#10 / Time Recaptured

 

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Aftter I finished reading The New York Times' article on Sedona, Arizona - which I encountered on October 26th of last year, and which I mentioned in my blog posting yesterday - I opened up the Saturday/Sunday, October 26-27, 2024, edition of The Wall Street Journal. The Journal had another article I immediately recognized should be featured in my blog. The article was titled, "Time Recaptured" in the hard copy version of the paper. When you click that link, you will find that the online title is different. 

The article I am talking about was featured in The Journal's "Books" section, which highlighted the picture reproduced above. That picture is very much like an image that I used in my "Trucker Time" blog posting published in October 2020. The picture from that 2020 blog posting (reproduced below) was also captured from an article in the "Books" section of The Wall Street Journal:

 

"Time" is always a timely topic!

The Journal's most recent article - the one I read on October 26th of last year - was a review of a book by Emily Herring, Herald of a Restless World. Herring's book is, apparently, "the first biography of Henri Bergson in English." At least, that is what Herring says. 

Frankly, I found that claim rather surprising. Bergson is a Nobel Prize Laureate, and is well-known in the English-speaking world, including being known by me. I checked, and my memory had not betrayed me. As I had correctly remembered, I have a well-underlined paperback version of Bergson's Time And Free Will on my own, personal bookshelves. That paperback edition of the book was published in 1960, and I read the book right around then. Time and Free Will was originally published in 1889 (in French). So, I really am surprised to hear that no one has done an English language biography of Henri Bergson after all these years. 

I have not double-checked Herring's claim, but if no one has done an English language biography of Bergson until now (sixty plus years from when I read Time And Free Will in English and over 130 years from the date it was first published in French), I certainly do think it's high time!

Speaking of "Time," which was a major focus for Bergson, it was Bergson's contention that our usual relationship to time is fundamentally flawed. Time, in fact, is "immeasurable unless ... you stop it in its tracks," as Herring explains in her book:

When we “clock” time, we cut it into segments, then place these next to each other ... “like interchangeable beads on a string.” In doing so, we make time into a three-dimensional object. We make time into space.

But time is rarely experienced in this way: A minute can seem like hours; a day can feel like a few short minutes. When we live in time, we observe no border between one moment and the next. Bergson called the human experience of time durée—time lived as continuous flow.

If you think that our understanding of "Time" is consequential - that it is "important" - then I hope you will consider rereading my 2020 blog posting on "Trucker Time." In that blog posting, I suggest that George Fox, the first Quaker, had the best statement on "Time."

Ye have no time but this present time, therefore prize your time, for your soul’s sake.

Simply put, we live in the "NOW." 

Now is when we are alive (not yesterday, or some other time in the past, and not tomorrow, or some time in the future).

NOW! 

Now is when we act (or fail to act). Now is when we can do something "new," something never even thought about before.

NOW is when we can change the world - a world that must be changed!

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(1) - https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/herald-of-a-restless-world-review-the-intuition-of-henri-bergson-37feea63

(2) - https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-clock-mirage-review-the-pulse-of-time-11595284205

#9 / Facing Up To The Real World

  

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Anyone who reads my blog postings on a regular basis will know that I continually disparage much  of what we now call, "Tech." It is my belief that we inhabit a "real world," in which real dogs can bite, real sidewalks can trip one up, and real kisses are capable of transporting those involved into something that is "beyond" the "real world," but still of it. 

Lately, human beings seem to be spending a lot of time and money figuring out ways to escape from this "real world." Increasingly, we rely on "artificial" intelligence (instead of our own "real" intelligence), and we live "online," as opposed to inhabiting the common world that is defiantly palpable, and tangible, as opposed to "virtual." 

"Virtual Reality," I submit, is not "reality" at all. If you click the link I just provided, you will see what Wikipedia has to say about virtual reality, by way of a definition. I was pleased to discover that our omnibus, online encyclopedia says that "virtual reality" is a "simulated experience." I pretty much agree with that, and I hope you'll agree with me that "simulated" is another word for "fake." A "simulated" one hundred dollar bill is actually "counterfeit." 

At any rate, for those who want a congenial and positive view of virtual reality, let me refer you to a fairly recent article in The Wall Street Journal. The article, one of Joanna Stern's "Personal Technology" columns, is titled, "The Smart Glasses That Won Me Over." The ones she likes are pictured on the left, above. There seem to be lots of options! 

So-called "smart glasses" are glasses that allow you to view the "real world," but to add in other items from an "online" reality. Once you put on these glassss, Stern reports, "you look at your phone a lot less." No need to look at your phone; a lot of what you get from your phone will show up in your eyeglasses. These "Smart" eye glasses also let you take pictures of whatever it is you're seeing. No need to have to pull out that camera phone you're using now. This feature of "smart glasses" may be a mixed blessing, I think, since it will help make sure that private moments and mistakes will be documented for the world to see!

I guess I am pretty easily triggered by efforts to help us all escape from the physical reality that we have always accepted as the "real world." It's the "real world" that will kill us or save us, after all, and there is definitely a question which way we're headed. 

If you are really smart, I think, you'll drop any efforts you may have been making to "enhance" or "augment" the realities that are out there. My alternative proposal: Let's get to work dealing with our very "real" problems and possibilities!

PS: That means REAL political action!

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#8 / Service To The Empire?

   

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Chris Hedges is an American journalist, author, and commentator. He is also a Presbyterian minister. Hedges writes, quite often, for Consortium News. In an article posted on the Consortium News' website, on January 3, 2025, Hedges has warned us, as follows: "Don't Deify Jimmy Carter." Carter's distorted image, above, headed up Hedges' commentary, which can be summarized in the following excerpt from what Hedges has written: 

Jimmy Carter, out of office, had the courage to call out the “abominable oppression and persecution” and “strict segregation” of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in his 2006 book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. 

He dedicated himself to monitoring elections, including his controversial defense of the 2006 election of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and championed human rights around the globe. 

He lambasted the American political process as an “oligarchy” in which “unlimited political bribery” created “a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.” 

But Carter’s years as an ex-president should not mask his dogged service to the empire, penchant for fomenting disastrous proxy wars, betrayal of the Palestinians, embrace of punishing neoliberal policies and his subservience to big business when he was in office (emphasis added).

I have a number of friends who, like Hedges, call the United States government, "The Empire." Most recently, my friends who use this term have been linking their use of it to the United States' assistance to Israel, as Israel's actions in Gaza become ever more difficult to support. 

I feel certain that I am not the only one who hears this language - calling the United States government "The Empire" - as an intentional reference to Star Wars. In the movie, and in all of its derivatives, "The Empire" is described as follows (calling upon what Wikipedia says): "The Empire is a fictional autocracy ... an oppressive dictatorship with a complicated bureaucracy ... [which] seeks the rule and social control of every planet and civilization within the galaxy, based on anthropocentrism, nationalisation, state terrorism, power projection, and threat of lethal force."

"The Empire," in other words, as the Star Wars franchise employs the term, is a shorthand way to call out a government that represents total and absolute evil. 

Is such a characterization of the United States' government really "fair"? And is it really "fair" for Hedges to name Carter as a lackey to "The Empire," despite all the good thing that Hedges admits that Carter has done?

My own sense is that while the United States government has made many mistakes, of both omission and commission, including some things it has done to support Israel in its actions in Gaza, some of which are quite probably violations of international law, and while the United States government has done other horrible things, it is probably not "fair" to equate the United States government to a government (the fictional "Empire") that can properly be called "absolutely evil." I also think that it is not "fair" to identify Jimmy Carter as a "dogged servant" to a government that can properly be thought of as absolutely evil. 

However, my objection to equating the United States government to "The Empire" as a government that is absolutely evil (and to suggesting that former President Carter was just a lackey for such a government) is not, in fact, an objection based on what I think of as an "unfair" equivalency. 

Here is why I object to using "The Empire" as a way to describe the United States' government (even admitting that our government has done many terrible things in the past, and in the present, and is likely to do even more in the future). Designating our own government as "The Empire" implicitly suggests that our government approaches us from outside. Now, in the Star Wars' movie and literature, "The Empire" IS an external force, and a force of "absolute evil." But OUR government is NOT an "external" force. WE are the government. 

Characterizing our own government as "The Empire" is a way to let ourselves off the hook. If the United States, or any of its representatives, are engaged in evil actions, our role is not simply to observe and decry them. When we assert that we have a system of democratic self-government that means that when evil is being done by the United States, that can't be attibuted to some "external" entity. We are on the hook for what our government does. 

When we name "The Empire" as the problem (meaning our own government), we impliedly excuse ourselves from complicity and responsibility. 

How about we take responsibility, instead? That means open political action in opposition to evil actions, not denunciations of our government as though it can properly be considered as some outside force. 

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#7 / The Great Tune-Out

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Susan B. Glasser, writing in The New Yorker, has provided readers with a "2024 In Review" piece that she titled, "The Weird New Normal of Donald Trump in 2024." Here is how Glasser frames her effort: 

Every year since 2018, I have written a version of this year-end Letter from Washington. What’s striking reading back through them now, on the eve of Trump’s return to the White House, is not so much his continued dominance of our politics as it is the consistency of how he has accomplished it—the manic governing by social-media pronouncement, the bizarro news cycles, and the normalizing of what would have previously been considered the politically un-normalizable. Even his targets are remarkably similar year in and year out—the Radical Left Lunatics, windmills, Justin Trudeau. In Trump’s 2023 Christmas social-media post, he wished the nation a happy holiday while praying that his enemies “ROT IN HELL.” What we have managed to forget about Trump in these past few years would fill entire books about other Presidents. This year-end exercise has been a small effort in trying to remember (emphasis added).

As Glasser pursues her exercise in "trying to remember," she makes what I think is a notable point: 

A new Associated Press / norc poll, released Thursday, says sixty-five per cent of American adults now feel the need to limit their consumption of news about politics and the government—the Great Tune-Out is real.

In other words, Glasser is telling us, she is not the only one who has "managed to forget" about Trump - and Glasser's characterization suggests that it actually takes some considerable effort to do that. Unlike Glasser, however, who is, after all, paid both to remember and to comment, ordinary Americans apparently would rather forget. At least, they don't want to be reminded. 

The "Great Tune-Out" that Glasser has brought to our attention may help many of us feel better. It does seem, if Glasser's statistics are right, that people may be "tuning out" because it's so painful to accept the fact that Donald J. Trump is now going to be, once again, our national "representative." That "Tune-Out" seems to mean, the way I'm interpreting it, that most of us would like to forget about how our next president will be "representing" us to the world at large. Sixty-five percent of us, apparently, don't want to be reminded that we have elected a self-promoting, pontificating, blowhard, who has no significant respect for other nations, or the law.

If I am interpreting those poll results correctly, I can well understand where they come from. Trump's conduct is often so cringeworthy that it's embarassing to have to face the fact that he is now our number one national spokesperson. Take over Greenland? Comandeer the Panama Canal? Annex Canada? Oh, sure! I would rather not hear about it!

My own thought, however, is that we had darn well better keep paying attention, painful though it may be. Trump works for the nation - for all of us - not vice versa (which is one of the things that Trump doesn't seem to understand). To make self-government work, we need to keep in mind that we are the "governors," not the "governed." In other words, we are "in charge." 

If we don't pay attention to what our "representatives" are doing in our name (because it's too painful to contemplate, or for any other reason), we can pretty quickly end up finding that our interests will be sacrificed and forgotten. We need to pay attention, in other words, to what our "representatives" are doing in our names. If we don't, this nation and the world at large will likely soon find themselves in a world of hurt!

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#6 / An Evolving Retail Landscape

      

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The January 4, 2025, edition of The Santa Cruz Sentinel, my hometown newspaper, ran an article on Page 4 that announced the close of the O'Neill Surf Shop on Pacific Avenue. Pacific Avenue is the city's main downtown shopping street. The article explained the shop's shutdown as an effort to "consolidate operations in an evolving retail landscape."

In case others have not noticed this "evolving retail landscape," it is largely characterized by an increasing number of closed-down storefronts throughout our community. These, I believe, reflect one thing, more than anything else. We are not in a time of general economic "downturn." Almost the opposite - at least that is what a number of economists seem to be saying. We are, however, in a time in which we seem to be abandoning "real world" retail for "online" retail at a prodigious pace. I keep seeing those delivery trucks in every street, at every hour of the day and night. 

As in many other aspects of our life, we seem to have been persuaded that our lives are better lived when lived "online."

I don't think that's true. How about you?

If you don't think that's true, either, then start considering how you can detach yourself from your phone, stop ordering your dinners from Doordash, and figure out how to obtain the books, and the hardware, and the household items you need from somewhere other than the Amazon store. That would be a beginning, anyway. The more we patronize and purchase from "the internet," the more "real world" storefronts close. 

Are we ready, once again, to go back to living in that physical, "real world"? Truly, I hope so!

Foundation of Freedom

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#5 / Body And Soul

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You don't "have" a soul. You "are" a soul. You "have" a body!

Recently, I came across the quotation I have just provided, which struck me with its importance, and now I can't remember where I got that. Such forgetfulness is not, I confess, an uncommon experience for me, nowadays. I remember things, all the time, but I don't remember where I heard them, or saw them, or found out about them. That can be frustrating, of course, but I tell myself that as long as I remember the "main thing," the circumstances surrounding my discovery of that "main thing" are of lesser import. 

Just to be clear, though, and despite the picture above, I can tell you that Frank Sinatra was not involved in drawing my attention to the rather significant assertion I have quoted right under his picture. You can, though, click this link if you'd like to hear Frank sing the song. 

As I attempted to track down the origin of the thought that we don't "have" a soul, but that we "are" souls, I found a website discussion that goes out of its way to deny that C.S. Lewis ever said this. Apparently, a claim that C.S. Lewis originated this saying is often made, but the Mere Orthodoxy website ends up tracking down the "you don't have a soul" assertion to some sort of Quaker source:

The British Friend, one of the two main British Quaker periodicals at the end of the 19th century, published a piece in 1892 on excessive mourning at funerals. The author believed that overly strong mourning kept people from remembering their hope in heaven. It is here, finally, where we find the quote attributed to George MacDonald. “Never tell a child,” said George Macdonald, ‘you have a soul. Teach him, you are a soul; you have a body.’ As we learn to think of things always in this order, that the body is but the temporary clothing of the soul, our views of death and the unbefittingness of customary mourning will approximate to those of Friends of earlier generations.”

Since I self-identify as a Quaker, I was rather pleased to learn that the observation about who we really "are" - "souls," not "bodies" - may well have originated with the Quakers. As for the thought itself, I do think it is an important one. It makes sense to me that we should all be trying to figure out who we "are," when we get right down to it, and if we embark upon an effort to do that, we might well conclude that we are best defined as "souls," not "bodies." Specifically, that way of thinking about it certainly helps us deal with that ever-difficult question of "death." 

We do know, even if not yet from personal experience, that "bodies" die. "Souls," though, as we may envision them, might provide us a way to understand that it is entirely possible (as one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs asserts) that "Death Is Not The End." 

Here is my own view: I, personally, think that "materialism" undershoots reality. If you don't believe me, try listening to Jimmy Carter as he ponders "materialism." In my view, there is something more going on in life than can be accounted for by the structured arrangements of atoms, faithful to the laws of physics (and biology). If pure materialism does not explain "life," and does not fully explain and account for our own existence in this world, it is very tempting (to me, at least) to decide that we "are," actually, "spiritual" beings. If I have to pick between "bodies" and "souls," I am going to go with the idea that we "are" souls, and that we "have" bodies, just as that Quaker-originated assertion says. There is a supremely important insight there!

On the other hand, I have never given up propounding what I call my "Two Worlds' Hypothesis." This is the name I have given to my claim that we live in two worlds, simultaneously. Most immediately, we live in a world created by human action. Ultimately, though, I am convinced that we live in a "World That God Created." This "world" is what I most usually call the "World of Nature." All our human efforts - and successes - in forging a reality for ourselves can have come into existence only because of our completely mysterious appearance and existence on Planet Earth. That "World" came first, and we depend upon it, utterly. 

Given my own way of thinking about the world, which is founded upon both an appreciation of the significance of what we, as humans, have done, and can do, along with my understanding that all of our human accomplishments are, in the end, based on the Creation, which is our ultimate "reality," I am now prepared to think that we are both "bodies" and "souls." Trying to assign "primacy" might be a big mistake, given my overarching belief in a "Both/And" reality. For any Christians among those who might be reading this, I think it is worth noting that Christians deeply believe that Jesus was God, appearing in human form, and that Jesus' ressurection from the dead, as he appeared once more in his "body," does seem to go along with the idea that disavowing the "body," to give complete primacy to the "soul," may not be the Biblical way of looking at things.

Frank Sinatra, in other words, may well be on the mark in claiming that what ultimately and really counts is both "Body and Soul." That's what we have to give, the whole package, and that is what love requires. Again, click the link if you'd like to hear Frank Sinatra sing that song (with a full orchestral accompaniment, by the way)!

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#4 / A Force For World Peace

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Paul Krugman, pictured above, won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2008. He writes for The New York Times, and and on October 19, 2024, Krugman's "Opinion" column in The Times was titled, "Trump's Radical Tariff Proposal Could Wreck Our Economy." 

Click right here for the column (understanding that you may be stymied by a paywall imposed by The Times). I, personally, think that this column is very much worth reading. It is a relatively short and pretty understandable explanation of tariffs, and explains how they work (or don't work, I guess you'd have to say). 

I want especially to highlight the following point, which isn't really about the "economic" impact of tariffs, but speaks to another aspect of what lowering trade barriers can mean: 

Some of Roosevelt's officials, especially Cordell Hull, his long-serving secretary of state believed that closer trading ties between nations were a force for world peace. 

We are "in this together" not only on a national basis, but on a global basis, as well. "Beating" other countries, economically - putting national economic self-interest as a top priority - is contraindicated. 

"World Peace" ought to be on our New Year's Resolutions List, so I am urging you to think about the point that Krugman is making!

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#3 / Guessing The Weight Of An Ox

 

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The "Intelligent Investor" (also known as Jason Zweig) has published a column in The Wall Street Journal with a headline steeped in realism. Here it is: "You’re Not Paranoid. The Market Is Out to Get You."

I am pretty much a market skeptic, myself, and I enjoyed the column. I recommend it to you, and I specifically endorse its words of caution!

The discussion excerpted below, though - not the cautionary words about market speculation - is the reason that I am bringing Zweig's column to your attention today: 

Own a soaring stock you can chat about online with thousands of other people who love it, and you’ll feel you belong to a pride of lions. Own a falling stock that nobody wants to touch, and you’ll feel like a skunk at a garden party. 

Starting in 2020, swarms of investors coalesced on Reddit, Twitter and Discord to pool their buying power and drive up the prices of such stocks as AMC Entertainment Holdings, GameStop and Bed Bath & Beyond. A few leaders and early birds made huge profits. 

Yet crowds aren’t always right, and their errors are contagious. What separates the wisdom from the madness of the crowd? 

In 1907, the statistician Francis Galton described a contest at an agricultural fair in which nearly 800 visitors tried to guess the weight of an ox. Although many knew little or nothing about oxen and their guesses varied widely, their average estimate turned out to match the weight of the ox exactly. 

Galton’s guessers had a variety of viewpoints, sought to win a prize for accuracy, didn’t know other people’s estimates and had to pay an entry fee. The sponsors of the contest collected and tallied all the guesses. 

The judgments of that crowd were independent, confidential, diverse, incentivized and aggregated—and, therefore, remarkably accurate at estimating simple values (emphasis added).

Let me suggest that we consider the phenomenon just described from the perspective of "politics." 

Isn't it true that our politics should celebrate, as opposed to trying to eliminate, different perspectives and different views? When we talk about, and generally deplore, our "polarized politics," we are talking about a political environment in which efforts are made by opposing forces to "eliminate" divergent views - and to crush and exclude those who hold them. This happens from "both sides." We see this tendency in our political discussions, in our political campaigns, in the pronouncements of our soon-to-be-president, and in the political process that goes on in the Congress, and in other legislative bodies at the state and local level.

Efforts made to eradicate or obliterate divergence from a view deemed "correct" leads to an impoverishment of our politics, not the opposite. Wiping out the opposition, rather than trying to accommodate and reconcile with it, is a shortcut to error. 

And sometimes the errors propagated by our "politics of opposition" are deadly. The politics of the past year is a model, I think, of what we need to avoid. 

Can we ever have a politics based on the kind of effort at reconciliation that Galton described in a different context, in the effort to guess the weight of an ox? 

Considering the past year of politics, and the year to come, I think we'd better figure out how to get there!

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#2 / Materialism, Money, And Malaise

  

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Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption,” said Mr. Carter. “Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning.”

On Tuesday, December 31, 2024, The New York Times contained a special section that saluted the life of former president Jimmy Carter. Carter, who died on Sunday, December 29th, was one hundred years old. He served as President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. The quotation above, which I found in a separate article in The Times, is an excerpt from what came to be known as Carter's "Malaise Speech." You can click right here if you'd like to read the text, or if you'd like to listen to or see Carter deliver the speech.

"Malaise" is not a common word. It is not a word that often pops into one's mind as one searches for a term that accurately describes how one feels about how things are going. Carter did not, himself, use the word "malaise" as a way to convey his message. Here is a definition of "malaise," from Merriam-Webster: 

1. An indefinite feeling of debility or lack of health, often indicative of or accompanying the onset of an illness.
2. A vague sense of mental or moral ill-being.

The way I read it, Carter's speech did not express an "indefinite" feeling, nor was his description "vague." In fact, Carter was pretty direct and focused in his remarks, as you can see from the quotation above. Carter urged Americans to consume less, and to find meaning not in material things, but in human relationships. 

Carter's speech provided us with some good advice. In fact, the observations he made in that speech, and that I have quoted at the top of this blog posting, are more on point than ever. As families start paying off their Christmas credit card bills, which are the result of an idea that any time of celebration demands more "things," we might want to revisit the ideas that Carter was trying to convey: "Owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning.”

If you read the entire speech, which ultimately confronted the nation's "energy crisis," you will find Carter urging the nation to start burning more coal, which he identified as "our most abundant energy source." Obviously, the consequences of global warming were not yet well understood back then. Still, note the picture. Carter installed solar panels on the White House. They were removed by the next president, Ronald Reagan. 

Carter's speech was less about energy policy than it was about how we were doing, as a nation, in meeting the challenges and opportunities that faced us then. Those challenges and opportunities haven't changed very much since Carter's time, but I'd say that it is clearer than ever how important it is that we stop pursuing the policies that suggest that more money and things can solve our problems. 

As William Galston said in The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial column published on the same day that The Times published its tribute to Carter, "A New Year Isn't A Blank Slate." It's not. As Galston noted, we don't live in an "Etch A Sketch" world. The momentum of the past is pushing us forward, carrying us, ever more rapidly, in the direction we are already heading. Climate collapse, environmental destruction, nuclear war, and increasing poverty for the poor, and increasing wealth for the rich, are what we know we're heading for.

If we want to go in some different direction, we're going to have to change what we do. 

Carter then, and Galston now, are urging us to make some changes. Me, too! 

Not to mention Bob Dylan. Not to mention Dr. Seuss!

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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/29/your-money/jimmy-carter-legacy-materialism.html

 

#1 / A Miraculous Twofold Gift

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HAPPY NEW YEAR!

A few days before the end of last year, I started browsing through some of my past blog postings, and I ended up finding a blog post published on January 1, 2017. That blog posting was titled, "Names Have Been Changed." It documented the name changes that my blog went through from 2009 up until 2017. 

Initially, when I began writing my blog, in 2009, it was titled, "Abrazos / 365," in honor of Eduardo Galeano, author of a wonderful book, The Book of Embraces, which is titled El Libro de los Abrazos en Español. Galeano's style of writing was to write short, stand-alone segments (each one a metaphorical "embrace"). I was going to try to do the same kind of thing, and was committed to putting out one blog posting each day. That is where that "365" came from. I didn't, incidentally, actually meet that commitment in 2009, but I met it in 2010, and I have met it in every year since then.

On December 31, 2009, I changed the title of the blog to "reflect my continuing efforts to understand the world by seeing it as consisting, in fact, of "Two Worlds," both of which we inhabit simultaneously, and one of which we create ourselves. Starting in January 2010, this blog was titled, "Two Worlds / 365."

On January 1, 2012, in a posting titled, "Just A Little Title Change," I announced my intention to rename this blog once again, and to drop the "/ 365." This was not because I had failed to maintain my commitment to publish one blog posting each day. I did make a blog posting every day in both 2010 and 2011, but as I said in 2012, I just decided to "relieve myself of that commitment." Thus, starting on January 1, 2012, and continuing through December 31, 2016, this blog was called, simply, Two Worlds. 

As I stated in that "Names Have Been Changed" blog posting on January 1, 2017, I felt that the year then just beginning was "likely to be a very consequential New Year." We all remember, I assume, who was elected as president in 2016 - the same person who was just elected, again, in 2024. Given the upcoming challenges, I announced the new title of the blog would be, "We Live In A Political World." It seems that this is still an applicable title!

At any rate, I discovered the January 1, 2017, blog posting just by chance, as I was browsing around, and I thought I would like to document one more time the trajectory of the name changes through which my blog has come. That is what accounts for the outline just presented. That January 1, 2017, blog posting, however, also commented on something that the political thinker Hannah Arendt said about politics, in an essay titled, "What is Freedom?" 

Given that we have a "consequential New Year" before us this year, too - a year that we can safely assume will be at least as consequential as 2017 - I thought that this statement by Arendt would bear repeating. This observation, too, is still applicable:

It is not in the least superstitious, it is even a counsel of realism, to look for the unforeseeable and unpredictable, to be prepared for and to expect “miracles” in the political realm. And the more heavily the scales are weighted in favor of disaster, the more miraculous will the deed done in freedom appear. It is men who perform miracles—men who because they have received the twofold gift of freedom and action can establish a reality of their own (emphasis added, along with this note that we will, I hope, forgive Arendt's inaccurate use of the word "men" to designate everyone).

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#366 / Onward (And An Annual Celebration)

 

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Just in case you might not have noticed, normal years have 365 days. But.... here I am putting out blog post #366. Since I put out one blog post per day, starting with #1 on each January 1st, and since I number subsequent blog postings accordingly, one of two things must be true: (1) I have screwed up in numbering my blog posts, which I have done before; or (2) this is an official "Leap Year," which means that 2024 has an "extra day." 

As it turns out, that second possibility happens to be true. 2024 is, indeed, a "Leap Year," and 2024 does, in fact, have an extra day. Our "Leap Day," the place where that "extra" day appeared on our calendar, actually happened back in February, a month that had 29 days, instead of the 28 days that February normally has. If I seem amazed, here at the end of this year, it's only because I paid no attention at all to that extra day I lived in February

I won't face this "Leap Year" issue again for another four years - or maybe I'll never have to face it again. That will depend, of course, on whether or not I am still around and writing blog posts four years from now. Ojalá! It is also true, of course, that whether or not I'll have to deal with another "Leap Year" will depend on whether the world itself will still be around four years from now. There are definitely uncertainties ahead - and I am thinking that this is more true now than in some of the earlier years I have lived through. Perhaps you might have gotten that idea from my blog posting yesterday.

In general, I tend to be pretty optimistic about our future (since "possibility" is my category, as I often proclaim). Whatever is ahead, though, there is one certainty for me. On every December 31st, every year, leap year or not, I get to celebrate the fact that my daughter was born on that day. That is really wonderful, and I really LOVE December 31st.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SONYA!!! 

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#365 / Tik Tok, Tik Tok, Tik Tok

 

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An article in the December 9, 2024, edition of The New York Times alerted readers to a potential "ban" of Tik Tok in the United States. As Wikipedia tells us (any of us who may be otherwise unaware), Tik Tok is "a short-form video hosting service owned by a Chinese internet company, ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from three seconds to 60 minutes. Tik Tok can be accessed with a smart phone app or the web."

The United States government believes that "national security" is imperiled by the use of Tik Tok by American citizens, given that Tik Tok is owned by a Chinese company, which presumably means that the Chinese government might have easy access to any information that appears on Tik Tok, and might also be able to use the application to undermine our democracy. 

As The Times' article tells us, it turns out that "a panel of three judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit" agree with the government ban. Unless ByteDance sells Tik Tok to some company of which the government approves, it will be banned in the United States by mid-January (apparently, at just about the time the nation welcomes its next president).

I am not a Tik Tok user. I have no real idea what its fate may be. However, I want to use the occasion of the discussion about Tik Tok to make a more "general" point. 

More and more, our avenues of communication are all "online." We talk to friends and others, debate the issues of the day, and become informed about what's going on by way of various internet platforms. Tik Tok is one of them (and is owned by a Chinese company). Other platforms are owned by U.S. companies (Google, and Facebook, and "X," for instance). 

Here's the issue I suggest we need to think about: If our ability to communicate and to participate in society, and in the "politics" that I think is so very important), depends on internet platforms (and especially ones that are under the control of giant corporations that operate in their own, private interest, not in the "public" interest) we are absolutely at risk of losing our ability to communicate among ourselves, and we might lose that ability at a moment's notice. 

Tik Tok, Tik Tok, Tik Tok.... the clock is ticking down towards a massive internet outage. Maybe that outage will be caused by some natural event, like a solar flare, or maybe it will be caused by some action by a government hostile to the United States, or maybe it will be caused by some action of our own government, or perhaps even by private corporate action. If, or maybe better said, "when" that occurs, we will not be in a position to "organize," or to do much of anything else. Our ability to communicate with each other, and to find out what is going on in the world, is something that we take for granted. But... all that is now almost totally dependent on systems that live on the internet.

We have built our interconnected society, in other words, on a massively unreliable foundation. This is true because the "online world" is different from the "real world." It is particularly noteworthy that our online world is "owned" by private corporations, controlled by billionaires whose interest is not "public service," but private profit. 

This is just something to think about, as you ponder my oft-repeated suggestion that you "Find Some Friends." 

I mean "real world" friends!

Tik Tok, Tik Tok, Tik Tok.

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https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/7/23822775/tiktok-music-competition-gimme-the-mic-live-stream

#364 / Let Us Now Highly Resolve....

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Monika Bauerlein is the CEO of Mother Jones. In the December 2024 edition of the magazine, Bauerlein wrote a "To Our Readers" column that doesn't appear to be available online. Bauerlein titled her column, "The Kingdom And The Power." In her column, Bauerlein took exception to the following statement by JD Vance, our next vice-president in waiting:

America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.

Bauerlein's quarrel with what might seem a rather unexceptional statement is outlined as follows: 

Despite the bland, stump-speech-bot language, these words signal an idea profoundly at odds with what America has sought to be - an idea that many conservatives are now embracing as the nation's future. It is the idea of nationalism, which at its core means that a country's identity is rooted in a specific group of people. That is indeed how many countries around the world define themselves. But America, historically, has aspired to something different.... 

The Declaration of Independence, in fact, does make a claim that the nation just being born was not one directed at the protection and advancement of any specific group of people - and thus, presumably, was intended to exclude all others. The Declaration proclaims what it says is a "self-evident" truth, that "all persons are created equal, [and] that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, [and] that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

The purpose of government - ANY government, if we follow The Declaration - is to "secure these rights," and to secure them for everyone. In essence, The Declaration indicates that the United States began with the idea that it was part of - perhaps the beginning of - an understanding that all governments should be dedicated to protecting the rights of all persons.

Today, the difference between the idea propounded in The Declaration and the kind of "Christian Nationalism" discussed by Bauerlein, and that has been advanced by the Republican Party in the last election, is, essentially, at issue. 

Let us not lose sight of what is most important about the United States of America - the idea upon which the nation was founded, and which the nation has pursued (albeit with many failures along the way) for what is getting close to 250 years. I am, truly, sorry that Bauerlein's column is not easily obtainable online. It's worth reading. 

On the other hand, you don't actually need to read Bauerlein's column to get the point. Just read The Declaration of Independence (and maybe Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, as a follow up). The Gettysburg Address is where Lincoln raises the question "whether ... any nation so conceived ... can long endure."

We answered that question once, in the Civil War. Let's address that question again, right now - and give the same answer that Lincoln gave, and that the nation gave, back then:

Let us, once again, "highly resolve that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

 

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#363 / Of, By, And For

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I subscribe to The New York Times, and therefore have had a periodic opportunity to read an editorial column dubbed, "The Conversation." The column consists of an ongoing discussion between the two people shown above. Columnist Gail Collins is on the left, and columnist Bret Stephens is on the right. The left-right placement in this image is undoubtedly no accident. Collins is the more "liberal," or "progressive." Stephens is the opposite, though he doesn't rant. 

On October 15, 2024 - a date prior to the November 5th presidential election - Collins and Stephens discussed the candadicies of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Stephens (the conservative) had, at that point, promised not to vote for Trump, but was unwilling to indicate that he'd vote for Harris. Collins had definitely declared herself for Harris. 

The October 15th edition of "The Conversation" was titled, "Three Weeks To Go, and That's All Anyone Is Sure Of." Well, now, on December 28th, we know what happened since then. Donald J. Trump will be our next president, starting next month. 

Here is what is prompting this blog posting - the following statement by Stephens, about the filibuster: 

Bret: .... what do you think of getting rid of the filibuster?

Gail: Well, as a cynic, I’d say it depends on which party’s in charge. If Trump — shudder — wins and the Republicans take control of the Senate, I suspect I’d be happy with anything that slows down the agenda. But long term, I’ve never thought it was really fair to give the party that elected fewer senators the power to just close everything down.

How about you?

Bret: You’ve basically explained why I’m against getting rid of the filibuster: Like it or not, the party to which you don’t belong is going to have a majority, now or sometime in the future, and the filibuster is a very useful curb on its power. It also preserves the Senate’s role as a check on the often mindlessly majoritarian impulses of the House.

Gail: I hear you, but doesn’t that sound like trying to make sure the people’s choice doesn’t have the power to do much?

Bret: To me, that’s mostly the point (emphasis added).

I think it's a pretty safe bet that many Democrats will now adopt the Stephens approach. Since we're not the majority, let's find some way to prevent the majority from doing what it thinks is best. There is, in fact, a good argument for requiring a "more than a majority" vote on issues of great significance. In California, for instance, we don't allow a number of significant tax increases to go forward without a two-thirds majority vote. But the other argument needs to be taken seriously, too. If the majority wants to do something - and what the majority wants to do is a bad idea - perhaps the way to deal with that is to let the bad idea demonstrate its unsuitability. Do we really belief that "majoritarian" impulses should always be suspect?

As I said right after the election. We need to "reflect" on how we can best insure that a government that is "of, by, and for the people does not "perish from the earth." Insulating the people from the consequences of their choices may not be the best way. 

As I have said before, I believe Lincoln's "of, by, and for the people" formula properly describes the essence of "self-government." And I think it's the "by the people" part of that formula that is most important. If I am right, we all should be finding ways to reengage, so as to carry out our responsibilities to "self-government." 

Let's "reflect" upon that!

 

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