Generation "Change?"

Professor J,

My original reading of your post on Sunday left me with the feeling that even though the alarm sounding was getting louder and more frequent, the wealthy, powerful, and influential would fight harder to retain the inequality you outline.

A more careful reading recognizes the hope you see instead. I'd like to see some media numbers, if anyone keeps track of such things, of the frequency of such reports in the news, if there is a measurable increase, when that would have started to tilt, are some news agencies more likely to report on the alarm sounding, etc.

Perhaps there are studies and surveys going on which would reveal if there is a real and permanent turn in the tide. As I read your post I noticed in the last year or so that I've accumulated some anecdotal evidence that might build on the hope you see.

I can see some slight movement away from old views among people my age and older but from my viewpoint it looks as if the real change will happen in the next generation. Increasingly the young adults I come in contact with are concerned with the state of the world in general and society in particular. The things I'm hearing are about from them are the way they desire to help change things for the better.

My Italian son, who I adopted in Italy if you recall, is working for a church in our city and is charge of local missions. He's always sharing about things going on around town, an inner city farmer's market, a woman who runs an art garden after school so impoverished children who don't have things like art supplies at home can be creative, a local artist who is helping kids make comics about their neighborhood. My young friend and two others rent a house in the very neighborhood where they are serving in order to feel connected to the community. He sent me a message last week to let me know that he' planting some flowers to help out the bees. :)

My own son is rejecting personally great chunks of the materialism and consumerism that keeps our society so bound up in the culture of me. He talks often of wanting to make a difference and live a life that matters. He tells of a skate park he goes to in a run down part of town. The skaters have impacted the neighborhood by cleaning up the area. Now kids show up to watch them skate, ask questions, and hang out. They are also being introduced to a new sport.

Over the weekend I was away at a silent Catholic retreat. There was a group of 6 college age kids attending as well. I would see them sitting quietly with stacks of books, or walking in the fields. When we could finally talk at breakfast on our last day I found out who they were and what they were doing. They were members of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. They had dedicated a year of life after college to the organization. The six of them lived in a house together and each received one hundred dollars a month to live on and meet all expenses. Not surprisingly simple living is one of the core values along with spirituality, community, and social justice. Attending a silent retreat was one of the requirements of their year of service.

What do you think? Can all of this translate into something bigger and long lasting? I'm thinking of the 60s where there was so much of this same attitude among young people in the country. And they did have a great impact and many of the results have lasted. But for the majority it seems that the responsibilities of life eventually crowded out the desire to go a different way.

Thoughts on that?

And here's something fun I'll be doing in May. The Minimalism Game. It's a challenge those two cool guys over at The Minimalists came up with. For our readers who feel like they are drowning in stuff, find a partner and make May the month of real spring cleaning. 

Bear Watching

Madame:

I have just returned from a short-notice trip to Panama, so this posting is not only a bit tardy, but will be unavoidably shorter (why am I not hearing any sighs? Lol).

There is a small flame near a whole lot of both kindling and dry wood.

I do not know if it will be blown out before it “catches,” but it has the potential to be a powerful movement for change.

Economic inequality.

Not the “normal” kind that results from differences in merit, hard work, intelligent application, and a bit of good fortune.

This is structural inequality, where economic opportunity is inhibited for most and accentuated for a relative few.

And increasing numbers in not just the country, but the world, are waking up to the seriousness of it:

“A wide range of social problems are worse in societies with bigger income differences.  These include physical and mental illness, violence, low math and literary scores among people, lower levels of trust and weaker community life, poor child well-being, more drug abuse, lower social mobility, and higher rates of imprisonment and teenage births.” Richard Wilkinson, professor emeritus, social epidemiology, University of Nottingham.

To make matters worse and self-accelerating (to this—perhaps!—tipping point),  the far greater wealth, power, and influence of the very wealthy have helped make the middle class feel less influential,more apathetic, and often even powerless, driving reduced voting and increasing apolitical behavior, leaving the “field” to the manipulators and the fringes.

But creeping into even the heavily wealth-influenced traditional media has been slowly growing numbers of individuals who have sounded the alarm. 

And that bears watching to see if a significant reaction, the possibility of which I mentioned in the last post, has begun.

We’ll see.  Maybe there’s more to the public’s interest in the Hunger Games, etc. than sheer entertainment!

Belated Earth Day Post

Professor J,

Well, well. You sound positively chipper in your most recent post. I see things quite often that give me hope.

While I'm preparing to head off on a silent retreat I'm using this week's post to illustrate some positive change. It's spring so it's hard for me not to relate everything to gardening and beekeeping (connections, connections...). Consider this my belated Earth Day post. Here are a couple of Ted Talks to show how new thinking can solve old problems. I love how different these two speakers are, yet the messages, not so much. The first one is about urban gardening and the second is about urban beekeeping. Enjoy!

Why The Long-Term Can Be Favorable

Madame:

Thank you for the look into juror duty.  It’s ironic, but this political science professor has never served on juror duty or even made it as far as you did.   It’s a pity (you may feel differently, lol) you didn’t go all the way through to be able to give us the all-the-way-through picture.

Today, my political scientist and historian selves are seeing a swirling confluence of factors that give hope and possibility at the same time as they warn of problem-avalanching. 

The older, crankier, narrow-minded, visionless, white-privileged, set-in-their-ways gaggle is slowly dying off.  They are, to be sure, a great force to be reckoned with as they go, and they are doing severe damage to democracy and economics as well.  At the moment, that is repairable, albeit at great cost. 

That means the long-term demographics are favorable.  The generations that succeed them have a fair chance, if they can follow their noses, of overturning the plutocratic setup.  Admittedly, it will be, without the catastrophes of Depression and World War, more difficult to accomplish.  Even more so because of the global nature of the plutocrats.  But by no means impossible.   And that’s even with the inevitable transformation of many of the presently younger generations becoming more set in their ways and resistant to change as they get older.

It would be fulfilling a historical pattern as old as the I Ching (Tao Te Ching): “After a time of decay comes the turning point.”

Just as the Gilded Age brought the Progressive Reaction, and the crises that later followed cemented for a generation (albeit quite imperfectly!) the primacy and growth of a middle class, so does the plutocracy/oligarchy dominance of today hold the seeds for a similar response.  Along with the nascent tendencies and desires to resist warring (or at least make it shorter and less continually destructive), as well as foster connections even as we become more tribal, that’s a trend that shows much promise.

Because for economics at least, after a while, the harsh, stark realities become so difficult to ignore, and so many people have so little to lose, that the groundswell propels the democratic levers to function for the people despite all the corruption and obstructionism (assuming, of course, no fascist/authoritarian radical change).

So, assuming we can both halt the acceleration of, and navigate the results from, our environmental criminally destructive foolishness, there is good hope for long-term transformation.  And we will need a vision to run TO, not just a present mess to run away FROM.

The “deep history” and “long history” trends inside just technology and globalization are so favorable that one could postulate that we are in the long view doing great things world-wise.  It is just our WAYS of doing those things are often highly flawed and often off-course.  Correcting those is like turning a great train engine down a better track.  As the obstructionists exit the stage in ever greater numbers, that becomes more and more possible to do.  And THAT’S hopeful.

And here you all thought I was just a cranky doomsayer. :)

And, for those of you who celebrate it, Happy Easter!

Civics 101: Jury Duty

Professor,

This week found me fulfilling the civic duty of serving on a jury. I have a few observations.

This was my second summons. A few years ago I was chosen to serve on the jury for a criminal case, that experience took me through the entire process from jury pool to trial, deliberation, verdict (guilty), then more deliberation for sentencing. While everyone groaned and complained about being called, once the jury was chosen I recall that the attitude changed immediately. People who had made light of the process until then took the responsibility very seriously and everyone went to great pains to follow all of the rules to the letter. I have to say it was impressive how quickly any cavalier attitude about the system disappeared immediately when it came down to the trial. 

No one seems to like to be notified of their opportunity to serve in this way. Everyone complains. It means time off work, or away from home, and in my case the thing that bothered me the most about it was the requirement to sit for the entire day. Something I am not use to doing. But I reorganized my phone, deleted old emails, and read Wuthering Heights. By lunch time the diverse cross section of our city had broken some of the ice and were getting a bit chattier. Like voting, only more so, jury duty forces citizens to work together as a group if you are chosen. If not there is still a benefit from the "we're all in this together" mindset.

We were shown a video by Supreme Court Justice Roberts explaining how and why the system works and Sandra Day O'Connor outlining why the Founders believed in a jury of your "peers."

Around mid-afternoon we were called to the courtroom. I was in a group of 12 out of 40 to be questioned first. The judge determined if we had family members in law enforcement and if we'd ever been the victim of a crime or if we'd ever been arrested or convicted. Some of the answers from fellow potential jurors were funny like the young woman who explained she'd been arrested for having a "blunt" and thought the justice system had worked well for her since she didn't go to jail. Then there was the woman whose husband had been murdered by a 14 year old as part of a gang initiation. He'd received life in prison without parole, she hesitated when asked if the system had worked for her and finally said "Given the situation..."

After that the judge had a little chat with each of us as the microphone was passed around. I garnered attention for most unusual job with "beekeeper." Got two orders for honey at the break, one from a Cambodian man and fairly new citizen who was beaming throughout the day as he fulfilled his duty as a fellow citizen. I was excused with the rest of those 12 save 2 and free to go.

When I walked outside I realized just how miserable having been inside all day had felt. Particularly in the courtroom where there were no windows but fluorescent lighting and an atmosphere that was tense. I couldn't help but wonder if people are making the best decisions possible under those conditions. One of the great lessons of the day was just how much better we feel when we get to move and be exposed to natural light.

Advice for introverts: Take up beekeeping. You never have to think of anything original to say because you are too busy answering questions in social settings. :)

"I Need To Learn More"

Madame,

“My experience is the norm.”  In this society cleverly divided by a privileged class where money and privilege begets more money and more privilege, while the opposite begets the opposite, we get this self-structured inability to perceive VALID differences.  Too many of us instead dismiss different views as “radical,” “far outside the norm,”  “crazy” or “evil.”  We end up universalizing our personal experience, as in “true in my experience” means it must be true for all, or at least ALL WHO MATTER. 

How easy it is to make us self-delusional in this hyper-individualistic society! And with it, all the deleterious second and third order effects from that self-delusion.

What we get, instead of consensus and united action to change a system that more and more intellectuals recognize as disastrously harmful to the shrinking middle class while it further enriches an already obscenely rich micro-sliver upper-upper class, is diversionary misfocus. 

The knowingly malicious and the willfully ignorant team up to manipulate the carelessly ignorant to vote against their own interests, and then alienate the remaining ignorant to become hopeless or apathetic enough to stay away from the voting booth.  Giving the appearance that voting has become irrelevant.

Bill Moyers had a piece recently to talk about a strategically clever donor class:

“We don’t have emperors yet, but one of our two major parties is now dominated by radicals engaged in a crusade of voter suppression aimed at the elderly, the young, minorities, and the poor; while the other party, once the champion of everyday working people, has been so enfeebled by its own collaboration with the donor class that it offers only token resistance to the forces that have demoralized everyday Americans.

“Writing in the Guardian recently, the social critic George Monbiot commented,

‘So I don’t blame people for giving up on politics... When a state-corporate nexus of power has bypassed democracy and made a mockery of the voting process, when an unreformed political system ensures that parties can be bought and sold, when politicians [of the main parties] stand and watch as public services are divvied up by a grubby cabal of privateers, what is left of this system that inspires us to participate?’”

Read more: http://www.utne.com/politics/the-rule-of-emperors.aspx#ixzz2yE2qeFIA

Precisely how that donor class wants it.  It won’t change until most of us cease cooperation with it.  Perhaps the first step is to say to ourselves, “I don’t want to be low-information anymore.  I want to learn more.  I NEED to learn more.”

"And I need to talk with others.  Others NOT like me."

Things are Tough All Over

Professor J,

 Like anything else there are lots of ways the mandatory service thing could go wrong. But in a nation with so many fatherless young men, those who lack discipline, and who have so little respect for themselves and others, I think the positives might outweigh the negatives.

I find the balance between seeing things as they are, which is pretty bad, and maintaining hope that they can be better hard for lots of people. What you see most often instead of hopeful realists are either Pollyannas or Doomsday Preppers. Neither of which are all that helpful in problem solving.

And as far as looking for adults I think my two years of service between high school and college would help immensely.

Last night I went with my son to the Italian Film Fest at his university. The movie was a documentary about Venice and I expected it to be the standard fare about the city sinking and the tourists ruining it. But the problems presented were much more complicated.

Teorema Venezia (The Venice Syndrome) depicted the situation in which residents of Venice find themselves. Property is being bought up by investors for rentals at astronomical prices, but the real problem was that the infrastructure (schools, post office, and businesses like markets and groceries) are closing. So the residents, many of whom have lived on the island their entire lives are being forced out due to an inability to survive.

The citizens had clearly been sold out by their city leaders. The money was bypassing the residents and going directly to the big corporations, cruise lines, and investors. Little of it remained in the city to keep anything going. The feeling of the people was that they were being driven out so the city could become a sort of tourist attraction with no real residents, an Italian Disneyland with canals and history.

Interesting how many citizens around the world are facing problems that have no simple solutions.

Summoning The Adults

Madame:

I was going to play devil’s advocate on the mandatory service thing, but heck, as my son has said, the two or so years from high school until one gets to be officially a full adult (age 21) are a period of angstful in-betweenism anyway. :)

I’m thinking that a candidate who showed that kind of humility of admitting not having all the facts, or willingness to consider new data and change opinions,would be loved by the many.  Hopefully, those many would vote.  Because the haters, well, they may not do much constructive, but they are loud, they are forceful, and they vote.  Man, do they vote.

I was thinking the other day about so many of us have this need for something positive to be presented, rather than pulling up our boots and making something positive by turning a negative thing around until a positive outcome or change is effected. In some ways, this desire to have a positive presentation is beneficial.  But in others, it holds us back, because it keeps us from facing up to our's and our society’s situations in full clarity.

Because how many times have you heard someone say that they listen to something, like something, recommend something, because: “It’s not doom and gloom, not all bad news.”

Americans have been doing a poor job of handling bad news.  That “handling” has too often consisted of going into deflect, deny, or escape/divert mode, or self-enfeeblement/self-depressive mode.  Such reaction states are not only not productive, but serve those selfish interests that are truly causing the bad news in the first place. 

Ignore the problem?  Deflect it onto something or someone else?  Deny it?  Temporarily escape from the consequences?  Divert oneself into something pleasurable while the problem builds in the background?

Those are all a child’s reaction to the need for taking responsibility and actively addressing and correcting the problem.  Those who thump their chests and say “we are AMERICANS,” should put their actions where their words are, and be adults.  Adults who lay fantasizing, wishing, and avoidance aside to come together with other adults to be the grown-ups who make the hard decisions.

And we need to be honest about our “leaders,” and ourselves.  Whose bidding are we really doing?  And where is the real data? 

Being the adult isn’t always fun.  But the children of future tomorrows need us to be.  Desperately. 

The Grit Factor

Professor J,

I thought we were agreeing that we agreed? Now I'm just confused. ;)

Very interesting that you list various groups of people with different degrees of grit. The fact that the discipline of the military seems to foster it in people reinforces my belief in the idea of having 2 years of mandatory military service between high school and college. I think a couple of years of service, physical fitness, and discipline would do wonders at a time in life when so many young people find themselves floundering. As I've noted before I think we'd also find ourselves in fewer unnecessary conflicts if every person in government knew their child might be involved.

You make a good point about true opportunity. Perhaps meaningless math problems don't bring out the stalwartness those researchers were looking for. I know that personally I will work long past exhaustion on something I care deeply about and carve out time for it no matter how busy I am. When engaged in a project I will often skip meals and lose sleep. I call it selfish industriousness. People who ask me to help with something I'm not interested in or don't see the importance of don't see the same kind of effort. Hopefully, they would see at least a a desire to help and a little grit. :)

And if you don't mind another family anecdote, my daughter told me a few weeks ago that she felt like her determination in getting an education and being interested in how people learn in general, arose from being responsible for so much of her own schooling. There is a great benefit in allowing students to be in control of much of their studies and time. My son corroborates her theory. As any teacher knows you can kindle, inspire, share and expose,  but you cannot teach anyone who doesn't have a desire to learn. Making students more and teachers less responsible for learning may be a part of the grit equation in education.

Franklin's genius is apparent like that of all great men in still being relevant centuries on. Intellectual honesty isn't something we see all that often in our culture. When did it become a mortal sin to be wrong or change your mind? Why is it so hard for people to say that they didn't have all the information or now realize they were purposefully mis-informed?

It seems almost impossible for people to say:

I see your point.

I hadn't thought of it like that.

I didn't know that.

My information may be wrong.

I don't have enough information to be sure. 

This human determination to be right (or at least not have our pride hurt by being proven wrong) is causing many to cling to faulty thinking and resist looking for common ground where we can collaborate.

It may well be our undoing.

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