Consumer side ethics.

I try not to participate in activities that I find reprehensible or that don't please me.  But sometimes, either from stupidity or advertising or coercion, I do the wrong thing.

I am, you see, a consumer side ethicist. I thought that the cars with 'Boycott Exxon' after the Valdez oil spill were absurd.  Ships have wrecked for years.  If one wants to avoid ship wrecks leaving oil spills, one shouldn't buy oil.  It could have just as easily been a Shell spill.

There was a day in late 1966 that I still remember vividly, when the young woman who was to be my wife and a very naive version of myself were standing on the corner of Michigan and Van Buren in Chicago and a new Caddillac Eldorado nearly ran us over.  I said at the time that I thought cars were a very poor method of daily transporation, and that I never wanted to own one.  I was about to make the worst moral decision of my life, and marry the poor girl.  It was a decision based on ignorance and advertising:  I would ask her to marry me, and when she said yes, to do the deed.  I was a gay man who didn't begin to understand what that meant, and everyone among whom I had grown up had advertised that marriage was a Very Good Thing.  Shortly after that, we were about to make a long journey and wanted to take all our loot--marriage does come with good loot--and my mother offered to buy us a car.  It seemed like something I might use occasionally, not as daily transportation, and it would make hauling all that stuff 3,500 miles easy.  So, I became a married car owner. I would remain married for more than 20 years and buy more cars than I can remember.  Indeed, I would try to find a sort of satisfaction in automobile ownership that I did not find in marriage.  (See Marshall McLuhan's The Mechanical Bride.)

Please consider this introduction a kind of confession, a revelation that I am often not very successful in avoiding situations that I find reprehensible or displeasing.  Indeed, after finally getting out of marriage, I would continue to buy cars from time to time for another fifteen years or so, although I was much better about not using them for my daily transportation.  I made a lot of trips to the east, west, and south coasts.

On September 11, 2001, however, I thought that oil had probably been a major contribution to the events surrounding the collapse of the World Trade Center, and I got rid of my car.  More research quickly convinced me that oil was mostly a side show to that event, but I found that not having a car was something I enjoyed, so I haven't had one since.  But I would not condemn anyone else who drives.  Ethics is a really strange human creation, ranging from genital mutilation to forbidding theft and demanding bombings. My position is simple: if you think something is wrong, don't do it.  If you think it's a good thing,  do it.  But don't impose your choices on others by force.  Circumcise yourself, but don't make it a legal requirement.

Soon after September 11, I found the reaction of the United States more reprehensible that the attack on the towers, so I decided to try to limit my support of the activities of the US government.  I simply limited my income to just below the minimal taxable amount.  Interestingly enough, despite what the advertisements might claim, I continued to have a very enjoyable life.  (And, I had a lot more leisure time.)

There was a time when I thought that Apple were an evil corporation, and despite their alluring advertising, I did not buy their products.  More research convinced me that they were not so bad as I had assumed, and I now have an iPhone.  But when I think some corporation or person really is evil, I try not to contribute to their success.  For instance, I think the local food co-op with its claims about being local and organic is just selling bullshit, and I almost never buy anything there.  But even then I am not pure.  They sell some short bread cookies that I buy about once a month.  And I don't hate the people who do buy there.

I am quick to recognize that I have the luxury to make these sorts of decisions because I live in a rich modern society which allows a lot of individual freedom.  I might complain about the coercion exercised by the United States government, but in the history of governments, it's pretty kind and gentle.  Still, it has the power to coerce, and there are many who would have that power as their own. 

It is the quagmire of the current US presidential campaign season that brings these thoughts to my mind and makes me think there might be some value in sharing them.  I find that nearly everyone 'participating in the debate', either as candidates or as voters, is happy to blame someone else for one's own actions,  and to punish the system that allows us choices for our own poor decisions.

As Plato reminded us long ago, Democracies can easily become the worst sort of tyrannies.  Ford can target me with advertisements to buy a new Mustang, but they don't send a mercenary to my door to force me to make a purchase.  Apple can spend millions telling me that my  life would be much richer with a new iMac, but they can't keep me from choosing Samsung or even, god forbid, digital isolation. But the government has the power to coerce. 

The genius of the American system was that the the framers of the Constitution recognized the dangers and tried to put in place restraints to that power, to protect the rights of minorities.  Now those would would use the American system only recognize minorities as voting blocs who are expected to be indebted to the candidate who promises them the biggest benefits at the expense of someone else.  Minority thoughts are to be banned from public discourse. 

I thought long about whether to say 'the genius of the American system was' rather than 'has been'.  I hope I have made the wrong choice, and that there might be a return to a society supporting individual responsibility for one's own choices.  I certainly have made some very poor choices over the years, and I could easily try to blame 'the system'.  But the truth is that when i have made poor choices, it was because I did not make the effort to think through what I was really doing and who would benefit.  It's easy to yield to stupidity, popular to yield to advertising, and sometimes it seems necessary to yield to coercion.  But I'm a perhaps foolishly optimistic old man who thinks that resistance is not futile. So, if you want a new Cadillac, go for it.  Just don't try to make me buy one, too.

The [Dis]United Statees Are not like Sweden; They're like the Holy Roman Empire

States.  Despite the efforts of and outcries of dozens and hundreds of folk who want 'national unity', with methods ranging from Mr. Lincoln's cannons and cannon fodder to Ms. Klobucher's magic woman sauce, the United States are not very united,  They are very diverse.  (I find it odd that it is often people who claim to be celebrating 'diversity' are most offended by that diversity.)

I watched as much of the 'Democratic Debates' as I could stomach last night.  (I am happy that there will probably not be any 'Republican Debates' this year, except perhaps as a Twitterstorm.)  Once again, folk were comparing the United States to other countries.  Denmark came up last night.  Denmark has a population about as great as South Carolina, and an area a bit larger than Delaware.  Eighty-six per-cent of the population is ethnic Danish.  Seventy-four per-cent are Evangelical Lutherans.  It makes more sense to compare Racine, Wisconsin, to Denmark than to compare the whole conglomerate of fifty states with who-knows-how-many ethnic and religious and  however-else we identify ourselves this week, to Denmark.

Often political candidates will compare, for instance, education in the United States to some particularly small and rich and unified European state, in an effort to impose their ideas for education reform on the country.  But of course there is no single level of educational system in the United States.  If one compares, say, California or Massachusetts to those European countries, things are pretty similar.  No aspiring politician whom I have heard has boasted about how much better the education in the United States is compared to India, another country with great diversity across regions. 

I am too lazy to go too far into my analogy of the United States and the Holy Roman Empire, which lasted much longer in its own faltering and evolving way than the United States has, and which most of us only know from Voltaire's quip about that Reich at the end of its life:  it was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire.  But if we consider that Empire as having existed from 800 with the coronation of Charlemagne until 1806 and the abdication of Francis after being defeated by Napoleon (an irony in itself), there was never a time when it was truly what it claimed to be.  By the time the last pagans in the Baltic states were 'converted' in the Northern Crusades, Lutheranism was creeping in.  One might argue that at least some of the emperors spoke Romance languages, but Francis was Franz and spoke German.  (One concept of the empire understood  it as the secular arm of the Papacy, and the Pope was usually in Rome.)  And empire?  Well, that term was mostly window dressing, chosen in envy of the real Roman Empire.  The Holy Roman Emperor was even less secure in his position than the emperors of Rome, and the Empire was composed of a conglomerate of 'states' and 'principalities' and 'powers' that ranged from towns and colleges to real princedoms and duchy's.  What united them?  Mostly elaborate webs of mutual defense and delusions of grandeur. All under the banner of a double-headed eagle.

If the American eagle were to more accurately depict the United States, it would be hydra-headed.  What is holiness in the United States?  One need only listen to the candidates describe each other as unholy to conclude that there is nothing holy here. (His brother-in-law claims that Mr. Buttigieg would lead the country into 'unholy directions', which I guess are different from, say, the sacred directions of the Hopi, who consider themselves the only holy people in the country.) At one time the 'Rights of Englishmen' more or less constituted a consensual backdrop to political discourse in the United States that might be compared to Roman Law in the discourse of the HRE, but Louisiana has the Napoleonic Code, much of the Southwest has property laws based on Spanish colonialism, and there are growing segments of the population who have no background in anything European at all.  (Except, perhaps, a yearning to be free. Yes, Virginia, Islam is a thing.) And international empire?  Well, empires usually receive tribute, not dole out foreign aid.  Certainly the United States is an immense world power with a lot of clout, but if it's an empire, it's one of the kindest and gentlest yet. 

Rather the empire of the United States is a domestic one, with the federal powers striving always to gain more control, with a steady stream of the sorts of people Plato said should never be given power, seeking to hold power. There are pockets of resistance:  the succession movement and the Confederacy was one; asylum cities are another.  Always the imperial powers fight back, sometimes with punishment, such as stripping the rights of citizenship from Robert E. Lee (Lincoln did pardon him from criminal prosecution, but it was not until the Ford presidency that his citizenship was restored.) or the banishment of Edward Snowden.  For most of the citizens of the empire, it has seemed that bread and circus has been enough.  This go-round, the Republicans seem to be ahead i circuses while the Democrats argue over who will give us the biggest loaf of bread. 

One great success of the American Empire is of course 'to provide for the common defense'.  Fortunately for Mr. Eisenhower when he was leading the allied Forces in Europe, he had the US military-industrial complex pumping out B-29's and B-24's and M4 Shermans.  If there's not a real enemy, most presidents are happy to invent one.

Then there's the delusion of grandeur.  I keep trying to imagine John Adams getting out of Air Force One, or playing golf at the expense of the country. 

Noah's Green New Deal

It has been raining.  Not forty days and forty nights yet, but close enough.  Several of my neighbors have been complaining that the rats are climbing on board their arks.  No rats have made it into my little craft, which I think is pretty snugly closed, but a bit of water has made it in.  When my gopher wood dries out a bit, I need to get me some of that pitch, which i hope will work on the without.  Pitching within tends to keep water hidden in places one doesn't want water.

It strikes me that the story of Noah and the ark is one of the earliest examples of some crisis for which humans in our hubris are hasty to take the blame.  (I wonder if the rats are telling their youngins that the rain is the result of their over indulgences.)  It often tends to be some some person in power who is jealous of anyone else's having power who points out the crisis.  In the time of Noah it was the Lord God himself who made the announcement, although it would be a few more years before he bragged about his jealousy for power. 'And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.  And God said to Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.'

So Noah set out to obey the radical plan to fix the earth.  It must have felt pretty good to be one of the very few good guys.  He built the ark, supplying it with enough natural, organic food for the duration, took on board all the animals of the earth, although giving a head to start to the clean animals (and feeling pretty special since it would be a while before the lists of clean and unclean animals would be published for general knowledge).  God apparently wanted the number of species, at least on land, to be stable.  It seems that fundamentalists, whether then or now, don't trust evolution to allow for changing conditions.

Anyway, the floods came, the floods went.  The ark landed on a mountain. There was a rainbow.  God  was easily pleased by the smell of burnt offerings and promised that next time he destroyed the earth, he would use something besides water.  Happy ending, right.  Well, no, not really.

Noah's first crop was grapes, and he got drunk and naked.  And he cursed his only son who was honest enough to point out that the emperor was naked. 'Speaking truth to power' is often dangerous.

Then of course things went on pretty much the way they always do, just as they had before the flood.  Now I keep hearing that once again 'the end of all flesh is come'.  This time it is said that we have twenty years, and the earth will end not in water but in heat.

Now, I am not a climate change denier.  Climate change is an observable, measurable phenomenon.

As recently as 20,000 years ago, the bit of rather soggy land I occupy was under ice.  The climate is becoming warmer, although at a varying pace, and it does certainly seem that now it is getting warmer fast.

What I don't accept is that such change is a crisis.  Human beings, as well as many other species, have been around for a good long time, and we are very adaptive.  What the fearful call our corruption of the moment is carbon dioxide.  But carbon dioxide is necessary for life on this planet, and as it increases, so does plant life, which absorbs it and releases oxygen.  The climate is a very complex system which we hardly understand at all.  It has never been stable, no more than there has ever been a stable number of species on the earth.Were that most famous group of species, the dinosaurs, unclean, while we are clean?

Nor do I accept that we must respond with radical measures that will limit the growth of well-being for everyone except the chosen few.  Yes, I know, there are all those scientists who are quite happy to go along with the popular fears.  Fear pays well.  Ninety percent or whatever of scientists are often wrong.  Advances in human knowledge are almost always made by rebellious sorts who say things like 'nevertheless, it does move.' More than ninety percent of the scientists of Galileo's time, after all, were certain, based on their best science, that the sun moved around the earth. Facts are not really determined by popular vote.  I tend to distrust anyone who is willing to make bit statements about a system so complex as the climate of the earth.

If climate change continues as it is tending now--and there are some data from NASA which suggest that we are really heading into a much colder period because of a cooling in the activity of the sun--then it will displace a lot of people, and we will need more acceptance of our differences and less fear of change much more than we need more acres of solar panels, which I suspect we will soon recognize to be at least as destructive as internal combustion engines and cow farts.

If the cunning plan of the Lord God Almighty to purify the earth failed  (for the documentation of that failure, read the Old Testament writings that followed the story of Noah), I doubt that the cunning plans of a truant teenager and a cocktail waitress would be more successful.  Such plans almost always punish far too many innocent people. I would suggest that we need more open discussion, without Facebook demonetizing or taking down people who are brave enough to say, 'yet it still moves.' If the shit hits the fan, it will take more than some seed bank in Antarctica, almost certainly inaccessible and filled with seeds suitable for a climate which will no longer exist, but which we have built as a contemporary Noah's arc, to recover.

I am reminded of another boat besides the ark, which has also come to have a place in the literature of western civilization, a small ship indeed:

'And when they had sent away the multitude, they took him even as he was in the ship.  And there were also with him other little ships:  And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full.  And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow, and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish?  And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still.  And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.  And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful?  how is it that ye have no faith?

I would suggest that there is indeed a powerful storm of fear around us these days, a storm to which almost none of us are willing to speak, a storm which few of us are even willing to name.  That is why I was pleased when Patty Murray, the Senator from this little soggy bit of once-glacier-covered land on which I perch, was willing this week to name the substance that pollutes the atmosphere of contemporary American politics as fear.

But I am a foolish old man who still has faith in the ability of humanity to gather our boats together and go out into the unknown,  I do not expect us to perish unless we abandon the search for knowledge and surrender to the gnawing rats of fear.  But that is why when I last had a boat of my own, I named it for St. Brendan.

A footnote, being a quote from Vikram Mansharamani's essay 'Navigating Uncertainty:  Thinking in Futures' in John Schroeter, ed., After Shock (Bainbridge Island, 2020), p. 15:  'Nobel Laureate Ken Arrow eloquently captured the desire for predictions in recalling his work for the US Army Air Force.  Despite concluding that the weather predictions upon which his superiors relied were entirely useless (i.e., statistically random, no better than a guess), he was rebuffed, told that "The Commanding General is well aware the the forecasts are no good; however, he needs them for planning purposes."'