are matters of individual choice as are methods of local governance or absence of governance provided international laws are not violated by custom or in practice. (In adjudicating these customs and practices there is no escaping the conclusion that any form of institutionalized privilege is inimical to justice. And justice not peace is always the goal and in fact is the only path to lasting peace.)

There is no attempt at enforced homogeneity. Differences that do not result in institutional inequality are tolerated. The free exchange of ideas is encouraged. With the free movement of people care to control the rate of flow at least initially and for a period allowing the peaceful and non-disruptive movement of individuals is needed. There should be no destabilizing and hence destructive shift of population but rather a gradual diminution of regional inequities through transfer payments such as exist in the European Union and Canada. This will have a retarding influence on migration for most people, who naturally love their birthplace.

The enforcement of rights by the UN— including the free right to life health and education— includes the UN’s right to taxation of nations according to ability to pay and of individuals worldwide without regard to nationality. This will necessarily involve some arbitrary limits on the growing disparity of wealth among the world’s regions as well as its individuals.

This means that the wealthy will not continue to get wealthier but ultimately with the end of military expenditures and costs of reconstruction no person anywhere will ever be forced to live in jeopardy. This does not mean that charity will be forgotten as long as inequities persist but that no lives will be ultimately dependent on it.

If this seems utopian so be it. It is obtainable when once the mighty have been subsumed in the family of mankind. To this end the Thoreau-Gandhi-King ethic of non-violent non-cooperation has proved itself more powerful than propaganda and armies combined and is the only technique necessary— or in my view even possible.

THE PRESENT

Preaching any war of any description for any purpose intended to make peace is doomed by definition— war is not peace. The idea that Mr. Bush is going to Iraq to give the people freedom ignores the obvious, that the first right of any peope would of course be freedom from invasion.

The UN has already fashioned an international bill of human rights more than fifty years ago. It needs the ability to enforce these rights not only between nations but internally within nations without regard to custom or status either historical or by reason of power and wealth. And its charter already expressly forbids acts of aggression by states upon other states, which it also needs the ability to enforce either by arms or preferably by international isolation of responsible leaders. This prohibition should be widened to include any occupation by any foreign power either militarily or by any other means of intimidation or threat, with the sole exception of the UN itself.

No nation today, least of all the United States, could exist in its present form without the cooperation, willing or otherwise, of other nations. The power of non-cooperation should not be doubted. The United States once isolated from its markets, for arms especially, would experience rapid economic decline more certainly than if it were deterred by force (which in any case could prove fatal to all). The US economy and standard of living depend on arms exports and control of oil. This requires a climate of fear and conflict to continue. Peace, no matter how they posture as a peace-loving nation, is inimical to the whole American enterprise— a terrible predicament for them and indeed the whole world— and they are going to need outside help in the form of overt pressure in order to restructure and thence reduce the insecurity of the world, including themselves. In this our interests are the same no matter how differently perceived.

The world must help the US help itself. It must be weaned from this dependence on arms and armies— on intimidation destruction and murder— and the crime of murder, which is the ultimate denial of individual rights, cannot be suspended just because some leader(s) declares a military action a ‘war’. It also must be made an international crime of the most serious magnitude to profit from violence in any way at any scale— another task for the world court.

What are the rights of war? And where does the human (animal) notion of rights of any kind originate? I have a strong life-long feeling that I inherently own the right to my own life. I think all rights flow from that primary feeling. If this is true then individual rights, being the origin of all rights, must remain sacrosanct — and an idea like immunity from prosecution for any persons on the earth is an affront to all. The right of any person or nation to make war whether on its own citizens or others must be eliminated as individual reprisal has been eliminated between citizens under the rule of law within nations.

DEFLECTING THE PATH

The first step we must take in deflecting the current destructive path of history toward a model of equanimity is to strengthen the UN and to enshrine the Individual Bill of Rights in international law, at the same time giving the UN the sole power to enforce it — and only it — over the whole of the globe. We must wean nations gradually of absolute sovereignty, starting with adoption of the world court jurisdiction as the world entire and continuing with granting the UN the power of taxation, then on to the gradual lock-stepped dismantling of all the nations’ armed forces in favor of a small highly mobile UN peacekeeping and peacemaking force of conventional arms comprised of small representative forces from a majority of willing nations.

As a first step in reducing the world’s national armies, the right to conduct military operations should be restricted to the territory legally owned by each nation, including the area of its fishing rights, up to the first two hundred miles of surrounding ocean where shoreline exists without conflicting claims and along some midpoint between nations where jurisdiction might otherwise overlap. This would allow for a less disruptive shift in internal structures of power, including both political and economic power, within nations. Ultimately, the only forces in the world that will be legitimately mobile will be UN forces.

No nation can seriously call its military forces defense forces which is involved in invasion or occupation of any other nation on earth. Those are offensive actions, in both senses of the word. And how long can it take for all the world’s peoples to recognize that if no-one can leave the home territory there can be literally no-one to defend against except the UN, which will have such constraints against its actions as to be a most unlikely adversary. In any event, this position of allowing national forces as long as they stay home will be only a transient structure, and as the expense of keeping large forces will be a serious detriment to economic participation in a global economy, should die of its own weight, if in fact democracy is a workable system of governance.

This fundamental change in power will necessarily involve restructuring the UN so that veto status is eliminated and voting power reflects population with a qualified majority along the lines of the new EU constitution (with perhaps the addition of a ‘taxation’ factor). It should be understood that only nations in good standing would be accorded any vote at all and that to remain in good standing nations must comply with all UN qualified majority decisions and pay their taxes. This means the end of international unilateralism.

In game theory ‘tit for tat’ works out to be the cleanest simplest and most effective strategy of cooperation. Perhaps some modified less destructive version of that will prove useful in developing protocols for the new UN. But whatever system of control evolves it will have to focus mainly on national governments. They have done most of the killing and suppressing of rights throughout history and certainly lack any claim to legitimacy however they have arrived and for however long they have ruled. Only individuals have an inherent right to protection under international law— every group is suspect that is smaller than mankind and must prove itself worthy of international support by its egalitarianism and its actions.

Even mankind is too small a group. The biosphere— earth itself— is vital. The goal is to sustain life on earth indefinitely— not for one species or nation or region or generation but for all.

EPILOGUE 19 MARCH 2003 (after the invasion of Iraq)

I remain skeptical that these features of a world government can in fact be implemented without a possibly cataclysmic confrontation among the world’s nations— a confrontation that it is not at all clear we can survive. But whether this vision of our world will be brought about gradually through diplomacy or suddenly in the aftermath of a deadly war that some manage to survive, I also have no doubt that by the beginning of the next century if any of our progeny do indeed still exist they will live under the auspices of some form of world democracy, and absolute sovereignty with its concomitant right to bear arms will be a relic of history.

That is the real business of the twenty-first century. It is time we got down to business.

(from 2007) THE UNITED CITIZENS OF EARTH

There is a fundamental problem with the United Nations and that is the recognition of sovereignty of nations above the rights of individuals. This has effectively eliminated the possibility of the UN ever bringing justice to all the world’s people and that effectively eliminates the possibility of ever bringing peace. The United Nations was the start, and the only possible start, of the formation of a true world government and it has gone as far as it can go within the constraints of its original charter. It is time for a new or radically altered body— it is time to make the individual the basis for rights and obligations under the world body. It is time for the UN to become the United Citizens of Earth.

To make this fundamental shift a reality does not mean the elimination of nations. They are a (sometimes) legitimate form of regional government and many things presently under the control of nations can best be determined at that scale. Similarly, the division of powers within nations into smaller regional areas, even down to cities and towns and rural areas, each with its own government controlling issues that affect its citizens at that scale, is also workable. What is needed is a new definition of ultimate rights. Ultimate rights must originate with the individual and migrate upward, not in a hierarchy but a circle, so that the individual is not only closest to the most local governance but on his other side to the most global governance. The individual becomes the point on the circle from which all other rights emanate.

In practice, the defense of the individual’s rights, including and especially his life, would be the joint responsibility of the entire circle of governance and would remain paramount. Under this structure, whatever threatened the rights and life of the individual would be protected by other bodies of the circle and if one member of the circle was threatening those rights it would be the obligation of other members to protect them from the threat. In this arrangement, the exisiting practice of local governments being subject to regional control and regional governments being subject to national control would be extended to include national governments being subject to world control.

In nations at present local laws are similarly subject to regional laws and regional laws are subject to national laws. This hierarchy too must be extended to global laws, perhaps limited to individual and biosphere rights, which will supercede all national laws. And an international justice system whose jurisdiction is the entire globe must be part of any new charter.

This may sound simple, even obvious, but it will be an enormous struggle of the will of the people everywhere to prevail and bring to heel those powerful individuals within national governments that have been accustomed to controlling the power of societies, both economic and military.

Once accomplished, it will become apparent that while local police forces may maintain civil order in towns, cities, states and nations under the rule of law, none of these police forces will have any jurisdiction outside their geographic areas. The same must apply to so-called armies kept by nations. No national army should have any legal right to act in or occupy any territory not legally its own, no matter what the pretext. Only the army of the United Citizens would have legitimacy over the entire globe, and then only to defend the rights of individuals and biosphere threatened by national forces within or between nations. National armies would effectively be police forces employed only to prevent violations of rights not protected by more regional bodies, never to gain territory or expand influence, either political or economic. And national territorial boundaries in particular could only legitimately be altered by negotiations ratified by majority decisions of the world body in a full and free vote.

Failing this, global problems such as atmospheric warming and the newly expanding nuclear threat cannot be effectively resisted. The last decade has seen the increased militarism of powerful nations emerge, including the threat of widening the arena to include the space above our atmosphere. This is likely to be a greater threat to us in the near future than even global warming, and like global warming its pace is accelerating.

If we can’t restrain the powerful individuals in powerful nations I have no doubt we will all die together and the meek who inherit the earth will turn out to be cockroaches or viruses. What a failed experiment we will have turned out to be— what an epitaph written of us all.

The prospect of inaction or endless fractional infighting in the cause of protecting privilege is very real and the most likely impediment to survival. Whether the instrument of our demise is global warming or a nuclear cataclysm, or some other unforseen problem, the cause of our demise will have ultimately been the same— the inability of individuals to recognize the equal rights of all and to forego the domination of others.

IGNORANT AMERICA

this is the face of ignorant america. the mean, the cruel, the degenerate are inspired by this public display of sociopathy. if the american right wing wants to survive their demagogue and not be decimated by history, they must stop the man, stop supporting the man, stop enabling the man, not in time for the next elections in four years, nor in two years, not tomorrow, but now.

NATION-STATE

the theme of the new book i have begun is to me more fundamental than global warming or overpopulation. it is time to redefine and rejustify the concept of the nation-state:

there is only one excuse and one rationale for anything beyond anarchy as an organizing principle of humans and that is the pursuit of justice. peace is not a goal. peace is the natural outcome of reciprocal justice and unless and until that becomes the bounding principle of every state on this earth and every action taken in the name of that state, we humans of earth will have failed to secure a viable future.

which means to say, pretty much, since the idea that states all over the world will somehow reform themselves without coercion is without evidence, we are likely doomed as a species unless a world government can emerge with controlling oversight of nation-states.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE TAR SANDS

i think it's time the great hollywood blockbuster film took its rightful place beside the tar sands of alberta. they are both huge blights on our planet and our culture, sucking the air (and the carbon budget) out of the room of their respective fields of human endeavor and making it difficult for more worthy projects to replace them.

CLINGING TO FAILED IDEAS

the united states suffers from institutionalized ignorance and it is endemic. as a nation they cling to a capitalist-centered world view, a winner-take-all ethic and a profoundly unempathetic attitude toward other people, not only of the world but within their own country. like other unevolved nations they still rely on first-past-the-post elections, a two-party system which cannot represent the views of many of its diverse citizens, and control of government at every level by moneyed interests. 

this regrettable situation will be exacerbated by the newly elected government and those who still seek to present optimistic scenarios or caution against despair are guilty of wilful blindness. it will be bad. it will hurt americans and it will hurt us all. and by withholding its undeniable power to assist in solving the existential threats both to itself and the planet, the united states will be materially responsible for its collapse, if it should indeed come to that.

though i hear ringing in my ears, 'be careful what you wish for,' i do think it is past time for a world governing body to wrest control of world-scale issues from the hands of regional interests.

OSTRICHES

what is it about canadian politicians that they so resemble ostriches, who put their heads in the sand when threatened with a difficult situation? the sand these politicians are burying their heads in is the tar sands and they are not going to come out of it looking clean and spiffy. 

the only practical solution to canada's contribution in opposing the encroaching devastation of climate change (and the tar sands are the biggest single canadian contributor to our terrible, sasquatch-sized footprint) is the complete cessation of alberta's mining of these tar sands.

so why are we spending treasure to increase the destructive flow of bitumen from this terrible foreign-controlled site that we will someday soon have to start trying to distance ourselves from? this is not about jobs, pipelines don't add significant jobs for the size of the capital investment, this is unneeded and unwanted infrastructure that is running against the stream of not only history but also science, and it is purely based on the inability of a privileged segment of the population to admit that their privilege is based on the destruction of our future, all our futures, their own included. getting off the tar sands will require a lot of new green energy infrastructure, which really is much more labor-intense and will result in many more good, technical as well as construction jobs, than any pipeline proposal.

the oligarchs do not speak for us, the great majority of humans, nor for the other life of earth. this is the sickest short-sided stupidity at precisely the moment in the history of the exploitation of earth by modern humans when better ways are actually finally clear to us. we know what path we have to take. why do we let shortsighted, selfish and callous sociopaths continue to dominate the large-scale efforts of man? if they keep on, you will soon be saying goodbye and good riddance to capitalism in all its forms, the good with the bad. times are going to quickly overtake us. while we fiddle with corrupt political and capital systems, trimming the edges and trying to make them look like something they are not and never have been, the planet burns.

THIS NADINE GORDIMER

this nadine gordimer knows what a novel is. knows what structure is. knows what meaning to chase down, to capture, knows the shape of the trap that will snare it.

one reads The Pickup thinking it like a Y; two people from different places brought accidentally together, who go on living as one complicated strand made of two, the stem of the Y. but it is not a Y. it is an X. and the author has known it and known where it goes and what she is after nailing to the earth, to the page, and she does nail it, artfully, carefully, letting out just enough at every turn, to cause that wonderful novelistic thing —— the inevitable surprise.

you think you know, even for quite a time, until coming up from underneath there is emerging another knowing, the right one this time, to surprise you. this woman born of, emerging from, a cold materialistic world of privilege, which values privilege over justice, who seeks the enveloping warmth of family. this man born of family, emerging from a stifling, formal, inflexible set of meanings and imperatives that yet better values human warmth and care, though in poverty, who seeks the expanding potential of success unbridled, of privilege, security, worldliness, even wealth — everything he sees embodied in her. everything that she wishes to abandon in favor of the family he seeks to abandon — how can it be anything but a perfect X?

first with her friends at the L A café and then with his relatives in africa, she has sought the enclosing warmth of a family she has never known. he has sought a kind of privilege he has heard of but never known. they have been forced by the author to confront one another, and to confront the ideas they each represent. how inevitable. how perfect.

like life in a crystal glass, we get to see it clearly, in the clarity of the novelist's singular unswerving vision.

if life were as visible as this we would never need novels.

WRITING LIKE NADINE

i'm not self-protective; have no wish to be. because i'm not afraid.

oh, i think The Pickup is a grand choice. spending time with nadine is lovely. as i read i wonder what you are thinking, what you are really thinking; what you will say to me about it and what you really feel, and if they will be exactly the same thing. if that is even possible.

just curious. just wondering if you are afraid, and if so, of what?

(writing like nadine.)

ROSS LOCKRIDGE/ALBERT CAMUS

i think camus and lockridge were living in very different places with both a different recent history and a different long history. as a young man camus was influenced by the dadaist movement, nihilism and the theater of the absurd after the devastation of world war one, with its utter failure both of the social order and of its intellectual and moral structures, and lockridge, who was living isolated from most of its effects in middle america (an america which had always been and remained quite self-referential), was not. (america lost some men in 1916-18 but it was considered europe's problem and it was europe that was laid waste.) the literary and intellectual influence in america was still rooted in the transcendentalism of the nineteenth century, in emerson, thoreau and especially whitman. lockridge himself seems to have been an extremely confident unstoppable force of nature, with whitman as his model and, though more conventional than whitman, accepted most of the permissions that whitman had conferred upon himself.

in terms of personality lockridge was unashamedly grandiose and considered himself the appropriate archetype of the great american drama. camus was a skeptical intellectual who did not believe in heroes at all, at least in the beginning. that changed  somewhat with The Plague, when he began to believe it made a difference what people did and did abandon the nihilism of his earlier work in favor of what has been termed by others, existentialism. but his approach to ideas and human behavior remained skeptical and critical.

if camus had been an american writer he might have been ignored but in france with its (sometimes problematic) intellectual tradition, his singular, original work found immediate favor with the intelligentsia which mediated french culture, unlike america where commercial interests and positivism dominated cultural expression from the beginning. 

though whitman had been an outsider most of his life, by its end he was revered somewhat in america (more in europe). lockridge seems to have wanted to be both as famous as whitman but in addition, to be successful in commercial terms as well.

so, though contemporary, these are very different men in terms of life experience and personality. camus grew up dirt poor in algiers and achieved surprising results early on because he was singled out in school as very bright and given access to privilege he never would have been granted by his humble birth, either in algeria or france. lockridge had no such deficits to overcome, early on or later in his brief life. he was kept out of the second war by health concerns and continued uninterrupted by its effects on the country in his singular literary ambition.

when it comes to Raintree County and The Plague, the differences in personality, in focus, philosophy (if lockridge can be said to have had any coherent philosophy) are stark. camus' work is philosophical, intellectual, abstract, cool and skeptical. lockridge's work is hot, emotional, unquestioning, accepting and much more stereotypical. he describes characters grandly, visually, as though the look and speech of them told all, but there are elements of stereotype, albeit very colorful stereotypes. camus' characters are unique, their identities are in their depth not on their skin, and they represent philosophical ideas and conflicting world views; one is hard pressed to find stereotypical types in the piece. 

though they are both good examples of their literary type, born of the same time, of the same western world and world view, these two works could not be more different in their purpose, construction, meaning, or as an experience for the reader. they both seem to me to contain much, and much that rewards the reader. in particular, lockridge and his opus i find slightly easier to admire for at least the scope of his ambition, than i did as a young man — camus i have always admired.

PURPOSE — A STRANGE WORD

why would nature want to convert grass into goat? 
what purpose is there in that? 
what purpose is there in me asking? 

i tell you, purpose has nothing to do with any of it. 
there is no nature with a purpose
there is no plan

there is just everything.

ONE OF THEM, YES

they wanting to see themselves as others see them
or, 
more
wanting others to see them as they see themselves.
yes that one 
that last one 
will be the 
sadder
one.

SOMETHING

we have the same issue with the conception of cosmos that we have conceiving life; they are both structured in time, they have a history, and the human mind is incapable of really understanding nothingness and timelessness, though we have invented zero. we cannot truthfully understand nonexistence at any scale. the meaning of our own death may be only too clear to us, as may be the various imagined ends of our universe, but to imagine no life and no cosmos at all — nothing at all — we have no language for that. nothingness is only relative, death is only relative. language is something and nothing cannot be contained in something. we are left with absence, another comparative. lack implies something missing. something is something the human mind cannot escape.

CAPITALISM UNDEMONIZED

capitalism could be saved. it's important not to demonize this method of production because of excesses of greed and hubris and sociopathic behavior, especially in the financial and energy sectors. the real freedom it brought to enterprise has been valuable and it has proved to be a more successful way of organizing production of material goods and services than the centrally planned economic model, which in comparison allowed even more corruption among the powerful.

the problem is that it bears watching, and regulating, when excesses emerge. the role of production and its ownership vs. state control of enterprise that has emerged in europe, especially since the second world war, and has come to be accepted there, is a better indicator of the way to salvage the good and eliminate the bad in so-called democracies around the world than the british and especially the american model. the key is to remove corporate influence from government and prevent it weaseling its way back in. the most important control needed to save the idea and ideals of democracy is to get money and influence, especially but not only corporate money, out of politics altogether and make elected representatives represent another constituency — the citizens of the state. at its core value, so-called capitalist democracy gives power to money, social democracy gives it to people. for this, the people need to be educated into thoughtful citizenhood.

and then — long live the people.

TIME'S ARROW

chaos (implied order) > cosmos > chaos (dispersal)

where one ends (or fades away) is not the same as where one begins. time does have an arrow, but this does not imply that a clock is not always starting somewhere in the physical universe(s).

REASON

our deepest motivations are not reasonable. reason is merely a tool we employ to accomplish what is innately needed. 

BRIDGE

a human is a bridge. by the things he can't let go and the things he adopts, he links the past to the future. 

MURDERERS

i live in a world full of murderers: murderous governments, murderous armed forces, murderous law enforcement agencies, murderous religious fanatics, murderous gangs of criminals, murderous youth gangs, murderous individuals, murderous psychotics, even murderous workplaces, highways, bars, nightclubs. 

sometimes i wonder if there is something wrong with me, that it offends me so. 

behind each murderer is an investor who profits from the crime. there is some general agreement among most public societies that the taking of a life is wrong. what about profiting from murder? about the killing business? about the accretion of wealth and power through supporting murder? is there general agreement about that? or is it considered just another economic activity, a legitimate countable positive addition to the GDP?

sometimes i wonder if there is something wrong with me, that this also offends me so, that people, individual people, allow themselves to profit in this way.

REAL AND NOT REAL

whether a book is fiction or nonfiction is not interesting. what is useful to know is whether the book attempts to get at something real — YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN; CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY; A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN; THE PLAGUE; THE PICKUP — or whether it is not real — HARRY POTTER; STAR WARS; ALL THE LIGHT YOU CANNOT SEE, and many many others. that is what should be categorized and clearly labeled for the reading public, not because real is inherently better — many people gain much from fantasy and other suspensions of reality, much more than i do — but because it is a more useful distinction to make in identifying a work for a potential reader. it is the underlying, original intention of the author from which every aspect and experience of the book in the mind of the reader will derive.

WITHOUT ATTACHMENT

i have recently been tasked with considering the present without attachment to a future, a stance that is perhaps closer to reality than most people understand, and have found it manageable. i now have left only the much more arduous task of separating the present from the past. in that task i am failing utterly.

UNDERSTANDING DESPERATE ACTIONS

there is a genetic component to tribalism but i think it is indirect — more it seems to be a precursor to a strong group identity that makes young people susceptible to influence in their earliest years. this varies between individuals in every group and the strength of a group identity that overwhelms the individual identity varies also between groups. this is largely dependent on how existential the threat to that group is perceived by its members. if you were growing up white in america in the fifties (as i was) there was no real perceived threat to the identity of your group, since it clearly dominated the surrounding culture. very little pressure was exerted on me to extract an adherence to loyalty to my group — in fact, when i became critical of it quite early on i was treated as a serious young critic and not condemned out of hand, though i think my thoughts along those lines would have continued unabated in any case and might have become more vehement the more external pressure was applied to me to conform to popular views. that was my nature.

this is not the case when a child is not a member of the dominant culture. the perceptions of the individual, family and group of a minority are quite different. that is why there is an inevitable link between the actions of the dominant group and the reactions of the minority. in these days of superpower almost all groups that are excluded will feel an existential threat and coalesce into enemy. the problem of america (or britain, or germany, or any other dominating power throughout history) will always be the same — in the desire to dominate and control others, whether you believe (like the above plus the french and other colonizing imperialists) that it is for the betterment of all and that the lives of all will be improved, or just that somehow you are exceptional (america's current gambit) and deserve to use others for whatever improves your own circumstances, the net result is the same — you will create enemies and enemies will resist you. and enemies under siege will become more extreme as individuals within perceive the threat to their group to be unequal and existential. the middle-eastern states, which were created largely without regard to tribal identities, are and always have been an unuseful construction, territories divvied up by the conquerers to suit their pleasure and their cat, and the present continued involvement by the same offending western nations will never resolve anything and may prove in the end to threaten the entire globe, or what of it is left inhabitable after we are finished degrading much of it for life in human form.