The Tea Party
Seen From Growing Up In History
The narrative that explains the Tea Party rests on a transformation in our lives and consciousness that is struggling to be realized, a development of the human mind that has swept our Western history through many such transformations. It is anon-partisan transformation from a society devoted to wealth-creation to one devoted to the well-being of people. In the eyes of angry America, government spending, which has been seen as irresponsible by wealth-creators in the past, is bad whether proposed by partisans of either left or right when people are suffering from loss of jobs and homes.
They are not yet able to realize that when people cannot afford to pay their bills and the wealth-creation beneficiaries in Washington see no reason to do the spending that would help them, there is non-partisan need for government spending to fill the gap and get the economy moving to a non-partisan society devoted to using wealth and wealth-creating technology to promote the well-being and development of people.
Whether they realize it or not, the appeal of the Tea Party is to the post-transformation people who seek to go beyond the values of the past and even the Constitution to fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence for Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,
It is a goal that goes back to 1965, when Paul McCartney sang,
“.When I was younger, so much younger than today,
I never needed anybody's help in any way.
But now these days are gone, I'm not so self assured,
Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Monday, September 13, 2010
Letter to The Sandpaper 9/6
September 6, 2010
The SandPaper
Attn: Gail Travers, Executive Editor
Dear Editor
Savvy and sociologists (Sex, Age and Bedbugs) might find it easier to make sense of his amazing “hash of trends” if they saw it as only one aspect of the far grander transformation that is struggling to be realized in our lives and consciousness, driven by a new level of human needs.
After all, our leaders no longer rule by divine right, we don’t teach lions to eat Christians, and we closed debtor’s prisons. So how did our ancestors survive those rising levels of human needs? They made changes called for by the new needs.
But efforts to take a sad song to make it better must lead to real change, not just legislative paralysis and a sadder song. Then those trends might make sense as part of a happier future.
The SandPaper
Attn: Gail Travers, Executive Editor
Dear Editor
Savvy and sociologists (Sex, Age and Bedbugs) might find it easier to make sense of his amazing “hash of trends” if they saw it as only one aspect of the far grander transformation that is struggling to be realized in our lives and consciousness, driven by a new level of human needs.
After all, our leaders no longer rule by divine right, we don’t teach lions to eat Christians, and we closed debtor’s prisons. So how did our ancestors survive those rising levels of human needs? They made changes called for by the new needs.
But efforts to take a sad song to make it better must lead to real change, not just legislative paralysis and a sadder song. Then those trends might make sense as part of a happier future.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Book History Presentation
Page One.
To go back to the beginning, about 50 years ago in the 60s, when I was in Greenwich Village, a Time magazine cover story asked, “What would happen to our economy if those anti-materialist hippies converted everyone into less than enthusiastic consumers?”. That “what-would-happen if?” triggered a two-thousand-year-old parallel with Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which reported that Roman citizens, threatened by barbarians, asked, “What would happen to their great empire if the peace-loving Christians converted everyone to anti-violence pacifists?”
That parallel between Christian pacifism in army-dominated Rome and twentieth century anti-materialism in business-dominated America suggested a pattern connecting generational stages in past and future cultures. Somehow that idea led me to St. Augustine’s idea that history was the education of the human race in the generational stages of our own lives, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and maturity. That was the connection that started the book.
Next to hit me was the eighteen-hundred-year historical connection between Augustine’s idea of development in our five life stages and Abraham Maslow’s five levels of needs that drive our lives starting with level 1—the basic caring and life sustaining needs, 2—safety and security needs, 3—needs for love, affection and belongingness, 4—need for esteem, and 5—need for self-actualization. (I remembered that from high school.)
So from my esteem-level 4 in Greenwich Village I looked for what happened to Maslow’s level 2 Roman Empire seeking safety from barbarians and Americans seeking esteem in wealth level 4 and I found level 3 in between actually contained the answer England finding togetherness in self government. Growing up in history was the answer—pacifist Christians brought barbarians and Roman Empire people together in the Middle Ages and England—level 3.
So the history of Western civilization seemed to confirm St. Augustine’s view that history is “the education of the human race,” a process with continuity and purpose that moves in the same biographical sequence of stages as a person growing up and has some important lessons for people and nations.
Page Two
Questions?
Here is a foreign policy example of the application of the ideas in the book to our complex world::
Afghanistan President Karzai and his brother still think in tribal level terms, while they are being driven by Americans to govern a tribal level society with security level 2 and the level 3 political tools of democracy. Meanwhile, the Taliban tries to organize the tribal level society into a religious level 1 Muslim state under one god, using jihadist security level 2 warfare to protect it from the American modernity level 4 they hate.
Can we think of them as children with guns, just doing the bidding of their parental god and unable to understand what it’s like to be grown up?
The book explores the growth of our civilization, stage by stage, from from the kind of tribal chaos we find in religion-dominated Afghanistan to killing-dominated Rome seeking safety from barbarians, and then to togetherness in England’s self government. That made possible our level4 stage, driven to build wealth by investment in the hard work that brought escape from poverty and an American universe split between:
· Change-oriented people who try to tax wealth to support more public-sector jobs, infrastructure that increased productivity of investment in technology, and the “incremental entrenchment of new rights in law, as a mark of progress towards a better society.
· Status-quo-oriented people, represented in my time by Presidents Coolidge and Hoover, who reduced progressive taxes on wealth, replaced lost consumer income with debt and led the nation to excessive wealth, instability, and the Great Depression.
FDRand public spending on the New Deal, and WWII took us out of the Depression, which were it not for regressive conservative reaction might have carried the nation into Maslow’s adulthood level 5.
In the vast sweep of history from tribalism to our time the book sees an important connection between Augustine’s education of the human race and Thomas Jefferson’s call for laws and institutions to keep pace with the development of the human mind. It sees the 1960s counter-culture as a rebellion against the excessive power of corporate wealth to constrain the growth of the human spirit.
And think about what our people could contribute to society if they did that instead of collectively spending 200 billion hours per year watching TV. (Clay Shirky book).
Page Three
Questions?
I came to realize that the human impulse to “make it better” that Paul McCartney expressed in “Hey, Jude” was the driving force in the monumental move, one step at a time, from the gods on Olympus to our democratic civilization.
The songs the Beatles brought to Greenwich Village in the 60s told the story of the next change that I was trying to understand. In the words of “Help”—
I'm not so self assured
Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors—
That was a mind-opening look at the transformation to the new mature level 5 Western world that was beginning to value relationships of people over their ownership of things. The fact that Queen Elizabeth attended the Beatles' movie "Help" premiere and decorated the Beatles with the Order of the British Empire indicated their impact on people who had “opened up the doors”.
The flow of life in history gives our lives special meaning as we search for happiness and accept not old age but maturity and not just death but a necessary ending in thankfulness for the wonders and miracles of life we shared—and for the opportunity to ‘take a sad song and make it better”.
So Augustine asks
Why then joy they not in it? Why are they not happy? Because they are more strongly taken up with other things which have more power to make them miserable, than that which they so faintly remember to make them happy. For there is yet a little light in men; let them walk, let them walk, that the darkness overtake them not.
Or, as Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote, “Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys.”
Philosopher and psychologist William James would agree. He hit upon the most important part when he wrote “The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.” He also said, “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook,” which confirms the spirit of the flow of history. Leo Tolstoy said it, too: “If you want to be happy, be”, and John Lennon’s lesson was, “Let it be.“.
I believe growing up in history is ultimately about the search for happiness.
Page Four
Questions?
In 2007 I used the core ideas in that book manuscript for a 13-week courses at the Academy. A course proposal for spring of 2009 was rejected and I took two semesters off to write the book, I found another connection in Giambattista Vico’s New Science. He explains how the development of peoples in history can be understood by comparing their experiences in different times—the idea that I explored in my manuscript. This is how he described it:
This New Science or metaphysic, studying the common nature of nations in the light of divine providence, discovers the origins of divine and human institutions among the gentile nations, and thereby establishes a system of the natural law of the gentes, which proceeds with the greatest equality and constancy through the three ages which the Egyptians handed down to us as the three periods through which the world has passed up to their time. These are (1) The age of the gods, in which the gentiles believed they lived under divine governments, and everything was commanded them by auspices and oracles, which are the oldest institutions in profane history. (2) The age of the heroes, in which they reigned everywhere in aristocratic commonwealths, on account of a certain superiority of nature which they held themselves to have over the plebs. (3) The age of men, in which all men recognized themselves as equal in human nature, and therefore there were established first the popular commonwealths and then the monarchies, both of which are forms of human government.
Vico lived in the stage of Maslow’s need level 3. when the monarchy was being reestablished in England and self-government was being still being defined. He described it beautifully in terms of a stage of development of the human mind,
The last type of jurisprudence was that of natural equity, which reigns naturally in the free commonwealths, in which the people, each for his own particular good (without understanding that it is the same for all), are led to command universal laws. They naturally desire these laws to bend benignly to the least details of matters calling for equal utility.
Page Five
Questions?
When I was finishing the book in 2009, for two decades America had been carefully ignoring the reality of a change that had already happened—change created by information technology that was replacing workers with robots and computers and cheap overseas jobs that demanded activist government to update physical and social infrastructure . Thousands of American workers were jobless (and still are)in an economy of excessive wealth and instability—the Great Recession.
In what I called the Phase of Persons in the American Age of Economics I came to see the creation of the European Union as representing a transformation to Maslow’s self-actualization level 5, which the book calls the European Age of Persons.
The change affects daily lives in countless ways. In the previous level of the transformation, Maslow’s adulthood level 4, “Consumer products should have as many features as possible; and next year’s version should have even more”. Why? To maintain the demand for a profitable product, of course. They satisfy consumers’ need for esteem, the driving need of that level.
In the new level of human needs Maslow’s maturity level 5, ”feature fatigue” is the response of people who simply want things to work to satisfy their need for self-actualization. That need would be satisfied sooner if more people would realize that it is only one aspect of the far grander promise that is struggling to be realized in our lives and consciousness—a promise growing within the new level of human needs in the development of the human mind
It’s happening here in thousands of ways for people whose education and background make them open to the new level of need and less influenced by by special interests that resist unprofitable marketing changes Those people see the connection between a simpler life-style, smaller houses, and a healthy environment.
The core countries of the European Union adopted in varying ways what might be seen as a level 5 social infrastructure for the information age —easier access to higher education to meet the employee needs of our global businesses and technical innovation to give them a competitive advantage,
That kind of revolutionary, secular way forward, based on civic values and nurturing of people to meet the goal of a better society, seems to be the inevitable response to Maslow’s need for self-actualization, which is inherent in the education of the human race.
To go back to the beginning, about 50 years ago in the 60s, when I was in Greenwich Village, a Time magazine cover story asked, “What would happen to our economy if those anti-materialist hippies converted everyone into less than enthusiastic consumers?”. That “what-would-happen if?” triggered a two-thousand-year-old parallel with Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which reported that Roman citizens, threatened by barbarians, asked, “What would happen to their great empire if the peace-loving Christians converted everyone to anti-violence pacifists?”
That parallel between Christian pacifism in army-dominated Rome and twentieth century anti-materialism in business-dominated America suggested a pattern connecting generational stages in past and future cultures. Somehow that idea led me to St. Augustine’s idea that history was the education of the human race in the generational stages of our own lives, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and maturity. That was the connection that started the book.
Next to hit me was the eighteen-hundred-year historical connection between Augustine’s idea of development in our five life stages and Abraham Maslow’s five levels of needs that drive our lives starting with level 1—the basic caring and life sustaining needs, 2—safety and security needs, 3—needs for love, affection and belongingness, 4—need for esteem, and 5—need for self-actualization. (I remembered that from high school.)
So from my esteem-level 4 in Greenwich Village I looked for what happened to Maslow’s level 2 Roman Empire seeking safety from barbarians and Americans seeking esteem in wealth level 4 and I found level 3 in between actually contained the answer England finding togetherness in self government. Growing up in history was the answer—pacifist Christians brought barbarians and Roman Empire people together in the Middle Ages and England—level 3.
So the history of Western civilization seemed to confirm St. Augustine’s view that history is “the education of the human race,” a process with continuity and purpose that moves in the same biographical sequence of stages as a person growing up and has some important lessons for people and nations.
Page Two
Questions?
Here is a foreign policy example of the application of the ideas in the book to our complex world::
Afghanistan President Karzai and his brother still think in tribal level terms, while they are being driven by Americans to govern a tribal level society with security level 2 and the level 3 political tools of democracy. Meanwhile, the Taliban tries to organize the tribal level society into a religious level 1 Muslim state under one god, using jihadist security level 2 warfare to protect it from the American modernity level 4 they hate.
Can we think of them as children with guns, just doing the bidding of their parental god and unable to understand what it’s like to be grown up?
The book explores the growth of our civilization, stage by stage, from from the kind of tribal chaos we find in religion-dominated Afghanistan to killing-dominated Rome seeking safety from barbarians, and then to togetherness in England’s self government. That made possible our level4 stage, driven to build wealth by investment in the hard work that brought escape from poverty and an American universe split between:
· Change-oriented people who try to tax wealth to support more public-sector jobs, infrastructure that increased productivity of investment in technology, and the “incremental entrenchment of new rights in law, as a mark of progress towards a better society.
· Status-quo-oriented people, represented in my time by Presidents Coolidge and Hoover, who reduced progressive taxes on wealth, replaced lost consumer income with debt and led the nation to excessive wealth, instability, and the Great Depression.
FDRand public spending on the New Deal, and WWII took us out of the Depression, which were it not for regressive conservative reaction might have carried the nation into Maslow’s adulthood level 5.
In the vast sweep of history from tribalism to our time the book sees an important connection between Augustine’s education of the human race and Thomas Jefferson’s call for laws and institutions to keep pace with the development of the human mind. It sees the 1960s counter-culture as a rebellion against the excessive power of corporate wealth to constrain the growth of the human spirit.
And think about what our people could contribute to society if they did that instead of collectively spending 200 billion hours per year watching TV. (Clay Shirky book).
Page Three
Questions?
I came to realize that the human impulse to “make it better” that Paul McCartney expressed in “Hey, Jude” was the driving force in the monumental move, one step at a time, from the gods on Olympus to our democratic civilization.
The songs the Beatles brought to Greenwich Village in the 60s told the story of the next change that I was trying to understand. In the words of “Help”—
I'm not so self assured
Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors—
That was a mind-opening look at the transformation to the new mature level 5 Western world that was beginning to value relationships of people over their ownership of things. The fact that Queen Elizabeth attended the Beatles' movie "Help" premiere and decorated the Beatles with the Order of the British Empire indicated their impact on people who had “opened up the doors”.
The flow of life in history gives our lives special meaning as we search for happiness and accept not old age but maturity and not just death but a necessary ending in thankfulness for the wonders and miracles of life we shared—and for the opportunity to ‘take a sad song and make it better”.
So Augustine asks
Why then joy they not in it? Why are they not happy? Because they are more strongly taken up with other things which have more power to make them miserable, than that which they so faintly remember to make them happy. For there is yet a little light in men; let them walk, let them walk, that the darkness overtake them not.
Or, as Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote, “Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys.”
Philosopher and psychologist William James would agree. He hit upon the most important part when he wrote “The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.” He also said, “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook,” which confirms the spirit of the flow of history. Leo Tolstoy said it, too: “If you want to be happy, be”, and John Lennon’s lesson was, “Let it be.“.
I believe growing up in history is ultimately about the search for happiness.
Page Four
Questions?
In 2007 I used the core ideas in that book manuscript for a 13-week courses at the Academy. A course proposal for spring of 2009 was rejected and I took two semesters off to write the book, I found another connection in Giambattista Vico’s New Science. He explains how the development of peoples in history can be understood by comparing their experiences in different times—the idea that I explored in my manuscript. This is how he described it:
This New Science or metaphysic, studying the common nature of nations in the light of divine providence, discovers the origins of divine and human institutions among the gentile nations, and thereby establishes a system of the natural law of the gentes, which proceeds with the greatest equality and constancy through the three ages which the Egyptians handed down to us as the three periods through which the world has passed up to their time. These are (1) The age of the gods, in which the gentiles believed they lived under divine governments, and everything was commanded them by auspices and oracles, which are the oldest institutions in profane history. (2) The age of the heroes, in which they reigned everywhere in aristocratic commonwealths, on account of a certain superiority of nature which they held themselves to have over the plebs. (3) The age of men, in which all men recognized themselves as equal in human nature, and therefore there were established first the popular commonwealths and then the monarchies, both of which are forms of human government.
Vico lived in the stage of Maslow’s need level 3. when the monarchy was being reestablished in England and self-government was being still being defined. He described it beautifully in terms of a stage of development of the human mind,
The last type of jurisprudence was that of natural equity, which reigns naturally in the free commonwealths, in which the people, each for his own particular good (without understanding that it is the same for all), are led to command universal laws. They naturally desire these laws to bend benignly to the least details of matters calling for equal utility.
Page Five
Questions?
When I was finishing the book in 2009, for two decades America had been carefully ignoring the reality of a change that had already happened—change created by information technology that was replacing workers with robots and computers and cheap overseas jobs that demanded activist government to update physical and social infrastructure . Thousands of American workers were jobless (and still are)in an economy of excessive wealth and instability—the Great Recession.
In what I called the Phase of Persons in the American Age of Economics I came to see the creation of the European Union as representing a transformation to Maslow’s self-actualization level 5, which the book calls the European Age of Persons.
The change affects daily lives in countless ways. In the previous level of the transformation, Maslow’s adulthood level 4, “Consumer products should have as many features as possible; and next year’s version should have even more”. Why? To maintain the demand for a profitable product, of course. They satisfy consumers’ need for esteem, the driving need of that level.
In the new level of human needs Maslow’s maturity level 5, ”feature fatigue” is the response of people who simply want things to work to satisfy their need for self-actualization. That need would be satisfied sooner if more people would realize that it is only one aspect of the far grander promise that is struggling to be realized in our lives and consciousness—a promise growing within the new level of human needs in the development of the human mind
It’s happening here in thousands of ways for people whose education and background make them open to the new level of need and less influenced by by special interests that resist unprofitable marketing changes Those people see the connection between a simpler life-style, smaller houses, and a healthy environment.
The core countries of the European Union adopted in varying ways what might be seen as a level 5 social infrastructure for the information age —easier access to higher education to meet the employee needs of our global businesses and technical innovation to give them a competitive advantage,
That kind of revolutionary, secular way forward, based on civic values and nurturing of people to meet the goal of a better society, seems to be the inevitable response to Maslow’s need for self-actualization, which is inherent in the education of the human race.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Growing Up In History
Ever wonder why the Americans do not have the quality of life enjoyed by people in other developed and less rich nations and even some less developed? Like a train ride to the airport in Spain at 230 miles per hour. Free health care and an impregnable banking system as in Canada? A system that would by regulate recreational drugs, and treat addiction, as in Holland and not have our habit of incarcerating 10% of the population? Progressive taxation and legislators that don’t need corporate support in million-dollar election campaigns. Well the answer is in this book. the idea that history is an aging process of growing up toward freedom and the pursuit of happiness.?
Monday, March 29, 2010
Fear in history
Bob Herbert’s “ An Absence of Class“ (March 23) is a timely call for decent Americans to rise up against fear, ignorance and divisiveness in our political life. .
We need to understand that it’s fear that is driving that behavior, fear that fear-mongering against “big government” is foundering on the spectacle of China’s very big government threatening our leadership in the race to the future, fear that a strategy of demonizing “socialism” in Europe fails to explain the effective performance of people-oriented capitalism there, fear that a decades-long campaign of fear, ignorance and divisiveness to block any move toward a more mature, sustainable society is finally failing,
Fear is a very powerful emotion that can cause pathological, irrational behavior when it finds itself trapped in a cage of reality with no way out.
We need to understand that it’s fear that is driving that behavior, fear that fear-mongering against “big government” is foundering on the spectacle of China’s very big government threatening our leadership in the race to the future, fear that a strategy of demonizing “socialism” in Europe fails to explain the effective performance of people-oriented capitalism there, fear that a decades-long campaign of fear, ignorance and divisiveness to block any move toward a more mature, sustainable society is finally failing,
Fear is a very powerful emotion that can cause pathological, irrational behavior when it finds itself trapped in a cage of reality with no way out.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Growing up in History - the book
This revolutionary book updates the ideas of two of the great thinkers about history, St Augustine, first century Bishop of Hippo in North Africa, and eighteenth century Italian historian Giovanni Battista Vico. It brings fresh insights into the long life story of our Western civilization by exploring Vico’s view that patterns of change of peoples in history can be understood by comparing the experiences of people in nations in different times in the context of St Augustine’s view that history is the education of the human race advancing in stages like our personal life-stages
There are many reasons to understand the process that produced Western civilization and will determine our future. We want to know how our world came to be, what it may become, and the lessons the past holds for our lives. A timely and particularly illuminating reason is the clash of civilizations in the 21st century, which calls for a new exploration of the history of Western civilization and its future in a world that faces it's modernity with perverse hostility.
To understand the dynamics of that process, and the meaning of aging and maturity in nations and people, Growing up in History applies a contemporary perspective to those ideas of St Augustine and Vico, borrowing from G. W.F. Hegel, Abraham Maslow, and chaos theory, an approach that has special relevance to understanding the growth of nations and people as they move through times of order and times to our chaotic 21st century. The lessons of that journey can tell us how people in the mature democratic nations of our global world can find inner freedom and happiness.
There are many reasons to understand the process that produced Western civilization and will determine our future. We want to know how our world came to be, what it may become, and the lessons the past holds for our lives. A timely and particularly illuminating reason is the clash of civilizations in the 21st century, which calls for a new exploration of the history of Western civilization and its future in a world that faces it's modernity with perverse hostility.
To understand the dynamics of that process, and the meaning of aging and maturity in nations and people, Growing up in History applies a contemporary perspective to those ideas of St Augustine and Vico, borrowing from G. W.F. Hegel, Abraham Maslow, and chaos theory, an approach that has special relevance to understanding the growth of nations and people as they move through times of order and times to our chaotic 21st century. The lessons of that journey can tell us how people in the mature democratic nations of our global world can find inner freedom and happiness.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
The Education of The Human Race
“The education of the human race, represented by the people of God, has advanced, like that of an individual, through certain epochs, or, as it were, ages, so that it might gradually rise from earthly to heavenly things, and from the visible to the invisible.
St Augustine, The City of God Book X.”
St Augustine, The City of God Book X.”
Summary
Posts in my Blogingon (rovion-on.blogspot.com) that refer to development of the mind are summarized in this blog
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
What is Wisdom?
In brief, wisdom is the power our brains acquire by learning the lessons of our history. From the infancy meanings stage of history we learn from the gods and parents who governed our infancy the the management of our basic needs for food and shelter, the values of love and caring and the terrors of their absence, and the manifold wonders of the world we live in. From the childhood security stage we learn how strong parental power can deal with the dangers and forces that threaten those needs and values, our beliefs and very existence. From the adolescent togetherness stage we learn how to join in relationships, laws and institutions that begin to provide those needs, values and security and struggle to end the governance of parental power. From the adulthood esteem stage we learn how to transfer those relationships, laws and institutions and that struggle to a fresh location and exploit the need for esteem to seize the wealth and possessions that replaced parental power And in the maturity self-actualization stage in same location of those gods and parents we learn from their regressions to the gods and parental abuses how to use those relationships to build new laws and institutions that replace the need for esteem with the need for self-actualization to replace those parental powers..
The internalization of all those lessons of history frees us from the constraining powers of all those stages of history and enable us to make pragmatic decisions that promote our full potential. Compare St Paul's Letter to the Romans 7,6
The internalization of all those lessons of history frees us from the constraining powers of all those stages of history and enable us to make pragmatic decisions that promote our full potential. Compare St Paul's Letter to the Romans 7,6
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Time is Running Out; letter to NYT
Time is running out for America to reverse its trend to second-power status, but the lack of a “coherent vision or plan” to build a new, saner, more sustainable economy has actually been a deliberate choice. For decades we have watched — and derided with horror as socialism — more export-oriented economies, powered by cleaner fuels, and equipped to deliver a better-educated work force. Our response has not been to learn from them whatever might be useful to America, but to declare., “We’ll never be like Europe!”
Meanwhile, the coherent vision or plan that brought America unity and prosperity for 200 years in response to the human needs created by the developing human mind empowered the same special interests that eventually dragged it down, by exploiting for their own benefit the economic system they knew so well because they made it. Now those needs divided between Main Street and Wall Street have reached a paralyzing state of conflict in America over the proper size and role of the state.
That is actually about the same way the unique civilization of the West matured as each stage responded in its turn with a new and distinctive structure of the state -- the priests in Egypt, the imperial warriors of Rome, the imperial colonizers of Britain. Now that the corporate oligarchs of America are next, their conservative supporters are desperately trying to stop the flood by blocking any move away from the status quo.
But there is no denying the need for mature "self-actualization" in a society freed by the miracles of technology to concentrate on quality of life, based not only on the physical infrastructure that was built in the previous age to support wealth creation but also on a social infrastructure of health care, child care, leisure time, and comfortable retirement.
(CHNGE)
Tn our digitalized information age, that is a society unachievable by a people seeking a better life by by working hard to acquire wealth and possessions make that work requires government funding for social infrastructure and other strong support for competitive business, like higher education and advanced innovation. The resulting higher profits support higher progressive tax rates on the self-multiplying productivity of advanced technology that our social development has made available by our hard-working and innovative past.
Meanwhile, the coherent vision or plan that brought America unity and prosperity for 200 years in response to the human needs created by the developing human mind empowered the same special interests that eventually dragged it down, by exploiting for their own benefit the economic system they knew so well because they made it. Now those needs divided between Main Street and Wall Street have reached a paralyzing state of conflict in America over the proper size and role of the state.
That is actually about the same way the unique civilization of the West matured as each stage responded in its turn with a new and distinctive structure of the state -- the priests in Egypt, the imperial warriors of Rome, the imperial colonizers of Britain. Now that the corporate oligarchs of America are next, their conservative supporters are desperately trying to stop the flood by blocking any move away from the status quo.
But there is no denying the need for mature "self-actualization" in a society freed by the miracles of technology to concentrate on quality of life, based not only on the physical infrastructure that was built in the previous age to support wealth creation but also on a social infrastructure of health care, child care, leisure time, and comfortable retirement.
(CHNGE)
Tn our digitalized information age, that is a society unachievable by a people seeking a better life by by working hard to acquire wealth and possessions make that work requires government funding for social infrastructure and other strong support for competitive business, like higher education and advanced innovation. The resulting higher profits support higher progressive tax rates on the self-multiplying productivity of advanced technology that our social development has made available by our hard-working and innovative past.
Monday, February 8, 2010
America Ending
America Is Not Yet Lost
By PAUL KRUGMAN
February 8, 2010
OP-ED COLUMNIST
We’ve always known that America’s reign as the world’s greatest nation would eventually end. But most of us imagined that our downfall, when it came, would be something grand and tragic.
What we’re getting instead is less a tragedy than a deadly farce. Instead of fraying under the strain of imperial overstretch, we’re paralyzed by procedure. Instead of re-enacting the decline and fall of Rome, we’re re-enacting the dissolution of 18th-century Poland.
A brief history lesson: In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Polish legislature, the Sejm, operated on the unanimity principle: any member could nullify legislation by shouting “I do not allow!” This made the nation largely ungovernable, and neighboring regimes began hacking off pieces of its territory. By 1795 Poland had disappeared, not to re-emerge for more than a century.
Today, the U.S. Senate seems determined to make the Sejm look good by comparison.
But by now, we know how the Obama administration deals with those who would destroy it: it goes straight for the capillaries.
By PAUL KRUGMAN
February 8, 2010
OP-ED COLUMNIST
We’ve always known that America’s reign as the world’s greatest nation would eventually end. But most of us imagined that our downfall, when it came, would be something grand and tragic.
What we’re getting instead is less a tragedy than a deadly farce. Instead of fraying under the strain of imperial overstretch, we’re paralyzed by procedure. Instead of re-enacting the decline and fall of Rome, we’re re-enacting the dissolution of 18th-century Poland.
A brief history lesson: In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Polish legislature, the Sejm, operated on the unanimity principle: any member could nullify legislation by shouting “I do not allow!” This made the nation largely ungovernable, and neighboring regimes began hacking off pieces of its territory. By 1795 Poland had disappeared, not to re-emerge for more than a century.
Today, the U.S. Senate seems determined to make the Sejm look good by comparison.
But by now, we know how the Obama administration deals with those who would destroy it: it goes straight for the capillaries.
The State of the Nation
BROOKINGS Conference
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 7, 2010
The Next Economy: Transforming Energy and Infrastructure Investment
Business, Cities, Environment, Trade, U.S. Economy
Bruce Katz, Vice President and Director, Metropolitan Policy Program
'The Next American Economy' Conference, Palo Alto, California
FEBRUARY 2010 —
The “Great Recession” has been a wake up call for the nation.
My comment:
Seventy years too late. The real wake up should have been the Great Depression!
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 7, 2010
The Next Economy: Transforming Energy and Infrastructure Investment
Business, Cities, Environment, Trade, U.S. Economy
Bruce Katz, Vice President and Director, Metropolitan Policy Program
'The Next American Economy' Conference, Palo Alto, California
FEBRUARY 2010 —
The “Great Recession” has been a wake up call for the nation.
My comment:
Seventy years too late. The real wake up should have been the Great Depression!
Friday, February 5, 2010
Infrastrucure is Fate
Until the collapse of the Mississippi River Bridge in 2007, in all my 89 years I had not thought much about infrastructures. But the collapse of our economic system in 2008 revived that dramatic memory of collapse and heavy costs of poor attention to infrastructure needs, and made me wonder whether America’s failure to maintain appropriate infrastructures might have a lot to do with its economic collapse. So I started to look for answers to the question, ”What is infrastructure?” and how it constantly changes to satisfy Thomas Jefferson’s principle that “…laws and institutions must keep pace with the development of the human mind”. The story of infrastructures over the centuries reflects their critical connections to the unique needs of their times.
Infrastructure for Egypt’s civilization was the structure of its priesthood and the vast pyramids it built to secure the after-life of its god-king.. For the Roman republic, it was its army, the Plain of Mars where it celebrated its importance, the roads on which it moved, and the aqueducts that supplied it with water. The Eastern Empire added St. Sophia and other Christian churches.
England’s infrastructure was the Christian and military components inherited from the past and added new political mechanisms for parliamentary government in a constitutional monarchy. Further infrastructure made food production less labor-intensive, established cottage industries like weaving, factories in the cities, and financial markets. Finally came transportion and housing infrastructure for the Industrial Revolution, and the public education needed in a more complex society.
America expanded it with Vanderbilt’s railroads and giant infrastructures of steel, steam, and oil to match the vastnesses of the country. Obeying the constitutional ban on establishment of religion, the spiritual component was limited to waivers of taxation and official association (but no funding) with the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral in Washington. In the financial area, before 1837 I found that America actually had two central banks in succession, modeled on the Bank of England. After they were abolished, the Federal Reserve was the principal infrastructure in financial matters. It failed to prevent the Great Depression, which I believe was caused when most of the benefit of the increased productivity of factories went into profits rather than into consumer purchases, and was ended by massive infrastructure construction projects by Hoover and Roosevelt: the Hoover Dam, the Interstate highway system, and the Coulee Dam paid for by high marginal tax rates that continued up to 92% in the prosperous Eisenhower years.
By 2008, after three decades of deregulation of financial markets and lagging investment in high-wage infrastructure jobs, the stage was set for trouble. So when robots and computers and arcane financial manipulations were replacing - and multiplying - the productivity of hands and brains, and jobs were going overseas, the financial collapse reminded me of 1929 consumers were again losing their share of the benefits from increased productivity when investors chose technology or overseas workers instead of American workers, or debt manipulation in a market economy dominated by debt. And even American businesses that did hire workers in the auto industry but paid for health care were under a competitive disadvantage with foreign producers.
But robots and computers also could have meant the beginning of a changed social system that needed less human labor and demanded more leisure time to be supported by the productivity of technology. The logical conclusion should be new infrastructure health care and higher public education to free American production to be competitive, generous unemployment, and retirement benefits with retraining and restructuring to create more jobs in human care and structural infrastructure repair and improvement. None of those ideas were accepted or even discussed for application to America.
Countries of Western Europe, their people perhaps transformed by the tragic legacy of a troubled past, responded to the miracles of information technology as a path to a “mature” society with that new infrastructure and the gift of more leisure time. That would mean higher unemployment and high marginal tax rates, less wealth inequality and slower growth, but also a stable economy with a proper infrastructure that was better able to withstand the impact of the global financial collapse and adjust to other demands of future change.
Infrastructure for Egypt’s civilization was the structure of its priesthood and the vast pyramids it built to secure the after-life of its god-king.. For the Roman republic, it was its army, the Plain of Mars where it celebrated its importance, the roads on which it moved, and the aqueducts that supplied it with water. The Eastern Empire added St. Sophia and other Christian churches.
England’s infrastructure was the Christian and military components inherited from the past and added new political mechanisms for parliamentary government in a constitutional monarchy. Further infrastructure made food production less labor-intensive, established cottage industries like weaving, factories in the cities, and financial markets. Finally came transportion and housing infrastructure for the Industrial Revolution, and the public education needed in a more complex society.
America expanded it with Vanderbilt’s railroads and giant infrastructures of steel, steam, and oil to match the vastnesses of the country. Obeying the constitutional ban on establishment of religion, the spiritual component was limited to waivers of taxation and official association (but no funding) with the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral in Washington. In the financial area, before 1837 I found that America actually had two central banks in succession, modeled on the Bank of England. After they were abolished, the Federal Reserve was the principal infrastructure in financial matters. It failed to prevent the Great Depression, which I believe was caused when most of the benefit of the increased productivity of factories went into profits rather than into consumer purchases, and was ended by massive infrastructure construction projects by Hoover and Roosevelt: the Hoover Dam, the Interstate highway system, and the Coulee Dam paid for by high marginal tax rates that continued up to 92% in the prosperous Eisenhower years.
By 2008, after three decades of deregulation of financial markets and lagging investment in high-wage infrastructure jobs, the stage was set for trouble. So when robots and computers and arcane financial manipulations were replacing - and multiplying - the productivity of hands and brains, and jobs were going overseas, the financial collapse reminded me of 1929 consumers were again losing their share of the benefits from increased productivity when investors chose technology or overseas workers instead of American workers, or debt manipulation in a market economy dominated by debt. And even American businesses that did hire workers in the auto industry but paid for health care were under a competitive disadvantage with foreign producers.
But robots and computers also could have meant the beginning of a changed social system that needed less human labor and demanded more leisure time to be supported by the productivity of technology. The logical conclusion should be new infrastructure health care and higher public education to free American production to be competitive, generous unemployment, and retirement benefits with retraining and restructuring to create more jobs in human care and structural infrastructure repair and improvement. None of those ideas were accepted or even discussed for application to America.
Countries of Western Europe, their people perhaps transformed by the tragic legacy of a troubled past, responded to the miracles of information technology as a path to a “mature” society with that new infrastructure and the gift of more leisure time. That would mean higher unemployment and high marginal tax rates, less wealth inequality and slower growth, but also a stable economy with a proper infrastructure that was better able to withstand the impact of the global financial collapse and adjust to other demands of future change.
Letter NYT Oct 29 200?
Doubts about the usefulness of the work done by Nobel laureates in economics (News story, Oct. 20) seem justified. There is little down-to-earth professional analysis of the serious threat to the health of the American economy from the replacement of human labor by robots, computers, and overseas labor that increasingly attracts investment.
Lengthy divergent explanations have been offered for the problems caused when new technologies gave producers new powers. Robert B. Reich explains the problem in his new book Supercapitalism, as caused by excessive competition, abetted by undue political influence and financial deregulation. In his new book, The Conscience of a Liberal, (Book Review, Oct 21), Paul Krugman clarifies the corrupt political failures and disastrous political consequences of economic dysfunction, without explaining the realities of economic structures underlying both his and Reich’s analyses.
The presidential candidates all seem to be preparing for office in a lost utopia ruled by the classic doctrines of Adam Smith when investment in business meant middle-class jobs for Americans, who paid taxes and joined strong unions. And to make that system work, taxes paid for an infrastructure that is now seriously in disrepair, including roads, bridges, seaports, sewer systems, and public education to the average level employees needed in those days to do their industrial jobs.
We don’t need new academic analyses to explain how new technology and globalization changed all that, abetted by A Dearth of Taxes” (Editorial, Oct. 22). Obviously investment in more productivity means more robots, more computers, cheap foreign labor, fewer American production jobs, and vast profits that have largely gone to the top 5% of the population, creating Reich’s competitive rat-race and Krugman’s political sewer. Our dysfunctional financial, corporate, and political structures provide all the explanation needed.
What we do need is a credible professional analysis of our outdated economic structures and new market realities. That kind of analysis will be needed for any meaningful reform that might create a more sustainable society.
Lengthy divergent explanations have been offered for the problems caused when new technologies gave producers new powers. Robert B. Reich explains the problem in his new book Supercapitalism, as caused by excessive competition, abetted by undue political influence and financial deregulation. In his new book, The Conscience of a Liberal, (Book Review, Oct 21), Paul Krugman clarifies the corrupt political failures and disastrous political consequences of economic dysfunction, without explaining the realities of economic structures underlying both his and Reich’s analyses.
The presidential candidates all seem to be preparing for office in a lost utopia ruled by the classic doctrines of Adam Smith when investment in business meant middle-class jobs for Americans, who paid taxes and joined strong unions. And to make that system work, taxes paid for an infrastructure that is now seriously in disrepair, including roads, bridges, seaports, sewer systems, and public education to the average level employees needed in those days to do their industrial jobs.
We don’t need new academic analyses to explain how new technology and globalization changed all that, abetted by A Dearth of Taxes” (Editorial, Oct. 22). Obviously investment in more productivity means more robots, more computers, cheap foreign labor, fewer American production jobs, and vast profits that have largely gone to the top 5% of the population, creating Reich’s competitive rat-race and Krugman’s political sewer. Our dysfunctional financial, corporate, and political structures provide all the explanation needed.
What we do need is a credible professional analysis of our outdated economic structures and new market realities. That kind of analysis will be needed for any meaningful reform that might create a more sustainable society.
Letter to NYT October 24, 2007
Prize that Even Some Laureates Question
Questions raised about the usefulness of the work done by th Nobel Laureates (News story, Oct. 21) seems justified by the absence of useful analysis of what may be the most serious threat to the health of the American economy. I refer to the destructive relationship between investment in production of goods and services and the profitable replacement of people with robots, computers, and overseas labor.
There seems to be little discussion of the vast economic dislocations caused by the once unimaginable increases in productivity of technology and the profitability of globalization. American workers without a college degree have no access to the benefits , which mainly go to wealthy investors in a self-magnifying process
The presidential candidates all seem to be preparing for office in that forgotten utopia where investment in business meant middle-class jobs for Americans, who paid taxes and joined unions. And to make the system work, taxes paid for an infrastructure that is now seriously in disrepair, including roads, bridges, seaports, sewer systems, and public education to the average level employees needed in those days to do their industrial jobs. That was Industrial Age Economics 101.
The Information Age and globalization changed all that years ago, but Americans, as Marshal McEwan said, have been looking in the rear-view mirror ever since. Investment in productivity has supported more robots, more computers, and cheap foreign labor and made vast profits that have largely gone to the top 5% of the population. Information Age economics has meant a growing wealth gap, two-job families and insufficient parenting time in a vastly complex society made more unmanageable by rising health costs and media and politics driven by money.
Big accumulation has mostly come from positions of inherited advantage, less from hard work than from exploiting the bounties of advanced financial systems and high technology. Those bounties were earned by the past contributions of all Americans and their benefits should be shared by all Americans.
Questions raised about the usefulness of the work done by th Nobel Laureates (News story, Oct. 21) seems justified by the absence of useful analysis of what may be the most serious threat to the health of the American economy. I refer to the destructive relationship between investment in production of goods and services and the profitable replacement of people with robots, computers, and overseas labor.
There seems to be little discussion of the vast economic dislocations caused by the once unimaginable increases in productivity of technology and the profitability of globalization. American workers without a college degree have no access to the benefits , which mainly go to wealthy investors in a self-magnifying process
The presidential candidates all seem to be preparing for office in that forgotten utopia where investment in business meant middle-class jobs for Americans, who paid taxes and joined unions. And to make the system work, taxes paid for an infrastructure that is now seriously in disrepair, including roads, bridges, seaports, sewer systems, and public education to the average level employees needed in those days to do their industrial jobs. That was Industrial Age Economics 101.
The Information Age and globalization changed all that years ago, but Americans, as Marshal McEwan said, have been looking in the rear-view mirror ever since. Investment in productivity has supported more robots, more computers, and cheap foreign labor and made vast profits that have largely gone to the top 5% of the population. Information Age economics has meant a growing wealth gap, two-job families and insufficient parenting time in a vastly complex society made more unmanageable by rising health costs and media and politics driven by money.
Big accumulation has mostly come from positions of inherited advantage, less from hard work than from exploiting the bounties of advanced financial systems and high technology. Those bounties were earned by the past contributions of all Americans and their benefits should be shared by all Americans.
Economist letter re big govermemt
January 29, 2010
The Economist
25 St. James St.
London SWIA IMG
I hope The Economist will reconsider its strong call to overcome those persuasive reasons to support the gaining strength of the “market failure school recited in “The Leviathon stirs again”, and reverse the trend to the “growing state” (January 23rd).
Surprisingly, the Leviathon omits the most important reason that determines the proper size and role of the state—the human needs created by the developing human mind.
Those needs, and the proper size and role of the state, present basic questions that are in a paralyzing state of conflict America. They have less relevance in Britain and even less in China.
The point is that in the West each civilization developed through a distinctive structure of the state that responded in its turn to the sequence of needs created by the developing human mind. The vision and purpose that brought it to its original unity and prosperity created the special interests that eventually dragged it down by exploiting for their own benefit the system they themselves created-- the priests in Egypt, the imperial warriors of Rome, the imperial colonizers of Britain. The corporate oligarchs of America had to be next, and the dire consequences, stating with the Great Depression, were to be expected. The policies of the state are constrained by the interests of large corporations and their wealthy owners in an unstable environment of growing inequality.
According to Abraham Maslow, the need for esteem was the driving vision of that American system–wealth and possessions acquired by hard work. The next stage is the need for mature "self-actualization" in a digitalized information age, which means a society freed by the
miracles of technology to concentrate on quality of life, based not only on the good physical infrastructure needed for wealth creation in the previous age but also on a social infrastructure of health care, child care, leisure time, and comfortable retirement, a society unachievable by the American people even by a party elected by a solid majority and controlling both the branches of the Congress. The important question elsewhere is what should the growing state bring with it.
To the developing human mind in Western Europe, good physical and social infrastructures are essential for profitable competitive global business, but not nearly as rewarding for private investment or as effective for creating jobs as investment in automated production, financial manipulation, and global business in emerging markets, unburdened by the costs of social infrastructure (like health care for employees in America).
So to make that work requires government funding for social infrastructure and other support for competitive business, like higher education and advanced innovation. The resulting higher profits support higher progressive tax rates, and good health and child care, paid parental leave and more leisure time lead to a more caring, healthy, and creative communities. Like it or not, the future is going to look like stake-holder capitalism and bigger government in the most advanced Western European countries.
These lessons of history, rejected in America, are already being heeded in Britain, accompanied by some discord from declining traditionalists. History tells us that Thomas Jefferson had it right when he called for laws and institutions to keep pace with the development of the human mind.
“The education of the human race, represented by the people of God, has advanced, like that of an individual, through certain epochs, or, as it were, ages, so that it might gradually rise from earthly to heavenly things, and from the visible to the invisible.
St Augustine, The City of God Book X.”
. Every past civilization has been brought to its knees by the special interests that brought it to its original unity and prosperity in response to the human needs created by the developing human mind. They dragged it down by exploiting for their own benefit the system they created - the priests in Egypt,
the imperial warriors of Rome, the imperial colonizers of Britain. The corporate oligarchs of America had to be next, and the dire consequences were to be expected.
But the important question is what comes next? According to Abraham Maslow, the need for esteem was the driving vision of the American system - wealth creation by acquisition. Next is the need for "self-actualization" in a digitalized information age. That means a society devoted to quality of life: an infrastructure of good health care, child care, leisure time, comfortable retirement. Production of goods must come from investment in automation and global business in emerging markets, unemcumbered by ·social benefits like health care for employees.
To make that work requires government funding for that social infrastructure and other support for competitive global business, stake-holder representation in corporate management, and higher marginal income tax rates. Like it or not, the future is going
to look like the advanced Western European nations of France, Sweden and Denmark, for instance. Thomas Jefferson had it right when he called for laws and institutions to keep pace with the development of the human mind.
Those ignored portents of disaster demanded a more activist government to create a sustainable post-industrial society and make American business structurally competitive on the global playing field, including post-industrial infrastructure with government-based universal health care as well as bridges and other industrial age infrastructure that had long been sadly neglected.
But laissez-faire is not a broken system; it is merely obsolete in a rich and digitalized part of the world that has passed it by, as Barack Obama clearly understands. Perhaps comprehension would be easier if we see the flow of history as growing-up toward a kind of maturity that makes the tired old labels of left and right give way to —as you rightly put it — “Not what you aim for, but how you do it”.
So its long past time to dismiss that bogey man of big government. This post industrial and post modern world demands more activist governments to create a sustainable post-industrial society and make American business structurally competitive on the global playing field, including post-industrial infrastructure with government-based universal health care as well as bridges and other industrial age infrastructure that had long been sadly neglected.
Perhaps all that would be easier to accept if we see the development of the human mind as growing-up toward a kind of maturity that makes the tired old labels of left and right give way to the pragmatism of do what works, or,— as you once rightly put it — “Not what you aim for, but how you do it”.
The Economist
25 St. James St.
London SWIA IMG
I hope The Economist will reconsider its strong call to overcome those persuasive reasons to support the gaining strength of the “market failure school recited in “The Leviathon stirs again”, and reverse the trend to the “growing state” (January 23rd).
Surprisingly, the Leviathon omits the most important reason that determines the proper size and role of the state—the human needs created by the developing human mind.
Those needs, and the proper size and role of the state, present basic questions that are in a paralyzing state of conflict America. They have less relevance in Britain and even less in China.
The point is that in the West each civilization developed through a distinctive structure of the state that responded in its turn to the sequence of needs created by the developing human mind. The vision and purpose that brought it to its original unity and prosperity created the special interests that eventually dragged it down by exploiting for their own benefit the system they themselves created-- the priests in Egypt, the imperial warriors of Rome, the imperial colonizers of Britain. The corporate oligarchs of America had to be next, and the dire consequences, stating with the Great Depression, were to be expected. The policies of the state are constrained by the interests of large corporations and their wealthy owners in an unstable environment of growing inequality.
According to Abraham Maslow, the need for esteem was the driving vision of that American system–wealth and possessions acquired by hard work. The next stage is the need for mature "self-actualization" in a digitalized information age, which means a society freed by the
miracles of technology to concentrate on quality of life, based not only on the good physical infrastructure needed for wealth creation in the previous age but also on a social infrastructure of health care, child care, leisure time, and comfortable retirement, a society unachievable by the American people even by a party elected by a solid majority and controlling both the branches of the Congress. The important question elsewhere is what should the growing state bring with it.
To the developing human mind in Western Europe, good physical and social infrastructures are essential for profitable competitive global business, but not nearly as rewarding for private investment or as effective for creating jobs as investment in automated production, financial manipulation, and global business in emerging markets, unburdened by the costs of social infrastructure (like health care for employees in America).
So to make that work requires government funding for social infrastructure and other support for competitive business, like higher education and advanced innovation. The resulting higher profits support higher progressive tax rates, and good health and child care, paid parental leave and more leisure time lead to a more caring, healthy, and creative communities. Like it or not, the future is going to look like stake-holder capitalism and bigger government in the most advanced Western European countries.
These lessons of history, rejected in America, are already being heeded in Britain, accompanied by some discord from declining traditionalists. History tells us that Thomas Jefferson had it right when he called for laws and institutions to keep pace with the development of the human mind.
“The education of the human race, represented by the people of God, has advanced, like that of an individual, through certain epochs, or, as it were, ages, so that it might gradually rise from earthly to heavenly things, and from the visible to the invisible.
St Augustine, The City of God Book X.”
. Every past civilization has been brought to its knees by the special interests that brought it to its original unity and prosperity in response to the human needs created by the developing human mind. They dragged it down by exploiting for their own benefit the system they created - the priests in Egypt,
the imperial warriors of Rome, the imperial colonizers of Britain. The corporate oligarchs of America had to be next, and the dire consequences were to be expected.
But the important question is what comes next? According to Abraham Maslow, the need for esteem was the driving vision of the American system - wealth creation by acquisition. Next is the need for "self-actualization" in a digitalized information age. That means a society devoted to quality of life: an infrastructure of good health care, child care, leisure time, comfortable retirement. Production of goods must come from investment in automation and global business in emerging markets, unemcumbered by ·social benefits like health care for employees.
To make that work requires government funding for that social infrastructure and other support for competitive global business, stake-holder representation in corporate management, and higher marginal income tax rates. Like it or not, the future is going
to look like the advanced Western European nations of France, Sweden and Denmark, for instance. Thomas Jefferson had it right when he called for laws and institutions to keep pace with the development of the human mind.
Those ignored portents of disaster demanded a more activist government to create a sustainable post-industrial society and make American business structurally competitive on the global playing field, including post-industrial infrastructure with government-based universal health care as well as bridges and other industrial age infrastructure that had long been sadly neglected.
But laissez-faire is not a broken system; it is merely obsolete in a rich and digitalized part of the world that has passed it by, as Barack Obama clearly understands. Perhaps comprehension would be easier if we see the flow of history as growing-up toward a kind of maturity that makes the tired old labels of left and right give way to —as you rightly put it — “Not what you aim for, but how you do it”.
So its long past time to dismiss that bogey man of big government. This post industrial and post modern world demands more activist governments to create a sustainable post-industrial society and make American business structurally competitive on the global playing field, including post-industrial infrastructure with government-based universal health care as well as bridges and other industrial age infrastructure that had long been sadly neglected.
Perhaps all that would be easier to accept if we see the development of the human mind as growing-up toward a kind of maturity that makes the tired old labels of left and right give way to the pragmatism of do what works, or,— as you once rightly put it — “Not what you aim for, but how you do it”.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
World Growing Up
Assuming with St Augustine that history is the education of the human race in the same developmental stages as human beings experience as they grow up.--
Africa is still in tribal chaos, unable to get its gods together, like Egypt before its faith unification was massively symbolized by the pyramids. (The infancy stage in the education of the human race.).
Extreme Islamists, particularly the Taliban, are using the force of faith to unify and enter the childhood stage -- Romulus and Remus fed by the mother wolf, little boys fighting on the playground that became the Roman Empire.
Iraq found temporary unity under Saddam Hussein, and again as America seeks to replace him with unifying force of temporary colonization and democratic politicalization, comparable to British colonization of divided tribal areas like India (and Iraq before Saddam).
Iran is seeking unity after decolonization by moving into premature adult technological modernity like China, hindered by demographic religious divisions in its people still in infancy stage and political divisions in its people in the adolescent stage seeking the order of democracy to replace its authoritarian past.
Great Britain is struggling to enter a mature European Union society hindered by people demographically divided between wealth-dominated modernity and regressive semi-feudal parliamentary government.
America is struggling to overcome regressive post industrial wealth and corporate domination of its adult technological modernity and government, hindered by a regressive political division between change driven by the development of the human mind in the education of the human race and special interests that benefit from the status quo and are supported by regressive financial imperialism and regressive religious faiths and organizations.
China found unity by military force based on political ideology to dispense with infancy, childhood, and adolescent stages to enter an American-style adult post industrial modernity dominated by government rather than corporate money-power.
The European Union is trying to fashion a mature confederation with a sustainable social infrastructure that brings together very diverse nations with different languages and cultures that need a unifying faith in a better society than the world has seen.
Africa is still in tribal chaos, unable to get its gods together, like Egypt before its faith unification was massively symbolized by the pyramids. (The infancy stage in the education of the human race.).
Extreme Islamists, particularly the Taliban, are using the force of faith to unify and enter the childhood stage -- Romulus and Remus fed by the mother wolf, little boys fighting on the playground that became the Roman Empire.
Iraq found temporary unity under Saddam Hussein, and again as America seeks to replace him with unifying force of temporary colonization and democratic politicalization, comparable to British colonization of divided tribal areas like India (and Iraq before Saddam).
Iran is seeking unity after decolonization by moving into premature adult technological modernity like China, hindered by demographic religious divisions in its people still in infancy stage and political divisions in its people in the adolescent stage seeking the order of democracy to replace its authoritarian past.
Great Britain is struggling to enter a mature European Union society hindered by people demographically divided between wealth-dominated modernity and regressive semi-feudal parliamentary government.
America is struggling to overcome regressive post industrial wealth and corporate domination of its adult technological modernity and government, hindered by a regressive political division between change driven by the development of the human mind in the education of the human race and special interests that benefit from the status quo and are supported by regressive financial imperialism and regressive religious faiths and organizations.
China found unity by military force based on political ideology to dispense with infancy, childhood, and adolescent stages to enter an American-style adult post industrial modernity dominated by government rather than corporate money-power.
The European Union is trying to fashion a mature confederation with a sustainable social infrastructure that brings together very diverse nations with different languages and cultures that need a unifying faith in a better society than the world has seen.
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