Orlov revisited

In my last review, I didn't include some salient points about the Orlov book that should at least be mentioned as they pertain to how his thesis holds together.

I skipped over chapter four, but it is crucial in understanding what he refers to in the harm/benefit analysis. If the power and control of the technosphere is to be diminished, he suggests that we need to hold as our standard the health of the BIOSPHERE.

But allow me to digress here a bit. Back on page 67, or there about, I read some passages that I can't get out of my mind. It is not that I remember them verbatim, but that I remember the essence of their meaning, and that is what has left a lasting chill.

Part of the control that the technosphere wields in getting people to adhere to certain beliefs, and thus behaviors, is the idea that we are becoming (or have already become) a global culture. This implies that as we think and act we follow along ever more converging paths of socially accepted behavior. Social media, for example, nearly demands it. If you have the courage to speak your mind, are you waiting to be struck by someone else's observation that you have not followed in line with the accepted world view that is now part of the popular meme? (I have often found this to be true, and as such deleted my Facebook account, for all the good it will do me!)

We have left behind centuries of previous forms of social organization that gave our lives definition and meaning. We understood our place in society through the boundaries of family, tribe, folklore, geographical location, city-state, nation-state, etc. Now, it seems we are swimming in a soup of humanity that is held together with the perfidy of imposed ideas. This is most evident when examining the vitriol that comes in response to political correctness.

In order to be inclusive of others our language use and behavior needs to conform to ever morphing sets of criteria. The intention is to acknowledge and correct a previous expression of prejudice or dismissiveness of individuals defined by the groups to which they belong. But by trying to erase the boundaries of these groups, regardless of how they are named, we are effectively asking others to join in where they may not want to go.

Not everyone wants to be identified with humanity as a whole. And so what you get is an ocean of identity politics and all the folks are clamoring to stake their claim in the please-acknowledge-me-I-matter territory.

I do not place myself on the political spectrum anywhere near the right end, and yet, I despise political correctness as much as any of those torch-bearers. And that is where the chill sets in.

If you have that many people in your society feeling dispossessed, underappreciated, unrecognized, and thwarted in their attempts at self-actualization, stirring the soup with platitudes of inclusion is not going to achieve your aims.

If we want to create a society that values the lives of all its participants, we cannot afford to ignore the fears and insecurities of those who bellow and scream obscenities. This is a horrifying realization. We are all guilty of writing off those who we are convinced will never listen to us, and that brings us up to NOW.

If we don't start bringing down the walls between us, the technosphere will continue to perpetrate its memes in order to conglomerate us and denigrate self-definition by any other means than the perceived, acceptable one. What we have lost in the meantime is any definition of basic, essential humanity--the idea that love confers value on all. That's it. Not language, not policy, not coercion. We need a vision of what love is, so we can know what it is like to extend it for ourselves as well as others. Our society, through capitalism, and other features, blinds us to the possibilities that matter most. Can we ever believe that the only possibility that matters is love??

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Discovering People from whom I want to hear more

I just discovered Nancy Neithercut.

I already love her and here is potent proof why:

The World Desperately Needs Us But NOT Online

Today is Wednesday, January 27, 2016 and the good ol' Seattle Times has given me the best excuse to make a decision to stop blogging.

So let's get right to it. What was on the pages of the Times this morning?

It was the confluence of two different but somehow related stories that really caught my attention. On A2 the headline reads: Panel urges all U.S. adults be screened for depression. Then, on B1 the headline reads: Mayor Ed Murray defends actions on homelessness.

There is something about that A2 headline that kinda makes me laugh. If you've been paying attention at all to how people feel these days about the prospects for their lives, do you really think screening them for depression is going to unearth anything valuable? If it is not obvious by now what would drive the average person to be depressed, confirming the fact won't change a damn thing.

It is a newspaper article after all so they're required to get quickly to the bottom line: lost productivity cost an additional $23 billion in 2011. Lost? I don't think so. You may have picked up on the fact that the productivity of an American worker is not reflected in his wages but in the profits sent much further up the food chain. Nothing is lost. We're just bumping up against the limits of corporate greed by seeing the toll it takes on people whose only ambition is to work for a living.

Perhaps the strangest statement came at the very end. The task force gave the recommendations a grade of B based on how much clinical evidence there is to support their findings, a rating that should provide coverage for the screenings under the Affordable Care Act.

So let me get this straight: If theses folks all agree that the depression situation is bad enough, well, gosh, then if we rate it as above average in severity and importance then at least the govmint will pay for us to tell folks, uh, yup, you're depressed all right.

...But dang! Please don't start abusing stuff or gettin' in trouble cuz darn it, you just won't be productive enough.

Please take this pill instead. NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEXT! 

It turns out even the mayor of our fair city has reason to be depressed these days. The Times tells us: Seattle will spend about $50 million in 2016 to combat homelessness, but Murray said the city can't solve it unless it receives more help.  

I'm not always a fan of Ed Murray, but I will say he appears to know what he's talking about when he says:

It's about the fact that we don't fund mental health. It's about the fact that we're in a national heroin epidemic, he said. It's about the fact that income inequality has made it hard for some people who work to sleep anywhere except in a tent in an illegal spot.

Both of these articles make it abundantly clear that we have plenty of experts who know exactly how to identify the causes of problems. Unfortunately, even when these problems are at the peak of crisis the main cry is always that somehow there isn't enough money to deal with them. As long as we believe this we will suffer the consequences. There is enough money in the world, its just managed by people who control way too much of it. You do know the difference between a billion and a million, right?

At times like this I am often reminded of the adage that in this world there is always enough for human need but not enough for human greed.

My human need is to step back from time spent online so that I can better attend to the matters of real life. I've allowed myself to get so caught up in the things that bring us all down. It takes time away from what I might be doing to bring my loved ones and I back up. Redirecting the only energy I've got is pretty important business.

I've loved blogging, but I'm just one more voice in all the noise that we're drowning in. I'd like to see what I can do besides "pushing electrons" as my darling husband puts it.

So it is with a sense of relief and fairly drawn conclusion that I bid a very fond farewell to The Twenty-First Century Citizen. I appreciate any and all who have read my meandering thoughts and chimed in or even just smiled.

Hang in there. Be well. Love your peeps.

Book signing!

Hello my precious, infrequent readers,

(That is only fair; I'm an infrequent blog poster.)

Just wanted to let you know that if you find yourself in the north end of Seattle on the evening of Saturday, November 7th, please consider stopping by the Kerf International Gallery.

Why?

I will be participating in an opening called Thirty women over Thirty. In this case, the art is my recently self-published book, Fallout from the Workforce: Living in a post-career world and the people who teach us.

I met the gallery owner, Dave Felker, this year.
He has taken this little spot in the Wallingford Center (1815 N. 45th St., to be exact), and turned it into a showcase for artists of all kinds. The fact that he invited me to launch my book during the opening of this exhibit tells you a little something about how welcoming he is to creative folks of all stripes. He has a genuine desire to help people bring their work to a wide audience.

Please consider joining us at 6:00 p.m. Saturday, November 7th. I'll be there signing books, fielding questions, and talking about my work.

Hope to see you there.

Just another teaser

It was a long and fruitful summer. At last I've turned the corner on a chapter that marks a very significant turning point for my book.

Here is another snippet:

Again, I’ve raised more questions than I’ve answered. I’ve looked as far as I can go from a computer screen. I’ve dropped hints, made suggestions, and sneered at human foibles when overwhelmed by the absurdities. In the process of performing this mental exercise I’ve had the opportunity to expose some nagging thoughts. I’ve tested them out to see if they were reason enough to think that my fate hinged on their existence. I have since reasoned that the answer is—no. I am guilty, though, of giving some of them too much power over my state of mind. How else could I write about them so passionately? Dang. Another question.

One can stand and stir the pot for only so long. Sooner or later the fire dies, the pot grows cold, and I have to pull off the witch’s hat and look elsewhere for better incantations. The next chapter represents an oasis of contemplation far from the polarized monologue of the fate of capitalism. It is in some of these proposals that I find the greatest source of understanding, if not solace, for my long-wandering heart.  

Neglected for all the right reasons

The title of this post pretty much sums up how I feel about my absence from writing for TFCC.
You may remember that I'm writing a book. I am slowly making progress, but there are now multiple related activities grabbing my time and attention. This will no doubt continue for quite some time.
Here is a tiny snippet from the first chapter:

It is as if going to work was the glue that held you together. Without the certainty of having to get out of bed, go someplace, and throw yourself into some task, pieces of you would start to break off like an ancient glacier calving at the edge of an ocean. What you used to know to the smallest detail would now become reabsorbed into an undefinable body of water. What you didn't know is that no matter how far that glacier recedes, the land mass beneath remains an untapped ecosystem that you've been led to believe no longer exists or can’t be revived. But spring always comes as day follows night and you learn how to withstand the passage of time without losing solid ground.

My hope is to finish this work by the end of the year. That said, it is highly unlikely I will be posting again any time soon. Thanks for checking back in from time to time. I will forever be....the twenty-first century citizen.


Yours truly,
M. C. Van Oel

Get up, stand up

And now dear reader, after several months of diversion, I'm going back to my original, stated purpose for this blog.

As you know I love to let you in on books I recommend, and today's book exemplifies the focus of much of my thought process in recent months. After reading it I felt buoyed by some astounding observations about American culture from a psychologist's POV. The author is Bruce E. Levine, and his book is Get up, Stand up. He examines the destruction of collective self-confidence, and describes how as a society we have lost our strength to fight back against oppressive forces. There is a way to rally that energy and that is the beauty of this work. Without giving it away, I simply urge you not to hesitate to dive into this book. It just might fortify your outlook for the rest of the year.

Why we need to stop giving back

A few years ago I was watching Oprah talk with John Travolta. I wasn't really paying attention to the television screen until I heard one of them say: "Doesn't it feel good to give back?" The other one heartily agreed. I remember that moment as the time I started paying attention to that expression and how often it is used.

The more I heard it the less I liked it. The essential idea behind using the term give back seems well-intentioned, but unpack that semantic baggage and you've got some seriously dirty laundry. Every single time I hear it I can't help but complete the sentiment in my head. It goes like this:

I'd really like to give back to my community because let's face it, I took too much the first time!

Hidden in plain sight is the notion that with abundance comes obligation and a requisite amount of guilt. The quest for wealth is made less problematic because one can so easily get rid of this guilt by giving back. Thus you can be admired for your accumulation without incurring any righteous disdain because you've done your part to relieve the burden the rest of us must feel for not being you.

Thus begins the push-me-pull-you schizophrenia of the desires we are conditioned to possess and the unrelenting terror of having no upper limit so that we may know exactly when it is time for us to give back. Tell me John, was it before or after you bought that first jet? I'm thinking--after.

If you have any doubt about whether this whole do-I-have-enough-money business is a creepy, ew-inducing insanity, all you need do is discover the etymology of the word tithe on Wikipedia.


Believe it or not I was raised a good Christian so I had a little background with this concept:

...the New Testament scriptures are seen as teaching the concept of "free will offerings" as a means of supporting the church...

That should read supporting the work of the church which presumably is caring for the less fortunate. And what about free will?

I must have tuned into this philosophical conundrum early on because I can remember after church one Sunday when I was a kid one of my parents grousing at how little some of the other parishioners put in the basket. What made it so easy to feel superior?

Not for me thanks. But not so fast. The sad fact in understanding conditioned responses is knowing that you, too, have never escaped them.

How we use language is a hugely conditioned response. Its power to perpetuate stupidity continues unquestioned unless we simply start making better choices with how we describe important concepts.

I want to encourage people to make free will offerings anytime they feel so moved, but if you didn't take too much in the first place, what the hell do you think you are giving back? No one wants your guilt, everyone needs your love.

This post is dedicated to my kindred spirit Noam Chomsky.

P.S. If you would like to read more on a related topic I highly recommend this excellent article by Ian Svenonius.

Pursuit of the common good

(See the previous post for the cliffhanger.)

        Indeed, on the very last page, in the last two sentences in the second to the last paragraph, the Skidelskys write:

Could a society entirely devoid of the religious impulse stir itself to pursuit of the common good? We doubt it.
 

        Excuse me!? Are Robert and Edward suggesting what I think they mean? Let's see. So without a god consciousness the whole of humanity cannot summon the will to solve its problems with, for example, capitalism as the overriding force controlling our mental framework. As much as I concede it will be difficult, I can't bear to give in to this level of cynicism just yet. Besides, the so-called religious impulse they're referring to is hardly a universal human trait, whereas the fact that we live in a capitalist state is incontrovertible. I find this level of doubt about the base impulses of humanity a sad commentary even if it appears to be true.
        A month ago when I first read that page I jotted down my initial reaction—People are at war with each other because ultimately they are at war with their own human nature and what it means to come to terms with that.
        This is the heart of what is so difficult to understand, describe, and parse into meaning so that people would feel compelled to take action. How many people have to be at exactly what level of despair in order to start living differently? And don't think that despair is the sole motivator. Anyone can come to this on their own from many levels of consciousness.
        If you want to describe that as coming from god, fine, but I think you'll find that it originates equally from self-interest, survival, and simply wanting to be at peace with the world, rather than struggling with the false dichotomy that capitalism forces on us. Money = self-worth, no money = no worth.
        But don't take my word for it. If you've read TwentyFirstCenturyCitizen before, you know I've mentioned the many people who study human behavior for a living. There are so many souls out there trying to get us to believe in the depth of our better nature, our higher selves.
        I hope it's not too late, but unlike the Skidelskys, I can't bring myself to say:

I doubt it.