Imagined Property - thoughts from out there

left looking...

I have always thought of myself as being of the 'left' politically.  This does not, however, say much about my politics.  It is more like saying, I have always thought of myself as basically a kind person...  For me, left and right in the context of politics is a value statement... and an indication of righteousness.  Being 'left' is good. 

And at this superficial level of good versus bad, I find so much of the stuff coming out of the US shocking. Without talking about politics at a personal or philosophical level, it is clear that my world view is different than what is seen as the American world view.  But there is also a sense that this political orientation is shared by most people in the world ... outside of the US.  So is it simply a question of words or is there something else involved.  And if so what is that difference?

What do I mean when I say that I have always seen myself as leaning left?  And even if I know, does anyone else know what I mean?  And when I say so and so has always been 'left wing' while someone one else has moved to the right - do others share my pride and my anger?

I am going to end this post with these questions.   While I have not posted any comments for a number of weeks, I have been watching politics.  And looking left to see what might be there.

Democracy - ok, ok

I thought that I would write about democracy...  a play with many parts.

The story of democracy is largely about power.  It is not just about who has the power or even how to select those who will have power....  it is about finding and cultivating the power of humanity - better described these days as society.  

To explain why democracy is so difficult to describe, it is necessary to begin with a short lesson in sociology.  Sociology is the 'study of society' which emerged in the 18th - 19th Centuries as the scientific counter part to more traditional ways of thinking about ourselves and our communities.  And just as science eventually stumbled on the atom, the supposed building block of all matter, sociologists discovered the individual.  Scholars and poets (for example, John Donne "no man is an island" (Meditation XVII0)) had for centuries seen men and women as part of and inseparable from society, but not necessarily as separate from this society.  However, as the modern era unfolded and with the help of the science of sociology, men and eventually women, extracted from society and given an existence independent of the social.  The problem as some sociologist have explained became understood as the duality of the individual and the social (the collective or aggregate).  The question is how to reconcile the individual with the social in order to offer one all encompassing theory of human society.  The technique, as described by one sociologist, was to privilege either the individual or the social.  So, on the one hand you could begin with ideas about society and then try to explain the individual and on the other hand, you could begin with ideas about individuals and then offer a theory as to how society evolved - see Ian Craib Modern Social Theory for an excellent discussion of the problem and how various theorists have attempted to resolve it...  What this all means is that several centuries into this modern era, the individual is not only considered as having an existence apart from society, society is increasingly seen as an aggregation of individuals.  The organic sense of humanity, the idea that no one can or should 'be an island' has been forgotten.  

The modern story of democracy began with a genuine and revolutionary desire to promote the idea of the individual...  the struggle for rights, equality and so on are all part of this story.  The problem is that while it was possible to abstract the individual from society in theory, it was not possible in practice.   Individuals were welcome to equality, until it was time to eat, sleep, procreate and so on...  the idea of equality promoted in the struggle for democracy also had to be abstracted from ideas of 'sameness', 'equal treatment' and, to a certain extent, even 'fairness'.  Life was not fair.  Woman bore children and died; men worked hard and the crops still failed and so on.  Add to this the scientific division and alienation of labour as compelled by 'capitalism' and the idea of the equal individual lost much of its economic justification. And then of course in the late 19th Century the Corporation emerged as an 'individual' in its own right and, since recent case in the US Supreme Court, is the archetypal individual and citizen in the post modern state - see discussion of Corporate Personhood in Wikipedia as a place to start exploring this bizarre turn of events. 

So democracy is about power and is a story about about the individual - but what does that mean?  Well my discussion will wander around a bit.  The next part of the story is about Auckland's super city and Malawi's green revolution.  And, to use what seems to be the metaphor of the month, it is all about the "perfect storm"...

The new new feminism

Reading the Guardian I stumbled on a review of Natasha Walter's NEW book.  Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism.  In 1998 she wrote "The New Feminism".  The personal was no longer the political ...

Now Ms. Walters is admitting that she had been perhaps overly optimistic... Mo Mowlan, Clare Short and Harriet Harman were just elected to the British Parliament (and of course there was Helen Clark et al in New Zealand).  Ms. Walters now says:

I really felt that we were on an irresistible journey. There was still this big gap to close, but I felt that we wanted to close it, and it was possible to close it, and therefore we would. We were in a virtuous circle. And what I feel now is that policy changes are not enough, because the culture is still very resistant to change. The book's subtitle is The Return of Sexism, and while I don't really think sexism ever went away, it's stronger than it was. It's as though something crept in by the backdoor – and we turned around and it's everywhere, and you just think, 'OK, we've got to deal with this again'

The reasons for this change of heart are, of course, many.  In the last ten years or so Ms. Walters has been praised and scorned for her earlier work... she has had a couple of kids... so on and so forth.  For me, the key though lies with her age.  She was born in 1967.  In 2000 she was 33. She is now in her 40's and is likely only now discovering the surprising state of gender relations ...

It is not just the burden of house hold chores and child care which distort women's careers.  For those women seeking advancement the glass ceiling is real...  unmarried and childless women make up the majority of female executives in many places; yet despite decades of academic and vocational achievement, only few women hold top jobs.  

In their 20's and 30's many women may enjoy a sense of 'equality' with men at work.  They truly feel equal to men of a similar age (or rank) and they may even be paid the same and so on. But then, as now, the majority of the bosses are men. 

And, as a friend suggested a number of years ago, for the most part the relationship between young women and men they work for remains characterized by what my friend called "sexual".  Now this is a tricky label as the relationship between young women and their male bosses is not, I imagine, at all sexual, at least for the most part.  A better label might be to call it 'gendered'.  Although in a way the sexual label describes many aspects of the relationship between young women and men in the work place these days.  This relationship is often characterized by women playing their assigned role as young women or girls ie looking or trying to look good, being smart but not intellectual, ambitious but not bitchy and, most importantly, being the subordinate helper.  But for the sake of avoiding misunderstandings, I will call this role the "gendered role".  

My friends point was that while they are relatively young, say in their 20's and 30's, women and men have a dominantly gendered relationship.  But, her experience also suggested that this relationship changed as the women got older ...  it sort of froze ...   

One reason so few women are promoted, my friend suggested, was that women needed a new kind of relationship collegial relations among managers.  The gendered role no longer worked - for a number of reasons.  One big reason why it didn't work was that as women got older, the role was just not right. As women age, they find it harder to play the gendered role - even if they wanted to. Even with hair dye and face lifts, it is hard work because this role is reserved for young women.  

As they get older, women need a new kind of role, one in which the relationship with men was no longer defined by gender.  Until there was this role, my friend believes, there will be a certain discomfort or lack of ease which makes men want to promote men, rather than women.  This lack of ease or collegiality was not necessarily apparent between individual men and women - individual men might have no discomfort working with women - but this dis-ease appears with groups and is felt at the partnership or Board meeting...  when the guys get together.  

Admittedly, this dis-ease is shared by women... ask a woman out for dinner with friends if the presence of a guy changes the nature of the event.   But a dinner party is one thing, work is another. The difficulty in developing collegial relationships at work is bad news for women who wish to climb the ladder of corporate success.  And like aging, it comes as a surprise.  

When it happens, when you notice that you don't have the same kind of relationship with the men who run the organization as your male counterparts, you may just think again about feminism, sexism and the illusion of equality...

 

Why? Why there and not here?

Haiti.  How does one face the sadness?  

The earthquake destroying what was already beyond hope?  But why?  A former slave nation - plundered by tyrants, liberated by thieves, ruled by self serving idiots and plagued by religion and dark superstition...  an ecological disaster, a economic ruin and very very hungry.   Too too many people. Too too few trees and now - now what?

Leave?  Run?  Run run run and the last one out turn off the lights?  Why would anyone let alone anyone competent or kind stay in a place where so many good intentions have died.  Rotting in the sweltering heat or a land where anything could grow - if only it had a chance?  Perhaps Milton put it so well, "It is better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven"?  

Or perhaps there is sooooo much wrong that any little thing one does seems to make a difference.  So yes, we can set up another school (Christian or other wise) and yes yes we will adopt a couple of kids - oh and yes - we will send more police for security, fix the roads and try to get the port (airport, telephone company, utility company, garbage collection, prisons etc) going again... and then we can give you a building code, an environmental plan and so on and on...  

Excuse me for thinking that none of this help, this reasonable charity, has any chance of remaking Haiti. 

Why?  Why is Haiti Haiti?  Experts list the reasons - slave origins, colonial past, neo colonial exploitation, natural disasters and so on and so forth.  The experts will also note that the tens of thousands who died last week were as much victims of the earthquake as they were of a society where building codes / inspections were fiction - part of a civilized patina of civilization which was never more than skin deep...  But why?

The question is not just who or what kind of force destroyed Haiti, the question must also be who or what kind of force prevented a similar disaster further north.  The reasons why Haiti is Haiti are likely not to be found in only Haiti.  Nor will sufficient explanation be found in a colonial or post colonial investigation (although that too will help) ... no, some of the answers lie with the reasons why places like Canada work.  And here the story of Haiti becomes a cautionary tale. 

For if Canada works, it works because of something called 'civil society'.  Canada is, from the inside, a badly sorted collection of communities - a federation of provinces and confederation of small towns where individuals imagine that what they do and think matters, if only for the place where they live. What Canada has and Haiti needs is this thing which experts call 'civil society'...  and others might know as good neighbours. 

A cautionary tale?   The differences between Haiti and Canada are considerable but why?  Why over the last 150 years have folks in Canada had such greater success with their stolen bits of land.   The climate in Haiti is much much better...  the answer may lie with the way politics is done. The difference might be between power up and power down ... 

The dismantling of democratic government in Canada - from the imposition of Prime MInisterial rule  to the mis information 'campaigns' run by a media whose only reason for being is money - is a work in progress.  As more and more 'power' is sucked up along with all the money that can be found, there are fewer and fewer reasons to care about one's community...  fewer reasons to clean the streets, pay one's taxes and know one's neighbours.  Ok, this might seem a long way from Haiti, but Haiti has been working at this for 150 years?  Or maybe it has just been the last 30 years which have made the difference...  

The Haiti recipe as most people see it is:  allow impoverished under class to develop and then disempower the 'middle class' and let their community concerns with over crowding and lack of social services (especially education) fester (as tax money is spent on other stuff like military, life styles of the ruling class, and sporting events) for, say, two or three generations and then add environmental disasters, malign foreign intervention, inept government, raging drug trade and see what happens...   

Why Haiti? Why not Canada...  what stands between Canada and a similar fate?  Winter?  No it is likely people and the way they do politics.

New Year

It has been TEN years since I staggered up One Tree Hill in the early morning.  My objective that day was to see in the New Millennium...  Now ten years has passed.  The time has gone by so quickly.  Perhaps because sooooo much happened.  Like yesterday I learned that Millennium was spelt with two 'n's'.  Who knew?

Things happened. Bush 2.0 is elected, the Twin Towers fell, the war in Afghanistan begins, Iraq is invaded, Gaza is bombed, the genocide continues in the Congo - have I forgotten some major military event - there was lots of military type action elsewhere but the events likely are only remembered by those who live there like in Georgia and Columbia... And then there was the Bird then Swine flu...  the other three horsemen - drought, pestilence, and famine were busy as well.  Of course, there were the financial disasters (the Dot Com bust, the housing bubble, the financial melt down etc) as well as the ongoing disaster now called "Climatic Change" - formerly known as Ecological Crisis.  

But what really happened?  I continued my project which was 'me'.   I finished my doctorate, meditated, read books, travelled, taught some more and did some law...  And my father died.  

I remember many years ago - 1979 it was - when I was looking at a poster of photos titled "The Decade
that Was" or something like that...  I am sure that these posters are done every ten years.  But my memory of this one remains, even though I can't remember the photos.  In 1979 I was in Africa and I had decided to go back to school.  

And now?  Who knows?  A new year, a new decade...  the chance to begin again at the beginning.
 

Plundering the social

Two articles.  

The first by Tony Judt Download Judt 2009 is a brilliant account, or rather the lack, of social democracy in the United States of America.  He begins with the question, if most Americans want things like health care and education and so on to be better, then why do so many of them reject the social solution most other rich 'western' nations.  Why is there no socialism in the US?  Judts' answer, and he writes this very well, is 'discursive'.  He argues that Americans (those who live below the 49th) lack the words or language needed to pose and then answer critical questions about the role of the state, the nature of a 'good society' and the problems great wealth creates in a supposedly democratic society.  There can be no reasonable debate because there is no way to talk about the issues.  Of course, the answer is more complex than this, but the point is well taken and supports his argument that regardless the left needs to stand up and protect what is left and what is left of government...  or soon that too will be gone.  For Judt what is coming is a social democracy of ‘fear’ – that what there is of the state may be taken from the people, just when they need it most…

The second article is by Matt Taibbi Download Taibbi Naked Swindle.  Taibbi, a writer with Rolling Stone tells an incredible tale of how basically thieving brought down first Bears Stearn and then Lehmann Brothers in 2008.  His story is the story of naked short selling.   And while there are those who challenge Taibbi's version of events, his account is good enough to pass the 'well how do you explain it then' test.  If true, then the story shows just what ordinary folks are up against – that the lack of language to speak of the ‘state’ not only silences those who might believe in some greater good, but allows those whose only ‘virtue’ is unrestrained greed to hide in wormy words about the benefits of the free market.  

------

Taibbi describes short selling as follows:

One practice that had been little used before but now began to be employed with great popularity was short- selling, a perfectly legal type of transaction that allows investors to bet against a stock. The basic premise of a normal short sale is easy to follow. Say you're a hedge-fund manager, and you want to bet against the stock of a company — let's call it Wounded Gazelle International (WGI). What you do is go out on the market and find someone — often a brokerage house like Goldman Sachs — who has shares in that stock and is willing to lend you some. So you go to Goldman on a Monday morning, and you borrow 1,000 shares in Wounded Gazelle, which that day happens to be trading at $10.

Now you take those 1,000 borrowed shares, and you sell them on the open market at $10, which leaves you with $10,000 in cash. You then take that $10,000, and you wait. A week later, surveillance tapes of Wounded's CEO having sex with a woodchuck in a Burger King bathroom appear on CNBC. Awash in scandal, the firm's share price tumbles to 31/2. So you go out on the market and buy back those 1,000 shares of WGI — only now it costs you only $3,500 to do so. You then return the shares to Goldman Sachs, at which point your interest in WGI ends. By betting against or "shorting" the company, you've made a profit of $6,500. One practice that had been little used before but now began to be employed with great popularity was short- selling, a perfectly legal type of transaction that allows investors to bet against a stock. The basic premise of a normal short sale is easy to follow. Say you're a hedge-fund manager, and you want to bet against the stock of a company — let's call it Wounded Gazelle International (WGI). What you do is go out on the market and find someone — often a brokerage house like Goldman Sachs — who has shares in that stock and is willing to lend you some. So you go to Goldman on a Monday morning, and you borrow 1,000 shares in Wounded Gazelle, which that day happens to be trading at $10.

Now you take those 1,000 borrowed shares, and you sell them on the open market at $10, which leaves you with $10,000 in cash. You then take that $10,000, and you wait. A week later, surveillance tapes of Wounded's CEO having sex with a woodchuck in a Burger King bathroom appear on CNBC. Awash in scandal, the firm's share price tumbles to 31/2. So you go out on the market and buy back those 1,000 shares of WGI — only now it costs you only $3,500 to do so. You then return the shares to Goldman Sachs, at which point your interest in WGI ends. By betting against or "shorting" the company, you've made a profit of $6,500.

What next?

Plan for the worst, hope for the best?  

Every now and then when I read James Howard Kunstler's blog I learn something.  Even then I am not quite sure what I might have learned...  

Kunstler referred to the US as a "moron nation".  Now far be it from me to say more (as I don't live there etc) but even as a child I was often surprised by how little Americans I met seemed to know about the world north of the 49th parallel. And I am not sure he manages to explain this phenomena - although the label may be apt.  Another reason might be that despite their wealth as a nation, most Americans (to give the label to USers) are just like folks everywhere else. They have no interest in anything that doesn't directly affect them - and so, believing that they live in the best country in the world and so on and so forth, they cannot be bothered to learn anything about anything else. 

[And then there is their appalling media but that is another story... ]

While the reasons he offers for the seemingly high level of ignorance seem lacking, his description of the US as a nation completely misguided is good.  One can feel the sense of despair.  Well maybe despair is too strong a word.  Disappointment tinged with regret?  Of course, this sensibility is not shared by the great mass of fools who are driving the US over the edge - no these poor benighted folks still believe in recovery, in the American Dream and so  on. Reading Kunstler though I got a sense that there is a class of people in the US, somewhere just below the ruling class and above the shop floor, who believe Humpty Dumpty is truly down and out ...  and who want to believe that it is not their fault...  

[And this is, of course, a new take in the old debate on high and low culture but again that is another story...]

Kunstler began this week's blog by explaining that he did not discuss the population issue as he felt there was no need.  As far as he was concerned, the world was way beyond its carrying capacity but there was nothing that could be done about it...  the problem would 'self correct' at some point.  This self correction would be brutal ... the four horsemen of death are gathering but then like the Black Death, a new world could emerge on the 'other side'.  

Of course, Kunstler is not alone in his bleak assessment of the prospects for human society.  The sentiment is so common that it no longer needs to be explained.  The sense of concern, even despair, has always been felt by those who feel deeply about the natural world - decades ago a German philosopher (whose name I will find) said that even though there may be no hope, we must act as if there was...  

But how does one do that?   

Feminism - remembering

Quebec license plates read "Je m'souviens".   Yes, je me souviens but je n'ai rien appris...

Listening to Judy Erola and Monique Begin on "The House" last Saturday was an act of remembering.  They remember.  But those who remember are often themselves forgotten.  Remembering is so selective.  I remember Begin as MInister of Health.  But I don't remember Erola.  And then I remember the energy and anger of the Charter discussions.  History was on our side.  Women long denied would no longer be ignored... so on and so forth.  

Women today enjoy the 'liberation' we fought to hard for but they also have the burden made worse because they don't remember - if they were ever told.  Young women don't remember that the world is not welcoming.  They don't know that their worldly success is like  - to use that worn expression, like lipstick on a pig - remarkable and not long from bacon.  

Women today have opportunities for work outside the home which did not exist thirty years earlier.  BUT... as Erola (or Begin) pointed out, women today believe, oh yes they know!, that any career success is personal - a testimony to their individual talents, energy and hard work .. and thus they accept any failure as personal.  Sadly, few young women understand that success, like failure, is social.  I doubt many have bothered trying to understand what is meant by the slogan "The Personal is the Political".  

A friend said that we feminists of the 1970's and '80's do not remember the Suffragettes ...  while that may or may not be true, two wrongs would not make it right - or easy.  Women today might by remembering find their successes and failures easier to understand and to accept...

Travels with myself

It has been almost a month since I last posted anything.  In that month I travelled from Auckland through Vancouver to Copenhagen (Helsingor) and back.  It is strange to travel with such ease...  I admit that I found the trip exhausting.  The long flights despite the in-flight entertainment and sleeping pills were tedious (to say the least).  But it was so easy to get from one end of the world to the other.  I just paid my money and put my mind into neutral.

And I arrived at a place where my ancestors surely began their travels - but thousands of years ago.  I had not been in Scandinavia for 30 years.  When I was last there, I felt that I 'looked local' and assumed that it was because I was young and the young dressed the same no matter where they were in the western world. This time I am not so young and again I blended in ...  

My ancestors left - likely first for England or maybe Scotland and then, as the story is told, for Ireland before leaving for Canada eventually after hundreds of years ending up in the West.  I suspect their travels were much harder both physically and mentally - the journeys were long and one way.  How many hours or days were spent in regret for the land and people left behind?  How many days were spent in anticipation of the New World which awaited them?

I wonder if I would understand these my ancestors if I was ever to meet them - understand why they left and what they found...  and would they understand me, how I too feel when it takes hours rather than years to travel away and back again.  

'my blog'... introducing thoughts from out there...

I like writing.  I write a lot.  Nearly every day I write something.  And for the last year I have written 'my blog'.   My aim is to write something, hopefully something worth reading, once a week.

My blog will be simply my thoughts - in a way it will be like a diary. Although there is a difference between blog and a diary.  A blog is 'on line'.  This means that what is written is recorded and the words remain on record for as long as the internet remains 'on line'.   And anyone can read it... but likely given few if anyone will read it...

So why?  Why write a blog that no one reads?  Writing with an audience, even a pretend audience, is good practice.  There are certain standards:  the writing (spelling / grammar) should be good enough to allow anyone who reads English to read easily; the comments should be political in the sense of 'not gossip' - about ideas rather than people; the thoughts should be comfortably public (allowing the reader to task issue with the idea rather than with 'me'). 

Here I could launch myself into a discussion of standards - what makes a good standard etc.  I could then discuss standards for blogging and so on.  But I won't, at least not now.  It is perhaps enough simply to say that for me, blogging is a discipline - the structured practice of writing.

Disciplined writing has long been the reserve of the well born - Michel de Montaigne and in a more contemporary form, Alain de Botton are keen examples of the kind of writer I have in mind ...  blogging allows the petty bourgeois (members of the grey middle class) to pretend an audience and thus write with intention.  Write well and write often - what more should be expected of an author?  

So ok - readers?  What would readers add to the writing?  Would what was written be better or worse for having been read? I intend to write.  My subjects will be varied - bicycles, feminism, travel, socialism - punditry - but at the heart of all this is creative activity.  To use Hannah Arendts' word, my blog will be about 'action'.  

And  if you are a reader - welcome to my world!