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Thursday, December 19, 2019

THE RASHOMON SYNDROME


James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 18, 2019


PREAMBLE:

In a 1951 film by Akira Kurosawa called “Rashomon,” people who witnessed an event varied in how they saw it from their particular perspective.

Charles D. Hayes and I have been friends for many years, or since he sent me a manuscript to read, which I returned with page comments that went into scores of single spaced typed pages. It was remarkable writing, and I was flattered that he wanted my assessment.

We are what you would call mutual autodidacts, having come to the business of ideas from very different life experiences although from a common culture of the working class.

I am a renegade Irish Roman Catholic and he is an atheist; I am a conservative and he is a liberal; I am a Republican and I would imagine he is a Democrat; while both of us are writers true to our instincts and experiences.

Incredibly, what he says here I do not necessarily refute as I can only say that I see the same things he sees but differently.

As I write in one of my books, as long as man has been in an economic society, whatever the politics, the economic system or the culture, the one percent have dominated the ninety-nine percent. It has been true throughout American history from the Founding Fathers to the present day. Ironically, it was as true in the glorious days of the aristocracies of Europe’s Golden Age as it was true of the brief history of the Soviet Union and the Russian communist state.

The few always control the many, and they do so because the many allow it to happen, having little stomach for the heavy lifting required in opposing the majority.

I must confess I don’t follow politics or economic trends nearly as closely as does Charles D. Hayes, but I do study the behaviors of my time. I have thought about funneling my ideas into some sort of a system but have not done so to date. It is likely I’ll leave that up to students of such things after I’m gone.

What I will say is that it is healthy to have ideas, and to express those ideas, and be passionate about those ideas. It is not important to generate consensus, be a crusader or have an army of supportive believers.

Chances of Charles and me ever looking at life from the same perspective are not likely, but that is okay. If either of our positions appeal to others, I hope it is because it is consistent with how those persons see the world and not because they want to climb aboard our little boats.

With that in mind, I share author Charles D. Hayes’s latest missives.


Author Charles D. Hayes reacts to my reaction to his assessment of WE HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE

America’s middle class was not actually created, until we had a massive investment in hard and soft infrastructure after the war. The interstate highway system, rural electrification, VA housing and the GI Bill among others. Moreover, our tax rates back then acknowledged that civilization is a damned expensive proposition.

In the Midwest there are companies with caravans of harvesting combines who travel northward harvesting wheat and other crops in the summer and fall. It is cheaper for many farmers to hire a company to harvest their crops instead of buying and maintaining the equipment themselves. My point is that employers are more like harvesters than job creators. The harvesters don't work unless something needs reaping, and likewise most companies do not hire unless there is money to be made. Gratitude for having been offered a job tends to obscure this reality. The expectation of reciprocal loyalty over the past two decades has pretty much evaporated. The reality has always been that employers don't hire people unless there is money on the table or in the field, and it seems exceptionally naïve to have ever thought otherwise.

More often than not, political usage of the term job creator is deceptive. The implication in pro-business political ads is that if we vote for a candidate who is friendly to the job creators, then there will be more jobs. Maybe, maybe not. In a nutshell, no demand, no customers, no jobs. But it doesn't stop here. If the candidate is too friendly with the so-called job creators, then the jobs are not likely to pay a living wage because the employers will write all of the rules and laws.

Now there are companies that innovate and offer new products, and in the process create their own demand. In effect, they do create jobs. But for the most part, the nation's big corporate employers are analogous to crop harvesters. When possible they ramp up to harvest and cash in. There is nothing wrong with this, but keeping this reality in political perspective is critical to the well-being of those who work for a living and vote.

Stimulating the economy is like siphoning gas: if it's not done with enough force, it won't flow with enough pressure to keep going. Austerity won't get you far enough down the road to reach a gas station, and the people promising to create jobs without a flowing economy are talking through their hats. No demand, no flow, nothing to reap, no jobs. This is not rocket science; it's not even a mysterious process when you stop drinking the political Kool-Aid. Put the ideological rhetoric in perspective and admit that a just society is a worthy goal and that working people count as much as Wall Street executives.

Gratitude toward employers during the past half-century has been so forceful and overwhelming that the right of an entrepreneur to exploit workers with exceptionally low wages and degrading working conditions has traditionally gotten a free pass. They act as if they have a divine right to do this because, after all, they are job creators. It's long past time to think through the mythology and the glorious rights of employers. If a task is worth doing and a job needs to be created, then it is worth a living wage. If not, let the entrepreneurs or executives do it themselves.

I met Sam Walton once. His company today could raise prices a few pennies on the dollar and pay real living wages. In all likelihood they would even be more profitable than they are today, because Walmart would be the place to work in America, like Ford once was. Instead, we as taxpayers supplement some of their full time workers with food stamps. This is right there in keeping with the old bastard himself. His employees won a law suit against him about not paying them for overtime worked, he gave them checks but promised to fire anyone who cashed their check. Job creators my left foot.

More from author Charles D. Hayes

If we are to have a brighter economic future, some prevailing ideological bubbles must be burst, and now we have a very sharp pin to focus on the subject of inequality. French economist Thomas Piketty has pored over a century’s worth of economic data from thirty countries and written Capital in the Twenty-First Century, where he provides compelling details that burst the balloon of supply-side ideology. Specifically, his evidence deflates the claim that the key to the future is laissez faire capitalism, low taxes, and the arcane notion that capitalism is a dependable trickle-down success story.

Piketty’s work has been under unrelenting attack, especially by people who don’t want to believe it and likely won’t believe it, even if it holds up over time as a valid argument. But the manic condemnation has created a bestseller. Critics are desperately searching Piketty’s data in hopes of finding flaws that will enable them to dismiss the whole work. Doing so won’t be easy, though, because, apart from some noted arithmetic errors, his examples are exhausting and his timeline covers decades of trends in the demographics of wealth accumulation.

One glaring fact is undeniable: inequality is escalating globally at an alarming rate. The debate needs to go on until we sort the virtues from the vices of capitalism and get to the bottom of why so many working people remain in poverty.

Those who claim that Piketty is a Marxist obviously have not read the book. He favors capitalism, but he makes it clear that capitalism is an engine so powerful that when it idles, the return on capital outpaces general economic growth. This is why the top one percent is on course to accumulate more and more wealth, at the expense of the rest of the economy.

The imbalance will not stop without serious intervention, namely putting a governor on the carburetor of capitalism, in the form of a progressive tax that’s steep at the high end, to check the excessive growth disparity and bring an equitable balance to the population at large.

In a nutshell, Piketty argues that capitalism is a system whose algorithmic functionality accelerates advantage and then continues to favor that advantage disproportionally. It’s a snowballing effect that, if left unchecked, eventually becomes an avalanche. The gap between the growth of capital and the rest of the economy is small, but the consequences are enormous.

Piketty’s analysis aside, the rise in economic inequality in America during the last thirty years offers prima facie evidence that something in our capitalistic system is fundamentally flawed. Capitalism, it seems, systematically undermines its own success. According to the Wall Street Journal, 95 percent of income gains from 2009 through 2012 went to the top one percent. How much worse does this disparity have to get before the intransigent GOP wakes up and at least admits we have a problem?

The ideological friction between labor and capital is an ancient quarrel. “Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” So said Abraham Lincoln, a prescient Republican president, in 1861.

Where is the higher consideration? Labor today gets scorn, contempt, and derision for even raising the subject. Why is the minimum wage stagnant despite significant growth in productivity? Simply put: although the precise identity of the culprits directly responsible may be subject to argument, the pockets of the working poor have been picked as effectively as if accomplished by a thief.

Adam Smith’s invisible hand is a powerful metaphor, and the self-interest it describes can and does improve lives all over the world. But Smith’s work has been corrupted and championed as a celebration of greed, which is the antithesis of his thinking. At its best, capitalism dramatically improves lives; at its worst, unchecked greed ravages the environment, oppresses individuals, and destroys culture.

Capitalism is analogous to radiation. Used carefully, it can produce miraculous results, while overuse kills. In Smith’s view, economic freedom does not come with the license to oppress because the very idea of doing so is immoral.

The government’s job is to keep the invisible hand from becoming a pickpocket by keeping any and all economic factions from acquiring enough power to be oppressive, whether the aggressor is the government itself, a corporation, or an individual. Whatever happened to the notion that “we the people” are the government?

Adam Smith advocated freedom in a sense of moral ethicality long since forgotten and absent from general public discourse. The ethos of Wall Street is so far out of sync with Smith’s view of ethical economic behavior, it seems almost extraterrestrial.

The idea that a self‐creating, self‐sustaining middle class can exist on nothing but low taxes, ambition, and individual initiative is absurd, and the hundred-year history in Piketty’s book makes this crystal clear. Middle-class societies require significant ongoing investments. Repeating adamant declarations that lowering taxes will always lead to economic growth will not make it so. American economic history well illustrates this point. Higher taxes do not necessarily result in economic downturns. Some of our greatest periods of growth and a thriving middle class have occurred when tax rates were much higher than those we have today.

Remember this: Never on this planet has there existed a civilization with a strong middle class and minimal poverty without an extraordinary government effort behind its creation and a substantial and ongoing investment in both hard and soft infrastructure to keep it viable. Never!

The existence of middle class is a purposeful effort. Don't believe it? Find one that occurred by happenstance or sheer ambition. Offer an example. Please. Look the world over at all of the developed nations with a high quality of life, and you will find no great society arising solely out of the burning desire for individual success. Affluent societies are not accidental occurrences. Even in societies that are resource rich, substantial investments in the public interest have to be made. And yet, in America, Horatio Alger bootstrap nonsense is still touted as if personal drive is the only ingredient necessary for economic triumph.

Make no mistake, individual responsibility and initiative are important for success, but we don't achieve middle‐class status without an overt public effort and the investment necessary for both creating and sustaining it. Rural electrification, the interstate highway system, the GI Bill, and the Federal Housing Authority were key ingredients that gave rise to America's middle class, all paid for by much higher tax rates than are currently in effect.

Thomas Piketty describes this period in American history as an aberration, but it didn’t kill capitalism. To the contrary, it kicked the engine into overdrive, putting a governor on capital and providing enough equity that starting wages supported a middle-class lifestyle with only one person in a family working. To avoid taxes at the highest rate, business owners reinvested heavily in their companies, and their wealth increased accordingly.

Executive compensation today has everything to do with the power to loot with legal immunity. These days we hear a lot of talk about takers, but not much is said about those who have already taken far more than the value they create. Wall Street executives fled the 2008 meltdown with multimillion‐dollar bonuses, while people who were put out of work because of executive greed are routinely referred to as parasites for collecting unemployment.

In reality, the financial services industry is where we have an infestation of parasites. They skim the stock market with supercomputers, and cover their tracks with empty slogans about success, freedom, and the American Dream, having succeeded in getting the legislative license and political support not only to loot openly, but to be celebrated for it.

An ethos of self‐reliance is accepted as a core component of American culture. Ralph Waldo Emerson is the grand architect of this way of thinking about ourselves. But today's politicized rhetoric about self‐reliance overlooks the fact that Emerson was anti‐materialistic to an extreme that few Wall Street cheerleaders can comprehend.

Much of our love affair with rugged individualism is based on mythology. We celebrate a history that never happened, obsessively calling attention to individual initiative, while ignoring the enormous government expenditure that made America possible. Millions of working people today depend upon paychecks in market economies that are subject to the whims of fashion and global recessions. Through no fault of their own, they find themselves out of work for months or years. The idea that without some kind of intervention or assistance, sheer determination will allow them to recover is patently illogical.

There is plenty of need for outrage in America, but it should focus on adjusting the engine of capitalism and the regulations that pose a danger to the public interest. Skyrocketing inequality and a shrinking middle class create a recipe for economic decline. The engine of capitalism is perfectly capable of working for everyone. It’s happened before and it can happen again, but the public will must demand an overhaul.

The profound irony is that the long-term future of our species depends not on economic growth per se, but almost its opposite: the exponential growth of knowledge toward reducing the human imprint on the natural world. Sadly, even to raise the subject that our impact on the earth is more important than our economic system is to invite ridicule and the questioning of one’s sanity.

Piketty’s research suggests that our long-term growth is inevitably likely to slow, but he is reluctant to predict a rate. He offers a brief discussion of the importance of addressing climate change, but says little about population growth and the consequences of finite resources. In his words, “The long-term dynamics of wealth distribution are potentially terrifying, especially when one adds that the return on capital varies directly with the size of the initial stake and that divergence in the wealth distribution is occurring on a global scale. The problem is enormous, and there is no simple solution.”

Put simply, civilization is a very expensive proposition, and if we continue to attempt to achieve progress with ego-driven criteria based on greed, a childish penchant for selfishness, and ethnocentric tribalism, the pursuit is likely to end badly. Nothing save a catastrophe will produce the resolve to do what needs to be done.

Wednesday, December 18, 2019

REPLY – WE HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE


Author Charles D. Hayes writes:

A half century ago, General Motors was America’s largest employer and the hourly wages then, were equivalent to $50.00 per hour today. Now, America’s biggest employer, is Walmart and the value equivalence of their hourly wage is $8.00 per hour.

This is the reward of 50 years of trickledown economics and because this loss of equity happened so slowly over time, we have a frog in the pot scenario, in which, the frog (we) let the water get too hot, until jumping was not an option.

Moreover, the small-government-low-taxes mania that accompanies trickledown economics, combined with a governance that operates on the principle of legal bribery, is a recipe for oligarchy at best, and tyranny at the worst.

That the GOP still has wildly enthusiastic support for a system rigged so effectively that it amounts to Socialism for the top one percent, and that CEO’s and Boards of Directors openly loot our public corporations, without public outrage, is an assault on the very idea of democracy. Donald Trump currently has an 88 percent approval rating with Republicans. How in the name of hell is such imbecility possible?

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis put our predicament in clear perspective: “We can have a democratic society, or we can have great concentrated wealth in the hands of a few. We cannot have both.”

French economist Thomas Piketty’s exhaustive research on the history of global capitalism, shows clearly and definitively that over time, unless there are very strict safeguards, capital will exponentially outpace the value of labor, resulting in an ever-increasing economic inequality.

This is where we are in 2019, and it’s going to take a lot more than a little tweaking with the minimum wage to fix this. We need a top to bottom makeover.

My reply:

There are two prominent fears to which we Americans are inclined to respond. One is economic fear, the other is emotional or physical fear.

After World War One, when the economy spun out of control only to collapse on Wall Street in 1929 with millions of Americans losing their jobs, homes and savings, while such places as Germany saw the German Mark not only become worthless but decidedly so with a trillion marks needed to buy a loaf of bread. This opened the door for the rise of Adolf Hitler and World War Two.

Something strange but seemingly predictable, given the two fears alluded to here, the American economy boomed immediately after World War Two with jobs aplenty and corporations not only vulnerable but open to laboring workers' demands. Then a funny thing happened.

Labor unions, which came out of WWII strong, instead of negotiating from strength, entered into collusion with Corporate America with workers giving up control of their work for pay and benefit concessions with the structures of labor unions proving to be essentially mirror images of their adversaries, Corporate America.

Peace existed in the trenches as long as the wealth creators profited against little or no international competition.  It was like Christmas every day!  I experienced a measure of this as I visited my professor uncle in Detroit several summers after WWII.

My uncle was Chairman of the Department of Economics & Commerce at the University of Detroit with Ph.D.’s in economics and psychology from the University of Iowa

He lived at 20963 Northlawn Avenue in Detroit near the university off Livernois in a fine brick home with neighbor’s as doctors, lawyers, professors, and psychiatrists. Only a stone’s throw away, however, lived autoworker families in equally fine brick homes with late model automobiles in their driveways or garages.

Both parents likely worked in the automotive industry for Ford, Chrysler or General Motors, and their kids as well once they finished high school. 

The irony was that the professionals down the street were not as well off as these working class families who had invested nothing in education and therefore suffered none of the expense or experienced none of the delay in earning a good living as these college trained people did.  

Yet, with mother and father, and often brother and sister working in the automotive industry, the family income sometimes proved staggering for the times.  I know because I asked.

I knew some members of these working class families as I played baseball with them in a summer league. They didn’t care if their parents had mindless jobs on the assembling line. Indeed, they were looking forward to the same mindless jobs once they finished high school.

Families living high on the hog, didn’t save, and thought the honey trip would never end, until it did. As I mentioned in my previous missive, the world caught up with the United States, and no more tellingly so then with the automotive industry.

Back in 1953, Charles E. Wilson, CEO of General Motors said, “What was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.”  He truly believed as Detroit went so did the rest of the country, or so he and others thought.

Detroit continued to make big gas guzzling cars while nations abroad were making and selling compacts to American consumers, and around the world.  Meanwhile, Detroit’s automotive industry shrunk to embarrassing size, and with this shrinkage, tens of thousands of formerly well-paying jobs in allied industries disappeared as well.

“Sleeping in the nightmare” became part of the experience of automakers and their minions as the lack of strategic thinking and vision collapsed a stellar American industry.

Now, who do we blame this on, if blame is the game? 

Do we blame it on the wealth creators who have made the United States the most vibrant economic power in man’s history? Or do we blame it on the shortsightedness of automotive and labor union management?

I have been a corporate executive with two Fortune 500 companies, a chemist with another, and have experienced the myopia of management on several fronts, including the international. I am sorry workers have suffered, but I have also seen little evidence of them, at any level, wanting to take care and control of their own destiny.

Workers gave up control of their work, and by extension, their lives, when they bought into the collusion of labor and management where wage and benefits concessions, including generous health insurance guarantees were part of the package. 

Many of these retirees still enjoy incredible benefits despite having worked many years ago, a burden that the automotive industry bought into when the gravy train looked as if it was overflowing with abundance, and would remain so forever.

On the other hand, I have known millionaires who have lost fortunes and worked their way back into creating others. Anyone who has ever been self-employed and have had other employees knows how hard it is to sometimes make payroll. I once own my own consulting company and I can tell you it is not easy; it is never easy.

Were it not for the Walmart’s and other such firms, where would the United States be today? People that work for such employers are often students, retirees, and people who lack the skills to be hired elsewhere. People who shop at Walmart’s benefit from the low prices which again benefit retirees and others on limited income.

Wealth creators are not the bad guys. Our spoiled brat society is a self-indulgent narcissistic society always looking for gain without pain, for a handout, or to get what it wants without using its brains or developing the emotional maturity demanded of a society clearly in decline.

Be safe,

Jim




















Tuesday, December 17, 2019




WE HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE 


James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© December 17, 2019



"So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days."

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Inaugural Address when he assumed office on March 4, 1933 at the height of The Great Depression.



In recent decades, and especially after the September 11 attacks, Americans have quietly traded an increasing number of civil liberties for increased government “counter-terrorism” programs and wars purportedly waged to “keep us safe.” Now, those same policies used to target “terrorists” are set to be used against ordinary Americans, whose electronic lives and communications are now set to be scoured for evidence of “mental illness.” If these untransparent algorithms flag an individual, that could be enough lead to court-ordered “mental health treatment” or even imprisonment regardless of whether or not a crime was committed or even planned.

Whitney Webb, Sleeping into a Nightmare, October 25, 2019, MintPress News


WE HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE

In my lifetime, we elected and reelected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt four times because he “led us out of The Great Depression,” which of course he didn’t; World War Two did.

American journalist David Halberstam (1934 – 2007) wrote about the “American delusion” in “The Next Century” (1993). This was published after the Berlin Wall came down. Taking little solace from this, while the Soviet Union was grappling with its disintegration, he writes in his book that “The United States, however, is a prisoner of grandeur.”

This was followed with the burst of patriotic fervor with the Gulf War, after Vietnam, then the Iraq War, and all the subsequent wars including Afghanistan, and now Syria, and always with self-worshiping optimism that this will all turn out well in the end.

It is obvious that America is in decline and its own downfall isn’t far away as it continue to fail to come to grips with its own enemy, itself.

It is now three quarters of a century since the triumph of World War Two, when America was a giant playing big brother to the rest of the world after other nations were dealing with their own devastation after two world wars.

Now, the United States has lost its immense technological advantage over other nations after the best American minds were invested first in devising weapons (the atomic and hydrogen bomb) that have now become obsolete producing waste that can never be destroyed; then turning its attention to the paranoia of using the breakthrough technology of electronics to create the George Orwell nightmare that Whitney Webb describes.


THE TANTALIZING APPEAL OF “MANAGED” CRISES

There is something in the American character that quite regrettably loves crises. This is so much in the personal/political identity of the American that we elevate people of distinction to executive leadership status in virtually every field of endeavor: from government to education, industry, medicine, mental health, and so on, who are expert "crisis managers."

We are a reactive solution driven society choosing to avoid the heavy lifting of carefully defining our problems, preferring instead to resolve pesky issues with quick fixes (e.g., throwing money at our problems) with cosmetic expedient remedies.

These solutions invariably exacerbate the situation. This operational blindness has, paradoxically, resulted in our crisis managed society with our most brilliant and capable citizens expected to rise to the occasion to unravel what cannot be undone.

Not unlike the corporate executives of cigarette manufacturing companies, in April 15, 1994, sitting side by side at a conference table before the US Congress, echoing the same sentiments: smoking is not dangerous to the smoker’s health.

Yet, each of these companies had conclusive data in their own research departments that smoking was, indeed, dangerous. Once again, profits won over people. We forget or choose to ignore the charade that has taken over responsible enterprise in these United States.

Our national leaders in nearly every discipline do not accept the new equation that the years of easy affluence and complacent regard for the future are over. Meanwhile, Americans are still in love with the feeling of being on top of the world even though they no longer are.

“The result,” Halberstam tells us, “is a society oddly oblivious to its new realities, a people and a nation living above their heads, and politicians who dare not tell the truth to the population.” 

This is a perfect climate for journalists to use scare tactics to gain an audience, as clearly Whitney Webb has managed with his piece on the World Wide Web mania, and electronic backstories, situations that have been going on long before the Attorney General of the United States made it his policy.

We are literally spies with our electronic contraptions used against friends and enemies alike, with our own backstory methodologies. In a word, we can be pathetic.

Now, as author Whitney Webb suggests, we are “sleeping into a nightmare” as U.S. Attorney General William Barr desires to establish an electronic “back door” to discourage and control the aims of terrorists and criminals, all to nullify our fears of the reality we have created: first, with the nuclear bomb and now with the wizardry of ubiquitous electronics.

Meanwhile, America has squandered its wealth becoming the greatest debtor on the planet. But it chooses to blame its competitors rather than tax itself and spend more wisely. It has entered this new century with a large portion of the American population impoverished and uneducated.

As is the American inclination, money has been thrown at poverty and education hoping some of it will stick and do the job, which is another indication of the great delusion, as the United States spends more money per student than any other nation, and yet the problem persists. There have never been more homeless and impoverished people in this nation before, which is now in the millions, while the per capita income of individual Americans in general is on the rise.

Meanwhile, our leaders engage in internecine warfare in the workplace, in education, in industry, in medicine, in the military, and in government, seemingly languishing in an aristocratic manse of superiority and exclusivity that is now delusional.

The world is now only functional for grownups, and the United States has never made that cut. It is a reactionary nation that responds to its fears in the form of pervasive anxiety (to wit, "The United States of Anxiety”), and has been willing, as far back as the “New Deal” of FDR to sacrifice identity, individualism and purpose for the benefits promised by progressive socialists.

Now, everyone is being told that they have the right to a college education at the government’s expense; the right to a well-paying job whatever their qualifications; the right to happiness without effort necessarily in its pursuit; and the right to be optimistic with no pause to embrace reality along the way.

This is a far different world than when I was a schoolboy, when I only had to compete with my classmates and neighbors for a good education, a good job and a relatively good life. Now, kids are competing with Germans who go to school six days a week, Fins who pay teachers the same as its doctors and lawyers, while the best and the brightest from Osaka, Seoul, Djakarta, Singapore, Bangkok, Wroclaw, Budapest and elsewhere come to America’s excellent universities to leave American graduate students in the dust.

What are America’s movers and shakers doing? They point to the Gross Domestic Product and  National Job’s Report and declare everything is going fine.

Now, the United States is no longer in the driver seat, although the nation lingers in the belief of America’s exceptionalism. Where the nation once basked in the eminence of its nuclear prowess, and world dominance, it now retreats into the hubris of its crafty electronics and wasteful abundance, failing to realize such conceits epitomize its own mental illness which includes depression, mass hysteria and delusion, states of mind of its own creation.    

   



Monday, December 16, 2019



THE COMPULSIONS TO CHASE RAINBOWS

OR

THE MIKADO EFFECT OF TODAY AND BEYOND


James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 16, 2019




HENRY WRITES

Maybe you’ll like this. Maybe not at all. At any rate, here it is.

Best,

Henry

P.S. Yes, cleaning shelves and memories ...




With malice toward none  

      ....  





Pick-up sticks, randomly heaped. (Source)



Pick-up sticks are dropped on a table or floor to form a loose pile. Players take turns trying to remove one without disturbing others. A stick's color code indicates its value. The most valuable stick is often called "Mikado" (Emperor of Japan).  

In real life there are many issues that concern us. Some now, others then. Circumstances change, priorities change. Years ago, I took some notes about various issues. Topping the list:

      pollution killing off our food chain,
      climate change,
      large-scale burning of our forests,
      nuclear warfare.

to be followed by:

      artificial intelligence and robotics,
      armed conflict and terrorism,
      mass migrations of people,
      fear and hatred among population groups,
      poor judgement by people and governments,
      poor appreciation of good citizenship.  

Many sticks and others still—long sticks, short sticks, fat stick, thin sticks, straight sticks, crooked sticks. And yet to be mentioned: inadequate education and corrupted media. How, in real life, do we decide in wfleabyte.orghat order problems need to be tackled so as not to critically disturb the others. All the while keeping an eye on happenings elsewhere.  

Mikado has its rules. Real-world Mikado vastly more. It also has cheaters. Every rule challenged by cheaters. "Money is the root of all evil," an old adage goes. Close, but no cigar; people are.  

There was once an emperor who loved new, ever more beautiful attire, which he would show off to one and all. Hans Christian Andersen wrote about him—back in 1837, if you want to know.  

Sorry, I am an old fogey and often get mixed up a bit. Andersen wrote many children's stories, mirrors for all to reflect in. From the downtrodden to the very fittest, who are not to be toyed with. Excellency’s, Honorable’s, you know, and mere multibillionaires of course.  

"The Emperor's new clothes" is also about two weavers who claimed to make clothes from the finest silk from China. And not only that. Their clothes would be invisible to anyone incompetent for the job he or she is supposed to do. Of course, when the Emperor heard about this he hired them instantly and gave them room to work and vast sums of money to buy those silks. Did he ever look forward to find those incompetent for their job!  

Word got around about those magic clothes. When finally the day came for the Emperor to put on his new clothes, lighter even than a feather, the Emperor was shocked to not be able to see them. So were all his ministers, his cooks, and his generals. But, of course, they all kept quiet about that. Everybody praised the Emperor's new clothes, the beautiful colors, the patterns, and the cut. Everybody agreed that the weavers deserved the highest order of the land and to be named Honorable Weavers of State.  

Time came for the Emperor to put in a public appearance. Parading for his subjects in the Imperial Plaza, no one dared to say that the Emperor walked about in his underwear. Nobody wanted to be found unfit for the job they were supposed to do. Absolutely nobody; not until a school-aged girl shouted "But he isn't wearing anything at all!" Then others followed her lead, "The Emperor isn't wearing anything at all!  

Loudest were the Emperor's Weftist minsters. His Warpists, however, denounced the Weftists' obvious incompetence. And the rest of the story has been going on till this very day and will go on in the time yet to come. Which leaves untouched our Mikado sticks.  
I'm Hans Christian Andersen,
            I've many a tale to tell.
      And though I'm a cobbler,
            I'd say I tell them rather well ....

      
I write myself a note each day,
            and I place it in my hat.
      The wind comes by, the hat blows high,
            but that not the end of that.
      For 'round and 'round the world it goes,
            it lands here right behind myself,
      I pick it up, and I read the note,
            which is merely to remind myself:
     
I'm Hans Christian Andersen,
            Andersen, that's me!

      
I'm Hans Christian Andersen,
            my pen's like a babbling brook
      Permit me to show you, Dear Sir,
            my very latest book.
      Now here's a tale of a simple fool;
            just glance at a page or two.
      You laugh "Ha Ha" but you blush a bit
            for you realize while you're reading it
            that it's also reading you.
      I'm Hans Christian Andersen,
            Andersen, that's who!


Danny Kaye
,


"Hans Christian Andersen" (movie, 1952)  






© Henry K van Eyken <vaneyken@sympatico.ca>http://fleabyte.org/My-2-cents/Myworld/blog-18.html



MY RESPONSE


Henry,

As usual, this is precious. Hans Christian Andersen touched a common cord to us all.

Only this past week, with our daughter and her husband visiting us from New Jersey, where she is a project manager of an interior design company and he an electronic engineer for Siemens, originally from Turkey, and curious about such things as this story reveals, asked me, “Jim, why are so many people two faced or three faced?”

Well, Hans Christian Andersen knew why. I explained to him that people forget that they are born with their essence, their DNA, which they cannot change, but they have an acquired self, their personality, which they cannot only change, but do so constantly throughout life.

They have a personality for work, when with family and friends, when around strangers, in a crowd, and when alone. To make the matter more complicated, even these dispositions change radically, or subtly over time, often, without our being aware of the changes.

Personality is like your Emperor and his clothes faddish. What my son-in-law was asking by implication rather than so stated, was why do so many people worry more about what other people think of them than what they think of themselves?

“Everyone has talent,” he says. “Take me. I came to this country as a young man, didn’t speak the language, and have never been afraid of failure, taking on one challenge after another …”

I added, “Building the successful life that you now enjoy.


“You have followed your talent which was spurred on by your interests, and a lot of people, I’ve come to believe, never experience this joy.”



Hans Christian Andersen’s “Emperor without clothes” being greeted by his subjects.



“Why?” he asked.

“They are chasing rainbows: that is, money, prestige, recognition, and acceptance by others, accolades, belonging, fitting in and so forth. It becomes kind of an insane prison, like an Emperor cavorting on horseback through the streets naked while only a child who has not yet been corrupted with personality rainbows, blurts out the obvious, “The Emperor has no clothes on.”

This little gem you shared with me along with your potpourri of societal dysfunctions points to another issue that comes to mind.

We have confused strategy and tactics with each other, and so collectively, we have generated the world civilization that may doom Homo sapiens survival on this planet.

Strategy is knowing where you are, where you have been, where you would like to go, and how you might best get there.

Tactics relate to the steps taken in pursuit of a strategy.  But, as I’ve attempted to show in my many books, tactics absent a strategy produce the society, indeed, the civilization that we now have and obviously aspire to continue. 

I am currently reading Kia Bird and Martin Sherwin’s AMERICAN PROMETHEUS: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005).  This is the story of scores of Nobel Laureates of Physics, who have unwittingly created the world we now call our own.  The emotional intelligence of these brilliant men (and women) of science leave much to be desired, fulfilling the outlines of our desires while seemingly unconcerned with the consequences of their discoveries.  Sad.

Be safe,

Jim

PS I’m now typing with both hands if not well.



























































































































































































































Wednesday, December 11, 2019

AN ECLECTIC SEARCH, DISCOVERY OF OLD FRIENDS and A LOVE STORY


 James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 11, 2019


I've been updating my EXCEL file of the books in my study as there are hundreds of books that have been read since I last worked on it which is a matter of years ago. With me, it is always a prosaic reason that gets me off the dime. In this latest instance, I’ve misplaced my copy of Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” where he first published his theory of paradigm shifts.

In any case, I’ve removed all my personal pictures in my study that once blocked my view of these books, but to no avail. I still haven’t found this book.

It was in cleaning the shelves and re-depositing them that I came across two old friends, Will and Ariel Durant in their “The Story of Civilization.”

I first read Will Durant (1885 – 1981) when I was in high school. It was at the urging of my Uncle Leonard M. Ekland, a professor at the University of Detroit, a Jesuit University. I would visit him summers from the age of nine to fourteen, thereafter I was too involved in sports to have this respite.

My cousin, Robert, was like a brother to me only a little older. We would go to Higgins Lake in north central Michigan for my uncle’s vacations where he had a summer place. During lunch and dinners, he would talk about people and ideas throughout history. Will Durant was ancillary to one of these discussions with my uncle asking me to read Durant’s “The Story of Philosophy.”

The book wasn’t deep and quite readable for a boy of normal awareness. As is my nature, however, I wanted to know more about Will Durant. What a fascinating story that proved to be.

Will Durant was a small, quiet delicate man, pensive but unobtrusively so, who was teaching at a special New York City school, the Ferrer Modern School, designed for working class families, while giving lectures at night at the YMCA. This was during The Great Depression. He had a Ph.D. from Columbia University and was a bachelor.

One day he saw from his class window a slip of a girl with her classmates playing outside that put him in something of a trance. It disturbed him so much that he asked to be excused from his afternoon classes as he was certain she was one of his French students that he had never actually noticed before.

He learned that she was Jewish from an immigrant family from Russia while he was from Massachusetts the son of French Canadian Catholics who had emigrated from Montreal. He also knew that she was only 14 to his 27. For the next year, he lived in agony as he avoided her but she brazenly didn’t avoid him. It seemed every time he turned around she was there.

So, Ariel (1898 – 1981), only 15 and Durant, 28, her teacher asked her parents for her hand in marriage, which was granted. He resigned from the school and turned his attention to writing “The Story of Civilization” with wife Ariel Durant his primary researcher. Over several decades, this story would grow to eleven volumes winning Pulitzer Prizes and other awards while finding a much wider philosophical audience than normally associated with intellectuals and academics.

Ariel was Will Durant’s Pygmalion tutoring her into the scholar that she became. From Volume VII through XI, she was given credit as co-author.

I saw this couple on “The Dick Cavett” television show many years ago. Ariel did all the talking while her husband looked on her with loving eyes. Ariel chained smoked reminiscent of my own mother.

Will Durant died in 1981 at the age of 96. Ariel quit eating and died two weeks later at the age of 83.

THE REST OF THE STORY

In 1960, I purchased the ten volumes of “The Story of Civilization” (Volume XI was not yet published) and have been reading them, off and on, ever since. In 2005, I visited my cousin Robert in Denver. He was dying of a cancerous brain tumor.  I found his son, Aaron, reading him Volume XI of “The Story of Civilization.”

“I can’t read anymore,” he confessed to me, “I would imagine you’ve read all of these (volumes), perhaps many times.”

“No, no,” I insisted, “not systematically like you’re doing.”

“Listen to him, Aaron, he forgets what a memory I have. He was always quoting from these works in letters to me. It is why I started to read them.” My cousin, Robert, would die a month later. His wife had died many years before and he had never remarried.

I thought afterword about what my cousin had said. I read the Durant’s in my most confused and impressionistic years, knowing, but only much later, that these authors were writing down to my level but mainly from their own inevitable perspectives of history.

Leafing through these volumes now, I have to smile to myself realizing how much a French Canadian Catholic and a Russian Jew have contributed to how I see the world. Then it suddenly occurred to me that I am enjoying the same May to December love story in my own marriage that was that of the Durant’s.

THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION

Our Oriental Heritage - Volume I

The Life of Greece - Volume II

Caesar and Christ - Volume III

The Age of Faith - Volume IV

The Renaissance - Volume V

The Reformation - Volume VI

The Age of Reason Begins - Volume VII

The Age of Louis - Volume VIII

The Age of Voltaire - Volume IX

Rousseau and Revolution - Volume X

The Age of Napoleon – Volume XI