-----Original Message-----
From: Ray Evans Harrell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Sunday, September 29, 2002 4:59 PM
To: Brad McCormick, Ed.D.; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: To survive or not to survive.
Ray said,
But whatever happens, it would be wonderful if our economists and futurists
on this list would come up with some ideas that could interest the rest of
us beyond the tattered 19th century Industrial models. Maybe we could get
a Science Fiction writer but with the exception of the "Pollinators of Eden"
and a couple of Roger Zelazny's novels, everything else including my beloved
Frank Herbert and Harlan Ellison are inferior to Orwell and Huxley.
Where is this "Future of Work" folks? Does it have a future? or are we
at the end of our imagination here? Where are your Bergs and your
Schoenbergs to scare the pants off of the banal and mediocre? How about a
Boulez or a Stockhausen? Instead even the "slight" Britten is frightening
to most. With such taste how can we possibly imagine anything but the
ordinary in the work life of the future? I haven't seen a decent Nobel
winner in 50 years. Mediocrity has captured the minds of the West and it
won't let go. Today, we don't even ask ourselves why Paris, a 19th
century city with the first decent toilet, is still the most beautiful city
in the world and the most idealistic. Otherwise why would all of our rich
folks insist on living there half the year? The Czars loved Paris as
well.
Arthur replies,
Many economists have come up with ideas. You should realize that
economists in government and business are the handmaidens of the
establishment. Academics are more and more in the same situation (the world
of the consultant!!) Every once in a while someone comes up with an idea,
and to the extent that it threatens existing distributions of income and
power it is either not listened to, taken seriously or denounced.
Change will have to come from outside. Some sort of political change which
enables the consideration of new ways of looking the economy. Economists
will then rush forward to justify, with models and mathematics the new
agenda. Sad to say and sorry to say this, but seems to be the case.
Hi Brad,
I said:
> [snip]
> > The Soviet Union
> > did many things better than us and they had a terrible agricultural
dilemma
> > in their growing cycle and weather. China does not share that
> > disadvantage.
> [snip]
> > It is also crucial that we not believe that Capitalism is the sole
reason
> > that we won the Cold War and the Soviet System collapsed. That we
> > seriously examine the differences in their work structure and
incorporate
> > their successes if we are going to survive the collapse of the
Industrial
> > Era's old age and out of date answers to completely new situations that
> > Capitalists never faced before.
> [snip]
> > I would also say that Brad's observation about his friend in the post "
The
> > [mis]adventures of private property under capitalism (case study)" is
just
> > another example of such systemic confusion in Capitalism.
> [snip]
You said:
> Ray: Are you citing my [IMO alas not original or unique...] story as:
> (1) What I describe in the story being an example of the systemic
> confusion in Capitalism, or (2) My interpretation of what I
> describe in the story being an example of the systemic confusion
> (i.e., are you asserting that I am systemically confused?), or (3)
> both #1 and #2, or (4) other?
I said:
Number 1. no you are not systemically confused unless there is something
you're not sharing with us.
(snip)
> I agree that it is a very good article.
> > September 29, 2002
> > Contradictions of a Superpower
> > By ROBERT WRIGHT
> [snip]
> > But the report's [ i.e., Bush's security manifesto's(?)]
> > biggest failing may lie in ignoring radicalism's
> > intersection with another kind of technology. It is information
technology -
> > satellite TV, Web sites, e-mail, cell phones - that with growing
efficiency
> > will convert amorphous hatred of the United States into the organized
> > radicalism that can employ weapons of mass destruction.
> > Thus the global diffusion of technology means American policies that
> > generate hatred "on the street" abroad will be more and more likely to
lead
> > to terrorism.
> [snip]
You said:
> Again, I think the article is very good, but I think it
> might be relevant to consider here that Mr. Atta and his
> 19 or so comrades gravely disrupted the United States, inflicting
> at least $40 billion damage for a $500,000 investment WITHOUT
> USING ANY "WMD" AT ALL! Similarly, the U.S.S. Cole was knocked
> out of service for 18 months with repair costs in the
> several $100 million range by a dinghy loaded with
> non-WMD explosives. And, in Mr. Atta's case, he used our own
> resources to hurt us (we not only have lots of
> commercial jetliners, but we also have lots of WMD's here in the United
> States!).
I say:
This is what guerilla operations alway do. It cost one million dollars per
Indian for the US to win the Indian wars in the 1880s which took three years
against an enemy they could find but wouldn't stand still and fight since we
were defending our way of life, families and our very existance. One of
the things that is always made a big deal of in Capitalist propoganda is the
large mansions i.e. palaces, of the enemies. It was an eye opening trip
for Reagan to go to Russia and visit the Hermitage which was put up not by
the Communists but the Czars. Nancy even said: It is no wonder you had a
revolution considering the grotesque wealth compared to the common people.
One could also ask if the Czars had continued what kind of space program,
housing, educational or health programs they would have had for the children
of those peasants. You could ask the same about the mini-Democratic
government that preceded the Bolshiviks. Many things are said and
projected but it should be noted that the poverty rate in this country
currently is greater than in the Soviet Union when we were in the Cold War.
(NYTimes last week.)
As for those castles, mansions or palaces, as in the local Moslem countries,
I'm sure that the locals would rather have better housing and a lower infant
mortality rate but I am also sure that their identity is wrapped up in such
big projects as mentioned just as ours was wrapped up in the Trade Towers.
It will take as much money relatively for them to replace their identity in
their leaders as it does us in ours. I realize this is not a popular or
even Democratic view but I do believe it is accurate psychologically. We
have people who are non-logical to say the least in their allegiances and
alliances where the only answer lies in their psychological indentification
of self and their sense of what it takes to be secure. In fact we are
suffering a non-logical breakdown in the marketplace at present where it
would make more sense to stop, think and plan as well as put the crooks in
jail but we insist upon civil rights for the wealthy crooks while
incarcerating the lower class guerellas forever in Cuba on evidence that is
evidentily so poor that they won't even let us see it. One of the crooks
is the Secretary of the Army where the appearance of evil is not enough to
incarcerate him in spite of the fact that he is in charge of the largest
fighting force in the history of the world. Another is the Vice President
of the United States who evidently makes Spiro Agnew look like a provencial
Angel. And then there is the President who stole the election with the
help of his brother, in spite of some of the protestations on the list.
But how can you live in California and pay that exorbitant electric bill
last year and not know that the Texans had screwed you?
You said:
> Our enemies may not need weapons of
> mass destruction to destroy us: Please do not forget that
> a big reason the Bush administration did not pay much
> attention to AlQaeda in 2001 was that the Bush administration
> was busy protecting us from rogue nation ICBMs! Maybe
> our focus on weapons of mass destruction needs to be placed in
> a broader context of
> attention to the factors of human intelligence and human commitment
> to a cause.
I would agree with the latter but not the former. I think the Bush
administration is basically compromised and incompetent. I think it is
grounded in their experience in the sector where I make my living, the
private sector. A place filled with companies that act like and are larger
than many socialist countries but who would never support a nation acting
like or to them either here or abroad as they act themselves in favor of
their "landed class" i.e. stockholders. These are the people who prefer
pundits to scholars and then wonder why Democrats don't come out to perform
in their coliseum.
Think of NAFTA which is skewed in favor of companies and against
Democracies. I suspect that the future will hold one of three things.
1. Either greater abuse and tyranny from those companies world wide or 2.
that Capitalism will be defeated by the megalithic giant of China with their
unique cultural structure, or 3. That there will be a fifth way emerge that
is either an amalgam of the previous four or a totally new system.
When we talk theory it usually comes down to the market version of whether
the rejection of "fast food" means that we all shouldn't eat instead of
making the food better. These wonderful theories about the Middle East
seem inexperienced except in the tabloids. The people who know
Palestinians, live in Israel or who work with Jews and Palestinians seem
quiet on much of this and when they do speak it becomes a time for battering
their knowledge instead of asking questions and proving one's National
superiority rather than a discussion relating to how economists, futurists
and professionals could help the situation.
I think Karen has supplied an intelligence simply by asking questions that
many of we men were unable to supply and it is a pleasure that Devorah and
Selma are speaking out. But the itch of the ideals about work and how
people grow their culture without being destroyed by the battering ram of
Western Business or the fundamentalist idiocy of the Middle Eastern Desert
Religions have not even been scratched. Note, I am talking about the
religious version of the 18th and 19th century economic philosophers who
have committed genocide and murdered whole professions with impunity that
didn't fit into their systems. I am not speaking of the progressives who
value the past, live in the present and work to imagine a future where both
can exist under the rubric of "Heritage and Cooperation." I care little
for the couch whether Freud or Procrustes.
But whatever happens, it would be wonderful if our economists and futurists
on this list would come up with some ideas that could interest the rest of
us beyond the tattered 19th century Industrial models. Maybe we could get
a Science Fiction writer but with the exception of the "Pollinators of Eden"
and a couple of Roger Zelazny's novels, everything else including my beloved
Frank Herbert and Harlan Ellison are inferior to Orwell and Huxley.
Where is this "Future of Work" folks? Does it have a future? or are we
at the end of our imagination here? Where are your Bergs and your
Schoenbergs to scare the pants off of the banal and mediocre? How about a
Boulez or a Stockhausen? Instead even the "slight" Britten is frightening
to most. With such taste how can we possibly imagine anything but the
ordinary in the work life of the future? I haven't seen a decent Nobel
winner in 50 years. Mediocrity has captured the minds of the West and it
won't let go. Today, we don't even ask ourselves why Paris, a 19th
century city with the first decent toilet, is still the most beautiful city
in the world and the most idealistic. Otherwise why would all of our rich
folks insist on living there half the year? The Czars loved Paris as
well.
"How do you like your blue-eyed boy now Mr. Death?" (cummings)
Ray Evans Harrell
