Monthly Archives: July 2018

Changing Signs

Posted on by
Reply

Back in the early 60’s, there was a British comedy show called Beyond the Fringe. Eventually it toured in Baltimore where mariner and his wife saw the show. It remains one of the best comedy experiences of our lives. The entire show is online at https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=beyond+the+fringe+1964&view=detail&mid=2391A28FEE931C54B1142391A28FEE931C54B114&FORM=VIRE

Mariner often recalls many of the short bits in the show. One of his favorites is changing road signs around to confuse German troops should they invade Great Britain (it is at 53 minutes on the video). Two men are standing beneath a sign with arrows showing the directions to three towns. The dialogue: “Let’s put Lyme Regis where Great Yarmouth was, Great Yarmouth where Ipswitch was and Ipswitch where Lyme Regis was. . . Here, how do we get home?”

Mariner does not expect the humor to carry after such an elaborate explanation but it speaks perfectly to today’s situation in US politics and culture. Some pieces of news that show we are changing signs:

NPR interviewed an individual in West Virginia of all places who said quite seriously and without malice that we should eliminate the Senate. (Mariner mentioned a few posts ago that the electorate may face conflict leading to a Constitutional convention)

The Republican Party ended Reaganomics by putting the US into the deepest debt in modern US history.

Donald is seeing to it that recent Democratic Party accomplishments (should mariner say recent Obama accomplishments?) are trashed whenever possible. Donald also has put the US at risk by denying climate change and disrupting international relations politically, militarily and economically. Further, the momentum that carries the US as a global leader is diminished by Donald’s immaturity and simplemindedness.

As the Democratic Party ramps up for the coming elections, a platform plank advocates eliminating Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) added 43,000 new members in 2018. It seems millennials aren’t afraid of the ‘S’ word.

Culturally, we are changing signs as well. Women in particular have pushed their agenda into public awareness for everything from abusive sexism to equal pay for every job. What lies ahead, especially with a different Supreme Court, are heated battles over Roe v Wade, voting suppression, gun laws, gerrymandering, privacy and security, single payer health care, and significant reworking of all Federal discretionary programs especially in education, Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security. Last but definitely not least is the role of religion(s) in a state-run culture.

Here, how do we get home?

Ancient Mariner

 

Crosswinds

Posted on by
Reply

While destructive winds are blown by the current administration, one notices alternative crosswinds rising in news outlets other than the circus news outlets. Here are a few examples:

Big businesses want lower taxes. Cities—and many of the people who live in them—want lower rates of homelessness. Lately, the compatibility of these two desires is being tested, as local governments across the U.S. float a new strategy to help the growing number of unsheltered people on their streets: Asking businesses to pay a greater share in funding aid. [Sarah Holder, citylab.com]

Solicitor Andre Davis, Baltimore, joined a growing movement of cities suing Big Oil over their contributions to climate change. It’s following in the footsteps of 12 other cities, including New York and San Francisco—but it’s naming significantly more companies and offenses in the case for climate reparations. [Atlantic]

The President’s ire with and dissing of US intelligence is for good personal reasons. The intelligence community has been watching Donald for many years because of his foreign associations and his foreign investment practices. Donald knows they know . . .

Speaking of intelligence services, the United States is the premier practitioner of cyber war and has been at it since the cold war. It is only in recent years that other nations are becoming good enough to hack US practices which they turn around and use on the US. This makes the nation vulnerable to actual cyber warfare – better than a bullet war in that not too many will die intentionally. However, knocking out banking systems, electricity, major manufacturing centers and water utilities is easy to do and has devastating effects; one doesn’t need 2,000 bombers and fighter planes to bomb a manufacturing center as we did against Germany in the Second World War.

In his new book, The Perfect Weapon, David Sanger points to ‘Operation Olympic Games’, where Sanger credits George W and Obama with overseeing the operation which used malicious code to blow up Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. The North Koreans could only suspect American cyber war was behind the excessive failure of their missile testing program. Despite Donald’s simplistic understanding of power, American cyber capability, still the stealthiest and most powerful in the world, can eliminate everything from a nation’s economy to Putin’s net worth. But cyber warfare, because it is easy and not physically destructive like bullet wars, is a one-up game: If nation A does this, then nation B will retaliate by raising the stakes. Not really a big deal to pull off. Cyber war is more like poker than it is like football.

A woman who worked in a restaurant a little more than a year ago has won a primary against a ten-term democratic Representative. She’s a firecracker! Keep track of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. [Politico.com]

Finally, for an entertaining (or frightful) view of the coming elections, do not watch circus news – watch fivethirtyeight.com or politico.com or read the Atlantic magazine or the New Yorker magazine or simply watch balanced news from PBS. All these sources are rational, factual and restore one’s faith in real news.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Intuition/Personality

Posted on by
Reply

A legitimate question was raised as to why mariner did not include personality variables in the last post. There are tons of personality tests about intelligence (Stanford-Binet), skill assessment (SAT, GRE), decision variables (Myers-Briggs), and many general tests (MMPI). There are so many that mariner refers the reader to Wikipedia at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tests

Every personality/capability/decision test adds understanding about personalities, aptitudes and function preferences – even attitudes. Mariner is not writing a book; he suspects his readers do not want to read a book. His intent always is to inject an interesting perspective into one’s daily schedule. Consequently when the subject is human behavior, he depends on truisms, popular psychology tools, general behavior and a sailor’s intuition.

When mariner was an independent consultant, he had contracts to teach leadership skills, organization methods and computerization of business models. All these subjects rest on human behavior. Mariner often used Myers-Briggs to sensitize how one participates in a group. He borrowed instructional tools from W. Edwards Deming, Peter Drucker and others. One of mariner’s favorites is Deming’s playing card games which demonstrated that employees will do anything, even cheat, to be successful. (One thinks of Sarah Huckabee Sanders)

A personal favorite mariner devised was on the second day of training, when the students were out to lunch, he and his team would move everyone’s materials to a different seat. This caused immense discomfort in many of the students but it demonstrated one’s conservatism in sustaining the status quo – a behavior that inhibits making good decisions.

Mariner responded to a reader’s reply about not including Myers-Briggs. The response suggests that when presented in a group that was predefined (employee groups), 99% used the four letter scores negatively for purposes of self-promotion and elitism. While Myers-Briggs is technically sound, it carries overhead in a behavioral training session.

So, as it states in the blog page about the mariner, tall tales will be told – with some wisdom, mariner hopes.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Intuition

Posted on by
2

When mariner was in his thirties, he took courses in sociology and psychology. He became interested in how an individual chooses lifestyle, career and hobbies. Certainly fate itself dictates a great number of choices, often choices that may not fit one’s emotion, talent or physical profile. Still, one becomes aware that certain ways of learning, certain mental and physical skills perform more easily when compared to other people’s profiles.

To demonstrate clearly how an individual is different from another in how they learn and what comes more easily to them, mariner cites three extreme examples of individual skills that demonstrate the differences each of us may have from others.

Alonzo Clemens was a perfectly normal human. Unfortunately, he had a severe accident which damaged his brain. He is no longer a normal individual; he is a savant. Hand him a lump of clay and in minutes he will miraculously produce a perfect replica of any creature, his favorite being horses. Alonzo’s brain easily speaks through his hands.

Alma Deutscher, is a normal British eleven year old musical prodigy. She played the piano and violin at 3; Alma wrote an opera for a full symphony orchestra at age 11 – including the music for each instrument in the orchestra. It was performed to raves. One could say that Alma’s brain is wired to understand and produce music – not a small skill and one where hearing is critical.

Marilu Henner is a well-known actress. She also is one of thirteen known people worldwide with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, or H-SAM. Marilu has full retention of her entire life complete with dates, what she did on a given day, and everyone she spoke to on that day. Marilu’s brain is wired like a database; parsing information is her special ability. This phenomenon does not interfere with other emotional or physical experiences. Mariner selected Marilu as an example from AARP magazine. You can read this article at:

https://www.aarp.org/entertainment/television/info-07-2013/marilu-henners-incredible-memory-tips.html

We plain folk aren’t mental superstars but it is important to realize that each of us has a discerning skill and aptitude that makes each of us special. It makes for an easier life if we are conscious of our specialties; this makes it easier to select our job, hobby, and leverage the special way that each of us learns.

There are a number of characteristics that can help us identify our abilities. For example, each of us tends to learn more easily with one sense over the others. Some find it easier to learn by touching or doing; some find it easier to learn by hearing; some find it easier to learn by watching; some by reading, etc. In the AARP article, Marilu suggests to review the day’s experiences by replaying them mentally, using our brain’s image of what we did that day, will noticeably improve our memory. Mariner, for example, learns best using sight; at the end of the day he should run a set of images through his brain that will serve as memory anchors.

Another aspect of learning is how our brains solve problems. Some will be better at solving procedural problems; others will be better at comparative solutions and others may understand solutions better if they have a broad perspective of the issue.

An old pop-psych description mariner has referenced before is the what-how-why description of arriving at solutions. Which is the most informative question you ask yourself when confronted with a situation that needs a solution?

What do I do?   How do I do this?     Why do I do this?

Combining the favored sense for learning with the manner by which we solve problems is a simple description of our individual aptitude. Those who learn best by touch or hands-on engagement coupled with ‘what do I do’ have an aptitude that excels at sequential activities, i.e, bookkeeping, woodworking, and construction among many examples. If we pair hearing and ‘how do I do this’ we likely will be better than average managers where talking and comparative reasoning are important. If we pair sight and ‘why do I do this’ it may be easier to ponder less defined solutions associated with science or cause and effect speculations.

Mariner has a life experience he tells about the time when he was a supervisor of programmers. In large computer systems, there are millions of lines of code so the code is divided into appropriate functions and each is overseen by a supervisor and a team of programmers. A situation arose where mariner was to receive an additional function from another supervisor. He visited the other supervisor to learn what the new function was about; this involved understanding the logic of the code – a very procedural style of logic. The supervisor sat down at the computer and described in rapid succession sixteen steps required to manage the function. Mariner, not being so glib as an intensely ‘what’ person at procedure, learned absolutely nothing about the meaning of the sixteen steps. The supervisor went through the steps again and a third time. Mariner was as ignorant as he was before the supervisor started. The supervisor asked mariner how he ever got a job as a supervisor and said as much to our manager. Fortunately, our manager was wise to our different aptitudes and dismissed the situation. Mariner later sat down with the code manual, read through the code a few times and understood what the function was about.

The important lesson in this life experience is to not judge people as inferior because they don’t have the same aptitude and skill experience as you.

We are amazed when people with very special aptitudes perform. A common example is the person who can do instant math. They stand at the front of an audience and outperform calculators. They seem not to do mental calculation; in fact they don’t. The brain intuitively knows the answer. A similar example is the memory experts who in real time can learn and recite massive amounts of detail like the first names of everyone in an auditorium. True, these specialists have honed techniques that help. However, we with all the techniques in the world could not compete with them.

A way to tell if you are in line with your aptitude is when you know solutions without calculating; another way to say that is you know intuitively: It seems so easy; why does everyone have trouble with this? I could do this job in my sleep; I feel good about myself when I exercise my aptitude. Athletes talk about being in the zone. The brain takes over and controls muscle and skeleton without conscious effort and performs better than if the athlete were thinking about his actions. Michael Jordon recounted his basketball shot at the last second in a close game: “I wasn’t worried about making the basket; I knew I would make it.” Each of us has a zone of some kind.

Enjoy learning who you are. You are unique.

Ancient Mariner

 

The American Duty

Posted on by
Reply

November 2018 is no longer an abstract date in the future. It is on the horizon. It is within the range of calendar notes for personal schedules. Election Day is November 6, a Tuesday. Mark it down on your calendar, your email calendar, your kitchen refrigerator, get a tattoo. You must not miss November 6. Mariner is not promoting any party; this is a momentous moment in history and you have a right to be part of it.

You must be an advocate among family and friends. Do not ask what party or what philosophy – only that everyone votes. Fill your car with friends and stop at a junk food place afterwards. If ever the fate of the planet were at a crossroad, this is the moment. Whatever the United States decides to do will set in motion a new historical phase in the history of man.

Ancient Mariner

 

Cultural Gerrymandering

Posted on by
Reply

Before we get to mariner’s post, read the following statements:

From the Washington Post

By 2040, eight states will be home to nearly half (49.5 percent) of the country’s entire population. An implication of that bit of trivia: 30 percent of the American population will control 68 percent of the American Senate. “The House and the Senate will be weighted to two largely different Americas.”

Twitter From Norman Ornstein   @NormOrnstein

I want to repeat a statistic I use in every talk: by 2040 or so, 70 percent of Americans will live in 15 states. Meaning 30 percent will choose 70 senators. And the 30% will be older, whiter, more rural, more male than the 70 percent. Unsettling to say the least

Twitter from Paul Waldman @paulwaldman1

In the age of minority rule, a Supreme Court justice appointed by a president who got fewer votes is confirmed by a party in the Senate that got fewer votes, to validate policies opposed by most Americans.

– – – –

And we thought immigration was the largest political issue . . .

The imbalance of the two houses of Congress reminds mariner of the British system where the public elects the House of Commons but one must be appointed to the House of Lords. While the House of Lords does not carry nearly as much clout as the US Senate, it can slow down legislation by sending it back to the lower House.

If the United States is to remain a democracy in spirit, it may be that we face a whopping battle to rewrite the Constitution. Like the Second Amendment authorizing the right to bear arms for a good reason back in 1791, each state was granted two representatives as a demonstration by the Founding Fathers that the voice of state governments would have a direct role in the Federal government. Senators were appointed by state legislators until 1910.

At the moment, the issue of demographics may seem a fantasy game but, in fact, Paul Waldman is correct when he says the Federal Government is about to appoint a Supreme Court Justice while representing a minority of the general population – and 2040 is still 22 years away.

Regular readers know mariner is chary about social stratification whether they are super rich, giant corporations, doctrinaire religions, or undemocratic governments. A theme running through many nations’ cultures at the moment is decidedly not empathetic; populations are sensitive to financial insecurity. Nationalism, including the US and Europe, is a growing response that easily could prevail given the observations of the contributors about imbalanced voting. In other words, the 30% mentioned above may just leave things as they are: a minority ruling class.

This is the largest issue mariner has thought about recently. Fixing demographic imbalance will require a power-shaking war either by reconfiguring Congress or playing voting games with fractions to level the playing field. It is a conflagration that will include the super rich and the super powerful in our society; let’s hope it includes the common electorate as well.

Mariner hereby turns this issue over to his readers so they have something to ponder until 2040.

Ancient Mariner

 

Real

Posted on by
3

Mariner was sitting in his living room chair the other day taking a break from working outside in Iowa’s mid ninety temperatures and its supercharged humidity. He absentmindedly was looking about the room and noticed the dark television. He began to think about the fact that many of the people he knows as casually as he knows his family aren’t real.

Those people on television are not flesh and bone; they are electronic pulses flashed on a piece of glass. Nothing more than millions of sparks. Is Katy Tur of MSNBC real? It is quite possible today to manufacture human images from scratch. Is Katy nothing more than a script typed into a box that generates a talking Katy on the other side? Mariner is quite sure Larry King is not real. Many of the pundits on news shows are eerily similar to Statler and Waldorf and Sam the Eagle. Many decades ago mariner read a book about a newscaster who traveled the world following news but never sat for a broadcast; he was cut and pasted from old newsreels by a computer. He looked like he was in the studio but he wasn’t.

Being retired and not much engaged in small town activities, mariner has gone more than a week without speaking or listening to actual humans other than his wife and his neighbors. Taking a broad view of human interaction reveals that US society at large has more electronic acquaintances than real ones – especially if you count social media, Skype and smartphone conversations. How many people walking down the street can you count on to be real humans and not a Mr. Smith robot from the movie Matrix? Is that woman looking at you a real human or a hologram? Both these technologies are available today.

How important is it to address reality by talking to actual people? There was a time when the only way to solve an issue was to visit another human being and talk together. Today, one can shop for anything under the Sun including a spouse and not have to talk to a salesperson; one does not necessarily need to go to a movie theater and ask a bona fide human for a ticket – wait for Netflix. Grocery shopping is next in line for humanless resolution; banks long ago put banking online; does anyone miss chatting with tellers?

Mariner has no deep speculations about having electronic friends; at least they take the place of talking to human friends. Don’t they?

Ancient Mariner

 

 

UBI

Posted on by
Reply

No sooner had mariner posted the last post about a new stratum, within minutes his wife handed him an article in the latest New Yorker magazine about universal base income (UBI)[1]. UBI is a concept where everyone, working or not, wealthy or not, young or old, socially accepted or not, receives the same base income from the government. Typically, it isn’t a lot of income; maybe enough to not starve.

The concept has been tested in small experiments in several countries. The testing arises from a concern that receiving a guaranteed freebie from the government may affect how or whether an individual will participate in the workforce and whether the stipend will affect employment regulations. By and large, it doesn’t alter the lifestyle of the individuals; they continue to participate in society as they did before receiving the stipend. In harshly deprived economies like many in Africa, UBI has worked well because it puts cash into a nonexistent economy; people react by using the stipend in responsible ways in order to escape abject poverty as much as possible.

Inadvertently, the United States has practiced UBI in a few labor markets. For most of the twentieth century school teachers were grossly underpaid because teaching, a female occupation, was considered a second income to the husband’s income. The teacher’s salary, in context, was treated like a universal base income outside the real source of income for a family.

Today, especially in small businesses or in larger service industries like convenience stores, the practice of requiring an employee to work only 38 hours to avoid benefits and fulltime labor regulations is the same rationale as UBI but for business profit instead of personal wellbeing; the business owner will claim that it is expected that a part time employee has other sources of income. These two examples suggest the reduced income was considered a stipend on the side rather than a fair, competitive salary.

However, in a government-distributed UBI, labor market income does not affect the stipend – or does it? Will labor class jobs slowly fall behind in salary because the government in effect is helping to pay the employee?

UBI relates to the last post about meritocracy; the New Yorker article uses the term as well. Meritocracy will mean every individual has the right to receive a stipend regardless of class, race, etc.

In several past posts, mariner has said that the true issue is not stipends; it is the definition of the word ‘job’. Pinning words similar to ‘equality’ and ‘justice’ to a universal dole is a false gesture insofar as human dignity is concerned; feeling justified in being a human takes more than a few dollars. With UBI will certain citizens continue to say, “They ought to get off their butt and get a job”?

REFERENCE SECTION

Mariner must share with readers a fascinating quote he discovered. He was reading a book review by Ron Elving of Dan Kaufman’s book, The Fall of Wisconsin. In his final chapter, Kaufman returns to the quotation that begins his book. It is from Edward G. Ryan, who was Wisconsin’s chief justice in 1873 and foresaw the protracted struggle of the next century and a half with striking clarity.

“The question will arise … Which shall rule: wealth or man? Which shall lead, money or intellect? Who shall fill public stations, educated and patriotic freemen or the feudal serfs of corporate capital?”

1873!! And still we haven’t straightened it out. A wonderfully articulate and insightful statement.

Ancient Mariner

[1] “Take the Money and Run,” The New Yorker July 2018, by Nathan Heller.

A New Stratum

Posted on by
2

The planet Earth has many layers of rock that have accumulated over eons of time. Each new layer sits atop an older layer. One layer is called a stratum. We who live on the surface are not aware of the many strata that hold our land masses together. We simply know what we see at the surface and form expectations about the surface environment. Ideas have strata, too. Over human history many layers of ideas have formed and together support our expectations in this present time.

A stratum lies beneath and supports our expectations about fairness, our expectations about equality, and our expectations about justice. We expect American society to have a set of scruples and we expect, without explicit definition, everyone to live by these scruples. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution plus the Bill of Rights promote scruples and guarantee a system of jurisprudence that assures a set of scruples. The stratum that lies beneath our sense of fairness, equality, justice and cultural scruples has a name: meritocracy. In the current meritocracy, all citizens have the opportunity to be recognized and advanced in proportion to their abilities and accomplishments. But meritocracy is subject to reinterpretation.

Words like freedom, liberty, pursuit of happiness, be all you can be, anyone can be President – all are expressions supported by meritocracy. When we look back to the thirties and forties, when the Great Depression, World War II and the years that followed established the current definition of meritocracy, we realize that a new stratum is forming; a new layer that will support a different set of expectations about the scruples of our society. Aware that a new definition is forming raises serious questions. How will existing scruples, fairness, etc., be reinterpreted? Will a new meritocracy support the ‘opportunity to be recognized and advanced in proportion to their abilities and accomplishments’? Importantly, “What will happen to me?”

Meritocracy is very malleable. Meritocracy is the flour in baked goods of every type, flavor and texture. The analogy of flour is apropos even to the event of having to rise; just because meritocracy is proclaimed, as in the Declaration of Independence, doesn’t mean it exists. Unlike baked goods, there is no given recipe – spices and additives are endless and often do not bake well.

In a final colorful analogy, meritocracy is like a toy top spinning on the floor. Spinning is wobbly and unstable in its direction but the fact that it seems to defy imbalance and stay spinning provides a good feeling and provides a sensation of success. This analogy is apropos of any ideal. Ideals by their very nature are unachievable; once fallen, ideals must be rewound and thrown again – and again. Each new definition of meritocracy is a new stratum in history; meritocracy is the flour of society; meritocracy, in the end, never will be permanent.

– – – –

What follows are general waypoints in the emergence, practice and transition of meritocracy.

What do Caligula, Henry VIII, Harold Hardrada, Napoleon, Hitler, Yeltsin, Erdogan, and Donald have in common?

Each of them, more by the power of their personality disorders than anything else, are the final blow that brought an end to an old stratum; government and culture were weak; mores, scruples and social expectations were in disarray. External status quo, that is, the world in general had changed but old internal assumptions held on until international conflict occurred and provoked the rise of new sources of power through overthrow of government, populism, or in some cases, war.

What do rice, wheat, corn, barley, and potatoes have in common?

The first significant shift in meritocracy was when early man discovered farming. Each of these crops in their own circumstances around the world created a totally new social order. Any significant change in economy or how economy works will trigger a new stratum – a new definition of human rights. The same can be said for inventions, communication, chemical advances and, especially until the entire world was mapped, exploration. Expectations about economic fairness, opportunity and confidence are life-changing in any regard and dissatisfaction quickly will challenge current perceptions of meritocracy.

What do Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, Moses and Muhammad have in common?

Obviously, each is the spiritual center of a major religion. Philosophical and theological contributions by each established codes of behavior and expectations which influenced all aspects of culture – even economics. Each religion straddles many strata and is an active force in changing the definition of meritocracy. Today, the impact of global economy, instant global information, and worldwide instant communication has brought various religions into conflict because global standardization does not mix well with the idiosyncrasies of different religious principles. This conflict in itself suggests a new definition of meritocracy is emerging.

Transition from one definition of human rights to another is messy and must pass through a hodgepodge of events and probabilities. No one can actually predict turns of events if one is living in the midst of stratum change. Below are some contemporary existential phenomena.

֎ Remember when . . . name any subject. If things are different today than they were a decade or two ago, meritocracy is undergoing redefinition.

֎ The economy is out of balance to the point that citizens are not sharing in the profits (remember the Luddites?). As alluded to earlier, nothing jumpstarts a new stratum like economic dissatisfaction.

֎ Populism emerges as a potent political force. The 2016 election was clear evidence that government was not meeting meritocracy’s expectations.

֎ New technology modifies cultural values and behavior. This began to accelerate when an individual could buy one’s own computer; then amplified by cellular phones and now aggravated by smartphones and social media to the point that normal interpersonal behavior is a matter of electronic potential instead of human potential. Need a spouse? Find them on the Internet; who wants to bother with socializing and honing one’s interpersonal skills?

֎ Those in power show signs of abuse when dealing with due process. We in the US certainly suffer this but virtually the whole of South America suffers big time.

֎ Allegiance to a common value disintegrates into partisan bickering; the big issue today is the one Russia is manipulating; Americans are not united in their expectations; the stratum of meritocracy is unstable.

֎ Compound all this by our knowledge that another significant change lies just a few years down the calendar: artificial intelligence. We have no idea what that will do to our human rights, our definition of meritocracy, our new stratum.

The point of all this is that we are living lives of unusual stress because our expectations about our role in society, our sense of fairness, our sense of protection, our sense of justice – all are without a stable foundation. Meritocracy, the foundation concept that provides order for these issues, is shifting.

One last analogy: we are sailing in stormy seas. We must take control of the helm to assure that what we still think is fair, equal and just will guide our course.

Ancient Mariner

 

Unplugged as Metaphor

Posted on by
Reply

There was discussion about mariner’s self-imposed ‘isolation.’ It was perceived that mariner had separated himself from society by blocking channels of communication and information. It was suggested that, while there may be abuse by communication corporations, the tradeoff is having access to more information and a better sense of what’s going on – a quid pro quo so to speak.

Mariner suggests the issue is not one of information but one of control. The insight he has while in communication isolation is a feeling that he is not dancing to an imposed melody. Mariner knows he is beating a tired horse in his posts but the issue of not having control of one’s life or personal values, and not being in a position to do a lot about it – and not being aware this is the situation – is no different than citizens in the book 1984 and in the movie Matrix (one was put into a coffin at birth and fed an artificial reality directly to the brain).

Recently mariner posted a short post saying privacy and choice were two sides of the same coin; can’t have one without the other. That relationship cannot be denied. Homo sapien history is full of continuous rebellion against someone else dictating one’s choices. Most often it has been countered by war. It can be countered by collective bargaining whether that means unions, voting, cultural separation, or individual isolation. Success in changing things, however, can’t be done in isolation; it takes a large representation of the affected society.

Mariner is concerned that populations around the world are not prepared for the control that can be had by governments and especially by corporations with the use of powerful computers and privacy-draining data collection. Somewhere along the way, society must develop a rule that says humans will approve modification to culture, law, economy, and quality of life. Otherwise, human life may not be worth more than an imaginary life in a coffin.

– – – –

On a distantly related note, the new European restrictions on international telecommunications has severed mariner from 40% of his readership.

Ancient Mariner