I never watch the Oscars, even though I do like the movies. I never go to the movie theatre any more, either, although I do like the movies. (I've got about 10 days worth of movies backed up on the DVR, a bunch of Blu-Rays and DVD's and even VHS tapes stacked in the closet, and subscribe to every movie channel known to man, so I don't feel deprived. And this is despite that I shun Netflix, too.) Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and whenever I make an exception to my "never" rule and go to the theatre anyway, I come away feeling that it wasn't really worth the hassle and the expense, and vow never to do it again. A year or so later, I'll make another exception, and go through it all again.
This year, I did go to see one of the Oscar-nominated films, the one starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field and imaginatively titled "Lincoln." Maybe because it was the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation or the 13th Amendment or something. Anyway, there was a lot of Civil War stuff in the news. And after the movie, which wasn't all that bad, I renewed my vow to wait 'til it came on TV the next time, for the same old reasons.
Another film with a "historical" theme, "Argo," was on the Oscar ballot this year, and according to this morning's Internet headlines, it won. Although I didn't see the movie, I did read something about it in the Sunday paper. Ben Affleck, who is now an "auteur" of cinema, apparently, was explaining to whomever was writing the article that he felt it was O.K. to take some liberties with the facts to jazz up the picture, and I heartily agree. They obviously did it in "Lincoln," too, in such stirring scenes as the one where a lawmaker virulently opposed to enacting the 13th Amendment, which abolished "involuntary servitude" in the United States (for most people, most of the time), came out onto his front porch and apologetically explained to Lincoln that he couldn't vote for the Amendment because he was a "prejudiced" man who blamed black people for his brother's death in the war. Not only would it have been better writing to show the audience that he was "prejudiced" and why, instead of having the guy just blat it out like that, the language was anachronistic. If one really to know how "folks" in this country, including Members of Congress, spoke to and about black people in the 19th Century, "Django, Unchained" would probably be a better source.
But all of this is beside the point, because when you get right down to it there is no such thing as an accurate "history," anyway. "History is written by the victors," Winston Churchill said, and that's true as far as it goes. What Churchill either forgot or chose not to mention is that the victors themselves never agree on just what happened, and moreover the "official" version of anything has a tendency to morph over time. In a society where most people get most of their information about "history" (and everything else) from television and the movies, and the distinction between "news" and "entertainment" has blurred to the extent that some people feel fully justified in getting their information about the issues of our time from "The Daily Show" or "Fox News," it's pretty clear that "history" becomes "fictionalized" almost immediately.
Add to this the research that shows that a) eyewitness testimony is unreliable; and b) people hear and see what they expect to hear and see; and c) people interpret all that they hear and see to conform to their pre-existing beliefs, and what do you get? A world where the truth of anything, from climate change to statistics to evolution to nutrition science, is simply a matter of opinion. Our world, and welcome to it!
So, what's so wrong about that? Isn't everybody's opinion as good as everybody else's? Well, most Americans would answer, "Sure, if it is based on the facts." (Translation: "Sure, if their opinion agrees with mine.") Or, more realistically, they might just say "No. I am privileged to order my own reality, and in my world there is no climate change; statistics prove that the death rate for everybody is identical to that for smokers (100%); evolution is just a 'theory,' and it's wrong because the Bible says so; and "McDonalds serves healthy, nutritious meals."
In our world, people can believe that the best way to stimulate the economy is to raise payroll taxes and cut government spending when unemployment is high. They can believe that manipulating the tax code to allow more billionaires to make and keep even more money will stimulate the economy, too. They can believe that privileged people sitting at home clipping coupons or plotting hostile takeovers and running hedgefunds and "downsizing" corporations are "job creators" who will make life better for the common man. They can believe all that, for a while, just like Marie Antoinette, sitting in her splendid palace, could believe, for a while, that if the poor had no bread, they could solve their supposed problems simply by switching to cake.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Monday, February 18, 2013
The Meaning of Life
When I was a small kid, I used to lie awake at night sometimes and wonder what was lurking in the closet or under the bed. Sometimes the suspense would get to be too much for me, and I'd leap out of bed and slap at the light switch to flood the room with incandescent light. Of course, I never caught any creatures this way, but it wasn't until years later that I found out the scientific reason why I didn't. It seems that a dude named Heisenberg figured out that the very act of looking at something alters whatever it is that you're looking at, so there's no way to tell whether there were monsters in there before I turned on the light.
Now that I'm an adult, I still lie awake at night sometimes, and I'm still careful to shut the closet door before getting into bed. Nor do I permit my arms or legs to dangle over the side of the bed once I'm in there... just in case. But I'm nowhere near as nervous about the unknown as I used to be when I was a kid, because all the empirical evidence I amassed over those Wonder Years ultimately allowed me to internalize that it doesn't matter whether there are monsters in the dark or not-- incandescent light is fatal to them, if there are. (Although now we're supposed to be switching to fluorescent bulbs. I think that kind of light should work, too, but maybe I should do a formal study to make sure before I run out of incandescent bulbs, just in case.)
Besides, somewhere along the long, tortuous path to adulthood I developed a new set of worries. Not only are the faceless, shapeless monsters in the dark less scary than the documented wackadoos on the front page of the paper and the 6 o'clock news, I've been wondering about the Meaning of Life. In particular, I've been wondering if there is one.
I've noticed that all the truly happy people that I know adhere to the philosophy of "living in the moment." One wise woman told me that "the Meaning of Life is Life." In other words, don't worry about the "why" of it at all, because now that you are alive, it doen't matter how you got here, or where (if anywhere) you're headed after this. There's a lot of sense in that approach to the problem. In fact, I think that's pretty much how cats and dogs live.
Human beings can never seem to leave well enough alone, though, and so a few billion of us around the world have fallen, to one degree or another, under the spell of something called "religion." In Western countries, but particularly in the U.S., there is also a large and probably growing group who call themselves "spiritual, but not religious." Near as I can tell, this means "I used to go to church... or synagogue... or temple... or the mosque... when I was a kid, but not anymore." Personally, I had my childhood indoctrination in the Catholic church. But I can truthfully say, without either shame or pride, that I haven't seen the inside of one of those places, except for the occasional wedding or funeral or trip to my Mom's, for longer than some of you have been alive. I'm spiritual, though.
Getting religion can remove the uncertainty of those unanswerable questions that you might otherwise ask yourself in the middle of the night, because religion is all about providing answers to the unanswerable, even if the answers are simply made up. All you've got to do is believe, and then you're set. My Mom is a devout Catholic, and has often told me that she prays regularly that I will receive the "gift of faith." And I appreciate the thought, I really do, because if I could really believe in anything, the way she's talking about, I'd automatically have answers to all of those questions and maybe I'd finally be able to get a good night's sleep.
And it wouldn't necessarily have to be Catholicism, either. It could be Islam, or the Old Religion ("witchcraft" to you and me) or anything, even "secular humanism." Anything to turn off the wondering.
It doesn't simplify things to think that all the different religions can't possibly be right because they're fundamentally different from each other, or even internally inconsistent. What if "our thoughts create our reality," as Louise Haye might say? Maybe everything is relative, and whatever we believe is real is real. That would certainly explain how both Newton and Einstein could be right. Heck, maybe some people really did come from nowhere, and will blink out like a lightbulb when their Final Switch is flipped. Maybe others wind up floating on clouds, strumming harps and wearing choir robes and sandals. And maybe somewhere there is a giant Gentlemen's Club in the sky, too, where explosives-singed martyrs are entertained endlessly by a parade of virgins. Or maybe we just go back to the foot of the line, reincarnated as goats or chickens or chupacabras or something.
Sometimes people find faith out of the blue, when something scary or unnatural happens to them. St. Paul, for example, was a heartless tax collector until one day he fell off his ass and was struck blind. After hearing the Voice of Jesus, he received the "gift of faith" and his sight was restored and he began preaching the Gospel and... well, I can't remember whether he got himself martyred or not, but however and whenever he ultimately checked out I'm sure he never again laid awake at night wondering what would happen when he did.
Maybe something like that will happen to me one day. In the meantime, I'm going to try to think happy thoughts, be nice to goats and chickens, and live life one beer at a time.
Now that I'm an adult, I still lie awake at night sometimes, and I'm still careful to shut the closet door before getting into bed. Nor do I permit my arms or legs to dangle over the side of the bed once I'm in there... just in case. But I'm nowhere near as nervous about the unknown as I used to be when I was a kid, because all the empirical evidence I amassed over those Wonder Years ultimately allowed me to internalize that it doesn't matter whether there are monsters in the dark or not-- incandescent light is fatal to them, if there are. (Although now we're supposed to be switching to fluorescent bulbs. I think that kind of light should work, too, but maybe I should do a formal study to make sure before I run out of incandescent bulbs, just in case.)
Besides, somewhere along the long, tortuous path to adulthood I developed a new set of worries. Not only are the faceless, shapeless monsters in the dark less scary than the documented wackadoos on the front page of the paper and the 6 o'clock news, I've been wondering about the Meaning of Life. In particular, I've been wondering if there is one.
I've noticed that all the truly happy people that I know adhere to the philosophy of "living in the moment." One wise woman told me that "the Meaning of Life is Life." In other words, don't worry about the "why" of it at all, because now that you are alive, it doen't matter how you got here, or where (if anywhere) you're headed after this. There's a lot of sense in that approach to the problem. In fact, I think that's pretty much how cats and dogs live.
Human beings can never seem to leave well enough alone, though, and so a few billion of us around the world have fallen, to one degree or another, under the spell of something called "religion." In Western countries, but particularly in the U.S., there is also a large and probably growing group who call themselves "spiritual, but not religious." Near as I can tell, this means "I used to go to church... or synagogue... or temple... or the mosque... when I was a kid, but not anymore." Personally, I had my childhood indoctrination in the Catholic church. But I can truthfully say, without either shame or pride, that I haven't seen the inside of one of those places, except for the occasional wedding or funeral or trip to my Mom's, for longer than some of you have been alive. I'm spiritual, though.
Getting religion can remove the uncertainty of those unanswerable questions that you might otherwise ask yourself in the middle of the night, because religion is all about providing answers to the unanswerable, even if the answers are simply made up. All you've got to do is believe, and then you're set. My Mom is a devout Catholic, and has often told me that she prays regularly that I will receive the "gift of faith." And I appreciate the thought, I really do, because if I could really believe in anything, the way she's talking about, I'd automatically have answers to all of those questions and maybe I'd finally be able to get a good night's sleep.
And it wouldn't necessarily have to be Catholicism, either. It could be Islam, or the Old Religion ("witchcraft" to you and me) or anything, even "secular humanism." Anything to turn off the wondering.
It doesn't simplify things to think that all the different religions can't possibly be right because they're fundamentally different from each other, or even internally inconsistent. What if "our thoughts create our reality," as Louise Haye might say? Maybe everything is relative, and whatever we believe is real is real. That would certainly explain how both Newton and Einstein could be right. Heck, maybe some people really did come from nowhere, and will blink out like a lightbulb when their Final Switch is flipped. Maybe others wind up floating on clouds, strumming harps and wearing choir robes and sandals. And maybe somewhere there is a giant Gentlemen's Club in the sky, too, where explosives-singed martyrs are entertained endlessly by a parade of virgins. Or maybe we just go back to the foot of the line, reincarnated as goats or chickens or chupacabras or something.
Sometimes people find faith out of the blue, when something scary or unnatural happens to them. St. Paul, for example, was a heartless tax collector until one day he fell off his ass and was struck blind. After hearing the Voice of Jesus, he received the "gift of faith" and his sight was restored and he began preaching the Gospel and... well, I can't remember whether he got himself martyred or not, but however and whenever he ultimately checked out I'm sure he never again laid awake at night wondering what would happen when he did.
Maybe something like that will happen to me one day. In the meantime, I'm going to try to think happy thoughts, be nice to goats and chickens, and live life one beer at a time.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Boomer or Bust?
A friend of mine asked me to say a few words in defense of the demographic known as the Baby Boomers. Apparently, there are those who think that Boomers in general are moribund, greedy, selfish and inconsiderate, and are burning up the last of our non-renewable resources before anybody else gets a chance. Well, here goes.
With the passing of the Greatest Generation, the Baby Boomers are left holding the bag. And I suppose it's natural for younger people to blame them for all that's wrong with the world, because there's nobody else left to blame, at least not so's you could yell at them without getting locked up for hallucinating or something. (Boomers might remember how everyone looked askance at Nixon for wandering through the halls of the White House with a cocktail in his hand, arguing with the portraits of past Presidents. But if you're younger, you'll just say, "Huh?") Anyway, the buck has got to stop somewhere, and now it's stopping in Boomerville.
Gen X, Gen Y, Millennials... everybody born since the very early 1960's has struggled to carve out an identity for themselves distinct from that of their Boomer parents (and more and more and more their Boomer grandparents now.) And, as with the Boomers themselves, and all past generations of which I have any knowledge, the succeeding generations are sure that their parents/grandparents are idiots. These days, a lot is being written about how the poor young people have a legitimate point. After all, the world is a mess, and it's projected that the children of the Boomers will be the first generation in modern American history to have a shorter life expectancy and a bleaker economic outlook than their parents did. And if you're 30 years old and still living at home because you can't find a job and have a six-figure student loan debt that will never go away, you've got to think that there's something wrong with the system, it's not just you.
On the other hand, the answers to life's mysteries are not likely to be found by staring into an ipad, even though frantically poking and swiping at the screen does make you look busy. (By the way, cutting and pasting from the Internet is only "research" if you actually read the stuff and know something about the source (and it's not "creative writing" at all.) And "staying connected" in 40 different ways with everybody you know or ever heard of is only worthwhile if there's a legitimate reason for it, like trying to line up what used to be called a "date," or planning a revolution, or (ahem) looking for a non-existent job or something. It is possible to be very "busy" all the time, without actually doing anything, you know. And how many cat videos and recipes and "likes" can you fling into cyberspace without starting to waste your time?
See, a lot of this is the fault of the Boomers. They developed the technology that has obsessed and enthralled everybody... and, coincidentally, has eliminated many of the jobs that the later generations may have been counting on to be working at when they grew up. They also failed to kick their kids off the couch and out of the house.
The later generations, of course, are great at creating "apps" to give them new ways and reasons to stare at computer (or ipad or phone or "phablet") screens so that everybody will have something to do while sitting on the couch waiting for that job. Because people are so much more "efficient" now, and machines are so much more versatile, there really isn't a lot for non-creative people to do, other than fool with their apps and stay connected to everybody else who's doing the same thing. What is Facebook except one giant streetcorner where everybody you know hangs out when there's nothing better to do? Which is a lot of the time, apparently.
Some people have been noticing lately that it doesn't necessarily make economic sense for everybody to go into debt to obtain a college degree. Of course, there are more (and better) reasons than economic ones for a person to get an education. However, to hear the politicians talk about it, every kid in America should go to a four-year university and study exclusively math and science, because that way we'll be able to compete with the Chinese. This is all B.S., of course. The Chinese have their own problems, foremost among which being the fact that there are so many Chinese. And whatever our own politicians tell us, all you have to do to figure out who's winning the "competition" is to compare the numbers of Chinese who are coming here to have "anchor babies" with the numbers of Americans going there to do likewise. Besides, if you're going to college to acquire "job skills," you're really going to trade school, and that's getting "trained," not being "educated."
The post-Boomer generations have high self-esteem, which is good in some situations but not in the abstract. Serial killers have high self-esteem. Napoleon and Hitler had high self-esteem. But, you say, Mommy and Daddy Boomer told these younger people that they're wonderful, and why should Mommy and Daddy lie? Well, the harsh truth is that not everybody is a creative genius. Of all those tens and tens of millions of bright young people out there, there may or may not be even one new Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, or Mark Zuckerberg. Another harsh truth is that not only has technology has taken us to a place where there is little for non-creative, poorly educated people to "do," there is less and less incentive to pay them a living wage to do it. And the third harsh truth is that it's up to the younger folk to find their own way off the couch and out into the world, because Mom and Dad don't have an answer for their dilemma, and will probably soon be in dire economic straits themselves if they aren't already.
Their expectations frustrated, the kids on the couch have to lash out at somebody, so it's naturally the Boomers they blame for their sorry estate. They are frustrated, understandably enough, by their failure to get anywhere, and assume that it's because the Boomers won't get out of the way. What they fail to understand is that Boomers are in the same boat, job-wise, as they are. When Boomers are "downsized" or retired, it is unlikely that many of them will ever be going back to work, and the vacancies created by their departure won't necessarily be filled from the ranks of the underemployed youth of America, either.
As for the sorry state of the world, it might be wise to remember that the environment has been rapidly deteriorating, and the population dramatically increasing, ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. By the time the Boomers came on the scene, the environment was already polluted, and there were already too many people. Although merely by being alive the Boomers have since made their own contribution to the mess, they also either originated or gave impetus to the environmental movement, the expansion of civil rights, the Cultural Revolution, the Sexual Revolution (whoo hoo! no-- think "contraception" and women's rights in this context), the ethical treatment of animals, the peace movement, the natural/organic/local food movement, the homeopathic/alternative medicine markets, renewable energy, nuclear disarmament and let's not forget Casual Fridays (or even jeans at the office all the time) in case you do happen to have a job. All this stuff is with us today because of things that happened in the 60's and 70's, which you whippersnappers would know if you'd studied history in school. The Boomers have at least tried to change things, and in the "real" world, too, not just Second Life.
Oh, and by the way, Led Zeppelin is a Boomer band. Come on, youth of America, cut the Boomers some slack, and don't spill anything while you're hanging out on the couch! Oh, and you might think about starting on working out some solutions to all these problems, next time you take a break from whatever it is you're "doing." The baton will be passed again soon enough, even if Mom and Dad do wind up having to delay-- or even forego-- their retirement.
With the passing of the Greatest Generation, the Baby Boomers are left holding the bag. And I suppose it's natural for younger people to blame them for all that's wrong with the world, because there's nobody else left to blame, at least not so's you could yell at them without getting locked up for hallucinating or something. (Boomers might remember how everyone looked askance at Nixon for wandering through the halls of the White House with a cocktail in his hand, arguing with the portraits of past Presidents. But if you're younger, you'll just say, "Huh?") Anyway, the buck has got to stop somewhere, and now it's stopping in Boomerville.
Gen X, Gen Y, Millennials... everybody born since the very early 1960's has struggled to carve out an identity for themselves distinct from that of their Boomer parents (and more and more and more their Boomer grandparents now.) And, as with the Boomers themselves, and all past generations of which I have any knowledge, the succeeding generations are sure that their parents/grandparents are idiots. These days, a lot is being written about how the poor young people have a legitimate point. After all, the world is a mess, and it's projected that the children of the Boomers will be the first generation in modern American history to have a shorter life expectancy and a bleaker economic outlook than their parents did. And if you're 30 years old and still living at home because you can't find a job and have a six-figure student loan debt that will never go away, you've got to think that there's something wrong with the system, it's not just you.
On the other hand, the answers to life's mysteries are not likely to be found by staring into an ipad, even though frantically poking and swiping at the screen does make you look busy. (By the way, cutting and pasting from the Internet is only "research" if you actually read the stuff and know something about the source (and it's not "creative writing" at all.) And "staying connected" in 40 different ways with everybody you know or ever heard of is only worthwhile if there's a legitimate reason for it, like trying to line up what used to be called a "date," or planning a revolution, or (ahem) looking for a non-existent job or something. It is possible to be very "busy" all the time, without actually doing anything, you know. And how many cat videos and recipes and "likes" can you fling into cyberspace without starting to waste your time?
See, a lot of this is the fault of the Boomers. They developed the technology that has obsessed and enthralled everybody... and, coincidentally, has eliminated many of the jobs that the later generations may have been counting on to be working at when they grew up. They also failed to kick their kids off the couch and out of the house.
The later generations, of course, are great at creating "apps" to give them new ways and reasons to stare at computer (or ipad or phone or "phablet") screens so that everybody will have something to do while sitting on the couch waiting for that job. Because people are so much more "efficient" now, and machines are so much more versatile, there really isn't a lot for non-creative people to do, other than fool with their apps and stay connected to everybody else who's doing the same thing. What is Facebook except one giant streetcorner where everybody you know hangs out when there's nothing better to do? Which is a lot of the time, apparently.
Some people have been noticing lately that it doesn't necessarily make economic sense for everybody to go into debt to obtain a college degree. Of course, there are more (and better) reasons than economic ones for a person to get an education. However, to hear the politicians talk about it, every kid in America should go to a four-year university and study exclusively math and science, because that way we'll be able to compete with the Chinese. This is all B.S., of course. The Chinese have their own problems, foremost among which being the fact that there are so many Chinese. And whatever our own politicians tell us, all you have to do to figure out who's winning the "competition" is to compare the numbers of Chinese who are coming here to have "anchor babies" with the numbers of Americans going there to do likewise. Besides, if you're going to college to acquire "job skills," you're really going to trade school, and that's getting "trained," not being "educated."
The post-Boomer generations have high self-esteem, which is good in some situations but not in the abstract. Serial killers have high self-esteem. Napoleon and Hitler had high self-esteem. But, you say, Mommy and Daddy Boomer told these younger people that they're wonderful, and why should Mommy and Daddy lie? Well, the harsh truth is that not everybody is a creative genius. Of all those tens and tens of millions of bright young people out there, there may or may not be even one new Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, or Mark Zuckerberg. Another harsh truth is that not only has technology has taken us to a place where there is little for non-creative, poorly educated people to "do," there is less and less incentive to pay them a living wage to do it. And the third harsh truth is that it's up to the younger folk to find their own way off the couch and out into the world, because Mom and Dad don't have an answer for their dilemma, and will probably soon be in dire economic straits themselves if they aren't already.
Their expectations frustrated, the kids on the couch have to lash out at somebody, so it's naturally the Boomers they blame for their sorry estate. They are frustrated, understandably enough, by their failure to get anywhere, and assume that it's because the Boomers won't get out of the way. What they fail to understand is that Boomers are in the same boat, job-wise, as they are. When Boomers are "downsized" or retired, it is unlikely that many of them will ever be going back to work, and the vacancies created by their departure won't necessarily be filled from the ranks of the underemployed youth of America, either.
As for the sorry state of the world, it might be wise to remember that the environment has been rapidly deteriorating, and the population dramatically increasing, ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. By the time the Boomers came on the scene, the environment was already polluted, and there were already too many people. Although merely by being alive the Boomers have since made their own contribution to the mess, they also either originated or gave impetus to the environmental movement, the expansion of civil rights, the Cultural Revolution, the Sexual Revolution (whoo hoo! no-- think "contraception" and women's rights in this context), the ethical treatment of animals, the peace movement, the natural/organic/local food movement, the homeopathic/alternative medicine markets, renewable energy, nuclear disarmament and let's not forget Casual Fridays (or even jeans at the office all the time) in case you do happen to have a job. All this stuff is with us today because of things that happened in the 60's and 70's, which you whippersnappers would know if you'd studied history in school. The Boomers have at least tried to change things, and in the "real" world, too, not just Second Life.
Oh, and by the way, Led Zeppelin is a Boomer band. Come on, youth of America, cut the Boomers some slack, and don't spill anything while you're hanging out on the couch! Oh, and you might think about starting on working out some solutions to all these problems, next time you take a break from whatever it is you're "doing." The baton will be passed again soon enough, even if Mom and Dad do wind up having to delay-- or even forego-- their retirement.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Foresight... or Head-up-your-Hindsight?
The Iroquois... or some of them, anyway... had a philosophy that held that people should consider the effect of what they do on the next seven generations. Of course, if all the rest of the "Indians" had shared that principle, and had adhered to it, and had been a little sharper in the foresight department, they probably would have tried a lot harder to raze Plymouth and Jamestown to the ground right at the very beginning of the European invasion. They didn't, though, and I guess you can't really blame them. The original settlers were few, and seemed a lot more sick and starving than scary at first. But...
Anyway, I'm not saying that the "Seven Generations" thing would have saved the Indians. After all, there were relatively few of them (especially after the European gift of smallpox hit) and there were a whole lot of Europeans. And the Indians had an abundance of resources, were living the good life, and reasonable minds among them pointed out that in a land of plenty, everybody could live in peace. Well, as it turns out, the reasonable minds among the Indians were dead wrong, and they pretty much all wound up being dead for their mistake, along with their friends, neighbors, families, tribes and way of life. It remains to be seen whether the former masters of this continent will succeed in clawing their way back to the top via the casino business, and since they took Jim Thorpe's Olympic medals, that looks like their last best chance.
The other big mistake that the Indians made, besides not thinking things through well enough at the very beginning, was to think too much later on. Despite overwhelming evidence that the European invaders were real bad news and not to be trusted, generation after generation of Indian leaders kept trying to reach an accomodation of some kind with them. (Well, not too many generations; once the ball got rolling, it really didn't take the invaders all that long to wipe the continent "clean" of the Indian way of life, and most of them, too.) But we know how well the "appeasement" and "co-existence" approach worked out for the Indians. One of them... probably Red Cloud... summed it all up very succinctly by saying something like: "Of all the promises the white men ever made, they only kept but one. They promised to take our land, and they took it."
The definition of "insanity" is sometimes given as "trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." But another way of putting it is "if we try hard enough to make them see reason, they'll change."
You would think that perhaps, having witnessed what happened to the Indians from a front-row seat, we might have learned a couple of lessons from their experience. Have we? Well, let's consider. How about the Seven Generations thing? Well, deficit spending is a way of life for us, individuals and government alike, and the one thing that Congress absolutely won't touch are benefits for the elderly, who have a tendency to vote against people who even mention the idea. And when the government does make cuts, it favors cutting funding for things like the space program, which isn't expected to pay off for a while (say those who are obstinate or stupid enough to fail to recognize that it already has paid off with scientific advances that have transformed civilization.) Corporations for decades have juggled their books and finances to show quarterly profits, at the expense of funding modernization of their facilities and research and development that doesn't have an immediate payoff. And, as for the wise American people, many of them are living from paycheck to paycheck, and about half of them have nothing at all saved for the time when they will no longer be bringing in a paycheck.
If that doesn't convince you, take a peek out of the window the next time you're downtown or on the freeway at all the lumbering "SUV's" with one passenger in them, blasting fossil fuel emissions into what's left of the atmosphere. Does that look like we're thinking seven generations ahead? And if you think electric cars are the answer, ask yourself this: What's in those batteries, and how do we dispose of them when we're through?
Second question: Are we crazy? (Collectively, I mean.) Is our world view realistic, or are we indulging in denial and wishful thinking when we careen merrily along, serene in our assurance that the future will take care of itself without any immediate, painful sacrifice on our part? Well, there are more than 7 billion people in the world right now, 300 million of whom live in the U.S. For those of you who are mathematically challenged, I'll tell you that that translates into less than 5% of the population of this planet. It is estimated that this 5% of the planet is currently consuming 25% of the world's available resources. Much of the rest of the world is wallowing in disease and poverty. What happens when the 6.7 billion "others" in the world demand their fair share of those resources? And what happens when there are 9 to 11 billion people in the world, as is projected to be the case by 2050? Some of you may already have guessed what I think about Question Two. Yes, we're nuts.
Anyway, I'm not saying that the "Seven Generations" thing would have saved the Indians. After all, there were relatively few of them (especially after the European gift of smallpox hit) and there were a whole lot of Europeans. And the Indians had an abundance of resources, were living the good life, and reasonable minds among them pointed out that in a land of plenty, everybody could live in peace. Well, as it turns out, the reasonable minds among the Indians were dead wrong, and they pretty much all wound up being dead for their mistake, along with their friends, neighbors, families, tribes and way of life. It remains to be seen whether the former masters of this continent will succeed in clawing their way back to the top via the casino business, and since they took Jim Thorpe's Olympic medals, that looks like their last best chance.
The other big mistake that the Indians made, besides not thinking things through well enough at the very beginning, was to think too much later on. Despite overwhelming evidence that the European invaders were real bad news and not to be trusted, generation after generation of Indian leaders kept trying to reach an accomodation of some kind with them. (Well, not too many generations; once the ball got rolling, it really didn't take the invaders all that long to wipe the continent "clean" of the Indian way of life, and most of them, too.) But we know how well the "appeasement" and "co-existence" approach worked out for the Indians. One of them... probably Red Cloud... summed it all up very succinctly by saying something like: "Of all the promises the white men ever made, they only kept but one. They promised to take our land, and they took it."
The definition of "insanity" is sometimes given as "trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." But another way of putting it is "if we try hard enough to make them see reason, they'll change."
You would think that perhaps, having witnessed what happened to the Indians from a front-row seat, we might have learned a couple of lessons from their experience. Have we? Well, let's consider. How about the Seven Generations thing? Well, deficit spending is a way of life for us, individuals and government alike, and the one thing that Congress absolutely won't touch are benefits for the elderly, who have a tendency to vote against people who even mention the idea. And when the government does make cuts, it favors cutting funding for things like the space program, which isn't expected to pay off for a while (say those who are obstinate or stupid enough to fail to recognize that it already has paid off with scientific advances that have transformed civilization.) Corporations for decades have juggled their books and finances to show quarterly profits, at the expense of funding modernization of their facilities and research and development that doesn't have an immediate payoff. And, as for the wise American people, many of them are living from paycheck to paycheck, and about half of them have nothing at all saved for the time when they will no longer be bringing in a paycheck.
If that doesn't convince you, take a peek out of the window the next time you're downtown or on the freeway at all the lumbering "SUV's" with one passenger in them, blasting fossil fuel emissions into what's left of the atmosphere. Does that look like we're thinking seven generations ahead? And if you think electric cars are the answer, ask yourself this: What's in those batteries, and how do we dispose of them when we're through?
Second question: Are we crazy? (Collectively, I mean.) Is our world view realistic, or are we indulging in denial and wishful thinking when we careen merrily along, serene in our assurance that the future will take care of itself without any immediate, painful sacrifice on our part? Well, there are more than 7 billion people in the world right now, 300 million of whom live in the U.S. For those of you who are mathematically challenged, I'll tell you that that translates into less than 5% of the population of this planet. It is estimated that this 5% of the planet is currently consuming 25% of the world's available resources. Much of the rest of the world is wallowing in disease and poverty. What happens when the 6.7 billion "others" in the world demand their fair share of those resources? And what happens when there are 9 to 11 billion people in the world, as is projected to be the case by 2050? Some of you may already have guessed what I think about Question Two. Yes, we're nuts.
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Health Care v. Health Insurance
When the Obama Administration announced that it was going to attempt to reform the health care system in this country, it sounded good to me for about half a minute. But almost immediately it became apparent that we weren't on our way to anything all that good, because the goal morphed from "health care for all Americans" into "health insurance for most Americans."
I think everybody (except maybe the very rich) understands the difference between "all" and "most," so I'm not going to go into that. But it's worth pausing to contemplate the difference between health care and health insurance.
Health care means you go to the doctor when you need to, and he or she provides you with the treatment that, in his or her medical judgment, is necessary. Of course, medical treatment costs something, and so to provide health care for all, there would have to be some agreement as to how much health care everybody was entitled to and some arrangement for paying that cost. Apparently, that problem was too tough for those people in Washington to tackle.
Instead, we've gotten a mandate to purchase health insurance. Everybody... well, almost everybody... is supposed to buy it now. And insurance companies are supposed to sell it to everybody, too... as long as they can pay the premiums. If you don't buy health insurance like you're supposed to, you're permitted to pay a fine, instead... which in fact will be a lot less than the cost of a health insurance premium in most cases, and you can still go to the emergency room if you need to, anyway, and the taxpayers will foot the bill if you can't, so why bother buying the insurance if you're a risk-taker?
Obamacare, as some people label the new program, is supposed to help keep the costs of health care down, so that should be good, right? Well, insurance companies are in the business to make money, which means that they've got to charge you for their profit and overhead on top of whatever payment is allowed to the provider. They're supposed to police the greedy providers (your doctor, e.g.) who provide "unnecessary" treatment, and discourage patients (like you) who like to go to the doctor for fun, even when they don't need to. If the insurance companies can prevent enough "unnecessary" care from taking place, and restrict the costs for the rest, they should "save" enough to pay for themselves and the "cost of health care" should go down eventually, right? Then maybe it won't be necessary for them to raise your premiums twice a year any more.
The uncomfortable truth is that the mandate that everyone buy health insurance is no guarantee that anyone can buy the coverage they need at a price they can afford, because there has been no agreement on what "basic health care" is, or how much it should cost. (Just in case somebody decides to tackle those issues in the future, though, the insurance companies have been jacking up their rates at a furious pace so as to have a little "wiggle room" for a "compromise" on rates.) And as for the idea that increased insurance company rigmarole will lower the cost of health care, just ask your doctor what percentage of his or her overhead already involves dealing with their crazy paperwork.
There's a good case to be made that the insurance industry is actually the cause of the spiraling cost of health services, as opposed to a cure. I'm undergoing some interaction with the health care system right now, and so I have a handy anecdote on point. My doctor recommended that I have an angiogram, which traditionally is a pretty gross, intrusive procedure with a significant risk of complications that I didn't want. But my doctor said that in my case he'd be able to get all the information he needed with a procedure called a "CT angiogram," which is a non-intrusive procedure designed to accomplish the same end, or at least enough of the same end for my doctor's purposes. He warned me, however, that my insurance wasn't likely to pay for the CT angiogram, allegedly because it is still "experimental," (it's not) but actually because the insurers are afraid that more people will get the test if it's not so gross and intrusive. I thought this was B.S., but it turned out to be true. The insurance company was willing to pay for a test that posed a far greater risk of complications for me, and was at least as expensive, but refused to pay for the non-intrusive test recommended by my doctor.
What did I do? Well, on my doctor's advice, I called the hospital and told them I wanted to pay for the test myself, and asked them for their best price. Turns out their best price was 20% of what they would have charged the insurer. I got my test, with a free life lesson thrown in.
Why does the hospital charge the insurance company more for the same work? Well, it isn't just greed, despite what the seven-figure-compensated CEO's of the health insurance companies might tell you. The price differential reflects the cost of paying a full-time staff of medical billers, etc. for hassling the insurance company's paperwork, and delays for six months to a year before payment would arrive by that route. The insurance company's objective in "adjusting" the bills is, of course, to shave enough off the bill to pay both its overhead for all the adjusters who are hassling with its own paperwork, plus the profit that allows it to pay seven-figure salaries to its top executives. Is it really the cost of health care that's going up, or just the cost of insurance?
I think everybody (except maybe the very rich) understands the difference between "all" and "most," so I'm not going to go into that. But it's worth pausing to contemplate the difference between health care and health insurance.
Health care means you go to the doctor when you need to, and he or she provides you with the treatment that, in his or her medical judgment, is necessary. Of course, medical treatment costs something, and so to provide health care for all, there would have to be some agreement as to how much health care everybody was entitled to and some arrangement for paying that cost. Apparently, that problem was too tough for those people in Washington to tackle.
Instead, we've gotten a mandate to purchase health insurance. Everybody... well, almost everybody... is supposed to buy it now. And insurance companies are supposed to sell it to everybody, too... as long as they can pay the premiums. If you don't buy health insurance like you're supposed to, you're permitted to pay a fine, instead... which in fact will be a lot less than the cost of a health insurance premium in most cases, and you can still go to the emergency room if you need to, anyway, and the taxpayers will foot the bill if you can't, so why bother buying the insurance if you're a risk-taker?
Obamacare, as some people label the new program, is supposed to help keep the costs of health care down, so that should be good, right? Well, insurance companies are in the business to make money, which means that they've got to charge you for their profit and overhead on top of whatever payment is allowed to the provider. They're supposed to police the greedy providers (your doctor, e.g.) who provide "unnecessary" treatment, and discourage patients (like you) who like to go to the doctor for fun, even when they don't need to. If the insurance companies can prevent enough "unnecessary" care from taking place, and restrict the costs for the rest, they should "save" enough to pay for themselves and the "cost of health care" should go down eventually, right? Then maybe it won't be necessary for them to raise your premiums twice a year any more.
The uncomfortable truth is that the mandate that everyone buy health insurance is no guarantee that anyone can buy the coverage they need at a price they can afford, because there has been no agreement on what "basic health care" is, or how much it should cost. (Just in case somebody decides to tackle those issues in the future, though, the insurance companies have been jacking up their rates at a furious pace so as to have a little "wiggle room" for a "compromise" on rates.) And as for the idea that increased insurance company rigmarole will lower the cost of health care, just ask your doctor what percentage of his or her overhead already involves dealing with their crazy paperwork.
There's a good case to be made that the insurance industry is actually the cause of the spiraling cost of health services, as opposed to a cure. I'm undergoing some interaction with the health care system right now, and so I have a handy anecdote on point. My doctor recommended that I have an angiogram, which traditionally is a pretty gross, intrusive procedure with a significant risk of complications that I didn't want. But my doctor said that in my case he'd be able to get all the information he needed with a procedure called a "CT angiogram," which is a non-intrusive procedure designed to accomplish the same end, or at least enough of the same end for my doctor's purposes. He warned me, however, that my insurance wasn't likely to pay for the CT angiogram, allegedly because it is still "experimental," (it's not) but actually because the insurers are afraid that more people will get the test if it's not so gross and intrusive. I thought this was B.S., but it turned out to be true. The insurance company was willing to pay for a test that posed a far greater risk of complications for me, and was at least as expensive, but refused to pay for the non-intrusive test recommended by my doctor.
What did I do? Well, on my doctor's advice, I called the hospital and told them I wanted to pay for the test myself, and asked them for their best price. Turns out their best price was 20% of what they would have charged the insurer. I got my test, with a free life lesson thrown in.
Why does the hospital charge the insurance company more for the same work? Well, it isn't just greed, despite what the seven-figure-compensated CEO's of the health insurance companies might tell you. The price differential reflects the cost of paying a full-time staff of medical billers, etc. for hassling the insurance company's paperwork, and delays for six months to a year before payment would arrive by that route. The insurance company's objective in "adjusting" the bills is, of course, to shave enough off the bill to pay both its overhead for all the adjusters who are hassling with its own paperwork, plus the profit that allows it to pay seven-figure salaries to its top executives. Is it really the cost of health care that's going up, or just the cost of insurance?
Friday, February 1, 2013
The Demise of the Traditional Publishing Industry
I live with a "real" writer, and I read a lot, so I know that a lot of "real" writers are upset that these days just about anybody can pound on a keyboard and "publish" whatever comes out and then call themselves a "writer," or even a "novelist." There's been stuff on TV about child "novelists," too, and that really seems to set the "real" writers off. It seems to me that, in both instances, the "real" writers and "real" novelists are onto something. There is a lot of crap out there. Or out here, I guess, since this is on the Internet. And a "novel" written by a child is a lot like a "painting" by a chicken. A novelty, perhaps, but not a "novel."
"Real" writers, I am told, are people who have learned the "craft" of writing, and who also have some talent. "Real" fiction writers, for example, have learned the time-honored techniques of story-telling. "Real" novelists are writers who have learned the "craft" of writing a novel. Oh, and did I mention that a "real" writer should also have some talent? Well, they should. Especially if they aspire to write "literary fiction," which I guess is defined as anything that doesn't fit into a "genre" like "romance," or "western," or "crime," but may also include "well-written" books in those "genres."
Of course, it was always the case that anybody could simply call him or herself a "writer," just like anybody (in LA, at least) can call him or herself an "actor" or a "filmmaker." (The writers in LA, "real" and otherwise, are usually called "screenwriters," by the way.) But in the old days, a manuscript written by a non-writer would, even if eventually completed, wind up moldering away sitting on the top shelf of a coat closet or something after rejection by a publisher or two and never see the light of day. A not-novel "novel" couldn't harm anybody's sensibilities just sitting there in the closet, and how many people who'd created such a thing would have the cojones to call themselves "novelists" without throwing in a self-deprecating laugh?
However, times have changed. For one thing, everybody's attention span has gotten shorter, so "novels" don't have to be as long. It doesn't take quite as much determination anymore to come up with enough pages to call a manuscript a "novel." No more James Micheners. No more "Don Quixotes" or "Moby Dicks," either. Not only that, you don't really even have to write enough to fill up your pages; you could simply cut and paste from other novels, like "re-mixing" other music instead of coming up with your own song. As a matter of fact, I believe they gave a Pulitzer prize a couple of years ago to some brilliant young "novelist" who did exactly that.
Most importantly, however, it's easy to get stuff "out there" now, which I've always assumed is one of the goals of putting ideas and stories into written form in the first place. The traditional publishers used to fulfill the function of gatekeepers, refusing to publish most of the true crap because they wanted to make money and believed, rationally enough, that nobody would want to buy something that wasn't reasonably interesting and well-written. Recent developments, viz., the enormous popularity of the "Twilight" series and the "Fifty Shades of Grey" trilogy, seem to have proved that the traditional publishers, now rapidly becoming defunct, were wrong. Apparently, people have either acquired a taste for crap, or are no longer capable of recognizing it. In any event, they are willing to spend money on it, and that's all that really counts when it comes to the bottom line, right?
The traditional gatekeepers have abandoned their posts, and they were being overrun in any event. The net effect of the collapse of our educational system and the explosion of new technology is that writing of all kinds, and fiction in particular, no longer needs to be well-written or interesting in order to be published.
Anybody can blog about anything, just like I'm doing right now, and presto! You're "out there." Of course, for the most part, what's "published" on the Internet is raw and unedited and often incoherent, but that happens when you publish a "novel" through the starvling remnants of the "traditional" publishing houses, too. "Real" New York publishers these days push things into print with little or no editing. Pick up a copy of "Fifty Shades of Grey" if you don't believe me. An oft-published "real" writer, a friend of the "real" writer that I live with, recently complained that she had a manuscript rejected on the ground that "it needs editing." In an atmosphere like this, the child novelist is an inevitability. Come to think of it, even actors and celebrities don't really need to bother with ghost writers anymore when its time for their obligatory "book." They can just have a staff member compile their "tweets" or something and somebody will publish them. Or, alternatively, they can write a "novel" on their phone between takes on the film set, which the literary lioness Molly Ringwald really truly did.
Come on! If a publisher won't edit manuscripts, what exactly is the value they add to the creative process? Oh, you say, they will promote the book and get it into bookstores, of course. Really? There aren't that many bookstores around anymore, have you noticed? And just ask any "mid-list" author about what kind of Herculean efforts his publisher put into promoting his or her last book. So what's the value added by getting involved with the traditional publishing dinosaurs? I think that's something that the ghosts haunting the halls of the offices of the five remaining major New York publishing companies will still be asking themselves when they, too, melt into history.
There is a glimmer of hope, though. Of necessity, many smaller publishers have cropped up to fill the void left by the big publishers' abandonment of "literary fiction" in favor of cookbooks and self-help books written by celebrities. You might even find an editor or two out there.
"Real" writers, I am told, are people who have learned the "craft" of writing, and who also have some talent. "Real" fiction writers, for example, have learned the time-honored techniques of story-telling. "Real" novelists are writers who have learned the "craft" of writing a novel. Oh, and did I mention that a "real" writer should also have some talent? Well, they should. Especially if they aspire to write "literary fiction," which I guess is defined as anything that doesn't fit into a "genre" like "romance," or "western," or "crime," but may also include "well-written" books in those "genres."
Of course, it was always the case that anybody could simply call him or herself a "writer," just like anybody (in LA, at least) can call him or herself an "actor" or a "filmmaker." (The writers in LA, "real" and otherwise, are usually called "screenwriters," by the way.) But in the old days, a manuscript written by a non-writer would, even if eventually completed, wind up moldering away sitting on the top shelf of a coat closet or something after rejection by a publisher or two and never see the light of day. A not-novel "novel" couldn't harm anybody's sensibilities just sitting there in the closet, and how many people who'd created such a thing would have the cojones to call themselves "novelists" without throwing in a self-deprecating laugh?
However, times have changed. For one thing, everybody's attention span has gotten shorter, so "novels" don't have to be as long. It doesn't take quite as much determination anymore to come up with enough pages to call a manuscript a "novel." No more James Micheners. No more "Don Quixotes" or "Moby Dicks," either. Not only that, you don't really even have to write enough to fill up your pages; you could simply cut and paste from other novels, like "re-mixing" other music instead of coming up with your own song. As a matter of fact, I believe they gave a Pulitzer prize a couple of years ago to some brilliant young "novelist" who did exactly that.
Most importantly, however, it's easy to get stuff "out there" now, which I've always assumed is one of the goals of putting ideas and stories into written form in the first place. The traditional publishers used to fulfill the function of gatekeepers, refusing to publish most of the true crap because they wanted to make money and believed, rationally enough, that nobody would want to buy something that wasn't reasonably interesting and well-written. Recent developments, viz., the enormous popularity of the "Twilight" series and the "Fifty Shades of Grey" trilogy, seem to have proved that the traditional publishers, now rapidly becoming defunct, were wrong. Apparently, people have either acquired a taste for crap, or are no longer capable of recognizing it. In any event, they are willing to spend money on it, and that's all that really counts when it comes to the bottom line, right?
The traditional gatekeepers have abandoned their posts, and they were being overrun in any event. The net effect of the collapse of our educational system and the explosion of new technology is that writing of all kinds, and fiction in particular, no longer needs to be well-written or interesting in order to be published.
Anybody can blog about anything, just like I'm doing right now, and presto! You're "out there." Of course, for the most part, what's "published" on the Internet is raw and unedited and often incoherent, but that happens when you publish a "novel" through the starvling remnants of the "traditional" publishing houses, too. "Real" New York publishers these days push things into print with little or no editing. Pick up a copy of "Fifty Shades of Grey" if you don't believe me. An oft-published "real" writer, a friend of the "real" writer that I live with, recently complained that she had a manuscript rejected on the ground that "it needs editing." In an atmosphere like this, the child novelist is an inevitability. Come to think of it, even actors and celebrities don't really need to bother with ghost writers anymore when its time for their obligatory "book." They can just have a staff member compile their "tweets" or something and somebody will publish them. Or, alternatively, they can write a "novel" on their phone between takes on the film set, which the literary lioness Molly Ringwald really truly did.
Come on! If a publisher won't edit manuscripts, what exactly is the value they add to the creative process? Oh, you say, they will promote the book and get it into bookstores, of course. Really? There aren't that many bookstores around anymore, have you noticed? And just ask any "mid-list" author about what kind of Herculean efforts his publisher put into promoting his or her last book. So what's the value added by getting involved with the traditional publishing dinosaurs? I think that's something that the ghosts haunting the halls of the offices of the five remaining major New York publishing companies will still be asking themselves when they, too, melt into history.
There is a glimmer of hope, though. Of necessity, many smaller publishers have cropped up to fill the void left by the big publishers' abandonment of "literary fiction" in favor of cookbooks and self-help books written by celebrities. You might even find an editor or two out there.
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