The Next Renaissance

Please do not think that what I am about to say in any way indicates that I am willing to surrender to the moronic and tragic course we are on in these United States.

Having said that… I fear that we are heading for yet another “dark age.” 

You remember the dark ages?  Powerful civilizations crumbled after becoming obsessed with world domination.  The wealthy became the greedy and most or all wealth was in the hands of a very few.  The rich paid nothing while the poor were taxed until nothing was left.  In order to keep control the leaders eliminated arts, culture and education and controlled the political discourse by dividing in order to conquer.  Religion became a weapon of the powerful.  Any thoughtful person was not only labeled a traitor but a heretic as well. 

Of course no nation can survive for long in such a state.  Rome is gone.  Greece is a resort.  England…well…England has rotten food.  More recently Nazi Germany used modern technology to take the dark ages to a whole new level.

I don’t know if we will get to the point of creating another dark age and I don’t know if the U.S. will go the route of Rome, Greece or Germany.  But in order to protect the interests of a very few very powerful individuals and corporations whose greed has led to a near collapse of the greatest economy in history, our elected leaders have decided to let the poor take the beating again. 

It is inconceivable that a country that can afford to provide food, clothing, shelter and education to all of its citizens, and to most of the world for that matter, is going to eliminate access to food, clothing, shelter and education to those who have not been invited into the exclusive fraternity that controls the power and wealth.

Now for the brighter side of this posting…I hope it isn’t too late…after every dark age there is a renaissance. 

I hope I can be around for it.

The next renaissance will be interesting.  What we call classic…like classic music and classic literature…will survive and be reclaimed.  It might seem to disappear.  With no more Public Broadcasting, no more funding for orchestras, libraries or museums it will certainly be hard to find.  But it will survive.  Maybe one benefit of spiraling technology is that literature and music won’t have to be hidden in huge catacombs.  Every great book ever written will fit digitally on my Black Berry.  Come the renaissance we can print them again.

Music might be a little more challenging.  Sure digital recordings can be hidden on thumb drives.  Computers can make synthetic music that is flawless.  But what if nobody is taught to play an actual instrument?  I have listened to and enjoyed recordings of some great operas.  But only seeing a live performance can connect an audience to the emotion and the passion of the characters.  Hearing a recording of a cello concerto is great.  Seeing Yoyo Ma perform one makes a bunch of notes become something extraordinary…something human.  Seeing the Iron Butterfly was way better than listening to a recording of In a Gadda Da Vita. (There…back to the 60s at last.)

Speaking of the 60s, some of us thought of the 60s as a renaissance.  The Viet Nam war, the political strangle hold of the military-industrial-complex, the paranoid sociopathic government of Richard Nixon were part of a moral dark age.  Culture survived because there were still the remnants of philanthropists who built libraries, museums, orchestras and universities with their incredible wealth.  OK much of their wealth might be considered ill begotten, but the early industrialists like Carnegie and Rockefeller recognized that their wealth and their future depended on a productive citizenry. That required education and culture.  Not only would these people make good workers and good customers but they would be tax payers and would foot the bill for infrastructure that would ultimately benefit them.

I think what we are witnessing is the swing of a pendulum.  Not the swing from good times to bad times. Rather it is the swing of the pendulum of how the rich get rich.  On the one side the rich get rich by maximizing opportunity by ingenuity, common sense, hard work, ethical behavior and most important, a sense of and concern for the future. But that side limits the total wealth, though there is still enough to go around. On the other side, where we are now, the rich get rich by being utterly unfettered by common sense, ethical behavior or any concern for the future beyond the next stock dividend.  That side limits the number of people who get wealthy and, though there is plenty to go around…they don’t share.

The trick is to be around when the pendulum is straight down…in other words, during the renaissance.

The Good the Bad and the Ugly

I have been reading my college reunion materials and trying to plan a trip down memory lane.  It reminded me that on the third or fourth morning I was on campus, a boy with a gun a million miles from home…no really...we had mandatory ROTC…we were awakened to the blasting music from the then hit movie, The Good the Bad and the Ugly with Clint Eastwood.  Great sound track.  The noise had something to do with hazing the freshman.  In any case, the idea of the good, the bad and the ugly has had me thinking recently.

There are lots of good ideas.  There are good ideas for doing well, that is, for making money…too many of those…just none that I ever had. 

But I want to write about good ideas for doing good.  For 40 years I have worked in and around numerous fields and disciplines that are intended to help some groups in need or to solve some social or human problem.  Many times, good people have good ideas to make things better.

The problem is, most human service organizations don’t pay very well and many, maybe most people who give it a try move on to better paying jobs.  That is where the ugly come in.  The ugly are the people who take good ideas for doing good and ruin them by trying to make them into something for doing well…usually for them to personally do well.  That is when good ideas get bad.

The ugly are usually people who think they know more and better than the poor suckers who work in human service programs.  The other source of ugly is state and federal bureaucracy.  Virtually every human service program is regulated by some state or federal agency.  The people who work in those agencies rarely come from experience with the organizations they control.  They are prone to find the “why not” for every good idea.  In order to assure control, they place endless requirements for funding or license approvals.

The current budget crisis is making it almost impossible to keep the good and will almost certainly protect and promote the breeding of the ugly.  That is bad.

In the 60s we had a lot of good ideas…you remember…peace, civil rights and women’s rights.  I think it was easier to spot the ugly…they were over 30 and worked for the government.  Over the years the ugly have had such brilliant ideas as quotas, reverse discrimination, and an endless string of military peace-keeping missions that look remarkably like wars.

I guess the good news is that despite the best efforts of the ugly, a lot of good came from the good ideas of the 60s.  I just hope the good ideas of today can survive the attempts of the ugly to make them bad.

I don't like "like."

As the Sara Lee jingle says, “Everybody doesn’t like something…”  Well I don’t like “like.”  It is amazing how something as insignificant as inserting the word, “like” before any or all spoken sentences has become so prevalent among young people.  It is annoying as all…like…heck. 

The over-use of “like” also reflects a deeper social psychological phenomenon.  We are in the throws of a national, maybe even international, epidemic of narcissism.  (Though I doubt people in some parts of Africa have time for narcissism.) According to the Pub Med website, “Narcissistic personality disorder is a condition in which people have an inflated sense of self-importance and an extreme preoccupation with themselves.” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001930

Some of the symptoms are an obsession with physical appearance, lack of concern for the impact one’s behavior has on others and lack of concern for the future.  Narcissism differs from arrogance, though the two can go hand-in-hand.  Arrogant people are certain they are always correct.  They have no need for qualifiers such as “like.”  Narcissistic people might think about themselves a bit too much but they are never sure of themselves.  By qualifying every declarative sentence with “like” it leaves the listener with the concept of some doubt about the factual or truthful nature of the assertion.  It gives the speaker a built-in escape clause.  “I didn’t say she was ugly.  I just said she was…like…ugly.”

There are other symptoms of this epidemic of narcissism.

According to www.cosmeticplasticsurgerystatistics.com the most common surgical and nonsurgical cosmetic procedures among men and women in 2007 included:
Botox 2,775,176

Hyaluronic Acid (Hylaform, Juvederm, Restylane) 1,448,716

Laser Hair Removal 1,412,657

Microdermabrasion 829,658

Laser Skin Resurfacing 647,707

Liposuction 456,828

Breast augmentation 399,440

Eyelid surgery 240,763

Abdominoplasty 185,335

Female breast reduction 153,087

To be fair, about 20% of breast surgery is for reconstruction following mastectomies.

Another symptom is the realization by advertising experts that there is a lot of money to made by appealing to the narcissism of the target audience.  In our area, one local furniture store uses the Queen song, “I Want it All” to appeal to the audience’s greed and lack of delay of gratification.  While the voice over talks about furniture financing deals the music screams, “I want it all, I want it all, I want it all and I want it now.”

Nike ads now appeal to the narcissism of amateur athletes by pounding the old hit song, “Nobody But Me” by the Human Beinz.  At least that might get a few sedentary folks up off their keesters.  Sometimes we need to accept doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

So how does all this compare to the 60s? 

In the 60s the most socially desirable trait was “non-conformity.”   Now, of course, deliberately trying to be a non-conformist because that is the norm is a bit hypocritical or at least ironic.  To be a non-conformist one was supposed to let one’s hair grow long and wear bell-bottoms and tie-dyed shirts, but we were expected to think for ourselves…not about ourselves. 

The idea behind non-conformity was to think less about ourselves and to be more concerned about others.  This often was expressed through being involved in causes other than our own success.  Civil rights, the anti-war movement, the peace movement (not the same thing but that will be the subject of a future post), the women’s movement and social justice would seem to indicate concern for others.

Being a non-conformist was certainly a form of narcissism.  Choosing to be a non-conformist implies that our concerns and opinions are somehow important to others.

Just as we now say that “time will tell” what the long-term implications of narcissism will be, time has told us a great deal about the long-term implications of the 60s non-conformity.

Sadly, I can count on one hand…okay maybe both hands…the number of people who were activists in the 60s and still believe and act on those principles.  Most of the hippies I knew are now active (or retired) stock brokers, corporate managers, and…gasp…personally and politically conservative.

At least a lot of these guys have been consistent about one thing… German cars.  Of course then they drove VW Vans…now they drive BMWs.

blogging

I have been blogging for a whole week now.  It has been fun.  According to the blogspot stats I have had nearly 100 views including one from South Africa, one from Germany and one from Singapore.  I thought I might do some research on other blogs that might be similar to mine. 

First I looked for 60s related sites.  Here is a couple I found that should be of interest to anyone who likes my blog.

http://thisdayinthe60s.blogspot.com/

Informative and fun.

http://mariepoetryofsong.blogspot.com

Specific to music and its interaction with politics.

Then I went to blogsearch.google.com and entered “liberal political blogs.”  It found 8.4 million results.  When I entered “conservative political blogs” it found 3.4 million. When I clicked on the first four or five on each list I found two things.  First, at least half of these blogs had not posted anything in months, some even years. 

I can’t promise I won’t get tired of posting.  On the other hand, I would hope that I get bored before I get boring.

Second, I didn’t find any blogs that even pretended to be balanced in any way.

http://theragblog.blogspot.com/

Progressive or anarchist it is interesting and passionate.

http://www.redstate.com/

Right wing…but current.

http://conservativepoliticalblog.wordpress.com/

Radically right wing…but also current.

So onward and upward and remember, don’t believe anything you read in a blog.

We can't afford it.

I enjoy cooking.  I have been doing most of the cooking in our house for several years.

Maybe this is why I have become more in tune with what the Government is cooking up.

Listening to the news lately it has become clear that, “we can’t afford it” is the mantra of the 2011 political world.  Both sides, assuming there are two sides…or only two sides…argue about what the “it” is that we can’t afford. 

Not that budget considerations have not always been the first concern for politicians, but now “we can’t afford it” is the smoke-screen for both sides to promote half-baked political agenda and attack programs they don’t like.

Because of mind-boggling waste and inefficiency and a couple of decades of clinging to the stale failed “trickle-down” economics model, the federal, state and most local governments are up to their various orifices in debt.

This economic model is a reflection of the current American business model.  This model calls for staying with a get-rich now approach until forced to change.  Then, cut costs today to get an immediate better bottom line and return greater dividends to investors.  If these cuts result in disaster two, five or ten years later that will be someone else’s problem.  You might recognize this model as the one that kept U.S. car makers building gas guzzling giant SUVs in spite of sky-rocketing fuel prices.  In a few short years General Motors went from the largest corporation in the world to bankruptcy.

What if U.S. car makers had actually invested in technology that would result in vehicles that consumers might want…or could afford to drive?  The Japanese did this years ago and by golly guess who’s number one?  Toyota.

In the 1960’s the government got the idea that the greatest public good could be served by investing in America’s future.  They started programs like Head Start to give children living in poverty a chance to overcome their social and economic disadvantage.  Education, it seemed, might make them better equipped to someday find work and escape poverty.  Then these citizens could become contributing members of society, that is, tax payers. 

It was a recipe for success and it worked for thousands and it still does.

Now, Head Start, along with WIC and other domestic programs are on the chopping block because, “We can’t afford them.”

These programs are not cheap.  The 2010 budget for Head Start was approximately $7 billion.

By comparison, each controversial Lockheed F22-A fighter plane costs U.S. taxpayers $177.6 million.  Approximately 183 F-22 fighters have been purchased at a cost of $34 billion.  This is in addition to 2,500 fighter planes already in service.  All of that is just a small part of a military budget (approximately $1.3 trillion in 2010) that is equal to four times the combined budgets of every other country in the world.

More amazing is the cost to taxpayers of the recent bailout of Wall Street when it followed the same business model described above.  Estimates ranged from around $2 trillion to as much as $4.4 trillion.  That’s a lot of Head Start (well over 570 years worth).  Heck that’s even a lot of F22-As!

I don’t have the answer.  I just thought I would serve up some food for thought for the logic-starved budget debate.

Birthday thoughts

Birthday message…

Though I am posting this on February 21^st…in a few hours it will be my birthday…mine and George Washington’s. 

Birthdays are supposed to make us think about aging.

I came across a timely report from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.  Pew surveyed about 3,000 American adults in the fall of 2010.  They asked what kinds of modern devices they owned and used.  Here are some highlights:

1.      Cell phones are by far the most popular device among American adults, especially for adults under the age of 65. Some 85% of adults own cell phones overall. Taking pictures (done by 76% of cell owners) and text messaging (done by 72% of cell owners) are the two non-voice functions that are widely popular among all cell phone users.

2.      Desktop computers are most popular with adults ages 35-65, with 69% of Gen X, 65% of Younger Boomers and 64% of Older Boomers owning these devices.

3.      Millennials are the only generation that is more likely to own a laptop computer or notebook than a desktop: 70% own a laptop, compared with 57% who own a desktop.

4.      While almost half of all adults own an mp3 player like an iPod, this device is by far the most popular with Millennials, the youngest generation—74% of adults ages 18-34 own an mp3 player, compared with 56% of the next oldest generation, Gen X (ages 35-46).

5.      Game consoles are significantly more popular with adults ages 18-46, with 63% owning these devices.

6.      5% of all adults own an e-book reader; they are least popular with adults age 75 and older, with 2% owning this device.

7.      Tablet computers, such as the iPad, are most popular with American adults age 65 and younger. 4% of all adults own this device.

 Generations and their gadgets By Kathryn Zickuhr, Web Coordinator, February 3, 2011 http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Generations-and-gadgets.aspx.

So?  Is this an improvement from the 60s?  Let’s see.

1.      Cell phones?  Canandaigua got dial phones in 1964.  Until then we just picked up the phone and told the operator who we wanted to call.  It worked fine.  At college we had one pay phone on each floor of the dorm.  That worked fine also.

2.      Desktop computers?  In the late 60s we went to the University Computing Center Batch Window.  We handed in a large stack, sometimes several boxes of 3” by 6” IBM punch-cards that we had carefully typed on a key-punch machine.  A few hours later, if we were lucky, we picked up a huge pile of print-out on 12” by 14” perforated paper.  Nobody owned a computer.  Simple as that.

3.      Laptop?  You mean hold a 25 pound pile of printout in your lap?

4.      Mp3, iPod etc.?  Not quite.  Some of us had “portable” cassette tape players.  They were the size of one of those cases that hold about 50 CDs.  They also weighed about 10 pounds…before you put in the four D batteries.  Other than that, I did have a transistor radio with a single earphone…AM only.  Guess what?  I still have it!

5.      Game consoles?  I did have a travel chess set that had a neat little wooden board with holes in it and the chess figures had little pins in the bottom to hold them on the board.

6.      E-book readers?  We carried Norton’s Anthology of English Literature…volumes I and II…nearly 1,000 pages each…hard cover.

7.      Tablet computers?  I knew a lot of guys who used a variety of tablets for a lot of things…but not for computing.

A couple of evenings ago my wife and I were having dinner at a local eatery.  At the next table there was a young couple apparently on a date.  Both were texting. 

My wife and I were talking to each other. 

Just like we did in the 60s. 

It still works.

Fame II

Thought for the day…

I just came back from running errands including stopping at the farm supply store (hey…this is Canandaigua) where I buy my bird feed.  They had a sale on blue jeans.  It made me reflect back on my “Fame” entry from a few days ago.

Levi Straus earned his fame by taking surplus cotton material and making rugged work pants for the 49ers... the gold diggers not the football team.  Today, pants wearing his label are worn all over the world.  We all wore them in the 60s too.

Fame today?  Another Levi is, ironically, famous for not being able to keep “it” in his pants.  Levi Johnson gained fame for inseminating (it was a farm supply store that got me thinking about this) the Alaska Governor’s teenage daughter.

Ah 21^st century…ya gotta be proud.

Fame

Today I saw an “article” in US magazine (please don’t ask how or why I was reading US) about some guy playing guitar at a party held by some other guy in honor of yet another guy.  I take great pride in not having the slightest idea who any of them might be.  Maybe they are the 21^st century version of the three stooges.  No, that can’t be because at least Curley, Larry and Moe accomplished something to earn their fame.  They made us laugh with their politically incorrect slapstick humor. 

Today fame comes from being famous.

It is difficult for a 60s radical to comprehend giving someone a television show, constant coverage in the “popular press” and a fortune in endorsements and other perks just for having too many children.  Back then if someone had eight children you just called them Catholic and if they were lucky they got their own pew in church.

I suppose that the current obsession with undeserved fame is understandable in a complex world that overwhelms many of us.  It is an escape.  Of course if it is an escape why call it “reality” television? 

My concern is that it establishes a social norm for what constitutes fame, what deserves respect and worst of all, defines who should be heroes or role models.  Sarah Palin?  Really?

In the 60s it was a lot easier to distinguish heroes from villains and just plain folks.  Not that there was agreement on the specifics of fame.  To some the Chicago Seven were heroes.  To others they were villains.  Whatever anyone’s opinion of them it was because they actually did something with a purpose.

Just-us.

One of the small perks of spending time on the road, as I have the last few days, is the opportunity to listen to NPR on satellite radio.  Three trips this week, with six or so hours in the car, gave me a good snapshot, or maybe it was a full-length movie, of the hottest topics.  Apparently there is only one…the federal deficit.  (Of course, closer to home, New York is broke, but that will be a topic for another day.)

Now for those of you who don’t know me, I have spent the past 40 years evaluating programs and policies meant to prevent a variety of public health problems especially alcohol related problems.  If you want to know a little about what I do, go to my website http://www.evalumetrics.org/. 

I still can’t decide if the current situation is a disaster or an unprecedented opportunity for prevention.  Right now all the discourse is about how to find more money to pay for healthcare and crime and unemployment while not taking any tax money from the wealthy.  One of the proposed solutions is to cut funding for what are called “domestic programs.”  Unfortunately, these are the very programs that will prevent the problems that will cost billions in future healthcare, crime, unemployment etc.  To save even more money for big business many are proposing the elimination of environmental regulations.  Again, save a few million for big businesses and assure billions in future costs for healthcare for those with respiratory, neurological and developmental problems caused by industrial contaminants.  Did you realize that within a few years after environmental laws prohibited the use of lead in gasoline, the average IQ in the United States increased over five points?

Now staying with the theme of this blog, I tried to reflect on how federal and state budgets were debated back in the day…the 60s that is.  I can only speak from the perspective of a teenager and college student at the time, but I remember overwhelming support for the war on poverty, aid to education, funding research in healthcare, the space program and so much more.  During that decade more was spent on higher education and more Americans went to college than at any time in history. 

It is ironic that so many 60s teens benefitted from scholarships, loans and huge government grants to colleges and now, so many of those graduates, and some of their children, want to eliminate support for those programs.  This is a theme I will revisit often.  It is the current American sense of justice which is pronounced, just-us.

To end on a positive note…one of the talk shows featured a discussion of the proposal to eliminate or limit the federal tax deduction for charitable donations.  One side argues that without the incentive of a tax deduction most people would not donate to charity.  The good news is that a recent survey of wealthy individuals indicated that almost none cited tax deduction as a reason for donations and that most would donate to charity with or without a tax deduction.  I hope that is true. 

Self -imposed rules for the blog

The initial response to the idea of my starting a blog was pretty positive...except for the people my age who said, "What to heck is a blog?"  Once I explained it, not easy since I still have almost no idea, even my fellow sixty-somethings liked the idea.

I am still working out my self-imposed rules for this blog but here is what I have so far:

1.      I am going to stick to my 2009 New Year’s resolution to not get into political arguments.

2.      I am going to comment on, criticize, mock, rant and rave about the state of politics now compared to the 60s.  See, that's the whole idea of this blog.  Compare everything and anything to the 60s…at least the 60s from my perspective.

3.      I am going to use whatever style fits my mood on the day I am writing.

For example…

One of the big stories right now is the tone of American political discourse. Over the past few election seasons, you know that time period that lasts from one election-day to the next election day, the issues and the debate have been controlled by a few powerful people and organizations.  Did anyone notice that in the middle of two protracted wars, costing thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, an election could be determined by people’s irrational fear of gay marriage?

OK…that sounded a bit political, but my point is that the great thing about a blog as a medium for information is that the person producing it, in this case me, gets to decide on the agenda, the topic and tone.

I am writing this after a long day and I have an early start tomorrow so I will stop.

Next time I guess I need to get into some content.

Setting Up the Blog

There are lots of us…we who were in our teens in the 1960s and now are in our 60s in the 2000 teens (almost).  More and more I find myself saying something like, "I guess every generation says this when they get to our age but..."  Here you can insert things such as, "Young people today just don't have the...

     (Check all that apply)

          Ambition

          Discipline

          Morals

          Ethics

         Concerns

         Sense

        All of the above

        Other __________________

My intent for this blog is to expound, wax poetically, pontificate and otherwise write about my observations of the world as I thought about it in the 60s compared to what I have observed that it has become. 

Check back periodically.