It’s difficult for a person to look closely at all the ways they’ve
changed. When I look back, everything looks different. I see a person
so alien to me that I cannot comprehend his thought processes but then
at the same time I feel as if I am still him and some alien has jumped
into my skin and is perverting the way in which I think now and
blocking off my true self.

Well whatever. It is in fact far easier to look instead at the ways in
which you have stayed the same: the things you believe that you have
always believed and which you hope you will always believe so long as
you do draw breathe.

There are many such things that I still believe but most of those
are trivial obvious things that most anyone would say they believe in
and hope to always believe in. For example a belief in family or a
belief in freedom or the right of peoples to live in peace, etc. etc.

But is there anything of that sort that I can cling to as defining? A
belief that is if not unique to me at least rather uncommon and which
distinguishes me from the randomness of the crowd. Is there a belief
that I have forged because of the experiences that are unique to my
life? Is there a belief that more heavily influences my actions and
decisions than it does anyone else who professes to hold it? Is there a
belief that if all else were stripped away from me would still enable
me to say that I am still myself and still uniquely me?

Well I have identified two beliefs that could be candidates for such an
essential life’s philosophy. I identified them by simple trial and
error. I look back at all the convictions I’ve held and all of the ones
that I have modified and altered and shifted or forgotten or given or
just haven’t seemed that important to me of late. I take all of those
out and see what of that which remains still drives me and then weigh
how much it matters to me still.

One of those two beliefs I am finding difficulty putting into a set of
coherent words. So I’ll just set that aside to write about another day.
It has to do with the importance of narratives and stories, the
relevance of characters and the profound truthfulness of  experiencing
that which conveys the kinship between sentient beings.  But that’s all
vague and incoherent so I’ll set it aside until I can get to the bottom
of it and see if there really is a simple to state guiding principle in
that mess that I can say that I believe in.

The other is much easier to state if only because philosophers have
stated it and argued about it for centuries. It is what I have come to
think of as the principle of rational intentions.  i state it as this:

Whenever anyone acts they do so because they believe in their actions.
They think that their choices are for the better and they act because
they are trying to the best of their ability to ensure the persistence
of some good or bring about some greater good.

I’ve had discussions about this principle with lots of people and I’ve
discovered that virtually no one believes it. Most everyone thinks that
there are “evil” people out there who are not deluded or foolish or
ignorant or unknowing but simply evil. That is, that there are people
who, knowing full well that their actions will lead to harm or could
result in a situation that is vastly worse for everyone will still
choose to engage in those actions in exchange for some small immediate
benefit or some personal gain or simply because they take some pleasure
in seeing the evil consequences of their acts.

I don’t believe that.  Why don’t I believe that?  There are a lot of
reasons but foremost among them is the simple fact that without the
principle of rational intentions I simply do not comprehend how any
living being can hope to come to an understanding with any other. There
can’t be compromises, there can’t be solidarity of purpose, and there
can’t even be coherent argument, if you can’t believe that the parties
involved can work first upon an agreement of what is to be considered
the best outcome and then toward an agreement upon what actions will
best lead to the realization of that outcome.

But if the world consists of some subset of irrational incoherent
automoton-like beings who act on pure whim and selfishness and others
who in fact do act in accordance with what they believe is right and
you can’t tell which is which, how can you ever really interact with
anyone? Not only could any interaction be based on a farce because the
other being is not just lying to you but in fact fundamentally
internally contradictory to itself. The words it is saying might as
well be random as you cannot infer from them his motives or desires.
How can you ever hope to understand anything non-trivial about your
people in such a world? It’d be like knowing that half of your test
subjects are returning bad essentially random results but not being
able to determine which ones are which.

That’s just too terrifying a possibility for me to believe in. I truly
do believe that we are all in some core ways similar and one of the
most important points of similarity I believe is that we are all
basically the same kinds of creatures in terms of how our reasoning
faculty enables us to make choices. We choose to act because we think
that our actions are what we should in fact do as opposed to some set
of actions that we should not do.

So why then is there so much confusion and deceit and lies and cruelty
and suffering in the world? Why don’t we generally come to much the
same reasonable conclusions about what is right and then act to bring
it about? Well that’s something I can’t be entirely sure of, but I
think it has a lot to do with other simple aspects of the human
existence like ego and pride and fear and self doubt. I also think it
has a lot to do with our lack of omniscience, the fact that we often
can’t see all of the consequences of our actions and the fac that it is
so often so easy not to bother to try and look at what the consequences
of our actions are. Wishful thinking is always easier than careful
thinking.

But I feel that it is very valuable to keep in mind the idea that we
are all at least to this small degree similar and not just in genetic
code. We all are on a very basic level the same kinds of thinking
machines even when we seem the most alien to one another. I think that
with that attitiude in mind we can reach agreements with one another,
we can teach and learn from one another, and  we can ultimately move
toward a better future together. I think that’s a lot better than
assuming that everyone who does not see the things that you perceive
that you “know” to be good and right is an evil being who beyond being
reasoned with and so must simply be discredited, ignored, and or
destroyed. Unfortunately these days this is the more common way of
thinking.

End of the world talk is getting pretty common. In one book I read (hint I mentioned it before) starts off by noting that human beings have been around for perhaps 100,000 years and that the average life expectancy of a species is about 100,000 years.  Another book I just started, the Long Emergency asserts that we are very much unlikely to ever replace the carbon based economy with one of renewable energy. His predictions just get darker from there. And those are just a couple of recent books I’ve been reading. The idea that our time is limited and that the risks for us are greater than they’ve ever been before is common in the media. You basically can’t avoid it. There is definitely a sense in which people feel that a lot is happening and that we stand upon the edge of a precipice. Perhaps fifty years from now we’ll all look back and laugh at our fearfulness and happily enjoy our symbiosis with nature and our world wide peace. That’s unlikely to the point of absurdity but who knows. The best likely case is that after fifty years we’ll be in a situation pretty similar to how we are now, still very fearful, some key things having improved (thankfully preventing our annihilation) but some things having also gotten worse and still uncertain whether humanity will survive the next century. I suspect this kind of tension is draining and wearying for people. It’s hard to live in constant uncertainty and terror. It’s dangerous. We certainly need to move toward a world where we can persist without the constant fear of what happens next. It’s just that the path to get there is very rocky indeed.

The other day on the radio I heard an interview with a famous Christian leader who believed totally that we are living in the end times, the time of revelations. This was a fascinating interview not because the speaker believed the world was about to end. How many times have we heard that throughout history? No, it was fascinating because the speaker took this to influence policy. He believed that that there were certain choices governments and people need to make to be in accordance with the words of the Bible. In other words he thought we had to make choices that God would approve of based on the words of the Bible and he was willing to try to influence foreign policy in order to get our nation to act in that manner.

Now here’s the thing. I’ve got no problem with someone believing in the Bible or believing the world will end. I’m not too confident of our future myself. But what bothers me a great deal is this attitude that you have to make choices in accordance with these written words rather than in accordance with your own reasoning. I could never accept that idea. If we were to determine that a certain course of action in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict were the one we believed to be the best chance for peace, and happiness and to ensure the people do not suffer and can live content fulfilled lives, and you try to argue that we can’t do that, or that it has to be wrong because the words in the Bible say otherwise, I’d say you’ve gotta be kidding me.

Perhaps the Bible is true. Perhaps our very best guess as to what is right really is the thing that God will judge us harshly for having done or not done.  I say so what. You have to do what’s right. First and foremost to the best of your ability to judge the right. And then when the time comes if there is a God I believe you should look Him in the eye and tell Him you did what you believed was right. And if that means judgement and condemnation and fire and brimstone so be it.  You do what you think is right first, and take responsibility face the consequences if you are wrong. I believe, that’s what being moral is all about. And I believe governments and people have to behave morally first, not, necessarily,  according to divine scripture. I don’t believe anyone should be more on the side of  the words of prophecy  than they are on the side of real people and real facts and honest analysis and truth. You have to be a part of humanity and you have to do everything you can to help humanity to the best of your ability.

You see that’s the thing about the end of the world. If you see it or suspect it or fear it coming sometimes there is an inclination to become despondent, sometimes this grotesquely manifests into a desire to even try to help hasten the end.  This is just wrong though. No matter how stark your vision or how sure you are of what is to pass, I believe you have a moral obligation to try and ensure our survival. I believe that you simply must do all that is in your power to stave off whatever impending destruction you see coming or ensure that a part of our species survives it if it cannot be stopped. This is your obligation even if you think that it is inevitable, prophecized, or simply impossible to prevent. If you don’t want to help you should just get out now and let people who still have the courage to believe struggle for their survival. We just can’t afford to simply give up.

This here makes me want to move to Lafayette, LA. I highly recommend it. 

There are some aspects of this work that I think are oversimplified but overall
it is quite good.

One of the most interesting aspects of this piece is how it
links the decline of local broadcasting and the consolidation of big media with
the attack on network neutrality. They are intrinsically linked but people
rarely talk about them together. You’ll find people who hate the growth of big
media but are very much willing to attack network neutrality.  This is a
sad thing, since undoubtedly no network neutrality regulation would only mean
far more powerful and influential groups controlling our access to information.

And of course if network neutrality disappears, much like media consolidation,
we won’t see the negative effets right away. It will happen swiftly but we
won’t start to notice it until a few years down the road we look back and
notice how vastly different our access to information is, how restricted we are
and how weakened we are. We’ll see that just as the decline of independence in
media outlets lead to a decrease in the coherence of the democratic process so
too will a decline in network neutrality ultimately lead to a weakening of the
capacity of the ordinary human being to contribute to their society.

 

Of course no one will set out to make this come to pass.
Rarely do people set out to destroy freedom and attack democracy, at least not
unless they think there is some greater good they are serving by doing so. The
problem is that the telecomm companies will try to be good citizens, try to be
fair, but above all they’ll try first and foremost to make their maximal
profit. Network neutrality institutionalizes fairplay and equal playing field.
A lack of network neutrality will institutionalize the idea that it is ok to
charge on as many levels as you please in order to build a faster network.

 

The cynicism though is the thing that strikes me the most.
Industries that have been given virtually every possible advantage of
regulation historically are now complaining about the persistence of a
relatively weak regulation that has existed for years without them having any
problem with it. They say they don’t like it because they can’t afford a faster
network without it. The question to ask is of course why can’t you afford it?
How many tax breaks and subsidies do they need? How big of a monopoly do they
need? Why can 16 other countries afford a faster internet than we have here
with good competition and a thriving marketplace? Why are many of them much
faster than we are?

 

But of course the second great irony is that, even if they
can’t afford it, no one is saying they can’t set a price that would enable them
to afford it.  No one is saying they
can’t charge as much as they please for broadband access. By the bit or by the
hour or monthly or by whatever means they please consistent with standard laws.
What the network neutrality debate is about not allowing companies to charge
for the content as well as the access. It’s about now allowing companies to
charge the internal aspect of the network, ie to make certain content cheaper
or more expensive, slower or faster hence privileging certain information and
applications over others.  This is
harmful because it hurts individual capacity to enact new content or create new
applications that can compete on the same playing field as those already
established applications. 

 

Believe it or not, not all big companies are always evil. This
is one case where companies like Google and Microsoft are absolutely right and
deserve our praise. Although to be sure that they are probably doing it because
of the simple dynamics of power. In this case, more power for telecomm
companies means less for them. But to be sure, we would benefit far more from
their successful campaign then the big companies would. The simple ability to
share on “equal” footing with other established sources can provide a mechanism
for spreading truth effectively, for popular movements to gather followers, for
innovation to lead to social mobility and advancement, and for the spread of
creative expression. It’s really just good all the way around.

 

Of course you won’t even notice should the fight to preserve
network neutrality be successful. Because really all it means is preserving the
way things have been for many years now. The only difference in the future will
be more and better technology enhancing the already considerable benefits of an
internet enabled world.

 

Oh and a lot of people who argue against network neutrality
will say something along the lines of “network neutrality is a complex issue”
They then invariably tend to deceive people by ironically oversimplifying the
issue. E.g. they try to equate charging more for a 3MB access than for a dialup
connection with the kind of anti-network neutrality practices being proposed.
Or alternatively they argue some nonsense about how much backbones cost and
internet servers and the likes. The problem with these arguments of course is
that although the fair pricing of these things might be important points of discussion,
they have nothing to do with network neutrality. Network neutrality is about
the cost of the services being provided over the network, the cost to provide a
type of content on the network, not the price to access the network at all. Anyway
if anyone feels this is really too complex an issue to understand, they can
always read the works of Lawrence Lessig who explains the matter quite well.
You can go here if you’d like.

Always always always watch out if you hear someone give the
argument “regulation often stifles innovation and destroys creativity” if they
don’t provide any argument for how this particular regulation stifles
innovations and destroys creativity. You’d think that’d be the key to their
argument wouldn’t you? But most of the time they don’t bother to spell out a
picture because it’s far easier just to create the specter of lost innovation
than to prove that it is happening. 

And watch out, particularly, if they are arguing in fact not
for the avoidance of new regulation but for deregulation in an area that has
been thriving under existing regulations. You wouldn’t realize is from much of
the commentary but the network neutrality debate is actually a case where entities
are advocating and succeeding in de-regulating an area that was previously
loosely regulated. 

Now the real solution to the “network neutrality” is for
more government involvement. If we can survive the coming political turmoil,
economic and environmental disasters, it will be absolutely essential to our
continued freedom and growth and competitiveness thereafter to have a true
super high speed internet available to every living being who chooses to use
it.  Such a network, if it can be made to
come to be sooner may even help us to survive some coming dangers. 

So, obviously the government needs to get involved and do
whatever it takes to ensure that the network gets built but also preserves the
fundamental principles that thus far have been effective to ensuring an
effective free internet. Whether that means threatening or coercing existing
companies, or bribing them with massive subsidies and tax breaks, or supporting
other smaller companies and newer startups to encourage competition, or taking
it into their own hands and building the networks themselves or whatever the
government should do whatever it takes to ensure that we move forward. It
should be up to the telecomm companies to work with the government honestly so
that they can try to preserve their pre-eminent status amongst providers to the
public.  Perhaps it really is very
difficult for these companies to establish broadband throughout this country.
Maybe there are barriers I don’t know about. If so the government needs to work
with them to remove those barriers rather than simply just letting them change
the very manner in which the network works and then hoping that that will be
sufficient to get them to really implement the networks we need.

And who knows, perhaps, over the long run after we have 100
times faster network connection or even faster everywhere then we might
actually notice some kind of weakness in the network neutrality scheme that
limits innovation and weakens progress. I find that hard to imagine since the internet
has been so ridiculously successful so far even when it had far less capacity
and thus was de facto already quite cluttered with people trying to push their
ascii images over obsolete wires.  But
even so, if that unexpectedly becomes the case then we should rethink network neutrality and
perhaps weaken or abolish it.  That time may come to pass, but it certainly is not now.

There are many arguments that I hear frequently that anger
me but one in particular I heard recently is really driving me mad.  The argument goes that we should get out of Iraq
to send a message to the Iraqi people that they need to stand up and take care of
themselves, to stop sitting on the sidelines and take responsibility for their
own future.

I know not what kind of opinion polling and studies lead to
this argument reaching the forefront of American politics but I truly wish the
argument would be shut away back into the netherworld of immensely stupid ideas
from whence it came. 

The argument is quite simply grotesque. The arrogant,
condescending, paternalistic tone of such a statement is so utterly apparent
that I cannot conceive of the degree of self delusion that one must undertake
in order to honestly hold this belief and look anyone living through the horror
of Iraq in the
face. The Iraqi people aren’t trying hard enough? We invaded their country on a
poor pathetic pretense, assaulted their people, tortured their people, botched
the reconstruction effort and allowed their country to slide into chaos and
virtual civil war and we’re going to say that it’s all *their* fault? Because
they aren’t trying hard enough? That if we just go away and let them be, then
of course things will get better because they’ll have no choice but to try
harder? No. That’s delusional thinking. It’s the thinking that can only come
from a people who have never experienced suffering on the scale of that which
the Iraqi people are facing. It’s like pretending that the problems in Iraq
are equivalent to children goofing off and not doing their homework rather than
a situation where people’s entire families are being slaughtered and live in
fear of a painful terrible death every day.

This is much the same as the arguments against welfare.  You know the arguments. The ones that say
that people are only poor because they don’t get off their lazy butts and do
something. It completely ignores the well documents and carefully studied realities
of poverty.  Apparently we’ve now turned
to the belief that the Iraqi people need to “pull themselves up by their
bootstraps” just like we good Americans have. Give me a break. 

Now, don’t get me wrong. I do think there probably are good
reasons to draw down troops in Iraq
(there are also good reasons to stay which is why it’s such a hard problem).
Occupation rarely leads to peace and often does serve as a spark that
continuously lights the fire of rebelliousness and chaos throughout the
country. In particular, many in Iraq
may never believe in or put their support behind any government formed in Iraq
under the oversight of American officials. 
The government that is created needs to be independent and the Iraqi
people have to actually believe that it is independent. 

And you know, maybe that’s the argument that people are
really trying to make when they make these statements. But if so, their
formulation is god awful. It’s simply a terrible thing to suggest that
extraordinary suffering that can be directly traced to our intervention only
persists because of Iraqi negligence.

    Last Saturday I was driving down the street at 4 am, going to my
job to fix a problem that I could not fix at home due to newly
implemented security measures. I am so glad I had to go to work that
Saturday!  You see had I not I would never have heard the BBC news
program during which I learned a little something about Iran-US
historical relations that is simply never discussed in the US media and
is rather hard to find.

    You see in this story they mentioned a letter written by Iranian
officials to the US in May of 2003. This letter was written prior to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s
presidency, but after the Axis of Evil speech and after the build up to
war in Iraq.  The letter is quite simply astounding. In it, the Iranian
leadership was willing to put everything the US had ever asked for on
the table. They were willing to completely open their nuclear program,
help assist in the reconstruction of Iraq, help disarm Hezbollah, and
end all support of Palestinian militant groups. To put it another way,
they were totally willing to start negotiations were in they were fully
willing to give in to absolutely everything that the US had ever asked
of it and more besides.

    Why did they want to do this? What did they want? The answer is
even more shocking than what they were willing to give up. You see
their primary demand according to this article was simply to not be
considered a part of the Axis of Evil. In other words they wanted the
US stop being so hostile toward them and not to attack them. They
wanted to be, if not our allies, at least not direct enemies. They
wanted to be treated by the US like any other state, rather than be
thought of as some fringe fanatical regime of the likes of Saddam
Hussein and Kim Jong-il.

    How did we respond? According to the story, we sent a message
lecturing Iran for sending us letters like this. Basically we
completely rebuffed it. We weren’t willing to even seriously respond to
any of the content of the letter let alone acknowledge its existence.
It should be no surprise at all really that after that the Iranians
changed their tune.

    What strikes me the most about this story is that I had never heard
it before. I still haven’t heard any mention of it outside of that
single broadcast. This makes no sense. Whether you think the Iranians
were serious about this offer or not and whether you believe that we
are justified in taking a hard line approach to Iran or not, this is
hardly an “irrelevant detail” to be ignored.  There is simply no
rational justification for simply ignoring this letter.  The
possibilities it could have opened are extraordinary. Perhaps they
would not have panned out but there can be no doubt that would have
been in a stronger diplomatic position than we are in now had we
pursued peaceful negotiations with Iran at that particular moment in
history wherein Iran was at a turning point and the US was at its most
influential. Now things are different, Iran holds many more cards and
we are being weighed down by the burden of Iraq.

     This has made me doubt even more the regularly asserted theory
that Iran is “evil” and lead by a mad totalitarian Hitler-like
religious leader who hates all Americans and Jews. Everything as always
is far more complex than that. Iranian has moderates and extremists
like everywhere else. Iran has reasonable, rational thinkers like
everywhere else. Iranians can learn about the world and form coherent
decisions based on facts and reason just like everybody else. There’s
no reason to believe they are evil. Not when you consider that 60,000
Iranians help a moment of silence for the dead of 9/11, and many more
took to the streets in candlelight vigil for the same event, and also
not when the Iranian government assisted us in our war against the
Taleban in Afghanistan. And also not when great strides in human rights, literacy, and education have been made in that country over the last twenty years. One wonders when taken as a whole what
exactly must governments like Iran’s do in order to be counted amongst
the good guys? Are they destined to forever be evil? OR must they give
up all of their independence and grovel at the feet of the US before we
will acknowledge them? If there is something they can do and which we
will accept as adequate  we really do need to make it very clear to
them what it is and how to go about doing it and then we have to stick
with it and reward any action that moves them closer to the ends we
desire. At least that way another opportunity like the one that passed
when this letter was transported to us is less likely to slip through our fingers.

    The great irony perhaps is that actions like the ignoring of this
letter and many other insults and rebuffs of a like kind may have or
ultimately will create an enemy truly worthy of our disregard. There
are more anti-US elements in power in Iran now post-letter rebuffing
than there was before. The utter failure of the moderate approach was
justification for the extreme approach. The louder we yell and the more
frequently we refuse to listen or treat them seriously the more they’ll
get their back up, the more angry they’ll become and the more likely
they’ll be to hate us and refuse to do anything that is even remotely
in our interest. This is not a stable situation.
 
    And we the people are kept totally ignorant of these realities.
Unless we stumble upon them, as I did, we lack the basic facts needed
to formulate the context through which we can form rational opinions.
Instead we are told to hold simple views of Iran as “evil” and the US
as “good” without any need of knowing any more.

There has to be a better system than this.

Watch this video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4449532225517541673&q=lester+brown

We  look at all the things that people do from day to
day, the things they produce, the services  they provide and then we add
em up and produce a number so that we can do math on it, basically.

Not all human activity is created equal. But luckily our number is built in
relative to individual opinions of what the value of that activity is of
course. If a good or service is worth more to people then they will pay more
for it and so it will contribute more to our good old magic number.

But we know opinions can be flawed. We know money can be wasted. We know very
well that a person can be manipulated into seeing more value in a good or
service than they would otherwise have felt and ironically as a consequent
people pay lots of money into goods and services whose sole purpose is to enact
that deceipt, to get people to expend wealth on things that are not as valuable
to them as they think they are during the one irrational moment when they make
the choice. This too contributes to the number. 

If we were to wonder at the age old question of why we are
here, now, in this place at this time very few of us would ultimately come up
with the answer: “to convince other people to buy junk” so we can say at least
on one level there are certain contributors to the equation that have a sort of
lesser order of significance than others in the context of the greater human
endeavor.

But individuals are taught, no demanded of to think only of
“their own happiness”. The story is you carve out some niche place in the
world, go on doing whatever you feel like for a living day in and day out,
spend time with your family, go on vacations, have fun when you can, enjoy your
work as best you can (if not what you are doing, at least enjoy the people with
whom you are doing it and your own ability to excel in it) and so on. Also, you
can do good things for your friends and family and maybe a charity or two in
your spare time. A Christmas gift. A birthday present. A donation for relief to
victims of a Tsunami or Hurricane. And so on. 

And then you have children. Raise them as best you can. Help
them be as good a people as they can be. Create an environment as best you can
that is as pleasant as possible for them. And teach them, also, to go about
their lives striving only as far as their inherent limitations and the
boundaries of the system in which they live. Most of all hope they are happy.

Then you get old and you retire and mostly just try to get
out of everybody’s way. Try to make the people you know’s life happier when you
can and not cause them any hardship when you can’t. And then you die.

Under this system, it is even entirely possible to do a
life’s work that is actually net harmful to the system and the world and still
feel entirely good about your own life and feel completed as a human being. All
you need to do is to ensure that your life’s work enables you to live happily,
have children, do good things in your spare time, be a conscientious citizen
and then get sufficiently out of the way in the end.  But your *job* could be drug dealing or
working for a fictitious company, or working for a company that is destroying
the environment for future generation or any number of a hundred things
provided no one realizes the harm or the harm though known can be sufficiently
hidden from the mind so that we might go about our daily lives without having
it plague us. Even if your life’s work does not result in net harm, it is
certainly possible that you can live your life without doing very much
measurable good at all really. For example you could work for a telemarketing
firm. And you needn’t worry, your work will still contribute to the global
magic numbers, and politicians will still use that conclusion to say to other
politicians their nation is better than another. 

One wonders where such a system came from. IF we think,
purely abstractly, of what is the purpose of *human* existence and what is the
value of *human* activity we do not conclude that   We
conclude that if humanity is to mean anything it minimally must be concerned
with its continued survival. More to the point we care about a lot more than
that. We care about growing as a species, getting broader and deeper and
learning more and creating great works and wondrous works and accomplishing
extraordinary things and expanding our civilization above and beyond our
wildest hopes and dreams. When we think abstractly about why we are here we
never come up with a real answer but we do fairly quickly settle upon the
things that we want to achieve and what we would like to be our future as a
species. It isn’t persistent perpetuation in random drudgery provided we are
all sufficiently “happy”. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I
think we want the happiness and the peace too.  It’s just that we all want the stories on top
of that . We want to be able to tell our children and grandchildren about the
great things our species has done and we want to see our children and grand children
do extraordinary things. We want to die knowing that humanity will prosper and
grow and that the universe will never forget that there was once a species dwelling
upon a little planet called Earth striving to become.

To these ends though, you’d think all human endeavor would
be focused upon building the human experience. Growing it. Making it  greater. Instead of not caring when people
choose life’s works that serve no purpose or do harm, we would do all that we can
to get as many people as we can choosing to create goods and engage in services
that contribute to humanity and that make us better. Rather than trying to
create a passive controllable populace willing and able to do only just enough
to get by and survive, we would strive to harness all of the human potential
and push it toward maximal greatness. We would thrive to ensure that we all
grow and learn and achieve and live lives that are not just pleasant but filled
with a feeling of fulfillment because we know that are actions have contributed
to something bigger and greater than ourselves. Humanity’s potential. 

So whenever I hear about economic magic numbers I always
wonder, how valuable is that money we are referring to? How well is it being
spent? Are our goods and services pointless wastes of human energy or are they
meaningful contributors to the greatness of our species?  And I wonder, always, how far can we go, how
much can we achieve if we focus all of human will and all of human commitment
together to the ends of improving our species? With all of the people and all
of the potential in the world I strongly believe that the possibilities far
exceed our wildest imaginations.

If we are to make our existence great and our existence
worthy of remembrance we must become serious about making our mission as a
people to be the human endeavor itself. If we can do that we may even be able
to save our species from ourselves.

It just so happens that I have terrible eyesight. This has been the
case all my life. Both my parents have poor eyesight but I suspect
neither had as poor eyesight when they were my age as I did five years
ago. And, judging from the thickness of our relative glasses, my eyes
are worse than my siblings as well.

I usually don’t think about the implications of that much or the causes
as it’s largely irrelevant. I get along just fine with my glasses and I
have no reason to suspect that technology will not be able to keep me
at 20/20 vision for the rest of my natural life through some means or
another. It is expensive though but that’s a discussion for another day.

The reason I bring this up is that the other day I realized one
somewhat intriguing side effect of wearing glasses most people don’t
realize. You see as a benefit to being a person who wears glasses every
2-4 years I get to experience a unique transformation of my
view of the world. When I get new glasses, everything about the way I
visually experience the world suddenly shift. Everything is sharper and
clearer and more vivid. The world just seems like an entirely new
place, like somehow I was living in a dark cave before and only
recently was exposed to the outside world.

I often wonder at how I could have stood the previous sight that I had.
Why did I not think it was so bad? Why did I think I could see fine?
Think of all the details I was missing! There’s so much out there to
see and I had deliberately crippled myself by allowing my eyesight to
decline without attention. I should not be going to the eye doctor
every two years, I should be going every month!

Now, truthfully, it probably wasn’t as a radical a shift as I thought
during those first few days.  The last couple of times I’ve gotten new
glasses the Doctor described it as a “minor update” to my prescription,
unlike when I was young and getting radically different prescriptions
every year or so when my family could afford it. But even when the
changes are minor, it certainly *feels* radical every time.

Why do I bring this up? Because this correlates to the effect of
radically different perspectives on one’s mental outlook. Every once in
a while, you see, I read a book or read an opinion or even see a movie
or experience some other media, that totally shifts my perspective on
the world in which I am living. Suddenly everything looks different
than it did before. Clearer. And I wonder at how I had lived not
knowing these things that I know now.

Now this is very different than experiencing media of kindred spirit.
For example my first pleasant academic experience was reading the work
of Plato and I would always put his works high up in my list of
important texts that influence my thinking. But Plato’s works, none of
them, had this kind of transformative experience on me. Rather, he was
just saying the things similar to things I’d been wondering about for
years. In some areas he developed ideas much further than I ever had,
but in basic content he wasn’t saying anything surprising to me. I
loved finding out that there have been thinkers throughout history who
have made it their life’s work to study these very same abstract ideas
that had plagued my childhood. It made me feel quite a bit more
grounded in the world around me. But it didn’t change my overall
outlook.

In recent times though I have experienced a couple of mind turning
books that have had as radical an impact on my thinking. There have
been others in the past but these two I think are particularly imprtant
for me to write about now.

The first tale begins with a reading of an obscure message board. It
was one my brother also frequents and they were having a rather off
topic discussion on impromptu politics. Most everything everyone was
saying was the same old same old but one person’s posts were just
radically different than everyone else’s. Not better or wiser or more
backed by evidence or any of that good stuff, just radically different
and not necessarily in a good way. Now on very rare occassion I’d read
a post on slashdot or some other forum with a similar bent but not
frequently and most drowned out by the majority of those taking the
more typical perspectives.

I might not have made anything of this post and just chalked it up to
one insane writer except that the person who wrote this post was a
person whom I had found to be very intelligent and inciteful when
writing about other matters not directly related to politics.

So in passing I made the comment to my brother in response to one of
this writer’s more outrageous claims, “I wonder what’s on this guy’s
reading list? I’ve never heard anything like it.”  To which my brother
immediately responds “It probably involves a lot of Noam Chomsky.” 

Now, I had a weird academic life since I didn’t really know a whole lot
about Chomsky. I remembered his name came up numerous times in
discussions in some of my lectures and I think we learned the basic
elements of some theory or another of his in my intro to linguistics
class, but other than that I knew nothing of him. My study was
primarily of mathematics and computer science and philosophy and I
really didn’t like Linguistics very much so I didn’t study mcuh along
that related tangent. Nor did I spend much time discussing politics
very much with people though my school was and is a highly political
environment. I just ignored it.

One thing I did observe was that the name Chomsky was often accompanied
with a great deal of contention. There seemed to be a strict division
of people who seemed to see some truth in his words and many others who
seemed to hate his guts. I made nothing of it really since that’s
pretty much the same division you find in classrooms about everybody.
Though for the most part people do try, reasonably to suppress their
inner feelings and expend their effort analyzing the ideas of scholars
in all fields. It’s just that you can always kinda tell the
undercurrent. If the disdain for Chomsky was a little stronger than on
average, I didn’t really take note since the discusssion never dwelled
on him long enough for me to gain any real understanding of who he was
and I was young and dumb and didn’t care enough to find out more.

But in recent years, like so many people, I’ve gotten to the point
where I care a little more about things political in nature. Perhaps in
large part it is spurred by my disappointment in myself for not
reacting nearly strongly enough against the war in Iraq before we
invaded. Perhaps its just that I am seeing more of the economic
consequences of political choices in my daily life and that of my
family. Or perhaps its just that I’m bored because the people around me
never talk about interesting things any more and I’ve fallen out of
touch with so many of my friends with whom I would not really discuss
any of these things with but who would at least listen to my most
recent random theory or crazy idea.

Well, whatever the reason, after that conversation with my brother, I
found myself in my local bookstore looking for something to read and I
found myself looking in the politics and history section looking at all
of the god awfully named books with gargatuan subtitles all so very
confrontational and trying to push various perspectives. Some of them
I’d read before and others were on my list of books I intended to read
but always only those that I had gotten specific recommendation from
elsewhere or which were very specific to the topics of concern to me at
the time, such as copyright law and the environment.

Anway, I found the works of Chomsky and flipped through a couple of
them. Some seemed interesting, others seemed tedious. Ultimately I
settled on buying a book called Understanding Power: The Indispensable
Chomsky.

Now this isn’t really one of Chomsky’s books. Rather it is a collection
of discussions he’s had and question and answer sessions from way back
many years ago to recent times. I thought this would be a good way to
introduce myself to the body of Chomsky’s theories without having to
have read all of hist various books. I also bought Deterring Democracy
so that I could get a sense of what hsi full length works were like.

I devoured most of Understanding Power in a single day.  And I got new glasses that day.

Everything just seemed so different after that. The reason people do
things, the way in which they act, the perspective with which they
approach the world.  Bits and pieces of so many other things I’d heard
over the years out of context now made so much more sense. Now I knew
where people were coming from who just seemed to be ranting insanely to
me in the past. Now the cynicism and lack of optimism with which so
many individuals I’d encountered had approached life seemed to have a
grounded basis. Governments and Businesses and Universities and
individuals all seemed like different entities to me than they had
before.

Now to say this is not to say that I have now become a devout follower
of the Chomsky world view. I don’t believe in religious experiences.
There’s only understanding and analysis that can cause shifts in
perspective. Remember that whenever I put on new glasses I try to
remember that what I perceive as a radical shift in view is actually
never as radical a change as I might think. And rememver also that a
world viewing change and a theoretical kindred spirit are different. I
don’t really think my thinking much aligns with that of Noam Chomsky.
Our basic assumptions are different. Our philosophies and morals are
very different. Perhaps that’s because he just knows more than me or
because I haven’t fully come to understand his theories or perhaps
because there are things that he just takes for granted that aren’t
really that certain, who knows. Regardless, I think even if I agreed
with everything he said, I still find it doubtful that he spent nearly
as much energy in his childhood wondering if his experiences were real
or imagined so at least based on this single examination of his writing
and thinking and the few other examples I’ve read since then he doesn’t
seem to be much of a kindred spirit to me.

So anyway, I think the world was laughing at me a little when not all
that much further in the future after I had discovered Chomsky,
Chomsky’s name was in the national spotlight. The President of
Venezuala, Hugo Chávez recommended one of Noam Chomsky’s books:
Hegemony or Survival during a speach to the UN wherein he also called
President Bush “the devil”.

Far far too much has already been said about “the devil” comment so I
won’t even go there. Now I personally didn’t know much about Hugo
Chavez before hearing this except what you hear on the news… you know
“radical leftist leader” and “hates the US and is trying to undermine
it” and “giving heating fuel to the poor in New York city”. Oh wait,
that last one seems a little out of place but anyway you get the idea.
Well anyway after hearing this I read a couple more resources about
Chavez which paint a very neutral picture. He’s no hero.

To be honest, I applaud the idea of advocating books that provide
different perspectives to the people of the UN and to the peoples of
the world. I also have no problem in particular with daring, radical
speaches to the UN. Indeed, I’d prefer the direct approach then holding
your opinions to yourself and saying some tripe instead.  One thing
that I wonder about is whether this speach was calculated to create the
uproar it did in order to create a greater audience for these new
perspectives he wants to advocate or whether it was a surprise to him
that US Citizens and US Media would take his comments so seriously and
be so critical of them.

Anyway, I’ve got to say I also agree that at this point that it
wouldn’t hurt too much to have a lot of people read the works of Noam
Chomsky. Whether or not Chomsky’s right about anything, the topics he
discusses are serious and the perspective he gives is meaningful and
the nature of his commentary really ought to be debated right out in
the open. For one thing, you can’t really understand the poltiical
discourse I think without having a basic understanding of the kinds of
writing Chomsky’s writing represent. There are lots of works written
that are influencing policy today that are specifically in direct
backlash to the words of Chomsky and those of a similar perspective.
There are others whose opposition to current policies are directly
founded in principles akin to those expoused by Noam Chomsky. If you
didn’t realize that before (and I didn’t before I read Understanding
Power), you surely must now that you see that a head of state of a
growing power in the world explicitly endorsed his book. To understand
where everyone is coming from you have to understand the evolution of
their thoughts. You have to know what it is that they are running
toward or running away from. And you have to talk about it in order to
break through fallacies and find out the truth. It’s better to read
Chomsky skeptically then to ignore him altogether

That being said, I’m not sure having Hugo Chavez endorse a work by Noam
Chomsky is likely to foster an honest debate about US foreign policy
inside the United States. This conjoining of two objects of hatred of
the Right will likely inspire such fervid opposition as to shutdown
discussion and brand those who dare try to give Chomsky’s work a chance
as traitors, enemies, or just plain stupid. More dangerous, I think, is
that so many regular people will feed their disillusionment and despair
by reading the dark words of Chomsky and will not fight as hard to
effect changes that are so obviously needed right now. Chomsky does
speak of hope but in the little that I’ve read of his, it’s such a
small part of his works that you can hardly believe it is there.
Overall I don’t think this well help Venezuala very much and I doubt it
will help Hugo Chavez very much and I sadly don’t think it will make
the world a much better place.

Now, if Hugo Chavez had wanted to have a more beneficial impact, I
think he might have considered recommending another book that I have
read of late that created a radical shift in my perspective of things
that are.  This one is called Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under
Stress and a Civilzation in Trouble by Lester R. Brown.

Plan B is fascinating in a lot of ways and pulled together in my mind
many discordant things I’d heard about the environment and the economy
into a much more coherent whole.  I can’t recommend this book enough.
It’s one of those books that just tells the truth without unnecessary
obfuscation or radicalization.

Now the picture Plan B paints is in a lot of ways more dark than
Chomsky’s but there is hope in this book too and very specific
recommendations for changes that can and must be done. Brown doesn’t
just throw up his hands and say “Oh well, let’s hope things get
better.”  He finds what can work and what ought to work and shows how
we can get the point that it will work. But the overrriding message of
the book is that we don’t have much time, dark days are coming and very
very soon. Even so the books is hopeful. You feel as if there is a way
out, we just have to take it.

In terms of acceptance, Plan B would get far more acceptance in the
American populace than Chomsky’s works. Plan B doesn’t inspire
defensiveness, anger, and hatred like many of the things Chomsky says
does. He isn’t being that controversial. He’s just spelling out the
truth about things people don’t want to talk about. ARguably Chomsky is
doing the same thing, but it’s a lot easier to take the “our planet is
in trouble right now!” message than the “your country in particular
amongst all the countries in the world has been acting evilly for
generations now” message at least if you are a citizen of that country.

If Chavez had recommended Plan B to the world, it would have had the
same skyrocketing effect on sales but the eventual impact on policy
would be far more substantial. People who read Plan B would have a more
global view of the world and have an immediate interest in changes in
their own country right now. Admittedly it might not have been quite as
on topic with the “devil” comment and to be sure it wouldn’t have
sparked as much interest without the “devil” comment but it would be
very useful and very needed. Books like Plan B need to be deeper in the
consciousnesses of regular people if we are to have any hope of moving
forward as a species.

Anyway, if you want to see the world differently today than you did yesterday I highly recommend these two books:
Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky -  Noam Chomsky
Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble  – Lester R. Brown

You might not like them and you might be quite disturbed after you read them but I believe they are worth it.

Please also tell me of any works you’ve experienced that have changed
your perspective on life. I am always looking to build a more complete
world view.