Restoring Deliberative Democray
1. Trim Tab
2. We Are Not Fossils
3. Left and Right, sorted out.
I thought maybe I could do this. But I failed.*
I tried doing a chart. Ridiculous. Did I really think I could write a how-to for moderacy and get us all on track? I mean the Dalai Lama says he MOSTLY doesn't succumb to anger. What was I thinking? Good grief.
So credit or blame Highlights for Children Magazine for what follows, a sort of Goofi & Gallantum, wherein there is one for each: a Right and Left edition each of yer pals Goofus and Gallant. Our heroes. Call them the Four Ignoble Truthers of the Apocalypse.
And this Part 3 has three parts:
A List
A Simple Trick
Plus this piece is chock-full of poetic license. And adjectives and adverbs.
*It's OK that I didn't figure it all out, right? A series called "Restoring Deliberative Democracy" is only as good as the deliberation that results from it, yes?
Once upon a time we could reliably hand off our society to a new generation, doubt and grumble as we do so, because we shared a civil space, a civic realm, and approximately trusted one another.
The 60s blew that to smithereens. Out went decorum, modesty, expectations, predictability. Of COURSE the Right is pissed about this.
But out also went strictured women, boot-heeled minorities, rigid dress, unquestioned social roles, figurative art, and the hypocrisy of class. Well, not completely OUT, but at least they all became fair game for examination and improvement.
OK, just kidding about that hypocrisy of class thing. No worries.
But back in the day, any guy who impeded the handoff to the new generation was a crank, the guy who didn't let kids on his lawn and never cleaned out his garage. Lived in the past, didn't like people.
At the end of every episode, Beaver, Ozzie, Lucy, and Lassie hipped him though, and how! The last shot was always this: arch laughter as everyone pitches in, to help Ol' Man Fartsworth Q. McGeezer get rid of all that crap. Beaver tries on a straw boater. Run credits.
It's just one long episode now. It never ends, and we are all about crank and hoard and sacred cows, Right and Left both. We all have full garages, even stuff we don't really need or want anymore. Our preciousss.
The Right is fiscally prudent. The Left has the moral high ground. Uh-huh. Mr. Lisa -- can I call you Mona? Want some grits?
We don't even begrudge anymore.
We have to fix this. We have to clean our garages. I am here to hang a worklight. One box a night is OK, but we have to clear a path.
And don't even think about making your kids help. This is YOUR crap.
1. Be prepared to make your case.
2. Otherwise, tread lightly. Share an opinion, be passionate. Ventilate. Fine. Rant, even, but don't pretend it's True and Correct unless you can make the case. There are no givens or assumptions unless you specify, cite, and back it up. After they made the lofty Declaration, they got to Constituting it. Some of them, like the Federalists, could never shut up. But they substantiated. They expected smart people to pick it apart. We must do no less. Smart R Us.
3. If you are of the Right: Assume patriotism. We can still differ on means, and errors. But you know it's deeply offensive, it's why you do it, so don't go there unless some jackass says "burn down the USA!", flat-out.
4. This includes when Left says the US makes mistakes. We have, we do, so honest-to-Pete, grow up! The red-white & blue will endure criticism.
5. If you are of the Left: enough already with the hipper-than-thou. King, Ghandi, Dorothy Day -- they were all social progressives, and saintly, but you aren't them. Besides, they got their hands dirty. Most liberals, including yours truly, love the right things and think that's enough. It's not. It's tiresome when we act superior, and the Right invents crap about us just to get back at us.
6. The Right is forever making a Bad Case, the Left can't ever make a Good Case.
7. So, everybody: pick an issue and learn about it. Take one-third of it from the "other side", if at least to carefully parse it.
8. Just do it.
9. One issue. Arcane is OK. Personal is OK. Small issue is OK.
10. And just stop moping about the work of it. Our teachers were right and we were wrong: history and science and literature ARE interesting, and utterly critical, so just get over it.
11. Trot out your at-least-one issue to prove to your cousin/roommate/neighbor/brother-in-law/grandma/spouse -- ohmygoodness, you poor thing, your spouse!? -- and prove to them and you that it's really good to think hard about stuff and maybe even agree for a fraction of a second.
12. Practice lovingkindness.
13. It is dreadful to ever write or say "I'm Just Saying". It's cliche. And how. But for the sake of peace in the house, for the team, for the cause of deliberate democracy, for the love of God most holy, for the salvation of humanity, sacrifice all style and hip and cool and learn to say (at least to yourself, especially right after you Say Your Piece), say it, say: "I'm Just Saying."
14. I'm just saying.
15. Because the Golden Rule is right and true, and we all want the OTHER guy to say his piece and then STFU. I mean retreat gracefully. So return the favor, and do it first, even.
16. Say your piece, and retreat gracefully.
17. Stern, strict, spartan, authoritarian, totalitarian, despotic, tyrannical, dictatorial, oligarchic, fascist, nazi, soviet, demonic, and satanic all mean different things. They can be combined, carefully, but they are not interchangeable. Learn the definitions, and use them with precision, or leave it alone.
18. Neither Bush nor Obama nor any President of the USA ran or runs a fascist, nazi, soviet, demonic or satanic regime. Learn why this is true and stop acting like such a baby about it. No one is taking away your right to make detailed explanations about what's wrong. Just get it right. It's an insult to the victims of real State Terror to pretend America is anything like what they had to endure.
19. Have to endure still, millions of them. The world is dying for us to get this right again.
20. Nowadays, criminals run banks. We need to fight that crime, together. We've done it before, we've busted trusts, and we can do it again.
21. The conspiracy theory of history is usually wrong.
22. Nonetheless, America, the West, and however obliquely the rest of human society IS managed by an aggregate of gigantic financial entities, plus both commodity- and service- based Big Interests. We need to all stop being hysterical when we describe this. It's just the sobering truth about modern, complex life, and a massive undertaking to get it under control.
23. We must always exercise that control, and make it effective governance, too. A permanent attitude of regulation. We must always improve their methods, transparency, accountability. Why? Because Big Interests exist to diminish suffering, primarily...
24. ...and the sublime writer and observer Sandra Stephens pins it exactly: "We must change what we admire." Stop admiring greed in the main, and renew our love of dynamic human ability, of noble sacrifice, of hard-won accomplishment, and laughter in the face of adversity, of adversity and struggle itself. The vain & lazy rich are stupid, and we are even morer stupider for devoting whole cable channels to them.
25. Big Interests, that profit from commodities, essential services and money itself, must see themselves and be seen as agents for diminishing suffering. This is harder for Right to get with, but only because it sounds typically Left and woo-woo. I have read and thought about this one a long time and it's precisely right.
26. It's a pipe dream, I know. But I'm correct. And if the employees, managers and owners of our power companies and food purveyors and financial markets -- and their regulators -- don't see their work as noble, and figure out how to be dedicated to improving and sustaining human beings, helping everyone thrive, then perhaps they should find a more suitable calling.
27. Big Interests currently lack nobility. Instead, Big Interests tend to monopolize. We, the people, must tend to bust up those monopolies.
28. To the Right: If we leave off the busting of rapacious monopolies out of respect for the market, or because we taint it as "leftist", we enable cheap hoods in nice suits.
29: To the Left: if we demonize capitalism we step off a cliff, deny humanity itself, because to exchange goods and services in order to earn a living is profoundly, irrevocably human. Thus it is at least small "g" good.
30. This is an essential Left, Right, and Libertarian connection: none of us like to be bullied. Big Interests can and do bully us.
31. None of us like a rigged game. If our personal traditions fail to keep us honest, our institutions must be overseen. But hey, Right, what happened to "if you're going to do something, do it right"? The Truman Commission did it right, boy howdy. People went to jail, man. And hey, Left, there have been a LOT of crooked Democrats over the last 100 years.
32. In fact, just as many Democrats and Republicans are crooks, over time. The best perspective on criminality is "damn!", not "damn them!" Meanwhile, by all means, Right, Left: compete vigorously at who will become Amercia's Most Extreme Virtuous!
33. Secular humanist nonbelievers are people, too, and as American as you. I'm afraid the Right almost owns this bad boy. Get over your holier-than-thou selves, some-of-you-on-the-Right. My kid played softball and I pay my excessive taxes.
34. If you can't make this work, can't get your heart or head around someone on the Right or Left actually being full citizen and deeply decent and worthy, then fake it. Begrudge. Notice I don't say correct or smart or even conscious. But let's allow for full citizen and deeply decent and worthy. As a contingency.
35. Hope. But work hard. Remember lovingkindness.
36. The Right worries. "No frills" is a concern for them. So if your social program or cause doesn't waste the tax payer's dollar and is effective, excellent work! but don't take offense if the Right worries.
37. The Left worries. People get left behind, they notice. So if your budget cut still ensures the wholesome and essential well-being of poor and infirm people, and we still offer opportunities, health-care and no-frills help for the lower classes, that's great! but please, forgive Left for worrying.
38. Yes, I just said lower classes. Can we all stop pretending that class doesn't matter, that everyone doesn't want to be upper-middle-class? that we are primally middle-class? that we mistake upper middle-class gaudy display for the true old-money-upper-out-of-sighters-who-hold-onto-their-assets-and value-education-and-don't-make-such-a-big-deal-about-owning-stuff? that we sniff at the working class, and are uncomfortable with the poor, even and especially if we were once poor and working class? and also this:
39. We are getting nowhere valuing Money over Merit.
40. Seriously, both of you, 36, 37: forgive each other, right now.
41. Right, stop being such a dick. Left, stop being such a wuss. (this one is a shout-out to Paul Thomas and all our friends and defenders in the military, who put it on the line, every day)
42. The sum aggregate outcome of all those Big Interests, all the science and corporations and institutes and schools and utilities and legal assemblies? positively epic and ever-increasing health, food, safety, and comfort, for the last 100 years. This is the upside to all our unbridled self-interest. Modern life is not the devil. (He is in the details, though, and has a line-tem veto.)
43. But Left, you essentially own this whole neo-Luddite, pixie-dust-addled, back to the garden fantasy that has an uncanny resemblance to hating humans as they really are. I personally want to live in hippie world, with all my heart, at least 6 months out of every year, and just be in a stone groove with everyone. But I don't, and we don't, and Left, if you want peace, love, and understanding, generate all three for the people who are here right now, every unlovely, smug, clueless, hungry, resource-wasting, fun-seeking, thrill-addicted, stodgy, traditional, unhip, badass one of us.
44. I sincerely believe if we meet in reality first, reality will improve.
41. It bears repeating: we must fix the instruments of finance. People are greedy, so we must regulate, oversee, and correct. This is the pressing work that Right and Left must join on, right now.
45. It doesn't matter (except to the Right, of course) if you folks on the Right want to privatize the whole shootin' match. Create, by all means, the Sacred and Chivalric Corps of Honest Accountancy and Money Management. Have a cadet program, make it a heritable tradition! Hell, make it profitable; I'm not THAT socialist! If you really do this -- and you guys have the $ and the business degrees to give it a whirl -- we'll hire several fewer federal bureaucrats to keep the markets, products, and services -- and you -- honest.
46. I sincerely think it would be one of the coolest things ever if the Right would create integrity traditions for important industries and disciplines, consistent with their highest traditions and values, which look thrilling on paper, and succeed at pilot programs first, like, say, how the Panthers' breakfast program morphed into Headstart, approximately. Hey there's a thought: maybe you could enlist YOUR extremists, like David Duke and his good old boys, to enthusiastically pioneer something like this. Maybe a cadre of scrupulous researchers, a new citizen knighthood of investigators into how effective is, really, our federal management of levy design, inspection, repair and improvement, in the lower Mississippi River valley?
47. That last one is a freebie for my side, just one, cause I'm a progressive liberal leftist, mostly. Balance me in the comments.
48. All taxpayer-funded programs must work, and efficiently.
49. Right, stop hating on the poor.
50. Left, stop hating on the rich.
51. Allow infrequent exaggeration, for effect.
52. Everyone loves grandma. No one wants to kill her.
53. There's a long list of people everyone loves, in fact, and an even longer list of decent things both Right and Left do, every day. Remember the Line Rule: The proof that we are essentially good at heart is how mind-bogglingly rare it is that people even accidentally cross the center line, an incredibly low percentage of how many total times every day that two cars pass each other. It's just a line. If we were all as evil and spiteful as we some people say we'd just plow into each other, a lot. We don't.
54. We all just want to get home.
55. Learn what "as a percentage" means. (Also learn about probability, what the scientific method is, and google "logical fallacy" while you're at it.)
56. Too many people don't have a home, though.
57. Too many are hungry. And sick. And poor. Fear is universal. Suffering is everywhere.
58. Caring about this is not "Left". Wanting people to work hard to overcome it is not "Right".
59. Love one another.
60. Eat a peach once in a while, a warm, fresh, ripe, sweet, red-gold peach, and let mlwawrmy spills of sticky juice run over your chin, and love it, love the ohm, awrm, mluhm, mlawrm of it.
61. Sorry.
62. Respect coherency. Even if you aren't.
63. The Right is currently incoherent about morality.
64. The Left is currently incoherent about power.
65. We can completely agree about those last two without coming remotely close to what we each really mean.
66. But it pays to agree about tendencies. And we must not take our sanctity and brilliance for granted.
67. Practically no one is brilliant or sanctified.
68. Not everyone is a precious, unique snowflake, either. The Right is right about this. Many are dull, talentless and simple.
69. Human beings are indescribably beautiful, and it's important to err on the side of peace, love, and happiness. The Left is overwhelmingly correct about this.
70. Left and Right share an abiding love of Opportunity. Build on this.
71. Pace yourselves. Stop trying to win, especially online.
72. At least once, imagine everyone you meet, everyone you know, every one online, as a child. Un-age the faces, soften the timber in their voice, raise them higher: beloved, about to smile -- see it? See how beautiful we are?
73. Remember lovingkindness.
74. To laugh at yourself, you have to hear what you just said.
75. Laugh at yourself.
A Simple Trick
This is going to sound stupid but I only just discovered that if I adjust the volume on my iPod I can provide a soundtrack to an entire evening out. Even when I talk to people. I went to see Zombieland a few days ago and left the music on, the earbuds in. It was amazing, how the music changed everything. I think sometimes I am TOO polite.
(Bear with me. This pertains.)
So I'm standing in line. These four 14-year-olds are ahead of me, doing something with their purses and pockets, but noticeably not moving up. Some kind of confusion, in that sweet junior-high date way. To the tune of "House Burning Down" by Michelle Shocked.
I wait, then ask: "Are you guys in line or...?"
Two of them stay behind, gesture me forward; the other two move up, and are "next". At the window the boy is a reddening face above a clean new blue track-suit ensemble, fumbling with a wallet. His date is lovely, a small scatter of blemish on her cheeks, suffused with the beauty of young patience and, it seems, first date.
I am smitten by their ticket seller. She eyes the two of them with a sly, amused, and immensely humane expression on her face, and I suddenly realize there is a little bit of sacred trust to her job, the delicate pas de trois of her and all these young couples. Especially when he can't get his money out from the flap pocket.
By weird, playful, and ironic contrast, "Mean Old World" by Little Walter comes on.
I suddenly want to be her "next" customer. I yearn to tell her...but nothing comes. How do I comment to her about her generosity to these two, the gentle precision of how she processes their cash, gently guiding the embarrassed boy's eyes back to his date? how the human parade has thrilled me, because of her radiant good nature?
I prepare to make my face as thoughtfully crinkelated, as knowing and kind, as hers...
"Next!"
I am taken by the other ticket seller. He is perfectly OK, stolid. But as he works my card I steal a glance at her. Of course, someone so alive, a natural cold reader with no ax to grind, she catches my glance. She looks straight ahead, says "Next?" to the second couple, who stumble up, excited.
But for just a moment there, she hesitated. Not quite a start. She saw me see her.
Here's what I think: We get and give in slices of mere 100s of milliseconds. There are moments, nearly indistinguishable slices of time and opportunity, where we show each other what we notice, what we appreciate.
So I pretend this: she got it. She felt surprised, and pleased, to be known as a quality.
THIS is what lovingkindess is: Not me, not the young couples -- not even the soulful ticket seller, who takes our payment and lets us in and sees us as we really are.
It is how my words, just now, made you feel. Human. Alive. We can do this, with each other.
It is what we must remember about each other, Left or Right, when we post, and comment, and deliberate together: to love what is human and alive and reaching out.
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Seer
daisyjane
The Good Daughter
Chicken Mãâàn
the traveler
Ashley F. Miller
Salon.com
Comments
The right has been "pissed" since the Civil Rights movement. Especially the southern right (which is 80% of the population). They can't get their stress relief lynching people any more and can't have separate bathrooms, water fountains and restaurants.
So they turned to religion to try and ruin it all for everyone, even those like myself who are deeply respectful of constructive religion. Destructive religion goes against humanity.
Rated
Kind: thanks, and thanks for reading all three and commenting.
Not sure I can go with the stress relief thing, but there are plenty of southern conservatives who pine for the old distance, and wish it were legal again to enforce it.
And religion is too often destructive of humane nowadays. I sometimes think when their church buildings got bigger their vision got smaller.
Btw: Zombieland also rocks!
that nice lady at the ticket counter? that's a great story, but remember what the f*ckin' Repubs had to say about empathy? they don't give a shit about you, Greg, or your intelligence, your humanity, your common sense, compassion, or silly-ass attitude about peaches
and by the way, I love and share your silly-ass attitude about peaches
you're a mensch, maybe a supermensch, but don't let one of those teabaggers get behind with a big stick
just sayin'
Love one another. Practice is perfect. Talk is preaching; and so many are climbing into the pulpit, wanting to be heard.
The best peaches I ate this season were from the Okanogan Valley in British Columbia, country I could move to if things get bad enough here; although Canada could profit from some global warming. The USA has always been a republic; and for generations, our elected representatives haven’t. Under Obama, as soon as he got into office, trillions of more dollars were given to the banks, all in the guise of stoically saving the financial system our elected representatives are owned by. They are so arrogant that they hide nothing of it now. The health care system needs their nod, for it is true; without them we are powerless; cattle in the lot, waiting for them to lead us into the next life; unless we rise out of this dusty volume and claim our sovereignty.
The response of the ticket seller and love at first sight happens in a fifth of a second. That’s all it takes. A fifth of a second. Then you hope someone takes your hand.
Each part of this series is incredibly thoughtful. This article in particular is a wonderful example of how meditation on issues, principles, beliefs, and other subject matters can pay lovely and high dividends.
Thank you for sharing these summations of your reflections with us.
This line, “She felt surprised, and pleased, to be known as a quality. is pretty near magic in expressing what we should long to communicate to others.
Though it may be true that practically no one is brilliant this article make a very strong argument that the author is.
Oh, and by the way, I’m not sure the first part of #52 is actually true :)
Rated and appreciated with respect
Roy: thanks for the mensch remark. I accept the nomination but the polls don't close for quite a while.
I make no pretense about being of the left. And I would love to sit beside Bill Moyers, even if got 15 min on a crowded bus.
But i would also love to sit next to David Brooks or Garry Wills or Andrew Sullivan, and do some deliberating. This series is aimed for all of us, including TS and Gwool and even BBE, anyone who succeeds or tries or even flails at finding our deepest shared currents. True, Hannity sounds shallow and doctrinaire, reliably, but so long as he's above ground there's hope. I don't waste time on him but I still maintain hope.
There is more to us than the clever lies, the glee at shock lines that both sides indulge in.
Yeah, peaches!
Stick, hell, some of them carry guns. I hear you.
dyno: you overwhelm me with articulate praise. thanks.
The point of this series is we must outflank them. Don't mistake my reconciliation ideas for being reconciled. The vast middle, at least, drifted toward Bush and then drifted toward Obama. Some of them are "available" to reasonable discourse, to new traditions of engagement. Among the anti-semitic far-leftists sit people who are there by mistake, who have not realized how much their earnest compassion for Palestinians ad worthy human beings has been co-opted by islamic assholes and neo-nazis. Hovering with the Beckoloids are mad-as-hell libertarians who might recover sensibility if the so-called statist rhetoric of the left is parsed and leavened more effectively.
British Columbia, the land of my dreams. I lived in Missoula before I fled to Manhattan. Sigh.
And goddamnit, Obama might just be floundering on bank reform. i think the bailouts were prudent, given his being in office for like 10 seconds when he had to Ok the general shape of it. But for him to now ignore how Citigroup and Morgan and Goldman are paying out half a billion+ in bonuses this "Christmas" to criminal ignoramuses, in complete violation of the TARP and bailout terms, is one of the most compelling reason of all for Right and Left to set stuff aside and SHUT DOWN THE BLENDED BANKING industry.
Retail, Commercial, and Equity investment banking must be busted apart. They will never do it unless we force them to. And Equity investment should be shut down, period, until they can present a regulatable, safe set of instruments and how they should be overseen.
"Then you hope someone takes your hand." Wonderful.
Dennis: the comments in these three constitute the kinds of exchanges I always have wanted on OS, and I am immensely grateful to you and the universe that you all are doing this.
"near magic". sigh. thanks.
What? show me the rapscallion greenhorn running-lacky-dog fifth columnist imperialist patriarchal lickspittle scallawag son-of-a-devil who hates his gramma and I will give him what-fer!
Thanks for this.
Delia: Thanks
You don't have to figure out the whole who 'n what to see it: Division has crippled our ability to control our own markets and instruments. It doesn't have to be a Total Conspiracy. All "they" have to do is emphasize our differences, take advantage of our weaknesses, however imperfectly, and they win.
Even if we keep our labels, we can begrudge long enuf to get the work of America done. Again.
It's all gone now, the valley Californicated and the ranch carved up into loathsome mini estates; and the city itself surrounded by suburban sprawl and mall. I went back in 2004, and could stomach only the city's center, where the old buildings still stand proudly and the cheap beer still flows, as if to refute the changes elsewhere; but it's gone; fled to some sweeter spot where the girls still wear flowers in their hair.
The bankers will never yield, and "we" won't force them. Don't fool yourself into thinking you/we have such power. Lovingkindness is not on their balance sheet. Let us reach out to those who will listen and laugh and frolic where the grass still grows green. I have little use for cement, and given a choice, would cut down buildings and plant trees that bear fruit that drips down my chin.
Pete's feed n read. Also see my Bitteroot Kiss" post about moving those giant irrigators.
But i disagree about being able to change it. Once we had robber barons who literally controlled us land & sea, and TR and others ripped them up. We had regulation til first Clinton then W turned it over to nincompoops with hummers.
We have done far harder things. We can do this.
to see what's in store for us if we DON"T bust up the banks:
http://open.salon.com/blog/dynomyte/2009/10/05/a_declaration_of_sovereignty
The first part: dynomyte's tight, maddening description of trying to get Chase to cash a damn check.
The rest of his post is a passionate, eloquent and pretty darn comprehensive & elevated rant about what's wrong, from what i take as a libertarian and leftist perspective -- but respectably human, and so well-detailed, so fair, it would serve as a talking points list for the right as well.
I would also add, "Always consciously keep from raising your voice. This also includes generally eschewing CAPITAL LETTERS and !!!!!! on the internet."
Oh Wait! We already had one of those....
Thanks for the effort.
If any rule applies to our conduct, let it be the Golden Rule.
All three pieces were great, Greg!!!
old new lefty: EXACTLY!!!! he he.
And our elders were right about nice, if at least in the personal space. And if OS is not personal for you, you are not yet doing it correctly.
TS: I have seen good effort from you across the divide, here on OS, so will all due respect and the expectation of improved understanding: WTF with this comment?
If a Left had made such a "joke" he would be lame-brained fodder for a Right and then some.
An attack on us would be a horror. Fear favors the Right, for whatever the reasons. beyond those obvious things, i just don't get this.
Right now: pick something from my list up there and follow "rule" 1: Make a case. Fer or agin it. Let's transcend the noise and cliche together. Cmon. Let's make this the polemic-free zone. Dare to go the distance on at least one small issue with me,TS. Without sarcasm.
I have read enough of your stuff to know you and I would have a great time at a dockside barbq, btw. If you don't want to really discuss something, then at least connect. Viz that , I appreciate the thanks.
dyno: Golden Rule Rules! And centrist is, contrary to rumor, where the really dynamic thinking is done, where the flexible, hard-working, accomplished people hang out. Cool School.
john: ah, great. Just...great. I loved her too, there, for that moment. I feel you back, bro. Thanks.
This comment is particularly relevant on 'Columbus Day...' eh?
I agree and add that we must TAKE from the rich and give to the poor, even if they don't work. After all, the first strong hunter who kept all his game to himself and did not share with the weak and the slacker, was killed in his sleep. The next strong hunter learned to GIVE even to those who did not participate in the hunt.
Greg, this is a wonderful read. It is very clever, even high brow. I wish all understand what you meant.
Rated for civil thought and good writing.
I have had modest success with a few slightly less stuck in concrete types on one subject: Stem Cell Research. That's because I'm the father of an in vitro child. The in vitro process of necessity produces more embryos than can be implanted for a variety of reasons. For more on the subject, see my post:
Stem Cells and Sophie's Choice
Lifers on the Rabid Right seem to think it is somehow more morally superior to flush the leftovers down the drain than use them for research that might very well save the life of a living person. The Rabid Right, as is their wont, seem far more interested in protecting a potential person than an actual person, a logic that completely escapes me. But I suppose that assessment isn't practicing lovingkindness.
I grew up when flower power and idealism seemed feasible. What happened to us? Now your common sense seems impossible to achieve. But kudos for the work you put into this, even if you are preaching to the choir and the choir isn't listening that closely.
I gently differ: the essential day-to-day capitalism in the west is mall market mercantile, and goods/services among small businesses, in regions, towns, and small cities. I take your point about the aspect that is best exemplified by equity markets (money markets and and cash-flow dependent investment schemes, like Walmart) but statistically, and conceptually, too, the marketplace is human-scaled enterprise.
What we need to do is bust the trusts to prove it, and to re-assert the human priority, to those who would control the meta-layer. Citigroup, I'm looking at you.
And also: the soviets proved that not only does Take not work, but it's a lie: they Took but did not reinvest, and enabled a corrupt system of gulags and privilege and dachas on the Black Sea.
I guess the thing iI support is this: capitalism, enthusiastically, short of freeboot, with lots and lots of oversight. That would include any home, neighborhood, town, region or state that wants to experiment with communalism. But just as I call for the Right to prove it with their private enterprise market controls,a small-scale project at a time, i say Proive it to the Left with even the most benign communalism. I lived in communes, starting in 1969, and they are almost impossible to maintain. Even the Amish tell the kids go crazy, leave home for a while. because it's hard, and must be voluntary.
Big yes to hunters sharing. Understand: I don't think the gonifs who run the banks are hunters. Cheap pilferers, really, who've found the key to the strongbox.
Tom:
No. frankly, the extreme Right has foresworn lovingkindness. They do little but play to the cheap seats.
This piece is for everyone, but it includes the Right that might begrudge again. If we find each other in a more meaningful way, great. If not, it can't be helped, except by education and example to the next generation. An aspect of lovingkindness is to preserve life for the long haul, so we must marshall our resources and apply them where it odes some good.
Case-by-case that can be anyone, but realistically, if you watch Fox more than an hour a day you are probably lost to decent society.
And I commented on you solid and most excellent post, and I am proud to sponsor it here.
Lea: What happened to us indeed? For me it was donovan and the incredible string band and the most pixie-addled version of beflowered peace and love, from 66 to about 70. I believed in it. I still do, non-existent-god-help-me, as a Good and True and most urgent impulse in us.
But then again there is the Congo and Darfur and the Russian mob and universal greed and all the cruel wars, across backyards and borders alike. I don't think it;s lost. I still think we disdain peace at our peril. But I leaven it with a sanguine respect for how cruddy we all are. Me included.
A sweet comment, yours, that goes to the very heart of it.
You never make things easy.
I've read all three posts, all the comments and just because I'm five minutes away from your last comment, I'm supposed to say something . . . coherent? Something that somehow captures the pleasures and challenges in your words and in all the words from our fellows and your responses to them and theirs back to you and . . . I don't think so.
Not just yet. It's too much to ask. Too good to digest in a single gulp. Someone serves you the Savoy Truffle and you just pop it in your mouth and try to talk around it?
I don't think so.
What I think you're asking for here isn't agreement but meditation. Here's something to chew on. And here's something else. Each one of your suggestions could be expanded on, but once again, I don't think you're out to convince so much as tickle, seduce, suggest.
And, obviously, you're not asking anyone to change the world or expect your suggestions to do that for them. You know action's required and so, you say, start small. Focus on one thing. Meditate, yes, research, yes, understand most of all -- then act. It's a way of looking at and contending with a mean old world you don't hear or see much these days. But I think if it's not the best approach, then it's in the Top Two. And to judge from the number & quality of comments, I'm not alone.
So -- though I find myself beyond all reproach in every way, especially self-reproach, and though I know that I am so rarely wrong about anything that I should be bottled and put on sale wherever fine foods are sold, I will do this in coming days: take a step back and look squarely at my self and what I intend to do about me. And I'll thank you for nudging me so expertly in a direction I talk but don't walk often enough.
As for your simple trick, who'd have ever believed that Zombieland, however hard it rocks, with or without a personal soundtrack, could ever yield such sweet beauty?
Thanks again.
Yr pal, Jeremiah
Many thanks
So:
(In for a treat? Apparently, I've turned into my granny)