Ain't freedom grand?

One of the paradoxes of American freedom is that no one needs to feel a sense of national responsibility. As long as we can hire an army and make a little fuss over them, no one else needs to do a thing except for themselves. The fact that almost anyone with a choice chooses not to serve their country in that way should tell us all something about the desirability of continuing with conflict as a model of interaction. So far, that message has been lost. We continue to dare each other to back up our positions with brawn. This great nation boils down to my great country club. Who let all these poor people breed? Didn't anybody tell them that if they won't work for nothing we won't employ them?

The problems are always somebody else's fault. The fact that some of the finger pointing has merit makes it even more complex and contentious.

The only hope the middle class might have had in the face of this is that the producers need consumers. But as the manufacturers build up poorer nations by sending factories over there, they also create customers. Those new consumers, nearer where the goods are produced, have a little less money than the residents of former industrial nations in decline, but the manufacturers will save a bundle on shipping.

Durable change is always evolutionary, not revolutionary. A cataclysm may alter things in the geological world, but human nature remains human nature. In years, perhaps decades, the developing nations will have caught up to the previously developed ones. Only then might we deal with the inequities between labor and management. But even that remains questionable. Several factors could keep the debate from proceeding. To name but a few:

1. Industrial development in less advanced countries could finish destroying the climate balance that makes life itself possible.

2. Some jackass could start a bigger war than has been fashionable recently. Wars are great economic engines, but when the environment is already delicately balanced the impact of major destruction could tip thing over the edge even more quickly than careless industrialism. Idiots trying to preserve the status of a nation in decline might be willing to make an "all or nothing, live free or die" effort to put their faction back on top or go down gloriously in the attempt. Similarly, idiots in one of the countries that was never great and has no industrial future might feel like detonating whatever they can get their hands on.

3. Governments in the formerly great world powers could crumble before their form of social stratification has had a chance to spread uniformly around the globe. If communication and transportation degrade, local customs and superstitions will regain their former power to promote xenophobia. English is the language of aviation. It didn't need to be English, but that's how it worked out. If the spread of one language falters, everyone who is interested has to pick up another one, should a single candidate emerge from the ruckus. Will it remain widespread if people don't do a lot of flying? We're not that far from xenophobia as it is. Take away the ability of people to mix and mingle and we're right back to eating or enslaving strangers who crawl ashore from shipwrecks. The cute ones we might have sex with first.

Because everything you do makes a difference, but nothing you do matters, future generations (if any) will simply deal with whatever reality they inherit. If we go back to the level of the 17th Century, that's what the kids will breed in. That's the ultimate truth: if anyone is left to eat and screw, that's what they'll do. The rest is just ornamentation. No one planned in the long term to get us where we are. We're here because of a combination of short term goals and philosophies intended to be observed without end. That's not a long-term development plan.

No one explained this adequately when I was growing up. I doubt if too many people thought in these terms. I was taught short term planning and lifetime philosophies. Short term includes a whole human life span. Some people like to dwell on how brief that is (tick tock), but seldom go beyond the impact that has on retirement planning or how much time we get to spend hanging out with our friends and loved ones -- short term aspects again. Humans make a big deal out of themselves when, in geological terms, they're just a passing itch on the surface of the globe. This planet doesn't need us. Only we need us.

As far as national responsibility goes, we're better off without too insular a sense of national unity and purpose. Unfortunately, as national identity shifted to a particular flag waving above personal gain, we've been slow to accept the concept of the individual human living on the human planet and needing to take care of it. Too many of us have no sense of ownership or stewardship, depending on your inclination. Those who fear one-world government see only that. They recoil in revulsion from anything that looks like global leadership. And they are right to do so. Why should one-world government work any better than the many examples of messed up national, regional and local government? But we're stuck with each other. We'd better figure out how to balance all our competing wants before we are no longer able to meet our needs.

Evolution grinds slowly. It tends to hinge on physical characteristics. Species success depends entirely on creating future generations. We've got that down. Now we deal with the trickier problem of intellectual evolution. Signs of it are obvious. So are signs of resistance to it. The mere fact of an individual's existence and breeding readiness mean nothing to the future survival and prosperity of an idea. The idea needs minds in which to flourish. So humans, always cooking up something, keep experimenting. Because so much is theoretical, we argue and argue while physical effects of previous decisions continue to accumulate.

The 2010 election in a nutshell: "I got tired of waiting for your computer to download an important update, so I hit it with a rock."

November 2: The Groundhog Day of politics

I predict that no matter which party controls Congress at the end of today's voting (and any necessary recounts) we will see no improvement for at least two years --if then.

If the Democrats retain control, the Republicans will continue to obstruct them. As shown in the sabotage of the health care bill, even if something big does pass, it will be so mangled as to be completely useless.

If the Republicans win, they will do as little as possible to make things better to make sure the Obama administration does not get any credit for turning things around. The financiers of the Republican Party can weather considerable hard times to squeeze the majority of voters and get them to blame the wrong people, as usual, for their difficulties.

Once the Republicans assure themselves both Congress and the White House they can return to strip mining the country as they so happily did under George Bush. They have put themselves against government for so long that they no longer know how to run one for the good of an entire nation.

The vocal factions that want even smaller government will make sure that the debate includes lots of pistol-wearing and head stomping.

Don't like my prediction? Prove me wrong.

About the labor charges:

You are purchasing an irreplaceable part of another person's life to perform a task you were unable or unwilling to do yourself.

Much of my job involves solving problems for peanuts. Some people obviously consider the tasks they bring us to be beneath them, while at the same time requiring skills they do not possess. These are the people who typically complain about how much our services cost. They have decided their lives are worth more than ours. Some of them might be surprised to hear it put that way. Some of them might acknowledge the fact and say that we are where we have put ourselves. But by rank-ordering people by their occupation we create a climate in which people on lower levels think only of getting above them at any cost. This does not translate into excellent job performance. Think instead of a camp full of prisoners of war trying every trick they can think of to tunnel out, go over the wall or sabotage the schemes of those who hold them. Not everyone who ends up on a lower rung "deserves" to be there.

Updating the technology

I'm writing this on a new-to-me iMac G5. My old notebook, the faithful HP ze5170 has been manifesting more and more ominous symptoms. I knew I wanted something that would do more tricks. When a Mac-savvy friend mentioned this unit she had been harboring I made the move to Apple.

I had been bilingual. The newspaper used Apple computers, and so does my wife. They really do have a knack for getting the software out of the way of creativity. My Mac-tech friend, who is also awesome musician Beverly Woods, fitted this thing out with a big honkin' hard drive and various graphics software. And I could lay the monitor flat and sleep on it. There's a lot of acreage here.

I picked it up earlier this week, but haven't had a chance to turn it on and load drivers for the resident peripherals until today.

I must now live up to it. My wife has a song project she wants illustrated.

After getting by on the netbook for so long it feels wonderfully roomy to have a full-size keyboard. I have to resume my dutiful attempts to learn touch typing.

I keep reaching for a touch pad that isn't there. But this is nice. Pretty darn nice.

Beginning summer with a chore for winter

Wood is not a heat source for the indolent. This summer I actually got motivated to make drying stacks from the unruly pile dumped from my firewood supplier's truck. What you see in the picture took nearly four hours. I have more to do, but I got tired. The job gets old long before it gets done.

Wood pellets have become fashionable, but pellets are a manufactured product. Their price and availability fluctuates radically. Pellets and wood chips also contribute to forest loss. They seem at first like a great way to use more of the tree, but the removal of slash and treetops from logged areas contributes to soil loss as more organic material is carted off and turned into carbon dioxide and soot in heating and energy systems instead of being left to rot.

Firewood won't work for everyone. If too many people used it, North America would become a desert in a matter of months. There are simply too many people. For now, it works for some of us. Other energy sources came to dominate for good reason. But there's no fuel like and old fuel, when it's right for the job.

The fan droned placidly

Members of the conservation commission attended the selectmen's meeting on Tuesday expecting to be criticized and possibly insulted for a decision they'd been forced to make based on inadequate information. We had not been summoned, but presented ourselves to report, as civil and rational colleagues, if the board had any questions or comments.

We are technically appointed by the select board. They could fire us and form a new commission if they chose. I do my best to help here, but if the town leaders decide that a less active and committed commission reflects the will of the citizens better, they have the power to take that controversial step. I can certainly find other ways to keep busy during the declining years of life on Earth.

We were not on the agenda. The board would only have received our decision that afternoon. We were there as a courtesy in case they wanted to address any of their concerns immediately.

Apparently they did not.

I had to leave before the end because of a previously scheduled personal commitment. Before I left I watched them govern for a while.

It's a strange little anti-government government. These people are paid with our tax dollars, which makes them kin to all in that position, but their caustic comments and eye rolls about the feds and state officials clearly showed that they do not sense it.

The chair of the board walks a convoluted tightrope above his constituency here in town. As referred to in an earlier post, the small population here holds the width of viewpoints held in the national population. We have tree-hugging socialists and gun-toting authority-haters. Interestingly, both these polar opposites get together to agree on the basics like road maintenance and other routine functions of the community before returning their customary scathing assessments of each other's mental competence.

The select board does not hold this place together so much as balance on top of the constant minor earthquake. The political speech is a caricature, the duplicity almost instantaneous, as people come forward who have very different positions. Politicians aren't lying, they're just trying to reflect the desires of whoever is in front of them at that moment. Sensitive to the entire audience, this board leans in an anti-government direction and praises property rights and jobs over environmental protection. The environmentalists are used to taking crap and being dismissed. Apparently we can take it and always will. The sad fact is, they're right. Short-sighted, selfish people who are willing to act out and destroy things always get attention over the small, the peaceful, and the hard to understand. If something is hard to understand, get angry at it and order it to become simple! And spout a catch phrase when you do it.

I don't say it's easy to govern, especially when you can face a room packed with angry neighbors. They also stop you in the grocery store, the post office and on the road. Not me, mind you. The board and commission on which I serve tend to function mostly ignored. But the selectmen are the headliners. They become the lightning rod. I've seen the chairman go from being a quiet but open person to someone not vastly, but noticeably, more guarded and angry.

Service to the people forces you to deal with everything about them. It either hardens you somewhat or it cuts you to pieces. That hardness does not have to be cold and cruel. It can simply be a measure of clinical detachment or prudent defensiveness. Or it can form a shell around a bitter center.