see you on the other side

Getting everything packed and ready for my trip to Michigan in a few hours. I'm taking a 51hr train ride from Portland, OR, to Royal Oak, MI, along Amtrak's Empire Builder route. The ride itself, while insanely long, promises to be quite scenic, and I'm looking forward to it. The closer it gets to departure time, however, the more anxious I'm starting to feel. I think part of it is the fact that I'm going to be away longer than usual this time. Instead of the normal 2 week visit, I may be there for a month or more depending on how things go. It'll be nice having more time to spend with my friends and family; but at the same time, I've never been away from Annie for more than a couple of weeks since we set out West almost 8 years ago, and I'm definitely not looking forward to that part. I haven't even left yet and I miss her already. It should be an interesting adventure, though. I can't wait to see where the road will take me. See you on the other side.

a recent conversation i had with a friend about my political views

I don't know who in the hell would ever be interested in this, but here's a recent conversation I had with a friend of mine over Facebook about my political views. I began the conversation by writing:

Annie told me you think my political views are essentially anarchistic. To clarify, I identify as a democratic socialist, which essentially means that my politically and economic views are more or less democratic in nature. In essence, I'm not completely against government, nor am I a statist in the sense of advocating for a strong central government; I advocate for a more decentralized form of government, as well as a more decentralized and democratic economic system. My philosophy of government is fairly positive, actually. The way I see it, civil society is the establishment of a cohesive social structure in which the interests of the community as a whole are weighed against that of the individual in an effort to maintain social stability. Government, then, is the physical manifestation of community interests. It creates stability through the establishment and enforcement of laws, and acts as a mediator in disputes between groups and individuals within the community. Of course, like most people, I think it's preferable if a balance can be struck where individual freedoms aren't too restricted and the continued survival of the community is reasonably assured, and how far the government should go in meeting the needs of the community is an open question.

The problem is that, for the most part, our government is a manifestation of ruling class interests, that is to say, those who own and control the means of production, finance, natural resources, etc., and not that of the entire community. In fact, the interests of the ruling class, the interests of capital, are often in conflict with those of average citizens. And one of the main issues I have with the current economic system is that its entire legal and political edifice is built upon private property rights. While this may not seem like a bad thing at first glance, it's has the tendency to lead to an extremely top-down structure, with often overpaid owners and CEOs and underpaid workers (the average CEO now makes roughly 275x that of the average worker); and, philosophically, it links private property to liberty, and through private property rights, secures the liberty of the propertied. Consequently, the greater one's property, the greater one's means of self-determination. It should be made here that by 'property,' we're not talking about personal property such as cars or homes, but private property, i.e., means of production, finance, natural resources, etc. Moreover, it tends to idealize and promote greed (self-interest) over altruism (common good), competition over cooperation, privatization over public ownership, etc.

While 'liberals' try to reform the system, they generally don't see anything inherently wrong with system itself. They fail to see that Keynes and Hayek are two sides of the same coin, and that the system has contradictions which naturally lead to boom and bust cycles and financial crises, especially what Marx calls the 'crisis of overproduction,' i.e. the tendency to produce too much of a commodity or too efficient a service for it to be profitable. For example, industrial farmers can produce too much wheat for them to sell at a profit, even though there's no shortage of demand for food (and some people are actually going hungry or starving). According to Hayek, boom and bust cycles are natural and must be endured, and interfering will generally just prolong them or make them worse, unemployment being an unfortunate yet contemporary consequence that'll eventually take care of itself when things recover naturally. Keynes, on the other hand, thought that by pumping money into the system, the government could stimulate aggregate demand and help put people back to work, and their subsequent spending would further help recovery. Both ideas have pros and cons, but they're based on the assumption that capitalism is the the best possible system and should be preserved at all cost. The difference is that Hayek basically believed it'd be fine if left alone, whereas Keynes believed that government could (and should) help it in times of need. They disagree about other things as well, but the real problem is people and their unpredictability.

If people are unemployed, having their homes foreclosed on, unhappy and generally disillusioned with the present system, there could be instability and eventually some kind of revolution. If trying to help by pumping money into the economy and creating work projects makes things worse, not doing anything could lead to lots of really pissed off and unhappy people. This has happened time and again, from France and Britain, to the Colonies, Russia and India just to name a few. I don't think that socialism can be forced onto people through a violent revolution by a small band of professional revolutionaries and their followers, however. Like democracy, for socialism to have any chance of being successful anywhere, it must be an experiment conducted with the consent of the majority of the people. Positive change rarely comes from the barrel of a gun, and not all revolutions are violent, e.g., think of Gandhi's nonviolent challenge of British rule, for example. Hence, my position is to advocate for a move towards socialism via democratic means, meaning that I think it can only be a successful experiment if it's done with the consent of the majority of people (unless, of course, shit hits the fan and things collapsed on their own).

I also tend to border on being a social democrat (or a reformist) in that sense; but I think pure reformism has its own limitations in that the we can do our best to enact reforms and try to limit their power and the damage done by the 'enlightened self-interest' of capital and powerful corporations, but it's essentially a lost cause seeing as how corporations themselves are now considered 'natural persons' and have managed to acquire certain constitutionally protected rights. A company and a CEO can get away with things no average working class citizen could, and that's because the legal superstructure is built decidedly in their favour—always has been considering that the Founding Fathers themselves were mainly wealthy, ruling class elites, and the 'aristocracy of the moneyed corporations' that Thomas Jefferson was so worried about was simply the next evolutionary step in a long line of wealthy, ruling class elites. Basically, all this is really saying is that the game is rigged. To fix these problems, we need to change the rules; and to change the rules, we need to change the system.

And while I'm not entirely sure how such a system could be successfully implemented, I like David Schweickart's ideas on what he calls 'Economic Democracy' (e.g., see "Economic Democracy: A Worthy Socialism That Would Really Work"). I also think Peter Kropotkin and Edward Bellamy had some good (albeit slightly outdated) ideas in works like Conquest of Bread and Looking Backward. I've also seen some promising examples of successful worker-owned companies whose dynamics are a lot different than the typical top-down structure, e.g., Alvarado Street Bakery, Big Carrot, Brainpark, Cooperative Home Care Associates, MONDRAGON and, to some extent, Weirton Steel, even though it eventually went out of business.

Another issue I have is the potential exploitation inherent in the system itself. In the Marxist sense, at least, exploitation refers to the worker's lack of ownership and/or distributive control over the surplus created by their labour. (That's why Marx defined slavery, feudalism and capitalism as exploitative systems of production, i.e., in each, the producers/workers have no ownership and/or distributive control over the surplus created by their labour). In this sense, exploitation is an inherent part of the capitalist mode of production, which in turn, ties into Marx's theory of alienation. It's rather complicated, and I don't fully understand everything Marx wrote on the subject as much of it is very abstract, but in short, exploitation is the idea that the capitalist profits far more from a worker's labour than the worker does, and it doesn't really matter whether it's voluntary or not.

Adam Smith et al. assumed that labour creates wealth (surplus value). But according to Marx, in a capitalist system, labour itself becomes a commodity, an object that's bought and sold on the market. Moreover, due to private ownership of the means of production, the product of the worker's labour doesn’t legally belong to them (alienation), nor does the surplus value their labour creates (unpaid labour), which is kept by the capitalist. Consequently, the product of the worker's labour becomes a commodity that's divorced from the labour expended on its production, thereby obscuring the social relationship between producer and consumer (commodity fetishism). Furthermore, the employer has the ability to increase their profit exponentially by reinvesting the surplus value extracted from the worker's labour into their company while the labourer is forced to spend their (more often than not) meager wages on the necessities of life such as food, clothing, shelter, etc.

I should stop here, however, and note that proving this kind of exploitation is rather difficult, especially when it comes to the various labour theories of value (the idea that commodities have a value that's relative to the amount of socially necessary labour-time involved in their production, as well as to their use value and exchange value) vs. the marginal utility theory (the idea that the value of commodities are determined by their marginal utility). Marx's theory of exploitation is derived from his labour theory of value, which is itself a critique of both Smith's and Ricardo's labour theories of value; but the labour theory of value itself has since been challenged by the marginal utility theory. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about either yet to declare a winner in this particular debate; although I will say that I think even if Marx's theory proves to be incorrect, his dialectic method of analysis still has a great deal to offer our modern understanding of economics. Critiques, by their very nature, reveal weaknesses, and can help open up discussions on subjects that otherwise would go undiscussed.

As for anarchism itself, it's true that I'm sympathetic to certain aspects of it as a political philosophy. For example, I agree with its anti-authoritarianism and the idea that citizens shouldn't be coerced into any kind of 'social contract.' This type of free association is in direct contrast to the Hobbesian idea of the social contract, in which, by way of your birth into that particular state, it's assumed that you've entered into said social contract. (Hobbes thought that people are naturally aggressive and violent and that they should give their obedience to an unaccountable sovereign in exchange for relative security.) It's little more than an abstract ideal, however, and not an actual contract since it's assumed that one's morally obligated to obey the state without any actually agreement on the part of the citizen. Anarchists, on the other hand, believe strongly in the right of free association and self-determination, and strongly distrust an armed state that's ready to take away their freedom whenever it likes (e.g., imposing 'laws' that restrict their movement, associations, certain behaviours, etc.). There are many different kinds of anarchists, however, and some, such as certain 'philosophical anarchists,' aren't so much against the existence of a state as they are an expansive, authoritarian state, i.e., they'd be content with a more decentralized and minimalist state that was more directly democratic and recognized that it could be eliminated via revolution if it became too oppressive and over-stepped its bounds; while others see the state as a necessary evil that they're not morally obligated to obey when its laws conflict with their individual autonomy, etc.

Whatever the case, I wouldn't classify myself as an anarchist simply for the fact that I'm not inherently against a state per se; although I'd definitely like to radically change the organizational structure of the present one, and I hope that one day we can eliminate the need for such a social structure in the future. In that, I suppose I'm closer to the philosophical anarchist or the anarcho-syndicalist than I am the purely anti-state anarchist. Like most philosophical sophisticated anarchists, I'm not against organizational structures as much as I am inherently authoritarian and repressive ones that are designed more to protect property from people than people in general.

My friend, James, who's fairly well-educated, relatively successful and leans more towards libertarianism, replied with:

I must say, this was quite the insight. I don't agree with all points but I have a firmer understanding of where you stand with regard to government and economics. [...] I think the capitalist and worker dynamic you allude to is alive and well but I don't really see any problem with it. Without the capitalist, in general, I don't think that most workers would have a way for their labor to be utilized. The capitalist sets up the system/factory/whatever and people have the option to work for the capitalist (or not).

Pure capitalism puts far too much power in the hands of the capitalist. We've come up with a controlled and regulated form of capitalism that puts rights back in the worker's hands (minimum wage, standards of treatment, etc). Workers offer their services to capitalists and capitalists can choose to accept or not (and vice versa).

It's not a bad system (not perfect either) but socialism itself I don't know is the answer. Eurosocialism isn't the answer either. I don't know that there is a perfect system out there, to be honest, that could work on a massive scale. But capitalism so far seems to work the best. We'll see if that's true in the long run.

To clarify my position a bit further, as well as address some of the counterpoints that were raised, I responded:

I figured you wouldn't agree with much of it, but I'm glad that it's given you a better understanding of where I stand. I should also mention that I don't hate capitalism; I appreciate the level of economic and technological advancements it's fostered, and it's only through these advances in equipment, methods and overall efficiency of production that socialism is possible. Marx was the first to admit that.

I also don't believe there's a 'perfect system'; all economic and political ideologies are going to be flawed in some way, and even socialism would have its own contradictions (dialectic relationships are inherent in any kind of system characterized by change, nothing is ever truly static). The issues I have with the present system are what I've mentioned above, along with other things I didn't have time to touch upon, such as capitalism's need for constant growth (which is inherently unsustainable) and how it actually creates structural unemployment, which hardly existed on a mass scale before it became the dominant mode of production.

So while I think they you make some valid points in regard to how the system current operates, I'd say that it's not working as well as you might suppose. For example, you say that most workers wouldn't have a way for their labour to be utilized without capital, but one could just as easily argue that their labour isn't able to be full realized precisely because of capital since (1) capital dictates most of the terms and (2) capital benefits from high-unemployment (i.e., it creates an insecure labour pool that can be hired and fired at will, at whatever wage the employer deigns to give). Moreover, if capital wasn't so concentrated into such few hands, it's possible that more workers would not only be able to utilize their labour, but would have more of a chance to profit from it.

To put it another way, under the present system, opportunity is essentially privatized along with everything else the capitalists and free-market advocates can get their hands on, making it just as concentrated as wealth (and, if you've noticed, income inequality is rising while median family income is lower now that it was 30 years ago). Sure, things have improved since the 1900s, when workers (which included large numbers of children) essentially had no rights whatsoever, and were forced to work over 12 hour days in absolutely appalling conditions, but that's been due to the struggle of workers themselves, not due to the benevolence of capitalism. Moreover, there's been an on-going and relatively successful push by the agents of capital to strip labour of their hard-won gains, most visibly (and successfully) against unions.

Capitalism isn't a 'bad' system, but I think we've definitely outgrown it, just like we did feudalism. And while socialism isn't going to be a perfect replacement if it ever takes its place, I think it has the potential to revolutionize society much the same way feudalism and capitalism have. For me, socialism isn't so much about the equality of wealth or outcomes as it is the de-privatization (i.e., socialization) of opportunity and the weakening of class antagonisms and hierarchies arising out of social relations unique to capitalism and other predominately exploitative systems. As Marx wrote in The Poverty of Philosophy, "Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist."

In this, you may think I'm some naive and uneducated idealist who blames 'society' for my misfortunes and lack of opportunity, but I can assure you that my views are as educated and rational as they are conditioned by personal experiences living and working in four states across the US; and it's out of an optimistic hope that humanity will eventually get its collective head out of its ass before its current infatuation with greed and competition destroys itself that I take such a position. But as you say, we'll see if that's true in the long run.

a crazy letter i wrote to a friend of mine over three years that i found while going through some old things. (i can't believe i actually sent it.)

May 1, 2008

Dear E___,

I have found, to both my happiness and dismay, that there are a great deal of similarities between the man in the mousehole and I. (I must confess that I have recently been reading Dostoyevsky's Notes From Underground, and I find it to be the most beautiful and terrifying thing I have ever read... and I am not saying this out of any kind of pseudo-pretentiousness; it speaks to me in a way that no other piece of literature has ever spoken to me before). Not unlike him, I had always thought that knowledge and intelligence were the keys to happiness and victory—the more intelligent we were, the more answers we would have; the more answers we had, the happier and more victorious we would be. And much to my dismay, I have found that this assumption has not proven to be true. I have since found that my intelligence, if you wish to even call it that, makes me content and miserable all at the same time; I am content, for example, in my knowledge, my self-awareness if you will, that sets me apart from the fool who acts without thinking, and yet that thinking more often than not prevents me from acting at all! This honest self-analysis that the person I envision I could be, the person that I desire to be, is little more than a mirage eats away at my sanity; I can see it so clearly, my imagination runs wild and the experience of my triumphs are so real and seemingly within my grasp that I almost leap into the world and give myself to this delicious dream completely, and yet it is a goal that I know I can never reach because it is simply a trick of my mind—the ghost of a long departed idealism that once captured my heart. I am as cowardly as I am courageous.

In reality, this thing that I loathe to call my intelligence simply alienates me even further from the rest of society; and even though I am quite an unsociable person by nature, I still get lonely and crave the kind of companionship that the Buddha called 'admirable friendship.' When we first met, I saw a lot of similarities between you and I (not that I thought you were a miserable person who failed to act out of a perplexing array of philosophical conundrums such as myself, only that you did not seem to truly be happy but in search of happiness). I might not have been at your intellectual level (I am certainly not an 'educated' man nor do I have the benefit of attending an institution of higher learning), but I felt that I was sufficiently intelligent enough to spark your interest and your friendship. (In fact, embarrassingly enough, I even entertained the idea that perhaps one day, we would become the best of friends.) Yet, after a short time, I realized that it was merely wishful thinking on my part. My realization was confirmed (painfully I might add) time and time again, like, for example, the last two times that I attempted to gather the courage to engage you in conversation. On each occasion, you gave me what perhaps you thought to be a clever excuse to prematurely end our (admittedly awkward) interaction in the form of an overwhelming urge to go to the book store, remember? (Perhaps you really did just want to go to the book store and it had nothing to do with me, but then I wonder why you did not invite me along if that were indeed the case. I like books too. Either way, I found it terribly insulting—especially on the day of my birthday when not only did I go to a job interview and the owner not show up, but then on the way home, I was greeted with a double-dose of rejection when you excused yourself to go to the book store.) The worst part is that I realize it was most likely my fault, that it is my personality that puts you off, and that it was my personality that drove you to make such excuses out of concern for my fragile intellect as much as your own boredom.

As I think about what I am writing, I can imagine you thinking while reading this, "What drivel; what absolute nonsense!" I can even imagine you showing this to some of you other friends while sharing a bottle of wine and having a good laugh at my expense, but to be honest, I do not care (OK, that is not entirely true; I do care, but there is nothing I can do about it so I have to tell myself that I do not care while secretly hoping that you will find my words amazingly refreshing and insightful, so much so that you will at once desire to invite me over for a cup of coffee and a long chat about our innermost thoughts. But I am not so deluded as to think this will actually happen, and in all probability you will have a good laugh at my expense. So be it!). I confess that if I were to receive a letter of this sort, I would probably do the same myself. I cannot begrudge you too much then, can I? Ha! Of course I can, and I probably will; nevertheless, I hope that you will at least see, behind all of my existential gibberish and this admittedly poor attempt at writing in a cliché Dostoyevsky-esque style, what it is that I am so desperately trying to say. In other words, I am sorry that we could not have been better friends, and as I try to understand why the majority of my friendships turn out the way that they do, I realize that I am doing so through the eyes of a man in a mousehole. In fact, that is how I see the whole world. For good or for ill, it is the only perspective that I have ever known without ever knowing it until know. Perhaps now you are wondering why I have written this, and all I can offer is that sometimes being truthful can be therapeutic; but more than that, I hope that you will at least understand me from an intellectual standpoint. Being a man that is familiar with the dialectic method, I know that if anyone can make sense of this gibberish and glimpse the confusion and clarity that is within my heart, you can. I am not sure that you want to, but I am willing to overlook that fact for the sake of the 'sublime and beautiful.' No, that is poor joke that I have borrowed from our dear friend Dostoyevsky; the truth is, it is my hope that this confession will finally rid me of the humility of rejection that I feel, imaginary or not, which rises like bile in my throat every time I am reminded of you.

Perhaps this 'man in a mousehole' phase will pass in time and I will see things from a different perspective, but for now this is something that I must accept. I must also accept that as pretentious as I sometimes find you to be, I admire and respect you all the same. And, since I am being completely honest, what pains me the most in this world is to be spurned by those that I look up to and admire. While I am no stranger to having others reject me or write me off, to having others not understand me, to being seen by others as nothing more than an eccentric anomaly that is tragically out of place, I am not used to having this be done by someone who I think is actually worth getting to know. It is painful and humiliating and absolutely maddening to a person such as myself—a person with intelligence, self-respect, and worst of all, stubborn pride. What is even harder to bear is admitting it, whether to myself or to my perceived transgressor. In fact, this is turning out to be one of the hardest things I have ever done (OK, that is bit of an exaggeration, but it certainly not an easy task for me in the least), and we shall see if I manage to gather the courage to send this to you at all. (And, if you are reading this, then it is safe to say that I did and my judgment did not get the better of me before I managed to send it.) But regardless of what you think or feel after reading this and reflecting upon it, for me it has been cathartic in the true sense of the word, and for that I truly thank you.

Sincerely,

Jason Merritt

so i had fun at church today....

I was sitting at home this morning, drinking a cup of coffee and rather bored, when I decided to attend Mass at the Greek Orthodox church near my house. I'm not exactly sure why, but I think part of it may have been the fact that I've been reading Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov lately, in which the Russian Orthodox Church plays a prominent role.

Apparently, I picked a good day to go as the bishop of Atlanta, Metropolitan Alexios, was visiting and gave a surprisingly good sermon based on Mt 8:5-13 despite it being rather 'faith' heavy (I'm generally what you'd call a rationalist). I also got anointed with some myrrh from the Myrrh-streaming "Hawaiian" Iveron Icon of the Theotokos, which I guess just happened to be making the rounds of Orthodox churches in the Pacific Northwest. It was definitely a surreal experience for me.

Only one person there happened to know that I wasn't Orthodox (or even Christian for that matter) as we'd met before at the annual Greek festival, but he didn't seem to care. In fact, he invited me out to lunch after the service and we had a nice discussion (well, he did most of the talking) about everything from The Matrix to his trip to Japan to what the 'icon' of the communion ritual truly represents. The last was especially enlightening.

I half expect to burst into flames whenever I walk into a church considering the kind of person I used to be, or at least the kind of person I imagined myself to be (think Damien from The Omen), but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed myself and how welcomed I felt. I suppose much of that was due to the company; but whatever the case, I'm glad I went.

google+: possible 'facebook killer'?

Almost everyone I know talking about Google+ seems pretty psyched about it and its potential to revolutionize social media. For example, check out this discussion between Trademark CEO Dwight Zahringer and my friend, Brian, about Google+ being a possible "Facebook killer."

Personally, I'm a bit skeptical as to whether it'll be as revolution social media-wise as they're predicting. That said, I agree with Brian that Google+ has a much cleaner look and simpler interface than Facebook, especially when it comes to privacy controls. Combined that with Facebook's comparatively complicated interface and increasingly more intrusive ads (not to mention their ever-changing privacy policy, etc.), plus Twitter's problems with spam, I think it has a good chance of replacing both as the default social media network for most people at some point.

The fact that you can actually edit your comments is another bonus. That's enough to sell me.

In the end, I think it'll all depend on how Google plays it, especially how well they integrate new features and services (it's pretty bare bones at the moment) and how quickly they open Google+ to the public. I think there's enough buzz out there right now to get people to join, and pretty much everyone I know uses Google and has a Gmail account already, so I don't think it'll be that hard to get people to eventually switch. The only question is whether they'll stay.

I think that predominately tech savvy people will find it more appealing at the beginning. But as Brian points out, the Circle feature definitely has a lot of promise; and if Google plays their cards right, I think it'll be extremely popular with a variety of people since it allows you to have a lot of sub-networks (e.g., family, friends, co-workers, etc.) within your larger network with little-to-no crossover. Even the beta version makes sharing things will certain people, and them alone, much easier than on Facebook or Twitter.

The obvious advantage to this is that it'll help people consolidate their social networks into one, eliminating the need to have a network dedicated just for work (e.g., LinkedIn), another one just for friends (e.g., Facebook), etc. Google+ puts you more in control of your content by giving you the choice of which Circles you share each post, picture, video, etc. with as you post them, which is something Facebook should have done a long time ago (along with the ability to edit comments). You can limit which groups see certain content on Facebook as well, but it's nowhere near as intuitive.

At least for moment, it looks as if Facebook is going to have to play catch-up with the beta version of Google+. And I'm guessing that if they don't come up with something to rival the convenience of Circles before Google+ is open to the public, they may have a serious challenger on their hands.

growth for the sake of growth isn't a sustainable model

Personally, I don't think that growth simply for the sake of growth is a sustainable model. While economic growth isn't necessarily a bad thing (as it tends to promote higher quality education and standards of living), it's not without its dangers, especially when it forms the very basis of our economic system.

Generally speaking, for national economies to continually experience growth, they need access to natural resources, a supply of relatively cheap labour and, more importantly, to eventually expand their markets. For many countries, especially those with limited space and natural resources of their own, this has been done through imperialist policies. The most blatant example being fascist Italy, where Benito Mussolini, with the help of Giovanni Gentile, wrote that:

For Fascism, the growth of empire, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is an essential manifestation of vitality, and its opposite a sign of decadence. Peoples which are rising, or rising again after a period of decadence, are always imperialist; and renunciation is a sign of decay and of death.

Of course, this doesn't mean that imperialism is the only effective means of acquiring natural resources and cheap labour, or expanding markets; but historically speaking, it's been one of the most popular, as well as one of the most effective (which is probably why it's so popular).

The focus on continual economic growth also requires a continual increase in consumption, and in turn, continually expanding markets and/or an increase in population to create and sustain such growth. This, naturally, tends to lead to consumerism, which has its own downsides, such as environmental degradation, the depletion of natural resources and the promotion of unnecessary and even harmful jobs as long as they contribute to growth.

In addition, things like sharing and reusing are actively discouraged by capital and the methodological individualism that underlies consumerism (and capitalism in general), which slows growth even though things like Portland's 'tool libraries' would arguably help people and the environment more than coercing them to purchase their own equipment or whatever simply to stimulate production.

In essence, I completely agree with C. A. L'Hirondelle that:

Blanket-over-head advocacy of jobs, jobs, jobs, ignores that

A) many jobs are wasteful, unnecessary or outright harmful (e.g. workin' hard at snaring new generations of smokers);

B) many 'non-jobs' such as being an unpaid carer, or doing volunteer work ---activities that are often essential to human health and happiness---are considered 'unproductive' according to conventional economic measures such as the GDP.

C) the idea of green jobs and green growth is just greenwashing the ugly roots, facts and outcomes of the economic growth imperative.

(I think B is an especially important point.)

I also get the feeling that things like 'green economy,' 'job growth' and 'sustainability' are little more than buzzwords being used by the current administration, as well as others, to promote the continuation of an inherently unsustainable system at a time when many are unemployed, disillusioned and beginning to question the status quo.

Sure, historically speaking, capitalism and the technological advancements it's fostered have arguably provided a greater standard of living for a large portion of the population in what amounts to the blink of an eye. But the system is designed to give people what they want, regardless of the consequences, and places profit in their production and distribution above everything else. Why? Well, for one thing, I'm inclined to agree with Martin Luther King Jr. when, on April 4, 1967, he said:

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'person-oriented' society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

The way I see it, we really need to start looking at capitalism and what we're being told by businesses, politicians and the mainstream media more critically before we do even more irreparable harm to the planet, not to mention our future on it. Unfortunately, I think my friend, Joe, was right when he wrote:

Yeah, and a lot of sustainability issues are dealt with strictly in terms of material causes (in the Aristotelian sense). The teleological, efficient and formal causes for capitalist bullshit go unchecked. You can't base your economy on monetary profit without it leading to cancerous growth of the economy or without completely crashing it and starving people with austerity measures.

I'm sure there are a lot of people who'd probably disagree with me and my predominately critical/pessimistic point of view, but that's the way I currently see things. I'm fairly certain that things need to change, and I mean seriously change, for us to survive another millennium, let alone to truly flourish as a society. I'm talking about the need for a radical shift in human consciousness and/or a socio-political revolution on an epic scale here, people.

sam harris: a neo-buddhist after my own heart

Sam Harris is by far my favourite of the so-called 'New Atheists.' I especially like his approach to trying to bring things like science, spirituality and reason together, and I think he's more or less on the right track when it comes to these kinds of things, i.e., having no problem being a vocal atheist and critic of religion while at the same time being open to the fact that people have 'spiritual' experiences. As he wrote in "10 Myths - And 10 Truths - About Atheism":

There is nothing that prevents an atheist from experiencing love, ecstasy, rapture and awe; atheists can value these experiences and seek them regularly. What atheists don’t tend to do is make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims about the nature of reality on the basis of such experiences. There is no question that some Christians have transformed their lives for the better by reading the Bible and praying to Jesus. What does this prove? It proves that certain disciplines of attention and codes of conduct can have a profound effect upon the human mind. Do the positive experiences of Christians suggest that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity? Not even remotely — because Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists regularly have similar experiences.

Being a 'Buddhist' myself, I also like the fact that he's actually practiced meditation, and comes at things like vipasana meditation from the standpoint of neuroscience, de-emphasising their strictly religious roots in an attempt to move more towards developing "a scientific account of the contemplative path" (A Contemplative Science).

I think that if there were more people like Sam Harris who were interested in what Buddhism and other contemplative paths have to offer from a scientific standpoint, we could easily create a contemplative science of our own utilizing the latest in modern technology and knowledge of how the brain functions. For example, I think his latest blog post does a great job of pointing out the importance and usefulness of meditation and transcendent experiences:

My friend Jerry Coyne has posted a response to my recent video Q&A where he raises a few points in need of clarification about meditation, transcendence, spiritual experience, etc.:

This discussion continues at 21:25, when Sam criticizes atheists, scientists and secularists for failing to “connect to the character of those experiences” and for failing to “give some alternate explanation for them that is not entirely deflationary and demeaning and gives some warrant to the legitimacy of those experiences.” He implies that these experiences are somehow beyond the purview of science. I find that strange given Sam’s repeated emphasis on the value of science in studying mental states.

I’m not quite sure what he’s getting at here, and he doesn’t elaborate, but I don’t see why giving credence to these über-transcendent experiences as experiences says anything about a reality behind them. Yes, they might indeed change one’s personality and view of the world, but do any of us deny that?

I had similar experiences on various psychoactive substances when I was in college, and some of them were even transformative. The problem is not with us realizing that people can feel at one with the universe or, especially, at one with God; the problem comes with us taking this as evidence for some supernatural reality. What does it mean to say that an experience is legitimate? If someone thinks that he saw Jesus, I am prepared to believe that he thought that he saw Jesus, but I am not prepared to say that he really did see Jesus, nor that that constitutes any evidence for the existence of Jesus.

So my question for Sam would be this: “So if we accept that people do have these seriously transcendent experiences, what follows from that—beyond our simple desire to study the neurobiology behind them?”

These are all good points. I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that transcendent experiences are “beyond the purview of science.” On the contrary, I think they should be studied scientifically. And I don’t believe that these experiences tell us anything about the cosmos (I called Deepak Chopra a “charlatan” for making unfounded claims of this sort). Nor do they tell us anything about history, or about the veracity of scripture. However, these experiences do have a lot to say about the nature of the human mind—not about its neurobiology, per se, but about its qualitative character (both actual and potential).

So, to answer Jerry’s question: yes, many things follow from these transcendent experiences. Here’s a short list:

1. It is possible to feel much better (in every sense of “better”) than one tends to feel. It is, in fact, possible to be utterly at ease in the world—and such ease is synonymous with relaxing, or fully transcending, the apparent boundaries of the “self.” Those who have never experienced such peace of mind will view the preceding sentences as yet another eruption of “mumbo jumbo” on my part. And yet it is phenomenologically true to say that such states of well-being are there to be discovered. I am not claiming to have experienced all relevant states of this kind. But there are people who appear to have experienced none of them—and many of these people are atheists.

This is not surprising. After all, experiences of self-transcendence are generally only sought and interpreted in a religious or “spiritual” context—and these are precisely the phenomena that tend to increase a person’s faith. How many Christians who have felt self-transcending love for their neighbors in church, or body-dissolving bliss in prayer, decide to ditch Christianity? Not many, I would guess. How many people who never have experiences of this kind (no matter how hard they try) become atheists? I don’t know, but there is no question that these states of mind act as a kind of filter: they get counted in support of ancient dogma by the faithful; and their absence seems to give my fellow atheists yet another reason to doubt religion.

Reading the comments on Jerry’s blog exposes the problem in full. There are several people there who have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about—and they take this to mean that I am not making sense. Of course, religious people often present the opposite problem: they tend to think they know exactly what I’m talking about, in so far as it can seem to support one religious doctrine or another. Both these orientations present impressive obstacles to understanding.

2. There is a connection between feeling transcendently good and being good. Not all good feelings have an ethical valence, of course. And there are surely pathological forms of ecstasy. I have no doubt, for instance, that many suicide bombers feel extraordinarily good just before detonating themselves in a crowd. But there are forms of mental pleasure that seem intrinsically ethical. In fact, there are states of mind for which phrases like “boundless love and compassion” do not seem overblown. Of course, it is possible for a person not to know that this is a potential of the human mind, or to imagine that such experiences must be signs of psychopathology. Again, people who think this way seem to gravitate toward atheism. And it is decidedly inconvenient for the forces of Reason that if a person wakes up tomorrow feeling “boundless love and compassion” the only people likely to acknowledge the legitimacy of his experience will be representatives of one or another religion (or New Age cult).

3. Certain patterns of thought and attention prevent us from accessing deeper (and wiser) states of well-being. Transcendent experiences, in so far as they are usually temporary, are often surrounded by a penumbra of other states and insights. Just as one can glimpse deeper strata of well-being, and briefly see the world by their logic, one can notice the impediments to feeling this way in each subsequent moment. There is no question that all of these mental states have neurophysiological correlates—but the neurophysiology often has subjective correlates. Understanding the first-person side of the equation is essential for understanding the phenomenon. Everything worth knowing about the human mind, good and bad, is taking place inside the brain. But that doesn’t mean that there is nothing to know about the qualitative character of these events. Yes, qualitative character can be misleading, and certain ways of talking about it can manufacture fresh misunderstandings about the mind. But this doesn’t mean that we can stop talking about the nature of conscious experience. At one level, there is nothing else to talk about.

4. Certain “spiritual” experiences can help us understand science. There are insights that one can have through meditation (that is, very close observation of first-person data) that line up rather well with what we know must be true at the level of the brain. I’ll mention just two, which I have written about before and will return to in subsequent posts: (1) the ego/self is a construct and a cognitive illusion; (2) there is no such thing as free will. There is simply no question that these statements are well grounded scientifically (in fact, it is very difficult to even imagine a physical account of the human mind that would suggest their falsity at this point). So, here are two facts which science gives us good reason to believe, and which I believe we can know through introspection, but which seem quite paradoxical and troubling to most people.

As for the “various psychoactive substances” Jerry mentions, I’ll address the risks and rewards of these in my next post.

At this point, I should probably make it explicitly clear that my admiration for Sam Harris isn't due to his vocal support of atheism nor to his vocal criticism of religion; but because of his scientific approach to contemplative issues. I think he finds a good balance between his atheistic/materialistic worldview and the fact that people have and can benefit from these kinds of spiritual experiences, something that's definitely missing from other 'New Atheist' writers such as Richard Dawkins.