Recently Ann Marie was talking with me about the concept of a job vs. a career, and that so much attention is paid to faceless numbers like 'job creation' as opposed to individuals' actualization and fulfillment.

It got me thinking--what is the real goal of our national and world economy? We hear so much lip service being paid to capitalism as the greatest system on earth, that free markets are the foundation of our free country, blah blah. But at the end of the day, what is it for?

From the way it has developed in modern history, it seems a fair conclusion to say that the economy exists for its own sake, and that its only true purpose is growth. The question of individual human worth and meaning is not even brought up, and the reality that there is no such thing as unchecked growth in the natural world is nervously brushed aside.

And this strikes me as strange. Even with our natural human selfishness, even with our tendency to horde and conquer and want, when I take a step back it seems so odd to me that the gargantuan engines and structures of our modern economy have been built in support of what amounts to an abstraction, an economic theory.

You'll hear economists talk about wealth creation, about a country's standard of living, etc, but really, there's no broad measure of human happiness and health that our economy can be said to be a real success at, and if you look at what drives the market, general affluence is not much more than a byproduct. Can our greatness as a community be measured in the number of plasma TVs or iPods we manage to buy? (Because increasingly, our country only buys now, doesn't produce.)

Have we come to a point in our history where we can no longer ask fundamental questions about our very societal structures and foundations, or is it still possible to ask: what are we striving for? Why are we working ourselves into the grave for this abstraction instead of a shared goal of, say, no one starving or living in poverty? Is it impossible to conceive of a society in which true welfare and health of all its citizens is a mandate which must be met before any other goal--such as massive hoarding of wealth and luxury by a small number of individuals--can even be considered? Is it possible for us to measure our success in a shared way, as opposed to the "scrambling to get mine" mindset which plagues us?

I'm not even talking about socialism, really. I'm just wondering about an economic system which every year seems to grow more amoral and abstract, and toward which all our social structures, from schools onward, seem to be directed. At the end of the day, does the economy serve us, or do we exist only to support the economy?

Labels: Culture

So, Toby Keith, country star and singer of such Republican-favored anthems as “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (the Angry American)”, is in fact a Dem:

Mr. Keith’s publicity agent, Elaine Schock, said his conservative reputation was a result of the times. He is a lifelong Democrat, Ms. Schock said, and the perception of him as conservative is a “myth.” “I think when you have a war,” she said, “people want you to be on one side or the other.”

Just thought that was interesting--I didn't suspect. I just like how the joke is now on all those Republicans who think otherwise.

Labels: Politics

A headline on the MSNBC web site today was, "FBI struggles to keep up in post-9/11 world". It nicely summed up what to me seems like an impossible game that our government is playing.

Look around us: war rages in Iraq, with a record number of Iraqis (more than 3,400) killed last month and total U.S. fatalities just topping 2,600. U.S. fatalities in Afghanistan have increased each year since our invasion in 2001. Hundreds of Lebanese civilians have been slaughtered by Israel in an invasion we've supported and perpetuated. Our "diplomatic" rhetoric isolates and stonewalls every country we're having difficulty with, such as Iran and North Korea, the result being no diplomatic progress at all with these countries during Bush's terms in office.

And what do we have to show for 5 years of anti-terrorism military actions abroad? For all of our black-and-white, good-versus-evil posturing?

Fear, paranoia, and ridiculously convoluted security measures. One delirious lunatic brings explosives on a plane in his shoe, and the result is millions of Americans taking off their shoes every time they get on a plane. Now liquids and gels are banned on planes. At this rate, we'll all be nude and cavity-searched every time we fly--it's the logical conclusion to this progression.

Do we feel safer? No, we're inundated with violence and mistrust of those who are different. Republicans construct tidy fantasies for themselves of a rising tide of anti-American violence of which we're innocent victims, with our stern-father president protecting us.

Any intelligent person, however, sees the absurdity in this. We're stoking the fires of violence around the world, and we're failing to keep up with it. The FBI won't be able to keep up with it, our soldiers won't be able to invade and conquer it. We're simply tapping into more violence around the world than we can keep up with.

It's not the same as, say, WWII, when we had a massive but very focused military undertaking. The violence we're facing is diffuse, granular, spread in tiny packets all over the world, and it's reactive. Reactive to our economic policies, our corporations' abuses of foreign sovereignty and civil rights, our devaluing of the lives of dark-skinned people abroad, our imposing of our evangelical Christian mores on countries whose poor and ill need help without conditions, our hypocritically selective military actions, the cultural, economic, and military presence we push on the rest of the world.

We simply can't bomb that out of existence. It's like trying to take out a huge killer bees' nest with a pistol--one shot, and suddenly you've got a cloud of angry enemies spread out with no clear target or way to overcome them. Each enemy is small, but can hurt you badly, and you can't keep up with all of them.

Iraq and Afghanistan are quagmires. Lebanon became a quagmire for the Israelis after only a couple weeks, and they look to be pulling out in shock. The last few years of failed American policies have revealed that we're simply not that effective at dealing with this type of adversity.

This game we're playing, of detaching cause from effect, where terrorism is turned into some spontaneous evil devoid of other motivation, where enemies are simply evil and have to be destroyed, is childish and deadly. Like Hercules and the hydra, we can't keep up with the violence our violence is spawning--we're only one country and we're simply getting overrun. Until we take the time to be adults and confront the roots of hatred and violence toward America--and take steps to remedy those causes, and to dismantle our sense of privilege and superiority in the world--the swarm will keep growing, and the result will be more misery for everyone involved.

Labels: Culture, Politics

Another day, another headline that shows how easily the world's greatest superpower is pushed around by the whims of Big Oil. This time, a breakdown in a BP oil line will slow supply and drive up already record-high gas prices.

Is this really what we want for America? To be dependent on a few major corporations for our welfare, to have our economy and ecology rocked by the slightest mishap in oil production? To be this vulnerable, this exposed to catastrophe at all times? Do we want to be this weak, this unable to provide for ourselves?

What happened to the American spirit of independence? We're a nation of floundering addicts. Now if we put our collective muscle behind natural energy--solar, wind, modern hydroelectric, biomass, etc--we'd make some real progress. We'd have indefinitely renewable energy that's not wasteful, not polluting, and not at risk for the kind of ongoing nonsense we see with oil.

Renewable energy sources are the real way to go for energy independence--they can be scaled from individual homes to nationwide grids, they're not vulnerable to the same kind of large-scale breakdowns and shutdowns as oil. And their development can create potentially millions of jobs here in this country, not in some overseas oil field. And unlike with, say, mountaintop removal coal mining, those energy jobs can come without the cost of ecological and community disaster.

If we could just collectively dig in and commit to real energy independence, we could be a beacon to the world and free ourselves of the economic dependence that muddies our policies in the Middle East and elsewhere. Renewable energy is more reliable, safer, cleaner, more decentralized, and ultimately, more American.

So where is that spirit of independence? When will we finally have the guts to break our habit? Where is the leadership in our government on this issue, and why are we not demanding more of it? I haven't been demanding it enough, but I'll start to--wanna join me?

Labels: Environment

Do you believe that companies should be responsible for the safety of their products? Well, the European Union does, and their latest proposed plan (highlighted by Andrew Leonard on Salon.com) designed to enforce responsibility in manufacturers is already drawing howls of protest from business interests who'd rather not be bothered with the implications of the toxicity of their products.

The new plan, called REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals), would, in Leonard's words, "require manufacturing companies to prove in advance that the chemicals in their products aren't dangerous, as well as publish previously tightly held toxicity data on the REACH Web site." In the words of a software company director, "With REACH, companies will bear the responsibility for the chemicals in their products and will have to know the impact of those chemicals, whether they're cancerous or otherwise toxic."

What a concept.

We often hear complaints about the heavy hand of government regulation. But without sensible regulation, the marketplace can and will put all of us at risk with materials that are hazardous at all stages of their creation, use, and disposal, for the sake of quicker and larger profits. For example, consider the variety of plastics that you are likely surrounded with at this very moment.

The free market, left to its own devices, will maximize its efficiency at generating profit, and things like safety and health concerns are inherently inefficient and impede the optimization of pure capitalism.

With more and more focus on quarterly stockholder reports and other short-term measurements of success, and new stories every day of executives bailing out of companies with golden parachutes, we can't trust corporations to consider the damaging long-term impact of practices that hurt the environment or customers. To put it simply, the market is amoral, and only wise human intervention can give it a heart.

Labels: Culture

I've been generally keeping up with the appalling situation in Lebanon, with Israel using the flimsy excuse of two captured soldiers to invade another country and kill hundreds of civilians. How Israel thinks this will in any way make them safer is beyond me. What's happening instead is a unification of the Arab world behind a group that was on its way to being marginalized both by other countries and its own countrymen. Why, even in our own Iraq v2.0, there have been widespread demonstrations denouncing both Israel and America. I'm waiting for Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld to tell us that this is all part of the plan.

But apart from any other analysis at the moment, I'm struck by the casualty numbers on both sides, and how they show the incredibly wanton and irresponsible nature of Israel's actions.

As of today, 93 Israelis and 591 Lebanese have been killed in this violence (source: AP). But just take a look at how the numbers break down:

• Total Israeli deaths: 93
• Israeli military deaths: 57 (61% of total)
• Israeli civilian deaths: 36 (39% of total)

• Total Lebanese deaths: 591
• Lebanese Hezbollah deaths: 53 (9% of total)
• Lebanese military deaths: 29 (5% of total)
• Lebanese civilian deaths: 509 (86% of total)

So Israel is claiming this invasion is all about Hezbollah, and yet an incredible 91% of those being killed by Israel aren't even Hezbollah militants.

Hezbollah, this supposedly evil group, is in fact doing a much more efficient job of killing only combatants: 61% of their killings have been Israeli troops, compared to Israel's paltry 9% number of Hezbollah members killed.

Another way to put it: Israel has killed 14 times as many civilians in this conflict as has Hezbollah.

And perhaps most damning of all, from an Israeli perspective, is that as of today (and this may well change), more Israeli soldiers have been killed than have Hezbollah militants. If that isn't an omen for this ill-considered invasion, I don't know what is. They've been at this for three weeks now, and it's already a quagmire.

A likely rebuttal for what I've been laying out is that Hezbollah has a history of violence, so to isolate these casualty numbers is misleading. It's true that Hezbollah's military wing has an alleged (though mostly unproven) history of violence, but all the killings that Hezbollah has been accused of over the years is actually a lower number than the number of Lebanese civilians already killed by Israel in this current conflict. Which makes me think of the tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians our military has killed in supposed revenge for just under 3,000 American deaths at the hands of a group of Saudis.

With numbers like this, it's little wonder that Hezbollah and its counterparts throughout the Middle East exist.

Labels: Culture, Politics