Metaphors II

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Metaphors II

In the previous post, Metaphors I, three metaphors were offered: metaphors from the tsunami and the failing culture of Germany in 1943 were used to develop an intuitive perspective of the American condition without using the jargon reported by the media.

The third metaphor, progression, enables one to have a new understanding of events over time. For example, observing how much money the reader saves each year compared to their age at the time will allow the reader to have a new perspective of what has transpired across their life and many insights into what happened during the reader’s lifespan, would enrich their understanding of how they arrived at their current financial circumstance.

Arithmetic Progression:

1,2,3,4,5,6,7….   The same number value between each is 1; (example 3+1=4).

We can learn something interesting if we add a value of some kind to compare with this sequence. Suppose the reader is looking for a pattern of how many times they eat catfish over seven weeks. The reader then perceives a pattern; which weeks did the reader eat catfish? Does one eat catfish more often as the weeks pass? Will the reader eat more or less catfish in the future?

 Catfish copy

WEEK    1

2

3

4

5

6

7

CATFISH0

1

2

0

0

1

1

What one learns is that it is likely that catfish will be eaten a little less than once per week over time (red line). Of course, with more values, the chart becomes more accurate.

High School history generally is taught in a similar arithmetic fashion; dates of history are an important measure of occurrence but do not measure parallel events. Events occur but they are measured by the year in which they occurred (Magna Carta signed in 1215, Columbus sailed the blue in 1492, The Declaration of independence was 1776, the first black President in 2008, etc.) This arithmetic progression shows little more than the sequence of historical events. One is left to surmise whether there may be a continuous relationship with other events.

What may provide a more valuable insight to us is the measure of two values not based on time but on the changing relationship between the events.

The following chart demonstrates the drawback phenomenon in a graphic. The latest date on this graph on this graph is 2007 but this disparity continues through today.

 After tax

The next graphic relates how salaries have not stayed with inflation and continue even today to fall further below inflation. One does not need numbers to have the intuitive insight that the United States economy is broken. Percent increase is at the left of the chart.

 

INFLATION/INCOME

PERCENT EVERY FIVE YEARS

Inflation                1913           1930        1950      1962                  1988              2012

The dip between zero and twelve percent reflects the Great Depression. The straightness of the red line indicates that salary increases have risen around one percent per year for forty years. At the end of 2008, income falls away sharply, placing income 25.6 percent beneath inflation. For a salary of $20,000, it would require a raise of $781.25 to match inflation only in 2008. Income lost to inflation from 1978 to 2008 amounts to approximately $26,840. When one considers that most workers receive a larger income and there are millions of workers who share this shortfall, it is a staggering amount of income – a drawback likely to cause a tsunami at some point.

Next post: Some ways we can fix our Country.

Ancient Mariner

Metaphors I

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There are a number of metaphors that provide simple insight into the circumstances of the United States today. The mariner suggests three: tsunami, Germany in 1943, and progression analysis. Each metaphor has a slightly different cause and effect that can help understand American circumstances without using the political and economic debates followed by the media.

Most of us have seen the effect of a tsunami in the news or on one of the cable channels. The most recent tsunami is the giant wave caused by an earthquake under the North Pacific Ocean 80 miles East of Sendai, Honshu, Japan on March 11, 2011. The earthquake, 9.0 in magnitude, created a wave between twenty-three and forty feet high along the coast of Japan. The devastation was widespread, wiping out villages and a nuclear power plant.

The characteristic the mariner applies to the state of America is the behavior of the water as the wave moves to shore. An advance warning sign is a “drawback.” The tsunami draws water away from the shore and adds that volume to the wave; this drawback exposes a large expanse of shore bottom that ordinarily is underwater. Shortly thereafter, seconds to minutes later, the tsunami returns the drawback along with much more water, overrunning the shoreline bottom and crashing violently onto dry land.

The water is a metaphor for a fair and normal sharing of wealth. As the wealth is sucked from normal sharing, exposing evermore hardship to the general citizenry, the wave of wealth eventually collapses in an uncontrolled way. The collapse forms a shoreline much different from the times of previous sharing and fairness.

Consider the drawback and resulting crash to the Great Depression and, similarly, to the increasing drawback seen across the Country today. Both Government and the wealthy are running out of sources for maintaining the top-heavy wealth. The deep recession caused by the housing collapse is an example of a drawback still in progress. Many homeowners forfeited their home to foreclosure or had to sell homes at half the price they paid just eighteen months before. The missing value in all those homes was sucked into the banks and investment firms. The wealth remains there to this day. Not if, but when it collapses, there will be great thrashing about as the economy is forced to right itself. As in a tsunami, there will be casualties and there will be the burden of rebuilding the shoreline.

As long as the gap between the wealthy and the common citizen continues to grow, the Country is in a drawback stage.

 

The second metaphor is the state of society in Germany in 1943. As the momentum of the war swings away from the Germans toward the Allied Forces, the German society begins to deteriorate economically and morally. Inflation soars because of the incessant bombing that destroys factories, homes and food supply. Morality is reduced to hoarding, a rising appetite for pornography and illicit vices of every kind. The following quote is from     “Remembering the White Rose: German Assessments, 1943-1993″ by Professor Harold Marcuse:

“It took two full years before the utmost exertion of the Allies broke the physical and moral strictures and allowed a “new dawn” to emerge. Even the last-gasp attempt of military circles to assassinate Hitler and install a new government on 20 July 1944 met with dismal failure and found no echo in the German public sphere.”

The public remained silent and loyal to the existing culture and offered no public resistance to the failing conditions. There was a price for this attitude: one begins to live in the moment, sensing tomorrow may not come. One may develop an existential desire to experience the joys of life, no matter how decadent. It is a dark time in Germany. In an unnatural way, the Allied Forces did what a tsunami metaphor would do; the invasion ended quite abruptly a failed social culture. For the many of the readers that have seen the movie Cabaret, the opening scenes capture the atmosphere of German society at that time – if one were fortunate enough to have a job.

The metaphor taken from the German situation is that the citizenry accepted the current state of affairs even as they knew their society was failing. In the United States, even as the number of poor and underpaid continues to grow, and the citizen knows the government is crumbling, no resistance is offered to change the status quo.

The next post, Metaphors II, will focus on progression analysis.

Ancient Mariner

 

Economic Fairness and Economic Spirituality

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Life is not a free ride. Many would say life is not fair. Some will say life is not worth the experience. Some might wish that life would stand still. No matter one’s opinion about life, all of us are in the same lifeboat – a lifeboat whose keel is economics.

Lest the mariner becomes too philosophical, this post ponders two phenomena in life: the ability of fairness to sustain an economy and the ability of spirituality to survive in the economic world. “Fairness” is the act of making decisions with the intent of everyone having an equal share. “Spirituality” is awareness that all creation is of the same source, that existence is a shared phenomenon. This shared trait exists whether one is a theist or one is aware that all matter is related.

The word “pleonexia” is an old Greek word that means “a desire to have more than one’s share.” It appears that pleonexia is inherent in the human creature. Pleonexia is a two-headed beast. The first head is called self-interest; the second head is called unification. Self-interest represents selfishness, arrogance, deliberate unfairness, and disregard for others. On the other head, unification, it represents the need to survive, create, be secure, and experience achievement. Fairness is a balancing act between the two heads. When a person ceases to be concerned about unification, that is, a concern that there is unity and fairness among all parties, fairness must force the person to rebalance their pleonexia.

Given the definition laid out in the last paragraph, self-interest is a symptom of the state of affairs in the United States today. The word “United” no longer applies to the Union. An outspoken advocate of this idea is Joseph Stigler, who takes to task the one percent of the population that has more than its share and has no interest in unification. Stigler published a synopsis of his book ‘The Price of Inequality’ in the May 2012 edition of Vanity Fair. Visit the following website:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/05/joseph-stiglitz-the-price-on-inequality

Please read the article because it presents material quite relevant to this post.

How can fairness force a retreat from self-interest to a balance of self-interest in behalf of unity? Stigler suggests that sustained self-interest leads to economic failure. In this scenario everyone loses. Stigler suggests redistribution of excess through taxation. Increasing taxes certainly gives clout to fairness. Mentioning taxes obviously involves the government as a major factor for maintaining fairness. The plight of the citizen dealing with all the governments in the United States has been a lament of other posts and will not be pursued. One need only say the Government is not interested in fairness.

It is sensible that a democratic government plays the role of arbiter in many areas of the economy. The government must look after the supply-demand (GDP) relationship; the government must look after the affect of international economics; the government must balance the wealth of the nation to the benefit of all citizens. It is a fact that fairness has no force to balance the economy without the cooperation of government. Efforts of charitable nonprofit organizations to adjust fairness will never be robust enough to change the self-interest culture.

However, the government can only do so much. Like Hollywood movies, the government reflects culture. The citizenry – all the citizenry including the one percent – must have a culture that is empathetic about the commonality not only of all people but all things. Lacking this empathy, as the United States culture does today, fairness has no substance. Fairness is more than tweaking economic regulations. The government needs a citizenry that has spirituality. Without spirituality, it is difficult to care about education, global warming, those that are in financial need, equal rights under law, and it is impossible to have a sense of unity as a nation.

The American citizen, rich and poor, is too sophisticated to simply be greedy or simply be unmotivated. There must be a balance between the two heads – one does not work without the other. Pleonexia must be balanced.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

It is Your Turn to be the Government

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The readers have read the mariner’s criticisms through many posts. Our governments all, Federal, State, County, and Local need your help. The election season has arrived in many County and Local governments. How about running for the school board? County Supervisor? Mayor? Town Council? Most elective offices have lengthy procedures that must be followed if you want to be in an election. File for your ticket now.

Find out who your local, County, and State District party chairmen are; find out when the caucuses or monthly meetings are so you can attend. Become part of the process. You certainly cannot have a negative influence – the bar of competence is too low. Your ideas about decent government are needed. The small clique of party regulars has too much influence. That can be remedied with more party members attending.

If you are not interested in personal public leadership, your opinions are a powerful tool. Use any form of communication from mailed letters, social networks, or emails. You may feel as if you are one small voice against giant political machines. Actually, you are one of many communicating with elected officials. Our government officials may not do what you want them to do but it makes them aware that there are votes at stake that may at some point outweigh the influence of lobbyists.

Your participation is needed badly when populism is totally disregarded in favor of lobbyist financial influence. Recently, the Senate voted down a gun registration bill that was preferred by eighty to ninety percent of the nation. Whether this was good or bad in your opinion is irrelevant. The real danger to both sides is a runaway government.

Many economists and management theorists have said that a new paradigm cannot rise from within the old paradigm – it must begin on its own from outside the system. The nation needs a new paradigm that makes those we elect represent the voters when there is an obvious majority for a given issue.

The United States is managed by wealthy entrepreneurs and large corporations – not by citizens of the United States. This is a broken government. It is your turn to be the government. The mariner has no doubt you will do a better job.

your_vote_counts copy

Ancient Mariner

Modern Trends in Christianity – Part Two

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The last post mentioned that there are two themes that occupy the writers and speakers in current religious publishing. The first theme, a fresh look at the historical experience of Jesus, is addressed in the last post. Today the mariner will investigate the preoccupation with the Religious Right as a political movement and the concern expressed about the increasing secularism of most Christians.

The mariner investigated many conservative, evangelical and fundamentalist websites searching for a core dynamic that these movements can share. In general, the websites were territorial about minor interpretations or tenets. In short, the conservative side of Christianity does not have a cohesive doctrine.

These websites were true religious websites. Government politics representing the  conservative or “religious right” were of a different ilk and focused on public policy, party politics – salted with a collection of moral issues and a lot of character assassination. Neither set of websites had any concern for the circumstances of mainstream Christian practice.

The political religious websites were a mix of conservative Christian advocacy heavily dosed with public issues. If the reader watches the news at all, they will be familiar with these issues: guns; abortion; eliminate discretionary government programs (all of them from health care to school lunch programs, Head Start, PBS, Planned Parenthood, SNAP (food stamps and other assistance programs, unemployment insurance); any extension of regulations of any kind; a major cut in government services, more or less keeping the military, central treasury and only in about half the websites, income taxes.

It is obvious why serious religious writers are looking closely at the claim of religiosity in the religious right movement.

There is not room in this post to capture a great deal of Gospel scripture that counters the misanthropic politics of the religious right but just a few references will demonstrate the massive gap between the religious right movement and the Christian positions of Jesus:

The parable of the Good Samaritan

The two great commandments

“If you have fed them, you have fed me”

“You shall love God above all things” (even your family and your money).

This could go on for pages but this is enough to expose antithetical positions between Jesus and the religious right. The mariner’s favorite Gospel is Matthew. It is an easy read and will be very clear about the principles of Jesus, none of which associate with the religious right. As to the public issues like guns and abortion, there may be a moral point, legally or religiously, but the violent and uncaring attack in an effort to obliterate these issues easily dismisses any moral intent.

What obfuscates the study of the religious right is the Tea Parties (there is more than one). Tea Party members are in the same room as the religious right because both groups are conservative. A closer look, sometimes, can determine a Tea Party person because of the absence of religious morality in their rhetoric. To the right of the Tea Party and to the left of the religious right is the libertarian – a cross breed of conservative government minimalism with a progressive approach to anything that pokes into one’s personal freedom.

Mix these three groups with the professional Republicans in the House of Representatives and it is no wonder that Speaker Boehner has no control over irrational legislation.

Ideologically, the right wing groups are noisy and disruptive but a minority incapable of streamlined organization that can overtake the middle of American religious culture. After doing this research, the mariner felt the most bothersome aspect of it all was the solidarity of the right behind the two-headed coin of nationalism and autocracy. New Testament Christianity is not to be seen.

A broader issue on religious book lists is the invasion of secularism into the religious practices of mainstream denominations. The mariner has written about this subject in other posts. (See Following Jesus Around, Is Christianity Still Christianity? Evolution of Faith, and Who is God?) Lest the mariner’s evaluation of the religious right makes the mainstream Christian self-righteous, secularism has decayed the organized church more than termites can destroy a rotten log.

It may be a good idea for every Christian to read the Gospel Matthew then ask one’s self, by sitting in a pew on Sunday, am I praying in public as the Pharisees did? If I skipped the church service and went into the poorest neighborhood to do what I could to make a life better, would Jesus skip the service and come with me?

Secularism is a failed pew-based culture. Mainstream Christians need to get their hands dirty doing God’s work as Jesus instructed. Find God’s grace through another person’s life – not your own.

Ancient Mariner

Modern Trends in Christianity

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Religious historians, theologians and ministers have been unusually busy in the past couple of years. Religious books, magazine articles, television interviews, and sermons have investigated Jesus in terms of what historians have recently learned about the time of Jesus. New insights have been gained about the cultural conflict between the Romans and the Israelites, the class system that was in place in Israel at the time of Jesus – in other words, what was society like during the time of the ministry of Jesus and what role did he play as a man living in this society?

Religious writers also have focused on the failure of modern Christians to adhere to the mission Jesus commands of us. The targets of these writers are the selective policies of the religious right and Christian believers generally; there is heightened interest in this cultural phenomenon because American culture has an increasingly harsh class system just as Jesus experienced during his ministry. Further, while not a military occupation, the nation is run by the wealthy rather than the citizens – again, something that confronted Jesus during his life and ministry. Finally, there is an apocalyptic undertone in the United States and other countries as social, political, religious and global experiences approach a point of chaos.

It is the growing similarity between the times of Jesus and our times today that provides energy for this new wave of religious introspection. Jesus and his message have been revisited many times in history. The power of Jesus’ life and faith must be reinterpreted to relate to the changes that occur in society. Otherwise, his divine insights lose their meaning.

A good example among writers examining the role of Jesus historically is ‘Zealot,’ by Reza Aslan, a respected religious writer.  This book, just published, has received good reviews. In his book, Aslan highlights the aspect of Jesus as an activist who fought the abuses of the Romans and the rigid, self-righteous class system that existed among the Jews themselves. Large numbers of the population were despised, oppressed, and powerless. Jesus behaved as a zealot, fighting the injustices openly and without regard for his own safety.

Aslan’s book clarifies the context of the role Jesus played in a time of chaos. Knowing that Jesus was zealous and defending the discarded people of Israel speaks to us today with more substance and a better understanding of the Gospel message. For example, in those passages of the Gospels where the Pharisees visit Jesus, these are not intellectual discussions. They are confrontations by Judean authorities who did not approve of his work and his belief in love as the primary force among human beings. This belief in love disregarded the religious, political and military rule that controlled Israel at that time. “The first shall be last and the last shall be first” evokes more pathos for Jesus and the literal, human meaning of his words when we understand his visible and outspoken rebellion against an unfair society. As Jesus grew more popular, his life was increasingly at risk.

We can relate to this role in modern times. To mention a few: Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Frederick Douglass, Nelson Mandela. What these names have in common with Jesus (though there is no intent to consider them equal to Jesus) is that they were zealots fighting against injustice for the displaced and oppressed people of their times.

The added disregard for the Jewish view of history, God, and the Old Testament rule fueled the flames of the authorities even more. Jesus brought to Earth a loving God, who did not judge, who did not control social history, and who bestowed divine importance equally on every human being – the first shall be last and the last shall be first.

The next post will discuss the focus on the forgotten message of the Gospels by today’s political and social environment.

Ancient Mariner

Our Duty to Know

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The mariner reported recently that only 42 percent of people polled knew about the existence of ObamaCare (Health Care Reform and The Affordable Care Act). One would think with the saturation of news stations, newspapers, magazines, and the political party battles, the percentage would be a lot higher. A citizen must cast the log from their own eye before they cast the forest out of the eye of Congress.

Our culture is changing ever faster in every respect. Money flies across the internet within seconds; within a decade plastic cards will eliminate paper money as the common format for financial transactions. Technology alters our daily habits. One simple example is the telephone. The mariner’s parents had one telephone from 1949 to 1963 then had to update their model when tone dialing replaced the clicking noises of the round dial telephone. In recent years, the telephone has changed not only its appearance and technology; it is changing every six months. It barely can be called a telephone as Internet technology has made it a toy, a movie theater, a television, a teletype machine and provides banking and retail services – oh, and voice communication.

The telephone is just one example of how our view of the world has changed and how we communicate – who would have thought that the U.S. Postal Service would become an anachronism? The mariner has mentioned in other posts the disappearance of privacy – a subtle but very important element of personal freedom.

Our duty to know goes beyond everyday habits. The advances in medicine and science will change the definition of what life means, how long we will live, what our medical policy for patient care will be in the future, even how we apply religion and faith to our behavior. Great moral issues will be tested as medicine extends the actuary tables beyond the age of 100; Social Security, Welfare and virtually all the laws, regulations and expectations associated with the human condition must change dramatically. This change is at our doorstep and modifies our financial security as we grow older.

Science has left us in the dust as it redefines reality, how the Earth works, and what the role of technology will be in our society when computers and robots are as aware as we are and can think faster, and immediately understand emotions as a cause and effect phenomenon.

Then there is the whole issue of government in the grips of immoral forces that want to shut out those who need the government for survival: virtually all elected officials are in government to get rich, not to serve the democratic principles of a once great nation.

The point is this: Each of us, for our own wellbeing, must read more, listen more, and think more critically about our culture. It used to be one would go to school for a while, learn a trade or business, and spend our middle and later years becoming more experienced and skilled at the trade we learned when we were younger and at some point retire to a relatively comfortable lifestyle. This is no longer true. What we learned in school and in our early adult years lose value quickly. More and more workers are discovering that financial life ends at fifty – with medicine providing another fifty years of life with marginal income.

For our own survival, it is our duty to know what is happening around us in government, education, banking, earth sciences, medicine and our own security in what is a very volatile oligarchy.

Ancient Mariner

The Affordable Care Act (Obama Care)

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While we are focused on battles that take on the oligarchy, Obama Care is less a battlefield than a front line similar to the Maginot line between France and Germany during the Second World War. The health industry is a huge industry, perhaps a profit hungry octopus reaching into insurance, manufacturing, health care (shaped around profitability rather than health), pharmaceuticals, State health programs (mostly a battle over sharing costs), and the idea that under the present circumstances, that is, without a single payer solution, the cost of covering more people will be borne by each citizen through increased ‘taxes’ or premiums.

The following website is the official White House fact sheet. There are so many websites citing pro and con positions that the reader will have no difficulty finding information about the Affordable Care Act.

 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/healthreform/myths-and-facts

 

The following states have filed lawsuits against the Federal Government in spite of the fact that the Supreme Court upheld the key component (a mandatory health tax). These lawsuits are supported by the many arms of the octopus.

Alabama

Alaska

Arizona

Colorado

Florida

Georgia

Idaho

Indiana

Kansas

Louisiana

Maine

Michigan

Mississippi

Nebraska

Nevada

North Dakota

Ohio

Oklahoma

Pennsylvania

South Carolina

South Dakota

Texas

Utah

Virginia

Washington

Wisconsin

Wyoming

Other states, like Iowa for instance, are inventing creative alternatives that virtually ignore the Affordable Care Act but, in fact, are financial failures.

Of all the statistics the mariner reviewed, the scariest one is that forty-two percent of Americans do not know Obama Care exists. In another post, he referenced the Stepford citizens we meet when we take the trash to the curb. This is evidence. It is no wonder there is not a balanced debate about any issue. Combined with unfair voting practices, crooked gerrymandering, and hidden legislative agendas, it is a wonder all of us do not live in homeless shelters.

The best weapon for restoring America’s balance is an educated voter.

Ancient Mariner

Hegemony/Oligarchy

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Some offline responses suggest that the word ‘hegemony’ may relate more to international relationships like the Imperialist Age of Great Britain at the height of its colonialism. The mariner is always willing to improve communication so the word ‘hegemony’ is replaced by the word ‘oligarchy’. As defined in the dictionary and Wikipedia, oligarchy means “governed by the few”; the second definition in the dictionary says, “a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.

Under the definition of oligarchy, a subtopic in Wikipedia referenced the term “Crony Capitalism”, a term describing an economy in which success in business depends on close relationships between business people and government officials. It may be exhibited by favoritism in the distribution of legal permits, government grants, special tax breaks, etc.

Therefore, ‘oligarchy’ is the issue at hand. Still, all the posts previously written about this topic apply both as the subject and as the practices that confront the citizen today. Just swap the word hegemony for oligarchy.

The Agriculture Appropriations Bill was discussed recently as a sample battlefield where future failure and success are at risk. Another kind of battlefield is the appointment of judges not only at the Federal level but in State courts as well. A recent report said that there are eighty-eight vacancies in the Federal Court system. One Senator can hold up consent. Obviously, this is another battleground for the future failure or success of the United States. Judges hang around a long time; therefore, their ideology will have a long term impact. The Supreme Court is the extreme example. The mariner once mentioned term limits to assure government officials were young enough to understand the current culture. Unfortunately, Federal and Supreme Court judges are not subject to term limits.

Dealing with a top-down Federal oligarchy is too expensive and too large to introduce reform. The mariner has written in the past that State citizens have a better opportunity at the State level to begin reforming the unbalanced economic structure. The mariner suggests strongly that State citizens should participate in State and County political party activities to prevent a small number of cronies from sustaining the status quo. Attend monthly meetings. Meet your State and county representatives personally and have a conversation. Discover who the power brokers are. Use your post office, email, Tweet and Facebook accounts to communicate your opinion.

Ancient Mariner