Progress, Regress, Digress

For some time now, since the primaries began or even before, Democrats have been dreaming of enough luck in the post-Bush era to capture veto-proof majorities in Congress, such as those elusive 60 Senate votes, as well as maintain the half-century of liberal (increasingly toe-) hold on the Supreme Court. Democrats want near-total power, and they want it back. Now this seems ever more likely and frightening for more and more panicking yet realistic Republicans. But just how impressive would such a “devastating” Democratic victory be? Not even all that impressive. This last decade or so has been slightly bizarre and abberrant. The general rule appears to be near-domination by the more progressive of the two major parties, whatever they happen to be called at any given time, punctuated with certain, and by that I mean guaranteed, setbacks. But the so-called liberal cause marches on. Can we extrapolate from this to speak of human progress in general? Well, why not?

Let’s think back to our first encounter with classical authors, the so-called ancients. In every case, I bet, one of the primary, almost inevitable reactions was surprise at the levels of expression, reason, moral processing and overall elegance on display—as compared to our expectations. “Surprise” is by definition an unexpected turn. But what did we expect? Something less? Why would we have such low expectations of the past? Maybe that’s only for psychologists to help us find out. But in fact, we generally do have low expectations of the past, and I guess it’s probably because we are so fully aware of the reality of progress.

It’s easy to create a mythologized past, as we well know. One common trap we fall into is imagining a past more progressed than it actually was. An even more dubious belief, of course, is one of an idealized past that's even more progressed than the present—thus actually claiming that we have inexorably regressed, presumably from some distant, angelic form. But probably we more frequenty mythologize the past in the other direction, in a way that makes it out to be worse than it really was. This is because for the most part, we are indeed realists, and reality can breed a lot of pessimism. Encountered with evidence of human communication from one hundred or more generations ago, this pessimistic myth proceeds to fall as well, and is replaced or re-shaped by the news-blast. A blast of the unexpected discovery of all that we truly share with Plato, with Sun Tzu.

We are so struck by our common humanity! But what kind of barbarism might we have come to expect, after all? Hmm. There are countless examples. Presently, the abuse of animals, and of each other. Name-calling, and war. We have good reasons to expect barbarism: it is real. What’s harder to nail down is its form, and extent. So we have to observe fearlessly.

A kind of boxing in ancient Rome consisted of two slave-gladiators sitting face to face, chained down except for their arms, their fists reinforced with something like brass knuckles, except less childish and innocent than brass knuckles. They boxed until one of them died.

St. Catherine’s College, part of the University of Cambridge, displays the breaking-wheel on its shield, above its alma mater. The wheel was a punishment that went out of style about three hundred years ago, although its principle elements haven’t exactly been abandoned—only as state-sanctioned punishment. But being broken in the wheel surely demanded an inhuman, evil, incorrigible criminal candidate—it was reserved for the worst of the worst of the worst, wasn’t it? Yes it was, yes sir it was, as is the case with all forms of highly serious punishment. It involved being strapped to a man-sized wheel, with the limbs arranged to lie across the spokes. What do I mean? As opposed to along the length of the spokes? Yes, as opposed to along the length. We're talking "across the spokes." The joints of the limbs, however, such as the wrists, the knees, the elbows, the ankle, were arranged to lie on top of spokes. With solid wood behind them, instead of air. This is where the blows would NOT fall. The executioner took a giant hammer right to the middle of the long bones that define the limbs, and broke them cleanly through the spaces between the spokes. In France, the death-blow to the chest was called the “coups de grace” on the rare occasions that such grace was granted. But by that point, I’m guessing, more and more people were beginning to have the uncomfortable feeling that maybe, just maybe, wheeling is no longer an appealing way of dealing with the feeling that this guy here is just begging for a wheeling, and so maybe it should be discarded. Because the whole point was to break limbs, without causing a massive loss of blood and also leaving the organs fully intact. Thus, after being properly broken in the wheel, it took many hours and even days to die from shock, from dehydration. So this entire “coups de grace” trend was totally missing the point and starting to ruin the whole thing, basically.

These days, when it comes to the least worthy of all Americans, we just inject them with poison or gas. And we’re not adhering to the old-school when it comes to boxing, either. We have come a long way, for sure.

We need not (necessarily) imagine humanity as a parasitic virus, nor ourselves (necessarily) in parallel. We will not (necessarily) self-destruct in a conflagration wrought by idiots, nor rape the earth, nor bring about some other apocalypse. Let’s not forget the reality of progress. Now, I’ll digress.

The famously philosophical and democratic Athenian citizenry consisted of 30,000, ruling over a city of 250,000, which in turn ruled a vast country-side. Yes, a vast country-side. And ancient Greeks sold each other into slavery, and yes, they invented the breaking-wheel as a form of torturous punishment, one which lasted for over 2,000 years, continuously. But wait, wait, let me try again to digress:

Yes, I said a vast country-side. The ancient city-state is such a strangely idealized entity! Such a thing never existed in the past, and no, it does not really exist today, I don’t care what Singapore says. Cities by definition are not self-sufficient, and so they don’t merit such weird glorification.

The village is a self-sufficient socio-political unit, being the settled agricultural domain of the tribe. The state is also a self-sufficient unit. But the city-state is mere fiction, one that means to mythologize the elites who built the state. The city is part of the post-communal, post-tribal political development, the final embodiment of a very significant re-organization of society under the new rules of strict class-hierarchy, the kind which can never be possible in tribal societies: too much intimacy there. The city is also a direct product of the wealth-surplus resulting from hierarchy. It is, in essence and always, the monumental capital of surrounding lands, be they a whole empire, or just enough to provide the requisite food.

To this day it remains what it always was, the truest home of concentrated leadership preserving the social order. It is fundamentally anti-agricultural in attitude except when it comes to consumption. By the time the first cities were actually built, I imagine that agriculture was already convincingly determined to be hard and dirty labor best left to people who really should just be solidified into a slave-caste and have it the fuck over with. Every political unit that has ever been called a city-state is nothing less than a perfectly normal state, with a capital. The word is a pure oxymoron. The idea is a lie.

A city is most definitely NOT a very large village.

Which notion sounds more likely—a village-city, or a village-state? Is a village-city anything more than blurred nonsense? A village-state, on the other hand, is what you might call the condition that immediately preceeds the urgent building of a capital. And unlike the raising of a barn, this one will not be a cooperative effort.

And that is something too: Progress! Capitalized, and exclamation pointed right at you.

The Hammer

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/02/AR2008100203043.html


Man, you are pissed off!

Aren't you, Krauthammer, or am I just imagining that you're having quite a bad and bitter week? Basically calling all Democrats fully hypnotized is a sign of something mighty heaving inside you. Now, we all know what this feels like, sure. But stop being such a prick about it.

Finally admitting from your influential throne that Barack is near-inevitably the next P. was very kind of you. And I respect something real about your writing, although I hate you and what you stand for; and yet, I respect you as well, for I must, and I love you with all my heart. Yes, you are pig-ignorant sometimes, as we all can be. Certainly, right now for you this is one of those unhappy occasions.

Return to reality. Are you not cognizant that Republicans have controlled all branches of government and both houses for a bit now? Do you think the polls are consistently off by 30-40 percent, that the GOP has not in fact humiliated itself, and been humbled? This they themselves repeatedly admit, and now use it to try to re-power. But it is the Democrats' turn to now face the challenge of avoiding power intoxication--such an urge, it can hardly be totally avoided. Remind yourself what it would mean if Republicans won again after this performance. Democracies and peaceful societies have been destroyed (your regimen) and destroyed themselves before (mine). What would re-electing Republicans now say about the state of our electorate?

As you well know, the alarm levels that Republicans have just achieved are astounding. It is your duty, Krauthammer, to have reason enough to know that the Democrats now have to take their turn in this wonder-world. Don't worry, it will not last too long. So stop being a sourpuss.

Slavery

In all my reading of traditional history, whose unfortunate sway is near-universal, there is greatly important emphasis on the levels of production achieved.  But there is rarely any talk about the constantly occuring phenomenon of needless overproduction due to enslavement.  In the distant past, it seems that mainly the rulers benefitted from consuming high levels of wealth, which as such equates to waste.  The industrial revolution unleashed ever more mindblowing opportunities to produce wealth/waste, yet Marx still had to respond to the slavery which resulted when machines that produced at levels unlike anything ever seen before were not producing enough.  

Future levels of wealth never seem to be enough.  For some, doubling or tripling is desirable.  Others have the foresight to know that given certain key tools, wealth can be squared, or cubed, or raised to the tenth power.  And to do that, once a few eyes are brightened by the possibility-turned-inevitability of magic happening, slaves WILL BE HAD.  It was not enough to discover the "new world" and be content with absurdly rich and abundant land, incomparable to Europe.  The land alone was an excellent and robust wealth multiplication.  And it was not enough to take over full empires with productive goldmine operations, and for what cost?  Maybe 3 cents to the dollar or less?  Those were some good deals, and the shareholders were pleased with the high level of dividends they could now waste.  Not pleased enough though.  It was also not enough for the many astute analysts of the day to contemplate the incredible potential of European mass-colonization to the new lands.  So they worked their way right up to the limits of human tolerance, as usual.  

Now our minds are left boggled when imagining how many months-long trips were made across the Atlantic, back and forth, back and forth, to transport millions of African agricultural force-multipliers.  How many could possibly fit on one ship?  Well, cargo-space was fully utilized--the motto has always been "less waste."  Still, how many trips, approximately?  It seems that the global financial system is a similar new product, discovery, invention, innovation, paradigm--call it what you will.  It is incomparably powerful compared to similar technologies of the past, and still very much changing and developing.  It is very new. 

I think the crises are surface shocks that may one day actually bring about major destruction, but it's the tectonic plates that are truly impressive.  As a statistical matter, the magnitude of any crisis is dwarfed by the underlying strength that drives it--over the cliff sometimes.  A small crisis is also a good thing, and sometimes necessary to maintain course.  And a whole series of small crises managed appropriately is a very good thing--it's called a balanced economy, and even a balanced life.  I believe in advancement, in slow historical change.  But the full undoing of simple and clearly graspable North American slavery still isn't finished.  The restoration of Native Americans is even less finished.  Capitalism is so not finished that it's praised endlessly.  

The financial structures that move the world economy are mainstays of capitalism, and transactions that can yield a billion dollar profit on good days without creating anything but small changes in psychological valuation spread globally have not run their course--they are way too institutionally entrenched, despite all the bank failures.  It will take messianic change.  Half a million Americans died in the Civil War, and that wasn't messianic enough.  This is because messianic change is generally unavailable, and possibly a complete fantasy.  And so I believe in incremental, painfully slow advancement.

We know the ones that are leading the current charge in the latest technological frenzy, and we know the ones that are incentivised and/or directly shipped in to strengthen the cast-iron balance sheets.  They ARE made of cast-iron.  But they could always use 21st century titanium plates for additional strengthening, if only we knew how to make them... But wait a minute, we do know how!  We just figured it out!  And what with how fast everything is happening, we probably should make them five meters thick if we could just ...  I mean, who's against additional titanium-plated reinforcement?  It is honorable, dignified labor to produce them for $13/hr, which is more than the competition pays.  If only polygamy could be legalized again, a large, healthy, hard-working family might even be able to afford one, eventually.

As a caveat, I have little or no real idea of what the fuck I'm talking about.  And I certainly want to employ people making titanium plates.  Currently, I am employed making titanium plates.

Mediocrity

I recall the night on CNN when the news finally broke open, with the bailout of AIG in the wake of Freddie/Mae and those giant bank failures, and about how we were now staring at financial catastrophe. That broadcast was an all-consuming, serious hustle for about 3-4 hours. What a rare, exquisite occurence it was--maybe one reason way some refer to the apocalypse as rapture--and certainly refreshing to watch CNN "keeping it real," because it had no choice. The nightly dosage of strong, long-lasting, unrelentingly dumb blabber was transformed into an alert and focused dialogue. The guest commentators were all new, all inside experts from the innumerable compartments and innards of the system. One was from the Wall Street Journal, who for years trod on a well-established journalistic track to document the illegal and destructive financial activites of some of these failing companies and their leadership cores. He never would have been on air otherwise, but given the chance, he expressed his opinion that a full congressional inquiry and a serious ethics scandal with accompanying jailtime was completely inevitable. He could afford to be certain due to the breadth of his knowledge, but he seemed more certain because of its simplicity: evidence of major crimes was undeniable, uncontestable, factually true and highly accurate, a generously helpful non-lie. Any thorough investigation would end up with the same conclusions. We would only be so lucky. But a lot of very important things were said outloud, and it was great to see mediocrity rise above itself so thoroughly for a while, or, to put it another way, it was great to see mediocrity's exposed core being substantial.

Presidentiality

Obama struck me from the beginning as someone who can distinguish himself among exalted company. He is looking even better now, since being "presidential" is no mere symbolism. Obama is not only more presidential than McCain, he seems more presidential than anyone in my generation, and, luckily, he seems to be pretty well rounded in other relevant aspects as well. His stars certainly appear to be aligned, and hopefully, if elected he'll keep the length and breadth of his coat-tails to a minimum. By the way, I'm constantly amazed, and I mean consistently since these last two years, how little we hear about the fact that Nancy Pelosi is second in line for the presidency after Cheney. I was partly beginning to hope that Obama would pick Kathleen Sebelius just to pile on the "change" a bit more. That was not long after I read about New Zealand, that it was the only country where "all the highest offices in the land have been occupied simultaneously by women." Of course, Elizabeth II is first on that list...