Not everyone understands that there are two clauses regarding religious freedom embedded in the First Amendment: One which prohibits government from establishing (i.e., “favoring”) any religion, and one which prevents government from interfering with the free exercise of any religion. But too many fundamentalist Christian organizations in America are constantly pushing for a complete reversal of this cornerstone of American freedom: The establishment (legal favoring) of their religion, and the curtailment of the free exercise of at least some others.
A good example of this is the blatant hypocrisy of those religious organizations that call, for instance, for the prevention of the construction of the Muslim interfaith center in Manhattan (not, in fact “at ground zero”), while invoking a federal law which prevents the implementation of any local land use law which burdens the free-exercise of religion (resulting in the ability of religious organizations to build anything anywhere, regardless of zoning laws that would have prohibited the structure were it any other entity that were building it). In an archetypal example of this very un-American belief in the privileging of some religions over others, a leader in the conservative religious organization American Family Association, which in 2003 successfully fought to prevent Georgia from implementing a land-use law limiting the locations where a church could be constructed, is now calling for a complete moratorium on the building of mosques anywhere in the United States (http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100812/pl_yblog_upshot/conservative-activist-calls-for-nationwide-mosque-moratorium).
America has always had a split personality when it comes to religion: A politically secular nation by Constitutional decree, founded by puritans and infused with an ever-present undercurrent of religious fanaticism. The reason for this, of course, is that the colonies had many who had come to practice (and proselytize) their own religion freely (all Christian denominations, originally), but not all such groups wanted to practice (and proselytize) the same religion freely. The necessary compromise was the legal institutionalization of “live and let live” when it comes to religious exercise: Government will neither favor nor disfavor any religion.
But, while this doctrine may have matured into the enlightened vision of the framers of the Constitution, it originated in religious zealotry, not tolerance. Each of those original religious sects would have gladly imposed itself on others, were it able to. And their descendants have much the same attitude.
Where such attitudes prevail, we wind up with theocracy and draconian religious laws, such as Muslim sharia law. The irony in this particular contest, between radical Islam and radical Christianity, is that the two sides, vehemently opposed to one another, are so strikingly similar.
And, of course, the radicals on both sides oppose the Moderates who seek only a peaceful, prosperous, and mutually respectful coexistence. The Muslim interfaith center in Manhattan is just such a voice of reason, and should be embraced as the epitome of what Americans stand for: Mutual tolerance and mutual goodwill, and the free exercise of religion for all.
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Democracy is a system which works best when people, informed of the issues, vote their conscience. Without a doubt, it has become polluted with money and marketing strategies, a battle of psychological manipulation and the amassing of the funds to propagate it. But if we fail to draw the line at outright intentional deception, at blatant misrepresentation designed to deceive voters into voting for something that they have been led to believe is something else entirely, then we should at least invoke the moral condemnation that should be triggered by such acts, followed by the punishment of it at the ballot box.
Amendment 62, of course, is a ballot measure which defines life as beginning at conception, in a probably unconstitutional assault on Roe v. Wade and women’s reproductive rights, and is a little gremlin of legal mischief, tying in knots a legal system almost entirely predicated on legal rights that vest at birth. Even that minority of Democrats who lean in the pro-life direction would (or should) tend not to support this measure, because it’s poorly drafted and poorly conceived, and far more draconian in its implications than simply the repeal of Roe v. Wade would be. The majority of Democrats, who, in the final analysis, simply can’t conceive of reducing women to legal incubators, would oppose this ballot initiative both for its anti-reproductive-rights implications, and for its general costly dysfunctionality (if it became law, it would wreak havok through a plethora of unintended consequences, while simultaneously tying up the courts by the need to rule it unconstitutional, the inevitable ultimate outcome).
Which is why its advocates decided to try to trick Democrats into voting for it, by means of a robocall by “a fellow democrat” which makes no reference to “abortion” or “fetuses” or “unborn children” or any other word or phrase which would indicate what the amendment is actually about, but instead refers only to thousands of Coloradans being killed due to a lack of civil rights protections (as reported by Colorado Pols: http://coloradopols.com/diary/14149/now-thats-one-misleading-robocall).
Yes, you can argue that from the perspective of whoever paid for the call (but who also violated Colorado election law by not stating who they were), the description in the robocall is entirely accurate (if also intentionally selective). But there is no doubt that it was designed to invoke false images in the mind of the listener, to deceive them into believing that Amendment 62 is a measure to protect some group of fellow Coloradans (as currently legally and conventionally defined) whose lives have been put in jeopardy by a failure to provide adequate civil rights protections.
It is left to the imagination of the listener who the members of this group may be. Illegal immigrants being denied life-saving services? Residents exposed to toxic substances in their drinking water? Inmates being subjected to dangerous involuntary drug testing? There is no doubt that the ambiguity was exploited in order to trick some population of not terribly well informed or dilligent Democratic voters into voting against their conscience, by misleading them about the meaning of the measure on which they would be voting.
This is a case of a fanatical minority, knowing that they are in the minority, but wanting both to impose their moral tyranny on the majority that disagrees with them, and to circumvent the Constitution which protects the rights of some from the tyranny of others, trying to undermine both popular will and constitutional protections by means of outright deception.
Since they are so transparent in their contempt of both democracy and constitutionalism, I recommend that we take pains to ensure that democracy and constitutionalism return the favor.
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Natural disasters and economic crises are not what plagues humanity; humanity is what plagues humanity. Humanity plagues humanity in the obvious ways, in acts of terrorism, in rogue-state escalations of tension and threats of military violence, in genocides and riots and acts of mayhem large and small. Humanity plagues humanity in contested but fairly apparent ways, by clinging to platitudes and engaging in the politics of ignorance and belligerence, of xenophobia and homophobia and a general fear of the “other”. But humanity also plagues humanity by indifference, by a lack of will, a lack of perseverance, a lack of commitment to confront the enemy within and defeat it each and every day, each and every week, each and every month, year, decade, century, and millennium. Humanity plagues humanity by failing to step up and contribute to the solution, even if never having contributed directly to the problem. Humanity plagues humanity by sitting on the sidelines and surrendering the field to the most ruthless, or the most enraged, or the best mobilized by the best funded but least altruistic.
Not only is the Tea Party the incarnation of our own worst enemy, but so too are the vast numbers of reasonable people of goodwill who can’t be bothered to stand up to them. The Denver Post reported today on “the enthusiasm gap,” assuring us that it is real, and tht it may be decisive (http://www.denverpost.com/ci_16367341). And when the Republicans take the House, and maybe the Senate; when they undermine through an assault of defunding and riders and amendments which chip away at the modest Health Care Act we fought tooth and nail to pass, and complained bitterly about it not being enough; when they turn the clock back a few years to the days when W made most of us ashamed; all of us who weren’t excited enough to keep it from happening will be to blame.
It’s not just those who do violence to the public interest that are responsible for the damage done, but also those who sit by and let them do it. We’ve got somewhere between zero seconds and 15 days to avert a political disaster. I suggest that each and every one of us spend just about every waking moment for the next two weeks doing every last thing we can to avert it. Don’t wait for the clarity of hindsight to recognize how urgent it is. Don’t forsake hope just because it didn’t serve you breakfast in bed the day after the honeymoon; you’ll miss it desparately when it’s gone.
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Mexican Drug Violence. Many recognize that the organized crime and violence associated with the drug trade is closely analogous to the rise of organized crime and violence that occurred as a result of Prohibition in the 1920’s. But a less noted aspect of Mexican Drug Cartel Violence is that, while we bitterly complain about the illegal flow of low-wage workers from Mexico, we also rabidly defend our own laws which help foster a far more disastrous and unredeeming illegal flow of arms to Mexico (http://www.economist.com/node/17251726). The differences between this two flows across our southern border are that the flow of arms is entirely destructive (as opposed to illegal immigration, which may actually have net economic benefits), undermines Mexican sovereignty and security to a far greater degree than illegal immigration undermines U.S. sovereignty and security, and is a direct product of our own lax gun control laws rather than an organic product of economic dynamics over which governments have limited control. In this light, American indignation about illegal Mexican immigration is just that much more shallow, self-serving, and hypocritical.
An extraordinarily productive Congress. Despite the popular meme to the contrary, the 111th Congress has been one of the most productive in American history, and the impending backlash is similar to the backlash that occurred when the 89th Congress (also Democratic) passed the now extremely popular Medicare and Medicaid programs and additional still much needed civil rights protections for African Americans (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101018/ap_on_bi_ge/us_prolific_congress). We tend to punish in the moment those who do what history recognizes to have been the politically courageous and responsible thing to do. I hope enough people are wise enough today to recognize the folly of this, and motivated enough to work hard in the days and weeks to come to prevent us from replacing those who are doing the right thing, and governing responsibly, with those who are committed to undermining our economy along all relevant dimensions (robustness, sustainability, and fairness).
Americans talk about The Tea Party. I especially like the guy who said “their anger is very justified and their fear is very justified and their explanations for why we’re having the problems we’re having are almost completely wrong.” http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_askamerica/20101018/pl_yblog_askamerica/across-america-people-speak-out-on-tea-party
President Obama is going to appear on an episode of Mythbusters. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_obama_science. Though the president is appearing on an episode addressing the question: Did Greek scientist Archimedes set fire to an invading Roman fleet using only mirrors and the reflected rays of the sun? there are plenty of myths to be busted closer to home.
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The title quote, uttered by President Obama to describe the choice we have in the 2010 elections, captures the essence of the on-going struggle between humanity’s inner-angels and inner-demons, a struggle which produces the realization of both our dreams and our nightmares, depending on which prevails in any given moment of history.
The refrain “we want our country back” is the refrain of those who fear progress, who cling to a mythologically sanitized past rather than forge a path into the inevitable future. It attracts, along with those who are making some vaguer, narrower reference, those who want to take the country back from, among others, women, African Americans, Hispanics, non-Christians, and Gays, groups which have succeeded in diminishing the opportunity gap between themselves and the white, male, Christian minority that has historically maintained that gap to their own advantage and in accord with their own bigotries. And while we have progressed in diminishing the gap, the legacy of history remains with us today, and demands our forward-looking rather than backward-looking attention.
Those who have the courage to hope, to aspire to do better, don’t ever want their country “back.” We always want it “forward.” Our history has been the story of a people moving forward, conceived in a Declaration of Independence which continued and contributed to a transformation of the world already underway, accelerating our reach for future possibilities, and our removal of the shackles of past institutional deficiencies. It was a nation of Progressives, of people who knew that you don’t just accept the institutions handed down, but always seek to refine and improve them. It was a nation that drafted a document by which to govern itself, one which proved insufficient (The Articles of Confederation, drafted and adopted in 1777, though not actually ratified until 1781), and then got its representatives together to try again, ten years later, and get it right (producing the U.S. Constitution, which was a document drafted to strengthen, not weaken, the federal government).
The drafting and ratification of our brilliant Constitution marked a beginning, not an end, a point of departure through which to express and fully realize our collective genius, not an impediment to the use of our reason and will to address the challenges yet to come. It was drafted by people wise enough and humble enough not to imbue it with the quasi-religious hold it (or an insulting caricature of it) now has over some contracted imaginations. It was meant to be a source of guidance rather than a source of idolatry. It provided the nation with a robust legal framework through which to address future challenges, some of which were already visible at the time, and some of which were not, but which the framers knew would ceaselessly present themselves (and which many thought would promptly make the Constitution itself obsolete. The fact that that hasn’t come to pass is a tribute to our ability to make from the document they created in a given historical context one which adapts itself to changing historical circumstances).
Ahead of the country remained the abolition of slavery, the protection of individual civil rights from state as well as federal power, a far-too-late end to the slaughter and displacement of the indigenous population (too late because they had already been nearly exterminated, and removed to tiny, infertile plots of land), the institution of free universal public education, the extension of suffrage to unpropertied males and women, the passage of anti-trust laws to preserve a competitive market, the establishment and necessary growth of an administrative infrastructure which immediately preceded and facilitated the most robust acceleration of economic growth in the history of the world, the desegregation of our schools, the passage of The Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the beginnings of absolutely crucial efforts to address the long-term detrimental health and economic consequences of environmental contamination.
There never was a moment in the course of this story when there weren’t challenges yet to be identified and addressed, many of which could only be successfully addressed by means of government, and, often, only by means of the federal government (e.g., the abolition of slavery, which ended up requiring the federal government to prosecute a civil war; the enforcement of Civil Rights protections; and environmental protections covering interstate pollutants). Our Founding Fathers understood that. Thomas Jefferson himself said that every generation needed to refine its institutions to adapt to changing circumstances and meet the challenges of their own day. Such people never wanted their country “back.” They always wanted it “forward.” And they dreamed of establishing a country that would renew rather than renounce that commitment with every new generation.
Though there are many today who don’t get this, most don’t get it by means of blurry vision and historical inconsistency, rather than a retroactive commitment to what they claim currently to be an immutable truth. It is a tiny minority today, utterly detached from reality, who want to completely abolish Social Security or Medicare, though there are many who vehemently oppose health care reform and improved financial sector regulation. The difference between those past acts of our federal government that we have come to take for granted and whose value we almost universally recognize, and those present acts of our federal government that so many (so absurdly) call a “socialist” threat to our “liberty,” isn’t in the nature of the policies themselves (they are actually very similar in nature), but rather in the difference of perspective granted by elapsed time and an improved quality of life.
The impassioned, angry, vehement opposition to today’s progressive reforms, almost down to the precise words and phrases (including cries of “socialism”), is virtually identical to that which confronted the passage of Social Security and Medicare in their day. It is the perennial resurgence of the same faction, the same force at work today as in those previous generations: The voice of fear, the clinging to past failures and deficiencies for lack of courage, the perception of progress as a threat rather than a promise, though those same cowering souls could hardly imagine living without the promises of progress fulfilled before their birth and in their youth. They take gladly from those progressives who came before and fought to establish the world they now take for granted, but fight passionately against those progressives of today striving to provide similar gifts of social improvement to future generations.
In Colorado, these two sides, these two opposing forces of Hope and Fear, are embodied in our U.S. Senate and Gubernatorial races. In both races, it is the urbane, highly informed, business savvy, pragmatic Progressive pitted against the retrograde, chauvinistic, insular and regressionary Conservative. Michael Bennet, as I have written before at some length (Why Michael Bennet Truly Impresses Me), is a model of reason, civility, humility, and subtle systemic understanding, all focused on how to leave our children with more rather than less opportunity than we ourselves have enjoyed. Ken Buck, his opponent, is a sexist troglodyte who accused a rape victim of “buyer’s remorse” (though the accused rapist admitted in a taped phone call from the police station that he had in fact raped her!), a candidate who opposes access to abortions even by victims of rape and incest (condemning some pre-teen girls to a premature motherhood that will, in some cases, utterly destroy them). With the same indifference to reality, Buck is committed to the pseudo-economic certainties of his ideological camp, certainties which defy the lessons of history and the prevailing economic models of those who actually study the subject.
In our gubernatorial race, we have a very similar match-up, with Democratic candidate John Hickenlooper (currently the very popular mayor of Denver) as a model of the rational, urbane entrepreneur (who, after being laid off as a geologist in his youth, opened a very successful brewpub in a downtown Denver area –LoDo– which, through his enterprise and hard work, he helped to turn into a very robust restaurant and bar district), opposed by Tom Tancredo, the U.S. Congressman (from my district, CD 6) who became nationally and internationally infamous for his outspoken xenophobia and belligerent anti-immigrant demagoguery. Again, it is a race of hope against fear, a repeat of similar struggles we have seen around the world throughout human history, with prosperity and human welfare flourishing where hope has prevailed, and a contraction of wealth and opportunity taking hold where fear prevails (sometimes accompanied by nightmares of violence directed against the scapegoats who have been identified as personified targets of that fear).
Economically, Hope counsels that we employ the best economic models to forge the best fiscal and economic policies possible to ensure the robustness, sustainability, and equity of our economic system, while Fear counsels that we base our economic policies on information-stripped platitudes, contracting rather than expanding, insulating rather than competing, cowering rather than aspiring. A hopeful people invests in its future; a fearful people stuffs its money in a mattress. A hopeful people works to create a higher quality of life, while a fearful people works toward enshrining past achievements and, by doing so, obstructing future ones. A hopeful people seeks to expand opportunity; a fearful people seeks to protect what’s theirs from incursions by others. A hopeful people reaches out, looks past the horizon, and works toward positive goals. A fearful people builds walls, huddles together, and obstructs the dreams and aspirations of others.
But this year, in this election, it is not just any other incarnation of the struggle between Hope and Fear. It is the most dangerous form of that struggle, the form it takes when we are on the brink of inflicting on ourselves enormous suffering. Because the struggle this year is characterized by a terrifying discrepancy in passion: The angry, fearful mob is ascendant, while cooler heads are too cool, too uninspired, to face that mob down and disperse it.
It is under just such circumstances when, historically, Fear prevails over Hope. It is under these circumstances, circumstances that the hopeful among us are allowing to take hold, when countries get sucked into the nightmare that fear produces. This is what responsible, reasonable people of goodwill cannot, must not, allow to happen.
Vote. Make sure everyone you know votes. Confront the angry, frightened and frightening mob and insist that we are better than that. Don’t let them put this state, this country, and this world back into Reverse again, as it was from 2001-2009, when America became a nation defined by fear, with a government defined by the belligerent ignorance which is Fear’s most loyal servant. Let’s keep this nation in Drive, and move hopefully into the future. In 2008, many of us were excited by that prospect, and in 2010, we should remain warriors of reason and goodwill in the face of the Grendel of small-mindendness awoken by the small, fledgling steps forward we have taken as a people. We need to defend, preserve, and advance what we accomplished in 2008. We need to move forward, not backward.
Don’t sit this one out. Don’t let the brutal tyranny of Fear and Ignorance rule us.
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I was going to title this post “Fate, Genes, Obama, and the Rest of Us,” but decided that “Cousin Obama” might do more to pique curiosity. After all, am I claiming that President Obama and myself have some traceable genealogical link? (Well, sort of.) Am I referring to our President’s “white” half, and the fact that he is as racially related to whites as to blacks? (No.) Maybe I’m referring to his Kenyan family, members of whom could call him by the title in the title. (No.) What I’m referring to is, well, “Fate, Genes, Obama, and the Rest of Us.”
Fate: The genetic confluence of an obviously gifted left-leaning Kenyan (later) Harvard grad student in economics with a more subtly but similarly gifted woman of English and German descent in a Russian Language class at the University of Hawaii, followed by the rich culturally diverse and sense-of-wonder laden childhood that that mother provided to the immediate product of that genetic confluence, who then goes on to be a very socially conscious, academically brilliant, oratorically gifted politician, experiencing a meteoric rise in prominence, resulting in one of the most exhilarating and emotional presidential victories in the history of the nation.
Genes: We are dealt a hand from the same very large and complex deck, one which defines who we are at birth. Barack Obama clearly was dealt an exceptional hand. The person that Bruce L.R. Smith describes in his Washington Post Column on Barack Obama Sr., reprinted in the Denver Post (http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_16352336), is a father in whom one can see the son foreshadowed, though the father had virtually no hand in the creation of that son other than to contribute his sperm and his memory. And the mother President Obama has described is similarly but differently endowed, creating the kind of genetic and cultural complement that provides the best chance of producing off-spring which combines and transcends the gifts of both parents.
Obama: The dealing of a genetic hand to each new person born, from the constantly reshuffled deck, produces an endless variety of unique individuals. From the distinctly finite emanates the nearly infinite. President Barack Obama is a unique individual, complete with strengths and weaknesses, virtues and vices, natural endowments and flaws. He is not just the (more than) sum of his genes, but also of his experience, of how he was raised (by a mother who instilled in him his sense of both social responsibility and wonder about the world, and by grandparents who instilled in him traditional American values), and of the social contexts in which the narrative of his life spun itself out.
The Rest of Us: The description of President Obama above describes each and every one of us. And it does not describe us in mutual isolation, but as unique swirls and eddies in a shared stream, less “individual” than our hyper-individualistic ideology is wont to acknowledge, non-existent without the stream of which we are a part. The river of reproduction is a single flow of interwoven currents. We are all cousins, all related and interrelated, threads in a dynamic tapestry weaving itself as we weave our ways through our own interconnected lives.
We are indeed all genealogically related, all human beings on this Earth, all descendants of “Mitochondrial Eve” who lived between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago (http://hubpages.com/hub/Genealogy-and-DNA-testing). And the clusters and branches within that family, defined through the drama of human history, are generated by fascinating tales. According to one genetic study, 0.5% of the male population of the world is directly descended from Genghis Kahn, who, as is known to have had dozens of legitimate and illegitimate children (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0214_030214_genghis_2.html). How many more such tales exist, that have not been studied, and that don’t always involve historically famous personages?
Who we are genetically, the deck from which our genetic cards have been dealt, was determined most broadly by natural history (carving out the branch of primates that we are), broadly enough to encompass all living human beings in the interim period between natural history and recorded human history called “prehistory,” in broad swathes by both recorded and unrecorded real-life dramas throughout human history, and in most precise detail by the unique (and therefore statistically astronomically improbable) confluence of events which caused the genes of our respective parents to converge in and genetically define each of us.
But there is another, similar, pattern overlaid atop this one, faster, more superficial, but fleshing out the narrative, realizing the potential that the genetic story creates. As I’ve discussed in several essays now (The Politics of Consciousness , Information and Energy: Past, Present, and Future, The Evolutionary Ecology of Audio-Visual Entertainment (& the nested & overlapping subsystems of Gaia), The Nature-Mind-Machine Matrix), the underlying dynamics of human history echo natural history, the pattern of genetic (biological) evolution being quite closely repeated in memetic (cultural) evolution. The study of geographic and historic distributions and evolutions of languages, religions, technologies, political forms (and social institutional forms in general, including family, community, economy, military, and so on), the combined landscape of all such cultural-cognitive artifacts, maps out a dynamical pattern of how we speak, think, believe, wonder, act, and live that, like the genetic story beneath it, also reshuffles and deals from an ever-evolving deck (one evolving far more rapidly than the genetic one).
We are each instances of these multi-layered narratives, defined by currents both broad and specific, from the general to the particular, determining what kind of species we are, what range of variation we encompass, what developmental branches have been carved out from that range, what sub-branches and twigs have led to the context which produced us, and what combination of particular genes, and unique life experiences, in the end define us each as marginally unique, but deeply similar and tightly interconnected, human beings.
Scott Kimball’s possible connection to the murder for which Tim Masters was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned (http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_16352864) is another reminder of a simple but underrecognized fact of life: Every act has rippling repercussions throughout the fabric of our social field. Whoever murdered Peggy Hattrick didn’t commit an act whose sole consequence was to deprive an individual of her life, nor even one whose sole consequence was that plus the infliction of grief on all those who cared about her. It’s an act which also contributed to all of the consequences of that grief, and the consequences of those consequences, reverberating through our tightly intertwined and far-reaching social networks. It’s an act which also deprived Tim Masters of 18 years of his life, and which raised awareness of the problem of completely avoidable wrongful convictions.
And Tim Masters’ choice to draw disturbing teen age pictures of sex and violence, though in no way a criminal act, had consequences beyond their being seen by others and embarrassing the “artist,” consequences which converged with some of those of the murder itself. The same is true for every kind or unkind, wise or unwise, selfish or generous word or deed, of magnitudes large and small. There are many such words and deeds which contributed to the creation of Scott Kimball and others like him, ones which were considered completely innocent by those who indulged in them. Violence isn’t just a crime committed by some (though it is that as well), but also a cumulative collective phenomenon contributed to in small ways by many. It is the responsibility of each of us to absorb and transform those ripples which contribute to it, sending out instead ripples which contribute to something more positive.
Bill Clinton recommended that voters not let their anger over the sluggish economy cloud their judgment (http://www.denverpost.com/politics/ci_16352734). I recommend that voters allow their anger over the sluggish economy to focus their judgment on those who are responsible for it: the Republicans. People forget that when Barack Obama took office, we were teetering on the edge of the abyss of a Great-Depression-scale economic meltdown, not merely looking at years of slow-to-no growth and high unemployment. We averted that impending disaster by the bold policies that the Right has succeeded in vilifying in the minds of those who are not overly concerned with facts and logic, an impending disaster that was the direct consequence of Republican policies and priorities (particularly underregulation of the financial sector, something whose consequences had long been foreseen).
“Governor Tancredo” is a real possibility (http://www.denverpost.com/election2010/ci_16352450), and one which would be to Colorado what blunt force trauma is to a human brain: We might survive, but impaired and possibly crippled.
At a leadership panel at Arapahoe Community College a couple of days ago, one of the panelists paraphrased a Lone Tree library official regarding Colorado ballot initiatives 60, 61, and 101: They define a policy that is like slowly amputating one’s limbs to lose weight. I’ve used a similar (though less picturesque) metaphor to describe extreme anti-tax fiscal policy in general (such as that which has come to dominate Colorado, to our great harm): It’s like trying to impose weight loss by forced continual starvation.
The emphasis on transportation at the same panel of local government heads stuck a chord. Our transportation system is an economic circulatory system, moving nutrients and oxygen from where they come into the system to where they are needed (more precisely, since the economic analogue to a “digestive system” is more decentralized than the anatomical referent, the economic circulatory system moves nutrients around among particularized decentralized points of entry, helping to ensure that all parts are fully nourished). Overreliance on cars is like a high cholestoral diet, causing a clogging of the arteries (in the somewhat literal sense of gridlock, with resulting increased pollution and decreased productivity; as well as in the broader sense of the more general dysfunctionalities of overreliance on cars).
Tiny Crawford CO’s love for it’s altruistic health care provider but scorn for the legislation that will allow her to continue to practice (http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_16352526) is a wonderful illustration of the disconnect between blind ideological beliefs and judgments, and real human preferences and desires. The ideal would be for us all to ask, “if I didn’t know what my own circumstances in life would be (race, ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, sexual preference, congenital physical condition and appearance, etc.), and I had to design a set of policies based on my self-interest prior to the lottery of birth, what would it be?” Second to that in preferability would be for each to vigorously seek his or her own self-interest based on a high volume of reliable information and well-reasoned analyses. Worst of all is what the Tea Party are their fellow travelers are trying to impose on us: Vigorous pursuit of an irrational set of ideological beliefs and judgments which don’t even serve the real interests of those pursuing them.
As for the “terrible” Health Reform Act itself, it’s funneling $19 million to Colorado to expand health clinics that serve the poor, unemployed, and uninsured, in a very definitive step in the right direction for this country.
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As Fritjov Capra, author of The Tao of Physics and The Web of Life, noted in the latter book, the dominant scientific lens through which to understand the nature of the universe may be shifting from physics to biology. Complex dynamical systems, even non-living ones, bear a stronger resemblance to organic models than to mechanical ones. It is, perhaps, a fundamentally animate universe in which we live. And the progressive patterns of that universe are repeated across levels and forms in a fractal geometry of dynamical systems. (The main contender for dominant emerging physical paradigm, meanwhile, is a mathematical model of “the cosmic symphony.” String Theory postulates that the ultimate and irreducible building blocks of the universe, from which all subatomic particles emanate, are one-dimensional vibrating strings in an 11-dimensional space! Read Brian Green’s The Elegant Universe if that idea resonates with you.)
As I wrote about in The Politics of Consciousness and Information and Energy: Past, Present, and Future, the evolutionary process of genes reproducing, occasionally mutating, and competing for reproductive success is echoed in the dynamics of human history, in which “memes” (cognitions) also reproduce (more rapidly than genes), mutate (more frequently and affirmatively than genes), and compete for reproductive success. And that pattern may be reproduced (and accelerated) yet again, in a new form, as the spawn of the spawn of Nature, human information technologies, acquire the ability to reproduce algorithmically adaptive packets of digital information that compete among themselves for reproductive success. Just as human cultural evolution is an accelerated version of the biological evolution, human autonomous technological evolution based on the digital transmission and processing of information is a yet more accelerated process. Thus humans are an intermediate ripple of consciousness in a series of accelerating inferior incarnations.
But it is the reintegration of these distinct ecologies and sub-ecologies which is perhaps most fascinating of all. It is clear that we humans will have to adapt our technologies and social institutions to the ecological context of the planet if we want to continue to have a planet on which to live (ignoring for the moment the possibility of extraterrestrial colonization). Not only did the Earth’s evolutionary ecology create us, but it also challenged us to imitate and integrate with it ever more perfectly and completely (like Bellerophon mounted on Pegasis, aspiring to reach Olympian heights, increasingly risking being thrown to our destruction for our hubris).
Both our technologies and our social institutions are bound to develop in directions that more closely mimic nature, not just in underlying dynamics and functions, but also in form, becoming softer and more “biodegradable,” creating more microtechnologies that scavenge the obsolete hulks of larger orga…, uh, “machines,” recycling them into the production processes. Such organic technologies are likely to utilize more flexible and viscous couplings, aspiring to and copying the natural machinery that remains far more sophisticated than human technologies. A computer that is more like a brain with synapses that are as agile as the brain’s can capture the advantages of both. An economy that is more like an ecosystem can produce less waste, utilize more resources, and recycle everything.
It is, at all levels –nature, mind, and machine– forms of consciousness and derivative consciousness we are talking about. “God” did indeed make “man” in “His” image, because the consciousness that is biological evolution created an echo of itself in the form of the human (or mammalian) mind, and that mind created an echo in turn, in the form of computers. So similar is nature’s “mind” to our own, that we use the language and mathematical tools of intentionality, designed for the study of human behavior, to study evolutionary ecology. Species develop “strategies” for reproductive success, that appear to us to be remarkably intentional: Disguises, defenses, weapons, colonies, divisions of labor; technologies and social institutions remarkably like our own.
Biologists are quick to admonish, “though we use the metaphor of intentionality, anatomical and genetically hard-wired adaptive strategies are not intentionally produced. It’s just a function of trial and error. Nature only resembles us in that way.” Remarkably enough, in one way in which religious faith hit the nail more squarely on the head than scientific scepticism, those biologists got it backwards: It is we that resemble Nature, not vice versa. The consciousness of Evolutionary Ecology precedes and produced us, the fact that it is a function of trial and error notwithstanding. While we have pitted God and Darwin at odds with one another, in reality, what Darwin described is simply one of God’s “mysterious ways” (or “avatars,” to be more precise). Just as we refer to what we have created in our own image as “artificial (human) intelligence,” we ourselves are really just “artificial (natural) intelligence.”
Nature had its own “collective consciousness” before humans were here to give it a name. It musn’t be confused with human consciousness, just as human consciousness shouldn’t be confused with whatever computer consciousness might emerge (or already exists). Nature’s consciousness is diffuse, not self-reflective, not imbued with an ego or corporeal integrity. It is not the function of a human brain, and therefore is hard to conceptualize, always reduced to that which is most familiar. But it is the Intelligent Being that designed us, as (or perhaps more) similar to the godless mechanisms of an atheistic scientist as it is to the Judeo-Christian God. And it did indeed “make us in its own image.”
Just as we have now made something in ours. It was inevitable that we would “play god,” because “God” made us in “His” image, not in the superficial sense, but in the substantive sense of being designed to “play God.” We cannot help but to create our own monster, just as “God” created “His.” The story of Frankenstein is the Story of Creation, told from “God’s” perspective, with “God’s” horror at what “He” had done. (You might recall that Dr. Frankenstein didn’t fare well in the end, a fate with which we ourselves threaten Gaia, if not Jehovah).
The concept of “collective consciousness,” and the study of the epidemiology of cognitions, predate the invention of the internet, but they gain new significance in a new age of accelerated, geographically liberated network communications. Before this creation of ours becomes an autonomous evolutionary ecology of its own, it has augmented ours, accelerating the communication and analysis of information, and thus accelerating the cultural evolutionary process.
Collective consciousness, and the human cognition which comprises it, is less about the discovery of an objective reality than about the forging over time of an evolving way of interfacing with it. Our conceptualizations of reality are not reality, but rather representations of reality, nested and overlapping metaphors that we use to map an almost infinitely more complex terrain. We argue over individual or sub-group variations in that map, over whether this representation or that more accurately and usefully describes the elusive reality we are mapping; sometimes, in essence, arguing whether it should be topographic or political, whether it should be more detailed (and thus more difficult to use) or simplified.
The construction of our maps is what has been called “the social construction of reality.” It is a shared reality, but with distributed and punctuated variation, with variation both within and between groups, but group coalescences at various levels around shared aspects of individual cognitive maps (and group coalescences reproducing shared aspects of individual cognitive maps). We have religions and denominations, political ideologies and factions within them, scientific disciplines comprised of competing schools of thought. The field of human consciousness is characterized by a combination of commonality and variation, constantly evolving, with patterns shifting according to extraordinarily complex algoriths that determine the patterns of change.
One model with which to understand this involves a tool called “cellular automata.” Cellular automata are a matrix of cells in which each can trigger changes in the state of neighboring (or otherwise interconnected) cells according to some algorithm. So, for instance, a simple cellular automata model might involve colors as states, with each cell being converted to the color that the majority of cells on which it borders has. Soon, a stable pattern of colors would emerge, perhaps all cells being a single color, or areas of particular colors emerging with sharp borders between them, But cellular automata can be far more complex than that, involving incessantly changing states rippling throughout the matrix, forming constantly shifting patterns.
Consider now cellular automata in which the shifting patterns themselves alter the algorithm by which they shift. Such is the human world. As our technologies and social institutions evolve, the speed of our communications and processing of information accelerates, and the patterns that are formed change at an accelerating rate, and according to shifting algorithms. As our tool (computers and the internet) becomes an autonomous ecology of its own, it both mimics and feeds back into the human ecology.
How these three levels of ecology continue to co-evolve, diverging from, threatening, reinforcing, and reintegrating with one another remains to be seen. Humans will undoubtedly continue the progression of how “plugged in” we are to the technologically enhanced network that binds us together, moving from desk top to lap top computers, to hand held and then handless devices, eventually, perhaps, to implants that can be accessed with a thought, and, beyond that, possibly even some technology that involves genetic engineering which moves our internet technology in a more biological direction. A human far future of organically and remotely interconnected and augmented human consciousness (a technologically accomplished mass telepathic network) is a distinct possibility.
As our technologies become more organic, not only does the process of their integration into the human ecology accelerate, but they also become the medium through which the human ecology reintegrates with the natural ecology. The acceleration of information processing and communication will inevitably be increasingly applied to the challenge of economic sustainability, which means, in effect, reintegration of human and natural technologies, reducing their incompatability and increasing their mutual reinforcement. And the increasing use of more organic technologies and social institutions may well be a major aspect of what that reintegration looks like.
It can even take on an extraterrestrial aspect, if we use genetic engineering to adapt ourselves to extraterrestrial colonization, completing the reintegration loop, our creature altering that which created us. Here on Earth, meanwhile, the reintegration of these three evolutionary ecologies holds a promise for humanity that tantalizes the imagination, as we continue to transcend limitations that we once thought untranscendable, and continue to become an ever-more conscious aspect of a larger consciousness.
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The story of the offensive Grand Junction billboard depicting President Obama as a terrorist, gangster, Mexican bandit, and gay man (http://www.denverpost.com/ci_16339916) is interesting for just one reason: It’s plausable (not probable) that it was commissioned by a Democrat. I hate to say that, because it is almost inevitable that someone will mistakenly interpret that to be either what I actually believe, or what is in fact the case. But it’s just an observation of reality: That billboard is so ridiculously beyond the pale of what any rational person would find anything other than repugnant, you have to wonder if it might have been put there to make those likely to put it there appear even more repugnant than they actually are. But here’s what I suspect is the truth: Those who put it there are precisely who you would think, and they really are that disgusting.
The Public Responsibility of Getting a Vaccination (http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_16329926) is a great example of our real interdependence, and the costs and benefits our individual choices impose on others. Those who have some monolithic notion of “personal liberty,” that just knows what is an inalienable individual right and what is an infringement on the rights of others, are really trapped in assumptions made with less knowledge and less ability to measure and address our responsibilities to one another. Sure, killing someone because they annoy you is clearly an infringement on their right to life, but neglecting to get a vaccine because it’s inconvenient or uncomfortable, even though it absolutely makes a marginal contribution to the death rate (ie, is partially responsible for the deaths of others) is your personal right? Why, exactly? Explain. And be precise about it.
Ruth Marcus provides us with a glimpse of what our world would look like if our conservatives were a bit more rational (http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_16329990). I’m sure there are many American Republicans as wistful as she, wishing that the insanity that has hijacked their party were just a bad dream from which they would soon awake. My advice: Get out while you can, and join the last sane party standing.
Coming Attraction: I hope to post by tomorrow morning an essay I’m working on titled The Nature-Mind-Machine Matrix, which I hope you’ll keep an eye open for. I’ve only actually worked on these posts once or twice, when I feel like something pretty cool is shaping up. The Nature-Mind-Machine Matrix is one of those. (It builds on the theme established in The Politics of Consciousness and developed a bit more in Information and Energy: Past, Present, and Future.)
At about the age of thirty, simply by following logic and observation wherever they led, I came to the unremarkable conclusion that markets are robust generators of wealth, and, as such, contribute in vital ways to human welfare. But, at the same time, I recognized that their very robustness not only amplified our productive activities, but also their destructive side-effects. And I have always been aware of the danger of false idols, whether they come in the form of the U.S. Constitution (“Constitutional Idolatry”), an oversimplistic and self-defeating conceptualization of liberty (Liberty & Society), or a pseudo-economic conviction that markets are completely self-regulating providers of all that is good and holy on Earth (The Economic Debate We’re Not Having, Regulation of Financial Markets).
Markets aren’t just functional, but, especially in the traditional sense of actual locations where wares and ideas are hawked, they can also be vibrant slices of life (Welcome to the agora!). The notion of human beings coming together to exchange the products of their hands and minds is an inherently appealing one. And the vitality of such places, the color and richness and pageantry of human activity, especially in its more primative forms, is hard to deny. Life isn’t just about producing and consuming wealth, or even ideas, but also about living, and such places are rich with the act of living. (Ironically, I can barely stand to spend two minutes in modern malls, finding them to be mind-numbingly sterile rather than lively).
The German Sociologist Max Weber warned about a century ago of “the iron cage of rationality”. The evolutionary logic of human history increasingly “rationalizes” our social institutions, but not necessarily in ways which maximize human happiness and welfare. The theme is similar to the one found in Aldous Huxley’s famous novel Brave New World, or Fritz Lang’s famous silent movie Metropolis: We gradually turn ourselves into cogs in a machine which operates according to a logic of its own (maximizing “efficiency”), sterilizing our world, reducing us to servants of the machine we have created, and sapping our lives of that which makes them truly satisfying to us as human beings.
It may well be that this precautionary tale is overstated, that efficiency itself eventually recoils from too much dehumanization, because the human mind and imagination, a resource whose maximally efficient functioning is an essential component of an efficient social institutional framework, does not thrive in such sterilized and dehumanized contexts. But, be that as it may, there is certainly one force in play, the drive toward increased mechanical efficiency (which would prevail, say, on assembly lines), which can be a brutal tyrant as well as a generous provider.
When we focus exclusively on GDP as the indicator of economic success, and ignore the gini coefficient (the statistical measure of inequality in the distribution of wealth) and the ecological and public health damage caused by the production and consumption of that wealth, we are surrendering to the iron cage of markets, privileging “efficiency” over all other concerns. There is nothing inherently just about those born into the world with inferior opportunities (less inherited wealth, social network advantages, and familial experience of success to serve as a model, for instance) being left either to beat the odds or suffer the consequences, not because life has to be fair (or ever fully can be), but because we should not casually shirk our responsibility as human beings to make it more so. There is nothing wise about privileging the production of wealth today at the expense of the Earth’s biodiversity and the predictable future costs, perhaps truly apocalyptic in scale, of our increasingly aggressive parasitism vis-a-vis the host body upon which we depend.
But markets do not have to be inequitable, nor parasitic. We can be the wise stewards that we need to be, incorporating into the mechanisms of markets themselves the goals and values that they do not automatically attend to. We can “internalize the externalities” so that market activities which impose costs on others, both today and in the future, are priced in ways which force buyers to take those external costs into account, so that buyers can decide if the value to them is truly worth the costs to others (thus, in aggregate, reducing those activities to the levels that truly serve our collective long-term interests). And we can make public investments in the development of both human and material infrastructure, to make markets more robust producers of wealth, and human beings regardless of the chances of birth more fairly able to partake of that wealth. We can keep working to get it right, rather than to surrender our wills to some dehumanized force that we have turned into a false idol.
In terms of addressing abject poverty, markets as they currently exist leave many behind. Those living primtive lives have little to offer to attract the wealth produced elsewhere, and, when they do (generally in the form of natural resources), markets are brutal exploiters of their desperation, paying them less than those less in need would receive. But we can use markets, intentionally, to do what they do not do organically: We can provide infrastructural investments which create the ability to produce something for local markets, and tiny start-up loans to enable poor folk in poor conditions (mostly women) to engage in some productive activity (“Grameen Banks” have been hugely successful in this: http://www.grameen-info.org/). We can devise small innovations, like trundle pumps (to ensure potable water where water is scarce), and cook stoves (to reduce the emissions of black soot that plague many desperately poor people around the world, and contribute significantly to global warming), which get those most in need into a position where they can benefit from markets. We can see markets as a valuable tool to be utilized in this shared human endeavor of ours, rather than a justification for doing nothing to address the horrors of an unjust and in many ways self-destructive status quo.
We must always be the masters of our technologies and social institutions, never their servants. They exist to serve a purpose, not to demand our allegiance and submission. The vitality of markets, in the modern sense, as robust producers of wealth, and in the traditional sense as vibrant slices of life, needs to be made whole again, if not in the actual appearance and ambience of most of our marketplaces themselves, than in how we view them. Markets are vehicles of life, where we come with our needs and desires and offerings, to enrich one another both materially and spiritually. And it is incumbent upon us that they are inclusive rather than exclusive, providing opportunities rather than exploiting desperation, and addressing problems more robustly than they create them.
