Inauguration #46 

“We must end this uncivil war.” — President Joe Biden, January 20, 2021   
(for Charles Cameron, in memoriam) 

i
In these upside-down and inside-out times
we need to gather together, to share
our hearts and minds, listen to each other
in ways we have not done for a long time.
ii
Now we learn to defend ourselves against
world-circling plagues —SARS, Ebola, Corona—
The virus incubates and mutates in us.
Science inoculates and intubates us.

Social space and mask-wearing are strictly
enforced. Isolation is protection.
And yet some folks insist it’s just a hoax.
They resist and despise what protects them.

Teilhard conceived the NoÖsphere spreading
through the biosphere, connecting every
conscious sentient being in a web of
universal love and understanding.

The web we got, the web we’re weaving is
electronic, amoral, ubiquitous.
Until we all become telepaths, this
world-wide web is the only tool we got.

Step by tentative step we go onward.
We want to build and live in Avalon.
What we build instead is called Babylon.
We enter our future looking backward.
iii
And that’s not all the dung hitting the fan.
Climate chaos is a more honest term.
The oceans warm, coral reefs collapse, fish
die as garbage gyres grow to island size.

Wildfire season grows longer. Drought and flood
alternate; earthquakes proliferate and
the air is foul more often than fair. Our
water? Toxic as the Nile red with blood.

The solution to the problem is clear:
profiting from pollution ends now, here.
Petroleum stays in the ground today
’til the temperature comes down to stay

and the atmospheric O2 goes back
to its ancient mix. Extinction will slow.
We shall convert to green economics
to honor Gaia, Terra, Mother Earth.
iv
Puzzles posed by Vico (the Heretic)
were elegantly resolved by Bucky
(the Maverick) and his ‘Fullerene’
models of the laws of distribution.

Here I digress to praise the tao of science.
Our curiosity is a quest for
patterns that repeat in time to tell us
when to sow, when to reap, rejoice and weep.

We watch the stars for signs of Providence,
but it’s a matter of stress against strength:
Dymaxion structures are ratios
of such complementary opposites.

Remember, whatever’s hot now will cool
when you do finally run out of fuel.
Trains, planes, cars and trucks that suck gas will stop.
Eventually. Everything. Will. Stop.

Dynamic exchange of information
maintains homeostasis in systems
subject to Galois’ Second Law, until
they run out of energy: Entropy.

The way resources and access to them
has evolved in modern times is obscene.
A “fortunate” few have all they can dream,
while the rest of us can barely get by.

Social structures display the State’s power
over resistance to the hierarchy.
Gender, race and class define your status
I rise with all indigenous people.

You are no victim, nor am I your foe.
Our enemy is a system of lies
corrupting democracy’s very soul,
a malignant tumor upon the eyes.

Guns and cars are lethal and obsolete.
Time to melt, smelt, recycle, and reset.
Look, the deal’s gone down, but it ain’t too late.
We’re in some deep dung: Grab the rope! Climb out.
v
Stop fighting! Grab the rope! Climb out! Ready?
When you’re centered and your breath is steady
see your experience from this angle,
as a case of mistaken identity.

Our unity hinges on opening
doors that lead us to know our true nature.
Peace is always present, as are our fears.
The choices we make have consequences.

A parlous time lies before us, we know.
We have the strength and clarity within
to do what we must and that is to trust
one another with our own children’s lives.

We are the Ones we have been waiting for
to correct the course of the ship of State.
Take your Golden Compass in hand and sail
the sea of truth. We won’t get fooled again! *
vi
Let’s consider where in space-time we are.
This living spinning rock circling a star
in a remote and quiet galaxy
spent billions of years learning how to breathe.

Our world is bathed in the spray of cosmic rays
as our spaceship Earth surfs gravity waves
in the turbulent wake of our lone star.
Behind your eyes a divine light shines.

Your goodwill will do as much good for you
as it does good for the receiver, me.
That’s how love is: it never subtracts or
divides, it only adds or multiplies.

We are the most beautiful, destructive,
and dangerous creatures to walk the land.
The most recent species to appear here,
We have not been good stewards of the earth.

Our sojourn is so brief compared to trees.
We count our time in thousands of days while
Sequoias will stand for millennia.
Show gratitude for the gift of each day.

It isn’t real when we lie, deceive or deride
the gravity of our collective plight.
This is our time to show up, to step up
and get the work done while there’s still some light.
vii
Here is my personal invitation
to play a part in the Revolution.
Go write a manifesto! Make the case
for the most radical transformation.
 
In these days of great perils and glories
we must gather together and open  
our hearts to hear the stories we tell ourselves—  
our rights and wrongs, our losses and triumphs.  

The dark time that was foretold now passes.
The Light has not dimmed, nor will it ever.  
Some think that it’s our rose-tinted glasses  
that have shrouded our vision forever.

No more wicked lies. Time to recognize
and realize we face a common threat.
Let’s analyze, theorize, organize.
We shall mobilize:  “Time to civilize!”

It’s time to summon the thaumaturges,
the marvel makers from every age,
Moses, Merlin, Joshua, and Jesus,
Buddha, and Francis, who dwell within us.   

Can we give our all before we be gone?
We have nowhere to go but back to earth.
Every dawn can be a revelation,
Let each day beget the revolution!

 Spring Equinox

    It’s been a while since I posted any updates. Not much to report with respect to my therapy. I had my seventh and eighth rounds last month and so far side effects have been pretty mild. Bloodwoork is much the same. Not better, not worse.
    A few weeks ago I had a teleconference with two folks from CoH genetics research department. Very comprehensive consultation, over an hour! The summary was inconclusive, in that there don’t appear to be any CA mutations although many relatives have died of cancer. In the event that you, dear reader, have family members who have been diagnosed, you may want to have a cancer screen done yourself, for your children & grandchildren. Talk it over with your primary care-giver.
                                    *
    Sometimes it occurs to me that my life hasn’t been so ordinary. Maybe I ought to give some kind of accounting for what I’ve done with the time I’ve been given here. I think I’ve gained some valuable life lessons worth sharing, as well as some mistakes I rue to this day. People I’ve known and loved, books and music that have touched my heart, scenes indelibly etched in memory… so much of my story is a stereotype of the “baby boomer” I am: a white male born in the USA after the end of WWII, with almost all the power and privilege this male-dominated racist society confers on its favored WASP sons.
                                    *
    I went out to Duarte last Friday (4/9) for the CT scan and to South Pas on Tuesday (4/13) —Karen’s Birthday— for pre-infusion labs. When I met with Dr Kim the next day (4/14) he told me that I was disqualified from the trial and the infusions would be discontinued. Why? The CT scan. Most of the masses and cysts were stable or not likely malignant, except for the mets in the liver… more of them and some larger since February. The trial didn’t fail; it wasn’t as effective as hoped, for me.
    Before I was put in the “chemo-light” trial, there was a Plan A protocol. Irinotecan (liposomal), followed by Leucovorin, infused fortnightly through the power port (catheter). And I have fluorouracil in a pump for two days. Today (4/19) I got my first session on this protocol. So far I feel okay, nothing disturbing. I expect the effects will be cumulative. Still early days…
                                    *
    Now it’s Tuesday (4/20), Cannabis day, or Jack’s birthday, I can’t recall. After all, fifty years smoking pot is a long time for short-term memory. Most days, if it isn’t too windy or wet, I sit outside on the deck, next to the kitchen/dining room, where we mostly spend our time when we aren’t sleeping. It’s been warm these past few days, sunny. At any rate, I don’t feel any worse. I suppose the side effects will come with time.
    Which reminds me. Suzanne wrote a wonderful essay in her recent quarterly newsletter on spending time and paying attention. You really will enjoy her newsletters, if you haven’t found her yet at Stagthicket.    

                                    *                                                        *

 On matters that concern meditation, practice or thinking, my touchstone for many years has been a 17th century church cleric, Thomas Traherne. In the most simple, elegant language, he writes:

     What is more easy and sweet than meditation? Yet in this hath God commended His Love, that by meditation it is enjoyed. As nothing is more easy than to think, so nothing is more difficult than to think well. The easiness of thinking we received from God, the difficulty of thinking well proceeded from ourselves. Yet in truth, it is far more easy to think well than ill, because good thoughts be sweet and delightful: Evil thoughts are full of discontent and trouble. So that an evil habit and custom have made it difficult to think well, not Nature. For by nature nothing is so difficult as to think amiss.
        Centuries (I 8)

That paragraph is profound. If you’re uncomfortable with the term “God” replace it with “nature” or “evolution” or “Gaia,” but it seems to me that there has to be a fundamental agreement that human consciousness grows, lives, exists on this planet, and we are among its vehicles or vessels. Pick your own metaphor. As sentient beings, we find ourselves living in an environment that seems designed to stimulate and challenge our endowments. As we encounter each change, we learn or we perish. This would appear to be a law of nature, but don’t call it ‘tough love.’ An oxymoron as much as ‘military intelligence.’ I digress from the point: That we exist at all is a miracle beyond comprehension.

If ‘God’s Love’ bothers you, how about the ‘glory of creation’ or the ‘wonders of nature?’ The words matter not at all, but the feeling, the enjoyment, is what matters. That feeling is a real possibility, and meditation is the practice by which we come to appreciate it. Thus, daily practice affords us the opportunity to feel that sense of wonder, that opening of the heart. It’s not a guarantee, but without the effort, the commitment, to turn within each day, what chance is there that we’ll recognize what we’ve been given, receive that understanding of what this life is, really?

 I think Traherne is also right about our natural propensity to think well. Human intelligence is clearly one of the planet’s most astonishing developments, and our accomplishments in the sciences, the arts, and exploring our environment are amazing, beautiful, wonderful. Our intelligence has also produced the most unimaginable horrors and desecrations of life. And neither tendency looks to stop its trajectory into the future any time soon. Traherne belongs to the human chorus of saints and sages who remind us that we are part of the creation, we are agents of the divine, if we so choose. That’s our default setting.

But we sometimes choose not to be. We have learned ‘evil habit(s) and custom(s)’ and become lazy, indifferent, indulgent. Thus we come to ‘think amiss’ as a matter of course, mistaking ‘yours’ for ‘mine’ and ‘theirs’ for ‘ours.’ Rather that think for ourselves, we defer to others whose thinking may be even more deranged than our own! It shouldn’t be a surprise to find that a large number of us don’t like to think, since the results of such mental strife will likely be emotionally painful, if it’s done honestly. So, there needs to be a supportive and nurturing environment for people who are being challenged to (re)learn to think well. As we were as children, curious, hungry to know, eager to try. Until our natural love of learning was stunted and warped by those ‘evil habits and customs’ peculiar to our culture.

Like most glosses, this one expands a simple, beautiful passage with several dry paragraphs intended to affirm what some wise one said in another age. Please pardon the excess, but savor the essence. It’s timeless.

Why We are Alone in the Galaxy | Marc Defant | TEDxUSF

Notes on the Green New Deal(s)

I have posted two announcements calling for a Green New Deal. One was offered by newly elected Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), the other by the Green Party (USA). I have given each a first reading and have come to some sense of how they might complement one another. Again, this is only my first response to draft proposals from two progressive communities. I anticipate the proposals will evolve and my opinions will need further revision as well. So, here’s what I take from what I read.

Part 1 : Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’ Green New Deal

AOC has made it clear that she is not a ‘traditional Democrat,’ but a Democratic Socialist, akin to Bernie Sanders. Her successful campaign in New York was simple and potent: healthcare, living wage, education and housing. Nor was she shy of gun control, immigration, justice reform and civil rights. The Green New Deal (GND) she announced (https://ocasio2018.com/green-new-deal) on her website has six sections. The first five parts comprise most of the proposal, all the legislative and bureaucratic gobbledy-gook that draft legislation requires: definitions, jurisdiction, reporting, procedures, and funding. The last section, loosely termed “Scope of the Plan,” sets forth some goals and objectives the bill identifies as benchmarks to measure the success/effectiveness of the programs the legislation enables. This is in the current draft proposal, Section 6

:

   A. The Plan for a Green New Deal (and the draft legislation) shall be developed in order to achieve the following goals, in each case in no longer than 10 years from the start of execution of the Plan: 

• 100% of national power generation from renewable sources; 
• building a national, energy-efficient, “smart” grid;
• upgrading every residential and industrial building for state-of-the-art energy efficiency, comfort and safety;
• decarbonizing the manufacturing, agricultural and other industries; 
• decarbonizing, repairing and improving transportation and other infrastructure; 
• funding massive investment in the drawdown and capture of greenhouse gases; 
• making “green” technology, industry, expertise, products and services a major export of the United States, with the aim of becoming the undisputed international leader in helping other countries transition to completely carbon neutral economies and bringing about a global Green New Deal.

There are some obvious hurdles to jump. As long as Republicans control either one house of Congress or the White House, no GND will become law. We can depend on the oil lobby to do everything it can to derail, delay and defund this or any plan through its paid puppets on the Hill. In order to realize a GND, we will have to discredit the oil lobby & its agents, and replace them with legislators who understand what is at stake. We will have to create and disseminate a compelling narrative to overcome the false narrative that has held people in thrall for half a century.

There are also several points in the above list that can be initiated by local, state and regional authorities, without federal participation. Upgrading our homes and businesses to be more energy efficient is already happening in several states and municipalities. Similarly, states can set their own standards, rules and regulations to decarbonize agriculture and manufacturing, as well as transportation and other infrastructure. If we develop successful models and pilot programs in our cities and states, we will have laid the groundwork for federal support for coordinated national efforts. It won’t be easy, but the way forward seems obvious.

And the final two sections go beyond the usual rhetoric of reform:

   B. The Plan for a Green New Deal (and the draft legislation) shall recognize that a national, industrial, economic mobilization of this scope and scale is a historic opportunity to virtually eliminate poverty in the United States and to make prosperity, wealth and economic security available to everyone participating in the transformation. In furtherance of the foregoing, the Plan (and the draft legislation) shall: 

• provide all members of our society, across all regions and all communities, the opportunity, training and education to be a full and equal participant in the transition, including through a job guarantee program to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one; 
• take into account and be responsive to the historical and present-day experiences of low-income communities, communities of color, indigenous communities, rural and urban communities and the front-line communities most affected by climate change, pollution and other environmental harm; 
• mitigate deeply entrenched racial, regional and gender-based inequalities in income and wealth (including, without limitation, ensuring that federal and other investment will be equitably distributed to historically impoverished, low income, deindustrialized or other marginalized communities); 
• include additional measures such as basic income programs, universal health care programs and any others as the select committee may deem appropriate to promote economic security, labor market flexibility and entrepreneurism; and> 
• deeply involve national and local labor unions to take a leadership role in the process of job training and worker deployment. 

This may be the heart of the GND. The Plan would completely upend the system of white male privilege (patriarchy) that has historically oppressed and repressed ninety percent of all the people who live here (or have lived here since the sixteenth century). This aspect of the GND will likely encounter the most resistance because it challenges the most fundamental myths that the powerful, privileged minority holds dear. For our part, we will have to endure a lot of anger, resentment, vilification and hostility. This is where our experience and skillful practice of satyagraha will be essential. It will be through our living example of these ideals that we will realize the Plan over time. We will have to create and build the models in our communities to educate, train and employ people who have been excluded from participation. We might hearken back to the free clinics, food co-ops, free schools and workers’ collectives of a few decades past, incubators of today’s social and economic experiments. If this GND legislation is going to move through the halls of Congress (or equivalents in state legislatures) it will require the momentum of grassroots activism to get it going and keep it moving. The last point may be the most vital in determining the success of the Plan. We have got to revive unions in this country. We have to infiltrate, invigorate, agitate for true democratic participation. We have to bring unions to broader swaths of the population, not only laborers and service workers, but consumers (think bus riders), bank customers, students, health/ home/ auto insurance purchasers, any group of citizens who share a common interest Real that stands in conflict with the private interests of corporations. Here we will have to take some lessons from friends in Europe and come to terms with our own unhappy history.

C. The Plan for a Green New Deal (and the draft legislation) shall recognize that innovative public and other financing structures are a crucial component in achieving and furthering the goals and guidelines relating to social, economic, racial, regional and gender-based justice and equality and cooperative and public ownership set forth in paragraphs (2)(A)(i) and (6)(B). The Plan (and the draft legislation) shall, accordingly, ensure that the majority of financing of the Plan shall be accomplished by the federal government, using a combination of the Federal Reserve, a new public bank or system of regional and specialized public banks, public venture funds and such other vehicles or structures that the select committee deems appropriate, in order to ensure that interest and other investment returns generated from public investments made in connection with the Plan will be returned to the treasury, reduce taxpayer burden and allow for more investment.

These are invitations to build a more robust participatory economy as we move out of a petroleum-dependent, Wall Street-dominated political economy. I am not going to comment on the legislative language of the draft. People with experience and knowledge in drafting legislation can parse those elements of the proposal. There are a good number of economists who have been thinking about this for a while: Ralph Nader, Dean Baker, Richard Wolff, Thomas Linzey, come to mind, and there are many women, less well-known, with much to contribute to this part of the Plan. 

What I see here is a good start toward the goals many of us would like to achieve. The Congress as presently constituted will not support or pass anything like it. Speaker Pelosi might allow a reading and send it to committee for further development. If it goes to committee, we will have to stay alert to prevent it being weakened, writing and calling members, to let them know, we are watching. In the meantime, we need to work to build a broad constituency in support of the GND. That is where the Green Party’s version of the Green New Deal can be effective.

Part 2: The Green Party (USA) Green New Deal

Here is the website of the Green Party (USA) and the current incarnation of the Green New Deal from the party platform.

https://gpus.org/organizing-tools/the-green-new-deal/ 

The language here is clearly not primarily legislative. It is about policies and programs, based on shared values and common goals. It is polemical, educational and almost revolutionary. It consists of four parts: I. The Economic Bill of Rights; II. A Green Transition; III. Real Financial Reform; and IV. A Functioning Democracy. Briefly, let’s look at each of these four “pillars.”

The Economic Bill of Rights details and highlights issues implied in AOC’s Plan. It covers the progressive gamut from single-payer health care, tuition-free education, affordable housing and living-wage employment to campaign finance reform, fair taxation and publicly owned utilities. The second pillar is about (1) investing in green businesses, (2) supporting green research & development, and (3) providing green jobs. While these objectives are presented in general terms, there is plenty of room for local initiatives of all kinds to realize any and all of these transitional steps. The direction is certainly clear without being doctrinaire.

The third pillar is definitively prescriptive:

The takeover of our economy by big banks and well-connected financiers has destabilized both our democracy and our economy. It’s time to take Wall Street out of the driver’s seat and to free the truly productive segments of working America to make this economy work for all of us. Real Financial Reform will:

1. Relieve the debt overhang holding back the economy by reducing homeowner and student debt burdens.

2. Democratize monetary policy to bring about public control of the money supply and credit creation. This means we’ll nationalize the private bank-dominated Federal Reserve Banks and place them under a Monetary Authority within the Treasury Department.

3. Break up the oversized banks that are “too big to fail.”

4. End taxpayer-funded bailouts for banks, insurers, and other financial companies. We’ll use the FDIC resolution process for failed banks to reopen them as public banks where possible after failed loans and underlying assets are auctioned off.

5. Regulate all financial derivatives and require them to be traded on open exchanges.

6. Restore the Glass-Steagall separation of depository commercial banks from speculative investment banks.

7. Establish a 90% tax on bonuses for bailed out bankers.

8. Support the formation of federal, state, and municipal public-owned banks that function as non-profit utilities.

This part overlaps AOC’s GND Section C (Part 6) that proposes changes in the financing of the Plan. The Green Party is quite specific in these matters, and it will be interesting to see how much of their program/proposal will make it into AOC’s proposal. This will be an area of struggle in the months to come. We should expect to have a number of rounds of “Duelling Economists” before this is settled. I’m not ready to speak to these points yet, but overall, I support them.

The fourth pillar is essentially a call for revolution, at least in our hearts & heads. It is calling for a new vision of politics in America, very much in harmony with the Democratic Socialist tradition that began with Michael Harrington, that now harbors Alexandria and Bernie, as well as your humble analyst. It contains eight points, with some detailed actions, that I can support without reservation, at this point. Rather than copy and paste them, I urge you to follow the link above and see for yourself.

In conclusion, I do not see these as competing or conflicting proposals. I would suggest that we look for opportunities to bring them together, as two allies working to form a stronger united front. Remember, our collective enemy is formidable, powerful, ruthless, experienced, wealthy and ‘connected.’ Our strength is our numbers, our commitment, our cause, our trust in each other, and the love that sustains our communities. The earth will abide, whether we are here or not. Climate change, global warming, whatever you call it, it is no longer in dispute. What matters now are the choices we make and the actions we take for the sake of our children and grandchildren, unto the seventh generation.

thoughts on change and structure

a.    I find that my personal time-construal and memory-retrieval schema are not as reliable these days, and I still tend to look at matters in a different light. It’s been a while since I read the source material, and my approach was not particularly scholarly, but I remember Max Weber wrote with particular clarity and insight.

b.    The first thing I recall was Weber’s assertion that the purpose of the state is to insulate the ruling class from the rest of the population. This it accomplishes by means of a political class (intelligentsia/nomenklatura/public servants) that governs in their interests. The other thing I remember is Weber’s extending Marx & Engels’ writing on alienation. His development of Durkheim’s “ennui” became a major thread in Reich’s work, especially in The Mass-Psychology of Fascism.

c.    From Weber’s perspective, one recognizes The Constitution as a social construction designed to protect the propertied class from laborers and slaves. This position was expressed by no less an authority than Princeton Law Professor (later President) Woodrow Wilson:

“The federal government was not by intention a democratic government. In plan and structure it had been meant to check the sweep and power of popular majorities…. The government had, in fact, been originated and organized upon the initiative and primarily in the interest of the mercantile and wealthy classes. Originally conceived in an effort to accommodate commercial disputes between the States, it had been urged to adoption by a minority, under the concerted and aggressive leadership of able men representing a ruling class….”  (That quote is from B. Ollman & J. Birnbaum, eds., The United States Constitution.)

d.    A very persuasive argument is laid out by Jerry Fresia in his book, Toward an American Revolution. (Now, if you haven’t given up… I apologize for being pedantic.)

e.    The half-century from the Crash, through the Depression, WWII, McCarthy, Korea, Civil Rights & Vietnam, ends with the Revolution in Iran. Several significant factors were driving down the 1% wealth share during this period, and “reforms” like progressive taxation, union protection, Social Security and FDIC were a response to those forces. 

f.    When the Stock Exchange crashed everyone who owned property lost some of their wealth, including the folks at the top. This was a period of rising militancy among working people, made worse by the Depression. Anti-capitalist screeds were widely available. Socialist and Progressive candidates were popular and serious contenders. Eugene Debs ran for President several times, once from jail. Upton Sinclair, the EPIC candidate for Governor of California, almost won. Norman Thomas and Paul Robeson were well-known orators. The demands of labor were fueled by the misery of poverty and exploitation. They were met with a ruthlessness that is shocking and shameful. It was popular outrage that forced Congress to legislate union protection in the Taft-Hartley Act. The Act also protects employers’ rights, but in such a way as to eviscerate labor’s major weapon: the strike. Most labor historians regard Taft-Hartley as a catastrophe for unions and a shield for the bosses. Consider, too, that while unions won the struggle for employer-paid pensions & healthcare, at the cost of their hourly wage, even those benefits have been reduced or disappeared. Taft-Hartley was of little help to workers, but the employers kept their golden parachutes. And Congress was complicit, all the way.

g.    Another major factor driving down the 1% wealth share was the diversion of resources for waging war. Over time, the 1% wealth share benefits from conflict since they hold most of the war bonds and all the military contracts which provide a reliable future revenue stream. The reallocation of capital, material and people caused real disruptions in the infrastructure and social structure of America. The state itself required a greater share of the national product, so everyone’s portion was bound to shrink. Once the military-industrial-academic complex was in place, tax dollars began to flow and the 1% wealth share rose.

h.    Although it might appear that the 1% wealth share was in decline, its minions certainly were not. From the Palmer raids to the HUAC hearings, the most virulent right-wing ideologists held sway in Washington and many state capitols. The ruthless extermination of the left was carried out by the Justice Department, the Post Office and the Treasury while organized crime became more entrenched. The resurgent new left of the sixties was likewise attacked by FBI, COINTELPRO and police assaults.

i.    During this period of turmoil, there was serious struggle for leadership in each of the two major parties. Democrats were divided on Vietnam and Johnson’s domestic programs. Republicans were recovering from Goldwater’s defeat and congratulating themselves on Reagan’s win in California, but without a clear vision of how to reform the party and take power. Narratives of this process have been emerging in recent years, illuminating the total indifference of the actors to the welfare of the citizenry or the consequences to the nation. The guiding principle is ever the same for all factions: maintain and maximize our status at the top.

j.    For most Americans, if we think about such matters, the market is a “given,” something that’s there that you have to deal with. Whatever you need,  as long as you have money to exchange, the market is the place to get it. The market place has rules, and the rule book currently in use is called “capitalism.” Clearly, this was not always so. Other, older rule books have been used and new ones are being written in this time of transformation. The times they are a’changing.

k.    For much of our time here we have been an exceptionally literate nation, and despite the domination of two major parties since the early days of the republic, third parties have emerged offering critiques, programs and candidates to challenge mainstream thinking. Their influence and impact has, at times, been significant, but capitalist ideology has survived and become the “neo-liberal” structure some call the “new world order.”

time for a change

l.    There are some who can survey the panorama that appears before us and select the salient features that characterize the moment, providing cogent and incisive analysis for those of us whose vision tends toward the myopic, and who process information more slowly. There are no easy answers, no fool-proof methods, no infallible rubrics we can rely on nowadays, that I know of—not that there ever were such. I tend to use the lenses of history and psychology, much as Norman O. Brown did, to make sense of what I behold and experience. He was a Professor of Classics at UC Santa Cruz for many years. His synthesis of Freud & Marx (psychoanalysis and dialectical materialism) is the most powerful analytical methodology I have learned to use. (Life Against Death) I am not an adept, only a slow student attempting to apply what I have come to understand.

m.    The writer/observer sitting here, in Eagle Rock, California, early autumn of 2018, should be able to situate himself more precisely, for the reader, to account for inherent bias and distortion. So, this is the literary voice of a retired, college-educated man who spent two decades working in food service and three decades teaching in public and private schools. My partner is a brilliant, beautiful artist and teacher, who has graciously put up with me for more than thirty years. My grandparents were all born in central Europe and came to America as children just over a hundred years ago. My father was a clothing manufacturer, and his father was a tailor. My mother sold high fashion clothing, her father was a shopkeeper and mechanic. I am the second generation to be born and raised here.

n.    First, let me say how grateful I am to be alive, to have been born and to have lived this life. That alone is a miracle. Dayenu! To have this time to reflect and share my thoughts is a blessing and gift beyond measure. Dayenu! To have found a teacher and guide for a lifetime is grace beyond comprehension. Dayenu! Thank you, Prem Rawat.

o.    Human occupation of our homeworld has actually been quite brief. If you’re familiar with a particular representation of Earth as a 24-hour clock, humans have been here for about a minute, and human civilization is a small fraction of that. Nonetheless, the fifty thousand years of our rise has utterly transformed the planet to its current perilous condition. Without a doubt, the climate is changing as a consequence of human consumption and combustion of fossil fuels. There is nearly unanimous agreement that we have passed the “point of no return” for saving our civilization. Let us take a quick look at the thresholds we’ve crossed.

p.    Greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide, methane and oxides of nitrogen and sulfur, have increased significantly with harmful effects due to reduced protection from the “ozone layer” and lower oxygen content in the air. These compounds become acidic in the atmosphere as rainfall, weakening and decimating forests. Absorbed into the oceans, the waters become acidic and lethal to many forms of sea life. This is particularly crucial with regard to coral reefs and krill.

q.    As global atmospheric temperatures rise we have watched the polar regions shrink precipitously. Glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, promising devastating, extensive droughts and severe crop failures leading to famines of unprecedented proportions, particularly in Asia. Changing weather patterns are now evident as hurricane season comes earlier, lasts longer and spawns more violent storms. The gulf stream is changing, affecting the behavior of fish as well as the migration patterns of birds and insects. As expected, the range of disease vectors such as mosquitoes, has grown, increasing the incidence of tropical and sub-tropical illnesses.

r.    These global phenomena have local manifestations as well. The decline in fish populations is an obvious example. Epidemics among livestock and fowl are more frequent. Wildfires and floods have become annual disasters on every continent, each year worse than the year before. And, of course, there are the oil spills, mine disasters, gas leaks and nuclear meltdowns human error tends to produce every year. Of late there is growing concern over plastic micro-beads infiltrating the waters and soils we depend on, adding to the incalculable volume of plastic waste accumulating in landfills and oceanic gyres.

s.    We who tend to live in urban and suburban communities know all this at a level of abstraction and detachment that is far removed from the immediacy of the crisis experienced by most of the planet’s human and non-human residents. For most of “us”, the fortunate 10%-20%, we note the rising cost of living, higher prices for food, fuel, water, services, housing, health care, etc. The “other 80%-90%” struggle to find food and water, enough to survive. They suffer from higher rates of infant mortality, shorter lifespan, housing insecurity, lack of health care, few schools…

t.    It seems obvious to me that this situation is unsustainable. The continued dependence on fossil fuels to power this civilization is suicidal. There is a need to radically and immediately change how human society behaves, if we are to avert global disaster and the collapse of human culture. Unfortunately, the “powers that be,” the 1% who rule the world, are not going to agree to the necessary changes. They will resist and use every means at their disposal, including state sanctioned violence (police & military), to maintain control of power. Clearly, power and control must be taken out of their hands. This can only be done by means of a global transformation of power relations between the people and the state: total world revolution.

u.    To my mind, one of the greatest achievements of human consciousness is the resolution of contradiction and paradox. For example, natural science, as physics was formerly known, could not resolve the apparently distinct features of light. Is light a particle or a wave? Similar conundrums regarding the nature of matter could not be resolved until Niels Bohr developed a model (or metaphor) that described the atom. Einstein and Planck were able to integrate the apparent contradictions and synthesize a “higher order of harmony” to explain and predict what could be observed experimentally. Quantum Theory was the result of that synthesis.

v.    It should be obvious to anyone who enjoys the luxury of space and time to reflect on the human condition and the state of the world that we have reached a critical juncture in the evolution of life on earth. The contradictions that we now confront are most dire, and should we fail to resolve these antagonistic forces, our species and perhaps nearly all terrestrial life forms now present will perish. It is clear to me that we must seek a “higher order of harmony” if we are to survive.

w.    If we can step away from our geocentric point of view, and look beyond a heliocentric horizon we might see ourselves as the temporary residents of a small, spinning water-covered rock on the edge of an extended spur between two arms of an unremarkable spiral galaxy, one of many millions that are scattered through the universe. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is estimated to be 100,000 light-years across, contains over 200 billion stars, including our homestar, the sun, which is 4.5 billion years old, a comparatively young star. As we ride our world, spinning at 1000 miles an hour, orbiting our star at 67,000 miles an hour, the solar system is rotating at more than 500,000 miles an hour around the hub of the galaxy. On average, we travel more than four billion miles through space every year. That is reality, and we are virtually unaware of it.

x.     Although I doubt this thought is original, it occurs to me that homo sapiens may be Nature’s way of liberating carbon that’s been sequestered underground for millions of years. The rapid release of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere and oceans is having profound effects on all planetary ecosystems. The oceans are becoming more acidic as carbon dioxide is absorbed, and acid rain is another well-known result of fossil fuel combustion. A number of scientific fields of inquiry -- archaeology, paleontology, geology, biology, botany, anthropology -- see this as the prelude to the sixth global extinction of species. All in all, I realize this is a misanthropic perspective on evolution, but the evidence clearly points toward humans as the agents of terrestrial ecocide in the anthropocene period.

y.    Coming now to the end of this rhetorical exercise, I want to thank you, dear reader, for indulging me with your thoughtful consideration. I hope you have found a measure of satisfaction in the process of reading these paragraphs. I hope it has been illuminating, as well as challenging, perhaps confirming your own ideas, raising questions and proposing paradoxical solutions, with a few splashes of irony. If you would like to respond to any of this, by all means, feel at liberty to do so. Please refrain from vulgar or offensive language. Let us be respectful of one another.

z.    Yes. I've been thinking about this stuff for a while. Having grown up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, I’ve been fortunate to live abroad for a year, as well as in the city, the mountains and the desert. I’ve lived in a couple communes, a collective, an ashram and several houses with lots of people with children and pets. And always there have been problems. Not the least of them was setting boundaries and respecting one another's space, physical and emotional. Over time, at least among the humans I've come to know, there seem to be a few common denominators-- things we generally do not/will not share (toothbrush, trombone, secrets, etc.) and those we do share. So for now, I'll work with the stuff we do share here on earth, and perhaps a rubric will appear that simplifies the problem. Enough for now. (Apologies for excessive verbiage.)

Manifesto 6.0 (Practice Draft)

     The spectre haunting Europe in Marx & Engels' day now overshadows the world. The collapse of empires, the blight of war, the mindless exploitation of Nature, the persistent devaluation of life --all life, not just human life-- these are the signs and symptoms of a pathological culture on its way to ecocide and extinction. Redemption, if it is possible, can only be achieved by global revolution overthrowing the present world order. The spectral forces of alienated labor, resistance to illegitimate authority, recognition of universal human rights, the struggle for social justice, these assume material form in solidarity and community.

     By now, the early years of the XXI century, it is clear that there is an elite class of humans --less than 1% of all humans-- whose decisions determine the use and distribution of human and natural resources necessary to sustain life on Earth. It is equally clear that their decisions have resulted in the present conditions of conflict, poverty, disease and environmental degradation. They continue to pursue social and economic policies that preserve and protect their positions of privilege, power and authority. 

     It is no secret that the immiseration of the majority of humans will increase, even as our numbers decline in the wake of endless wars and plagues that become more frequent and lethal. It is no secret that the oceans are dying, warming as they become more acidic, killing coral reefs, melting the polar ice caps. Drought and wildfire, followed by storms and flood, are reducing crop yields, devastating forests, turning grasslands into deserts. There is no relief or rescue on the horizon. There is perhaps, the possibility of transformation through revolutionary action, but the spectral forces of imagination, invention, organization and cooperation must coalesce and unite even as classes, castes, divisions and heirarchies dissolve and merge, giving rise to a new order, a global awareness, a planetary consciousness that holds fast to the truth that Earth, our homeworld, is alive, sacred and finite.