Category Archives: Culture

Another world on this world

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Mariner is judgmental about most things happening in the world today but every once in a while he discovers a different world. This time it is the Ashaninka indigenous people living in the Amazon River wilderness where the Amazon crosses the Peru/Brazil border. They are the subject of an article in Scientific American Magazine/May 2022.

Aside from their lifestyle, which is in true balance with their rain forest habitat, they have mastered keeping the modern world away by shrewd dealings with government agencies, logging companies and drug entrepreneurs who illegally would clear the forest to grow coca, yet at the same time the Ashaninka have preserved simple religious practices, have a simple government comprised of a dozen elders and a stable economy that sustains their natural environment. The strength of their culture was demonstrated when twenty members laid down in a road that loggers were illegally attempting to build, finally forcing the loggers to retreat.

The Ashaninka negotiated the land in 1992 as a protected reserve for indigenous people. The land had been logged and was not a balanced ecology. Since then the tribe has restored the natural forest, encouraged indigenous animal life including two threatened species, the jaguar and the woolly monkey.

Alas, the Ashaninka live in Nirvana. One thousand members survive in an area of 335 square miles (214,800 acres) and 247 miles from the nearest and tiny town of Pucallpa. As a planet, seven billion people share 37 billion acres, about 5 acres per person compared to each tribe member having 214 acres.

These indigenous people live contemporary lives; they believe that all of the elements in their natural realm are family members – including stars, Sun, vegetation and animals; they maintain a guarded relationship with governments and charitable institutions; they keep a wary eye on the capitalist corporations that want to take their family away.

The culture is maintained by a handful of shamans whose job is to interpret the value of existential events.

Our human wisdom has brought us so much. Humans have landed on the moon, invented nuclear weapons, have periodic wars. Fortunately, humans are moving to metaland where acres need only be a few million electrons.

Ancient Mariner

 

Is it the Tower of Babel all over again?

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Genesis 11:1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. 3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” 8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel -because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

– – – –

Mariner wishes sincerely that everyone would subscribe to the Atlantic magazine. It publishes articles that look at reality in a plain, nonpolitical way. Mariner cannot share adequately a real world metaphor in the May edition but the reader will get more from reading the article themselves at

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/

The gods of social media have brought down the tower called ‘United States of America’ – a land for which “nothing would be impossible”. We must, in some way, perhaps through small, hands-on, face-to-face behavior begin again to build one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Ancient Mariner

Puzzled

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Mariner’s three alter egos, Guru, Amos and Chicken Little, are apprehensive. It seems the entire world is a pot of stew about to boil out of the pot making a huge mess. Perhaps it is similar to a hot air balloon slowly leaking air until the acceleration of gravity pulls faster and faster toward the ground. Perhaps it is more like a circus tent free of grounding stakes and the wind is growing stronger.

The rules that have governed mankind since the Luddites objected to new weaving technology in 1779 are unraveling as a new dimension of automation brings stress to the planet. It is a universal stress not limited to one circumstance like weaving or one nation like England, it is international, it is cultural, and it is personal. All the while the planet is tinkering with a new habitat for life.

Well into his eighties, mariner admits to being a Luddite. His reality began crumbling with the assassinations captured in the song ‘Abraham, Martin and John’. A poignant memory for mariner’s generation, the lyrics are below:

 

Has anybody here seen my old friend Abraham?

Can you tell me where he’s gone?

He freed a lot of people

But it seems the good die young

But I just looked around and he’s gone

 

Has anybody here seen my old friend John?

Can you tell me where he’s gone?

He freed a lot of people

But it seems the good die young

But I just looked around and he’s gone

 

Has anybody here seen my old friend Martin?

Can you tell me where he’s gone?

He freed a lot of people

But it seems the good die young

But I just looked around and he’s gone

 

Didn’t you love the things that they stood for?

Didn’t they try to find some good for you and me?

And we’ll be free

Someday soon, it’s gonna be

One day

 

Has anybody seen my old friend Bobby?

Can you tell me where he’s gone?

I thought I saw him walkin’

Up over the hill

With Abraham, Martin and John

 

Consequently, today the race war of 1860 has never ended. The Camelot vision collapsed in the 1960s because of the unpopular Vietnam War and a growing conservative swing in local government. Also today, economic theory is engaged in a war, the philosophy of individual freedom in a democratic society is crumbling and international politics is collapsing.

So this post is about none of that. It’s about puzzles. There are two: the first is an exercise in arithmetic; the second, taken from a Zen calendar, is a true puzzle.

  1. There was a shipwreck at sea and Buck, Lance and Jack were washed ashore on a small island. Upon reaching shore they promptly fell asleep from exhaustion. A short time later, Buck awoke and saw that a box of bananas had been washed ashore. Buck ate one third of the bananas and went back to sleep. Lance soon awoke and upon seeing the box of bananas ate one third of what was left and then fell asleep. Jack woke next and assumed that the other two hadn’t eaten any bananas, so he ate one third of what remained. When Jack had finished, there were eight bananas left. How many bananas were in the box originally? [answer in next post]
  2. A quote from Niels Bohr: “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.” Is this plausible? Is it logical? Is this how conspiracy theory works? [Send mariner an answer, he doesn’t have one]

 

Ancient Mariner

Did you know?

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Not only can one make ghost guns, one can make ghost kidneys.

Denver, Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, El Paso, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix and San Diego may not be sustainable by the end of the 21st century because of water shortages.

Independent local election campaigns no longer exist. The concept of local campaign-local-citizen-related funding no longer exists. Local citizen funding as an indicator of local citizen interest is a victim to giant PACs who can fund regional broadcasters, who can saturate local markets even if a local election committee wanted to spend money; PACs can dominate social media. The republican reelection campaign PAC alone is spending $141 million on district races. Three cheers for totalitarianism!

Elon Musk tweets are the new Trump tweets: Have you noticed cable news shows increased programming around Musk tweets?

Oklahoma’s four abortion clinics have been overrun with demand from out-of-state patients. When a team of academic researchers posed as pregnant people and called the Oklahoma clinics at the beginning of March, all four told the callers they couldn’t schedule them for an appointment.

Used car prices are a staggering 35% higher than last March. Many consumer products will never retreat back to pre-Covid days.

Syria is gearing up its military to join Russia against Ukraine.

Guru speculates that as many as three different regional wars may erupt similar to the Ukraine-Russian war because of regional, longstanding issues:

The Middle East War. See the map for possible players. Some players like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran are seeking more power through unification but common human struggle exists throughout the region. The West counterparts may involve Europe, Greece, Israel, India and the United States.

 

 

The Southeast Asia War. See the map for possible players. This is a China-centric war that includes a current sore spot, Tibet, where a current conflict is China’s genocidal policy against Uyghur Buddhists. Beyond Tibet are a number of nations that depend on independent trade that China would like to own – Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Malaysia. The West counterparts may include India, the United States, the Philippines, Taiwan and perhaps if China acts out in a certain manner, the third regional war for economic control of the Pacific Rim will join in. Other nations would join in like Australia, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Canada and perhaps Columbia and Mexico. In the expanded regional war for the Pacific, Russia and North Korea would step in as China’s allies.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inflation 2022

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It is no surprise that lower income families, retirees on fixed income and debt-laden families are suffering under inflation much more harshly than those with higher income. An individual bringing home minimum wage will have to pay proportionately more for necessary commodities and food than a higher income individual.

For example, a person may bring home, after deductions, about $250/week. Because of a shortage in low income housing, as much as 50 percent of the individual’s income will be for rent. The remaining $125/week must purchase all other consumables, children’s expenses and fossil fuel needs.

If inflation rises by 7 percent as it has in just 4 months, the individual doesn’t have $125/week; they have $116/week. Mariner’s grocery shopping jumped by 15 percent. If the individual had shopped at mariner’s supermarket, their net value would be reduced by more than 7 percent.

Of course inflation affects everyone. Inflation inflicts tragedy on the poor but even ‘middle class’ families need to adjust spending patterns to minimize the higher cost of family living. What follows are suggested modifications for offsetting the loss of spending power:

  • Have two dinners each week that are meatless. Fruit salads, meatless vegetable pasta, bean soup are much less expensive without meat and, in fact, better for you.
  • Move away from pre-packaged, ready-to-eat foods. Does the reader remember how to use flour, rice and eggs?
  • How many channels on the smart TV are paid for? Cut back by half. Spend more time with your family – that’s free.
  • Many families have a weekend night out. How about switching to a night out every other week or not at all?
  • Adjust the furnace thermostat down by three degrees and wear a sweater – raise it for air conditioning.
  • Analyze auto trips per week. Find a way to stretch those trips to 10 days. A good game for this category would be to shop less frequently but limit the amount to what the old schedule would have purchased in a shorter time.
  • Alcohol consumption along with snacks is relatively expensive. Cut back by half or more; perhaps this is a good time to start a serious diet.

These ideas are offered to help the reader develop a mindset that lessens the impact of inflation. Mariner is positive that there are many more ideas the reader can conger.

Ancient Mariner

It is time for change . . .

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. . . Let’s hope the change will be productive. Mariner, especially with the input of Amos, knows he complains a lot. In this post, however, mariner simply is sharing evidence about why the nation is in dangerous disarray. Mariner will share with the reader his personal experiences which show the extent of fragmentation this nation suffers.

First, accept the fact that mariner is an old geezer with many of the typical maladies that come with old age. One malady among others is a lung issue. When mariner was young he suffered lung damage while working in an industrial factory. The resulting years since have been normal with no effects but in recent years the lungs are suffering a gradual decline.

Each year when mariner gets his general physical, three different pulmonologists have offered him a prescription that ‘may’ slow the decline. It is important to know that this prescription costs $10,000 each month. The firm that sells this prescription has arranged for some off-shoot firm to pay $8,000 in his behalf.

To each pulmonologist mariner said, “I will die before I accept that prescription.” This is the point of truth about the condition of our society: The CEO of the pharmaceutical firm that sells this drug each year makes $2.4 million in base salary. If mariner pays him 10 thousand/month, he will let mariner live longer.

This is the result of forty years of unbridled capitalism in the United States. This is the underlying cause of Trumpism and direct attacks on the principles of the Constitution. Working classes statistically make less today than they did forty years ago (Minimum wage in 1980 was $5/hour; that equates today to $19.50/hour). Mariner can throw many charts and comparisons at the reader that show a rapidly growing poverty class – coupled with a rapidly growing billionaire class. In past posts, he has demonstrated the social stratification between post-college life and labor class life – including the deliberate, premeditated elimination of unions.

On the society front, mariner has complained continuously about abuse by big data technology; he will not belabor the issue except to say that the right to live an individual life centered on the existential experience of that life is under great threat by a capitalistically driven technology.

Human life has lost its priority to a handful of dollars.

The pandemic is a dreadful way to force to the surface deep, embedded values that are fracturing this nation.

Ancient Mariner

It is about the times

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Mariner’s wife has a desktop Zen calendar. Most of the time mariner struggles to grasp the point of the quote but today it couldn’t be clearer or more apropos to these times:

“The dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its meaninglessness.”

We must find our dignity within ourselves – in the world today the reader won’t find it anywhere else. There is no news outlet broadcasting good times. Even marginal advances in humanism and technology are fraught with negatives and controversy. There is the Putin war, the totalitarian legislatures, the republican autocracy, the uncontrolled metaverse, the age of misinformation, global warming, pandemics, housing shortages, inflation, skyrocketing medical expense, China, North Korea, societal disintegration, the age of mass murders, the destructive influence of venture capital, uncontrolled private equity, growing plutocracy, Christian-based Trumpism, abusive tax structures that protect the wealthy, ignorance about the disappearing biosphere, disrespecting the very immigrants who will bolster the national population and its GDP.

Okay, mariner will stop. Oddly, it seemed almost like good news when the news outlets broadcast the passing of Madeline Albright; it wasn’t, of course, but it seemed better because it carried no angst. Bless her; she helped run a more civil nation in a different time.

Within ourselves we must find stability, sameness, a reason we exist. We must use behaviors that show responsibility for others, by doing what we can to help victims of our age.

We must separate our emotions from our thinking. Pure, educated thinking is in short supply today. We must act with vision and wisdom.

As the Zen quote implies, we must search for a world with meaning.

Ancient Mariner

 

Is growing autocracy a world threat?

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Suddenly many of mariner’s sources have written articles about the growing number of autocracies around the world. Autocracy and democracy do not get along well and Putin’s immoral assault on democratic Ukraine is an example of the difference in national behavior between the two political ideologies.

Matching headlines with Putin is the growing autocratic momentum in the United States. Add two or three new dictators elected in other nations in the last few months and journalists see a trend. Will the United States be able to vaccinate itself against autocracy? Will the world’s democracies be willing to engage in physical war to stem the trend? No less than The Atlantic in May’s issue has published a major article by May Applebaum about this concern:

“There is no natural liberal world order, and there are no rules without someone to enforce them. Unless democracies defend themselves together, the forces of autocracy will destroy them. I am using the word forces, in the plural, deliberately. Many American politicians would understandably prefer to focus on the long-term competition with China. But as long as Russia is ruled by Putin, then Russia is at war with us too. So are Belarus, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Nicaragua, Hungary, and potentially many others. We might not want to compete with them, or even care very much about them. But they care about us.

They understand that the language of democracy, anti-corruption, and justice is dangerous to their form of autocratic power—and they know that that language originates in the democratic world, our world.”[1]

Chicken Little already sits in a corner of the henhouse trembling as the November election approaches. Will the electorate use its votes to put a stop to totalitarian legislation? Amos is revisiting his will. Guru, on the other hand, feels that global warming will dominate the world’s economies to the point that there will not be time or money to fight political ideologies.

Mariner just watches 70s game shows wearing his college football helmet.

Ancient Mariner

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/autocracy-could-destroy-democracy-russia-ukraine/629363/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-weekly-newsletter&utm_content=20220403&silverid=%25%25RECIPIENT_ID%25%25&utm_term=This%20Week%20on%20TheAtlanticcom

Church versus State –

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– in Afghanistan. The Muslim practices relating to women are severely punishing; not only physically but emotionally and with life-long debilitation. In Afghanistan the church side dominates the state side without question. Note the following excerpts from the Associated Press:

“Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers unexpectedly decided against reopening schools Wednesday to girls above the sixth grade, reneging on a promise and opting to appease their hard-line base at the expense of further alienating the international community. The international community has urged Taliban leaders to reopen schools and give women their right to public space.”

Islam dominates every aspect of daily life. Very frequently government legislators and judges are imams (priests) as well. When the United States wrote the original Constitution, it declared that religion was free to practice as it desired and the state had the same mandate. Fortunately, the Reformation had begun beforehand or the U.S. may have found itself in a situation similar to Afghanistan. The reader may recall the bitter confrontations between early ‘denominations’. The Christian religion absolutely is totalitarian and can muscle in on the State’s authority with little difficulty. This occurs consistently in the United States because ‘freedom of religion’ was free to run without a leash.

The clash between the freedom guaranteed to the people via the vote and the mandates of religious practice are in constant battle, to wit: abortion, gay rights, segregation, state practices like marriage, zoning, tax shelters and advocating conservative causes like Trumpism and immigration – the last two clearly matters of state.

Given the totalitarian conflict between church and state, money grubbing between capitalism and socialism, national demolition between Trump and the electorate, existence of privacy between big data and the individual citizen and the imminent flooding of Tiger Woods’ 41 million dollar home in Florida, We the People are in good shape. Indeed good shape – would you rather live in Afghanistan? Or, sigh, Denmark?

Ancient Mariner

 

Jobs

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A company called RoboBurger is out with a machine that will make you a burger with custom toppings in six minutes for $6.99, Jennifer A. Kingson reports in What’s Next.

In the food courts of the future, you could avoid human interaction by ordering from a hamburger vending machine, a pizza vending machine and, of course, cupcake vending machines.

The first RoboBurger machine was just installed in the Newport Centre Mall in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Besides mariner’s lamentations about the future regarding the loss of human contact and abuse to the social herding instinct referenced in the last post, he wonders what will happen to all the low income fast food workers as these boxes spread. The employees don’t have any assets to speak of – where is the next underpaid job market?

Artificial intelligence expert and venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee predicted that 40 percent of the world’s jobs will be replaced by robots in the next 15 to 25 years. That means two out of every five working class people will be out of work at a time when there are no other jobs to be had.

The type of job that is in imminent danger is warehousing people filling orders for online sites like Amazon.  Also at great risk are taxi drivers, uber drivers, and other ride-share drivers. Autonomous self-driving cars will use AI technology to drive and apps to identify who needs to be picked up and dropped off. Payment will be made with a credit-card swipe.

UK’s Institute of the Motor Industry states, ‘As many as 97 percent of active auto mechanics aren’t qualified to work on electric cars and won’t get their hands dirty in the future – robots can handle it.’

Assembly line workers will disappear and, interestingly, so will air traffic controllers.

Close to mariner’s home, librarians will disappear as the tracking system becomes fully automated and virtually all reading will be online or in digitized form.

Remember Nadine? She will be the replacement for payroll clerks, human resource staff, customer service representatives, cashiers (don’t get mariner’s wife started), translators and even mortgage brokers.. . . And this is a small list. Mariner is dumbfounded by what the world will be like in 2050. Guru won’t even talk about it. Our best guess for insight may be a fortune teller, certainly not our government’s octogenarian legislators.

Ancient Mariner