Narrow Thinking

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Nature's got variety. Human beings lived in the midst of nature's richness --- in all of this "got milk" richness --- for a million years more or less. OK. They communicated by words and by hand gestures. Worked pretty good. They were no dummies either. No; you guys were the smartest things in nature, at least outside of fairies and spirits, and things like that.
     But to comprehend how human spirits (orig: beings) of the current era think, read the Financial Times.  Can you do that? It's that salmon-colored paper that is written from the perspective of the British. Their decision to print on salmon-colored paper was a brilliant decision to print on salmon-colored paper. You jolly well know it was. The thing is actually interesting, too.  The FT can be revelatory, even, when I read it, or rather analyze, thorughly. It's a lot of work, but I find it positively worth reading this way. Or, I should say --- analyzing.
     In the world of the writers of the ft what is considered "good"? What are their "valuations," so to speak. What is their right and wrong of it all? I have to wonder about that, particularly when I see that simply because a given company is not making big profits, the ft writers tend to say that this poor thing is "struggling." Come on, is that the best you can do? Why? Who sets these doctrinal agendas? That is what Noam Chomsky calls the "narrow ideological spectrum."
     So, what in their world is "good"? Profit is good. Well, yeah, I really nailed it there but why is profit good? And---another question---do they actually believe this stuff? That's always a good question, but which we'll never know the answers to. There are so many. I wonder if these writers have different opinions or if they are all the same "business brain," belching out the stale fumes of conformity. (And yes, I know about the "Economist," where personal bylines are not allowed.)
     It is obvious enough that all are just trying to make something true, or good, where no such logic applies. Of course, we could call that "ideology" or "superstructural ideology" if we like but at any rate these newspapers are there, and this is how our world works. This be how the human beings communicate. We shouldn't be too pessivistic or too optimistic---about the value of these human communication endeavors; but rather realistic. They are what they are. Why do they make a positive valuation for, say, strong demand for aluminum? In two separate articles ft tells that market demand is slowing for aluminum and as well for steel. But why is it "good" for demand, and hence output, to be strong? Why isn't it good for demand to be weak-----instead? Why does the world need more aluminum? Why does the world need more steel?
     I don't get where the need comes from: albeit that FT says in two separate articles (Mon, Oct 10, p.15) that demand is slowing for aluminum and steel, ask me if I care. There is an apparent consensus opinion that there needs to be growth. What I do not get is why. Why this apparent consensus opinion that if companies do not grow it is bad? Why is that bad? It makes zero sense. Why not good? I do not get why that is. Isn't buying only the other side of not buying? The Financial Times, and everyone in general, seems to be unseemly (monolithically) stuck on the "growth" concept, where "growth," near as I can discover, is some kind of a technical term for the ability of firms, or individuals in the market, to record a profit. So, this is the mania, then: everyone must grow.
     But what kind of a concept is that? What if it should happen that we do not need as much aluminum? That is not a crime. Neither is it some kind of a natural calamity, or a calamity of nature. Why do we need to dig for ore? It is clear that there is no inherent need to do that. It will eventually wreck earth; that it will do. If capitalism has any value at all, what is the greatness or goodness of it, or even its saving grace, the saving grace, if you like, of capitalism? The capacity to wreck the earth it is not. The capacity to wreck earth? That is not the greatness of it. Why is it necessarily good to remove ores from ground? Why? Ft tells us this material is for markets. It is "...for markets from packaging to construction to aerospace." Oh, I see. And this leads to the next thing. That "...makes it [aluminum] a barometer for the world economy."
      Aluminum has this quality? That's great but I thought it was flexible and light. And I thought it was for tin foil. But its great that aluminum is a barometer, too, and that the great ft has told us about its "barometer" quality.  I guess it is barometer-like for the purpose of illustrating whether the world economy is growing. That would be the linguistic of it. Well, the business culture too has qualities and characteristics. They are a culture that is hooked on their own ignorant and ingrown opinions. Wait a minute here though. (Cartoon of Disney character screeching to halt with emergent dust storm) Doesn't a market system thrive on variety, or on the existence of different individuals, and different products and firms, and, dare I say also, even different opinions? That, Um --- "compete"?
     In Nazi Germany everyone had the same opinion. You had to be like everyone else; and you had to support Hitler. And that was just about the end of it. And that kind of system was called "fascism." That kind of system is totalitarianism, authoritarianism, extremism, and the dominance of one party's ideology over the truth; and, what it is not is actual, reasoned thought --- mankind's basic creative capacity for thought.
     The reporters at FT come out of a certain English, and also world-wide, experience, one that involves money --- money and trade and things like that.
     And they, in turn, somehow represent --- OK, serve --- some kind of capitalistic experience that Britain has had, also a world experience, an aspect of the recent human experience --- of "history."
     But, if they are so smart, why no ability there to see the limits to growth, outside their own little box? Why can't they do it? Because it's a simple concept: an aluminum plant does not NEED to be open, and, if open, does not NEED to be producing at full capacity. There is no NEED for aluminum. It is not aluminum that is needed, and it is not growth that is needed. And if a plant is not needed it can close. Let's not be idiots. I don't think there is any doubt about the matter. Why do we have to become fascists? Is this phase of capitalism just a matter of a different kind of fascism? Fascism in italics.
     If there is no inherent need for growth, why can't we say so? Why is admitting something obvious --- what has been called the "limits to growth" --- not an option? Why does there have to be this insistence on a false idea related to this technical concept called "growth"? I do not know, really.
     Nor can these people, or these reporters, propose (report?) basic changes to the financial structure. Let us say that the kind of capitalism we have had for some time now needs to change. Who will do it? They are  monolithically stuck.
     This inability to propose basic changes to the financial structure is reflected in this news that they issue, the news about the countries of the European community, in trying to change the financial structure. But they cannot do it.

     Europeans are peculiarly ineffectual creatures.

     Sometimes they seem good and perfectly elegant.
     And the rest of the world loves their poetry, and their courtly novels. They have produced a beautiful stream, in terms of literature. Yeah, well some people like it, anyways.
     But they are so ineffectual. They did not do anything to stop Hitler. They knew about it from 1933, and did not do anything. They cannot act as a group, for their own good. The Europeans can only act individually, but this is no fault of persons, per se, i.e. of individuals. Persons, the species itself, are not that stupid.
     Then why are they? -- why are they that stupid? What golden calf are they (FT writers I suppose, if not the leaders of states) bowing down to?

Some Perspectives on Economics

Here is something about my views, as a preface to the piece that folows. The fashion in which the piece below begins declares of perhaps a negative view of economics and economists. (Here I have to take time to mention something intriguing: what we mean by "economics" or by "what economists study" is ambiguous as to whether it means ideas about economics or the actual trade practices and the "items" you put on trade.)  I eventually developed a unique and particular view of the "idea" side of the matter, or the economics profession, that is - yes - striking for being a negativity. It is true that it developed that way but I was not looking for this or striking out intending to be negative. It happened that way. First, there was the studying. There was some school work, too; I did it in school, first. Eventually, I have over the course of my study and investigation and my observing the (dual) world of economics (i.e. the ideas and the things all mixed up together) come to some conclusions. I see it as not being biased, although others may say that it is impossible to be without some biases. But I have the subjective experience of knowing how I did this: I looked at the field honestly, and my views developed over time. I think very few other persons would have done this in as honest and openhearted a fashion as I did. But of course that is not for me to judge.

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     For economists the economy is not a system of human social relations but rather some kind of an exotic god.....    

 one that needs to be propitiated so we can all keep buying twinkies.

     The questions pertaining to the field of "economics" are in reality questions of authority amongst human beings. That being so, these are really political questions. They are social since they are not apolitical decisions of the individual. This later is the program of the orthodox, or neo-Classical theorists. It is all, therefore, social and political; and, what it is not, is a matter of "self-interest," the term used by the orthodox university economists -- they like to say: "rational self-interest." I do not doubt that people have rational self-interest; but I do not think it has a thing to do with economics. When working within the field of economics, if, as we suggested, questions are in fact political or authority questions, we also have to admit that these social or political questions do not merely apply to one society, but, a bit oddly, to a plurality of them, in fact, in the age of globalization, to all -- at any rate to all the societies that participate in the trade system. Which is just about all of them. There are questions, then, of relations between societies. It all gets very international. So, these matters are matters of trade — "international trade" — and yet, they still relate to authority.
     The question of economics in general could be put: "why should one person have something, but another person not have something?" That is the question of economics. Economics has objects, too. The objects of economics are (matierial) wealth objects. The objects are desired generally, by everyone. Who is it that makes these decisions, then, decisions about the satisfactions others may have? That matter is the matter of "economics."     
     It occurs to me that "economics" may sometimes  (especially in earlier times) mean something like "authority over objects." The objects interpolating themselves into the functioning of authority. 

     If the matter is linked with authority, we should say "political." But ---- of course ---- Americans never say "political" economy. No. That's a pesky habit of the Europeans.

     In every human case, or every known human case, in economics or where we may begin to haltingly to speak of "economics," there is first a primitive phase, where everyone owns everything. This is the case for the primordial species members homo sapiens, on this planet. And, later---a condition, in any given society, where there are higher and lower classes. Capitalism is perhaps the phase that comes next, and in this phase anyone (although of course not everyone at once) can use economics (trade) to advance himself beyond what class would have ordinarily acceded him.

     But when the globe is covered, when the whole space of the geography of the earth has been covered by this capitalist phase --- globalization --- and the environment is stressed if not deeply threatened and man is even affecting the climate, "growth" can be seen for the absurd, overly simple concept that it is. 
     It is quite awful: denial of what has been called "The Limits of Growth" is a worse thing even than the other great denial, the denial of global warming or catastrophic climate change.

     Some people are winners and some people are losers. It is just the matter of how we figure out who to put where. And there will always be winners and losers—even if we need to make the biosphere the loser.

     As we have seen, at first everyone is the same --- the primordial man or woman, their infants, their elderly, their healthy and sick. But then --- I am not sure why --- "development" begins to take place such that there are a new kind of class-startified societies like Catal Huyuk, in present day Turkey, which I have read about somewhere. And then the next development, and then the next, and then the next, until we are where we are, in the present phase. And behind all of it, a struggle to develop a fair society—or perish.

                    perhaps you expected a bed of roses?

Restaurant Review: Su Casa

dining notes: (at "Su Casa," 49 E. Ontario, Chicago):

     In Mexico, they smile—as soon as they see another person's face. The waitress did that. To me. She did it as she approached the table, smiling immediately when she saw me. This is touching, isn't it?

     The whole country is friends with itself. 
     Mexico attempts to survive as a culture of empathy, but its world seems to me traumatized, dominated by the culture to the north. That culture to the north is a frenzy of suicidal individualism. 
     There are two different ways of life here. These are of course two different ways of life: individualistic and socialistic. But one dominates the other. One society is dominating the other one. The country of Mexico is traumatized. This is so because the world to the North turns its back on empathy. It will not admit to empathy. This traumatizes Mexico, and Mexico becomes a world traumatized by a world to the north that turns its back on empathy. Or seems to. This is all pretty simple and death stares from the wall in the form of

the wooden statue of a Spanish Conquistador. In fact there are two statues. The face of the second is hidden in shadow. But from the boots, it looks Spanish.


     This restaurant could also be called "57 varieties of weirdness," of which the conquistador statues erupting from the wall are only one example. And that includes some of the people who work there.

Ugly People and Economics

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capitalism is fascinating if we overlook how ugly it is in general. The human race is an ugly race. Human behavior over the past two thousand yars ain't pretty. And into this ugly world emerges capitalism.
      Capitalistic behaviors are behaviors engaged in in the world by these ugly persons of the human species/race. Once you consider the circumstances you see that the phenomena of capapitalism are neither bad nor good.
     What are capapitalist behaviors? Capitalist behaviors are certain behaviors of individuals within capitalism. What is the nature of these behaviors? Can we clarify? They have as a goal the making of money ----- that phrase is itself vernacular, and crude, of course. If not ugly.


     Now, when these persons do what is called making money, what are they doing? This is the kind of question that a real scholarly study concerned with the subject matter of economics would pose but that is not what universities do. When they engage in he scholarly study of economics, they continue instead to study the wrong thing.

October 02, 2011

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Why don't stupid people just go away? Why do they need to bother me today?
     All societies need to deal with their resident stupid peoples so this is a philosophical question of deep significance—I mean it. I might not be putting it into the right words exactly but it gets at a deeply relevant area of inquiry. Sort of an "ask, don't tell," maybe thing. Thing<-->maybe. The question could be askid bout any society. A humane society is humane period. To the stupid as well; but they have to be somewhere. Where? And we have in the past done a lot of inhumane things to them so I do know that it's sensitive.
     But perhaps what is also relevant is that the stupid are just getting too much equality and power.  After all: all they need is money. In this stage of capitalism, do you really think that there is any systematic means by which certain irresponsible members of society are kept from it? Not only do the stupid have too much money but also they've all done got their own websites. So, that's the problem. Earlier today I accidentally bumped into yet another "Austrian" economics website.
     This kind of person is economically stupid, or, you might say, stupid-plus-thinks-he's-an-economist. He is not even slightly interesting to me. No, not anymore, because I have seen enough! Aren't they supposed to be living in the Alps? Or maybe in a tar paper shack somewhere. Maybe just outside of the little town that kicked them out.
     Hiding under a rock, perhaps I meant to say. Somewhere? Over the rainbow? No, not over the rainbow. Instead, they think they are actually intelligent. And there my friends is the problem.
     Yes, I think I nailed that one. And I think it is really a problem. The internet is not some great development for "the cause" of democracy and etc. and so on and I don't know whether anyone still believes that. This is the whole point. No, just the opposite: the internet should have been properly regulated; what you should have done is have both a business internet and a public access internet---two sections to it. It should have been diverse. Start dividing and sorting one thing from the other. The internet had the same need for diversity as everything else in a democratic and capitalistic society. But you can't do that because it is blocked by the same forces which tell us you can't regulate capitalism. If we would just regulate capitalism...then it (and we) could have a chance...

     Remember that stuff about how we're an empire now? It was a big, popular theme there awhile around 2003 or something like that—somehow linked to the American aggression in Iraq. "We are an empire." "Empire Lite." Well, OK. We rule the world for a little bit of time. Now regulate capitalism.

     I agree that we need to have an "open" society. This means that  bums should be on the same streets as the professionals are, as the businessmen are. Maybe this is about "identity." I know I am seeing that word around lately. I have stopped reading post-modernism, though, some time ago.

     There are some questions here about "integrity." Where the integrity in a human society? It has to be there no doubt. But how is integrity to be preserved? How is integrity to be preserved in a free society? Such a society is one where those lacking in integrity (that's the real meaning of my word "stupid," I suspect) mix right in with everybody else.

Big Welcome to a New Reader

A big welcome to officer Simmons of the C.P.D. You have a big city to pacify, officer. Good luck.

A Hollow Empty World

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Here's one for ya------I have an email account that is extra. That is old. So, I don't use it as much. I have not used it for a long time. But I might go there to do a little checking. OK. So when I go there, what do I see? I see that on the false email system I am more popular.  
     I am more beloved on my nobody email account than my real one. But of course! The non-me is so much more valuable and lucrative. If you were a corporation, would you prefer a real person, who makes trouble, or a nobody who serves you little money packages wrapped in tin foil from used chewing gum. Anyways, I am apparently highly valued in emails into the email account I don't use.
     In other words I am not even home. And I don't exist there. And that fellow is the one everybody is beating down the bushes to get to. These "persons," if that's what the marketers or the marketing programs are, "pretend" to be interacting with somebody, somebody who has real money, for that is the main way that a member of a capitalist society participates. But it kind of seems like they prefer to send mail to the distinguished non-person at the non-email. This is dysfunctional, and it is dysfunctional because they prefer the person's money to the person. That means that the capitalist actors in the economy are no longer targeting persons, but rather just manipulating them.
     This reminds me of some other stuff that has been happening to me lately too, all on this theme of the preference shown for mechanical actions over human action. Non-persons have become more valuable than persons. All of these experiences make one feel like if one's individual's acts in the world are done as (?) a non-living or non-conscious being-----maybe we should say to a non-living being-----it works better. But what is this contemporary condition of life that we are looking at for the past few years? This condition of things, today's condition, is historical in nature, it is the end result of old, ongoing processes. This is old, human stuff. Or, stuff that was human, at one time!
     Capitalism did not develop by treating people like machines. It treats people like machines now. It may seem to be happening now, yet the "now" is of a piece with phenomena that are also historical. These are the processes that, over much time and many years, create our livable world. It (the world; the economy) is laboriously created over the centuries. If you don't like it, you can try to change it. But this is the work of history. Our world today is the work of humans over history, and these processes are human. These processes are human, if they are anything.
     What is happening? Today, we are simply bringing all that down, we are bringing down history and fomenting a permanent attack on mankind by filthing and defiling the very progress of capitalism.
     To erase history, brings down the civilization. There is a real capitalism, that which has been created historically. And there is also a more superficial world of finance and investing.
     A human phenomenon, hopping through history, has now been robbed of its hop (of its vitality, its consciousness, its quality of being conscious, living, which we summarize as: "human"). And now here's a word from Jack's muse-----his autistic and yet somehow creative muse:

The hoppies warned us
that the modern world was dehumanizing. But
Wii didn't listen. We just played with our wii.
Now look around you, what do ya see?

Well, I'd say a society that is "truly" dead, whatever that means. This is the "real" zombie society.
Excited yet?

Well, some people are; some people like it.

True? Real?

Truly? Really? You like death? Really?

Then you should die.



-----more on the wii game here: http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/wii_console/