Dismantling the Petro World

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The last post implied, if the reader did not take the content as factual, that the future for the western coalition of nations faced a collapse of its economies and would be fortunate to be called second tier nations. The reason that the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations will overwhelm the western economy is because they have the oil, gas, and the population growth to take over the world economy – somewhat like Walmart, Target and CVC moving into a neighborhood. Any local retail outlets that survive will be less than robust for sure.

Aside from nations, the petrochemical industry is the largest set of global organizations in the world. Asking them to go out of business or scale down to ten percent of what they were is not a winning strategy for global warming. Yet this is the fear that those who deny scientific information hear – that the petro economy is a common source of wealth and making the changes in corporate behavior, the way neighborhoods are built, the way every person consumes food, energy, space and nonrenewable minerals must undergo a transformation that challenges capitalism and suggests something more akin to socialism. So, global warming doesn’t exist.

While searching the Internet, the mariner came across an article in the Nation Magazine for November 2011. The article was written by Naomi Klein, a Canadian author who writes books on the climate and its confrontations with capitalism, human nature, and disappearing resources, including the disappearance of national economic policies. Klein’s current book, “This Changes Everything, Capitalism versus the Climate,” is on the best seller list at the moment.

The entire article is available at

http://www.thenation.com/article/164497/capitalism-vs-climate?page=0,2

 

In the Nation article, Klein makes a six point case that makes a reader think it is easier to climb a cliff covered in ice than to change the petro paradigm:

  1. Reviving and Reinventing the Public Sphere

…Traditionally, battles to protect the public sphere are cast as conflicts between irresponsible leftists who want to spend without limit and practical realists who understand that we are living beyond our economic means. But the gravity of the climate crisis cries out for a radically new conception of realism, as well as a very different understanding of limits. Government budget deficits are not nearly as dangerous as the deficits we have created in vital and complex natural systems. Changing our culture to respect those limits will require all of our collective muscle—to get ourselves off fossil fuels and to shore up communal infrastructure for the coming storms.

  1. Remembering How to Plan

…Every community in the world needs a plan for how it is going to transition away from fossil fuels, what the Transition Town movement calls an “energy descent action plan.” In the cities and towns that have taken this responsibility seriously, the process has opened rare spaces for participatory democracy, with neighbors packing consultation meetings at city halls to share ideas about how to reorganize their communities to lower emissions and build in resilience for tough times ahead.

  1. Reining in Corporations

…But we are also going to have to get back into the habit of barring outright dangerous and destructive behavior. That means getting in the way of corporations on multiple fronts, from imposing strict caps on the amount of carbon corporations can emit, to banning new coal-fired power plants, to cracking down on industrial feedlots, to shutting down dirty-energy extraction projects like the Alberta tar sands (starting with pipelines like Keystone XL that lock in expansion plans).

  1. Relocalizing Production

…Climate change does not demand an end to trade. But it does demand an end to the reckless form of “free trade” that governs every bilateral trade agreement as well as the World Trade Organization. This is more good news —for unemployed workers, for farmers unable to compete with cheap imports, for communities that have seen their manufacturers move offshore and their local businesses replaced with big boxes. But the challenge this poses to the capitalist project should not be underestimated: it represents the reversal of the thirty-year trend of removing every possible limit on corporate power.

  1. Ending the Cult of Shopping

…This growth imperative is why conventional economists reliably approach the climate crisis by asking the question, How can we reduce emissions while maintaining robust GDP growth? The usual answer is “decoupling”—the idea that renewable energy and greater efficiencies will allow us to sever economic growth from its environmental impact. And “green growth” advocates like Thomas Friedman tell us that the process of developing new green technologies and installing green infrastructure can provide a huge economic boost, sending GDP soaring and generating the wealth needed to “make America healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive, and more secure…”

The bottom line is that an ecological crisis that has its roots in the overconsumption of natural resources must be addressed not just by improving the efficiency of our economies but by reducing the amount of material stuff we produce and consume.

  1. Taxing the Rich and Filthy

…That means taxing carbon, as well as financial speculation. It means increasing taxes on corporations and the wealthy, cutting bloated military budgets and eliminating absurd subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. And governments will have to coordinate their responses so that corporations will have nowhere to hide (this kind of robust international regulatory architecture is what Heartlanders mean when they warn that climate change will usher in a sinister “world government”).

Most of all, however, we need to go after the profits of the corporations most responsible for getting us into this mess. The top five oil companies made $900 billion in profits in the past decade; ExxonMobil alone can clear $10 billion in profits in a single quarter…

Naomi Klein pulls no punches in this article in the Nation. The quotes provided here by the mariner provide an insight into her perspective but a great deal of reasoning remains in the article. He recommends that his readers go to the link provided above and discover the whole painting and all the colors in it.

Ancient Mariner

The Petro World

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In a newly released book, “The Colder War,” author Marin Katusa prognosticates that Russia and China will sign a thirty-year oil and gas deal that will not trade in U.S. dollars. This is not new information. The BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) have been moving in this direction for several years. BRIC has two overriding objectives: displace the International Monetary Fund (uses the dollar) with a BRIC-specific currency, thus removing the global advantage of the United States and its western partners; secondly – having achieved a weakening of the dollar, the BRIC currency will invest in world markets and national partnerships, becoming the new monetary power.

Marin Katusa no doubt is one of the premier petrochemical analysts in the world and is consulted widely when nations are forecasting oil and gas futures. One cannot argue with his logic that oil and gas will be the engine that drives super power countries in the future. The BRIC nations make up two thirds of the world’s population. Further, with the exception of Russia, the BRIC nations have young citizenry positioned to generate huge GNP that could never be matched by the U.S. or the European Union. For more detail see the mariner’s post from July 14, 2014.

The mariner wonders if there could be an alternative future. The possibility rests on the western consortium willing to invest heavily in new technology, invest heavily in competitive education, and otherwise diminish the importance of petrochemicals as a source of monetary power.

What no one knows today (except perhaps Nostradamus) is how the world will reconfigure itself. Every element is poised for a chaotic shift: weather, geological activity due to warming, agriculture (already shifted ecologically by two weeks since 1900), future political liaisons, which may not align with petrochemical availability, the new technical age of which we have only faint insights today, and perhaps the transfiguration of the dollar and every other currency into one worldwide currency.

The disadvantages that face the western world are the age of its citizens, the arcane structure of its politics and government, and the lack of population unity for the betterment of everyone. The U.S. especially is run by the one percent who is the wealthiest and currently would have no qualm dropping the dollar and western civilization for a good return on investment with BRIC.

Should the ducks line up, there may be hope for the western culture and its waning dollar. It’s a long shot but maybe the solar system will align in syzygy such that the west will have luck on its side. Whatever, the west, especially the U.S., has no time to lollygag.

Ancient Mariner

 

Oneness VII – Person Driven Oneness

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Using a person to define reality

Using a person to define fairness

Using a person to define reality.  That person is you. You must be aware of a situation from several perspectives. Very few situations are wrapped around one idea or one condition. You must practice seeing situations using empathy as an interpreter and compassion to create oneness. This may be difficult in our culture today – difficult in that compassion appears to open the door to personal vulnerability; difficult in that you will not be understood by those who must also see the same realities; difficult in that your habits and opinions are ingrained in you.

To help loosen your empathy and compassion as tools in decision making, here is a training technique for you to try: Walk around your neighborhood. The walk will be good for you on its own merit. Look for someone of any age, sex, race, or circumstance to whom you can give a helping hand – no matter how small or large your help may be. It may only be a sentence or two to acknowledge neighborliness. A popular term for this is “passing it forward.” Someone helps a person; that person helps another person, etc. This training exercise makes you focus on the situation of other people rather than simply people-watching. You are the lesser, personal reality; the others are the greater reality. Once you find a person who may need help, quickly determine how you will help that person and give a moment’s thought to whether you are improving the situation or just butting in. The object is to have compassion and take action, not, as the old boy scout story goes, help an old lady across the street whether or not she needs to cross the street.

Sometimes you may have to walk for a long time but if you perform this training exercise regularly, you will find some situations where you can help even if the other person is not present. For example, repacking a trash can on the curb after raccoons have dumped it. Further, you will be amazed how quickly your neighborhood comes to know you personally. You are a neighborhood asset. You will notice others passing it forward. You have changed the neighborhood gestalt! Remember to continue honing your empathy and compassion skills when making decisions of any kind.

Using a person to define fairness.  The key to fairness is not only using empathy and compassion but actually understanding the best process for reconciling personal and greater situations. Besides your own participation, you will need one or more other persons with whom you perceive conflicting realities. “Conflicting” does not necessarily mean argumentative. One can have conflict over which restaurant to visit. Remember that your conflict is the lesser reality. Consider this another training exercise; do not try to right the wrongs of the world at first try. Many will take a mediation/arbitration approach to define fairness. This may work from time to time but mitigation without compassion prevents reconciling situations and achieving oneness.

Often, a profession lends itself to managing only with the personal reality of the individual. As an example, a school principal is autonomous and tends to become autocratic. Organizational and educational edicts may be issued without considering the greater reality that may be affected by these edicts, that is, the greater reality of the teachers, students and parents. A principal may move students or educational policies around in a manner that reflects efficiency from the principal’s point of view but when applied, the move may be unfair to teachers or students. Fairness is an attitude that should always be present in one’s mindset. It is the attitude that kick starts a search for a greater reality.

You will need a bit of social skill to define fairness. Control of the process is important. To identify a few procedural rules, let’s use the earlier example of the employer whose workforce is too expensive:

  1. Know your own feelings about your situation and what causes those feelings.
  2. Engage other persons in a controlled way. If the employer calls a sudden meeting of all the employees, the chances are good that the process for defining fairness will collapse under the weight of anxiety and, because there are many more employees, the tool of equality will yield to mob responses. It may be better for the employer to maintain control of the process by talking with a few trusted employees one-on-one so they are aware of your personal reality and, importantly, that you want to reconcile by including the greater reality of the employees. These few will carry the message to the others for you thereby preventing a confrontation and further, the employees will begin their own processing of rule 1. If you have been honing your compassion on regular walks, you will sense the right way to do things in a compassionate way.
  3. How rule 3 plays out depends on how the employer has managed the employees. If the employer has been fair in the past, rule 3 is almost automatic. If there is personality conflict or any signs of disrespect, rule 3 can become nasty. Seek feedback from those few trusted employees. Seeking to sharpen your compassionate choices, ask about the mood of the employees. Very important to the process at this point is to talk about fair solutions with the trusted employees; you must build empathy in them for your situation even though yours is the personal reality.
  4. Rule 4 is the end game. The employer will prepare an agenda – again with the input of the trusted few. The agenda should be a discussion of solutions, not problems. It is a meeting focused on what is fair. It’s a coming together of understanding what ‘fair’ means, which can be painful even if fair. Compassion should be active in everyone’s mind. Just as the walks produced positive resolution, the employer is in a position to share compassion with the employees.

No question at this time. Second installment of Person Driven Oneness forthcoming. In the meantime, keep walking; perhaps drive around to find places where you can use your personal reality to resolve a few greater realities. Here’s a simple one: ring the bell for the Salvation army.

Ancient Mariner

Oneness Dictionary

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Oneness (Definitions)

The mariner has had a number of questions about the use of various words, their context and meaning. Presenting a broad philosophy about how to live better by making better decisions is sometimes heavy reading. What remains to be released is lighter reading. The mariner wants to make sure that key words in the philosophy of oneness are understood before we move on.

What follows is a list of frequently used words and the mariner’s intended use of those words.

 

ANOTHER’S REALITY A reality or situation that is observed in others. Their realties are accommodated in one’s decisions.
COMPASSION Empathetic awareness of another’s distress and a desire to act in a way to alleviate that distress.
EMPATHY The experience of emotional understanding, shared feeling, and understanding the thoughts of another.
ETHIC A set of moral principles or values that guide behavior.
ONENESS A sense of comfort, satisfaction, and achievement shared between one’s own reality and that of another’s reality. Oneness requires that a decision to resolve an issue is based on the greatest good for all persons involved and further, is a decision that is not driven by personal objectives.
PERSONAL REALITY One’s own reality. Oneness requires that one must focus on an external (greater) reality rather than one’s own. One’s reality is always the lesser reality.
PERSON-BASED DECISION Decisions that are made based on human quality of life as the most important factor. NOT decisions that prioritize assets, profits, or any possession above human quality of life.
REALITY The sum of all circumstances that exist in one’s life at any given moment; the sum of self awareness both internally and externally. Basically, everything that has brought you to the present moment.
SITUATION Similar to reality except a situation is limited to a specific set of circumstances or issues that require a decision.

 

It is hoped that this short list of specialized words will help. Future posts about Oneness will be laden with practical applications.

Ancient Mariner

 

Oneness VI

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WITHOUT ONENESS

Effect on Social structure

Acceptance of Hidden abuses

 Effect on Social Structure.  There is an African subculture known as the Ik. The Ik live in the mountains of Uganda. They long have been a marginalized culture. Survival is so severe an issue that children are not raised by their parents but are expelled to live with children their own age. These children must find subsistence on their own and bond into small groups of like-aged children to protect themselves from bands of older children. One asks immediately what the role of empathy and compassion is without the family unit to inculcate these values. Yet this subculture survives – but only in remote regions where contact with other cultures is unlikely. One can imagine there is little hope for the Ik in the long run. It is a survivalist life worthy of a television series and sustains itself on competition comparable to chimpanzees. The Ik are incapable of mediation and certainly cannot achieve oneness.

The Ik people survive without empathy and little compassion. The price they pay for this barren approach to life is the inability to develop an ameliorative society; it is not possible with such meager resources and such barren childhood. The lesson we can learn from the Ik is that our modern society, with its elaborate infrastructure, complex economy and cultural sophistication, is more dependent on oneness than we would like to admit.

The United State is a clear example of change in social structure, moving from middle right but homogeneous society in the forties and fifties to an extremist, non-negotiating society in this century. It is societal rather than incidental because so many cultural issues are involved. Abortion is a religious war that sometimes kills people; Voting rights are a racial battle that sometimes kills people; very limited government is a political war that counts victory as a failed congress and often causes death because of brutalization of defenseless poor. Beyond the cultural issues, the States have just enough power to disrupt processes that reflect the greater good for the greatest number – for example, gerrymandering totally disregards concepts related to one person, one vote.

Oneness is in short supply these days.

Acceptance of Hidden abuses.  Abuse occurs everywhere in many forms from the brutality of murder, rape, and molestation to ignoring the inequities of millions of families losing their homes and savings, to racial and economic prejudice and many more examples. In too many homes child abuse is a given. Whether sexual, starvation, destruction of a healthy personality, or physical beatings, maltreatment is the norm within too many households.

Old style slavery was outlawed by the Emancipation Proclamation but still today the racial burden of being black is not part of a national discussion that will lead to oneness. African Americans suffer unending hope for equality in society. The whites appear to be completely ignorant of black reality or guiltily sweep the issue under the rug.

Corporations and large financial entities feel free to run the US and State governments through the back door with a system that requires elected officials to attend endless fund raisers where their votes are bought by the wealthy. Yet only 39% of eligible voters actually vote. Out of sight, out of mind.

The information industry evades the compassion required to respect an individual’s privacy, security and in recent years, has developed a retail cost model that makes investors salivate.

You understand the situation. We can continue to list hidden abuses but the case is made. This list suggests with certainty that our society has lost its way and is virtually incapable of using compassion to use personal advantage in behalf of the greater good.

The question: Will you commit your time, skills and energy to improve your neighborhood, politics, or improve public service to those who may be disadvantaged?  To what cause will you commit? You are the first brick…..

Ancient Mariner

 

Police Culture

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The mariner is befuddled by the response to confrontation between a policeman and any adversary, that is, kill/harm first, ask questions later. While the conflict between races receives news coverage, it is more than race. It is a different attitude primarily by the policeman but includes an expectation by adversaries that in any confrontation one may be killed and therefore a defensive attitude escalates the situation.

When the mariner was a youngster, a policeman had a walking route in neighborhoods with retail centers. The policeman knew shop owners, would check alleys, visit with citizens on their stoops (A Baltimore term for front steps) and generally knew who the troublemakers were and where they lurked. The attitude of the policeman was not assaultive by nature. Is this just a Norman Rockwell moment? No, it actually was that way sixty years ago.

What elements of our culture changed so much that the role of policemen became a civilian National Guard complete with armor, military vehicles, military cannons and other heavy ordnance, and a strike force mentality.

Perhaps it was many things.

More individuals are able to purchase guns simply because all forms of retail (legal and illegal) move more rapidly today than sixty years ago. Further, the weapons are no longer 22 And 38 pistols but automatic weapons, explosives, and the ability to organize criminal events via cell phones and social platforms on the Internet.

Crime used to be a nationally based issue, for example, the mob and extended crime families. Today, crime is an international issue dealing with drugs from many countries using elaborate armies of mobsters similar to those in Mexico and South America with arsenals and strike capability better than many nations. Stateside criminals receive indirect armament and intelligence from international syndicates – it must be said that arms manufacturers are a source and fight mightily through the National Rifle Association (NRA) to block any legislation related to types of arms and registration.

To help cover law enforcement budgets, the Federal Government provided to law enforcement “no strings” grants through its Community Oriented Police Services (COPS) program. Without direct oversight, heavy armament and riot equipment was purchased far beyond the need of any law enforcement agency. It must be a macho thing for a small city police department to own an Abrams battle tank. Obviously, police departments chose overkill to overstaffing.

It always has been the case that a policeman is trained to quickly stop a threatening confrontation. Years ago, when the mariner worked with police training academies, emptying a pistol was not the first solution – as it appears to be today. Even allowing the use of techniques that would quickly kill an assailant was not routinely encouraged. The example being the strangle hold on Eric Garner in New York where Garner died in the process. The mariner is puzzled that the Grand Jury did not vote for a trial in this case. The video and the Medical Examiner’s report clearly presented arguable information.

Nevertheless, each incident clarifies that the role of a policeman has changed from maintaining social order to inciting social disorder in the last several killings that have made the news in such a short time.

Guns of any kind are too easy to acquire and underlie incidents from mass murders in schools and religious institutions, to robberies ending in unnecessary gun killings.

Those who want to satisfy fear in their personal lives have run out to purchase their own guns. While emotionally gratifying, more guns in anyone’s hands only acerbates conflict that ends in unnecessary killing and wounding of people. Truly horrific and emotional documentation abounds. The issue is to straighten out the cultural and legal rules that govern our society. Perhaps we need controlled access to weapons and more policemen who want to manage peace with conversation rather than incite conflict and fear.

Ancient Mariner

 

Oneness V

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Lacking Compassion, is there another way?

Measuring the Outcome

Mediation and Arbitration

Measuring the Outcome. Through the ages, many have negotiated deals that were worth good profit because they gave away something that the other party wanted and was willing to pay a price to acquire. Until money dominated commerce, buyers and sellers had a culture that allowed for barter, which is dickering about the comparative worth of two commodities. True, it was awkward to carry a sheep around or three bales of timothy hay, but everyone was in on setting the price. Those were the good old days. Today, a customer pays a price set by the seller. It is uncommon to dicker about dollars unless one is engaged in stocks, bonds and commodities – which is limited to those who do not need to barter for basic necessities. If a farmer wanted to sell a sheep on the open market today, much of the profit is already taken by a commodities trader who may never have seen a sheep.

It used to be that business and labor would sit down and dicker, each side knowing the financial status of the company. In one example, the business negotiating team was under severe orders not to grant more than a two cent per hour raise. The labor negotiating team had its members clamoring for ten cents an hour. After three weeks at the negotiating table, the final result was: the union received a two cent raise. However, labor also received a four-week vacation instead of two and was allowed to accumulate sick leave. The solution was a two cent raise to please the bosses and the equivalent of a ten cent raise for the union members. It’s all in how one measures things. There is no doubt the process improved oneness in the company.

Measuring the outcome requires that two elements be in place: those involved are using the same measuring stick – one of the big reasons money became a standard; the other is respect for the measuring process. With these two items in place, it is possible to reconcile differences even if there is no compassion. It may not be easy but it can be done.

In recent years, airline companies have received a bad reputation because some airlines did not want to measure the outcome with the union’s help. Some airlines declared bankruptcy, which negated labor contracts that were in place. Weeks later, when the bankruptcy court agreed to a method for emerging from bankruptcy, the employees were at the mercy of the airline if they wanted to keep their jobs. This is an example of not agreeing about how to measure outcomes. Another failure to use the same measures for outcome led to heated reactions by US citizenry when in 2008 banks that caused a severe recession were not allowed to fail and the citizenry was furious when large bonuses were paid to bank traders. Behind the scenes, the Federal Government and the banks were dickering and making deals about who would fail and who would pay fines. The Government actually ended up owning bank stock as a guarantee. For lack of agreed measuring, this situation is still unresolved in the citizens’ minds six years later.

Mediation and arbitration are controlled dickering. This is accomplished by using a third party to oversee the negotiation. A good example is when Egypt attempted to mediate a compromise between Gaza and Israel. The mediation will not work for two reasons: neither Gaza (Hamas) nor Israel want to use the same values by which to measure the outcome; neither Gaza nor Israel perceive a greater reality. Oneness, even by an uncompassionate process, is out of the question.

Having an arbiter or judge decide the outcome of a conflict inevitably leaves one party or the other, or both parties, unsatisfied. Granted there are times when two parties will never accept a common measure of outcome; neither will accept the arbiter’s measure of outcome. While forcing a conclusion to an unstable situation, the difficulty with mediation and arbitration is that the methods generally do not build oneness.

Conflicts that find themselves in court inevitably enter a win-lose environment. While negotiation may take place within the court process, the win-lose environment remains. Constricted by legal procedures, empathy and compassion are not players. One may make the case that courts expedite irresolvable situations, for example divorce or property conflicts. Still, these arrangements are self serving and do not encourage the union of lesser and greater realities based on compassion and oneness.

The question: You may be familiar with this situation and may already know the act of compassion. You and a friend have one doughnut to share. What is the best procedure to assure the doughnut is equally shared? Think about your combined feelings of trust and fairness that were necessary. Which feeling was stronger?

Ancient Mariner

The Matrix

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Some readers sought an understanding as to why the mariner uses the movie The Matrix as an allegory in several posts where government or corporations are the theme. All the information you would like to know about the movie, a trilogy, can be found at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix#Philosophical_influences .

An exegesis: many years ago, computer networks and robots took over the world. Humans fought back by making the atmosphere permanently full of storm clouds, denying the Sun as a source of energy. In turn, the robots began breeding human beings as a source of energy, AKA human batteries that were kept alive in casket-like pods. These humans were fed a false reality such that they believed they were living normal lives as their ancestors had done. This false reality is called the Matrix. A small team of free humans fight to destroy the Matrix in typical science fiction manner. The trilogy is an entertaining set of movies to watch.

The idea of a “false realty” goes far back in history and encompasses many theoretical speculations that the world we engage in is not real but rather a figment of our imagination and greatly limited by our five paltry senses.

The mariner uses the “human battery” as an example that represents when citizens are ignored or impugned upon in favor of profit or false political authority rather than to be properly represented by our governments and corporations.

Perhaps most memorable was his reference to candidate Romney when he derided behind closed doors that 47% of American citizens were nothing but overhead (Oneness IV):

The 2012 presidential race caught candidate Romney admitting that forty-seven percent of the US population depended on government handouts. It was spoken with derision and contempt….. The woes of a beaten middle class would not be an element of reconciliation between lesser and greater realities. There is no act of compassion. To Romney and the attendees in that room, people are Matrix batteries.

During the 2014 election, it was obvious that gerrymandering had achieved the same effect making the majority of the population irrelevant – more or less batteries. While national polls showed 80-90% of the population preferred taking automatic weapons off the street, candidates were elected across the board that would defend gun rights to include not only weapons but armored vehicles and rocket launchers.

To counter the Matrix effect, we need only to rise up as citizens and demand two changes:

Remove census redistricting from party domination and gerrymandering.

Impose a term limit election rule that no candidate may run for public office if the term in question extends beyond the candidate’s sixtieth birthday.

The term limit issue is not as irrational as one may expect. What is the average age of all citizens? At what age does current culture and experience begin to pass by an elected official? We need only to look at the Supreme Court to see the damage outdated and myopic judgment can cause.

Ancient Mariner

 

Self Serving Utterances

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Today’s topic is doublespeak. Doublespeak is designed not only to confuse or fool others but one’s self as well. For example, it is common for an individual to speak of themselves as “fiscally conservative and socially liberal.” This phrase feels comforting; one feels that one is up-to-date on the political tone of the times. Actually the phrase is an oxymoron. One need only say, “Put your money where your mouth is” and the fallacy reveals itself. A fiscal conservative foremost will defend the need for fiscal worth and likely will not trade that for social responsibility.

Another form of doublespeak is “do as I say, not as I do.” There are many examples. An example from the left this time, an advocate of animal rights will decry the practices of sow birthing cages and beef veal pens while enjoying their pork or veal cutlet. From the right, one advocates freedom of religion but denies that freedom to anyone who may not support their perception of religious practice.

Then there is the doublespeak professional – the politician. The late night talk shows, including FOX, NBC, CBS, ABC, Comedy Central and MSNBC, had a field day with candidate policy positions before a primary and afterward. The republicans had to win the primary within extremely gerrymandered districts where the tea party held sway. If they won their primary, the candidate shifted their remarks toward the center to garner as many remaining votes as possible.

The same tactic revealed itself in politicians who decried President Obama’s policies while supporting the same legislation under President Bush. One exception is the proposed immigration reform by both Presidents that was not accepted by Congress in either administration.

The last form of doublespeak today is false advocacy. The most virulent form is the negative campaign advertisement. A candidate espouses an implied but unexplained position on policy by talking about an opponent’s errant ways. Debating in this way permits the candidate to do whatever he wants without defending his or her own policy declarations.

False advocacy is used by the individual citizen in daily conversation when the individual disagrees with another individual but will not express that disagreement. Instead, at best, a statement of faint praise is offered but clearly there is no intention of supporting the other individual. The second individual must be keen on body language to know the person does not mean what they say and is in opposition.

It is no wonder one is encouraged not to speak of politics or religion. One of the mariner’s longstanding friends is a staunch conservative. The friend knows the mariner is, well, all over the place. We never speak of fiscal or social issues which is a shame; the utterances would be self serving but even more destructive to a good friendship. It was in the post “Oneness IV” where the mariner suggested that the reader pick one of the people you know that you have difficulty relating to because of your opinion of that person. Imagine that person without letting your opinion affect you. This takes a lot of practice. You know you are doing the right thing if you can feel a growing empathy. This is an exercise coined in the phrase “walk a mile in his shoes.” What are the good characteristics that you noticed?

As a parting thought, the advocacy for freedom of religion seemed to be a “do as I say, not as I do” form of doublespeak. Does the same apply to “one person, one vote?” Is the US indeed a democracy?

Ancient Mariner

 

Oneness – IV

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ONENESS – IV

Which lesser reality?

Which greater reality?

One need think only a moment before a conflict comes to mind: How does one select the appropriate lesser solution? The reader is reminded at this point that empathy is a tool with which to make the best decision. In the example of the owner of a small business, the owner actually has several options: Layoff? Sell the business? Go into debt? Restructure the business in a way that maximizes short term profit? How does one select a lesser solution that maximizes the opportunity to select a correct greater solution?

This is no easy consideration as any individual will attest. In the example, consideration begins deep in the philosophy of the owner. Is profit, his religion, his character, the definition of who he is? Is his measure of personal worth his obligation to others – if only to his kind or his business? Is his measure compassion? Have we come to a root that solves the dilemma? Is it the act of compassion?

Compassion deserves further investigation. It is not a strong objective in global awareness. The link between lesser and greater realities almost always is a compassionate consideration and suffers mightily from self interest and the predatory nature of the human species.

If one examines prejudicial behavior, particularly racism and religious prejudice, the smaller situation is a matter of conditioning rather than thoughtful consideration. Racist and religious behavior may be inculcated by parents. Perhaps peer pressure is the source of prejudice. It may be that people of color simply are a scapegoat for personal feelings of inadequacy. Confronted with an interracial or religious situation, how does the person find empathy required to select the appropriate lesser reality? Even if they found empathy, could they select the greater reality?

Many years ago, the mariner had a conversation with a racist man. His position was that African Americans, Latinos and Chinese all looked different than he did and, conversely, he looked different to them. This turned out to be a telling point. “What,” he said, “if they became the majority of the population? I would no longer be part of the majority and my normal white privileges would disappear.”

Is this man able to find sympathy or to act with compassion involving nonwhite individuals? If so, it will take a mighty wind of change.

Prejudice is not limited to race or religion. The author knows a number of individuals who are so opposed to smoking that friends and events first must be tobacco free. Then more compassionate behavior may arise. Confronted with a situation involving tobacco, how does the individual select the correct reality which will link to a greater, compassionate reality?

One solution is to ignore that which is offensive. It takes practice to hone one’s mind to accept the person first – despite the automatic rejections of race, alcoholism, smoking, or whether a person is neat and clean, has a job or makes as much money such that the person is a credible member of the human race. The 2012 presidential race caught candidate Romney admitting that forty-seven percent of the US population depended on government handouts. It was spoken with derision and contempt. Where was the seed of empathy that is necessary to link a lesser and greater reality? Without empathy, Romney was unable to perceive the dependency of banks and industries on government handouts, tax breaks and loopholes. The woes of a beaten middle class would not be an element of reconciliation between lesser and greater realities. There is no act of compassion. To Romney and the attendees in that room, people are Matrix batteries.

Science has a theory that all things in the universe are entropic. The mariner suggests that oneness can induce growth, depending on oneness as part of a resolution. In other words, an act of compassion expands orderliness, consciousness, and discovery while negative acts accelerate entropy.

The question: Pick one of the people you know that you have difficulty relating to because of your opinion of that person. Imagine that person without letting your opinion affect you. This takes a lot of practice. You know you are doing the right thing if you can feel a growing empathy. This is an exercise coined in the phrase “walk a mile in his shoes.” What are the good characteristics that you noticed? Can you separate your smaller situation and the person’s larger situation enough to reconcile the difference? What act of compassion will be required?

Ancient Mariner