"To return ... with a withered face, the snows of time have turned silver my templea ..." I'm not tango devotee, nor a fan of Carlos Gardel, but there are lyrics that say it all and this one, upon returning from a trip to South America (and cybernetically reconnecting with former school classmates as a result of the emergency of one), feels appropriate.
No, I don't long to return. That's only the paradox Thomas Wolfe (not the modern Tom Wolfe) proposed in his novel You Can't Go Home Again, which is, ultimately, a version of the rejection of Jesus in his childhood Nazareth. We can't go back. Or as they sang after World War I, "How ya gonna keep'em
down on the farm, after they've seen Paree?"
I "returned" to São Paulo, where I never lived but had visited before. I have relatives in Brazil, as I have in many other countries. To that was added a brief stop in Bogotá. Furthermore, I "returned" once already via the cyberworld while remaining on the terra firma of the good ol' U.S. of A., after hearing via email of a temporary health crisis (the reader is welcome to thank the god of choice) of a former classmate.
Sometimes distance from the daily occurrences of even people and places we know let us discern differences that have happened to them over time. Call it the Rip Van Winkle Outsider Effect, if you will.
Bogotá, for example, no longer has those packs of street urchins engaged in begging or street vending. Or perhaps they hide them better today from the tourists. You do see in their place some grungy old and obviously very poor men. Are they the children of yesteryear grown old? At least their descendants don't seem to lead similar lives.
São Paulo has always been a thriving hub of commerce. I was amazed that its newyorkization (all Latin American cities aspire, in my view foolishly, to have New York skyscrapers) is not absurdly functional. Instead of the square, sterile and high blocks, the Paulistas have been concerned to build modern art objects.
Sure, being in the country of architectural genius Oscar Niemeyer gives them some incentive to avoid modernizing without rhyme or reason. But I can declare: modern Paulista buildings have a grace that is not found even in the big cities of the First World. Really!
While the consensus among those with whom I spoke is that the economic miracle of Lula is fading (and the efforts of Dilma to build stadiums for the World Cup has been an inexcusable waste), it is still remarkable that Brazil's poverty fell from 22% in 2002 to 9% in 2012 As a point of comparison, in the United States, the rate is 15%, having never dropped below 11%.
These rapid declines are slowing. Perhaps it's like dieting.
Of course, the Third World poverty based on poor or unevenly accessed infrastructure persists. You see people in the 21st century still without electricity, power, fresh drinking water and weather-worthy housing. That's not to mention the social problems that are of a more First World type, such as education, work and opportunity.
And there is the kind of return.
I got a mass email from my secondary school "litter" announcing that a former classmate was in intensive care and suddenly saw names that had never been in my inbox before. They were people whose names evoke a variety of experiences in my youth.
Other names, of course, yield nothing. ("This guy attended school with me?")
Then there's the fact that at a certain age, the numbers begin to diminish. Five of my fiftysomething classmates have died. Any day now, I is listed among them.
We are not intimates, except for two or three who kept up a friendship through the years. There's at least one who is not in the list and I don't want to see even if it is only an email address. Yet for better or worse, all of us are part of each other's youth.
In my case they are men (I went to a boys' school, where the existence of beings called "girls" was mostly theoretical) who are intelligent, vigorous that have managed to stay afloat despite everything that has happened to Argentina since 1968.
(Yes, I know, some readers were not alive then. You are forgiven.)
It occurs to me that many of my concerns will be echoed in theirs. The values that were instilled in us are the same. The intellectual reference points are, in essence, the same.
We will have had failures. You can't reach a certain age without failing; the absence of failure yields no success. I would have liked to say that my former colleagues and I made the world better, as we once expected. But no.
All these things make returning to people and place in the past desirable and undesirable at the same time, leaving a bittersweet taste. Nostalgia has pulled us back to a
reality that somehow did not welcome us or serve us well enough to keep us there.
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Why "innocent"? The Malaysia Air passengers had no foibles like anyone else?
It riles me no end to read and hear the drumbeat of "innocent" passengers killed in the Malaysia Air plane over the Ukraine. Without any disrespect intended to the dead (although, why not, since we don't particular honor the living?), I am sure that these people all had their moral failures; including the children.
This happens with annoying regularity. Yet what makes people killed randomly innocent?
Gazans and Israelis do not cheat on taxes or their mates? Boston Marathon bombing victims had never cheated in school or failed to come to a full stop at a stop sign? And don't get me started on the scummy bond traders who died in 9/11!
The same applies to children who, any truthful parent or teacher will testify, are selfishly wilfull.
All right, you might say that these people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, were innocent with respect to the conflicts that caused their deaths. But were they?
Conflicts in the Middle East and the Chechnya did not occur in isolation to everything else. Certainly, also, the largest economy in the world, the United States, is in some respect dependent on almost every corner of the planet.
For example, when something grievous has happened in the Middle East, we have to think of our oil interests. Surely some oil company has profited and its employees have purchased something that has spurred economic activity that in some way has splashed upon us directly or indirectly.
As Dick Gregory once told a Canadian who claimed to be uninvolved in Vietnam, "Did you pay sales tax on those socks you're wearing?" When the young man admitted he had, Gregory went on to show in a complicated train of events I have long forgotten how those taxes freed resources for war.
We are all much more interconnected today than we were in the 1970s, when Gregory's remark was made. No one is entirely unconnected to what happens in Gaza, the Ukraine and elsewhere. We all in some way continue to thrive in the global human system that makes these events happen.
There are no innocents. Indeed, long ago one Augustine of Hippo proposed the theory of "original sin" (or original concupiscence) as an explanation of the reality that, even at birth, we are all culpable. The rich baby effectively exploits the poor baby born the same second, taking a greater share of resources than, strictly speaking, are his or her due.
None of us is an island. We are all in some way responsible for everything and have the duty to stop the bad and increase the good. To the extent we fail at either, we are guilty of moral failure.
There were no innocents on the Malaysia Air flight as there will not be in the next tragedy that occurs.
This happens with annoying regularity. Yet what makes people killed randomly innocent?
Gazans and Israelis do not cheat on taxes or their mates? Boston Marathon bombing victims had never cheated in school or failed to come to a full stop at a stop sign? And don't get me started on the scummy bond traders who died in 9/11!
The same applies to children who, any truthful parent or teacher will testify, are selfishly wilfull.
All right, you might say that these people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, were innocent with respect to the conflicts that caused their deaths. But were they?
Conflicts in the Middle East and the Chechnya did not occur in isolation to everything else. Certainly, also, the largest economy in the world, the United States, is in some respect dependent on almost every corner of the planet.
For example, when something grievous has happened in the Middle East, we have to think of our oil interests. Surely some oil company has profited and its employees have purchased something that has spurred economic activity that in some way has splashed upon us directly or indirectly.
As Dick Gregory once told a Canadian who claimed to be uninvolved in Vietnam, "Did you pay sales tax on those socks you're wearing?" When the young man admitted he had, Gregory went on to show in a complicated train of events I have long forgotten how those taxes freed resources for war.
We are all much more interconnected today than we were in the 1970s, when Gregory's remark was made. No one is entirely unconnected to what happens in Gaza, the Ukraine and elsewhere. We all in some way continue to thrive in the global human system that makes these events happen.
There are no innocents. Indeed, long ago one Augustine of Hippo proposed the theory of "original sin" (or original concupiscence) as an explanation of the reality that, even at birth, we are all culpable. The rich baby effectively exploits the poor baby born the same second, taking a greater share of resources than, strictly speaking, are his or her due.
None of us is an island. We are all in some way responsible for everything and have the duty to stop the bad and increase the good. To the extent we fail at either, we are guilty of moral failure.
There were no innocents on the Malaysia Air flight as there will not be in the next tragedy that occurs.
Wednesday, July 02, 2014
Happy Real Independence Day
Cecilieaux is off for the holiday, but he left behind his now-traditional Independence Day blog post. Happy 2nd!
Today, July 2nd, rather than July 4th, is the actual day that independence of the territories that were to become the United States from Britain was first approved. This came in the form of a resolution that attorney Richard Henry Lee, a Virginian, proposed to the Second Continental Congress.
The brief document read:
The motion was approved by 12 of the 13 colonies. Indeed, John Adams, of Massachusetts, who seconded Lee's proposal, was so certain that a great step had been taken that he wrote to his wife Abigail:
Now, 238 years later, the festival is held on the 4th, when the delegates approved the wordier, some would say grander, announcement of the decision by Thomas Jefferson, who composed it in the absence of Lee, who had rushed back to Virginia due to his wife's illness.
In honor of someone born on this great day, however, let us fire off an imaginary firecracker.
Today, July 2nd, rather than July 4th, is the actual day that independence of the territories that were to become the United States from Britain was first approved. This came in the form of a resolution that attorney Richard Henry Lee, a Virginian, proposed to the Second Continental Congress.
The brief document read:
Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.
That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances.
That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.
The motion was approved by 12 of the 13 colonies. Indeed, John Adams, of Massachusetts, who seconded Lee's proposal, was so certain that a great step had been taken that he wrote to his wife Abigail:
The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.
Now, 238 years later, the festival is held on the 4th, when the delegates approved the wordier, some would say grander, announcement of the decision by Thomas Jefferson, who composed it in the absence of Lee, who had rushed back to Virginia due to his wife's illness.
In honor of someone born on this great day, however, let us fire off an imaginary firecracker.
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Financiers' Goal on Argentina Shouldn't End the Game
In these World Cup days, it is easy to see a U.S. Supreme Court's decision as a decisive financiers' goal scored against Argentina, but the game isn't over. The court let stand a lower court judgment requiring Argentina to pay $1.3 billion to creditors means different things to different people, but it is actually the human writ small.
For Argentina, and Argentines I know, it's a disaster that causes anxiety. Among Americans, most of whom are completely unaware of the news, those who are up on the events are scratching their heads: what are Argentines complaining about, didn't they borrow the money?
The International Monetary Fund has taken a position of concern about the possible repercussions well beyond the republic of the Southern Cone.
It does not take great theological acumen to realize that from the point of view of the Argentine pope this is an injustice. And it is. The Argentina bad debt was wrongly acquired. Worse, those who will suffer will be children without a meal at school, their teachers who may not get paid and otherwise needy people who never got the least benefit from the loans.
The debt doesn't just go back to the year in which the Argentine peso rapidly lost two thirds of its value overnight (when Argentines say "2001" they mean this event, not September 11). It goes back much earlier. There were the abysmal governments by military officers who borrowed to buy useless weapons (and certainly to fund their retirements) and at least one subsequent civil government (that of Carlos Menem), which essentially carried out a monetary scam, peso parity with the dollar.
To complicate matters, this is not fair in even for those of us who live in the wealthy First World. These investment pools are not just for millionaires (I mean, billionaires), men who fit the image of the fat Monopoly man with a top hat and cigar. These funds are freely sold to the common middle-class citizen who has some put away a little something for old age or medical expenses. This man or woman also had nothing to do with Argentine governments' waste.
Moreover, the Supreme Court didn't actually rule against Argentina. Rather, the justices simply declined to hear the case, without explanation as is common in most such petitions. And, actually, I don't see a legal issue in this matter. The bonds were developed and sold in accordance with current laws and their constitutionality is not in question, which is what the high court judges.
In Argentine eyes, the move will be seen as part of U.S. foreign policy, but Supreme Court justices cannot be removed unless they are charged with serious wrongdoing and their decisions can not be modified or President Obama, or Congress.
So it's not an American "trick." Nor a goal by a foreign soccer team. It is undoubtedly the result of a sad story, one very well known in Latin America. National leaders have been very bad, there have been too many dictators and even democracies have been undemocratic.
As to consequences, there are few countries that historically have been able to escape their debts as tried by Argentina under Presidents Nestor and Cristina Kirchner. Greece is trying today (using the Argentine "model," which some say is merely a bad example).
When someone does not pay a debt, he is considered bad debtor and the cost of borrowing goes up for the debtor because the risk of loss is higher. All loans follow this pattern going back to the Church's abandonment of its traditional condemnation of usury, a fact that coincided with the rise of Italian banking in the Renaissance (and ecclesiastical money needs for monumental works such as St. Peter's Basilica in Rome).
The great historical exception was Russia. In 1917, Lenin refused repay foreign debt (also internal debt, but that's another story), arguing that the debt belonged to tsars and not the people. He got as a response a military intervention by Great Britain, United States and other creditor countries from 1918 to 1920.
The Soviet Union won milityarily, but the nation was an economic pariah until the fall of the Communist Party. The ruble ceased to be convertible currency and Russia could not buy anything on the world market without paying for it with hard currency obtained through exports. However, the USSR had vast internal resources and made use of them to survive.
Partly in preparation for the eventuality of such an isolation the Kirchner governments have restricted and controlled trade and monetary exchange, a move that may have seemed crazy to anyone who did not consider the default problem. Like Russia, Argentina is one of the few countries in the world that is physically self-sufficient: it has enough food to feed all of Europe, let alone merely 40 million Argentines, plus it has oil, minerals and untold natural raw materials and industries.
It's not entirely insane to think that, with doors closed to external funding, Argentina must find a way to survive on its own.
But of course, for the IMF, which bears the responsibility the debt of all, this situation is a potential global disaster. The international economy depends on a degree of cooperation between all people, rich and poor, creditors and debtors.
Indeed, human beings are not independent and autonomous. We are born thanks to the love of our parents (in the best cases) or instinct, but not on our own. We survive at least the first 10 years thanks to someone who feeds, dresses and shelters us.
Human societies bear a resemblance to individuals. We all depend on each other. The owner of factory depends on workers and vice versa. Sellers on buyers. Professionals on those who don't have their specialized knowledge, and vice versa.
Societies also need one another. Think of Colombian Coffee, Brazilian bananas, Argentine beef, Sri Lanka's tea, Chilean copper and Venezuelan oil. Consider the cultural diversity that enriches us all: what would we read without Tolstoy, Mafoud, Cortázar or Naipaul? What would we listen to without Beethoven or Menuchin?
In short, this is one of those times when you have to wear the uniform of the human team. In fact, I think that's what everyone with the power of persuasion in this matter will wear. If not, we all lose.
For Argentina, and Argentines I know, it's a disaster that causes anxiety. Among Americans, most of whom are completely unaware of the news, those who are up on the events are scratching their heads: what are Argentines complaining about, didn't they borrow the money?
The International Monetary Fund has taken a position of concern about the possible repercussions well beyond the republic of the Southern Cone.
It does not take great theological acumen to realize that from the point of view of the Argentine pope this is an injustice. And it is. The Argentina bad debt was wrongly acquired. Worse, those who will suffer will be children without a meal at school, their teachers who may not get paid and otherwise needy people who never got the least benefit from the loans.
The debt doesn't just go back to the year in which the Argentine peso rapidly lost two thirds of its value overnight (when Argentines say "2001" they mean this event, not September 11). It goes back much earlier. There were the abysmal governments by military officers who borrowed to buy useless weapons (and certainly to fund their retirements) and at least one subsequent civil government (that of Carlos Menem), which essentially carried out a monetary scam, peso parity with the dollar.
To complicate matters, this is not fair in even for those of us who live in the wealthy First World. These investment pools are not just for millionaires (I mean, billionaires), men who fit the image of the fat Monopoly man with a top hat and cigar. These funds are freely sold to the common middle-class citizen who has some put away a little something for old age or medical expenses. This man or woman also had nothing to do with Argentine governments' waste.
Moreover, the Supreme Court didn't actually rule against Argentina. Rather, the justices simply declined to hear the case, without explanation as is common in most such petitions. And, actually, I don't see a legal issue in this matter. The bonds were developed and sold in accordance with current laws and their constitutionality is not in question, which is what the high court judges.
In Argentine eyes, the move will be seen as part of U.S. foreign policy, but Supreme Court justices cannot be removed unless they are charged with serious wrongdoing and their decisions can not be modified or President Obama, or Congress.
So it's not an American "trick." Nor a goal by a foreign soccer team. It is undoubtedly the result of a sad story, one very well known in Latin America. National leaders have been very bad, there have been too many dictators and even democracies have been undemocratic.
As to consequences, there are few countries that historically have been able to escape their debts as tried by Argentina under Presidents Nestor and Cristina Kirchner. Greece is trying today (using the Argentine "model," which some say is merely a bad example).
When someone does not pay a debt, he is considered bad debtor and the cost of borrowing goes up for the debtor because the risk of loss is higher. All loans follow this pattern going back to the Church's abandonment of its traditional condemnation of usury, a fact that coincided with the rise of Italian banking in the Renaissance (and ecclesiastical money needs for monumental works such as St. Peter's Basilica in Rome).
The great historical exception was Russia. In 1917, Lenin refused repay foreign debt (also internal debt, but that's another story), arguing that the debt belonged to tsars and not the people. He got as a response a military intervention by Great Britain, United States and other creditor countries from 1918 to 1920.
The Soviet Union won milityarily, but the nation was an economic pariah until the fall of the Communist Party. The ruble ceased to be convertible currency and Russia could not buy anything on the world market without paying for it with hard currency obtained through exports. However, the USSR had vast internal resources and made use of them to survive.
Partly in preparation for the eventuality of such an isolation the Kirchner governments have restricted and controlled trade and monetary exchange, a move that may have seemed crazy to anyone who did not consider the default problem. Like Russia, Argentina is one of the few countries in the world that is physically self-sufficient: it has enough food to feed all of Europe, let alone merely 40 million Argentines, plus it has oil, minerals and untold natural raw materials and industries.
It's not entirely insane to think that, with doors closed to external funding, Argentina must find a way to survive on its own.
But of course, for the IMF, which bears the responsibility the debt of all, this situation is a potential global disaster. The international economy depends on a degree of cooperation between all people, rich and poor, creditors and debtors.
Indeed, human beings are not independent and autonomous. We are born thanks to the love of our parents (in the best cases) or instinct, but not on our own. We survive at least the first 10 years thanks to someone who feeds, dresses and shelters us.
Human societies bear a resemblance to individuals. We all depend on each other. The owner of factory depends on workers and vice versa. Sellers on buyers. Professionals on those who don't have their specialized knowledge, and vice versa.
Societies also need one another. Think of Colombian Coffee, Brazilian bananas, Argentine beef, Sri Lanka's tea, Chilean copper and Venezuelan oil. Consider the cultural diversity that enriches us all: what would we read without Tolstoy, Mafoud, Cortázar or Naipaul? What would we listen to without Beethoven or Menuchin?
In short, this is one of those times when you have to wear the uniform of the human team. In fact, I think that's what everyone with the power of persuasion in this matter will wear. If not, we all lose.
Friday, May 30, 2014
Europe is committing suicide again; we should let them
The Europeans tried to commit suicide beginning 100 years ago with what Churchill called a 30 years conflict with a long truce (that included the Stalin purges and the Spanish Civil War)—easily 150 million dead. Now, with these recent European Union elections, they're saying they want to do it again.
I say, let them.
Twice, the United States stepped into centuries of European ethnic and religious hatred leading to savagery of all kinds—a fair amount of it inflicted on the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America in the form of colonialism.
We rescued France, which effectively lost both world wars. We gave the Germans the means to rebuild themselves (unlike the Soviets, who took everything that wasn't nailed down back to Mother Russia, where their incompetence could destroy German machinery better). The Marshall Plan and the U.S. nuclear umbrella allowed western Europe the longest and most widely felt prosperity they had ever known.
Yet, ever since the U.S.-Soviet bipolar world ended, the European uglies have been surfacing. The practice of "ethnic cleansing" took the world back to the Holocaust. The hatred of immigrants took the world back to Kipling's "white man's burden."
Their mishandling of the economic crisis, which may have started in United States but rippled through Europe thanks to European banks that eagerly overinvested in junk bonds, has now delivered Europe to levels of suffering not seen since the Great Depression.
True to their script, the Europeans are goosestepping back to fascism, austerity (for the many—not the politicians, not the bankers). The right-wingers, in classic capitalist self-contradiction, have run for and won seats in a useless electoral body (the European Parliament) that they want to implode from within—presumably to die in the ruins with it. Hurray!
Russia is dreaming of empire, France wants Napoleon back (Britain presumably wants Nelson back to defeat Napoleon again). Crimea, not heard of since Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" in the 19th century, is back in the newspapers—even though newspapers are on the verge of disappearing.
The Europeans are crazy and they deserve everything they choose to inflict on themselves.
I say this as a descendant of Europeans, but of the group of the few plucky Europeans who had the good sense to leave and try to start something better on the western shores of the Atlantic. We may not have succeeded—and some of our dumber cousins are trying to undo the democratic experiment.
At least, we knew not to repeat history. Of course, our own Mark Twain told us about the repetition in his famous aphorism: "History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes."
I say, let them.
Twice, the United States stepped into centuries of European ethnic and religious hatred leading to savagery of all kinds—a fair amount of it inflicted on the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America in the form of colonialism.
We rescued France, which effectively lost both world wars. We gave the Germans the means to rebuild themselves (unlike the Soviets, who took everything that wasn't nailed down back to Mother Russia, where their incompetence could destroy German machinery better). The Marshall Plan and the U.S. nuclear umbrella allowed western Europe the longest and most widely felt prosperity they had ever known.
Yet, ever since the U.S.-Soviet bipolar world ended, the European uglies have been surfacing. The practice of "ethnic cleansing" took the world back to the Holocaust. The hatred of immigrants took the world back to Kipling's "white man's burden."
Their mishandling of the economic crisis, which may have started in United States but rippled through Europe thanks to European banks that eagerly overinvested in junk bonds, has now delivered Europe to levels of suffering not seen since the Great Depression.
True to their script, the Europeans are goosestepping back to fascism, austerity (for the many—not the politicians, not the bankers). The right-wingers, in classic capitalist self-contradiction, have run for and won seats in a useless electoral body (the European Parliament) that they want to implode from within—presumably to die in the ruins with it. Hurray!
Russia is dreaming of empire, France wants Napoleon back (Britain presumably wants Nelson back to defeat Napoleon again). Crimea, not heard of since Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" in the 19th century, is back in the newspapers—even though newspapers are on the verge of disappearing.
The Europeans are crazy and they deserve everything they choose to inflict on themselves.
I say this as a descendant of Europeans, but of the group of the few plucky Europeans who had the good sense to leave and try to start something better on the western shores of the Atlantic. We may not have succeeded—and some of our dumber cousins are trying to undo the democratic experiment.
At least, we knew not to repeat history. Of course, our own Mark Twain told us about the repetition in his famous aphorism: "History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes."
Monday, April 28, 2014
All Hail St. Karol Wojtyla, Patron Saint of Priestly Pedophiles!
Jorge Bergoglio, aka Pope Francis, has sold out. For the 30 (million?) pieces of silver from tourism and holy trinkets that the Vatican is surely to reap, he has put on a spectacle sainting two popes in an unscrupulous and totally unnecessary way.
The Roncalli-Wojtyla compromise—meaning the balancing of the canonization as saints of John XXIII, the "good pope" beloved by many reform-minded people, with John Paul II, every conservative Catholic's favorite ecclesiastical fascist—has been in the works for some time. It's one of those deals favored by politicians, union leaders and the Mafia: a little bit for everyone, not enough for any one constituency and, most importantly, no power base gets rolled.
It's the sort of thing I would have expected from his predecessor, Pope Nazinger, the bemoaner at Auschwitz of how the poor Germans suffered (see here).
To be fair, Guiseppe Roncalli, aka John XXIII, could be called a good man. During the Holocaust, while he was a Vatican diplomat in Turkey, he personally forged hundreds of baptismal certificates to put under the protection of the pope a boatload of children being shipped to certain death by the Nazis. Years later, at the outset of the Second Vatican Council, he gathered the periti, or experts, in his office (one of them was Nazinger) giving them the warning: "the Church is not a museum."
Roncalli was an astute man of faith. He wanted to a faith that was alive. His view meshed with that of historian of religion Yaroslav Pelikan: "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." Still, was he a saint?
No such doubt arises with the Polish pope, Karol Wojtyla, who was from the outset the false John Paul. The original one, John Paul I, died in still suspicious circumstances at the onset of a money laundering scandal affecting the Vatican Bank. He had adopted the papal name John Paul as a way of signalling that he would steer a middle course between the openness of John XXIII and the retrenchment of successor Paul VI. Instead, JP1 died, and Wojtyla was elected, after which he effectively closed every window Vatican II had opened.
Back came the enormous rugs under which to sweep the corruption of the clergy. Wojtyla was especially protective of one Marcial Maciel, founder of a religious order called the Legionnaires of Christ (tip: mistrust religious groups with military or monarchical names). Maciel was found to have operated what was essentially a seminarian man-on-boy rape mill.
As John Paul II's press secretary, an Opus Dei operative in the Vatican, put it, Wojtyla could not imagine such a thing because of "the purity of his thought." Right! A man who lived through World War II, precisely where some of the worst crimes of the Holocaust took place, could not imagine pedophile or sex-abusing priests.
I know for a fact altar boys knew about "funny priests" for at least the past half century. Also that particular U.S. bishops knew such a thing was going. One of them thought he was making a joke when he remarked behind closed doors and in my presence, "We have to make sure seminary rectors don't screw the Hispanic seminarians." That double meaning was intended was shown by his own laughter and that of his peers.
You're going to tell me the pope at that time did not know? I have nice bridge for you in Brooklyn at a bargain price.
The Vatican may not care about raped altar boys and the Roman Curia may not give a damn about Pope Francis' the blessed poor, but they sure care about tourism to Rome. So I learned when I received the one direct contact from the Vatican while I worked for the U.S. conference of bishops quite some time ago.
They sent an officious little man to see if I could help organize a "pilgrimage." Johann Tetzel, the infamous seller of indulgences who enraged Martin Luther, put the religious marketing in slightly different but no less mercenary terms: "As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs."
They're still selling indulgences of a sort in Rome. This week it has been the massive orgy of tourism and saint swag selling brought on by the canonization, or sainting, of Roncalli and Wojtyla.
This is not good Christian leadership. It's a bad imitation of Elmer Gantry: put on a show for the fools who will always go for one (and sell them travel and baubles). All "for God." Because God needs your pilgrimages and your shopping for saint cards.
Referencing the Vatican's own purported beliefs, sainthood merely means that a dead person is living in the presence of God. Add to that the theology in the Nicene Creed and you get "the communion of saints," in which those in heaven are believed (at least by Catholics) to be able to hear from and intercede for the living here on Earth.
This is what the whole Catholic saint shtick is all about. Johnny is incurably sick, they pray to St. Holyguy. So St. H goes to God, "Hey, Creator of All, Johnny's sick, how about you slip him one of those superduper aspirins of yours and make him better?" Presto! A miracle through the influence of St. H!
The notion of revering certain Christians goes back to when they were killed for their beliefs during the Roman Empire. To be a martyr meant to be a witness to the faith to heroic proportions. Vatican press releases to the contrary, neither Roncalli nor Wojtyla quite qualify. OK, but not all saints on the church calendar were martyrs.
Indeed, my favorite children's hymn in the Episcopal Hymn Book begins "I Sing a Song of the Saints of God":
I mean, I'm not planning to issue an encyclical letter any time soon. Or ride around a 500-year-old piazza in a converted golf cart. O wear white dresses and a white yarmulke. What does a pope have to do with the problems and moral dilemmas facing thee and me?
Here's where Francis the rock-star pope has tripped up in his marketing of a faith we all now know he completely lacks. Pity. He had me fooled.
The Roncalli-Wojtyla compromise—meaning the balancing of the canonization as saints of John XXIII, the "good pope" beloved by many reform-minded people, with John Paul II, every conservative Catholic's favorite ecclesiastical fascist—has been in the works for some time. It's one of those deals favored by politicians, union leaders and the Mafia: a little bit for everyone, not enough for any one constituency and, most importantly, no power base gets rolled.
It's the sort of thing I would have expected from his predecessor, Pope Nazinger, the bemoaner at Auschwitz of how the poor Germans suffered (see here).
To be fair, Guiseppe Roncalli, aka John XXIII, could be called a good man. During the Holocaust, while he was a Vatican diplomat in Turkey, he personally forged hundreds of baptismal certificates to put under the protection of the pope a boatload of children being shipped to certain death by the Nazis. Years later, at the outset of the Second Vatican Council, he gathered the periti, or experts, in his office (one of them was Nazinger) giving them the warning: "the Church is not a museum."
Roncalli was an astute man of faith. He wanted to a faith that was alive. His view meshed with that of historian of religion Yaroslav Pelikan: "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." Still, was he a saint?
No such doubt arises with the Polish pope, Karol Wojtyla, who was from the outset the false John Paul. The original one, John Paul I, died in still suspicious circumstances at the onset of a money laundering scandal affecting the Vatican Bank. He had adopted the papal name John Paul as a way of signalling that he would steer a middle course between the openness of John XXIII and the retrenchment of successor Paul VI. Instead, JP1 died, and Wojtyla was elected, after which he effectively closed every window Vatican II had opened.
Back came the enormous rugs under which to sweep the corruption of the clergy. Wojtyla was especially protective of one Marcial Maciel, founder of a religious order called the Legionnaires of Christ (tip: mistrust religious groups with military or monarchical names). Maciel was found to have operated what was essentially a seminarian man-on-boy rape mill.
As John Paul II's press secretary, an Opus Dei operative in the Vatican, put it, Wojtyla could not imagine such a thing because of "the purity of his thought." Right! A man who lived through World War II, precisely where some of the worst crimes of the Holocaust took place, could not imagine pedophile or sex-abusing priests.
I know for a fact altar boys knew about "funny priests" for at least the past half century. Also that particular U.S. bishops knew such a thing was going. One of them thought he was making a joke when he remarked behind closed doors and in my presence, "We have to make sure seminary rectors don't screw the Hispanic seminarians." That double meaning was intended was shown by his own laughter and that of his peers.
You're going to tell me the pope at that time did not know? I have nice bridge for you in Brooklyn at a bargain price.
The Vatican may not care about raped altar boys and the Roman Curia may not give a damn about Pope Francis' the blessed poor, but they sure care about tourism to Rome. So I learned when I received the one direct contact from the Vatican while I worked for the U.S. conference of bishops quite some time ago.
They sent an officious little man to see if I could help organize a "pilgrimage." Johann Tetzel, the infamous seller of indulgences who enraged Martin Luther, put the religious marketing in slightly different but no less mercenary terms: "As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs."
They're still selling indulgences of a sort in Rome. This week it has been the massive orgy of tourism and saint swag selling brought on by the canonization, or sainting, of Roncalli and Wojtyla.
This is not good Christian leadership. It's a bad imitation of Elmer Gantry: put on a show for the fools who will always go for one (and sell them travel and baubles). All "for God." Because God needs your pilgrimages and your shopping for saint cards.
Referencing the Vatican's own purported beliefs, sainthood merely means that a dead person is living in the presence of God. Add to that the theology in the Nicene Creed and you get "the communion of saints," in which those in heaven are believed (at least by Catholics) to be able to hear from and intercede for the living here on Earth.
This is what the whole Catholic saint shtick is all about. Johnny is incurably sick, they pray to St. Holyguy. So St. H goes to God, "Hey, Creator of All, Johnny's sick, how about you slip him one of those superduper aspirins of yours and make him better?" Presto! A miracle through the influence of St. H!
The notion of revering certain Christians goes back to when they were killed for their beliefs during the Roman Empire. To be a martyr meant to be a witness to the faith to heroic proportions. Vatican press releases to the contrary, neither Roncalli nor Wojtyla quite qualify. OK, but not all saints on the church calendar were martyrs.
Indeed, my favorite children's hymn in the Episcopal Hymn Book begins "I Sing a Song of the Saints of God":
I sing a song of the saints of God,Then it goes on to say that "one was a doctor, and one was a queen, and one was a shepherdess on the green" and later "one was a soldier, and one was a priest, and one was slain by a fierce wild beast." But my favorite part comes in the third verse:
patient and brave and true,
who toiled and fought and lived and died
for the Lord they loved and knew.
You can meet them in school,And here's where Saints Roncalli and Woytyla make absolutely no sense as models. Who in this day and age can realistically draw for personal moral example from the deeds and circumstances of the chief gerontocrat of a worldwide religion of about 1 billion lemmings?
on the street, in the store,
in church, by the sea, in the house next door;
they are saints of God, whether rich or poor,
and I mean to be one too.
I mean, I'm not planning to issue an encyclical letter any time soon. Or ride around a 500-year-old piazza in a converted golf cart. O wear white dresses and a white yarmulke. What does a pope have to do with the problems and moral dilemmas facing thee and me?
Here's where Francis the rock-star pope has tripped up in his marketing of a faith we all now know he completely lacks. Pity. He had me fooled.
Tuesday, April 08, 2014
Bye, bye, Microsoft, you've XPired
Today Windows XP ceases to be supported (meaning that Microsoft will not correct any more of the mistakes in their shoddy ware), so I am saying goodbye Windows, hello Linux.
This has gone in stages. At first I thought I would go to 7. I am a great believer in "distressed" software technology. To me this means software that someone else has forced Microsoft to bring up to the standard it should have been in the first place.
I decided to keep a locked up, un-networked XP for those projects that started with a particular Windows application. But the more I look at this, the fewer items there are to preserve.
Most of the ordinary software runs great in Linux (and for free!!!):
That's why I think that in about a year from now, I won't even using my museum piece XP.
So give it a try. I'm using Linux Ubuntu, which is very friendly and comes in a huge bunch of flavors.
This has gone in stages. At first I thought I would go to 7. I am a great believer in "distressed" software technology. To me this means software that someone else has forced Microsoft to bring up to the standard it should have been in the first place.
I decided to keep a locked up, un-networked XP for those projects that started with a particular Windows application. But the more I look at this, the fewer items there are to preserve.
Most of the ordinary software runs great in Linux (and for free!!!):
- Firefox, Chromium (no need to sell your soul to Google using Chrome), Opera and even Safari surf fine under the penguin.
- Open Office or Libre Office are in many ways better than Microsoft Office and they are compatible with WordPerfect (which I prefer to Word).
- GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) will do everything any other graphics programs will do and there are media players and editorsthat do cartwheels on the overpriced Windows wares.
That's why I think that in about a year from now, I won't even using my museum piece XP.
So give it a try. I'm using Linux Ubuntu, which is very friendly and comes in a huge bunch of flavors.
Friday, March 07, 2014
Is it the long winter? Is it me? Why can't people exchange more than chit-chat and pictures?
There's a dearth of real, urgent, passionate and intelligent discussion on the Internet. Yes, you have TED and there is "social media" (I hate the term); but there is, increasingly, nowhere to discuss things that matter with people who have a modicum of education.
I don't do chit-chat, in person or online. I'm terribly bad. I run out of things to say in three minutes. Your illness? I'm a bit phobic about talking about disease, minor or major. As to your family ... I care, because? Gardening is a yawn. Your plans for retirement, your dream house, your car ... yawn, yawn, yawn.
Consider ideas, not the partisan or doctrinally correct or fashionable or lockstep or group-think mishmash you think is your ideo-(a)theo-philosophical "position." More how it applies and how you came to this conclusion and how come there are so many other "positions."
Give me religion. Is there a God? What church does she attend? Is homosexuality moral? Why can't a society with so much religion be fairer, more equitable and so forth? Why, why, why ... and let's source our answers, at least in passing, please.
Or politics, but not so much which party is right nor the latest chatter from your favorite radio ranter or columnist, but something that you really want to explore.
Legal or economic issues. What's happening or what do you think will happen?
Or literature or the arts. What are you reading or seeing (no TV, please)? Do you like or dislike it? Why?
Or historical interpretations.
There used to be some (few) email lists that had some level of intelligence in them. (Although, frankly, I'm appalled at the level of historical, religious, political, cultural and linguistic illiteracy that is found online.)
Anyone wish to revive cyberspace for any of this? Or just exchange email? Or point me to where this exists, if it does?
I don't do chit-chat, in person or online. I'm terribly bad. I run out of things to say in three minutes. Your illness? I'm a bit phobic about talking about disease, minor or major. As to your family ... I care, because? Gardening is a yawn. Your plans for retirement, your dream house, your car ... yawn, yawn, yawn.
Consider ideas, not the partisan or doctrinally correct or fashionable or lockstep or group-think mishmash you think is your ideo-(a)theo-philosophical "position." More how it applies and how you came to this conclusion and how come there are so many other "positions."
Give me religion. Is there a God? What church does she attend? Is homosexuality moral? Why can't a society with so much religion be fairer, more equitable and so forth? Why, why, why ... and let's source our answers, at least in passing, please.
Or politics, but not so much which party is right nor the latest chatter from your favorite radio ranter or columnist, but something that you really want to explore.
Legal or economic issues. What's happening or what do you think will happen?
Or literature or the arts. What are you reading or seeing (no TV, please)? Do you like or dislike it? Why?
Or historical interpretations.
There used to be some (few) email lists that had some level of intelligence in them. (Although, frankly, I'm appalled at the level of historical, religious, political, cultural and linguistic illiteracy that is found online.)
Anyone wish to revive cyberspace for any of this? Or just exchange email? Or point me to where this exists, if it does?
Saturday, February 08, 2014
Why do we have to work, anyway?
The answer to a declining need for workers is, of course, not to work so much. Or, seen another way, who says work has to be punishing drudgery performed 40 hours a week for 40-plus years?
We in America are such Puritans that we are constantly in dread that someone somewhere is having fun. We live by the biblical curse: “By the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground” (Genesis 3:19).
Europeans are no better. Sure, there's the French month-long vacation and Italy’s ferragosto (or, literally closed August), which have spread all over the Old World. The British worker seems to love striking and habitually appears at the workplace following his own unscheduled notion of a short workday, often intoxicated. This behavior actually upholds the very same Puritan work ethic—through transgression.
Effectively, the European welfare states (and American unemployment) have produced masses of people to whom life without work is one long stretch of daytime television watching while drunk or high, with the occasional sex break during commercials or the news. That’s no answer to work; it’s an inhumane wasting of the most precious non-renewable resource we have: life itself.
There has to be a better way. Indeed, there is. It’s called the society of leisure.
The idea has been around at least since British sociologist Kenneth Roberts’ original work The Society of Leisure, published in the 1970s. Sadly it's out of print and I was not able to find it anywhere on the Internet, although there are copious references.
However, I did find Roberts himself and a later work of his, Leisure in Contemporary Society. If you are as fond of social science theory as I am, you will recognize it as a positive and upside-down spin on Thorstein Veblen’s ideas.
“Say what,” you ask? Allow me to explain.
Restated for the era of the Internet and incipient robot-controlled machines, from which the 1970s were very far, the underlying premise is that a society that can produce enough food and consumer goods for all using diminishing inputs of human work—defined as toil for wages—will reach the point at which workers as we know them will, on the whole, become unnecessary.
All that will eventually be needed are a few specialists to check on the systems now and then; there’s no reason they could not be volunteers who simply love to check the running of systems. There will always be someone who does.
This might be something as imagined by Richard Brautigan in his poem "All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace," which in part says
I like to think (it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
Next Roberts stipulates that all of us enjoy applying our innate talents in a way that provides structure to our lives. If we could wave a magic wand, we would all choose to do something productive with our brains, our hands, our eye-hand coordination, etc.
I should have been a lawyer and that gene was passed on to the son who became one. I could also have been a programmer and that gene was passed on to the son who became one.
The point is that we all enjoy some quantity and form of what is known as work today. What we don’t like are bosses, or generically, people who tell us to work at their convenience rather than ours. We don’t like the compulsion, mind-numbing tasks (except if we are obsessive-compulsive or temporarily upset), unhealthy work conditions or hours and so on and so forth.
Of course, right now no one is prepared for world without work. Unemployment or retirement are unmitigated human disasters. But what if things changed? What if we didn’t have to bear with work as we know it?
Next: Why society has failed to change.
We in America are such Puritans that we are constantly in dread that someone somewhere is having fun. We live by the biblical curse: “By the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground” (Genesis 3:19).
Europeans are no better. Sure, there's the French month-long vacation and Italy’s ferragosto (or, literally closed August), which have spread all over the Old World. The British worker seems to love striking and habitually appears at the workplace following his own unscheduled notion of a short workday, often intoxicated. This behavior actually upholds the very same Puritan work ethic—through transgression.
Effectively, the European welfare states (and American unemployment) have produced masses of people to whom life without work is one long stretch of daytime television watching while drunk or high, with the occasional sex break during commercials or the news. That’s no answer to work; it’s an inhumane wasting of the most precious non-renewable resource we have: life itself.
There has to be a better way. Indeed, there is. It’s called the society of leisure.
The idea has been around at least since British sociologist Kenneth Roberts’ original work The Society of Leisure, published in the 1970s. Sadly it's out of print and I was not able to find it anywhere on the Internet, although there are copious references.
However, I did find Roberts himself and a later work of his, Leisure in Contemporary Society. If you are as fond of social science theory as I am, you will recognize it as a positive and upside-down spin on Thorstein Veblen’s ideas.
“Say what,” you ask? Allow me to explain.
Restated for the era of the Internet and incipient robot-controlled machines, from which the 1970s were very far, the underlying premise is that a society that can produce enough food and consumer goods for all using diminishing inputs of human work—defined as toil for wages—will reach the point at which workers as we know them will, on the whole, become unnecessary.
All that will eventually be needed are a few specialists to check on the systems now and then; there’s no reason they could not be volunteers who simply love to check the running of systems. There will always be someone who does.
This might be something as imagined by Richard Brautigan in his poem "All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace," which in part says
I like to think (it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
Next Roberts stipulates that all of us enjoy applying our innate talents in a way that provides structure to our lives. If we could wave a magic wand, we would all choose to do something productive with our brains, our hands, our eye-hand coordination, etc.
I should have been a lawyer and that gene was passed on to the son who became one. I could also have been a programmer and that gene was passed on to the son who became one.
The point is that we all enjoy some quantity and form of what is known as work today. What we don’t like are bosses, or generically, people who tell us to work at their convenience rather than ours. We don’t like the compulsion, mind-numbing tasks (except if we are obsessive-compulsive or temporarily upset), unhealthy work conditions or hours and so on and so forth.
Of course, right now no one is prepared for world without work. Unemployment or retirement are unmitigated human disasters. But what if things changed? What if we didn’t have to bear with work as we know it?
Next: Why society has failed to change.
Friday, January 31, 2014
Maybe the economy doesn't need full employment any more
Instead of arguing whether raising the minimum wage will destroy jobs—which it won’t*—let’s consider a new International Labor Organization report that tells us that, globally, the labor market is not likely to come close to recovering before 2018. That's not even counting the catchup needed to employ the workers added each year.
This brings me to the thought that has been haunting me since 2008: What if we don’t ever get everybody back to work again right here in the good old U.S. of A.? It seems more likely every year.
This is a prospect looming over workers everywhere, and particularly in the technologically advanced United States since the 1970s. It was then that premature predictions of the Luddites—the textile artisans who protested against newly developed labor-saving machinery in the 1810s—began to come true.
Since then a long slump in average wages, from which we have yet to recover, has occurred despite enormous productivity gains, sucking profits to the investing class in the now popularly known top 1% income bracket (I would include the top 20%, but that).
In 1978, President Carter signed the Humphrey–Hawkins Full Employment Act (formally the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act), which set full employment as a national goal, defining that condition as 3% unemployment for adults and 4% for youths.
Those rates were never reached. For three months in 2000, national rates for the civilian labor force slipped below 4% and the national average for that last year of the Clinton Administration was 4%. But the complete goal, which coincided with the well-known view of economist William Beveridge, was never reached.
What if the modern economy doesn’t need full employment to function?
For five full years in United States, which has the world’s largest economy with the world’s largest functioning internal market, has been able to chug along with roughly 1 in 10 workers idled or involuntarily employed part-time. Growth has not been great, but profits (and the stock market) have soared.
The plutocracy (which comes from the Greek for “the wealthiest rule”) has been perfectly content to effectively toss into the garbage the 30% to 40% of the American human beings directly affected by this (assume one worker per roughly three people, including children and the aged).
Unemployment insurance and food stamps have been cut in a time of continuing need; welfare didn’t need to be cut because it’s been effectively frozen since 1996 (that’s 18 years ago).
Welcome to the United States of Brazil or Argentina ... or even Greece.
Next: an immodest proposal ...
* Every respectable piece of research since the 1994 “Ur” study by Card and Krueger has proven—contrary to the repeated argument of the restaurant industry’s fake “Employment Policies Institute” plastered in a full page ad in The New York Times this week—that increasing minimum wage has no negative effect on employment. Some have suggested there may be a positive, job-generating effect.
This brings me to the thought that has been haunting me since 2008: What if we don’t ever get everybody back to work again right here in the good old U.S. of A.? It seems more likely every year.
This is a prospect looming over workers everywhere, and particularly in the technologically advanced United States since the 1970s. It was then that premature predictions of the Luddites—the textile artisans who protested against newly developed labor-saving machinery in the 1810s—began to come true.
Since then a long slump in average wages, from which we have yet to recover, has occurred despite enormous productivity gains, sucking profits to the investing class in the now popularly known top 1% income bracket (I would include the top 20%, but that).
In 1978, President Carter signed the Humphrey–Hawkins Full Employment Act (formally the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act), which set full employment as a national goal, defining that condition as 3% unemployment for adults and 4% for youths.
Those rates were never reached. For three months in 2000, national rates for the civilian labor force slipped below 4% and the national average for that last year of the Clinton Administration was 4%. But the complete goal, which coincided with the well-known view of economist William Beveridge, was never reached.
What if the modern economy doesn’t need full employment to function?
For five full years in United States, which has the world’s largest economy with the world’s largest functioning internal market, has been able to chug along with roughly 1 in 10 workers idled or involuntarily employed part-time. Growth has not been great, but profits (and the stock market) have soared.
The plutocracy (which comes from the Greek for “the wealthiest rule”) has been perfectly content to effectively toss into the garbage the 30% to 40% of the American human beings directly affected by this (assume one worker per roughly three people, including children and the aged).
Unemployment insurance and food stamps have been cut in a time of continuing need; welfare didn’t need to be cut because it’s been effectively frozen since 1996 (that’s 18 years ago).
Welcome to the United States of Brazil or Argentina ... or even Greece.
Next: an immodest proposal ...
* Every respectable piece of research since the 1994 “Ur” study by Card and Krueger has proven—contrary to the repeated argument of the restaurant industry’s fake “Employment Policies Institute” plastered in a full page ad in The New York Times this week—that increasing minimum wage has no negative effect on employment. Some have suggested there may be a positive, job-generating effect.
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