Hellooooo

If you are not responsible, then you are not free. Denying your responsibility is denying your freedom... Own up, as they say. Those who do not own themselves are “owned” by someone or something else. We often say we have money... and debt. But I think money and debt often have us. Who owns what? What owns who?

Dare I? More advice: Don't love anything that can't love you back.

Knowing About Knowledge

Knowledge is not just power. The fact that Aristotle saw it that way tells us more about him, than knowledge. Maybe that's why he raised a megalomaniac. He invented reason as an instrument. But, knowledge is also wonderous. It can be an end in itself. Knowledge ends in understanding. We see all sorts of patterns "in" clouds/in us. The average cumulus cloud weighs 1.1 MILLION pounds. That's 550 TONS! Yet they float along on the breeze. Glorious. Pick up a bucket full of water. Get it? Sublime. Knowing does not dispel wonder. It expresses it. The more you know, the more amazing everything is. So, as Merlin told the Wart. If you are depressed, open up. Explore. Learn something new. How long does it take our solar system to make one orbit around the center of the Milky Way galaxy? 240 million years. That's about when we, Homo Sapien sapiens emerged. One galactic year ago. By the way we didn't even know galaxies, the great spinning island-pinwheels of stars existed until 1923, when Edwin Hubble proclaimed a blurry speck of light in the sky to be a "galaxy," far, far away, later named Andromeda, after an Ethiopian (or Phonecian) princess. Before all the pollution, Andromeda was not so hard to see with the naked eye. Most thought it was just a nebula. Leave it to Kant. Back in 1755, in his book Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels (Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens), he was the first to suggest that the Milky Way might be just one of many such discrete structures of stars in the universe. When I went to college in 1975, professors my age at that time (65), were about to go to college themselves when Hubble made his discovery. Unlike Kant, Hubble had proof for the hypothesis. Point being, it was not that long ago that humanity lived in the BG (Before Galaxies) era. Just like people living BC didn't know it, my old profs didn't know they'd been born in the BG era until one fact forced us to see everything differently. What we see as significant is all about us, our values. Another by-the-way, which is actually the way, central to chatting, Andromeda, which is about 40 percent bigger than the pinwheel we are part of, will meet and mingle (not "collide") with our Milky Way in about 4-5 billion years forming a large elliptical or lenticular shaped galaxy. Now, as we sit here together, cruising at an average of 514,000 miles per hour (828,000 km/h) around the center of the Milky Way, my question is, if there is no wind in outer space, why do the pinwheel galaxies spin? And do they all spin the same way? I guess it depends on what counts as the "top" of the pinwheel. All for another time. The future is always beckoning. There's always more to learn. Ignorance is a blessing in disguise. School presumes it just as science presumes the invisible for the visible to exist. Something needs nothing, and nothing needs something. Oh bother. Anyway, we all look out and wonder what kind of whos are out there in the various Whovilles. Like Horton, we listen with our radio telescopes. We see the closer galaxies as our "local group." Our neighborhood. We seek companionship. Knowledge is making the unfamiliar, familiar. Do you have intimate knowledge of the clouds and stars and other things? That's what professors push for. We love to learn. We love sharing.

Pre-amble: Before We Start Our Stroll

Everyone’s weird. That’s normal.

Here’s Elaine and I catching a ball game in Bricktown, OKC. One of my former doctoral students, Ken Fischer used to run internships between the Oklahoma City Minor League team, the OKC Dodgers (affiliated with the LA Dodgers) and the OU school of journalism. Now he teaches at the U of Nebraska. He still knows everyone in the OKC organization – helped many get their start. Ken invited us to come down with special passes to get close to the pitching bullpen so Elaine could see up close how fast the pitches are, and also to go into the broadcast booth. Big deal. I can pitch faster than that and hit those guys, but… I have a job already. Elaine seemed dubious. Woe to my male ego. “But at least I am more handsome right?” No comment. It’s going to be a long game. More about Ken, and all my students later.

Re-member-ing. Bringing the gang and everything back together in the thick sediments of now. Re-pair. To reestablish the pair. When people ask, "Are you mad at me?" I think they ask, hoping not. We don't ask "are you happy at me?" It's interesting we see anger as a projectile but happiness as an enveloping lightness of being (to borrow). Lighten up. If you are reading this, which you are, then at least you have access to a computer and the massive Internet. Things could be worse. When I was in college, this would have been impossible.

What follows has many reliable facts, lots of opinion, errors (no doubt), but no lies. It wanders. It is not sacred. It is in places, inconsistent. I argue with myself at times. That... is O...K. That is probity. Integrity is not endless consistency but a type of humility. As you read I welcome you to reflect and probe. Some teachers instruct. It is elementary. Here are the steps, memorize them. Do as I do. Others query along with their students. I tend to be the latter. I don't know very much at all and the longer I live the more I understand that.

NIGHT LIGHTS

Optimism: People can and do change. Otherwise, education is useless, experience is of no value, and I can’t change either. If you believe people don't or can't change then communication is a total waste of time. You can wait for salvation. Or you can try. I'm told that even some gods need to be baptized -- to prove something to somebody? Maybe to themselves? They too... change, I guess... Curious. I'm sure many know the answer to this. I just know the story, er one or two versions.

SPONSES AND RESPONSES: A SO SO LIMERICK

There once was an old man who made a webpage

Lest he be left behind

His free speech to engage

Retorts never declined

But if you take a poke at the sage

His foot will find your behind

With a print on your last page

And an impression for your mind

Your Mind is More than a Calculating Machine.

Everyone’s weird. That’s normal (That's weird. Didn't he write this before?).

Judgement versus judgment. I’ve spent my life reading lots of books published in England, and translations from Europe where they spell judgment incorrectly… with an “e.” Here in the US, where we speak proper American, we spell it correctly. Judgment. I hate to judge but right is right. We have correct judgment. I’m sure you will judge these words. I invite you to. I tend to spell judgement with an “e.” But I’ve tried to break the bad habit in this long string of words. Similarly, but differently, I talk a lot in here about time, change, difference/identity, the virtue of fun… and the creators of hells. Gotta watch out for those guys. Much of their work is not exactly “family friendly material.” I apologize about that ahead of time, I mean Fra Angelico, Federico Zuccari, Michaelangelo, among others who the church hired to paint their houses of worship. But I also talk about money. With life and money, we make change, or it doesn’t happen. Be pro-active. I talk about Godot. What are YOU waiting for? Don’t wait too long. Don’t just re-act. I know it is shameful to be a subject. To be subjective. We SHOULD be objective. But, fact is, we make judgments so we can act. Even AI has prejudices. Don’t run for shelter. Bet on yourself. Go where the map ends and “step over.” Be original. Don’t try to be somebody else. Everybody else is already taken. And watch out for those who would “save” you. They may take from you what would have made you grow stronger and independent. All sorts of opportunities that were not predictable.

History is full of grand, sweeping tales. Epics. But there are also small stories where geopolitical and sacred ideological concerns have less influence. Countless little resistances to "adapt," or more accurately conform to abusive systems that portray themselves as "historical imperatives," the ABSOLUTE LOGIC of Hegel's utopianism (Left or Right) -- tiny minorities with outsized power claiming to represent majority reality as ture and even natural. It comes down to something small but significant. Maybe the "butterfly effect?" They (meaning we) may not be “worth a hill of beans” as Rick says to Ilsa, but we are all “little people” as time goes by. This is where we find each other as not so different after all. When Rick pointed his gun at Captain Renault he said, “Remember… remember, this gun is pointed right at your heart” to which Renault replied, “That is my least vulnerable spot.” But as we know that was totally untrue. No one is a disinterested observer. Okay, once in a rare moment you may encounter a psychopath, but even they care about themselves. They want things. It is those who observe who come to care the most because they see. We all, including scholars and scientist, want to understand. Some care so much they dedicate their lives to trying to understand, and to share ideas.

Look up! You never know what you might see. Something amazing maybe. Here's Elaine, my partner. She's always looking up.

Elaine does not talk about this so I will. I am proud of her. This is a very rare award. It was given to only 10, the "Top Ten Teenagers" in Taiwan determined by a huge governmental search. Her parents are not rich or connected. She was nominated by her teachers based on her character and what she had accomplished. Hundreds if not thousands of high school students were nominated. Now in a country like Taiwan, where kids are pushed hard to excel, to win this was a big honor for Elaine, her school, her town, her family. She is sure many were worthy. But... she was chosen. She is still a little embarrassed and doesn't talk about it. She sufferes a little from imposter syndrome. Maybe her humility is one reason she was picked!! Bottom line, it was not her choice. For a year she traveled around the world as a representative of Taiwan. Now I could try to say something deprecating and witty here, but flat out, this was special. And throughout her life she has lived up to this honor. I will not divulge the year... She was a teen so I am guessing about 10 years ago or so... The accomplishments and recognitions keep coming by the way. Leapords have spots. Okay so what was I doing when I was 17-18? I was getting busted for speeding and for having too many friends in my car (7 in a Capri). Doing lots of sports. Playing pranks. Partying. Reading lots of Steinbeck and SciFi (Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Herbert, Tolkein, et cetera). In essence... I would not have been "competitive." As I say many times below, I am one lucky guy.

Wow. Effortless. Exquisite. Elegant... I think this is so cool. 

Didn't See That Coming.

An Observation: What is Beautiful is Often Brilliant and What is Brilliant is Usually Beautiful.

Why is It Dark?

I’d like to think I have at least average smarts. But then it depends on the subject, doesn’t it? Some are “quick.” But then they just don’t know anything about Persian poetry or Inca (sometimes Incan with an “n”… someone confusing poor Eric again) engineering or the drum languages of Africa or exactly why peroxide bubbles or why aspirin makes us feel better or the difference between a Hex key (Allen wrench) and a Type I Cross Recess (Phillips) screw and driver. I know people who do, and that’s cool. I mean with a universe filled with countless stars, how can your eye not fall on one all the time? Why isn’t the night sky so filled with stars that it is light instead of dark? Why is there darkness? It has been called a mystery. A paradox. By the way, I found out I’m not the first to ask that question. I’ve made that discovery many times in my life too, namely that I am not an original thinker, but still, when I thought about it, it was new to me. Duh. But more importantly, paradoxes and mysteries are usually glaring signs of our own limitations. Working together, as we develop better means to see, the more light we gather, and indeed, the darkness gives way. Bit by bit, everywhere we look we can see. But we have to keep trying. The view is worth it. As it changes, we change. As we change, it changes. "And so it goes." Psst... it's not dark. That's just our own limitations. Open a book. Open a door. Converse. Let's amble. But first, a nod to Thoreau's warning about plumbing the depths of Walden. Mystery is wonderful too. For our own sake, some waters should remain mysteriously deep. A long time ago, I once said to a Berger who became famous for being anxious, without uncertainty there is no reason to explore and no hope. Being certain can lead to nihilism. Fatalism. He was stunned. Without the dark, the stars cannot sparkle and fireflies can't wink. I don't know about you, but I like sparkles and winks. Drama... we all like drama, and drama is all about not knowing. Take a risk. What's going to happen? Can you "tell" the future? I can't. That's okay. That gives me some wiggle room -- tolerance. Try, and, make a difference (meaning).

I have never simply assigned a topic or old theory to a graduate student for their dissertation work. It should not be my interest, my theory or my buddy’s theory or topic but theirs. They have to have their own research agenda, or they are not doing research. Instead, they are just assisting their mentor with her research interest. They have not matured into blazing their own path and so they will be unable to direct, to teach others in the future how to do that. The field will stagnate. It will be reduced to tribal clusters around a handful of charismatic “mentors” who maintain control of the agenda. The field will be limited to their narrow interests and capabilities instead of branching out as a healthy ecosystem must diversify. It can even become canonical… Medieval with very limited ideas and methodological scope. Repetition of the same. Uninformative redundancy. The students become minor copies, forgeries, of the master.

NOON MOON

I once had a doctoral student who grew up in Tokyo. He always walked looking straight ahead or down. One day we were walking back from a class around noon. I asked him if he’d ever seen the moon at noon. He said, “that’s impossible.” I said look up. Sometimes the sky in Oklahoma is so blue, so clear, you can’t believe it. He was amazed. Here's a shot I took in Hawaii.

Perfection is Overrated and Utopianism is Downright or Straight-Up or Outright... DANGEROUS, Or Why I Don't Like Drum Machines

Utopianism exposes the pathetic limitation of our imaginations and the fantastically inflated egoism of narcissism wedded to power that aspires to spread, limiting thinking and our futures. Avoid the contradiction of "pre-planned communities."

The idea of the liberal arts comes out of humanism. Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (c. 75- c.14 B.C.E.) was a Roman architect, engineer, writer, craftsman, landscape designer… He is famous for his multi-volume work De architectura. In it he says that all buildings should have firmitas, utilitas, and venustas (strength, utility, and beauty). He wrote of the “perfect proportion in architecture and the human body” that, 1,500 years later inspired Leonardo da Vinci’s sketch of the Vitruvian Man. Vitruvius’ great work was lost then “rediscovered” in 1414 by the Florentine humanist Poggio Bracciolini in the library of Saint Gall Abbey, Switzerland. The work also astonished and captivated Leon Battista Alberti (one of the originators of modern three-dimensional perspective (since Classical times)). The Pantheon was designed and built the same time Vitruvius was active but, due to a lack of records, no one knows who designed the Pantheon. Vitruvius was no doubt familiar with the great construction project if not directly involved.

"Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board." -- Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes were Watching God

The Feral Scholar

Here I am in the Poconos with my granddaughter Mars, Summer 2021. I was "thinking." Academe is tribal. Many get their positions through networks. Recommendations are powerful. I am different. I made it “on my own,” so to speak. Okay. I had some help and I talk about those folks later. Jon Nussbaum, recently retired from Penn State, is one. However, no one, neither my colleagues nor students know who chaired my dissertation. That’s because I originally was accepted to, and was all set to go get my Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago. But then, my funding left. It literally walked out the door because I was to be funded on a grant held by Dr. James Coleman, whom I'd been corresponding with before going to Chicago (at his National Opinion Research Center). He left Chicago for Johns Hopkins on a leave or something. Sabbatical maybe. Another faculty member told me that he tended to "ping pong" between Chicago and Hopkins (where he started the sociology department back in 1959). Wish I'd known about his ping ponging earlier. Bottom line, no money. Aside, Coleman, had been chaired by the old Austrian from the Vienna Circle (more on them below) Paul Lazarsfeld. Back in the 1930s, Lazarsfeld also worked with T. Adorno and Erich Fromm on "authoritarian personality" theory and anti-intellectualism. They go together. It was the Frankfurt Critical Scholars who launched the first large-scale surveys. Yes... critical theory uses all forms of methods and data. Critical theory is not... a method. It is... a set of theories. It is also positivistic in that it wants to find the truth because truth and justice go together. You can't have "false consciousness" unless there is a truth. For instance, folks on strike want to know the truth about the profit margins of the shop. It was Lazarsfeld who brought survey research design to the USA, to the Princeton Radio Research Project to be more precise. And... and one of Lazarsfeld's students (other than Coleman) was Barney Glaser (a founder of "grounded theory" -- an evolution of phenomenology). Here's the old home of the Frankfurt Institute. Method and theory are two different things. Lazarsfeld was the two-step flow guy who made "narcotizing dysfunction" of media consumption famous. Coleman followed his and Merton's examples. Coleman invented the notion of "social capital" and imported "rational choice" theory from econ into soc (I think that's hilarious... rational, really??? have you seen how many spend their money and vote???). Coleman had convinced Washington that desegregational "busing" was the way to go. Then five years later changed his mind after it turned bad. Coleman coined the term "White flight" to describe the subsequent collapse of inner-city schools as the tax base ran for the suburbs. Oops. He was not popular for this grand flipflop. "Science" in action. Social engineering is a dangerous sport. Funny to me how whenever we have to make decisions concerning "real world" issues like hiring (must interview folks face-to-face to get the sense of them), and admitting graduate students for scarce positions, it is the "quant" people who argue most vociferously that testing instruments not only do not predict future educational success but may even mislead us (sorta like the research that convinced policy-makers to launch busing). Maybe, deep down, they know something??? In the real world, shipping kids across town is a very complicated deal. Well, we can't even predict how a raindrop will run down a window or the motion of three bodies in Newtonian space. Too many variables. At least it was worth the try. Science (natural philosophy) remains our best shot yet at progress. I'm no cynic.

Anyway, I was broke. I was adrift. The Chair of the department had no money for me, and I could not afford to “hang on” paying Chicago grad tuition for a year until the next cycle. My family could not help. My mother was a high school graduate and housewife. My father had an eighth-grade education and worked for Ohio Edison as a meter reader. So, I called a couple of my professors back at Ohio U for advice. Result, very late in August… I went back to Ohio and they gave me a full ride in Telecommunications. But I was frustrated… I get to Ohio and I start working with the big Uses and Gratifications guy, Dr. James Webster in his audience research lab and also with the Semiotics guy, Dr. Hal Himmelstein. I was trying to decide who to pick as my chair when, within a week of each other, they both announced they were leaving. Webster took off for Northwestern and Himmelstein for Fordham. I had a ton of graduate credits (a Masters in Soc and another in Philosophy). So, while other grad students were taking lots of “out-side” classes, I took an overload of nothing but journalism and telecommunication classes. I'd started out as an undergrad in T-comm and even had a radio show on campus for a while. I already had tons of methods (stats, design, qualitative methods). I finished in 9 months including my comprehensive doctoral exams and my dissertation proposal and left ABD for a fellowship in Taiwan.

Who was my chair? My champion? After Webster and Himmelstein left a brand new Ph.D. person had just been hired who was supposed to be crackerjack. I met with them, told them my interests, and they said, I will chair you but you know way more about this stuff than I do. I said okay. And we mutually agreed that they would stay out of my way. My outside member, David Descutner (later Provost at Ohio U), had the most appreciation for my dissertation topic. There was nothing like it in communication at the time. I traced the problematic of truth from the positivistic structuralists to the post-structuralists to the postmodern deconstructionists and then offered a Gebserian solution to the either/orism of monological positivism versus the absurdity of certain endless relativism. For the curious, I have attached the table of contents (pdf) and Full Text (pdf) of my dissertation.

The major thrust of the thesis was how time generates relativism and how transcending that (if possible) is essential for moral, scientific, and practical truth. I was contending with the rising tide of Derridean, postmodern nonsense (literally), and the threat it poses to common and enduring sense. I also posited visiocentrism against Derrida's notion of phonocentrism. We believe our eyes more than our ears and so I wrote about "deep fakes" before they were called that back in the 1990's and my concern for visual disinformation on a mass scale. In the 1980s, we as a society were not yet confronting (in a robust fashion) what has come to be called the “post-truth” worldview ushered in by corrupt leaders. Not liars or gas-lighters, per se, for lying presumes a truth, but instead an endless diffusion of self-serving mediated political fantasy that we are now dealing with in very practical terms. Without any referent, a "deep fake" and the "real thing" become identical -- of equal metaphysical value. If you can't tell the difference, that's bad. But what is worse is if you don't believe there is a difference and you give up trying to establish the truth. What's left? Might and charisma make right. I'm not a nihilist. In 1988, I sent the full manuscript to Brenda Dervin at Ohio State. She had a book series with Ablex. She kept it for months, then rejected it because it was too long and expensive to publish. It was a two-volume dissertation. I understand. A few years later she and some friends had an edited collection covering the same material but with no solution as I had tried to formulate. That collection was seen as a "breakthrough." So it goes. I later published part of my dissertation as my book Modern/Postmodern: Off the Beaten Path of Antimodernism. I was lucky to have had professors in soc and philosophy who put me just one degree away from great Twentieth-century minds such as Heidegger (yes I know about the Nazi Party stuff but still he had a huge influence), Husserl, Lazarsfeld, Merton, Fromm, Carnap, Quine, Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Parsons, Gebser, Jung, Lewin, Merleau-Ponty... I at least understood what was at stake and the difficulty of the problematic. I loved the debate between Dilthey and Husserl. Very honest and to the core problem of relativism. This proximity via personal storytelling inspired me to study hard. I finished everything but the dissertation, left, wrote in abstentia, went back to defend, and moved to the U of Oklahoma to teach. Been here since 1990. I have seen many people come and go and many things happen. Now, my wife, Elaine Hsieh, Ph.D., J.D., is going to move to the University of Minnesota to be the Chair of their Department of Communication Studies. I am going to retire from the U of Oklahoma and move with her there to teach as a joint appointment in Journalism and Communication Studies in 2022/23. In many ways, I am going home to journalism/mass com where I started. Because of my graduate work in Sociology, Philosophy, and Telecommunications, my first Chair at Oklahoma described me as a "utility infielder." I am “rangy.” But from the beginning, I always saw interconnections and recipocal influences across the social sciences, literature, history, and philosophy. First semester at Oklahoma, Fall 1990, Dr. Bob Norton assigned my first graduate seminar. It was Media Literacy. I had over 30 students in there. The room was packed. One of them was Dale Brashers who later became my wife's doctoral dissertation chair at the University of Illinois. He moved from Oklahoma with his chair, Dr. Sally Jackson, and finished at U of Arizona. Small world!!! I also teach at the graduate level Communication and Technology, International Communication, The Media at War (miss the old "Murrow Boys"), Intercultural, Storytelling in Everyday Life, Phenomenology and Hermeneutics, Semiotics, and a few other things. Since moving to Oklahoma, I have also always taught the doctoral capstone class, History and Issues in Communication Theory. I was actually hired to teach that specifically. The old prof I was to replace who had retired, Dr. Bill Carmack, accompanied by Dr. Dan Nimmo, quizzed me pretty rigorously about how I would teach that class during my interview. I guess I passed that audition some 32 years ago. It's been my honor and pleasure. How’s that for a thumbnail bio? When people announce to me that they are a “quantitoid” or a “qualitative person,” usually followed by an awkward giggle, it sounds silly, like identity politics to me. Not science. We need every tool in the toolbox. You don’t have to take every drop of my blood to tell me I have measles. A sample will do, thank you. And you can’t learn about a culture with a few surveys. Social science has solved precious few social problems if any. There is much to be done. None of us is “great.”

We Are Already at Sea

Have you heard of Alonso Quixano? No? He performed magic upon himself and renamed himself. Perhaps you know his “real” name. It seems that Don Quixote is a man of flimsy delusion. We are on thin ice. Convictions made of smoke and shadows. Why do we call prisoners, convicts? Are we all “convicted?” Just wondering. I’m sure a treatise is out there about it.

“It” always starts with a question. The presumption that there must be an answer, is the first mistake. But it’s okay. We secretly want the discussion to continue. Otherwise, it’s all over. Now I have known experts on “the Quixote,” as they call it. But, so what? Let’s play around a little. What if, Don Quixote was the sane one, playing the wandering knight-errant so his dear friend Sancho could fulfill his dreams of being more than a servant? Perhaps, Don Quixote allowed, enabled Sancho to be “the man” of reason, to be the one looking at the world and shrugging his shoulders in common cause. Sancho was the confederate with both the sane and the insane. The knowing conspirator without a side. Wisdom. The onlookers looked to Sancho for verification that they were not the crazy ones, that it was his poor deluded friend who was “deficient.” Sancho’s great deed? To assure us all that life, is harmless. Deviance is not to be feared or sympathized with. It just is. And that’s okay. In fact, it can sell many books, inspire many works of art… even an essay by a mediocre professor from Oklahoma. And Sancho was well cast. He was up to the role, the role Don Quixote offered. The role of the grounded. Sancho assured all, both Don Quixote and the villagers, so that all could abide (like the mentor of the Dude in The Big Lebowski -- Sancho is the cowboy at the bowling alley). Sancho got to be the conduit of morality and sense. Elevated, he was the “adult in the room.” The “manager” of chaotic impulse. The “higher faculty.” The one with complete understanding of both his addled friend and of the onlookers -- the witnesses. Sancho was the transcendent one, but not a judge, not a witness. He was a friend. It seems so simple. So small. Yet… He under-stood all perspectives at once. Don Quixote knew that he, himself, was no grand gentle man -- or was he? Perhaps Don Quixote’s sacrifice enabled Sancho to rise to the august “position” beyond the classical “rational narrator,” to a very special status, an ambiguous place of friendship as a contradiction, a subjective object, an objective subject – a participant observer. To be close and far at once. Spectacle and spectator at the same time. A confidant to all. But with special devotion to Don Quixote who enabled everything. To be magical. Caring. To be included in the madness but without sin.

What a gift. What love. Don Quixote would humiliate himself for the sake of Sancho’s needs. He set up all the jokes for Sancho to hit out of the park. Now that, is true sacrifice. In this way Don Quixote could, “in reality,” be chivalrous, sure, to Dulcinea and others, but especially to Sancho. Sancho’s devotion had to be rewarded somehow. That was the noble thing to do. Was it pandering? We all pander to each other. Indulge each other. It is, the noble thing to do. This charity is so important that the Church of Rome named their tickets to heaven, Indulgences. We know the truth… that people exaggerate, lie, brag, the truth about untruth and forgiveness. Tweaked “selfies.” We give each other “room” to express. Let each other have our dreams because they are as real as anything else. “In fact,” they are the fertile soil of aspiration. The entire past and future are little more. To do otherwise is to be Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Cruelty in the name of rectification; “the cure.” So be a good knight and let me ride along with you because I need to believe. You may feel this is a waste of time, a humiliation. Endure it just for its “own sake.” “Off” we go, “off,” of “the” point, moving from point to point to… And we are “off”… When there is no circumference, no enclosure, there is no center. We are always already off.

Cervantes wrote a book about how books will dry up your brain. Hmm. The word, but not the “thing,” “book” first appears in English in the 12th century, right when humanism and light were beginning to flicker back to life. The word “book” is derived from the Old English bōc, related to the Old German buoh, Goth Boka (letter). The word “letter” means a, b, c and also a note to another. Tome is another word for book but it’s “heavy” feeling, like tomb. Well, this river of words is easy to escape. So, play around. “Skip” across it like a stone. Make a cannonball splash. Switch to Facebook. Come back… or not. You got this far. Salutations to you, whoever you are.

I believe none of “this” is real, unless it is shared. Was the ghost there? Did the dog see it? Nope. Then it was just my eyes tricking me. Community is vital. Be very very wary of anyone who promotes the destruction of community, especially if they advocate that because it is “ethnic.” That’s some bad shit. My father fought in a war against "ethnic cleansers." As a Marine in the South Pacific, to be specific. Everyone said the war changed him. He didn't see much humor in things anymore. He taught, not self-defense, but how to kill, as he put it. He also shot "expert" in the Marines. A rare feat. After his experience with insane carnage he didn't see war as "glorious," or killing as fun at all. No hunting for him. Here is a clip from my hometown daily newspaper, The Marion Star (like so many other small town newspapers, now defunct as anything other than a weekly ad sheet), of my dad with one of his adopted greyhounds. He liked dogs much more than people. I understand. He said even "good" people are liars but even "bad" dogs always tell the truth. He died in 1998 at age 77 a couple years after my mother, Helen, passed. After my mom died he was lonely. He didn't do much. He just waited his turn. Here's Preston when he was little visiting Marion, Ohio with two of Dad's adopted greyhounds, Max and Lady. The boys had a ball with them. Beautiful and gentle dogs.

I know from fishing at night a lot as a kid, there’s always more light than you think. Even when people try hard to block it all, they can’t. Your eyes will adjust and you’ll see. There’s a lot going on below the surface… especially at night. I think that is part of what Moby Dick was about. By the way, this is how Sperm Whales sleep… vertically. And honeybees sometimes sleep in flowers and hug each other. Thank you Arlyn (Anderson), for teaching me this about honeybees. Wonderful.

The universe is dark until our awareness, like a flashlight, happens upon and illuminates it. Imagine a single flashlight groping along the dark bottom of the vast ocean. It has a tiny cone and is more precious for it. It’s not “knowledge” until it is shared. Share the light. Sharing is fun. Leave the light on for me, even if you denounce me. The condemned, the convicted, need a little light. This “quandary” we call life, is never hopeless. Rather it is the home of hope. Often it is joyous. Why do we use the word content to mean substance and to be satisfied? Maybe it has to do with gratitude and achieving happiness? And if we say life is content-ious, how does that square with being content? Converse and be glad. Don’t strive for “equilibrium.” Strive to connect and be stirred -- meaning aroused, inspired, and provoked all at once. We know the universe is there and that we are here because when we push, it pushes back (“with equal and opposite force”). So enjoy the difference of others. We need each other. Later, there is plenty of time for no more words. Because you are reading this, that proves that your flashlight is still working.

As Merleau-Ponty pointed out in his phenomenology of knowledge, though it is denied by primitive empiricism, the invisible is presumed by the visible, the unknown by the known. Don’t fear the unknown because that is the field where discoveries are made. And don’t be fooled by what you know or think you know. That’s just the starting point for the adventure.

OVERTURE 2: Wait. Can Kramer Do This? Two Before One and Two Overtures?

“Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.” – W. E. B. Dubois

The same has been said of fear. At least ignorance can be blissful. Fear never is. But defeating these dismal twin brothers are keys to freedom. The guru promises easy solutions that turn into a prison… the old saying you can give me a fish and I eat for one day, or you can teach me how to catch them and I can live a lifetime. Learning to fish is harder, but in the long run… A successful education means, you don’t need the teacher anymore. Beware those who claim to “help,” to be able to make muscles for you. Not true. You have to go to the gym yourself. That’s how you become stronger, not weaker. Quitting is a luxury that produces nothing. It is a sagging back into familiar confines. The modern, anxious world loves quick solutions. Then what? All done. Fatalism. The root of the word routine is route from rut, a narrow path worn by monotonous behavior, the opposite of the improbable. Trapped people then waste their lives longing for something else, a “next move,” that they are not prepared for. But they can become very automatic at what they have done. That is why they may verge on wearing a habit to symbolize the unwrapped potential that withered without sunshine.

"The darker the night, the brighter the stars"  -- Dostoevsky

X and Y constitute two-dimensional flat thinking we’ve inherited from the old Bishop of Orseme. The patterns we see are a combination of us and the universe. You are one of the points. Like the old duality of nature versus nurture that no one follows anymore, patterns are neither objective nor subjective. Reality is a combination of both. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, art, and Gestalt theory proved that long ago. But some are still stuck in dualistic metaphysics. We hurtle along looking out into the universe from a little bit of rock. Sublime. Lucky. Very, very lucky. Void. darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Genesis 1: 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1: 1. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. Genesis 1: 3. God separated the light from the darkness. Genesis 1: 4. The Word became flesh. John 1: 14. But before you jump to conclusions about me, I think this about “postcreation” is very true too: “In woman's womb word is made flesh” (Joyce). Structure creates meaning. Making waves. Waveforms. Rising and falling like breathing and heart beats. Light waves. Brain waves. Cosmic waves. Electro-magnetic waves. Gravity waves. Sound waves. We are waves. Make some. Create. Dance, and make some music. Don’t be afraid. You don’t have much time. So en-joy.

There are many recollections in here and collections. I do believe we are in precarious times. Doesn’t every generation? But we really are living through a mass extinction the likes of which has not visited the planet for many millions of years, certainly long before any of our ancestors walked. So, I have to disagree a little with Flaubert when he says, “Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.” My times, at this writing, are different. Deserving of some slander. Genetic engineering, nuclear weapons, global warming… This is not “your grandfather’s problems.” Proust may be correct when he says, “Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.” But our historians are the best there have ever been.

Everybody knows that Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It's not even past.” But did they read on? He continues, “All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose providence dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations. The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.” We inherit our ancestors’ successes and mistakes. Hegel says, “To be aware of limitations is already to be beyond them.” But can’t you be aware of limitations and not be able to get to the “other side?” I think death is a good example. Some limits are simply… limits.

In The Sunset Limited, Cormac McCarthy writes something that I think has happened to me. “I got what I needed instead of what I wanted and that's just about the best kind of luck you can have.” Maybe. I’d like to have had smarter ancestors who had cared more about our world. But they did give us some sense and, still, we can turn towards the light.

“Don't be humble... you're not that great.” -- Golda Meir

"I rose, In rainy autumn, And walked abroad in a shower of all my days..." Dylan Thomas

Disagreeing is not the same as disrespecting. I hope I have been the kind of person that the longer people know me, the more they like and respect me and not the opposite.

Failures are lessons.

همسات الأمل حاول مرة أخرى (Hope whispers, “Try again.”)

There is so much I don’t know, that it is astounding.

If there is no truth, then there can be no lies. Lies and liars exist. The truth matters.

Eric Mark Kramer, Ph.D. is Presidential Professor of Communication and Affiliate Faculty in the College of International and Area Studies and the Department of Film and Media Studies at the University of Oklahoma. He is Senior Editor of The Oxford University Research Encyclopedia on Communication, International and Global Communication, Associate Editor of the Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, and a founding Director of the EU Institute for Studies in Comparative Civilizations. Kramer was a Fulbright Scholar for one year to Saint Kliment Ohridski Sofia University, Sofia Bulgaria. Professor Kramer has authored and edited 12 books in English, Chinese, and Japanese. He has been funded by the United States Agency for International Development.

Professor Kramer can step over small obstacles in a single bound and can sometimes open doors properly and not too tight jars. His bravery is renown. He can even admit he likes rom-coms like the masterpiece Amélie, and movies by Disney-Pixar (WALL-E, Up, Incredibles, Toy Story, Monsters, Inc.…), DreamWorks (Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon, Madagascar (especially the penguins)…), and Illumination (Despicable Me, Secret Life of Pets…). Rumors are true. He sometimes cries during movies. His favorite line from a movie? “Earn this” from the end of Saving Private Ryan.

Professsor Kramer taught for a year at Feng Chia University in Taichung Taiwan. Additionally, he has guest lectured at International Christian University in Tokyo, National University Shizuoka, Ritsumeikan University Kyoto, Vilnius University Lithuania, National Normal University Taiwan, Vilniaus Gedimino Technikos Universitetas Lithuania, Universidad Rafael Landivar, Guatemala City. For those who don’t know, lecturing is different from “teaching.” Teaching involves doing every lecture and grading, office hours… the whole nine yards. He has studied at the University of Veracruz in Xalapa Mexico, and at the Collegium Phaenomenologicum Perugia, Italy.

For more than three decades (1990-present), and in addition to his normal on-campus teaching and research, Professor Kramer has taught graduate courses around the world for the University of Oklahoma's Advanced Programs in Heidelberg, Stuttgart, Geilenkirchen, Ramstein, and Weisbaden Germany, Heerlen the Netherlands, Aviano Italy, Mildenhall and Lakenheath England, Washington, D. C., San Diego, and Hickam Field and Pearl Harbor Hawaii. He has very much enjoyed those students, most of whom are officers and diplomats with broad experience and undergraduate degrees from outstanding universities including the various United States military academies.

Proportion. Don’t let one bad fight change all memories and everything else.

Proportion: Each day that passes makes each day left a larger proportion of my remaining life until the last day will be one hundred percent of my future, then… the last hour… minute. So, each day left, each year, takes on more significance as time passes. It’s not about where you’re from but where you are and where you are going.

CATCHING THE WIND, GETTING THE DRIFT

Hit the Road Jack (Kerouac?). Explore. Test. Risk. Who inspires you? What sounds vibrate within your spirit? Sunny winds have crossed a thousand miles to fill your sails. “The strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to be sung… A blade of grass is the journeywork of the stars.” --  Whitman.

There’s an old saying, “What Peter says about Paul, tells me more about Peter than it does Paul.” Okay, so, what I say about myself tells you more about myself than about myself..??! Oh my. Right off the bat, we’re playing. Reflexivity is a wily one. Hard to get in the bag. This is Bertrand Russell’s problem of set theory all over again… Gödel got it. In short – in a very short, short -- no theorem is complete because, in self-consistent and recursive axiomatic systems, there can be true propositions that cannot be proved from the axioms. Furthermore, axioms cannot prove or disprove themselves (which vexed Husserl, so he invented a new method, phenomenology). Ironically, consistency does turn out to vex the strongest minds while, it remains the “support animal,” the teddy bear of comfort for “little minds.” The teddy bears are “hobgoblins” only to those trying to live a life of meaning. As Emerson said, “With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.” Indeed. A totally predictable world would be meaningless.

OVERTURE 1: One After Two! Blasphemer. I Talk About Playing Music Upside Down Too

Messing With Structures: Unintended Usage

"About me," is not tidy or systematic. It is less a mirror than random flotsam on the tide. A “bricolage” as literary types like to say. Common denominator? Me. Yes but “me” is not fixed or perfectly clear, even, maybe especially, to me. I am the epitome, the epi (transcendental) tome (the big book), the tale of tales. Okay you are thinking, "what an ego!" Well, if you are a "postmodern" then you insist on the inescapable fact of perspectivism -- egocentrism. Everyone has their point-of-view. Relativism. This is precisely what the champion of positivism, Husserl tried to defeat with his transcendental method (read Logical Investigations). Stats folks do it by shmushing all the differences together into an average. Clipping off all the outliers as unimportant, insignificant. There go all the great artists and scientists (deviants). Why? Because they don't matter for our interests. Wait. What? Social science has such a profound bias -- prejudice? Then after the outliers are removed we compare populations as derivative averages. Such dedication to the average man, Das man! This paradigm comes straight out of mass mediated propaganda and mass consumer marketing. It has an "interest," a way of regarding humanity. Not saying it is evil or anything bad. Just saying it is not disinterestedly objective. It has a goal. It has a structural bias that its practioners try to elevate to "the truth, the one and only." To generalize select properties and coorelate them to outcomes of interest. The lowest common denominator. The track coach measures how fast you run. Not how big your thumbs are. Not interested in the latter. What you choose to measure tells me as much about you as your subjects. Ironically, Ph.D. stats social scientists are outliers. Gotta go.

Anyway, when I put the issue of relativism/egoism to Derrida (in person) I asked him how does deconstruction differ from good old fashioned liberal pluralism. He said it doesn't except deconstruction is an overt effort to de-center priviledged narratives. Okay. So I responded, what liberal pluralism fosters is random emergence and diffusion of differences -- free speech (mutations, spurs, more dynamic than a farmer grafting for a purpose). But what he (Derrida) calls for is the "encouragement" of differencing in the interest of a transcending agenda (a specific culture less free than old fashioned liberal democracy). Forced diversity, like a farmer grafting a tree to expand his product line? He didn't like that reasoning about his re-invented training wheels. Words can bite back. Point is, for good or ill, relativism is based in modern ego-hypertrophy. More ancient, collectivistic communities don't see differencing with the same positive judgment as "postmodern," hyper-moderns. What do you think?

Okay, so back at the ranch: It was the first great modern thinker, Aristotle (Socrates was still part of oral culture and Plato's writings were of dialogues), who, while sailing to Egypt to visit his student Alexander, realized; 1) the Earth is a sphere and therefore, 2) the ocean under him was curving down and away from him in all directions toward and beyond a circular horizon. He was the center of his perception. So, yeah, this is my story told by me. I'd still like to hear your stories. Stories are what we humans do.

You can, and will judge me by my judgments.

Let’s take a peek backstage. What you see tells us as much about you as what you are looking at. Same for me too. I may never arrive in these words. As James Joyce said, we have plenty of words, the challenge is how to put them in order in sentences. Don’t expect a lot of wisdom or suggestions about anything in here -- except pace yourself. It’s okay to linger. But generally, I agree with Saul Bellow when he said, “When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.” I don’t want the liability. Like the tiny lettering at the bottom of TV ads, this is not FDA approved. Just drifting, trying to get before opposites, as unreal as a waveless sea. Ulysses was lost. Yet he gained fame as “the” nobody. I’m just a nobody. I think, we gather “baggage” along the way, until it becomes so heavy we finally let it go and disappear. Maybe we were always already home. But I am not lost. Can you pick out who’s the physician, who’s the executive, who’s the engineer, who’s the professor? Left to right; Aunt Candy, my sister, Ventrice the poker-playing executive, Preston the physician, Alex the executive engineer, and Elaine the professor and lawyer. This has become our Christmas tradition. Alex and Ventrice either mail or carry the best corned beef with sauerkraut sandwich makings available in all of New York City to Norman. Even the mustard is custom. Lucky, lucky me! Now for a story or two, just to pass the time, while we drift along on the currents of our current times. We can’t escape the now but everything we need is here. A story with many stories.

Play Past Dark

Here I am at my paternal grandparents’ house in Mount Healthy, Ohio (a suburb of Cincinnati) around 1962. It might have been North College Hill. Neighboring neighborhoods. Check out the full counsel solid wooden cabinet radio behind me. All tubes. They still used it. The dial lit up as I recall. We’d listen to the Red’s games on it. I always played past dark. In the gradual fade of twilight when we kids had to face the reality of going home, I’d often be the last to let go of the moment, turn away back into the domain of the big structures. I still am. Winter in northern Ohio (Marion) was the worst. It seemed like the sun went down at 4 PM. I hate to surrender to the clock. Wearing the machine, the wristwatch is the handcuff or our times. Even superheroes take breaks -- go “off the clock.” Speaking of superheroes… The superist of superheroes’ species chose wisely to name their planet after me. I’m still waiting to have a unit of measure named after me, but for now, this will due. If you look at the abbreviation of my name Kramer it is Kr. It is not a coincidence that within the scientific community, it also stands for the home planet of Superman. You will find me on the periodic table. I am a “noble gas.” No worries. Noble gases are odorless. That’s what noble means, in part.

"The past is a foreign country…" -- L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between

Here's an article written back in 1997, about me in "Weekly Friday," a Tokyo-based magazine run by journalists for social justice. They focused on the plight of immigrants and migrant workers in Japan, economic struggles of young people, and other issues. The publication is still going strong. One of my first doctoral students in intercultural communication who later became an award-winning author, Dean at the International Christian University in Tokyo, and President of the Japan Communication Association, Dr. Richiko Ikeda, was an expert consultant for the first sexual harassment case to make it to Japan's Supreme Court (she later accompanied Anita Hill on her visit to Japan and interpreted for Hill with the mass media and at her conferences). A landmark case. Richiko knew some of the journalists at "Weekly Friday" and they interviewed me for this little piece. Later Richiko and I published a textbook together on intercultural communication in Japanese and other works including an article on the Enola Gay and the controversy surrounding the openning of its exhibit at the US National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.

How to Read (This)

Reading is so amazing that it has been considered a magical power. Old story from ancient Greece: A master’s figs are in season. He picks ten very nice ones and gives them to his illiterate servant to take to a friend. He includes a little note telling his friend that he hopes he will enjoy them. It is only ten for now but as the harvest commences more will follow. The servant takes the note and figs and heads off. Along the way he gets hungry. He stops, ponders and decides his master’s friend won’t know if he takes one or two. He then goes on and delivers the figs. The friend opens the package reads the note, counts the figs, and writes a reply note, gives it to the servant (who cannot read) and instructs him to take the note back to his master. The servant goes home, his master reads the note that thanks him for the figs and tells him it was two figs short and that he might have a word with his servant. The master confronts the servant in anger saying that he had embarrassed him. The servant does not deny what he did. He watches the master gather ten more figs and write another note to his friend. Unbeknownst to the servant the new note is an apology for the thieving servant’s behavior and to please accept ten more figs as his gift. The master sends the servant off. The servant gets hungry again and is also a bit grumpy about being betrayed by the little note. He stops but this time he takes the note and puts it under a rock so that it cannot see and report what he is about to do. He has two figs. Then he takes the note out from under the rock and continues on his way. As you can imagine, the friend reads the note, counts the figs, writes another note telling the master that his servant has stolen again. The servant goes home where he is furiously scolded. Drat! Foiled by the magic notes! Here’s a Native American Conjuror from the 1500s.

Word. The history of the English word, “word” is that it derives from Latin verbum, Greek eirein, from Hittite weriya- to call, name. A word is a sound or image. How do we recognize that a sound is not a word? Some are clicks and whistles, tonal, nasal, guttural… Is a hiss a word? If someone clucks in disapproval, we know what it means… is that a word? What about a laugh? Some say that the earliest human language copied bird calls. A word is the smallest sequence of phonemes that can be uttered in isolation conveying an objective or practical meaning. If the language is written it can also be a sequence of graphemes or “letters” in a writing system. For instance, Chinese. Chinese is old. Perhaps the oldest continually used language in human history. It is very pictographic. That means the words look like the things they name. Alphabets do not. Also in Chinese, the sounds, the phonemes matter. Much more than English, it is a tonal language and wordplay is very complex in Chinese. If two words sound alike, the Chinese folks allow the semantic sense to spread and associate. My wife saw a billboard in Oklahoma advertising a law firm. The phone number was prominently displayed: 444-4444. She said, “Well they must not care about Chinese business.” The Chinese word for four (四) sounds like tzai or sì. So does the word death (死). Two totally different words with totally different meanings but because they sound almost identical the meaning bleeds over from one to the other. That’s idolic communication. It is not totally arbitrary. Whatever death touches it contaminates it. Poor number four. Didn’t have a chance. Because they sound alike (homophonous), the number four in Chinese is not a good number. Don’t call that law firm! You’ll lose everything. Chinese high-rises don’t have a fourth floor. The Japanese company Cannon made the G3 camera and then introduced the G5, skipping 4.

In the US we have unlucky 13 but nothing else really sounds like it. Some don’t like the number on an airplane and such. But we are not as sensitive to phonemes as the Chinese. We tend to make fun of thirteen and say we’ve got “lucky 13.” Chinese are not playing. They mean it. Four is not to be trifled with. We English speakers say all sorts of stuff not fearing that uttering the word will literally evoke and/or invoke the thing. But in many cultures, there are words not to be spoken lest you magically conjure the evil being. Can you say “Voldemort?” Rowling made up the word including mort, which of course means death. His followers are the “Death Eaters.” They fight the Order of the Phoenix whose leader is Harry’s father-figure Albus Dumbledore, who of course dies. The phoenix rises from death (resurrection). Nothing new here. Rowling borrowed from old mythology (the grand shining stag… spiders… snakes). That’s why it was so popular. The symbolism already saturates our culture. She just called it forth. Same with Star Wars. Lucas was working with Joseph Campbell, the great expert on mythology at “Skywalker Ranch” when finishing up the original script. Retread stuff. Safe. Bankable. Already in our heads.

What’s a Story?

The story of story. “Story” -- the word comes from the old French estoire from the Latin historia from the Greek historia, istor, meaning knowing learning, learned, akin to the Greek eidenai, to know, idein to see. Related to Wit, to know, wise, intelligence, witan, one who knows or sees. Wit-craft. If you tell stories, you’re a wi[t]zard, (wicca) (Harry Potter). We charm each other with enchanting tales. The more powerful (magh – a Persian root to modern words, magic, might, make…), the more mesmerizing. Some tales even change our lives, inspire us, repel us, teach us, change us, cause us to think. Tools for storytelling. A porch. Glider, swing, rocking chair… people. But alas. We have invented such great globe-spanning communications networks that we feel more alone than ever. It may be that we are trying so hard because we know, intuitively, something is wrong.

The oldest "writings" are divinatory inscriptions. A famous example is the 3000+ year old oracle bone logograms that mark the origins of what would later be known as Chinese, and Egyptian hieroglyphs from over 5000 years ago. To write is to do magic. And speaking is spellcasting. We all conjure the imaginations of those who listen. And as we listen, we suspend disbelief and welcome the spell. Even as I doubt what you say or disagree, I hear you and divine intent. The spelling of language is important. My elementary grades depended on doing well on my spelling tests. We dream while awake and then turn inward again after the story is over. But traces remain. The images linger. However… when I watch people watching a play or TV or listening to a tale, I think, maybe, the “inside” and the “outside” are allowed to merge as our emotions come to the surface and mingle with the story for awhile. We open up and reach out as we let things in. We suspend our critical attitude and just enjoy the tale.

Greatness?

I don’t think you have to be a “great” soul to be bored to death by redundancy. Ever work on an assembly line? I have. It can be soul crushing. That’s why we don’t stay home on vacation. We go somewhere different. Like big holes in the ground and walk around them on dirt paths (i.e., the Grand Canyon), and it’s so great… because… it’s so different from one’s pedestrian life. This is why people who confuse “adaptation” with conformity are dangerous because they are claiming that redundancy is good while deviance is bad. It’s a value judgment without merit. And it claims that “progress” is regress toward, not just the mean, but literally the “mainstream” “majority.” But what if the majority doesn’t like you, so if you conform to their values you have to hate yourself. And what if you can’t change (even if you want to, to fit in)? Ever hear of racism? And if you question such claims, the folks who make them, will try to silence you, right after telling you all about their fantastic trip to… you guessed it, the Grand Canyon. They love getting away from it all, away from the crowds. But that’s not mainstream majority? Maybe they’d enjoy the Grand Canyon more if everybody went there and overran the place. They also very much enjoy being different (recognizable). Why do I say recognizable? Because you can’t have an identity or meaning without difference. If everyone were identical, no one would have any identifying features. Identity (“social identity theory” and all that looking-glass, significant Other stuff from Mead and Cooley and presenting the self in “everyday life” on down) has long been understood as depending on difference. Long ago… try going back to Nicholas of Cusa… or Plato even. Difference is identity, even between I and me… a difference that can lead to all sorts of dissonance, cognitive, social, and emotional. Difference is not always fun. And that’s the mistake homogenizers make. They think making everyone the same will avoid unpleasant experiences. Nope. That’s part of life. In fact, without pain you can’t know bliss. The road to hell is paved with…

The Definition of the Word, Definition

The definition of definition is the ability to discern two adjacent objects as in fact, separate, unique, different. This is also the case with the ability to separate categories and meanings. This is the essence of awareness and knowledge -- consciousness. Parsing words and things helps us understand with ever-higher "definition." Refinement, precision, is... fragmentation. If you cannot tell me what something is (categorically), which implies how it is different from other things, then I conclude that you don't know what it is. This is important and why we keep building better and better ways to see, to visualize things. If you think the tiger in the grass is the grass... you're dead. If you look at a satellite image and conclude that you saw a funky shaped dock, you may have failed to see that it was actually a dock with a nuclear submarine moored to it. Big mistake. This is part of my theory of visiocentrism which breaks with Derrida's phonocentrism. We believe only half of what we hear and most of what we see. But this makes us even more vulnerable to visual "deep fakes," an issue I raised back in 1992 in a White Paper to the Pentagon, before the phrase, "deep fakes" existed. Counterfeits of various kinds are lies and can confuse and cause harm. Garbage lies do exist, because truth exists. Perfumers can smell the difference between the real thing and a cheap fake. Disinformation is very problematic to survival. Some dogs can smell cancer! I wonder what it smells like? Beyond this, the universe is for synesthetes because it's all waves and so we now have telescopes that listen for radio waves as well as gather light. We need all the methods we can get to build our picture of the universe, to "know" it. And to know, is to be able to define, to recognize and be aware of differences. The more subtle, the more acuity. Good news everybody. Farnsworth (the inventer, or one of them, of the first workable electronic television system -- for real), has given us the Smell-O-Scope which expands our consciousnesses. Sniff. Hmmm. That planet is in the constellation of Cancer... Why would you name a constellation Cancer??? Maybe it smells like crabs? Or "69," the quant version of yinyang? The patterns we see tell us as much about ourselves as what's "out there."

In short, being different is why you exist. Why you have a meaningful identity and even position in space and time. They say god made time, so everything didn’t happen all at once. We could add that god made space so everything didn’t happen in the same place. The whole universe is one gigantic, omni-directional, aperspectival implication. Position, is difference. Okay. As a result, we have different moments, days, years, discrete events and memories -- an eventful, meaningful, life. Hitler’s dream of a homogeneous global population of identical Aryans would have made being an Aryan meaningless. Well, Adolf was not very smart. Absurd. Wait Kramer, Hitler was a genius who rebuilt Germany! How? Answer: He defrauded the German people by selling them down payments to reserve a little car Porsche was to make. Hitler promised hundreds of thousands of Germans, mostly Party members, that they could all have a car. But no Volkswagen Type 1 "Beetles" were ever deliverd by the Nazi regime. The money was instead diverted to the Party. And once aggression started in Spain, of course weapons and not cars had to be made. Conquest plunder provided the rest, along with some banks. Not a sustainable economic plan. By the way, Hitler's astrological sign was Taurus. Thought I smelled bullshit. Here’s a picture of the great eliminator of deviance, the great “purifier” in his middle school (age 14) picture with a classmate… Ludwig Wittgenstein! Hitler is circled on the right. What a middle school class that was. They were very different despite coming from the same place and time. You can’t avoid divergence. It’s the essence of evolution (change/difference). Ludwig was a lot smarter. They attended the same state school in Linz Austria from 1903 to 1904. Hitler repeated a year while Wittgenstein was advanced a year.

These two were outliers. I talk about others throughout this tome. Being an outlier is a statistical thing. It can be “good” or “bad.” What was that teacher teaching?! He looks tired. Maybe if they had had girls in the school that might of helped. Who knows.

Any change, including what might be called progress, is deviance from the status quo – not conformity there to. And identity and difference are inextricable. But back to small minds mesmerized by consistency.

Thankfully, and as Goethe insisted, we are left with curious propositions that are what others would later call “undecidable.” Well, not really. They are not determined by logical necessity and therefore we do have to decide. But this unfortunate use of words, underscores the problem of the “linguistic turn,” of using language in a sloppy way -- of having to use language at all. But Wittgenstein (among others) argued that without language, there is no thinking. Indeed he said that the limits of language are the limits of the world. But I disagree. Often I’ve sat at a keyboard knowing what I mean to say but can’t think of the word or words for “it.” Nietzsche is right. What we say is but the very tip of our inner world that remains unsaid but fundamental to life. I don’t concede the prison-house of language argument.

Being indeterminate is not the same thing as having to make a decision without logical necessity. Logical necessity means there is nothing to decide. But I digress a little (not much, but a little). Even systems of axioms (formal systems), cannot prove themselves, let alone the world we play in. Here are some of the limits of language and logic. “All redheads are liars. I’m a redhead." So, if I make this proposition, then I am lying, and telling the truth – at the same time! If I am lying, then I am telling the truth, and if I am telling the truth, I am lying. Auh… What? Exactly. At some point you have to move on. That’s called living. Why is there something instead of nothing? Maybe somehow, someway, you’ll get to meet the creator, if one exists, and ask why? Give me some reasons. But as it is, it just is.

Bopping Along

Thanks to the invention of comparative linguistics by Franz Bopp, who traced the conjugational systems of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Persian, and Germanic languages, we now know that all modern Indo-European languages descended from a single tongue called Proto-Indo-European, or PIE. It was spoken by a people who lived from roughly 4500 to 2500 B.C., and left no written texts. So no text, then how do linguists know about it? They have found common words in many different “daughter” languages that point back to a single common “mother” language. Over time the daughters have diverged but within them still are bits of the original from which they all sprang. You and I regularly use words such as ma (mother), that are 7,000+ years old. Appreciate that. So what did PIE sound like? In 1868, German linguist August Schleicher used reconstructed Proto-Indo-European vocabulary to create a fable just so we could hear some approximation of how the original PIE language sounded. He called it “The Sheep and the Horses.” Today it is commonly known as Schleicher’s Fable. It tells the story of a shorn sheep who encounters a group of unpleasant horses. You can hear it here online. Sheep And Horses by Archaeology (soundcloud.com). The modern English translation is this: A sheep that had no wool saw horses, one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load, and one carrying a man quickly. The sheep said to the horses: "My heart pains me, seeing a man driving horses." The horses said: "Listen, sheep, our hearts pain us when we see this: a man, the master, makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no wool." Having heard this, the sheep fled into the plain.

Of course, we have cave paintings reaching far far back more than 40,000 years ago. Long before the end of the Ice Ages. Those were magical figurative works by magical people that did not so much represent things as manifest their being on the walls. The painting was the animal. In a magic mentality, if you touch the “picture” you literally touch the beast. Like sticking a pin into a voodoo doll and making the intended target a thousand miles away feel pain, spatial separation did not exist. Now this is all interesting but there is something more.

The oldest known cave painting of any sort is a red hand stencil from Maltravieso Cave, Cáceres, Spain. It is more than 64,000 years old and… It was NOT made by us, presuming that if you are reading this you are a Homo sapiens. It was not by archaic Homo sapiens either. Not our line. It was made by a Neanderthal who diverged from our common line about 750,000 years ago. It may be that Neanderthal taught us symbolic expression including cave painting. There is some evidence that they taught us to put flowers on graves. Now if you want pictures of animals you have to wait another 25,000 years!!!

The oldest known cave painting of an animal dates from 40,000 years ago depicting several human figures hunting pigs in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Magdalenian art, Magdalenian meaning “reindeer hunters,” comes from the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic epochs in Western Europe and it dates from a “recent” time period of just 17,000-12,000 years ago. A shell was discovered that was engraved, again, not by a Homo sapiens but by a Homo erectus, who is the ancestor of Homo heidelbergensis from which Homo sapiens, Neanderthal, and Denisovans derive. Homo erectus was making art from about 500,000 years ago. And a set of eight white-tailed eagle talons dating from 130,000 years ago have been found. They were fashioned by Neanderthals, possibly for use as jewelry.

What about Africa? Isn’t that the source of humanity? The first imaginative manipulation of objects for symbolic purposes thus far known used the human skin as a canvas. Red ochre, iron oxide deposits, were mined and used in Africa beginning more than 200,000 years ago to color the skin and hair and to draw symbols on the body. Body modification including tattooing, scarification, piercing, teeth blackening, foot binding, clitoridectomy, cranial binding (head shaping), branding, skin stretching, neck lengthening… has been practiced around the world for many thousands of years. Cosmetic “plastic” surgery is nothing new. Personally, being a perfect specimen, I’ve never felt the need to modify my body beyond combing my hair and having braces on my teeth.

Imagine going deep into caves with very primitive sources of light and creating massive bison, woolly rhinos, mammoths, horses, people on the walls. Why? What were the cave painters doing? We don’t really know, and I suspect that their psyches were so different from ours, in some ways, that we would struggle to assume their understanding and really live in their world.

The people back then lived when sea levels were much lower because so much water was locked up in glaciers. And because many lived along the coasts, their homes (and caves) are now a hundred feet under water. Today archeologists have to dive to find them. The glaciers melted and we have… the great global flood that in fact wiped out all the coastal communities. Humans had to move inland. All over the world, rivers swelled out of their banks across flood plains. Floods the likes of which have not been seen in 8,000 years. Such a massive calamity must be punishment from the gods! And then there are the hand stinciles. All these hands reaching out for us across millennia. Here we do seem to have an almost immediate connection. Authorities have had to close caves to protect the images, especially the hand stincles because people almost automatically reach up to take the hand on the wall, to touch it. Touch is magic. Sight is much more dissociated. Maybe, the people who did the stencils wanted us to touch them and not just look.

Writings from the Hand of an Illiterate: Me

We find hand stencils from France to Borneo. Something compels us to hold hands. The Internet can’t allow us to do that. Holding hands and touching beasts are not yet stories. This is deeply emotional expression but not a story as such. There is no narrative thread. Now perhaps the shamans told stories in the presence of the great beasts as the flickering flames made them undulate against the cosmic field. Stories, I suspect, went along with the cave paintings. But without writing, they are lost. Too bad. They were probably fascinating.

The word “story” is derived from the Greek historia, the connecting of happenings. The word “history” was rarely used until around 1800. Some even argue that stories do not exist. Just characters and their meanderings. Originally, a story was regarded as the account of past events. Telling of what counts. Now we say “narrative.” Today we call that history while we weave tales of the future such as science fiction. While proto-Chinese and Egyptian were logographic (writing with pictures of the things one wants to convey), Bronze Age Cuneiform evolved into a more abstract logo-syllabic form of writing that dates back to the 31st century BCE. The origin of Cuneiform is in what is called “proto-writing.”

Ancient magic idolic symbols represent nothing. Rather, they present themselves, their power as “hex signs,” for instance. They are irreplaceable like a holy relic that is itself powerful. It does not represent anything. It is itself the actual bone of a saint or piece of the cross. Then comes abstraction. Pictures that represent things… logographs. But they are ambiguous (proto-mythic symbols). Egyptian hieroglyphs of poisonous snakes, if not drawn with a break in the middle, could crawl off the wall and bite someone. A crucifix is not entirely arbitrary. It can be made of wood or gold. It can be large or small enough to wear as a neckless. It can be replaced. You can’t change the shape at will. A circle or triangle or octagon cannot be crucifixes. Yet, it conveys powerful emotion for some. It is however, not the actual cross the Christ was crucified on. It is symbolic. Then with more abstraction comes pictures of sounds. Finally, we come to the modern version of writing which is conceived as arbitrary signs with no inherent meaning or value.

I’ve been told, in most serious seriousness (gravity), that if you don’t read the Qur’an القرآن in Arabic, you have not read the Qur’an. I’ve been told that if you did not read the Old Testament (Tanakh תַּנַ״ךְ, including the Torah תּוֹרָה) in Paleo-Hebrew/Canaanite Phoenician, again, you have not read the book. Same for the New Testament. Sorry folks. It was written in Koine Greek. King James is not the author. So why do we give him possessive status? Royalty takes all the credit, which traditionally meant they got all the royalties. Royalty used to license everything printed as a way to make money and to control content. From ancient Roman times a “Censor” was an official who managed the census and also “public morality.” For instance, Appius Claudius Caecus, was a Roman censor who built the first Roman road, the Appian Way, and aqueduct. But… he was not royalty. Just a censor. A great leader, but you the reader, are probably well versed in what constitutes great leadership and folks like Appius who helped to build the very notions of modernity and linear progress. You can’t lead if you ain’t going somewhere… What’s your vision? In my time I’ve helped to launch three journals (in Japan, Europe, and the US), edit three other established ones, a book series, structure part of the Oxford University Encyclopedia of Communication Studies (a huge, unending project that is continually updated), organized international conferences, and for about 15 years I administered the graduate International and Area Studies Advanced Programs courses for the Department of Communication. Did they amount to anything? Who knows. But, as a mere commoner, no spiritual guru – pronouncer of magic incantations – I did try to build and support opportunities for others -- to be a… road builder. Late in my career I have tried to elevate younger folks through editorial service while backing away from publishing (especially as I see folks stick their name on student papers and multi-authored pieces -- some ridiculous with like 10-15 authors on 20-page papers). I review about one manuscript a week. More then 50 per year. I’ve helped with a lot of dissertations too. Next year (2021) I’ve got a book coming out with Elaine Hsieh, Full Professor, Ph.D., J.D. I’m second author. Really. No false humility. I’m glad to have been part of her project. So, my fingers can still type. I still put out one or two publications a year that I solo author, but for the last decade or so, I’ve tried to give younger folks ideas, sometimes prose, suggestions, help with things they can publish without my byline. Time to be the stepladder. They become experts in things I am not. That’s great. So, they don’t play second fiddle to anyone. I want them to develop their own theories, not just rehash someone else’s.

It may seem “fair,” but when a professor puts their name on the only publication to come of out a dissertation, even as the second author, it makes it clear that the origin of the ideas came from the professor and not the student. They are the senior mentor in the pair. If you’ve got tenure, and the student did an original piece of work for their dissertation, then let them be solo. Now if the student did not do an original piece of work, then… the chair didn’t force them to earn their chops to be a professor in their own right.

Force? Did Kramer say force? Oh my. Okay. Okay. Encourage. But here’s the deal. When you are working on your resume or vitae, whatever you have accomplished is yours. You get the credit. So when others push you to do more, they are helping you in the long run. If you give grades, you are enforcing standards. Get used to it.

If you want to be liked as a teacher give easy grades. If you want to make people stronger give them resistance. Give them a ladder with a few rungs missing so they have to solve the problem to advance -- stretch. We can’t go to the gym and make muscles for other people. Likewise, we cannot learn for others but we can “encourage” them. Secret… they may still like you. If you are fair, most people understand what you are trying to do. Make them as strong as possible.

Too many wiggle through but then go inert. No research after they finish the dissertation. Kaput. They learned how to manage the dissertation process, but not how to do research. To me, that’s a failure. So, after all that time and money in school, they are stuck. Hopefully, they can get tenure… at a school with little expectations for research. Okay, then they can be “helpers” too. “Life coaches.” Ugh. We all have limitations. But don’t settle, or make mediocrity your goal. Older professors tend to be “tougher.” Why? They have seen how professional life unfolds and they know what it can be like for those who get stuck. If they care about you, they will try their darndest to make sure you have choices later in life. Not right now. Not just for the first job but for choices down the road. Their job is to look ahead for you. Parents and good teachers are antagonistic because, they are trying to make you better than you think you can be. And they can see ahead while you cannot. You may think you can, but that’s part of being immature. If you want to get to the mountain top, ask the guy who has been there. As a young person you may not understand that. But you will later. Hopefully, the breakthrough does not come with the realization that you took the easy route to nowhere.

Perception, knowledge is perspectival. As Ludwig Landgrebe said, even if you did have a divine mode of awareness that allowed you to see all things from all perspectives at once, that would still be a unique perspective. I try to let students self-consciously play with perspectives. It's not merely okay to think widely and experiment with varying points-of-view, it is essential. Otherwise, they become dependent rather than independent. When that happens, the relationships are approaching cult-like dynamics. Adoration is not the same as professional appreciation and respect. Adoration bleeds over into all aspects of life. The students become blinded by devotional reverence. Be careful. Shepherds need and cultivate sheeple. As a student I suggest you avoid shepherds who would collect and add you to their flock, and instead seek out a critical sounding board who would demand that you explain your different approach (for without difference you have no identity or originality as an artist or scientist). The latter wants to hear your voice. Tell me something I don't know. If you adore your mentor because they "know everything," you have a problem.

FULL SEND

Time to take a drive in the Vette with the top off. By the way, in ECO Mode I can shut down 4 cylanders and cruise at about 50 MPG. Vettes are little and light. But the next car will be an EV. So we cruise.

My dear reader… we have gone down Lewis Carroll’s rabbit hole with Alice. We have become discombobulated by logic, jabberwocky. Remember that all this was an effort to be fair, to apply my axioms to myself along with everyone else. Here’s the ultimate paradox. The truth of life is that it ain’t fair (consistent, coherent, logical, just, balanced). Truth, has nothing to do with logic. Proofs yes. Truth, no. Now see. Damnit. The order of things matters here. It should be the other way around. Logic has nothing to do with truth. Not, truth has nothing to do with logic. So let’s fix this so the following sentences make sense. Logic has nothing to do with truth. Proofs yes. Truth, no. Whatever. The stories you will read below (if you do) about my pond, my car, my life are true but not logical. Life is not a logical proof.

The most important thing to learn is how to cope with this and make it as good as you can. “Good?” Well, shit. All I can say is that you can’t be your happiest by excluding everyone else. Both “good” and “happy” are relative experiences, and therefore collective. There’s nothing more fun than celebrating with others. Is fun good? My son Preston with undergrad friends at Johns Hopkins University after inventing an antigravity machine. All of these students went on to become MDs. Preston went to Cornell Med school and now practices in Seattle. Fun is good. Smart is good. Smart and creative is more fun than stupid and boring. By the way, lots of fun, smart, creative people never went to college. Heck the diffusion of the institution "the university," even public education are very recent things in world history. Yes, yes. I know about old schools in Europe (Bologna, Salamanca, Padua, Oxford, Cambridge...), and Isocrates, Plato's and Aristotle's schools that lasted until Christian zealots destroyed them, chasing the last philosophers such as Damascius and Simplicius off to seek protection under the Sassanid Persian court bringing to an end the classical world, at least in Europe -- talk about book burning cancel culture!

Later those scrolls saved from the righteous flames formed part of the library at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, the smoldering embers of critical thinking (a redundant phrase), cross-examination, dialectics, philosophy, logic, science). But I'm talking about public and private universities and school SYSTEMS diffusing around the globe in just the last 150 years or so that have changed the world. Thank you Horace Mann, and others in the Massachussets State Legislature who supported his efforts (which he copied from a tiny public system in Prussia) to establish free and cumpulsory education for all children. Libraries before around 1850 were all private, rare, or by subscription. Free-to-the-public, tax supported, libraries did not exist in any systematic way before about 1830. And while Europe remained locked in caste systems and royal imperial power, the US and Canada led the way to creating an educated mass public that enabled them to leapfrog into modern industrial prominence. Alice Walker's novel (later a movie), The Color Purple eloquently conveys the power of literacy. All teachers, have as their baseline dedication, the freeing of minds by means of access to information. I'm proud to have been a teacher for nearly half a century.

Here’s a picture of Alex my other son, the night he graduated from Johns Hopkins (yes Alex and Preston both did their undergrads at Hopkins), and another picture of them together and more recent at Alex and Ventrice’s Greenwich Village Apartment in the famed Hotel Albert where Zappa (the Mothers of Invention), the Mamas & The Papas, Canned Heat, the Butterfield Blues Band, the Lovin’ Spoonful... to name, as they say, but a few, lived. They all practiced in the basement. Walt Whitman, Mark Twain and others hung out there too. Alec Baldwin lives next door. Apparently he is often grumpy at the local shops while pushing his kids around in their strollers. Now Alex can join him with his daughter, my granddaughter, Mars. If you keep going, you’ll meet the rest of the family later. Wait a minute Alex. Is that the same shirt, 10 years after your graduation? Get some clothes. And here’s a picture of Preston in Taiwan. He took a year between his BS and MD to live and teach at Tsinghua University.

Okay, so what’s the point? The point? This is not a sharp instrument. There is no point. It is a stream, sorta. More like an overflow in all directions. Not an arrow, that’s for sure. It may not even be the right temperature. Or “taste” “right.” You might think it stinks. It might sometimes sound fishy. Now the senses are getting mixed up. WARNING: don’t expect this waterfall of words to be perfectly consistent, self-contained, coherent, unambiguous, or complete. Don’t expect it to be “better” than life or Principia Mathematica. Be realistic as much as logical and then you might find something interesting (truth is far too daunting) herein. But I can’t prove it.

By the way, about life and not logic, Gödel published his incompleteness theorems in Vienna in 1931. He was only 25 years old. His neighborhood of thinking was populated by Georg Cantor, Alfred North Whitehead, David Hilbert (i.e., his Hilbert Space which informed quantum theory generally and borrowed from Husserl’s geometry), Einstein, von Neumann, and Herman Weyl (all working at Göttingen and familiar with Husserl’s work on logic). Some studied Husserl extensively whose work also influenced others far and wide such as Poincaré. In more than one publication, Einstein called his work “phenomenology.” Okay… enough with the incompleteness, as a theory, and carry on with being incomplete ourselves. This descriptive winding river of words is incomplete. All efforts are incomplete. Life is incomplete. And it is, as Perimetheus, Prometheus’ brother, teaches us, thankfully unpredictable.

If we could predict all future states, life would be one gigantic “groundhog day,” horrible, a type of hell. And so thankfully, while Pro- brought fire back to us, Peri- took the power of foresight away from us to save us. How? Time. Difference. Perimetheus is related to peri-odicity. Avoid recursion. Don’t always go to the same place to eat or for vacation. Go someplace “different.” It will be fun. Don’t watch the same TV show over and over and over, or listen to the same song over and over and over or you will grow to hate them.

The root of the words fun, function, fundamental, and funeral is the same thing. Fu. As in foo- phooey meaning terminal laughter. Nah, that can’t be right. Actually, PIE goes from E to G and skips F. So, I guess all those words came from an alien source. It is part of Plan 9 from outer space as explained in the famous Ed Wood documentary of the same name. Poor Dracula. He couldn’t get any good roles in Hollywood. Makes sense though. He should of gone to Evilwood instead. Ed Wood sure didn’t help. On the other hand, Wood, the blood sucker, was so bad that he became an original, a legend, an artist of kitsch.

To be a scientist or artist you must be “original,” unique, innovative, deviant! Otherwise, you’re nothing but a plagiarist. Sure, Wood could of made a movie like all the others, but he had “vision.” He didn’t let the bars of convention, good taste, human decency, or lack of talent hold him back. NO! He transcended all that to be overman, or whatever he became.

Each day is uncertain. That’s good, unless you are an extreme fascist fool who wants total control, even of yourself (the tightest hairpin turn of cybernetic feedback until there is no room left even for feedback). But as I just proved/disproved, I can tell you more about myself than myself. Peri- has saved us, even those who would rule everything. Play. Let it go. Tough luck for those who only see uncertainty as leading to anxiety. Poor sots, drunk on trying to make everything permanent – to “fix” everything. They suffer “nerves,” dred surprise, joy, adventure, appointment, and disappointment -- life… I prefer exploration over nihilism, which is the end state of a universe that is totally redundant (predicted). This river of words, wanders, meanders, in places ends in sloughs, almost cuts back into oxbows of thought and expression. Sometimes it rushes along, tumbling over rocky parts, other times it lulls in backwater stillness. It is certainly incomplete. It flirts with inconsistency and incoherence, without treatment or remedy. It is not “well structured” like the tight laces of Goethe’s Spanish boots (Spanish? Really? This seems incongruent. But then isn’t it all, sort of?).

We know we don’t have forever but we don’t know how long we have. So, sit back in your innertube and float along. Dabble the water and swirl your hands in the fluid passing. Beware Mephistopheles and the fear he uses to motivate you to get back in line, back into the rut. What do rivers need? The rains come and revive all. Overrun the banks, alter the channel’s course. Nothing is perfect and so nothing is sacred, nothing is finished. Evolution has no final goal.

-- Goethe’s Mephistopheles to the Young Student

Waste not your time, so fast it flies;

Method will teach you time to win;

Hence, my young friend, I would advise,

With college logic to begin.

Then will your mind be so well brac’d,

In Spanish boots so tightly lac’d,

That on ‘twill circumspectly creep,

Thoughts beaten track securely keep,

Nor will it, ignis-fatuus like,

Then many a day they’ll teach you how,

The mind’s spontaneous acts, till now,

As eating and as drinking free,

Require a process – one, two, three!

Don’t be afraid to be wrong or to fail. Don’t be afraid to get off the “beaten path.” This river of words? Skip around in it. Throw rocks into it. Scream at it. Watch it go by. Take it or leave it… you will (said Yoda). Blame? Really? What’s the harm?

ADMIRATION

I think you can learn something about a person by those they admire, who their “heroes” are. Here’s just a couple of people I admire. Also I find people confuse admiration with envy. They are very different things. So what does Eric have to say about Rachel, Jacques, and John? They had integrity. They did what they wanted to do and what they thought needed to be done. They had courage and tried to make good differences. What are “good” differences? (see my reflections on Ethics in my blog – hint, they are not reducible to neurophysiology). Socrates sought to discover what is courage, wisdom, justice, tolerance. Not easy. Once identified, then more critical questions come into focus. Why can I not have more courage? Why can I not be more wise? Why can I not be more fair? More tolerant? If I can, how? These are the critical questions. No great ethicists are young. It takes a long time and much experience to just get this far.

Two of my heroes that influenced me growing up, Jacques Cousteau and Rachel Carson. Carson earned a Master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University in Marine Biology. She started on her doctorate, but financial difficulties and the sudden death of her father forced her to leave school. I know how that feels. I was admitted to the University of Chicago’s Dept. of Sociology for graduate school but lost my funding (the grant moved, and I could not follow). So, I changed course. Carson went on to do important scientific work. She published Silent Spring in 1962. So what? In important ways, she marks a beginning of science and expertise generally, being threatened by postwar corporate capitalism, a threat that is destabilizing our ecology, and more fundamentally our collective sense of reality. So what did Carson do? In her book, Silent Spring, she demonstrated a rapid decline in birds and why.

At this writing (Feb. 2021) people across the globe are excited to hear the first sounds of the Martian wind recorded on the surface of the red planet. Me too. But what about here? The forests are falling silent. Studies of forests across the world have in fact noted a profound drop in bird songs in the environment. At this writing a metanalytical report that corroborates earlier metanalytical studies such as one by Dr. Hagai Levine (that screened 7,500 studies), has appeared showing a “jaw-dropping” global trend of falling sperm count (falling 53%), rising miscarriages, and increasing numbers of malformed male genitalia across the globe for humans. It is a real, “very profound and even shocking” trend. If this trend continues it will lead to a crash in human species population before 2100. The cause? Rachel told us 60 years ago. The widespread presence of hormone-disrupting chemicals (endocrine disruptors) in the environment including insecticides, herbicides, and plastics. We are dumping billions of tons of poisons all over the world and into the water. We’ve seen this in the collapsing numbers of insects and amphibians around the globe. And at this writing another study notes that more than half of freshwater species of fish have gone extinct, 16 in just 2020. “Migratory populations have declined by more than three-quarters since the 1970s, while populations of larger species, weighing more than 60 pounds, have fallen by an even more ‘catastrophic’ 94 percent.” Read full report if you dare HERE.

In the 2014 book Environmental Communication and the Extinction Vortex I published with three former graduate students (Gabriel Adkins, Ph.D., Sang Ho Kim, Ph.D., Greg Miller, M.A., J.D.) we demonstrated a very close correlation between a collapse in species diversity along with a collapse in cultural and linguistic diversity around the globe. A particular culture with a specific set of beliefs, values, and motivations is sweeping the globe with profound consequences. What is happening is a cultural issue with biodiversity and civilizational consequences. As Edward O. Wilson put it, we are seeing the “social conquest of Earth.” But he failed to realize it is a total collapse in diversity; biological and cultural.

This is the news of my time on this Earth, the BIG story of globalization and what is being diffused across all boundaries… what I called an “Emerging Monoculture” in my book by that title back in 2003. Monocultures are not robust. Just ask the Irish about potatoes.

Five years after her book appeared, J. F. Kennedy ordered his Science Advisory Committee (imagine presidents used to have those… Biden does again), to investigate Carson’s claims about DDT and other chemicals. DDT was finally banned in 1972 in the US and other developed nations. Roundup is another disaster. In fact, there are many products that are literally killing our world. Carson was attacked by big oil, Monsanto, Bayer, Dupont, Montrose, Aventis CropScience, Chris-Craft… Scientific American even published an article in 1945 “Manufacturers Worry DDT Will Not Be Used.”

She along with the early whistleblowers in the cigarette industry led to corporations creating a new industry whose product was doubt. The books Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health (2008 by David Michaels) and Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (2010 by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway), is a good place to start to learn about this very dark side of public rhetoric that has led to modern conspiracy mania, only now with anonymous, mysterious sources like QAnon. The thrust to create a culture of doubt, of confusion and to deny expertise. They funded unscrupulous labs to create findings contrary to mainstream science (there are always those willing to claim anything, even to be able to make products like video games with zero expertise just to land some money… expertise has been under assault for some time). The merchants of doubt bankrolled fake science. They planted articles in all sorts of media propagating attacks on real scientists while pumping “their scientists” as the real experts. They learned from Hearst and Luce (heads of large media empires including Time, Inc.) how to mold public opinion.

Favo-rites of Passage

I can’t give you a “favorite song” or food, or painting, or car… or anything. Too many great things have been created. But I will say that there is one little 2 minute and 37 second song that was pressed into vinyl in 1967 (written in ’66) by the house band (three from Ontario Canada, one from Dallas, and one from Yellow Springs Ohio), for Whisky-A-Go-Go on Sunset Strip Boulevard. It was about protests against curfews imposed on young people cramming the block to hear the music happening. Some young “unknowns” were in the “riots,” including Jack Nicholson. Three years before his hookup with Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider, Peter Fonda was arrested. Later it became an anti-war song. It was never a number one hit, but it is iconic. They put it on their first album for the second pressing. The song list was set but they dropped another song to add it as song number 1, side 1. Its title confused people, so they added a second title to help folks find the song. First it was called “For What It’s Worth.” A fitting title for this webpage. The second title is “Stop, Hey, What’s That Sound.” The band? Buffalo Springfield. The song is still relevant today. Can you believe they made a mono recording of it? Still a good song. One of my… favorites. Every time I hear it, I stop and listen. I was nine when I first heard it. Just starting to have my psychic awakening. Part of my soundtrack. Lots has been added since, but that one has always been there. There were only five in the band, originally. Someone got their picture on the album cover twice but with the ATCO logo plastered on them. Or… was it their recording engineer, Messina? Guess who?

Here's a Professor of mine and friend since I was 18... Algis Mickunas and I in Japan 1996. We just got some Mochi! Yum. A long time ago. At this writing he is still kicking and crafting ideas and arguments (over 92). Later at his 80th birthday celebration and conference in Vilnius, 2018, Algis was going strong lecturing on democratic theory and current events on radio and TV. I went along to one of his broadcasts and got some photos. Ever optimistic is Algis. And at this writing Ukraine has been invaded by Putin's Russian army and we wonder what is next for the Baltic states. Algis and his family were caught between the German and Russian armies when he was a child -- farmers in a vise between two warring thugs; the left Hegelians led by Stalin and the right Hegelians led by Hitler. A vise of vice. They managed to survive and walk to safety, eventually making it to the USA. At 16, he later fought in the Korean War for the US and was wounded. The recruiters didn't care about his age. He was an immigrant. He has spent as much time as he can back in Lithuania trying to help the post-Soviet state. Algis introduced me, and not just to their books but physically, to Jürgen Habermas, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Ludwig Landgrebe, Herbert Spiegelberg, and others. There is something to watching the inner workings of a great, cultivated mind move to the surface and be spoken and gestured into conversation. Getting access, to ask a question, to stir things your way, toward your interest, to engage is "something." Do you still believe what you wrote 30 years ago? Algis now stands among them. His influence extends to many outstanding students in many disciplines. His official portrait hangs in St. John's Cathedral in Vilnius, Lithuania, his country of birth. He was "installed" during a nationally televised ceremony as one of that nation's leading lights of the last century. He "matters" to me. Who matters to you? Let them know.

Feral: An Interesting Name for a Kid

No feral human or purely "wild" human has ever existed because the human brain must be cultivated. Without lots of social support we die. Infant humans are pathetically weak. And here I am speaking of the brain, not the mind (which the brain, along with the rest of your body and your life experiences, generates). The physical brain, its structure and operation is also a product of experience. The brain, your brain is a cultural product. Let me repeat that. Your brain is a product of experience. Yes, there is a genetic predisposition to create the basic organ but once it is switched on, it is very malleable. It is not "done" when you are born. It's just getting started. This environmental fact begins in prenatal care and continues until you die. In short, the socio-cultural and economic condition of your mother is already shaping the development of your brain in her womb. After a time it becomes your responsibility to develop it. Cultivate your brain. Actively work to create neuronal networks that will allow you to think in new ways. Be patient. The first time you read Kant or calculus, you probably won't understand. Don't expect to play the violin at one sitting or to become a good fisherman or anything. Practice. You are growing new networks of neurons. It is an organic process. Like healing, it takes time. So if you fail the first try, that is to be expected. Keep practicing. You'll "get it." Sometimes students quit because a topic is "too hard." Don't let that stop you. If it did, you would not know how to walk.

True story: Despite his clear instructions that his brain was not to be studied after he died, during his autopsy a pathologist named Thomas Harvey stole Einstein's brain and also his eyes. He gave the eyes to Henry Abrams, Einstein's ophthalmologist. Harvey cut Einstein's brain into 240 cubes. He kept most of it in mason jars within a cider box for 20 years and gave some away to others. He drove around the country with Einstein's brain on the front seat of his car. Harvey believed that if he looked at the cells in the brain he would get some interesting information. A hundred years earlier the brain of the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss was also removed and studied. Some abnormalities were found and were probably due to him training himself in math. I think this all means that even after we die, our culture, our values, beliefs, expectations, motivations... effect the shape of our brains. Nature and nurture come together in life producing our world. We have some, indeed alot, of responsibility for how things "turn out," at least until we die and then we are at the mercy of others.

Years ago I read a story about a guy who was raised by his mother in a cabin back in the woods of rural Appalachia. They had no electricity or running water. He never went to school. But she regularly brought him books from a public library in a nearby little town. He read insatiably. When he "came out" of the woods he was "tested," and offered a full ride scholarship to Vanderbilt and pursued his Ph.D. in literature by age 22. If you really want something, within reason (I don't mean to be some super-freak outlier), you are stuck. Most excuses we used to rely on are now limited or gone. Ouch. Darn it. I guess I have to take responsibility. This goes for moral as well as intellectual phenomena. Becoming someone's friend changes minds.

What might this say about going to school? First, we can't all grow up in cabins in a bubble. Second, I'm sure this guy had alot to learn about living among others. School is life, which includes the joys and traumas of friendship, bullying and being bullied, success and failure. School is life. We are already at sea. It is a churning malstrom of hormones, expectations about currents, and navigating channels and shoals. I was once bullied very badly by a teacher. One of the minor things he did: He literally looked at me in middle school art class and said, "I don't like redheads." Much worse was to come. I had bright orange hair. Nothing I could do about that. Some other teachers, I could tell, were unhappy about it. They showed me that they disapproved. Confederates among the powerful. Yet they didn't do much to help except... the husband/wife team of the Sperry's, who I talk about later. They came to my rescue. Teachers have a huge influence and it can be good or bad. School, life has both grace and tragedy -- drama. I'm afraid that I have to tell you that they come together. The stronger one is, the stronger the other. Contrasting colors. If you want to really feel one, you have to know the other. I was so confused that I did not tell my parents. I thought I'd done something wrong during recess. It proved to not be fun times for me. In hindsight if I had told my father (the old Marine DI), he would have killed the teacher. Nothing sexual by the way, "just" sadistic. Did I learn anything? I learned alot... about adults, kids, the order of things and punishment (before Foucault came along). I also learned about survival, about prevailing despite... "school" (life), and also because of it. There is no single chain of causes and effects. Life is a field, a fog of implications and actions. But I can also see how other kids might have buckled under the "art teacher." He liked to talk about fire and the devil! He should not have been allowed near kids. He and his wife in fact left. Dangerous game of chicken. But I managed to get across the road. Later we had a great art teacher, Mrs. George. I talk about her more later. I also had an English teacher in highschool who I could not convince that my poetry was not plagiarized and that, per my senior thesis, there are pyramids in Mexico (irony there, she was married to an architect). Well, after I brought books to her about the pyramids in Mexico, she did concede that I was right, but she didn't take correction well. She was a popular teacher among the popular kids, but I was not one of her favorites. Never figured out what her deal was. Maybe it was my red hair. Anyway, I began to notice a pattern of several, not just one or two, of my neighborhood friends' fathers committing suicide, others having heart attacks. Too much stress. I realized that others had bigger problems than I. I could handle the fucking art teacher. Perspective. Anyway, in the end teachers are people. Some smart some not so. Some wise, some stupid. Life is... complex.

ME AS THE OLD PROFESSOR!

As you will see I talk alot in here about being appreciative and optimismtic. I'm a lucky guy. Full stop. But as a social scientist I also think my culture, or a good number of my fellow Americans, are manic depressive. Erich Fromm noticed this back in the 1970s. So have many others such as John Updike, Judith Guest, Norman Maclean, Frederick Exley, Louise Erdirch, and Cormac McCarthy; two writing of eastern suburbanites, one of southwestern rural folks, another of northwestern rural folks, another of urban life, another of midwestern modern Native Americans. Then there is the author who not only wrote about this condition but embodied it himself, Kurt Vonnegut. Picking up bodies in Dresden as a prisoner of war... well, "so it goes." I have watched the trend increase and reach further down into the ranks of our youth even. I watch the screens that are everywhere today and they are filled with ads and the ads are filled with people frantically smiling and dancing, trying as hard as they can to portray ecstasy at buying everything from insurance to automobiles, sodas and snacks to laundry detergent. Happiness is consumption. I think the more we feel we must act happy, the more we really aren’t. Acting is "make believe" right? What a strange phrase, "make believe." We make believe we are happy. But that is pathetic -- hopeful maybe, but sorta sad -- metasad. Such sadness and anxiety plays into a search for solutions that can fragment into violent reaction, on one hand, and widespread escapist apathy on the other; people willing to burn down the courts and legislatures and people who just want to get high, play video games and try not to care. Social media and the straight news threaten our mental health. Then there is the middle, the “golden mean,” those holding it together but under pressure and stressed – those who do eighty percent of the work on "group" projects, who pay most of the taxes as a percentage of their incomes while showing up every day to make things run. I wonder where this will go? I think we need to turn off the screens, talk to each other more, and get outside to let the spectral array of the universe fill our eyes with sunlight and starlight, our ears with the sounds of leaves in the wind, our noses with fresh air. It's cheap. What do you think? One proviso. Avoid toxic folks.

I had a colleague who liked to say that students haven’t changed… never change. He was an old organizational communication guy. True story: Nearly every other professor I know has told me the same thing -- that they felt worse about themselves after talking to him. You walk up and chat and leave feeling crappy about yourself. That's a gift. Not a good one. His view of reality was very… ecclesiastical. He saw himself as rather heroic -- as a shepherd of lost sheep. His words, not mine. He'd never lived outside the midwestern US except for a short stint on the East coast – which he didn’t like. To be honest I’m not a big fan of NYC either. He’d gone outside the US on short tourist trips maybe four times in his life. I don’t think he enjoyed them.

It has been and remains my opinion that in order to be promoted to Full Professor status, especially in the social (human) arts and sciences, one should be required to have lived for at least one year outside the US in another linguistic community/culture. It used to be very common to get just a Bachelor's you had to study a "foreign" language. That was not a bad idea. Values, beliefs, expectations, behaviors really are different from one community to the next, and many function quite well even though they are different from how “we/I” do things. Also, you can see change occurring very rapidly in developing parts of the world. Such an experience of contrast also makes an individual realize who they are and that their perspective is very limited. This humbles those who would argue that everyone else should assimilate to their beliefs and values and/or assume that everyone is always already just like "me" – some notion of universal human nature that totally disregards culture. Culture is real, diverse, and, some would say, it is “everything.” Not sure about that. However, anthropologists have taken standardized psychology tests around the world and “tested” folks across the globe. They have discovered that the Anglo-American picture of the “normal” human has been based on studies of “students from a midwestern university” which is not, in fact, generalizable to the rest of the world. In fact, statistically speaking, the US version of “normal,” “healthy” psychology and behavior is an outlier. But the power of an ethnocentric perspective has led to an arrogant ignorance that demands others assimilate to this narrow version of the good, the beautiful, the appropriate, the healthy, the sane, and normal attitudes, behaviors, and values.

The first person the confidence man (or woman) cons is himself. I include a couple of articles in my page "For My Students" (under the tab "Teaching") on methodology -- mostly help with stats, about the "line test" in other cultures. Joe Henrich and his colleagues have conducted over 600 studies around the world demonstrating that Western College Students are statistically proving to be “weirdoes” – statistical outliers, yet they form the basis of much social science research. "Extra credit" for undergrad participation in studies may be the bane of social science. I am reminded of Gadamer's 1960 Wahrheit und Methode (Truth and Method), and Habermas' 1968 Erkenntnis und Interesse (Knowledge and Human Interests). Both standing on Schopenhaurer's sholders and Nietzsche's back. Perspectivism, even within one's own life -- cognitive, but more importantly, emotional (affective) dissonance.

In short (but not, and this very long sentence is a tease for my wise student, editor, and friend, Karola of the Osage), intercultural differences are real, profound, and can be a source of "troubles," as they say in Belfast (with a nod to my students and co-authors David Sean Zukerman, who did semiotic and hermenetuitic analyses of territorial street murals in Belfast for his dissertation, and also Yemi Akande's doctoral analyses of political cartoons in Nigeria (many cartoonists jailed and killed -- not business for the "funny pages"), Stephen Croucher's dissertation analyses of the hijab in France, Megda Igiel's doctoral analysis of national symbols like the Black Madonna and social/political movements in Poland, Amir Jafri's Ph.D. analysis of "honor killing" in Pakistan, Archana Pathak's dissertation analysis of the hyphen in Asian Indian-American identity, Lewis Porch's doctoral analysis of leadership styles among Muscogee (Creek), Denise Scannell's Ph.D. analysis of Italian American identity and numerology in Tampa, Bobbi Van Gilder's dissertation analysis of heteronormativity in the U.S. military), but also of solutions to problems we cannot seem to solve, such as widespread depression, alienation, loneliness, and such, that stem from modern fragmentation of the family, stressful work, impersonal educational processes, poor access to healthcare, and so forth. If we all assimilate into a global monoculture for the sake of efficiency and "equilibrium" ("competence"), then all alternatives die. But this nightmare is a fantasy. Not only are we not all the same we also change. If you travel around the world, you cannot miss these facts. But you gotta take others seriously and get to know them a little. Not just live in hotels for one or two weeks and leave. Exposure to difference also can help temper the snarky arrogance that one knows everything – what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s good, what’s bad... We don’t know everything. Not even close. Integrating into a family from another culture can be a real eye-opener too. Everything from daily cuisine to music, spiritual beliefs and life/work expectations, child rearing practices to ways and expectations about aging, all expand. Choices emerge. Compromises and fusion of styles emerge. Complexity increases. Things are not as simple as the naïve believe.

Now being naïve is fine except when one tries to impose on others. That’s why forced assimilation leads to resentment and resistance. Then we start to head for polarizing extremes. Not good. We’ve known this forever. If you need scientific proof read “Cognitive Consequences of Forced Compliance,” (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959… that’s right 1959… we’ve known this for a long time, indeed long before Festinger and Carlsmith did their controlled studies). Here’s a picture from Watson and Rayner’s “Little Albert” experiments where they terrified an infant to prove what all our ancestors already knew stretching back into prehistory about classical conditioning. Same for Skinner putting his child in a box not to be touched or doing the same with baby rhesus monkeys. What did we learn? That for status and power people will do stupid things and that others, such as graduate student assistants will violate the protocols and defy their bosses and, out of compassion, comfort the subjects of such unethical treatment. Duh… Hardly insightful. But they were and are not alone. From Vance Packard’s classic The Hidden Persuaders (1957 – the year I was born) wherein he tells us about the burgeoning advertising industry’s work to learn what excites us, angers us, scares us, makes us want to buy, to Michael Schudson’s redux, The Uneasy Persuasion (1984)… how could we be surprised when we learn that Facebook and other Internet companies have systematically experimented on millions of us with messaging that will cause us to be depressed, happy, angry, sad… As Clifford Geertz noted, work that yields “banal generalities” such as all people eat, all people cry and laugh, proves the obvious and misses the complexity and richness of cultural variability. Beyond this, we have changed. Such experiments are no longer valorized.

Relax. People change. People are different. Communicate with, and appreciate them. You might learn something. But you got to get out of your own way first. Progress requires deviance.

Okay... Gods are timeless. But students are not. Auh yes. Evolutionary biology and psychology would suggest my colleague is correct -- though he never made that argument. I don't think he ever would. But in case you're thinking that way, evolution is CHANGE, and not toward some utopan transcendence "beyond the limits of all cultures" (as another colleague of mine teaches). Adaptation does not mean conformity to what already is, or escape from time itself. Nope. It's much less... dramatical (I like adding "al" for fun -- like scientifical). Evolution is change -- divergence -- experimentation. The animals and plants are the ecology. They are not trying to "fit in." That's ideology, typically wedded to value judgments. The "fit" are "good." The "unfit" are "bad." No. Rather animals are the niche. They don't fit into empty parking spaces separate from themselves. There is no duality. Many things in our "environment" have changed because we have. People have changed "it." And "it" changes people. Life is an endless mixing of integral processes. Not so much “structuration,” which is stuck in a feedback looping that goes nowhere maintaining and reinforcing the status quo (ala Parsons, Luhmann, or Habermas… and the afterthoughts of Giddens), but rather systasis (Gebser's more sophisticated idea). Other than Parsons, maybe a little unfair. Systasis is the recognition of the temporal dimension of structures as systems with the realization of random change and willful creativity -- mutation -- 4-D.

IDENTITY IS A VERB: DON’T GET STUCK IN A LABEL

I, you, us are not nouns. We are verbs.

An old professor of mine, Troy Organ (1912-1992), who’d translated Aristotle, the Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads once told me, other cultures think in verbs, not nouns. For instance, it’s not a fist to them, it is “fisting.” I remember he held up a fist then opened his hand. “Where did the fist go?” Indeed. Where did yesterday go? And last year… One day, where did Eric go? We have answers proclaiming permanent final solutions from various religions and such but I suspect, Eric dissolved and his parts just… keep on keeping on – star dust. With his hand Professor Organ was illustrating that reality is constantly shifting, a process, and that languages artificially conceptualize or cut this flow up into bits and pieces, categories and cases to help us mere mortals make sense and to hold things in memory long enough to reflect on them. It is false to believe a predictable future makes us happy (allays our anxieties). That’s the fascist dream – a false promise. Rather a completely predictable future is utterly redundant, boring, meaningless. There is no need for curiosity. It is the hell of Sisyphus. Same old same old, over and over and over. The mind goes insane then dies. Solitary confinement. The truth? Well, that’s a bold question. I think this too shall pass, that passing is our permanent condition. We just snag on the thorny limits of our puny logic. Here’s a very positivistic statement to make you feel either very satisfied, or “concerned,” depending on your psychological make-up and needs. Change is all that we can predict with certainty. With it comes uncertainty but also hope and opportunity. A totally predictable future is manifest fatalism. Freedom is impossible. I guess the good part is that then you can’t make any mistakes. But then, you make nothing else either.

Time/difference is of the essence. I have taken it one step further. Culture is a process, a verb, if you will. Not a noun. So are people. I argue below, that the struggle between conservatives who would even make of adaptation, a permanent dead-end -- a premeditated organizing agenda with a "good" end-state presumed (total assimilation), and those who see endless random flux, such as Lao Tzu and Heraclitus, mark our divided world. In this sense the "post-moderns" came before the moderns. Plato and Confucius were reactionary modern organization guys who promoted the idea of "eternal forms" and governance with the conviction that (contingent) subjects should conform to the eternal objective truths of the "order." According to the reactionaries we must strive to become one with the order and escape what Nietzsche called the "shame" of subjectivity, the existential burden we as mere mortals all carry. We should all get organized, be subjugated to -- to conform to -- a positive timeless order/truth or be condemned as errors -- mistakes. BE RATIONAL! Order is reason. The very development of life through mutation comes to be seen as a series of mistakes. Life itself must follow a transcendental plan toward a predictable end, a zero-energy entropic state of total assimilation. According to this way of thinking, the goal of life is death. Pre-determination. The order is destiny. The secular natural world of time must obey eternal supernatural law from outside this world -- or else. Very anti-democratic. Hegel is the high watermark of this ambition. People should be flexible and conform to the rule, not presume to be part of the system affecting its future. For conservatives the only way to be a member is to passively conform. That is the very definition of a "good" person for them. The Order transcends the people. It is... the Order, the mold for "plastic" people (Reich). Success is thus defined by how much you conform. The more, the better. "This is the way" says the Mandalorian who never removes his helmet. Hegel elevates the order to being equated with logic itself, the “Absolute Reason.” Any deviation is thus the definition of insanity. Only crazy people try to innovate and create.

But without deviance there is no progress.

Change. You can't avoid it though terrible things have been done to try to stop it. It’s okay to change your mind. In fact, that is what living and learning, experimenting and sharing/teaching, are all about. Bottom line: because we are verbs, we can change if we realize it. That fact is the last thing managers want you to realize -- and the main thing real teachers, true mentors, want you to grasp. Change coming from independent minds means rocking the boat. That's a problem for assimilationists, order-enforcers. Cult leaders want you to be dependent on them as sheep are to shepherds. Mentors want you to become responsible independent thinkers -- what a democracy needs in its citizens. The former can seem conforting and the latter scary, but that's growing up. Professor Organ encouraged his students to embrace that freedom.

Not incidentally, Professor Organ was exactly my age when I met him as a sophomore undergrad. A few years later as an Emeritus Professor at age 67, he chaired my Philosophy Master's Thesis on the relationship between Taoism and Buddhism. My thesis: that their fusion culminated in Chan (Zen). Aside: If you worked with Professor Organ, as I did, you got organized. Ha, ha. Fine. Bad joke. My Sociology Master's thesis was on the social and ecological impacts of large-scale strip-mining – chaired by Professor Eric Wagner, another great guy and influence in my life. Reflecting on them (and others) has inspired what you are about to read about “old professors” and… appreciation, or at least enhanced understanding. Professor Organ had made several trips to India before it modernized. Interesting insights.

So, I met Dr. Organ when I was nineteen in 1976. He was sixty-four. Just a little over two years earlier I was still riding my bicycle up and down my street with my buddies. Very narrow world of "my." We were dreaming of getting our driver’s licenses. Meanwhile, Dr. Organ was about to retire. He was born in 1912, the year the Titanic sank. Until he was about nine years old, radio was still an industrial technology, not a mass consumer product, and it was almost entirely in Morse Code. Even if you could buy a radio there were no radio stations to listen to until 1921 or two. He was about my age (seventeen) when the Stock Market crashed. Tough times delayed his college education for a few years. The unregulated greed on Wall Street would lead to a “Great Depression” which, in turn, would help create and foster the conditions that launched fascists into power around the world, ultimately leading to another “Great War.” On December 7, 1941 (Pearl Harbor attack), Dr. Organ was 29, having kids and building his teaching career. He was 37 by the time he’d seen a television. When I chatted with him, he had keen memories of Pearl Harbor and the first TV he’d seen, just as I have keen memories today of the 911 attacks, the first “personal” computer and the first video game I’d seen, the first modem I heard dial-in to “the web,” and my first cell phone. On January 28, 1986, I was teaching a class on broadcast script writing (storyboards and such) at Radford University. The classroom was part of a larger TV studio complex. I could roll the blackboards back to look through large windows into the control room and beyond to the studio. I did this so we could all watch the Challenger Shuttle launch live… I’ll never forget that class. Some students were confused then upset. Me too.

Dr. Organ had seen eleven US Presidents come and go, from Harding and Hoover to Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton. In his world, the news of the day was the news of people like Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Eisenhower, missile crises, the Iron Curtain, Sinatra, Elvis, The Beatles, going to the moon, southern governors refusing to let Blacks into public universities… There were only three TV networks and color TV was to him, still sort of a new thing. CD’s didn’t exist. Cassettes were the preferred recording medium. He was curious when I asked him if I could record his lectures. No one had ever done that before. I still had an 8-track in my car. In September 1975, I was 18. A hit song came out called At Seventeen by Janis Ian. The songs moving around in the top of the charts were Bowie’s Fame, John Denver’s I’m Sorry, Glen Campbell’s Rhinestone Cowboy, and The Isley Brothers' Fight the Power Part 1. My favorite of the top chart songs at that time: That’s the Way of the World by Earth, Wind & Fire. Listen to it. Still awesome. Springsteen’s Born to Run had entered the charts and was rising fast. Here's a sample of what we were reading in my dorm my first quarter of college. No doubt, this Playboy will be offensive to somebody out there. Really? It's a butt. We all have one. Some cause pain therein. I think the Harvard-based National Lampoon cover is much worse and proves times have changed. Now having said this about Harvard (later National) Lampoon, I hasten to add that this is a venerable publication, founded in 1876 by seven undergrads at Harvard, making it the third longest-running, continually published humor magazine in the world after the Swedish Blandaren (1863) and the Swiss Nebelspalter (1875). So there! I say to the prudes. Still… the cover is… in today’s world… different from 1975. In both cases, it is “self-explanatory” but the picture of the world is very different. But then… that’s my point.

Anyway, my freshman year in an all-male dorm in Athens, Ohio… these were a few of the reading materials we had laying all around and shared. No Internet. No TV. Telephones down in the lobby. So we listened to records, played chess and board games, cards, and we read… And we talked. We went home maybe twice a quarter. The little white boxes on the magazine covers? Those were mailing labels that I’ve blotched out. No digital magazines. The place was cluttered with texts. All were mailed to us physically. We had a big mailroom down in the lobby and students got lots of packages, newspapers, magazines, and physical letters. Even Christmas and birthday cards. And we wrote letters and sent packages… Ancient history. I arrived on campus at Ohio University just a little over a year after the draft was cancelled and the US had pulled out of Vietnam. Dr. Organ had been a Full Professor, at the peak of his intellectual powers throughout the 1960’s and they were not a time of “Peace and Love” to him but of war, “race” riots, “police riots," desegregation, assassinations, Watergate, a boom in college admissions… four dead in O-Hi-O (at Kent State), a burgeoning “post-modern” revolution in his field of philosophy as well as in art and architecture. Things had changed so much during his life. He’d seen a lot and I was clueless. But, I was beginning…

Students today are awash in distractions that I didn’t have. Thank god. Many of dubious moral and ethical value. Do you agree? The Internet is just one. Choice is good right? But it is also true the more choices, the more complicated life becomes. I knew guys who had to choose between Vietnam and Canada. I was lucky. I was not forced to make that choice. The Internet is a time-eater. Also, many now start post-college life already in serious economic debt. They haven't even started their careers yet. Times, have changed. So, I disagree with my colleague. Culture, technology, people do change over time. Progress and regress are real and demonstrable though admittedly sometimes tough to ascertain. They presume goals that are often unstated and valuated. Meanwhile, it is also true, globally, that poverty has declined while lifespans have extended. But those quanta are not the whole story. Because of dramatic changes in people and their behavior, we are now in the midst of a great mass extinction event… Things are “complex.” Here's a self-portrait taken on a subway in Taipei.

Who am I? How do I relate to you, my student? At this writing it is Fall 2021, and I am 64.5 years old, just like Professor Organ my freshman year. I entered college 46 years ago. I think about my professors when I first walked onto a college campus in 1975. The first of my family. Beautiful Athens, Ohio. A few were older than I am now. Like me, they had entered college 45-50 years earlier – that is, before 1975. That puts their freshman year right smack in the middle of the Roaring Twenties, and on the brink of the Great Depression. Their college experiences? Their life experiences?

When my young professors-to-be went to college, there was much optimism and nihilism in the 1920s. What? Isn't that contradictory? Yes and no. The 1920s were "roaring" yet in their wake, in 1930/31 Huxley was motivated to write Brave New World. And Hemingway declared many intellectuals and artists (including himself) to be members of the "lost genertion." Alienation increases rapidly with modernity. That's why the first "social science" book by Émile Durkheim asked the question, "If industrialization is good and increasing wealth is good, then why is suicide increasing profoundly?" Good question. Things were changing.

For my professors entering college in the mid- to late-1920s, nuclear power, space flight, the jet, the computer, video games, the Internet, cellular phones, satellites, antibiotics, rock’n’roll, television, the birth control pill, "social media," air conditioning, World War II… all were still in the future. Professor Organ was eight-years-old when women got, not the right, but permission to vote (1920). Things change. The planet Pluto did not exit. Or more accurately, it would not be discovered until 1930. Interracial marriage was illegal. The great whales were still being hunted to near extinction and boiled down to make oil for lighting the Industrial Revolution (assembly lines working around the clock) and making margarine. Petroleum oil and vegetable oils finally came to their rescue on an industrial scale in the mid 20th century. There was no "youth culture." Skyscrapers were still very new and rare.

As I write this it is hard for me to realize that many of my freshmen students were born a year or two AFTER the "911" terrorist attack. Right before Professor Organ was born, the notorious “lawman,” who shot Billy the Kid while standing in the dark as the Kid kept asking him, "¿Quién es? ¿Quién es?" (who’s there? in Spanish), Pat Garrett was himself shot down in New Mexico (1909). Butch Cassidy’s “Wild Bunch” from “Hole-in-the-Wall” Wyoming had disbanded and Butch and Sundance were carrying on in Bolivia at least until shot to death in 1937 (the same year the Hindenburg zeppelin blew up). Times change fast. We pivot from the “Old West” to modern airship technology. Etta Place went with Butch and Sundance and then returned to the US after their deaths and disappeared (probably made a new life in San Francisco). She reminds me of another woman who commanded men’s attentions, Lou Salomé. More about her later. The last of the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, one of the women (equal opportunity gang), died in 1961. Laura Bullion died in Memphis Tennessee. So the pride of Nazi Germany, the Hindenburg zeppelin would not crash and burn in Lakehurst New Jersey, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid would not meet their demise until Professor Organ was twenty-five years old. Bonnie and Clyde traded in horses for cars. They were killed in 1934 and Bonnie was about Professor Organ’s age when it happened. They were both in their mid-20s.

My Professors' Professors? The college teachers of my 65-year-old professors had gone to college in a world just encountering Darwin (died in 1882), Alexander von Humboldt (died 1859), the concept of biostratigraphy and different eras of life (Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic, and such), steam-powered travel, and John Snow, Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch's recent demonstrations that “germ theory” was correct. European imperialism was swaggering across the globe. Practically everyone in the US was an immigrant or their parents were. Lots of freed slaves were around. The US government was still engaged in the western "Indian Wars." The great Eastern forests and plains bison herds were being decimated -- actually far worse than decimation, which means every one in ten is killed – for the bison and trees more like 9.999 out of every ten were killed, and for other species such as the passenger pigeon and ivory-billed woodpecker one hundred percent were wiped out – extinct. The passenger pigeon had been the most abundant bird in North America. Many were rushing for gold in California. The entire continent was being transformed. The Transcontinental railroad connected Europe with Asia with the US as the middleman.

But let's stick with my Professors, the ones who I knew and who influenced me directly, and their lifetimes. Three years before Professor Organ was born, Geronimo, the Apache war chief died in Lawton Oklahoma of pneumonia. When Dr. Organ went to college in the 1920s, “outer space” was not yet understood or defined. It took awhile to comprehend just how empty the void of outer space really is. It's not easy creating a vacuum that empty, nearly impossible in fact, even in a laboratory. And weightlessness? The Fédération aéronautique interntionale didn’t establish the Kármán Line that attempted to draw a line between inner space and aeronautical flight with the aid of lift, and outer space and astronautical flight in a void, until the 1960s. No one had been near the bottom of the ocean. It would still be a quarter of a century before people made it to the top of Mount Everest. There were still many groups of humans that had had no contact with the larger global world, isolated mostly in the jungle interiors of places like the Amazon and Indonesia. It was the period “between wars.” But my old professors didn’t know it because the “Second World War” had not happened. Woodrow Wilson won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in the 1920s to build the League of Nations to avoid another great war. The effort exhausted him, literally shortening his life, and… failed. The United Nations would be a second effort after WWII.

In the 1920s, the world had been thrown into shock by the horrors of the first mechanized industrialized war, the “Great War.” The Spanish Flu pandemic took millions globally (no anti-viral vaccines). Thanks to the likes of Bohr, Heisenberg, Planck, Schrödinger, and others, even physics had lost it's claim of being a "material science," as matter dissolved under probability and reductionism. Waves took over. Keep dissecting things, and pretty soon what you are studying is gone. The ancient part/whole problem. Remember Zeno's paradox? Uncertainty pervaded much even as modernism stormed ahead. New revelations: Time could be bent, according to Einstein. The subconscious rules us according to Freud. Humans are essentially the same as all other life. Professor Organ was 41 when Rosalind Franklin, Crick, and Watson unveiled the double helical structure of DNA. All life is a common code. Space is formalized then exploded by time when Cézanne, followed by Picasso, Braque, Metzinger, and others paint time instead of space. Right when my older profs went to college, Duchamp and Magritte are playing with image as a synthetic mental construct -- expectancy violations revealed our assumptions (we call it "Garfinkeling" in sociology). Flashing still images fast enough creates the illusion of motion (ironically called "persistence" of vision -- again permanence and flux always appear together). Hubble explodes physical space to infinity. Not only that, it, the entire universe, is expanding. And, by implication, we humans are shrinking fast and profoundly. Georges Lemaître first noted in 1927 that an expanding universe could be traced back in time to an originating single point, which he called the "primeval atom." Older steady-state cosmologists made fun of the crazy claim calling it the "Big Bang" idea. Hubble confirmed through analysis of galactic redshifts in 1929 that galaxies are in fact drifting apart. In a little more than my professors' lifetimes, both time and space inflated far beyond our comprehensions. Both became "DEEP." And, conversely, we shrank -- significance changed. The significance/meaning of almost everything changed. For many it didn’t sink in until moon voyaging astronauts could cover the entire Earth with their thumb. Some still don’t get it.

Berthold Brecht is working in the theater just before and during the Weimar years, first in Munich, then in Berlin. In 1925 two silent films set new benchmarks. Chaplin’s The Gold Rush and Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin appear in ever-more palatial “Peoples’ Cinema Palaces.” People fill the cinemas with cigarette and pipe smoke. The 1920s are the peak years for Ku Klux Klan membership (about four to five million). At the same time, the Harlem Renaissance is thriving. Dadaism is happening ("members" in Paris pictured). Vorticism is happening.

In 1925 the famous Scopes Trial takes place putting evolution on trial. The USSR is formed in 1922 (not the Soviet Union yet). Mussolini becomes Prime Minister of Italy. The Fascists have good relations with the Roman Catholic Church via the Lateran Treaty. Hyperinflation is hitting Germany hard and getting worse by the month. The Nazi Party is formed, and in 1923 Hitler leads the Beer Hall Putsch. While in prison in 1925 Hitler, along with lots of help from his psycho-fanatical followers, Emil Maurice and Hess, writes Mein Kampf (of course... Hitler could not write anything by himself). In Africa, Marcus Garvey’s Pan-Africanist supporters are repressed by colonial powers.

The US is flexing its own neo-colonial muscles in Central and South America setting up cartels for sugar and bananas. The phrase “banana republic” is coined by the writer O. Henry (one of my favorites) to describe the exploitation of Hondurans and their neighbors by a cadre of political, military, and industrial plutocrats. A banana republic is a corrupt oligarchy that abets and supports monopolistic foreign mining and plantation interests via kickbacks. The corrupt plutocrats offer their country and citizens up for sale. Like when Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort invited Putin’s interference into the 2016 US Presidential election by taking US citizen polling data to Putin’s spy Konstantin Kilimnik and other Russian intelligence agents in Ukraine. Manafort was caught lying about it and also routing millions of dollars to pro-Russian Putin puppet politicians in Ukraine. He was found guilty by a jury, jailed, and then pardoned by Trump. By the way, if you think I’m being “political,” it was the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee that concluded in August 2020, that Manafort's contacts with Kilimnik and other affiliates of Russian intelligence "represented a grave counterintelligence threat" to the US because his "presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign." Immediately after his inauguration, Trump invited the Russian Ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to the White House to celebrate! Yea. We won! He also kicked all US citizens, including all US advisors, the US press, and even US interpreters out of the Oval Office so only the Russians would know what they talked about. Trump invited the Russian "Press" to stay. The only pictures we have of the meeting were taken by them. Party down. Putin was celebrating too. And not long after several US spies were outed in Russia. One that had access to Putin was seized in the middle of a meeting in the Kremlin and never seen again. US assets were betrayed. Trump still wanted his Moscow tower. In 2017, the CIA removed (“exfiltrated”) its top spy in Russia before they got caught. US eyes were blinded. Russain psyops are working. Millions still love Trump. Banana republic.

Early on, the poets Pablo Neruda and Gabriel García Márquez denounce banana republic practices in their various writings. It is the colonial way. Hawaii’s King Kalakaua is forced to endorse the “Bayonet Constitution” that benefited American businessmen/missionaries (pineapple and sugarcane growers) at the expense of native Hawaiians and immigrant laborers. The missionaries end up owning much of Hawaii. True prosperity theology.

The Future Can’t Come Fast Enough!

In the 1920s, everyone is obsessed with time and change; philosophers (Henri Bergson, Husserl, Heidegger, Gebser, Whitehead), artists (Picasso, Duchamp), writers (Joyce, Bakhtin, H.G. Wells -- who invented the role of "futurist"), scientists (Einstein), architects (Sigfried Giedion, Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto), experts in war and business (Taylor’s time and motion studies), stress what the, ironically Jewish economist Fritz Sternberg called “Blitzkrieg” -- a lightening swift strategic defeat of competitors…

Change itself is changing – accelerating. Efficiency, as Jacques Ellul would say, becomes the last value. Hegelians stress the modernist notion of utopianism and talk about the logic of order and organization, and the end of history and the last man in "evolutionary" terms. Progress becomes suicidal, equated with apocalyptic hope. Hence the optimism and nihilism that pervaded the 1920s. We're all heading toward some final destination. The problem is, who is driving? And who will be allowed to come along for the ride? Which version of utopia will be our terminal condition? Everyone from Hitler to Stalin, Ford to Mussolini becomes an organizational expert. Planning of every motion takes command. Those who dictate order (Reich), have power. World War II becomes a titanic clash between the Left and Right Hegelians. The crown jewel of modernism, utopianism, proves to be deadly to both cultures and nature. Stalin and Hitler are mirror images of each other. "Left" or "right," it’s all Fascism. The driver's supporters get to ride "shotgun." The First Reich was the Holy Roman Empire. The Second Reich was the German Empire. The Third Reich, beginning with the Enabling Act of 1933, came to a crashing end with the fall of Nazi Germany. In his last days, Hitler decried the failure of the German people to live up to his new order/utopia.

The realness of the eternal order/organization transcends the contingency of individuals. Hegelian logic (the "Absolute") over flesh and blood. Can you say, sharia? Cults and religion should govern the secular world. Hence the study of organizations and logistics as things sui generis. Why predict the future when you can make it? Victory goes to the swift and bold. The rest suffer the, and as, "consequences." Remember, no dualism -- except for fascists.

The modern fight is over who will author the future. Speed is of the essence. Preemptive strikes seize the day. Even stock trading becomes a race to zero time needed to transact. Quantification and computation must accelerate. Time itself must accelerate. People are “too slow.” AI is the new hope. The future can't get here fast enough. The future itself becomes a medium to be acted upon. Tragic dualism renders everything media for organizing schemes. Nature, other people, culture… all media for the will to manipulate. While Nietzsche was the prophet of the postmodern world, Schopenhauer nailed the true sense of modernity. The world… as will. Wars are less and less about Maslow’s basic needs and more and more ideological, about end times, the future perfection. Struggles for dominion extend out, through colonial ambitions to the dreams of new world orders. Engineering entire societies comes into focus. Engineering culture. Engineering life itself. Everything becomes resource base for “designs.” And until and unless the organic natural world is reworked it has no value. Value must be “added.” And that means that things like oceans and forests and rivers have no value until and unless they can be “harnessed,” exploited. Value is reduced to exploitation. Otherwise, not being material things, value, quality, meaning evaporate. Yet, “vision,” is the motive of authoritarianism. Modernity, with graphs, ledgers, and screens everywhere, is visiocentric, not phonocentric (contra Derrida). The world must be organized, made (to order). Networks of techno-pragmatism, of power-politics (Realpolitiks)extend across the globe to organize everything and eliminate inefficiencies. Profit is realized only with each unit moved. Cultures, languages, species face mass extinction as streamlining modernism bulldozes all in its linear path to utopia. Woe to whoever “gets out of line,” “out of order,” goes “off the rails,” of the straight and true version of progress. If not “by definition” (a visual metaphor), then by pragmatic imperative, one cannot modernize without Westernizing. The way to the future becomes a narrowing funnel. And as you go down the drain… vortex.

Everything must be planned. God has a plan. In the industrial world, god becomes an engineer -- made in our image (another visual metaphor). Also a capitalist. Fascists ironically plan to lead the way according to stages of evolution, into a static future, because, after all, once utopia is achieved, everything is done -- final solution. End game. "The end is near." Culture itself becomes a prefabricated product -- someone's self-privileged vision. Confused writers even argue, absurdly, that evolution is leading to total assimilation and end times. However, we know, and thankfully so, evolution has no final goal. But the tension between a rising sense of time/change (“progress”) and conservative forces in the 1920s, marks the world on the brink of total war as flux and stasis clash. World War II would be won not by soldiers but logistics. William Whyte would capture the Zeitgeist of the impersonal bureaucratic post-war world in his classic The Organization Man. A new discipline never seen before on college campuses stretching back to Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum will suddenly appear after WWII and proliferate rapidly with lavish endowments: busi-ness schools. Many reduce the discipline of communication studies to the teaching of the laws of “strategic communication” and “compliance gaining.” Human communication is conceived as a tool for ordering and managing others. Instrumentality. Power is like the great eye of god in The Great Gatsby… “super-vision” – watching and judging -- over lower beings. Hurry sickness, an endless sense of time urgency, temporal anxiety will take hold of our lives. We must all be more productive, faster. Measures and evaluations saturate the world. Restless sleep becomes the norm. Even the “prophet of the far right,” the conservative talking head Limbaugh’s first name was Rush. A few independent thinking artists and intellectuals are noting the changes. Many are blindly onboard. A new objective way of seeing people reduces us all to functions within a structure. Everyone is expendable. Artisanship declines. Accomplishment and expertise lose respect. People can become obsolete. Jackboots march under a single will in both business and war. Alienation grows. Folks sense something ominous is rising so they lash out but without direction. Seeking escape becomes a keystone to culture. Today, artificial intelligence promises to outthink us all and gather constant "real time" data on us and organize us -- finally. Organisationslogik Über Alles. Standardization is the means. Standard Oil, General Electric, General Foods, National Cash Register, General Motors, Standard Time... Predictable certainty is the goal -- control/power. Styles and fashions are engineered with ulterior motives and change faster and faster. Culture has an ulterior motivation! Demand must be created. One can’t have mass production without mass consumption. Landfills… fill. But you can't stop surprises. Opportunity, good and bad, knocks. In the 1920s the Vorticists launch the publication BLAST literally out of the trenches of WWI. But even the Vorticists, such as the poet/artist/essayist Wyndham Lewis, from whom Marshal McLuhan “borrowed” the idea of a global village, could not imagine what was to come. A gyre of trash in the Pacific Ocean the size of Texas. Trash at all levels of the water column.

In 1923, Tokyo is destroyed by the Great Kantō earthquake. Thousands of ethnic Koreans are massacred and rightists seize on the disaster for political leverage. Anti-fascist intellectuals, artists, and politicians are assassinated. Martial law is declared. Some avant-garde Japanese hail the earthquake as an opportunity to rebuild Tokyo as a modern city with large avenues for cars and buses -- and troops. The Chinese civil war erupts in 1922 between Maoist Communists and Kuomintang republicans led by Chiang Kai-shek. Korea (all of it before North and South), Taiwan and other parts of Asia are controlled by the Empire of Japan. Tin Pan Alley is officially recognized in NYC. Bartók, Ravel, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Bloch, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and others are pushing classical music into new sounds. Schoenberg’s atonal music that lacks a tonal center or key, is attacked by Nazis as degenerate “Bolshevik” music (Entartete Musik), as Einstein’s work is attacked as “Jewish” physics. The famed Vienna Circle of philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, and logicians who were dedicated to rationality, positivism, and Enlightenment ideals and who were inspired by Klein, Botzmann, Husserl, Einstein, Russell, Wittgenstein, Mach, Hilbert, Poincaré, Frege… is most active with luminaries such as Schlick, Hahn, Frank, Neurath, Carnap, Gödel, Popper, Kaufmann, Tarski, von Mises, Reichenbach, Hempel, Quine, Nagel, Ayer. With the murder of Moritz Schlick in 1936, Austrofascim, and the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, most are forced to emigrate. The Circle, with its dream of a unified natural and social science, dissolves but its members spread out around the globe and continue to influence science and philosophy for decades. In Mexico, Pancho Villa, the great revolutionary, is assassinated.

The jukebox is invented in 1927. George Gershwin writes two great classics, Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris. Irving Berlin, Hoagy Carmichael, George M. Cohen, Jerome Kern, the Gershwins, Lorenz Hart, and others are working. Rodgers and Hammerstein put on Varsity Show (1920), Connecticut Yankee and Show Boat (1927). The Ziegfeld Follies are running strong. Cole Porter returns from living in Paris to work on The Greenwich Village Follies (1924) and his 1928 Broadway hit musical Paris. It includes the songs “Let’s Misbehave” and Let’s Do It.” When Professor Organ is eight-years-old, the first radio stations in the US go on the air in 1920. The BBC is formed in 1922, and the first radios for consumers are being produced and sold. Radio, in other words, was still a new and fast-devloping cultural and technological phenomenon to my professors when they were freshmen. Surrealism and Art Deco set the pace in the Arts. The first science fiction comic strip, Buck Rogers appears in 1929, as does Tarzan.

Influenced by Edgar Allen Poe, Oswald Spengler, Lord Dunsany, and others, H. P. Lovecraft, invents a new literary genre that combines science fiction, horror fiction and, fantasy. His circle creates a philosophy called Cosmicism (humanity is an insignificant force in the universe). Hey. This is eerie!!! Lovecraft and Schlick look like the same guy… A time-traveler maybe? Nope, they existed at the same time. But in two different places at the same time... Hmmm So it must be that "they" or he had a "time-turner" like the one Hermione had in Harry Potter. Mystery solved.

Decentering and deconstruction of human hubris started by the likes of Darwin and the notion of “deep time,” continues to unfold. An anti-modernism begins to emerge. As noted later below, the creator of Conan the Barbarian, Robert E. Howard will have correspondence with Lovecraft. The thing about the change-culture of modernity, is that it is very difficult to imagine the future in modern societies. Old sci-fi, like old movies look and feel… old pretty quickly. But Lovecraft’s ability to create a mood of abnormality lingers. Deformational forces are struggling against formalism. Hesse publishes Siddhartha. Milne publishes Winnie-the-Pooh. Kahlil Gibran publishes The Prophet. Shaw Back to Methuselah, O’Neill wins three Pulitzers in the 1920s. Sinclair Lewis hits a creative frenzy and publishes Main Street, Babbitt, Dodsworth, Arrowsmith, and Elmer Gantry – all in the 1920s. André Breton publishes the Surrealist Manifesto. D. H. Lawrence publishes Women in Love and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Joyce publishes Ulysses. Kafka’s The Trial appears. Frost publishes two collections (1923, 1928). Wallace Stevens publishes Harmonium. Margaret Mead publishes Coming of Age in Samoa (1928). Walter Gropius builds the Bauhaus. Le Corbusier publishes his manifesto on architecture. In 1920, the Negro National League in baseball is created. The same year, the NFL is founded. In 1923, the first 24 hours of Le Mans takes place.

In 1923, the New York Yankees win their first World Series. In 1925 the French Open invites non-French tennis players for the first time. 1927, first Ryder Cup. In 1926, when my professors were undergrads, Vogue presents “Chanel’s Ford” (like the Model T), a little black dress that becomes a huge fashion hit for woman of all social classes. In 1926, Western Air Express (later eventually to be part of Delta Airlines) launched the first scheduled airline service in the US for “commercial” passengers from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles. Why there? Who knows? Anyway, here’s the first passenger ticket for a regularly scheduled air route. As I write this in 2021, less than 100 years later, we have the first commercial passenger flights to space in history. When my professors were in college, flappers, the Charleston, and bob cut haircuts are all the rage. So are marathon dancing, mah-jongg, crossword puzzles, and pole-sitting. “Clip joints” or strip clubs are popular. Victorian values had been destroyed in the Great War and the depression, not the “Great” one, but the one that followed the Robber Barons of the Gay Nineties -- another systemic “economic panic” that capitalism cycles through periodically. Some call the 1920s the Années folles, the “Crazy Years.” In his great 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway says of his clan of expatriates in Paris, “You are all a lost generation.” While my profs were young, the Lost Generation of writers -- Hemingway, Stein, T. S. Eliot, Pound, E. E. Cummings, Hart Crane, Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, Faulkner, Millay, Henry Miller, Edmund Wilson, Huxley, Joyce, Woolf, Tolkien and more, were are all pounding away on typewriters. Many are sounding the alarm, the end of the American dream. But not so fast. Some dreams people WANT to believe in. Or they don’t want… to believe. Wanting is the key. Sometimes wanting is close to needing to believe or else it’s very tough going. Facts are facts, right? Wanting them is another thing. The Lost Generation's post-modernism was more anti-modernity. A sourness after mustard gas. Their's was a creativity that was less pluralistic and more "critical." I understand. How could you not be jaded. Some things were just not "right," period. It was different from Derrida’s anything goes liberal pluralistic decentering to allow new perspectives to emerge. Don't forget Picasso's masterpiece, Guernica. Rather the lostness suggested a slump at the end of a frenzy of imperialistic power spasms that left the older values, beliefs, and norms without basis. They were groping as strangers in strange lands. The stage was set for the big show to come like an imploding star before it goes supernova.

It was the “Jazz Age.” It was the age of flappers and prohibition. Corruption was running wild with the “Big Oil” Teapot Dome scandal in the Harding White House. Then came Hoover and Hoovervilles. F. Scott Fitzgerald was writing The Great Gatsby. My professors were looking for teaching jobs. In the 1920s, women are becoming liberated. It would be nearly two decades before Orson Wells would broadcast his famous adaptation of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. Russian peasants were launching a civil war against the Bolsheviks who betrayed them. It failed. There are many wars including the Greco-Turkish War and the Irish War of Independence. Until the Immigration Act of 1924 placed restrictions and quotas, immigrants from Europe were pouring into the US. “White America” did not regard many immigrants from Europe as being of the same “race” as themselves. That included the Irish, Italians, and Jews.

Back when my professors were freshmen, many colleges did not admit women. Women were not allowed to vote until 1920. Many colleges and even high schools did not admit Blacks. Native Americans were not conferred US citizenship until 1924. The Tulsa race massacre occurred in 1921. The 1920’s were roaring. Opium and Cocaine were legal until the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914. Freud and the Pope used coke. Yet marijuana was legal until the 1950s. Peyote and methamphetamine was legal until the Controlled Substance Act of 1970. The German military ran on methamphetamine during WWII. Heroine, which is actually a brand name of Bayer pharma company that invented it, was not outlawed until 1924. Ecstasy, which was patented in 1912 by Merck, was not outlawed until 1985. Not unlike the epidemic of painkillers that flooded the US in the last part of the 20th and first part of the 21st centuries. I know of two people personally, who succumbed to the legal drug business. No one is proud of being an addict. Too many think they can control the drug when it controls them. So just before my professors went to college lots of hardcore drugs were readily available and used by laborers to work hard to build America, and other drugs were still legal. But when they went to college, booze was not legal in the US. Still, many colleges had speakeasies near campuses. And many a professor back then kept a bottle in their desk. What one of my older profs from Germany, Detlef Ingo Lauf, called a “bracer-upper.” He’d taught at the Jung Institute in Geneva with Carl, Jean Gebser, and Paul Watzlawick. Here's Virginia Woolf (1925).

Around the time my professors were graduating from college (1924-1926 or so) violent turf wars among booze gangs were happening. Al Capone’s Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre occurred in Chicago in 1929. My professors who went to college in 1925 were already 24 years old and had finished their Bachelors. The first Winter Olympics ever was held in Chamonix, France in 1924 (the ancients did not have “winter” sports). The Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in public schools, is passed in Tennessee in 1925, and not repealed until 1967. Sears opens its first store in Chicago in 1925. The very last ones will close in Illinois in a few weeks from this writing (today is September 19, 2021). No one under age 35-40 remembers the Sears “Wish Book” Christmas Catalogue. It was an American tradition that was published from 1933 to 1993. The first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade happens in 1924. The first traffic light signal goes up in 1923. Clarence Birdseye invents frozen food around 1924. Goddard invents liquid-fueled rockets in 1926. My 65-year-old professors had already graduated college before bubble gum, the electric shaver, car radios, the aerosol can, the zoom lens, the parking meter, the Yo-Yo, neoprene and nylon are invented. In 1922, Frigidaire starts selling air-cooled refrigerators. No more hauling ice. Willis Carrier installs the first air conditioner in the Rivoli Theater, NYC in 1922. Air conditioners for homes will not appear for another ten years. The year 1922 saw the first around-the-world flight conducted by the US Army (the Air Force would not exist for another quarter century – founded in 1947). The flight was in stages. It took 175 days. The first single nonstop circumnavigation of the globe by plane will not happen until 1949, and it took 90 hours. Here’s Lucky Lady II and a map of the route.

My professors were almost all white, male, from privileged backgrounds. Those my age and older were students before the Great Depression, WWII, the rise of the Soviet Union, atomic power, TV or even “talking movies.” The first sound movies would not appear until 1926/27 when they were Juniors in college. Pretty exciting I imagine. There were no electric guitars, ballpoint pens, aqualungs, bikinis, seat belts, electric calculators… The great symbol of modernism, the skyscraper, was just appearing. Veterans of the Great War (not yet called WWI because that name came along with WWII… when we started numbering them) were walking around on their campuses.

Hubble discovers galaxies in 1924. The “Milky Way” does not exist as a galaxy until we realize such things exist and that we are living in one. Hubble famously said, "The great spirals apparently lie outside our stellar system." It took a long time to figure out how to measure just how far outside they are. Yankee Stadium, the “House that Ruth built” opens in 1923. Ruth led the league in homeruns from 1923-1931 (except 1925). Madison Square Garden opens in 1925. Colleges start building sports stadiums and sports generally become much more organized during the roaring 20s. Knute Rockne coaches Notre Dame to national championships in 1924, 29, and 1930. "Leisure time" comes into being. Modern childhood comes into being. Before this period, kids started work as soon as they physically could. Joe Lewis and Jack Dempsey are the most famous boxers. The Empire State building will not exist for a decade after my professors had graduated.

When Professor Organ was in college, reality and dramatization was as blended as reality TV is today. Perhaps more so. Talk about things changing fast, the West had been invaded, conquered, and converted into entertainment within half a lifetime. Criminals and lawmen (hard to tell apart sometimes) such as Earp and Masterson ended up working in Hollywood and New York City portraying themselves in movies and pulp "fiction"! How bizarre. Geronimo ended up working in “Wild West Shows,” pretending to be himself as a fierce Indian war chief. He died ignominiously. One cold rainy night, while riding back to Fort Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma after a bender, he fell off his horse, laid in the rain for hours, caught pneumonia and died soon after. Aside: Speaking of benders, have you noticed that the robot in Futurama is literally a bender and also an alcoholic? Just saying. And Professor Farnsworth is named after the guy who invented television (along with Zworykin). Lots of inside jokes in that show. I wonder how many “get” them. My professors were young adults when the famous lawman gun slinger Bat Masterson dies in 1921 and Wyatt Earp of the famed O.K. Corral shootout, dies in 1929. Wiley Post and Will Rogers are flying around setting aviation records. The biggest cinema stars are Al Jolson (in Blackface no less), Rudolph Valentino, Lillian Gish, Clara Bow, and Charlie Chaplin. There are only 48 stars on the American Flag.

In 1922, Howard Carter discovers King Tutankhamen’s tomb. Less than a decade earlier, Peary had just made the North Pole as Amundsen had reached the South Pole and Machu Picchu had just been discovered. Adventuring and discovery are still a rich gentleman’s pastime. Much of the globe is still “uncharted.” Route 66, the first road to run from Chicago to LA is established in 1926. Many roads are still dirt or gravel around the country and there are no highways, or airports as we know them. Tens of thousands of Civil War veterans are still alive as are eyewitnesses to the battle of the Little Bighorn. When my older professors were undergrads in college, the British Empire still stretched around the globe. The population of the US passes the 50 percent number for urban residences. But that’s misleading. The population is half urban but huge swaths of America are still rural and literally dirt poor. Rural electrification does not take off in a big way until the 1930s.

The Dust Bowl has not yet happened. Later in the 1930s, the great Dust Bowl drought that followed poor agricultural practices plunges the southern plains into despair. The “Dust Bowl Troubadour,” Woody Guthrie has not yet written his famous ballad “This Land is Your Land.” The big cities are getting bigger and the move to create the “arsenal of democracy” does not see the migration of large numbers of poor Whites and Blacks north into factories in the industrial centers for another 20 years. Much of America is without running water or electricity. Lindbergh flies solo over the Atlantic in 1927, and Amelia Earhart is the first women to do so a year later. There are no antibiotics when my professors are freshmen in college. That would not come until Fleming discovers penicillin in 1928. Walt Disney does not draw Mickey Mouse during a train ride until 1928. The Academy Awards (Oscars) will not exist until 1929, the year the Stock Market crashes leading to yet another economic depression, this time global. It very much helps launch Fascists into power in Europe and Japan.

So, when my professors were freshmen, the world, the US, was very different from my world of 1975, which is very different from the world of the freshmen entering college in 2021/2022. During their careers, by 1975 when I showed up, the Beatles had come and gone – already disbanded half a decade earlier in 1970. Watergate had happened. Desegregation had happened. Vietnam, the Beat Generation writers and the psychedelic cultural fad with the emergence of the new “super model” (Twiggy for instance), had occurred. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Bobby Kennedy, Jimmy Hendrix were dead. Woodstock had faded. WWII, Korea, and Vietnam were in the history books. A youth culture unimaginable by my professors when they were freshman had swept the world. And WWII ended with a big bang that changed geopolitical patterns globally – the Atomic Age. And by the time I went to college in 1975, Armstrong had already walked on the moon. The year I started driving, 1972, the last Apollo mission, Apollo 17 landed on the Moon with a Lunar Roving Vehicle (a “car”).

At this writing, no humans have set foot on the moon since. It’s been forty years and counting!! My entire teaching career. And as huge problems face our planet, rich tourists made their first flight into outer space on Elon Musk’s Space X rocket, September 15, 2021. Billionaires, Musk, Bezos, and Branson are rushing to leave the rest of us increasingly and literally farther, and in other ways further behind. One of the first “civilian astronauts” on the first flight was the billionaire CEO of Shift4 Payments, Jared Isaacman. The flight hailed the opening of space to civilians… very, very rich civilians. To assuage the anxiety of growing economic, opportunity, and spatial gaps, the first flight donated millions to St. Jude’s Hospital for Children. This practice, no doubt, will end with this one-off. Elysium liftoff.

Unbelievably, to me… the death toll from the Covid pandemic just passed the death toll for the Spanish Influenza pandemic that raged from 1918-1919 – about 640,000. And remember, back then people had no vaccines. They tried anti-bacterial vaccines to stop the Spanish Flu but it was a viral infection. They had no effect except for secondary pneumonia. Are we smarter today? We have much better science and facilities for treatment but some parts of the culture lag woefully.

So, as you sit in my classroom, I’ll tell you I entered college in 1975. Back in 1975, my freshman dorm had one TV and two phones (landlines) down in the lobby. The TV didn’t work. There was no cable TV as you know it. No Internet. No cell phones. No digital books. All invented during my career. Few students had cars. People hefted hundreds of vinyl long-playing albums (LPs) from home along with their stereos. We carried pounds of books to and from class. We spent lots of time talking to each other, face-to-face, reading newspapers and magazines, and going to the library. The Vietnam draft had ended just two years earlier so there were many on campus who came to college to avoid the war. And many veterans of that war using the GI Bill benefits for education. They sat side-by-side in classrooms. The war was still very fresh in the minds of everyone. Cambodia and Laos were turning into genocidal disasters, Vietnam was going to war with China. Mao died in 1976. China was still largely closed to the West and very poor. Mao's "culture revolution" did not end until 1976. It was a disaster for the country. The Cold War saturated much including popular culture. Spy-as-hero genre was popular (007).

An Accidental Mentor

When I first came to the University of Oklahoma, a fellow who had retired the year before, but who maintained an office took me under his wing. Edmund Nuttall would take me to lunch at least once a week. He was part of a clique of newly retired or soon to be retired professors who met for lunch every day. I got to listen in. Now I am him, or getting close. I learned a lot from Ed. He’d been a Chair at Cornell and chair or dean at Indiana, as I recall, and came to OU to be VP for research. He had a lot of experience. We were chatting and he said something about mentorship. He noted that the great rhetorician Kenneth Burke had spent his entire career lecturing here and there, mostly in small private universities without a bevy of graduate students to carry his fame forward. He’d been a member of the renowned Boar’s Head Society in Greenwich Village. Boar’s Head was comprised of many autodidacts and unattached adjunct writers/lecturers including Lewis Mumford, Allen Ginsberg, William Carlos Williams, John Erskine, John Berryman, Lionel Trilling, Alfred A. Knopf, Sr., et cetera. Members of the Boar’s Head Club and it’s related group, the Philolexian Society (at Columbia University) were and are a group of folks who like ideas and writing. They write, not to just “get a job.” They already have jobs. They don’t write to finish some assignment. They write as part of being literate human beings. They write because they have something to say, to express. Too many have nothing to say and do not appreciate their right to expression. They see writing as just a chore to complete ASAP and then quit. Burke’s fame was based solely on the power of his ideas. He had no prefabricated fan club of graduate acolytes. When a faculty member keeps turning out the same sorts of dissertations over and over, they are using the graduate students for their own self-promotion.

Aside: the substance in consubstantiality is not... like matter. Being substantive is not the same as substance -- "stuff." Similarly empirical is an adjective or adverb demarcating a metaphysical quality of an object or process that has both extension in space and duration in time. Not all phenomena have this quality. Many, like ideas, logic, plans, identity, emotion, mathematics, inspiration... have duration in time but not extension in space. You don't find science laying in the woods. It does not have color, weight, texture... Empirical, like being objective, is not the phenomenon or thing itself, it's not an object, but a quality. "Being an empiricist," is a choice (for those who are self-aware) as a member of a philosophical school of epistemology. As such it is a preferred or "privileged," mode of regard (way or perspective taken toward the world). It's a bias. You can describe something in historical, or economic, or mathematical, or sociological, or psychological, or physical, or critical, or empirical... terms. When a faculty member insists that all the students use the same method and the same theories, that’s a dogma. The students are being indoctrinated -- limited. Usually, it’s because the teacher has limited capabilities and understanding that are passed on. It’s the old hammer joke where everything has to become a nail or we can’t deal with it. They may use the philosophical justification of utility or pragamatism to justify their choice. Okay. Your values are expressed. Even so, and more so, your perspective is still a bias like all others. Sorry, you're special, like all the rest of us. Good news, you have a voice, like all the rest of us.

Ed had that quintessential American football face. He was a handsome dude with a pancaked nose from playing football in college back before facemasks. He looked, as you will see below, like Don Kay and Vince Lombardi… men of that generation. I too have had my nose broken a few of times catching an elbow or knee when going in for a takedown in wrestling or playing rugby in college. My nose has been “rearranged.” Until it was fixed, when I bought glasses the folks “fitting” them would try and try and then realize that my nose was not in the center of my face. Now it is, more or less. Well, Ed’s nose was not like mine. His was an old football nose. We talked about our noses. In 1980, toward the end of his long career, Ed published a paper in Journal of Thought entitled “Philosophy of Liberal Arts Education and Its Relationship to Life.” I quote: “If one were to ask a typical undergraduate what his primary educational goal is, he would probably reply that it was to become a lawyer, teacher, doctor, or some other type of professional. It is quite unlikely that he would say that it is to become more human. Yet the humanizing effect of the liberal arts education the student gets will probably influence his life more than his professional education.”

I agree and decry that increasingly and even at the graduate level, I see people driven by fear into vocational approaches hoping to go forth and repeat the “professionalization” of communication as a field, to teach “professional, organizational, and strategic communication skills” rather than to become “more human,” or I would amend, to better understand our existential condition. Ed enumerated five general goals of a liberal arts education that should contribute to a student’s overall life. “1. Develop effective modes of thought. 2. Develop a perspective of one’s place in humanity, both actual and ideal. 3. Prepare one to make professional decisions. 4. Discover and develop one’s avenues to esthetic experiences. And 5. Gain some understanding of one’s natural and institutional environments” (Nuttall, E. 1980. Philosophy of Liberal Arts Education and Its Relationship to Life. Journal of Thought. Vol. 15, No. 2 (Summer), pp. 39-46.). Not a bad place to start thinking about what we are supposed to be doing as professors. Today people are complaining about the failure of millions to care about or be able to appreciate civil responsibilities in a democracy. Well, I’m looking on my doorstep. There lies the responsibility. Are we teaching how to think, analyze, express, discern, or rather how to “do” “professional communication” skills such as how to write memos, create PowerPoint presentations, write “effective e-mails,” convince others to assimilate, conform to organizational goals? These are office skills that anyone educated in any field should pick up along the way. It’s basic literacy. But that’s what some teach as college curricula.

As for assimilationists, ever hear of Stockholm Syndrome and Group Think? Look them up. Conform even to abuse? Are there no limits? Nonconformists are criminals, maladjusted, mentally ill... It's in the literature as such. But even assimilation theory has been so watered down. Read Robert Merton's work on forms of assimilation (including rebellion) in Strain Theory which is traced directly back to the work of Émile Durkheim (1893, 1897). So much I read is ignorant of our own academic history and woefully simplisitic compared to much work from previous decades. But that is encouraged by some teachers. I once was commenting that a student citing Karl Weick might look at Husserl and Gadamer's distinctions between sense and meaning and Alfred Schutz, Peter Berger, and Thomas Luckmann's various works on social construction of meaning, especially since Weick relies heavily on them. She and her advisor resisted and responded, "but they are dead." So are Newton and Einstein. At this writing Weick is 86... I guess that means their work is now useless and his is soon to be. What an excuse for being lazy! Anyway, I cringe when I see Ph.D.’s from communication teaching undergrad classes in this housekeeping stuff in business colleges. The folks in business don’t want to teach such mind-numbing skills. They are busy teaching economic modeling, business law, accounting, management. So they hire Organizational Communication people to teach office skills. They’ve got the money. It’s embarrassing. You shouldn’t need a Ph.D. to teach “how to give effective presentations with Powerpoint.” Look it up on Youtube. That’s high school speech and debate. I just wish for more for our students. The Ph.D. is a long haul and it is a research degree. They may settle and find contentment. They have to right? We all "settle" to some extent. And that's good for them, maybe. But not so good for the field.

LIBERAL... ARTS, SCIENCES, HUMANITIES

Though I get grumpy about seeing communication Ph.D.s used to teach basic skills, I hasten to add that there are some brilliant young communication students, writers, and I keep telling myself to focus. Also, sigh... I understand the need for a job. I write alot in here about economic imperatives and the need to make the best of life situations.

Anyway, Ed had a great sense of humor and a lot of experience/insight. Ed was an expert in speech therapy – stuttering was his area of research, and my grad work was in three disciplines (two Masters, one Ph.D. all different fields), sociology, philosophy, and communication technologies and global networking. I learned much from Ed about the academic world. We were both very familiar with J. L. Austin's work. He told me a story about a very famous guy he knew personally who had basically kick-started the notion that communication studies must become a "social science" or... else? Last name rhymes with tiller. Long dead now. He was the teacher of a close-knit clutch of "brahmans" in communication (a mutual admiration club) who denigrated the field as "dame speech." Eager folks. Humanities? Bah humbug! This was about the time everyone was running for the stat books. The run started in sociology about a decade before it hit Communication, which tends to borrow and lag beyond. By the way, statistics is not the same thing as science. The greatest science, like Darwin's work on the voyage of the Beagle, puts the formation of theories and derivative hypothesis (for testing) AFTER observation. A hypothesis is not a theory.  It is a prediction based on past observation and a theory that seeks to explain the observations.  Hypo-theses are not proposed explanations of what has been observed. Sometimes people get these confused. And we spend less and less time actually observing behavior because online surveys of opinions are so easy. Data is not self-explanatory. Data alone is not science. We should be observing the behavior of our subjects just as other scientists do. They can't survey stars or blue whales for their opinions so they are not tempted. They use all sorts of instruments to observe and measure the behavior of planets, comets, blood cells, molecules, animals... Don't listen to waht people say, but what they do, and what they do with talk. Messaging is a behavior. Study the behavior of communication. One way: ethnography of communication. There are many others. Some like semiotics focus on content, others on form. In physics there are theroticians and there are experimentalists. They have clearly defined jobs. We do not. Nothing is more empirical than ethnography. All direct observation, which is the basis of empirical knowledge, is personal. Can't get around that. Adding up surveyed personal opinions and averaging them leads you to a an average opinion; not knowledge of communication behavior. Self-reporting is a weak foundation for knowledge of the human critter. Okay. Well I know I have been wrong. I believe truths can be discovered like when I don't think there is a wall in the dark and then I walk into it. Truth does not care. Ouch. I write about her below. She's NAKED. I found her in a park in Missouri donated by a beer brewer. Really. Truthfully. Astronomers fight for time to use telescopes to look for and at the naked truth. They can't wait to travel to such instruments and personally fiddle with them all night long. Our survey "instruments" generate responses more than data of observed behavior. It's hard to tell how much is artifact of the method. Now stats work especially if your population is highly homogenous. You only need a drop of my blood to generalize. You don't need to drain me dry -- thank you. If you know how one hydrogen atom behaves under certain conditions, you can pretty well generalize to all other hydrogen atoms in the universe. Humans are not so homogeneous. Individuals even change their minds and behavior over time, sometimes very fast and profoundly. Confound it!!! Anyway, a sociologist (can't remember his name) investigated why suddenly people were trying to outdo each other with stats? Suddenly very arcane arguments were being made about obscure statistical tweaks and logical manipulations of data. Tweakers... may guess, many using ritalin. Joking, sorta, maybe. Now in extreme conditions, and tiny Quantum states, this makes sense. But social science deals with macroscopic scale phenomena. The stats can be pretty blunt. The real problem, as noted, is heterogeniety confounding generalizability. Garbage in, garbage out. Significance only means you've made a map the size of the territory. What the soc dude observed affected not just sociology. Professors were being threatened by Joseph McCarthy's hunt for communists. So they took refuge in work few understood or cared enough about to read. We would later see this repeat in the hedge fund and subprime industries but for different reasons -- not because they were commies, quite the opposite. One had the sense that all the fancy math was a con and no one wanted to admit that they actually didn't understand any of it.

Back at the ranch, Ed knew this guy, the self-proclaimed champion of social science, and read one of his papers with interest. Hmmm. This attacker of dame speech had referenced J. L. Austin. Surprising to Ed. But then Ed realized our wannabe scientifical friend had referenced the wrong J. L. Austin. He plucked a reference out of somewhere that did not have any relationship to what he was claiming the source said. Turns out there were two folks with the same name. The "great scholar" had obviously not done his homework. You see this alot today with people accruing a million citations on Google Scholar, many that are not their own. Okay. I can live with that. There are several Eric Mark Kramers out there. One in Chemistry, another in Physics, another publishing on "cortical seizures," another on "enzyme substrates" ... I'll take credit. Thank you for publishing like fiends. I look great! I also need more gang publishing to get the numbers up.

This picture might be called, "How to Do Things with a Pencil." One day in 1976, I won't forget it, I walked into one of my professor's offices and a flying journal narrowly missed my head. Professor Krebs, a huge man who had played football for Navy and gotten his Ph.D. in rural sociology and systems analytics at Cornell (and very good at stats by the way) had hurled the object. He cursed, "There's no damn sociology in the sociology journals anymore. Just mental masterbation." People were trying to find the most obtuse and arcane statistical operations to write about. Keep in mind major social movements had been underway and gigantic public policy initiatives enacted during the 1960s and into the 1970s. Out of intimidation, sociologists had sidelined themselves to some extent. Well the communication journals are not like that. They are very interesting to read. But back then the soc journals were like reading math textbooks. In short, there was a moment in US history when social studies was under attack. Still is in some quarters. Some important writers such as Herbert Marcuse were "marginalized" because they insisted on studying social inequality and injustice. The social sciences were born out of the realization that industrialization and modern political/economic systems were generating unprecedented levels of alienation, inequality, anomie, loneliness (Max Weber, Ferdinand Toennies, Émile Durkheim, and yes Karl Marx, among many others... and before them Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Montesquieu, Hume, you know, the "Age of Reason" bunch...). But suddenly such investigations were dangerous to a person's career. Social science? Sure. I have dedicated much of my efforts to the sociology, philosophy, and history of science -- the "sociology of knowledge." You'll see it in here. But understand that scientism, the ideological version, or diversion, of this process, is not science. The defense of science is... not the same as doing science. I defend science but I also understand that science and scientists put their pants on, one leg at a time like everyone else and that Husserl was correct in his famous book The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. First Husserl argued that science is a cultural activity and product. Not all cultures have science. It has a history and it is a uniquely human history, not natural history. Science is not a naturally occuring phenomenon. Again, it is a cultural, historical phenomenon. A great one, in my humble opinion. Well worth defending. It is premised on admitting ignorance, honesty, humility when one is proven wrong, diligence, innovation, sharing... Wizards don't share their secrets. Next, science, as such, is part of the larger life-world (Lebenswelt) like all other human activities and which tends to be unseen (presumed). Science thrives in a free speech environment. Not so much under know-it-all yes-man operated dictatorships. Then Husserl identified two crises emerging from scientism (not science per se). Arguing about methods is not doing a method. Fights about science are not the activity of doing science. One "crisis" was the claim to be free of value judgments (value-free behavior) which had unleashed science and technology in WWI without moral bearing. Morals and ethics had been denigrated as subjective nonsense. Two, relativism was threatening Husserl's major goal, the goal of all philosophers, to find the truth. Science has a value system. The application of knowledge is debatable and increasingly and vitally so as technologies such as genetic engineering become more powerful and widespread. When people use the word "science" as a fetish or tailsman, as a tribal designation, hit "pause." What is their motive? And all careful observation is interested, not disinterested. The social sciences have suffered from an inferiority complex vis-à-vis other older disciplines for a long time. And because we study people, we must engage in value judgments as much as people making atomic bombs, AI, and are recombining genes. As Nietzsche observed, we are not inert self-polishing mirrors laying in the dirt that unconsciously reflect whatever happens by. We search and research. We have intentionality. We have motive. Needs. Desires. We direct ourselves. We work hard to pursue questions that are limited/focused, informed, and interesting (at least to us). Few are as passionate about their work as scientists and artists (a very similar breed). I find the staunchest defenders of social "science" to be very emotional about it. Their identities are involved. Okay unless they start to deny the rights of others to publish work that is different from their own and to only hire versions of themselves. Try to see the value in others. You might grow.

I remember Ed and I talked a few times about the problems of alcohol in academics, and society generally. He was an alcoholic. Hadn’t touched a drop in years but he was adamant. For a time, I quit going to some of our major association conventions because I came to concur. I got tired of retread papers, reinvented wheels, presentation times so short you can’t present anything new or unorthodox, and people getting drunk out of their minds. Disorganized panels... Then we tell the grad students they must attend these conferences to get their careers started. I get it. But they cost a fortune. Airfare, membership fees, hotels that sell an egg at breakfast for a massive markup. They never get the state institutions to cover it all. And many pay with borrowed money. I complained about this some years ago, and low and behold, NCA at least made an effort to lower membership for grad students. I'm sure I was not the only one grousing. I go to support the students who are trying. But now we are swamped with vanity presses. Pay to play. Why? We already have huge organizations with experts who have for years edited and put out our organs. Power. I talk about that later. Okay. I won't get started. Ed passed in 2006. Some things have not changed. Some have. Ed was just getting used to using a cell phone.

“Miracle” is Just Another Word for Breaking the Law

Some people say there are no miracles. Nothing is a miracle. Others say everything is a miracle. The entire universe is a miracle. Well… If either is correct the word has no meaning. A necessary requirement for the supernatural is the existence of natural law to violate. This is both a crime and a miracle at the same time. Imagine that as a defense in court (read with diphthongs) “Your honor, jury… I’m just a small town country lawyer, but I say, my client is not a criminal. No! He is a MIRACLE-DOER. And the only reason is because of the existence of laws in the first place. Make no laws, no crime, no miracles. I rest my case. It’s not his fault.” Applause. Hooping and hollering from the peanut gallery. A slight nod of the head toward the client. Okay… just trying to be funny. Did I violate some rule or law? Miraculous.

It seems to me, that modern cosmology says there was a beginning. I know there is debate about it. But if there was, then there were no laws of physics to break. They came into being with the universe. So, there were no laws of physics. Then there were. Before the univserse... nothing. Absolute peace and quite. Beyond stillness. Then endless com-motion breaks out. Was the universe a mistake? Oops. Sorry. Dropped the plates and woke you up. Is it a crime? Disturbance of the peace. Is that miraculous? A meta-miracle? I don’t know. Some societies, people, and institutions are inherently democratic. Debate! Others are not. I prefer the former. After all, I, you, we are part of the commotion. Is it "self-organizing?" What some call endless dissipative structuration. Prigogine explains: "A self–organizing system acts autonomously, as if the interconnecting components had a single mind. And as these components spontaneously march to the beat of their own drummer, they organize, adapt, and evolve toward a greater complexity than one would ever expect by just looking at the parts by themselves." Prigione has also declared "the end of certainty." That, I think, is "good" for free will and having one's own rhythm. Wanna dance? Hindus see it that way.

Being part of a chain, a chain of causation... being nothing but the effect of prior causes is... minimally boring if not nihilistic. Variables operating according to interlocking imperative. Hmmm. See my quote from Goethe below about tight boot laces. Who organizes this... commotion? Nobody? Or everything? My problem with authority… Is it legit? Is it earned? Does it listen? Can it change? Is it honest and just? Kind? I think kindness is a good thing. Subjective nonsense I'm told but I'll stick my neck out. I respect expertise and innocence. So, god can break its own laws. It makes the laws. So I guess it cannot do miracles or break the law since it is meta- or trans-legal. I don't know. But we have to follow the laws, or else... This arrangement is what one famous scientist called “celestial dictatorship.” King of kings’ stuff. For me, up front, and as an Enlightenment philosophe, I have a problem with hypocrisy and power of this ilk. That’s all. I’m “new world” I guess.

WARNING: Nerdish Detour Ahead

If you want to skip this, you can move on to "My Goal: Defense Against the Dark Arts" below. Or heck, you can skip wherever you want. There are no rules about this -- river of words. You can jump around, splash here and there. Just giving you a heads up about this next section. The next few paragraphs are a little tiny bit demanding. Still here? Okay, so you say, "I’m not a logician or mathematician. Why should I care a flying zipwinger about this?" Well, you talk, don’t you? You think. The problem is worse in “natural language” or loosely “street talk.” I say “loosely” (meaning ambiguously, inconsistently… a “drifting signifier”) because I’m using street talk, to talk about street talk, but even mathematicians can’t control the codes they explicitly invent to avoid loose talk. And everything, even scientists and mathematicians, and surly politicians and news anchors speak in wobbly ways. We’re at sea here and we don’t have very good sea legs. We stumble around what we mean, and naturally have trouble understanding each other. We want to be “positive” (I am positive about such-and-such!!!). Certain. If only we could lock down meanings once and for all… fix things. That might be good… and also not so good; good being relative and all.

If you go back in time to fix something bad, and it worked, then you wouldn’t need to go back in time. So, stop regretting the past and stop doing bad things to begin with.

As with so many things, what Gödel was up to was nothing new. He translated an ancient paradox known as the Epimenides Paradox into mathematical terms. Simply put, in natural language, versions of the paradox look like this: “This statement is false” or “I am lying.” What this means is: If I am telling the truth, I’m lying. Gödel took the fateful reflexive turn philosophers had already taken and tried to use mathematical reasoning to explain mathematical reasoning. He, like philosophers, wanted to be fair, and more importantly, achieve universal truth which means that my axioms and following propositions must be applicable not just to everyone else but me too. So, we have the self-referential theorem, which may be “fair” but unworkable.

I have an unsavory choice. Be universally valid, which leads to absurdity, or existentially truthful. The existential truth? I’m invalid; an invalid. Not “whole.” Not complete. Not perfectly consistent. Not perfect. I am just me. Ego sum, sicut mihi. Not so nice as Descartes' big saying but probably truer. That’s what you get with a kid from Marion, Ohio… working class philosophy.

COMPLETELY INCOMPLETE

Gödel’s complete Incompleteness Theorem appears as Proposition VI in his 1931 paper “On Formally Undecidable Propositions in Principia Mathematica.” Principia Mathematica was a grand effort by two philosophers/mathematicians/logicians, Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, to purge set theory of self-contradicting self-references. It failed spectacularly and Gödel showed why. The Incompleteness Theorem basically attempted to prove itself via a self-referencing mathematical statement (using number theory… very difficult connection to make). Now I’m not going to go into this too far except to say that Gödel realized that he was writing number theory that was about number theory (self-referencing) and that that was possible only if numbers could be converted into statements which involves the invention of a code (you communication people with me here?). Hence, the Gödel Code makes numbers stand for symbols and sequences of symbols. This coding enables statements of number theory to be both statements of number theory and also statements about number theory (at the same time). Yes, I know. Boring… I’ll try to pick it up. Just a suggestion: if you can be satisfied with incompleteness, life will be more fun. And being indecisive can mean you are thinking things over. Not a bad thing to do.

So, when applied to itself it means that “this statement of number theory does not have any proof.” Now most of us blithely think we know what proof is, but what a “proof” is, is an area of debate among philosophers and mathematicians and that is one of the reasons Russell and Whitehead wrote the massive Principia Mathematica. Proof referred to a demonstration within a fixed system of propositions. Here then is another problem. It is very artificial. The real lifeworld (Lebenswelt), where you and I and everyone else including Gödel, bungle along day-after-day, as Husserl argued, is far more complex with permeable boundaries between text and context. Fixed systems are nice and tidy but they are artificial. So, we are stuck with limitative results. Husserl, however, did not give up, arguing that the fact of limitative results was itself an essential, universal property of existence. In short, relativism is universal. PARADOX! He didn’t like this result and thus proclaimed his life-long effort to make an unassailable positivism a “shipwreck.” Poor guy. He opened philosophy to account for the lifeworld (Lebenswelt) and it swallowed his logic whole. Self-referencing can be a pain in the ass. He realized that he was positive about only one thing. That he was not sure with absolute certainty of much of anything. Welcome to reality. Or I will borrow from James Thurber, welcome to my world. Wittgenstein said that methodologies were therapies. He might have been right about that. One book by Sartre could have been called Search for a Therapy. Hmm. Academics do tend to get very emotional about their means of accessing (or constructing?) reality. The good thing about professors (or why I like them) is that they keep trying. The truth keeps getting truer. A ten-year-old biology textbook is out-of-date. But then lay positivists accuse us academics of being inconclusive, not 100 percent sure (evolution is “just a theory”). Humility and positivism don’t always go hand-in-hand. That’s resolute certainty versus doubt, or at least healthy skepticism. Sure I’m sure that you’re not sure. For sure. Strange word, sure… and insure and assure. We want to feel safe and good.

I CALL... BS!

This whole webpage thingy is BULLSHIT!

If I'm bullshitting, then I'm telling the truth.

If I'm telling the truth, I'm bullshitting.

Thank goodness for existential facticity that saves my posteriori logic from my apriori logic (induction, deduction, "abduction," ABDUCTION"??" for real... ask Peirce). Logic and language are not everything. Not even close. Go outside and be quiet. It's magnificiently huge out there. By the way, in his Rhetoric Aristotle lists the "cardinal virtues," and one is "magnificence." What? What's that? Words can't capture it. Go outside and be overwhelmed by nature's virtue (which resides in you too). It's dunamis (δύναμις), your potentiality and actuality at once. What's more amazing, the acorn or the mighty oak tree? There's a woodpecker, a redhead like me, who sees the potential and stashes them in holes she makes in trees for the future. What do you think your potential, your "potency" is? P.S.: See Werner Heisenberg's treatise on Aristotle's many discussions of potentia (which implies actualia), Physik und Philosophie: Weltperspektiven. P.P.S.: (if I keep adding Ps I'll be Peeing all over -- not dignified) Heisenberg, along with, Carl-Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Adolf Portmann and other luminaries contributed to a Festschrift in honor of Jean Gebser (talk a little more about him later). For communication folks reading this, Gebser was a colleague at the Jung Institue in Geneva with Carl Jung and the fellow who famously said "Man kann nicht nicht kommunizieren, denn jede Kommunikation (nicht nur mit Worten) ist Verhalten und genauso wie man sich nicht nicht verhalten kann, kann man nicht nicht kommunizieren." In short, Paul Watzlawick said you cannot not communicate (among many other very interesting things). Simple. Like the potential power of an acorn.

MY GOAL: DEFENSE AGAINST THE DARK ARTS: OR, HOW TO CUT THROUGH KNOTS OF BULLSHIT

Magic Mag(ha) Means Might, Make, Manipulation

Myth (Mu) means mouth, music… nondirectional tools of emotional symbolism and magic incantation (you can look away but you can’t hear away – the eye is signalic – written versus oral structuration)

Power: How it works. What is “it?” How can I explain this? Let’s see. In technology, it is converting things (including people) into tools, like a branch or board into a lever, that enables you to multiply, to amplify your strength by manipulating things around you. Unlike most animals, at least to our scale, no other animal adapts the environment to their needs and wishes as much as we do. We change everything around. We don't adapt. We make other things fit our wants and needs more than any other animal. Consequently, the environment is our cultural product. And then life adapts to that, or not. We adapt to our own cities. Dialectics. We are movers and shakers. We move rivers, mountains, travel to the bottom of the oceans... fly. Okay so humans "count." Beavers can also drastically change the environment. If we keep wiping out insects that pollinate, we will find out the hard way that they "count," "matter." I talk later about how the emergence of a bacterium that farted out oxygen as a metabolic waste changed the entire world, including creating an atmosphere that stored enough chemical energy to enable the development of multicellular life... including us! When you take a big gulp of fresh air, you're inhaling some other critters farts! Auh... oxygen... Sing along "The great circle of life... La la." It also led to a global mass extinction of anerobic life! So, change/shit happens, often as a "by product."

Magic shares the root Mag(h) with the modern English words machine and mechanism too. Archimedes said with a lever long enough; he could move the Earth. Tools, utilities involve power multiplication -- a "force multiplier." In business, it consists in multiplying oneself by hiring others to extend one’s interests and abilities, to work FOR YOU. The manipulator multiplies himself by being in multiple places at the same time… enlisting the bodies and minds of others to do the work (or the fighting) he wants done and to produce results. How does this happen? Plato and Aristotle told us long ago. Rhetoric. Make no mistake. Money talks. It can make you "sing," or it can buy silence. Rhetoric is any means of persuasion. That includes not just critical writing but stats too. Rhetoric is not limited to quality or quantity. Those metaphysical and epistemological designations are not important, though some are so identified with them that they call themselves a quantitative or qualitative person, researcher -- magic identification. Very subjective folks. Very "personal," even passionate about metaphysics and such. First step in the phenomenological method? Bracket metaphysical speculation. It's just a bias. Such tribalism is not helpful. It's a luxury actually -- merely academic -- as one of my old professors used to say. The point is: If what you are trying to do is really important with consequences like taking away someone's freedom, such differences become irrelevant. For instance, a detective uses all sorts of information to build a case/story; interviews, survellance/observation, participant observation (aka undercover work), insect studies, weather reports, lab results, ballistics, phone, financial, criminal, and other records/histories, DNA... Even autoethnography, sort of, when they are called to be a witness if they directly experienced a crime. If you are serious about finding the truth, you use all the tools you have. A society that denies the power of idolic (not symbolic or signalic, see my theory of Dimensional Accrual and Dissociation) rhetoric is doomed to be a dictatorship. The first trick of the devil is to convince us that he does not exist. Those who claim we should not study rhetoric because it does not matter are in denial. You are most vulnerable to persuasion when you think you are not being persuaded. This denial is meta-rhetoric. Myth is often involved in convincing you to become a lever for someone else, to lend/sell your body and mind to do what he/she wants. How? It’s a con. "Trust me," says the manipulator, "and I will make you great again," which presumes that you are not already great. Or, that you and your society were once "great." To be a leader, find people who feel not so great... dispossessed so you can possess them.

The cult leader rigs systems and ties us up in knots. The cult leader studies others for their vulnerabilities then strikes when they are most stressed. The leader takes possession. Possession… to be invaded by an alien spirit/will. Their will moves your limbs. Such a person will work on your feelings of alienation and disenfranchisement. He will give you reasons why it is not your fault your life is difficult, not happy. That will give you focus for your resentment and help you avoid reflection on your own failings -- or the simple fact that life in general is not endless euphoria. Read Buddhism. Then he will tell you that life should be much better. That you should and deserve to be great. But, he will also tell you that you can’t save yourself. You need a savior. Guess who? That’s the cult leader’s template. So in this process, you are the tool used to turn you into a second-order utility directed for and by the cult leader.

In The Responsive Chord Tony Schwartz, a wizard of advertising, tells us how this works. He noted that in 30 or 60 seconds, he did not have time to teach the audience anything new or complicated to sell a product. Watch an ad for a car, a very complicated product. They tell you almost nothing about it but present it to you shiny, with pretty people around it or in it, on a picturesque coastal highway, maybe at sunset... "This can be you, if, and only if you buy the car which will do the magic of transforming you..."Who communicates better than advertisers? Even presidents, prime ministers, kings, and emperors hire ad firms to sell themselves. For instance, the Saudi royal family does massive global PR. So does the Vatican. So do the biggest law firms and industries, universities... and with Facebook we are all advertising ourselves. So what did Tony teach Madison Avenue on how to make advertising magic (other than hijacking music itself leveraging its emotional associations, tranforming music into the "jingle" -- the power to borrow "good feelings")? Chant and enchantment. We see it at rallies all the time. I call it spiritual/cultural leverage. You might psychologize it. That works too. In short: Turn the audience members into a workforce and leverage them against themselves. Use what people already know, believe, and feel to resonate with the message and persuade them. Use us against us. Don’t try to teach a person anything new but instead turn her beliefs, feelings, and values into triggers, into leverage (force) to sell her on a product. That way, the soothsayer can also sidestep the issue of truth. How you feel and what you value and believe is not a matter of truth – to you. Truth-claims about the empirical aspect of a product are not what sells. The issue for the persuader is not to overcome cognitive dissonance but affective dissonance. "Come on. Buy the boat..." "Buy the car..." Come on cause after we ink the contract, then the remorse is your problem, not mine. So we don’t even need to talk about facts to create the product as a means to evoke and invoke (incantate) feelings and aspirations that will move us to buy. Cigarettes are all tobacco and saltpeter wrapped in paper. Some with a filter and menthol, some not. Mostly a delivery system for nicotine. Empirically not much difference between brands. Smoke this cigarette and not that one because it manifests a lifestyle and feeling of being cool, sophisticated, tough. Marlboro and Camel are life-accessories for toughness and individualism. "That's you, right?" "Damn straight it's me." "Okay then, buy and smoke Marlboros." That's my tribe. But there are the Others... Newport, Merit, Pall Mall, L&M, Lucky Strike, Benson & Hedges, Kent, Virginia Slims, Salem, Chesterfield, Raleigh, Kool... cigarettes/tribes They all have an identity, different identities from Marlboro and Camel. How? Rhetoric. Male/female. Tough individualist. Socialable sophisticate. Which are you? They are you. Products are also produced to enable status mimicry. Can't afford a Ferrari? No problem buy a Porsche. Can't afford a Porsche, then buy a Corvette. Can't afford a Corvette, buy a Camero. Can't afford a Camero, buy a used one and put fancy wheels on it. Can't buy a house in this suburb, there are others with facades and cheaper versions of fireplaces, kitchens, bathrooms, and schools for you. Tiers of entire neighborhoods so we don't "mix" or get "mixed up." Buy what and who you aspire to be. We are schizophrenic. Can't buy a diamond there are classes of them. Next step down to the mimick cubic zirconia, or further, glass. The market provides. Never satisfied. Debt has been a very powerful invention, some say the most influential invention of the modern world. Banks keep the currency flowing. Socialism with a profit motive. You need money? I got money to lend. Money itself is a product bought and sold. It's all rhetoric and psychology. Aristotle wrote about both, as well as his book, dedicated to his son Nicomachus... his ethics. Nothing new here. Art or science. Both demand originality. Nothing escapes rhetoric. The more scientifical, the more persuasive, at least for some. Wear a lab coat in your ads. It makes your product seem scientifical. Put your logo and product on a grid. That looks scientifical too.

It's not just about Group Think but GROUP FEEL

Much “persuasion” is not dialectical in the form of rational debate but is evocative and invocative as incantatory images. The images and words evoke and invoke feelings. They do not drive conclusions. Instead, it is how the ads make us feel that sells. Mussolini promised Italians that they would become great again, feel proud again, if they did what he wanted – give him power. The old Roman Empire would rise again. They loved to watch him strut around because I am him and he is me (magic). Just as Mussolini studied a movie star for his style, Trump copied Mussolini's mannerisms, the slow walk, the jutting jaw, the crossed arms and grimace... Here's (Mc)Donald discussing grimacing with the purple professor himself. Hitler said the same thing to the Germans: build a third Reich or third order like the first two (the Holy Roman and old German empires). Putin is doing it as I write. Xi in China, same thing. Rebuild some lost glory to justify current subjugation and aggression. We are told that we must return to the days of living god-kings, emperors, pharaohs, Caesars/Czars, monarchs… Or not be great. How can I be proud and righteous without submitting to a god? Salvation itself is dependent on surrender. How do I become part of something bigger than myself? Convergent structuration… with one agenda to conform to. Join with fervent dedication. Hazing makes it all, makes me, real. All conquerors make that promise. Of course they do. It’s all about identity. They promise a better tomorrow and a happier and better you too. Great means to be significant if not to everyone else, at least to ourselves. Otherwise, I am nothing. It's not just "group think." It's GROUP FEEL. Belonging, or lack thereof, is the great leverage to the threat of ex-communication.

The cult leader promises nothing less than to give me an identity that will make me feel good about myself. To be somebody. A member, a limb, an appendage to support the great cause. To be the cause. Trump vaguely called on a return to some sort of greatness to convince people to give him power. But those old “great” orders were not so great when you study them. They involved tremendous inequality and injustice, violent terror, crushing conquests, the enslaving and extermination of peoples, languages, and ways-of-life. Also this call to return to some fictional past denies that we as a species have made any progress. I respect the fortitude of my ancestors but no way do I want to "go back" and live like they did. They fought and worked to get out of that situation. Imagine: If they could see the 21st century and then see that I want to go back to the 18th or 15th centuries, they'd think I was insane. "What can I say? My descendant is an idiot. He thinks living before antibiotics, redress of injustices before courts, electricity, hospitals, libraries, airplanes, telephones, 'the pill,' light beer... is 'great'. What the hell am I working so hard for!!?" What "past greatness?" The cult leader must teach us that we need to be saved and that current conditions and leaders are terrible and must to be supplanted with him/her. But again… the truth. We have made progress and the promise to move forward by going back is nonsense. Perspective. Bias. Sure. You can't avoid it. It is essential to perception itself. And so, we apply our values to the past. With progress, past practices seem and are deemed to be deficient. That's progress. Sorry "the past." Suck it up. You're not so great after all. And the present needs work. So we have to keep trying.

Don’t believe that these are end times. Sure, there are problems. I talk about them in here. I've published hundreds of pages about the extinction vortex, and not just of other flora and fauna but also of cultural diversity and other languages. I'm clear-eyed. But... But poverty is down globally. Lifespans are up globally. Literacy is way up. Access to education is way way up over just 100 years ago. Look up. Things are changing. It may seem too slow, but in historical terms, we have seen amazing progress all over the world. Keep going. Don’t drink the cool-aid (which I talk about later) and give yourself over to cult leaders who want to take everything.

How power works: would-be cult leaders want you to conscribe and/or enlist under their control so they can expand themselves, leverage you. They want you to volunteer for “the cause.” To become the effect of the cause. Scribe -- lists. They want unfair shares of everything. Maybe you have known a proto-"leader" who wants a valuable college degree. Maybe more than one degree. And they are in a hurry to amass them. How will they succeed? Well, they can hire other students in their classes to write “their” papers. Hey, they paid for them, so the work is “theirs,” right? Ghostwriters. Workers regularly sign away their products to the boss (patents, copyright…). The cheater might pay the labor $50 or $100 per paper. Then put their name on the work. Lots of famous people do this. Trump. Bill O’Reilly writes a book a week. Like his bestseller Killing Lincoln. I've noticed that lots of his books have "killing" in the title. I think he's manipulating his readers via mortality salience to trigger them to revert to more conservative mindsets. Anyway, historians have pointed out that the Lincoln book is riddled with numerous factual errors. It was written not by O’Reilly, but a high school cross-country coach named Martin Dugard. It’s a polemic. Not a work of scholarship or even basic accuracy. So why was it a best seller? Because Fox gave O’Reilly a massive audience for years who were fed his line of crap – a ready consumer base. His primary product, like Trump, is himself. The brand is the cult leader. They produce nothing, just sell themselves. When confronted with the facts, O’Reilly didn’t care about that. Just sales. Okay, since the cult leader is in a hurry they take 12 classes per semester. They pass them all with A’s, thanks to the hard work of those they hired to write “their” papers. They didn’t learn anything, but that’s not the issue for the sake of power. Like Trump University. Total scam to get tuition money, including from GIs using their education benefits. Captain Bone Spurs,’ aka the Commander and Chief’s contribution to veteran’s educational aspirations. Soon the player has three or four degrees. Maybe an MBA. Maybe a Ph.D. This is the multiplication of force.

Knot Making: All Hands on Deck for Rigging the System with Block and Tackle

How do you multiply force? You leverage others. Money hires bodies and minds that the player turns to labor upon what they want done. You build what they want. They pay you for the service AND to leave, after they are satisfied. Leaving means that the product is no longer associated with you the ghost person. It is “theirs.” You are anonymous. Their name is on the degree. You are invisible, like the hand of the market. Sorta like Archimedes water screw, you got .... Without you, no book, no homework, no degrees. But their origin is a mystery. Once done, you have no claims. Once they are satisfied, they pay you to leave, and they have exclusive rights, maybe even a contract that buys your silence (a non-disclosure agreement). Silence and invisibility. Magic. So, they end up with all these degrees and future opportunities, and you have 50 or 100 bucks and no future. Leverage begets leverage. The more you have power, the more opportunities to get more.

If they are not interested in learning, why do they want the degrees? The degrees are leverage, too, just like you were. They leverage the degrees for a good job or to convince investors to help them start a business. They repeat the process only on a larger scale. They only hire and keep people on their payroll worth more than they pay. The lever must produce more force than is invested in it. To profit off each person’s labor on their payroll, the strongman (leader, owner, boss) pays less than the workers are worth. Nothing personal, but if they can’t make more off a person than they pay them, that person is removed -- fired. So as their workforce grows, the workers’ value, ideas, labor, hands become the owner’s ideas, labor, and hands and the force grows. Hence the “labor force.” Leveraging labor builds the value of the enterprise. With each bit of work they do, the player profits. So the bigger the payroll, the more people employed, the faster the player accumulates power/wealth -- gets rich… quick The more people they can utilize the better, and the workers are grateful for a job. The employer becomes a hero, a business-person hero, even as they take profit by paying each worker less than what their labor is worth. And with some of the profits, the player probably pays politicians not to tax them or create or enforce any worker or environmental safety laws. Costs must be minimized to accelerate wealth accumulation. They end up with all the degrees, the empire that others (you) built for them for a salary. And since you get a salary, you cannot avoid taxes. Also, as you get a salary and are not an owner, the agreement is that you can be terminated from the enterprise at any moment without stated cause. You took the money, the salary. So that concludes the relationship. They pay you for a service and then to leave when they want you gone. When they make decisions, labor does not matter. Only money. Investors call the shots because they own the business. Only if it is organized (unionized) can labor maybe force the owner(s) to listen to their interests. Otherwise, you are alone with no assets, no leverage, no power. You are probably only a few paydays away from homelessness. That’s how power works. This precarious position is the source of huge leverage for the owner. This is also why government safety nets are hated by owners. And they like to paint poor immigrants and single mothers on welfare as major threats to your livelihood. Nonsense, BS.

So to build their power they must find ways to harness others and take their labor at below market value. And since people with no power need jobs, they will love the player for exploiting them. If the player employs enough people, the player will rise in status and be worshipped. They will get a key to the city… their city. All workers in this system put themselves out on the platform (real or digital) to sell themselves. They are the labor market. Their representatives (politicians) will even give the owner massive tax breaks for building their exploiting machine in your neighborhood. The politicians will bribe them with your tax dollars to exploit you and your children. A bit of every salary will go to building the infrastructure for their operation of wealth building. To push faster growth in their enterprise, they may need more investors. They have to push the workers for more productivity because investors want consistent and big returns. Now workers who sell their bodies and minds do not matter. Investors are all that matter. If the investors want to move the factory to a place with cheaper labor, no taxes, no labor or environmental protections, it will be done. You, and other workers don’t matter. Yes, you may have given your body and mind, blood, sweat, and tears to build the enterprise, but you do not own it at the end of the day.

Below, I talk about growing up in the steelbelt that was beginning to rust. I watched the transition. I grew up in Marion, Ohio, where the crawlers that carried the Saturn V moon rockets, the Space Shuttles, and other space vehicles out to their launch positions were designed and built. Over 50 years later, those crawlers are still working. Here’s some photos from 2022, of them carrying the Artemis Space Launch Systems (SLS rockets) out to begin humanity’s return to the moon. Here’s a link to a NASA video of the “wet dress rehearsal” (the final prelaunch test) of the SLS NASA SLS 2022

The factories that built these crawlers are long gone. Because workers dared to ask to share more of the profits, the factories closed and moved to Mexico, Taiwan, China… And they blamed the workers! Why? They asked for a larger share of the value they were creating. But that is blasphemy. Mythologies have been deployed, narratives constructed, and rhetorical tropes engaged to make this so. The workers had no power to decide to move the factories overseas and never would have committed such suicide if they did have that power. Who made those decisions and why? Investors who wielded the power of ownership. Many never set foot on the factory or mill floors. That’s the power to move things around without much effort. Leverage. Abracadabra. The factory is moving to Mexico. Magic. The workers didn’t matter.

The Great Wall of China, the Great Cathedrals, the Egyptian, Aztec, Maya pyramids, the temples of Angkor Wat, the Great Stupas of Sanchi and Mahabodhi, the Iron Pagoda, the Youngning Pagoda, Liaodi Pagoda… Who built them? We are told Emperor Suryavarman II, Pharaoh Khafre (Chephren), Pharaoh Khufu, Emperor Qin Shi Huang, Emperor Ashoka, Emperor Renzong, Emperor Yang of Sui… Money, not labor, matters. Labor has limited contingent value. Muscle does not produce more muscle. It is finite, limited, and nontransferable. I get exhausted quickly, and my children cannot inherit my muscles. Only the investors’ interests mattered when the decisions to move the factories in my hometown were made. This is power. When hiring hands to multiply power, any hands will do. They can be trained to be dedicated to the agenda set by the owner. Converge on the one narrow interest. “Adapt.” Assimilate. Conform. Some call this compliance, good, “mature,” “well balanced,” “sane,” “being agreeable.” The workers must be flexible. Not the agenda of the owners. Conformity goes one way. The interest of money and the order transcends the contingent labor. The “mainstream” is never the numerical majority, despite what some idiots claim. Societies are run by tiny minorities with majority power. Wizards. Great persuaders. And money is very persuasive.

Subsuming others. Inoculating them from critical reflection, inoculation (as first described and theorized by Aristotle), can cut both ways and consuming them -- their time, energy, ideas -- putting others to work makes one bigger, stronger, smarter. Experts. Critical thinking... all bad. Reason is bad. Faith is good. That’s how to most efficiently multiply power. Avoid inconvenient questions. But the world is shrinking, and people around the world are figuring this out. Fewer and fewer populations are ignorant enough to do the work for less and let their lands be decimated by pollution. Wealth has grown around the world. Pockets of desperately poor people ripe for exploitation are shrinking. Did the rich expect the poor countries to just sit still and stay poor forever? The “race to the bottom” is bottoming out with no where left to run and exploit. Investors are being forced to see labor as inherently meaningful and valuable as, in fact, the source of their profits. Work has dignity. Not just money. Reducing people and organizations to finance is a mistake. They are more complex. Interests may eventually converge. Then we will have more fairness and justice because with a growing labor sector with education and some money comes political voice. And more voices will count. But not yet. And I am being optimistic here. Attacks on reason, expertise, and critical thinking are rampant.

I could be wrong. Robots are growing in number. They are building “smart” ones. Supercomputing, big data, artificial intelligence… new tools are being developed and deployed because such systems never ask for a raise, get sick, get old, or go on strike. They also help to control the masses. People pray to be exploited. And still, they are easy to buy and sell, even to convince to go to war and do other things such as throwing away their own democracies to “be great again.” But not quite as easy as in the past… Mythologies exist, operate, and are powerful, and when combined with magical ethnic identity, the power of myth is multiplied. How to fight back? Education is the way to expose the myths and the nature of the propaganda and to teach critical thinking skills and methods for deriving truths. That is why I remain optimistic.

I am an educator, and my job is to teach my students how to defend themselves against the dark arts – to recognize bullshit and to exercise their voices to defend themselves. This is premised on protecting the public sphere, the democratic process itself. Logic must be taught and learned. It’s a dialectic. If you don’t exercise your rights to have a public sphere, then you will lose those rights. You have to defend your right to defend yourself. Vital participation. Neil Postman put it succinctly. Education means to confer onto others the ability to smell bullshit a mile away. How? Methodical cross-examination of claims. Question the myths. Old as Socrates. There is a reason a method, THE method was named after the old gadfly. A famous Harvard philosopher, Harry Frankfurt, published an essay in 1986 simply entitled, “On Bullshit.” Since then, another version has been published by Princeton University Press in 2005. Frankfurt argues that the acceptance of bullshit is more harmful to society than liars and lying. That’s because liars actively consider the truth when they seek to conceal it. Bullshitters, on the other hand, completely disregard the truth. Trolls we call them today, and we had one in the White House. And that position vastly multiplied his power (the megaphone effect) to troll.

The willingness to follow, to be vulnerable to “salvation,” is rooted deep in our cultures. The story at the core of medieval thinking, namely, of the divinity of rulers and their divine rights, set the stage – primed us to be willing to surrender and submit – to even see such “humility” as a form of “being good.” Surrender is thus “power.” It is not in our genes. That's a psuedo-scientific myth. The vast history of humanity prior to the rise of empires was characterized by cooperation as much or more than competition with each other.The person who cries most at the funeral is not necessarily the best person. The quiet and conformist person is not the best person unless you are looking for a yes-person and want to foster group-think. This is the myth and ideology of much org com… of seeking how to maximize, multiply the force of convergence of structuration, not divergence. "Leadership," it's called. But this is stupid dualism. “Conformism is the path to utopia,” is bullshit. There is no pre-established single privileged reality to converge or diverge from. As Nietzsche pointed out, Christ was a nonconformist. And everyone after him has been trying to copy him – plagiarism writ large. Nietzsche is generous. He did not see Jesus as a wannabe cult leader. Others, the disciples, made careers out of pumping him up into that identity. Prigione and others have demonstrated that reality is “dissipative,” -- self-structuring and that all things are in motion, what I call pan-evolution. Evolution is not moving toward a final perfect state (equilibrium, zero energy, or whatever). Rather, the opposite. Evolution is an endless process of divergence. There is no utopian or dystopian end. Freedom, experimentation, not fatality, is there if we can understand it. The tree of life keeps adding branches.

Converging toward utopia is a very dangerous myth that cult leaders use to convince us to give them our power – to “humble” ourselves and thus be “good” people and “get in line.” Don't branch out. Instead return to the "fundamentals" is hailed as the way "forward." This is part of the monotheistic mythic culture that all bosses exploit. Their way, or the highway. Their way is the right and true, good and beautiful way. Utopianism. WARNING! Pure positivism. There is only one best way, one solution, and it happens to be what they want. No deviation. No innovation, unless it serves their interests. Anyone getting out-of-line is a criminal, defective, not reinforcing, as Foucault put it, the privileged order of things. Disorderly forces must be neutralized for the sake of efficiency in building profits (barely shared). But without deviance, there is no progress. So what is progress according to this mythic structure? Progress is limited to the enhancement of the powerful “strongman’s” agenda. Progress is its opposite -- regression toward the mean. Absurd but for many, convincing. Why? Because life is always filled with challenges. A promise to escape is seductive. So return to one story is offered. This means the disempowering of all others as a good thing. This is bullshit.

My definition of education is the manufacturing of bullshit detection and eradication. Now, of course, not every statement made by a teacher is true. But that’s a minor issue. A contingency of an utterance here or there. What matters is the process of questioning and testing. Examination. The classroom is not a soapbox but a place where the dialectic should thrive… like a courtroom and a legislative body. Students should question and teachers should encourage that. But how? That is method. That is what we must learn. Dialectics is foundational to all examinations (statistical, rhetorical, experimental, semiotic…). It prepares students for civic duty and a thriving civilization. There’s always bullshit around in every society (you can lie with stats as well as mythologies), but I am optimistic because humans can reflect and participate in making various futures. That's what this essay is doing.

"The" future is neither singular nor is it a noun but a verb. We all have futures and no two are identical. We are not simply empirical beings stuck in a here and now presented to us by our sensory organs. That’s reactionary. Every animal lives in the here and now and reacts to its sensory stimuli. But humans have imagination, science, logic, mathematics, art – vision, not of the eye but of the mind. What color is math? What shape is science? What does method taste like? My point. Humans project beyond the empirical here and now. Indeed, what texture is the epistemology of empiricism? I know people who proudly announce that they are “social scientists,” and “empiricists” who then, apparently, must insist that empiricism and science cannot exist because they are not material objects. Absurd. They also seem to not understand that scientific inquiry is a genre of critical thinking and that the results are a form of literature, with a history. Science too, even statistics must be interpreted. I can look at a chessboard and not see what a chess master sees. Same with stats. You can't take the human out of perception and understanding. Francis Bacon did not find the experimental method lying in a forest. No one dug up science in an excavation somewhere. Ideas, as Husserl noted, are not empirical things. The brain is, but the material brain is not our consciousness. We can think, question what we hear and see, and project and pursue a future. And because we make it, it's up to us to make it "good." The "good life" is the philosophical pursuit.

I don't want my students to be the kids being yelled at to "Just Do It." I don't want them to be the guy yelling "Just Do It." I want them to have options they find and make and develop. Don’t goosestep until you are certain that the cause you are willing to give yourself and your children to is actually in yours and their bests interests. Don’t be short-sighted. If you promote a culture of predatory exploitation thinking you will be king, you are promoting a culture that will subjugate your descendants one day. Taking away their right to participate in making their own future is not a good start. Look at those “great orders” of the past, and you will see that the vast majority of people were used and exploited to create and then give all the goodies to a few who convinced them that such a situation was “great,” even natural like “good German blood,” as one of our presidents recently said!!! Sure. Great for the few, and only while it lasted. And how do most dictators end? Without a peaceful transition of power… bloody. And also, not so great for everyone else. Instability. Violence. Terror. And here’s the key to power. If the many don’t agree, the few greedy for power cannot prevail. Even dictators must have the support of the people, or they fall. That’s where communication is so essential. It’s pretty simple. People deserve the leaders they have, especially in democracies. So choose wisely. Dumbledore or Lord Voldemort? A teacher or a tyrant? A friend or a ruler? Who do you support? Life or death? Freedom or slavery? The choice is ever-present. Vigilance.

LOOKING AROUND YOUR OWN CORNER

There are multiple but equally valid geometries. Imagine that. Maybe other culture’s solutions to life challenges work too, even better than Western solutions under some circumstances. Maybe… there isn’t just one, best solution to every problem -- not just one standard of smart or beautiful or nice or right. And codification was a process Aristotle used on syllogisms and Euclid used on geometry. Nothing new here. Bottom line, truth is a stronger concept than provability.

So, I leave you with the following paradox in a nice fixed, closed system.

The following sentence is false.

The preceding sentence is true.

Not as elegant, as succinct as, “I am lying.” The only way to avoid paradoxes was to introduce hierarchies to avoid self-referencing (make recursion illegal). Ah. Okay. Time goes in just one direction and it commands logic itself. Time, that most secular of all things which enables the great criminals, contingency and relativity! A metalogical rule(r), that was less than an eternal law, to govern logical statements. Truth, the lifeworld, is starting to push in on our artificial fixed systems and notion of proof. Our naïve belief that we can create eternal truths. That we are gods. Hegel thought he was getting close. How ambitious.

What’s the rule to avoid paradoxes? Some statements are more equal than others. But that’s… relativism. Hmm. So the solution to avoiding paradoxes is… relativism? Really? Why? Position. It’s spatial but its temporal. It’s class warfare in math and logic. Do as I say, not what I do. Formal hypocrisy is introduced to save the day, to preserve “consistency,” but which is actually, truthfully, not universally valid or applied. We will be consistently, inconsistent. We can make the proofs work by being untruthful. We can save consistency by being inconsistent but in a strict way. This is the special right of power. Logic gets mixed up with politics.

Hierarchy? What hierarchy? Well, people (people mostly with pipes and beards) started to say that either both sentences, “The following sentence is false,” and “The preceding sentence is true,” are meaningful, which is absurd, or combined they are meaningless. Absurd again. What? To avoid the paradox, let’s say that because sentence number 1 refers to sentence number 2, first, it has a “higher level” in the metalinguistic/discursive ladder. Okay… So, who goes first, wins? Who goes first is more true? What? No. But yes. If we stay consistent in our little fixed system with its axiom – what comes first wins -- about inequality, it works. In short, such a fixed system is absurd – meaningless.

Another Banal Generality: People Fear Failure

Sure. People fear failure and crave belonging and success among their “significant others.” But what counts as failure and success varies. In some cultures, being able to bring down a monkey out of the tree-top canopy with a poison dart and blowgun is important. Not so much in my world. I think I had different fears from many students today. I think I had different expectations about life, work, and about myself. I had a different sense of masculinity and femininity… different notions of what was and was not appropriate. I thought you get a job. Work it. Retire... from the same place. Now people have multiple careers. People didn’t live as long as today. The middle class had money, not just tons of debt. Folks were not mortaging their homes, their childrens' inheritance to stumble into death (reverse mortages). Hedge funds didn't exist. Jobs were plentiful and paid a living wage. The US government was not yet demonized as "the Beast" (ala Reagan). Despite Watergate and Vietnam, there was still the afterglow of optimism and arrogance that came out of my father’s generation that had “saved the world for democracy.” Everyone believed democracy is good and worth defending. Not so sure today. I had different conceptions of sex, love, and devotion. Air travel was still a little bit high class. College sports were not nearly as huge as they are today on campuses. Life was slower. Screens and cameras were not everywhere. I saw my first video game, Pong, in a bar my freshman year. People put tiny computer programs on cassette tapes and tried to make code appear on TV screens. That was high level computer science, a field that did not yet exist. Programming was first taught in math departments. We trusted the three network news shows and newspapers. We trusted doctors. We trusted scientists. We trusted professors. We, at least I, didn’t know priests, coaches, Boy Scout leaders, and others were sometimes “pedophiles.” A word I did not know until much later.

So… bottom line, when I met my older professors, I was far too ignorant about life to realize what and who they were… walking, talking encyclopedias and very experienced human beings. Even when I disagree with my colleagues, I respect them. Getting a Ph.D. is not easy and that’s just the start. Now when I hear that a professor has died, I feel as though a library has burned down. It takes years and years of effort to integrate tons of information. Pearls before swine. Oink. I admit I was not ready. This, I concede, has probably not changed. It can’t. It’s not our fault. It is a structural fact of time and experience itself. It’s a fact of life. It takes time to learn and to truly appreciate people and things.

Why does West-Side Story or Brando in The Wild One seem pathetically silly to today’s audiences? A 1965 Playboy is practically boring by today’s standards. Much more literary… But then… lynchings were still happening. In the past the major problems in schools reported by surveys of teachers and administrators, were chewing gum, running in the halls, making noise, cutting in line, not putting paper in wastebaskets. Today it is drug abuse, alcohol abuse, pregnancy, suicide, rape, robbery, assault. Gang activity, venereal disease and arson are also common responses on surveys. Cops now roam the halls of high schools and metal detectors greet kids coming to school.

When culture changes people change. Again, no duality. The people are the culture. Child psychologists can tell us something if we listen. After countless surveys of millions of kids, parents and teachers beginning in the 1960s, this is how today’s students are different from those of the past. Today students exhibit poorer emotional health for various reasons. One reason everyone points to is new media. Students are more lonely, anxious, and depressed. This is undermining their social skills and even their sleep. They have grown up with cell phones, an Instagram page and do not remember a time before the Internet. They spend 5-6 hours per day on the Internet, much via mobile media. Experimental studies show that they suffer withdrawal symptoms if removed from access. But if they do give up social media for a time or spend time in nature without their phones, they become happier. Like other opiates, past withdrawal, things get better.

Bullying is harder to avoid. Feeling inadequate and/or left out has similar bio-chemical markers as physical pain. Girls seem to be more vulnerable than boys and experience twice the rate of cyberbullying as boys. But boys are dropping out. They are not going to college at the rate of girls. One reason, they are diagnosed with ADHD and drugged. My old colleague Karl Pribram used to go to Congress and rail against this cultural trend back in the 1970s and 80s. Few listened. So corporations encourage them to play video games that shorten attention spans, then wonder why they can’t sit still in a classroom.

Child psychologists find that kids today see the world to be more hostile and competitive than in the past and so many exhibit a “slow life strategy” meaning they are “reluctant to grow up,” sometimes declining to get a driver’s licenses, and choosing more to hang out with their parents. “Youths of every racial group, region, and class are growing up more slowly” (Jean Twenge in her book iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy – and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood, 2017). One result is that they lack coping skills. Twenge concludes that social media is creating an “epidemic of anguish.” Julie Lythcott-Haims in her book How to Raise an Adult (2018) says today’s kids entering college have been “over-parented.” But at the same time, they are exposed to many things previous generations were not. In childrens’ sports, parents increasingly will not let the game belong to the kids. They don’t let their kids “own” their decisions, both good and bad. Some coaches fail to respect the kids or sport and ignore the massive impact they have on kids. In short, it is more and more about the coach… but winning does not make a great coach. Youth sports organizations have become enormous, focusing on organization and finances losing the kids in the mix. Even schools are increasingly poaching top athletes from one another (I’m talking high school and even junior high levels). Consequently, experts claim they are timid about exploration, fear mistakes, and less able to advocate for themselves.

“iGens” are more inclusive of diversity than previous generations but are also more “fragile” needing “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces.” There are also rising rates of “insecure attachments.” Kids today are dealing with an environment that captures dopamine, hijacks attention, and ties them to personal media. Good part. Kids are more empathic, but then… that means they are more easily hurt stalling exploratory behavior like inventive play, motivation and ambition. They are no more narcissistic than previous generations. They are also willing to work hard. But self-esteem and depression issues are impacting them. Many teachers and administrators note that either parents are absent from the education process or are too aggressive teaching their children to, in effect, not respect teachers. Many students and parents troll teachers on social media today. Students don’t pass notes anymore… but use their cell phones that teachers are not able to intercept and are also not allowed to touch. Most kids are coping -- "fine" (as The Who would sing long ago). But there are trends that are not good. To ignore this is to ignore the kids.

Saluting Students

Ken (Fischer, the student I mentioned before) has many years of broadcasting experience including at my Alma mater Ohio University where he used to run the sports TV show initiating local high school football coverage for a good bit of the state’s southeastern district. Now he produces nightly news for the U of Oklahoma, teaches and is finishing his doctoral degree with me. Addendum: Since I first wrote this he was poached by U of Nebraska and has moved there to teach. Big 10! Change. He could not finish before I left for the U of Minnesota so Dr. Justin Reedy has taken over as his doctoral committee Chair. His dissertation is about, as you might guess, the role of color commentators in broadcast baseball, "the voices" of teams that span generations of fans. We hung out with David Zeoli, another one of my Doctoral Students who has copious broadcasting experience, who used to own and run a recording studio for years, who worked in Africa for many years (was named a tribal member), and who is a virtuoso guitarist, among other things... His dissertation? He interviewed many primary school teachers, administrators, and parents about the growing presence of the Internet in primary school classrooms and in the lives of children. It’s amazing how little we have bothered to discuss this tsunami change in our children’s lives with schoolteachers. They were literally grateful that someone, asked their opinions. After all, they are just raising our children in the midst of this blizzard of Internet messaging. I can’t begin to keep up with my grad students.

Another one of my former doctoral students, Kevin Blake, works for the Board of Regents for OU as Executive Director of Operations and Business Development. I keep asking him to slip a raise into my salary… Nada. Nothin. Zip. Heck, I might have even gotten a pay cut. People with integrity are a pain. He’s doing a Ph.D. for the purest of reasons. He loves to learn. Oh and for many years he’s moonlighted as a member of the Big 12 Instant Replay operation. Come on. Fudge a couple of calls in the direction of the Sooners. Nope. Sigh. What good is having him in the booth. He won’t cheat! He was not able to finish his dissertation before I had to leave OU for Minnesota but he is continuing with Dr. Lindsey Meeks. A great colleague. She's taken over and will "finish" him. His dissertation? It’s about the impact of technology, including evermore invasive and precise instant replay on the game and on the massive college football audience’s sense of justice and honesty (one of the few places in our society where literally millions insist on, and personally observe “the truth” and official judgments). I wish we cared so much about the truth in our local and national politics! And yet another doctoral student I chaired in 2022/2023 (my last year at Oklahoma), was Reinaldo Cortes. Reinaldo analyzed Twitter messaging posted by migrants in “caravans” as they moved toward the US border. They use much of the symbolism one finds in Christ’s “Stations of the Cross” or “Way of Sorrows” or “Via Crucis.” Fascinating symbolism as they try to stop themselves from being demonized by anti-immigration forces. Another doctoral student of mine, Dr. Kyle Hammonds, defended his dissertation in Spring 2023. This is the last one I will chair in my life. It was a wonderful experience thanks to Kyle's impeccable professionalism and intellect. His dissertation is about how White supremists are trying to coopt popular culture texts such as the Batman series and reinterpret the narrative to make the Joker the true hero.

My last Master's student was Antonio Guardado. Antonio wrote his thesis about the symbolism of the Memorial at the Murrah Federal Building in OKC. He finished up at the end of Fall semester 2022. I did not officially retire from OU until June 1, 2023 although I'd moved to Minnesota back in July 2022, so that Elaine could begin her job as Chair of the Department of Communication Studies. I zoomed my classes and meetings for the academic year (2022-2023) from Minnesota for the OU students so that my graduate students could finish off their projects. As noted, two didn't make it before I had to retire but they will finish with someone else. I start teaching at the U of Minnesota Fall, 2023 on campus. I will be very glad to get back on a college campus and teach face-to-face, in person. I think Zoom is handy but I'm not a fan of teaching "remotely" all the time. I need to see the students to gauge how things are going with them. Nonverbal signs tell us alot. Physical isolation is not good for us. 

As you can tell, these are folks who already have professional identities and are very mature. They come from all over the world. They are not each other’s best friends. They are not members of a clique. They have complex life experiences which gives them the confidence to read critically. They select experts for their committees who fit their needs and they scour the journals (all journals not just a subfield of a subfield) – not just read what I like – my little network. I don’t use them to promote myself and my network. They are not joining my cult. They are pursuing their own research. Their dissertations are all over the place from migrant social media to instant replay for sports. There is no Kramer-type of student. No Kramer clan. They are each unique. And they draw on whatever theory and methods their topics demand. While they know each other, they did not “grow up” together under the influence of one exclusive mentor. They are “my students” in an administrative sense, but they are not Mini-Me’s. They know who they are. I remember a colleague once telling me that he could close his eyes and hear by the speech pattern of some grad students who their chair was – the influence was so profound. Their verbal and nonverbal, let alone patterns of thinking, mirrored their adored mentors. That’s weird to me. You don’ have to ask them their opinion on a topic. If you know what their teacher would say, you know that’s the limit of their “insight.” You’ll get basically the same answer, even the same theories and citations. They did not open up in grad school. Instead, they fit a mold and those parameters form their identities, even beyond their “academic” identities. Some “finish.” Some don’t. That’s their river.

What’s your greatest power? Let ‘em go…

But then… You might realize something else… Like “control is an illusion.” But then, again, I think, I am responsible for some things... Let ‘em go.

Only life cares. The rest is emptiness occasionally, very rarely populated with vibrating bits of dead matter. To be sentient means to be sentimental. I’ve been accused of being senti-mental. Thank you.

Don’t love anything that can’t love you back.

Here is our little buddy, Rudy. He was dying of cancer. We held him to the end, and he hugged us back. I believe the old saying is so true. The greatest proof of a person’s character is how they treat (and feel about) others, including animals that are less powerful than themselves. If someone is cruel, well… they are cruel. Some people will claim to be “realists,” but being cruel is not being realistic. It’s being sadistic.

Greater than Bucephalus, Genitor, Marengo, Godolphin, or Trigger… Quixote thought hard about the name of his beloved and gallant steed. For four days he pondered before issuing the magic. I can hear Quixote in the end, leaning over and whispering into Rocinante’s haggard ear, “Dearest Rocinante… you bore me well. I owe you so much. Without you I am pedestrian. Just another guy walking along a dusty road.” I say the same “thing” to those who have carried me even when I did not deserve it, even when I failed to keep their devotion as a gentle man should. But I assure you all, you are branded deep into my heart. I don’t have pictures of all the graduate students I have worked with over the last 30 years. Sorry. If you notice you are missing, please send me one. By a quirk of the universe, the time capsule in the picture was created the year I started teaching at OU…

Every graduate degree, Master’s and Doctorate, is a story. Each student must meet challenges. One even wrote two versions of his dissertation; one that he could use to get a good job back home (which he did), and the one he defended. The data were not flattering to his government. Researchers have “difficulties” sometimes. Good projects are cutting edge. Results speak for themselves. Researchers must call it as it is. Just one example: Back in the early 2000s, for years Stanley Nnochirionye commuted a significant distance to Norman for classes. He worked full time+ teaching and running the media studios for another university. He had children during his program. A full busy life. For his dissertation he conducted an experiment with instructors in person and via TV to compare teaching effectiveness and “presence,” a common variable used in instructional studies (something I’d been involved in back in the 1980s at Radford University with a grant from NASA for connecting several universities via satellite). Stanley was systematically studying “distance teaching” long before anyone had ever heard of “Zoom.” I remember when he completed his dissertation defense, he broke out into a dance from his home tribe in Africa. To be honest it caught the committee off guard. I’ll never forget the look on Dan O’Hair’s face. It was hilarious. For half a second, we all were startled and then the committee celebrated with him. He earned every bit of that joy. He never gave up. He had no quit in him. He worked so hard. It was a very sweet moment. He continued building his career in teaching and administration. Every one of these people worked hard and prevailed. I honor them here. A couple I don’t have pictures for include Matthew O’Brien (Ph.D.), Noriko Takagi (MA), Chaodong Zhang (MA), Lewis Porch (Ph.D.), Gordon Hobbie (Ph.D.), Abdullah Saleh Al-Habib (Ph.D.).

The theory of The Vulnerable Audience (TVA)

If you read on you’ll find my reflections on the structural reasons why the steel belt (where I grew up) turned to rust. There are… reasons beyond our control. But I’m talking about something different here. You want a rhetorical strategy to gain power? Find a group of losers. Maybe they wouldn’t work hard in school, or they are lazy at work so… they don’t do so well in life. Form a gang. A political party. A “cell.” Dissonance will not let them admit that at least some of the responsibility for their lousy conditions are the result of their own day in and day out decisions to not invest in themselves. So, offer them other reasons for their failures like foreign workers, immigrants, unfair teachers, coaches, bosses, reverse discrimination, bad parenting, weak genetics… anything but themselves. You can always blame the past leadership too. That helps to eliminate competition. So you blame everything and everybody else, then they will like your storytelling, your mythmaking, and follow and support you. Hope springs eternal. You may have no real solutions for them but if you are sincere-sounding, confident, with a bit of charisma… it will work. Feign simpatico. The more they identify with your defense of their failures as not being their fault, the more they will hail you as the truth and the savior and their avenging angel. If you paint them as victims they’ll really love you. You’ll be seen as somebody who “gets them” and cares about them, because you shield them from the wicked and especially dissonance. They might even worship you… give you their money, give their children over to you. Before you know it, you may have more power than you can imagine. Of course this rhetoric does not honestly address the real source of their problem, which may be in part… them, and therefore it will not fix anything. It may even in a sense justify it and let it fester. We have met the enemy and they is us won’t cut it. That hurts too much. Also, getting at the real sources of the problem may backfire. What if they begin to really succeed, they may not need you anymore. But that’s not the point. The point is how demagogues win for themselves.

To be a charismatic leader you need followers. That’s different from being the captain of a team because the captain is in the boat or on the field with everyone else and consequently problems belong to all. If the ship sinks, the captain goes down too. However, oligarchs and plutocrats have that figured out. They are not part of the team. They play by their own rules and so I don’t call them bourgeois, but players. See my article with Dr. Taesik Kim on this from 2009 Global Players . Hence, with golden parachutes, contractual buy outs, limited liability, "executive privileges," and other legal structures… Self-Pardons… Self-forgiveness sounds nice (very new agey). But there might be a reason your conscience is bothering you. And the community might have a say if the offense harms others. These mechanisms that enable the demagogue to avoid shipwreck constitutes one of the biggest problems we see now. In a highly individualistic society we’ve already reduced shame and now we’re working on eliminating guilt. Ponzi schemes of enormous proportions are operating all over the planet and poor communities with few regulatory controls, many in the USA, are being used to launder the ill-gotten money. If schemes start to be revealed, the players just take their helicopters off the decks as the ships sink below the waves. The avenging angel turns out to be part of the problem itself! Ouch. More dissonance. That’s tough to handle. "I believed." Worse than buyer’s remorse. Gotta find a new myth to escape the fact that I was worshiping my oppressor. As Johnny Cash once said, “Who knew Nixon was a crook?” Many people Johnny. Many. The “old flag” got a bit more ragged thanks to Nixon. Also, Spiro was a piece of work. So… ironically, grievances are not irrational, and we see folks seeking… searching for a savior. Maybe they need to become more sincere in their efforts than just going to rallies and buying the merch of some big mouth who promises to deliver them to the great gated community in the sky. My suggestion? Forget the rhetoric. Follow the money. Study the issues. The savior may not be helping and running from savior to savior is easy but not very useful.

A Little More About Freedom

I’m tired of people claiming the right to lie. I’ve taught free speech for years and I tell the students "this is not a law class." We cover all the major legal cases for sure, but as a communication class we also talk about the moral dimensions of free speech and communication. What is legal is often not moral or ethical. If you know someone who hides behind their right of free expression to “validate” their lies, or to harm others, please tell them an old old saying, “Thou shall not lie.” Our commercialized culture is awash in lies. Ads are full of lies. Business interests lie about profits and other things (environmental impacts, working conditions, product claims...). Maybe that's why we use the word "gross" when talking about pre-net profits. Ask any business person what their product or service actually costs. There is no "good faith" negotiations unless you know that. Good luck. So sincere. Good hair and smile too. A nation of salespersons. Everything in a store is for sale, right? Then why, when you hang a sign on it saying that obvious fact, that that then implies that its price is reduced? Sure it’s “for sale.” It always is… “Sale.” A curious word. We are conditioned to not think about it. We all misspeak and make mistakes. But malicious deceit for some ulterior agenda, including power and the adulation of others, is terrible for relationships (interpersonal and societal). If you get whacked for lying and misrepresenting things, and you know you did it, don’t run to hide behind “freedom of speech,” and whine. You got what you deserve. You want to push some agenda by strategically twisting things… fine. Then don’t cry when others reject you – snowflake. Don’t claim your opinions as facts. If you can’t tell the difference, you’re “messed up” and toxic for others. Try the path of natural philosophy (also known as science). It will help you sort out the difference. Social media will not.

Championing capitalism, even making the very dubious equation of capitalism with Christianity was the prototype case. This, and the company churches in coal towns, was the origin of prosperity theology -- well maybe, from the very beginning of the "official church," Constantine saw it that way, but then he was not a capitalist as such. But all over folks seem to see religion as a way to get their prayers answered, to get the goodies they want. Capitalists began writing Christian theology in their own image. To be sure, Max Weber’s insights about Calvinism are important too, but with media muscle the new church took off. World War II saw a great leap forward in instrumental propaganda. As war turned “cold” conflict became “ideological.” And epistemology was square in the middle of the war for people's “hearts and minds.” Religion, proselytization was the obvious rhetorical art that would lead the way into other domains. Evangelizing the world to post-war corporate capitalism was born. Corporate "captialism" is not very free enterprise. But that's another discussion. We also have corporate Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. Cultural fusion. But this aside, the military industrial complex moved into the sciences and academe. Claims needed the patina of scholarly authority. As Habermas noted the rise of grant dollars as status and the old truth that the person who pays the piper calls the tune, meant that knowledge and truth became increasingly a reflection of the interests and agendas of deep private pockets (often disguised as “foundations” with glorious names). Indeed, fundamentalism was pushing into knowledge, even funding journals and endowed university chairs.

The first great postwar coordinated domestic propaganda campaign targeting the domestic US population is described by Ben H. Bagdikian, “Hearst and Luce interviewed an obscure [road-side revival] preacher and decided he was worthy of their support. Billy Graham became an almost instantaneous national and, later, international figure preaching anticommunism. In late 1949 Hearst sent a telegram to all Hearst editors: ‘Puff Graham.’ The editors did… within two months Graham was preaching to crowds of 350,000… By 1954 Luce had put Billy Graham on the cover of Time magazine. Graham was preaching, 'Either Communism must die, or Christianity must die,' and the preacher became a public advocate for Senator Joseph McCarthy. The massive Hearst media empire was also used to help create McCarthy.” (Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly).

Today, such propagandists don’t need to plant stories in other media, but just troll the Internet and let “sharing” and “likes” do the job. We have culture by algorithm. And foreign powers are more than happy to join in the campaigns of confusion and discrediting expert authority. Communism was pure regulation and so any effort at regulation was portrayed by the no-holds-barred profiteers as a dangerous slippery slope to absolute tyranny. No one should be allowed to dictate what I, the purest form of an American citizen, can do. Regulation is thus anti-American. Worse, it is atheistic Communism! Expertise is just a ploy to take over our lives. Such fear mongering rhetoric, wielded by very cynical powers, often works, at least for a time. For a time? But if cultivation theory is true, then its nefarious impacts may be compounding. A blunt version is the observation that if you repeat a lie enough times it becomes the truth. Inconvenient truths can be not merely avoided but denied altogether. Global warming? Evolution? Ozone depletion? Acid rain? Structural inequality? The Holocaust? The evil of slavery? Racism? Anthropogenic ecological change? Antivaccination tropes. Fraudulent, stolen, national elections. Obama as a Muslim and alien born. Freedom becomes detached from responsibility. Domination becomes self-validating. Might is right. And nothing is more mighty/right than god, and god, is a capitalist. This motto to identify our nation (“In god we trust”) finally made it onto our money in 1956, nearly a century after Lincoln resisted the badgering of preachers. Just a year before I was born. And “under god” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 after the largest Catholic fraternal organization began including the phrase in the pledge. If you want to know the origin of Hitler’s salute look up the Bellamy salute to accompany the pledge. Later it was changed only in 1942 (for obvious reasons) to the hand-over-the-heart gesture. “Conservative” (in quotation marks because there is nothing conservative about denying science) corporate giants such as the Koch brothers, Timothy Mellon, Kelcy Warren, Linda McMahon, the Yasses, the Mercers, the DeVoses, the Adelsons, Kenneth Griffin, the Uihleins, and corporations fund “think tanks” such as the Heritage Foundation, Competitive Enterprise Institute, and others to generate and disseminate lies. Denialism, victimage (grievance identity politics) that ironically justifies exaggerated personal freedom, and the rhetoric of confusion, have become a multi-channel industry. With the Citizens United case corporations became equated with individual citizens with attendant civil rights including free speech, so free that they pour huge amounts of dark money into various manipulation machines.

Also I see increasingly cruel attitudes and behavior. What is called unsportsmanlike behavior. An "I'll show you!" attitude with an egocentric sense of justification -- the secret delight in some presumed triumph over another. Community can't hold up long under that ethos. Play and sincere efforts at assistance are thus smashed. Result: fragmentation -- people retreat and ossify into their tribal silos/fortifications. "Salvation" ends up meaning exclusion because salvation implies the existence of the outsider, the unsaved who, the more demonized, the more exulted those within the pack, the convenant, feel. So much is lost when we close circles, and often so little gained. But the price of retreat from effort for some is very low. We cannot know what never was and might have been. The pain of dissonance makes us justify to ourselves, our choices. Such is the desperation of those seeking escape often mistaken for "salvation." The "escape" is actually a final conformity, a surrender. To what? Some "inevitability" presented as a monological certainty. In a monological community there is only one truth (absolute positivism) and if you deviate there are grave consequences ranging from punishment to banishment (excommunication). In dialogical communities, there is pluralism, tolerance, debate and discussion. The topics vary and those who get to choose the topics also vary. Without a single certainty, authority is tempered and diffused. Discussion ranges. New ideas emerge and fields of thought open up. One is not stuck in the same old talk over and over and over -- repeated sermons, just one book. Eventually you have to learn to grow and cope (adulthood). The monological world is one of sheep. The dialogical world is one of philosophers (some not so eloquent as others but all having a voice -- all permitted, invited). Monological communities tend toward authoriarianism and because people do think, even when they are to only take instruction, such communities often see sectarian violence because there are no habits of pluralistic tolerance. To be alternative ends up in conflict with the one and only authority. They are stablized by repression, fear, terror of the most extreme means imaginable. Hiearchies are strict and the truth is permanent. Change is highly discouraged. They are "conservative."

Form over contents. People are replaceable. The work of organization is to figure out how to get employees to conform -- to, in a liberal environment, convince them that their insterests are the same as the goals of the organization. Find shelter in conformity, within already published ideas and structures – canon. But the interest of individivduals is to get a high salary and the company's interest is to pay as little as possible. The difference is -- profit -- from the labor of others. CEO's make huge salaries and stock options for managing to convince everyone else that this conflict is not real. They usually come out of sales. Sophists. So the company will toss in a ping pong table and some sofas in the office to make folks feel wanted (then have the workers/taxpayers pay for them as business expenses deducted). Convincing workers to take less pay is "expensive." So make them pay for their own brainwashing. Put some art on the walls (often motivational posters!). If its real fine art that will be an investment for the firm. Win, win, right? Such is the rhetoric of ping pong, catered food (so you don't have to leave the office for lunch), and one-time bonuses. Then there are the meaningless awards that you can't use to put your kids through college with. It's all about feeling good despite... Also bond-building retreates. There's a whole industry of motivational experts and organizational experts to help. They are way cheaper than sharing profits. Smooth salesmanship to convince the workers to work ever harder. The psychology of positive reinforcement. "We care so much that we hired an expert to come in and help us convince you to work harder and be glad."

One, the modern sophist, demands conformity and obedience, the other (philosopher) sees this as a tragic and futile ambition -- unless you can sell the exploited on the con. Remember: betrayal starts with trust -- the con artist's currency. No profit sharing. Control versus play. In the hands of the sophist "evolution" is reduced, absurdly, to conformity. Up becomes down, truth, lies. Even the church has gone through many unplanned re-formations. A little embarrassing for them. We constantly hear talk about the dangers of the “revolt of the masses.” But what about the revolting elites? Symbolic and real economic violence is rampant. This is dangerous. Injustice breeds anger and has led to, been used to justify, world wars, concentration camps, genocide, and fascist brutality.

Did you know the dinosaurs were killed by steroids. Er… a-steroid. Funny how one little letter like “a” attached changes everything. Afoot, ashore, abed, aside, aback, asleep, alive, anew, akin, arise, ashamed, amoral, asexual, abode, alight, agnostic... That one little prefix can mean before, again, back, against, not… Even breast is not immune. To be abreast. This is a stream of words. Life is a river. We are making wakes. Wake and awake. Trophy and atrophy. It’s quite dehumanizing when we make relationships into trophies. But it happens. It distorts human interaction. And what some will do for what they believe to be in their self-interest or “self-preservation,” goes beyond mere egocentrism – psychopathy -- relational violence, which may not seem “physical,” but has physical consequences such as, who is no longer living in the house or is invited to the meetings. We all like to “win,” but once you got “it” (the “trophy”), then what? That’s the more important question. What a person does is who they are.

Freedom = Taking Responsibility for Consequences

Too many forget how to balance an equation. In fact, they forget there is another side to the action/reaction. My first contact with organized sports was Little League baseball. I was so excited. I ended up being a pitcher and hitting the most homeruns in my county that year! Got my name in the newspaper! Here I come MLB. Then everyone started to grow. I topped out at 5’8”. Okay. But the point is I remember going to the Junior High during weird evening hours… never been in school at such a time… with my Dad. We went to the cafeteria and all my classmates were there with their Dads. No girls back then. Some Moms. This was 1966 or 67 (can’t remember the date). Looking at everybody’s Dad. That too, like being at school in the dark, was weird. So that’s what your Dad looks like? Hmm. Rules. You got to have your own glove. Check. You gotta get a physical. There was a doctor there behind a curtain. We lined up. Most of the Dad’s were WWII and Korean War vets. It must have been interesting for them too. Uncharted territory. I remember when I got up to the curtain I could here the doctor telling the kid ahead of me “Strain. Strain. Cough.” Giggles. The kid didn’t know how to “strain.” The doctor was checking for hernias. My turn. Check the eyes. Look in the throat and ears. Take the pulse. Thump the back. Feel the belly. Then… What is this guy doing!??? Strain. I did and got outta there. Now, I wanted to play baseball “super bad.” And back then it was fast-pitch hardball. T-Ball had not been invented. It was like the real game. If you didn’t want to take the physical you were FREE to do so, but then, you weren’t playing. CONSEQUENCES.

Freedom means taking responsibility for consequences. The snowflakes now screaming “freedom” and refusing to get vaccinations still want to go on cruise ships (Trump loved Norwegians but Norwegian Cruise Lines is fighting with Florida’s Trump supporter De Santis as I write this because they want proof of vaccination). Don’t look for consistency. The snowflakes don’t want to do their part, but they still want everything. To go to school. To go shopping and to restaurants. To have raves and big parties in the streets. To go to work. Visit grandpa and grandma. They don’t want to deal with the consequences. And if they get sick and run up huge medical bills, suddenly they like socialism. Well, they always have. The “blue states” have always subsidized the economically underperforming “red states.” In short, red states tend to take more federal aid than they pay in, in taxes. The waning oil and gas industry is, as we see throughout the Third World, an extraction industry. The resources leave the state. For Oklahoma, most profits end up in Houston. I guess we can all live off Indian casino revenue. Sure. Here in Oklahoma, if they ever close the military bases, the state will dry up and blow away. Oh there’s fracking and some ranching but a significant part of the economy is money gushing in from Washington. We can’t afford peace. Long before Eisenhower’s speech about the military industrial complex there was Marine Corp Major General Butler’s book about our economy’s addiction to war, what he called the “racket” of war by wicked capitalists.

By the way, Butler is one of a very few people to ever win two Congressional Medals of Honor. No cry baby. What my Dad used to call an “old China Marine” because he served in China. When my Dad ran into some of these “old men” during WWII, he realized they were tough, period.

So anyway, I think it’s time to not let them play. If they don’t want to take the vaccine, it’s of course worse than not getting the physical for Little League because that just effects the one kid, but not getting a vaccine can get others sick and help it mutate into something more virulent by being a willing host, a collaborator with the enemy. One doctor I saw on the TV was furious. They’d lost a transplant patient to COVID. All that effort, generosity, planning, money, praying… for nothing. Some of the staff of her hospital refused to be vaccinated! Healthcare workers!! She said the hospital was now mandating every employee get vaccinated. A few quit. Good riddance. It’s like you are bailing the boat as hard as you can and you turn around to see others pouring buckets of water into the boat. These folks shouldn’t get to play, or work if they insist on acting like spoiled children. Whining, kicking, screaming, threatening. “Okay. We’re not going to the amusement park. You can sit in your room.” Time out. Time's up. The cost is too high. Their personal desires are too expensive. We, yes WE, can’t afford to keep this up. You have permission to secede from society. We’re better off without you. This panel reminds me of the Three Christs of Ypsilanti by Milton Rokeach… check it out, which explains so much about all the Folio à deux we see around us all the time. I’m sure it, the fog of shared delusion, includes me from time-to-time.

As I write this, August of 2021, Florida is in worse shape than it was a year ago in August 2020 -- BEFORE WE HAD VACCINES. The pandemic is not over, thanks to the “freedom lovers,” who also want the schools to open with no regulations. In fact, they have passed laws saying that, for the first time ever, let alone during a pandemic, public health officials are blocked by law from discussing vaccines with students. Even for things like polio and meningitis. This is astoundingly STUPID. Governors in red states are threatening to defund schools if they mandate masks. What? Wearing a mask hurts that much? It’s such a terrible burden? Snowflakes are falling all around. And something is drifting deeper and deeper, the BS that is. Only a fifth column of stupidity, aided by dis- and misinformation from foreign enemies via the Internet, could bring down this country. I get into my theories for why we are going the wrong direction later. But it does seem that too many really relish being trolls, and lying and hurting communities just for fun. It’s hard to tear down something you have built. Those eager to tear everything down never built anything. They inherited everything. No appreciation.

Fine. So, don’t show up at the baseball field. You’re not on a team. You don’t have to take the vaccine. But then you can’t work, play, shop, fly… It’s your CHOICE. If you don’t want to have a driver’s license or car insurance. Okay. But then you can’t drive. You don’t want to get a license. Fine. You’re free choice. But then don’t whine when you get busted for fishing or hunting without one. The police, who represent the rest of us, will impound your truck and boat, your guns. Now you can go full anti-government outlaw. So sexy. And try to shoot the police, like the Bundy clan in Oregon or blow up a federal building like Timothy McVeigh, but the rest of us, and there’s a lot of us, will not bide or abide you shooting our employees who have the tough job of enforcing our laws. Sure some politicians embrace this attitude but not the majority.

Freedom. It’s a bitch, or bastard if you prefer, because REAL freedom, which these folks don’t really want, means you pay for all the consequences. Don’t come to me crying later. Don’t get a lawyer. Don’t “plea” your case for a deal. Don’t file for bankruptcy. Stand up and take your licks. You wanna ride your motorcycle with no helmet or some minimal bowl on top of your Hell’s-Angels-wanna-be noggin, fine. Be “cool.” Be “the man” all the way. When you bust your head open, don’t go to the ER expecting doctors to stand over you for 15+ hours, pumping gallons of precious donated (socialist) blood into you, trying to put it all back together. Man up. Be free! Be a hero. That means live in harm’s way and love it. Hey, if it wasn’t dangerous, it wouldn’t be “cool.” So, enjoy the consequences. Don’t beg for help later or have the rest of us pay all the bills. Take the consequences and stop whining. It’s irritating.

Psst… Family Values Demonstrate Socialist Principles

People valorize dedication and sacrifice. In the military, for instance, devotion to one another is paramount. Sharing, looking out for one another, supporting each other. Pitch in to help carry the burden. Same for sports teams, church, family. Primo Levy wrote of a man, Lorenzo Perrone, a bricklayer who shared his soup ration with Levy in Auschwitz as the very definition of humanity. Perrone’s help rescued Levi physically and spiritually. Levi said that Perrone’s aid gave him hope and the realization that this life is not meaningless and that not all are careless. Careless. To not care. Rocks, clouds, stars don’t care. People care. If people aspire to be objects, that’s a problem. Family values are all about helping each other out even when a person makes mistakes.

Families are in trouble. The system is pounding them. People have to go to school longer and longer to be valuable for corporations and they have to work harder and harder. Birth rates fall. Kids have to go to daycare because parents have to move to find opportunities, so the grandparents are too far away to help, and they have to work to pay all the bills. Predatory social structures are stretching the family to the breaking point. Stress grows. Divorce rises. Anger. Frustration. Exhaustion. Social media mirrors all of this. Monopolies that sell us to advertisers provide a “space” where our dominant values manifest. Facebook broadcasts personal victories and implicative failings so that it has been deemed a threat to mental health. The self is a brand. It does take a village to raise a child to their fullest potential. When families fall on hard times neighbors, friends, extended families pitch in if they can. But it’s getting harder and harder. From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. Donate. Volunteer. Don’t gouge your neighbors, friends, and family. If you steal from them, that does not make them stupid, it makes you a thief. Subsidize their efforts. Encourage their dreams. Offer a hand when they need it. Small is beautiful and perhaps the only sustainable future. Scheming against and ambushing others does not make you a hero but a predator. Talk about “wicked communication!”

Sociopath versus Psychopath

Both conditions are characterized by a lack of empathy, a tendency toward cruelty, even violence (symbolic and physical). They are both mean types of people. A couple of differences; sociopaths tend to be disorganized, spontaneous with relative lack of emotional control. Sociopathy tends to be the result of childhood trauma. Psychopathic people are equally unempathetic and unsympathetic, but they are organized, often meticulous in their planning. Psychopathy tends to be an inherited condition that can be acquired when the amygdala is injured indicating a biological, not sociological, origin. People who have head injuries can manifest profound personality changes, sometimes becoming very cruel and cunning causing great stress in their familial relationships and friendships. Those trying to care for them find it very difficult because they are “not the same loving person” they had been before the injury. Psychopaths make plans, launch ambushes, don’t care about the feelings of others. Researchers have found a larger than random number of psychopaths in business and organizational communication. They feel the right to organize, including others, and don’t empathize with the desires of others to have agency. They are more authoritarian than sociopaths and because of their fastidious cunning, often more dangerous.

Psychopathic people seem to be increasing in number, but this is probably a result of socio-cultural shifts from traditional organic communities to modern anonymous societies. Psychopathic behavior is “rising to the top” more in modern industrial cultures. Communities and societies tend to value different personality traits and behavior patterns. Psychopaths enjoy more success in modern societies than in traditional communities. This is because modern societies have more complex and anonymous, dehumanized structures than organic communities. Families that are more “corporate-like” tend to have “successful” children who are more likely psychopathic. Psychopaths do not fare well in traditional organic communities where compatriots know them well outside of strictly functional activities. They are recognized as being aggressive, selfish individuals. More communal, collectivistic cultures do not reward psychopathic behavior as much as modern highly structured and complex societies, where “operational competence” is valued over friendliness and loyalty. Psychopaths not only lack empathy but also do not sense guilt. They see their actions as self-vindicating. They have “thick faces.” Shame and guilt do not deter their plans and actions. Sociopaths can feel a sense of guilt and remorse. Sociopaths are more likely to be depressed and suicidal.

Not only are individuals on a spectrum of sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies but so too are cultures: family cultures, organizational cultures, and societal cultures. More organic communities tend to purge psychopaths because they are disruptive and caustic. Organic communities interact with the “whole person,” what Talcott Parsons called “diffuse” understanding as opposed to instrumental specificity. Parsons claimed that more “high context” (to reference Edward T. Hall) collectivistic and affective people and cultures talk to and see each other as whole humans. This means seeing the waiter or janitor, the manager or owner, not as a specific set of operational functions but as an equal human being with many and varied qualities and dimensions. The more psychopathic person and society sees people and values them more on specific identities defined by and restricted to professional status and functions.

The anthropologist Wei talks about a fundamental cultural variance between holism and dualism. Holistic cultures and people are not dualistic thinkers. They see the universe as self-governing and harmonious without a nature/culture split and without notions of dominion/subjugation. By contrast, dualistic people/cultures see the universe as under the control of a divine master with a strict demarcation between nature and culture with one having dominion over the other via domestication and the engineering of desired environments. In this latter cultural bias there is a boss, he/it dictates the rules and judges and dispenses punishment and favor. From this comes competition. One guy offers the bounty of the soil, the other sacrifices a lamb. Both work hard and adore the boss but the boss picks one over the other. The rules are not organic. They are transcendent and applied from above. Duality in metaphysics leads to duality in relationships and veering away from cooperation and harmony toward competition and strife. One culture fosters community, the other psychopathic society with endless discord and struggle for favor from some transcendent force, from nature, god, the market… whatever. In the competitive world, the niche is separate from those who seek to fit in rather than the animal or people being identical with the niche as what they do. And so people are just the filler for the niche and they can be judged a good or bad fit and easily replaced. Since niches are limited, conflict is inevitable. Winners and losers are divined by the transcendental power. Subjugation and the struggle for favor characterizes everything. Psychopathy is inherent and sociopathy is a common product.

More modern mass societies, psychopathic cultures, tend to not only tolerate but even reward cruel behavior portrayed as being efficient and operationally lucrative. Operational (“objective”) efficiency is highly valued in modern instrumental modes of living. Professional evaluators and judges proliferate and their “objective” disinterested attitude is valorized. The boss is not your friend. Friendliness, harmony, and sincere concern tend to be most valued in organic communities and their sentimentality may be deemed as being irrationally inefficient by more psychopathic observers. By contrast the organic community will judge the psychopathic society as cruel, too fast-paced, and unfriendly. Communities trend toward belongingness and collective well-being. Societies focus more on material, quantifiable results than emotional processes. Emotional wellbeing is a concern for the psychopathic individual or society only as a means to an end. If the psychopath craves adoration, they may posture as the caring shoulder to cry on but as a posture of authority with little sincere empathy. In other words, they are much less likely to reciprocate as an equal and open up about their own struggles. They are the strong yet relatively distant shoulder, not the friend who identifies with you and who also seeks comfort as an equal. The psychopathic shoulder is that of the superior (in status, power, knowledge…). Not as a true and equal friend with a relationship of reciprocity. So, the psychopathic shoulder is self-serving as a function of power distance and adoration. A means to an ends, a quantifiable mark on the psychopath’s scorecard. They stress efficiency/speed in accumulating points.

People are subservient to organizational needs and goals. They are replaceable. The functions and organizational goals are not. The “best people” are “plastic,” moldable to the needs of the organization. People come and go. They are contingent. Organizational needs and goals transcend such flux. The chair you sit in today was sat in by someone else yesterday and you too will soon enough rotate out. The people, as employees, exist to serve the goals of the organization or are replaced. Even teachers, as they age and gain experience are supposed to not change but present the same personae as new teachers. Newer teachers may have more energy and that is what counts, not experience and the difference and reflective disruption that may entail. Older artists are different in many ways from younger skilled artists. But teaching teaches to the test which is the set of presumed questions and answers. The “topic.” As an older teacher sees the genre morphing and expanding, that is seen as a wayward attitude including ancillary, unnecessary contents. Reflection is not valued. Pointed presentation is. The wandering mind is problematic. Education is increasingly an effort to give students skills that will be seen as exploitable/profitable by business interests – functional fit. Choice of topics, advisors, majors is directed by this logic. Education is not for the edification of the individual and enlightenment of society but for vocational requirements often seen in psychopathic nationalistic competitive terms. Otherwise, educational priorities are of dubious value in modern societies. Hence we have the example (one among many), of the cultural sociopathy resulting from the trauma of defeat in World War II manifested in the obsessive compulsive drive of “Japan Inc.” Modern China is another example. The growth of the individual outside professional functions is “subjective nonsense.” Noise. Tolerable if and only if personal needs, goals, and growth do not interfere with organizational needs and goals. Hence even talk within the organization and during working hours is strictly monitored and restricted to organizational needs and goals. Talk is to be instrumental, not as a means of “doing relationships.” Human interaction is reduced to functional operations and efficiency. Get er done! Don’t worry about anything else. Pare away all avenues of curiosity that are not “mainstream.” Jettison any time or relationships that do not fit.

Desmond Morris argues that there is a pendulum in human interaction that swings between cooperation and competition and that modern societies are dangerously stuck over in a hypertrophic competitive gear making life very difficult for real wiggling protoplasm… organic human beings that have not changed biologically for millennia. Similarly, it was only “yesterday” that we all lived in human-scale communities, hamlets with agrarian tempos. Psychological evolution is very slow, rooted in anatomical structures. Socio-cultural change has been instantaneous by comparison. We are still villagers trying to live in and cope with a new super-urbanized environment, an environment made for psychopaths and creating sociopaths.

Now there are other cultural differences rooted in psychological and moral constructs manifested in sacred stories (myths). For instance, Zeus was so angry with Prometheus, his most trusted advisor, for breaking his rules, that he chained him to a mountain where a vulture or eagle would come each day and tear his innards out. They would grow back over night and Prometheus was an immortal. Consequently, poor Prometheus had to endure the agony day after day for thousands of years. But then the Oceanid nymphs tell Zeus’ wife Hera of the endless torture. Hera, Oceanus (the father of the nymphs), Atlas (Prometheus’ brother) and others have sympathy for Prometheus and intercede with Zeus. Zeus is part of a family of others with sentiment. He is the child of Kronos and Rhea. He has siblings including Demeter and Poseidon. He has a wife, lovers, and children. He is fallible. They judge him! Here he is portrayed in 2nd Century AD, Greco-Buddhist art as the protector of the Buddha. Zeus’ son, Hercules, would complete the defiance of his father’s actions. Hercules would free Prometheus after Zeus capitulates to all the criticism. Unlike Lucifer, Prometheus is freed and the king admits his judgment was less than perfect. Zeus, changed his mind. Why? He exists in a semi-democratic ethos that is reflected in the Greco-Roman notions of free descent, debate and humility. With time (secularism), Zeus changed his mind. Because there were other gods, other alter egos who spoke up and convinced him that he was wrong, he accepted that judgment, and let Prometheus go. Other monotheistic gods are very different. They emerge out of cultures with little democratic ethos or sense of equality. They are lone rulers of all. They are alone, omniscient, and infallible. Their judgments are eternal. There is no possibility for error. Judgments are final. They constitute the non plus ultra of dictatorial authority. All hope is lost. The duality of favor or punishment becomes total and permanent. Total terror. There is no chance for appeal after judgment is rendered. The only small hope is total surrender and submission. Descent is a big no no. Questioning judgment is itself a sin. No dialectics, no debate. Those who find status and power within such an authoritarian construct, often modeling the example, can become very cruel. The minions to the great power can become terrible tormentors and fear mongers.

Societies are becoming bastions of ego hypertrophy. You can trace it through many psychological dimensions that manifest later as institutions over time. For instance, first the world was one. Everything was alive and cognizant. So, etiquette and appreciation were vital. Animism. If you are rude to a tree or rock or animal or river, it may react. If you are polite, it will sustain you. That collapsed into pantheism. From the amorphous Titans emerged the increasingly anthropomorphic gods. Many. Countless but also not always “here.” Animistic spirits were always “here.” But the gods? Where are they? Up on Mount Olympus or some other distant “place.” Space begins to empty and things begin to move, change. Hierarchies emerge. Gaps grow. Space empties and dies. Vacuums emerge. Animism gives way to polytheism which gives way to monotheism which then ends in atheism. The universe expands to infinity, empties and is dead. No need for etiquette. Dam the river. Strip-mine the mountains. Enslave other animals and people.

One other institutional example; the family. All are “the people.” That shrank to the tribe. That shrank to the extended family. That has shrunk to the modern nuclear family. And that is fragmenting into individuals. Now people have lost themselves. I have to “find” myself. Confusion. The modern ailment of alienation became so pronounced that it spawned the invention of the modern social sciences with the writings of Max Weber, Ferdinand Toennies, Rousseau, Voltaire, Marx, Emile Durkheim… The central question for them all was alienation, anomie, power distance, exploitation.

With the shift to seeing everything as having no value unless it can be exploited and industrialization emerging, people left the land. Agrarian communities vanished and the modern mass society emerged with huge aggregates of people “milling.” We lost the human scale. Dormitories and slums arose around the new fact-tories like the serfs around the old castle but sans the family connections. The birth of the stranger occurred and became the dominant identity. My students sit in rows and don’t know the people who sit next to them. And I don’t know them. They come to class, get a grade, and vanish. Year after year. Sure a few “stand out,” but most of us shuffle through institutional structures as replaceable functions. Individuals staring at little screens. We don’t even watch together anymore.

Because of anonymity cruel trolling is common. Bullying without any personal empathy is mistaken for responsible free expression. Care… like a fog burning off in late morning, is giving way to clear emptiness. This is, I suggest, ultimately irrational. Hypertrophy means that there can be too much of a good thing like personal isolation and privacy. If we can come to erase the boundaries between us and them, me and you, we might come to appreciate each other more. The older I get, the more I appreciate the value of appreciation, understanding, and gratitude. Throughout this long river of words, I humbly thank many who made me possible, for whatever I’ve been “worth.”

I wonder if the increasing fanaticism I see with fandom, congregational conspiracy groups, silos, and the obsession with communication, as an academic study and as global telecommunications complexes, are not signs of desperation. You only feel the need to “reach out and touch someone,” when you are out-of-touch. We are obsessed with identity because we are losing it and that is because we are losing the Other. Identity depends on difference, on communicating with others. As Nicolas of Cusa, De Saussure, Lacan, Deleuze, Guattari, Derrida, and others have noted, what Robinson Caruso lost was himself… until he saw the footprints of another. That’s why in the movie Cast Away starring Tom Hanks, he had to create Wilson or he would be lost and so Chuck’s crisis hits its nadir when he fails to save Wilson. His rescue by a passing cargo ship is in the nick of time before all is lost. Maybe we are all feeling a bit like this and so this age has been called by many writers, the Age of Anxiety. The “atomic age” has pushed us to the brink. One plane, one bomb… an entire city incinerated. And thousands of such bombs are pointed at us all, all the time. Fingers are on triggers. Why? What has brought us to this? If the President of the United States is told that Russia has launched thousands of incoming thermonuclear bombs and that he cannot stop them and has only ten minutes to retaliate, the only people he can save are the Russians. Would he? What would you do? What would I do? If things were reversed what would the Kremlin do? I know what I hope they would do. Hope.

Of all people, yet it makes perfect sense if you actually read… that a college entrance essay that discussed Jesus Christ as the prototypical Proletarian hero was penned by a youthful… Karl Marx. Few in history have been as radical as the young Rabbi from Nazareth.

How To Get Out of Your Own Way, Commune -- Chat with Someone NOT YOU

My thoughts are mine. My memories are mine and when I die they go with me. And it is me who gets the thrill of figuring out how to solve for an unknown. And my little discoveries of music and art and nature are mine too. Subjectivity is real. I’m not being narcissistic. Rather, I’m stating a simple fact. Being a subject, both enables me to experience the universe and have knowledge of it, and confounds my efforts to communicate and share my experiences, to “generalize” my claims. All direct experience is personal. And it forms the first step in discovery and building knowledge, but it is also subjective. My opinions do not constitute knowledge, which is a socially built and maintained structure of communication – what Husserl called a web of intersubjective reality, that Heidegger stressed, is mediated via technology and language. These are facts too, and they further confound our search for truth. So, we invent methods which are themselves contrivances that are cultural in nature. They are rule-based procedures for communicating with the world and each other (observation, categorization, and sharing of results). Freedom of speech is essential because without it, the field of intersubjectivity can be, as Habermas said, “distorted.” If it is methodical, it is then systematically distorted – the problem with AI having systematic biases.

Wizards, witches, warlocks, whatever, maintain their status and power by not sharing their “secret knowledge.” When we started keeping secrets and lying, we stopped being like all the other animals. As Mark Twain said, "humans are the only animals who feel shame, and they damn well deserve to." Don’t know if I agree with the last part but he’s probably right. Well, once we get to dig into their claims without being condemned for lack of faith, we discover, either how their tricks work or that their tricks are bullshit. Ethnopharmacology has shown that many indigenous cures work! Over generations of trial and error, as Karl Popper argues, all cultures have found herbs and methods that actually cure some diseases and mend limbs. Great. Science takes it a step further to investigate why and how? Often the wizards of the world don’t like scientists investigating their secrets because that levels the playing field. Their status and privilege is diminished because the knowledge is made public and reframed. But their claims are not knowledge until and unless they are shared and critically interrogated.

Personal knowledge is not scientific knowledge. It may be true, but we don’t know until and unless others examine the claims. Scientific knowledge begins with those first personal observations made by myself and others, and as I become educated, scientific knowledge comes to inform me so public knowledge and my private knowledge overlap. Prejudices corrupt understanding. But here’s the crazy thing about life. Prejudices also enable understanding. Yes my eyes cannot see infrared and ultraviolet like many other animals. So, what I see is the result of structural prejudice built into the structure of my eye. But should I then get mad and rip them out? Heck no. That same structure is what enables me to see anything at all.

Prejudices are inescapable. We may say they “corrupt” our knowledge but at the same time they are necessary for us to know anything. What about an all-seeing all-knowing god? That too would be a very unique way of seeing. As Ludwig Lundgrebe noted, even god has a prejudice, a particular style of seeing, a unique way of regarding the universe that is different from me and you. Perspectivism, as Nietzsche suggests, is inescapable. This is because our awareness, our consciousness is incarnate. But even a being without a body, without history or geography, culture or language, these structural facts would in-and-of-themselves constitute a different way of being than living in a body in time and space like you and me. Such a being would have a perspective different from us. Interesting. Perhaps incomprehensibly different. Our perspective is part of our flesh and body which is limited in space, time, and abilities. That which we valorize as making scientific knowledge the “best,” is that it is not based on hearsay or venerated personalities, or words in old books but on direct -- personal -- observation. Observation that anyone can participate in. No need for special royal blood or unique supernatural gifts.

However, and this is very important, direct observation is always personal. It is from my perspective and so the basis of the pride of science is subjective experience. Seeing, understanding always involves a perspective, a “prejudice.” Without a perspective I can’t know at all. Okay so we don’t escape subjectivity by being empirical. Empirical knowledge is rooted in direct personal observation. And my understanding of what I see is a consequence of my prejudices. Another may look at my data and understand that I did not appreciate what I had seen and recorded. Why? Because I was not well enough informed or smart enough to realize what I had. But by sharing, the other person may see connections that enable my work to contribute, to improve our overall understanding. Our collective understanding is a synthesis of many observations by many people over time. It is a synthetic construct and so it changes. And when the preponderance of the evidence gathered by many stands against my observations… I’m probably wrong.

All animals react to direct sensory perception. Even plants sense and track the sun across the sky (phototropism). All animals are “empirical.” Aren’t we smarter than fungus, beans, and daisies? Don’t answer that. They respond to light, but they don’t have science. That’s a system of logic applied to data. And logic is not a behavior. It is not an empirical object. It makes no sense to ask what color logic is or how much is weighs. It is a set of rules that govern thinking and behavior (when it is logical). Of all the classes taught on campus, logic is the most important one and it is the sister discipline to rhetoric. The definition and functioning of syllogisms, enthymemes, maxims, axioms, propositions, and such, are taught in both classes. So are common fallacious constructs, types and qualities of evidence, and arguments.

So, we have a bunch of people feeling the elephant and they are working hard, gathering impressions (data) and carefully describing their direct perceptions. But they are all different. Tracing the outlines of what they feel is not much smarter than vegetables dutifully tracing the path of the sun. How do we achieve the overview? Communicate. Share data. Try to replicate our experiments. Ask why. How. Work toward a transcendental understanding that allows us to integrate all the little observations into a broader, different view. That includes an explanation for the behavior. The sunflowers follow the sun. They all “agree.” They turn in unison. But they never ask why or talk to each other about it. They don’t have to because they already share genetic predispositions. That’s a structural prejudice, a biological predetermination. Theory is an explanation of why.

Humans have structural biases too, but we also should be able to identify them and avoid them if we CHOOSE. And unlike sunflowers, we theorize. We can talk to each other about our patterns of behavior, like repeated wars, and ask are they random or is there a pattern suggesting a set of law-governed “reasons?” Is it predictable? Is there a meta-pattern to the patterns I see? And if yes, why? Sunflowers can’t ask why. But even sunflowers communicate with the rest of the environment. That’s weird. They don’t “talk” to each other. Why? Nothing to say. No difference. Two people who agree on everything, who are identical in their thoughts, have nothing to say. Watch an old couple at a restaurant. They can sit for over an hour and not say a word. It’s all been said. Then watch a couple in their first date or early years of being together. Talk, talk, talk… They have something different to exchange. If you exchange identical things or ideas there is no information gained and so we are smart enough to not bother. Just save the calories. They are no longer interesting to each other. Bored. That’s why we go somewhere different for vacation and don’t just sit in our bedrooms and stare at the wall. Difference, the Other is interesting and so those who want to exterminate the Other are stupid and apparently want to be even more bored and moronic.

Not sunflowers. They communicate with all the Other stuff around them; the climate, butterflies, bees, flies, the soil… Not in words but they sense and react, grow or wilt, reproduce when the atmosphere, the overall tone of things, is right. And go dormant when it changes. Communication is all around us. Just not in words. But there are patterns and that is what science looks for. Overall patterns that transcend individual cases, that are derived from synthesizing countless cases to form “knowledge.” Knowledge is categorical. Opinion is case based. Hence, courts render “opinions.” Courts don’t care about generalized statistical objects. They care only about the particular case at hand. There’s tension there all the time. And with enough money you can find “experts” at anything and everything to come to a court and claim whatever. But real science either works or it doesn’t. The bridge holds up or it falls. It’s not an opinion. It’s a fact.

All sciences have problems they seek to solve, phenomena they seek to unravel and understand. The social sciences have been pretty lousy so far at solving their biggest problems like war, poverty, inequality, hatred, fear, sadism, alienation, ignorance, delusion… Plenty of work to be done.

So, we are feeling the elephant. That’s interesting but what is even more interesting is comparing our notes and trying to convince each other and sharing our views and hashing out a common truth that allows us to progress toward better understanding and problem solving. But below all of this is a need for honesty and transparency and humility. If I’m wrong, I need to admit it. Working at the edges between disciplines, bit by bit we grope along and through methodical communication with strict and shared rules and procedures of information processing we build a fuller picture.

Freedom of sharing and transparency are essential for science to exist. Democratic principles are vital. Science cannot function properly without freedom from fear of being accused of an ideological, mythological (religious), or some other “thought crime,” meaning a transgression of the official – “authoritative” story.

One quick example. Until they were exposed, some of the richest men in the world used trafficked, starving slave children as young as 4 and 5 to race camels. I recommend you see the 2004 exposé by HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel and Bernard Goldberg. They followed up the work of the Pakistani human rights activist Ansar Burney. Slave Children Camel Jockeys.

They exposed the “sport of Sheikhs” as a crime and stain on humanity. For decades thousands of children were kidnapped, abused, injured and died falling under the beasts’ feet during races. They were malnourished so they would not gain weight. This horrible slavery began to end around 2005-2010, when it was exposed, specifically when the children of one of these monstrous men saw the HBO report via satellite TV about the practice and they confronted their father. “Is this true about our country?” He proceeded to change the culture so that now across the Arab world, owners use robot jockeys to beat the camels to run faster instead of starving children. This, I think, is “good” (granted not for the camels maybe). I don’t think it is a stretch to see this as progress. Transparency and cultural exchange is forcing change. Arguably not all good, but some change is good. One would have to have a very romantic vision of the past to think it was a world of “noble savages.”

Now another important thing to understand, that emerging scientific picture itself is a perspective and it is transient. So as Nietzsche noted, science has a perspective that is different from all the component parts – all the other perspectives that it integrates. It is a “prejudice.” But here’s the big difference between science and other “ways of knowing.” Science knows it is groping along. It knows that it’s understanding is contingent, temporary, limited. When people attack it for not being absolutely certain, for not being a religion, that is a good thing. They may not understand that but the fact that science is humble and is constantly evaluating new data and reexamining old paradigms and hypotheses is a good thing.

When you see athletes do their haka war dance, realize that it’s hardly a romantic thing. And human tribal violence is the norm. The essence is the “projection of power.” I punch you but if you take a step back, out of arm’s length, I can’t hit you. So, I invent the spear. Then I throw the spear. Not far enough… And you invented the shield. So, I invent the bow and arrow. Then the gun. Then the cannon. Then the airplane. Then the missile. Europeans have been especially adroit at developing technological means to extend my fist to your face clear across the globe with intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Internet does the same thing for symbolic violence. Now kids cannot escape bullies just by leaving school at the end of the day because the Internet enables the attacks to continue far-and-wide and all day and all night.

As Archimedes taught us, technology is nothing more than a means to amplify (leverage) capabilities we already have in our minds and bodies. Scopes and television extend our optic nerve. Radio extends our voices and ears. Guns and missiles extend our fists. Why do we do this? Because we crave power. And we are violent. And just because Europeans tended to operationalize Archimedes’ insight better than other cultures does not make them all that special. The Māori for instance were not nice to outsiders. It took European guns to conquer them. Later they would adopt the gun, as did everyone else on the planet to escalate their own conflicts. That’s how Hawaii’s tribes were subjugated under one ruler in 1795 by King Kamehameha. Kamehameha used the gun and the secret of gun powder given to him by Captain Brown to kill off all his rivals.

The paradise of the South Pacific was also ruled by the Māori who arrived in New Zealand from Taiwan after centuries of seafaring expansion. They arrived and quickly killed every Moa bird and decimated other large species. They also commonly ate their enemies (cannibalism). They had slaves (mōkai). Māori navigated thousands of miles between islands in their great waka canoes. They sailed to the east all the way to the Chatham Islands around 1500 AD. That was about the extent of their great range. They remind me of Vikings and Spartans. Anyway, they left the Chathams not to return for hundreds of years. Some were stranded there. Descendants of the New Zealand Māori called Moriri, survived on the isolated Chatham Islands. Separated from the original culture, and after much internecine violence among themselves, they created a new culture and decided to renounce their violent warrior ways and live in peace according to a philosophy of nonviolence called Nunuku’s Law. But then, about 350 years later, in 1835 to be precise, their long-lost cousins reappeared, invaded them, killed many and enslaved the rest. Historians call the Moriori genocide the “Musket Wars.” By the time the Taranki Māori were finished so were the Moriori. A few escaped to the Auckland Islands. Too bad they found them. So much for human nature. Sounds a lot like what Columbus and his men did to the Taíno people of Hispaniola. But before Columbus arrived, the Taíno were already at war with another indigenous group, the Caribs. They asked Columbus to help them defeat the Caribs. Ironic.

It seems from historical accounts and pictures, the Māori of romance were not only truly vicious to their enemies but also far less pumped up due to a lack of steroid enhancements I presume, had far fewer tattoos, and didn’t dance with their tongues sticking out nearly as much as their modern admirers imagine. Here’s a picture of some dancing with their guns. Cultural fusion. Clearly, they understood that threat displays might be intimidating and motivational but not as effective as the gun.

The point is, horrible intraspecies violence is not exclusive to Europeans. It’s endemic to the species. To be sure, the Europeans had their time and proved to be particularly good at genocidal violence, and, thanks to being a highly literate culture, very good at recording the activity. But others had their peaks of power too. Wiping out the Other is not a new thing. Look at Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, the Romans, the Bantu “displacement” of Pygmies… And everyone seems intensely interested in being able to project power farther and faster than their “brothers.” Hence the huge military budgets across the globe. What a waste. So rich Arabs using children for sport is not new or particularly unique. What is, is the attempt to be civil and logical in the exploration of the universe for reasons other than divine power and conquest.

Science is a living debate. It is in flux. It admits this up front. It is humble. It is honest. It understands that its knowledge is shifting, that old textbooks should not be worshipped but replaced regularly because our state of knowledge keeps growing. Science knows this and admits it and embraces the challenge of improving our picture of the universe, of making it more complete over time and by admitting that old pictures are no longer the best ones – they are less complete and misleading.

Science embraces change and admits mistakes. Other modes of knowing tend to claim to be infallible, absolute – true for all times and all places and all people. They insist that they are never wrong and will punish those who suggest otherwise. Under this way of operating, each person feeling the elephant would deny and perhaps even attack each other person leading to schisms, sectarian feuds, violence, fear, hate, and the ultimate end of an opportunity to learn, ex-communication. They are arrogant and dangerous and stop progress in its tracks. Science is completely different and if you can’t see that, then you’re missing something very special and important that has enabled humanity to improve our understanding of the universe and to live better and longer lives.

How do we know science is right?  The proof is in longer and better lives, expanding understandings and cultural and technological evolution. The scientific world is forever changing. The pious world seeks to not challenge old ways and fights change. The former is liberal as in the liberal arts and sciences. The latter is conservative. The former sees an endless proliferation of ideas and books, styles and fashions. The latter has only one idea and one book.

So, my little observations are both the basis of scientific knowledge and also inescapably prejudiced and limited. But is it inescapable? With the help of others, I have my path out of my own egocentric cave. This is how I can “see around my own corner.” I allow others’ eyes and ears and minds to expand my view. We form a complex of minds and senses that transcend any one of us, giving each of us a path to greater understanding than any of us can achieve alone. We gather to share, debate, cross-examine, not to conform to a single preconceived mindset. The scientific community is dynamic, not submissive and reactionary.

How do I escape my own limited little cone of light? By engaging others and inviting them to see my work and test it. Sharing insights, procedures, replicating the experiments of others and sharing my work with them. No wizardly secret knowledge here. No, it has to be shared and cross-examined by others. And science does not condemn those who disagree but listens to them and takes their observations seriously enough to investigate their claims. Nothing is rejected until and unless it is proven by many to be false. And claims must be testable. Faith alone and networks of kin and cronies (groupthinking) does not count as knowledge. Others help me see beyond my own limited horizon and with honest, humble effort we, together, can build knowledge that transcends each one of us. This is how the world grew from small tribes trapped in perpetual twilight, to vast global technological complexes, based on and advancing the exchange of everything from commerce to ideas. The dynamic scientific world is one where movement increases in scope and accelerates.

Objective knowledge is not permanent or beyond examination. It is moving. It is intersubjective agreement, and it is temporary. Hence, we call it the “state of the art.” Currently, it is our best understanding, but we are working constantly to improve the picture. Together, we are smarter. But we have to share, listen, and critically examine each other’s claims. AND be willing to admit when we don’t know something and when we have been wrong. This is something other modes of knowing rarely exhibit (humility, honesty, integrity). It’s tough to be proven wrong but that is the price for getting smarter and not remaining ignorantly stuck in one’s own little picture. Break out of your silo. Fear and hate are what form tunnel vision.

Anyway, it turns out that I am not the first person to wonder why there is darkness at all. A German astronomer named Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers asked that question back in the early 1800’s. It came to be known as the “dark night sky paradox,” or “Olbers’ paradox.” There’s an answer. A physics colleague of mine told me. Isn’t it great to know smart people? The best. Ignorance gives us something to look forward to. Lots to explore.

I suppose those living less fringy lives on planets nearer the center of the Milky Way have brighter night skies and those living both farther and further out have darker nights. Seems typical. But then I might be overestimating the value of the center. Actually, I think I am. The farther/further “out” you are, the better you can comprehend it all. As they say in real-estate, you either have the view or you are the view. But the more you step out from the forest or flock to survey it, the more visible/vulnerable you are. As Plato’s intrepid spelunker discovered, you gotta take that chance if you want to see… anew. If you aren’t different, you don’t have an identity… you can’t see who you are. But being different does not mean being against anyone or being better. That’s the narrowness of ideology. Instead, being different is being itself.

Siloing and “cancel culture”: the fragmentation and isolation of groups by contradictory belief systems and excommunication is born in religion. You can’t disagree agreeably because to disagree is met with horrendous, eternal, inescapable torture. In science, if you are proven wrong, your theory is simply dropped, and you have to move on with everyone else to find the truth. No one will burn you and your library for being simply wrong or failing to love the one who terrorizes you with extreme threats of everlasting life in hell. The standard rhetoric of subjugation and forced surrender? I don’t think there’s a hell but… what if… Those who would rule you confuse you then terrorize you. The final step to rule you is achieved by “saving you.” My way or else…

Here are Gustav Klimt’s great lost murals. They burned in a fire at the University of Vienna. We have no decent color photos of them. This is a reproduction with a small section approximating the original polychromatic masterpiece. Such a pity.

Fear of death is not the basis of the university. Nor is an ambition for power and coerced compliance and conformity. Curiosity and creativity are the foundations of the university. Monolithic indoctrination is not the mode of knowledge but instead testing and debate – freedom of speech without fear of reprisal. The worldview that demands submission and conformity, organizes community as a flock from a position of absolute authority. The other worldview, represented by the institution of the university, invites all to participate in the common search for truth and solutions to problems. One establishes levels of power, privilege, and access to information, the other is open, free, and inviting. One hands decisions down from a few. The other democratically enables power to emerge from the many. One, you must wait for the shaman to come and select you as a unique child, perhaps as a reincarnated lama. The other says, come to school. It’s free. It’s public. Come to the public library. Read, learn, debate. Everyone is welcome. Girls, boys, young, old, no matter your religion even. Rise above all the walls that separate us and protect the privileged and join in the great voyage. Insofar as money is an obstacle, we are slipping back into medievalism. One jealously guards power and privilege, often with armed force, the other shares decision-making through open, honest, and fair debate. One prefers people to not have access to information and to remain docile (“plastic”). The other requires people to be informed and to participate. One sees the masses as a passive, manageable resource base at best, the other as the dynamic pool from which invention and innovation emerge. One prefers stability and tries to make the royal bloodline a predictable source of all future rulers and places organization and permanent order at the center of social structural formation. The other can only predict that innovation will arise but from whom, when or where, we cannot say. Not necessarily the central seat of power.

We cannot even predict who will be president in two years let alone who will write the next iteration of jazz or the next revolution in art. What child will invent a new mathematics or be the first to step on Mars? We write biographies and try to retroactively explain the rise of luminaries, but even hindsight does not reveal a solid pattern for prediction. It is not even close to 20-20 vision. You can’t see a pattern even with all that after-the-fact information.

For instance, and to pick on a few extreme cases that might help “weight” any patterns that are there, let’s look at a couple randomly selected cases. A kid born of a dietitian from Saskatchewan Canada, and a property developer who divorced when he was 9, with his father raising him in South Africa -- Elon Musk. Or a guy born to a 17-year-old Albuquerque, New Mexico high school student who dropped out and carried her baby to night school with her to finish high school, who then divorced his 19 year-old father when he was four-years-old, and remarried a Cuban immigrant from whom he takes his last name (not his biological father) -- Jeff Bezos. Or a kid whose father’s company went bankrupt forcing the family to move several times, a kid who so hated school that he used a doctor’s note to drop out and joined his family in another country to try to start over where he wrote an essay based on his terrible school experience on how the “spirit of learning and creative thought is lost in strictly enforced rote lessons.” Later he was forced to become a refugee, to flee his country due to genocidal persecution -- Albert Einstein. Or a kid whose father was a merchant seaman who was rarely home and who stopped supporting him and his mother who had gotten pregnant with another man’s child and whose aunt won custody of him after she repeatedly complained to social services about his parents’ lack of consistent care... Oh and then while he was a teenager his not so dutiful mother whom he still cared very much for, was struck and killed by a car while walking home leading him to drink heavily and have “fits of rage.” He himself ended up being shot to death… an event his old friend (Paul) used to protest for more gun regulation but to no avail -- John Lennon. Or a guy who was born to a 22-year-old woman and a 34-year-old journalist who was forced to flee France when the authorities closed his newspaper. This guy’s mother was the illegitimate daughter of a member of the French army who had connections to his wife’s powerful family in Peru. So when things failed for the journalist, he and his wife set off for Peru but on the way the journalist died of a heart attack so his widow arrived in Peru with the 18-month-old Paul Gauguin. Gauguin’s uncle became president of Peru and young Paul enjoyed a life of privilege in Peru. Or a kid who grew up to win TWO Nobel Prizes, one in chemistry, one a peace prize. He was born to a traveling salesman and his wife who lived in a one-room apartment in Portland, Oregon. The salesman died of a perforated ulcer when the kid was nine, leaving his mother to care for himself and his two little sisters. He and a buddy scavenged junk from an abandoned steel plant near his home to conduct “experiments.” He went to Oregon State University and went on to grad school at Caltech. His name, Linus Pauling. Or a guy who was one of eight kids, three of which died before adulthood and whose father, a minister, died of stomach cancer when he was only seven, leaving his mother to raise the brood by herself. Other women in the family pitched in. He did not start formal schooling until he was nine years old. And yet by 14 he entered Harvard College. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Or the kid born in St. Louis, Missouri to a doorman and a card dealer. When she was four her parent’s “calamitous marriage” ended. At ages three and four she and her older brother were put on a train alone and sent to Stamps, Arkansas to live with a grandmother. Then four years later and without warning her father came to Arkansas and took her and her brother back to St. Louis. At age eight, her mother’s boyfriend raped her. She became mute for almost five years. Then she and her brother were sent back to Arkansas where a teacher helped her speak again. Then at age fourteen, her mother took her and her brother to Oakland, California. Right after graduating high school, she gave birth to a little boy. She worked as a prostitute and madame. She went on to win many awards including a Pulitzer for her poetry, three Grammys for her spoken word albums, the National Medal of Arts, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I team-taught a class with Maya Angelou at Radford University. One last example, this guy was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. His father left before he was born. His mother then moved to LA and married a musician who then left when he was 10. His mother then sent him back to Tennessee to live with his grandparents. He returned to LA then dropped out of high school at 15 and went on to write and direct several films and garner 34 Academy Award nominations with 7 wins (not to enumerate all the Palme d’Or, BAFTA, Golden Globe, Saturn, and other awards his work has won). Know who this person is? Quentin Tarantino.

Now some of these folks had siblings, two (Lennon and Tarantino) did not. Of those with siblings, none came close to the achievements of these folks. Same parents. Same childhood conditions… but. Something made them different from their siblings. And also, they were very different from each other. Who would have pointed at these kids and predicted their lives? It goes the “other way” too. Some born with all the advantages, you would predict would achieve great things. But they turn out to not accomplish much and sometimes even lose their inheritance. No one can write a futurology that can identify in childhood, let alone by family, the future Nobel Prize winners or revolutionaries in art and society. This is so because the universe is not a simple chain of causation. This is true even in authoritarian countries, where bosses think they know everything, who will achieve what, and consequently give support only to a few, usually family members and allies, thus stifling all the talents of a vast majority out of which real innovation might have come. Society stagnates. A vital society has no central ruler. People are free to experiment leading to change that you might call “progress.”

Here’s the thing. Averages are not real people. No real family is constituted of 2.7 people and .834 dogs. I’ve never met an average person because I’ve never met a mathematical derivation except on a piece of paper. An average is a mathematical abstraction and mathematical abstractions create nothing. They don’t invent new genres of music or art or breakthroughs in science. People, real subjective individuals do that. Averages are useful for real people who make decisions, but they are just information. People still have to make decisions and that involves… perspective including values, motivations, expectations, and beliefs.

And as you read my perspective, if you continue, you will see that perspective shifts and is not even consistent. Societies change and so do people. I’m not consistent. And if you disagree, okay. In a free society write your Internet page. Go for it.

Screws and screwing. More complicated than you might imagine and not just as described in the कामसूत्र, the Sanskrit compendium formed from about 400 BCE to 300 CE, commonly translated as the Kama Sutra or “Principles of Lust” or “Tales of Love.” Hindus are quite precise about the difference but some (not all) Western translators, intoxicated with orientalist fantasies, seem to have skimmed over the finer details. Bluntly, it is not just about sex positions. Details, details…

By the way “Allen,” as in screw, comes from the Allen Manufacturing Company of Hartford, Connecticut who trademarked the tool in 1910. Apex Tool bought out Allen and moved the manufacturing to… Shanghai (or more likely to some rural factories), of course. Later Henry F. Phillips of Portland Oregon formed Phillips Screw Company in 1934, at the height of the Great Depression. But it was John P. Thompson who invented the “recessed cruciform” screw and driver and got the patent in 1932. The businessman with the cash in the 1930’s was Phillips who bought the design and formed the company in 1934, and got his name up in lights in 1935. You see this pattern repeated time-and-again with inventors losing control of their creations because they don’t have the money to take them to market. Shark tank. Being a creator can be a tough experience. Why two kinds of screw heads? Thompson was smart. The Cross Recess was designed to avoid slippage and “cam out” the head and scratch up adjacent surfaces when driving. With the advent of power drivers, the Phillips gained popularity.

Make your name a “household name.” Not just a name but a “household” one. Learn how to screw better. Thought it was simple right? Lots in this world to know and, to me, not people but knowledge, is the real trophy, and you can never have big enough trophy case. When you build the case, I’d put it together with Thompson, er “Phillips” screws if I were you.

As my old professor Hans-Georg Gadamer used to say, the key is to ask the right questions. That takes preparation. Using the noodle. Here in Oklahoma people “noodle.” They stick their bare hands into holes in the banks of turbid lakes and rivers to let huge catfish literally bite them, then they pull the fish out. That’s not what Gadamer was referring to. Some suggest that this technique presumes that the fisherperson has a screw or two loose. No comment on that. People have been known to drown trying to do it. So, it’s almost always a two-person operation. All I know is that it works. Folks do haul in some huge fish. It is kinda creative… scary but it is a solution to how to catch a big catfish. I give them that. Who needs a rod, reel, bait? I wonder if Native Americans knew the trick. Who figured that one out? But with cotton mouths, copperheads, water moccasins, snapping turtles and such around… I’ll use technology. I’m a coward.

Now this is a river of words and rivers tend to meander and connect everything. Here we have screw and screwing, using our noodles, trophies, and the Kama Sutra all coming together in the “Okie Noodling Tournament” (sorry Elaine, it’s not what you’re thinking… no ramen) where men are men and women are women, by god, and it is the “Most American Thing You Can Do.” Patriotic. Also, the MEN have the wet T-shirt contest throwing their T-shirts against concrete structures as some sort of contest. Are these guys doing their own laundry in the oldest of ways? Dare I say, progressive gender roles. But just to be safe we have the “Bare Knuckle Babes,” the “Official Okie Noodling Calendar,” with “Balls Deep” tackle sponsoring the tourney. I bet Pope Gregory XIII, the dude that replaced the Julian Calendar in 1582, with his leapin’ lizards version -- didn’t see this one coming. Those avant-garde Okies!

I want to say up front. I am not making fun of all of this. It is fascinating. And probably fun as hell with a few beers. And I can’t see that these folks are hurting anyone. What I do see as stupid is people refusing to get a Covid vaccination when it is free, safe, available, and it works. The 2020 Okie Noodling Tournament was cancelled... due to... Covid.

The Joys of Hosting a Deadly Virus

It’s one thing to let a 50-pound catfish chomp on your arm to prove your masculinity and to get some of that succulent mud-water meat -- and, to be honest, to go outside and get wasted with your friends. It’s another to be laying helpless with a ventilator rammed down your throat. Another tool… the laryngoscope is used to force your mouth open so an endotracheal tube can be intubated. Catfish open up by free will. Being intubated… not much “freedom” there (for those screaming they demand their freedom to not take vaccines or wear masks). And while the Delta variant rampages among those who refuse to get vaccinated, that is allowing the virus to spread far and wide and mutate more. I have a word for those folks that are the allies of the deadly virus, but I won’t write it here.

George was a brilliant comedian. And I know what he means here but it’s worse than he literally says. He says that “half of those” are even dumber. That would be half of half the entire population which would be twenty-five percent. But, if he means the mean (or median) as the average and not the (mode), then the number of people who are “stupider” than average is much higher than twenty-five percent of the entire population. Instead, it is just shy of fully half the population. This makes his point even more disturbing – that is, if you agree that the average person is not very well informed or even inherently curious and/or cognitively sharp.

Sticks and Stones and Words

Witty wordplay is essential to Chinese storytelling and comedy. It also confounds government censors. In 2009, Internet free speech activists in China invented ten mythical creatures on Baidu Baike to mock Chinese authorities. One, Cǎo ní mǎ (草泥馬) literally means the “grass mud horse.” The grass mud horse is said to inhabit the Gobi Desert and to be threatened by river crabs (which is another wordplay – you’ll have to look that one up). The Mandarin phrase Cǎo ní mǎ (草泥馬) sounds very much like the Mandarin words cào nǐ mā (肏你媽), which literally means “fuck your mother.” The two phrases have the same consonants and vowels with different tones. They are literally different words represented by different characters, but very close in sound. Not exactly, but very close. Cute. Imaginative.

Now before you get that warm and fuzzy feeling about youthful liberties, I want to add that I very much doubt it fooled the censors for long. They simply made a decision to let some banal activities go. In 2018, Xi Jinping (“Xi Dada”) was elevated to President for life. Why not. The “bunga bunga rooms” of Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi and Trump’s election gave the green light for total corruption. Putin backing Trump, poisoning political opponents, and later Saudi Royalty chopping up US journalists signaled no limits. China is a serious enemy of democracy. So are those pushing for restrictive voting laws in the US. China has made holding and strategically releasing prisoners for leverage into an artform. In 1990, they let some go (but still under close surveillance), to win back “Most Favored Nation Status” from G. H. W. Bush. When China was bidding to host the 2008 Olympics, it released some kids who had been jailed since the 1998 Tiananmen Square Massacre for good PR. Just a trickle. One at a time. Many were vegetables. Tortured and harassed for years until they lost their minds. Very brutal. Very tragic. The free press accidentally got footage of one old woman who came to collect her son at prison after years of incarceration. It was so sad. He was totally broken. Uncontrollable shaking. He could hardly walk and showed no indication that he recognized his mother. She was in utter anguish, helping him walk away. Years of sleep deprivation and mistreatment had shattered his mind and body. But, hey, we buy lots of stuff made there like the laptop or computer you’re now reading this on. Maybe you’re excited about the electric cars and other shiny things they’ve copied and released onto the world. No doubt, nice and affordable products. But remember their legacy and client state is North Korea.

By stark contrast, and acknowledging all its faults, the US’s legacy state is South Korea. And believe me, I wade into some of those faults later, which, as Socrates taught us, is our patriotic duty – to critique and improve our world. Progress is based on sincere criticism, fact finding, and honest debate. Habermas taught us about systematically distorted communication. We are seeing it in spades now from the right. South and North Korea are two very different societies. Neither is perfect. Nothing is. But one is preferrable over the other. If you disagree, you might want to visit each for empirical comparison. Where would you rather live? Sure K-Pop, and an epidemic of plastic surgery is crazy. But I’ll take that over prison camps any day. And despite Trump’s primitive magic talk of having “good German blood,” you can’t mark the differences up to genetics. We are not predestined, genetically determined, or trapped by the past. We make choices. We are responsible. And for those assimilationists who think it is smart to just go with whoever is in power, that’s nihilistic relativism. You have no principles. No ethics. No morality. You don’t even understand your own self-interest and how the life you enjoy was won for you by those who fought for justice. Pathetic. Even Confucius was not so “Confucian.” He himself did not just memorize prior teachings and regurgitate them for favor. He pushed for change in his world. It was only later, when much lesser people, seized on his works and made them into a religion. Same thing happened to Jesus and Buddha. Imitation may be the greatest form of flattery. But if all you aspire to be is a flatterer, I have no time for you. And in my experience, those who are busy making a difference also don’t waste much time on taking curtain calls.

Be Late To Your Funeral

Proportion. Keep things in perspective. Ratio is the root of rational. Be rational. Everything is connected, directly or indirectly, to everything else. Don’t let perfection (utopia -- ou topos) become the enemy of the good. We can keep striving for “better,” but don’t forget to appreciate what is “okay.” That’s part of the purpose of this essay. Perfection does not exist. The word Utopia is the combination of the Greek words ou (meaning “no,"  "not”) and topos (meaning “place,” like topography). Thomas More invented the word to describe his imaginary ideal place/society in 1516. Sounds nice but it kicked off a frenzy of modernity that led to lots of agony. Suddenly nothing real was good enough. Modernity became the age of endless striving. It helped to launch the Age of Ideology. Utopia literally means “No Place” and various versions of utopia have driven people to fight horrendous wars. WWII was basically a struggle to the death of the Left versus the Right Hegelians. Hegel. He’s practically unknown outside philosophical circles but his impact on the world is unmeasurable. When you read their literature, the two ideal models of humanity were practically identical. The new scientific man! Hegel’s Absolute reason created, through reflection, a mirror-image of itself, and like a bird attacking its own reflection, Hegelian Europeans, and their followers in places like China, tried to peck each other to death. Global cockfight. Talk about the fixation on perfection that drove millions to their deaths. Forget perfection. It doesn’t exist. Focus on the good. Accept limitations and help out. The good is sometimes attainable and real. Human.

Ne sis victima, Non Salvatorem exspectamus

As I see it, my job is to teach my students defense against the dark arts. Sounds like Harry Potter. Well there is such a thing as false rhetoric, and it can be literally deadly. It has led entire countries to horrendous ends. What are the pieces of armor? Logic. Scientific method. Honesty. Pretty simple. But it requires lots of hard work to get up to speed. Many houses of worship around the world are places for laymen philosophers. Sermons on morality. But they don’t teach logic or methods. They don’t have impartial experts rigorously review claims before broadcasting them. Lots of opinions. Like going to the barbershop or hairstylist to chat with friends and share stories. Some may be valid, accurate, honest and true. Some may not. The thing about truth is that it is true whether you believe it or not. Global warming and its causes and evolution are examples. These are “inconvenient” truths if and only if you don’t like them.

Whether you like a fact or not does not effect the fact. The same for a good teacher. Teachers who dedicate themselves to being liked and who reduce education to a set of “skills” to make it easy are not mentors. They are narcotics for the lazy. And you might love them, but don’t become addicted lest you sell yourself short. The hard path is the one that teaches you the most. The lazy person will say, I do just enough to get by. That’s “efficiency.” That’s a strip mall compared to the Taj Mahal. Don’t make of your life an eyesore. The effort of years of experience to build up a craft leads to real accomplishment – art and science. Original creation. Not recreation (meaning lounging). After a day of leisure there’s nothing to hold. Nothing. Just, “I got to the finish line with minimum effort and that’s it. Finished. Kaput.” The well is dry. Writers write. Painters paint. Musicians make music. Scientists research. Business people do business. Builders build. You may retort. I have kids. Okay. So do midges. Millions of them. So do carrots and starlings and mollusks. If you are not doing anything, then, what are you?

There are many religions. They can’t all be true. They contradict each other. Their fundamental foundations are pretty shaky. Full of conflict even. Meanwhile science works diligently and honestly to establish something all can test and replicate. Differing theories and theorists in science debate but they don’t literally expend every penny and ounce of effort going to war, burning down each other’s houses and schools. Who burns libraries, scholars, and schools? When you answer that accurately, you’ll begin to get my drift. You don’t have to have special “gifts” or blood or status to participate in logic and science. You go to college and the teachers there practically beg you to join in. There’s a gigantic library sitting there for all to use. Labs, seminars, experts on practically every topic. You want to study Aristotle, go to this office. You want to learn ballet or how to play cello, that’s in the performing arts building over there. Binary star systems, in that building. Shakespeare, over there. Latin, in building X. How to build a suspension bridge, over in engineering. International finance, in that building. Law, medicine, veterinary medicine, agriculture, weather and climate, geology, anthropology, chemistry, history… All you gotta do is get off your ass. Try.

Blizzards of Flaky Victims

Are there genuine victims in the world? Of course. But there is also an extremely cynical form of rhetoric that I call victimage. Fake it ‘til you make it. Well, if you play the victim too much, you become one. How? You keep surrendering your own agency, your self-determination by asking others to make all the decisions and run the show. That precludes you from having to learn how to do hard tasks, how to solve problems, how to endure and prevail, how to make your own identity. Instead, you just close your eyes and follow their super-vision. Why would people “surrender” their minds? Because they don’t want to think about it. They just want to be told how to do something and be done. They literally don’t want to reckon on their own. They need a mental/emotional crutch, a spiritual prosthesis.

Why would someone promote victimage? For cynical reasons. Those who would be saviors want control. They thrive on the lamentation of others. They drink their tears as a fine wine. They crave the adulation of gratitude that pours forth. “I don’t know what I would have done without you. I can’t thank you enough.” Real victims of injustice and violence and the fates do exist. But victimage is a story, a myth told by those who would be “leaders” to get followers. The 2020 election was a fraud! You were all robbed, says Trump… of me, of the glory of having me lead you. This lie is then used to push for hundreds of new state and local laws to restrict access to vote, to choke democracy. There were no victims in the 2020 election. That has been proven over and over and over. It’s a lie. A myth.

Victimage is a cynical rhetoric, a set of lies deployed to convince people they are in peril, that they have been wronged so that “leaders,” “saviors” can take control. A rhetorical question was posed to the Germans between the wars. Rhetorical because it was not a sincere query but a tactic to allow the same person asking the “question,” to pose an “answer.” It is a mythic construct. A means to propose a make-believe scenario to appear like a valid argument or “fact.” A sort of false syllogism because it posits false or untested premises or skips them entirely like an enthymeme. Why did we lose World War I? Who has the answer to our problem? Why the person posing the question to begin with. The Jews! The communists! The gypsies! Nonayrans conspired. A global Zionist network destroyed Germany. We are victims of evil. We must avenge. Never mind the fact that many Germans who also happened to be Jewish fought for Germany in World War I and many died. Some won medals like the Iron Cross for their heroic efforts. Germans. Jewish Germans. Jewish German soldiers and sailors. Just a little fact.

Victimage starts with scapegoating others. With not taking responsibility for the consequences of one’s own actions. And if there is a scintilla of real victimage, real injustice, then that just amplifies the rhetoric even more. Exaggeration of martyrdom ensues. Now there are two groups at risk here. Obviously those unfairly scapegoated but also those who would become victims, those who embrace the identity of being wronged and then using that to justify all sorts of atrocious behavior in the name of justice and self-preservation. For nothing is more just than self-defense, right?

Another example. Transgender kids are winning all the state championships. They are boys in drag ruining womens’ sports. They must be stopped by force of law. Where? Give me some evidence of this great injustice. Nothing. No kids are claiming to be transgender to win a track meet. Another example: millions of people are pro-abortion. They love abortion. It must be stopped and god is on our side to save all the babies slaughtered just for fun. I’ve never in my life met even one person who is pro-abortion. It is a medical procedure. Is anyone pro-root canal surgery? You do it because you must. Not because you like to. Now I am not a big cheerleader for abortion. I agree with Christopher Hitchens. It involves life and death decisions, and I would prefer to exhaust every possible alternative before making that decision. And I believe that is what people do. Categorically outlawing the procedure is not subtle. The patient, the doctor, and her advisors need to make the decision. Not a statute of one size fits all. I have met women who went through the procedure and for some it remains a traumatizing decision they felt they had to take. But those who would be heroes demand, all women’s clinics must be attacked, burned, the doctors run out of town or killed. It’s none of their business. But that’s how victimage gives people the opportunity to be heroes. Storm the witches coven.

Lobbyists who use victimage rhetoric claim that there are anti-gun people who want to “take away your guns and your freedom.” I’ve met people who don’t like guns, and they don’t have them in their houses. That’s freedom too. But I’ve never met someone who says all guns should be outlawed. That hunting and sport shooting must be stopped – removed from the Olympics. In Switzerland, that bastion of liberal socialist maniacs, it is the law that every household have a gun and shooting tournaments are very popular. But they don’t tote handguns under their shirts. That’s stupid. The snowfall blizzard of victimage is amazing. Snowflakes all over the place. Fear. Fear that makes money for “leaders.”

White people are now victims of historians who are insisting that there was a categorical racial dimension to slavery in the United States that has had lasting social, psychological, and economic consequences. Yeah… when Christian slave-owners tried to convert slaves their preachers said they couldn’t baptize them because they were, quite precisely, three-fifths human. A fraction of a human being. And, like other animals, may not have a soul. That’s a very exact description of race. They found a workaround and then ran into another problem. Can one Christian own another Christian as chattel property? They got around that too because Saint Augustine had owned a slave. If there’s a will there’s an excuse. Woe is me, the White person so unfairly treated by nasty historians. The heroes of the White race are rising. We must pass laws to stop the vicious teachings of historians. Burn the books. Deny tenure. Destroy the pagan temples. But slavery was real. Those with guilt scream the loudest that that which makes them feel guilty, that reality, is not true. Yet… they know in their hearts and feel, minimally, embarrassed.

The “science” of eugenics was all about race with careful measurements of skin color, nose shape and size, hair-type… It was all about race. Period. And mixing them is seen as an abomination by “purists.” Someone once said to me that I was a “traitor to my race,” for marrying an Asian woman. Racism is a fact. Historians and social scientists are not wrong. Many government forms still ask us to declare what race we are. Another fact. Race is a myth. And genetics has proven that there’s been lots of “mixing” including with other species such as Neanderthals… So, the racists are steeped in bullshit but that does not mean racism is bullshit. It’s real and dangerous. Ignorance and hate go hand-in-hand. False conspiracies stories (not “theories”) because they are either untestable or have already been proven false repeatedly, cynically circulate. But without believers where would Q be? Stuck in a James Bond movie making gizmos. Here’s Qbert, or “Q,” as his friends and acolytes like Michael Thomas Flynn call him (I think it’s a “him”). You know people pledge their allegiance to him and venerate him. This suggests that Kool-Aid Man has a chance to enter the Pantheon of saviors too.

Victimage is about lies told to justify false martyrdom. It is rhetorical judo. The perpetrator, when caught, becomes the “victim.” Grievance. We are unjustly persecuted! So here comes the solution, the savior with the magic to deliver us from evil. This is the cynical rhetoric of vicitmage. It is the creation of expansive networks of lies and liars to convince people they need to surrender their critical thinking skills and join the cause. It’s self-preservation. Fear leads to aggression. But the truth is, “the end” is not near. There is no evidence of a “rapture.” Yet you can’t have the “second coming,” the Parousia, without the apocalypse, which from Paul forward is repeatedly, and falsely predicted.

The more dire the crisis, the more gratitude is showered onto the savior. It may be quantified, for my friends with statistical competencies. The greater the perceived danger, the greater the appreciation of salvation. Appreciation escalates from a “Thanks,” for opening the door to, “I pledge my eternal soul and allegiance for saving that soul from eternal hellfire.” But what if the “end times,” is a myth. What if hell is not real? Then, you don’t need to escalate your appreciation to the point of surrendering your very being, your critical abilities, to pass through stages of gratitude to veneration to adoration to full blown and total devotion. You are consumed into the leader. As I say below, Kaa has you for lunch. You also don’t need to repent or to attack the demons that are your friends, family, and neighbors. No one is after you. No one is trying to destroy you. You don’t need a savior. You don’t need to give yourself through total devotion to another. But, that’s the whole point. That won’t do for a wannabe messiah. You must be convinced that you are in peril. The more dire, the better. That you are a victim even of yourself. Otherwise, there is no reason to “surrender,” and accept the exclusive “help” from the sole savior.

Those with messiah complexes must find sheep to save, and one way is to manufacture crises and convert folks into sheep. “Friendly concern” and repetitive messages of unease and anxiety cultivate the sheep in us. Existential anxiety, fear motivates everything from prayer to the construction of massive thermonuclear arsenals. Self-preservation is at stake. My eternal soul. What if… What if his stories of end times and eternal damnation are true? What if… I better stop questioning, because that too is bad, and just assimilate. And those who don’t agree? Eliminate them. Why? The savior says so. That’s one way to gain favor. Those raised in a culture of sheepishness end up being the most dangerous mind-guards and defenders of the faith, whatever that clique is – a political party, a sect of religion, a school of “thought,” a cult… Nothing less than identity is involved. One of us, or not? You may not care to join but then power and resources are part of the deal. The more exclusive the membership, the more you want in. Membership has its privileges. Just ask party members in China. And because of those privileges, the members fight hard to maintain the status quo.

Stability and assimilation are the watchwords of dictatorships. Are you saved or damned? You better be “confirmed” before it is “too late.” A chronic sense of urgency is an essential part of victimage. Salvation may not last. End times are coming. Who knows when? Be afraid. Very afraid. Now drink the Kool-Aid. Like I said, the end is near. Now for an aside.

Poor Kool-Aid. It was invented by a guy named Edwin Perkins in 1927, in Hastings, Nebraska. Hmmm. Hastings, Nebraska in 1927, might have prompted thoughts of ending it all. During the Gilded Age and the coming of the railroad, the town’s population peaked at around 13,500 but then declined to less than 7,000. It is in the “middle of nowhere.” In the late 1920s it had “grown back” to a population of about 14,000. Today it has swelled to a whopping 25,000. Perkins’ invention evolved from an earlier product he’d concocted called “Fruit Smack,” a liquid concentrate, like the syrup process used by Coke and others today. Perkins figured out, in that auspicious year of 1927, how to remove the liquid from the Fruit Smack leaving just powder.

So, there you have it. Kool-Aid. Blame it on Ed Perkins of rural Nebraska. Just add sugar or… cyanide if you are a cult leader who wants to hurry your followers off to the great here-after. Like I said. If you play the victim enough, you become one. You might have heard of Tom Wolfe’s famous book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The “Merry Pranksters” (you’ll have to look them up), first added LSD to Kool-Aid in Watts, California. It became a hit beverage among some in the 1960s and 70s. If you see the guy pictured (a combination giant happy face and pitcher saying “Oh Yeah” while breaking through walls), you might be a Merry Prankster. Doublecheck your Kool-Aid. The Kool-Aid Man might be a deity. I can see how a new religion could form. The demonized thirsties. Scapegoats to enable Kool-Aid Man to burst in and save us. But honestly, they were just doing their job alerting the body to a need for hydration. But Kool-Aid Man must crash the game and destroy them. Only he can quench the thirst of the victims, releasing the kids from bondage. Bondage?! Even here? Look closer. The kids are bound and on their knees. Classic imagery. Product as savior. Businessman as savior (Trump for many). Everyone aspires to be a messiah. So sure, Kool-Aid Man can be a god. Well, to be a great savior bondage is a helpful condition. The folks making these comic books must have had Ken Kesey’s recipe.

This brings me to the end of, the eschatological terminus of my little phenomenology (essential structure) of cynical victimage rhetoric. Don’t fall for the lies even if, or precisely because, they are your path to victimage. Feels nice to be taken care of at first. But “take care of him” is what mobsters say about those they want “rubbed out.” They will help “end you.” Help you “get finished.” Apocalyptic, isn’t it?

There are no miracles. You don’t have to have special supernatural powers. Everyone can participate in learning and discovery, in the arts and sciences. Heck there are amazing lectures now, thousands, maybe millions, for free online by world-class teachers and authorities from universities around the world. Sit down and learn how to solve a quadratic equation. Get some paper and pencil and follow along. But… you have to meet them halfway. If you quit, there’s nothing they can do. If all you want to do is finish, then don’t start. That’s the fastest way to the end. Skip all those intricate words and go straight to the last page. You’ve made the assumption that they are useless apparently – and miraculously – without having to read them. So, you’re done! Life too can be short. Skip to the end. Why would you do that? If you have any desire to be a teacher, please don’t. Please don’t spread that attitude as a teacher!! There’s so much to learn and enjoy. Don’t run back into the closet when the whole world is wide open. Be brave. It’s worth it in the long run.

Charisma: The Addictive Personality

Be careful lest you become addicted to victimage. It feels good. The “knight in shining armor” stuff can become an escape, a narcotizing dysfunction, as we say in social sciences. Notice that narcotic and narcissist have the same root. The men love it too, of course. Their chance to show their stuff. But then you will pass victimage culture on to the next generation instead of how to cope without heroic rescue. There are many who crave to be the hero. The problem is, they need a damsel in distress (or “distressed dude” as gamers refer to males in need of help) to pursue their “calling” as a savior. So they cultivate them. It has to do with the adolescent fantasy of being a messiah and the combination of what psychologists call various types of narcissistic identities/personalities. “Paternal narcissism” has to do with the obsession with being the strong savior and rewarded with heroic status (admiration and gratitude). “Victim narcissism” loves getting attention, avoiding all responsibility, and being seen as innocent. The Klan lynched many Black men because they didn’t give proper respect to “their” women. Knights slay dragons for the damsel in bondage… often scantily clothed. Cowboys rescue White women from savage Indians. The trope is deep in the culture and manifests as a pathetic form of masculinity AND femininity. The covers of both male magazines like “Real Detective” and nearly all romance novels portray the same form of relationship. You don’t have to assume that you are a “victim.” Don’t be needy and weak. Be strong and creative. Innovate. People who dis-courage you, rather than en-courage you, people who try to convince you that you are weak and cannot cope, are not your friends. Don’t capitulate. The would-be savior, smooth talker can make people do terrible things and to become sheep.

Richard Weaver wrote extensively about the ethics of rhetoric. Unethical rhetoric tends to take two forms of malicious manipulation; seduction through flattery or scare the living daylights out of the person. A combo works too. He is a good source to add to Plato’s Phaedrus, which is the text where he, Plato, introduces the evil lover, the noble lover, and the nonlover. Plato would not teach the dialectic, which is part of the art of argumentation and rhetoric, until and unless the student had first studied his ethics to his satisfaction. Aristotle believed ethics was so important that he dedicated his ten-volume work on it to his son Nicomachus (the Nicomachean Ethics), and he continued to work on the text his entire life.

In the Phaedrus, Plato said there are two kinds of “lovers,” for he understood that performers want to be loved. One kind of lover will flatter you and tell you what you want and like to hear (also see Plato’s Gorgias about flattery). As long as you are on my side, you’re great. You’re doing great. We can make everything work. You don’t have to worry about anything or take any responsibility. Just do as you’re told, and everything is taken care of. You’re on track for heaven’s gates. All your debts are paid. I’ll protect you from evil (assuming it lurks, which I assure you it does). I am your rock in the storm (again I assure you that you are in one). Uncertainty removed. Anxiety abated. Nothing will happen to you that we don’t already foresee, AS LONG AS I AM HERE. Otherwise… not so sure. Calamity is imminent, unless, you choose me and forsake all Others. Simply put, it is selfishness in the guise of being your friend, your savior. Being good looking with a nice smile is a powerful form of rhetoric. The right clothes, friends, status. Being regarded as “smart” is also seductive. Some are really good at talking smartly and knowing how to flatter others they want to collect. One such fellow, Jeffrey Epstein called himself a financial “bounty hunter.” A dean of graduate studies once described such people to me as “poachers” (of graduate students).

The infamous pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein apparently was very good at talking his way into circles of billionaires with nothing more than flattery and lots of lies. People with lots of money are no smarter than the rest of us. They too are susceptible to flattery and fear. Also, humor is a dangerous rhetoric that many use to put you at ease and then take your wallet, your vote, or whatever they are after. Very seductive. Apparently, Leslie (Les) Wexner, the guy who built, along with his parents (especially his mother’s management) Victoria’s Secret, Bath & Body Works, The Limited, Lane Bryant, Abercrombie & Fitch, Lerner of New York, and other mall fixtures into a huge fortune was a victim of what Plato would call an “Evil Lover.”

First, how did Wexner become one of the richest people on the planet? Wexner and his parents, who were executives in the corporation, figured out that if they joined up with the logistics company Mast Industries in 1976 that would give them access to near slave labor all over the world. Mast Industries (founded by the American Martin Trust in Sri Lanka in 1970) was a company that operated dozens of factories in Asia and contracted with hundreds more around the world tapping into super cheap labor that had no unions, and no labor or environmental protection. Then the mall boom hit America. I understand this well because Wexner was born in Dayton and lived his entire life in Ohio. He operated out of Columbus (about 35 miles from my boyhood home). There’s an old saying in marketing. “If it sells in Peoria, it’ll sell anywhere.” Forget Peoria. Columbus is famous among marketing experts. It is the definition of “middle America.” Wexner brought a sense of faux “class” in the form of cheap but seasonal and sexy clothes to the aspiring middle class of middle America. Bingo. The sweet spot. Ohio was union territory. Lots of good factory jobs and folks were primed to consume. It’s the oldest story in marketing. You make and sell something affordable that looks like the expensive brand that makes lower classes feel like they are upper class. Seasonal clothes? Oh my. That’s what rich people do. It’s called status mimicry. Buy cheap versions, even fake knockoffs of expensive stuff to appear as you aspire to be but actually, are not. It’s marketing rhetoric. Trickle up was working like crazy. Wexner became one of the first billionaires. The guys who hated organized labor the most, made out like bandits because of those union salaries. They wanted consumers but didn’t like labor. But those are the same people. They didn’t seem to get that truth, and so today, its’ all rust and poverty and the malls are dying. But the pillaging paid big time at least until the golden goose was cooked and devoured.

Epstein was the purest status mimic, the ultimate speaker of “false rhetoric” that convinces, persuades and mesmerizes targets. Shameless flattery and ruthless fear mongering. At what point does suggestion become hypnosis? Epstein changed people along with his clothes. Wexner was rich and loved to have a buddy like Epstein – essentially a bought friend. For his interest, Epstein loved the money and started claiming to be a “scout” for Victoria's Secret. Execs at VS alerted Wexner of Epstein’s fraudulent “activities” with local girls and also with the models but he didn’t fire Epstein.

Wexner himself was a very unimpressive specimen. Boring, not handsome, not athletic, not witty, shy, a mama’s boy, the kind of kid bullied on the playground, and apparently, he had “sexual hang ups.” As is so common, the bullied becomes the bully later. Wexner passed on his mother’s style. He was famous for being a “brutal boss.” He didn’t marry until he was nearly 60. Epstein found a lonely guy who had done nothing except business all his life and whose mother famously bullied him even as she managed their corporate operations, often calling her son an idiot in front of employees. She was probably correct. Perfect mark.

All Epstein had was his mouth. His rhetoric. He’d been a math teacher at a private high school in Manhattan, where he had a reputation with the female students. Through that he got access to rich parents such as Robert Meister, an insurance mogul who handled the insurance for The Limited. Through Meister, Epstein made contact with Wexner. Epstein knew how to “network.” Epstein claimed to have an investment deal. So Wexner sent his financial manager Harold Levin to check out Epstein. Levin knew everyone on Wall Street, but he’d never heard of Epstein. Levin went and heard Epstein’s pitch. He then reported back to Wexner that Epstein had a tiny “office” with no business and that everything he said about finance was nonsense. Gibberish. Epstein was a fraud. Didn’t matter, Wexner liked him and hired him. Later Meister found out about Epstein’s dealings with underaged girls and warned Wexner to distance himself from the con artist. But nope. They became “inseparable.” Epstein convinced Wexner to get rid of Levin, who had help build the empire and who actually had a Master’s in finance from Ohio State University and was a real expert with years of experience. But Epstein had magical rhetoric. He was dashing, handsome, and could flatter the socks off of a cat. Levin, ended up fired by Wexner and destroyed by Epstein who used his mouth to great effect circulating negative rumors about Levin. The rest is history.

I think this mentality is neatly represented by the serpent, Kaa, in the various film adaptations of Kipling’s The Jungle Book. The film adaptations play off of the Garden of Eden tale. Primordial seduction and the easy target, the lost and lonely. Eve was alone when she encountered the serpent. How many are conned online this way? In person it can be even more intimate and alluring. Mowgli is lost and confused. But he is not frightened. He is confident. Trusting. He is not weak or stupid. He is making his own way when Kaa finds him alone. What is Kaa? Friendly. Helpful. Innocent. Knowledgeable. Wise. Powerful. All the qualities that make for seductive rhetoric. He is also, avaricious. Rapacious enough to go to extraordinary lengths to get what he wants. He takes his time working on Mowgli. Bagheera and Baloo, Mowgli’s friends are not available to him. Mowgli is a prime target to be “helped,” consumed, assimilated into the snake. Here’s some wonderful concept art. I include two pictures of Bagheera watching over Mowgli, but also letting him be free to take risks, to grow into an adult, which Bagheera knows Mowgli must do, and another of Baloo. Baloo, as you know is not charismatic. He’s clumsy, oafish, a bit selfish but in the end, along with Bagheera, a loyal friend to Mowgli. Baloo and Bagheera never give up on Mowgli. They let Mowgli go. Would others do that? Hmmm. The god-fearing might not because the god they fear and who they seek to imitate, has earned that response. There are givers and there are takers in the world. Can you tell which is which?

The insular (comforting) culture created by Kaa’s reassuringly secure coils. The finishing strike is sudden and decisive. To the resigned lamb perhaps a welcome resolution. How can abuse from gurus lead to more devotion and adulation? Salvation. This is the fertile ground for being mesmerized… for conspiracy myths. The more dire the situation is portrayed to be, true or not, the more grateful the lamb. We must rush to make laws to defend against voter fraud… even though there is none. Same mentality. Rush to save someone who is fine, so you have to convince them that they are not fine (advertising 101). You need me, my product – even if you don’t. You are in grave peril. The more dire, the more you will rush into the savior’s arms. You desperately need the savior, so much so that you will do treacherous things to save yourself. Leave the community and go to the commune with armed guards to prevent communication with now demonized family and acquaintances. Kaa is smooth. The worm tongue. Convincing and assured. “Come over here and be safe.”

The mission of the missionaries -- bring the “good news.” You are sinful and going to hell. What? Why? I’m a good person. Well, there’s this thing called original sin so, yup. You’re destined for eternal horrible torment met out by the good lord, who loves you by the way, unless you listen to him and join his team, that is. That’s essential. You must denounce your evil past. That means all your evil friends and associates must go. Only a total commitment to the lord will do. Then, you’ll be saved. Severance. Cut off the evil. Fire everyone -- by e-mail. Take what you want and throw the rest under the bus. It’s all for the “better.” The ends justify any and all means. What a lesson to teach! Anything goes in the name of self-preservation. What an organizational culture! Strategic carving. It’s the iceberg in the night. You’re happily dreaming and pow. You awake to the ghost of Ephialtes. No communication. No sign. No signal. T-boned on a country road. You don’t see it coming because you believe and trust. I thought the skies were clear and we had fair sailing. How naïve. You can live decades and until and unless you encounter such a nightmare you won’t believe it is possible. Only those you truly trust can really hurt you. My boss once made it a point to come to my office right after I’d returned from sabbatical to tell me he and another had to “save a student.” As soon as I heard the words, so much became clear. It wasn’t about the student. In fact, he said he didn’t know anything about the student’s research and didn’t care. It was about him.

What Peter says about Paul may or may not be true; may not tell me anything about Paul. But it tells me a lot about Peter. It was about bragging and being a messiah. It was about power and the language he used spoke volumes. It was predictable. In fact, I did predict it. I knew who they were. I took it too personally. Of course, that was his goal – why he came to my office to have his say especially since, by then, I was well out of the picture. But I was wrong. It turned out to not be about me either. The problem was wide in scope. As it turned out, I needed to keep the faith. Other people are not stupid, and many others that I was unaware of, also saw problems. Everyone knows who Shere Khan is and when he is near. But that’s not fair to Shere Khan. Shere Khan is brutally honest, not scheming. Everyone knows he’s coming. Everyone knows about his scar and his grievance, which is real, not imaginary. Kaa has no grievance. He’s just a voracious opportunist.

The obvious question then arises about the spiritual source of this culture. Can’t god just leave me alone? Nope. It’s a war even if you don’t get that. A zero-sum game. With me or against me. Period. The naïve don’t even see it coming. Sorry, but it’s true. This mode of thinking is instilled most profoundly in my culture by old Near Eastern religions. It sets up a stark binary opposition of mutual exclusion. If you are with me, you cannot be with him too. It is a sort of junior high mentality where if I am friends with him, I cannot also be friends with you. We can no longer do anything together. You must accept him and love him back or else. Oh and despise and forsake all others. Friends are transformed into demonic threats. “Pagans.” It wouldn’t be bad to annihilate them. Holy war. Paint a cross on your shield and god will protect you as you eliminate the Other. Who’s the bad guys? The Master will point them out for you and give you your instructions for assassination.

So, if you encounter the iceberg and live, then what? You learn. It’s a tough lesson and a sad one because it is destructive of trust. I can think of no more caustic lesson a mentor can teach a student than to betray their friends for some specious self-interest. But that’s how the shepherd gains a monopoly over the sheep. Horrible. And in the name of “self-preservation,” which like other conspiracy theories such as “wide-spread voter fraud,” a canard used to justify enacting restrictive voting policies to “save our democracy,” tends to come out of a particular culture (ethical-dramatistic cosmology with a very hierarchical structure) that I discuss below. The first lie is, “your doomed.” That justifies all efforts at “salvation.”

The rest of the story: Luther is correct. But then he knew a lot about betrayal. After encouraging peasants to rise up he then betrayed them and they were crushed by the Swabian League, a group of princes and their armies at the Battle of Frankenhausen, 1525. Their leader Thomas Müntzer was executed and his head prominently displayed for years as a warning to any others who might believe that god is on the side of the poor. Render onto Caesar everything he wants and shut up about it. Tens of thousands who’d been inspired by Luther’s early writings were killed. Luther reaffirmed the “divine right of kings,” including the right to kill serfs who dared to ask for some of the food they had cultivated.

You’re in big trouble. That’s the big lie. The truth? No one is after you or against you. Rather they are your friends. The next big stipulation is there can be only one friend, one messiah. This is the essential structure of the rhetoric. And then to add that there is a solution. But only one and no alternatives can be entertained. Period. Full stop. To save you, all relationships must be broken and rearranged. You have to be convinced to turn vicious to save yourself. Now since religions don’t change much or very fast, you then end up with endless conflict between competing saviors. “Traditional enemies,” rooted in ethno-religious, often also involving racial tribalism. They overlap and intermix prior to modern efforts to define separate identities as separate and contingent. The definition of the word definition is the ability to discern two adjacent objects as in fact different. Modernity is obsessed with definition, fragmentation – in a word, precision. Even our genetics are now understood to evolve. But ancient religions are meant to be eternal, changeless constructs. You’re stuck with mutually excluding and warring saviors. Breeding fear and distrust, which leads to the destruction of relationships, in perpetuity. Why? Because we’re talking about eternal damnation. Not just a couple weeks in hell. If you believe it, then you will fight like a maniac to avoid that fate. Fear, and fear mongering is incredibly powerful and that is why the ethics of rhetoric are vital.

Here’s the structure, the “deal.” One can’t be a messiah without people who feel they need salvation. They have to be worried and scared. So, the first move is to scare them. To fill them with doubt and anxiety, to cultivate, often subtly, through “friendly concern,” a sense of dread over time. Gain their trust. If you have the power, toss them a perk. Maybe a little job that will give them nominal power over their peers. They are made to feel special. Favored by the power. Now the messiah is not looking for competency or innovation but rather someone easily managed. Gratitude seals the deal. I’ve watched it happen. The recipient is flattered and grateful. The hook is set. So after having “concerns,” second, the messiah flatters the person by saying they are definitely worthy of salvation, they have a soul/value as a human being, and that, therefore, the messiah loves them. Animals may not count. Or certain kinds of human-like animals such as slaves.

Finally, the ambition of the messiah is to be absolute, exclusive, and eternal, meaning forever monopolistic. So communication with or thought of any alternative is regarded as one of, if not the worst, sin. The structure of the pattern can become inculcated so that it reproduces itself. It becomes a culture (organized and self-reproducing), canonized in complex systems of symbolic expression and socialization with rules, norms, and mores. Identity becomes received and imprinted – membership. The emergence of castes, covenants, classes, and fragmentation. The goal of the guru is to isolate and carve members that are amenable to control out from the herd. Exclusive celebrations and rituals laced with adoration and endless gratitude for salvation emerge as social reinforcement of membership identity. Tribes are built around charismatic leaders.

Here is a mass wedding ceremony presided over by Sun Myung Moon the Korean cult leader who was close to several Republican Presidents. Look this guy up. Interesting reading. Having your spiritual leader officiate your marriage is a big deal. When the weak follower has little else to give other than adoration, this becomes the follower’s gift of gratitude and elevation of honor. Parent/child hierarchy. These days “spiritual” is less important than some other kinds of adoration.

You see it with folks who fall in love with authority figures in their lives; coaches, teachers, their boss… Sometimes they are serial lovers moving from one authority figure to another. And through social influence they may convince others to follow a similar pattern. If you are just a teacher, you can’t compete with a guru. If the love interest/guru is already committed to another, then the follower will have to settle for second best. Once I was talking with an old friend, I’ve known for over thirty years about this. Jon Nussbaum noted how the second choice (often the guy who ends up the husband to a woman who couldn’t have her crush) looks kinda like the crush. A lot like the crush… In our anecdotal experience… it did seem so. But the problem is, of course, the second fiddle just is not the “real deal.” Just a substitute who is a completely different person. Hope they can measure up.

Love of gurus rises and spreads like a flooding river inundating all sorts of things. It’s not just “physical.” But of course, it often involves that aspect of life too. That’s why cult leaders eventually get around to having sexual liaisons with followers. But it is more serious in a way than just a physical thing. It has to do with an abiding veneration of the subordinate for the guru. Power inequality is a fundamental quality of the relationship. The archetypal example is the marriage of the Catholic nun to Jesus. The typical acolyte does not remain celibate but goes on to marry and have kids and in the continued effort to venerate the guru, they name their kids after him (or her but usually it is a male). That’s devotion. That’s magical identity in the flesh. The deep desire to extend one’s relationship with the guru as far as is humanly possible short of literally marrying him and have “his” kids.

Basically, what I’m saying is… if the guru could and would propose to the student/follower, they would have said an emphatic “YES.” But since he could not, due to a previous commitment, the adoring acolyte does the next best thing and finds a spiritual/physical surrogate. It gets weird. As is well understood, spiritual leaders have enormous influence over vulnerable “lost sheep” followers. Authority figures, with an emphasis on AUTHORITY – those who hold the power of career life and death if not literal spiritual salvation in their hands, experience adoration. The sheep worship the wolf, or the sheep dog. When they settle for the surrogate that’s quite a step down but at least there is some emotional associationism for them. The surrogate has never “saved them,” or been their revered teacher but he maybe looks a little bit like them.

Religion forms the very foundation of ethno-tribal identity (ethno-national in modern terms). That is why, anyone who teaches intercultural communication without discussing religion is not even beginning to scratch the surface of the phenomenon of culture. The structure of a person’s religiosity is usually part of primary socialization, how they see themselves, their beliefs, values, motivations, is carried through other aspects of their lives; psychological, sociological, professional, interpersonal, organizational, even economic… It influences how they view aging, work, childrearing, gender and sexual relations, marriage… A person coming from a strict religious upbringing will be different from one who is not. A society that is based on a religion will manifest that in its laws and structure. Polytheistic people and societies are different from monotheists. Mutual exclusivity of theistic traditions breeds intolerance at the level of identity itself. And because the stakes are so high, eternal salvation versus eternal damnation, no tolerance for error is allowable. This is literally, infinitely more serious than mere mortal death. Consequently, there is practically no limit to intolerance including violence. This life or death binary effects even how people interact interpersonally. It’s my way or the highway.

The Jewish/Christian/Muslim form of messianic religion cast people as sheep in need of shepherds/saviors. It reflects the geography and agrarian life of the place and times. The central tenet is the prophecy of a coming savior. If you play the lost sheep role through submissive surrender, enjoy being saved, you may become one -- a sheep. You think you’ve won some victory, some want, but you’ve changed who you might have been. The person can learn to react like this over-and-over. Fear. Fear is easy to manipulate to create a sense of desperation. People can be talked into doing terrible things out of “desperation.” But those fear mongers, destroyers of trust are out there. They have ambitions. And you may not see them coming. They may be very close, watching for their opening, watching for when you are most vulnerable. They have to be close to know the timing, the weakest most vulnerable moment. And we all have vulnerable moments when we doubt ourselves, are ill, frightened, depressed. This can happen even during mundane challenges as when we are struggling with a large task such as finishing a dissertation. Sounds minor to those who have faced truly difficult times like disabling injury, deadly disease, financial ruin, war, loss of a loved one, but for many, it is a heavy lift. A “snowflake” perhaps. But such things are relative. To the first vets to have access to the GI Bill after WWII, college was a breeze. They poured onto campuses and gave the professors all they could handle. Housing was in short supply. Many were the first of their families to ever go to college. Many had families and were serious about getting their degree. That generation changed the university. But it’s been a long long time since the university has seen a large influx of students with that sort of life experience and no-nonsense drive. The opportunistic fear monger would have difficulty selling his snake oil cure to such guys. They were not looking for a shoulder to cry on. But gurus are good at exploiting vulnerabilities among those susceptible to drifting around without a compass. They set up a very stark binary opposition. Us versus them. You may find yourself unexpectedly Othered like Levin in the Epstein story. You are suddenly Them. One of those who have to be excised for the sake of salvation. If this ever happens to you, if you are not careful, such an experience can change how you perceive people generally and cause you to doubt the motives of others. Don’t let that happen. Remember all the good people. Don’t let a few ruin your openness to others. It is not a sin to be naïve.

Lack of Mirth as a Tell

Those who are treacherous are often people who don’t laugh much. I don’t mean a snarky “laugh” that is a form of ridicule, or the sort of “laugh” an insecure person does to try to convince you to agree with them. Over the years I have had colleagues that I could identify anywhere in the building by their laugh. Others… I’ve never heard them laugh. Smile, but not really belly laugh. They may be “pleasant” but always guarded. They don’t tell jokes or funny stories. They are “high self-monitors” – always vigilant of their image. More than average, their identity is based on how they believe others see them. They are defensive and tend to brag. They are suspicious of others. I mean you will rarely hear them chuckle with abandon. They don’t let themselves be free to chortle. They are tight. Watchful. These are a couple of clues that might tip you off that you are dealing with a predator. I’ve noticed this over the years. Remember when FBI Director James Comey commented that he noticed Trump never laughed. He had a forced smile, but never let go and honestly embraced mirth. An old friend of mine, Philip Glenn, who published an important study on laughter with Cambridge UP, and I have chatted about this. He agrees that this is a strong non-verbal or paralinguistic tell that exposes a type of personality. Be aware that when you are interacting with such a person, you are involved with, under the scrutiny of, a particular type of gaze – one with little humor but strategic calculation in the service of self-interest. To giggle is to “lose control.” To open yourself to others.

Those who don’t laugh are into control. Communication is strategic. Talk is an instrument for ulterior motives -- for organizing others and things for their agenda. They survey others. Watch. They like evaluative and one-way super-vision. They like power over others. This is a suspicious personality. Why suspicious? Because power is politics, and they fear being challenged and losing it. In short, don’t trust those who don’t trust. Well, that would be logical. But try not to go down that hole with them. You will be vulnerable, but you have to try to assume the best – keep the faith.

Bertrand Russell wrote an interesting analytics of all this. So did Porphyry of Tyre way back in about 260 AD. Churches are not for merriment. They are not like universities, made for research and debate -- and young people testing themselves, experimenting, and sowing their oats. By contrast, religious institutions are built for profoundly serious, death denial, as the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker refers to an obsession with, a terror of, death, and a profound fear of god and its judgment. It’s a Medieval mentality. Differently, universities are filled with older yet vital learned folks (perpetual students… a phrase I love), and multitudes of the young. They keep coming, year after year. An endless river of optimism and drive. So do new, young professors with the latest knowledge. The state of the art is not a “state,” unless you define that word as a verb. Rather knowledge is constantly evolving.

Church is for the old. I know many will vehemently disagree with this, but just look at attendance. And efforts to make churches “youth oriented” are so artificial, so controlled. Even with “fun events,” it’s all about messaging and propaganda. It’s about power and control, intolerance. Tolerance means wiggle room. Uncontrolled wiggle is precisely what most religions are against. It is an organized, supervised, chaperoned life. Fear is ever-present. Indeed, the horror vacui of the unknown which gives birth to curiosity must be contained. So, managing it by allaying uncertainty is the solution given by those who also provide the problem. This is how one creates endless demand for salvation. All, we are assured, is known. So, there’s not much for the young except rote memorization. Divine word, the fixed and secure canon is the rock! No editing. No rewrites. Just take dictation and you’re done. Nothing to be discovered. No frontier. Life is a slog of redundancy.

That’s very different from the university where questions, theories, and hypothesis are the stock in trade. The venture and adventure of exploration. Debate instead of dictation is the culture. The scientific and artistic worlds do not “follow observances.” Rather they make it happen. They participate. The mass asks questions. That’s not good to those who prefer what Foucault calls snuggling confinement, comfort in order established by fear and ordained solution. Such is the structure of an abusive relationship. I scare you then comfort you. I create the drama then offer the resolution. Advertising 101. Rhetorical ploys that are so simple yet effective. In my little experience, people who are raised in churches don’t laugh much. They judge. And laughter, fun, merriment, are often frowned upon. The ecstatic nature of worship is not filled with laughter, but surrender to, and adoration of the divine -- and you don’t laugh at god. I think Christian rock’n’roll is a curious tactic to attract the young.

Here we have a portrayal of a debate or discussion between Porphyry and Averroes. They are depicted sitting on the same level, the same size, facing each other eye-to-eye. Status is equal. No one is “pulling rank” to silence the other. They are arguing with ideas, not each other. Charisma is not here. Logic is. Porphyry had access to the New Testament books. The first complete list of the 27 books of the New Testament appears in a letter by Athanasius (Bishop of Alexandria), in 367 AD. But all the books were available no later than about 150 AD. Porphyry was a great neoplatonic philosopher. One of the last as all the great universities (some over a 1000 years old) including Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum were closed and/or destroyed by Christian zealots. A few made something of a comeback and then were really leveled in the sixth century AD. Poor Porphyry. He didn’t know what was about to hit him. He was just doing his job. He dared to take Christian texts seriously while other philosophers of the time discarded them as more fantastic pamphleteering of just another supernatural cult. Porphyry carefully studied the Christian texts and wrote a fifteen-volume analysis. Theodosius II twice ordered every copy burned (in 435 and again, just in case, in 448). This is what I mean by the essential structure of discourse, the intolerance and allowing only one master voice while banning all others, even friends – it is cultish – the establishment of an organized cult-ure in the name of salvation. So how do we know what happened when Classical reason took notice of Christian mysticism? All we have of Porphyry’s work are quotes of it by Christian apologists such as Methodius, Eusebius, Augustine, Jerome, etc. Other philosophers and professors were killed, run off, and the libraries burned. With me, or against me. No room for “let’s talk.”

You don’t want to mess with fundamentalists. Fundamentalism is the breeding grounds of terrorists. Not exactly the fun folks you want to vacation with. A lot of religious people are just lukewarm. If you truly, really believe that someone is doing something that will send their soul to eternal damnation, and you don’t do everything you can to stop them, then you are a coward and sinner. You might have to kill their body to save their soul. The body is the domain of the devil anyway. It is lowly temporal flesh. The soul is the whole ballgame. Most religious folks I know are nice. Some are righteous jerks. But taken to it’s logical conclusion, if they have true conviction and courage, they should blow you up, unless you agree with them. It’s about eternal bliss versus eternal torture after all. I move among many who are… righteous but not that committed. Thank God. They like to be messiahs with a little “m.” They only judge and excommunicate you, not destroy you and your entire culture. Although I suspect some harbor fantasies…

But Plato also talks about the “noble lover.” The mentor who tells you hard truths that you don’t want to hear, even risking your wrath. They may be wrong, but they will be honest. They care about your best interest more than you liking them, or them feeling messianic. They don’t get a kick out of “helping.” It’s not their narcotic. It’s about you, not them. They may seem to push you (away), make you think so you may be independent. Parents are often noble lovers. And because they are, we clash with them. The evil lover will tell you to be scared and that you need him. The noble lover will tell you not to be scared and to work the problem yourself. One place is dedicated to a dark obsession with death and drinking the blood and eating the flesh of a sacrifice. The other is full of light, technology, and progress. One is filled with solemn ritual, the other filled with discovery and celebration thereof. One gives you nightmares of supernatural things beyond your control. The other provokes aspirational dreams of things you can accomplish with your own hard work. One is obsessed with sex as a licentious attitude and sinful act. The other with the lived-body. One sees flesh as the domain of the devil. A battleground between good and evil. The other as part of the sublime universe. In one world you can revel in life and achieve happiness. In the other you are doomed unless forgiven for being alive (original sin).

The noble lover will leave you alone to “figure it out.” To find your own voice. The selfish lover, seemingly so helpful, will have you sit at their feet while they dictate to you. Be assured, their name will appear on all pubs coming out of the dissertation because, as everyone understands, the Chair who dictated it, not the student, is the source of the original ideas. The student ends up owing the savior everything. Debt piles up. You can’t think critically anymore without feeling dissonance. The Master is always right and just. “I’d be nothing without him. I owe him more than I can say.” He’s so humble. He insisted on being second author. But not being removed from the byline altogether. Well, sure. He deserves the recognition. It was his dictation after all. That’s the point. The student is reduced to taking dictation and being an assistant. The student becomes part of the advisor’s agenda even politically as the theories of others in the advisor’s network are celebrated. The student’s identity as a proponent of someone else’s theory, is thus solidified. Their chance to make their own theoretical, scientific contribution passes. They are assimilated. They are… somebody’s. Belonging, to belong to another, to fit, is a confinement. They won’t make much noise later. No voice.

As I said at the beginning, a theme herein is waiting for Godot. Don’t get in the habit of waiting for strong men to save you. It feels good to them and you. But one day, they may not come. Learn to walk on your own. That’s what school is really about. Challenges. And learning how to do things yourself, how to initiate and create all by yourself – single author. That’s what you should learn. Not how to ask for help. That’s elementary school. It is not strength to learn to always ask for help. We’ve become spoiled. We like to be fussed over, to play the victim even when no one is harming us. You don’t know what a real crisis is, and so when one inevitably comes, you will be unable to help yourself or others. Learn to work the problem. No struggle, no growth. With handholding you may finish faster. Indeed, with such favors you will be finished -- kaput. Some favor. But for a moment, everyone feels good. Then it fades. You are ended ASAP. Some goal. You coulda been a contender. But you settled… to the bottom. I am reminded of the final soliloquy of the original Blade Runner by Roy Batty (played by Rutger Hauer). All that potential… I believed… Why be ordinary when you could be… I hope for the extraordinary for my students. I don’t think that is a bad thing.

One kind, the selfish lover wants to be adored. They don’t reciprocate that admiration. It’s a very unequal relationship. If you handle graduate students this way, you perpetuate the sort of educational culture one finds in grade school that Neil Postman decries. The student will not grow. Rather they will be enculturated to be good followers. Being rewarded for being pathetic, their identity is rooted in victimage. At least in grad school with adult students, the culture should begin to shift toward a more free, responsible, and mature relationship. Sacred canon is infallible and changeless. In fact, alteration is a great sin. By contrast, a philosophy text is meant to be debated. A science text becomes obsolete almost as soon as it is published. Progressivism is anathema to religiosity. Two different cultures. One comforting in conformity. The other challenging and uncertain. One reliably predicable with step-by-step redundant instructions and predictable outcomes. Ritual. The other driven by hypothesis testing and discovery (surprise as you will see later in the way General Patton used the term – “I don’t tell people how to do something. I tell them what to do and let them surprise me with their solutions”). The new is unique. Art and science, by definition, must be new. Replication of the old is not art or science. It is counterfeit.

Plato was warning us about the cultish leader/personality who fosters dependency, not independency. Does the selfish lover admire and respect his followers as he is admired and respected? No. He may be fond of them as children but not as equals. And he thinks this is right and natural. How about if we just don’t talk about need and instead talk about the quest, the discovery. Those who focus on needs, and being needy, see the entire process as just something to end ASAP. Well then just skip it. If you don’t enjoy research, get a professional degree like an MBA. It’s much more versatile and no comps or research necessary. You don’t need to teach to get a Ph.D. but you do have to do research. That’s what it’s all about.

On the other hand, the noble lover sees the audience or student as part of the whole process, in fact the essential part of the relationship. The student is not media to be molded. Rather nothing happens unless the graduate students makes it happen. I tell my doctoral students that when you defend, you become the expert and the committee the students. The doctoral student should have learned something new, something we all didn’t already know. And so, they teach us, the dissertation committee. But for this to happen, the teacher has to let them go and not confine them to his or her own agenda and perspective… not to make them into a clone. Redundancy is not informative. This is the student’s show, not mine. I now am the student. Once the dissertation proposal has been worked on by the entire committee (hours of effort) and it is approved, the student is set free to, as I like to put it in Campbellian terms, go forth on the quest and return with the boon. Modifications are almost certain to occur along the way because not every contingency can be predicted. That’s science and art. You don’t know the outcome before you start. If you do, you have wasted your time proving something everyone already knows. You have to strike out into the unknown to make a discovery.

Bagheera and Baloo know Mowgli will explore and get scuffed up. But he has to. If you remove all impediments for the student, they will never learn how to navigate them on their own. How to work the problem on their own. You’re making them weak, even teaching them to wallow in victimage. They will be stuck when, in the future, no authority comes to solve all problems for them. Time finally, to grow up. And if not, they will pass this idolized mode of life onto their own children and students. Victimage becomes a culture. Like a good parent, a good mentor is not your “best friend.” They will let you fail so that you can succeed. You cannot know one without knowing the other. They will not tell you the answers but instead make you do the math yourself, practice guitar yourself, repeat the foreign language yourself… and learn. That’s how YOU grow. I can’t go to the gym and make muscles for you. I can’t go to the library for you either. And your success will be yours, not mine. When you achieve I should be proud of you. Not bragging that I “finished you.” That’s a form of intellectual murder – to reduce you to a victim. It’s not about me. It should be about you. That’s the type of “love” the noble lover has for you -- what they hope for YOU.

There are differing philosophies or, more accurately, a philosophical and a religious approach to mentoring. They are fundamentally different. The person with a devotional mentality sees the student, even the adult graduate student as a “lost child” (in need of salvation). It’s a culture, a way of thinking about relationships that comes from one’s background. Wrath of god and salvation stuff. Medieval/Ministerial (ad-ministerial), not Classical Greco-Roman. These are fundamentally, and I do mean fundamentally, different cultures. I will concede that if you’re operating with the right kind of audience, the messianic mindset works. I admit that. And no doubt some students really like assuming the role of the lost and found sheep. It can be comforting. Fit.

What may be the best fit of all, at least so long as you don’t have to ever work with others? My colleagues in psychology tell me there are several forms of narcissism. One is a “victim narcissist.” Another is the “maternal narcissist.” They may go together best. The victim narcissist loves the attention of being the sufferer. They can claim to be innocent while avoiding all responsibility. Because they are weak, they get away with doing the least amount to get by. And the maternal narcissist who loves to be the shoulder to cry on and seeks out those who “need help.” The would-be savior is thus fulfilled by finding sheep to herd. It’s a symbiotic relationship. A sort of mutual emotional version of the narcotizing dysfunction. As long as they can survive without encountering demands from outside their relationship, they are fine.

Here’s a comparison of drama and real-life on the set of a James Bond film. More silly adolescent fantasy. In the drama Bond is comforting the girl after scaring her by beating evildoers to death in her presence. And then here are the actors out of character, equals, adult professionals, card-carrying thespians having fun. I prefer reality over drama. Of course, there are many who long for the fantasy of the swashbuckling protector. Sometimes they get reality and make-believe mixed up. A shower full of tears… There, there. Sorry I traumatized you with the “reality” of being a walking, talking lethal weapon in the service of Her Majesty. By the way, she too, the girl that is (not the Queen, although she did parachute into the Olympics opening ceremony with 007), is an employee of MI6 but apparently had no clue that agents with guns kill other people. Hmmm. She must of missed that in the orientation when they hired her. The special effects, to be poetical, outstripped the script.

Everyone wants to be helpful. But what does that mean? Tying a kid’s shoes all the time prohibits them from struggling and learning and ultimately, being free instead of dependent. The Classical versus Medieval ad-minister’s approaches have very different expectations for students. The ministerial approach is largely bureaucratic. It seeks to impart a fixed set of skills and find a narrow path based on personal networking within academe. In fact I know people who boast that having any knowledge of or interest in the topic of the study is irrelevant for chairing a doctoral dissertation. I find this astounding and alarming. But there it is. The student is seen as something of a product to be moved along the assembly line efficiently without concern for quality or content. It is a formalistic mode of thinking. A template is applied to every dissertation regardless of empirical issues. It’s all about the chair and production. Not the student and their interests. The science is not an issue. The study does not matter. The student, as an individual, does not matter. They are a statistic – a production goal. The process of putting another notch on the chair’s vitae is what counts (literally and figuratively). Like all such thinking, when profit is realized with each unit moved, it behooves the profiteer to move as many units as fast as possible. Efficiency. For me, however, the study will dictate how fast things progress. This fast-food mentality belies the fact that the best dishes are not made in microwave ovens. A dissertation is a handmade, very personal effort. Unique. Mass production leads to redundancy. Taking an old theory and applying it to yet another context that leads to one, maybe two pubs, then kaput should not be the goal. A good dissertation should end with more questions than solutions thus generating a research agenda and career. Not a terminal condition. If all you want to do is skip everything and just “get the degree,” then skip it all. This sees the degree as nothing but a tool to get a job. But what kind of job? What kind of science? What kind of teacher? What kind of scholar?

My approach is to open the student to possibilities and options well beyond personal networks, even to nonacademic opportunities. Mobility at will is one of the things I hope for my students, and for them to grow far beyond my sphere of friends and acquaintances. I don’t want them to feel stuck later in mid-life in a particular job or institution. I’ve been lucky because I’ve had many opportunities, even within my small departmental world to do and teach many different things from script writing to graduate methods, from philosophy of communication to new technologies and international logistics. But I also know that some folks get stuck teaching the same material over, and over, and over so that by the time they are 45 or 50 they feel like a broken record. Some even just keep repeating their dissertation! Augh. Not good.

Now, this is a little ironic since learning manuals and skills tends toward vocational thinking. But I have tended to be one of the faculty NOT pushing for simple skills training while at the same time keeping nonacademic options open. Why? I know what I know. First of all, I have known many who have moved back and forth between academe, government, and private sector jobs, especially if you are an expert in criminology, terrorism, encryption, languages, computer programing and data management, international affairs, hell I even know a Ph.D. in art history who works in the private sector and an anthropologist who is a university department Chair, an expert in the Batak culture of Sumatra and works for museums and private collectors of Indonesian art and jewelry… The Ph.D. has value. You don’t have to be a teacher only. I know many nonacademic organizations benefit from, and appreciate high-level analytical and independent thinking. But then, unlike many faculty, I’ve worked in very large nonacademic organizations, and I know that the academy, which I dearly love, does not have a monopoly on elite expertise or talent.

Furthermore, your significant other can give you an expansive view of the world or… tend to live as an appendage of your own. Professors who are married to nonprofessionals tend to have a very unequal power distribution in the relationship. This does not mean they are bad marriages. Not at all. But it does mean that their spouses tend to live in their shadow. And for the religiously oriented this is seen as a good thing, what the Southern Baptists call “Complementarianism.” What is that? It is a very clear hierarchy of authority from Christ to husband to wife. It is the sincere belief that the man in the house is the boss. Professors have been, and still are overwhelmingly men. What I’m saying is that folks raised in a certain subcultural tradition may see this hierarchy as not just natural and right but as ordained by divine law and this effects how they see relationships between teachers and students and husbands and wives. The professor husband in a household steeped in this tradition has certain characteristics. The Southern Baptist Conference for instance, draws primary justification for complementarianism from a handful of Biblical verses including, “But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man.” (Corinthians 11:3). “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.” (Corinthians 14:34). “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.” (Timothy 2:12).

How I differ from colleagues raised and living within this cultural tradition? Well, to begin with, my spouses are stars in their own rights and have exposed me to completely different worlds filled with all sorts of opportunities. My first wife and second wife, each smarter than me and in more than one language, also exposed me to their work environments. One is a software engineer with two Master’s (one in Industrial and Organizational Sociology and the other in Mathematics). My second wife opened her first language school while she was in high school and went on to get a Master’s from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, a Ph.D. in Health Communication, and a Law Degree.

What I know is… not a lot but, I know that when you know people well that move in other circles you learn a lot through them. And I’ve also “moved in other circles” myself. Experience matters and I very much appreciate what my wives have taught me about professional life beyond the academy. I would be a fool to not realize this. And people who don’t have such luck, don’t. And it shows in their behavior and beliefs – their culture. I’m just saying that I know, for a fact, that the world is much bigger than a 15-person university department, and many folks out in the world are as smart and hardworking as my university colleagues. In fact, some of the most dedicated, insightful, and creative people I’ve ever known do not work in academe.

Why did I choose to work in academe? I love books. I love universities. I love university towns. I love the freedom to research what I want and control over my time. If I want, I can, and often do work in the middle of the night. It is flexible, but you have to be a self-starter. The freedom you have puts pressure on you to come up with your own research agenda. The “in-box” is empty. You have to have some real interest, some real curiosity. That’s another thing doctoral students need to get used to and why I do not assign them a theory, task, little project for their dissertation. We brainstorm, sometimes for months as they try to figure out what they want to do. I make suggestions but no assignment. And they are free to reject my suggestions.

Consequently, though I’ve directed over 50 doctoral dissertations in my time, they are all different topics, with different theoretical foundations and methods that fit the phenomenon (just because you can’t measure blood pressure with a telescope does not mean telescopes are useless – the essential qualities of the phenomenon should dictate the method you use). Many have been published as books. That’s a nice way to start your vitae. One, for instance, about honor killing in Pakistan (what messages does that act send through the neighborhood, the community, to law enforcement, women’s rights efforts…) by Amir Jafri, was published by Oxford University Press with no alterations or corrections! That’s honestly, pretty amazing. Amir is a very gifted writer. I don’t agree to chair dissertations unless I have taught the topical area at the graduate level and published at least a couple of pieces in the area. Their job is not to repeat or promote my work or to be a little subset of my research – to become a Mini-Me. It’s not my agenda. It’s theirs and, unless they are at a school with very low tenure and promotion standards (and therefore low pay and repetitive teaching), they need an agenda that will grow, not shrink after just one or two pubs. I’ve directed dissertations about Twitch, how adolescent exchange students from Korea use social media, the message of the Black Madonna and the Solidarity Movement in Poland, swing voter behavior, the influence of numerology within the Italian immigrant community in Tampa Florida, the concept of “The West” in American cinema, American celebrity culture in Japanese advertising, the reintroduction of Classical thought through the great translation program of the Alfonsine Court, the use of instant replay in television sports and notions of evidence and inherent justice, the role of shortwave radio in national image management and the rise of the Internet, how newsrooms are coping with social media, how Central American caravans of migrants use social media to combat negative images, contemporary fandom, the global influence of K-pop, how returnee families in Japan reintegrate, how Native American’s interpret social drinking, how throughout history walls have functioned as media and messages, how terrorists use social media for recruiting, what values, beliefs, and motivations were operating in the Ministry of Education for enacting curriculum reform nationwide creating compulsory English lessons for all children in Japan, how and what murals communicate in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the organization of urban space via light corridors, the racial differences in American death rituals, the history of religious pilgrimages and the recent use of social media for those unable to walk to still participate via proxy, sexual identity formation and identity in the military, elementary school students and social media exposure, globalized aesthetics and fashion in cosmetic surgery, the politics of classifying and declassifying government information, the role of Kami in Japanese culture, the lack of integration of foreign workers in China, assimilation issues for Asian-Indian immigrants (with a database of over 18,000 individuals), integration issues of Muslim citizens in contemporary France…

I’m proud of every one of these dissertations and others I don’t have room to discuss. I talk about the students themselves later. But the topics have all been diverse, as you can see, and fascinating. None of these are my research agenda. All belong to the students. They are the first and only authors. This is their work, their degree. Not mine. Each student figured out what they wanted to do and did it. The outside members are vital also. Their input is essential. We’ve had former ambassadors (one who I talk about later who was the US Ambassador to South Africa when Mandela was finally released), major scholars from other universities (I’m talking giants like Jurgen Habermas, Cornell West, Algis Mickunas, and George Gerbner), and vital thinkers. Anita Hill served on a dissertation involving the first sexual harassment suit to be brought to the Supreme Court of Japan.

Again, I have colleagues who say outside members are irrelevant. Really? Well, I guess what kind you pick makes a difference. If you pick them for political purposes or for “ballast,” sure. But what a waste. But I see why. That’s another way to assure restricting control over the student’s work. Going outside the field can be very useful in expanding our insights. I can’t see why any scholar of any value would be willing to be reduced to a rubber stamp. But maybe they too think they have been recruited to render pathetic (emotional) and political leverage (“help”), rather than providing content expertise and critical skills. Pretty soon no one is a content expert, just a “helper” of some sort. What is this, a kumbaya choir? You get one pub, maybe, out of all that time, money, effort? But ya’ll feel good.

The dissertation should be a launchpad, not a terminus – just the groundwork, the beginning for a research career. It should be complex, and the chair of the dissertation committee should not know how it ends before the student begins. If he or she does, then it’s not a research dissertation but instead a report, a little terminal assignment. The student is a stenographer taking dictation from the Chair.

Isolation, Fragmentation: Identity/Difference: Cancel Culture, Silos, Cliques and Tribes

Identity is based on difference. Who am I? I am not you. And this desire to “be somebody,” and the desperate fear of being a “nobody” can drive people to do all sorts of things. Exclusion is the path to identity in both individualistic and collectivistic cultural contexts. For instance, to join a group to gain an identity is collectivistic and it means there are “us,” and there are “them.” Them ain’t us, and I’m a “member” of “us.” Gangs form. Intolerance and exclusion solidify. Mean girls’ and mean boys’ cliques (as my wife calls some students who join tribes in the department), form around charismatic teachers who promote the sense of exclusivity. Clashes over methods, of all things, occur. Well sure. Method is metaphysics and epistemology. Reality is the most fundamental battleground. Not mature. Not healthy. Not good for science, which is a democratic institution. This attitude is more akin to religio. It took the classical rationalists to identify religio. The word originates in Latin, more specifically in the works of Cicero who identified this way of being as a “strict observance of traditional cultus.” Religio also means “to bind.” Magic identification, emotional attachment to an adored personage who’s name may come to signify an entire group of people is at the core of the passion. It is an antique and archaic sense of identification with “the right.” This may be part of our nature as social beings, but it seems to be intensified by those reared in religious environments because the origin of silos and of cancel culture is religion. Sectarian splintering and violence have led to countless examples of destroying the Other – their hallowed places, their sacred texts, murdering their teachers… Absolute canceling of the Other and their beliefs escalates from cult behavior all the way to eternal exclusion from paradise. As the Buddha said, hate becomes endless. The stronger the identification the stronger the fragmentation. I can’t be your friend because I now belong to this other clan. I can’t talk to you. You aren’t allowed to question my guru. I have a new set of sacred texts, holy places, and holy teachers.

Science and philosophy, the mission of the classical Western worldview, is very democratic and open to any and all ideas. It presumes free speech. Everyone is invited to participate in the search for knowledge. Everyone has their day in court. Anyone can submit to any academic journal and its editor is obligated to receive the work and send it out for blind review. No matter who you are, if it is good work, it gets published and enters the arena for cross-examination and the commitment to be replicated by strangers. You have to share with everyone your methods. No secrets. No mysterious “cold fusion” techniques. No. You have to share how you did it and others then have to try to replicate your findings. If they can’t then it does not count as knowledge. We all need to see your data and have a detailed explanation of your methods including instruments and analytical techniques.

Royal blood or some other magical gift that allows only you to be able to do the trick and know the secret knowledge is not democratic. It is autocratic and dictatorial. If I can’t see the planet through my telescope, maybe it’s not there. And if I say so, you can’t just kill me to silence me. If you claim a special supernatural gift of vision that makes you immune to testing, then you are a mystic, not a scientist or philosopher in the grand classical tradition. If you are the only one who can see it, that’s suspicious. Democratic institutions include everyone. We all have a right to look for the planet and to question the person who claims to know where it is. Show me. Show me how you did it. If I can replicate it, then I will honor you with being the first… the discoverer of new worlds. Otherwise, I’m not interested in mystical doctrines of supernatural forces beyond all human comprehension. I do not aspire to be a wizard or warlock or whatever. Just someone who is awake. If Columbus had come back to Spain with tales of a vast land unknown to Europeans, that no one else could find, he would not be famous today. Knowledge is not just for some special bloodline or those with supernatural gifts. The One who god speaks to and no others. We have to go to him for the message. No. Knowledge is for everyone. And you should be able to access it directly with your own eyes and ears. And cliquishness is just a silly immature pimple on the face of academe.

The narrow access to vital resources (salvation, jobs, health, wealth…) forms the basis of the exclusive power of the guru/cult leader. Since only he got the sacred message, then all the rest of us have to go through him for the information that can save us. That’s a really tight sphincter. That’s a narrow gate for the gatekeeper. When democracies put the Public in the Public Library, that opened the floodgates. Entire societies became literate and advanced rapidly. I believe the first public libraries on earth were founded by Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah in around 1000 AD. They were financed and made open to anyone, even “simple laymen.” He later ordered his policy reversed. Okay. But it was a start. Then the first community-run public library was established as one might expect, during the Renaissance, in Cesena, Italy… The Malatestiana Library in 1447. Then Gutenberg’s invention made books cheap and fast, and literacy took off. Then we had the super radical idea of public education. Libraries popped up and formed the centers of universities, a cultural institution that then spread across the globe along with public funded education for all children. Democracy… it’s a bitch for dictators. You can’t keep people stupid if they have access to knowledge. And knowledge is power. Knowledge no longer separated people but brought them together. The secretive sorcerer’s tricks were exposed. Fear was replaced with understanding. But still today, even in academic departments, fear exists and students can be manipulated.

Being Excommunicated -- De-sided

De-cision. A final judgment. Judge not lest ye be judged. If you keep trashing others, you will end up in the landfill. In combat sports we say that a victory is a decision based on points. The word decision first appears in Imperial English in the 15th century. Not long ago. It derives from the Latin decidere, to decide. To take a decision is to take one side and to de-cide from the other. Winner takes all. It is based on simple binary thinking. Often, we can move forward without de-siding but some may try to convince you that life is all or nothing. They may try to convince you that others you have trusted, really are not trustworthy. Your judgment is somehow flawed. Corrections, the prison warden tells us, is salvation. Be cautious. Ask yourself, really? What did they do to deserve to be de-sided, excommunicated? The simple black/white binary mode of thinking allows no compromise, no mercy, no “weakness.” One must be, “resolute.” We cannot talk about it. Talk is deemed dangerous. We see this in Washington D.C. too much. Purging. Exile. Banishment. Cliques and a fragmenting society. It is corrosive of the essence of community – trust.

This approach to communication is characteristic of the “Right” in the US (politically/religiously) since around the time of Nixon (and his buddy Joseph McCarthy). I write later about watching a Methodist Church turn fundamentally in the 1970s and the pain it caused its life-long members. Something strange was moving north from Appalachia with folks looking for good factory jobs up around the Great Lakes. Speaking increasingly was literally in nonsensical noises – “tongues.” Either you spoke in tongues, or you left. Most couldn’t and wouldn’t fake it. They built the church, and it was their home but no longer. They were truly conservative people, union members and church goers. Ministers and priest would stand picket lines with workers (watch On the Water Front). Humble, hardworking. Serious. Naïve. But is that all bad? I remember how they were appalled by the rise of shock jocks like Limbaugh and Morton Downey Jr.

Those regular folks, not rip roaring, tongue speaking, wiggling, handwaving fundamentalistic Pentecostals (whatever), respected teachers and doctors. Most had never met a professor! They didn’t think lying was funny. There were no “life coaches.” “Personal trainer” was not a “job,” except maybe in Hollywood. No one took selfies. Obesity was rare. Lots of people smoked, including pipes. Many changed the oil in their cars themselves. No one thanked god for making a touchdown or beating the bejesus out of their rival. TV stations signed-off around midnight. People watched movies while sitting in their cars at drive-ins. Roller skating and bowling were popular. There were no malls but instead thriving “downtowns.” There were no ads in movie theaters or on PBS. Just about the only people with tattoos were military vets, almost no women. People didn’t have pink and blue hair or killer dogs for fun. Pets were mostly friendly. The vast majority didn’t like dictators. They believed in vaccines and a better future. Public college was affordable to a thriving middleclass. There were no “active shooter” drills in schools. Lots of families had immigrant members from Europe. They believed in science. Mowed their own yards. Went to Little League games, even when their kids weren’t playing. Gaps were smaller then. Many had carried guns for the USA but not at home, except for hunting. Not many people lived alone. Today, over 10 percent of households, that’s over 30 million are single occupancies. Fifty seven percent of Millennial moms are single. Around 1963/64 the US population passed 200 million. Today it’s over 330 million. Americans have moved to cities. Far fewer women were wage laborers. They were proud of NASA and went to World’s Fairs. They believed. They had thrived on Leave It to Beaver, My Three Sons, Gun Smoke, Bonanza, The Twilight Zone, Maverick, The Andy Griffith Show/Mayberry R.F.D., I Love Lucy, Dragnet, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Rawhide, Candid Camera, The Fugitive, Mister Ed, Daniel Boone, Walt Disney’s Wonderful World (later) of Color, Hallmark Hall of Fame, McHale’s Navy, The Red Skelton Show, Perry Mason, Wild Kingdom, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (photo of Dobie and the Beaver below).

Temporary Icons

Aside: Can you be a “cultural icon” if nobody, but a few historians of media, remember your existence? Times are achanging and faster than ever. Change is changing. What it means to be “iconic” has changed. Icons rise and dissolve before our eyes. And our eyes, our way of looking, also changes all the time.

Now I’m not saying all of this or any of it is good or bad. It’s just how it was. Jim Crow and the Klan were very real in the South and conflict over Vietnam was, by 1966 or so, erupting at many kitchen tables around the land. Assassinations of the highest profile progressives and voting and civil rights activists were happening. They likely changed the course of American history. One famous widow who had been “First Lady” of the nation, fled the country. She took her kids and moved to Greece, in part, for the safety of her children. After Bobby Kennedy was shot and threats against Ted kept pouring in, old man Onassis told Jackie Kennedy come to my private island and you’ll be safe. She took him up on it. That’s America too. Increasingly people were forced to be free, to “freely” de-cide. For the war or against it. For desegregation or against it. For the new more “charismatic,” fundamentally extreme church, or against it. Their naivete was real and formed Mainstreet. But a harder, more aggressive America was threatening that naivete.

Well folks, I’m Dobie Gillis. I don’t know much but I think a lot about not knowing much or understanding. Today… I am worried that, like the Germans in 1933 and the fascists cynical use of the “Enabling Act,” a sizable number of Americans are interested in helping one party gain power by cynically and expansively manipulating election law and regulations across the country in order to assure one-party rule. I know politics is not a new thing, but a large number of experts are telling us, warning us that the country is in uncharted waters… The closest analog, they say, is the 1850’s leading up to the Civil War. That’s not good. People whom you’d like to believe are serious and mature are aligned with Russian psyops and vigorously promoting the “Big Lie.” That even in states that went overwhelmingly for Trump and the Republicans, Republican state elections officials perpetrated wide-spread election fraud – that America needs to restrict access to voting because American democracy is not working, unless one party wins, and despite regularly getting fewer votes than the other party.

Back to the little Methodist church in my neighborhood (my family went to a Lutheran church by the way). I knew a lot about the little church because the fathers of some of my best friends growing up were ministers there. I saw an abrupt and profound change happen. Televangelism was growing by leaps and bounds. Megachurches with malls were popping up like mushrooms. A new spiritual industry had blossomed. Evangelicals unleashed a new “muscular Jesus” with steroid freaks presenting strong man shows around the country bending rebar and smashing bricks to motivate children in public schools to come to Jesus, often while wearing skimpy clothes along with military-style camouflage hats. Kids are told Jesus gives them the power to bend steel and tear apart stuff like license plates and thick books with their bare hands, neglecting to explain to the school children the role of steroids, growth hormones and massive eating. WWE meets Jesus, but then maybe the superhero thing has been there from the beginning. It’s all about “Victory!” And the contents of sermons was changing. The music was changing. The styles were changing. The attitudes too. In the little Methodist church, a coup had taken place. A new emphasis on charisma had emerged and not just in churches. Everywhere. Reality TV was, as George Gerbner would say, cultivating a new culture. Despite what talents or charisma they might have, such acidic people are often grasping and end up not faring well. Others come to understand their intolerant and egocentric attitude as being inherently divisive and unnecessarily dramatizing. Most prefer to avoid needless acrimony. It may take time but eventually folks see the leopard for its spots.

Anyway, cision can mean a cut and therefor a de-cision might mean to mend. But rather it means to resolve by means of de-siding requiring that one throw away or abandon some in total favor of others. That’s not very mature but there it is. It is rarely necessary to destroy relationships to form new ones. We see this sort of social fragmentation occur in political life all the time. Political people tend to be destructive of community. I see that as being a junior high frenemies mode of comportment. “I can’t work with you, be your friend or colleague and also be his friend too.” That’s childish. It narrows your world of social support. There is nothing good about that.

Domestic Violence in Heaven

When deities lose their temper… Bliss was severed in two by the flaming blade of sanctimonious authority. Half was thrown under. Cast out and down. Lots of spatial metaphors and thinking in this story. Intolerance and hate escalate immediately to absolute, white hot, intensity. Sorry, but it’s true. This mode of thinking is inculcated most profoundly in my culture, my community, by the old Middle Eastern religions. Coercion toward conformity by a stark binary opposition between life and death, salvation and damnation. There is nothing in between. Righteous intolerance is formed and reinforced within, and literally painted upon those sacred walls. The lessons from the pulpit cultivate the fear. It is a culture based on fear and anxiety depicted as spiritual and spatial separation. Fear mongering as a tactic for coercive compliance gaining in the name of friendship and salvation, this tactic saturates the culture. Rather than being busy achieving, you are told you must change course. You must repent. Most people make their decisions based on fear. Fear that they cannot do something, that they will not get a job, that they will fail. And there are those eager to stoke those flames of self-doubt. Why? What would be the motivation? Look at the church. Power. Control. And the adoration of those one harasses. To bring them into the covenant – the ambition to make identities – one-to-one extension of the self through followers, students, fans.

You are assuredly, authoritatively told that you are failing, floundering, lost. And the authority has the solution. I, and only I, have the map to your salvation. People learn to play the victim and then, when it comes their time to lead, they just repeat the one solution. They make no new contributions. Life, the field stagnates. They have one method and one theory. A map to one destination. They apply it even to phenomena that do not fit. One cannot travel off the beaten path. The opposite of “grounded theory.” Instead, you pick a theory written in a different context and “apply” it to phenomena even when they do not fit. There will be no growth based on such thinking. No one will cite such work except those personally invested. You have a dead end.

The great cosmic cleavage. Heaven or hell. Good or evil. With me or against me. My way, or the highway. No allowance for additions or modifications. Here is the solution. The final solution. You will do THIS, THIS WAY, and only THIS. Curiosity is a sin. We’ll get you on track. The straight and narrow. Soon you will be “finished.” Your identity sealed. Growth abated. Final judgment. God and the devil covet. The story of the grail is all about trying to bridge the infinite gap of such extreme prejudice. But it is portrayed as a fool’s dream, Quixotic. Fire be upon them all. Fire them all! Leave no survivors. Take what you want and throw the rest under the bus. Purge the evil without hesitation. No more communication.

Well, I’m a professor of communication and so I don’t see excommunication as conducive to anything other than isolation, fear and hate. Not a lesson I would teach. How you behave is more important than your accomplishments. The ends do not justify the means. Those who teach otherwise, that the ends do justify the means, are teaching terrible things. Such worm tongues will tell you you’re very survival is at stake. If you calm down and look around yourself, you will see that nothing bad or dramatic is happening. You’re not dying of cancer, your child is not about to fall off a building, you are not in the midst of war or famine. But without fear they cannot play the role of savior in their stage play. There must be calamity for their raison d'etre. Such theatrical people love “drama.” Politics. They are busy with the cultivation of fear and loathing. But, community eventually will not tolerate it. It cannot without declining. How we treat each other is most important. All that we build ultimately turns to dust. Will you want your child to learn a culture that values dust over camaraderie? We know in our hearts that fear, greed, and betrayal are ugly and shameful. We feel it. Despite our rationalizations, it remains the truth.

Be careful what you teach the young. How you achieve is more important than what you achieve. The communal decimation of dictators has proven that time and again. Yes, they have power, for a time. But the destruction they wreck for that “accomplishment” lasts far longer. Their names endure in infamy and may even come to stand for qualities of selfish betrayal and pain. Two famous examples. Judas and Ephialtes. In exchange for dust, and all his friendships, Ephialtes showed the Persians the route past Thermopylae so they could trap and annihilate the 300. The name Ephialtes would come to mean “nightmare.” More recently, Gerrymander is named after a signer of the Declaration of Independence, who became famous for his slimy political activities. His name? Elbridge Gerry. In 1812, while governor of Massachusetts, Gerry signed a bill that allowed voting districts in the state to be revised in such way as to keep his party in power. The “G” is pronounced “soft.” How about the inventor of the wonderful “fragment” bomb that changed modern warfare? British General Henry Shrapnel designed a bomb that would explode in midair and spread fragments over a wide area. It was adopted by the Brits in 1803, in time for the war of 1812. Names and identities can expand in such ways.

Only those you trust, and love can truly hurt you. If they do, they know what they have done. And you now know who they are. It is not your fault. Enemies and strangers can injure you and annoy you, but not cause you the truest human pain, your heart to ach. Don’t follow the likes of Ephialtes. That is not a good lesson from any angle. And for his reward, he had to live with the truth of his own nature. You can try to tell yourself; treachery is justified. But you know better. Avoid those who would give you “good reasons.” They would make you into an ugly visage in your mirror. They don’t have to live with it. You do.

I would suggest avoiding decisions if it means destroying relationships. I like Will Roger’s attitude. Try to like, respect, and trust everyone. Make them earn your distrust. If they betray you, that’s not your fault.

The human world is one of constant interpretation. The human world is a world of mediation and meanings. Increasingly it is commercialized. The modern culture is a product. It is a product of advertising – on billboards, on people (shirts, hats, jewelry, handbags, watches, even tattoos), in books, magazines, newspapers, in the sky, underwater, on racecars, on fields, on radio, TV, cinema, and the Internet. We dream of ads. Derrida called this the logocentric world but by this he did not mean advertising logos, but I do. And it is not phonocentric as he said but visiocentric. And advertising money has changed everything. Everything. It has changed media. It has changed reality. It has changed cultures and identities. It has changed work and play, sports and entertainment, even the funeral business. All aspects of life from birth to death, marriages and divorce, medicine/health and aging, the meaning of youth and wealth and debt. Religion has been commercialized. War has been commercialized. Food, education, the family, the land, the lakes and rivers, the oceans, the air, even genetic material, and entire species.

Its product is manufactured need and dissatisfaction. -- and fear. And fear leads to hate. Fear is a liar. As Erich Fromm said, ads make us afraid of not being loved, of being left behind, of being inadequate. We are made to crave. We are consuming the world including each other and even ourselves by selfies. Everyone is a brand, a “known quantity” now, a mark or scar on the flesh of world. Moderns do not pass lightly. And what happens after you eat? Waste. That delicious dinner ends up in the toilet. We are told this is life and there is no alternative. It is “the best of all possible worlds.” I don’t believe that. I call that claim the origin of self-delusional myth in the Dr. Pangloss Syndrome. In that sense, and very ironically, I am more optimistic than the dear doctor himself. Why? Because I see potential change where he sees only what is.

So, some Hobbesians argue we should reduce education to teaching “skills.” To prepare the next generation to take their place in the organizational ranks. To arm students against each other in the war of all against all. PowerPoint wars. Prepare them for battle, not to discern a world that is not endless war. Not to think of a better way. The latter is denigrated as too “visionary.” Reality, the one and only, is endless conflict and those with the skills prevail for a time, until they too fall. That is all that we have to look forward to. A stillborn future. In the meantime, consume. Escape via various opiates of body and soul. In our desperate attempt to be happy and escape, we are destroying the very cradle of our existence. You cannot shop your way out of debt. There do not have to always be wars and rumors of wars on all levels of life. How simplistically Darwinian. Fatalistic. The narrowing chute to drive the herd to one conclusion. Stocks and bonds. Livestock. Organizational communication is about corralling and sorting. We see this mentality depicted in the Fra Angelico painting of judgment above. As people are organized and sorted, a stairway leading up to god clears and the void between the two sides widens as the people are driven to their opposing sides; eternal bliss or eternal hell. Controlling the herd with rewards and punishments. Flow charts. Boxes and lines of communication. Why? The goal? Get everyone pulling on the same rope in the same direction. Each easily replaceable along the line. You are either with us, of value, or against us, an obstacle that needs to be removed. Identity is thus determined by the agenda of the gods.

It begins as an effort to consolidate power and directionality, meaning the mission is the expansion of ever-more power, and remains so. As spiritualism consolidates it become more and more anthropomorphic and solidifies. So, we see the cosmos fragment into animistic spirits, which then consolidate into pantheons of gods, finally merged into a single monolithic power that is absolute. There is no debate or discussion because there is only One. The mythologies of many gods having disputes and disagreements vanishes. Alter egos are eliminated. There are no more negotiations or conversations. Intolerance expands to infinity. Blessings and torments also grow beyond comprehension. It begins in a time before the secular and sacred were separated. Before the legal and the ethical were separated in the organization of masses into holy wars with god-rulers.

Here is the source of logistics and organizational communication extended from the coordinated hunt. Individual innovation is subsumed under duty and chains; causal chains and chains of commands. The higher calling takes precedent over the persons’ needs. So, they are shipped all over to the “front lines,” to the edge of empire to serve the expansion of empire. Service becomes elevated to an honor. Everything is turned upside down by the power of ordination and charismatic divinity. The private is the lowest of the low. Identities and rank are assigned. People “get their orders and ship out.” Imperial ambition gave structure to social arrangements and power multiplied while also consolidating into “generals” in the military, ministers in government, and “principles” in schools. Initially they were all the same people. Super-vision is the power granted to those who are “higher” in hierarchical structure. Intent becomes super-intendents. The real person is now the lowest, the contingent versus the principle. Content is sacrificed to organizational ordination and form. Bureaucracy. Private, Team, Squad, Section, Platoon, Company, Battalion, Regiment, Brigade, Division, Corps, Army.

This hierarchical structure of organizational interest and forms of communication was adopted to formulate and operationalize the efficient exercise of power and control. Initially the great empires had a single secular/sacred leader of military might who was also the divine emperor/pharaoh/king. Separation of powers came much later as a manifestation of modernity. Diversification and expertise proliferate. Other, more animistic religions, such as Shinto and Buddhism lack such structure and therefore have not had the kind of missionary conquest of the world’s people. Lacking centers, they did not formulate spatial ambitions that were shared with military conquest. Eventually, religion separates from spirituality. Organizational formality becomes its own curriculum and leadership sui generis, without concern for context or contingent expertise, becomes popular. If you can manage the production of crackers, you can manage the production of atomic bombs or autos or pantyhose. Contingent contents do not matter. Abstract “flows” are real while content is not. Form is separated from substance. Platonism overtakes Aristotelianism. Real people are contingent – replaceable.

Check out North Korea. The people going through the exertions every year for the Dear Leader’s birthday and military parade are so happy. So dedicated. Not alienated at all. But this indicates a total lack of the great Classical effort of critical thinking (a redundant phrase), found in democratic institutions including law, science, and their grandfather, philosophy. What are we organizing for? Why are we organizing this way? Just because you come into agreement with a majority does not mean everything is okay. Later I talk about the great myth of equated assimilation and obedience with adaptation, a classic naturalizing trope used to propagandize mindless conformity. The vast majority used to believe the Earth is flat and that witches were real, and saints literally flew through the skies. And you could die of an infected scratch and the vast majority ate with one hand and wiped with the other, if you were proper. Millions, perhaps billions, still do!

That is the overarching message of this worldview. The organization takes precedent. People must assimilate to organizational goals or be eliminated. Power amasses and claims the mantle of objective truth and reason. Meanwhile subjective needs are not rational. In short, mission objectives are real and take precedent over individuals who are sacrificed for the “cause.” If you can’t help me achieve my goals, get out of my way. You will be terminated. It’s “just business.” Policy trumps individual needs. The formal quantitative bottom line is god. It dictates all and is the expression of self-preservation. The organization must endure even as members sacrifice for it. This is hexapodal reason and morality. In the hexapodal – insect -- world, we are socialized to see service to the organization as the source of satisfaction and happiness. Sacrifice, self-destruction, is the goal. Thus, the structure of the order becomes permanent. Insofar as you can get the members to share the goals and values of the organization, and kill and die for them, the more group-think assures status quo.

Much of management and organizational communication efforts are dedicated to maximizing this agreement between members and the order they belong to. If it is highly successful and emotional then you have magic identification where the order is the members, and the members are the order and the members are interchangeable -- drones. Pars pro parte, partes pro parte, pars pro toto, toto pro parte. However, it does not fit human, as opposed to hexapodal, imperial interests. What makes us happy is self-determination, not pre-determination. Freedom, not feedback control and command. The hexapodal structure does take away responsibility with freedom and that can eliminate stress and uncertainty, but it also eliminates innovation and the satisfaction one gets from being creative.

What really makes us happy? Self-determination. Accomplishment. The harder, the more satisfying. It’s so obvious. You give a picture to a little kid and say, “Give this to your mother.” They will. It’s just a task. A robot could do it. But if they make the picture and give it to their mother, that builds them up. We all know this. You catch dinner for the family. That’s satisfying. You make dinner for someone, that’s way different than buying one for them. You grow a garden. You create. You become you and not just a credit card or an assistant goffer who follows instructions.

Personal growth and achievement is what the comforter steals from the student. We did it. Not you did it. It’s about the committee. And when we ain’t around, you are stuck going in a circle looking for directions. God help you if your institution has high standards for tenure and promotion because you’ve been set up to fail. There you are, deep into your career and in trouble. Your dean does not have the crying sign on her blazer. Expectations of singly authored work and a record of sustained publications and grants, an evolving mind are fundamental to continued success and vitality. Those are things your students deserve too. Organization and lesson planning can assuage many undergrads, but bright and expanding graduate minds quickly recognize stagnation.

Humans are not hard to herd. Easier than cats. Until they realize they can change. Change, freedom, is scary. For some, however, they can’t handle the responsibility that comes with being free, so they run for shelter like the pop-up guiderails on a bowling alley for kids. They form a never-ending supply of tears for those who drink them as an elixir of life. The professional comforter. They have a sign on the shoulder of their blazer, “cry here.” And many do, and love them for their “support.” But the comforter has taken away a very precious thing. Work the problem. That’s the solution. The challenge that leads to authentic joy. Bliss is in the overcoming. When you can’t miss, effort is no longer meaningful. It is just doing assigned work. Being supervised. You are assured and reassured. Comforted. No matter what, your dissertation will pass. Guaranteed. This is about the committee, not the student because all students finish. Everyone gets a trophy in this little league. But then, nothing matters. When you look at the trophy, you realize it is meaningless. Kinda sad, actually. The participation award. When you can’t miss, playing soon becomes monotonous, meaningless. There’s only one pre-established destination. True, the end is always in sight even before you begin. That may be comforting. No uncertainty. No surprises. No discoveries. But that also means that you’ll learn nothing new for your efforts. Write it up like taking dictation, because you are, and be DONE. Thus, we have the stenographic dissertation. You don’t have to read it to know what it says. Like following the explicit instructions for how to tie a knot and then getting the “merit” badge for following the instructions. Thank you, for the pat on the head. Praise be to the dictator. The word is received from above. Somebody’s got to do something. Well, if the committee takes over, then the student is no longer a somebody, but just another widget to move out the door.

Banality may yield one or two publications and then the shallow well is dry. It won’t produce on its own. In silence the stenographer sits motionless. So, thank god for god! Praise be to the dictator. It would be terrible if we had to be responsible for our own future. So “hard.” Edgy. When there’s an edge, like in a horror movie, people hesitate to watch. What’s going to happen next? They become alert. Awake. Alive. What if there was no savior? No judgment. Just reaction. Karma. You break it, you buy it. Period. So… don’t break it. No one to pay our debts for us. Just consequences. But if there was no forgiveness, maybe we’d be more mindful of what the heck we’re doing? Could it be that we are so lazy, so reckless with each other and our world because we don’t think it really matters anyway? Someone will fix it for us. As you read this, you might get that edgy feeling. "I’m not sure I like this." Well, you won’t know until and unless you read it. Scary. And like anything in life, you might find some parts, interesting. Proceed at your own risk. This does not read itself. Parts are… not easy, not redundantly “comforting.” But then, I don’t drink the tears of lamentation as an elixir.

Many prefer the security of the squeeze chute – the snuggle of authority – protection. However, trust me (if you dare), if you leave the shelter, you can see the sky. But it’s big, wide, deep. Open. You might see snow. Maybe even something sublime like a tornado. Weather is… chaotic. Hint, so is life. A little scary. I understand. There are cases where gorillas have been caged for so long, they are driven insane and inert. Bears too. If you open the door, they won’t leave. They’ve quit. To me, that is a profound tragedy. It’s even worse when humans choose to enter the cage to begin with. If you need to hold the guide’s hand to cross the road, then you can’t without them. You’re stuck standing on the corner. Guides limit you. For a child? Hold hands. But for an adult? Part of becoming an adult is, letting go, not running for help. You might get “that magic feeling” the Beatles sang about. No assignments. It will happen only if you make it happen. Scary but open potential to do your thing. Where we goin? You tell me. That’s the essence of creation. Surprise us all with a “big bang.”

I marvel at the picture of freedom presented at the beginning of the novel Main Street by Sinclair Lewis (the first American ever awarded the Nobel Prize in literature), of a young woman stepping out for the first time and embracing the world. It’s joyous. It’s gloriously inceptive. I quote:

“On a hill by the Mississippi where Chippewas camped two generations ago, a girl stood in relief against the cornflower blue of Northern sky. She saw no Indians now; she saw flour-mills and the blinking windows of skyscrapers in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Nor was she thinking of squaws and portages, and the Yankee fur-traders whose shadows were all about her. She was meditating upon walnut fudge, the plays of Brieux, the reasons why heels run over, and the fact that the chemistry instructor had stared at the new coiffure which concealed her ears. A breeze which had crossed a thousand miles of wheat-lands bellied her taffeta skirt in a line so graceful, so full of animation and moving beauty, that the heart of a chance watcher on the lower road tightened to wistfulness over her quality of suspended freedom. She lifted her arms, she leaned back against the wind, her skirt dipped and flared, a lock blew wild. A girl on a hilltop; credulous, plastic, young; drinking the air as she longed to drink life. The eternal aching comedy of expectant youth. It is Carol Milford, fleeing for an hour from Blodgett College [sounds apropos, like being bludgeoned by a medieval cudgel] … a rebellious girl is the spirit of that bewildered empire called the American Middlewest. Blodgett College… still combating the recent heresies of Voltaire, Darwin, and Robert Ingersoll. Pious families in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, the Dakotas send their children thither, and Blodgett protects them from the wickedness of the universities.”

Now tell me I’m a cynic. I’m a romantic. And I don’t want to be cured. Romantics are neither fools nor unrealistic. They are the engines of tomorrow. Now I will tell you the rest. The novel Main Street was awarded the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature. Then the board of trustees overturned the jury’s decision. Just a year later Lewis published the influential Babbitt (which inspired John Updike’s Rabbit Run, which inspired Pink Floyd’s (Richard Wright, David Gilmour & Roger Waters’) “Breathe (In the Air)” on The Dark Side of the Moon). Then five years later, Lewis was awarded the Pulitzer again for his novel Arrowsmith. He refused it. Lewis’ insights continue to sustain us. His 1932 satire, It Can’t Happen Here, surged to the top of Amazon’s list of best-selling books after the 2016 US Presidential Election. Lively rivers are punctuated by choppy stretches between mirrors reflecting mercurial skies. Riffles are the lungs of a stream. They are not just “rough waters.” They sing and dance while relieving the need to conform to the heavens and “come up for air.” Snorkeling is so shallow. Snarking even less depth.

I’m very cynical about cynicism; very doubtful of its value. In other words, the herd security of organized identity as membership – power and status via networking and cliques. I’ve run across quite a few snarks. Very arrogant and cynical people who are often also quite ignorant. And here’s something ironical. In my experience in academe, the most snarky people actually got their jobs via networks of teachers and students… not on merit alone. After a time, it shows. They operate on a quid pro quo mode of wheeling and dealing, which over time is not good for the institution or organization, let alone the growth of knowledge, though many claim to be experts at organizational communication. They tend to love power. Cling to it with their last ounce of strength. Insofar as students are extensions of teachers' egos, teachers often promote their own regardless of merit.

When I was young almost every time I finally met a “great brahman” at one of my fields’ conferences such as the International Communication Association or the National Communication Association meetings, I was… underwhelmed. Not just a little, but usually to a disappointing degree. What did I expect? Well, I’d had some really great teachers in philosophy and sociology and I thought the “famous big names” in communication would be even more impressive. But almost always, they were far less impressive. Then I realized that the books of my teachers, such as Ricoeur, Gadamer, Habermas, and others were available in every bookstore I visited around the globe and were cited tens of thousands of times across multiple disciplines from art history to political science, anthropology to economics. When I went up for tenure, I was told to go count my citations. Back then to do that I had to go to the library where they kept these massive citation indices that were compiled every year. Giant indices published in hardbound and kept at all research libraries. I counted mine. Pathetic. Then I looked up famous big names in communication. Hey… maybe my poultry numbers were not so horrendous after all. Then I picked up a volume from like “G-P” and fanned it with my thumb. I could see a pattern as the pages went by. Who was that!? Nietzsche. Pages and pages and pages of citations of Nietzsche. Who else was like that? I flipped it again. A pattern caught my eye. Again pages and pages of Foucault. Of Habermas. Of Chomsky. Wittgenstein. I was the only person who even taught a little of Chomsky, Habermas, Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, Lakoff, Barthes, Eco, Derrida, Campbell… In the indices, they were by far… like lightyears the most cited “communication” scholars I knew. My colleagues had never heard of the “Chinese Room” allegory, hermeneutics, or semiotics. While the “big names” in communication didn’t rate shelf space in even major bookstores like the Strand in NYC, Dr. Seuss did. So did Gadamer. When I was at the U of Chicago I found my teacher, Troy Organ’s books there, used as textbooks even there at Chicago and also at Harvard. I once found a book with a chapter by Stanley Deetz in it in Tokyo. That’s it. And Stanley studied at Ohio U with the same people I did. Then I noticed people with very few professional accomplishments, like a handful of pubs at most and very limited scholarly scope were editing things like the Communication Yearbook. How? Networking through friends. Teachers like it when their students gain notoriety. Of course, they loved the status and would not relinquish their positions for years.

This was very different from my experience growing up in philosophy and sociology. But then, those fields are also deeply established in the elite universities such as the Ivy League. When I was in the sociology department at Chicago I’ll never forget the first time I noticed G. H. Mead’s nameplate above one of the office doors. That had been Mead’s office… He’s still cited a lot in many fields. Kinda like Dewey and Husserl and James and Geertz and… Generally, communication departments that often include elementary work in social psychology and marketing media effects survey work do not exist in elite universities. Instead, those universities have psychology departments that do work on things like interpersonal relationships and communication, cross-cultural psychology, anthro departments that focus on cultural studies, sociology where they work on human networking and industrial sociology or “org com,” and such. So, I read but I don’t adorate. There’s some very interesting work done by communication scholars. And I am proud to work in that field, but I did have a realization at some point.

I’m more a kynic, like Diogenes. You know, the guy who Alexander the Great sought out and when he found him, Diogenes was reading in the sunshine. Alexander, with his entourage of generals approached Diogenes announcing that he was the “Great One” who’d come to talk. Legend has it that Diogenes didn’t even look up but instead replied, sardonically, “You’re standing in my light.” I’m sure you can guess which one is Diogenes in this detail of the famous painting Schools of Athens, by Raphael. He’s reading and not paying much attention to the big shots. By the way Raphael used Leonardo da Vinci as the model for Plato. The empirical truth of this story about the meeting between Alexander and Diogenes is irrelevant. As with all parables, we “get” the point. You can find a whole book dedicated to the definition of what a kynic is in Peter Sloterdijk’s two volume work Kritik der zynischen Vernunft (1983) (Eng. Critique of Cynical Reason, U of Minnesota Press). Sloterdijk points out that the Greek term Kunikos is not the same as the modern word cynic. The shift indicates a narrowing down and simplification of the Greek stand for values and ethics that bind people beyond cynical institutional religious and economic self-interest and exchange (unequal power). The latter are rooted in inhumane tactical thinking, pragmatic maneuvering, silencing and strategically misleading modes of interaction. They also use the rhetoric of fatalism. “Bottom line” justification for silencing discussion. “Objectivity,” is often presented as a fait accompli, thus allowing those making decisions to avoid critical analysis and appear innocent. “That’s what the computer says.” End of discussion. A little more sophisticated version is to be found in George Homans’ Social Exchange Theory, which is a good explanation of the modern capitalist/organizational form of cynicism with, as Jacques Ellul notes, only one value left – efficiency of agenda accomplishment and accumulation. Efficiency is of course reduced to a simple combination of units per time quanta. And quantification is then confused with logic and reason. Data are not arguments. Data have no value except in the service of agenda that remain debatable if and only if, they are recognized as not laws of nature but actions and desires of people. In a cynical world, what the agenda is, is no longer debatable. Such debate is preempted with the derogation of “philosophy” used as a pejorative term to disregard reasoning of ends in favor of operational calculation of means.

Efficiency. Doing just enough and nothing more. But “excess” oxygen is what leads to vibrant diversifying, intense life. Thanks to Jacques Cousteau’s outlandish dream of building an aqualung to carry extra oxygen on our backs, we know a little more about the teeming depths – the richness just beyond. I like folks who make and then push open doors. Those who push to think a new thought and explore. They may “fail.” Meaning not achieve their preset goal. But, so long as they avoided old paths to begin with, they make discoveries. I don’t mean taking an old theory and applying it like a band aid to a new set of conditions. That, bright undergraduates can do. That is housework. I mean thinking a new idea.

Though Hudson Bay proved to be a false route in the quest for the Great Northwest Passage from Europe to Asia, its discovery for Europeans and exploration revealed a majestic and bountiful place that made Canada. Not a shabby mistake. Discovery means finding something unexpected. Redundancy is uninformative. Don’t let others reinforce your fear. Don’t be afraid of a challenge, of the unknown. Accomplishment leads to genuine confidence which is not the same as hiding in the womb. In your heart, you will know the difference. One path will always lead to self-doubt because you know… Confidence will take you places beyond. But you have to build it by taking risks. Don’t let others convince you to resign to your fear. That’s how they can become shepherds, and how you become a sheep.

Surround yourself with those who presume, because they believe in you, and expect more of you. That’s how you grow and find the new and lead rather than be led. There are those who will whisper how tired you must be, how hard it is, how there is an easier way. How things are unfair, even as everything lies ahead and all that is to be done, is to work. Auh but work is a four-letter word that those who would ease your toils and reduce your aspirations use. “Don’t be too ambitions.” “Give up. Turn back. Come to Mama.” Or Papa – organizing ad-ministers. They will pretend to save you. They may even believe it. But, when you take the chance of failure away from a person, existence becomes meaningless – just motions. Life thrives on challenges. If you know you cannot lose the game, then there is no point in playing anymore. I know people who brag that they have never had a doctoral student fail to finish. That’s about them. Not about the doctoral students. They are proud of themselves, not the students. The students are just a uniform and plastic medium. The contents don’t matter. They are just plastic to be molded to an administrative template. A notch on the advisor’s belt. The students no longer have faces. They are products to push to the end of the line. There is a reason a sizable percentage of doctoral students do not finish. Making sure all finish is like stamping sheet metal in a common form regardless of the quality of the material. Everyone gets a degree regardless of real differences/identities. Everyone gets the “merit” badge. The advisor get’s his trophy.

I want to be used up. Not saved. At the end I want nothing left to cling to. Spent, so I will be glad to sleep. As the stoics say, “One day we all die. Yes. But not today.” Today leave the embrace of saviors and climb to achieve the rarified air. Stop being afraid. Stop looking for “help.” You can do it. Stand up. Walk. Once you, and you alone, can, you will never stop. And when it comes time for you to mentor, teach, you can support others. But then a time comes to leave them alone to become who they will. They may be wobbly but don’t rush in to catch them. They have to do it. Trust them. They may betray themselves, not trust themselves. They may betray your trust in them, but that will tell you something about them that you needed to know. It’s about them. Not you. Leave the adult student alone to make their stand. Most will. Time then, to leave under their own power. Let’s amble.

A Not Utopian Goal: The Tougher, the Sweeter

Quixote and Parsifal and the search for the Grail. Connection? How do the tales of chivalry make the modern world? Individualism, drive, faith in oneself and one’s own faculties, celebration of life in all its struggles and accomplishments. Instead of truth coming from a sacred book, the truth comes from direct, which is to say, personal observation. Romeo and Juliet fell in love “at first sight.” And they would not deny the truth despite the mythic world around them – the “coercive force of the mainstream.” Empiricism was born out of the romantic movement. Tenacity. Determination. Perseverance. Faith in oneself. Percival. Perceval. Parsifal. Parsifal and Quixote both are searching. One was defeated by those who would “help” “cure” his torments. Those who convinced him that his trials were of no value. This destroyed him. He settled back to “normalcy” and was miserable for evermore. I say nevermore. Parsifal found the grail. When someone says, “Come to mama…” Nope. I’ll figure it out on my own. I’m not dying of cancer and I’m not in the middle of a war. I think I can do the normal stuff like take classes and get good grades. That’s a luxury actually.

Don’t give up. Don’t let others “save” you from your quest, ease your suffering. For it is out of the suffering that we forge our aspiration. Lift yourself. It’s not that hard. Look, sometimes we have bad days, but if Monty Python can do it, you can too. Here’s some reality for you. Graham Chapman, M.D. (yes, he had a medical degree and practiced medicine for a time), who played the King (and also the voice of God), in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, was suffering from full-blown alcoholism while filming. He had to be drunk to get through the scenes. When he couldn’t get a drink, which did happen during filming, he started to have delirium tremens (DT’s). He was really struggling throughout the production. But he made it, literally and figuratively. Now this may seem like something stupid but people detoxing are sick as hell. But he wouldn’t let everyone down. So, in this scene where he looks so miserable, he was. And we’ve all benefited. It’s a comedy classic. I laughed so hard when I watched it in the Palace Theater in Marion, Ohio my senior year (1975) with my buddies that my face hurt. My sides hurt. Wonderful pain. Thank you Graham Chapman and the rest of the crazies.

We know we exist because when we push, things push back. Be. Relish the trials. They are how you prove to yourself… satisfaction. Simple truth? No two things can occupy the same place at the same time. Difference. Everything is somewhere or sometime and not elsewhere and elsetime (made that one up). Everything is “relative” to everything else but that does not mean that there is no truth. It means, connectivity is omnidirectional through time – systasis the dynamics, the temporality of system verses static structure -- what biologists call “punctuated equilibrium,” or “punctuated evolution.” This is what Jean Gebser meant by “consciousness mutation” back in 1949, decades before Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould made the idea famous in evolutionary biology in the 1970s and 80s. After attempts to do an initial major translation project by Erich Kahler at Princeton fell through, Gebser’s work was not translated into English until the mid-1980s.

Anyway, change is not a smooth gradual process. Life, existence, is “punctuated” by short bursts of intense “speciation” (for instance) interspersed with long periods of stasis or equilibrium. We have “breakthroughs” in our thinking, our satori moments that cannot occur until and unless much effort has prepared the ground for the new growth. You work on a problem for weeks, months, years, and then because you are steeped in the issues, you are the one that has the breakthrough. Let me give you an example of consciousness mutation, of a breakthrough in awareness and the need for effort.

In number theory we have Fermat’s Last Theorem which states that no three positive integers a, b, and c satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for any integer value of n greater than 2. The cases n=1 and n=2 have been known since antiquity to have an infinity of solutions.

In 1637, Fermat jotted down this theorem in the margin of a copy of his book Arithmetica. But he did not include the proof in the margin or anywhere else. So for over 350 years the greatest mathematicians tried to find a proof for Fermat’s Last Theorem or “conjecture.” No one could. It got to the point where anyone who deigned to try was considered either naïve as hell or overly arrogant. Andrew Wiles, a mathematician at Princeton started to work on Fermat’s theorem in secret in mid-1986. He didn’t want his colleagues to think he’d lost his mind. For over six years he made his work public, but bit by bit, in separate papers in order to have it reviewed and to hide his larger endeavor. He confided only to his wife what he as attempting. Then he had the breakthrough. He wrote that once he saw the solution he was dumbfounded. There it was on paper. Why hadn’t he seen it before? He worked it out and then left his office to walk around. He came back to see “if it was still there. It was.” He was overjoyed. Excelsior! He said it was the best feeling of his life. That’s what my ambition for my students is. That feeling, or at least a taste of it. If we can, then they might get hooked and become life-long explorers, problem solvers, and not just another working stiff repeating motions, lectures, phrases in meaningless redundancy. Sure, it might be new to the students but a professor can repeat the same stuff only so long before they burnout. Learning, and sharing, should be a life-long journey. Not for some great altruistic reason but for the fun of it. I want them to feel the joy. But that means they have to hang in there until results start to appear. That takes perseverance and patience with oneself. No one learns calculus or how to play the violin over the weekend. You’re growing. That’s an organic process. Neuronal nets and muscle development are flesh and blood.

I hope to put students in a position that challenges them with something new, something they also decide interests them so they can grow. To put them in a position to be asking a question(s) that has not been already answered a million times, and to give them the structure to be able to find an answer. Not to just review old theories by others or to do a little tweak of one, but to try… try to be original, because that’s the way to the smile that will not be denied. Not a social smile. Not a smile expected by others after the normal dissertation defense… because it’s done. Not because it is finished, kaput, dead, but because the realization leads to a new horizon… a new beginning. Things are going to be different from now on. Future research, new questions are provoked by this work. It is not over. It is just beginning. We’re off. Tally-ho. A breakthrough is an opened door. I want my students, as much as is possible, to have that kind of smile. The kind of smile Wiles had when he stood alone over his desk staring at his proof. The realization. The personal satisfaction that is genuine and comes from the inside out.

Real ecstasy is earned. It takes time building, building… and then, the dam breaks. No one can give it to you. They can give you a solution but that is not the same thing. And in giving you the solution, they have stolen your ecstasy. A solution is information. The how to, of a manuel. Joy is a state of Being. It is not relief -- “respite.” Quite to the contrary. Joy is exhilarating and carries one forward into new confidence and determination. I call it planing (with one “n”) as when a boat comes up and levels off and achieves maximum speed, gliding off the foils. You are self-buoyant.

Finally, Wiles showed the proof to Nick Katz, a colleague for verification. It worked. He “went public” with his solution in June 1993. Awards and accolades poured in. The rest is history. Well almost. Soon a flaw in his proof was discovered. So, he worked another year to resolve that. Aside to the aside: Now here’s the real kicker. Wiles admits that he solved Fermat’s Theorem using mathematics that did not exist in Fermat’s day. So… still… no one knows how the heck Fermat did it.

It’s holistic planing. It is the whole ball of wax. Emotional, cognitive, and social gliding. But the boat has to get up to speed first. And it has to be built and built in a certain way to achieve “the glide.” Preparation is key. Lots of work to be done before you launch. Just slapping together any old study may get you across some idea of a finish line but that’s it. It is a “finish line.” An old scow can make it. All the time and effort expended to build a keel is wasted if it can’t continue. Sure, the boat, the design serves as a tool to get a degree but that’s it. It is just a means to a final end. You burn it after a pub or two. Maybe repeat bits of it in lectures over and over. Burn the boat and the cargo, the degree because they have little value.

The Ph.D. dissertation should be far, far more than that. That’s the most bankrupt mode of utilitarian thinking. Write/build a clipper. Build a design that can be used over and over to deliver the goods, that can be refitted and keep serving for years. A theory such as uncertainty reduction and management, or uses and gratifications, has applications far and wide, through all sorts of climes and seas. I hope that is true for my theories such as Cultural Fusion Theory and Dimensional Accrual and Dissociation. We’ll see with the test of time.

In all the world’s long history of sailing. Of all the cultures that have gone to sea and all the designs, the fastest sailing boats in history were the great clippers and one particularly famous one was aptly named, “Flying Cloud.” The ship was more than its physical being. It was also its crew who possessed the knowledge and skills accumulated through experience. She was built in Boston. She launched in 1851 and set speed records that stood for over 130 years. She was known for her woman navigator, an innovative thinker, Eleanor Creesy.

Creesy had studied oceanic currents, weather formations, and astronomy all her life. She was one of the first navigators to apply the insights of Matthew Fontaine Maury’s book Sailing Directions. Maury himself, a naval officer, was nicknamed the “Pathfinder of the Seas” and the “Father of Modern Oceanography and naval Meteorology,” the “Scientist of the Seas.” Creesy found her ship, and what a ship. And the Flying Cloud found her navigator, and what a navigator. The joining of Creesy with the Flying Cloud made magic. It was pure synergy.

It was Aristotle, in his Metaphysics, Book VIII, 1045a.8-10, not Buckminster Fuller, who coined the phrase later named “systemic emergence,” “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” But for Aristotle it was not simple Euclidean summation. Rather than “summation” it, synergy, was something else altogether, something “beside” simple summation of parts. It was not merely mathematics, the adding up of matter. It had to do with design, intellect, purpose, the cause. "The whole is something besides the parts," is the correct translation (as noted by Marc Cohen in "Aristotle's Metaphysics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2016 Edition). It is an emergent sense resulting from the quality of unity. This makes assembly integrative. The way things go together has a temporal dimension, sequence. It also has an overarching logic of joining. How things go together is more important than that they can be piled up. The joining in a unified cause of Creesy with the Flying Cloud made history. All builders, from stone masons to cabinet makers appreciate the art and craft of joining.

A woman… a woman would prove to be the greatest sailing navigator in the world. And the ship? On April 25, 1851, a reporter for the Boston Daily Atlas correctly deduced that, "If great length [235 ft.], sharpness of ends, with proportionate breadth [41 ft.] and depth, conduce to speed, the Flying Cloud must be uncommonly swift, for in all these she is great. Her length on the keel is 208 feet, on deck 225, and overall, from the knightheads to the taffrail, 235— extreme breadth of beam 41 feet, depth of hold 21½, including 7 feet 8 inches height of between-decks, sea-rise at half-floor 20 inches, rounding of sides 6 inches, and sheer about 3 feet."

In 1854, Flying Cloud sailed from New York round Cape Horn and on to San Francisco in 89 days, 8 hours. How fast was that? Most took over 200 days to make the 16,000-mile voyage. It captured headlines across the world. The record stood until 1989 when Thursday’s Child, a racing sloop beat the record by nine days. Flying Cloud’s record will last forever. It was surpassed but not erased. It lasted for 135 years. The design, the beauty of the lines, endure and will always work according to the laws of nature. Though physically lost, the Flying Cloud remains a thing of great beauty that countless people are still inspired by. It was not just a tool. It was part of a culture, lore, song, legend, with enduring and multiplying meanings. It epitomized mobility and space, freedom beyond the confines of tribe or nation on the “open seas” as not just commerce or engineering but romance. Minimalism and a mentality dedicated only to efficiency and utility is making our world into strip malls. Don’t let your dissertation be reduced to a strip mall.

Life should evolve eventually into a romance. That is the Enlightenment. It is not cold reason. Even reason has elegance. Empiricism itself evolved out of the emerging faith in sensuality, in sensate knowledge. Your dissertation should be a unified whole with an aesthetic. Not just a screwdriver. Wiles, like so many others who achieve the magic moment, called his proof beautiful to behold. Einstein famously said that if mathematics is not aesthetically pleasing it is probably wrong. The pinnacle of the Enlightenment, the Ph.D. is privileged freedom to explore and find the beauty in knowledge itself. You get my drift. See yourself as a clipper, planing, connecting distant places, ideas, cultures. Full sail and brilliant skies.

What is genius? I think it is the ability to see relationships that others can’t. How do you do that? By staring at the problem a long time. You begin to see things others don’t because they are not exposing themselves to the problem long enough. You keep tinkering until you see how it fits. The secret? The longer you look at someone or something, the more interesting they become. You see more and more. But… you have to look. You have to listen. Things become more meaningful, interesting. But you gotta be patient. I think I learned this from fishing. Nothing worth your time on this Earth comes easily. Why? Because value is invested effort. You care more about things that are hard to get than things that are easy. If you do the “hard” dissertation, it will be more valuable to you in many ways longer than an easy one. An easy one is forgettable. And a huge part of life is memory. Ask anyone who has experience with Alzheimer’s. I’m not talking about accolades. An “award winning” dissertation. I’m talking about who you are to yourself and what resources are available to your mind. To steal away the chance for a young person to have memories (good and bad) is a terrible thing. The struggle is the point. The journey, not the destination is life itself. It is not helpful to tell them to skip to the end of the novel or movie. If they do, they’ve missed it all.

It is a collapse of the will as if we choose to skip from birth directly to death because a long life has difficulties. Yes. But that is also the only way to real satisfaction and to know, in one’s own heart, that you did not quit. That is a precious and very private thing. That I will always try to protect for my students. Matisse and Picasso, Lennon and McCartney, Rogers and Hammerstein, Einstein… always talked most about the process of making things. The finished product sits there, and everyone can experience it and judge. The natural question? How did you do it? But only the makers, have the experience of the process. Those are the most precious memories for the person. Even for those who got to be in the studio during the recordings, it was that experience that matters most. When they hear the song years later on the radio, what comes to mind is the richness of the process itself. That is what makes their lives rich. Not the finished product. You move on from that.

That Great Feeling When You Cannot Not Smile

What do we all like to hear? The stories of the making. The story of traveling to Germany and playing in strip clubs and sleeping four to a bed. The exciting times of youthful ambition and freedom to experiment. Many quit. The Beatles did not. Will your story to the young be how you quit and slid through or how you struggled and prevailed? They won’t like the first story nearly as much as the second. And you won’t like telling the first one nearly as much as the second one. The first is boring. The second one is worth telling. It has lessons worth passing on. There have to be obstacles for accomplishment to exist. What is your finest accomplishment? Taking the shortcut? Having others remove all obstacles for you? As Nietzsche notes, be careful you cast out that which makes life most meaningful for a short-sighted relief, a kind of spiritual fraud. Deep down, we know when it is not earned and therefore, it does not fulfill us. Don’t let others deprive you of what could be your hardest-fought and earned satisfactions. Hiding behind others to fight your fights… well, what do you learn? To be a parasite. You may perfect the act of being pathetic. Before you know it, it is no longer an act. And those who would save you? Even they call you a “lost soul.” Shortcuts have no place in science and art.

We all know the 10,000 hour rule Malcolm Gladwell made famous. Inherent talent is very much overblown. Persistent dedication is what makes “genius.” I have never quit on a student. I have been criticized by colleagues, behind my back, for not giving up on a chronically ill student who had one last chance given the time limits. I insisted that we give every opportunity to them. It was the right thing to do. I don’t care how long it takes. If you are showing signs of progress, we keep at it until the breakthrough. The insight. The original kernel of a new vision appears. Then it was all worthwhile. You get doors opening throughout your future. The student's face lights up. It is their experience. They DID IT! The longer the march the more blissful the rest. Not “relief.” Not being saved by another. But the realization that I am not saved, but used up. And there is the product. I am in this. I did it. That feeling, not of relief but of satisfaction and joy, is what matters. Not a sigh but an “eternal and loud YES.” A yes to carry you on to greater challenges, not lesser ones. Confidence to move forward. Not to be “finished,” but launched. Getting the Ph.D. is a launch – a beginning. The mutation leading to a new you on the way to the next breakthrough. Growing more capable over time. Don’t “settle” into the muck at the bottom of a stagnant pond. The equilibrium of the same old, same old. Someone else’s theory. I’ll write about that and be done. Finished. Kaput. Instead meander around. Be snoopy. Try new angles. Cut a new channel. Flow. Evolve. Grow.

I am not “easy.” The work has to meet my standards. But time is not that important. Now if all you want is a job, any job, I talk about that scenario below. In short, don’t start what you don’t want to do. If you just want “it to end.” Then skip to the end by skipping the entire enterprise altogether. You don’t have to have a Ph.D. to “get a job.” I suggest an MBA. Much more versatile and no dissertation, no research required. Nothing original necessary from you. Otherwise, work with someone who will assign a task, maybe a review of someone else’s theory and write that up. I’ve seen “prize pupils” hand in the exact same paper to two different graduate seminars and when they were caught their advisor jumped in to do the politics and save their ass. That’s really bad for everything and everyone involved. The lesson, if you have powerful allies, you can shimmy your way through the hole without merit. What did they learn? To use other people’s syllabi to get a job, pretending that it was theirs… That’s how you move from a crummy job that fits, to a better one if you have no distinction. That’s anti-enlightenment, anti-intellectual… medieval. It is darkness -- iniquitous. Parasitism. Corruption exists and we have to resist its siren call to quit the noble effort, which is to be true, fidelitous, to not cheat and lie, and not skip to the front of the line -- or to the end by surrendering to scheming shortcuts.

What Will You Become When You “Grow Up”?

If someone asks you to betray others, or to suggest that that is a good solution to anything… what are they asking you to become? If that is your goal, to just end your own program ASAP, then please skip me too. Don’t waste my time leading me to believe in you. In fact, skip grad school entirely. We already have too many tribes of networkers rather than sincerely interested and dedicated researchers. Quixotic? No. The 10,000 hour rule is not a dream. It is all too real. You have to persist and resist corruption. If not, you can have an entire culture that stagnates. Resist the corruption of getting a little job assignment, a “promotion” that will endear you to someone for all the wrong reasons. Corruption is a real thing and many, billions in fact, suffer from corrupt, short-term, thinking.

There is no picture of Edmund Hillary on the top of Chomolungma ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ (“Mount Everest”) in 1953 because he refused to have his picture taken there. The picture of the two of them smiling from ear-to-ear is after they’d started their descent and others greeted them further down the mountain. Instead, he took a picture of his friend and guide Tenzing Norgay. That’s integrity and at “the moment,” the crowning achievement of a life’s career, Hillary proved himself to be a person of honor. He not only climbed the tallest mountain on Earth, but he proved, at the critical moment, to be a faithful person… arguably an even more important quality of his being than the ability to climb.

What kind of climber are you? And once you get to the top, what kind of person are you? The good will others extend to you at the beginning is because you are a blank slate. But if at the end of the journey not many like you, that’s earned by your behavior. That’s who you have become and who you are. You want to be the person others trust more and more and believe in the longer they know you. You don’t want to the person fewer and fewer trust, the longer they know you.

Aspire. You can be a “genius.” YOU CAN. It just takes faith in yourself. Don’t let others hand you a shortcut on a silver platter. Severed heads are presented that way. They are not helping you. They have their own messiah complexes. Their own agendas. They are stealing you from yourself – your potential… stealing from you a chance to grow. Doing “assignments” is elementary. The doctoral degree is freedom… and responsibility. I get that it can be hard and scary, but it is your chance to be different – original. Real. Not a forgery. Be patient and the breakthrough will come. It might be really something. Wait to see. Wiles is a great example. Pick a path, because it is harder. You will learn so much that way and you will be unique. What is rarest is most precious. Once, my older son Alex, came home from college demoralized. He’d taken a super advanced class and was getting buffeted by the winds. I said, “why did you sign up for a graduate class as a sophomore undergrad?” His answer made me so proud. He said, “it is very difficult and so not many learn this stuff. That’s why it is so valuable.” He went on to get some damn nice job offers straight out of his bachelors. Guts. Don’t be afraid to try the hard path. Ask for it.

Be the kid begging to go on the voyage, the caravan, the long hike. Resist the seduction of the “easy solution.” In the long run, it closes opportunities for your LIFE. Your growth will be retarded. Take a risk. Bet on yourself. That’s my wish for my students. There are millions who are not my students. They will do what they do. But for my students, I believe in them. I know they can do it. Just don’t give up on yourself. I promise I will not quit on you. Pace yourself. Keep working the problem.

First Principle of Utopia -- Stability

If people accuse you of being “unstable,” “unbalanced,” “unpredictable,” that may not be all bad. To be a great scientist or artist, you have to be full of surprises… original. Beware the creators of hells and utopias. They tend to be the same thing. Beware of those who claim “super—vision,” who would be “Over Humans,” perfect “Post Humans.” They intend to organize the rest of us. Crazy talk. Each side, the Nazis, and the Bolsheviks, had their specific versions of the perfect modern organized society, the organized human with a “received” purpose from on high. Hegelian to the hilt. They each thought they had the final Absolute solution. The “last human and the end of history.” That’s the problem. A “purpose driven life,” is not all it’s cracked up to be. Hypertrophic industrial Human. Modern organization Human (ala William Whyte and Max Weber who decried the dis-enchantment of the world). Leave the box they would put you in on the flow chart. “The Plan” is fatality.

Hymenopteran. The rise of the “super-organism.” The “human” anthill. In queen-centered species most do not reproduce. Most do not pass on their genes. Sterile castes exist. Workers. Around the world, across cultures, from Japan to Ireland, birthrates are crashing. That’s because cultural differences are shrinking. A global system of common motives, values, expectations, behavior patterns is emerging. And a common result is coming into focus. Sperm counts are collapsing. People can’t afford to have kids. Meanwhile, royal families and the rich keep having kids… into their 60s and 70s. Oligarchic power is a feature of the emerging global system. They have more in common with each other around the globe, than with their poorer worker castes in their “home countries.”

The opportunities are not even remotely close to being equal. So this is an apparent evolutionary paradox. If adaptive evolution unfolds by means of DIFFERENTIAL reproduction of individuals, then what is the exclusive monoculture? Is it capable of evolution? Not much. So then how does it persist? Haplodipolidy. “Inclusive fitness.” All the workers are an “extended phenotype” of the few who get to reproduce themselves and the system. Appendages that assure stability, that assure that we, and all to follow, will always be nothing but appendages. Don’t be proud of being in a long line of those duty-bound to make sure all descendants will also be duty-bound to sacrifice for the elite. We are the system, and it will not change unless we change. In such a conservative system only a tiny fraction of ideas, of potential is realized. Most exist to just exist, to defend and perpetuate their own slavery. Workers have been taught that they benefit because they are somehow “related” to the few who get all the privilege, of those who are the primary beneficiaries of the system. Maybe the connection is through “trickledown economics” or through the process of being lucky enough to be exploited (get a job). That’s an anthill or beehive with one queen. The system is reproductive because members have “assimilated.” NOT assimilated as elites, but to accept their roles as supporters of the system and as endlessly aspiring wannabees.

Despite all the propaganda (businessman as savior and the false belief that you too can be Oprah Winfrey or Bill Gates), the one-percent elite are not even essential to the reproduction of the system. They do very little. This is the total irony. The workers work to assure their own slavery. Unlike ants and bees, we don’t need the tiny minority to lay all the eggs. In those societies, the elite actually are essential to the reproduction of the system. In ours, they are not. We are stupider than ants.

We can’t take the realization that we may be delusional. And we get enough scraps to scrape by. So, we compete with each other in office politics, interpersonal dramas, “career” efforts, sports (with little merit badges, employee of the month plaques, trophies…), and whatnot that occupies our energies. We get drunk and high. We feel pride in a new “expensive” handbag or car, as if we produced it rather than just consuming it. Consumption has been turned into an opiate. Feel blue? Go shopping. Otaku is what the Japanese call “young antisocial people with consuming interests.” But going shopping doesn’t always work. And we have data that shows that the more we inundate ourselves with lifestyle pressure through advertising and social media, the more depressed we become until some just literally won’t leave their house, what the Japanese call hikikomori. It’s linked to post-traumatic stress, but I think it is real-time relentless stress to consume.

Parents are desperate to make their kids “succeed.” So we have Kyōiku mamas, “tiger moms” -- tiger parenting. Coercive education with rising school phobias and youth suicides. Schizotypal personality disorder (STPD) is on the rise. But it lays the blame, on the individual thus insulating the society from criticism. “People need to adapt.” Social anxiety leads to avoidance and what are more and more kids avoiding? Society itself. Quixote is the sane one. The Analects of Confucius is the oligarch’s bible.

Urban Life: When Inheritance Becomes Inherent

In the classic comedy Brewster’s Millions, Monty Brewster, played by Richard Pryor, inherits a fortune of $300 million from an unknown distant uncle, but with a caveat. The will stipulates that to receive all $300 million he has to spend $30 million in 30 days. If he fails, the estate goes to charity. “He must get value for the services of anyone he hires, he may donate 5% to charity and lose 5% by gambling, he cannot give any of the money away, and he may not waste it by purchasing and destroying valuable objects. If he fails to spend the entire $30 million, he forfeits any remaining balance and inherits nothing.” The comedy/tragedy is that Brewster discovers that the more he diversifies by buying stuff like art, franchises, businesses, real-estate and such in an effort to get rid of the money, the richer he gets. He tries to find bad deals, but he can’t lose the money. Lost and destroyed valuable objects are covered by insurance. Expensive antiques appreciate.

At some point wealth is so great that it is not contingent inheritance but becomes something like permanent inherent power. Inheritance becomes inherent. Like genetic privilege. Money and power like royal bloodlines. The system, as designed by those in power, is built in such a way that you’d have to be a complete moron to lose all the money. But even then… you can’t. Trump managed it three or four times. A rare gift, I guess. But he bobbed back up with help from Russian money funneled through a German bank, Panamanian luxury apartments, fake charities…. Since he’s on their line, the bloat, er, bloke is quite a bobber. So, it’s hard to lose a fortune. It’s like being part of your DNA. When a huge fortune goes under there's always still something of value floating from the wreck that enough lawyers and accountants can parley. Like the family in Schitt’s Creek. Even after losing everything, they still own something… the entire town. You can’t lose your DNA. It is inherent to who you are. Same with money at some point.

So, all the rhetoric about earning and merit and competition becomes absurd. Once you get to about 50 million dollars, you almost can’t go broke -- ever. It’s impossible. Just letting it sit in a boring bank account at a poultry 2.5 percent interest rate yields nearly $1.25 million bucks a year (over $104,000 per month)… and compounds. And realize that if you have $50,000,000 you are still $950 million short of one billion. So, to a billionaire, you’re poor. If you have $1 billion at 2.5 percent interest, that yields $25,000,000 in the first year (without compounding). If you make minimum wage of less than $14,000 a year it will take you 18,900 years just to make the interest that guy has “earned” in one year. Now the movie Brewster’s Millions (1985) was based on a 1902 novel by George McCutcheon. That was motivated by what McCutcheon saw happening in the economics of the “Gay 90’s” and the Robber Barons. I talk about them more and the invention of our modern economic system later. Point is, we’ve seen this picture before. We don’t seem to be getting the message. We have a failure to communicate. Poor “Fatty.” He got framed but that’s another story.

Today, inequality is even worse than it was back then. It is practically unimaginable. When you go online to look for an interest calculator you get lists and lists of calculators to figure out your monthly payments on various loans. So few people have to worry about how much interest they make on savings, that such a saving calculator is hard to find! We all owe… Most are under water. Actually, Trump is too but his money managers move money around adroitly. We’ll see what happens now that some light is being shown into the dark cavity that is his world. He’s also got the donations scam, like a mega-church owner/televangelist, working to bail out his leaking boat. It’s effective. The cult model. Produce nothing but by all means necessary, stay in front of the cameras and preach. The shining example of turning the modern self into a brand.

Imagine, if you can, how the transition from traditional “organic community” to modern industrial capitalist society (in Ferdinand Tönnies’s words), must have looked and felt. How all relationships and work changed. We all live in a village. There are power differences. There are elders, maybe a chief. He lives eight huts down. Everyone is related to him. He likes to play with the village kids and tell stories. We know him personally and he knows us. We all work together planting, harvesting. We all celebrate and mourn together. We have a common “blood” that is beyond the “extended family” to encompass “all the people” (tribal). Sure, we squabble and have cliques. But we don’t die of stress and worry about basic needs. We don’t become so alienated from our own group as to seek to mass murder them with assault rifles… er, assault spears or something, and then commit suicide. Suicide is largely a modern phenomenon. As Durkheim discussed, such depths of despair are a product of “modern living.” Then everything begins to change. “Development.”

Economics rises in importance as spiritual/religious and other aspect of life decline. Rather suddenly, the one guy, the “employer” in the village has most of the power. Our old relationships begin to shift dramatically. Work begins to dominate everything. Identities are increasingly determined by work. We become “professional” human beings. To be, we have to “get a job,” to make a business, to fit into an organizational chart. Otherwise, we are homeless, and home means more than just shelter. Our social construct is determined by our professional associations. We barely know our neighbors. Modern industrial urban life sees the rise of a new kind of human. The stranger. Increasingly we move among hoards of strangers.

As Benjamin Hunnicutt says, work begins to answer all the classical questions such as who am I, what am I worth, what are my goals, who do I respect, am I a successful human being? Social relations change. Power relations change. We all work for him now. And he takes profit from all our labors. And because of the new construct, the new matrix of social organization, we need to work for him. We need to be exploitable and exploited otherwise we are alone. Those not exploitable are inconvenient. They are obsolete like a technology. A nuisance. They need to be moved off of the daily calendar so we warehouse them in daycares, schools, nursing homes… The community, the family, fragments.

“Conservative” business interests drove this cultural trend. Lovely. They attack any attempts to shore up those old community relationships as “collectivistic communism.” Personal greed rises in power and domination of cultural values, beliefs, expectations, motivations, behavior patterns. Hegemony of mind, body, and imagination. Especially imagination. The reality exposes the great lie but we keep it all going by imagining when “I will be rich.” Sure. And if you realistically admit you will not become Bezos or Oprah, you’re a “negative thinker.” The power of positive thinking ala Norman Vincent Peale and prosperity theology plays a hugely important supporting role. The birth of the genre of selfie self-help literature and “life coaching” (now expanded into the flock of private gym trainers). “Give me one more push-up. Okay you are great.” Trophies for all! It’s like willing oneself to fall asleep. You will be happy! Impossible.

Hegemony and Manufactured Culture “Technology”

This was just starting to infect America when I was a kid. I grew up in an old culture where sports were organized by schools. No private gyms. The America full of WWII, Korea, and Vietnam vets was not into “muscles.” They were secure in their masculinity. Comic books were for kids. The adults knew real heroes. But then we started to lose that. Don’t blame feminism (“Iron John”). The old crooners gave way to rockers who were androgenous, and who treated women and girls like shit. Just one of the more infamous examples: while in his twenties and already world famous, the lead guitarist of the “Viking rockers” Lead Zeppelin, Jimmy Page kept “baby groupie” Lori Mattix, a 13 year-old at his mansion. He had a “relationship” with her for several years even as he was married. Not exactly the type of behavior Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, or old Blue Eyes exhibited. When Mia Farrow married Sinatra, which was scandalous, she was a movie star and was 21. Rockers were not as “feminist,” did not treat women as respectfully and equally, as the old “Rat Packs” (both Bogart’s “Holmby Hills Rat Pack” and later Sinatra’s redux), that included superstar women such as Lauren Bacall, Ava Gardner, Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine, Angie Dickinson, et cetera. All of these were famous, highly accomplished professional women, not anonymous “local girls” picked up while on tour for abuse. Women changed too from adults to infantilized Lolitas. Hence the new “baby” groupie. This has also metastasized around the globe. Think Woody Allen versus Sinatra.

If possible, and with Elvis as the transition, celebrity enflamed even more than during the “golden age” of Gable and Lombard’s, Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly’s Hollywood. The gap between commoner and rock god was huge. In my lifetime, the scale of things used to be smaller. As recounted in Ken Burns’ documentary series on American Major League Baseball, up into the 1960 superstar players still road the subways out to ballparks along with the fans. The average NFL salary in 1970 was $23,000 ($140,000 adjusted for inflation). The gap between CEO pay and the average assembly line worker was much smaller than today. After unionization, which boosted salaries, the minimum for a veteran player in 1970 was $10,000 per season. Owner’s were raking in the dough. The NFL Players Association finally won recognition and could begin to negotiate for more of team revenues so that by the 1980’s salaries skyrocketed. In 1995 Deion Sanders signed a $35 million contract (not counting bonuses). If you have a very rare and valuable gift such as flying major commercial passenger jets or playing professional sports, you can negotiate. If not, with the collapse of working-class unions, you have no leverage. Today the average price for a Super Bowl ticket is over $10,000. After his stint in the Navy, the Heisman winning QB Midshipmen, the Cincinnati Kid, Roger Staubach’s starting salary in 1969, was $25,000. Until the 1970’s many NFL players had off-season jobs to make ends meet. Gaps are indicators of fragmentation and when money gaps, in a culture based on money, then the bonds that solidify culture come apart. Even sports broke into ever-more specialized skill “positions.”

Outside of the YMCA and Boy’s and Girl’s clubs there was next to zero private gyms. Spas and retreats were mostly for Tuberculosis and convalescence. Adults rarely joined private gyms. It was not part of the culture. No money for such nonsense. Pay to go lift weights and dance around in front of giant mirrors with other people? Nah. When I was a kid, many more jobs were labor intensive. Working in factories and construction. Wash the car. Paint the house. That’ll keep you in shape. People got plenty of exercise. They also tended to mow their own yards. I mowed my neighbor’s yards as a pre-teen and up until I was old enough to get a “real job.” I never saw adults do “kids” jobs like deliver newspapers or mow yards. Once factories started to close, that changed. Plus, our diets changed and we started eating much more processed foods and fast foods. Obesity soared. Gotta eat out. No time to cook. Why? Gotta go to the gym… to lose the weight the restaurant foods pack on. Bottom line, when I was a kid in the 1960s and into the 1970s no one I knew had a gym membership. I’d never heard of a personal trainer and/or life coach until much later. What does it mean? You tell me. But I can tell you that the old WWII generation would never spend a dime on spandex and a personal trainer. They new how to do pushups and jumping jacks. Weight machines had yet to be invented. And it’s not because they didn’t have the money. They were making money in the factories. But work kept them in shape so off the line, time to relax. Go fishing, hunting, catch a game. And they weren’t fat. All the personal trainers out there should be supporting the fast-food industry that created their market. All hail the triple burger with bacon, cheese, chilly, and an egg on top along with a giant fries and a shake with 45 grams of sugar. Five thousand calories of carbs, fat, sugar and salt just for lunch. Yum. Denmark just legally categorized Subway “sandwiches” as “pastries” because the bread has so much sugar in it. How did Jared really lose all that weight? Maybe, he’s hiding something.

If an enterprise is making so much, then those who do the labor, not just the owners, should share so gaps and exploitation don’t erode the fabric of the social bond. But, we’re going the opposite direction. We see enormously widening gaps between teachers and administrators. Labor and management across industries. And… our social lives are becoming more aggressive, even violent and life-stress is enormous for millions. The times… changed. When The Beatles were still kids, the Rat Packs were breaking color lines and gender lines. Were they perfect? Were they saints? No. But despite their huge power and stardom they were more gentlemanly and mature (not destroying hotels for fun), than many of the newer ilk. Rockers were… post-gender. So, the culture over-reacted and we had the “bodybuilding craze” that infiltrated the minds of people my generation and later. But it was dissonant. Men… “men” posing under the lights like strippers. But they did have big muscles. Confusing. The confusion diffused. And post-war, hungry Confucian Asians, never to be outdone, took Western ideas and tech, like the old Hollywood culture machine, and made it better… more -- hypertrophic.

Hyper-conservatism. Mega-nationalism. When you have to wave your flag all the time… you might have an inferiority complex on a national level. Korean Wave (Hallyu) was invented to rise globally. Korean Olympics – over the top. Okay. But then the Chinese had to reassert their absolute domination. The inventers of North Korean discipline would show the world what super regimentation really looks like. The Olympics are perfect because they capture a global audience. So, the Chinese Olympics redefined “perfection.” All new hyper-deluxe venues. A thousand cloned drummers using ancient “Chinese drums.” The little girl singing at the opening ceremony (so innocent) was not pretty enough, so they lip-synced a “cuter” model girl and pushed the real singer back out-of-sight. By the way, the girl in the red dress is the mime. The cute face of dictatorship. What are the parents and handlers thinking? The music director told the worlds’ press that the call came at the last minute from a member of the Politburo and that it was “fair.” Pride? The song? “Ode to the Motherland.” Some mother.

In the name of nationalism, manufactured image is pushed to total, manufactured culture. Not surprising that Asian nations have boys prettier than girls now. They have pushed it to the max, burning out real kids, and now their all-controlling agency bosses are building cybercelebrities “who,” that will be even prettier, never age, never have a bad mood, never step out of line, never get a pimple, never complain, work 24/7/365. The perfect slave. As perfect and permanently functionally fit beings they manifest Confucian utopianism. Personally, I’d rather go bowling with “The Dude” Lebowski than watch a pretty robot. But then… I’m old.

The culture manufacturing “agencies” in Korea like SM Entertainment led by its visionary, who has a utopia for us all with the system of culture management, Lee Soo Man, are building the new face and sound of the future perfect post-human for us to cheer. Perfection and assimilation. The Korean Confucian model. Can’t wait for genetic engineering to propagate perfection. Just use the media. Engage AI and Mr. Lee’s judgment to build, one pixel at a time, the perfect ageless, totally submissive (adaptable) body and face in the service of the overarching vision, to sell the rest of us the way to the promised land. Not one blemish is admissible.

Am I a positivist? I think it hilarious that those who claim to be disinterested objective scientists named their school of thought after a mode of subjective judgment. A perspective. Positivism. Oh well. Nietzsche made fun of that over 130 years ago already. Was he a negativist? No. That’s a “positivistic realist” that locks the future into causal extrapolation. He was trying to be an artist. Read Zarathustra. Naomi Wolfe’s old exposé of airbrush and photo retouching of already “perfect” models on Madison Avenue seems quaint by comparison. But that was the origin of the culture industry. But the hardcore authoritarians will not be surpassed. They will take it all the way. Why? Inferiority complex. Dictator types have big psychological problems that then become a problem for the rest to us. Especially at the cultural level because it goes to our sense of identity and self-worth. Cults always end up being about sex and domination of the body.

I’m… just floating along hoping for more artists. Creators of a better way. We are too disinterested, too uncaring, too fragmented… I think. And nonorganic, artificial unity ala “culture engineering” for the profit of a handful of media moguls, turning culture itself into a tool of economic gain, is not appealing to me. You may disagree… of course. I suggest moderation. Not a world of clones nor a world of every man for himself hold up in his one-man militia compound ready to kill anyone who approaches. Chill… Stop trying to “coach” life itself. Everyone wants to be a “coach” now. Just play. Surprise each other. That’s fun. Following instructions is predetermination. Here’s an assignment. Here’s how to do it. Follow instructions. Done… done… boring.

“Development.” The passing of traditional society as Daniel Lerner entitled his classic work in 1958. If he’d read Tönnies, he would have more properly called it the passing of traditional community. What counts as expertise, competence, wisdom, value, worthy of respect, all begin to change. Relationships become dissociated and care dwindles. The relationships most valued are the ones that are most instrumental. You might be “too ugly to prostitute,” and too meek or stupid to steal. If I can’t use you somehow to achieve my personal goals, I discard you. You are just a chore to me. Dead weight. That’s when secular materialism goes too far – hypertrophic perspectivism. We are just tools to each other. A broken tool is useless.

This is a power unlike the old pre-urban, pre-imperial chiefs and shamans had. They didn’t take our value. They didn’t exploit us. They didn’t create a system where either you sell yourself or starve. With the advent of urban centers and pharaonic rule the gaps in power and status became absolute. Some became subhuman slaves while a few became living god-kings. In the Mesolithic and Neolithic hamlet no one was a god. Nor was anyone a subhuman slave. Even those captured in raids often integrated into the tribe. Nobody wanted to waste their time guarding someone else all day every day. Jails did not exist. Nor did jailors or police forces.

But then that changed and not for the better unless you are into monumental egos and architecture and slapping slaves around. Now of course many are into those things. We see it in their gilded suites atop their skyscraping towers and their mansions and yachts. They are a manifestation of the enduring dream of being a living god emperor.

Now I started this talking about language and the magical power of naming. In this new divinatory worldview, you gotta put your name on the great edifices. It is Christ-ianity. Buddh-ism. Trump tower. The name is what identifies the power person as claiming things, souls, territory, stuff. My name is on it. It is my religion, my building, my factory, my stuff. I have the titles with my signature. Mine. Not yours. As I said at the beginning, I aspire to have a unit of measure named after me. Every time someone, anyone measures something they will be compelled to invoke my name! I will be there. Auh… Blissful command. I want a whole species or galaxy named after me. Countless stars, planets, lifeforms. Become a Mormon and you got it. Mr. Universe! Everything is mine! I am the center of all sensation. Check out my oiled-up delts under these lights. Yeah baby.

Enron put Arnold Schwarzenegger in real power. The guy who arrived from Austria at 19 thinking Vietnam was a good idea, the guy who bought, hook, line, and sinker, Nixon’s rhetoric and who loved to defraud Californians by using metric jargon when discussing how to fix their broken chimneys after an earthquake… “idiot Americans,” (watch Arnie on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson brag about defrauding homeowners with his roommate muscle head Franco Columbu). Enron and California Republicans combined Arnie’s chemically enhanced muscles with engineered fake energy crisis. The rest is history. Well… other than his love-child humiliation of a Kennedy. Maybe… that proves that there are a lot of idiot Americans.

I’ve read that bodybuilders actually suffer from profound inferiority complexes and compensate with body dysmorphism. Arnold’s dad, Gustav, pretty much bullied him during his childhood and put his brother first. Apparently, Gustav suspected that Arnold was not his biological son and had a “strong and blatant” preference for his older brother, Meinhard. What a name. Meinhard. Okay. Well, Arnie it worked. The mistreatment made you strong, like Thulsa Doom in Conan the Barbarian stories. Your evil dad made you “strong.” Or at least want big muscles -- or more accurately, want others to see and admire your big muscles. That along with the 1960’s allure of California surfers, the Beach Boys, Hollywood, and Venice Beach weight cages, there was no stopping Arnold. Dad pushed and California dreamin’ pulled.

Huge muscles… That’s cool. Every boy (don’t know about the girls) in my high school thought Arnold was awesome. Me too! We were all brainwashed. Lie to me. Please. Postwar America was the time and place of hypertrophy. Atomic bombs. Jets. Superduper super groceries. Two-door cars that were 100 feet long and weighed 10 tons. Muscle cars. Crazy dirt bikes. Motorcycles became mammoth. Soon the starting front lines in high school football had kids as big as 1950s pro players. Music got bigger. The Beatles gave up because they put them in giant stadiums. It got louder too. Way, way louder. Girls got skinny. Way, way skinnier. Twiggy skinny. Lolitaish. Cinema got sexier. Way, way sexier. Hypertrophy. Everything went not just, as Lennon said, “to the top,” but “over the top.” Money too grew. To be rich got bigger and bigger. Everything was super. Everything was going to extremes. Bruce Lee was extreme. Compared to John Wayne, Robert Mitchem, heck even Charlton Heston and Clint Eastwood, Bruce Lee’s steroid induced body (yes, he used steroids but didn’t eat to bulk up), kicked their asses on the big screen. Steve McQueen and James Coburn who played the other super spy “Derek Flint,” sought out the Hong Kong piece of gristle for martial arts inspiration.

Lee’s body, like Schwarzenegger’s were like none ever seen before. Of course. The chemistry didn’t exist. Suddenly even baseball players were growing huge and hitting homeruns left and right. It was East German and Soviet biochemistry fused with California mythology that took over world masculinity.

Talk about objectification of the human body. Women get in line. Look at the college recruiting websites for high school athletes. High school. It was initially male, but now females too get to be put up on the Internet on recruiting sites. It’s like buying cattle. Equal objectification by supposedly responsible adults for all high schoolers. If you measure up, you get a college scholarship. In some cases even junior high. Millionaire coaches representing the great centers of learning start trolling kids in junior high to come play for them. It’s insane. It’s money. TV money. There’s nothing on the websites about the their favorite colors, books, movies, food, what kind of pets they like. Heck even Playboy pinups used to tell us that stuff. Nope. All physical measurements. Height, weight, times in the 40 and 100 yard dashes. Vertical jump. Wingspan. Number of reps on the weight bench and squats, yards per catch, number of touchdowns, rushing yards in high school… People quantified. Identity reduced to a set of measurements to fit a narrow interest.

Aside: I believe that the fact that the only Black character in the movie Conan the Barbarian (1982), Doom, is the one who slaughters, drugs, rapes, kidnaps, kills and eats (are there any abominations I’ve missed? – they’re all in there), and who literally and finally turns into a giant snake, might be a bit racist? Ya think?

White supremacists love that movie by the way. They didn’t learn anything from it though. They are following Trump in their efforts to end the USA as a democracy. But he is White and very insistent about it. So, I guess that makes sense. Ironically, and despite Trump’s praise of Norwegian society and people (socialists!) and wanting the US to purchase Greenland from the Danes (socialists!), Sweden has imposed legal restrictions on promoting and celebrating all the Viking fantasy shit that has become popular in mass media in recent years. They realize it is racist mythology, like Wagner’s love of Siegfried mythology in Der Ring des Nibelungen (which triggered Nietzsche’s split from him). The Scandinavian countries uniformly regarded Trump as a nutcase. And they prefer their highly efficient “socialist” economies to the sort of savage capitalism Trump and his ilk in the US promote. Anyhow, the one redeeming value of the Conan movie, its broader critique of cults, seems to have been completely missed by its Trumpian fan base. Arnold, to his credit, spoke out eloquently against the claim that the 2020 election was “stolen” by Biden and in support of democratic institutions, and has also led efforts to stop unfair jerrymandering. The GOP loved Arnold. Not so much though when he started to speak the truth about state legislatures cheating to win at all costs and set up perpetual control. Conan may have been a lout, but he was not a supporter of the “Big Lie” about US elections being rigged. Ironically though, and in line with Putin’s psyops, that lie is being used to justify exactly that… rigging future elections. This document will be held to historical scrutiny in the future to see what happened. If it is still online in fifty years, is the US still a democracy? I wish you the reader could tell me, but I’ll be long gone by then. I sincerely hope you live in a free USA. But I am compelled to write this little aside because there is a concerted effort by authoritarians and their followers on the “Right” to destroy our democratic republic.

It was reported by an eyewitness, Dr. James McHenry who was one of the delegates from Maryland, that on Monday, September 17, 1787, as the great American Enlightenment philosophe Benjamin Franklin left Independence Hall in Philadelphia at the close of the Constitutional Convention, Franklin was asked, “What kind of government have you given us, Dr. Franklin?” He replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Less than 100 years later, it barely survived the Civil War. Now, again, it is profoundly threatened by the descendants of that same destructive racist and authoritarian mentality. I hope, if this is read years from now, it again found the internal resilience to endure and prosper. In this portrait of Benjamin Franklin by David Martin, the bust of Isaac Newton indicates that history and reason are watching us.

Anyway, the casting in the Conan movie was racist as hell. All Doom’s victims were White. Especially the literally sparkling girlfriend of Conan. Doom shot her with a snake that he could make erect, stiff, like a wooden arrow! O…kay. Like Rocky Raccoon, Conan “didn’t like that.” Some weird racial fantasies going on there. I think he (James Earl Jones) was the only Black cast member. Of course, Conan chops his head off for the grand crescendo of emotional satisfaction. Evil purged. Revenge achieved. He did have an Asian bowman who crucially helped out. In the next Conan installment, they tried to correct by having Wilt Chamberlain, but he plays a treacherous guardian of a very white young virgin princess “Jehnna” who, with Conan’s help, seeks to restore a jeweled horn of some freaky god. The treachery? Secretly, once obtained, the horn is to be used to stab Jehnna as a sacrifice. Along the way they are joined by “Zula” played by Grace Jones. Horrible movie and weird racial stuff going on again. The innocent princess is very White and so is Conan. But this time they have a Black criminal who helps out. Still the ultimate traitor is Wilt Chamberlain who lies and seeks to help sacrifice the virgin princess with the horn. Of course, Conan kills him for his treachery. I suspect a lot of repressed homosexual tendencies are also swirling in this, not unlike WWE wrestling. Also rape fantasy. Impale a nearly naked virgin with a horn for powerful magic??? Creeeeepy. Stop lying about who you are. You become “mental,” even violently “masculine.” It’s okay. Really… it is. It’s a continuum. We all like bodies. We’re all gay and lesbian to some degree. I believe that is true. The reactionaries are the one’s to watch out for. Moderation folks. Moderation. I submit that extremism, Mr. Goldwater, is a vice. Put some cloths on, get rid of the weapons and gore, and chill out. Too much sexualized and racialized aggression. Kids are watching.

Anyway, Arnold found a way to gain attention. Joe Weider sold countless magazines with Arnie posing on the cover, plus all the fake ways to build muscles. But they neglected to mention all the steroids, testosterone, and growth hormones that actually made big muscles. Instead they encouraged people… boys, to buy bullshit supplements that do nothing or worse, something bad to your body. Utah is the home of the supplement industry. They fight like heck to stop any regulation.

A rhyme to live by. Fakeness is contagious. Science and philosophy can’t keep up with the fraud culture. Arnie inspired millions of boys around the world to “pump up.” Bush Sr. launched Arnie's political career by making him the official “Ambassador of Physical Fitness” for all the country’s youth. Out of the multitude of great athletes in the country, people who could actually move like gymnasts, Arnold was the one picked to travel around to elementary and junior high schools all over the country to show the kids his muscles. Perfect for marketing himself, supplements, and exercise equipment… product lines being mostly BS. I like this one. Weider’s wrist bands that will get you Arnold’s arms, and the babe. They are, you are, “HELL-BENT FOR LEATHER N’ LEAD.” When this ad ran, the real lead was flying in Vietnam.

Our new masculinity. Of course, the rush for muscles was on and it didn’t take long for boys to figure out that what you really need is steroids. Though illegal in the US, the market exploded and is still big time. Didn’t matter that his physique was… unhealthy. It was all about how ya look. And political favors. He took everything available on the street. He says so himself. He took “Fen-Phen” to cut weight. That damaged his heart values complicating a congenital problem he had so he had to have open heart surgery. Hey kids, President George Bush Sr. tells you, “Be strong. Be like Mr. Universe.” You too can wreck your heart (and testicles).

Now I just said, stop lying about who you are. But I also do recognize that we make ourselves into who we become. And some makeovers are laudable. Arnold is a self-made man if there ever was one. Later, yes, the Republican Party and Enron helped him. Earlier it was Joe Weider. But credit where credit is due. Schwarzenegger just walked into a gym, took a bunch of chemicals and built himself into a franchise. He found a very weird little niche subculture and thrived. Today, private gyms are all over the place. Along with Bruce Lee, Arnold and a few others, revolutionized physical culture. That’s pretty amazing. And he’s made a fortune. All I have to say is, be careful what you build yourself into and please don’t lie to kids about it. They will try to follow you.

Arnold knew he was lying to homeowners needing to fix their chimneys. He bragged about it on national television until Johnny Carson raised his eyebrows, then Arnold quickly, awkwardly changed tone to tell the audience how great America is and the American idiots, who don’t know the metric system, are. Tsk-tsk. Those immigrants ya know. Bullshit piled on top of bullshit. And he knew he was misrepresenting the “strong arm bracelets,” and most of the supplement crap except maybe his branded “Iron Whey” protein powder. I mean, whey is protein. But “Iron” whey. Really? And I very much doubt he ever wore those bracelets except for the ad shoot. He knew what he was doing but I suspect he believed and believes that it is all part of “doing business.”

Therein lies the really big problem of a capitalist worldview. It thrives on, it perhaps even requires a culture of deceit. So much so that we think it is “natural” to lie to each other. We can’t remember or imagine a social arrangement where people really don’t purposefully lie to each other all the time. We have inundated ourselves with so much bullshit that now QAnon and other massive liars and lies thrive, and we don’t know why? Really? It’s our culture. The ends justify the means. Close the deal. Period. Take what you want. Relationships don’t matter. Only money/power matter.

Here’s two pictures I sometime put up in my classes and ask my students which version of manhood they admire most. One is of Marines in Vietnam suffering from heat, dysentery, lousy food, lack of sleep, shell shock – in a word -- war. The other is of someone who epitomized the care and feeding of the self. Perfect sleep. Perfect diet. Perfect exercise… Pampered to create the “perfect man.” You decide what you think. One represents sacrifice. One is a giver. The other is a taker. We tend to admire the takers. Next time you see a poor person in their shitty car in traffic, especially a woman with kids, I suggest you see a saint in the next lane. She stayed and is fighting to raise those kids on nothing. She’s strong. Who said strength is “pretty?” Not pretty. Crappy car. Tired woman in cheap clothes. But she’s standing firm. The last line of our society – our civilization. It’s not at the galas thrown in big museums by rich pampered people. Our civilization, teaching the kids right from wrong and raising them, that’s enculturation. If she fails, it’s because no one helped, perhaps not even the dad. So the guy in the crappy little boat or the guy fishing off the bank with no boat versus the superyacht. Where’s your values? Pretty is seductive. I admit. It’s mythology.

Me. Me. Me. Personal property. People even buy entire towns. Entire continents were claimed in the names of kings and queens. The land, like the fruit of their loins, was named “after” them and to extend their being. Sovereignty. And we claim to have the absolute right to even kill others who would trespass. If you shot ‘em in the street, pulled the body onto your property and you’re legally good to go. Stand YOUR ground. Gun manufacturers are “booming.” Trump the trump. Make sure the entire era is named after you. The Victorian era. Periclean Athens. The Wu, Tang, Song dynasties and times. Time starts with my birth. The brilliant idea of naming eras started with Emperor Wu of Han and spread across Asia. This ain’t ancient history. Japan, England have kings and queens today and oligarchs are aspiring. Xi in China and Putin in Russia have extended their reigns for life. Last step, extend it on through the magical bloodline. Power and wealth accumulated for the kids will assure quite a bit of control if not total command(ment-alism).

Now a talk about big ships as a synecdoche to illustrate the immensity of the power gaps we see. All the super yachts belong to three types of oligarchs. Royalty, especially those who control oil reserves. Oligarchs. Again, especially those who control oil reserves. Patrick Geddes (followed by Lewis Mumford, Alvin Toffler, et al.) was the first to describe human epics in terms of the dominant source of power and material hence the Bronze Age, Iron Age, Steel Age, Alloys Age paired with wind, water, steam, and petroleum epics (coal/oil/gas). If you control one of these in its time, you are god. And the last group (after royalty and oligarchs) to own superyachts that pharaohs, kings, sultans, and emperors, even the various “kings of kings,” mega-kings of yore, could not have imagined, are tech/media moguls. Information management is big big humongous power today. Toffler nailed it in his book Power Shift. That’s because information is a fast breeder reactor of power.

Information enables a person to gain more information. Muscle power is finite, and you can’t share it. You cannot bequeath it to your children. Money is also finite, but you can share it and bequeath it to your kids. But you can spend it only once. When it’s gone, it’s gone. Cryptocurrencies are based on the open “distributed” ledger software that assure two things; proof of work (that you are recording transactions on your server), and that you can spend it only once. So, money, even cryptocurrency is finite. Indeed, some have lost a lot of value messing with it and also in losing it physically (sorta) by losing their hard disc. Ouch.

But knowledge, information never spoils. You can’t lose it. Once you know something, you know it. You can use it over and over and its veracity does not diminish. If you know how to solve for the hypotenuse of a triangle, you can do it to any triangle any time or place with reliable validity. And you can share the knowledge. No matter how many people learn the knowledge, it is not diluted. It works equally well for one billion people as it does for just one. And, most important of all, knowledge enables you to learn more, new stuff. Knowledge builds on itself. Muscles? Nope. You push and push until you are spent. That’s it. Money, once spent, done. Also, anyone can gain knowledge. You don’t have to have a certain phenotype, gender, age, or income. Anyone can learn. Just go to the library.

But these days we have concerted efforts to pollute the pool of knowledge with falsehoods. Those are truly problematical people. A wicked lot. They are a serious problem for all the rest of us. They hate the essence of the human community. They irresponsibly exploit the human right of free speech in order to distort everyone else’s vision, blinding countless others. It’s one thing to be honestly mistaken. It’s another to maliciously propagate lies. According to most religions, it’s against the law… a sin. For good reason. It disrupts the foundation of social interaction and trust. Ambushes are based on deceit only the liar decides when it is most advantageous to finally spring the truth.

According to this new worldview value does not exist at all or at least nothing, including people, have “inherent value.” Rather, value exists only as exchange. If you can’t convert a forest into a product that can be exchanged, like toilet paper, it has no value. It has to be converted through “value-addition” into a commodity. The businessman as hero provides the magic. You have no meaning or value unless and until you can find a niche in his system. Go to college and get retooled to be valuable, “functionally fit.” You may be “doing” something you don’t like but, it puts food on the table. You are a “success.” Awesome. Without that organization, you’d be lost. And that's why, when anyone starts to suggest a different worldview, they seem so scary because that structure is the basis of our meanings, sense, and identities. Messing with the metaphysical foundation of things, questioning the “naturalism” and “rationality” of reality, is very “subversive” from the member’s perspective. But it is also liberating and uplifting. But also… scary. Meanings become wobbly. Identities start to shift. We feel an earthquake.

If you can’t convert yourself, your very being into a tool that can function, fit, be operated to exchange for something else, you have no value. Who does the retooling and buying and selling of you? Your employer. Without them, you are worthless. Get off our streets. Go live under the overpass. Die young. This worldview undergirds assimilation theory with its presumption of humans being reprogrammable and functionally fit (or unfit), and many other ideological constructs that we learn to enable us to generate a sense of our world and ourselves. It is even sold to us as utopia.

This absurdity is presented in Voltaire’s Candid when Dr. Pangloss keeps insisting, in the face of grave injustices and horrors, that this is the “best of all possible worlds.” Nuns eating parts of each other to survive is an interesting adaptation. No need to even contemplate an alternative. This is the best we can do. Things cannot be other than they are. “All for the best.” Causal determinism. No room for wishy washy freedom. Cause has a direct, unbroken line to effect. Now remember, statistics make sense only because we presume 0 probability and 100 percent probability – causation, yes causation. Otherwise, none of the numbers in between make any sense. They are relative to 0 and 100. Statistics presume causality. However, we concede that we have trouble determining relationships based on limited observations. That’s only a problem for fortune tellers/prophets/predictors/actuarials (curious how profit and actualism appear). Regardless of our little human emotional desire to predict the future, in reality, objectively, things cannot be other than they are and will be… From the prime mover down to the end of time, all is determined. Pascal’s chain around our necks. The chain of causation. Unless you are playing a game of trying to say what will be before it happens, just wait and see. It will be what it will be, regardless. Que sera sera, as Doris Day used to sing. Fait accompli.

But wait! That’s not… satisfying… We try to predict the future so that we can alter it. Right? Clearly, I care about the prediction because I want to engineer the future. It is not what I want so I try to predict the current path and then make a different one thus making my prediction false. Why? Because I don’t like the future as is. So I can make money in the market for instance. But that implies that if I am right in predicting the future so that I can change it, then I am ruining my own prediction. If we don’t stop polluting (a future that I don’t “like”), then the world will burn up. We make great efforts to build computer models and dump tons of data into them to run them to see what will happen. We make such predictions in order to change our behavior so that the world in fact, does not burn up. There’s an old Latin saying for this. Utinam vates falsus sim. It is a plea, a wish, a prayer “that I were a false prophet.” It’s the paradox of time travel. If you go back in time to “fix” something, and you succeed, then you would never be compelled to go back in the first place. What!? Ouch.

Okay, let’s go back to easy stuff like money, exploitation, and meaning. The grand illusion, we are assured, is believing we have any freedom. Perfect for the master’s narrative. You gotta do, what you gotta do be-cause… Reactionary violence awaits those who dare think. You will even be condemned as mentally ill, maladapted, if not criminal by some “academic” literature that purports to offer a path to utopia.

Divisions of labor “naturally” emerge. WE no longer live alike, work together, celebrate and mourn together. We is replaced by the private individual and property, status, power becomes privatized. Classes emerge and lifestyles diverge as wealth and power is generated in a new way, and changes hands. Things, even education, take on a step-by-step process of enculturation divided by “classes.” Upper classes. Lower classes. Networking. The right college gives access to power. Universities are ranked, 1, 2, 3… Who controls the criteria controls public perception.

Suddenly we all “owe our lives” to the boss. Wait. What? He’s exploiting us but we owe him our “livelihoods?” What? Yes. How? We must be exploited to survive. Thank god he’s exploiting me or I’d starve. And the structure that “allows” you to be exploited is provided by him. Otherwise, you are homeless. You can’t even go out and find your own food because the fields, forests, lakes are now in private hands. Profit is the margin over what labor is necessary to survive and he take it for himself. We feel happy when he exploits us because the old system no longer works and without his employment, we are not part of the system. We lose everything.

During the transition, before we forgot, it must have been very weird. The old chief is now a janitor at the young guy’s factory. The strongest and bravest is now a mall cop because he didn’t get drafted for the NFL. Meanwhile, having played the game all his life, he’d like to go to a game in the stadium he paid for with his taxes but can’t afford the ticket prices charged by the billionaire owners. Only one place has a community stadium and caps on tickets… little, tiny Green Bay. The billionaire owners have passed a rule that communities can no longer own teams. It’s a private club so it is not illegal to have such a restriction. Their lawyers and political friends make sure of it. They won’t pay taxes, but they donate to the politicians who will do their bidding. And we let them… even as we also let them blackmail us into building ever bigger and more expensive stadiums lest they move their teams – teams that are worth massive fortunes. Happened to Cleveland and Baltimore and… This guy who now takes profit from everyone in the village, used to be one of us. Now he is our master. We remember when he was not so important.

This is exactly what has been happening in “developing economies” around the world my entire life. It has been happening in India and China especially in the last 30 or 40 years. In historical terms, overnight billionaires have arisen as “heroes.” The more of us they employ/exploit the faster the gap grows and the more we admire them and hope to “get a job.” Otherwise, we are destitute because the old system is gone. Efforts to create real competition, real alternatives, such as the Paris Commune of 1871, are violently set upon and destroyed by the powers that be – often a mixture of church, state power, and the rich. The notion that they “give us jobs” as a kind of charity or gift belies the fact that the more people they can press into service, the greater the revenue stream of value flowing from each person their pockets and with that wealth, which means prosperity. Prosperity becomes concentrated. The opposite of prosperity is poverty. So as prosperity concentrates, poverty spreads.

And with growing power the more that guy who used to be one of us can determine the direction of our entire society and create new channels for even more exploitation. He can threaten us with starvation. Either work and make him richer or… starve. It’s “your choice.” We had a forest. It is his now. We had a river. It is his now. We had time. It is his now. We had a house. We pay rent now. We gather our money as taxes and bribe him to build factories in our town to exploit us. We bribe people to please, please exploit me and my children. Please, I beg you. Why? Because there is no alternative system. And we believe this is the only, natural, rational, and best way. We also now fight to defend this system as conscripts or as voluntary soldiers – another kind of exploitation for pay and “benefits.”

Finally, the new system deploys ideological and mythological tropes to justify and even naturalize the new system. It seems like it is only natural, or in religious terms, supernatural that all power and wealth should be concentrated into just a few hands. It is “rational.” As if it has always been so. But this is, in historical terms, a very new arrangement. The legacy of memories is still there in some “developing” communities. But it is fading.

I lived through the transition but from afar. In my home it was already well established before I was born. But I could still FEEL the dissonance, the unease in villages in rural Mexico and other places I visited as they shifted from agrarian communities and were brought “online” within global logistical networks of resource extraction, production, and consumption. When I first went to Taiwan, famers where still becoming instant millionaires when their kids built apartment buildings in place of the rice paddies. Suddenly the whole village was living in one guy's apartment block and paying him for a roof over their heads. And they all seemed to get into the import/export business. They would go to trade fairs and meet with Americans, Australians, Europeans, Japanese, whoever and basically say, "I can organize my community to make whatever you want. I don’t know how but with your help we will make it happen." Here’s an example of what I mean. Elaine, my wife from Taiwan told me the story of this little glove made to shine up your shoes. She keeps it as a memento. This is the story: “I remember the late nights that my dad brought big rolls of cloth back from the factory after a long day of work, cutting them to the right size with the help of my mom in our living room. I was asked to stand far away because there was too much textile dust, and the blade was too fast for little curious fingers. The next morning, when my dad was off to work, my mom would pour the bright red ink over the wood-framed screen-print and put the prints on, one after another. She would then sew them into a glove. It was a production line of a young couple...for their dreams and for their daughters' futures. Lai Lai Shangri-La Hotel (now Sheraton Grand Taipei Hotel) was a big deal back then (and still now). I did not know how they got this gig and how long they kept it. I think this shoeshine was left in the house because it was not printed squarely in the center. They were free to the patrons of the hotel, a hotel we never visited or ate at. I wonder if the patrons knew that the shoeshine in their room was literally handmade?” Another thing that happens in such a revolutionary transition is that family members inevitably end up working for each other instead of working together. That creates all sorts of problems. Status differentials and power distances increase. The motive to maximize profits ends up making one family member, the employer, drive another who is now an employee. And all see where most of the money goes. It is very disruptive.

The whole place (Taiwan) was transitioning so fast. Money from abroad was pouring in. The whole economy took off just as Walter Rostow had predicted. But then the island’s beautiful environment was destroyed. I lived next to a stream that ran a different bright color everyday. Plastic waste was everywhere. Every home was converted into a mom and pop assembly line. Then the buyers found cheaper labor with even less environmental and labor protections elsewhere and the folks on Taiwan were abandoned. Today, outside of high tech, folks are really struggling to make it. They have to count on inheritance. Pray that grandpa has enough to spread around among the adult grandchildren to help them get an apartment.

The grand balancing act? The purest form of a capitalist is the capital investor. You make money with money. To minimize risk, you push the employees harder and harder. Success to the investor increases as more efficiency is pressed from the labor force – more value squeezed out of the relationship. You buy stock in businesses. It gives you access to the circuit of production consumption. You pay expert managers to make it work. The owners understand that their managers have to modulate the process. They have to keep paying the workers just enough so that they can reproduce and keep buying the stuff they make. The circuit has to keep running, the money circulating so that each time it passes the capital investor, he can take his cut. He doesn’t need to produce or consume, just pluck profits out as capital gains. The ultimate parasite. Then he assures that politicians demonize any attempt to tax his capital gains. Don’t make life too nice for workers. Just enough…

The race to the bottom is an inverse correlation to the race to accumulate more and more employees to amass more and more wealth faster and faster. Wage-labor has imprisoned the world. We are no longer all working together. The boss wants to maximize profit. A major cost is wages. So it is in his interest to cut your wages as low as possible. And it is in your interest to get as much as you can for your labor. The system has built-in conflict.

This creates alienation. People move to ever-bigger cities where it cost a fortune to live. They work constantly and are lonely. So they seek to connect but the more they connect, using social platforms on the Internet, the more they are exploited there too. The platforms are designed from scratch to extract money with every click. That is their purpose. Not to help you stay in touch. That’s just the hook. Every keystroke and view is recorded and sold to advertisers. Algorithms use this massive amount of data to then push content toward you that you will click on more, and with every click you are sold again to an advertiser, and that data is added to the pile, to your identity (virtual and actual are blended now). And so the noose tightens bit by bit. Online games are now free because they are designed to create need-based purchasing. I need a spear. That will cost you. I need magic armor. That will cost you. But the game is free… You are manipulated and sold, again and again. So you can be exploited in every way imaginable and fortunes beyond comprehension are amassed. Click, click. The money flows. Bing, bing at the Walmart checkout counters, the money flows in one direction. Stop and listen. And with it political power grows. The fear that democracy could disrupt this perpetual money machine is driving new efforts to get rid of that radical idea… democracy. Oligarchs are working to get this last threat under control. Since young people tend to want freedom more than others, the powerful are now attacking education at all levels and at the source of funding to make young people more ignorant and hopeless -- more flexible -- assimilative. Ban books. Not guns. Those damn teachers. Gotta get them outta the way. They teach critical thinking. Very bad…

The existence of a struggling middle class was a brilliant invention of the rich for two reasons. First, it mediates the tension. People can accumulate some and have a little mobility… enough to convince them that the system is fair. Second, the system has been designed to have the middle-class wage earner pay almost all of the bills. Taxes are taken out of their paychecks before they ever see them. Meanwhile the poor are too poor to pay taxes and the rich have tons of legal loopholes to avoid taxes. It’s brilliant. They work really hard, they think the are going somewhere while they pay all the bills. Many immigrants go straight for business ownership because they come from entrepreneurial cultures such as China. That’s smarter.

Meanwhile, the rich hire expert managers to sniff over applicant resumes and be as picky as they wish. I call it the sphincter interview. Go online and see what tricky interview questions Google and Apple and Facebook famously ask job candidates. Confederates for the owners, these interviewers enjoy the power. The expert interviewers and others already “in,” assess job applicants, making them run a gauntlet. The “candidate” has to come back multiple times for additional “evaluation.” One slipup and you ain’t right. This after most have gone significantly into personal debt to get a college degree they pray will make them attractive to “the employer,” which includes those already in the club. Total assimilation and gatekeeping. The interview process and its context remind me of the Big House and the character Stephen in Django Unchained, played by Samuel L. Jackson. The rich hire expert managers to figure out how to subsume yet more people. Conglomerate fever, mergers and acquisitions, and other means, legal frameworks and economic structures are built, and self-perpetuate. Hazing creates solidarity. The word “hazing” means darkening. Every fraternity and sorority understands this psychology. Team building it is called. It is most effective among the young.

Marx deconstructed it brilliantly when he said he would never join a club that would admit him as a member. The hilarious logical conclusion of irrational haughtiness and FOMO. But when it comes to getting a job, its more than that. It’s the pressure to make others, who are desperate, try to find the answer and conform because they need the job. It creates a weird fraudulent culture. To quote the great Marx again and to the point, “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.” He also brilliantly said, in this world, “While money can’t buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery.” These are direct quotes from the beloved manifesto.

Sphincter Economics and the Amassing of Shit

The rich now are so rich we no longer relate to them and their power is such that they control law and government. They live elsewhere. Eat different food. Travel differently. Put up walls and congregate inside “closed communities” with private security. Of course, this ain’t entirely new. Powerful people have built walls and moats to encircle their shit for millennia. The drawbridge can be pulled up to stop even the tiniest trickle of money from leaking out or of the wrong people leaking in. Globally, the players share a culture with each other but not with their employees. They have a different culture meaning different values, beliefs, expectations, motivations. They make the old shamans and chiefs look pathetic. And the rest of us hope for “trickle down.”

What the heck? Kramer’s a Marxist terrorist maniacal ugly bastard who smells bad and who hates America, apple pie, and motherhood! He should be SILENCED! Everything is fine. It is the best of all worlds. Okay. So… let’s dare to take a look at some very simple numbers that are very real. Yes, thankfully, I’m a phenomenologist and so I can say numbers are real even though they are not empirical objects. Jeff Bezos made $75 BILLION in ONE year. Last year, 2020, during the Covid 2021 pandemic. He is currently lobbying Congress to give him $10 billion dollars for his REJECTED plans for a moon lander. His vanity spaceship company Blue Origin lost the competition to Elon Musk’s Space X for the contract. But still, he wants the money claiming that the US needs redundancy in the space program. This is the same sort of deal military contractors have enjoyed for over a century. Fail to get the contract. No problem. Senators will appropriate the money to you anyway to assure “redundancy.” So, ask your boss tomorrow if you can quit your job but keep getting paid just to assure that your redundant labor will be available in the future.

Republicans are screaming that money given to the unemployed is bad. It hurts workers’ sacred “work ethic” (the conjoining of Calvinist religion with capitalism… read Max Weber) and they won’t take jobs that pay shit. But we can give Bezos $10 billion dollars to just sit around… on one of his yachts, I guess… that’s where he sits. He quit being the CEO of Amazon after he got divorced. NASA, as you might guess, is a little upset. That tax money could go for other, real projects.

Or it could go to support universities. Give it to the top 100 public universities, or hospitals that bore the brunt of the pandemic. They could use the money. Let’s see. Ten billion divided by 100 would be $100,000,000 per hospital or university. Wow. Or it could be $50 million to each university AND hospital. Still Wow! That would be useful. Or $10,000 to 1000 preschools across the country for maintenance, materials… It would help. I’d like a $10,000 grant. Nope we better give it to Jeff so he can stand by with plans that experts say are not very good.

Back when this movie was made (1932), you had to have a beard to be a professor. Mandatory. Makes your head look bigger. And since there were few women professors, it was no problem. Very handy. They all could have their afternoon snacks two hours after they’d had it at lunch. Can you imagine trying to kiss something like that? Natural form of birth control. Maybe this was Santa Claus College. All White, of course. I wonder if this is what the Nicene Council really looked like with Constantine on the table belting out gospel tunes? I suspect that this is how pretty much every “important” meeting in the Anglo and European world looked like for a long time. Glad Groucho had fun with it. But little did we know that this would be the beginning of the end of American greatness… until we make it “great” again. It may take violently ending democracy but by god we’ll make it great again! That will put an end of all this making fun of authority and bad stuff. NO MORE MARXISM!

There around about 680 billionaires in the USA. While many folks were losing their jobs and getting hammered by the pandemic, this group collectively made over $1 TRILLION dollars last year. A trillion is a thousand billions. That’s a million millions. Got it. A billion is a thousand millions. A million is a thousand thousands. That is more wealth than the lower half, about 170,000,000 Americans combined. Now let me let that sink in. That’s one trillion dollars in the last 12 months to fewer than 700 people. If you spread that around it could be almost $800,000 for every household in America. Not every person but every household. All the wealth they have accumulated over lifetimes, about 700 people made in the last twelve months. Bezos makes about $205,500,000 per day. That’s $8.5 million per HOUR! Got it? So, he has plenty of money to convince the poor workers in his warehouses to not unionize because they might ask for a couple extra bucks per hour. Poor Jeff just can’t afford to give them raises.

Minimum wage in the US is still, at this writing, $7.25 an hour. But millions work in food and service jobs that don’t even pay that. No pensions. No healthcare. Local places beg Walmart to put stores into their communities for the jobs. Then they discover that Walmart pays so low that the workers qualify for welfare hurting the local economy. How do you get big box stores and other employers to move into your town? Bribe them with zero taxes for years and even build infrastructure for them like sewage, roads, additional fire and police… It’s not a good deal. I say horse feathers!

How much is $7.25? $7.25 X 8 = $58 per day X 5 = $290 per week X 4 = $1,160 per month X 12 = $13,920 per year. Jeff Bezos just bought a yacht costing $400,000,000. Actually, he bought two. One for about $200,000,000 to follow and service the big one that cost an estimated $400,000,000. It will cost him about $100 million per year just to keep the little navy fueled up and maintained. So, he bought $600 million dollars worth of yacht in early 2021 (during the pandemic). Billions literally have no access to any vaccine. Hospitals around the world are collapsing but Jeff’s got new fun projects.

But Jeff. My god! You’re so irresponsible. That’s a lot of money. You’re going to go bankrupt! To hell with the poor. Save yourself man. Relax. Never fear. Six hundred million dollars is only 3 percent of his total wealth. He’ll make it up in a couple of days. No biggy. He will literally make more than enough over the three-day Labor Day weekend to pay for both boats. Bought and paid for. Done and done. Jeff kicks back, “all mine.” No payments. No sweat.

If you work for minimum wage for him, you may be “glad just to have a job” – to be exploited by such a great guy who might not give you time to go to the toilet. But don’t be a sourpuss. Be like Dr. Pangloss… optimistic, happy. This is the best of all possible worlds. You can buy the yacht too. Just work hard and save up as John Calvin would advise. Okay, so let’s get to work and figure it out. To buy his boats it will take you 600,000,000 ÷ 13,920. That means if you save every penny he “gives” you (spend nothing on food, shelter, healthcare…) and pay no taxes at stores or on income, you can buy his boat after working 43,103.5 years. But hey let’s say Jeff is really generous. So much so that his employees in Alabama voted to not unionize. Why? Cause Jeff can’t afford to pay more and he’s already so generous. He needs that $10 billion bail out for Blue Origin, or his yachts will sink.

But let’s say Jeff goes wild. Sunstroke while lounging on the deck and decides against all good reason to triple the salaries of his workers in the warehouses. Crazy, but he’s such a saint. It could happen and he triples the pay from $7.25 to $21.75. He’ll pay you what he used to pay three people. Wow. So now how long will it take you to buy his boat? Well hot damn. Only 14,367.8 years. Alright, alright, alright (as they say in Texas). Now we’re moving into the upper classes. We don’t want to bite the hand that feeds us. No siree. That’s just his boat. If you want to catch up to Jeff’s wealth at about $190,000,000,000 and growing super, as in unbelievably fast (which he accumulated in less than 40 years), at $7.25 an hour, you’ll have to save every penny for a little less than 13.6 million years. That means, you would have had to start saving about 13,350,000 years before our species, Homo Sapiens existed. They’ve been around for only about 300,000 years. That means your ancestor had to start making minimum wage and saving like a fiend.

Which ancestor? Well, it would not be a human as you know humans. Going back over 13 million years ago, would put us back around the time that the Homininae branched off from the Ponginae (Pongo) or “Asian hominids” (orangutan). Humans (Homo) did not speciate or branch off from the chimps (Pan) until only about 5.5 million years ago. So, imagine animals of the Hominidae family but predating chimps, gorillas, orangutans, and humans working for Jeff. They would be the common ancestor of both humans and other great apes. That is probably the Pierolapithecus catalaunicus. Dr. Salvador Moyà-Solà of the Miquel Crusafont Institute of Paleontology in Barcelona discovered the fossil remains near Barcelona. Here’s a portrait of our great, great… grandmother who worked in one of the earliest Amazon warehouses. I’m so proud. We all should be. And here’s a picture of our great, great… grand uncle. He was fired after screaming “strike.” Troublemaker.

Now imagine, if you can, that the 600+ billionaires in the USA started to pay their workers much better. The economy would rip. And, since poor folks can’t afford to hoard money or cars or yachts, they would spend it. Meaning it would all end up back in the billionaires’ bank accounts and stocks. It’s called trickle up economics which is how things actually work. Bush Sr. was correct to call Reaganomics “voodoo crap economics.” So, the billionaires’ income would boom too but in the process everyone, the whole country would develop and improve. We could put more into technologies that pollute less, better healthcare, better housing, education… a Renaissance. But nope. Hoarders hoard. It is a psychological illness. Our big problem? Narcissistic hoarders are in control. It has to do with their sphincters. They fear and keep their buttholes tight to retain their shit. They didn’t develop past the “anal stage” in the second year of early childhood. Really. I’m not kidding. That’s our problem. This is our reality.

So, I say to Jeff, keep your boats. It makes jobs for yacht makers in the Netherlands. But also raise the wages of your workers. They’ll buy more stuff using… Amazon. You’ll be okay. Don’t be afraid. Nobody will take all your shit.

It wasn’t like this very long ago. And we humans evolved social relationships that predominated all over the world with human-scale communities for our entire history up until just yesterday in historical terms. Colonialism and empires didn’t exist until about 2,500 years ago. That’s about when the wall, as a thing, was invented, followed soon by the division of labor leading to professional standing killers (armies) to keep others out of “our” food. Let them starve. The “urban revolution,” as defined by Tertius Chanlder in his famous Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth, George Modelski, M. E. Smith, Lewis Mumford, and others, started in the “Middle East” at sites such as Tell Brak, Eridu, Uruk and such. In comparison to hunting/gathering societies, I guess you can call these tiny hamlets “cities,” but they really don’t grow until we get to places like Byblos (the oldest city to the Sumerians), Jericho, Aleppo and such or even not until the rise of Rome and the complex settlements in Egypt, the Indus Valley and the big river towns in China. But, so what? People anatomically identical to you and me, Homo Sapien Sapien have roamed the Earth for at least 280,000 years. If you put the first settlement/urban center at 4500 BCE or 3000 BCE or 1500 BCE, we’re squabbling over micro differences on a very long ruler.

The point is that we changed and then changed again with industrial capitalism/colonialism/Social Darwinism leading to the explosion in modern globalized megacities we have today, what experts call “urban agglomerations,” with the sociology, psychology, and economics of agglomeration. A new human condition never seen before the nineteenth century with but hints in Rome and a couple of other imperial centers. And that has changed everything again. Rome reached a population of 1 million in the 1st century BCE. Then it declined to just 20,000 during the Early Middle Ages. Baghdad was probably the largest city in the world almost from its founding in 762 AD until the mid-900s. Chang’an and Kaifeng probably surpassed 1 million. Things didn’t get much bigger until recently. In 1918 the largest city in the world was Imperial London with about 5 million. The NCY metro area reached 10 million, megacity status, in 1950.

A “megacity” is a city with at least 10,000,000 people. Since then, the least urbanized parts of the world have rushed to city life in the hopes for economic opportunity with a massive growth in slums and shanty-town conditions for billions. What are those “conditions?” Overcrowding, crime, lack of sanitation, malnutrition, lack of basic healthcare, urban “heat island effects,” water and air pollution, habitat fragmentation, food waste… In 1950 the population of Lagos Nigeria was 300,000. By 2020 it skyrocketed to 21 million!!! Here's Elaine at Grand Central Station, NYC, 2016.

In 1800 only 3 percent of humans lived in cities. By 2007 we witnessed, I witnessed in my lifetime, a turning point when more than half of all humans lived in cities. Urban planning was partially invented by one of my academic heroes Lewis Mumford. Edward T. Hall also wrote much about proxemics and urbanization. This is THE trend of our species and though the Covid 2021 pandemic slowed the trend a tiny bit, it roar onward with consequences we cannot fully fathom. We’re running an experiment on ourselves with no controlling authority, no Institutional Review Board. Ohoooo. If nothing else, we can say that life is endless experimentation. If you are conservative and don’t like risk, you crave certainty and stability, too bad for you. You can retreat into a bubble but too late. You were born. Close your eyes and hang on.

We are being driven, like cattle. Look how many are going into serious personal debt to finance their educations in the hope that it will make them more exploitable by the rich later. We are taught that “good,” “nice” people don’t complain, don’t presume to insist on being part of the decision-making. They get little rewards, popularity, maybe a huge reward – everlasting life in heaven for being docile! Surrender, submission is the great virtue. It assures stability.

It is stable and what is consistently reproduced are castes with most sacrificing themselves to pass on to the next generation the duty, the honor, the burden of sacrifice. Under such bizarre conditions, life’s purpose becomes a contradiction – to sacrifice. To die in the service of perpetuating sacrifice. The pyramids of death. So we reproduce hugely unfair systems and even willingly sacrifice to assure the continuance of inequality and castes of sacrifice because… we are deluded into thinking that we are somehow related to those with all the goodies. That we might even one day become one of them. That we are identical in some way. The human anthill. Assimilationists generally, and organizational communication is largely an ideological construct that seeks to improve the efficiency and viability of the anthill, of maintaining, and perpetuating the structure. Hail status quo. Sacrifice yourself and your children for it.

Don’t be so romantic. Listen to Sting’s song “Dead Man’s Boots” (2013) on the album The Last Ship. I am sentimental but not stupid. Hopefully… smarter than an ant. Stability is no virtue if it means perpetuating injustice or as a tautology… pure conservatism meaning we fight to maintain stability for the sake of stability. No evolution. No learning. No meaning. That is what I call skipping to the End. Fear of change and greed fueled by the false belief that you too can be Oprah Winfrey or Bill Gates, will imprison your grandchildren. As I discuss later, the old social Darwinism that was beaten back during World War II with some success, has more recently been fused with romantic “Orientalism” to sell the brutality of injustice on a massive scale. Confucian regimentation combined with the notion of self-erasure (“beat-Zen”) is the new rhetoric. What can be more submissive than a person with “no mind?” The message of mysticism? Be passive. Be flexible. Be a dumb terminal or an easily reprogrammable robot. Join the cult. It’s horrible. Look at Joan Collins the movie star is… one of… THEM.

But… maybe, a global awareness might be emerging that will “bend the arc of history toward justice.” Maybe. If we wake up and engage and do the bending. If we don’t, it won’t happen. Instead we will assure that it does not happen. We are all artists even if we don’t know it. The picture depends on us. The potential is always there. That’s why oligarchs fear and hate the “uppity” poor and democracy.

Without a final solution, a final goal, we cannot reckon progress and regress. The great myth of the Age of Ideology… that we are going somewhere. We’re not. Evolution has no final goal. Just take it easy. We’re in this together. I think the US and China can actually work together because they both tend toward practicality. The USA has done things not to be proud of too. Trail of Tears. Slavery. Domestic gun violence. Abu Ghraib. Maybe I’m being ironically unrealistic. Marvin was right. What the hell is going on? First establish the truth as best you can. These days, there are entire industries trying to destroy truth. That has to be vigorously resisted. We can’t give up on the great philosophical mission even if it is unattainable in totality. We are mortal. But that admission doesn’t mean we just submit to what is popular just to “get along.” So, Marvin, we have to establish what’s going on and then let it go and move beyond. Miles got it. “So what.” Yeh. We know. But we are changing. We are not going to be trapped by our parents’ mistakes. Repeating mistakes is not a solution. But “so what” (it’s a slow song… Coaltrane rolls just fast enough to cover the Miles – just right). Take Five. Jamming means making room for each other so each of us can play our notes. Complement the Other. Relax. Enjoy Others. Don’t try to remake them in your image. People who try are happiest living alone. That’s probably best for everyone. That’s absolute god talk. Stop pushing. Time only goes so fast. You won’t be late for your funeral. Usually, it is only those who are crazy enough to think they can change the system, who are the ones who actually do.

Silent Karaoke and Dragon Holes

As the inventor of the advertising jingle, Tony Schwartz says in the Responsive Chord, advertisers don’t have time to teach us anything. They convert us to do the labor for them. We sell to ourselves. Their magic is to conjure, to use the contents of our minds to persuade us to purchase. For many products the packaging costs as much or more than the contents. They create “choice.” And in “choosing” we feel empowered as they take their profit from us. Incantatory communication to move product off of shelves into our shopping carts. The levitation is performed by us. Advertisers take bits of already popular sayings and songs, colors, images, put them adjacent to products like cigarettes and laundry detergent and then let our minds do the work of forming associations. Nonsense becomes sense. Magic!

Magical incantation and transformation saturate our world. Not magic like defying the laws of nature. Not that poppycock. But magic as in rhetoric that convinces you to do one thing and not another, and machines, might, mechanisms, making, manufacturing the future. The real magic is how to get physical beings – people – to move. Ideas. Will makes physical beings move. Emotional “pathetic” appeals tend to work best. Fear, nostalgia, anger, want… We physically go, buy, and carry stuff home. Trillions of dollars’ worth of stuff every year. Much of it not necessary. It is simply, as Kierkegaard said, the world as will. Some changes to the world are sillier than others. Look at some of the products that come out of Japan like this “silent karaoke” machine. Landfill. Some other products are devastating like nukes. Silent Karoke and little umbrellas for your shoes may be dumb but not hideously, catastrophically destructive. Japanese do not find that latter product (atomic bombs) to be funny at all. Neither do I. Me? I grew up in the shadow of the Cold War and “atomic annihilation.” My entire life, indeed, everyone on Earth since 1947, has been charted by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists by their “Doomsday Clock.” It began ticking in 1947 and was set at 7 minutes to midnight. Since then, it has fluctuated, sometimes closer, sometimes farther from midnight. Godzilla, “king of all monsters,” is what happens when you combine dragons with nukes.

Here’s a modern building on Repulse Bay, Hong Kong. It has a hole built into it. Many modern buildings in Hong Kong do. Why? They are called “dragon holes.” They allow the “auspicious” creatures access to the sea and to bring good luck to the citizens of the city and tenants of the buildings. Really. No joke. Numerology, not just on clock “faces,” but everywhere is rampant. We see cops in the US using their shield numbers on lotteries. People in China have been known to pay the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of US dollars to get an auspicious number on their auto license plate. Statistics are often used as magic incantations. An example: the term 'IQ' was coined in 1912 by the psychologist William Stern in relation to the German term Intelligenzquotient. A kid feels one way. Then she takes an IQ test or college entrance exam. After the results, the kid and her parents, teachers, siblings, neighbors… feel another way. Powerful magic. Identity altering. The more seriously you take such numbers as predicative of the future, even as things are developing, the more you are engaged in the process of self-fulfilling prophecy. Binet got it. He understood what was happening with his little test. But organizations always looking for justifications didn’t listen. In my case, as you will read, if you do, later, I was lucky. My teachers realized I didn’t give a damn about the Iowa test and so they realized that the results were meaningless. I randomly filled it in as fast as I could so I could go play ASAP. I was done with a two-hour test in about 10 minutes. They told me it “didn’t matter.” I believed them. Seemed logical. But then, I was innocent and naïve about power structures. They realized that my test score was useless. But they thought they learned something else about me, which might have been true. I wasn’t like the other kids. They had to keep their eyes on me.

In my generation, assigning a number to each child was a magical, naming, “scientifical” thing to do. I talk more about my number later. Bottom line. No sense wasting resources on dumb kids. Tracking kids through school became the operationalization, the application of organizational logic to kids. Initially, Alfred Binet, the inventor of the IQ test believed that intelligence could be measured and that it should correlate with life success as defined during the height of European colonial domination. He later found that there was no correlation and he concluded that he didn’t know what, if anything, the instrument was measuring and realized that it was being misused to track kids. But as is the case with so much in life, people grabbed the “science” that supported their political agenda and reified it. Reification (“concretism”) is essentially idolic communication – magic incantation. We measure what really matters to our subjective interests. The more personal, the more sensitive the measure… like salaries. If it doesn’t matter, we don’t bother. Like, how many lightbulbs in my office building are not burned out? That can be empirically verified but no one bothers. It certainly wouldn’t count as a dissertation topic.

What’s Your EMK?

If you are big enough big shot, you get a unit of measure named after you. Hertz, Ampere, Ohm, Watt… Planck’s constant… The Eric Mark Kramer. “How many EMKs is it?” Sounds good. It can’t just be the Kramer though because there are too many Kramer’s running around. There’s already a Kramers-Kronig Relationship in electrochemistry – a measure of impedance. Kramers is a little too close to Kramer. Also, it sounds like what it measures is impotence. Ah. Not my preference. Impedance. I can stonewall that. But to avoid confusion, I think my unit has to be named the Eric Mark Kramer (EMKs). I want all the credit. Now, what would it be a unit of measurement for? Maybe by the end, you’ll figure it out. I’m thinking… greatness, immensity, preeminence (how much something or someone stands out), excellence… Something humble but universal at the same time, like length or mass. Everyone and everything could be subject to it (its objectifying force of naming -- identifying). “Wow, it is 15.243 EMKs” (so long as we can determine what the definition of is, is). Or, “it’s only 3.98432 EMKs… disappointing.” Authoritative. Valid. Precise. Definitive… Convictive. Like IQ, it could become very poignant even intimate. Something to be bragged about or concealed. It could become the very currency of pride and/or shame. Really powerful. A world famous club/“society” like Mensa International would no doubt arise to recognize those with the largest EMKs.

After Social Darwinists grabbed Binet’s intelligence test, they stopped listening to him. He later had doubts about the test, doubts that were inconvenient for the eugenicists. Too bad. He wondered, was he measuring reality or creating a reality? He understood numbers. Numbers can make us numb. Assigning a number, a “value,” to a kid’s abilities was horribly misleading. It’s not just a label for now. It alters expectations. Closes future paths. The power of naming extends through time. We’re not talking about using a sledgehammer on a delicate thing that is still developing. Rather more like dropping the Acme anvil from 30,000 feet on a kid. And Binet’s instrument and its many variants along with time reckoning is one of the most universal applications of measurement in our world. It spread like wildfire along the channels of imperial colonialism changing identities by the millions. The legacy continues. A guy I talk about more later, Francis Galton, the inventor of eugenics, saw intelligence as hereditary and predicative of traits such as muscle grip, head size, and wealth attainment. It “follows” that the people with the most money must be the smartest. The cultural anthropologist Jules Henry called this “pecuniary truth.” What’s real is what sells. Intellect is identical with wealth. That’s magic identity. You stick the pins in the voodoo doll and the person a thousand miles away is in pain. Identical. Myths are then used to explain the magic. Businessman-as-hero myths were deployed by the rich during the Robber Baron days. It worked for Trump, especially among Evangelicals. Go figure. Prosperity theology has proved that Christ must have actually been very rich but hid it. The drab clothes, sandals… all a façade. An act to get poor people to like him. With reductionism, nothing you perceive is real. The colors you see, the flavors you taste, the sounds you hear are actually, REALLY, just waves and particles. Sensational empiricism is reduced out of existence. Stuff you can’t see and hear like atoms and electromagnetic waves are what are really real. What you “think” you see and hear are just “epiphenomena.”

So, Christ was a fake. Money is reality and, like atoms, we often don’t see much of it, but it’s “out there” ala the X-files claim. True story: at the various Ecumenical Councils starting with Nicaea (325) about 300 men decided the dates of Christian holidays (Easter, Christmas -- Christ was not born on the Winter Solstice Saturnalia in December), the ecumenical Nicaean Creed, and they finalized previous machinations about what would be in the Bible and what would be left out. Machination. Machine. Make. Might. All derive from the early Persian mag-h meaning magic – power to alter, make reality. The altar is where magical transformation, alteration happens. It is where offerings, sacrifices, sanctification, and other reality altering processes occur. The altar as an instrument of authority and power greatly predates Christianity. Often its power derives from magic relics with supernatural powers incorporated into its construction. Actual bits of actual saints (bones, teeth, shreds of clothing) or pieces of the actual crucifixion cross (for Christians). Magic is identity. Such bits are not symbolic. They are idolic… identical actual pieces of the supernatural person or object. They are the source of the altar’s power.

People write theories of identity. What is identity? It is magic. It is what is you, what you care about, what animates you. Who you are. Your kids. You care about them. They are an extension of you. Intense emotions involve your kids. Not so much for the kids next door. Your “attachment” to your kids is one-to-one identical. Little dissociation. It is not symbolic. A symbol is something that stands in for something not present. Your kids are not symbols. They are. True, if they die you do not. But you may feel as if you have. Some things are worse than death. If you lose the magic amulet, the bits of saint or cross, it is irreplaceable. You’ve lost something powerful, precious, world-altering. You are rich or poor. For many, money is identity. If they lose their fortunes, they jump off buildings. IQ is very magical too. People care about it. They think it is who they are and what they are capable of. It is indicative, expressive, evocative, symptomatic, even so powerful through identity as to be “predicative.” Powerful stuff. Very emotional. If you lose a lamp on the altar. Okay. We’ll get another. But if you lose the Holy relic… People get passionate about stuff. They’ll even go to war over it. Some things are irreplaceable. You are irreplaceable to yourself. Some things you have to do. Nobody else can do it.

Constantine’s councils were making the religion, including the making of the sacred creed. The making of the Bible. You do know that the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant Bibles are all different, right? Christology was also born. There was a long and serious debate about whether Christ carried a money purse – part of the Arian controversy. In a sense, they were deciding the characteristics of the Christ. Wow. Heady stuff. Making gods. Making the Word. Making the religion. Majestic Might. They made a culture. Debates. Sometimes very heated. Arius was out! Sectarian schisms, violence, anger… Grim faces. Anyway, it was important to determine the relationship between Christ and money. Let Ceasar have his. Sure. “Let him.” Check out the picture below of the Nicene Counsel. I think the guy down in the lower right of the picture is trying to say something. “Psst. Emperor Constantine [the Republic with its great Senators such as Cicero and courts was long gone] has already taken all the money.” Tyranny reigned.

The First Smile in History

Here’s one of the first smiles depicted in human art around 530 BCE. It is an example of the “Archaic Smile.” A few examples exist from the Archaic Period (600-480 BCE) from the Mediterranean (Etruscan, Greek, Phoenician, Mycenean…). More from classical times. Then nothing. No one smiled for over a thousand years I guess. Then in around 1470 Antonello da Messina painted a little 10x8 inch (27x20.6 cm) picture on wood called “Portrait of a Young Man.” And there it is, reborn. A smile. Humor. The light heart. Light in weight and luminous, like a smile. I talk later about Anubis, the Egyptian god who weighed the hearts of the dead on a scale against a feather. Too heavy and you can’t move on. The Modern Western Individual emerged with a smile. Modernity, the three-dimensional perspectival world, has existed twice; in the classical world and again, after a thousand years of grimness, with its rebirth around 1250 ADE. During the interim no laughing, no three-dimensional free-standing sculpture, no nudes, no depth painting, no vaulting space in architecture, basically no maps… not much fun. Not much hope either. Dreary gloom. With the metaphysical swing away from classical humanism toward transcendental idealism the cosmos shifted dramatically. It became a place of grubby humans trapped in horridly seductive yet aging, putrefying flesh under the all-seeing surveillance of eternal divine perfection and judgment. There was nothing much in-between. The divine gaze made of us all a grand shame, naked and fallen. No place to hide. The power-distance was absolutely enormous. So no jesting allowed.

Aside: Here’s the revered football coach of my high school, Marion, Pleasant. Don F. Kay. He liked me. I asked Mr. Kay if I could play football and run cross-country. I remember the conversation. For a second he looked astonished. I don’t think anyone, in all his years, had proposed such an arrangement. I told him since football was at night and only once a week I could do it. Then he laughed. “No.” Period. I was so naïve. I was a freshman. Fourteen years old. Stupid. I actually tried to argue. He shut that idea down immediately. In hindsight I’m glad he did. First, I didn’t bash my brain for no good reason. I played in junior high for two years. When you’re 5’6” and 130 pounds, physics tends to determine some things. But after two years, I found it to be boring. Still I was willing to keep going. In my high school everyone rushed to join the football team because they were winning state championships but of course only the seniors and a handful of juniors actually played. That was no fun to me, and the practices were boring. I’d go to the games and have a blast while my friends sat on a bench for two hours. Eighty kids and four or five coaches. When I was on the team, we’d break up into groups and stand around watching drills, two at a time, maybe four. The “wind-sprints” were no problem for me. In fact, I learned, without understanding any of the chemistry, that running feels good. It releases endorphins and as I got into shape, running became a pleasure, an escape.

Running? I was not built for running but I had a fantastic young coach, Mr. Ken Click, who was wise beyond his years. He had no illusions about school sports. To him, grades mattered. Academics came first and many on the cross-country team were really good students. Only a couple of us were actually outstanding runners – like state-level competitors. Most of us did it for fun. I don’t think we realized how healthy it was, mentally and physically. In the early 1970’s jogging was not yet a craze. Nike didn’t even advertise much until my junior year of high school. People ran in what we today would consider clodhopper tennis shoes. Real running shoes (other than spikes for tracks -- and my high school track was a cinder track), were just starting to appear among regular people.

I used cross-country to get into shape for wrestling and it was great. I was as trim as could be by wrestling season while many of the football players who rode the bench were actually outta shape and overweight. Didn’t they lift weights? Maybe at home. So did I. But we had no weights in my high school until my sophomore year. We finally got one weight machine with like six stations. It was a primitive one. I remember the positioning relative to the handles was not good. Even the arc of the bench press was funky. They were just becoming common contraptions. A kid’s rich dad bought it for the school. With eighty kids, the football players hardly touched it, as individuals. And of course, working out is as personal and individual as it gets. As I tell my students, I can’t learn for you, just like I can’t go to the gym and make muscles for you. You gotta do it. When the football team cleared out and our time came to use the machine, we, ten or so cross-country guys, would swarm the machine and actually rotate and lift more than the football players.

So cross-country, you hit the gym door and take off running. Free! No standing around listening to plays being explained. No sitting on the floor watching a single little black and white TV with a first-generation video tape running. You could hardly see what the hell was going on. It took the football guys half an hour to just get dressed and “tape up.” The cross-country team would be out on the road within ten minutes. Kerouac got it. Wrestling also was immediate gratification. You dress and hit the mat. Grab someone and start wrestling until the coach comes out and everyone is ready to begin formal exercises. Pair up and fight. Some sitting around for instruction but not too much.

I liked playing. Not waiting. My problem. Sports for me had to be fun. Otherwise, what was the point? I had no problem with my masculinity. But I did have another issue. As I say later, I definitely had ADHD before it had a name and “treatments.” The “H” is important in my case. I was hyperactive. I could not sit still. I was easily bored out of my mind. It made some things hard. Running and playing; cross-country, track, wrestling, were godsends. So, yes, some guys in my class can say they were on a state championship football team. But they contributed nothing to those teams. By my junior year, the winning streak was ended. Basketball also dropped off. Same kids were winning the championships so once they left… By my senior year, they were losing pretty badly. All the big brothers were gone. Meanwhile, I still enjoy running. I’ve been doing it my entire life on several continents. Nothing better than getting out on the open road and breaking a sweat.

In a bigger school maybe one or two would have made varsity teams. Maybe one or two of the cheerleaders would have made the squad. The thing about a small school is that almost no one is invisible. That’s good. It builds confidence. But it can also lead to a hollow arrogance that comes back to bite kids after they leave the nest and join the big world. “Out there,” they ain’t so special. That’s an “adjustment.” Still, with some realism tossed in, which my parents gave me in abundance, I’d recommend the small school over the giant anthill. You just gotta keep proportion in mind. Remember my dad was an old Marine Corp drill instructor. It took a lot to impress him. Small school winning streaks… fun but not a big deal. He’d chortle at the community obsession with high school sports. When I said I was going to run cross country instead of play football, my parents didn’t notice. Whatever. My parents didn’t care much about my athletics. To them it was all about college and beyond.

“Mr. Kay” had known me from little league all the way through high school. I remember once an opposing coach tried to call balking on me when I was pitching. I was killing it. I had a crazy windup. I faced third base, would windup, pause then turn and throw sidearm. I was good. Anyway, Kay was the umpire. He told the coach I was okay and to sit down. I thought that was great. After he saw me pitch in several games over a couple of years, he took a liking to me. He liked to make fun of my very orange hair. He got to know my dad who coached little league. That was a hoot and a lark. My little league coach just up and quit. The team was in chaos. The other parents drafted my dad to take over. He did, reluctantly but we actually ended up with a great season. That’s how Kay and my dad got to know each other. My dad walked into a situation not knowing all the rules and regulations and stuff. Mr. Kay gave him a rule book and helped him get batting helmets and such. Important since, back then, we played fast-pitch hardball. There was no “T-ball” or softball or anything else. Just baseball. And wild pitches did hit kids in the head. Believe me. I know.

I had been born “late.” My dad was older than all the other dads in my high school. Kay was older too. Maybe that mattered. Through the years they’d chat. It was a strange feeling. I was invisible when the old bulls got together. I was there… but utterly irrelevant. “Adult talk.” My father was the only father I ever saw talking with Mr. Kay. I’m sure others did but because I was not on the football team, my dad and him had a different relationship, different conversations. I think Mr. Kay got sick of talking about football with football parents sometimes. My dad and him would talk about other topics, including… the obsession with football. Mr. Kay understood there’s more to life than high school football. That was, to me, something of that generation who’d seen depression and war. Don’t get me wrong. Mr. Kay loved football, coaching, and winning championships. But I remember him telling my dad that the adoration was getting silly. He was uncomfortable with some of it. I don’t know if coaches these days still feel that way, have any such perspective.

Later in high school, I was in the locker room a lot (lettered in three sports every year for four years). That was a problem (“lettering” my freshman year) in one important way -- important to me at least. I got to order a letter jacket my freshman year. You had to have written permission from the coaches. Even if they could somehow get their hands on an unauthorized letter jacket, no one dared to wear a letter jacket they had not earned. It would be a scandal of mammoth proportions. Stolen valor! My letters came easier than others. Sorta. Still running all summer to get ready (we had to keep a log), running several miles a day and getting points in meets was not easy. But, by comparison, no freshman in my class lettered in football. Maybe one in basketball. A few more their sophomore years. Many waited until their senior year to finally letter and get a jacket. They didn’t get to play. That was a big reason I ran. I hated just sitting on a bench.

Of course, with letters as a freshman (as any classman), I had to swag them! But that meant that by the time I was a senior I’d outgrown the jacket, and it was getting a bit worn compared to my classmates’ jackets. Why didn’t I get a another one? Good question. I could have had my mom move the letters over. One, they’re expensive. My parents weren’t interested. Still they might have gone for it if I’d asked. But I knew the answer… buy another jacket for just one season? Nah. But honestly, and according to the understanding I have now, it was because of magic. The original letter jacket could not be replaced. If it were, that would somehow, in my mind at the time, diminish the authenticity of the “real jacket.” Sentiment sedimented. Strange. I know. But I kept the same jacket from 14-18 years of age. It got pretty tight by the end. Lucky my parents insisted I buy one too big to begin with. They knew I would grow. My freshman year it was… too big. Someone should write a paper on high school letter jackets (probably have). It’s a weird, wonderful, painful, magical piece of clothing. Very important to high school kids and maybe their parents too. Guys used to let their girlfriends wear them. Girls walking around with jackets way to big for them… so proud to have “a man,” a “letterman.” I know there is a sorta unwritten code that if the kid’s parents can’t afford the jacket, the money appears somehow… from donors, coaches… often very hush hush. No embarrassment allowed in this one little bit of American culture. I’m sure it happens but at least in my day, I never heard of a kid with a letter that didn’t get a jacket to put it on. These days, letters are given for other things like band, debate team, and other activities. I think that’s good. Such is life. Wonderful and silly. Important and trivial at the same time. You’d pass guys with different jackets at the mall… Hmmm. Rivals. Human beings are amazing critters.

Here’s a nice tournament we won my senior year. About 30 teams if I recall correctly from around central and northern Ohio. I had gone down to change after my last match in the semi-finals because my dad was going to take me home. I came up and they were taking pictures. So, I’m in my street cloths. He was very unhappy and wanted to leave ASAP. Anyway, I did pretty well in that tournament. I did score some points for the team for making the semi-finals. But I got robbed by the ref. I know, I know. You’re not supposed to say such things… But it was true. I thought my coach and father were going to get into it with him. It got hot for a minute or so. My match went to overtime. We were tied. It ended with me riding the other guy. The rolled up, taped towel came flying in from the timekeeper. It hit us and was laying on the mat. I let go and stood up. The ref gave the other guy one point for escape and the win. I couldn’t believe it. No one could. But the ref refused to listen. So, I got fourth out of about 30 guys. We should of gone for another OT. I think the ref was old and it was the end of a three-day tournament. We were into the last few matches. I think he just wanted to get out of there. Honestly. My dad was pretty pissed. The next Monday a couple of teachers who had been there consoled me. It was really obvious I got screwed. I might have lost anyway, but he was wrong and wouldn’t admit it. The other kid and his father came up to me right at the end after all the matches. They both looked apologetic. If I recall the father said something like “you’re a good wrester.” Something nice. I said something nice back. I’d beaten that kid in about 30 seconds in a dual meet a few weeks earlier. I’d also beaten the guy who won that tournament twice before. So, you get the drift. Despite scoring for being in the semis, it was a disappointing tournament for me. Later I wrestled the winner of the weight class at the end of the season and beat him. I never wrestled the kid in the OT match again. So, it all works out or so they say, but that’s a way of brushing things under the carpet.

It was a “learning moment.” I learned nothing about wrestling but something important about people and status. Me and the other kids were ostensibly the reason for the tournament, but we were also just pawns in a sense. We had no authority. We wrestlers were just the labor. I couldn’t even argue. I tried for a few seconds. I pointed at the towel laying right next to us. But it was a very rigid structure. Even my coach gave up after a few seconds. Everyone saw what happened. Literally dozens of people. Still, he would not admit he had been objectively wrong. I’d never seen anyone act like that before in a dual or tournament. I’m sure it has happened but I’d always seen people be flexible. Of course, we’ve all seen bad calls on TV. Like the infamous fifth down play between Colorado and Missouri in 1990. Innocent mistake. He didn’t see the towel come in and the timekeeper yell “time.” There were other matches going. It was really loud. No shame. But he would not change. It was really something. And, after a little arguing, all the adults let it stand. Hmmm.

I’ve been suspicious of such cultural constructs ever since. It seemed like they believed that if the ref relented, we’d be on a slippery slope to anarchy. I never bought the “slippery slope” argument. People always walk that out when they can’t defend something like the insane proliferation of guns all over the place. We regulate the speed, size, height, emissions… of cars but that has not led to prohibiting the use of cars. I don’t remember what the timekeeper said. My coach, Mr. Larry Holman, later pulled me aside and gave me “the talk” about how you get bad breaks sometimes and… not to quit until the ref says so. The season wasn’t over. You gotta let it go… Right. I was a senior. I knew that. I know he knew that. He was trying, in the coachly, manly way, to address the issue and comfort me. “Bad break. Move on. You’re good.” Still, I never made that mistake again. Because I had won other tournaments and had a strong record I could bounce. But what about a kid that might be struggling?

And the ref? What was his deal? In every match I’d been in for four years, up to that point, the refs would defer to the timekeeper if there was any confusion. Why not this time? There should be a mechanism for feedback and correction. Who knows? Maybe his grandkid was wrestling for another team, and he wanted them to win the tournament? Maybe he didn’t like the way I looked. Maybe he liked how the other kid looked. Maybe he was friends with the other kid’s coach? Maybe he’d been arguing with other coaches throughout the tournament over calls. Maybe he needed to use the bathroom right away. He did take off fast. Maybe the ref had something really bad happening in his life. Maybe he too was sick. I had a touch of the flu. Almost threw up a couple of times during the tournament. Maybe his wife was dying of cancer. What do I know? Very little. That’s perspectivism. We are limited beings. I learned that. And of course, we are all stubborn, irrational and unfair sometimes. Social science tries to explain and understand behavior. It’s very complicated. Too many variables and a lot we don’t know. In the Spring of my senior year of high school, when everything is both winding down and cranking up, with everyone getting excited about graduating, after all was done with high school wrestling, Mr. Holman bought this trophy for me out of his own pocket. He told me it was for four years of lettering. No ceremony. Just him and me. I’d been consistent and there from the very beginning. He also knew that I started at 126, went up in weight class my sophomore year. Went up again my junior year. Then to help make the teach as strong as possible, I dropped back to 126 my senior year. That year, I skipped lunches. No sitting at the jocks table. I spent lunchtime over in the art room with Mrs. George. She helped me make a bar for my dad’s basement. She was pretty impressed with my discipline. She started to come to our matches, and I believe she even ended up sponsoring a tournament years later. Not all good. I got the flu. After the season I shot up to about 155-160 pounds. I could eat again. Hallelujah! While most boys my age had been dreaming of girls, I’d been dreaming of hamburgers and pizzas. It was tough. It had been hard on the whole family, me dropping so much weight. I was “grumpy” that whole season. I’d been a member of the very first wrestling team at my high school. Mr. Holman had to fight to get the team. Some didn’t want it. At first, we didn’t have a mat. We literally took the wall pads down from under the basketball goals, laid them on the floor, taped them together and wrestled on those. Then we’d hang them back up after practice. It was a big deal when we got a real mat. Let me tell you, knees and elbows find the separations between the pads.

I learned something that day. My face in the picture was not happy. I should have had first but I lost fair and square to that kid earlier in the tournament. I was sick and not full strength. Well. That’s life. You learn to roll with the punches. The trophy was really nice. It was a replica of a replica. The one in the Uffizi in Florence is a Roman copy of a lost Greek statue. It is called The Wrestlers or “The Pancrastinae”). We brought it back to the high school all excited. Our principle, Mr. Midlam, decided it was too risqué to exhibit… like, out in the open… So he “exhibited” it in the office for a short time. Then… I don’t know where it went. Maybe in the far back corner of the school’s trophy case. Too bad. It was one of the nicest trophies ever won by a Spartan team. Really classy and unique. I learned something else again about adults. Don’t respect people because of their position or age. Respect them for what they do.

After I quit wrestling, I decided to give rugby a try. I could eat!!! The Phase I was the bar that sponsored us. It was the Rugby bar in Athens, Ohio. I’m not in this picture. We won the Mid-American Conference Championship my sophomore year. I did scoop and score in one of the tournament games. When really big guys are chasing you and you have no helmet or pads, you run like hell. It was quite a party. There were about 25 of us on the team. After that I quit. I saw way too many friends need to go for knee surgery. It was just for fun for me. I have been knocked out or close only twice in my life. Once when the forks of a dirt bike broke from the frame, and I went head-first into the dirt. That one really hurt… for a few days. One of the race officials picked me up. I was not out, but close. The other time was in this tournament. I was the last guy to try to stop a big dude from Ohio State. I did tackle him, but he fell across the goal line and scored. I remember I got up but didn’t know which way to run. I think I caught his knee into my head. I had to go for the legs to have a chance of stopping him. That one hurt too but… we won the championship! Good medicine. I played winger in the backfield. First year on the “B” squad (I was literally still learning the rules). The year we won I played on the “A” Squad. In rugby you play “both sides” of the ball. It is much faster and more fluid than American football. And everyone can run, kick while on the run, and lateral pass while on the run down the field to another to score. Maybe I shoulda played football in high school? Nah… We had a couple of guys who made the US national rugby team and one of our best had played for the Malaysian National Team. That guy could kick points with either leg from 50-60 yards out. He told me he played with us just to stay active. He was big. About 6’3” and over 220 pounds. We had some good players and good athletes, but he knew what he was doing and would just shake his head at us at practice sometimes. Most, like me, had never played before coming to college. My freshman year two of our top players convinced him (can’t remember his name), to kick an American football one day. Rocky and Cat Daddy (the only names I knew them by) brought a US football to practice. The big Malaysian fellow took it in his hands, turned it around with curiosity. Even to me it did seemed puny after playing with a rugby ball. He flipped it around. Finally, they convinced him to try some American-style field goals after practice. We all gathered to watch. He was hitting with either leg from 50+ yards. They then begged him to kick for a Cleveland Browns scout. He refused. He was a grad student in chemistry (our coach was a chemistry prof – this was old school athletics) from England. He sneered at the idea too. Dr. Peter Griffiths had his B.A. and D. Phil. from Oxford. He would just yell “bloody this,” and “bloody that,” at us all practice. Anyway, the kicker kept saying no, he would not kick for the NFL scout. He said that he was a scientist and scholar, not an athlete. They tried so hard to get him to agree. He was a going to be a Ph.D. in chemistry. That was his goal. Not American football. But the money!!! He didn’t care. I think he came from a rich family. Anyway, for him, our little team was just exercise. But he helped us win a MAC Championship, 1976. My sophomore year of college.

Now, back to Mr. Kay. Because I was in the locker room every day for four years (all seasons), and because he knew me and my parents since I was 8 or so and outside the purview of his football coaching, I’d chat with him in his office. He was my coach for track. He ran the gym classes, so he saw me there too. I held several records for my school in gym. Stuff like number of swinging dips, standing broad jump… He knew I was competitive as hell and he liked it. He seemed to be perfectly okay that I didn’t choose to play football. I once asked him how he could have 4 consecutive undefeated football seasons… the longest winning streak in the country. The streak ran from my seventh grade until my sophomore year in high school. He said, “Eighteen-year-olds. We were lucky to have back-to-back-to-back classes of outstanding seniors. Didn’t have to play underclassmen. When kids are playing, being 18 makes a big difference over being 16 or 17.” That’s a humble answer. It wasn’t his coaching. It was the luck of having plenty of good seniors, guys shaving playing against peach fuzz. We’d talk like that. My senior year… not so good. We ran out of talent. It seemed like all the “big brothers” really were bigger… in fact. He was a great guy. Mr. Kay had played for Ohio State way back when. The other coaches, his younger assistants (now I realize what, and how that difference in age meant something too) had been working at the YMCA (literally) and moved around some. Not bad guys. But Kay was the football player and everyone knew it. He’d been at Marion Pleasant High School forever. He retired from there. A fantastic coach. He looked like Lombardi, don’t ya think? Or maybe all men looked like that back then. They did in my hometown at least.

Don’t be average. Be an exception. We still see the subjective, the limited, the contingent, the real as a shame. We strive to be “objective,” cleansed of personal taint. Formal. But don’t get confused. “Objectivity” is really just intersubjective agreement. And it too, the ideology, is a human invention filled with ambition for power and a rhetoric of “disinterest.” No one is more interested, more driven and committed, emotional even than those who attack the subject of their observations as needing to be subsumed into a mass number – the average. And then calling that more real than individual experience. Empiricism is all about direct, PERSONAL, experience. But that is not powerful. Generalization is the “mass effect.” Generalization, like General Foods, Standard Oil, General Motors, Standard Insurance, General Stores, is all about massification and homogenization. Militaries march with standards and generals. The GI, general issue soldier is a “private.” Expendable. A number with no depth or breadth. One-dimensional. Less than Marcuse’s Two-Dimensional man. Das Mann, mass man. Consumption and production are massified in the interest of accumulating power as fast as possible. Redundant. Functionally fit to replace all other anonymous beings. Do this task as on an assembly line. Don’t deviate. Don’t innovate. Just operate. Methodists. Follow the standard instructions. Stay in the rut.

The subject is thus subjected to, reduced to just the variables of interest, and otherwise simplified out of existence, or even more self-serving, of salvation. Let me “give you a job.” Let me help you while taking profit, credit, from your labors. I’m helping you by giving you strict guidance in Taylorian time and motion restrictions. It will be efficient. Power in the massified world of quick production is achieved by convincing others to come “on line,” to become ready, even eager tools and to “re-tool,” to be “flexible,” “adaptable,” to fit the master plan applied to them. Not to participate in the planning. Not to have a voice, but instead to just be a set of appendages controlled by another source, and willingly, gratefully. Surrendering planning for a job can be “practical.” I get it. But it is not what science and art should be. An assembly line of artists copying the same thing over and over… is not art. It is its opposite. The same for science. Being assigned a task just because it can be done quickly to “get done,” is not science. It is not discovery. It is not innovative.

This is the mentality of escapism. To just “get done,” means to escape… prison. Life, art, science, are just prisons to some who seek quiet repose. My suggestion. Don’t start, if the journey is not the goal but to end is the goal, then skip to the end. There will be no pain of growth. No doubt. No failed experiments. No challenges. No problems to figure out. Just head straight for the couch and veg out. Take a novel and skip to the last page. All those words and pages between the beginning and the end are just so hard to read. And of course, don’t even think of WRITING a book. Too much effort. So don’t. If investing effort is just too much, then skip it. Don’t bother to pretend for some status or other, or god-forbid a job of teaching young people. Get another job. An assembly line job, I suggest. You don’t have to think. Just do as you are told. And if and when you quit an assembly line job, you don’t screw up everyone else because you are redundant and easily replaced. General issue. Don’t pretend that you want to be something unique, an artist, a scientist, and waste people's time and effort. They might believe you, believe in you, and then find that you are just a cog looking for a place to fit as soon as possible.

Of all the dissertations I have chaired (about 50), only two or three applied one of my theories. None repeated my dissertation in any way. I always had decent expertise in the topic areas – taught the material at the graduate level and typically publish some on it. That’s absolutely necessary at the doctoral level. I know some who think that expertise in the chair of a doctoral dissertation committee is not necessary. I find this astounding. They put structure (the confines) over content. Formality over substance. Organization first and last. Those are pure clerics. Not even scholastics. The Word is just to be taught, not written. They see organization; structure (the confinement) as more important than the content. Formalists. Medieval. Imagine having a doctoral chair who has no expertise or interest in your topic. You want to learn chemistry and you have a poetry professor as your chair. You won’t have any help from someone steeped in the literature. No experience. No expertise -- at the doctoral level!?? These are “life coaches” masquerading as academic experts. Standards? For them, just getting the degree is all that matters. Skill is not important. Just formality. But then, what the hell do you teach? What do you teach younger people to research? You don’t. I see people who teach methods like a cookbook with no understanding of why they are doing what they are doing or what the point is. One person I know teaches a “modified” super watered down version of a method. I and others have asked his students what exactly does “modified” mean. What was “modified?” How did you “modify” it? Why? How does “modifying” your method better serve the generation of data? They can’t tell us. But… in some journals, that’s okay. What are you supposed to do, go into the lab and pretend you are a chemist and start mixing chemicals together randomly until you blow up? What a waste of everything and everyone involved.

That would indicate that the subject is ill defined, perhaps not even academic at all. What I did on my summer vacation… Astounding. A doctoral degree chaired by someone with no background. Research? Just take this sorta popular theory I heard about and redo it and if it’s written in the proper style, you’ll get the degree. Wham bam done. Finished. Maybe you’ll get one pub out of it and you can quit. Memo-writing 101. Have a nice powerpoint for the defense. Professional communication without substance. Formalism.

Why? So you can finish FAST!! It’s not about the research. It’s about personalities and process. And escapism. And escaping the process itself. To end it ASAP. If you hate research just skip it. Take another degree. Not the Ph.D. I’ve learned that leopards have spots. Once a quitter always. If the going gets tough. Quit. But that’s not what the doctoral degree is supposed to be about. It IS the research and only the research. New knowledge. To dump that is to begin to slide into a clerical dark age. Who ya know, not what ya know counts. Fill in the forms and you’re done. That’s a recipe for killing a field. Sure, it is fast and easy and one more notch one the teacher’s vitae but a massive, missed opportunity of a lifetime to become a real scientist. No. That’s not easy but it is transformational and that takes time, effort, and yes… sometimes it is exhausting, frustrating, painful. Otherwise, you are not a scientist or artist. You are labor. Just a finisher. Not a thinker. Content poured into a form.

The dissertations I’ve chaired took time. Each was the result of months of brainstorming until the student arrived at what they wanted. There was never an “end” to the evolution even after the dissertation proposal. Still things can be added and removed. But, if the goal is not the research itself but to just get to the end of the process, if avoiding or shortening the process is the goal itself, that’s another thing entirely, a different focus, motivation, intent. Avoiding doing the doctoral degree while getting one makes no sense. It also does damage to the integrity of the degree.

The doctoral degree is literally, and by definition, a research degree. You must do some research to get it. You DO NOT have to do any teaching. Most TA to pay the bills and the teaching actually gets in the way of the dissertation. That levels out after you become a professor and you learn to integrate the two making good college-level teaching fully founded on the latest research. Doing the dissertation should not be seen as an obstacle. It is the end-in-itself. Of course, a good dissertation is not an “end-in-itself” entirely. It should be just the beginning… of research and more writing. It should start the pipeline that will carry you through tenure and promotion. Writers write. If you keep stopping… maybe this is not your calling. The research is the point of doing the doctoral degree. The production of publishable, original work. Developing a new theory is the growth of knowledge. If that is not your sincere goal, then get a professional degree. It’s faster and easier.

An MBA would be better suited to the ender’s game. It has a very wide range of applications. No doctoral comprehensive exams. No dissertation necessary. No publication demands. If you are fixated on getting a job, after the dissertation, to the extent that it even guides what you will research even before starting the dissertation, or if you are fixated on just getting a “teaching” position in a university, then don’t take the path of research. You’ll only suffer and so will those around you who believe. Don’t deceive everyone about your motives. Take the professional route. Learn the skills, memo writing, PowerPoint presentations, Adobe, spreadsheets, accounting, the law (to be a lawyer), medicine (to be a physician), practical skills and how to fill out the forms… Physicians and lawyers cannot be too creative. They should not improvise, or experiment on their clients and patients. Ph.D.’s literally experiment on undergrads for extra credit. IRB keeps it safe. They follow procedures and protocols. But a research scientist or artist is free. The freedom is scary and stressful, because nothing happens until you make it happen. You have to be a self-starter.

If you only want to teach lesson plans just get a bachelors. You’ll be a better teacher for undergrads if you go to a college of education and get a bachelors with a strictly pedagogical focus. For “a job,” whatever, you’d be best served if you skip straight to a job where the employer will help pay for your MBA or JD or some other applied skills – welding school or something that you will enjoy and continue to do. Too many get the Ph.D., publish one or two things with their dissertation advisor (because it was her ideas to begin and end with), and do little more the rest of their lives. By the time they are in mid-career they are either preachers in the classroom or uninspired folks waiting to retire. You see them around. They show up at conferences with a sort of “paper.” They spend more time worrying about what to wear than the contents of their excuse for getting funding to travel. Most of the publishing is done by only about 10 percent of faculty. Again, the people around them, the students, suffer while they occupy positions, often for long, long decades, younger researchers should have.

A university professorship is not “just a job.” You are, or should be aspiring to become a writer, artist, scientist. That’s more than just going over lesson plans and training kids. It is more than instruction. It is freedom and responsibility to make something new. It’s hard. I get it. But I can’t just give a degree out for anything less. A one-trick pony is just another horse to pull the plow. Data spoils. The ability to think, to theorize is demanding. If you don’t relish that challenge, go another route, for everyone’s sake. “Liking teaching,” being a “people person” and performer/preacher does not require generating new knowledge. It can be terrible if it involves repeating false cliches. “Lookn good” and being popular are not criteria for a Ph.D. Writing and research are requirements. When you teach methods at the doctoral level you should be exploring new ways to do research not just teach methods as a “tool.” When I was in sociology, our “tools” were taught as undergrads. At the doctoral level methods classes should involve the logic of design, the development of new processes, strategies based on understanding the metaphysics and ontological requirements involved. Thinking about how to improve reliability and validity. How to reveal new phenomena through statistical methods or instrumentation.

Science and art constantly experiment with their media and techniques because those are revelatory of new insights. In the physical sciences people get doctorates for figuring out how to detect and measure new things in new ways – improving and building instruments. But to do that, you have to know what you are studying enough to know that you need a telescope and not a microscope. One instrument does not fit all phenomena. It is the fundamentally reflective aspect of modifying perspective itself. Inventing new eyes and ears. It’s not easy. Some students don’t “like” to work so hard. Fine. Do something else -- other than a Ph.D.

If making choices, figuring things out, freedom is too much, then head for structure, shelter, confinement within strong walls of prefabricated design. Art and science is all about figuring things out, not just applying old means like a band aid. If you keep using the same old instrument, you will not be able to see more. Exploring without a map. Discovery. Achieving a new perspective. When the artist walks into their studio they are faced with a block of marble or an empty canvas. A writer starts with a stack of blank pages. The freedom can be overwhelming. Nothing happens unless the artist or writer makes it happen. If you can’t do that, find a supervisor, not a mentor. You need someone to tell you what and how to do, not challenge you to think. Don’t waste everyone’s time trying to find a shortcut to “the finish,” to death, because for those who make creativity their life, there is no end. Writing, thinking, innovating, testing is the purpose itself. It is a process, not a terminus. It is life itself. Research in industry is a mere tool. But research in academe is a lifestyle, a never-ending pursuit of knowledge. It is not just a means to an END.

If the goal is to “get done,” then you have already stopped living. Why start to begin with? Skip life, as that involves doing things, and go straight to the end. Quit life. It asks too much. What is the opposite of art/science, as both must be original? It is to simply rush to the end, for that is the most common thing we all eventually experience. It is to worship end-times, to long for them; for it all to be over and done with, to love death because the mosquito bites of existence, as Nietzsche put it, are too much to bear. If your goal is to “get done as fast as possible,” then don’t start. The problem of struggle, of building, of living is thus solved… avoided. Otherwise, you are just mucking around and wasting everyone’s time and effort, everyone who invests in you because they believe you are serious about being creative. You might get one thing done, with the help of someone else, and then collapse in exhaustion. Kaput. Draining resources others need. All the effort of training is wasted. The hope of progress, of a new path halts. The promise of potential dies. Wasted. Do yourself and everyone else a favor. Do something else. Don’t stay in academe and poison the future by teaching. Get an assembly line job. At least that way, you might be productive in making new products under the management and supervision of creative types. Even in the uniformity of the military, people encourage not just following orders/instructions but innovation. Even a hardhead like Patton often was a little too out-of-control for Eisenhower. Are you self-starting or waiting for someone to control your direction? Let others be creative and get out of the way.

But… if you really have a question you want an answer to or you believe you have a better explanation, a new understanding, then do not let anyone de-mind your hands -- hands that they will take control of for the sake of just getting done fast. You will die soon enough. Watch out for the saviors that would give you shelter/structure… a cage for your mind. Don’t let them tell you you need help. You can’t do it. Try not to let them convince you that you are “just a statistic.” That is fatalism. When you become predictable, you are defeated. If you can switch onto a line with little or no effort to join assembling something, even a dissertation, then you’ve joined a standardized process that is hardly science and not even very laudable in industry itself. A dissertation should be a work of art/science. Something new. Robots do most of the assembly these days. They can be reprogramed, re-tasked in short order. That’s not creativity. And all good science and art is original, unique, different. It is ingenious, not just testing an old theory with predictable results. But I understand. To be original, divergent takes guts. It is easy to just join the assembly line and produce one expected thing after another. Our libraries and journals are clogged with boring stuff. One-and-done. Hopefully it is at least original. Resting on laurels is recognized by all who watch, to be a sign of a has-been who is self-deluding, like the old movie star who thinks that their one great shot still matters. Check out the aptly named film Sunset Boulevard. As we say in academe, build a pipeline, not a puddle. If you are strong and can stand up, it will show in the fact that you keep the hits coming, building to new theory, new thoughts to think, new ideas to test. You are thinking and not just following someone else’s in-structions (another brick in the wall).

It is interesting that incensed means anger. Anger at life, mortality, being human, all too human. The medieval gloom was (and still is in places) filled with incense. A perfect world had ruined this one by contrast. But what if this world is perfect and it is our deformed, sheepish, conniving egos that mess things up. Not the confident and bounding egos but those of the low that would hide their ambitions in ambush of the honest and true. Don’t be naïve. You may not see the schemers coming until it is too late. That is their way. From the shadows they strike. Innocent honesty and sunlit progress can be cut down by the eclipse of those who would be preachers, ministers and ad-ministers.

As I note elsewhere, beware of the makers of hells and salvation. They may save you from that which would have made you stronger and more confident. That fear-filled and fear-inducing medieval mentality does not discover new worlds but instead hunkers down under the wings of vultures. After “sheltering” you, they will pick your bones. They will coopt whatever you made as your own, if in fact you made anything on your own. It will become theirs. You will become theirs. And you, being rendered dependent, will worship them for it. They give you relief from effort while stealing from you the ecstasy that would have been gained through struggle and accomplishment.

Lombardi is right. Churchill’s warning is prescient. The shortcut and those who would talk you into it, rob you of your finest hour. Satisfaction is in direct proportion to exertion. No one wants to see an NFL team pummel a junior high team to death. No NFL team would do that. It would be a total disgrace. The victory a complete loss of honor and integrity. The harder the competition, the sweeter the victory and even the nobility of a hard-fought defeat. Pride comes from not quitting even in a losing effort. That is the source of respect from not the weak but the strong. It is not “tough” or “courageous” to run away from tasks into the arms of those who would be messiahs. No satisfaction there because surrender is not accomplishment. It is self-evident. The more you can bear, the stronger you are. See what you can do. Arise.

A culture of salvation is a culture in need of salvation. After more than a millennium of self-hate and flagellation, the metaphysical pendulum swung back toward materialism and temporality, secular life dared to laugh again. Out loud. Into the sky. Universities reopened. The thick, malodorous atmosphere dissipated. Space as such reemerged, empty and bright. Even spectacles were invented to help us see clearly again. Distance manifested giving us room to roam and providing the seduction of exploration. We were once again bound to bound. We were destined with an uncertain destination. Inquiry and curiosity were restored. We looked “up.” Romanesque churches were squat. Oppressive to be in. Then something stirred and Europeans were moved to try to build space with vaults and walls of glass. Often the cathedrals collapsed during construction. But they didn’t give up. They innovated, obsessed with color, light, brilliance -- space. No domes were built after the great Roman Pantheon with its oculus (finished in 14 AD after forty years of construction). Then the Florentines built a cathedral that they could not finish.

They started in 1296 right when humanistic modernism was being reborn in the works of Dante, Petrarca (Anglicized Petrarch), Boccaccio, Salutati... After 1400 years with no domes built, the Florentines audaciously aspired again. They wanted a dome. They selected Neri di Fioravanti’s plan, but it was impossible to build. But the dream never died. For more than one hundred years they held mass in the rain and snow. Now having said this, religion has money. And it can inspire. Some of the greatest art has been commissioned by the institution and given artists opportunities to show us all new paths. That’s how culture works. As Hegel suggested. It often contains within itself its own contradiction. When resources are made available to artists, they will create something new. That’s what art does. Do not expect them to do the same old, same old. That’s neither art nor science. Progress is deviance. Religious leaders often find artists hard to contain.

Finally, a clockmaker, Filippo Brunelleschi solved the enormous problems to build the tallest and widest dome ever and explicitly, as Fioravanti had intended, without Medieval gothic buttresses. It could have no central support during construction (the masonry would have to be self-supporting), and the octagonal base was unevenly built. Brunelleschi built two domes; one inside another with stairs in between leading up to the peak. It was and remains an astounding accomplishment. The dome started 52 meters (171 feet) above the ground and extended up to 114.5 meters (376 feet in height), including the large lantern house at its peak. It spanned 44 meters (144 feet). It was topped by a lantern-house. The dome was built of masonry rather than concrete as the Pantheon 1400 years earlier had been. The formula for concrete had been lost during the “Dark Ages.” And besides, Brunelleschi’s dome was so big there was not enough timber in all of Tuscany to build a scaffolding and forms for concrete. Instead the Dome of Florence consists of over 4 million bricks weighing 37,000 tons. Each laid by hand. Because workmen feared the heights, Brunelleschi, the genius, stretched out over 300 feet above the floor to lay some of the bricks himself. The machines Brunelleschi invented to hoist the materials skyward were themselves revolutionary. The clockmaker applied his understanding of ratio gearing to the block-and-tackle pulley systems and cranes he invented. A young Leonardo Da Vinci working as a helper in Verrocchio’s studio that made the great bronze ball to set atop the lantern, would study and draw them. Here’s a link to a really fun National Geographic video of how the dome was built. Brunelleschi’s Dome. Now tell me you can’t write a dissertation. Come on. Can Do!

Okay. So, you pay for this amazing building and then you hire folks to paint the interior for you. What do you choose? Well, here’s one fresco. Now I surmise that the only reason you would choose to put such an image on a public wall is to scare the crap outta everyone. That, to me, is a weird culture that manipulates the masses (literally the mass) through terrorism. I have an issue with that. I prefer rational over emotional appeals. You may not. I understand that. But that is an old tried and true way to convince people that they need to be saved and that you are the one to do it. You drive the wide-eyed livestock into the chute. Teachers do it, financial advisors do it, “life coaches,” would-be guides and helpers of all sorts who need your business. If you can catch fish on your own, you don’t hire a guide. You can’t be a hero without people in need. Ya gotta create demand – the market. So here is some early advertising. Want to watch a profound movie? Watch Pixar’s A Bug’s Life (1998). Flik, the unsung hero realizes that the bullies who steal the food (the grasshoppers), need the farmers (the ants) while the farmers need the thieves like a hole in the head. Flik confronts the leader of the bullies Hopper and says, “Ants are not meant to serve grasshoppers! I've seen these ants do great things, and year after year, they somehow managed to pick food for themselves and you. So-so who's the weaker species? Ants don't serve grasshoppers! It's you who need us! We're a lot stronger than you say we are. And you know it, don't you?”

Despite the best efforts of some very powerful people to scare their hell into everybody, confidence flourished. I suspect that after 1400 years of bleakness, people had finally gotten tired of being afraid. That’s typically how tyrannical systems fall. The people just won’t endure it any longer. That’s how the Soviet System finally wheezed and collapsed. People there were tired of waiting for utopia and didn’t want their children and grandchildren to be condemned to what they had put up with. In most popular uprisings it is the young who fill the streets but in many Soviet satellites, old people came out and that made a huge difference. When grannies and gramps are looking across at the guys with guns, and say, “Are you willing to shoot me son? I’m doing this for you.” the validity of state authority falters. You can’t put down the people without a lot of young men willing to turn against their own. Unfortunately, the West gloated instead of helping and the smirky victory lap allowed the old guard KGB and apparatchiks who knew were all the goodies were stashed and how things worked, to steal everything when the state properties were privatized, becoming the new corrupt oligarchs. The people, for the most part, are still languishing. You can’t buy anything made in Russia except guns and vodka. They don’t make anything anyone wants. They export oil. Okay they have that, and they are by far the worst oil polluters on the planet with thousands of spills every year all over their territories from the Caspian to Siberia and increasingly in the Artic. And now Putin is playing havoc everywhere. Anyway, they await a renaissance. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, in the 13 and 14 hundreds in Western Europe, confidence began to rise. The folks began to laugh again, with abandon. They ceased stuttering at the constant fear of judgment. Expression, invention, exploration burst forth again. The delusion of denying this life for the contradiction of everlasting life-after-death faded into myth and we began to revel just for fun. Carnival. Carne means flesh – of this world – of time and mortality.

Embrace the fleeting moment for it is from the wistfulness itself that its beauty emanates. There is the source of your momentum. Because it does not last, it is precious. Being literally short-lived event-time defeats ennui. Feelings spatialize and become longing. Youth passes and so our delight of it intensifies making it wonderful. We can feel the thrill of youth only after it fades. You have to take the “bad” or there is no “good.” The greater the highs the greater the lows. You must embrace one to have the other. If the teetertotter does not swing, there is no joy of the ride. The re-birth, the Renaissance, opened life to chance and embraced risk, experimentation, movement. The life that is a trial, is the life lived. Don’t give it up to another and call that salvation. Don’t let them steal your struggle, your chance to grow. They may try so that they can be a savior. Invite them to find another “lost soul.” Yours is found. Tell them, “I’d rather make it across the finish line on my own than to be carried by another, because it’s not just about crossing a line. It’s about achievement. I am not your sack of potatoes to let you flex your righteous muscles for adoration.”

The strategic, meaning self-serving (one’s own agenda)… which is what “strategic” always means, excuse of procurers, of collectors of others’ lives: they pose a question they already have an answer for that involves you, “How do you save yourself? By saving others.” What? Sounds cliché and it is. What do I have to do with your salvation? Oh, I get it. You need me. You need me to be lost so you can save me, and therefore be heroic. So, you have to convince me that I’m lost. How? By giving me a path that is not of my making. And then noting that I am not on that path. Therefore, I am lost. Then the master can say, “I’ll tell you how to walk the new path.” Just follow the instructions. One, two, three, as Goethe says in the quote below. Sounds logical. Good. Right. Now all is “fixed.” You are “fixed.” You were once lost, now you are found. Set. Fossilized. Done. Finished. Once completed, the path ends and growth stops.

But, the moment you are found you are lost. You lost your own path and now trod the path of the master. Same ideas. Same solutions. You could be anyone – no one. You didn’t blaze the trail or invent the means. You just followed instructions written for you like anyone else. You do not organize according to your own lights but rather you are organized. You have been organized for another agenda. The form of the agenda transcends you. You are just the content. Assimilated. “Your” agenda is their agenda handed to you. What was inherent in you, is lost. Anyone can identify you as the master’s product. You have been authored by him. You become the content of his form. Others will follow. The contents are all the same, interchangeable plastic. A “next” person will soon follow in the same footsteps and so a little tribe of followers grows taking their place in the trophy case of the procurer. Arranged and enumerated. “Behold,” says the master, “my saved lost souls, my sheep, which manifests my own salvation and glorification. All are in my debt. Now pay me with gratitude for consuming you, for giving you my path to follow.”

You cannot be lost unless you presume a path written for you by others. If you are not resolute, they will give you “the gift,” “the final solution,” of a “simple” narrow path that will, no doubt, include passing through their realm so they can tax you – take your most valuable production as quid pro quo for “helping” you. Salvation costs. For the helper to pay your debts you have to give something… yourself, over and over. Isn’t it interesting that the word interest means both to be concerned with, curious, and also to profit from lending over time. Be careful who you borrow from. The more desperate the more likely you will fall in with sharks. Sharks have narrow but intense “interest.” You will become narrower, perhaps to the point of being lost in their being. Devoured. Redundant. The same. Salvation via consummation (consumed) -- you do nothing that is different from them. You failed to launch on your own journey and became, instead, a backseat passenger awaiting instructions. So then, you cannot help others because you have never grown to be equal to, if not surpassing your teachers. The conservative teacher thus prevents progress while assuring that his own shadow grows. Control (guidance) thus kills verdant evolution. The master gains acolytes but the environment is retarded. You will be forever the weak student looking for help. They have thus stolen from you the most precious thing. Your independence. You bartered it away without even knowing it. You insisted that they take it, and you endlessly thank them for it. Interest payments. Thus is the cost of the flight from life and its demand that one struggle to grow. Be careful that you are not sheltered… sheltered from the sunshine so that you wither like grass under an oppressive object. Risk the burn for the vitality of it.

Those seeking infinite righteousness began to punish the wretched, mortal and evil body. The dream was to escape this world of time, contingency; this world of change and fall into eternal perfection. Changeless formality. I don’t blame them. The culture they had so ironically created, the “Dark Ages,” was bleak. The Darkness of the Dark Ages, as named by Petrarch, was the flight from this life and its struggles. The closing of our eyes against the colors of a shimmering mortal life. The obsession with escapism into transcendental formalism -- the divine eternal world that supersedes evil nature as super-nature. But with the reversal that was the rebirth, the Renaissance, this supernatural realm became a comedy. The minstrels and poets of Provence helped us laugh again at the supernatural, to overcome our fears that had held us bowed before the other worldly judgment and threat of eternal hell. Our lack of confidence evaporated. Our self-hate faded. We dared again to try. But it was not until we accepted freedom and therefore personal responsibility, that we started to improve the world instead of wallowing in our own misery awaiting salvation from some big daddy boss (like the one played by Burl Ives in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof). He just wants what’s good for you.

“Somebody should do something.” Well, you are somebody unless powers keep telling you, you are nothing, a shame on existence, an abomination of sin – even before birth. That’s hardly a pep talk. That sort of rhetoric seeks to make you dependent and to subvert your confidence and activism, for discouraging any thrill to be had here and now. “Look here. Just do this. Follow these steps. And death will be kind.” Finish one little thing then you are finished.

Never be finished. The great institution with its orders, organization, would reduce us all to rank and file. Well, I’m more than a file in someone’s spreadsheet. I know they may wish to reduce me to that, but I refuse. The great organization men of the Right-wing fascists and the Left-wing Soviet Union had files. Millions of files and everyone feared their files and those who kept them, those who perused them, sniffed them, fondled them. Power. The organizational gaze. “Please boss, can I see your file?” Never. One way vision. Top-down super-vision that sees not just your “particulars,” but everyone else’s, and compares and sniffs.

Ranking. Filing. Organizing. The lovers of dirty laundry haunt us. Only democracy enables us all to see, know, participate, and make change. True democracy also evolves, including how we will discuss issues, not just what will be discussed. It is radical and reactionaries hate it. Formality. Formalism. Formations. Fill out and fill in the standardized forms. After scrutiny, we’ll inform you later of our decision. Perhaps you will move to the next level in the organization, into a new office, a new box on our organizational chart. Perhaps not. Con-form and we will be pleased and bestow upon you the honor of having a little more “say,” according to our criteria, of course – and in due course. We like ourselves and wish for you to be just like us. Structures perpetuate themselves. Stasis. Not systasis, which is time and change, evolution but stasis. Escape into the womb of eternal perfection. Become part of the rank and file, a notch on the superior’s staff. A number. You were number 12 of my conquests. I have duly recorded you as such in my files. The order of things, things such as you.

Time to run out into the sun and be unfit – in need of no salvation, propelled by your own merits. See what you can do. Floor it. Roar with your own voice. Leave the shelter of “helpers.” Stand in the hail storm and experience everything without retreat. Make it yours. Be the sole author of your story. Be confident. Don’t let others take that from you.

Don’t be saved. Be used up. Go to your rest satisfied, exhausted – fully spent – with a smile.

The metaphysical tide has swung back and forth. For a while, the classical world was materialistic, secular, and filled with revelry. Merriment and the flesh were real and celebrated. Then transcendentalism. This world of human time was beaten back. This world became unreal. It was illusion and debauched. Punish the evil body to escape into eternal spirit. Then… it swung back. Science and logic re-emerged. The study of bodies, of the here and now. Humanism, materialism, and partying lit up the night again. Romance blossomed. We dared to smile again – right in the face of death! Maybe because of death? It was okay once again to read Aristotle’s jokes and relish the human body, and even depict aging bodies again.

Then between 1503 to 1506 Leonardo paints his Mona Lisa. So nice. Friendly. Cooperative. Vulnerable. Furtive. Suggestive. Asking for inquiry. The inquisition was not far behind. Reactionary violence.“What are you smiling at! Wipe that filthy smile off your face! We’re dealing not just with death but eternal damnation here! Life is not for fun! It is to be used to prepare for death.” The smile, so innocent, became politicized. I noticed that FBI Director James Comey said something interesting. He said Trump never laughs. He smiles but its strategic. I know people like that. They never really laugh. You don’t hear them chortle in the hallways. Why? They are suspicious people. Why? Because they have done not nice things and they presume everyone else has an agenda too. There are people who’s laugh you can identify from a distance. If I were to hear them, I’d think they were in the building. Some, sadly are dead. I miss their laughter. Others I’ve never heard them laugh, openly, freely, authentically. That’s sad too. But not for me. For them. Here’s a couple of the first paintings of laughter after the rebirth of Modernity (after the “Dark Ages”) in the early 1600s by Frans Hals. He is known as the “artist of laughter.” Bravo.

Nietzsche said that the church was not Christ’s but Paul’s. Hence the “Pauline religion.” Okay. I can see it. But I think it’s really the Constantinian Church. The guy in the middle is not Christ. It’s the Roman Emperor Constantine who organized the Councils to establish Christianity as the official religion. Christ was an inspiration but it was Constantine, with his armies, who was the organizational dude who made it all happen. Later artists such as Leonardo who perfected painting by numbers (geometry of arial perspective), would make fun of this old art as being childish. But wait one dang minute. These artists were clear and accurate. They didn’t care about space, inner or outer, actual or virtual, measurement… Instead, they cared about status. Get it straight. Religion is all about commandments, law, power. No laughing matter. And they clearly and accurately painted status. Remember when Trump took money from one of his fake charities to buy a huge painting of himself. Sure.

Anyway, here’s a couple of depictions of the Ecumenical machinations. You can see here how high school yearbooks began. The less important the smaller the picture. Seniors get the biggest, juniors next biggest, sophomores… until you get down to the microfiche of junior high people. And, the poor guys in the back. What’s that about? Can’t see them at all. Just the tops of their halos. Now this is a painting, so this is no accident of folks jostling for a photoshoot. The guy at the bottom in the dark is Arius. A heretic. But an important one. He made the picture but in a humiliating pose. That tradition has also come down to high school yearbooks. Only Constantine, the big boss, is allowed to literally touch the Word of God. Halo Effect. Which becomes self-fulfilling prophecy. Make him the “toucher of the Word” and thence he is the boss. It is a tautology. Only the boss gets to mess with the words and by touching them he is sanctified as the boss (ultimate authority). Around and around the mythological “logic” goes. And check out the painting-bomb in the lower picture. Who’s the guy leaning way in on the lower right? Weird. The guy sitting in front of him has turned toward him. A little sidebar chat? Maybe the guy sitting is telling him to backoff? The artist’s selfie? Michelangelo and others have painted themselves into pictures in similar ways. Picture. I know. It’s not a “picture.” It’s a great work of art! Holy even! My essay. I say picture. Did anyone smile in the “Middle Ages?” In fact, do we see smiles on any statues or paintings anywhere before say… Mona Lisa’s little effort? I think this may be the greatest thing about Leonardo and we all missed it. Grins. Only a few masks of pranksters (African, Native American).

Speaking of halos, lots of religions have them. Here’s the Buddha. Homer described an unnatural light emanating from the heroes of battle. Going even further back, Summerian religious literature mentions melam (from Akkadian melammu), which was a brilliant glamour exuded by gods, heroes, kings (of course), temples and gods’ symbols. No regular folk. Sorry. I’ve got the more modern, three-D halo with a tilt. Newer Western fashion. The Statue of liberty has glamour. Celebrity is so powerful it allows you to grab women by their private parts. Wow. The “most powerful man in the world” told us that. And millions voted for him -- twice (of both genders). I just can’t see the halo though. But he does have one super fancy, shiny hairdo. Only money and bling have halos these days. Unless you’re really special like my teachers. 😊

Social Darwinism still looms large in our culture. And nothing is more real than money. Everyone was into reductively defining reality. What phenomenologists called “metaphysics gone virulent.” Galton made the first attempt to create a standardized test for intelligence and Charles Spearman started doing factor analysis of correlations between various tests. Numbers are very magical. Why? Because we are.

Feng shui, chi… all that stuff is part of magic and it still is very influential today. In 1980, the 64-story Hopewell Center became the tallest building in Hong Kong. A feng shui master said it had to have a circular swimming pool on the roof because otherwise it looked too much like a candle which has connotations of fire and death. Okay. I’ll swim to that. Architecture is very symbolical.

Ka-Ching: Modern Shamans Teach Us We Must be Weak to be Strong!

To be auspicious has a sound. “Ka-ching.” The sound of a cash register. It sounds… Chinese. Don’t you think? Young people ask, “What’s cash?” “What’s a cash register?” You’ll have to take archeology to get the answer. Very ancient and powerful relic, the cash register. Many worshiped it. It reckoned the Truth. Ka Ching. Tao Te Ching. I Ching. I think I should write the book The Ka Ching: The Tao of Money. I think it would sell. But alas, I’m no expert. Baqua. I could rip off a bunch of Baqua charts and pretend to know what they mean. If you claim to know the Tao, you do not. Mystery… It’s on the flag of “South” Korea. Magic. I studied “Bagua Kung Fu” in Taiwan. My teacher’s father had taught Jackie Chan “Drunk Man Fist.” So what? Here I am with my Kung Fu teacher and my Tai Kwon Do (Tai Shwen Dow in Chinese) teacher in Taiwan 1983. I was once young. I was 26 and “ABD” (all but dissertation). I found little magic involved in martial arts. The laws of physics pretty much dominate. However, my teachers would tend to disagree. They could kick my ass. So maybe they knew something I didn’t. I think… it was… how to fight though.

The Potter books talk about death a lot. Harry’s an orphan (like Batman, Superman, James Bond, Captain Kirk, Spiderman… Hmmm a pattern here?). And we end with the “Deathly Hallows.” During life-threatening crisis, when thinking of death, we revert to things that give us comfort (“mortality salience”). No atheists in foxholes. Flags pop up in the midst of hurricane destruction. Churches are packed during crisis. And so, it makes sense that the Harry Potter movies have become mainstay media fare around Christmas. Christmas is comforting. Has little to nothing to do with Harry Potter but it does make us think about death a lot.

The Dead Dad Syndrome: Superhero Orphans -- Twice Over

Another aside. What’s with all the orphaned superheroes? Even double-orphaned. And their dads are all super duper too, suggesting some sort of genetic “gifts.” Superman’s dead dad Jor-El, was an elite on Krypton. Superman’s adoptive parents, Ma and Pa Kent both die before he’s “Superman.” Peter Parker’s dead dad was Captain Richard Parker, a decorated soldier of the US Special Forces while his mother was the daughter of the O.S.S. agent “Wild Will” Fitzpatrick. She became a CIA translator and analyst. Then, Ben Parker, Spiderman’s uncle, who is a retired military police officer, gets murdered by a petty criminal. Captain Kirk’s dead dad was an officer who sacrificed himself to make sure Jimmy’s pregnant mother Winona would escape before dad used the spaceship to ram the evil enemy. Then, Christopher Pike, Captain Kirk’s adopted father figure is killed years later by the same evil doer that Jimmy’s dad rammed. Harry’s dead dad (and mother) was a great wizard who died defending Harry from Voldemort. Then Harry’s adopted father figure, Albus Dumbeldore (his muggle “father” is a nemesis caretaker at best, and Hagrid is his crazy uncle-type), is murdered by Voldemort and friends. “Iron Man” Tony Stark's dead dad was a genius inventor and super rich businessman. T’Challa “Black Panther’s” dad was Wakanda’s king who was murdered. Batman’s dead dad (and mother) were also murdered. Dr. Thomas Wayne, mayoral candidate for Gotham City, was a physician who built a massive enterprise and who was also a vigilante. James Bond’s dead parents had a title and estate, “Skyfall,” in Scotland with a gamekeeper and all. They died mountain climbing. Then the guy who adopted James Bond, Hannes Oberhauser, is murdered by his biological son who is jealous of his affection for Bond. Rich equals hero in this universe. And then… even the adopted dads die off. What about Wonder Woman? She, like the Black Panther, is of royal divine blood. Same old, same old. Raised by her mother and Amazon aunts, her father, Zeus, is “absent.” In some versions, her mother shaped her out of clay and brought her to life with superpowers. Nothing weird to see here. The rest of us are either petty criminals or chopped liver. No way you’re going somewhere if your parents are alive. Whata message that is.

Trump’s rhetoric was all about failure. The death of the American Dream. The US is falling apart. His inaugural address was doomsday. The call, “Make America Great Again.” What? Yep. The US is a steaming pile and we gotta put the stuff back in the hole. He also told his rallies that this was the “last chance” to save America. What? Yes. Demographics are changing. Last chance to defeat death by returning to the good old days of White people’s youth. I get it. I was there. My time as a kid in northern Ohio was great. I had a blast. I bought a new car when I was 15. Our family had one paycheck from my Dad who had only an eighth grade education. The US had “saved the world.” You bet. My buddies all had cars. Factory jobs were for the taking. I wasn’t Black. I wasn’t drafted. I went to college. Sure. My memories of America are fun in the sun. No worries. But then… I also watched the factories close and my buddies who didn’t go to college slip into poverty and despair. My hometown died. Most of the steel belt turned to rust. So, I get the Trumpian rhetoric and how it worked its magic. We face death so rush back to embrace the symbols and good feelings of a time that was good for some… but not all, and which, thanks to Trumpian style economics (IRONICALLY), it collapsed, especially and finally in 2008.

Trump was going to save the Whites by reinvigorating their blissful memories. All this even though it was folks like him who destroyed that White person’s paradise. The decisions to start moving factories overseas??? Do you think poor Blacks or working class Whites had the power and made those decisions? Wake up. No… Trump’s class. But then you can’t be a savior without people who need saving. Trump played that cheap rhetoric and Fox backed him up. Murdoch cares? Really? We’d been conned before. More than once. WWII was a complete disaster. Millions and millions died. Fascism got control of several countries. Why? How? The “brilliant” money managers on Wall Street crashed the system. The Great Depression spread across the globe giving fascists fertile fields to sow their resentment, hatred, scapegoating, and mix it with “good blood” versus “polluted blood” eugenics. All there in Trump. Same old same old. That’s the magic power of mortality salience. We are dying. Rush back to the tried-and-true symbols and try to repeat history. But you can’t. Not exactly. Oh we do repeat mistakes but even those are contextual. Sorry Santayana (later plagiarized by Churchill). You can’t because times change. Technologies change. Work changes. Knowledge changes. Our racial make-up changes. We evolve. Everything is different. And young people don’t share those rosy memories of youth during the 1950s and 1960s. We have to move forward. Don’t buy that BS. But many Whites are trying hard to return to a set of relationships that were not good for a lot of people, including many Whites. Meanwhile other countries like China are blazing ahead. Kids grow up often not knowing what’s going on and thinking life is good. Sure. Their parents protect them. Trust me. The 1950s and 1960s were not worth going back to. They were not so “Great.” For some, maybe but for most not really. For me… as you read, I keep saying how lucky I was. I was. But that was based on some pretty horrible racist policies and the vagaries of history. Lucky the US had oceans to make it possible to win WWII. Can’t go back. Those oceans no longer protect us. Time to think forward. Anyway, back to conjuring.

Here’s a discovery from archaeology in 2012. It is from a “shaman sanctuary” at Lake Świdwie, in north-western Poland dating back 12,000 years. According to moderns, the meanings of letters and words are merely conventional. You can change them at will. They are signalic, as compared with magic idolic and mythic symbolic modes of communication (as per my Dimensional Accrual and Dissociation Theory of Communication). Signifier and signified are related only through convention. There’s nothing emotional or necessary, compelled or “motivated” (like a hieroglyph that should look like the thing it represents), about the relationship between the sign and the thing it indicates. Red means stop today. Could mean go tomorrow if we all agree. Magic language – “It is written.” God’s will. I can’t change it. Fatalism. No one can change it, unless you are a living god, Pharaoh for instance. Then everything you say is a divine edict. That’s magic language. It is the “prison-house of language” as Fredric Jameson says.

Nazis and other conservatives don’t like change. They wanted to create a Reich -- Order, a “third” one. The first one was the Roman Empire. The second was the Holy Roman Empire (Charlemagne). The third one was to be permanent. Last at least a thousand years. No conventionalism. No change. It was to be written literally in the blood of the people. In the permanent genetics of the “Aryans.” They “naturally” should lead, and forever. Conservatives don’t like change because they benefit from the “order of things.” And if they can convince you that that order is natural or supernatural (god’s plan) then it is fatalistic. Who would argue with nature or god? No point. Just submit. The Order is identical with nature, or even more powerful, supernature. The State is Ordained. The dictator then says he is the State. All magic identity. The voodoo doll is you. You stab it. You get stabbed. Magic. If you challenge the dictator you challenge the State. If you challenge the State you challenge god! Always question such propositions. They can enslave you.

But with modern conventional thinking… nothing is written. Language is just a tool. Zero, One form computer code. But it could be x and y. Just a convention. Nothing emotional about it. But idolic communication is very emotional. If you don’t mean it, don’t say it or draw it. Why? Because if you do, “it” will be invoked. To magic peoples letters and words are idolic which means when written or uttered they evoke and invoke a change in reality. They “conjure.” They are not conventional to those people. They cannot be changed at will. They do not re-present anything. Rather an idol is the thing, and idolic signs are aspects of the thing itself – they present it, not re-present it. Either the “spelling” in the spell is correct or it is not. If you know the spell you have the power to change reality. That’s why spells are carefully guarded secrets. Science would change that. Progress comes only when we share and can test the “spells.” If you don’t want the spirit to appear, don’t call the name.

Here’s a more recent shaman with his drum in Central Asia. Everywhere chanting and the drumbeat are essential to idolic trance and ritual. The rhythmic pounding of marching boots and drums is thrilling. Intoxicating. People get carried away. The passion! The drama! Commitment! Throw “all in.” Sacrifice everything! Go for broke! Shut your eyes and leap! Exhilarate! The ecstasy of self-mortification -- sanctification! Quaking rapture. Lose your grip… Wait. Galton said that grip  correlated with intelligence. Hmmm. The Christian church incorporates drama, singing and rhythmic chanting into the core of the process of worship and transformational magic (Holy Communion and such). Same for the Islamic ritual of Tawaf with the circling of the Kaaba while reciting the Takbir. And of course, modern rock ‘n’ roll has many elements of shamanism in it. So does sports fandom…

“Lock her up, lock her up.” “Stop the steal, stop the steal.” “Drill baby, drill.” “Drill baby, drill.” “No new taxes.” “No new taxes.” Always three words. The magical, sacred number three. The father, son, and holy ghost of human en-chant-ment. Intoxicating frenzy and trance-energy is barely contained by the simple syntax and sound of many individuals merged into one mob. Mindless chanting. Primitive cognition. Critical faculties, reflection requires quiet solitude. The opposite of crowd consciousness. It’s very difficult to get all excited by oneself. Solitude is advantageous to reflection. By contrast, congregation is necessary for rapturous excitation. That is the seduction of the tribe, the gang, the mass. That is the function of religion. Not spiritual enlightenment but chaotic excitation and it’s polar twin, law. Theological study is not the same as rousing sermonizing. Theological reflection and debate is what kept scholasticism alive through the Darkness. I remember when older folks made fun of the Beatles hits quoting their inane lyrics on TV in monotones. “I say hi. She says low. I say why. And she says I don’t know. Oooo. Oh no!” But political chants make such lyrics seem like Shakespeare, like high level analytics.

Magic is everywhere. Intoxicants often help it along. Archeologist now say that oxygen deprivation in the depths of caves led to hallucinations inspiring the earliest cave artists. I’ve read that parts of Jesuit training including sleep deprivation and fasting are “guaranteed to create altered states of consciousness.” Fear of death and escape therefrom… love of intoxication, I think, are central to the origin of what we call civilization. We are following wasted dudes and dudettes (surfer slang that fits this endless wave of an essay). I confess. I can be fanatical about Oklahoma athletics (football, softball, mens and womens basketball, gymnastics, track, wrestling, baseball…). But I, I the rational professor, have an excuse. Many of the players are also my students and I know them (a little). So caring makes sense. Just an excuse. Just try to avoid harm. Just in 2018 the University of Oklahoma started selling alcoholic beverages at football games. As if the fans are not emotionally charged enough already. But hey that’s what the tailgate rituals are all about. Harmless fun I defend. Marching bands playing fun songs on grassy fields, handspringing sunshine smiling flipflopping cheerleaders; I can get behind that. But… jackboots down main street with guns. Nope. If the cheerleaders become ugly chantleaders of hate, we’re going the wrong way. Excommunication, damnation, and such rubs this communication professor the “wrong way.” Can we talk about this? If not… what excommunication means, we have terminal fatality (double-down redundancy). Eternal silence. Well I guess that’s one kind of “peace.” I prefer a ruckus crowd of about 100,000 on a brilliant sunny Saturday afternoon celebrating the vitality of youth and mostly friendly competition. The magic of thousands moaning and cheering every play. Play. Fun. That’s the ticket.

And I think… there is only one, one letter word in English. I.

The Oceans are Never Full So the Rivers Keep Flowing

Literacy is power. It enables you to participate if you wish. You look at bits of ink on paper or pixels on a screen and turn them into all sorts of meanings, often more than one at once. It’s not “information processing” or “decoding.” Experts on meaning realized that a long time ago. The meanings change as you and the context change. You read a novel like Catcher in the Rye as a kid and it’s boring. No rocket ships. No monsters. No racing cars. No pictures. Below I include a diagram of the evolution of the cat-cher. Fascinating and very scientifical. Like utopian positivism it goes through “stages of development.” Henri Saint-Simon and August Comte would approve. The book, by the reclusive sexual harasser of coeds when he had the chance (Salinger), is about a kid that is so full of himself he can’t get out of his own way. Phony for sure. But then you read it again in college, interesting. Alienation… okay got it. You read it again when you are a parent… yet another meaning. It’s not about pathetic “lost soul” students (in my opinion). That’s how a would-be savior would read it. What you say about another person or painting or book or song tells me more about you than the text. If that’s what you take away from Catcher in the Rye… okay. He’s sooooo up tight. He needs to learn how to play in the snow like some big cats. “Jungle ball.” It’s a game we played in Ohio in the winter in the snow. Half basketball, half football, half wrestling. Wait a minute. That’s too many halves. That’s the point. Practically no rules. Fun as hell. Herding cats can be a foolish ambition. They don’t need a shepherd. To me Holden is full of it. He needs to save himself, but it’s left up to his little sister to get his head out of his bum. Only in a very affluent USA could a kid be so… into himself. I think… if we read about him later in life, he’s the one who would walk into a Walmart and start shooting people because he’s an INCEL. Okay… maybe too far. But I think with the Internet and video games, he would have never left the house. That’s what I say about that. Holden is a drama case. He’s no savior. Is he a lost soul? He’s sure narcissistic. To me, he’s on his way to becoming a joiner with others full of resentment, misogyny, misanthropy, self-pity. Phoebe, his little sis, on the other hand, is, according to Hesiod in the Theogony, one of the Titans, grandmother of Apollo and Artemis, no less! Her name means shining. Moon of Saturn. Well, I’m neither a shining savior nor a lost soul (at least I don’t think so), just a teacher. Private schools… not in my orbit. Anyway, reading is not “decoding” or “information processing.” It’s much more, wonderfully more complex and alive.

As you’ll read one of the things that has irked me is the rhetoric of communication as “social science.” It’s not that I don’t believe in social science, “believe” meaning to have faith in and to presume that it does exist. My problem is stuff that has gotten published right up to today, that is not science at all but political rhetoric and personal opinion. That’s the stuff that rankles me. The folks that write it then teach it as “social science,” sometimes as multiple editions of the same old same old and reprints of book chapters over and over and over by friends. The game is to live in a powerful tribe and become famous. The way? Use the tribal connections (not merit – not rational), and be “scientifical” by using words like “adaptation” and “information processing.” Reading is much more complex. To begin with, it is done by living people with experiences, beliefs, prejudices, values, motivations, expectations… Computers don’t have any of that and that’s why Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver were dismayed back in the 1950’s when human communication folks latched onto their information processing lingo. They knew that was a profound distortion.

Wait just a minute Kramer. Algorithms and computer programs have biases. They sure do. And they don’t change unless someone changes them. They just reflect the biases of their creators. What biases of god are manifested in us? We’re in “his image.” That’s scary. Reading is not “decoding” which implies one “correct” “appropriate” meaning as determined by a… “the code.” Assimilationists like that explanation though. It implies that meaning is predetermined and so are we, and that there is just one correct interpretation, one “fit” determined by the dominance of the “Mainstream” culture/code. Who are they? The “majority power.” So… might makes right. Ethics and morality come down to sheer quantity. Reality is based on quantity of people who believe too. So the Earth is flat and does not move after all. That troublemaker Galileo should have been burned at the stake. That’s what the literature about cultural adaptation says. Not me. Sigh… Way too simplistic and, undemocratic and unethical as hell.

Let me channel Mortimer Adler and his 1940 book How to Read a Book. What this river of words means to you, I don’t know and can’t control. And I have no right to, even if I could. Not only would that make me a bully, but it would make the world boring… the greatest sin of all. The thing about assimilationists is that they are so egocentric that they prefer to hear themselves talk rather than have a conversation with a DIFFERENT person. They are proud to proclaim the validity of their opinions and to even suggest they be propagated through school curricula and broadcast far and wide by the mass media! Honestly. Narcissistic and boring. “Wisdom” from hermits. Anti-social life coaches. What a plague upon the rest of us.

The Event Bucket: Time is Completely Swallowed by Eternity Like a Drop in the Ocean

This “essay?” Opinions. Observations. That’s all. It may not even be totally consistent. Imagine that! But I hope you find some entertainment in it. Read it for fun. Not exactly Adler’s perspective but still a suggestion for how to read. It’s a river and rivers have “stretches,” “episodes.” A waterfall here, slow moving pool there, oxbow there, riffles, a stream merging, a gurgling spring in the bank (is gurgling words?)… It’s alive and constantly varying with the weather, season, geology, fauna and flora. Beavers show up and dam parts. Mayflies hatch and the fish school. Ice forms and jams appear then melt away. You can jump in anywhere. If one stretch gets boring, hop out and walk along and jump in somewhere else. Or hang out at one area. Throw a rock into it. Ice skate on it. Wade in it. Splash it. Watch its moods mingle with yours. Read it at night or bright daylight. It’s freely flowing without an “aim.” Sometimes it may seem “deep” or its opposite, “fake deep.” Other times it is decidedly shallow. Drivel. But in the end, it all pours into the ocean (unless it’s full). But then all the worlds' rivers keep flowing. So I guess the oceans are never full. The more they flood, the harder they rampage toward the seas. Wherever time goes, that place, the event bucket, never fills up.

Clouds Float Yet Weigh Hundreds of Tons, Really

Yeah. I remember something about a hydrological cycle, evaporation, condensation (matter changing form)... I think the planet has a finite amount of water. Better take care of it. Clouds. Clouds are great. As I noted earlier, we see all sorts of patterns "in them/in us." Clouds float along. The average cumulus cloud is made up of 500 tons of water!! Yet... they float. Amazing. Sublime. And we fly right through them. Knowledge is not just power. It's fun.

Literacy rates are a major metric for measuring the success of a nation. It is considered an essential component of a civilization and of a civilized person. But there are many kinds of intelligence and literacy. Literacy and access to information enables a person or entire society to advance because knowledge begets more knowledge. Redundant information is not informative. So, you want to access difference in order to expand and flourish. You don’t learn much when you’re doing all the talking. Don’t be afraid to hear an alternative view. It’s your path to true growth. Converse is always filled with tension. Exposing yourself to another threatens your “equilibrium,” your dogmatic slumber, your beliefs, your ignorance! That is okay – more than okay. It’s nourishing. I hope some of this surprises you and that you disagree with some of it. That’s perfectly okay. In fact, that’s the goal of having a conversation. A certain amount of consternation is to be expected. Just avoid road rage.

Literacy is not dualistic. It is not yes or no. It, like a river, varies from place-to-place in rate and depth. Class, gender, age, wealth, educational attainment all impact literacy. The “level” of literacy varies across populations in a single country, region, town. Some places suffer from a drought. Too often it is “manmade.” Some places have “low” literacy rates. Some nearly 100 percent. Nearly half the people in Benin are illiterate. That’s a huge disadvantage in today’s global world. Same for Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivorie. About 70 percent of the citizens of Chad are illiterate. The movie The Color Purple is a powerful tale of literacy and power. Exercise your power. You’re already dangling your feet in this stream of words. Play around. You will judge my judgments, my language, my choices. That’s part of the fun. Kerouac told us. We’re on the road. We’re all going in the same direction, but we jostle along the way. Some hit more potholes than others. Some run out of gas or… charge. But they get moving again. Be careful when you change lanes. Can you read the signs for roadside attractions? Be it on the Internet or the Interstate exits always lead back onto the thoroughfare. That’s where all the action is. Learn to “read” the signs. Let’s hope you don’t run out of road for a while. Rivers? Roads? You may say, Eric, you’re so… linear. Sometimes. So….? I agree with my friend Steven Crowell, a leading phenomenologist who teaches at Rice University. The evidence is that time as we experience it, is… linear. Doesn’t matter what the popular ideology says. It just is.

Some Suggested Tunes for the Road Ahead

Just in case you end up reading this infinite “number” of times, I’ll recommend right off the top some sounds. I don’t have a favorite kind of music. But I do like Samba-maxixe and Bossa nova with its altered harmonies and “different beat.” Very fusional (batuque-like circle dance music, Brazilian folk traditions, West African roots). It is very musical music to me. I like that it is not in a hurry. Maybe someday I’ll visit the neighborhood of Estacio in Rio. Here’s “Donga” (Ernesto dos Santos) who recorded “Pelo telephone” (Over the Phone) in 1916, and João Gilberto who some call the “architect” of Bossa nova. Composer Antonio Carlos Jobim internationalized Bossa nova sambas.

When I was an undergrad, I lived in the “international dorm” at Ohio U and my floor monitor lived right next door. He was from Brazil and played guitar all the time. Someday I’ll take his advice and visit Ipanema. Once I felt harried and passed his open door. Honors Tutorial symbolic logic was kicking my ass. I was a freshman, and it was a graduate level class I was required by the Chairman of the philosophy department to take. He taught it… long story. Not now. My dorm monitor was a grad student. He was softly strumming away. I said, “how can you waste time like that?” He stopped, looked at me and said, “I never waste time. This is not a waste of time.” I was suffering from hurry sickness. I was time illiterate and didn’t know it. I started to study time right about then. So we glide on downstream. Stars are quiet but so is the blazing sun and the flying shadows of fluffy clouds. Listen. You can hear the quiet.

But then, if you’re in the mood for some major horns… One other brilliant musician who is often overlooked… Doc Severinsen did far more than just play the theme song for Johnny Carson. Check him out. He was an amazing trumpet (cornet actually) player and led a fantastic band. At this writing he’s still alive (96). He played with many symphonic and philharmonic orchestras. After serving in the Army during WWII, he played with several bands and orchestras, then in 1949, he got on as a studio musician for NBC accompanying Steve Allen on Tonight Starring Steve Allen. I talk more about that later. Severinsen was a serious artist. He played a lot with Tito Puente, Gerry Mulligan, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Tony Bennett, Mancini, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and many others… Later I talk a little about other obvious greats such as Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis. Here’s the Count and the Duke. They helped out a skinny fella from Hoboken named Francis. Stop reading and go listen to Count Basie’s Li’l Darlin.

Have You Read This Before? It’s All About Communication

Poor Sisyphus. Nietzsche asked, what if you were destined to relive your life over and over and over? The eternal recurrence. In Ecce Homo he calls it the “fundamental conception” of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and also mentions it in relation to the Pythagoreans in Untimely Meditations. In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky characterizes the idea as demonic. The Stoics, Empedocles, Zeno of Citium, Virgil all dared to think the thought. Heinrich Heine discusses IT, “Time is infinite, but the things in time, the concrete bodies, are finite. They may indeed disperse into the smallest particles; but these particles, the atoms, have their determinate numbers, and the numbers of the configurations which, all of themselves, are formed out of them is also determinate. Now, however long a time may pass, according to the eternal laws governing the combinations of this eternal play of repetition, all configurations which have previously existed on this earth must yet meet, attract, repulse, kiss, and corrupt each other again…”

Nietzsche wrote, “What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.'" [The Gay Science, §341]. The idea is found in Asian-Indian philosophy, in ancient Egypt and Judaic literature (Ecclesiastes). Nietzsche suggested that one live a life that would lead to Amor fati (love of fate). Okay. But did he? Looks like Nietzsche is being pushed out of the picture. Did Nietzsche think he had a “good side?” Was he leaning “back” to listen “in”? Maybe we should call him “Hal” (or IBM as it is one letter off). Perhaps he was listening to the song of nature rather than singing it himself. Greek tragedy was an extension of the ancient rites in honor of Dionysus.

He suffered a lot, especially when he lost out to Paul Rée for the attentions of Lou Andreas-Salomé. But then, that pain probably propelled him to write, and write like a lightning bolt across the night sky. Behind every “great man”… Salomé befriended many and inspired them including Freud and Rilke. She was extraordinary. She did indeed whip the boys. Nietzsche probably should have ditched the mustache. But then beards and mustaches are costumes. And often conceal ugly truths (the semiotics of facial hair). Freud would no doubt say that a beard is just a beard (like his cigar). What do you think of women with mustaches? You know you do. And so do they. Waxing… By the way, Freud stole many ideas from Nietzsche, who, as we know “borrowed” from others, notably Heine, Ralph Waldo (whata name) Emerson, and the Stoics. You put it “out there” and somebody will borrow it. That’s how you know it was a good/interesting idea. Flood myths, virgin births, resurrections, saviors… folks really like those ideas and repeat them recurrently (wait, was that redundant?).

If the eternal recurrence is true, what would you do differently? Be careful. Reflective. Think. Now this simple idea scares some people shitless. Augustine condemned the idea and for a while Europeans did not think it. For a guy who had so much to confess, he sure was into condemnation. Upon hearing Nietzsche explain it, his friend Rée recoiled. “What a monstrous idea!” It bothered him for days. Ideas. We are told by empiricists (strictly speaking) that they don’t even exist. But then they go back to doing their mathematics without wondering what color math is or how much it weighs. Some very smart people have dared to think this very real thought and have tried to refute its possibility. Okay. So, what if? And what if this is your only life? This is it. What should you be doing with this precious, rarity? Would it be different than if you were faced with reliving it infinite times? Maybe not.

Me? What do I think? Personally, I don’t think things recur exactly the same over and over. I mean the possible number of combinations and relationships is… big. But then… infinity is a very very long time and physics claims that nothing is created or destroyed (first law of thermodynamics). Remember the universe is everything. Well, if time is truly infinite, because there’s no beginning, then I’ve already lived this life over and over and over an infinite number of times. And because there is no end, I’ll live it another infinite number of times in the future. I’m a split infinity! Or I’m where infinities split? I’m the Alpha and the Omega! My mom knew I was special. Love you mom. Wow. Maybe I’m a god! Whatever that would mean. Nah. I’m just drifting along. But I don’t seem to recall the recurrence so… so what? I talk later about Miles Davis’ song with this title. He wrote it about when I was born. Fitting. I suggest, either way, that you find somebody to love whether it be for just this one life or for eternity, someone who inspires you. And support them. If it doesn’t last, find another. There are billions. It’s all about communication. Can you read lips?

My Teetertotter Theory of Identity

On a teetertotter the farther apart the greater the swings and the greater the leverage toward the “other” side. And the relationship to the center has much to do with small swings and stability. Killing the Other, eliminating difference is suicidal. Why? Because identity depends on difference. Who are you? You are not me. Culture is not nature. Up is not down. So, we have something to exchange, something to talk about. Redundancy is silence. “You already said that a thousand times.” Now some may be so obsessed with “equilibrium” and stability that they don’t want any difference or identity at all. Zero entropy. But in fact, the assimilationists I know are very proud and egocentric people. They love recognition, awards, status as much or more than the rest of us. They take credit for things they have nothing to do with, like getting students jobs when the students already had positions promised to them. Okay so let’s just ignore the hypocrisy and deal with the substantive reality. If you eliminate difference you end up eating the same food over and over and over, listening to the same music over and over and over, watching the same TV shows and movies over and over and over. Even if you have a masterpiece, a museum or gallery that is nothing but the reproduction of the one masterpiece over and over you have a horrific eyesore. Museums bring together a vast variety of art because the difference, even among artists of the “same genre,” of Picasso compared with Matisse for instance, is the joy of life.

The dream of the assimilationist is Groundhog Day. Why? Fear of uncertainty. Fear of the smallest mosquito bite of existence. Fear of life. They dedicate their lives to stasis. No revolutions here. No mutation. No learning, unless it is unlearning?! And no evolution unless it is a tendency toward the mean, the fulcrum and zero entropy. Fear leads to symbolic and physical violence. They refuse to let others speak. As Noam Chomsky has observed, most violence is “counter-revolutionary,” against evolution and change, and perpetrated by those who like things just as they are because they benefit from the unequal conditions that exist. Assimilationists refuse to let Others speak, such as “ethnic media.” They don’t like free speech and free association. They also suggest you stop hanging out with your “ethnic friends.” Authority becomes authoritarian. Control and predictability is their dream but it is suicidal. If we are all clones of each other, nihilism is the result. Endless repetition of the same is not just boring, it’s meaningless. Meaning and sense come from difference. But this dream of escaping meaning, identity, life, culture… is nonsense. Life proliferates difference. That’s what it does. And so authoritarians are always angry, threatened, dangerous – fearful of change. Inbred culturally and sometimes even biologically. Self-crippling. Petrified. But change is inescapable. Much sorrow comes from the foolish effort to stop change.

It’s all about proportion and ratio… relationships. Are you big? Are you rich? Are you strong? Are you young? Depends. The closer you are to the Other the more cultural proximity, the more agreement. But also, the lower the highs and the higher the lows and fewer of them. So in conservative cultures we have low-context communication. Not much to say because not much is happening. Same today as yesterday and tomorrow. The sense of the world is implied. No need to speak. Okay. We all get tired of too much noise from time-to-time but humans also love to people-watch and stimulation. We are smart critters. You can both sit over the fulcrum and have no risk but then you aren’t even playing anymore. Just sitting. The teetertotter becomes a static bench. It’s gone. It’s function is eliminated. When one side moves closer to the center the other side gains leverage. It’s all about the relationship.

Husserl was one of the first to recognize that you have to bracket metaphysics – no more reduction to materialism because it is part of politics. Same with the other side of the grand Cartesian dualism, idealism. Mind/matter, subject/object, sacred/secular, eternity/time... Each seeks power to control what we call reality through material or ideological domination. Husserl realized this and also realized that both “sides” were wrong. He realized, Hume was right, not Descartes. Everything is a web of relationships. Relationships, including statistically significant ones and cause/effect -- relationships are not material objects. Nor are they ideas from gods or men. No one controls them even when they try to. There is no plan from another reality governing this one. No duality. Relationships are the way objects, people, numbers, colors, sounds, tastes, ideas interact.

Are there structures? Patterns? Seems so but they are not imposed. They are dissipative meaning self-forming and dissolving like ocean waves and the weather. Directly or indirectly, everything is communicating with everything else. Sometimes it takes a long time as with the photons reaching my eyes from distant galaxies. And sometimes we communicate by implication as when we surmise something like dark matter must be there because of how other things are behaving. Communication…

When we push, the universe pushes back. We have to learn to work with it. Those who see communication as merely command and obey have a very utilitarian and limited understanding of communication. The wonderful ability to communicate is reduced to being merely a tool. The attempt to plan and then impose structures (fascism) almost always leads to misery and resistance because they are not natural. What about the “laws of nature.” Well, they are not somewhere else being imposed on the universe like human laws imposed on people. Rather the universe manifestly expresses them. That’s why they can’t be broken. The behavior of planets and nature in general cannot be “sinful.” Physicists have to play with the universe we have. They can make stuff happen, but they cannot break the laws of nature because nature is identical with the “laws.” “Law” is an unfortunate dualistic metaphysic we have gotten into the bad habit of thinking. It comes from monotheistic religion (not animism or even Spinoza’s “radical” god who is “spirit infused in all things.” For Spinoza god is nature. Somewhat animistic but not -- because it is monotheistic.

Anyway, with a judging god of commandments, you have to have dualism otherwise you have the thorny question of evil. Ironically, human free will makes us independent, dissociated from god and thus evil. The casting out of paradise and all that. So, since we are not god, we can be evil (even as he is not) and we can have judgment imposed on us. We can stray because the goodness of god is not embodied in our very being, like the laws of physics are in the modern version of the cosmos. A transcending Other divine being makes and governs creation that is “fallen.” Can it be redeemed? That is god’s self-imposed mission. No. This is, I dare say, incorrect. The universe appears to be is self-organizing. The planets cannot stray and behave in a sinful manner. There is only unity. No dualism.

The universe and its “laws” are one. Pattern, structure is dissipative. Those who seek to impose “order” on the Other (people or nature) have a political agenda. To make a profit or win a war, or to “help.” Very presumptuous. Messiah complex. Especially when they call for levers of power like school curricula and the mass media to be used as tools to re-socialize, indoctrinate, reprogram, train, acculturate (whatever words they use) and transform entire populations into some image they have! Watch out for such would-be sorcerers. They are into power. “Theories,” that propose an ideal human and to tell you how to adjust, adapt, assimilate, fit… are not theories. They are not scientific. They are schemes that would presume the power to create a “new order.” Scientists do not set out to “correct” the universe. There’s nothing wrong with it. They seek to understand it. Theory is an explanation of behavior. Not a correction toward some presumed “better” planet or humming bird. Now there’s nothing wrong with trying to help people be happy but that is very very complicated. Be very careful.

All knowledge is based on recognizing differences between categories and also between cases. I can identify this cell phone as mine because it is different, it has a unique scratch on it. My power, my identity, my status, my stigma all are based on my relationships to Others. Without them, I don’t exist. And Alfred North Whitehead and Husserl understood that those relationships are in flux. Now if you want to stop existing… then one way to do it is to eliminate all Others. But they may not agree with your plan. So instead, just eliminate yourself and leave everyone else out of your ambition to no longer be (human or at all). Go off and be a hermit. Forget all language and culture.

But there’s a problem. You can’t go away to a mountain top unless you start in a valley. The Other is necessary. To be a hermit you have to assume a community you have left. This is sorta selfish because they are still there if you ever need them. It’s like the “heroes” who don’t listen to warnings and get stranded up on a mountain and then call rescuers in to risk their lives to bring the great adventurers (social influencers, life coaches, and such) home. But to withdrawal means that you want all the control. You want them when you want them, but you refuse obligation. You want freedom but no responsibility. Well, the Buddha did abandon his wife and kids to go “find himself.” The system is all encompassing. Robinson Crusoe could not be, could not have the status and identity of being “isolated” unless there were Others to be isolated from. Don’t think you can get away with not doing your chores if you live in our house. That’s what the monks in Japan learned about the 1960s-70s hippies who came over to become Buddhas. The monks ended up closing their monastaries to those who wanted to drop out and do nothing. Coming to a monastery is a dropping in, and there are chores to be done. You want to drop out. Okay. But don’t try to impose such madness on the world. Don’t claim the universal right to fix the system, our system by eliminating it, by leaving the “defilments” of ethnicity, culture, identity, and our own humanity, behind.

We cannot not communicate (Man kann nicht nicht kommunizieren). Paul Watzlawick, a German phenomenologist who studied at the Carl Jung Institute in Zurich (Jean Gebser taught there), was recruited to become a member of the Palo Alto Group along with Gregory Bateson and Juergen Ruesch. Watzlawick, like other systems thinkers such as Nicolai Hartman and Heidegger, and their student Gadamer, and his student (me), have borrowed from Heraclitus’ idea of unity in diversity. We cannot not not have relationships with everything. Everything is always implicated. Even the dream of being a hermit is always already biased vis-à-vis Others. It always already has a context that defines you as the weirdo who went off to live by yourself. It’s a perspective, an identity that requires togetherness and community to enable isolation to make sense. That’s the primary premise of systems theory and why biologists and myself write about panevolution. Everything is connected directly or indirectly with everything else. COMMUNICATION. And communication is not “defilement.” That’s some weird value judgment on steroids. It is not a valid justification for either social engineering on a massive scale or totally eliminating the system altogether (“adaptation theorists” are thoroughly confused about their own logic here because they suggest both at once – assimilate completely into a specific culture and by so doing transcend all cultures). Fine. Go ahead and claim to “transcend all cultures” and humanity itself. But that does not mean you are no longer part of the system. It just means you’re deluded. That’s okay as long as you aren’t hurting others – leading them into dead-ends or worse, justifying symbolic and/or physical violence such as “erase yourself or else.” Convincing people to hate who they are, to doubt their own self-worth, is not nice.

Being identified as a “hermit” means there are non-hermits. This is the universal implicate aspect of reality. As soon as you claim an identity you are implicating and presuming the Other. The Other side of the teetertotter is always there. Near or distant culturally, psychologically, economically, educationally, geographically… What you are is a result of the nature of your relationship with Others on the teetertotter. Close, not close. The ratio varies by the micro-inch. Small moves “Sparks,” as the father says to his radio-tuning daughter in the movie Contact. We, you and me, exist because of the existence of Others. The more different from us, the more different we are. The more different the more complex, sometimes challenging communication, but also the more there is to learn and be surprised and delighted by. The more information and meaning. Wow Godzilla is much shorter in person! Hmm. I guess the camera really does make people and monsters look taller on screen.

Elimination of difference is suicidal. I have been stumped that so many seem to think that elimination of difference is some sort of solution. Well, yes. I suppose if you eliminate culture itself, and human beings, then there’s no more intercultural communication or miscommunication. No people. No human communication. The final solution. Toss the baby, the bathtub, the house, the toys, the soap… everything with the bathwater. The solution to solving problems in the game… eliminate the game entirely. Hmmm we need a better quarterback or pitcher. Let’s just stop playing, that’ll solve the problem. Nihilism. Or… you can learn to enjoy difference, tolerate Others (or give them wiggle room -- that’s what it means in manufacturing), embrace their idiosyncrasies, teach them, learn from them, debate them, hug them. Come out of your shell. Stop being afraid. Uncertainty is the opening to discovery. That is much more “realistic” to me, than we all become Buddhas and cease to exist.

Cultural Fusion Theory offers that explanation (not solution). [I have developed and published four other theories including Visiocentrism (which disagrees with Derrida’s claim that modernity is phonocentric), Dimensional Accrual and Dissociation, Technology as Denial of Death (synthesizing Søren Kierkegaard, Jean Gebser, Freud, Otto Rank, and Ernest Becker’s work on mortality anxiety to the process of technology), Ontogenesis/Cultural Panevolution]. Cultural Fusion Theory does not seek to engineer a utopia. It does not promise total assimilation and psychic “equilibrium.” It’s a scientific theory that attempts to explain how things are, not a political manifesto for how things ought to be. The latter presumes arrogant authority and to have a bad history of exclusionary violence. I need the Other on my teetertotter. They can’t be me. They can’t be on my side otherwise I can’t play because we can’t play – or talk. I agree with Wittgenstein that there is no such thing as a one-person language. But my point is more “radical” (except that “language speaks us”). There is no one-person identity. That’s what Deleuze and Guattari is talking about when discussing Robinson Crusoe. The presence of Friday, gives Crusoe an identity. Lacan also talks about this in terms of the child and mother forming looking-glass identities (borrowed from Mead who borrowed it from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, who borrowed it… going down the rabbit hole here). When your kid, OR YOUR DAD (Listen up here Alex, Preston), wants to play catch, get off your ass and do it. Even fishing alone is not as much fun as fishing with buddies. As defined by Aristotle, The Old Man and the Sea is a tragedy.

The Other, YOU, are NOT my opposition. I certainly do NOT want you to disappear by disintegrating and/or becoming identical to me. Talking to myself is boring. Without difference, change, I can’t have a world at all. Even my eyes will become blind if they become still. So nature has a solution. The process of involuntary twitching in the eyes is is called pathophysiologic saccades. If you stare at an unchanging point, the photoreceptors or ganglion cells stop responding. So, your eyes must experience involuntary movement, a little twitching all the time to make the image appear and be clearer. To make sight possible in a static scene your eye moves involuntarily. Same with your ears, skin, tongue, nose. In fact, all conception and perception is rooted in recognition which is based on difference. Without change you can’t conceive or even perceive. When someone says, “I have a different idea,” or “I have a different opinion,” that’s important because that helps to clarify what your own ideas and opinions are. You see something when it moves. You feel something when it crawls across your skin or newly presses against you. That’s the essence of what we call consciousness.

Without difference, change, the Other, there is nothing and no identity. You can’t say “I know that,” unless “that” is not “this.” Likewise, you can’t say, “there it is” unless it is different. Don’t move and the T-Rex won’t see you. Don’t smell different, and the wolf can’t track you. Basic. Very basic but yet, some assimilationists who confuse “adaptation” with conformity don’t get it. Assimilation and integration are not erasure of difference into homogenous disappearance of identity. But the terms assimilation, adaptation, and integration are misused that way in too many social science pubs. Evolution also is not a trend toward sameness. It is the opposite! Divergence of forms. Proliferation of styles. Endless experimentation to expand culture, life, the self. The more different kinds of people you get to know the more refined your sense of self-identity. You grow through exposure to difference, not sameness. Death is not life’s goal. Proliferation is.

Now, if you want absolute assimilation, collapse of all difference into a nothingness, “peace” defined as a zero-energy state entropic homeostasis, equilibrium without disturbance (terminal stability) with no movement or uncertainty, then imagine a place with no up or down, no good or bad, no light or dark, no past or future, no hot or cold, no sound or silence – nothing be my guest. That’s where the fulcrum wedges your bum. But that’s not life as we know it. And to aspire to that -- changeless, meaningless, void… You must be tired of living, lacking all will. Not even enough left in the battery to close the program. Well, it may come soon enough. But that’s not a theory of communication. That’s a last call of despair. To be sure, in such a state, you wouldn’t have to worry about miscommunication or misunderstanding or even communication at all. Communication requires difference. It would indeed be a solution… a final solution. I’m not going there. I may be a nobody or a tiny somebody thanks to all of you Others out there. In any case, I’m splashing around until… I don’t. Come on in.

Error and Conformity

We often obey commands and conform to popular beliefs and behaviors even though we know they are wrong. We assimilate/conform. Why? Immature psyches want to fit in, be popular, accepted. Mind guards, as sycophantic promoters of conformity itself, take it one step further and promote not merely conformity to a particular ideology but the universal good of assimilationist conformity generally. They are meta-conformists. “Conform to the call to conform!” They really want to please their mentors and be popular. It can work… for a time. In a bowling league or club such obsequiousness does little harm. But when promoted as social science, that’s another issue which demands response.

Shouldn’t we instruct our students to not give into this tendency to uncritically follow peer pressure and other desires to “fit in” when it is wrong? -- Not encourage erroneous behavior or encourage the continuation of unfair and unjust social structures? Of course, we should. Why people conform/assimilate to the point of becoming reactionary sadists toward others and to the point of reproducing social structures that are unjust and cruel has been massively studied since the 1950s, often by researchers motivated to understand how the Holocaust could have happened. Were Germans uniquely compliant to authority? No. The research demonstrates that. Irrational obedience is a universal PROBLEM. Unfortunately, this research seems to have been completely overlooked by those who promote cultural adaptation theory, who even call assimilation to any and all “mainstream” ideology the very path to enlightenment. According to assimilationists obedience is called “freedom,” and “liberation.” It is the “upward-forward” path to “emancipation.” And “unlearning” is necessary for “growth.” Simplification means complexity… a lobotomy enhances intellect. Astounding but true. Okay, on the last one about the lobotomy I was joking. However, obedience is not about intellect even when authorities say it is “smart” to obey. And lobotomies have been used to make the questioning mind more docile, which is the goal of assimilation – which does suggest using psychotherapy to get “maladjusted” people to conform to mainstream ways. The procedure was still popular when pro-assimilationist ideology was being conceived.

Remember the 1962 novel by Ken Kesey and 1975 movie version directed by Jan Tomáš "Miloš" Forman One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? Why would an émigré from the former Soviet Union be the perfect visionary to tell this tale on film? Well try reading the poet Andrei Codrescu’s book Raised by Puppets (1987) for further understanding. It was the second film in history to win all five major Academy Awards: Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor in a Leading Role, and Actress in Leading Role. I don’t know how the author of pro-assimilationist theory could of missed the point. But then, maybe… the pro-assimilationist theory was written in honor of Mildred Ratched. No room for Merry Pranksters in this worldview. See my version of their bus below. Really awesome.

It seems we don’t appreciate freedom unless we’ve lived without it. That those who inherit everything including freedom won by others fail to understand the sacrifices, the “aggression” sometimes necessary to achieve it. Eastern European artists and scholars understand.

I repeat one refrain throughout this river of words, I am a lucky dude and appreciate so much. I’ve seen mass graves in Guatemala and the struggles of folks to rebuild their lives after the fall of the Soviet Union. My father and I accidently drove through the Detroit riot the night Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. I didn’t leave bad situations, I tended toward them, at least enough to really appreciate coming home. And I am very sad to see others who have benefited so much, benefactors of the “free ride” education and affirmative action (that they would now deny) actually argue against the freedom to protest. You will never see them at a protest or even encourage students to read contrary views. If they speak up it is always for their own personal interest. This is “keeping one’s nose clean and out of other peoples’ business.” Sounds nice but you don’t want to count on them in a pinch. They coast on previous folks’ efforts to make their cushy lives possible.

Not just Hollywood, but the Ivy League was making lots of noise about conformity too. Solomon Asch was a student of Max Wertheimer, a phenomenologist pioneer of gestalt. Asch, like so many other immigrats to the US from war torn Europe, felt a strong need to understand this problem. He was a Polish-American social psychologist interested in conformity. He was at Columbia, Swarthmore, and then Harvard. What piqued his interest was the sadism of Nazi prison camps and also the work of a University of Oklahoma psych prof Muzafer Sherif. Sherif was a Turkish-American scholar who was a founder of modern social psychology. He too was interested in conformity. Just as the origins of sociology generally were rooted in the problem of alienation, the origins of social psychology were rooted in the problem of conformity and social influence. Why don’t people do the right thing instead of the wrong thing? Aristotle spent a good bit of time pondering this question. It cannot be simply explained by “rewards.”

Doing the wrong thing often leads to negative consequences and regrets. We don’t need books to encourage conformity to even stupid ideas. We need ways to teach critical thinking to avoid terrible decisions. Sherif launched the experimental investigation. But from Asch’s perspective, Sherif’s experiments did not have a clear, correct answer (which line length equates with one given for matching). The choices were too ambiguous and so the results imprecise. Asch took the experiments a step further to offer a clear, correct answer to demonstrate that people under pressure to assimilate will pick the WRONG answer. They choose conformity over being right. They will come to reject the data of their own eyes and ears in order to appear compliant with a popular claim. This research had profound consequences. Irving Goffman was focusing on social stigma, others continued to examine the consequences of Mead and Cooley’s “looking glass self,” the little distorting mirrors everyone holds up to each other, and that we all fret over. The first self-portraits heralded the emergence of individualism and now we are swamped by literally billions of “selfies.” The more people attend to Facebook, the more depressed they are. Who’s winning in the game of life? Social pressure. FOMO, fear of missing out, plagues us. Some just withdrawal and become angry INCELS. We are such social animals.

Asch, working with Carl Hovland, turned to examine social judgment. Research into this problem continued. Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo were buddies in high school. They loved the TV show Candid Camera (a hidden camera reality TV show filming ordinary people being confronted by unusual situations). This influenced their experiments and their interpretations of results. Both Milgram and Zimbardo were also very interested in how the Holocaust could happen. Milgram ended up conducting experiments at Harvard and Zimbardo at Stanford. In the 1960s, Stanley Milgram conducted his famous shock experiments where it was demonstrated that ordinary people (not psychopaths) would obey authorities to the point of even overriding their own judgments and the facts as presented to them to continue to “shock” people to “death.” In the 1970s, Zimbardo conducted his experiments on obedience and conformity in his simulated prison. Student “guards” quickly became so sadistic, that he had to shut down the experiment prematurely for ethical reasons. He came to call this the “Lucifer Effect,” meaning the process of how good people turn evil via assimilating to unjust, even sadistic power structures. Then Albert Bandura’s work in the 1980s also dealt with “moral disengagement,” somewhat similar to the 1960s work on the “bystander effect” (why people won’t intervene to stop something bad or to render aid) studied by Darley and Latané. Then came Irving Janis’ work at Yale looking at what William Whyte in 1952, called “Groupthink.” In 1972 Janis published his famous book on groupthink describing how poor decision-making results from group pressure to silence deviant voices. Kurt Lewin had earlier warned that group cohesion, often seen as a virtue, can lead to terrible consequences. The deviant voice, the contrarian, is often demonized and so they are called the “Devil’s advocate” when institutionalized as performing the function of trying to find weaknesses in decisions before they are operationalized.

The point here is that any “theory” that defines a minority person who does not obey and assimilate to majority coercion as lacking cognitive complexity, being immature, ethnocentric, psychologically unbalanced, maladjusted, “unfit to live in the company of others”… is a propaganda tool for perpetuating status quo and authoritarianism. It is not a social science theory. It is a prescription for accepting forced compliance as right and good. It promotes forced compliance as inevitable, as “objective reality” against “selfish” “subjective” opinions and needs of minorities. Majority beliefs and values are presented as “natural,” beyond question so that any attempt to make change is “unrealistic,” “selfish,” “immature.” Now, it also assumes that some might try; they might resist, be “disagreeable,” even “hostile,” hence the need to teach them obedience, to “reprogram” them, to “train them.” According to this social engineering trope, even those who expand their repertoire of cultural competencies, bilingual “coethnics,” for instance,are deemed to be “poorly adapted.” Why? Because they can compare beliefs and values. They have the ability to assess decisions from an outside perspective. Also, some residue of their original cultural self remains and may contaminate complete, pure assimilation. They might harbor alternative thoughts. Yes, in highly homogenous societies, coethnics are not mainstream. They are in parts of Europe, however. Poor bastards. They didn’t even know they were maladjusted incompetent communicators (in several languages).

After all the work done in psych, soc, and other fields, there’s no excuse. Go back and read Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt. It came out in 1961 to huge acclaim. No one with exceptional skills, drive, competencies is typical. That’s what exceptional means. Such a prescription to unwavering assimilation would take all of these immigrant social psychologists and erase their perspectives that made them so valuable, their outlier insights and experiments that led to their gaining status as giants in social-psychological research and highly respected professors in the Ivy League… (which proves the cultural adaptation theory wrong both theoretically and empirically). Outliers, by definition, are rare and valuable and often are recognized with status and rewarded for their innovative thinking, at least in democracies… thank god… To follow cultural adaptation theory, we should decapitate societies of their innovators in the arts and sciences, in academe and every other institution of society. Why? Precisely because they are nonconformists.

Wait a minute. There can be exceptionally bad people too right? Right. The point here is that moral assessment cannot be left up to the “mainstream” no matter what the norm is. Popular beliefs and values are not always right. But this is exactly the kind of crazy relativism promoted by cultural adaptation theory. No matter what, the mainstream dominant power is always right. Yow! The “theory” intercultural adaptation “personhood” is offered to cover all conditions. No matter if a “majority” is unjust and cruel or not, they are to be obeyed. If we lived this way, the Earth would still be flat, and medicine would still be a mixture of prayer and sorcery. Got a chicken to sacrifice to stop Covid? Leeches might help.

Why would someone promote such an ideology? Because it has been rewarding to them… personally. They suffer from the egocentric fallacy. Well, the denigrated, vilified, and disparaged don’t espouse such an ideology. It almost always comes from someone who has been part of a dominant group and has enjoyed privilege under the regime. They can’t empathize with the “ingrates,” “activists,” “community organizers,” who would criticize the very system that gave them rewards and privilege or even those who sacrificed to give them those opportunities. In street lingo, they are spoiled but then seek to justify their privilege through transcendental “objectifying” doctrines such as being “chosen” by a diety (the exclusive covenant stuff) or scientifically via biological superiority, and such. The problem with Social Darwinists, they love to take credit for their success. Hyper-individualism, as we shall see, is a hallmark of this ideology. This dedication to “self-reliance” even while promoting a “mainstream” culture, clouds the thinking, unless, a person can be self-reflexive (a philosopher or scientist), and recognize and truly appreciate all the help they got every step of the way. We assume structures that others built, often at great sacrifice.

The great patrons of Social Darwinism, of claiming that “competence” is all “within the individual,” also like to see themselves as great competitors, as “geniuses.” They abhor debate, challenges, government interference to muck up the “natural selection” of social hierarchy, meaning their domination of the floor, and their monologues of self-praise. Pure egocentrism. They can get away with it when they literally control, if not own, the forum. Pooling our insights and ideas. How can a little group of people with fire and sharp sticks bring down Giant Cave Bears, Saber Toothed Tigers, Woolly Mammoths? Not brute strength. Brains. Cooperation. The willingness to listen to each other and accurately assess the results of efforts. Not fawn at the feet of the great master but brainstorm via complex communication.

But there’s nothing natural about it. In fact, primatologists have argued that what made the human species so successful was cooperation. Our extraordinary ability to communicate enhanced our ability to coordinate and succeed against other animals that, individually, were much more “fit” than we. It is our ability to empathize, sympathize (abstract thinking), and cooperate that is our strength. And as for fair competition, which involves rules and a level of cooperation… the Robber Barons were infamous for avoiding competition at all costs. Hence the need for anti-trust and anti-monopoly law, which they fought tooth and nail. Savages? When a presidential candidate declares that it is smart to not pay taxes and half the country agrees, the culture is in trouble. We are confusing intelligence with cheating and being ruthless. That’s a serious error. At the end of the day democracy is very collectivistic. It presumes trust among the citizens, that they will, on their own volition, do the right thing. If it is decided that the “right thing” is to not support the community, the community is in big trouble. Then it is every man for himself, might makes right. Savagery.

It makes simple sense. If the system is working great for you, why would you want to change… unless you can see beyond your own nose. I hear people say they hate so much about Trump but… their 401K is doing well. There you have it. Forget that he inherited a great economy, Social Darwinist with “good blood” try to egocentrically take all the credit for things that work and deflect if they don’t. But, this is an error that can have grave consequences for the system overall.

If you see the movie Gran Torino, you get a fairly accurate picture of where I grew up in many ways, the town, everything. The main character is eerily like my dad. He too was a widower in the end. My dad was born in May, 1921. Went to the South Pacific during WWII and barely survived (stabbed and shot). He was a DI in the Marines. My dad even had the same attitude toward a preacher in our neighborhood and church generally as Eastwood’s character. My dad was smart but without degrees (including no HS degree), fair-minded and hard as nails. One time I helped him put up a chain link fence at the back of our yard. Then our neighbor decided to do it too. His son, a big shot banker came up from Columbus (OH), with his son and the three generations, a banker, an accountant, and the kid put up a fence that extended ours across the back of their lot. I’ll never forget. I was about 8 or 9. My dad and I were in the back of the yard burning trash or something. My dad said look at the fence. I did. So? Look again. Then I realized, our fence posts were all even in height, theirs were up and down and looked ridiculous. Just one little example of my dad. He did things and didn’t talk much. He was very “empirical.” His way of educating me? “Look.” “See.” He was, surprisingly open-minded. I guess working and living with guys in the “Three Cs” from the time he was 16, and then the Marines from all over and seeing some of the world made him willing to give anyone a chance. He’d seen a lot. He was a very mature person. He didn’t trust words so much. He used to say that in bootcamp some guys were arrogant as hell, “big talkers,” but that you would not know who’s really brave until the moment came and that it was often the person you didn’t expect. Brave to him meant doing the scary but right thing, taking a lonely stand outside the norm.

Here’s my mom and dad after they retired. He really had a hard time after my mother died. He didn’t show emotion. This is about as much of a smile as you could get out of him. But he missed her. He was proud that I’d gotten a Ph.D. but he didn’t understand the academic world. He thought I was stupid for leaving Radford U in Virginia to move to Oklahoma. I did have a nice house in the beautiful New River Valley. We could drive to each other’s houses in about 4-5 hours. Oklahoma is very far from Ohio and ugly by comparison to Virginia (at least central and westward). I told him Oklahoma was a bigger, better school. It didn’t impress him. Students are students. They all need teachers. He’s not wrong about that. My mentors were all encouraging and proud that I’d moved “up.” He might have been smarter than all of us combined. Ideology and myth does confuse us. Still, I’m glad I moved to a Ph.D. granting department. We lived in different worlds. I think status like rank had lost its luster for him in the kind of combat he’d been in. Having rank didn’t mean much when what counted was who would stand with you and who would freeze or run. Am I brave? I’ve never been tested that harshly. I don’t know. Hope so. More about my mother later.

My dad’s prejudices; he didn’t like “weasels,” who stab you in the back because they don’t have the guts to face you, and against stupid and lazy. I see people teach ethics and leadership. Fuck. Most don’t have a clue. When the moment comes, they often disappoint. Not just lacking fortitude but even being selfish – shameless even. They’ve got a million excuses. Masters of deflection. Words… They have a little power due to structural position but outside that structure they are burrowed into, nobody would follow them to water if they were dying of thirst. But guys like my dad didn’t want to be big shots or “saviors.” Mostly, they wanted to be left alone.

One of the things I liked about the movie Gran Torino is that Eastwood’s character “Walt Kowalski,” tries to socialize, “assimilate” the kid but then he also realizes that there are structural realities, and that “he doesn’t stand a chance on his own.” So, Eastwood’s character intervenes to change the odds. Hint. It’s not what you think… see you’ve been brainwashed. He uses his brains, not a gun (sorta). Clint cross-examines the attitude that: “They should just shut up or go back to their own country… They don’t belong. I demand to see the birth certificate.” He should’ve stayed in character. Ironically, it was Clint who would end up talking to an empty chair in an attempt to totally negate the existence of one of those “community organizers.” And he did such a great job in Unforgiven deconstructing the lone gunslinger western that had made him famous. Oh well… By the way, I wrecked my sister’s Torino. Someone pulled up and waved me out… right into the path of an oncoming car. I was 15. No license. Like I keep saying, I am one lucky dude. If I’d been black, I probably would have never made it to college.

When I was an undergrad major in sociology I was encouraged to become a sort of “big brother” in a program in inner-city Cleveland Schools. The boy I was assigned to was the kid in the movie. The more I learned about his situation, the more I realized that he was up against ridiculous odds. His school, his neighborhood, his house were war zones. My “life coaching” advice was not worth spit. It was insult added to unending injury. A tweak of his “personality traits” wasn’t gonna do it. Real social change was necessary, and it had to come from those who had the power to make it so. Now you might think, isn’t Kramer being a hypocrite here? He is against the assimilationists who would use social institutions to engineer change but he says we need change. The assimilationists want to teach the rest of us to… assimilate. I’m saying we all have to change. The system has to change. The “mainstream dominant culture” needs to change. But… assimilationists like the system as is. So, we have the “White Man’s Burden” that came out of Social Darwinism. It was used to whitewash the troubled souls of White Folk (Mr. Du Bois), and to whitewash a genocidal history. It was cooked up by the “mainstream” to make the “mainstream” feel righteous for taking on the “burden” of helping the less fortunate. What a scam. You steal entire continents and then see yourself as a victim held hostage by some duty to help those you just crushed.

And the solution? They have to deculturize. Their failings are all their fault. They need to develop, evolve, assimilate, adapt. Develop into what? A member of the dominant privileged group that got its privilege in the first place by clobbering them. Kiss the fist that punched you in the face and then, become that fist yourself. Well, I don’t know what ever happened to “my assignment.” I did learn a lot so I benefited, but in the end he was just one more opportunity for me. But I can make noise now.

Assimilationist ideology proposes a goal for everyone to strive for “complete adaptation,” meaning total “cognitive, affective, and behavioral” conformity to the “dominant mainstream” ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving. The best minority is the invisible muted minority, the eliminated minority, the disappeared. This is the old “model minority” label conferred upon obedient minority groups by majority categorization. The power of naming is real. That is the message loud and clear. But we all have minority opinions and needs from time to time. And what if the status quo is evil? What if, like all real-world conditions, some things could be identified and improved if someone speaks up? Sherif and Hovland’s first great book was Social Judgement: Assimilation and Contrast Effects in Communication and Attitude Change (1961). Communication is essential. Express your perspective. Otherwise, if you remain silent, or conform behaviorally, don’t expect anything to change.

Now to be clear, all these pioneers in the field of obedience, power, conformity studies did not pursue their work in order to figure out how to make people more obedient or compliant. Rather they wanted to understand how it is that people were so easily manipulated. How people could be influenced to choose the wrong alternative even as they knew at some level that it was wrong. To make bad decisions based on group pressure/coercion. The assimilationists are the exact opposite. Their goal is to  “help,” to justify a need for, and to encourage people to unlearn who they are and to assimilate, to even install ideological campaigns promoting the virtue of assimilative conformity in school curricula and mass media broadcasts. Maybe that explains why the literature on this topic is conveniently ignored by the assimilationists. It certainly is not the view of Buddhism. Now D. T. Suzuki presents a problem here, but the authors of cultural adaptation theory who claim him as their inspiration, I doubt, even know about his pro-Nazi views about expelling Jews from Germany. It would make their claims more consistent… but I believe they were caught up in his popular westernized version of the “New Buddhism” he was promulgating about “universal brotherhood” and nondualistic metaphysics (much of which he borrowed from Nietzsche, via Heidegger, while living for years in the US), and other niceties like exterminating the ego and ignorance, and other typical goals of enlightenment. Below I get more into Suzuki and the bizarre westernization of Buddhism that so influenced young college students everywhere, in the 1960s and 1970s and how it was all mixed up with western esoteric mysticism, interest in the occult, and general romanticization of all things Oriental at the time. Heidegger had a huge impact on Suzuki. They were sympatico. He even wrote the introduction to Suzuki’s most popular book. Here’s the two posing. Heidegger was a member of the Nazi Party and never renounced it. Gadamer told me this personally.

As social engineers the teachers of assimilationism had a goal in mind. So they selectively chose and also misrepresented sources to support their agenda. My Master’s thesis in philosophy was on Chan (Zen). I’m confident that abandoning individual critical reflection and accepting any majority rule is not the philosophy. Monks throughout history, more recently in Tibet, Thailand, Burma, and Vietnam have resisted oppression. They did not champion turning into a mindless blob of malleable mud. To present the philosophy that way is to strip it of its moral teachings. Read the Sutras, learn the Eight-Fold Path and the Four Noble Truths before coopting and misrepresenting an entire spiritual tradition in order to promote a political agenda.

Encouraging people to “deculturize,” and “unlearn” themselves, and to avoid their “ethnic” media and friends and to assimilate to a more powerful group is a political statement. By contrast, what is called “right” by Buddhist teaching has very often led monks to be “disagreeable,” and even “aggressive” against “wrong” teachings and behaviors. They fought, with guns, against the Chinese army in Tibet. The Dali Lama fled. He did not “assimilate.” They see actions as having consequences. And they judge. Śīla (Right speech, right action, right livelihood), Samādhi (right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration), Prajñā (right view, right resolve). Right does NOT mean blind obedience. I assure you that if you put a Buddhist monk into a neighborhood full of crime, drug dealing, prostitution… he will not start dealing drugs. Fitting in, is the concern of immature teenagers. Adults develop independent discernment. Buddhism is not a philosophy for lemmings.

And to reduce authority to mere quantity, the “majority” “mainstream Culture” that is called true and “objective reality” by assimilationists, simply based on numbers, is morally bankrupt.

But never fear. One thing that came out of the Holocaust was a great deal of reflection on conformity, obedience, compliance, mimicry, and other modes of behavior that can erase an individual’s critical thinking and lead to horrible decisions and behaviors. Continued research has shown that replicating Asch’s work from the 1950s, in the 1980s yielded different results. Far fewer subjects were persuaded by group pressure to pick the wrong string in a matching test. This is good. But the field of communication still lags far behind. We also find that people raised in a conservative non-western, non-democratic culture tend to see conformity as more of a virtue than those raised in democracies. But this too has been changing over time. And if old-time conservatives immigrate, they become part of a diaspora. That means that while away, their old conservative countries where they had primary acculturation, progress, often liberalize, and democratize. They missed that boat.

In the 1960s the world was full of military juntas and generalissimo-dictators. There was a fierce battle between Washington and Moscow/Beijing for control of the newly independent post-colonial nations. Culture is more fundamental than politics or economics. In Asia authoritarian Confucianism was a perfect cultural soil for oppression. It led to dictatorships (kings, sultans, emperors, military juntas) in both communist and capitalist societies. Suharto in Indonesia, Marcos in the Philippines, Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan, Park Chung-hee, Chung Il-kwon, Chun Doo-hwan… in South Korea, Ne Win in Burma, Thanom Kittkachorn in Thailand, the Marxist-Leninist one-party states of Vietnam, North Korea, China. As one of my professors who escaped China told me, to the average Chinese, Mao was just another emperor. Confucianism justified dictatorship. The entire region saw much ultra-right violence such as the Thammasat University massacre in October 1976 in Thailand.

Democracy has had a tough time gaining ground against Confucianism. Coup d'états were the rule until the 1980’s and even today we see young democrats fighting for their lives as I write this in Hong Kong and Myanmar. The powerful demand conformity (“adaptation”). But times have changed some and for old-timers, they are caught in a diasporic time warp. Millions have died in re-education camps throughout Laos, China, Burma, Cambodia, Vietnam and in prisons… Where do you think the idea of mass indoctrination via schools and the mass media comes from? And during this period the US was bringing the “best and brightest” youth of these authoritarian regimes to places like the East-West Center (established by an act of Congress in 1960 to form a bulwark against democratic “leftist” movements in Asia) and the College of the Americas for grooming. You didn’t get chosen for the privilege of going to the US without being recognized by the various regimes as being a “good representative.” Kings and dictators across Asia sent their hand-picked learners along with “gifts” to the Center such as the Thai Pavilion donated by the king and queen of Thailand in 1964.

Time is making a difference around the globe as Enlightenment ideals continue to spread. Struggles of minority rights for workers, women, children, the poor… have taken root almost everywhere. For instance, the old hardcore Confucianism literally woven into the business philosophies promulgated by Korean Chaebols (Korean family-based business empires), Japanese Keiretsus, Zaibatsus, and now Chinese “clan businesses,” are increasingly recognized as being patently anti-democratic and regressive toward competition and capitalism. The “spiritual traditions of the eastern cultures” that writers appeal to, to justify conformity is really just one stream… Confucianism. But at least they are in the ballpark for clearly identifying the cultural bias that they, themselves, have not “unlearned” but rather promoted as the way westerners should think, fell and behave about blind obedience.

These “corporate” empires are now called “corporate monsters” in their own countries. Koreans react very negatively to bosses and elites publicly humiliating subordinates, demanding that they get on their knees and beg for forgiveness. An example? The “nut rage” incident where the heiress to Korea Airlines went crazy because a flight attendant served her macadamia nuts in a bag instead of a porcelain plate. She ordered the plane to return to its gate at JFK in order to kick the flight attendant off the plane. She also forced him to apologize to her on his knees in front of the rest of the passengers and crew. Can you imagine what she must be like behind closed doors? And who taught her this was appropriate behavior? Monster indeed. Forcing compliance. Forcing assimilation. Just another way to “persuade” -- bully people to “adapt,” through “coercive pressure,” -- to “behave appropriately.” This is not social science. This is not a new observation. Dah. We all know about coercioin and social pressure. The point is how can we manage it. Assimilationist social “science” texts even argue that complying is the equivalent to being a competent communicator. So apparently attorneys arguing a case are not competent communicators? This is western culture. The dialectic. The right to argue your case, to hold a position. To be “disagreeable.” To get into “good trouble.” I could give many more examples but if you watch Koran soap operas you will notice that many are about the huge power distance between the rich and the poor. But today, unlike earlier times, the power and abuse is portrayed as not a virtue by these shows. Instead, these stories are critiques of the way things have been. Women in many conservative societies have been fighting for equality. Up through the 1980’s workers, salarymen could still be seen on street corners in Confucian cultures such as Japan and Korea, screaming at the top of their lungs that they are idiots and lazy because a boss ordered them to do so. Those days are waning. They still linger, but the tide toward a democratic ethos is strong. Treating people with basic dignity and the right to speak is growing despite authoritarians around the globe trying to stop it.

The Young Philosopher Meets Scientism

Orwellian Advice: Darkness is “Enlightenment,” Obedience is Initiative, Conformity is “Liberation,” A will to Be is Poison, Life is Death, Unlearning is Learning, Progress is Regression to the Mainstream Culture, Growth is Zero-Sum, Complexity is Simplicity, Assimilation is Freedom, Mimicry is Creative

We notice that calls to adapt suddenly appeared with the rise of Imperial power and industrialization. It was the ultimate rhetoric to justify change and consolidation of power into new hands that were beginning to stretch across the globe. The Victorians proclaimed it from the rooftops as even a pseudo-scientific justification. As ecclesiastical authority waned, the new secular science was employed by elites to justify their eliteness; to generate a new authoritative rhetoric to promote obedience. How genuinely scientific Spencer’s doctrines were didn’t matter. He was a new, improved, modern, “authoritative source.”

Then Galton and Pearson (who was the first, last, and only occupant of the Eugenics Chair endowed by Galton) at University College London, made it more scientifical by applying statistics to the comparison of human groups. Pearson also became the Chair of the Department of Eugenics Science there. Can’t argue with numbers. We’ve got Fisher’s linear discriminant analysis, t-distribution and analysis of variance along with Pearson’s rho (correlation coefficient), Pearson’s chi-squared test, method of moments, his histogram, P-values and principal component analysis… So persuasive. Galton was eager to see how he measured up. Surprise, surprise. He proved to be an outstanding specimen of the superior race.

Why suddenly develop and apply statistics to human beings? Why in Victorian England and Germany? Carl changed the spelling of his name to Karl because he liked Germany. True.

Ronald Fisher joined Pearson in the Eugenics Department. Both were avowed White Supremacist, convinced that their work proved the genetic superiority of Anglo-Nordic races. They were both strong supporters of British colonialism. In his book The Grammar of Science, Pearson argued that European settler colonialists benefited all of mankind by taking land from “dark-skinned tribes” because they didn’t know how to use the land efficiently. In his book The Scope and Importance to the State of National Eugenics, Pearson wrote that “human sympathy” for the genetically “defective” was a bad thing. Resources should not be wasted on the genetically inferior (the poor) but instead used to improve people of “good stock.” In his book The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (1930), Fisher devotes three chapters to endorsing colonialism, White Supremacy, and eugenics. He also argued that war and colonialism are good because they increase the average genetic value of mankind by exterminating “tribes” of “lesser genetic value.” This is a justification for genocide.

In his Annals of Eugenics, Pearson ran into a problem. Initially he counted income and saving as proxies for genetic superiority. Jews were supposed to be genetically inferior, but the data showed that they had higher incomes and savings than average. So, he changed his interpretation of the data to call it a “negative trait.”

This rhetoric enabled colonialism and even the systematic sterilization of poor people. So now we sterilize not just he poor but also above average earners because… well, just because we say so. This rhetoric masquerading as social “science,” also justified the colonized mind. This involves systematic instruction for how to reprogram individuals by deculturization and unlearning to make room for new “appropriate” acculturation. It’s A Clockwork Orange.

Stanley Kubrick made the movie version of the 1962 Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange. Kubrick wrote in the Saturday Review when the film came out in 1967, that it is, “A social satire dealing with the question of whether behavioral psychology and psychological conditioning are dangerous new weapons for a totalitarian government to use to impose vast controls on its citizens and turn them into little more than robots.” Burgess was a critic of the then popular treatments of behavioral modification and “conversion therapies.” Burgess called B. F. Skinner’s book Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971), “one of the most dangerous books ever written.”

Although behaviorism’s limitations were conceded by its principal founder, John B. Watson, Skinner argued that behavior modification — specifically, operant conditioning (learned behaviors via systematic reward-and-punishment techniques) is the key to an ideal society. The “adaptation”/assimilationists refer to conditioning as “training” and “programming.” Pavlov would be proud. Free will would be dead. You must not read or watch “ethnic” media or maintain friendships and other social networks of “ethnics.” Isolation will make you happy, fit, and mentally stable. Right… Having had both cats and dogs as companions I believe it is fitting that the one chosen to represent uncertainty is the cat.

According to assimilationists “conditioning and programming are the basic processes of communication, including decoding (perceptual and cognitive) patterns and encoding (verbal and nonverbal) training. The form of training depends on the particular culture and is embedded in the process of enculturation, in which the forms for expressing and comprehending basic social behavior are internalized.” This is accomplished via the “coercive pressure on one to adapt.” And “assimilation is the highest degree of adaptation conceivable.” Wow. Communication is reduced to primarily command and control. If Pavlov had worked with cats, we would not know who he is because they would not have cooperated – too independent minded. According to the assimilationists one must erase old programing to make room for new programing. Give your mind over to them for safe keeping and appropriate modification. That includes a fundamental “psychic transformation” from being incompetently “maladjusted” and “maladapted” to becoming competently conformist to the coercion of dominant people who manifest “external reality.” In short, stop insisting that you have a right to participate in making the future. Just “be realistic.” Lay back and enjoy it. Unless… unless you already are submissive, then you can keep your “positive personality traits and habits.” Hence, certain immigrants are more welcome (desperate) than others.

You, the “stranger,” the Other, on the other hand (ironically but still in their grip), constitute “internal, subjective experiences,” that are of no value. The more completely you erase that knowledge, those memories and experiences the better. Even if you keep your fluency in your original language while acquiring a second, third… language, that would make you a “coethnic” which is “poorly adapted.” According to the assmilationists that also makes you simple-minded, lacking cognitive complexity. Conformists and unlearners constitute the most “cognitively complex” and “mature” people. Just conform and be good compliant labor. Don’t think… certainly not in more than one language. That is the key to you having “functional fitness and psychological health.” You must learn to erase yourself to be “programmed to think, fell, and behave in a predictable manner.” Who should not suffer surprise? The boss of course. According to assimilationists, if you don’t willingly unlearn yourself, then you are being “self-deceptive,” unreasonably “hostile,” “cynical,” “immature,” “unbalanced,” “counterproductive,” even possibly “extremely mentally ill.” The boss will determine what constitutes mental illness – hint – it is being independent minded. And the authors of adaptation/assimilation engineering themselves are not “ethnic.” They humbly announce that they deem their plans for deprograming and reprograming (acculturating) the masses according to their values and beliefs is a “valid goal.” The rest of us should strive to be “plastic,” and show “agreement”, “loyalty,” and “piety” toward their plans for us and the culture they would give to us (under “coercive force”).

Those who have appointed themselves the mindguards of the establishment have given themselves the mantle of official enlighteners of the rest of us. They give very specific instructions on how all the rest of us should conform. I’ve noticed that assimilationists tend to own dogs or, if they are really into control, they own no pets at all. They may be uncooperative, inconvenient, even “aggressive.” So, eliminate them. Same for inconvenient people – the old, the sick, the disabled, those with divergent ideas, beliefs, values, motivations – in a word, culture.

Indeed, the assimilationists get confused because they do say that the ultimate goal is to “rise above the hidden forces of culture… to overcome cultural parochialism… approaching the limits of many cultures [I guess not their own] and ultimately of humanity itself.” So, if you don’t conform, you are no longer human which is good but only in relation to “many” cultures, except their own utopian plans. The more you assimilate, to their version of the “valid” culture, the more you escape the parochialism of all other cultures and become a post-human, transcultural Übermensch  -- the overman to lord it over the rest of us pathetic, ethnocentric, parochially minded, immature, unbalanced slobs. Makes sense since D. T. Suzuki is referred to as an inspiration for this vision and we know that Suzuki was heavily influenced by Nietzsche, but Suzuki didn’t understand Nietzsche any better than his super pro-Nazi crackpot sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Suzuki was a fascist sympathizer. Nietzsche was anything but, and “aggressively so.” Read him and read Suzuki’s essays supporting Japanese fascism. Here’ the hilarious train wreck of assimilationist thinking. If I do become an Übermensch, as conceived by Nietzsche and not the fascist Suzuki, then I will become truly Other, and will not listen to your bromides, commands, and advice to conform in thought, feeling, and acting. I will NOT erase myself and assimilate. Maybe you’ve met a little bit of an Übermensch in this critique. Nice to meet you. I think you know my name (no doubt you the assimilationist would call me the devil). I give credit to Mick for these words. “Be careful when you cast out your demons that you don’t throw away the best of yourself.” One man’s devil is another’s freedom fighter. Words. Names. Labels. Be careful who you give the power of naming to. There’s no stronger prejudice than that expressed in naming.

The massive question left unasked let alone unanswered by the assimilationists… who defines “utopia?” Well, it is not asked but they do freely and resolutely give the answer. They themselves. This is sad because by the 1930s we already had seen the horrors wrought by the age of ideology and its various “utopias.” Okay. We’ve heard this tune before. Well, those who get most of the rewards are being rewarded for greed, deception, and selfishness. Be careful what you reward. The evil kid “Alex” in the novel and movie is not unlike many powerful people in the world – psychopathic narcissists. Following their example leads to a very sick society. A good example is efforts to “reprogram” homosexuals. And this was deemed the truly moral thing to do… for the system… for the good… the natural thing to do… the objective thing to do… part of god’s plan… And not incidentally, there’s a lot of money to be made in conversion and other therapies. Money. Stimulus. Response…

All bases were covered. There was scientifical justification, empirical data (pretending that it doesn’t have to be interpreted), and religious authorization for genocide. Science had been colonized. But had it? These methods were invented to establish a reality of White Supremacy. Can you decolonize something born of racial and ethnic bias in favor of power? I think so. The statistics still “work.” But thank god eugenics has been put on the backburner. But it is still lingering right in the middle of interethnic and intercultural theorizing as key concepts and arguments. Same old arguments and even terminology. Hence my criticism here. But in this case, it is not White Supremacy but the supremacy of whoever is in power – total relativism in favor of whatever and whoever dominates – blanket justification for authoritarianism. Don’t ask questions. That’s deficient behavior. It is a tautology. Having power proves dominance and superiority, which justifies having and keeping power no matter what.

Here’s Dr. Robert Galbraith Heath, “the man who fried hundreds (if not thousands) of gay people’s brains.” He famously put electrodes into the brains of gays and inmates in Louisiana prisons and used “deep brain stimulation” (DBS) to “cure them” of homosexuality and other anti-social ailments. He was active from the 1930s to the 1980s. Today we also use powerful psychotropic drugs to “modify behavior” even and increasingly of millions of children. My old friend at Radford University, Professor Karl Pribram (neurosurgeon and developer of the “holonomic brain theory” along with David Bohm) used to go to Congress once a year to testify against the over prescription of powerful drugs to young adults and children who are “perfectly normal.” It is the demand that they sit in neat rows hour after hour, day after day, year after year that is abnormal. I talk about my own challenges with “the fidgets” below.

Social Darwinism became popular. Words like “evolve,” “adapt,” “growth” buzzed around. Charles Darwin decried the misuse of his name and of the terms by his cousin Francis Galton, who invented eugenics, and Herbert Spencer, who invented “Social Darwinism.” Social engineering of people extended from behavioral modification to the “root causes” of deviance in personality traits that could be bred-out of the species in the service of industrial efficiency and wealth accumulation. The poor were obviously inferior and should be discouraged from polluting the gene pool. Workers who were “aggressive” in their insistence on labor safety and fair pay were not the stock preferred by the factory and mill owners. They resisted conforming to the roles allocated to them by the elite mainstream dominant culture. The elites sang to the masses, conform to the new roles we have planned for you. Those who do not adjust, those nonconformists, those maladjusted will be assigned to facilities of “corrections.” A fatalism was promulgated and the purring, “helpful” voice suggesting as one would to a person to be hypnotized, “You are weary. Embrace a collapse of your will. Give up. Give in. Submit. Surrender… for your own good.”

Erasable People: How to De-Mind and De-Ethnicize the Masses

Herbert Spencer, the leading sociologist in Victorian England also promoted ways to help people “adapt” and “evolve” for the sake of a stable industrial culture -- for the Empire! And long live the oppressor. This was, along with eugenics and studying bumps on peoples’ heads the quackery of the times – literally a time of gaslights (scientifical gaslighting as well as literal gaslighting) and a horse-and-buggy worldview. This was, after all, before the great world wars, mass produced cars, airplanes, radio, television, radar, a national electricity grid, superhighways, antibiotics, the safety razor, vacuum cleaners, zippers, ballpoint pens, chocolate chips, tea bags… Now we shouldn’t be unfair to the brand-new social science emerging in the imperial centers of European capitals. Medicine at the time had some pretty crazy ideas too. In physics everyone was looking for the “ether.” The universe was not yet understood to be expanding. Galaxies had not been discovered. But while medicine and physics, and everything it seems, have moved far far down the road since then, I write this because I was stunned to see 1800s Spencerian ideas and terminology parroted in books sold today in the field of communication studies. What? How? Why?

As you can guess, the rich loved Spencer’s pseudo-scientific explanation for their privileged status. They immediately seized on it. It became the new gospel that justified predatory capitalism. It absolved them of any responsibility for taking more than their fair share. It not only justified inequality but also abandoning collectivism, fellowship, any and all efforts to help those less fortunate – to rectify unjust conditions. Spencer promoted intense individualism. It was a vindication of the old Hobbesian every man for himself philosophy but without a Leviathan to guide society. Adam Smiths' “invisible hand” that would assure true, fair (rational) competition was dumped for all out cheating. Follow those who grab power no matter if it is through fraud and deceit or not. Assimilationists would have us all falling over each other to follow and mimic the ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving of this class of dominant psychopaths. Of course. But why? Because assimilationism and conformity to the boss’s ways (worshipping one’s oppressor), was promoted by… the boss. Duh.

The dominant class, with their coercive ways, assures us, they know best, they are all powerful. They are truth and reality. Resistance is futile. They deserve your “loyalty” and “piety” (literally terms used in textbooks I’ve seen). And don’t even think about changing anything. Also, they have a school of thought that will explain to you, scientifically, why it is best for you to just follow and reproduce our ways. It’s natural… realisticalism.

What’s the best way to gain and maintain compliance? Convince people that complying is the best and only way to live so that they willingly follow and reproduce the status quo conditions as natural and real. Realism is a genre of fiction. Yet if you buy into it you fall prey to fatalism. Convince people that muting themselves is good for them. No thinking is best.

Horkheimer and Adorno wrote about the separation of the hands from the mind. The embodied Cartesian dualism. Factory labor didn’t have to think. In fact, they were discouraged from thinking. The brains were in the front office and the front office managers told the workers how to do everything. Everything right down to how to physically move, how fast to move, and when to go to the bathroom. The assembly line requires all to be in place at the same time and moving with the same rate. Pure regimentation of labor production. The management (the brain) controlled the hands. Read Harry Braverman’s account of how Frederic Taylor’s “scientific management” conceives of labor as a dumb ox -- specifically the case of the “stupid immigrant” Schmidt. It still does. The best ox is a strong one that does as it is told.

What the mass production system calls for is a mass of labor that will silence themselves, so management gets compliant “flexible” people without having to enforce the agenda. This is now called “competent communication.” Once laborers internalize the boss’s agenda (undergo “psychic transformation”), the work of compliance gaining is done. So first the compliant submissive worker has to be produced. Then that tool-human is used to produce other commodities and services.

This is the explicitly stated goal of “adaptation”/assimilation theory. How to make the right kind of person. The best worker ultimately is a programmable robot. They don’t complain, have ideas, get tired or sick… perfect. “Adaptation”/assimilationists give rhetorical support for this separation of mind from hands in the form of pseudo-scientific Social Darwinian jargon. The prescription for engineering the best kind of person. First, de-mind the workers. Make sure they cannot coordinate or have a social network. Isolate them so solidarity is eliminated. Encourage them to “deculturize,” to psychically “disintegrate” and “unlearn” who they are so they can be reprogrammed and trained (acculturated). Now this is old Victorian era rhetoric. I was shocked to see this promoted as current social “science theory.”

Now you might think there is nothing new here but there is. It’s a matter of creating a Taylorian fundamentalism that applies to all aspects of life and the individual (cognitively, affectively, and behaviorally), and in all contexts, not just work. Taylorism promoted total conformity at work. But “adaptation”/assimilation theory extends this call to total psychic transformation via deculturation. The person should “disintegrate” and transform into an entirely different person including giving up their culture, language, religion. They should de-ethnicize themselves.

Workers in the early twentieth century had massive walkouts and strikes against the “monstrous” approach of “scientific management.” “Adaptation”/assimilation takes this control to a totalitarian level to produce “universal people” who can fit any need or situation because they no longer have a culture or mind of their own.

According the assimilation “adaptation” conformity model, contrary voices should be silenced, which would of course obliterate J. S. Mills’ model of a fair and free marketplace of ideas. This is worse than Machiavelli. We know that Machiavelli wrote The Prince (in the “mirror of Princes” style of critique found in Xenophon and Isocrates) as an attempt to get Princes to see their own outrages and also to get into the good graces of an actual prince. It didn’t work. Despite his “brilliant” praise of a particular prince, that prince, not being stupid, threw Machiavelli into prison anyway. He probably used the book to level up a wobbly table. The poison of the wormtongue did not take hold in the noble as it did in Lord of the Rings. Tolkien was a wise old dude. Fiction can teach us much about human nature. I once told a famous fellow, Gus Friedrich that I learn more about human relationships and communication from reading Updike than our journals. Sandy Reagan was standing with us. They agreed. The journals do their job. They take good hunches and in very precise and small moves, they test them. The truth is most evident when each reinforces the other.

Check out my BLOG on organizational communication. What do people get out of raping doped victims? What satisfaction out of stabbing others in the back, sucker punching a sleeping person? Here’s an article placed “strategically” in a fourth-rate predatory “journal” that publishes garbage literally days after being received (can you say, review?) for a few hundred dollars. IRB? The victims probably will not see it. That’s why it is placed in a backwater venue, plus I can’t imagine a decent journal being willing to publish someone's diary.

So why bother? Apparently some get their jollies from backstabbing. It's Cosby-like. They can get a little tingle every time they meet the person, the unsuspecting victim, thinking “I fucked you good, and you don’t even know it.” It’s a double insult. It’s cowardly and egocentric as hell. I’ve got a few blades in my back too. Beware of treachery. Evil does exist. Often it comes with a title, a handshake and a handsome smile. Some folks you have to watch like a hawk. Attend to what they do, not what they say. Being “collegial” is minimal civilized behavior. It’s a fancy way to talk about frenemies. It’s like being “merely academic.”

We read all sorts of plagiarism from Machiavelli in contemporary organizational communication such as “strategic silence,” speaking half-truths, concealing information from some while sharing with others, distorting channels, and contents that one THINKS others can’t double-check, quid pro quo deals (If you publish me, even on a topic I am not an expert, then I’ll give you an award), gossiping while righteously condemning gossiping… all the little devious shitty things grubbers have pursued for eons that make communal life miserable for all, at least until they are found out, which they usually eventually are, and expelled. Such folks have fewer friends than enemies. Hint, if you think it and see it, others do too. Hence Antonio Gramsci’s theory that Machiavelli was not attempting to educate princes. They already knew about power. Rather Gramsci, trying to be generous, claimed that the book was intended for an audience of common people to understand and defend themselves against hegemonic brutality. Still, the Catholic church banned the book for being immoral. In his more comprehensive and serious work Discourses on Livy, even he, Machiavelli promulgated a republican model of state and even promoted the notion of an esprit of fellowship among citizens.

The assimilationists notion of “objective reality” is Machiavellian “realpolitik.” If Rousseau is correct that The Prince was a satire, then our assimilationist social “science” is reduced to being the butt of the joke. The Robber Barons of the Gilded Age espoused it. They used it to lobby for low to no taxes, no welfare, no assistance for the poor at all. They used it to refuse medical care and education to the poor -- except to propagate the inspiring truth of Social Darwinism itself. This would convince the poor that their plight was all their own individual faults which would achieve two objectives of the assimilationist. Convince the poor to accept their lot as natural and “fitting.” To admire rather than envy the great and noble higher up the social ladder. And to work harder and harder to gain a little ground in the status struggle. To accept, embrace, and conform as much as possible to the rules as created by the super race. Otherwise, they should accept their own demise, and quietly perish and cleanse the gene pool of their inferior genetic traits, and or ways of thinking. Of course, what is “selfish” depends on perspective. Assimilationists assume the perspective of the “super race.”

The rationale was Spencer’s infamous dictum, “survival of the fittest.” The rich saw themselves as scientifically vindicated as the most fit of all, by nature. If you are strong, you can take food, housing, medical care, and education. The “integrity” of their bloodlines was most fiercely defended. And for the overall good of the empire, low-valued classes should be discouraged from reproducing. Starvation was a valid tool.

The rich saw themselves as more fit, meaning more evolved – better adapted. And this, via the false reasoning of biological reductionism, they linked to better genes. This was their humility. On one hand they enjoyed and were immensely proud of their privilege, but on the other they admitted that it was, after all, only natural that they have more of everything. They were the strong and majestic thoroughbreds for the Human breed. Hence the “White Man’s burden.” But individualism also instructed a strict lassie faire approach. Too much help and you spoil the destitute their opportunity to achieve on their own. To earn the right to reproduce. Horatio Alger myths proliferated. They were the proud natural-born leaders.

“Evolution” and “adaptation” were Spencer’s terms that turned up again in the 1980s in cross-cultural and intercultural communication theory and in the same usage! It still does. Spencer misused these concepts to justify a political agenda. Authors today do the same. They naturalize social injustice. But the new assimilation/adaptation ideology is even worse because by adding assimilation to the mix, the ideology blames the poor for their lot. Under Spencer’s biological reductionism, it was merely their bad luck to be born inferior. This biological determinism suggested a sort of biological structural inequality. Hence, in some writings, Spencer grudgingly did entertain a few socialist remedies as part of the elite’s duty to the less fortunate. Mostly as a way to clear them from the streets. But with the new 1980’s scheme that equates assimilation with evolution and adaptation and competence/success, it is the poor’s fault. They not only suffer inequality, they are the cause of it. The solution is so easy. Don’t be obstinate. Just willingly “unlearn” and “deculturize” yourself. Obey.

Another aspect of this scheme is extreme individualism. It is all your personal fault. According to the assimilation/adaptation theory, there is confusion in the author’s thinking as to whether those with “personality traits” can adjust, or if those traits are innate, in which case their pathetically unfit behaviors, ways of thinking and feeling are fatalistically predetermined. If the personality traits are a result of enculturation and acculturation, then there is hope. We just have to erase your mind and reprogram you with the appropriate cognitive, affective, and behavioral construct. But either way, for the good of society, you have to go. You have to be eliminated lest you cause “disequilibrium” in the system. “Disagreeable” attitudes cannot be tolerated. Hence, the claim by the assimilationists that you need psychotherapy or prison. Otherwise, you may not be “fit to live in the company of others.”

The more “unfit,” “maladapted,” people you eliminate, the more the mainstream dominant culture is purified. Either you join it or you go. If you join it, “integrate” but not really “integrate,” which presumes maintaining difference, but conform, the more you become the same as the mainstream. There is no growth or evolution for the mainstream culture. No innovation or contribution from the newcomer is wanted. Just very “programable” labor. The more “flexible,” the more “competent” (according to mainstream evaluation). The more you conform, the more functionally fit and evolved you are. It is a zero-sum process. To evolve toward assimilation you must unlearn and deculturize to the same amount. According to the new Spencerism, you cannot add new ideas, behaviors and feelings. You cannot learn anything new without also unlearning old ways. And so if it is impossible to unlearn and deculturize yourself, which it likely is, then you will always be inferior according to the adaptation/assimilation theorists.

Spencer’s work was profoundly influential. It argued that those most adapted are most successful. Any effort to help the weak and poor is bad because such assistance interferes with the natural process of what he called “survival of the fittest.” Assisting the weak simply weakens the population overall. Many called it god’s plan. The English Home Secretary, for instance, ordered churches to stop giving food and aid to starving Irish families. So pseudo-science got mixed in with hyper-conservative “Christianity.” War was good because it pits race against race to see who was most fit. Competition, not cooperation, was the basic law of human nature. This led to eugenics. It also justified brutal colonialism. Meek, peaceful peoples were literally exterminated. Hitler used this notion of a more “evolved” “fit” people to justify the taking of territory to expand. If others could not hold on to it, that was proof they did not deserve it. There could be no crime except in helping the weak.

Those races not involved in colonial theft of entire continents, the victims didn’t look like the victors so they were easy to spot and discriminate against. Children with inherent racial characteristics that were not “mainstream” had no chance to “adapt” or conform to the colonizer’s techniques of domination even if they chose to. At birth they were not given the advantages of power and wealth, advantages those who possessed them claimed to be earned through innate superiority. When things were made equal, as when Jesse Owens humiliated Hitler before his super race at the Olympics, it was marked up to bestiality. Yes, Owens could run fast but so could a dog or horse. Sure he’s great as a physical beast of burden. But the belief was that he could never match the Aryan in other more important spiritual, artistic, or intellectual ways. Nonwhites could never produce an Aristotle or Descartes, a Bach or Mozart, a Rembrandt or Lord Tennyson, a Goethe or Newton, a Da Vinci or Laplace. And they made sure they never had a chance. Their concept of “nature” was social advantage for themselves and obstacles for the lesser beings. They would have to adapt, “pass” perhaps, to fit in, if they could. Read the sign if you can – “Whites and Males Only.” As late as 1953, because women were banned, Rosalind Franklin, the co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA, could not enter the faculty club at Cambridge with Crick and Watson. They stole her data and snubbed her contributions. Crick later was accused of sexually harassing undergraduate co-eds and was an outspoken advocate for… eugenics. Can’t make this stuff up.

Charles Darwin hated the doctrine of social Darwinism for two reasons. First it misused his own work to justify bigotry and abuse of the weak by the strong and to justify great injustice. Second, he disagreed fundamentally with the inheritance of traits and characteristics that were cultural rather than biological. The Social Darwinists claimed to be able to reduce soci-economic differences to biological differences but there was no evidence of that. Social inequality as maintained through unfair structural conditions such as access to resources including food and education. Darwin made a genetic, biological argument that traits were passed on genetically. Darwin rejected the idea that culture is passed on this way.

For the poor sots who did try really hard to assimilate, that meant that the more they accepted the way of thinking, feeling, and behaving of the mainstream culture, the more they had to accept that they are inferior. After all they are not mainstream. They are the ones who have to change, to adapt and assimilate. The mainstream ways are the right ones, what assimilationists call the “objectively real” reality. To not agree is to be unrealistic and maladjusted. So, the more you agree with the mainstream the more you have to agree that you are inferior. And if you can’t change everything, like your race and your gender, and your religion… the more you are stuck hating yourself. Back in 1903 W. B. DuBois called this horrible quagmire “double consciousness” in his classic work The Souls of Black Folk. Some 80 years before I read the same Spencerian retread crap being published and even celebrated in the field of communication.

The Young Philosopher Meets Commercialized Mysticism

One reason I like Nietzsche is because he sized up the surrender culture so well and its hypocrisy. Writing in the 1880’s and 1890’s during the great shift to industrialization in Europe, he warns us of the call to surrender, submit, “adapt,” conform, noting that this is the advice for those who are tired of living, weary of being, those who define the glorious indeterminacy of existence as nothing but a source of anxiety. He says that “adaptation” taken to mean conformity, is the lowest form of activity. It is purely reactionary, not creative. And he takes to task Spencer and other would-be cultural leaders of the day. Other than trying to convince the subjects of the great empires to capitulate and say, “thank you sir, may I have another,” the elite assimilationists do so in the interest of “stability and growth.” But not of the individual worker or soldier but the “system,” the empire. But then they say, if you minority dude conform, that will be good for you too, even if the system is unjust. Don’t worry, be happy. And most of all, be silent and do as you are told. They pursue the flight from suffering the “mosquito bites” of being and caring (Section 48, Book 1, of Die fröhlishe Wissenschaft) in their quest of absolute escapism. Who is they? Culture writers of the time trying to make sure no revolutions disturb the peace. Life in the palaces, country manors, and mercantile mansions needed to be protected from the assembly lines that fed their coffers.

The goal, keep an even keel, a smooth efficient flow of profits and control. Elimination of all resistance on the way to alleviating existence itself. The grandmasters, the “Fellows” are positive. They know “the answers.” And they champion friction-free utility as our nirvana. The leaders of the dominant culture proved utterly careless in their disregard for those in the ghettos, children literally chained to machines in the new “fact-ories,” and shanghaied (forced conscription) into the imperial navies and merchant fleets, and those decaying in the poor houses and asylums. Careless and carefree except for bottomless ambition and their postures of authoritative wisdom. Correct those you can, discard the rest. Send them off to distant and horrible prisons and penal colonies as described by journalists and survivors in tales such as told in Lorenzo Semple’s 1969 autobiography “Papillon.” But the discarded often turn out to be the best and strongest or at least the equal of those who would break them and mold them. Been to Australia? Many in the American West, many of the “heroes” including at the Alamo were fugitives from justice, scoundrels, deviants…

Those who build the future are the same who do not accept the past.

But life breaks rock, endures deserts and ice. It takes risks. Over millennia of challenges, it finds a way. Without a plan, it transforms itself, experiments on itself – the most fundamental of magics. It then reaches out and changes the environment. Culture and technology constitute and also modify our habitats.

Convincing others to surrender, which is the ultimate minoritization, “Othering,” is essential if one seeks to lead. Here lies the hypocrisy of those who tell us submission is the greatest virtue for all, except for themselves. We should surrender and follow their plan and accept the identity they would have for us. We the masses are reduced to being the dumb medium they would mold. We are the clay, they are the creators. They are planners but we should be followers – and the more docile the better. Bad faith. But they don’t tell us their plan until the end of their story. Conformity is good. Why? They offer excuses. And then add, “Oh, and as a parting thought, we want to install our plan as an institutional goal, as a structural and structuring ideology – as a “system” for systemic enculturation. We realize that the reality we’ve been describing does not exist, but we have a plan for how to create it.” Hey wait a minute. If you’d told me that up front, I would have read your “theory” in a different way. You’re not presenting a “theory” that explains what is. You hate this existence (Contemptus Mundi). We, as we are, are trash to you. We are messy. You want minimalism. Uniformity. Predictability. You fear the uncertain. And you hate what you fear. It must be eradicated. You seek to spy on us lowlifes, to gather information in order to avoid difference. Systemic feedback and control. Exclude the voice that disagrees. You despise the exuberance and pain of life and prefer numb “equilibrium.” There’s a huge emotional issue here. You’re proposing reengineering me, everyone, the world. Sly. Springing it on us at the end so we would not be reading critically.

The “theory” of assimilation/adaptation is political rhetoric. It is an overt attempt to persuade people to conform by misusing scientific-sounding terms such as “evolve” and “adapt.” The authors flat out say that the “theory,” which is really a template for socially engineering the right kind of person, is in their opinion “a valid goal.” Because the authors proclaim their own plan to be “valid” they then insist that, “an extensive search for ways to articulate and implement intercultural human development [adaptation/assimilation engineering] must be undertaken. The propagation of the goal must go beyond the educational process directly to the political processes and the mass media. Media, in particular, can play a pivotal role in the spread of ‘interculturalness’ as a human social value and thus produce a change in the mindset of the general public.” These are not my words, and this is not a misquote. This is a plan for social engineering, not a social scientific theory. Here’s one of the more famous “Ministers of Public Enlightenment.” He actually got a budget and an office. I wonder how it turned out?

Einstein never set out to “correct” the aberrant orbit of Mercury but to understand it and explain it (theory). What is being strongly argued for here is social engineering. This is a style of writing common in popular pseudo-science in the 1960-70’s. An example that actually is cited by the authors of the quote above as supporting the “validity” of their project is Fritjof Capra’s work. In similar style, Capra claimed to “reconcile” theoretical physics with eastern mysticism. As Capra put it, he did so, “by ‘power plants’ or psychedelics… so overwhelming that I burst into tears, at the same time, not unlike Castaneda, pouring out my impressions to a piece of paper” (p. 12, 4th ed.). Okay… I’ll get to Castaneda later. This is not social science. Nor is it philosophy. It is the domain of “life coaches.” The mixture of arrogance with ignorance is dangerous. Remember Goebbels and Eichmann? They were into esoteric mysticism too. We’ve seen this movie already.

The point is that such mysticism was swirling when I was in college, and I was stunned to find it in our “scholarly” literature today. Back in the early 1970s, the Western audience had been primed. Korea and Vietnam Vets attested to the popularly alleged low “value” of life in the Orient , AND, at the same time, its mystical seduction. It was right in line with the racial and ethnic portrayals found in the old Fu Manchu serials. Jiddu Krishnamurti, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Sufism, Rudolff Otto’s mystical writings… a confusion of all sorts of esoteric alchemical occultism, geomancy, astrology, astral travel, “scrying,” trance-inducing stuff… with secret ciphers and other “things” churned in the cultural blender of college life. The halo of old “explorers,” of “dark” continents, “lost” worlds, and “enigmatic” peoples lingered and was promoted well into the postcolonial era. The exoticism enchanted the privileged urban kids of rising industrial empires, including Japan, Korea, England, and the US. Busy people, farmers, construction and factory workers… not welcome. Life was less enchanting for them.

Krishnamurti and D. T. Suzuki were both associated with the Theosophical Society, which I attend to below as well. Why attend to such nonsense? Because their ideas are claimed as the source of the goals deemed “valid” for mass indoctrination by the authors of adaptation/assimilation “theory.” It’s a rhetoric that gives the patina of “deep wisdom” to the plan of mass assimilation. It’s cool, like The Beatles.

This “science” so reflects the mood of the times which is why I am delving into those atmospherics, which are also part of my story. Members of the Hare Krishna organization founded in 1966 were vying with the Moonies for solicitation space in airports and on college campuses to gain donations for their leaders. In 1979, I visited New Vrindaban in… rural West Virginia, not far from Wheeling on the Ohio River. There volunteer devotees had built what was once a very large and active commune dedicated to “Krishna consciousness,” and the leader’s Palace of Gold. George Harrison was known to hang out there from time to time. Asian-Indian Hindus visited the place, but so did a lot of lost kids looking for easy answers. Here’s a picture from better days. I think it has fallen into disrepair. Locals were “suspicious” of their new neighbors but in my experience, the Krishna devotees were harmless – definitely less dangerous than some of the local moonshine-swigging, gun-toting, pickup-truck-racing dudes. I found that out when my friends and I asked some for directions to the Hare Krishna center. We were “eyeballed.” Classic.

The point here is that this stuff is what many believed to be “philosophy” and a paperback source of “secret Oriental wisdom.” It distorted and misinformed probably millions without the Internet. QAnon should be jealous. For many would-be young student intellectuals who chose to avoid the trouble of learning physics, comparative religion, philosophy, anthropology… this BS was a good, qua easy, substitute. Most read it to find ways to cope with their decisions… “self-help and improvement.” I’m okay. The universe is groovy, especially when I’m tripping.

Now this running essay is “about me.” Okay. Ya caught me red-handed. But there’s plenty of non-mystifying and demystifying stuff in here too. When Woodstock happened, I was 12 years old. The youth culture was exploding. The US was changing faster than ever. And so was I. I was the youth in the youth culture. Very impressionable. Ohio has several major media markets (Toledo, Cleveland, Columbus, Akron/Canton/Youngstown, Cincinnati, Dayton). All were also major industrial hubs. Then just across the Ohio boarders were Detroit, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Louisville and Lexington not far from Cinnci… Buffalo and Rochester. I listened to radio from all of them. AM R&B and rock mostly. The tuner was jammed. One little move and you had another station. It was radio heaven. FM was still expanding. Many stations were simply simulcasting their AM content on their new FM channels. In 1965, the Cleveland Brown’s own Jim Brown was on the cover of Time magazine. Others that year included Ho Chi Minh, Marc Chagall, Lyndon Johnson, Carl Albert (we have his Center at OU), Martin Luther King, Jr., Jim Clark, John Maynard Keynes, Bill Moyers, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., “Millionaires Under 40,” “The Biggest Blackout.” On the April 2nd issue the cover was “Computer in Society,” the April 9 issue they had “The World According to Peanuts,” May 21 “Rock’n’Roll, and a week before on May 14, “The Communications Explosion.” To be a millionaire was a big deal. And computers, Rock’n’Roll, and communications were taking over the world. The Oklahoma Democrat Karl Albert was becoming a national political figure and helped push through the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting poll taxes that prevented poor folks from voting, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Could use that conviction today.

As a little kid I moved back and forth between the Cleveland/Toledo area and Cinnci where my grandparents lived (my Dad’s hometown). I remember watching George Clooney’s father anchor the Cinnci/northern Kentucky nightly news. My loyalties were split between the Indian’s Elmer Flick, Cy Young, Steve Carlton, Satchel Paige, and Bob Feller and the Reds’ Johnny Bench, Sparky Anderson, Pete Rose, Tony Pérez… Jackie Robinson played for both clubs. Pete… why? About a quarter of the US population lived within a 3-hour radius drive of my house. Rock’n’Roll got its name in Cleveland. Motown sound was booming just up the road in Detroit.

Ohio had over 100 colleges and universities. They ranged from the super liberal Antioch, Oberlin, Otterbein, and Kenyon, et cetera schools that went nudist for a few days to the more “conservative,” but still liberal schools such as Wittenberg, Wilberforce, John Carroll, Miami Ohio... There were dozens of small private schools such as Case Western Reserve, and then the gigantic public system led by Ohio State U. In 1968 the “worm was turning.” In 1968, the Mỹ Lai massacre was in all the media, King was assassinated in April, then Bobby Kennedy eight weeks later. Then in August the Chicago Seven visited the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The following summer Woodstock. A few months later in December there was “Woodstock West.” A counterculture free rock concert held at the Altamont Speedway in California. About 300,000 attended. The Rolling Stones hired the Hells Angels as security. The festival organizers, fans and acts didn’t welcome the violent biker/hoodlums. Marty Balin, a member of Jefferson Airplane was knocked unconscious by one of the bikers. Later that day a Black man, Meredith Hunter tried to escape the bikers who were beating him. He pulled a gun and they stabbed him to death. Two other fans were killed in hit-and-run incidents. Some say Altamont is where the “Summer of Love” died.

Nine months after Woodstock, National Guard Troops shot four students dead at Kent State University in Ohio. Ohio went nuts. I was 13. Without the benefit of e-mail and the Internet and cell phone videos the news spread from campus to campus like wildfire. Riots broke out at every state university and many private schools. The governor closed all the state U campuses. But many of the kids didn’t go home. Instead, they marched on Washington. In 1969, Jim Morrison was arrested in the middle of Doors’ sets a couple of times for wiggling, “controversially,” across stages. Hendrix died a few months later in London.

The one/two punch. The Honda Civic and the Toyota Corolla rolled into town in 1973, the year I got my driver’s license. I grew up inside a labor movement. My older sister (Candy) was a union steward at Tecumseh Products, perhaps the most militant group of workers in the state outside Youngstown. Growing up, it was not uncommon to see picket lines and violence. It’s how it was. That’s what all the chatter in the restaurants and bars was about. When the workers “went out” (on strike), the adults got serious, and I picked up on it. They stood the lines 24/7 even in the dead of winter and northern Ohio gets cold with lake-effects snows. The worst thing a person could be called was a “scab.” Back then, in that climate, almost no one ever tried to cross the line. Not out of fear but out of support for workers. Folks were not afraid of their bosses. That’s what being organized taught me in a visceral way. You should not fear the boss but demand to negotiate with him or her like an equal human being and partner in work. Because of that power, there was a thriving middle class and strong tax base. Ronald Reagan’s time started to change all of that. When the middle class disappeared, the rich didn’t pick up the slack on the taxes. Instead, the steel started to rust. Infrastructure fell apart because the guy on salary pays the taxes. He can’t afford accountants and lawyers to avoid taxes. They’re taken out of his paycheck before he sees the money.

I was just waking up to the world outside my neighborhood, gnashing at the bit to get my driver’s license. I had already been riding minibikes and motorcycles for a while. My hometown of Marion (between Toledo and Cleveland) was famous as a major manufacturing hub (Pollack Steel, Marion Power Shovel, Dressler, Whirlpool, B. F. Goodrich, Fisher Body… more on that later). Major strikes occurred regularly and were covered even in the national media. Despite this, every town in the rust belt had its mansion row. The rich were getting theirs. The factory workers often overlapped with vets and college students. I worked at Tecumseh in Marion during one summer between my sophomore and junior years of college. We summer workers could not join the unions, but we supported them. Tecumseh was UAW. Lots of college kids could and did get jobs in factories during the summers. Money was easy. While I was scrimping for books, I had high school buddies who had trailers and boats up on Lake Erie and were driving brand new muscle cars. We didn’t know what was about to pop.

The old guys who built the auto industry, who fought the wars, who managed to turn the industry into the arsenal for democracy and back again in short order, were dying out. They were increasingly replaced by the new college studs with zero experience. The frat boys brought in a new culture, a new approach based on accounting and organizational planning. They were bean counters and “efficiency experts.” Good at golf with nice haircuts and suits but no grease on their hands. They turned the American automobile industry into a pathetic shadow of itself. A year before I got my driver’s license, I was working at a Suzuki shop and racing motocross. One of my friend’s dad (Jack Arter, a great guy, local attorney) owned it. We knew a kid whose dad owned the Honda motorcycle shop in town from racing and such. One day in 1973, he called us up. We went over to look at a Honda CAR. A “Civic.” We laughed like hell and played with it in a grocery store parking lot. If you got up to speed and turned sharp while pulling the emergency brake it would hop sideways. We had no idea a tsunami was rising. Maquiladoras were just beginning across the border in Mexico. They were being set up by American manufacturers. Don’t blame foreign labor or domestic labor. The rich were doing fine in the US, but they wanted more. More money and control. The wealthy class of America was making moves to ship factories and jobs overseas. Because of their arrogance and because the old “car guys” had been replaced by academic MBA’s, Detroit was making, for the most part, trash like the Gremlin, Vega, Pinto, Cadillac Cimarron (a cheap J-car with extra stickers on it)… With the help of a major US bailout, Lee Iacocca was “saving” Chrysler, with his K-Car line of junk. He said in an ad, “If you can find a better car, buy it.” Americans did. Hondas, Toyotas, Datsuns appeared seemingly overnight. Later Mercedes Benz partnered with Chrysler. The Benz execs were shocked when they realize how much Chrysler execs were making while running the company into the ground. Benz wanted access to a massive computer design team Chrysler had. But then Benz quickly realized that a major corporate “cultural” difference existed and exited the partnership toot sweet.

By age 17, I plopped down into a quite liberal university from factory town Marion, Ohio and found myself emersed in swirling pipe smoke from intense philosophy and sociology professors on the one hand, and swirling smoke of another species from bongs on the other. Both were new to me. Where I was from, all smoke came from two sources, smelters and cigarettes dangling from the lower lips of car mechanics, steelers, and industrial workers. Lucky for me, the professors gave me an uncompromisingly, sometimes brutally rational foundation. Unless you had a foot in that world, you could, and many did, assume that “true wisdom” unfurled from a hand-rolled “dubby” and/or tab of acid. And indeed, the mood and mindset infiltrated some “social science,” which is part of my point here. I know this neighborhood well. Assimilationists who claim Capra and Suzuki as the inspiration and ultimate answer to things like intercultural communication difficulties, got a lot wrong on both sides of the fence. What has resulted is mystically based political pamphleteering masquerading as “social science.” I understand this stuff. It was a sort of self-indulgent pollutant in the water all over college campuses in the 1960s and 1970s from Seoul to Tokyo, Harvard to Heidelberg. As a philosophy major, I was aware that everyone was “reading philosophy,” but not really. In philosophy departments, we were grinding away at classes in high-level analytics and symbolic logic.

Sidebar. My essay, my prerogative. Like my brilliant friend David Resler, many advanced math and physics majors were also struggling with these classes. Wrestler was voted by two faculty to be the “Departmental Outstanding Student Award” at graduation in both math and physics the year we graduated. At least once every week, we sleeplessly met the rising sun after banging our heads against symbolic logic all night long. It was misery. I never saw Dave smoke a cigarette or drink a cup of coffee. He had an amazing ability to concentrate for hours on end. He saved my ass in that class. Dave, if you ever read this, thank you, one more time. Last I knew he was a Ph.D. doing computational nuclear physics research. I took a class in nuclear engineering. It was great. Easier than symbolic logic to me. Less abstract. For some reason Ohio U had a nuclear reactor lab built into the side of a hill running right under Gordy Hall where the philosophy department was. Why Ohio U? Don’t know. Lucky me. We had some interesting discussions about fast-breeder and fusion reactors. Now, 40 years later, finally fusion energy production might become practical. Now back to the real La La Land.

Meanwhile, outside, on the quad, was another form of “philosophy.” Out there, what counted as “philosophy” was… very popular and largely consumed without critical reflection. Out under the great sycamores, no one was reading Hume’s massive and profound A Treatise of Human Nature or Kant’s equally daunting Critique of Pure Reason or Husserl’s two volume Logical Investigations, or even Heidegger’s more poppy Being and Time. Too dense, too long, required too much background. All the kids were looking for easy answers that poured forth from highly commercial moralizing texts. Spinoza’s ethics? No way. Too hard. You can’t read it while high. And to translate the natural language into symbolic logic was very very heavy lifting.

Instead, the atmosphere of the university when I was an undergrad was heady but also tripping. People were reading long books without pictures (for the most part) not required by classes. That’s good, right? Not necessarily. Quality matters. I dare say, such “pleasure reading” does not happen so much today. But then we didn’t have TV or the Internet in Athens, Ohio, in 1975. There was one TV down in the lobby of my dorm, and it was broken. When and if it ever worked, it could only receive one channel out of West Virginia. No cable TV. I know this not because I ever watched it, but because my profs could only get two channels: the university PBS station and the West Virginia signal. Columbus, Ohio, was too far away.

So, what were these “heady” books folks were reading? It was utopian and romantic Orientalism, as defined by Edward Said, mixed liberally with late-19th century occultism and mystical esotericism. Remember the Beatles had Aleister Crowely on the cover of their 1967 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album? He was the model for Uncle Fester of the Adams’ family. Everyone was into “transcendental meditation,” which drove philosophy majors nuts because neither Hegel nor Husserl used “transcendental” that way but don’t even go there. The Summer of Love was in the middle of an escalating Vietnam war, an increasingly contentious draft, and an increasingly urgent civil rights movement. Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama had been two years earlier, and King was about to launch his Poor People’s Campaign in ’68 when he got assassinated. Charles Mason was building his “family” in San Francisco, Bobby Kennedy was shot. Chicago Police attacked the Democratic National Convention on live TV. Nixon got elected. Black Panthers were prowling. Students for a Democratic Society were trying to push the Port Huron Statement and coordinate with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The love, in the summer of love, was largely a myth to sociologists and philosophers. But not to others reading secret oriental wisdom.

The Bushido of Pooh

The hangover of the mystification continued from the 60s into the 70s. As Vietnam waned, Nixon left the scene, and riots dropped off, the university atmosphere, at least in Athens became… pastoral. It was, idyllic. And, in the absence of nightly war at home and abroad, there was a booming book business for esotericism and romanticized “Oriental wisdom.” They were sold in bookstores and right next to the fantasy art posters in head shops. Some even tried to ride the wave by appealing to the mystical, fusing it with “social science” theory. It was cool, and popular. The 60’s edginess was absent. Rigor maintained in philosophy departments, to be sure. But overall, things were relatively tranquil, and folks spoke of “psychic equilibrium.” Psychic spoon bending and tripping in stimulus deprivation tanks was the rage. “Telepathic intuition” is also mentioned by the assimilationist/adaptation writers. No shit. For real. Published in the 1980s. Time warp authors. Freud had argued that there is a constant tension between Id, Ego, and Super Ego, to maintain “balance.” Nice metaphors that don’t mean much today. But they live on in some theories as the absolute goal of life, and in some cases, even equated with total assimilation/conformity to some mainstream cultural force. Mystical and mystifying. Be careful because entropic tendencies toward zero activity means… death. But to some, the concept was twisted into meaning something like a peaceful state of mind or blank mindedness without perturbation. Okay. But a peaceful repose is one way to describe a corpse. Tension and conflict are not bad. The ancient Greeks called it dialectics, and many have agreed that it is through converse that knowledge is formed and progress generated. Status quo means no debate, no conflict. But also… no progress. Social statics. Smooth functionalism. Conflict and tension are essential to life itself. Avoidance is a fairytale. But one promised by some social engineers. Buddhism, to me, is a form of utopian escapism from “suffering,” “contention.” The goal… self-destruction, to achieve “Nothingness.” All knowledge is… ignorance. Okay. Not my goal. As Nietzsche said, this is a sort of ideology for those who cannot stand the “mosquito bites of existence.” To be or not. Well, I am. Too late for that “choice.” And I got used to lots of mosquitoes living and working at fishing lodges on the Canadian Shield. No problem.

By the mid-60s capitalism had gotten a handle on the youthful idealism, and started cranking out everything from TV and magazine ads exploiting the “Age of Aquarius” motif, to tons of books like Capra and Suzuki to help us catch the mystical carpet ride to Shamballa fueled by “Puff, the Magic Dragon.” The BS lingers even today. Massage is best when it is “Oriental.” Racist pablum. Cultural misappropriation and exploitation. People are still trading on the mystical race thing. This contaminated “cultural studies.” Even anthropology has had its battles with the Indiana Jones goes to Tibet, image. On the one hand, the 60s and 70s saw pathetically conventional unconventionalism and adoration of all things “Oriental.” Much of it fueled by noncombat GI’s enjoying peacetime Korea and Vietnam GI’s chasing R&R in Saigon, Bangkok, Taipei, and Japan. The paper-pushers had a different war. They were gathering “intelligence.” And then there were the have-nots, the other strident debate and schism. The military itself was schizophrenic with a growing “tooth-to-tail” ratio, seeing more non-combat support personnel to every combat grunt in uniform. For many in uniform, it was a fun chance to “see the exotic world” without so much as a scratch. They might get a Purple Heart for VD. But for the smaller group in the field, the minority Others, disproportionately poor and Black with no college, it was pure hell. Vietnam ushered in the pot culture, which overlayed the “counter-culture movement.” Vets were high. Anti-war protesters were high. And many were seeking “cool” answers. Timothy Leery summed it up “turn on, tune in, drop out.” Catchy, but few had his IQ, knowledge of biology or psychology, and diligent self-questioning. Less informed followers eagerly turned on and dropped out. Tuning in, meant pop spiritualism that took no sacrifice. Do it while getting high! The message got “watered down,” as they say.

So “getting philosophical,” became escapist, the exact opposite of the philosophical mission. In some hands, submission was defined as evolving beyond culture and “humanity itself!” Ubermensch stuff, which Suzuki got from Nietzsche’s eternal recur, infinite yes, and transvaluation of values – not exactly Buddhism but very seductive to Western and westernized youth – which Suzuki had become (westernized). Suzuki also left out the downside of freedom and liberation that Nietzsche stressed – eternal responsibility. The emphasis on escaping the karmic wheel of suffering went the opposite direction from Nietzsche’s realization that the more you are free, the harder it gets. This happy, happy, joy, joy version of “Oriental philosophy” had become fused with popular entertainment such as TV shows like “Kung Fu” with the fake Chinese David Carradine and the explosion of Bruce Lee. “Be like water.” Then break their neck. This popular stuff led to folks reading D. T. Suzuki. I did, because I was a philosophy major, and my Master’s thesis was on Chan (Zen) Buddhism. So, I know Suzuki’s work. It was not the best, but it was hugely popular. It appealed to the kids among the New Age college students unfamiliar with real philosophical rigor. How could this weird foreign ideology appeal to privileged college-going kids riding the youth culture wave around the world? Wasn’t it “foreign?” Suzuki and others like Capra found the sweet spot, and commercial publishers ran with it. After you read this, some of you, my students, may now understand why Algis Mickunas and I have been so adamant about not letting Jean Gebser’s work slip into this morass of spiritualism, often linked to charlatans with personal, commercial interests. Keep it academic. Keep it rigorous. Challenge every claim without mercy. This may make you fewer friends, but this rigor is necessary for the philosophical/scientific mission. You have to be fearless and willing to debate. If not, something is wrong. The work is in danger of becoming an orthodoxy heading toward religion. WRONG WAY. Don’t be in the business of launching new religions. We have plenty already.

So what was this “New Buddhism” that so enchanted globe-trotting young privileged kids of leisure? Its utopianism comes out of a westernized “New Buddhism” that is actually rooted in an esoteric and occult “religion” that called itself “Theosophy” founded in 1875, by Helena (Madame) Blavatsky. Blavatsky was a con artist, a wealthy Russian esoteric who was into the occult and claimed to have been taken to Tibet by an ancient secretive brotherhood of spiritual adepts she called “the Masters” to pass on their wisdom and supernatural powers to her. Who were these masters? They are a fraternity of humans who have evolved morally and intellectually. They have supernatural powers and have achieved extra-long life spans. They form the “Great White Brotherhood” or “White Lodge,” watching over humanity and secretly guiding its evolution. She was to be their chosen ambassador. They live in Tibet, of course (the ultimate romanticized focus of Orientalist fantasies). This was, as you probably guessed, exposed to be total nonsense, the stuff that would later find its way into comic books and movies (Batman Begins, Kill Bill, even Arnold’s Conan, look out for those ass kicking Shaolin Monks, Wolverine…), but she managed to convince Henry Olcott and William Q. Judge (also a mystic occultist and esoteric) to help her form the Theosophical society. Olcott mixed it with his interest in the newly formed (around 1863) Baháʼí faith and his version of Buddhism.

So, where is Suzuki in all of this? After giving up monastic life and “struggles,” he moved to LaSalle, Illinois. Yep. It’s true. Why? To live at Paul Carus’s house and help him with some translation work. That is where Suzuki met and married Beatrice Erskine Lane, who introduced Suzuki to Theosophy and the Baháʼí Faith founded by a guy who, as these stories usually go, claimed to be a new prophet of god in Iran. Suzuki continued the formation of a “New Buddhism,” which he wrote about in English. His work captivated many American, Japanese, Koean, European youth in the 1960’s teaching them something different from Zen. To be sure it had elements of Zen (mediation) but was “New” and improved. It was Zen for the industrial age. It incorporated tenets from Theosophy, which had borrowed from Hinduism; ideas such as human reality is an illusion, and reincarnation and karma are real. But that’s not all. There is the claim that human evolution is causally connected to a Solar Deity, one for each star. Each star-diety has seven subordinate “ministers” or “planetary spirits.” Additionally, we are told by the Madame, there are seven “root races” of humans including the “Hperboreans.” That group was formed near the North Pole. The Atlanteans were giants who built Stonehenge with their psychic powers. They also mated with “she-animals” resulting in gorillas and chimps. Want to learn more super secret Oriental wisdom that influenced Suzuki, Krishnmurti, et al.? Okay. A figure in Buddhist mythology, Maitreya, had entered Jesus of Nazareth when he was baptized, and he will return as a messiah (of course). Theosophy encourages chastity WITHIN marriage (divorces proliferated for new adherents as you can imagine), and then the ever-popular, hardly original promotion of universal brotherhood and social improvement were tossed in for good measure.

So, when many made their pilgrimage to Zen monasteries in Japan, where initially they were welcomed, things went sideways fast. Nearly all Zen centers in Japan began rejecting the American “hippies” because their Suzuki version of Zen prevented them from being teachable. They lacked the discipline. Like Suzuki himself, they did not do so well with monastic life. They had come to believe that Zen is… everything and nothing. No dualism. No right or wrong. No up or down. No pre- and post-enlightenment. Everybody is the/a Buddha but they don’t know it, and if you meet him, kill him, err yourself… or whatever. No rules, just sit and become one with the universe, transcending all cultures, all rules, all responsibilities, all values… Become no longer human. This mysticism did not work in a monastic environment. Someone had to wash the dishes and clean the floors. In theory… cool. But in practice you still should wipe your ass AFTER you shit. Effect still comes after cause (sorry Nietzsche… I understand what you mean – the effect causes us to look for the cause).

Suzuki was a celebrity Buddha. Ego? He never turned down his royalties. When you put the Dali Lama on a pedestal, you’ve totally missed the point. You’ve politicized everything. Power-distance. Adoration. Suzuki was very inconsistent. Remember, I studied him. And, that inconsistency migrated into the social theories his work inspired. The more you assimiliate into a particular culture, the more you are rising above all cultures to become a “universal person.” The more you achieve an “absolute point of view” beyond dualism the “greater [your] cognitive differentiation.” In philosophy we call such self-contradictions nonsense. Suzuki promulgated the post-Cartesian nondualism that was becoming a major topic in Western philosophical debates while at the same time maintaining a very dualistic description of reality including his regular reference to his own pre-satori transformation to his post-satori enlightenment (dualism).

As social engineers, the authors of the adaptation/assimilation doctrine had a goal in mind. So they selectively chose and also misrepresenting sources to support their agenda. I’m confident that abandoning individual critical reflection and accepting any majority rule is not the philosophy of Zen. Monks throughout history, more recently in Tibet, Thailand, Burma, and Vietnam have resisted oppression. Heck even Olcott, one of the founders of Theosophy helped to lead the independence movement in Sri Lanka. They did not champion turning into a mindless blob of plastic. To present the philosophy that way is to strip it of its moral teachings. Read the Sutras, learn the Eight-Fold Path and the Four Noble Truths before coopting and misrepresenting an entire spiritual tradition in order to promote a political agenda. Make no mistake. Encouraging people to “deculturize,” and “unlearn” themselves, and to avoid their “ethnic” media and friends and to assimilate to a more powerful group is a political statement. What is called “right” by Buddhist teaching has very often led monks to be “disagreeable” and even “aggressive” against “wrong” teachings and behaviors. They fought, with guns, against the Chinese army in Tibet. The Dali Lama fled. He did not “assimilate” or “adapt,” as overwhelming numbers poured into Lhasa. They see actions as having consequences. And they judge. Śīla (Right speech, right action, right livelihood), Samādhi (right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration), Prajñā (right view, right resolve). Right does NOT mean blind obedience. I assure you that if you put a Buddhist monk into a neighborhood full of crime, drug dealing, prostitution… he would not start dealing drugs. Buddhist teaching does not abandon dualism. It canonizes right from wrong.

Beyond dualism? Okay. Thích Quảng Đức (yes Buddhas have names) picked his side. He is one of many Buddhist monks who have taken the extreme course of protest by burning themselves to death in public. He did so in Vietnam in 1963. In the memorial to him, you can pick sides. Go with the military coup leaders enforcing order, or with the monks. Noam Chomsky is correct. Most violence and hostility and aggression comes from reactionaries, not people asking for change. Assimiliationists demonize the minority asking for change, and say if they don’t submit, they are being “immature,” “ethnocentric,” “hostile,” “aggressive,” “disagreeable,” “mentally unbalanced,” “maladjusted.” All justifications for reactionary violence (symbolic and physical). Really? Asking for equality is bad?

Now there is another issue with D. T. Suzuki… He picked sides too. He not only picked a side, he propagandized for it, lobbied for it, tried to justify it. Fantasizing is one thing; the truth is another. Have you ever wondered where the Zen masters were when Japan was slaughtering Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, Malaysians…? I did when I was an undergrad philosophy major studying Buddhism. I’d read about antiwar heroes in Japan who resisted the fascists, but none were “Zen Masters.” Instead, they were artists, scientists, writers, scholars, students, a few politicians, physicians, and yes, philosophers.. The more enlightened, progressive, dare I say, westernized folks of Japanese society.

Well I’ll be!! Someone else asked the same question and finally investigated. Here’s Brian Daizen Victoria’s book Zen at War. On the cover we see Zen monks marching along with the rest of the fascists. Victoria says this has been a concealed part of history in Japan until recently. I asked the question back in 1976 or so. Finally in 2012 with this book we get some answers. And where was Suzuki? Well, Suzuki did take a side. Dualism for sure. He was busy writing a series of pro-fascists articles for the Buddhist newspaper, Chūgai Nippō in which he expressed sympathy and agreement with Hitler and for the expulsion of Jews from Germany. Yep. Check it out. Get serious with your scholarship. He suggested that such extreme action was necessary to preserve the happiness of the German people (“hedonic adaptation” as some Nietzscheans call it). So much for “universal brotherhood.” Suzuki’s flag turned with the wind. At the age of 65+, Suzuki was espousing raging ethno-nationalism in print. Oh yeah, Suzuki won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1963 for speaking out against the Vietnam War. Wow. Join the very big club there. That was hardly a brave stand to take. But his earlier activities were concealed. Can anyone say “transparency” and “honesty?”

Read Brian Victoria’s lectures given in Germany in 2012, in which he presented the evidence. Suzuki was also friends with a high-level German diplomat, Karlfried Graf von Dürckheim, who was a committed Nazi working in the German Foreign Office in Tokyo during the war and promoter of Suzuki in the West. How do you think he got so famous? Oh… I wonder if… those who cite Suzuki as the spiritual justification for advancing total assimilation know this about Suzuki and actually subscribe to his early pro-Nazi arguments? That would be intellectually consistent at least. Or are they just totally confused about Buddhism and caught up in the 1960’s Orientalist fantasies that swept the West? Could be either way. Same result. I want to believe it is the latter, that they just didn’t understand that Buddhism does not warrant criminalizing people who are different and following a mainstream nationalist ideology, evil or not. Initially, Suzuki followed his teachers Imakita Kosen and Soyen Shaku to create a “New Buddhism” (shin bukkyo) that was even more in agreement with the industrializing/militarizing Japanese government and its imperialist ambitions than the older traditional Zen. Then he went to Illinois and joined up with the big fad of the times, mystical esotericism mixed with occult teachings tinged with mesmerism, and romanticized “Oriental thought.” Being an intellectual Asian, a monk… in those days… among acolytes who embodied Orientalism… instant celebrity. While there, Suzuki became familiar with Western/German literature and thought that influenced his exegetics. Nietzsche was a big influence on Suzuki but only his critique of Cartesian metaphysics. Nietzsche, was no proponent of fascism or authoritarian assimilation! See his clash with Wagner over these topics.

The Engineered Evolution of Fantasy and Homo Consumens

Not so insignificant details about how the Western led world youth culture was mystified by Orientalism. Same for the Western image of Africa and the peoples there struggling to overcome that image both at home and abroad. In 1974, when Ali and Foreman held the World’s Heavyweight Boxing championship in Kinshasa, Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo), the whole continent went crazy. The West was recognizing the “dark continent.” It’s like countries going deep into debt to host the Olympics so they will finally be “put on the map.” Relevance came with the Western gaze. That’s the cultural power of imperialism. Africans were so proud to “host” the fight, even though neither fighter had a clue what Africa was like or the fact that it was branded “The Rumble in the Jungle.” Shades of Tarzan movies. In fact, they both, but especially Ali, romanticized it themselves. With over 15 million people, Kinshasa, the capital of Zaire is the largest city in Africa, followed closely by Cairo and Lagos. It is urban Africa. Not “jungle.”

Everett Rogers talked about the “diffusion of innovations” as part of the “White Man’s Burden” ethos. Rogers saw modernization as only flowing one way from the rich industrial modern West to the rest. It seems so natural, doesn’t it? Of course, advancement comes from the “advanced” societies. Of course! And the rest assimilate and “progress” toward finally becoming civilized, evolving into markets and modern consumers. Homo consumens (See Erich Fromm and Mihailo Marković among others) or Homo consumericus… used by Gad Saad in his book The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption and Gilles Lipovesky in Le bonheur Paradoxal. For these sociologists, human psychological traits are “evolving,” perhaps even into a third type of Homo consumericus that is unpredictable and insatiable – into “hyper consumption.” The Marshal Plans included not just rebuilding but what sort of structure would be built, especially with the “loss of China” to the Commies and threats in Korea and elsewhere. Starting with US efforts in Asia around 1960 with Walt Rostow’s “take off-stage of development” operationalized by US intervention to stop communism, the diffusion of this “innovation” indeed did “take off.” The torch has been successfully passed. In the mid-1980s Clay Grady wrote about the “Cathedrals of consumption,” the “malling of America.” Below I talk about the dead malls in America today and the boom in gigantic super glitzy malls in Asia. Maybe the US is devolving according to its own criteria of “evolution.” With rising tides due to global warming we will return to the seas.

Now I know that obesity is not exactly the same as “consumption” but it is a strong indicator. These maps by the CDC and WHO show how the growing problem of obesity in the US diffused around the globe. The stronger the connection between wealthy developed nations and developing nations the faster the latter also start to show problems of over consumption… the diffusion of a consumer culture. But that was the stated goal of Rostow’s efforts to “develop” the world. Profit is released only if and when consumption occurs, so it behooves the profiteer to get people consuming as much and as fast as possible. That was the “dominant culture,” the primary message coming from the top. And the faster people reproduced and the fatter they got, the more the world died. So we have witnessed a massive extinction of languages and cultures right along with a mass extinction in the biosphere. Here’s an animated map put out by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) showing the spread… of the problem in the US CDC Obesity Map. And one from the World Health Organization (WHO) showing the global trend WHO Obesity Map.

Arrogance tends to mean that one is in control, calling the shots, commanding the “purse strings,” and other strings to various puppets. What the diffusers failed to recognize was two things. 1. Engineering entire societies is very expensive and complex, with many unseen consequences. And 2. The Engineers get engineered in the process – colonizers and influencers are colonized and influenced too. Influence is omnidirectional. The “dominant” “mainstream” culture was evolving too. The US and other world leaders were changing faster than ever. And part of that change was coming from their interaction with the “less developed” peoples of the world. Learning was going in all directions; it was not a unilinear process that the assimilationists presumed. How arrogant. How stupid. The worst combination.

The one-way diffusion of influence was wrong. Communication is not a simple arrow running from “sender” to “receiver.” And adding a “feedback” arrow is still pathetically simplistic and spatial/dualistic. Communication is, as the phenomenologists had argued, transcendental meaning that the activity of sending and receiving is shared by all involved simultaneously and that the process does not belong to any one participant. It is even more complex than “transactional” models. It is fusional. When you engage another, you will be changed by the experience. Even owning a slave changes the owner. Minimally, it makes you an “owner” with all that that entails.

Cultural Fusion and churning are omnidirectional. The European imperial powers were profoundly influenced by those they colonized. Think about the English obsession with tea… and curry… and other drugs and spices and art, philosophy, fashion… from the Orient… Fusional churning, sharing of ideas, styles, ways of thinking, worshipping, doing business, pop culture, high culture… goes in all directions. If you make contact, you, the colonizer, will be influenced. It is profoundly arrogant and ignorant to believe that influence goes only one way because the Other has nothing to offer.

To be clear, the rapidly westernizing youth of Asia were being fed an image of themselves from the West. It was only after The Green Hornet US television show aired in Hong Kong, that Bruce Lee became a huge hit there. Once the West put its stamp of approval on its romanticized version of the Orient, the Orient itself seized on it with vigor. As Sinatra sang, if you can make it in New York City, you can be a big shot anywhere and everywhere. Even the best and brightest Russian artists and scientists defected to NYC. This was romanticized Occidentalism, which I have argued in pubs, was more influential on the planet than Said’s Orientalism, especially when you realize the impact western-made Orientalism had on the Orient itself.

Orientalism started in the West. Much of it carried home by GI’s who had “good times” in the cities (not so much the combat vets). This perspective then spread back to the East strongly influencing the westernizing youth culture there. Communism had done the same thing earlier. Rock n’ roll, the mod culture, Beatles boots and haircuts… spread across the youth of all the world. And who influenced the Beatles? Black musicians from the southern United States who as slaves and descendants of slaves fused African rhythms and styles with Gospel and western instruments that already imbodied hundreds if not thousands of years of musical fusion and evolution. The “Spanish” guitars they played had started their journey long ago as stringed instruments far east of Spain. Culture is endless churning. There is no fixed “mainstream.” There are countless streams that proliferate with migration. And a romanticized Western version of the “New Buddhism” spread back into the Asian youth culture itself. Suzuki became famous worldwide but only after getting the stamp of approval in the West. Getting the thumbs up from Heidegger was a huge boost for Suzuki. But not everyone was a romantic. Take my father…

I remember around 1969, my father and I went to a Karate demonstration my sister’s boyfriend and I had begged him to attend. He barely survived the war in the South Pacific. He didn’t want to go to the demonstration, but he took me. It was in a high school basketball gym with about 25 people sitting in the bleachers watching. The “master” got up and broke some boards and such. My sister’s boyfriend got to hold some of them while they got punched. So exciting. Such an honor.

The Master then began flashing a samurai sword around, cutting apples. I could feel my father tensing up next to me. The “master” paused to explain the “Code of Bushidō” and how honorable and chivalrous it was. My father couldn’t contain himself. To my horror, he suddenly stood up and loudly told the “master” that he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. I was mortified. My father announced loud and clear that he had actually fought Japanese warriors and that there was no honor in them; in how they treated captured Marines, indigenous people, raping girls and women, cutting off nursing women’s breasts and leaving them to die after bonneting the children. He was furious. He stormed out. The entire place was silent. The poor Karate instructor was shocked. He just stood there with his “samurai sword,” dangling at his side in his limp grip. The students, including my sister’s boyfriend looked like statues. I felt so ashamed. My sister was unresponsive. I was about 11 years old. Now I understand.

Combat, I mean like life and death clawing for survival, tends to take the romance out of martial “arts.” The romantic BS is easily recognized in the difference between a Tarantino movie and say a film like Saving Private Ryan. Both are fiction but one much more than the other. Later I studied Asian martial arts, but I also studied the social structure that justified their right to kill any peasant for any reason. And how they would kill themselves at their Master’s behest. Total conformity and obedience. Crazy. Conform to what the elite define as the appropriate behavior for your station in life, or die. No self, no independent thinking. Japanese treatment of minority powerless serfs and colonial subjects was no better than European brutality. Conformity to elite, dominant culture is a huge problem. It’s steeped in hierarchy and injustice. Only critical, independent reflection can crack the code.

Only after GI’s who had time and the leisure to take Karate and Tae Kwon Do while hanging out in peace-time Korea and Japan, returned to the US all exoticized, did the “Oriental fighting arts” appear on the American scene. Then, after Bruce Lee, martial arts schools sprang up like mushrooms. Little kids were all hoping around and kicking the air with mighty intent. Orientalism was there too. In fact, like a Tarantino movie, it was massively exaggerated. Because I was involved in the culture, I knew of the bias against white and black instructors in the US. Some, outstanding experts but… suburban White America wanted an Asian-faced instructor, or, it wasn’t “authentic.” I see the same exoticism in some academic subfields. Racism… exists in all directions and it sells. As the saying goes, in the Orientalist USA, it comes with the territory. And because there are so many dreamy racists buyers, there are those selling it. What is “it?” I call it racial authenticity.

My father was right. But he was too brutal about it. The “master” was a schmoe, trying to be “somebody” -- a dupe like so many caught up in the times. I’m a much kinder teacher. But then what I teach is not so important. Philosophy taught me the hardnosed pursuit of truth. I quickly realized that while many were reading Suzuki and Christmas Humphreys, The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The Tao of Pooh, Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha, Chapra’s The Tao of Physics, it was a different story among serious scholars. In my major, I had to read the actual original texts, the sutras and commentaries. Not so… easy. I read The Tao of Physics with a physics prof who was kind enough to do an independent study with me. No one in philosophy felt qualified to talk about how Taoism is really quantum mechanics in drag. The physicist said it was a bunch of bullshit. Much jargon interpreted in ways unrecognizable to a real quantum physicist. Good to know. The three easiest ideas to sell? How to get rich quick. How to be happy (salvation). And the way to universal brotherhood. One other might be how to lose weight and shape your buns. Let’s try the post-cryto-neolithic squirrel diet and running wheel. The more mysterious and “special,” the better.

Suburban Tantrism: Ethno-Mystic Seduction of the “Forbidden” Erotic Other

Every field has a few “also rans,” semi-educated charlatans willing to cash in by selling numskulls like me two things: 1) you too can understand the deeper truths of quantum mechanics in one weekend and without all that pesky math and, 2) you’ll find what you want in these pages… moralizing pap. What a con job. Within university philosophy departments, the rigor was much more intense than in the coffee shops. Answers almost never came. That’s the problem with serious philosophy. It tends not to lead to resolution. But then neither does life. Life is evolving toward no final solution, no final perfect form. There is no predetermined “end.” One of my professors of Eastern philosophy, Detlef Ingo Lauf called the pop culture version of Zen, “beat Zen,” and “psychedelic Zen.” He’d met one of the great popularizers of beat Zen, Alan Watts. Watts had invited Lauf to his home. Lauf found him on his yacht in California, drunk out of his mind and surrounded by wasted sycophants and waifs – his “ḍākinīs.” It was a cult. Lauf was shocked. Watts had written one or two early books that had merit. But the culture swept him away. He was up there in the pantheon of trippy semi-academic writers like Carlos Castaneda.

Here’s one more example about the intellectual environment I waded through as an undergrad and grad student in the mid 70s. Other than required texts I was reading Fire in the Lake, writings by Malcolm X, the Fugitive Poets, Gulag Archipelago, The Pentagon Papers, Walden, All the President’s Men, practically everything The New Yorker and the Club of Rome was publishing, A Sand County Almanac, Silent Spring, Small is Beautiful, Paul Ehrlich, Ralph Nader, Farley Mowat, Wendell Berry, Tom Robbins, Hunter S. Thompson’s Hells Angels and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest, Epstein’s News from Nowhere… I also encountered a book about a dessert shaman. It was all the rage. It was called, The Teaching of Don Juan A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda. It was published to great fanfare in 1968. No one ever met the shaman “Don Juan Matus,” except Castaneda. Castaneda would not introduce the Yaqui Indian “Sorcerer” who lived in the Sonora desert to anyone, not even his Master’s thesis committee for verification. They let is slide. Privacy and all ya know. Many thought it was pure fiction… not social science. But it was exotically cool.

Time magazine described the whole phenom as “an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a tortilla.” Again, the exoticization of a nonWhite ethnic. I call it ethno-mysticism. Then you can be a sorcerer and appear on TV like the Russian psychic spoonbender Uri Geller, and make millions. Most readers wanted some of what Castaneda had admitted he was smoking (peyote and jimson weed). Castaneda, like Watts made enough money to just be cool. Claiming to have received the mantel of sorcerer, “Man of Knowledge,” from Don Juan, Castaneda hit the lecture circuit to promote what he called “tensegrity” which he defined in his promotional material as “the modernized version of some movements called magical passes…” Basically a new religion. He just wasn’t talented enough to pull it off. Plus, modern journalism tends to dampen such ecstatic states necessary for zealotry. Journalists found his accounts of his personal history to be full of inconsistencies. Castaneda never taught anthro anywhere. This sort of mystifying nonsense was in the air we were breathing in the 1960-70s. And it has lived on in some of the stuff still teach today. Sorry. This is the best I can do to inform you.

Back to the California Buddha. Lauf found on the boat a raging alcoholic, but Watts had money. Like Castaneda, he’d hit it big on the beat Zen/New Age book circuit. Today they’d both probably have a podcast and be called spiritual influencers or life coaches. This is not Zen or Yaqui culture’s fault. I agree with the experts. It was a bad fusion of Western escapist mysticism mixed with nonwestern spiritual traditions, and the 1960s youth/drug culture thrown in to enhance the “enlightenment.” But it shouldn’t be used to justify an ideology of extreme assimilation. How backassward is that! Get a bong, some “good stuff,” and read Zen and the Art of Archery by Herrigel. Everybody was doing it. Maybe it was total conformity!

Strangely I found the cinema to be less mysterious. The cinema of my primary visual socialization? The Godfather movies, Midnight Cowboy, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Doctor Zhivago, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Funny Girl, The French Conection, A Clockwork Orange, The Last Picture Show, Love Story, MASH, Cabaret, Deliverance, The Sting, American Graffiti, The Exorcist, Chinatown, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Jaws, Dog Day Afternoon, Barry Lyndon, Annie Hall, The Goodbye Girl, Star Wars, The Deer Hunter, Coming Home, Kramer vs. Kramer, All That Jazz, Apocalypse Now, Norma Rae…

Last thing necessary here. I have had many wonderful Japanese students and colleagues. They are not of this older generation. They are not “warriors.” They are not fascist or fascist sympathizers. Just so that is clear. But there was a culture of butchery for a time in the Japanese military that can be traced to the old feudal system. The vast majority of Japanese, like the Germans, made some terrible mistakes. They “assimilated” with fervor to the dominant ideology. Talk about errors, poor decisions, groupthink on a national scale! Japan remained basically a low-tech agrarian society with no science, until the opening to the West. And then, unfortunately they decided to mimic English imperialism. Of course they would, being Samurai and all. They didn’t need too much prodding to feel it only natural that they crush the inferior races into slavery.

Sampling Error

There’s just me but I keep taking samples of life. I’ve got samples from day one to age 63.95. That’s a lot of samples. Multi-perspectival. Not aperspectival because I agree with Nietzsche, I don’t think you can have what we call knowledge without a perspective. Gadamer is also correct I think. To know is to have a prejudice, a point-of-view. But we can compare perspectives and my “position” on things has changed a lot since I was a child. That doesn’t mean one perspective is truer than another. Just different. A war can be described by a combat medic, a soldier at the front, a spouse waiting at home, a general back at HQ, a child caught in the middle of the fighting… all different. All true. This is a sample.

I like sampling. I need many samples of watermelon to make sure I can say, on average, it’s good. Same for ice cream, good stories, hugs, sunsets, motorcycle rides… You can never get enough samples. Because there’s just one of me, I’m told I’m insignificant. I suppose. I don’t get paid all that much. But then neither did Einstein. Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg, the Walton family, even though there is only one of each of them, they are $IGNIFICANT. We randomly sample the universe and find that some things are related and some are not. Patterns. Some threads run through this chaos of words. There is no headwaters or delta here. You can jump in at any point. In the universe, if there is a connection between two things, we say it’s significant. Can there be an insignificant relationship? If there’s a relationship, doesn’t that mean significance?

So, we sample, and we sample as many examples as we can, but then we do what sometimes is not necessary, we average them to come up with a single score, a score like 1.359 dogs per family or 2.846 people per household that are not even real. Then we focus hard on those values. No family has 1.359 dogs. But we mash all the real differences down into just one number. Why?

It’s a tendency, not toward the mean, but to want to feel like we have apprehended things. To apprehend means to get control, detain, confine. To know something is to be able to define it and that means to be able to identify it as separate from other things. The definition of the word “definition” is to be able to discern two separate things as distinct and discrete – confined. How? Reduce all the variance to a mean. We do it a lot in the modern world. It’s our culture. Why? Control. Power is the ability to confine and define. To render something predictable. Surprises suggest freedom, agency that is not ours. Few things are as unpredictable or unwanted as a fart. Not a good surprise. We try hard to control them. Now if you want to see how difference, how a fart, yes a fart, changed the entire course of evolution, and how much of our “academic” writing about intercultural communication doesn’t understand, and so why some writers see intercultural communication not as an opportunity to share and learn, but only as a problem to be solved by the elimination of culture itself, then read on. If not, skip this section.

Our age has been called the “Age of Anxiety.” We kill-off diversity in favor of uniformity, standardization, generality because that makes things predictable. All the handmade variance is eliminated, and we call this efficiency and “competence.” Control. Economics. So we have General Foods, Standard Oil, General Motors, Standard Real Estate Investments, General Electric, Standard Life and Accident, General Stores... Massification/elimination of diversity… monoculture. We sample then smash all the wonderful varieties of things down into one number, including people; the consumer, the worker, the General Issue soldier (GI). We choose one and reproduce it. We have a standard. We have standardized units of soldiers and of measures. Standards are what armies march into war holding.

Late modern dualism promotes anxiety. Either or. Either you are going the “right” way, or the “wrong” way. It is enshrined in variable analytical thinking. There are only two ways to go and as you move toward one end of the line you must be moving away from the “opposite” end with equal rate and distance. Totally spatialized, dualistic thinking. There’s no wiggle room. No “quarter” given. Tolerance is “tight,” precise. But farts escape even the tightest sphincter.

This spatial thinking saturates our way of understanding. Difference is real. It is not oppositional, necessarily. Rather it can be complementary as well as contrasting. As my old mentor Algis Mickunas says, we “see through” each to recognize the Other as different. And at the same time, we also see ourselves as not the Other. The Other enables me to have an identity. To be perceivable via difference. It is not my enemy. It simply is and along with it, I am. Who am I? Not you. And we also see the difference itself as a synthetic phenomenon that is integral. It is the integral capacity to perceive. It presents fluid shades and nuances. Still too many of our writers imagine a monolithic fixed “mainstream” culture with newcomers, “strangers,” minorities that are “outsiders” who must struggle to become part of the world. Why? Because they are conceived as not being part of “it” (the “dominant” culture). But “they,” newcomers, sojourners, visitors, refugees, immigrants, transfers, diplomats, exchange students, foreign workers (H1B Visa holders), “legals,” “illegals,” foreign spouses of military and others, with or without documents… whatever label you have for the individual, are part of a global system that impacts our little national system. Tourism is huge for many states and towns. Foreign student tuition is vital to many universities. US agriculture, everyone who eats, depends on foreign labor. And then, obviously, we are all human beings. Our ancestors, if not ourselves and our children, have and will move around. The “Other” is you to someone else.

And yet… some academic (not online wingnut literature), literature perpetuates Othering, the Outsider, not as something or someone who enables my own identity to have meaning, but as an alien force, a threat (insane, criminal, immature, incompetent, unbalanced – these terms are quotes from the literature). This prompts the same authors to prescribe solutions to the “problem” of difference such as altering school curricula and mass media tropes to teach assimilation – meaning mass conformity to the “dominant culture.” Preservation of the status quo is the penultimate goal… in intercultural communication literature. Really. Not kidding. I can quote the passages to you. Inherent within this duality is a power hierarchy. They, the Others, must do all the integrating and assimilating but that is wrong. Not for moral reasons alone. It simply is not how things actually happen.

The framing that sees people as “entering” and “leaving” self-contained territories is spatial thinking and it is based in an old notion of sovereignty. Borders are fading fast. People are communicating like never before. Cultures are blending, fusing, evolving. Conservatives hate this but there’s no stopping human curiosity and innovation. Life evolves, period.

The system is dynamic, and everyone is changing, integrating, assimilating, adjusting. Co-evolving. In a spider’s web a touch here, makes all the rest vibrate. Everyone on the web has to shift position to maintain. Some fall off. All things are connected and so we have panevolution. Everything, organic and inorganic, in an environment “counts.” Text and context share the system. Part and whole, form and content are always and already integrated. The environment and animals “in it” are the same thing. Let me give you an example.

OXYGEN! Methane-Fart-Beings, Creep for Your Lives

About one billion years ago during the Paleoproterozoic era the Earth underwent the “Great Oxidation Event.” The Earth began to cool. Vulcanization slowed. Volcanic nickel dwindled. The Chemosynthetic organisms (Methane-Fart-Beings) that constituted life on Earth needed nickel as an enzyme cofactor. The war of farts commenced. The Chemosynthetic organisms were affected such that oxygen-producing algae started to out-perform the methane producers and the percentage of oxygen in the environment steadily increased. Cyanobacteria evolved a new way of life generating energy through photosynthesis that produced oxygen as a byproduct. Oxygen was a poison to the old Methane-Fart-Beings. It changed everything. There was a mass extinction of previous anaerobic life on Earth (methanogens that produced methane instead of oxygen as a gaseous byproduct died off). The methane-fart-beings lost. They were no longer the dominant form of life on Earth.

Now to be fair, there were no farts because assholes didn’t exist like today. Today, there are many around. Free atmospheric oxygen was toxic to this early form of life and a massive oxidative stress led to a mass extinction event driving evolution toward a new kind of reproduction. Sex! Bet you didn’t see this as a sexy story? Sexual reproduction appears. Wow. Thanks to this change from a little minority of algae we have the primary obsession of our species. Oxygenation helped to launch Video cassette rentals and the Internet! And a whole lot more. Lots of machinations in religious circles, the Venus of Willendorf, rock n’roll, Romeo and Juliet, Playboy. And the subsequent development of multicellular lifeforms including you and me. Iron became “reactive.”

Those little blue-green algae! They were spectacularly successful and are still going strong. But life evolves. It does NOT just keep conforming to one type of success. No. Sex mixes things up. Life, sexy life especially, proliferates forms. It expands. No dualism. It does not “fill niches.” There are no niches separate from their “content.” This is the problem of “flow chart” organizational thinking. There is no empty T-Rex box. The universe is not a parking lot, empty or full. It, Life, diversifies, and manifests multiple examples of success. Success means it reproduces itself – endures. I’m astonished how many “scholars” very wrongly equate adaptation with conformity to a “mainstream” type. There are countless successes. There is no “mainstream” animal or plant. If they reproduce, they are “successful.” It’s simple. To be or not. Algae were not only the “mainstream,” they were the only stream for a long time. Here’s a family picture of your earliest ancestors. Be proud. But that was just the beginning of the story for oxygen Earth.

To use the word “adapt” to mean conform is all wrong. Life proliferates and thankfully so. I am not an algae. And having a wide repertoire of forms and alternatives makes the overall system resilient. When all you plant are potatoes, and a blight comes along and you have no other forms of food… you’re in trouble. Ask the Irish about that. Having choices makes the whole system robust. But we get crazy. Ideology emerged that made some so egocentric that they thought only their ways were good and all others should be eliminated. Royals tend to inbreed. Not smart… But everyone knows this right? “All your eggs in one basket,” diversify your investments, and all. Nope. Read the literature. You may be surprised. I was… very surprised.

Ideology came into existence and started to conflict with biology. One form of life, humans, and just a small, peculiar subcategory of humans, started to literally whip itself because it was horny. Despising the most archaic urge of life to succeed, to reproduce, is quite a contradiction. People beating themselves because they are sexed beings. Control freaks. Sad, isolated folks. Very conservative but at least consistent. Maybe they can’t abide the “cost of sex” which is the fact that only half your genetic information is passed on. Well, that’s the cost of sharing with someone else. Cloning preserves the status quo, but that means no evolution. I guess they want to conform back to asexual reproduction via spores. But sex… allows for recombination (fusion) of parent genotypes… and mutations. Evolution. The real meaning of the term. Not the mixed-up usage that talks about “evolving” as assimilation to the mainstream. That’s conformity and it is usually sold to people with fear appeals, comply or else.

Reproduction of the same, cellular division (mitosis), cloning and such is static – redundant. To humans, boring. Recording the same song over and over. Painting the same picture over and over. Same food over and over. Fusion, communication, accelerates evolution. You can wait around for a random mutation to succeed or you can have sex. It’s risky. You don’t know what the kids will look like. Not exactly dad or mom. But there too is the resilience of diversification. And it’s a lot more exciting, dare I say fun, than waiting for a new kid (form) to just randomly appear.

Evolution does NOT mean conforming. This is how the term was coopted and used, turned upside down, by promoters of Eugenics such as Francis Galton and his protégé Karl Pearson (yes the correlation coefficient guy) to claim scientific support for racial cleansing. More correctly, evolution means DIVERGING. It is nature’s endless experimentation via the proliferation of new forms, which is an endless process. There is no final solution or end to evolution. No matter how successful a form is, Life continues to branch-off new forms. There is no progress because there is no final perfect form, no final goal. Without a goal you cannot reckon progress (or regress). The party never ends. Thank god we have escaped utopian thinking which is really a trap. But not all of us. Here is Psyche Awakened by Cupid’s Kiss (Louvre).

The self-isolates not only hate the rest of us who “have sex” but hate themselves too. Thankfully, they are such a small minority that the species continues. They not only self-flagellate. Some even mutilate their own genitalia. Some go into massage parlors and shoot all the women. This is the source of the mental illness that sees the adored as a “terrible beauty” (as one of my colleagues traced a small part of the syndrome as it applies to women). Gotta blame the seducer or seductress. We, who give in, are “weak.” We need to be “reprogramed.” Time to go to military school for our own good. Strange that a lifeform would be so anti-life. But diversity flourishes. And some experiments are weird and fail. I’ve heard some experiments in music… augh. Don’t record that… don’t reproduce it. But my egocentric opinion doesn’t matter. And that’s good. I’m a mutt, not a royal pure breed. Mutt is short for mutation… an X Man! Nope. Just me.

What else is in the system? Everything. Everything including gases and minerals, sunlight and background radiation, everything that we experience (communicate with). Those algae did not adapt or conform to the atmosphere and Earth. They changed the atmosphere, land, and sea. That’s what I mean by saying everything, everybody is always already part of the system. Even a brand-new upstart little bacteria can, and did change the world. And still today it produces most of the oxygen we breathe. There’s no fighting to get “in.” There’s fighting for dominance within the system. But even that is a very ideological way of thinking. I don’t think lifeforms believe they are in competition with each other. Much is random. You’re already involved, even if you don’t know it, or believe it. But it’s not always a zero-sum game either. Life branches out to develop and exploit new domains. There is no dualism. What there is, is interaction. Communication. Panevolution.

If some would have their way, the solution to troublesome intercultural communication would be total homogenization which would mean the end of difference and communication. Usually when someone says you have to “get on the same page,” “get with the program,” they’re trying to coerce you to do what they want.

The big mistake? Dualism. We are told by such authors that they have deemed their therapy as a “valid goal.” Worthy of being pursued on a mass scale by all means available including within schools and via the mass media. They are confident that your “subjective internal state” needs to conform with the “objective external reality.” And they know what that objective truth is. And under all circumstances too. The truth is whatever the majority power says it is. Poor Galileo. He was so in need of reprogramming. The gay kid. The Black. The foreigner. The Other abled. The artist. The scientist with an unorthodox theory. If you have a divergent opinion, you are not being merely different, you are being “unrealistic,” and quite possibly, diseased, culturally ill.

Their false assumption: you are a “competent” receiver of commands if they are “reproduced” in your mind as intended by the boss and your response is “appropriate,” as defined by the boss. This is the language in the literature. Not my words. And if you dare to disagree or have your own perspective you are labeled, “maladjusted,” “hostile,” “immature,” “mentally ill,” in need of “psychological reformulation” via therapy if necessary… or jail for being “aggressive.” You are not “functionally fit,” “not “fit to live in the company of others.” But there’s a problem with this nice authoritarian model. Communication requires difference to exchange. Authoritarians see the “solution” to the “problem” of awkward intercultural communication as the elimination of cultural differences, the cessation of communication except as a means of cloning reproduction. Not production of the new. Reproduction of the old – redundancy. We are all the same page. Why is this good, a “valid goal?” Because it is “competent,” defined as efficient labor.

Well, that ain’t gonna happen. That’s not how life works. Way wrong. And coercion often leads to resentment and resistance. Now I’m not a cheerleader for inefficiency but reproduction of the same old, same old, is not efficient evolution. It is not evolution at all.

So, the upstart weirdo algae created their oxygen farts. Algae therapists were not available. They didn’t have medical insurance anyway. The land absorbed the oxygen creating new minerals. The deep oceans became oxygenated oxidizing iron to form soluble ferric compounds ending the deposition of banded iron formations that folks mined a billion years later in places like Minnesota and Wisconsin and shipped via the Great Lakes to places like Gary, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Marion (my hometown) to make the steel that would make our cars and skyscrapers and guns. Iron and oxygen (ferrous oxide) became part of red blood cells. Iron oxide (same as ferrous) was the first pigment we know of used in human graphic symbolism. Early “art” did not dissociate from the body. Our ancient medium was our own skin. Tracing symbols over skin… touch is very magical. It’s an artform meant to be touched. Our ancestors painted their bodies with ferrous oxide. We still do. It is used in cosmetics and tattoos today. We like them in erogenous zones. Thanks algae for helping us with inventing idolic and symbolic expression.

Other than our little blue-green algae friends, no other animal changes the environment as much as Humans. Humans don’t move into a region and just conform. They build shelters, grade and construct roads, damn great rivers creating huge lakes (some, such as the Three Gorges Damn Reservoir, are so huge that their mass has measurably altered the rotation of the Earth!), corral and domesticate the animals and plants, breed them to our specifications, move mountains (and build them as mounds, stupas, pagodas, pyramids), build ports, take the skins of other animals and the fibers of plants and wear them, turn deserts into farms and turn forests into deserts. Make silk from moth cocoons.

Here’s an adult silk moth – the movie star Mothra saying, “leave my cocoons alone!” You want seedless watermelons, fine. You want to be able to stack them, then make them cube shape. Here’s one from Japan. We are altering the global climate. Our activity literally causes the planet to vibrate. Our noise permeates the oceans. Our electromagnetic signals radiate from the Earth out into space. We are movers and shakers. We’re even making plans for terraforming entire planets and moons, deliberately modifying their atmospheres, temperatures, and topography to suit our wants and needs.

For better or worse, humans do not conform. We change the environment to suit our imagined “improvements.” And we don’t just turn our efforts onto the environment. We change ourselves. All over the world, we inscribe and scarify our skins, shape our skulls (“artificial cranial deformation”), bind our feet, pierce our bodies, even extend our limbs through surgery to be taller. We give our kids growth hormones if we think they are not big enough. We don’t accept things as they are. Instead, we “enhance” them, “develop” them, do “value adding.” It’s art. It’s technique. It’s medicine. It’s religion. It’s business. It’s vanity. Breasts, noses, chins, bellies, bonsai trees, livestock (how many shapes of dogs have we created as breeds?)… We alter our smells, our hair color, our faces. We play with our bodies with surgery and shaping exercises. We defy aging. And now we are embarking on genetic engineering.

When humans invented magic, they invented complex systems of rituals and ceremonies and activities to attempt to change the course of things, to impose our will on fertility, the weather, our health, the gender of our offspring. We discovered plants to alter our psyches and heal our wounds. We “trip.” We alter our moods. We control our sleep cycles. But much of magic didn’t deliver. It failed to give us our demands, our efforts to control everything. Technology is material magic that often works.

Archimedes taught us the essence of technology. It is the effort to magnify our power. Build me a lever big enough and I can move the Earth. Indeed. We refuse to accept our own limitations. We refuse to accept or conform to the environment we find ourselves in. We just keep trying… trying to not conform to what we encounter, like cancer, but to control it.

If you do not understand this basic truth of our species, you will make many errors in your theorizing about our behavior. Conformity does not make us happy or successful. We are not satisfied with things as they are. And confusing conformity with adaptation is just another error, a rhetorical ploy to sound scientifical in the service of a political agenda. But it could be that people just flat out don’t understand adaptation. We adapt things to our wishes, the temperature in our houses, the speed of our travel, the kinds of foods we want, and increasingly the type and number of children we desire.

We create culture. What is culture? Culture is that which is not nature. We create nature at the same time. What!? Yes. We define what it is. Nature… is an artifact. We have turned it into a resource base to play with. That’s human. This version of nature is a social construct. Some religions openly teach that nature is ours to use and abuse at will. That’s archaic magic on steroids. That’s a fact. Now judgment is up to others. Is this good or bad? Maybe this old binary is not adequate to understand our relationship with the world as “resource base,” as a set of “building blocks” we take liberty with to rearrange at will. But that’s a completely different issue.

Let’s look at that for a minute. Here’s the irony of ironies. The trick of those who would be our masters. While they encourage obedience, they are doing so as commandments. This proves my point about humans being makers. These folks want to make us according to their priorities, but they themselves, do not conform. They seek to be agents of change. And to do so on a cultural/societal scale. They use their bully pulpits as “experts” as moralists to modify the messages of other socializing institutions. They seek to be the meta-teachers of teachers. Their ambition is enormous. They seek to go beyond trying to form us as pupils to shaping the institutions of socialization themselves. To what end? Of course, to what they deem to be “the good.” Hence the mega-moralizing and megalomaniacal ambition presented as “social science.”

The message for us. Strive to erase yourself. Strive to be as flexible and obedient to whatever power structure comes along. That is being ‘evolved,’ and ‘adaptable’.” The misuse of terminology is “strategic communication.” Useful for compliance gaining. Of course, this is an effort to persuade us to volunteer… to voluntarily surrender our agency. This is the “right” thing to do for us and “the system.” They make it very clear. They tell us,“This is my will. I get to tell you what you should do, which is, don’t make any changes. Instead, conform behaviorally, the way you think, and the way you feel. We will teach you how you should think and feel, what are the 'appropriate' thoughts and feelings to have. So, do as I say, not as I do. There’s only one boss and obey the boss. Don’t interfere in your own life. Don’t go writing your own plans for utopia. Just conform to what is handed to you. That’s the ‘mountain top’ of success. Trust me.” So typical of power-seeking. So redundant. They encourage us to be “flexible” and “adaptable,” and “plastic” and suggest that if we try to be who we are, or, god forbid, even get in on the planning that we are being “hostile,” “aggressive,” “immature,” “unbalanced”… “Know your place. Stay in your place. Feel good about that. If change is necessary, we will tell you how and in which direction. Don’t worry. Be happy. We are certain about all this. Just keep your eyes straight ahead, and listen only to my voice.” Planning of what? Your own life, your own world. But that’s the point. The authoritarians make it very clear, this is not your world. It belongs to the “dominant mainstream.” And you have to “adapt” meaning conform, or else. According to this theory, you are not part of the system. To become “fit,” to “fit in,” you have to conform to some fixed set of priorities handed to you from the “dominant mainstream culture.” You have to submit to all preconditions, norms, habits, and not of just behaving but as noted, of thinking and feeling too. You have to totally “deculturize” and “unlearn” who you are. Three problems, four if you hope for change that might be called “progress.” One is moral. Coerced blind obedience without free will or agency is an afront to human dignity. Most civilized folks agree about that. Two and three are empirical or practical problems, and four is both practical and possibly moral. Two, there is no fixed system. And three, yep three, you are always already a part of the system even if you feel alienated or others tell you you are not. Well if you read some of the intercultural literature, you’ll feel pretty alienated by it. And four, there’s no progress without deviance. Change is important to overcome boredom and it may also lead to “good” changes we call “progress.” But never fear, evolution is real, change is real, it is not predetermined, and you are part of it and have a say. You “count,” to speak in quantitative terms.

Evolution is unstoppable unless you kill life. Or in the case of some intercultural communication theories, you eliminate culture altogether, erase all difference… monoculture. That authoritarian dream of “overcoming cultural parochialism,” of “rising above” the “defilements” of difference (of course above is different from below, but who cares about being a consistent thinker), beyond the “limits of culture and ultimately of humanity itself” ain’t likely. And even if such a crazy ambition succeeded for a moment, divergence would happen again. Same with life. You can force extinction but then, who’s to say it won’t randomly pop up again. No rules against having more than one origin of life on a planet.

The same people who encourage all the rest of us to just conform and obey are the same people who then propose an entire propaganda campaign to be expedited by schools and the mass media to effect change, to build, literally, more obedient children and a more conformist culture! They want to cultivate us as a certain type of personality with the “right” attitude. We are to be domesticated with the traits they deem “good.” And they do this without ever engaging in the debates necessary for ethical and moral projects. This is moralizing on a massive scale. These guys tell us to conform, and they tell us in which direction we should conform.

We should conform to being conformist! Wow! It can be summed up in one phrase, “Submission is good.” We should embrace and strive to “adapt,” meaning conform. It’s the “realistic” and scientifical thing to do. The only rational thing to do. Well, that’s got to be the most typical hypocrisy of those who would command the rest. First teach obedience, then reinforce it in an infinite loop. No thinking required. Just obey. “Listen to me. It is for your own good and the good of the social structure. I’m teaching you how to be more obedient so that you can conform more easily to commands in the future. No more uncertainty. No more deviance. No more trouble. Utopia. Progress to the final solution."

In classic form, only after laying out all their pseudo-scientific justifications for why conformity is the best way to live, do they then spring on us their desire to spread this gospel via the most powerful institutions of socialization in our society (schools and the mass media). If they’d said that up front, we might have become more critical readers of their morality for us. But strategy is the essence of rhetoric. The other shoe drops. So, this was the plan all along. Okay. I get it. So, these ambitious power-seekers are doing what I would expect, except, that within academic culture, where debate is supposed to be fostered, they don’t want anyone else to participate in the planning. That’s a problem.

But let me be clear about my position on all this. First, adaptation is not conformity to what is. Second humans, essentially, do not accept what is but imagine what could be and then set out to make it so. That’s what we do, unlike any other animal. We are not “empirical.” We do not live in the here and now like other animals. We are constantly reflecting on what has been and projecting our wishes towards modifying things in the future. That’s what we mean by work. We are planners and builders. We put the beaver and birds making nests to shame. They follow instinct, we defy it. What to build, which direction to go, is a matter of debate. To use pseudo-scientific justifications in this debate is to debase science and manipulate your audience in cynical ways. And I’ve seen these guys publicly bully students when they dare to engage. The point of intelligent reflection and planning that is crucial is determining how to alter everything. That’s the key. Or even if just one plan should be allowed. Altering everything is dangerous for individuals and the system. That’s a fact. So I would suggest that no one should have absolute power over everyone else. Period. Full stop. Saying the best, and only good plan, is to be obedient to whatever power structure comes along and to conform to its dictates is to totally abandon freedom and responsibility.

Now, tacking back to our algae friends and the world they created. A couple of things changed that I take personally. Multicellular life emerged. I am one. And a new form of reproduction evolved. Sex enables genetic fusion. Sex is a form of communication. Things are exchanged. The future is altered. This is a good analogy for intercultural communication… all communication actually. Cultures also have fusional interaction. You can be afraid and write books saying that immigrants must “deculturized,” erase all the qualities and traits of who they are to become identical to the “mainstream” type of person in language, thinking, behavior, beliefs, values and call this “maturity” and “competence.” Good luck with that. The only way to accomplish that is to block all communication ala North Korea. Build the “Great Firewall” around the minds of the people you are trying to help to “assimilate.”

Well, my friends the conformists have that covered. They clearly state that immigrants should avoid each other and “ethnic media.” Don’t hang out at the community church where folks speak some foreign tongue. Change your religion. Don’t eat your “ethnic” food. Don’t listen to your “ethnic” music. Abandon your language, your literature, your poetry, your arts. Stop communicating with “your kind” so you can hasten “adaptation” which means “assimilation/conformity.” This means the immigrant should not contribute anything to the system except malleable labor. The best immigrant is the robot. Totally programable. Erase and reprogram at will.

Now this wording itself, demonstrates that the authors believe “mainstream” folks don’t have “ethnicity.” That only immigrants have “ethnicity,” and accents. That’s wrong on many levels. We all have accents. This retread nativism masquerading as “social science,” assumes that “mainstream culture” is not a culture at all but “OBJECTIVE REALITY.” Anything else is subjective nonsense. That way of talking about immigrants is the epitome of being ethnocentric and there it is in texts about intercultural communication! Astounding to me.

And like robots, immigrants should claim no stake in the system. Just fit in as supporting cast. Reinforce the status quo or leave. This comes from being conditioned by religion. From the robot’s “perspective” the programmer, the “mainstream culture” can never be wrong. It is self-evident. It is “reality.” The robot has no interest or stake in the overall plan of things and can’t understand it anyway. So, the mainstream is infallible. That’s the argument. So just obey. Don’t question. How dare these immigrants make any suggestions. “Go back where you came from,” chants the assimilationist -- read some of our textbooks on intercultural communication!

Where I grew up we had tensions but also celebrations. I did not grow up in a super homogenous place and maybe that’s why I have a very different take from the assimilationists on these ideas. There was “German Town,” “Little Italy,” “China Town,” “Korean Town,” the “Irish neighborhood,” the Jewish neighborhood, the “Polish neighborhood”… Since I moved away a “Russian,” a “Mexican” and a Puerto Rican enclave have formed. They’re in quotes because the “Russian” neighborhood has Belarusians, Ukrainians, Georgians and others just as the “Mexican” neighborhood has Salvadorans, Panamanians, Costa Ricans, Guatemalans, Hondurans and Nicaraguans living there. It’s cheap. The communication is facilitated until folks decide to move on. They all had their groceries and houses of worship. Many had little newspapers and community centers to help folks get jobs and learn English. Instead of avoiding each other, the old timers could help out the newcomers.

Help them to do what? Integrate. Yes integrate, not disappear. Not conform but integrate which means make your way with the skills you have as you acquire more – build up your repertoire of competencies. In fact, you ask around in Spanish where the English school is. You use what you’ve got to acquire more. You don’t have to forget how to speak Spanish to learn how to speak English. But that’s what some theorists claim.

Integration is not a zero-sum game. It is additive. Competencies accrue and modify each other. That’s how it works. You go to a strange place and you look for help. Not local indigenous people because they don’t know what you’re going through. You look for folks who have run the gauntlet and can help you do it too. And there’s all kinds of cultural fusion going on. That’s what port cities, border towns are like. And people tend to love such places because they are not boring. There are cultural and economic opportunities – vitality. Is it all roses? No. Of course not. Just life happening. Some “good” stuff and some not. The theory of cultural fusion does not promote social engineering toward some utopia.

I remember going to a bar in a Polish neighborhood with one of my college buddies who grew up there and every song on the jukebox was in Polish. It was fun. There was an old school, physical bulletin/message board with all sorts of messages on it for jobs, places for rent, babysitting, English classes… all the notices were in Polish. The bar acted as a communication conduit, as a node in the network, a bridge between cultures. I’m sure there are now countless digital bulletin boards online that do the same thing. We went to church. The sermon was in Polish. It didn’t hurt me. Who doesn’t like tacos, Ramen, or Korean barbeque? Well if you don’t like any of these, that’s the great thing about diversity. You can go for pizza or bratwurst and a beer. There is no one standard type that repeats and repeats and redundantly… repeats. It can be inefficient. That’s life. If you don’t like that, take it up with your god or something. I don’t have a problem with diversification. I have other issues I want to take up with god, if it exists and if I get a chance, like black holes. Do we really need those scary ass things drifting around?

Multiculturalism is real and good. It leads to cultural fusion. Kinda like sex. You mix two or more channels that contribute information to create a new form that is not identical to any of its parents. Evolution. Innovation. Creation. Some offspring are ugly. Some don’t get along. Cultural fusion does not promise utopia. It is not prescriptive for social engineering like “adaptation”/assimilation in some “upward-forward” transformation of the immigrant into a real mainstream person living in “reality.” Like evolution, fusion does not posit some ideal end state we are shooting for. We are not engineering with a blueprint already drawn up. Rather Cultural Fusion Theory is a scientific description of what actually happens. Here’s the band Hiroshima performing Jazz and R&B with traditional Japanese instruments such as the Taiko drum and the Koto.

You can be reactionary and try to fight change. Good luck. Without deviance there is no progress. We are all, always already part of the system. And as such, we all contribute to its qualities. Abandon your immigrant dreams? But it is those sometimes-naïve dreams, that faith in the new land, that makes immigrants different from the locals and enriching and invigorating to the system. Their status as different, sets them apart from the locals who may be more jaded. Immigrants make contributions -- even if they don’t intend to. Not just as flexible labor but through their differences. We cannot not communicate. They bring us new music, new cuisines, new games, new ideas, new genes. In a town of coalminers, one more coalminer arriving is not a big deal. But a preacher, schoolteacher, violin maker, publisher, carpenter, seamstress… that one unique person can change life for us all. Like our algae friends, newcomers change the atmospherics of our shared environment. Not always for the “better.” There is no guarantee that all experiments will be “successes.” But without deviance there is no progress. Period. Fear of change is the essence of the conservative mindset.

Influence is not correlated to numeric majority. Again, I read that in our academic literature. The “mainstream” dominates just because they are the numeric majority. What? Look at any society. The powerful tend to be a numeric minority. Read basic sociology about “pyramids of power” (start with Peter Berger’s classic work). Unless you are fighting the basest form of war of attrition, redundancy is not valuable. Rarity is valuable. A handful of geniuses, many immigrants, and a couple of bombs completely changed the global “balance of power,” including launching the great post-colonial movement. It launched us into the “atomic age.” “Minorities” are always already part of society.

Deja vu all over again. Dualism again. I read that there is the organization and then the individuals. Same thing. Same restrictive privileging of those who are the bosses and all the rest trying to “fit in.” And these imaginary phenomena, the mainstream, the organization are conceptualized as having hard shells. Boundaries that mark the duality. This was the huge mistake people in my hometown made. They believed they were confined, protected, isolated, not part of the web. In fact, all over the US. They did not understand systems. They were thinking in hard structural terms. Spatial thinking. The workers did not understand that they had become part of a global workforce and that they were competing with people they’d never met and never would. Their competition emerged first in Japan, then Taiwan, then in China. They were part of a massive, rapidly expanding labor market with the capitalist imperative to race to the bottom of the wage scale. I expected scholars to understand this better than factory workers, but many do not.

Sometimes We Get Misfortune Cookies

The people are real. We focus on and even defend imaginary phenomena because we are conditioned, raised to worship oppressive authorities in hierarchical structures. Even just one minority in a school or neighborhood changes the whole thing. One new restaurant that offers “foreign” cuisine in a small town gives us all an alternative. “Legal” or “illegal.” Immigrants effect the community because they are always already part of the system. Instability and suffering in one place compared to relative opportunity and stability in another communicate. They affect each other. A perturbation “disturbs” other regions in the system. As North America was discovered by Europeans this was a form of communication and the European system expanded just as the Native American world was invasively also exposed to a whole new world that was, to them, Europe and beyond. Play the music upside down. Here’s Iishi. I’ll let you find out who he was. He was the last of his tribe.

My family decided to move from the Alsace-Lorraine area (sometimes France, sometimes German) to the US. You can’t migrate unless where you are going is connected to where you are. Globalization has connected everyone everywhere. Some are strong connections, some weaker but all are part of the system. Even the “threat” of them coming, changes the community who prepares to welcome, ignore, or reject them. Spending money on walls is the effect of people not here now, people who “might” come. Our politics is driven by things happening in Central America. Our pandemic, by things happening on the other side of the world. Dualism makes our understanding and explanations shallow, erroneous. Error! It is misinformative and if continued despite correction, it become maliciously disinformative… an ideological agenda.

One song sells a million times over, identical, without variance. Then when we go see the artist live, we get mad when they sing the song differently. “That doesn’t sound like the recording I have at home or on my phone.” The Korean culture manufacturing industry driven by mega-agencies such as Kakao M has worked hard to make the perfect entertainer with the right face, right voice, right moves, right personality. They are now using AI and graphics to produce Avatars to sing and tell us the news that are mash-ups of thousands of faces and voices into one “perfect” salesman/speaker/entertainer. Why? Control. Avatars don’t get sick, get tired, get drunk, age, commit suicide (a major problem for entertainers in Korea who are pushed over the edge by demands for perfection). In 2013, the super-Confucian kingdom of South Korea realized that all the contestants in its Miss Korea beauty pageant looked “insanely similar.” Cosmetic surgeons had found the one perfect face and put it on all the girls who could afford it. In 2009, one in five women in Seoul between ages 19-49 said they had had cosmetic surgery. Cookie-cutter faces (there’s a chapter by Rainwater-McClure & Reed, in my 2003 book on monoculture and the “model” minority with this title). We’re beginning to use genetic engineering to make the babies we want.

Big data crunching has displaced the old prophets -- actuaries, the astrologers. Risk aversion has tightened our collective sphincters. Mashing all the world’s diversity down, reducing it to “the one” (or a handful of templates) limits choice, eliminates the pain of making decisions. All the variety of life shrinks down to a low-level fog of maudlin redundancy. We worship the faded ruins of the past, statues, pyramids, shrines, temples once covered in fantastic colors now blanched. Thinking they’d recovered its vitality, the Renaissance copied the bleached bones of a classical past. The builders would be aghast at our minimalistic sensibilities, our aesthetic cut to the bone by Ockham’s razor. Adequate but not ecstatic.

Then we over-react because we are desensitized, tranquilized, bored. Spasms of berserk violence (symbolic and physical) and confused aimless “carousing” flare-up. Escape, but with no destination. Unlike magic and mythic ritual and spectacle, there is no “aim.” “Identity” issues become prominent. Identity is in “crisis.” The need for more communication, more social mediation presses. Repressed and suppressed vital impulses corralled by fear. What happened? Urges for personal and private expression spasm and deflate. But this drive for total control, for entirely predictable life, numbs the world. People grow weary. They surrender. They don’t want to go out on a limb. They retreat to what everyone else is doing. They are advised to do so to eliminate “anxiety.” “Conform to the pressure. It’s good for you.” Become “functionally fit” -- “fit to live with,” easy to erase (“deculture”) and reprogram. -- retool. The strange goal, the new ideal personhood? To become a blank medium. Facile, plastic, moldable – without form. The perfect tool for the information age, useful for facilitating any and all assignments. This is the new instrumental “rationality.” Everything is outcomes evaluated but so many seem lost and unhappy. Tell me what to do. How to do it. Operation complete. I’m done. They just “wanna get it over with.”

Color is not beautiful by itself. It is the complementarity and contrast between differing colors that is the cradle of sight. The juxtaposition of different textures is the origin of touch. Motion, difference piques our awareness. How notes form a phrase in a song that is unexpected, exhilarating. If you take all the perfumes in the world and mix them down into just one scent, you’ve ruined everything. The same for food, wines, beers, ideas, people, arts. What would be the “average” poem or the “average” song or the “average” city? The old Soviet cities were grim. Believe me. I saw them. The average Joe is a euphemism for being a nobody.

In his book Video Night in Kathmandu, the travel writer Pico Iyer writes about waking up in a hotel and not being sure where he is for a few moments. The ubiquitous TV is on. The ever-present CNN personalities form the droning ambient noise. But not sure, it could be local news. They all look alike, sound alike, have the same graphics. The decor is standard for hotels all over the world. He gets up and looks out the window at a city that could be Shanghai, Toronto, Melbourne, Manilla, Addis Ababa, Pretoria, Dubai, Singapore, Tokyo, London, Paris, Boston, Johannesburg, Shenzhen, Bangkok, Buenos Aries… He sees the standard streetlights, malls, brands, architecture, autos, buses, suits passing. Globalization/homogenization. You can’t modernize without westernizing. Edward Said is right. The West did become enamored with a romantic version of the Orient. But the whole world has rushed to mimic the West. Arguably, Occidentialism has been more consequential than Orientalism. Here are some cities. They include Jakarta, Paris, Sau Paulo, Mumbai, Mexico City, Lagos, Ho Che Minh City, Tianjin, and Taipei. Can you tell the difference? They span several languages and religions, capitalist and communist governments, climates, and histories. I could have tossed in Atlanta, Frankfurt, Beijing, Osaka, Houston, Cairo…

Of course, if you were on the ground, you could figure it out but, the point is, they are much more alike today than just 50 years ago, and the trend is toward homogenization in all things from business and financial practices (insurance, for instance, is everywhere now) to legal cultures and law enforcement, life-expectations, courtship, child-rearing, pedagogical content… Western double-entry accounting is as ubiquitous on the planet as mechanical clock time, internal combustion engines, electricity, refrigeration, antibiotics, and cell phones. I have gone to conventions around the world. They are all so… conventional. The hotels even smell the same. A handful of global advertising agencies drive “the look.” A handful of architectural firms dominate building design. While differences yet exist, it is an exciting time. There is much to learn, to exchange and share. Cultural fusion is dynamic across all modes of expression from cuisine to cosmetics, sports to tattoos. But, as the process continues things are becoming more and more uniform. Sushi is everywhere now. Can the oceans sustain it? As wealth increases people are becoming more and more the same, chasing the same resources, the same ambitions, the same future. We are converging on dwindling resources. We can adjust but we have to pretty soon to avoid serious problems. Time waits for no one.

Who’s the Invasive Species?

Fewer than a dozen media conglomerates manage what the vast majority watch, listen to, and think about. Values, beliefs, motivations, and expectations are collapsing into a smaller and smaller repertoire. This homogenization has profoundly increased efficiencies across the globe. This can be good and/or bad. It means that if we are doing something bad to the planet, it has been greatly intensified and accelerated. The scope has expanded to global proportions almost overnight in geologic or evolutionary terms. If we are doing something wrong, we’re all doing it now. So what? I don’t know. Do you? All I know is that it’s never happened before. We’re in new territory here as a species -- as a world. Our footprint is becoming so huge that nothing can escape our actions, including each other. The “last first contact” between the “developed world” and tiny isolated groups of humans living in the rainforests, has occurred. No place is isolated anymore. Communication has become king of the era. We had the Stone Age, Iron Age, Bronze Age. We tend to call eras by the dominant material. Today is the Information Age, the Communication Age. And it is the time of a great mass extinction in biodiversity and cultures and, ironically, languages (worldviews). We are becoming poorer in alternatives as we gain power.

Perhaps you believe that life is nothing but suffering, and the goal is to become nothing -- to escape the something that is life (the wheel of karma). That’s pretty bleak. Staring at a cave wall for decades until you are dead. Self-erasure. Repeating your koan until your mind is blank. You are blank. You are gone. That’s one “ambition.” I always thought it was very selfish. Must escape! Don’t’ forget the Buddha abandoned his wife and kids to go off and find himself. Well, I say sample away. But not to mash away all the variety of sensations -- not grind reality into an amorphous jelly, a supposed balm for the seeker of “normal” families with 1.359 dogs and 2.846 people. Yes, you’ll have to cope with not being in command. I hope you can’t find the average. It may not be an error after all. There’s still much difference in the world and, therefore, much to explore. But it’s under stress.

Biodiversity and cultural diversity are both declining at alarming rates. Tending toward the mean, aligning with the “mainstream,” conformity pressure is happening, and some even promote it! As Nietzsche wrote, they cannot tolerate the “mosquito bites” of being. Well, if you want to see the splendor of the wilderness, you have to be a bit hardy, a little daring. Try something… different. Take a chance.

Study something that not everyone else is studying. I’m not saying go crazy. I’m saying sniff all the perfumes but keep them separated. And make something… handmade. I cherish the afghan my mother made with her own hands and left to me. It’s unique in many ways. One-of-a-kind. Irreplaceable. And so are you. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Don’t become a general issue human. Everyone around you will like it. At least, as Bonnie Raitt sings, you’re giving them something to talk about. And that’s the essence of life. Conversation and story-telling. If we are all the same, silence descends. Difference is the essence of meaning and conversation. Make your life a tale worthy of telling. The point is not to find the meaning of life but to make life meaningful. A famous phenomenologist once said to me the meaning of life is a great cup of coffee in the morning to launch the day. Maybe. Why not. Sure. I agree that’s one worthwhile meaning up there with dog smiles and the rush of diving into water. Let’s dive in.

Avoid the Void!

Below, I enumerate a few kinds of errors we make. Type I, II, III… errors. Mistakes. Taken and mistaken. Statistics books talk a lot about them. Does anyone know the difference between a thesis and a hypo-thesis? We talk about alpha scores, the likelihood that the “null hypothesis” (that things have no causal relationship – a void of interaction) should be rejected in favor of an explanation of events not being the result of pure chance (presuming a normal curve). We call this “significance.” Well, to me, even accidents can have important effects. And indirect causes/effects can be practically untraceable (the great chain of causation). Billions of chains in parallel in time, sometimes joining, sometimes diverging. No freedom. Just chains. The butterfly’s beating wings causing hurricanes on the other side of the planet and such. You go back in time and step on the one critter that was going to mutate into our ancestor. Oops. End of the line – my line. But then who stepped on the critter? I get into that stuff later, and you can skip that section. Coincidence. My favorite Herbbie Hancock song is also called “Butterfly.” The number 1 song in the USA when I was born was also called “Butterfly” sung by Andy Williams. Totally different songs. Hancock’s is much better. I’ve noticed that butterflies pop up here and there quite unintentionally, I think, in this text.

But how about something significant. How about this, the three biggest regrets/mistakes people have at the end of their lives according to Tenzin Kiyosaki, an experienced Buddhist nun who has worked as an interfaith hospice chaplain for many years. Even though she urges her patients to accept how their lives turned out and how beautiful life is, still many have heartbreaking regrets. She says they are often about, 1) Not living the life of their dreams, 2) Not sharing their love (don’t be absent or cruel), and 3) Not forgiving. About number 3, forgiveness helps to heal relationships and yourself (it is a gift you give to yourself). We don’t know how long we have, and if we do, it’s pretty late. So, as she puts it, get on with your ambitions and dreams. Godot ain’t comin’. There’s nothing to lose, no reason not to follow your heart.

Sounds profound. And I have little doubt that this nun is accurately reporting what she has seen. Perfect for the talk shows she’s making the rounds of, selling her book. But… What did she expect? Maybe her expectation of happy dying is unrealistic, and her lamentation misplaced. Then there’s the issue of the grass always being greener on the other side of the fence. Wishful escapism. What if many of her patients had followed the other path to the “dream” life they projected. Well, we’ve run that experiment and we have results. A massive study conducted by Bellah, et. al., and published with the title Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life show that dropping everything and chasing the dream isn’t all it’s imagined to be. That’s even when you get what you wanted, or thought you wanted. In short, my dear Buddhist, nothing is perfect, suffering of some sort is inevitable, go back and read your sutras again.

No doubt people have regrets. That’s a no-brainer. Everyone does even when they won’t admit it for whatever reason (probably another delusion that other people care). But she posits that they could have been avoided. Maybe. But even when one regrettable experience is avoided it is often replaced with another one.

Bliss-ters: Being Silient and Re-silient, “Like Water” Says Bruce Lee (Dead at 32)