Response to comments

Thanks for the comments, Nancy, Summer, and Professor Q.

I still haven't figured out to respond through the comments section ... on my own blog. Yes, that is how technologically inept I am. Or lazy. Or indifferent. Or ... something.

Anyway, you've made a lot of good comments, all, but I want to respond to the comments from my most recent journal entry. I'll start with your comments, Professor.

Yes, I did mean in a humanitarian sense. But I also mean technology in terms of the physical as well. You are imagining a particular person and extrapolating as if that's the norm for a person to fly on commercial airlines and have access to surgeries with anesthesia and other modern medical technology. But there is also the majority of the world's population that does not share in that prosperity and, in fact, suffers more because of technological advancements. The greater the technology, the greater the means of controlling their lives--their behavior.

Performing repetitive tasks for 12 hours a day six or seven days a week as a teenager and on into adulthood cripples the body, destroys any chance at developing a sense of autonomy or self-direction in life, psychologically grinds a person into an automaton (even the self-conception of "victim" would be a step up), and reduces the individual's purpose in being to subsistence through labor to make the shoes for your man on the jet flying off to India to receive a kidney "donated" from a desperately impoverished undesirable. As I've said, it's all a matter of one's position. For the world's wealthier classes advancements in technology and science are incredibly beneficial and truly can raise the quality of life exponentially. On the flip side, technological and scientific advancements have just made the world's poor and those enduring the worst of war more susceptible to the world's wealthy-- those owning and controlling the resources that have been developed through those scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs--who continue to manipulate, exploit, imprison, injure, kill, and destroy.

That's why I say ethics is dead. What I mean by that is that public consciousness, in the U.S., is awaking (again--and they'll fall asleep again) to the fact that there is no real-world evidence indicating that power is ever acting an ethical manner. Power may act legally, but never ethically. To hold any type of ethics at all would require a person to sacrifice self-interest at times for the good of the whole. Not to be compelled to sacrifice self-interest, but to willingly choose to act in a way that is for the benefit of others. Individuals do that, but institutions never do. Never. Ever.

Humans are somewhat limited by the structuralism of language, but there are means for some degree of liberation from linguistic thinking. Not so for institutions which are entirely rule-based in their activities. They cannot veer from the script in the way that humans can. The individuals in positions that "steer" institutions? Oh, yeah. But when have you ever witnessed an individual directing an institution toward the public interest while going against its own because of the rogue actions of a CEO or department head? No, the anti-institutional actions (sometimes illegal) are pursued for self-interested reasons. Theoretically, a company decision maker could act in the public's interest to satisfy his own self-interest in helping the public. I can't really think of a case of that happening off-hand, but I'm sure there are some isolated incidents. I'd be interested if anyone knows of any cases like that.

And I think that segues into what you said, Nancy, about the people you feel you can affect through personal caring to make your own life feel worthwhile. I'm not begrudging you that, but it's neither here nor there for the world. To effect global change institutional models have to change. In fact, institutional relations also need to change. I'm becoming more convinced that it cannot be done piecemeal but instead as a series of well-planned steps over generations. In some ways, that is happening organically at the regional/local/individual level, but the majority of the world's political and economic landscape is being transformed by the global corporate vision for civilization. It ain't pretty.

The sources of good news are events such as the awarding of the Nobel Prize for economics to Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson for their work on resource management by community institutions. Those are the types of models that need to be explored. If we were a sensible people and we actually lived in a democracy we would consider alternatives to the status quo as much as anything to follow a path of continuous improvement (continuous learning providing the basis for that change). Of course, priorities would have to change. We would have to collectively hold humanitarianism in higher esteem than we do property rights. That isn't the case in the United States and it is codified in law that property rights trump human rights--think of how quickly you shift to "he's trespassing" instead of "I can't believe that guy is waving a gun around and yelling at that kid to get off his land, that he should be paying him for the air he's breathing while standing there." Well, you might think the latter, but the U.S. Constitution and state laws support the crazy guy on the verge of shooting the teenager walking around in some lemon groves.

That alone seems like something to be re-examined, but the "right" and "left" in the United States--as they act in positions of government power--are split by about a millimeter. So, you know, sigh, shrug your shoulders, wail, just say fuck it, try it, embrace it, make love to it, walk down the aisle with it, and then one day you wake up in the middle of the night to find yourself tied to the bed while U.S. corruption is raping you. You shout, "Hey, I thought you loved me! I hated you, you wore me down, I gave in to you, I submitted and became not just a servant but also a cheerleader. I've done your bidding even as you've committed atrocity after atrocity. And even after all of that you are still tying me down to rape me? Why?"

"Well ... because I can. And it feels good. Plus, I'm trading ass rapes as derivatives now. It's something I had inserted into a bankruptcy reform plan being proposed in Congress. I figured I'd get in some practice because it looks like we've got the votes. I'd apologize, but I'm enjoying myself to much."