How Sex, Politics, Money and Religion are Killing Planet Earth

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Let Them Drink Tea and Koch - The Mythology of Individualism

“A human being is a part of the world called by us ‘universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to force ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
- Albert Einstein

What do we know about human nature? We know that the species Homo sapiens has always lived communally and that in hunter gatherer societies, exile almost always equates to certain death. In the modern world, we have examples of individuals going off into the wilderness for various reasons. Eric Robert Rudolph disappeared into the woods of Southern Appalachia shortly after he bombed the Atlanta Olympic games, a gay night club and an abortion clinic in 1998. He was captured in Murphy, North Carolina (my neighbors) almost 5 years later in 2003, eating out of a dumpster behind a Save-a-Lot grocery store. He was clean-shaven and had on a pair of new tennis shoes, but he had lost considerable weight. According to his own admission, Rudolph had survived those five years by stealing from vegetable gardens, eating out of dumpsters and catching salamanders. He may also have had help from a sympathetic community that shared his extremist views against blacks, Jews, homosexuals and abortion (1). After Rudolph’s capture, local businesses sported signs that suggested people “Pray for Eric Rudolph.”

While many skilled survivalists can and do survive in the wilderness for extended periods of time, they are anomaly. The case of Eric Rudolph illustrates that living entirely off one’s own resources goes against human nature. We need each other for both social and physical support. Even as one of the FBI’s ten most wanted, Rudolph set up camp on the outskirts of town, unwilling or unable to completely separate himself from society.

In spite of what we know about the natural history of humans, we live in a culture that exalts the supremacy of the individual over the collective whole. In psychiatry, the ultimate goal of mental health is “individuation.” In economics, it’s “every man for himself.” Profitability trumps “externalities” (or costs to others). From the time we can walk, we are told, “stand on your own two feet.” We are encouraged to “develop personal goals” and to become “self-aware.” The ultimate icon of achievement is the “self-made man.” Consequently, the western man and woman walk around looking out at a world they see as separate from themselves. This separateness is a delusion.

Today I woke up, put on my bathrobe (made in China), made a cup of tea grown somewhere in India, added some milk from a dairy in another state, turned up the heat, fueled by the Tennessee Valley Authority, made a fire (from a tree that fell down last winter on our property and was subsequently cut and split by my husband with help from our tireless helper Javier) and fed the dogs their daily dose of Canidae kibble and green beans. The cats got their low fat concoction (an exercise in seeming futility). Before I had been awake more than a few minutes, I had already relied on resources produced by others and harvested from the natural world just to begin my day.

As the day progresses, the reliance on others only increases. I can’t even begin to fathom the places and hands the various components of my computer have passed through prior opening up before my fingertips. My iPod belts out an eclectic mix of George Winston, Jason Mraz, Norah Jones, Green Day, REM, Melissa Etheridge and myriad other artists from assorted musical genres. Some would say this is the condition of the modern, globalized world. I should stop complaining and be happy I have a heated home and an assortment of musical genres to entertain my days. I am grateful because I am not deluded into thinking all I have is a product of my own creation. Everything I enjoy every day arises from my own effort but also from the efforts and productivity of thousands of other people and organisms.

The problem with the cultural programming of individualism is that it forces perception inward towards self interest. Inside a corporation, the toxic smoke spewing from the coal stack blows away on the wind to “somewhere else.” Inside a nuclear family, those down the road are “others.” Inside a house, the outside is a commodity. Inside a mind, the outside is separate.

Who is the individual we all seek to satisfy? We are told our ultimate purpose is to foster the image in the mirror, the job title, an expensive car, a big house and the balance on a bank ledger. The image changes. Work comes and goes. Status symbols of glass and steel shatter and rust. Paper and numbers are just paper and numbers. None of these things actually defines who we are. Even the flesh, blood and bones are made of elements borrowed from the earth cycling in and out of the physical form and the natural world as regularly as a shifting tide. We reside in and have dominion over our bodies but they too will pass away in time onto other forms and lives. We spend our days fostering an individual that is an illusion, superficial and manufactured, in Jung’s terms, the ego.

Meanwhile we neglect that which is real. All we have is the wisdom we accumulate and the relationships we share. Knowledge, companionship, truth and love. These things are eternal and cannot be cultivated by an agenda of the singular pursuit of self interest.

What is wrong with embracing the fantasy that every man for himself is the optimum way to live? A woman marries her high school sweetheart, has three children, then her husband abandons the family. The single mother works two jobs at minimum wage, but because of the costs of childcare, healthcare, etc., she still cannot make ends meet. The new Tea Party Congress would have us believe this woman, who has followed all of society’s rules, is a pariah. They would deny her children nutritious food from food stamps, winter heat from government subsidies, a good education in schools in which teachers are appropriately compensated for the invaluable work they do (teachers are just getting paid too much and they want pensions too?), medical care (Medicaid) or any other kind of social support.

Even though our single mother (like many single mothers) works two jobs, Tea Partiers would have you believe she is a burden to society. She is not. McDonalds and Walmart enjoy high profits because they can hire people like her for less than they are worth. When our single mother goes to government to help her meet her and her family’s basic needs - because her employers, who exploit her labor do not – taxpayers are really subsidizing the profit margins of billion dollar corporations. In 2010, GE, the largest corporation on earth, paid no taxes (2). Koch Industries, the purveyors of the Tea Party, enjoy lucrative government contracts, courtesy of their friend W. They sell fuel to the national reserve at prices that exceed the going market rate, thus lining their privileged pockets with millions of tax payer dollars (3). Now who or what is really the burden to society?

The Koch-sponsored Tea Party tells us that paying taxes, regulations, labor unions, and everything else that has been established by our democracy to protect the rights of citizens and to cover the costs of the collective welfare are an infringement on individual liberty. They want a world in which the individual moves around unencumbered by any restrictions. However, in the world of their dreams, there is nothing to prevent the powerful from exploiting the weak, the environment, the political process and the entire economy to their own individual self-aggrandizement.

Many might think that this describes the world we already have. True, but it can get a lot worse. The rhetoric sounds good. Freedom, liberty, who wouldn’t want them? But when individualism is prized over the collective whole, those individuals with power will undoubtedly exploit the rest. How stupid to think that such an ideal will somehow, against all the laws of nature and the universe, benefit us all.

Ultimately, even the self-made man is not an island unto himself. One can almost guarantee that behind that “self-made” man is a team of support staff and a wife, mother, maid or other nurturing female character who goes quietly unnoticed as she sprays and washes the tread marks from his underwear.








Saturday, March 26, 2011

Rainy Day Thoughts

We have been fed a line of bullshit by the prevailing culture for the past several hundreds of years, that monotheism is an evolved, advanced spirituality, that the patriarchal power infrastructures and economies are similarly advanced, and that technological advancement is always good.  In the absolute global brainwashing this orientation instills, we forget or do not question the basic assumptions of the mantra. Perhaps technology is not always good. Perhaps patriarchal power structures are brutal rather than democratic, and perhaps in simplifying our religions to worship one god and a few books, we have lost something invaluable.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Death, Rebirth, Ancient Rituals and the Vernal Equinox

“But when night had fallen, the sorrow of the worshippers was turned to joy. For suddenly a light shone in the darkness: the tomb was opened: the god had risen from the dead; and the priest touched the lips of the weeping mourners with balm, he softly whispered in the ears the glad tidings of salvation (1).”

Today marks the first day of spring. For many, including myself, this is a most welcome occasion that will usher in a flurry of joyful gardening until the weeds just get to be too much and we resign ourselves to letting Nature have her way. For now, we rejoice after a protracted, if not schizophrenic winter season.

Today also marks the vernal equinox, which is one of two times of the year when the earth, on its trajectory around the sun, tilts neither towards the northern hemisphere or the southern hemisphere but orients with its equator pointing directly at the sun. This phenomenon causes a day and night of almost equal length with some variations because in reality the earth is not perfectly spherical, but contrary to popular belief, the equinox refers to the solar orientation of the earth rather than the equality of day and night.

As we emerge from the hassles of snow and ice, delayed flights, snow days and super-sized heating bills in the modern world, one can only imagine what a blessing the arrival of spring was to our ancient ancestors. As contemporary gardens and pantries lie bare of all but a few freezer-burned remnants from last year’s harvest, we can almost sympathize with the real hardships and depravations most likely suffered by our ancestors. Perhaps not surprisingly, the observance of seasonal celebrations surrounding the spring equinox are believed to be the oldest rituals in the world. The season of rebirth after the long, cold death of winter was and continues to be cause for celebration.

In the modern era, Christian Easter, Jewish Passover, Wiccan Ostara and the Zoroastrian celebration of Nowruz, to name a few, commemorate this time of year when the earth awakens from her long slumber to once again bring forth life. These modern celebrations are in part or in whole replications and evolutions of ancient pagan rituals, with the exception of the celebration of Nowruz, which itself dates back to the third millennia B.C.E.

Most rituals are variations on this theme. Cybele was the Great Mother of all things. She gave birth to her earthly incarnation the virgin Nana who conceived a son, Attis, through an immaculate conception by eating or implanting in her bosom either a pomegranate or an almond depending on the telling of the tale. The conception (and annual re-conception) of Attis takes place on the vernal equinox. His birth takes place nine months later on December 25th.

Attis, the god of vegetation was also known as “The Good Shepherd” and was lustily admired by his mother/grandmother. Alas, he was smitten with love for a nymph, which made Cybele furious with jealousy. As a woman scorned, Cybele inflicted insanity upon her beloved, thus causing him to wander aimlessly until he ended his own life by castrating himself at the foot of a pine tree.

Attis was laid to rest on Black Friday, but three days later he arose from the dead bringing the joy of resurrection to the earth and her people. Death is only a recycling of sorts, as Attis proves each spring as he is reborn to drench the world in fertility. As the blood of Attis brings forth his own resurrection, he became known as “the father and the son.”

Those of you who are sentient might notice a couple of similarities between the savior Attis and a later one named Jesus. Do not be afraid. According to official Christian sources dating back to the very early Church (2), the mythology of Attis is what is known as “diabolical mimicry.” In other words, the devil, in full knowledge that the true savior Jesus was going to come to earth in 1,000 years, created the myth of Attis around 1,000 B.C.E. in order to confuse people.

Whatever you believe, the Easter season (named after the Anglo Saxon goddess of the dawn, Eostre) is a time when we are reassured both physically and spiritually that no matter how dark things get, a new dawn and rebirth are as predictable as the earth continuing on its endless cycle around the sun. Happy Eostre.

Notes
1- In The Golden Bough, Sir James G. Frazer describes the death and resurrection of Attis, a Phrygian god of vegetation.
The Golden Bough
2- For further information on diabolical mimicry see http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa1.htm

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Fallacious Criticism, Climate Change Conspiracies and Other Inadequacies of Contemporary Discourse

In simpler times, it was considered a breech of etiquette to discuss money, sex, religion and/or politics in mixed company. Lately, because of a few conversations both online and in social scenarios, it has come to my attention that science has now joined the ranks of taboo subjects. The Age of Enlightenment that reveled in man’s ability to place reason above myth and truth above ignorance and ushered in the founding of the United States, the Industrial Revolution and all the other great advancements over the past few hundred years, now appears to be coming to a close.

Of course science denial is nothing new. Galileo Galilei, the father of modern science, learned this the hard way. After discovering that the earth orbited the sun, laying to rest forever the notion of an earth-centered universe, the Catholic Church (who were the political authority at the time) sentenced him to house arrest for his discoveries for the remainder of his life. Today we scoff at the blatant misuse of power exercised by the Church and their attempt to silence Galileo in order to maintain their hegemony as an obvious power grab. But as we fast-forward 450 years to today, we find ourselves in a not-dissimilar situation.

Once again scientists are being tarred with the brush of heresy. As scientists go about their day to day lives trying, usually with inadequate funds, to separate fact from fiction and find real solutions for what plagues the world, anti-science voices, with much better funding than the scientists, are now actively at work to silence the voice of reason. As funding for public education dries up, a population with limited scientific ability becomes less-equipped to be able to separate out scientific fact from fabricated fiction. Conspiracy theories abound.

I recently had the pleasure (seriously) of getting an in-depth synopsis of the climate change denial platform. First, I passed a pleasant evening in the company of an intelligent man with a degree in Meteorology. We had a respectful conversation during which he laid out some of the basic arguments, with reasonable scientific basis, against climate change. Then, I had a less than pleasant experience online (1) where I commented on a piece by Mother Jones that discusses the planned dismantling of the EPA by the GOP. While I did not mention climate change (at all), my comments elicited a Pandora’s box of personal attacks by a lively group of respondents.

I was charged with being a 911 conspiracy theorist, a homophobe, a communist, stupid, an indoctrinated liberal, mentally-diseased, a hypocrite and a wingnut. It was suggested that I get a lesson in Economics 101 (as part of my Environmental Science degree I was forced to sit through Micro and Macro Economics classes in addition to Environmental Economics, all taught according to Chicago School, neoliberal doctrine. I got A’s in all three classes) and take my head out of the sand. Two out of the tens of responses actually reflected on my actual statement. To those two and to my dinner companion, I say ‘thank you’ for respecting my position enough to offer constructive criticism just as I respect yours and offer the same.

It is a shame that in the United States our philosophical differences have become so vitriolic and apparently personal (In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that my comment to Mother Jones was somewhat inflammatory). How did we degenerate from a country that was established on the principles of reason and respectful debate into such a quagmire of personal attack, vitriol and passionate misinformation? I subscribe to few conspiracy theories, but my guess is that it behooves the power elite to divide us and keep us ignorant.

A lack of information leaves one with no tools other than to react emotionally (and predictably). A public that reacts emotionally rather than intellectually can be easily manipulated with clever propaganda and by hitting predictable hot buttons. For example, 80% of the American public consider themselves Christian. A full one-third of the American people believe the Bible is literal truth, that the Earth is approximately 6,000 years old and that the world will end (soon) in Armageddon as described in Revelation. A one-third block is a substantial constituency that can be easily swayed with carefully-crafted propaganda that frames the debate as an issue between God and non-believing scientists who are inspired by the devil himself. Add to that a further 50% who identify with Christian values, and you have yourself a swung election.

For the fraction of the population that cannot be swayed by the prospect of eternal damnation, the problem is further exacerbated by a media of television, internet and talk radio that floods citizens with a plethora of both fabricated and factual information. Much of the fabricated information appears on the surface to be “scientific.” Official and professional sounding people are associated with the “research,” and the public are so confused that they go with their gut, often reciting like parrots the fabricated information used to confuse them and thus perpetuating a vicious cycle.

The climate change debate is case in point. First one must acknowledge that there are vested interests on both sides of the issue. On the anti-climate change side, powerful interests that thrive off the oil, gas and coal industries have a strong economic incentive to maintain the status quo. These entities, spearheaded by the Koch brothers (billionaire oil tycoons) to name a few have actively funded most of the “research” that disputes climate change. A rational view would insist that one at least acknowledge the potential for conflict of interest interfering with scientific integrity. This is particularly true in light of the fact that corporations such have Exxon, have conducted research with the explicit stated purpose of manufacturing doubt. On the other hand, Al Gore certainly has financial interests in some alternative energy technologies. Whether or not this is simply investment in what he believes in or conspiratorial, only Al Gore knows. Again in full disclosure, I invested a (very) small sum in a Chinese solar technology start up company. Since the Chinese alternative technology industry does not have any outside forces trying to squash it, it flourishes, and so has my investment. The economic implications of the Chinese alternative technologies boom is fodder for another blog but is something free market advocates who are also virulently anti-global climate change should consider.

What shouldn’t be in doubt is the credibility and integrity of average scientists who are simply doing their jobs and do not stand anything to gain from their positions on global climate change. There is no conspiracy here folks. First of all, nobody becomes a scientist for the money. If they do, they are foolishly barking up the wrong tree. Most scientists, including myself, are somewhat nerdy types drawn to the discipline from a very early age and who simply cannot imaging doing anything else in life. Since money is obviously not the motivating factor, rather a thirst for knowledge and truth is what characterizes the vast majority of us.

With the above in mind, I will outline my rebuttal to those who refute the authenticity of scientific credibility, which is overwhelmingly in support of the theory of anthropogenic (human caused) global climate change. The anti-climate change platform has as its basic premise the idea that global fluctuations in temperature are natural phenomena that have occurred as long as the earth has existed and are not related to CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.

Several factoids are cited as “proof” of the above claim. One thing I have noticed is a surprising uniformity and reoccurrence of citations among climate change skeptics. I.e. they are all citing the same information, which makes it easy to check their information. Below are some of their claims:

(From Mother Jones commenter poet 756)

The rise in temperature occurs a full 800 years before the CO2, which is logical since the increased temperature causes of evaporation of our oceans which then releases CO2.

Poet756 then gives a reference for his statement (2).

First of all, the above framed argument is a classic post hoc logical fallacy. Poet756 and those who concur with his ideas would like us to believe that if the earth heats without increased CO2, then increased heating of earth cannot be related to increasing CO2. If A happens, then B happens, then A must cause B. This type of logical fallacy requires more support than simply B came after A.

Climate scientists do not refute (and never have) the idea that the earth warms due to a number of astronomical events including axial wobble, solar flares, volcanic activity and a number of other influences. It would be unscientific and stupid to subscribe a complex phenomenon like climate change to a singular factor. The models that climate scientists use incorporate a number of parameters and still are admittedly woefully inadequate to take in the potentially infinite number of variables that affect climate.

More disturbing, is the fact that poet756 is citing a scientific article which he obviously did not read in its entirety. The author of the article, Jeff Severinghaus, explicitly states that warming without CO2 does not preclude the very real probability of increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere causing a negative feedback that increases warming even further, which is exactly what the geological record shows.

Another “proof” cited by climate change skeptics is the fact that during the Ordovician Period (approximately 430-490 million years ago), CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere were as high as 4,400 parts per million (we are at approximately 380 ppm today) and the Earth still experienced a period of glaciation (which poet756 refers to incorrectly as “the Great Ice Age”).

The Ordovician Period is indeed characterized by very high concentrations of CO2. It was also one of the hottest periods in earth’s history. Across the entire era, global temperatures were on average 2̊C above the modern level, but at several junctures, the average global temperature was well above that level. Oceanic temperatures were as high as 45̊C (113̊F). Understandably, the hot ocean was much more voluminous than it is today, 180 meters (approximately 550 feet) above the current level to be exact.

The flooded earth was vastly different than the world we know today. The southern continents, South America, Africa, India and Australia were a single landmass called Gondwana. The northern continents, North America, Europe and Asia were similarly joined. Due to high ocean levels, the northern continent, Laurentia, was almost completely submerged underwater. Complex land organisms were non-existent.

During the end of the Period, Gondwana migrated to the South Pole, where it did experience some glaciation (not a “great ice age”). This glaciation resulted in a minor retreat of the oceans to approximately 140 meters above current levels. Rather than disproving climate change theory, the Ordovician Period illustrates exactly the world that climate change advocates are warning against. Using the presence of glaciers for a small portion of the entire era as supporting “proof” against climate change is classic missing the point logical fallacy.

Finally, those who are skeptical of global climate change are fond of citing natural solar activity as the primary cause of climate change. The “evidence” has been compiled almost exclusively by a scientist, Khabibullo Abdusamatov, a Russian astrophysicist and climate change skeptic. Abdusamatov contends that all of earth’s recent warming can be directly correlated to increased solar activity over the past 100 years. He also contends that the earth’s atmosphere does not act as a “greenhouse” and that gasses in the atmosphere do not trap heat or warm the surface of the planet.

Abdusamatov enjoys ad populum celebrity with climate change skeptics, and indeed his pedigree does look impressive at a first glance. He is an astrophysicist after all. But his claims unfortunately do not hold up to either scientific or logical scrutiny. His entire hypothesis is fallacious by begging the question. Admitting that the earth has indeed warmed over the past 100 years, Abdusamatov circularly-reasons that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses do not contribute to warming, which he then offers as proof that the warming is caused by increased solar intensity without providing any substantive data for the latter claim. Further undermining his credibility, Abdusamatov lists data for apparent solar activity over the past 100 years without detailing any credible methodology for obtaining his figures. A list of numbers on a piece of paper does not prove anything unless other scientists can replicate the results. Without a detailed methodology, this is impossible. It is no small wonder that all of the world’s professional scientific organizations and 97% of the world’s scientific professionals dismiss Abdusamatov as a charlatan.

We could all do ourselves and our democracy a favor by educating ourselves before we speak. Most people, myself sometimes included, have adamant opinions about issues without having researched independently the data supporting our opinion. We then spout our positions with the talking points provided to us by our choices of media without considering the inherent bias provided to us by the deliberately polarizing media. A little bit of digging to review both sides of an argument before drawing a conclusion can often provide enlightening information.

The claims, refutations and arguments presented both in the media and in my online discussions also make clear to me the desperate inadequacies of our public education systems. One of the primary focuses of education must be teaching people to develop and defend well-formed arguments. The information free-for-all has disintegrated into a quagmire that reads like an English 101 case study of logical fallacies. Sadly, the public is apparently not equipped to even notice that the vast majority of arguments do not hold any water at all when subjected to even the most basic of scrutiny.

Finally, public debate is meaningless and antithetical to our combined interests if we stoop to the level of ad hominem and tu quoque attacks that serve only to inflame passions and do nothing to further the uncovering of facts.

I have learned a lot from some of the information provided to me by climate change skeptics, although none of the data provided has changed my position. I am sure the same holds true for those I have engaged in respectful debate with. We should all look forward to the day when educating one’s self is prized over slandering those with whom we disagree. Then we will have the truly democratic society our forefathers, in the Age of Enlightenment, envisioned.

References
(1) http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/republican-epa-ambush
(2) http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/

Further Recommended Reading
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-lag-between-temp-and-co2/
http://www.alternet.org/story/150180/naomi_klein%3A_why_climate_change_is_so_threatening_to_right-wing_ideologues?page=entire
http://thinkerspodium.wordpress.com/2008/01/27/the-uncritical-parroting-of-khabibullo-abdusamatov-last-ditch-effort-of-the-denialists/



Thursday, March 10, 2011

Atlas Mugged - The Impoverished Legacy of Ayn Rand

April 15th, 2011 marks the day Ayn Rand’s cult fiction novel “Atlas Shrugged” will be launched in film version to a mass audience. Perhaps the only redeeming quality of Rand’s magnum opus is its near-Biblical length, which thus far has prevented much of the Limbaugh and Beck-watching, gun-toting, couch potato crowd from perusing its contents. With the upcoming movie event, making Rand’s mantra of sociopathic self-interest mainstream, I am sending a Unitarian prayer to the universe to save what remains of our economic and natural infrastructures from the scourge of Rand’s objectivist philosophy, which can be said to have almost single-handedly led us to the global mess we find ourselves in today.
In “Atlas Shrugged” Ayn Rand’s highly over-simplified and idealized version of the world contains only two types of characters. All of her “good” characters are simultaneously self-serving, intellectually-brilliant, rich and sexually-attractive. Rand’s antagonists are similarly tarred with a communal brush of lethargy, corpulence, lack of intelligence and/or creativity, corruption and (seemingly oxymoronically) altruism.

For Rand, the assignments of “good” and “bad” attributes are mutually and universally exclusive. For example, an altruist cannot be intelligent, honest or good looking, and all self-interested people are (ironically) serving a greater good through their selfishness.

In Rand’s world, the epitome of human perfection is a rabid industrialist who produces without hesitation or restraint for personal aggrandizement and enrichment. Her “good” characters are beyond moral reproach and never engage in any unethical behavior, while “bad” characters, those who would seek to distribute wealth equitably, Rand renders as universally corrupt and inept.

Rand’s work of obvious fiction would be innocuous and simply just another bad novel except it has been embraced as gospel by proponents of free market capitalism, and these same proponents have been in charge of the global economy for the past 40 years. Rand herself described her pseudo-libertarian philosophy as a desire for a “separation between economy and state.” Alan Greenspan, who served as Federal Reserve Chairman for 18 years under four Presidents, was a personal friend and staunch advocate of Rand’s objectivist economic ideology. In his tireless efforts to separate the banking industry from any regulatory control, Greenspan can in hindsight be charged with bringing the global economy to its knees. In a 2008 Congressional hearing on the downfall of the global economy, Greenspan explained simply and unapologetically that there may have been a fundamental flaw with his (and Rand’s) ideology. It’s too bad more people aren’t getting the message.

In “Atlas Shrugged” the selfish “good” guys ruin the world economy deliberately to teach the “bad,” charitable people a lesson. In the real world, Rand’s faithful followers have also ruined the global economy, this time for their own personal enrichment. The disconnect between fiction and reality comes from the assignment of labels of good and evil, and who they rightfully belong to. In Rand’s world, industrialist capitalists are beyond moral reproach. In the real world, human and non-human corporate entities have a legal imperative to generate profits at all costs regardless of the harm caused to other individuals and the environment. The real world legacy of corporate and industrial greed is ravaged ecosystems, ruined communities (as in coal mining and timber industry towns) and gross social and economic inequality.

In Rand’s fictitious world, all state social infrastructures and proponents of charitable values are referred to as “looters,” and Rand saddles them with blame for draining the economy of wealth and resources. In the real world, the manipulators of economic derivative structures, wielded per Greenspan’s ideal without regulation and according to Rand’s objective philosophy, have sucked the value out of hard-working people’s homes and 401k plans only to line their own pockets. Industrialists have unsustainably pillaged the globe’s natural resources without remorse or mitigation. How can the real world activities of bankers, corporations and predatory capitalists be described as anything other than “looting?”

Ironically, Rand labels her philosophy “objectivism” and claims as its moral basis a firm grasp in reason, but when one merely tugs at the fabric of her ideas they are found to be as logically-inept and transparent as the emperor’s clothes. Furthermore, Rand’s followers, who claim reason and enlightenment as their exclusive domain, follow this obviously deeply-flawed philosophy with the blind faith of religious zealots.

The objectivism in “Atlas Shrugged” is riddled with non sequitur logical fallacies. Intelligence and altruism are not mutually exclusive attributes just as greed and moral goodness are rarely compatible, but Rand presents her fallacies as absolute truth.

Literary elements have no parallel in reality. The antagonists create idiotic laws like the “Preservation of Livelihood Law,” the “Fair Share Law,” the “Anti Dog Eat Dog Law,” and ultimately the ludicrous “Directive 10-289,” which doesn’t allow anybody to increase production, decrease production, leave a job, hire people, fire people or even publish new works of literature in an effort to keep the world at a stand-still. No socialist, capitalist, communist, fascist, hunter-gatherer or other economic entity has ever or would ever demand such silliness. The only purpose these ridiculous bits of data serve is their incidental necessity to the development of Rand’s poorly-conceived plot.

Rand spews individualism, but even the ultimate plot of protagonist John Galt to bring down the global infrastructure rests on the fact that the oil man needs the railroad to transport his product. The railroad executive needs the steel manufacturer to make rails, and the steel manufacturer needs coal to smelt his ore, etc., etc. Individualism is a delusion not expressed anywhere in nature or even in man-made economies.

In “Atlas Shrugged,” Rand suggests that it is the proponents of social justice who insist on a suspension of reason in order to realize their evil objectives, but in reality, just the opposite is true. To accept as truth a philosophy that insists that selfishness will serve a universal good and that left to their own devices, self-interested people will miraculously serve the public without harm defies all evidence in human nature to the contrary.

Now Rand’s disastrous and illogical message will become available to a wider audience. Those who were too inept or lazy to read the book can now embrace Rand’s sociopathic ideology as gospel and like all her other blind followers, defy objective reality in the process.

p.s. Amazon link is provided for informational purposes only. Please do not buy a new copy of this book. Doing so will enrich Rand's legacy foundation and serve to spread her destructive nonsense further. If you must, buy used from an independent bookseller. Having suffered through the book myself, I can inform any lovers of good literature to avoid this monolithic piece of literary garbage.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Atlas Mugged – The Impoverished Legacy of Ayn Rand

Atlas Shrugged
April 15th, 2011 marks the day Ayn Rand’s cult fiction novel “Atlas Shrugged” will be launched in film version to a mass audience. Perhaps the only redeeming quality of Rand’s magnum opus is its near-Biblical length, which thus far has prevented much of the Limbaugh and Beck-watching, gun-toting, couch potato crowd from perusing its contents. With the upcoming movie event, making Rand’s mantra of sociopathic self-interest mainstream, I am sending a Unitarian prayer to the universe to save what remains of our economic and natural infrastructures from the scourge of Rand’s objectivist philosophy, which can be said to have almost single-handedly led us to the global mess we find ourselves in today.
In “Atlas Shrugged” Ayn Rand’s highly over-simplified and idealized version of the world contains only two types of characters. All of her “good” characters are simultaneously self-serving, intellectually-brilliant, rich and sexually-attractive. Rand’s antagonists are similarly tarred with a communal brush of lethargy, corpulence, lack of intelligence and/or creativity, corruption and (seemingly oxymoronically) altruism.

For Rand, the assignments of “good” and “bad” attributes are mutually and universally exclusive. For example, an altruist cannot be intelligent, honest or good looking, and all self-interested people are (ironically) serving a greater good through their selfishness.

In Rand’s world, the epitome of human perfection is a rabid industrialist who produces without hesitation or restraint for personal aggrandizement and enrichment. Her “good” characters are beyond moral reproach and never engage in any unethical behavior, while “bad” characters, those who would seek to distribute wealth equitably, Rand renders as universally corrupt and inept.

Rand’s work of obvious fiction would be innocuous and simply just another bad novel except it has been embraced as gospel by proponents of free market capitalism, and these same proponents have been in charge of the global economy for the past 40 years. Rand herself described her pseudo-libertarian philosophy as a desire for a “separation between economy and state.” Alan Greenspan, who served as Federal Reserve Chairman for 18 years under four Presidents, was a personal friend and staunch advocate of Rand’s objectivist economic ideology. In his tireless efforts to separate the banking industry from any regulatory control, Greenspan can in hindsight be charged with bringing the global economy to its knees. In a 2008 Congressional hearing on the downfall of the global economy, Greenspan explained simply and unapologetically that there may have been a fundamental flaw with his (and Rand’s) ideology. It’s too bad more people aren’t getting the message.

In “Atlas Shrugged” the selfish “good” guys ruin the world economy deliberately to teach the “bad,” charitable people a lesson. In the real world, Rand’s faithful followers have also ruined the global economy, this time for their own personal enrichment. The disconnect between fiction and reality comes from the assignment of labels of good and evil, and who they rightfully belong to. In Rand’s world, industrialist capitalists are beyond moral reproach. In the real world, human and non-human corporate entities have a legal imperative to generate profits at all costs regardless of the harm caused to other individuals and the environment. The real world legacy of corporate and industrial greed is ravaged ecosystems, ruined communities (as in coal mining and timber industry towns) and gross social and economic inequality.

In Rand’s fictitious world, all state social infrastructures and proponents of charitable values are referred to as “looters,” and Rand saddles them with blame for draining the economy of wealth and resources. In the real world, the manipulators of economic derivative structures, wielded per Greenspan’s ideal without regulation and according to Rand’s objective philosophy, have sucked the value out of hard-working people’s homes and 401k plans only to line their own pockets. Industrialists have unsustainably pillaged the globe’s natural resources without remorse or mitigation. How can the real world activities of bankers, corporations and predatory capitalists be described as anything other than “looting?”

Ironically, Rand labels her philosophy “objectivism” and claims as its moral basis a firm grasp in reason, but when one merely tugs at the fabric of her ideas they are found to be as logically-inept and transparent as the emperor’s clothes. Furthermore, Rand’s followers, who claim reason and enlightenment as their exclusive domain, follow this obviously deeply-flawed philosophy with the blind faith of religious zealots.

The objectivism in “Atlas Shrugged” is riddled with non sequitur logical fallacies. Intelligence and altruism are not mutually exclusive attributes just as greed and moral goodness are rarely compatible, but Rand presents her fallacies as absolute truth.

Literary elements have no parallel in reality. The antagonists create idiotic laws like the “Preservation of Livelihood Law,” the “Fair Share Law,” the “Anti Dog Eat Dog Law,” and ultimately the ludicrous “Directive 10-289,” which doesn’t allow anybody to increase production, decrease production, leave a job, hire people, fire people or even publish new works of literature in an effort to keep the world at a stand-still. No socialist, capitalist, communist, fascist, hunter-gatherer or other economic entity has ever or would ever demand such silliness. The only purpose these ridiculous bits of data serve is their incidental necessity to the development of Rand’s poorly-conceived plot.

Rand spews individualism, but even the ultimate plot of protagonist John Galt to bring down the global infrastructure rests on the fact that the oil man needs the railroad to transport his product. The railroad executive needs the steel manufacturer to make rails, and the steel manufacturer needs coal to smelt his ore, etc., etc. Individualism is a delusion not expressed anywhere in nature or even in man-made economies.

In “Atlas Shrugged,” Rand suggests that it is the proponents of social justice who insist on a suspension of reason in order to realize their evil objectives, but in reality, just the opposite is true. To accept as truth a philosophy that insists that selfishness will serve a universal good and that left to their own devices, self-interested people will miraculously serve the public without harm defies all evidence in human nature to the contrary.

Now Rand’s disastrous and illogical message will become available to a wider audience. Those who were too inept or lazy to read the book can now embrace Rand’s sociopathic ideology as gospel and like all her other blind followers, defy objective reality in the process.

p.s. Amazon link is provided for informational purposes only.  Please do not buy a new copy of this book.  Doing so will enrich Rand's legacy foundation and serve to spread her destructive nonsense further.  If you must, buy used from an independent bookseller.  Having suffered through the book myself, I can inform any lovers of good literature to avoid this monolithic piece of literary garbage.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Spotted Owls, Extinct Oceans and the Poverty of Western Culture

“The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything (Genesis 9: 2).”

Imagine you live in a perpetual war zone. All around, houses are being destroyed, landscapes flattened and people, trees, plants and animals are raked up and ruined. As soon as the neighborhood recovers, maybe over a period of years or decades, another onslaught ensues. The few who manage to endure and flee find adjacent locations under similar assault. Survival under such conditions is impossible. This is the scourge Western, Christian, capitalist culture inflicts upon the natural world.

Fishing has been closed in several key areas across the Southeastern United States Atlantic coastal waters recently as a response to the near collapse of several key fish populations. Last week, as I visited Ocracoke and Cape Hatteras on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, many of the local fishermen were complaining about this recent development. While none were forecasting economic ruin for their small businesses (plenty of fisheries are still open), they did note that the closing of the fishing grounds would inhibit their ability to reliably fish for grouper and other bottom dwelling fish. Most blamed the Obama Administration for their “concern for fish over people.”

Similar sagas play out across the continent on a regular basis. The infamous spotted owl controversy pitted the timber industry and all of the workers who depended upon deforestation for their livelihoods against conservationists who sought to prevent the extinction of an endangered species (Strix occidentalis caurina).

Unfortunately, passions within the public are easy to inflame by those with an agenda. The fisheries problems along the eastern seaboard were not caused by fish or the Obama Administration, and the issue is not about fish over people. For decades, catastrophic bottom trawling fishing techniques, largely employed by large corporate enterprises rather than small commercial fishermen, have literally scraped the living sea floor clean of life and habitat. Sadly, most of what is destroyed or captured in the process is tossed away as unintended bycatch. The process is like dropping a bomb on a forest to harvest a few deer. Bottom trawling has left the ocean floor devastated, and consequently, fish populations cannot rebound unless the ocean is given time to heal. Continued assault must be halted to prevent permanent ruin of the ocean floor.

The clear cutting of old growth forests by corporate timber interests has had a similar effect on habitats in the Pacific Northwest. Not surprisingly, spotted owls and all other forest-dwelling species cannot survive without forest. Once again, corporate giants annihilate complete ecosystems, condemning thousands of innocent bystander species to death for the sake of the harvest of a few trees. The systematic deforestation of old growth forests by massive corporations has created an environmental quagmire.

Fishermen are enraged by “liberal” laws that now prevent them from sustainably earning their livelihoods as they have done for generations. Workers in the Pacific Northwest blame the same “liberal” laws for costing them much needed jobs, and the corporate profiteers who inflame these passions have successfully guided public anger away from the real culprits, themselves.

We live in a culture that allows for a few to steal from the many. The profits in Kimberly Clark’s coffers represent old growth forests rendered into toilet paper: forests that belonged to all of the living creatures and humans that inhabited them. As the bottom line in Kimberly Clark’s bank balance grows, the rest of living creation finds itself jobless and homeless. The complete annihilation of old growth forests has ruined an ecosystem that if left intact, would have provided myriad sustainable business opportunities without killing all the non-human inhabitants.

Similarly, fished according to traditional custom, the fisheries off the Outer Banks could have supported generations of residents into the foreseeable future, but the commercial scraping of the ocean bottom has rendered it sterile of life, so nobody is able to earn a living from it anymore.

But instead of being outraged by the corporate greed that not only steals our resources but destroys ecosystems beyond recovery, people turn against legislators as they make a last ditch effort to save the few living fragments of nature that remain. The legislation they rail against is ultimately the only hope to save the natural heritage ruined by corporate greed, but people see it instead as a battle between individuals and owls.

“Nothing is more priceless and more worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed” – Republican President Richard Nixon at the signing of the Endangered Species Act, 1973.

The corporations would not have such an easy time of making us hate owls and fish if our endemic culture didn’t already set up the conflict. We live in a culture that fundamentally does not believe that other living things are as deserving of life as humans are. Nixon was wrong. We don’t believe that nothing is more priceless than the rich array of animal life. We think profits are more priceless. But when the last tree is converted to toilet paper and the last fish has been swept from the ocean bottom, all those dollars in the bank will be worthless because there will be nothing left to buy.