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Time for a rant.

I recently saw a Visa commercial showing this morning in this city in which all this commerce is happening like clockwork, mechanically, with classical music (Johann Strauss's "On the Beautiful Danube" Waltz) as in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Donuts dropping in bags, sugar dropping in coffee, synced to the music, and everyone using their Visa card, moving one right after another. No one talking to each other or anything. Then, all of the sudden, this guy pays for his donuts with cash, and the girl behind the counter gives him this funny, glaring look, as if it was because he interrupted the seamless flow of people standing in line to check out and buy things with their Visa cards. She gives him a damn glare because he used cash, and the music stops and everything! She didn't talk to any of the people who were swiping Visa cards, and she didn't say a word to him either. And then, maybe the worst thing, the slogan that appears on the screen at the end of the commercial: "Life takes Visa". Life, for crying out loud. That thing itself, that we all live, takes Visa. Said as if life runs on a credit card.

Aldous Huxley would not be surprised.

If I were ever impressed by a commercial like that--no, if I ever didn't absolutely hate a commercial like that--just take me out and shoot me, because most of what I am is dead inside already.

It is always astonishing to see people clamor for more State protection of the environment, especially since the State is the biggest polluter in any society, and has the least respect for the environment. Deep Sea News (which is written by such people) provides a nice case in point, with a nice map to illustrate [...]

David Z, of the blog … No Third Solution, has published the fourth edition of the Market Anarchist Blog Carnival. Check it out! There seems to be a lot of entries about voting: I wonder if Anarchists are gonna get tired of talking about that next year. Also, don’t forget to submit your entries for the [...]

I can't believe I used to be a subscriber to National Review. Well, actually, I can. Just as I know why I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh: because (at the time) we had the same political and ideological opponents, I thought we shared most of the same values. My subscription, as it happens, ran out over four years ago. The last issue I received was the infamous Unpatriotic Conservatives issue.

But William F. Buckley, the founder of the magazine, is having a tough time lately. He now believes the war was a mistake and, like most Americans, claims he supported it because of the word of the Administration on WMD's. (This was a terrible mistake; even if Iraq had WMD's, that wouldn't have justified a war.) For that, even his magazine's biggest fans think he's demented. He is asked

if he feels like a parent whose kids grew up to be serial killers. He smiles slightly, and his blue eyes appear to twinkle. Then he sighs, "The answer is no. Because what animated the conservative core for forty years was the Soviet menace, plus the rise of dogmatic socialism. That's pretty well gone."

Maybe so. Nevertheless, in the early 1960's Buckley himself "expelled" from the conservative movement those on the right he felt were insufficiently statist. Particularly, radical libertarians like Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand (though for different reasons), and the patriotic, populist, pro-Constitution John Birch Society. Then, when the conservative coalition began losing its reason for existence after the Berlin Wall fell, Buckley's magazine favored a neoconservative foreign policy over Pat Buchanan's "isolationism."

In the end, however, who was right about the invasion of Iraq? The very segments of the "right" that National Review disavowed: the Rothbardian libertarian movement, the patriot movement, and the Buchananites.

The debate within conservatism has always been Republic vs. Empire. I don't know if Buckley ever really did make up his mind about who was right. But I suspect that today his biggest regret is that he put his magazine in the wrong hands, that he initially blew it on the Iraq War, and that these two blunders will tarnish his name in the annals of history. He probably wishes he could stand athwart his own life trajectory and yell "Stop, go back, and do over from 2001 on - or, better yet, 1989 on!"

AN OLD BIT OF KNITTERS' LORE says that if you secretly knit a strand of your own hair into the fabric, the person you give the garment to will be bound to you forever. I thought about that the other day as my needles moved through cables and lace at Cabin Sweet Cabin. It occurs to me that anyone I ever give a hand-knitted garment to will be eternally bound to four dogs. Plus any fosters that happen to be around at the moment. If you're a cat person, you definitely don't want a sweater or a scarf from me. Speaking of foster doggies, let's have some more good news. Remember Frosty, the terrified young cattle dog who came to me after life in a horse trailer? She was, as shelter workers described, "like a wild coyote." Totally unsocialized to people and jumpy at any new experience. Well ... :-) :-) :-) Frosty now has a forever home. And the phrase "lucky dog" comes to mind. Eighty acres. A full-time mom and dad (experienced cattle dog owners). It's the life, wouldn't you say?

In my explorations of more community-based activism I've identified neighborliness and familiarity with one's fellow residents as an important element in the development of bottom-up institutions to replace the need for top-down, centralized, managerial government. In my exploration of community solidarity I attended my local neighborhood watch meeting. My neighborhood is in the west end and is pretty quiet and peaceful, with lots of families that engender a sense of a thriving, balanced community in me.

That's why I was struck by how kids were singled out as problems, not residents with interests and perspectives of their own:

Well, the vast majority of attendees were elderly and white. Their complaints were about kids, of course. Now, I don’t condone any criminal activity, but my impression of the complaints were that these elderly residents have a different lifestyle than their younger neighbors, and they feel threatened by kids who are out on the streets carrying on as kids will. Older kids were accused of racing cars. But generally, the younger generations were seen as nuisances, and their side of the story and their interests were not represented. Certain households of minority racial demographics were also singled out for scrutiny.

What is lost in these complaints is the truth that these kids, their parents, and others targeted by the meeting’s attendants are residents. They are part of the group of people whose interests the neighborhood watch organization should be representing! No talk of reaching out to them or presenting a way to work things out. No talk of whether they are being served by the neighborhood or county.

Moderating a significant portion of the meeting, and hearing these complaints, was an officer with the local police department, whose name I won’t mention but whose affiliation should be easy for a regular reader to ascertain. He encouraged people to call often on the slightest of suspicions, urging them to leave sorting out the good guys from the “bad guys” (a phrase often invoked) to the professionals. He singled out kids as a big problem, stressing that once their names are in the police system, they track them for life (as if that alone will stop kids from being kids). He even said (I couldn’t believe this) that his officers “like arresting people” and urged attendees to give his department opportunities to catch kids.

Just as I was working on this blog entry, I saw Radley Balko blog a YouTube video of police choking kids for simply riding skateboards. And Richmond City Council is apparently creating a snitch class among its residents to single out kids who party for special treatment by the police, according to SaveRichmond.org.

Where is the sense of proportionality - that these are children who deserve patience, attention, gentle - not brutal - reprimands, and engagement in the way neighborhoods and communities work? They are the future of the community, and people who ignore this and see them as mere obstacles to their retirement are incredibly short sighted (not to mention the naivete of moving into a college neighborhood and being flummoxed by partying!).

This, my friends, is what happens when communities break down. They require politicians, bureaucrats, and hired muscle to come in and mediate what should be organic, face-to-face interactions between neighbors. Gone is any sense that the community's children are worth tolerating is entertained - they're just somebody else's kids. I'm no fan of Hillary's "it takes a village" philosophy, because it expressly calls for more government intervention, rather than recognizing it as the root problem in society.

In my explorations of more community-based activism I've identified neighborliness and familiarity with one's fellow residents as an important element in the development of bottom-up institutions to replace the need for top-down, centralized, managerial government. In my exploration of community solidarity I attended my local neighborhood watch meeting. My neighborhood is in the west end and is pretty quiet and peaceful, with lots of families that engender a sense of a thriving, balanced community in me.

That's why I was struck by how kids were singled out as problems, not residents with interests and perspectives of their own:

Well, the vast majority of attendees were elderly and white. Their complaints were about kids, of course. Now, I don’t condone any criminal activity, but my impression of the complaints were that these elderly residents have a different lifestyle than their younger neighbors, and they feel threatened by kids who are out on the streets carrying on as kids will. Older kids were accused of racing cars. But generally, the younger generations were seen as nuisances, and their side of the story and their interests were not represented. Certain households of minority racial demographics were also singled out for scrutiny.

What is lost in these complaints is the truth that these kids, their parents, and others targeted by the meeting’s attendants are residents. They are part of the group of people whose interests the neighborhood watch organization should be representing! No talk of reaching out to them or presenting a way to work things out. No talk of whether they are being served by the neighborhood or county.

Moderating a significant portion of the meeting, and hearing these complaints, was an officer with the local police department, whose name I won’t mention but whose affiliation should be easy for a regular reader to ascertain. He encouraged people to call often on the slightest of suspicions, urging them to leave sorting out the good guys from the “bad guys” (a phrase often invoked) to the professionals. He singled out kids as a big problem, stressing that once their names are in the police system, they track them for life (as if that alone will stop kids from being kids). He even said (I couldn’t believe this) that his officers “like arresting people” and urged attendees to give his department opportunities to catch kids.

Just as I was working on this blog entry, I saw Radley Balko blog a YouTube video of police choking kids for simply riding skateboards. And Richmond City Council is apparently creating a snitch class among its residents to single out kids who party for special treatment by the police, according to SaveRichmond.org.

Where is the sense of proportionality - that these are children who deserve patience, attention, gentle - not brutal - reprimands, and engagement in the way neighborhoods and communities work? They are the future of the community, and people who ignore this and see them as mere obstacles to their retirement are incredibly short sighted (not to mention the naivete of moving into a college neighborhood and being flummoxed by partying!).

This, my friends, is what happens when communities break down. They require politicians, bureaucrats, and hired muscle to come in and mediate what should be organic, face-to-face interactions between neighbors. Gone is any sense that the community's children are worth tolerating is entertained - they're just somebody else's kids. I'm no fan of Hillary's "it takes a village" philosophy, because it expressly calls for more government intervention, rather than recognizing it as the root problem in society.

It's only too easy to respond to an argument like Dinesh D'Souza's post "Is Homosexuality Genetic? Ask the Ancient Greeks." D'Souza, a conservative author/commentator and fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, has written a blog post asserting that, because many older, married men in ancient Greece were engaged in the practice of pederasty (sexual and mentoring relationships with young men), and that that was a cultural practice, sexual preference is a choice and does not have a biological basis. Asks D'Souza,

"If these practices are genetic, why aren't homosexuality and pederasty prevalent in Greece and Rome today? Has the gene pool changed that much?"

Even ignoring the fact that D'Souza both completely discounts studies of the biological basis of sexuality AND refers only to genetics (when there is more to biology than genetics, particularly in the study of sexuality), his argument seems poor to anyone but conservative ideologues (see also this excellent response, "We're all Gay--The Only Question is How Much?" by Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks radio show). I contributed this comment (which can be seen on #44 on the comments):

The problem with an absolutist view is that it lacks any appreciation of the depth of an issue, any nuance. In the case of Dinesh D'Souza, he believes sexuality must be a choice because there is a precedent in which the expression of sexuality has been culturally influenced. A few problems with that:

1)The most important, he overlooks decades of important work in the area since the studies of Alfred Kinsey which suggest that it is not a dichotomy between "gay" and "straight", but that most people fall somewhere in between and, while having preference for one sex, have a latent attraction, to whatever degree, to the other (the expression of which can be culturally influenced, as in ancient Greece or feudal Japan). There is a small percentage of people on the exclusively gay side of the spectrum, just as there was in ancient Greece alongside the mostly heterosexual/slightly bisexual pederasts.

2)By characterizing the scientific studies of sexuality as more controversial and inconclusive than they actually are, D'Souza is showing that his ideology is preventing him from seeing what is there.

3)Even if latent homosexuality could be changed (i.e., "cured"), why should it be? Who is Dinesh D'Souza or anyone to want to change an intimate and personal part of a person's identity (particularly when it does no harm and adds diversity to a society)? What is easier and better, to "cure" homosexuality or to "cure" homophobia?

Now, this actually gets into a much deeper debate, which is "how much power do human beings have to decide themselves and their own behavior?" Some hold to a strict genetic/biological determinism, some hold to a general social/environmental determinism, and many more hold to a combination of the two. Some, however, while believing that both are true, also believe in an important third factor, self-determinism. That is, there is such a thing as mental causal efficacy. I happen to hold such a view, and have spent quite a lot of time researching and pondering on it (particularly how it is quite consistent with modern [quantum] physics, how it is consistent with and even necessitated by the nature of our conscious experience, and how it is necessary for any real ethics and meaning). There are some, however, who take this to way wrong conclusions. One such person is Harvard psychologist and religious conservative Jeffrey Satinover, who has written books on quantum neuroscience, the Bible Code, and how gays can and should change their abberant behavior (which he believes is supported by quantum neuroscience).

Although I share with Satinover the view that our minds actually do something and aren't just unexplainable by-standers or by-products, and that we humans are capable of self-directed neuroplasticity (and I have some experience with such myself, overcoming anxiety disorder through intense mental effort rather than medication), his idea that sexual orientation can or should be changed in such a way (or any way) comes, like D'Souza's, from his conservative ideology--not from either science or from geniune spirituality. There are certain things about us that are just that--things about us. We shouldn't any sooner want to or try to change them than we should or could our skin color or personal history or most deeply personal traits. Who we love in certain (romantic) ways is one of those. And, as I wrote in a previous post, just because our minds have power doesn't mean they have unlimited power--just as we can change our course when behind the wheel but we can't change everything about the vehicle we are driving, nor can we change the road as easily (regarding the road, my friend Jim pointed out this insightful example: the Dalai Lama arguably has more control over his own mind than most people. However, with all the mental power he has, he hasn't been able to drive the Chinese government out of Tibet).

Integral philosopher Ken Wilber has written on this subject in great detail, and what he has written is quite relevant (it can be found about a fourth of the way down the page, here). In Wilber's analysis, those views that have tended to focus exclusively on external factors/realities, like the historical materialism of Marxists and Utilitarians, believe that everything happens to people, discounting or ignoring internal, conscious factors. The typical conservative, meanwhile, focuses only on internal, subjective factors, ignoring or discounting external factors that affect people and which they have little or no control over. It is only an Integral approach, Wilber says, uniting the truths of both realities, that will allow us to move forward. I think so too.

Recently I have discovered a renewed interest in left libertarian and anarchist concepts of community solidarity. My interests lie in finding ways to build community relationships and institutions that devolve important decisions to the interpersonal, neighborly level - rather than counting on government bureaucrats and politicians to fix all our problems. I believe that this reliance on an outside force to manage us - a top-down, progressive-era holdover - has damaged what was once a bottom-up, dynamic consensus. This breakdown in neighborliness is partially responsible for many of our present social ills, and reflects the dark side of the centralized, managerial State that so many Americans seem to want.

Inviting cops into our neighborhoods should be a last resort, because law enforcement professionals view everybody - not just the elements you find undesirable - as a potential criminal. They write traffic tickets; they harass citizens; they conduct reckless raids against innocent citizens; the list just goes on. Residents should be very careful when inviting outsiders - such as police officers - to make decisions on how the neighborhood’s business should be conducted. Ideally, cops should be called only as an alternative to a neighborhood resident employing force himself in self-defense, and only in reaction to a particular threat.

Maybe there was once a time when police officers lived in the neighborhoods they patrolled, knew everybody by name and whose kid was whose, and exercised a form of reasonable discretion (even if that discretion was poisoned by racism, classism, etc.). Maybe they policed on the basis of what was best for the community rather than maximizing their arrest statistics to secure federal funding. Those times, however, are no more: police are intervening in neighborhoods more and more, with less and less of a sense of statutory limitation, and a growing sense of entitlement to dictate to people the most mundane details of their lives. This dependence on such authoritarian elements is surely brought about by the increasing atomization and isolation of residents, who cannot look to the community to realize their values. When neighbors are strangers, there isn’t even the opportunity to establish an authentic sense of shared interests or common concerns, let alone the true security situation.

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