Make Love Not War was not emergent

There are those who think the 'Make Love, Not War' movement emerged from nowhere. It seems like a very rational worldview from a generation that grew into childhood and adolescence in a world seemingly always at war somewhere; and bombarded by images suggesting the next war could mean the end of all life on the planet. There had to be some ideology to counter the endless warmongering and brinksmanship in the evening news.

If nothing else, 'Make Love, Not War' was an anti-ideology that borrowed a lot from those who wrapped themselves in anticipation of the next world war. It's been asked often: How would we appreciate life if we did not die? A question that should have been asked in the Garden of Eden when warning Adam and Eve about those trees. Told if they ate from a particular tree they would die, how would the immortal Adam or Eve have understood the term?

Biophiliac and necrophiliac positions are not exclusive. One does not exist without the other. It's what I came to call a dichotomy many years ago: biophiliac-necrophiliac. These dichotomies are how we define relationships with others. We categorize, pigeon-hole, and label but often without realizing we are more defining the opposites of these ideas by applying them judgmentally to others.

People form both types of relationships with others, commonly as a reaction to the perceived position of the other person through another dichotomy: acceptance-rejection of any idea. It's called tribalism or black-n-white thinking or just plain pig headed-ness.

Less common, due to western cultural influences, is acceptance. It's much easier to reject, although the position often is forced to ameliorate. Human relationships do not rationally form Nash equilibria. Our rational mind is too dependent upon propositional logic.

Aristotle suggested an important caveat though: "natural" propositional logic is composed from incomplete syllogisms, or enthymemes.

Forever Young (Joan Baez) just asked too much of us

Listening to Joan Baez sing 'Forever Young' made me sad. It's a wonderful, loving wish for a life, every word. One of the anthems of a generation. Even its words forget those who never were young.

A real Boomer though will tell you it's the old souls she's singing to, not those who couldn't feel the energy of that generation. The dawning of the Age of Aquarius is really a few hundred years yet.

The cutting edge, first adopters, those who thought the world had not changed enough to catch up with their shared vision, were only a small slice of that generation. The oldest Boomers are in their 70s now, and many still have the Cold War etched into their bones.

The poetic words at  the end -- sounding very much like an Irish farewell -- may have asked too much of anyone.

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
And may your song always be sung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

The generation that set out to change the world succeeded. It didn't change itself so much though. The idealism of the Boomers is more broadly reflected in the Gen Ys.  The Boomers became first neoliberals then neoconservatives, inexorably failing Baez' prayer to "always be courageous" to always be defensive by sliding to the right, losing much of the intrinsic joy along the way.

Politics became personal and then too personal, as one very human contradiction after conflict stumbled over one another in chaotic competition as technology continued its trajectory far ahead of the social and psychological.

Wildfire still runs in the Carmel Valley

I turned 60 a little while ago. It came as a surprise for many reasons. Somehow I thought some idiot would have blown me and the rest of the world up long ago. I never thought I'd see 60 years old  It never even occurred to me. Or, maybe, I thought I'd be too busy to even notice.

One way or the other, I noticed. I noticed the day growing nearer, and couldn't help becoming a little nostalgic.

A few years ago, I decided to let my beard grow out. I was shocked. There was no rich brown mass with swirling blond highlights. It looked all white at first. Then, as the stiff hairs filled in, salt and pepper: a lot more salt than pepper, to be sure. I suppose that should have been a warning...

Even a few years ago, my hair only had a few grey tinges around the edges. It was curly and unruly as ever. Now, at 60, it's a lot straighter, with grey streaks running from front to back. -- It just seems too soon somehow...

About the same time I let my beard grow out I was in love, and happened across one of my old, now ancient, favorite songs on YouTube: "The Battle of New Orleans" by Johnny Horton. Listening and singing along, I started remembering other songs that had stuck in my head for one reason or another through the years.

I have to admit some songs touched my heart. Some so tenderly, there was a lump in my throat that forced a few tears.

Funny how you attach moments in your life to songs and places. This post, for example, was inspired by "Wildfire" by Michael Martin Murphey. Wildfire is a song I connect to a beautiful northern California valley, full or art and wonder. The greatest wonder of all though was the woman I loved then.

I've listened to about 50 old (ancient) songs now. Some, not all, I connect to one love or another.

"By the dark of the moon I hunted
But there came an early snow
There's been a hoot-owl howling by my window now
For six nights in a row
She's coming for me, I know
And on Wildfire we're both gonna go..."

Kulturkampf or win? pt 1

If the people of the country focus on the election, we allow the politicians - especially the neocon/right - to choose the battleground. In a real sense, we allow them to choose the weapons to be used by each side, too. Do you think pitchforks can stand against modern tanks?


Vietnam

Bismarck and the Pope

Gen Westmoreland commanded one of the most powerful military forces on Earth in Vietnam. Arguably, the US forces won every battle. But they failed to capture the hearts and minds of the people of the country.
The US was especially effective against the North Vietnamese Regulars.
Remember the embassy evacuation? American journalists were running around frantic to go to the sounds of battle. They wanted to cover the battle for Saigon. There just wasn't much noise anywhere. There was almost no heavy weapons fire. Why? 
Because the South Vietnamese Army weren't fighting. They surrendered the city. The South Vietnamese Army and the city police were as glad to be rid of the Americans as the Viet Cong and NVA.


America won all the battles and lost the country. If we focus on the election, we lose the chance to influence the hearts and minds of the country, and can win or lose the election - this battle - but lose much more. 


Obama Administration

I can imagine the Obama administration experienced something very similar.They focused on winning the election. The promise of 'Hope and Change' resonated across the country and around the world. They promised to open the doors, build new bridges and highways. They won the cultural war on the populist level.
But when they got in, they found someone had taken the handles off the doors. The only doors left with handles led to gaping chasms with sand and political minefields. Cheney had hand picked industry representatives in every department of the Executive Branch and at all levels. And the Cheney shadow government, still well funded and organized, was still in place just down the street to support the Cheney appointees.

• The country was facing a financial crisis that could have been worse than the Great Depression, and the only 'solution' was set to plunge the currency into an inflationary spiral that could have made early 1930s Germany look like a cake walk.
• They had to bring the enormous off budget debt for the Iraq and Afghan wars on budget. That made their first budgets show enormous debt spikes, along with the TARP debacle.

True, 85% or so of the Cheney appointees resigned after the first year. They did their job before they left though. They opposed on the governance level any attempts at transparency and change. And when they left, they left gaping holes in the departments. The new administration didn't have hundreds of on-side names to recommend to fill the positions. There was no precedent to even allow them to be prepared for that.

Because the new President insisted on it, the TARP funds had to be repaid somehow. The loans were too huge to look right, but at least they could be collected with interest. Nothing was going to make the government taking equity positions look good.
There was no time or energy left to put all the handles back, much less build the bridges and highways. They must feel lucky the whole country didn't just fall apart. They won the election, but lost the governance - the hearts and minds of government.
And the Obama administration has spent the last 3+ years trying to dig themselves out of the hole. Arguably, they haven't yet.

I can't help but wonder if the Obama people are going to try to win the cultural war again, or have they been too badly burnt? It's really not up to government to change national culture though. That's something people and citizens have to do.

What Niall Ferguson left out: Human rights with Marlene

My voice and noise on subprime bank regulations: What Niall Ferguson left out: "What Niall Ferguson left out
Niall Ferguson in “Civilization: The West and the Rest” argues that the west's ascendancy, is based on six "killer apps": competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic. Those are indeed ingredients, but unfortunately he misses the willingness to take risks... the oxygen of development.
Perhaps he does not remember psalms calling out “God make us daring”… and that is why he fails to understand how the bank regulators, with their stupid nanny-scared capital requirements, based on doubling the importance of ex-ante perceived risk, are now slowly but surely taking the Western World down.
Ps. Here’s a link to… Who did the eurozone in? http://bit.ly/t3mQe0 and as you will read, it really was the butlers… and here´s also a video that explains a fraction of the stupidity of our bank regulations, in an apolitical red and blue! http://bit.ly/mQIHoi"

(from LinkedIn http://lnkd.in/9qvnNj )
Human Rights  
Here's the problem: No one has defined human rights. Or, more correctly, there are too many definitions of human rights.
Is there a fixed list? Or are human rights emergent? (developing as technology, philosophy, and civilization develop?)
Even if there were a universally (or at least world wide) definition of human rights, who's going to enforce them? If the answer is governments, then we have a problem. What governments define is civil rights - rights defined under law.- and that becomes problematic. There is no higher civil power than government defined law, right?

So first we need a list of human rights.
The UN has one, but it keeps growing. Access to the Internet has become a human right according to the UN.
FDR put one together that extended the US Bill of Rights. It looks like the list of all the topics under attack in political debate.
Is there a list that can be acceptable to most, if not all?

Are human rights emergent?
If we assume human rights are emergent, then we don't need a complete list. We still need compliance.

There is no way to enforce human rights on individuals in one-on-one or one-on-many situations.
Your discussion of nurture vs nature begins here.
For example, if we assume human rights are enforced by nurture - which would include humans rights emergent with technology, philosophy and civilization - then how long will it take to nurture a generation that understands human rights? Based on recent events, there's been no such nurturing so far. You're talking about starting a whole generation - not just part, but whole - on a very different child development concept.

If that's not difficult enough, assume human rights are enforced by nature. Here you're not talking about training just one generation, but possibly many.

How many generations does it take before someone recognizes natural human rights?

Based on history, it took about 98,250 years for someone to even declare there were inalienable rights endowed by a creator.
Of course, now we have to figure out for everyone if there was a creator.

Nurture or nature?
Whether assumed to be either nature or nurture, or some combination, human rights are still emergent as technology and the shared understanding of human rights is defined. New human rights are defined based on previous human rights.

For example, if we assume - as has been declared by the UN - that the Internet is a basic human right, then we must assume access to some sort of connection - wireless or wired - and some source of energy are also human rights.

The human right to self-rule was such an emergent human right. It emerged as a reaction to monarchies and merchants, and the declarations of the Reformation, as the Enlightenment.
At one time it would have been considered a human right to have a king, for example, along with an aristocracy and nobility.

Many of the human or civil rights we think of as "natural" to day were really emergent rights.
Property rights, for example, is the basis of all economies today. But it wasn't always true.
While it makes easy logic to understand how a king can own or rule everything within the borders of his/her kingdom, the idea of individuals owning small parcels has always been problematic.
As the American Indians will tell you, the idea that a man can own the land is ridiculous.

Governments and emergent human rights
In order to have property rights, you have to have some form of government.

It was the rise in the financial power of mercantilism and banking during the 10th to 14th centuries that provoked the emergent right to property. These classes became more wealthy than the kingdoms. Their wealth put the kingdoms in the position of having to ask these classes to finance state functions, such as wars.

It was the emergence of the new social technologies of trade and banking the kingdoms had to deal with.

In the UK and Australia today, it's still true officially that the king or queen actually owns and rules over all the land. Land ownership is only a grant that can be withdrawn at any time.

Even in supposedly capitalist countries, the government defines limits to property ownership. Taxes are the way governments assert their control, and can reclaim ownership. There are mineral and air rights defined that can limit the individuals' ownership.

Yet merchants and banks can't exist unless some government(s) defines money.

And then there's the media...
Allen Funt, host of a popular show, Candid Camera, was once asked what was the most disturbing thing he had learned about people in his years of dealing with them through the media. His response was chilling in its ramifications:

"The worst thing, and I see it over and over, is how easily people can be
led by any kind of authority figure, or even the most minimal kinds of authority.
A well dressed man walks up the down escalator and most people will turn
around and try desperately to go up also...
We put up a sign on the road, 'Delaware Closed Today'. Motorists didn't
even question it. Instead they asked: 'Is Jersey open?'"

'via Blog this'

Time or Understanding

Marlene,
(taken from a LinkedIn discussion on the White House group http://lnkd.in/9qvnNj )

How many ways has this been said? And by how many people? Is the answer simply reflection? Or is it some structural change?

Your post refers to the Moral Molecule, psychopaths and sociopaths. The references discuss all of those topics along with narcissism.
The problem is two fold:
 ♦ The words psychopath, sociopath and narcissist are meaningless buzzwords to most people.
 The terms are understood to be negative, somehow, but what do they really mean? Or do they all mean the same thing? Do the terms describe different aspects of the same mental disorder? -- Because most people cannot answer these questions, the terms drift into cognitive dissonance.
 ♦ Is there enough time to make the changes that seem necessary?

Over 35 years ago, I submitted an essay to my teachers relating the fact that people think in dichotomies and models. I was just a high school student in a small California high school.

Essentially, the paper said people's perceptions are not one-sided. For every Yes, there's a No; for every black, a white. I argued that language tended to describe only one side of a discussion without becoming bogged down, overwhelmed by volume, and was inadequate to describe the whole meaning of an issue as the author or speaker perceived it.
I put forward the idea that the real meaning of any words required some statement about the perspective and experience relating to the development of the topics and ideas discussed in order to understand the dichotomies involved.

The most controversial idea in the essay was the people do say what they mean. In fact, because there is always a dichotomy involved, the apparent meaning has both meanings: affirmation and the opposite.

Therefore, people often say one thing and do another, but it's unfair to expect anything different.
I went on to say that people form models from these dichotomies that are applied to other issues. In order to understand a person's words, it was necessary to understand the models they had formed.

You can imagine how my high school literature teacher, who was teaching from Shakespeare's plays, reacted.

What I didn't realize is I was talking about aspects of pathological thinking; that the models became ideologies which serve to allow the person to place any sense of conscience into mental bins of denial or cognitive dissonance. In effect, the person is training themselves into mental illness.
We call that training personality.

We admire those who walk the talk because it is rare.
Most people say one thing, or many things, charming and evocatively, but will do something anathema to their words. It's not just individuals. It's groups and parties and nations that do the same thing.
It's human nature.

 Game theory offers an interesting insight. (from a link off the pages you refer to)
 ◄In short, in this game, the government always does better by not being ethical and we can predict the government's choice of strategy because there is a single strategy - no ethics - that is better for the government no matter what choice the public makes. This is a "strictly dominant strategy," or a strategy that is the best choice for the player no matter what choices are made by the other player.

What is even worse is the fact that the public is PENALIZED for behaving ethically. Since we know that the government, in the above regime, will never behave ethically because it is the dominant strategy, we find that ethical behavior on the part of the public actually costs MORE than unethical behavior.◄
Official Culture - A Natural State of Psychopathy?
 by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
 http://bit.ly/rQmYce

 The concepts are not new. They go back to the beginnings of civilization.
◄(T)he warnings of Innanni (Ishtar) from ancient Suma, 5500 years ago.
 ====
 (T)he goddess Innanna brought the arts of civilization from the god of wisdom, Enku Eridu, like a Pandora's box
 Here were the delights of society exquisite craftsmanship, beautiful clothes, the arts of sex and music, But civilization has a darker side. said Enki, which has to be accepted along with the good. There is the art of being mighty; the art of being kind; the art of straightforwardness; the art of deceit; the art of kingship, justice, and the enduring crown; the resounding note of a musical instrument; the rejoicing of the harp; the kindling of strife; the plundering of cities; the setting off of lamentations.

Fear, pity, terror - all this is civilization, said the god of wisdom. All this I give you. And you must take it all with no argument. And once taken, you cannot give it back. ◄

 This is from TechRepublic today.
 ◄That’s why the premise of The Sociopath Next Door, a book by Martha Stout, gives me the major creeps. Stout claims that as many as 4% of the population are conscienceless sociopaths who have no empathy or affectionate feelings for humans or animals. Sociopaths (or the more politically correct term, someone with antisocial personality disorder) show a lack of regret in their actions, with a common trait being the violation of the rights of others.

This book was brought to my attention by a friend of mine in response to my telling her about one of my son’s friends being bullied at work by her boss. I don’t know if Stout’s 4% metric is accurate but I know that I hear an awful lot from readers of this blog who are dealing with bosses that I believe could be characterized as sociopaths.◄
Your boss could be a sociopath. No, really.
 TechRepublic
 http://tek.io/uGQvGi

 ♦Evil Genes 
It's not just the 4% who have the sociopath gene that's the real problem. It's the fact that people have learned the advantages of this model of behavior, and train themselves to it.

We call these people 'leaders', 'visionaries', and 'professionals'. Subject the concept of professional to the merest scrutiny and you can see the concept is sociopathic. In fact, narcissistic.

In short, we reward and admire most in our society that learn to lie best: lawyers, actors, and salespeople. 

Based on the reception my essay got and the 5500-year old warning from Ishtar, is it realistic to assume there is time to make the changes you propose?

Business and the social contract

A part of the thinking behind the conceptualization of Regulatory agencies as information repositories is, I think, what you're talking about here.

"Ergo, our valiant words are burped out of the orifice of the money drunk. We have and continue to lose credibility in the global expanse. I agree that transnationals are likely the answer and do not support that we dominate. I am saying we a no example of any sense of the "common good" or wishing to see humanity survive. "

In my terms, you're saying the transnationals have the power, but don't consider themselves parties to the social contract. If so, I agree.

Business has taken the political position of being antithetical to government. It's a straw man. Business cannot exist without effective government. Business requires both the law and enforcement of the law or there are no property rights (other than that provided by thugs and warlords.)
All incorporated organizations must be licensed and registered by a government, or they effectively are those thugs and warlords.

Business has chosen the political position as antithetical to government in order to oppose taxes, regulation, and unions. Those roles are better understood in terms of the monopoly stage of capitalism, where business sought market share.

The present stage of capitalism can better be called global capitalism, where business seeks to control governments across national borders. In time, all levels of business will be forced -- as we're already seeing -- to respond to the goals of globalization and global capitalism.

Business will be networked as defined in management science. Much of transnational business already is. (see the excerpt above) The networking aspect is an opportunity for the concepts of networked innovation to be applied. The key goal for government and regulators is to develop a network to include all stakeholders and avoid becoming increasingly insignificant. 
That goal will only increase in importance as capitalism moves into the state capitalism stage; where business and government effectively form controlled economies.

These changes and goals will draw business ever deeper into the social contract.