Reality isn’t very large

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Mariner was reminiscing the other day about his teen years. That was a time when weekend dances were common in high school gyms. Living on the East Coast, there were summer beach parties, water skiing, Limbo contests and in the midst of it all dating and beginning to learn ‘grownup’ social skills. Naturally, after a moment, realism set in and mariner realized that era didn’t last very long. Not only that, it doesn’t exist anymore. Everyone has memories, of course, visions stored in brain cells. There are accountings in history books, mementoes, even the old letter sweater. Still, that era doesn’t exist anymore in any form of reality. That chunk of time is gone. Time doesn’t flow; it breaks off in chunks just like a glacier.

Think about the lives of our elders in the year 1900. It was an era where the horse was front and center to virtually every human activity. One accepted without thought the smells, the chores, the care and feeding of horses. On farms, it was an unconscious chore to start the day harnessing old Dobbin. One couldn’t go to town or church or work or haul the product of one’s labor without engaging a horse.

By 1914 the internal combustion engine had replaced the horse – so rapidly and so completely that everything from commerce to politics was reinvented. By 1925, after World War I, the horse was no longer a centerpiece in society. The horse world disappeared. That time broke off as a chunk and was no more.

Reality, that is, an interacting phenomenon that creates new actions and results, is really only about 25 years long. In a Zen moment, one realizes that their own reality has disappeared, too. Having only a few moments that exist in memory, one’s old self is gone.

Similar to a glacier losing a chunk of ice into the sea, the actual chunking process takes a long time. A glacier may take a half century to slowly split and melt to the point that a chunk falls off. Mariner proposes that today, at the start of the twenty-first century, humanity is splitting and melting as it approaches a moment of chunk, when the time one is familiar with today will suddenly be gone. A new time is beginning.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Dancing

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Mariner wrote a post some time ago that defines a physical difference between liberal and conservative thinking (Red Brain, Blue Brain posted June 19, 2015). The difference is where decisions are made in the brain.

֎ From an Atlantic article by Dan Meegan

Conservatives Have a Different Definition of ‘Fair’ and liberals ignore it at their peril.

[Some people have more than they need, and others need more than they have. Even when liberal leaders describe policies that are beneficial to everyone, they make it clear that the most important beneficiaries are those whose needs are most urgent.

Conservatives tend to value equity, or proportionality, and they see unfairness when people are asked to contribute more than they should expect to receive in return, or when people receive more than they contribute. Consider a hypothetical comparison of two people who graduated from college five years ago with equal amounts of debt. Jessie successfully implemented a plan to pay off the debt in five years, while Sam still has much to repay. Warren’s plan forgives Sam’s debt, but offers nothing to Jessie, despite her industriousness and self-discipline. To add insult to injury, Jessie must contribute tax dollars to the $640 billion fund necessary to forgive outstanding loans, including Sam’s.]

 Sigh. ‘Pass it Forward’ must not be a conservative concept. Where are the Evangelicals when Christ needs them?

No doubt the example above proved to be a litmus test for the reader. One option will ring more true than the other. The conservative option is based on self-value while the liberal option is based on human value. The twain, as it is said, will never meet. When one gives it thought, one realizes this is the very core of the dysfunction of US governments. Conservatives are willing to eliminate the Affordable Care Act (ACA aka Obamacare) because they already have health insurance and balk at paying someone else’s health insurance as well – and gratis at that. Liberals, on the other hand see the imbalance of the human condition and seek to rebalance equality using the abundance of others.

In a more subtle sense, conservatives operate from a point of view that induces prejudice and classism; prejudice and classism simply are rules of the road that keep proportionality in place. Liberals on the other hand see the injustice of prejudice and classism as lack of concern for the human condition.

There are handy government philosophies for this conflict: capitalism and socialism. Mariner has said in the past that these philosophies don’t work if either is an absolute. It takes two to mambo . . .

Ancient Mariner

Gettysburg Revisited

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Mariner has a mental image of walking across the Battlefield at Gettysburg during the Civil War. Over 7,000 dead bodies lay strewn across the field; over fifty thousand were wounded. Heavy smoke from gunpowder hangs in the air like fog; the stench of blood and death fills the nostrils. This image is a metaphor for citizens in today’s America – old and new concepts of government are in battle against one another. The difference is the citizens are the ones who will die and be injured.

[NEWSY] The Justice Department said in a filing Wednesday that it believes “the remaining provisions of the ACA should not be allowed to remain in effect.”

The Trump administration has joined a coalition of Republican-led states in asking a federal appeals court to strike down Obamacare in its entirety.

Should the Justice Department win this legal battle, many millions of US citizens suddenly will be left without health insurance, including virtually the entire Donald base. If this isn’t gunfire into the citizenry, causing many more deaths and injuries than at Gettysburg, then what is it? Old government forces (social conservatives) want to stymie inevitable change to the culture. The conservatives will cause a lot of pain and suffering both fiscally and emotionally but change is inevitable.

So it has been throughout history. Change means war. The innocent must die.

Ancient Mariner

Interpretation

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֎ The rising tide of white nationalist violence is in the spotlight in the 2020 presidential race, reports The Washington Post. “I think that’s what the crux of this campaign is going to be about,” said House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.). Over the weekend, Trump gave a full-throated condemnation of anti-Semitism following a deadly shooting at a synagogue north of San Diego. And days earlier, Joe Biden launched his presidential campaign with a video attacking Trump’s response to the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville — comments which the president quickly doubled down on. Some GOP strategists, however, think the issue could be a real weak spot for Trump, who has come under scrutiny for his rhetoric around white nationalism.[Politico]

 This is tied to immigration policy as well. Mariner believes that worldwide migration will continue to become worse as economies and climates bifurcate into have and have-not. Racism is an obvious defense for those on the margins, for example Donald’s base. Most western nations that are large enough are experiencing the same impact; nationalist parties are gaining political clout. At the moment mariner sees two alternatives: develop an economy that absorbs (needs) more population or develop an economic policy somewhat similar to China’s which is to invest heavily in nations with weak GDP thereby easing emigration (and fostering economic dependence on China).

For the US, with its fragile concepts of freedom and equality, racism translates into identity politics which is highly volatile and destructive; just ask Russia.

Perhaps the ideas about infrastructure may provide an economic boost – hampered only by indebtedness imposed by the last Congress and a severely imbalanced tax system. But infrastructure may be little more than an offset to job loss caused by automation. In short, living today is a lot like watching storm clouds approaching.

Ancient Mariner

Oh My, Oh My

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Not enough to worry about? Here’s more:

֎ A new paper, based on highly detailed observations taken using the Hubble Space Telescope, appears to confirm that everything in the Universe is expanding too fast – 9 percent too fast. [LiveScience.com]

֎ According to an annual Gallup poll of more than 150,000 people around the world, Americans are among the most stressed-out people on Earth. Fifty-five percent experienced stress during “a lot” of the previous day. That’s compared with 35 percent of stressed-out folks globally. [The New York Times]

֎ If you weigh the Earth’s terrestrial vertebrates, humans account for 30% of their total mass, and our farm animals for another 67%, meaning wild animals (all the moose and cheetahs and wombats combined) total just 3%. In fact, there are half as many wild animals on the planet as there were in 1970. [Falter, Has the Human Game begun to play itself out? Bill McKibben, Henry Holt]

֎ Earth Overshoot Day marks the date by which all of humanity has used more of our natural resources than the planet can renew in the entire year. In 2018, it fell on August 1. This means we are using the resources of 1.7 earths at present. We are using more resources than the earth can provide, largely through overfishing, cutting down our forests, and other unsustainable practices. [The Royal Gazette]

֎ Will we still be able to visit Treasure Island in the Bahamas when 80% of the islands will be under water by 2100? [Bahamas Association of Young Professionals]

֎A survey of nearly 800 top business leaders around the world listed global recession as their biggest concern for 2019. [Chicago Tribune]

֎The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is sounding the alarm on a potentially life-threatening super fungus spreading across the United States. The deadly yeast fungus is called Candida auris and it’s lurking in hospitals and nursing homes. Nearly 600 cases have been confirmed across the United States, the CDC reports. While a majority of those cases are in New York, Illinois and New Jersey, several other states have each reported at least one case. More than one in three people with an invasive Candida auris infection can die, according to Illinois health department officials.[KCCI8, Des Moines]

Ancient Mariner

The Creative Brain . . .

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Over the years mariner has noticed a preference, even a celebration of the human brain’s dexterity and inventiveness. Mariner first noticed this bias in scientists. Remember Carl Sagan? He was famous for saying “billions and billions of stars, galaxies”, etc. Outer space was tantamount to Heaven itself. More recently, Neil de Grasse Tyson had an astronomy series where he blatantly described the wonderful phenomenon of physics, science and the creative mind. Any number of science specials on television tout the glorious, unburdened reality and the never ending benefits to humankind by the creative three dimensional world.

The other day mariner watched a special on Netflix called ‘The Creative Brain’ hosted by David Eagleman. He spoke of the special tool of the human brain, the Prefrontal Cortex, which allows humans to combine old knowledge and experience with new ones to create the art, tools, machines, technology, and abstract reasoning. Every example was a contribution to business, a three dimensional, arts and crafts creation.

Mariner reacts to the glorification of ‘things’ and ‘processes’ by asking a probing question: Who is in charge of these new things? His traditional example is Alfred Nobel; he invented dynamite in 1867. A premature publication of his obituary led him to establish the Nobel prizes in retribution. The obituary stated, Le marchand de la mort est mort (“The merchant of death is dead”) and went on to say, “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.) This motivated him to dedicate his estate to the Nobel Prizes in 1900.[1]

Of course Alfred did not mandate the killing of people faster than ever before. The question is who was in charge of Alfred’s scientific achievement?

The man credited with first having split the atom was Ernest Rutherford, who achieved the feat in 1917. Did he authorize the death of 280,000 Japanese in August, 1945? Who was in charge of this scientific achievement at that time?

Today, computer cloud technology receives similar praise as a wonderful invention. Who is in charge of this achievement? Business entrepreneurs and the military. Without his permission, the man on the street is creating billionaires by letting them steal his profile without remuneration.

The real point to this post is this: What good are all these advancements and business opportunities if the other part of the brain, the hypothalamus, hippocampus and amygdala are not capable of handling emotional judgment and ethics regarding the use of three dimensional inventions for human good? Perhaps a bit of wonderment should recognize human advancement in maturity and compassion, should it ever occur.

Ancient Mariner

[1] Detail by Wikipedia

A Seismic Shift

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The United States, indeed the World, stands at the precipice of an historic change. Not just generational change; not just new electronic horizons; not just shifts in culture; not even the same climate. The United States as it has existed since the Second World War and especially since the 1980s will not exist in twenty years.

Mariner hasn’t surmised this future. It is the opinion of many intellectual and professional writers, leaders, scientists and philosophers – several with Nobel Prizes, many with Pulitzer prizes – all with concern whether we will be prepared for the seismic shift. At the moment, the US and State Governments, the oligarchical economy, the lack of plans for an economy that cares for the entire population not just the privileged, the standoff between climate change and fossil fuel economy, the dysfunctional education and job preparation institutions, and the symptomatic rise of identity isolationism all suggest the common man on the street is woefully exposed to the vagaries of change over the next twenty years.

If the citizenry is to minimize its exposure to poverty, environmental travesty and political failure, each citizen must make an effort to improve sociability in family, community and have a moral obligation to the nation and its citizens. Further, each person must educate themselves to the realities that will confront the nation over the next twenty years.

To suggest a tone for pursuit of quality understanding and insights, mariner offers three recent books that address the seismic shift. There are many more books and magazines that already provide a steady stream about the nation’s imminent future. Mariner also lists several broadcasting sources that are veritable libraries of quality discourse. Everyone must respond to the changes. Become conscious of social morality and become educated.

Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity

by Joseph E. Stiglitz

Joseph E. Stiglitz is a Nobel laureate in economics, University Professor at Columbia University, and chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute.

“The United States bills itself as the land of opportunity, a place where anyone can achieve success and a better life through hard work and determination. But the facts tell a different story—the U.S. today lags behind most other developed nations in measures of inequality and economic mobility. For decades, wages have stagnated for the majority of workers while economic gains have disproportionately gone to the top one percent. Education, housing, and health care—essential ingredients for individual success—are growing ever more expensive. Deeply rooted structural discrimination continues to hold down women and people of color, and more than one-fifth of all American children now live in poverty. These trends are on track to become even worse in the future.”

Falter

By Bill McKibben.

Bill McKibben is recognized around the world for his dedication to the environment and health of the planet. He first warned of climate change 30 years ago and says its effects are now upon us: “The idea that anybody’s going to be immune from this anywhere is untrue.”

In his latest book, Falter, McKibben broadens the potential disruption to question whether the human race is in an end game.

The Second Mountain, The Quest for a Moral Life

By David Brooks.

David Brooks is a Canadian-born American center-right political and cultural commentator who writes for The New York Times. He has worked as a film critic for The Washington Times; a reporter and later op-ed editor for The Wall Street Journal; a senior editor at The Weekly Standard from its inception; a contributing editor at Newsweek and The Atlantic Monthly; and a commentator on NPR. Brooks is currently a columnist for The New York Times and commentator on PBS NewsHour.

“This book is meant to help us all lead more meaningful lives. But it’s also a provocative social commentary. We live in a society, Brooks argues, that celebrates freedom and choice, that tells us to be true to ourselves, to march to the beat of our own drummer at the expense of surrendering to a cause, rooting ourselves in a neighborhood, and binding ourselves to others by social solidarity and love. We have taken individualism to the extreme degree—and, in the process, we have torn the social fabric in a thousand different ways. The path to repair is through making deeper commitments.”

Other Media

Mariner’s opinion is that FOX, CNN and MSNBC are low quality sources for actual and meaningful information. Instead, try perusing the CSPAN video library or keep an eye for meaningful book reviews on CSPAN-BOOKS.

Check out NEWSY, a low budget news channel with no frills, just the facts, no pundits and ongoing insightful specials about issues of the day.

Check out PBS and NPR – not just the broadcasts but peruse the websites.

Mariner has mentioned previously The Atlantic, The Economist, The New Yorker and Scientific American Magazine as solid sources for insight into the reality of these times.

Check the New York Times for new books on important subjects.

How will Citizens prepare for the rapidly rising neo-Nazi presence in democratic nations? Even the US has a nationalist, racist President.

The bottom line – in the US at least – is an individual’s vote. Like a chess move, the vote must be played with insight and an awareness of future moves. Today’s US governments clearly are inept representations of a past that no longer applies. It is the reader’s job to vote for new values and knowledgeable representatives that will help everyone survive the seismic shift.

Ancient Mariner

Happenings

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[HuffPost] Confirmed: Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, Viber, Snapchat and Messenger blocked in #SriLanka following series of deadly church and hotel attacks.

The United States is fortunate that misinformation did not lead to bombing and killing during the political campaign. Social media remains an uncontrolled communication service unhindered by the scruples and regulations of America’s free press. While the US suffers racial hate in the bombings and killings in black churches, Sri Lanka suffers religious hatred fueled by racism and politics. Life in the US could be worse. So far citizens yell and curse one another but warfare is not a tool of our religions or politics except for the armed crazies who seem to have a bias toward school children.

The real cause in Sri Lanka and many other situations is the ability to broadcast untrue and unwarranted information. Mariner believes that fact-checking can be automated to the point that attempts to spin falsehoods could be trapped.

– – – –

Talk about violence on TV, did the reader watch Bernie Sanders on Fox television? A notable moment to remember and one that caught the debaters off guard was when Bernie asked the audience if they would rather have single payer health coverage or stay with insurers. A significant majority raised their hands for single payer.

– – – –

[NPR] More than 80% of parents in the U.S. support the teaching of climate change. And that support crosses political divides, according to the results of an exclusive new NPR/Ipsos poll: Whether they have children or not, two-thirds of Republicans and 9 in 10 Democrats agree that the subject needs to be taught in school.

It is true that society would be less argumentative if our children were educated in contemporary subjects that provide a common (apolitical) foundation for life. However, public education is subject to imposing political and religious influence. Civics isn’t taught anymore because political locals prefer less complicated, controlled campaigns; American history of minorities isn’t taught because of race prejudice; Religions of the world and the accompanying sociology isn’t taught because of conflicts between other religions, science and Christian bias. Health practices aren’t taught because of biased resistance to issues like sex, abortion and flu shots.

Imagine if there were a class called ‘Living Today’ or ‘Contemporary Living’ where the material covered how government works, factual presentation of long-standing, polarizing issues and videos of economic circumstances around the world. Nah, mariner is dreaming.

While Betsy DeVos’ economic model for education would wipe out public education, private contractors may be encouraged to teach contemporary subjects by dangling increased profits for the effort. Nah, mariner is dreaming.

But just imagine if Donald’s base had studied civics and economics. . . Mariner is following Alice down the hole. God bless the US electorate.

Ancient Mariner

 

The Future is here

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Sometimes, modern, up-to-date folks feel like they are at least keeping even with new technologies and new ways of doing things. There’s a bit of hubris in telling Alexa what to do – as if one actually is in charge of the technology and its consequences. Do not be deceived. Computer technology has leaped into the future at the speed of light – literally.

LiveScience.com has an article about a computer that can foresee the future – all 16 possibilities![1] What staggers mariner’s mind is that data is stored on qubits – a subatomic particle. A quick reference: in the beginning, data was stored by carving into stone; then data was stored on paper by printing presses; then data was stored on tape; then data was stored on disks, all this time leveraging the computer base 2 language of zero and one; then data was stored on magnetic switches; now data is stored on subatomic particles that can be divided and manipulated to predict future events. There is no way mariner can convey how tiny a qubit is.

Without confusing things by discussing quantum mechanics – a valid science that has nothing to do with our sense of reality – mariner will fall back onto Schroeder’s cat. Imagine a cat in a sealed box. Is the cat alive? Yes. Is the cat dead? Yes. As a state of factual reality, alive and dead are both equally true at the same time. It isn’t until one opens the box and measures the situation that alive or dead – it could be either – is true.

If one is truly careful and can open the box with different versions of historical evidence, one can predetermine whether the cat is alive or dead. Hence, foretelling the future. The computer scientists in the article are able to present four variables to the qubit that modify its responses for future processing into sixteen different futures.

Forget history class; take future class.

Ancient Mariner

[1] https://www.livescience.com/65271-quantum-computer-sees-16-futures.html?utm_source=lst-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20190419-lst

What can we do about the Base?

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The concept of a political whole has existed since Thucydides described the Peloponnesian War. In those days, a political whole was necessary to provide armies for war. Today, a political whole is the same as flour in a bread recipe: it holds a nation together despite endless differences in politics, society, technology, religion, economics, international treaties and the state of the planet itself – all part of the same recipe.

A way to feel the presence of a unified political whole, or unified nation, is to feel national pride. Remember in the old days when the phrase ‘I am an American’ was spoken with sincerity? An obligated feeling is to believe that each individual is America. America is each individual. Joined at the hip to use an old phrase. Alas, today the recipe isn’t working; the bread collapses into useless crumbs and bad tasting pieces.

Throughout history when change was in the air, in fact overdue, the idea of a unified nation no longer sufficed. Populist groups rose in rebellion; today we call it ‘identity politics’ and there are fractious campaigns across the board involving abusive class practices, abusive racial practices, abusive sexual practices, abusive economic practices, abusive corporate practices, political party elitism, and too frequently, a relapse into less than moral respect for the nation itself. The Base is among this list of entities. Why?

Mariner points to the over-capitalization of the US given that its resources have shrunk over time – from that time when an entire virgin continent was at hand to let capitalism generate the profits that it can generate so quickly. But in this century especially, there isn’t enough continent to go around and capitalism still reigns as the economic philosophy. Given less resources, those who garner wealth continue to maintain profits while the common citizen collects less and less over time until things obviously are unbalanced and unfair. The time has come that the common citizen knows their children will be economically disadvantaged.

The common citizen points their finger at Federal and state governments that have let this happen. It is a serious issue; savoir faire does not apply. The election of Donald, a pompous bully who is destructive, is not an issue with the Base. His job is to bring down an unsympathetic government – no love lost.

There are just a few ways a citizen can share profits derived from the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP):

Investment – For those citizens and corporations that have ‘extra’ cash above normal living and operating expenses, the cash is invested in things like stocks and bonds and various funds or it is invested in business expansion. Today there are some new wrinkles in capitalization; antitrust laws are ignored so very large companies can supersize themselves to sustain market value and increase profits; investment has become an international reality and significant percentages of money are not reinvested in US interests but invested overseas. Having little or no extra cash, the Base does not participate in profit by investment.

Wage and benefit negotiation – At the beginning of the 1900s, there were some bloody clashes and major destruction as laborers fought to unionize. Today, at the beginning of the 2000s, unions have been outlawed to the point of not being a significant influence in corporate decisions about wages and benefits. Employers can now treat wages as a static overhead regardless of profits. Consequently, the Base is shut out from GDP profits with a net effect of underfinanced retirement. Another side effect is minimum wage; plutocratic influence in governments has pushed against increases even to levels of viability.

Taxation – It is common knowledge today that the tax tables are upside down. As a percentage of income, low income citizens are taxed at severe percentages while wealth in all its forms is virtually tax free. Further, corporations no longer are bound to one government’s tax laws and are able to avoid taxes of any kind. The Base feels it is paying an unfair share of taxes for a government that caters to the plutocracy instead of the tax-paying workers.

Discretionary Programs – Programs in the government’s budget that are beneficial to citizens in general, e.g., health, welfare, social security, worker’s compensation, support for the indigent, and equal treatment programs; add in public education. The Affordable Care Act is the first major program to be added since the Civil Rights Act in 1957 and Medicare/Medicaid in 1965. In the 1990s, the health industry became a profit taking industry; the cost of health services was no longer based on cost plus a margin, it became based on what the market would bear. This increased health insurance significantly; copays increased and many health services opted out of Medicaid and Medicare, forcing citizens to pay huge bills for special services and prescriptions. Major detractors of discretionary programs are Libertarians and conservative parts of the Republican Party. The Base feels that governments are ignoring their needs.

A paragraph must be dedicated to the screwy results of the 2016 election. When surveying Republicans, Donald has 70% of the GOP. When surveying the general population, Donald has 40%. The 40% represents Donald’s Base; the other 30% is the GOP faithful. Unfortunately, Hillary was in the crosshairs of history: the whole Bill thing, the Whitewater thing, the female thing, the Establishment thing – the crossover to vote republican was just enough for the Base to switch to Donald. The irrational Electoral College didn’t help either. Ironically, Hillary won by 4 million votes and in 2018 the Democratic Party rose like a tsunami to take control of the House of Representatives. But Donald, running republican, took the day. Mariner feels sorry for the Base in that they elected the personality they wanted but not the party they wanted.

So what can we do about the Base? Fear feeds populism. The Base feels threatened on every side. Salaries are inadequate; retirement is uncertain; automation eliminates jobs every day; upward mobility is denied (college costs, forced layoff around the age of 50, rising house prices, etc.), governments are awash in plutocracy, children can’t afford to move out and on and on.
Mariner isn’t touting either party these days; government is totally dysfunctional whether Democrat or Republican. Still, the Green New Deal may expand the necessary workforce – especially for the working class; retooled discretionary programs, including the expense of college, may help around the edges of life; the idea of a dole to every citizen may rebalance income conditions especially for the poor and elderly; universal medical coverage may ease the life of just about everyone. It seems that the Democrats need specifically to invite the Base back to their party for 2020. A lot hangs on who the presidential nominee will be.

Ancient Mariner