Conservatives Watching Liberal Media

Conservatives are always going on about the media having a liberal bias. They say the same thing about college professors and scientists. There is a sense in which they are right.

I sometimes watch older television shows when they happen to be on. I’m thinking of shows like The Waltons, Little House on the Prairie. Mash, etc. These shows regularly have liberal messages. My mom watches many of these shows and I think she is unaware of how liberal they are.

I remember the response my dad had when he found out that the MASH producers were intentionally trying to influence public opinion about the Vietnam War. He felt betrayed, as this was one of his favorite shows. Of course, my dad isn’t offended by all the shows and movies that pushed right-wing WWII and Cold War propaganda. Sure, everyone making media has their biases. More than left or right bias, the biggest bias of all is pro-corporate. Still, liberal bias particularly sells well in our society.

Liberalism sells for a number of reasons.

For one, liberalism as licentious behavior is fun to watch and freedom-loving liberal messages are inspiring. But a lot of liberalism in the media is more basic. The Waltons often had morality tales about treating people equally and fairly with particular shows focusing on prejudice against Germans, Jews and blacks.  Little House on the Prairie was about a sensitive father figure and many of the episodes were about helping the underprivileged or oppressed, from blind people to Native Americans.

Another reason is that most Americans are very liberal about most issues. Producers make this liberal-biased media because they are making it for a mostly liberal audience. In the US, even conservatives are relatively liberal compared to other societies and compared to the past of our own country. This relates to the corporate bias. Mainstream media is produced to make big profits. To a large extent, what is sold is what people will buy (although buying habits can be manipulated).

This isn’t anything new. From the early to middle of last century, liberalism was the dominant ideology. Even mainstream conservatives wouldn’t talk badly about liberalism and would even praise it, from Ike to Nixon. There always has been a strong liberal strain throughout the entire history of this country. Obviously, this isn’t a traditional society and so conservatism in the US has defined itself in relation to liberalism. It shouldn’t be surprising to find liberalism in media, education and science when most Americans, however they may identify, are for all practical purposes liberal themselves. I suppose it also shouldn’t be surprising that, complaints aside, even conservatives enjoy the liberal-biased media.

As someone who can be critical of both liberals and conservatives, I find the dynamic between them amusing.

Ideological Realism & Scarcity of Imagination

I’m always fascinated and frustrated about the relationship of ideology to ‘realism. There are all kinds of ways for realism to manifest: race realism, communist realism, capitalist realism, religious realism, etc. But all of them share the same basic mentality.

The realism I’ve been most focused on lately is capitalist realism. But in our society it goes hand in hand with race realism. The two then give birth to a third realism: Social Darwinism.

Realism as an ideology forms a reality tunnel that declares nothing else is possible. This isn’t a passive lack of insight and vision. Rather, it is an active occluding of perception and an active suppression of alternatives. Realism taken to its extreme becomes dominant over all else.

In capitalist realism, scarcity is a central tenet of faith, the wall of ‘reality’ beyond which we don’t speak of, beyond which we don’t even know how to speak of. But if you step back for a moment you can see how much scarcity is self-imposed and so artificial.

Diamonds are a famous example as one company controls almost all the mines in the world and you know they are using some devious means to maintain that control. A less well known example is how the US Fed used hard money policies to suppress wages. Another less well known example is how Reagan used an artificially created Starve the Beast strategy by unnecessarily creating a permanent Federal debt.

This scarcity never applies to the rich. It is always the rich who are forcing scarcity onto the public. And it is the media and politicians owned by the rich who spread the scarcity message.

We live in the wealthiest country in the world. We have enough money to house, feed, educate and give healthcare to every American citizen. But our government chooses not to do so. Instead, the plutocrats choose corporate subsidies and the building of a military-prison-industrial complex.

A different kind of realism exists in China and another in North Korea. Those are more obviously oppressive, but in the big picture the US-style realism is more oppressive across the globe. In the end, it doesn’t really matter which ideological realism you choose. Oppression is oppression is oppression.

All forms of ideological realism have their preferred scarcity for that is just the other side of concentrated power. Behind any ideological realism, concentrated power will be found. Scarcity of all other things is determined by the scarcity of power, i.e., the hording of power.

The ultimate scarcity, though, that this leads to is a scarcity of freedom and imagination, the disempowerment of mind. To imagine other possibilities is to that extent to make yourself free. It is the force of vision that is behind any genuine claim to freedom. There is no greater revolutionary act.

PKD on the Golden Door

From Exegesis by Philip K. Dick
(edited by Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem)

“The original display of dazzling graphics which I saw, which inaugurated all of this, were characterized by their balance, not what shapes they contained. They were, like much of Kandinsky’s abstract art, modern esthetic elaborations, in color, of the ancient a priori geometric forms conceived by the Greeks, which even in their time passed over into esthetics by way of Pythagoria, e.g., the Golden Section becoming the Golden Rectangle. * Certainly this would indicate that even the start of this contained the hallmark of Apollo: the balance, the harmony— I remember noting that in all the tens of thousands of pictures what was continuous in them was this perfect balance, illustrating a fundamental principle of art. It was that aspect which caught my attention and eye and told me they had great worth. In a sense, since all were rectangles, they were permutations of the Golden Rectangle, which I saw today in its original abstracted, empty form, so calm, so enduring, so restful, reminding me of Apollo’s basic virtue: syntonos.”
(Kindle Locations 963-970)

“The “solitary” life which both Christ and Paul speak of as an affliction, [is] in contrast to the ear of corn in which all grains are together in corporate life; it was an ear of corn that was held up at Elysius, to demonstrate the mystery: I think the mystery is, the solitary grain( s) will be sown, then will grow again in corporate life , a corporate body of which Christ is the head. Paul in 1 Cor makes it perfectly clear that resurrection is in a spiri tual body as opposed to the prior physical body 107 ; as in Neoplatonism , we can expect to ascend on to a spiritual “next ring” universe in a spiritual, nonphysical, immortal body, leaving this one behind ; it grows out of this one after this one is dead and buried , as with the grain of wheat/ corn in the furrow: what comes next is different; it is a complete misunderstanding to expect— or even want —the originally physical “solitary” inferior body back ever again; it is metamorphosis which we are talking about; Paul in 1 Cor makes this perfectly clear. The incorruptible body is not a physical body, like this only eternal, but a spiritual body. Death is regarded as a doorway, with something better on the other side, exactly like the doorway I saw in 3- and 4-74, like a Greek pylon, with the moonlight and clear water beyond, which was everywhere, here and there, that I looked. A study of the other mystery religions (all based on the dying lunar god Osiris) shows this. Of all the things (visions) I saw, none is more significant than the pylon or arch-like doorway with the Greek water and nighttime island scene, so beautiful and peaceful on the other side. That was not a transformed view of this world (as with the iron ring and later spring time and Santa Sophia the building ), that was a doorway to another world for sure. It wasn’t to death; death was the doorway , the passage , with life beyond. It was a rather narrow entranceway. (When did I see that doorway? It must have either been after my shoulder surgery, or led into that period, because just after Pinky died I remember seeing him, all healthy and full-chested, squeezed through the doorway looking into this world at us.) (It just occurs to me that the doorway always had the proportions of the Golden Rectangle .) And at first I saw it as a geometric drawing of the Golden Rectangle complete with Greek-letter markings at corners, etc., at that point not yet projected into the world, found there as doorway and 3-D, but “in my 3rd eye or inner mind or mind’s eye,” not yet fused with the landscape; later, whenever I saw it, I actually picked out the Golden Rectangle in the real world, discerned it, but saw it as a doorway, and saw the lovely quiet peaceful world on the other side, waiting. Thinking about it now I realized that the discernment of this Golden Rectangle doorway within the real world here and there was on the identical order of the iron ring, God in the trash of the alley, everything else, especially equal to seeing Springtime in 2-75; it was a major event, and not to be ignored or forgotten; it was another transformation of the landscape, another vision of the next world or the New Creation. Offhand I’d say its message was, One can get from here (this world) to there, which is to say, to the Spiritual Universe. It’s immediately at hand, if we could but see it. That which is seen through the doorway is not superimposed on our world but lies beyond it. For instance, it is nighttime there. (Although midday here.) I’m sure it’s “on the Other Side, ” and you would have to die to get there; after all, Pinky, after his death, immediately after, looked back into this world from there. It is another place, another time entirely. I don’t think it’s the Kingdom of God; I think everything else I experienced is. If it is indeed a glimpse through the doorway into the Next World, then the Next World (for me anyhow) is very much like Minoan Greece, like the Aegean and Crete (where many of my first visionary dreams were set). (Also, where Zagreus/ Dionysos came from.) All the straight john uptight rigid description and attitudes by the Christians about it are just so much a row of swords to protect it; once inside it’s lovely. You can sit down on a Grecian bench and relax in the cool of the evening.”
(Kindle Locations 4227-4227)

“at the height of despair and fear and grieving I stumbled into the Kingdom, stumbled around for a while and then stumbled back out, none the wiser as to how I got there, barely aware of where I had been, and no idea as to how I stumbled out, and seeking always to find my way back ever since . Shucks. Drat . If it wasn’t the Kingdom I don’t know what it could be, with its bells and the lady singing and the void, with the trash in the gutter glowing, and the golden rectangle doorway with the sea and figure beyond, and the moonlight. There were people living there, especially the lady. It was all alive. It had personality. It explained everything to me. Now I don’t see or understand anything. At that time I could even remember back to my origins. My real origins: the stars. What am I doing here? I forget, but I knew once. Amnesia has returned ; the veil has fallen, back where it was. The divine faculties are occluded as before.”
(Kindle Locations 4333-4339)

“golden rectangle, also golden section: Figures associated with the golden ratio or divine mean, a mathematical pattern of relationship that has been recognized since Pythagoras. The golden ratio (an irrational number approximate to 1: 618034) occurs when the ratio between the sum of two unequal quantities and the larger quantity is equivalent to the ratio between the larger quantity and the smaller . Geometric plotting of the recursive Fibonacci sequence also produces the golden rectangle, as does the growth of a nautilus shell.”
(Kindle Locations 18564-18568)

 

 

Regions & Religion: Donations, Charities, Tax Credits, etc

A typical piece of data that is often mentioned is that the most religious states donate the most money. There is a nice mapping of this by region from The Chronicle of Philanthropy:

But if giving to churches is excluded. it is actually the Northeast that gives more to charity:

Of course, it is more complicated than this. The above example is a case of why one should be careful of reading too much into data before understanding the details.

* * * *

In another article at this site, they discussed different demographics, policies and other issues. For example, they mentioned tax credits:

“The reasons for the discrepancies are rooted in part in each area’s political philosophy about the role of government versus charity: At least 13 states now offer special tax benefits to charity donors, often in the hopes of stimulating giving at the same time that lawmakers are adopting big cuts in government services.” [ . . . ]

“Tax incentives matter. State policies that promote giving can make a significant difference and in some cases are influencing the rankings. In Arizona, charities are reaping more than $100-million annually from a series of tax credits adopted in recent years.”

It’s interesting that they brought up Arizona. I just read an article about that state—Give to Charity, Turn a Profit by David Cay Johnston:

“Arizona taxpayers who itemize deductions on their federal returns can turn a profit by giving to charity, thanks to a system of state tax credits.”

Is giving to charity in order to gain tax credits or even gain profit actually charity in any meaningful sense?

* * * *

In response to various articles at that site, here is what was brought up in the comments:

http://philanthropy.com/article/The-Politics-of-Giving/133609/#comment-1090852348

The lead article gives some insight:

“When religious giving isn’t counted, the geography of giving is very different. Some states in the Northeast jump into the top 10 when secular gifts alone are counted. New York would vault from No. 18 to No. 2, and Pennsylvania would climb from No. 40 to No. 4….”

http://philanthropy.com/article/Generosity-in-All-of-Americas/133673/#comment-721993905

It really comes down to what “giving” means. Tithing to your church or donating to your favorite PAC is a bit different than giving to your local homeless shelter,

http://philanthropy.com/article/Sharing-the-Wealth-How-the/133605/#comment-1019563286

The article is misleading by including tithing in the totals. The average church gives 3% of its proceeds to non church outlets. The other 97% is spent on the parsonage and salaries of principal leaders, church upkeep, mortgages, missionaries who evangelize primarily and other church related functions. The people who do not attend the church but benefit from money received through the church is only 3% of the take. That number is hard to verify because of the non-reporting exclusion that only churches (as charities) receive. However conversations with various financial officers will verify the statistic. 

http://philanthropy.com/article/The-Politics-of-Giving/133609/#comment-1091764233

This is statistical idiocy. It says NOTHING about who actually gives. Maybe it is the case that the liberals in the red states are actually the givers? Also remember all states are about 50/50 red and blue anyway.

First, only a third of Democrats identify as liberal with another third identifying as moderate and the other third identifying with conservative.

Second, most Southerners identify with the Democratic Party, but because of disenfranchisement (voting purges, long polling lines in poor neighborhoods, etc) the vast majority of Southerners don’t vote.

Third, the poor in all states and regions who lean more toward Democrats and vote more for Democrats are being excluded from this data.

http://philanthropy.com/article/The-Politics-of-Giving/133609/#comment-627022019

Seems like there is also more poverty in the red states making a higher need for charity there.

That is what few don’t understand. Red states have the most social problems and so need more charity to deal with those social problems. Blue states tend to spend their money on programs to prevent social problems before they begin or alleviate social problems before they become too bad. All that liberal government spending makes private charity less necessary. Even so, the Northeast gives the most to private charities (while the South gives the most to churches).

http://philanthropy.com/article/Sharing-the-Wealth-How-the/133605/#comment-1188304259

This ignores that the red states in question already start out with weaker wages and social safety nets. Liberal kindness shows more readily by realizing that poverty is a social problem needing social addressing by greater tax provision. It is the reason charitable contributions tend to be lower in Europe than the US, but typically still have lower poverty rates.

Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, SC, Idaho, Arkansas, and Georgia
(in the top ten), all have poverty rates in the approx. 15 – 20% range. States like Vermont, Massachusetts,Connecticut, Wisconsin, NH (lowest rate in the country) and NJ (2nd lowest rate) have poverty rates of approx. 6 – 10 %:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_poverty_rate

http://philanthropy.com/article/The-Politics-of-Giving/133609/#comment-625994270

That may be true, the Blues DO pay much more in taxes, are more wealthy, and receive less per dollar in from the Gov vs. the reds who receive more per dollar in taxes paid.

but it doesn’t explain the imbalance of secular Northeastern giving in much greater amounts to secular charity. There are certainly a greater amount and variety of charitable organizations in the NE compared to the South…

Perhaps since the reds receive more Fed money, they can free up the people to give to their churches more?

Don’t forget that giving to the church is also self-serving as it can be ascribed as an “insurance policy” to get into “heaven”….

http://philanthropy.com/article/The-Politics-of-Giving/133609/#comment-626981942

The giving was determined from median disposable income — that is money after taxes, mortgage or rent, groceries, utilities, car payments, etc.  In other words, what do people do with the money that remains after paying for necessities?

So whether or not a state is a net payer or a net receiver would not affect giving as a percentage of median disposable income.The primary reason Red States receive more federal money is for defense-related purposes — Red States are disproportionately represented in the armed services.  Blue States pay residents in Red States to fight in die in wars.

http://philanthropy.com/article/America-s-Geographic-Giving/133591/#comment-625246428

Interesting study, but note that it doesn’t count all those who give to charity but don’t own homes so can’t itemize deductions. I assume that because of this, people with lower incomes who don’t itemize and those who live in high-cost cities (less home-owners and more renters) are not included. I would be curious to see how that skews the data, as the states they list as the “most generous” probably have much lower property values, higher home ownership, and more people able to itemize their charitable deductions.

Personally I am not surprised to hear about New Hampshire, the state whose motto is “Live Free or Die” has no sales tax, and no motorcycle helmet laws ; )

http://philanthropy.com/article/How-The-Chronicle-Compiled-Its/133667/#comment-624344330

“Because of discrepancies in the data for people with income below $50,000, The Chronicle’s study includes only taxpayers who reported incomes of $50,000 or more.”

Is that gross income of $50,000 or an AGI of $50,000? Is there any data for tax filers who don’t itemize? If not (and it seems not) out of the total universe of filers, how many filers were excluded and how many were included in the study? Without that data, and for each level of aggregation, it’s hard to believe any of the findings.

http://philanthropy.com/article/How-The-Chronicle-Compiled-Its/133667/#comment-624120412

This study excluded more than half the taxpayers in the nation (those making less than fifty thousand a year). It also did not inlcude charitable donations not included in tax deductions. I rarely (if ever) include charitable donations in my tax records. I think the study doesn’t do a  very good job on who does, and doesn’t give. Not even in terms of pure dollar amounts, much less in terms of percent of income. Would christ admire the multi-millionare who gave in public, and got a tax deduction more, or the women who gave her last penny to help others?

http://philanthropy.com/article/Sharing-the-Wealth-How-the/133605/#comment-645728915

What’s not included here is the fact that many ‘high net worth’ individuals donate massively to their children’s private schools, ‘gala’ events with $1,000 per plate dinners, etc.  This is ‘returned’ to them in the form of lowered tuition, social connections/status, food/drink/entertainment, etc. So, those who malign the ‘blue’ states need to provide data showing that this website data is quantified with the ‘net return’ to people who can afford to donate extensively to pass-through organizations and ‘party’ opportunities. 

http://philanthropy.com/article/Generosity-in-the-States/133707/#comment-1019578560

It is a bad system which actually creates the need for charity in the first place. Most givers of charity don’t realize that a system which creates or allows the need for charity to exist, is a bad system which must be replaced with a system that takes care of everyone’s needs without the need for charity at all. Charity is a way for some people to feel good about themselves, while supporting a totally evil system. Charity is a way of allowing people to pat themselves on the back for throwing crumbs to the poor while keeping more than their fair share for themselves and while supporting a system which actually needs the existence of the poor in order for the system to continue its own existence.

It is the system which creates poverty. And, it is the idea that some people actually deserve more than other people do, which helps to keep this evil and vile and criminal system in place. But, it is not true that some people deserve more than others, or that some people have more of a right to be here than others do.

The simple fact that a particular person IS here, is proof that that person deserves to be here, or that person simply would not be here. No sentient being is required by the universe, to earn their keep or justify their existence on this planet. The resources on this planet belong to everyone equally, and are meant to be shared equally with all.

No society or system can justify the existence of poverty by throwing crumbs at the poor and calling it charity. The poor cannot be justifiably blamed for their own poverty…only the system can be blamed.

http://philanthropy.com/article/How-The-Chronicle-Compiled-Its/133667/#comment-624441217

Note that donations to the hateful American Family Association are tax-deductible, donations to the ACLU are not. Determining charity based on the tax code’s bias toward religious causes will (of course!) skew the results toward making religious people appear more charitable than they are. What’s worse is that this false result will be dished out against the “evil atheists” in the next “charitable” religious fundraiser rally, right? 

 

Trends in Depression and Suicide Rates

I just watched this video and recommend it.

Stephen Ilardi made two very important points.

First, depression is a disease of civilization. He spoke of research done on a hunter-gatherer tribal people. What the researcher found was that depression was almost non-existent among them. They lived a hard life and often hard deaths, but they weren’t clinically depressed. Nor did they have many of the other diseases of civilization, all of which are related to inflammation in the body.

He points out that studies have shown that depression is related to inflammation in the brain, at least partly caused by an unhealthy ratio between Omega 6 fats and Omega 3 fats. Combined with the stresses and social isolation of modern society, clinical depression has become a massive problem.

Second, clinical depression is a growing problem. Each generation has higher rates of depression than the generation before. It correctly can be called an epidemic at this point and it increases as people age. The younger generations will as they age, if the pattern holds, have 50% or more experiencing clinical depression.

This gets at an issue I continually return to. Everything is getting worse for the young generation such as poverty, economic inequality, unemployment and homelessness. My generation is the first generation do worse than their parents in the 20th century. My generation as children had poverty rates not seen since the Great Depression and had the worst child suicide rates since such things were recorded. How bad does society have to get before even children become so desperate and hopeless that they kill themselves?

Most people in the older generations never personally experienced these kinds of conditions. Because of this, they have no tangible understanding, no sympathy. They can’t see how this is a systemic problem throughout society, a problem transcending individuals and even generations.

I’ve previously discussed this a bit in terms of capitalist realism (see here and here), but I’ve never gone into much detail about this before. The analysis behind the concept of capitalist realism is based on the collective inability to imagine alternatives and hence collective inability to perceive the problems of the present system. The individual is the product and the scapegoat of capitalist realism.

* * * *

I decided to look more closely at the increasing rate of suicide.

There definitely is something going on in society. It’s hard to make a simple assessment, but obviously particular demographics are hit really hard, specifically the youth demographic (also particular states and white men). A lot of it seems to do with the economy such as with peaks during industrialization and the Great Depression and then a slow rise during the era of globalization.  Overall national suicide rates go up and down. It is only with particular demographics that you see long-term trends.

http://www.haciendapub.com/medicalsentinel/homicide-and-suicide-america-1900-1998

http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html

U.S. Suicide Rates, 1950–2003
(per 100,000 population)

	1950	1960	1970	1980	1990	1995	2000	2001	2002	2003
All ages, age adjusted	13.2	13.2	13.2	13.2	12.5	11.8	10.4	10.7	10.9	10.8
5–14 years	0.2	0.3	0.3	0.4	0.8	0.9	0.7	0.7	0.6	0.6
15–24 years	4.5	5.2	8.8	12.3	13.2	13.0	10.2	9.9	9.9	9.7
15–19 years	2.7	3.6	5.9	8.5	11.1	10.3	8.0	7.9	7.4	7.3
20–24 years	6.2	7.1	12.2	16.1	15.1	15.8	12.5	12.0	12.4	12.1
25–44 years	11.6	12.2	15.4	15.6	15.2	15.1	13.4	13.8	14.0	13.8
25–34 years	9.1	10.0	14.1	16.0	15.2	15.0	12.0	12.8	12.6	12.7
35–44 years	14.3	14.2	16.9	15.4	15.3	15.1	14.5	14.7	15.3	14.9
45–64 years	23.5	22.0	20.6	15.9	15.3	13.9	13.5	14.4	14.9	15.0
45–54 years	20.9	20.7	20.0	15.9	14.8	14.4	14.4	15.2	15.7	15.9
55–64 years	26.8	23.7	21.4	15.9	16.0	13.2	12.1	13.1	13.6	13.8
65 years and over	30.0	24.5	20.8	17.6	20.5	17.9	15.2	15.3	15.6	14.6
65–74 years	29.6	23.0	20.8	16.9	17.9	15.7	12.5	13.3	13.5	12.7
75–84 years	31.1	27.9	21.2	19.1	24.9	20.6	17.6	17.4	17.7	16.4
85 years and over	28.8	26.0	19.0	19.2	22.2	21.3	19.6	17.5	18.0	16.9
Male, all ages	21.2	20.0	19.8	19.9	21.5	20.3	17.7	18.2	18.4	18.0
Female, all ages	5.6	5.6	7.4	5.7	4.8	4.3	4.0	4.0	4.2	4.2

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/05/chart-americas-rising-suicide-problem.html

http://news.msn.com/science-technology/us-suicide-rate-for-middle-aged-rose-28-percent-in-past-decade

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/06/chart-what-killed-us-then-and-now/258872/

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113316/suicide-rates-rise-us-because-economy-not-culture

http://www.afsp.org/understanding-suicide/facts-and-figures

http://grerp.blogspot.com/2010/12/thoughts-on-fourth-turning-part-2.html

http://2020plus.net/Editorial-323-Mal-Fletcher-Middle-Age-Suicides-Does-X-Mark-The-Spot.aspx

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14191&page=0

Click to access YMHPbook_chapter_1.pdf

Losses Outweighing Gains

I just finished reading Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country by William Greider. It’s not an awesome book, but it’s well above average. Greider is a liberal who seeks reform rather than to revolutionize the entire system. He is only radical in his optimism about democracy.

What I liked about the book is that the author wasn’t afraid to dig down into the foundation of our collective problems. One particular passage demonstrates this which can be found below. In that passage, he talks about the economy and the environment. His focus is on externalized costs, moral hazard and free riders.

If you’re an informed person, most of this won’t be new to you. But it is always nice when you find a clear-eyed accounting of the problems we face. I did learn one new thing from this passage. He discusses the work done by Herman E. Daly and John B. Cobb Jr as presented in their book, For The Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future. Basically, if all the costs are accounted for and measured, the US economy is a net loss. This isn’t just unsustainable but self-destructive.

There was a good review (by David E. Rockett) about Daly and Cobb’s book:

“Agrarian Localist that I am, with roots in the cultural and political Right — Daly was refreshing and often challenging from the ‘New and Improved Left. He brilliantly and repeatedly shows the ‘fallacy of misplaced concreteness’– that is the dubious use of logical abstractions which supposedly lead to good conclusions. NOT! In logic, it is similar to ‘the undistributed middle’– or in laymen’s terms — there is yet far too much we simply don’t know to conclude ‘this’. Those pegging him a traditional UN Internationalists look like blind Libertarians who are simply dead wrong, and didn’t read carefully. Daly is a modest Decentralists/Federalists’ in calling for a ‘return to the Local’. His call is for a federalism with far more attention to Local and Regional markets and development than we’ve had in this country since Lincoln. Yet Daly still uncomfortablly allows for some heiarchialism at national and international levels. Suprisingly, he uncritically buys all the status-quo environmental hysteria as ‘Fact’, indeed ‘wild facts’ he calls them. Thus, you have a mixd book — full of brilliant and insightful critique — and sullied by a good bit of carried-over authoritarian leftism.”

I just wanted to share that to show that this isn’t a right vs left issue. Even for someone like this who doesn’t appreciate the actual data about environmental damage can still understand the basic problems for human society.

This reviewer gets at an important point with his mention of the ‘fallacy of misplaced concreteness’. This is essentially Burkean conservatism being used to criticize laissez-faire capitalism as an ideology lost in abstractions and ungrounded in reality as it is. It’s interesting how closely aligned Burkean conservatism is to the precautionary principle that so many liberals obsess about.

Now for the passage from Greider’s Come Home, America.

* * * *

(Kindle Locations 2636-2707)

It is not people who have failed. It is the system that has failed people. The awkward secret about the American growth engine is that it thrives by wantonly wasting the noneconomic “assets” of people’s lives, the lost potential of their time on earth. These are “priceless” because they cannot be bought or sold. Their true value is unknowable, even to the individual. The growth engine wastes the future-the full range of possible experiences that ought to be commonly available in this very wealthy nation. When people look around, they see that vital elements of their surroundings have also disappeared or crumbled, and these things are not just the roads and bridges, but also essential public assets like the grace notes of community life and common verities trashed by the manic competition for growth and profit. Why must we live like this if we are so rich?

Ecologists look at the natural world and ask essentially the same question. The most dramatic and threatening price paid for economic growth, they argue, is the systematic destruction of nature. The finite capacity of the natural world to sustain life-human and otherwise-is endangered by the relentless encroachment of the industrial system. This threat means that there are indeed limits to growth, at least to growth as it is presently practiced. To put the point crudely, you can only pave over so much of the earth before nature begins to lose its life-supporting capabilities. Most mainstream economists dismissed this idea originally, but now they are more respectful, since global warming has provided frightening evidence of the collision between nature and the industrial system.

Images of the Arctic ice cap receding and polar bears stranded on floes have been seared onto our consciousness. Oceans and mountains, topsoil and rain forests, water, land, air, and the natural diversity of living things have all been laid waste. These are the things that sustain existence for all species, including ours. There are limits to growth and the world is bumping up against them, especially now that industrialization has spread to some very poor societies. Like wasted human lives, the losses to nature are not factored into the economic accounting, nor are they redeemable.

It may seem odd to accuse US business and finance of wastefulness since they are obsessed with efficiency. But the intense competition for returns among companies and investors focuses their managements on reducing their own companies’ costs, not the costs to society or nature. The gross domestic product is essentially the total of all of a country’s economic activities-the money transactions of producers and consumers and the performance and profits of enterprises and investors. Everything else is left out-human lives, society’s needs and values, the well-being of nature. In this system, even obviously negative events-a train wreck or an earthquake-are treated as positive since they will stimulate more economic activity.

Worse than that, the growth engine actively damages anything it does not itself value. Companies know how to enhance their own growth and profit by dumping their production costs onto innocent others, such as the workers stripped of their pensions and the rivers destroyed by pollution. Then the government must clean up the human injuries and environmental wreckage left behind. Some of the collateral damage businesses cause is no doubt accidental, but most of it is deliberate. In numerous ways, companies develop careful strategies for extracting profit from the assets of others. Someone does pay eventually for this antisocial wastefulness, but usually it is not the perpetrators who gained wealth from their irresponsibility.

This is more than an accounting problem. It is a deep disorder in the values that govern our country. The economy keeps output-production and consumption-expanding as measured in dollars. But the process of growth simultaneously creates a political illusion by concealing the net negative loss to society. Politicians do not have to face this contradiction since the government conveniently does not look at growth in these terms.

Herman E. Daly, a rare economist who endeavors to see the world whole, set out to unmask the illusion. He calculated the full consequences of growth by combining various indicators of social and ecological gains and losses with the standard economic measures of output and wealth creation. Daly and his collaborator, John B. Cobb Jr., called it the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare, and its stunning results were a rebuke to narrow-minded economics.

In For the Common Good, Daly and Cobb explained that for many years, although US growth had been officially reported as positive, it was actually negative for the overall society when these other factors were included. Economists quarreled with Daly’s method of calculation, but other researchers have since confirmed his point by using different ways of weighing the losses and gains.5

[5. Among the controversial assumptions Daly made in constructing the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare was that a measure of income inequality should be included. The premise was that society’s well-being degrades as inequality increases, a point that only hard-right conservatives would dispute today. The book was revised and the index refined in a second edition published in 1994.]

The great American economic icon-gross domestic product-is in trouble, especially as more Americans discover the truths that ecologists have been explaining for years. The familiar measure for defining progress no longer makes much sense, not for people or for society. Progress as it has been traditionally defined feels dizzying instead, like running in place, faster and faster, without getting anywhere, and even sliding backward without realizing it. Americans need to rethink the meaning of progress in broader, more realistic terms that are more consistent with the human condition. Demanding an honest accounting of reality represents a major step toward straightening out our future.

[ . . . . ]

In Steady-State Economics, Herman Daly invoked a similar analogy. To grow, he pointed out, is defined as “to spring up and develop to maturity.” People do not grow physically bigger and bigger throughout the life span (they would look like freaks if they did). At a certain point, they level off in physical size, but continue to develop the skills and qualities they need to sustain and enrich their lives. At a certain point, he suggested, wise and wealthy nations must do the same.7

The steady-state economy described by Daly and elaborated by others is radical and uncompromising. It rejects growth as we know it as a fixation on expansive accumulation that does not discriminate between good and ill consequences. This does not mean an end to “progress,” however. In terms people can recognize, the steady-state society continues to improve itself, developing and redeveloping internally, perfecting the social conditions that promote the public welfare and more fulfilling lives. The United States has the wherewithal to achieve this if it has the nerve to try.

Daly’s “steady state” is an economy in dynamic equilibrium that fulfills human needs without destroying the planet. It is an economy fully reconciled with nature’s limits and in harmony with the country’s abiding values of equality, freedom, democracy, and “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Daly’s pioneering insights have gained a lot of ground among economic and social theorists in the intervening years, despite the hostility of orthodox doctrine. His perspective has been popularized as a foundation for sustainable development (though the meaning of sustainability is often corrupted in practice).

A concrete expression of Daly’s thinking is popularly known as the ecological footprint-a measure of how much humanity and industrialization have encroached upon and diminished nature’s capacity to replenish life. Even some leading corporations now promise to reduce their corporate “footprint.” The footprint of human activity-including the spoiling of natural resources like air, land, and water-is already overshooting nature’s carrying capacity by an estimated 25 percent, according to the Global Footprint Network. Biologists have called our era the Sixth Great Extinction, with thousands of species doomed by the shrinking habitats and failed ecosystems.

“Humanity is living off its ecological credit card,” said Mathis Wackernagel, the group’s executive director.”While this can be done for a short while, overshoot ultimately leads to liquidation of the planet’s ecological assets.”8

[8. Wackernagel said in announcing the release of the Living Planet Report 2006: “Humanity is living off its ecological credit card. While this can be done for a short while, overshoot ultimately leads to liquidation of the planet’s ecological assets, and the depletion of resources, such as the forests, oceans and agricultural land upon which our economy depends.” See Chris Hails, Jonathan Loh, and Steven Goldfinger, editors, The Living Planet Report 2006, WWF International, Institute of Zoology, and Global Footprint Network, October 24, 2006, http://www.footprintnetwork.org/newsletters/ gfn_blast_0610.html.]

These are social and ecological wounds whose existence can no longer be evaded. They are defining realities that Americans must face and accept if they are to think clearly and honestly about transforming how we live and are organized as a society-the dream I describe as America the Possible. Reconstructing a promising society from the wreckage of the past is possible, though every aspect is difficult and lies beyond the usual expectations of what seems possible in politics. Failure is also possible. I won’t dwell on the consequences of failure because it means genuine decline-we would become a country that was past its best days and resigned to a dispiriting future. That is not where we are, nor where we want to go.

* * * *

For more information and discussion, see the following:

Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare

Genuine progress indicator

Ecological footprint

Green gross domestic product

Green national product

Environmental full cost accounting

Happy Planet Index

Human Development Index

Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare

Living Planet Index

Beyond GDP: Measuring and Achieving Global Genuine Progress

The Triple Bottom Line: What Is It and How Does It Work?

Herman Daly’s Ecological Economics – An Introductory Note

When Higher GDP can lead to Lower Welfare
The use of ISEW: the index of sustainable economic welfare

What is economic growth and are there limits to it?

The virtues of ignoring GDP
Dropping a bad habit

Someday Environment Costs will be factored into the GDP

Economic Growth: A Social Pathology

VALUING THE EARTH: Economics, Ecology, Ethics

This is the copy of an email sent to Mr. Herman Day in 1996

Extreme Consensus On Globalization

Something I continually am reminded of is how disconnected the ruling elite are from the rest of the population. The political elite doesn’t represent most Americans. And the media elite doesn’t speak for most Americans.

This wouldn’t be as problematic if it wasn’t combined with a citizenry that doesn’t realize they are the majority. Too many Americans have come to believe what the elite say. This creates a sever state of collective disempowerment that is fatal to democracy.

I wonder if ths is how populist movements begin. When it comes to major issues, it probably takes a long time for a consensus to slowly form among the majority. It then would take a long time for shared awaeness to form. And then it would require someone to articulate what everyone was thinking and speak out in a way that breaks past the mainstream filters.

Someone like MLK only can be a great leader because the conditions were right. He came onto the public stage when a tipping point had been reached in public opinion. He simply said what so many people wanted to say and he was in a position to be heard.

Below is a passage from Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country by William Greider (Kindle Locations 903-915).

* * * *

Americans have developed what I call an “extreme consensus” on the subject of globalization. According to pollster Daniel Yankelovich, the public reached a tipping point several years ago, when 87 percent expressed concern about the outsourcing of US jobs. Polling firm Lake Research Partners found there to be a similar consensus about globalization’s impact on wages. In 2006, some 81 percent of Americans agreed with the statement: “No matter what you hear about the economy, working families are falling behind.” Half of the population (51 percent) believes the next generation-today’s children-will be worse off in economic terms than they are.

When people talk about this in everyday conversation, they say things like “I don’t see how the country can go on like this” and “We are going to be okay, but I worry about what it’s going to be like for the kids.” People don’t claim to know all the economic facts and theories, but they can see what’s happening around them. The lost jobs, the closed factories, the middle-aged men working behind the counter at Starbucks. What keeps people up at night is wondering how to pay the bills and worrying about what will come next. Most Americans are not opposed to the idea of global trade, and they accept the inevitability of globalization. What they are against is the unaddressed consequences globalization will have for their own country.

The governing powers, with few exceptions, do not share the public’s sense of urgency. In 2005, the Pew Research Center compared the public’s concerns with the opinions expressed by “American influentials” in various sectors-government, politics, foreign affairs, news media, and others. The public believed overwhelmingly (84 percent) that “protecting the jobs of American workers” should be the government’s “top priority” and considered that to be as important as fighting terrorism. The influentials did not think so. Of those in the news media, only 29 percent agreed. Among academics and scholars at think tanks, only 16 percent agreed. The only group that more or less agreed with the people was religious leaders (55 percent). Opinion leaders overwhelmingly regard new trade agreements as good for the country. Less than half of the public agrees.

Conservative-Minded Liberals: Reactionary & Xenophobic

A while back I was involved in some discussions about Jonathan Haidt’s model of moral foundations via some book reviews. One of those discussions was resurrected. Two people offered links to articles. It connected to something else that was on my mind. That something is violence.

In the discussion, there was a link was to a piece by PZ Myers. What caught my attention was instead a comment by Eamon Knight:

“I mostly liked The Happiness Hypothesis, but I think Haidt’s gone downhill since (and in a direction pointed to by the flaws in that book, ie. let’s just appreciate everyone’s viewpoint because it comes from their basic psychology, even if it requires overcompensating for our natural pro-self bias). I’m reading the last chapter of Pinker’s Better Angels, in which he discusses the underlying psychology of the decline in violence. He frames his exposition in terms of Haidt’s Moral Foundations (the original five), though even more in terms of [mumble’s — sorry I’m not near the book at the moment] Relational Models (the two taxonomies roughly inter-map). Pinker argues that human violence has declined precisely as we have moved away from an emphasis on (using Haidt’s terms) Purity, Authority and Loyalty towards Care/Harm and Fairness — IOW, as we have become more psychologically “liberal”. Even modern conservatives are where liberals used to be — it’s getting harder to justify eg. outlawing certain sexual behaviours on the grounds of “yuck” or blind obedience. So to hell with Haidt’s false equivalence — we are better off by ignoring some bits of social-psychological baggage that worked for small foraging bands, just as we need to train ourselves into restraining our natural taste for sweets and fats that developed in the days when dinner was A) uncertain and B) often had to be chased down.”

Haidt argues that humans and hence society functions best when there is an ideal balance between moral foundations. The problem is such an ideal comes off as an abstract belief. Functions best for what purpose and for whom?

He justifies this balance by claiming he has gained a vantage point above all of us peons. Through his model, both conservatives and liberals can be transcended, although with a tilt toward conservatives for he oddly claims they are more balanced than liberals (an argument he makes by not taking into account some of the moral values that liberals possess and conservatives dismiss). As Eamon Knight says in another comment:

“Or to borrow a punchline originally used in a different domain, but which seems applicable here: the important thing is that Haidt’s found a way to feel superior to both sides.”

Haidt sees himself as a missionary who learned from the natives (conservatives) and now wants to teach the civilized folk (liberals) about the benefits of a more natural lifestyle. Meanwhile, from the safe position of his lectern, he conveniently doesn’t mention that the natives have a high rates of violence and death.

Still, I don’t just want to beat up on poor ol’ Haidt. Let me move onto the next link. It is a response to Haidt by Sam Harris. Of course, Harris does beat up on Haidt, but that isn’t what interested me. Instead, I want to beat up on Harris a bit to even things out.

Harris begins with the same basic insight as Pinker:

“Anyone feeling nostalgic for the “wisdom” of the Aztecs? Rest assured, there’s nothing like the superstitious murder of innocent men, women, and children to “suppress selfishness” and convey a shared sense of purpose. Of course, the Aztecs weren’t the only culture to have discovered “human flourishing” at its most sanguinary and psychotic. The Sumerians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Hebrews, Canaanites, Maya, Inca, Olmecs, Greeks, Romans, Carthaginians, Teutons, Celts, Druids, Vikings, Gauls, Hindus, Thais, Chinese, Japanese, Scandinavians, Maoris, Melanesias, Tahitians, Hawaiians, Balinese, Australian aborigines, Iroquois, Huron, Cherokee, and numerous other societies ritually murdered their fellow human beings because they believed that invisible gods and goddesses, having an appetite for human flesh, could be so propitiated. Many of their victims were of the same opinion, in fact, and went willingly to slaughter, fully convinced that their deaths would transform the weather, or cure the king of his venereal disease, or in some other way spare their fellows the wrath of the Unseen.

“What would Haidt have us think about these venerable traditions of pious ignorance and senseless butchery? Is there some wisdom in these cults of human sacrifice that we should now honor? Must we take care not to throw out the baby with the bathwater? Or might we want to eat that baby instead? Indeed, many of these societies regularly terminated their rituals of sacred murder with a cannibal feast. Is my own revulsion at these practices a sign that I view these distant cultures with the blinkered gaze of a colonialist? Shall we just reserve judgment until more of the facts are in? When does scientific detachment become perverse? When might it be suicidal?”

That is more than a fair point stated with dramatic flair. There are many things that are ‘traditional’ which we would rather not continue. Besides human sacrifice and cannibalism, one could mention common examples from past societies such as slavery and theocracy. Moral progress fits uneasily in Haidt’s scheme of moral foundations.

Harris further on continues his line of thought, but then takes it down a dark alley of his own (bigoted?) paranoia:

“The same point can be made in the other direction: even a liberal like myself, enamored as I am of my two-footed morality, can readily see that my version of the good life must be safeguarded from the aggressive tribalism of others. When I search my heart, I discover that I want to keep the barbarians beyond the city walls as much as my conservative neighbors do, and I recognize that sacrifices of my own freedom may be warranted for this purpose. I even expect that conservative epiphanies of this sort could well multiply in the coming years—just imagine how we liberals will be disposed to think about Islam after an incident of nuclear terrorism. Liberal hankering for happiness and freedom might one day yield some very strident calls for stricter laws and tribal loyalty. Will this mean that liberals have become religious conservatives pining for the beehive? Or is the liberal notion of reducing harm flexible enough to encompass the need for order and differences between in-group and out-group?”

How did the mostly non-Christian Japanese feel when the Christian Americans dropped atomic bombs on their cities? Some of those Japanese were liberals concerned about the long history of being oppressed and exploited by Western countries. And some of those Japanese were liberals concerned about when their own government went the path of oppression and exploitation in relation to the Chinese. Many liberal Muslims, Arabs, Africans and Asians have been concerned about the violent militaristic Western countries with long histories of imperialism, colonialism, genocide, slavery, wars of aggression, invasion and occupations, etc; all issues that many non-Christians see as directly connected to a Christian heritage going back to the Crusades.

A Christian nation is the only one ever to have gone nuclear on another country. Why is it terrorism if Muslims were to do it but a morally justified act of war when Christians do it?

Harris didn’t need to go there. It didn’t help his argument.

Harris isn’t wrong to bring up the violence of particular groups, but he ignores a larger issue of culpability. When the Iraq War (a war of aggression) was promoted, many liberals jumped on board. The number of innocent people who died because of that war makes the casualty numbers of the 9/11 attack look minuscule. Middle Easterners have more reason to fear us than we have to fear them.

This weird mix of liberalism and xenophobia is what I call conservative-minded liberalism. I see it all the time. It’s similar to how some progressives in the past became neoconservatives or how some liberal-minded people today have have embraced neoreactionary ideologies such as the Dark Enlightenment. As I’ve argued before, this seems to be a central aspect of liberalism, it’s ability to shift toward its opposite (sometimes shifting back again and at other times getting stuck).

I came across another example of this from a friend of mine, a very intelligent and well-educated friend I might add:

“Immigration to UK seems to be implicated in the UK criminal class now carrying guns and using them to shoot law abiding citizens and their police adversaries. The old ban on gun crime apparently was maintained by criminal norms–UK criminals shunned others who had shot the police. A criminal who shot and killed 3 UK police in the 1960s was shunned by his fellows and given no place to hide in his local community–he eventually lived in a tent in remote moorland (and was there apprehended).

“Now, that informal arrangement (which empirically, by inspection, seems to have existed) has collapsed. Criminals carry guns and use them against the police, so the police have armed themselves, too.

“One factor that contributes is immigration of Afro-Carribeans to UK, who brought/bring with them different norms for gun crime. For example, murder rates in Jamaica are 50x higher than in UK (Collier’s figures). If Jamaica does not have the highest homicide in the world, it’s quite high.

“A paradigmatic case is Mark Duggan (Afro-Carribean descent) who shot and killed three UK police and was lionized (rather than ostracized) by substantial portions of his co-ethnics in London. After he was shot, vocal portions of his co-ethnics sided with him against the police, and accused the police of brutality.”

Afro-Caribbeans live in poverty that was created from a colonial past. Poverty, for all races and ethnicities, correlates to higher rates of violence and crime. It sucks to be so oppressed to the point that poverty, and the desperation that goes with it, persists for generation after generation. Once slaves, I’m willing to bet those Afro-Caribbeans experience racism on a daily life which makes it hard for them to find good work and housing. Europe has the problem of ghettoizing immigrants, something the US doesn’t do (here in the US we only ghettoize our native-born poor minorities).

Besides, if we included all the violence done in the name of UK citizens by way of their government, the murder rates would look a lot differently. I’m willing to bet Collier isn’t including police brutality and wars of aggression in his figures, and certainly not all the victims of slavery and genocide (and other victims of colonialism and imperialism). We don’t even know how to count up all the victims in order to compare them. But Afro-Caribbeans haven’t enslaved UK citizens en masse nor started a war of aggression against the UK nor tried to make the UK into a colony.

My friend then concluded:

“The interpretation: Duggan can be viewed (in game theoretic terms) as a “super-villian” who violated the old norms, increased distrust between UK indigenes and Afro-Carribean new-comers, and is a paradigmatic signpost / marker of a transition to a new, more violent equilibrium (vigilant UK police must now be ready to shoot suspects before they might pre-emptively be shot *by* suspects).”

Or maybe it is simply the inevitable results of a colonial past with continuing poverty, oppression, and racism magnified by globalized capitalism and growing economic inequality. There are a lot of factors going on and few if any of them can be understood in isolation. There would be no Afro-Caribbeans in the first place if not for the intertwined history with colonialism and slavery. Afro-Caribbeans are as much a product of the Europe as of Africa, both culturally and genetically.

“Another salient example of norms,” my friend explained further, “probably not discussed in Collier but it came readily to mind.”

“In the USA, in theory and I think also in fact, Mafia (La Cosa Nostra) norms prohibited the murder of uniformed police officers and judges. I don’t know when this got to be the case, but it seemed to facilitate a “non-agression pact” in which Mafia members lived openly without much hiding who they were, and cops went home and slept at night with a bit less trepidation.

“The counterexamples in other countries are well known: Italy, Colombia, and Mexico come to mind offhand.”

Yes, norms change. But the argument seems strange.

The Mafia is listed as an example, but Italy is offered as a counterexample. The Mafia brought there norms from Italy. They were social norms and they were quite violent. An early version of the Mafia were the Black Hand. The more Anglo-American KKK was very similar, specifically the second KKK around the same time as the Black Hand.

Both the Black Hand and the KKK were anti-democratic and used violence when they saw it as convenient. They were some of the most violent groups in US history and yes many innocents were harmed, and the era when they dominated was one of the most violent in uS history. They both were trying to enforce their versions of traditional social norms and cultures, but they were also strongly opposed. One of the main motivations of the KKK was fighting against ethnics like the Black Hand because they feared changes that were undesired.

These kinds of arguments fall apart when you look at all of the data and look at the entire history. But that isn’t my main point in writing about this kind of argument. All three of these liberals (Haidt, Harris, & my friend) argue for traditional Western values. They may disagree about other things, but they agree about this style of argument. This is what makes them conservative-minded liberals, conservative-minded with a reactionary slant.

It is obviously a popular viewpoint. Even liberals get stressed out by the uncertainties of modernity: globalization, industrialization, de-industrialization, offshoring of jobs, world wars, etc. Everything is changing and we humans don’t have the capacity to easily deal with this on the individual level. It is overwhelming.

My argument is that liberalism can only operate on its own terms during peaceful times and in democratic societies. Liberalism becomes dysfunctional or forms weird hybrid ideologies when it is dominated by illiberal forces. It is only in brief moments when we can see the potential of liberalism manifest without the constraints of fear and anxiety. That is understandable, but unfortunately I don’t think many liberals fully understand this.

“suicidal self-hatred of Western Left-wingers”

Over at WSJ, there is an article about The Late, Great American WASP by Joseph Epstein.

I won’t say much about the article itself. The author is essentially talking about an enlightened aristocracy as related to ethnocentric nationalism, plutocratic ruling elite, landed gentry, primogeniture and noblesse oblige. It’s an interesting topic, but the author simplifies and in doing so falsifies history a bit. Still, the topic should be discussed for its continuing relevance.

My purpose here, however, is simply to make note of a couple of comments. The two commenters were speaking to a more side issue that is another interesting topic. I’m not entirely sure what to make of this side issue, but I thought I’d share it because I found it curious.

Frank Pecarich, in his comment, offered a quote by Collin Cleary:

“Even within the most modern of Western men – yes, even within our politically correct academics – we still see some glimmer of the old, Indo-European thematic nature. One sees this, of course, in the polemical nature of Leftist scholarship. And, as Ricardo Duchesne has pointed out, their critique of the West embodies the perennial Western negativity about itself, and Western “self-doubt.” This may be the hardest point for Right-wing critics of the Left to understand. The suicidal self-hatred of Western Left-wingers is something that seems utterly mad, and defies explanation.

“Of course many Right-wingers do, in fact, have a ready explanation: the self-hatred that currently grips Europeans, and European-Americans, is a kind of plague germ spread by non-Europeans who wish to manipulate us for their own ethnic self-interest. But such manipulation would be impossible if Europeans did not already exhibit an innate capacity for ruthless, sometimes suicidal self-criticism. The anti-Western animus of the European Left may be foolish, dishonest, and disastrous – but it is not un-Western.”

I’m not familiar with Collin Cleary. I wondered what was the larger argument he is making, but the source of the quote wasn’t offered. Fortunately, a quick web search brought up the article which begins with that quote. Cleary is a neo-pagan of the neo-reactionary variety. His argument is basically that left-wingers take too far what is otherwise fundamentally true and good about the Western tradition. This he describes as our “tragic flaw”, individual freedom brought to its self-defeating extreme.

It seems a bit melodramatic with the author’s description of the “suicidal self-hatred of Western Left-wingers”. Still, I’m intrigued by the general idea of the “old, Indo-European thematic nature”. In this view, the Left isn’t un-Western and as such neither is it un-American. However it is described or judged, it can claim an ancient lineage of sorts.

In response to that quote, James Nedved wrote:

Very interesting. I never thought about that in relation to Leftist criticism of the West, that “even it” is really part of the Western “tradition” as it were.

We in the West when you think of it do have a penchant for self-criticism on BOTH the “Jerusalem” and “Athens” side of our patrimony: Jerusalem: search our hearts, find our sin and get rid of it. Athens: Socrates was the original asker of the question, “What is the right way to live?” (An aside: If he would have just shut up, he wouldn’t have had to drink the hemlock.)

Both sides of our patrimony ask us to criticize ourselves / our laws / our “way” to find and then to prove (in the sense of “test”) ourselves.

With this comment, Nedved adds another layer of Western tradition from two other sources of the Mediterranean variety. Levantine Judeo-Christianity obviously didn’t originate in Europe, but it has become so syncretized with the “old, Indo-European thematic nature” that is impossible to separate the two. Protestantism is very much an European creation and Calvinism particularly embodies the attitude of self-doubt and harsh judgment. As for the Greek influence (by way of Hellenism and Rome), we have another strain of Axial Age influence that later fully bloomed in the Enlightenment Era. Combined, the doubting prophets and philosophers were overlaid upon the ancient dark imagination of the European pagans.

In a The Phora discussion thread about Cleary’s article, someone with the username Petr wrote:

I myself would be ready to acknowledge and celebrate the genius of Aryan peoples (as a non-Aryan Finn myself ), but yet I think that writers like this often overstate their generally correct case concerning the exceptional altruism and idealism of Indo-European peoples by over-generalizing and not noting similar traits in other peoples as well.

Here, for example, the brazen attitude of Leftist polemics is attributed to Aryan high spirits. But in other New Right writings, Jewish or Semitic fanaticism is blamed for that same thing…

The Jews had enough suicidal idealism to rebel repeatedly against the might of Rome, inspired by their messianic ambitions, until they were almost destroyed. On the other hand, the Asiatic Aryan peoples of Persia and India do not seem to have displayed that Faustian individualist attitude that writers like Cleary seem to consider as typically Indo-European.

That is a good point. Cleary is a true believer seeking to defend his conception of European traditionalism. His analysis, although interesting in parts, is ultimately apologetics and should be taken as such. Even so, I’m always fascinated by exploration of origins.

Orwell’s Homage to Socialism

George Orwell has been mostly a name to me. I’ve seen adaptations of his works, but I don’t recall ever having read anything by him. I found a cheap copy of Homage to Catalonia which more than intrigued me. I didn’t know anything about his life, but maybe that book is a good way to learn of one of the most important experiences of his life and how he sought to make sense of it.

Homage to Catalonia is about his time spent fighting fascists in Spain. Like many others, Orwell got caught up in the rhetoric of communism. He wanted to fight with the communists, but for various reasons he ended up fighting with the communist-allied anarchists and social trade unionists in Catalonia. The communists eventually took over and eventually wiped out their former allies (imprisoning, torturing and killing them) which, to say the least, was a self-defeating maneuver and cost them the war. For Orwell, this meant he was now perceived as an enemy by the communists and so he escaped across the border.

This disillusioned him about the communists which made his support of socialism all that more stronger, having remained a socialist for the rest of his life. Maybe he was taught a lesson by those he fought with, those who suffered at the hands of the communists. Most right-wingers and maybe most people in general think communism (in its form as authoritarian statism) is the same as socialism, but it would be hard to convince those anarchists and trade unionists who were perceived as a greater threat to communism than even their supposedly shared enemy of the fascists.

Orwell was no friend of any kind of absolutist ideology and he understood how it led to ruthless oppression. He realized this was as true for British imperialism as for communism. This put him in an odd position when, during the Cold War, he became an informant for the British government:

“In The New York Review of Books of September 25, 2003, Garton Ash published an article called ‘Orwell’s List’. In this article, Garton Ash gives an account of his research concerning an astonishing list of thirty-eight names of journalists, politicians, and others compiled by Orwell. In some cases, Orwell appended com-ments, some being anti-Semitic or homophobic, as well as vocational information. Those on the list were generally labeled as “crypto-communists” or “fellow travelers”. Others were said to be merely “appeasers” (of the U.S.S.R.), “reliably pro-Russian” or “sympathizers only”. Quite a few on the list are well known to those in Russell studies, for they include such figures as E.H. Carr, Isaac Deutscher, Kingsley Martin and J.B. Priestley.”

It’s rather sad that he let himself be used that way. The very people who were critical of British oppression became potential targets of that oppression because of Orwell’s collusion:

“But what Garton Ash does not mention is that in case of need, this list was also to be used to ferret out suspicious intel-lectuals and others, perhaps in a political crisis, though there is no indication Orwell himself knew this. Accordingly, in a telephone interview conducted by Francis Stonor Saunders, Adam Watson, a senior IRD veteran and Celia Kirwan’s supervisor, would not cat-egorically deny that the list was to be used against those on it. He would only say in an artfully qualified way that “Its immediate usefulness was that these were not people who should write for us,” but went on to add that “[their] connection with Soviet-backed organizations might have to be exposed at some later date”.[1] It thus seems to have been intended that the list could be concomitantly used as a tool of ideological suppression or even political control under certain unspecified untoward circumstances.”

The only explanation I can think of is that he saw the British government as the lesser of two evils and, besides, his loyalty was to his native country. Orwell was no Thomas Paine who would fight a revolution against his own country, despite his criticisms of it. I’m sure he reasoned that the British government might be reformed from within whereas he saw communism as unamenable to any reform. Rationalizations aside, my respect for him is tarnished by his collusion with power.

This Cold War angle made a lot of sense of Lionel Trilling’s introduction to Homage to Catalonia. Trilling wrote it in 1952, two years after Orwell’s death. The book had been some combination of ignored and suppressed prior to that. When it first was published, not many copies were printed and they didn’t sell. His criticisms of communism at that time were unpopular. Then during WWII, his criticisms of “Uncle Joe” were politically inconvenient. Only when his work became useful for Cold War propaganda did it see the light of day.

Reading Trilling’s introduction, I kept getting this sense that Trilling was projecting his own beliefs and opinions onto Orwell. It is a very strange introduction that offers little in the way of in-depth analysis or evidence supporting it. Trilling just uses Orwell as a way to make claims that have little to do with Orwell. Discussing Trilling’s introduction, Noam Chomsky bluntly stated, “Orwell, who had died already, would have hated it.”

I’m not sure what Orwell would have thought of how his name would be used as a propaganda tool. I doubt it would have made him happy. If he had lived longer to have seen the Thatcher-Reagan Era, I’m sure his criticism of the Cold War would have matched his criticism of the communists. The Cold War was ultimately used by Western state governments to attack socialists like Orwell.