Monday, December 14, 2009

back to basics....

Recently I wrote the following to my sister... but it may be of more general interest...

Dear Sister,

I just want to stress that I didn’t agree when you suggested the problems we face as a family are universal ones.

It is not true to say that it is the same everywhere. The problem is not only the inevitable fact of aging. To be sure, getting old is a problem everywhere, but the problem is made worse by the social and political system in the United States.

Aging is a universal problem, but our shitty system of public transport, and the correlated system of suburbanization, together with the awful profit-driven system of medical care all combine to exacerbate the problem. What all of those elements have in common is that they were designed to serve the interests of a small minority of our population.

An additional factor is cultural: America’s extreme individualistic ethos combined with Puritanism (or Calvinism) creates shame among the poor and intolerance towards them. We, as a society, specialize in blaming the victims. “Socialism” is not universally regarded as a dirty word. And many people (rightly in my opinion) regard America as a country with anti-social values. But let’s focus on public transport and health care.

Other countries have much better public transport and a system of medical care that is not profit-driven..

These two problems are instances of a more general problem in the United States. And if it exists elsewhere, that is largely because the US in the form of the WTO has been aggressively insisting that other countries behave like the US. Every time the United Nations ranks countries according to the quality of life, the USA ranks near the bottom among developed countries—below European countries.

I am not saying that there are no problems in Europe.

Slovaks and Austrians are racists. Austrians are suspicious of so-called “Eastern Europeans” and Turks. And Slovaks are suspicious of the Roma minority.

But Slovakia provides generous support to mothers and I have experienced the Slovak medical system, and I have seen with my own eyes that there is less bureaucracy when you go to the doctor in Slovakia than there is in the USA. Whenever I have gone with Mom and Dad to the doctor’s office, they have had to fill out detailed forms. (And these are not doctors who they are visiting for the first time!) I never had to do that in Slovakia. I had a small plastic card, and I just gave it to them. No forms. No hassle.

And, what’s more, I have been told that it is the same in Mexico. When you go to the doctor you give them your health card and you don’t have to fill out forms.

So, it is important to understand that it is not the same everywhere.

In many respects, things are worse in the United States—not because God or the laws of physics or economics or psychology make it that way. It is worse because certain groups in America (a genuine ruling class) have managed to control the economy and politics so that it benefits them first, so that they retain superior access to resources. The system they have created is neither just nor logical nor an inevitable product of the laws of nature. The current system was created by self-interested individuals who wished to retain their unjustly acquired privileges. And so it continues.

And if you say or think, “It’s the same everywhere”, what you are really saying is that no one is responsible. You are, in effect, justifying and trivializing the crimes of the ruling class. You are letting them off the hook for the mess they have made in pursuit of their own self-interest.

Yes, aging is a problem everywhere; but the social and political institutions which people create can either make that problem worse or they can ameliorate it.

Change begins when you say that a piece of shit smells. Something important happens when you say that the emperor has no clothes.

And the inefficient system of public transport and the system of medical care we have in this country are both enormous pieces of shit that reek of privilege and class.

I am not picking on you. Some things are too important to sweep under the carpet.

Love,
Your Brother


PS
You may be skeptical of my term “ruing class”. If so, I would suggest that when you get online, you take a look at the following:

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/

This is the homepage of a sociologist, G. William Domhoff (at the University of California at Santa Cruz) who has been studying the class structure of the United States.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

so-called radicalization

Of course the propaganda machine is so powerful and ominpresent that it can be difficult to breathe,

not to mention say what one means...

But let us take as an example recent talk of "radicalization"

At my local coffee shop, while waiting for coffee, I commented on what was then displayed on CNN

"And what made Obama become radical? Now there's a question."

If we use words as they are defined in, say a dictionary, then the idea that you can attack any country you
want to further your ends is a very radical idea. It is, that is to say, a very extreme idea.

It is extreme to use violence when it is not in self-defense, but only to pursue self-interest.

(Strictly speaking, you could argue with me that American imperialism is the status quo, and any attempt
to oppose it would be, by definition, "radical". In that case the question becomes whether being radical
isn't a good thing. I think that in the current terms of debate being radical is presupposed to be bad.)



However, if we use the word "radical" and "radicalize" as it is currently used in discussion on CNN and
other sources of propaganda, that elementary point won't be made.

The United States has no justification for occupying Afghanistan. But the opponents of that occupation are
dubbed "radical" and "radicalized".

So words can mean what you want them to. If you oppose the wishes of the empire, you are a "radical".

I don't believe, however, that my audience at the local coffee shop understood what I was saying.

They live in a peculiarly American dream-world where listening is short-circuited by dismissal.
My words must have seemed to them to be mere "cynicism" or faux cleverness....

(Is such short circuiting really peculiarly American? Well, I think on the topic of war and peace it is.
My friends outside the United States seem to have clearer views about the reality of war.
The sensitivity I refer to is usually recognized in official declarations and it is trivialized and/or
criticized. We hear about Europe's pacifism, described as something regrettable, indicating a
failure to be realistic. This was present in Obama's recent Nobel speech.)


the propaganda machine is powerful

freedom? what freedom?/Shitty Sun Metro

was in the drug store, and I realized there was a so-called security camera recording my every move as I paid.

Now that is a violation of my freedom. They are actually watching me -- just in case.

You cannot monitor people just in case. That is intrusive.

then I realized there is another camera on the bus! --just in case.

when did it happen that all public spaces are monitored? And who is doing this monitoring?

there is no such thing as the right to photograph or film anyone you right any time you like.

It is like suspecting people of crime before any crime has been committed.

We are all under permanent observation, permanent suspicion.

This is NOT freedom.

turning to another nasty subject.. sun metro...

sun metro is not FUN metro!! It is pain in the ass Metro!!

the number 15 bus must have
been about fifteen minutes late (or more) coming to university and mesa
around 4:20 or so....and...
this caused me a lot of problems and actually set up a chain of events leading me to unknowingly spill
coffee all over two books

that is the price you pay when you use shitty (or, more politely) mediocre public transport.

I was late getting to where I had to be, and this caused me to rush, and inadvertently spill a cup of
coffee over two new books. A very irritating event. Thanks to Sun Metro...

I hasten to add that the first bus I took today was very crowded. standing room only.

the second bus likewise was crowded to the breaking point.

If you want people to use public transport, it has got to be more convenient. Waiting fifteen or twenty minutes for
a bus is too long! and then being crowded with other people in that inhumane way is not acceptable.
No one will voluntarily use public transport when it is so UNPLEASANT

SUN METRO has it all wrong in Many ways.

Instead of facing up to the climate criminality of the average citizen (Do you really need to use your car?
Do you need to use it as often as you use it?), SUN METRO has an ad campaign that appeals to self-interest.

Sun Metro does not appeal to our desire to help others (Help reduce global warming. Use your car less. Use
public transport)
They do not use that motivation. Instead like good unthinking capitalists they appeal to selfishness:
save your money!

That shows something about local culture. Selfish individualism.

A while back someone at Sun Metro actually wrote me an email with words to the effect:

with the new improvements Sun Metro will be almost "perfect"

NO NOT almost perfect
Nothing like perfect
MEDIOCRE at best

The new improvements (so called; really very minor changes ) affected lines that i never use!

but that cheerful insincere language is an indication of a certain American marketing mentality mindset

something which seems invisible to most people I talk with

and oddly, while it contributes absolutely nothing to their well-being (just as attacking countries which
have not attacked us does not add to national security) the people I talk to seem quite defensive about
defending marketing and advertising.

defending bullshit

that too is a sort of culture

Or, more strictly put, a lack of culture, a sort of degraded conformist value....

Like the people I've met in the coffee shot near UTEP who don't want to hear that CNN has propaganda.

Well propaganda is not exactly the same as lying. It means using the truth for certain ends. Selectively presenting
some truths and not others.

You have to have enough truth to make it plausible. And then there's the way the conversations are framed so that
some questions just don't get asked.

All manipulation in favor of the classes who profit from war.

No it is not a "conspiracy" theory, although the USA has certainly conspired with other countries such as Great Britain
to continue climate crimes. (I am referring to the secret agreement reached in Copenhagen at the climate summit)...

What I'm talking about is class warfare. Property versus labor. The owner of the drug store versus the customers.

I have often wondered whether the use of whistles by SUn METRO at the famous downtown changing center
doesn't indicate a certain fascist mind set... but I will save that topic for another day...

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Monday, December 7, 2009

1. Drive Unfriendly 2. Sun Metro safe?

1. I believe that the official motto for drivers in Texas is "drive friendly"

In my experience, the actual behavior, from a pedestrian standpoint is the exact opposite. Drivers are AGGRESSIVE and UNFRIENDLY.

Last week I tried to cross Executive Blvd just off North Mesa. I had a walk light. The cars refused to stop.
They were turning right at the light, and they just kept coming--even though I waved my arms and shouted.

I repeat: There was a walk light. (In previous posts I have pointed out that the wise traffic engineers allow pedestrians
very very little time during which to cross El Paso's wide boulevards....)

I will say that again:

I was standing on the corner. There was a light giving me permission to walk. I could not step off the curb
safely because the cars were speeding by, refusing to stop.

In my experience, that is typical of the way people are in this city--at least when they are in their cars,
their cars which are destroying the environment, and which contributed to climate changes which,
according to conservative estimates were responsible for the death of between 300,000 and 400, 000 people last year....

2. Rumors about "Sun MEtro"

this afternoon as I waited for the 42 bus to take me downtown, I noticed six or eight or more men (and maybe
one woman) dressed in a "professional" manner with shirts and ties and clipboards and such paraphernalia.

I believe they did not travel by bus, though I cannot be sure. I noticed one group of four or six men
coming from the parking lot. I didn't actually see them get out of a car or van, but I didn't see them get
out of a bus either.

It would appear they were there because they are planning to build a new building in the Northgate shopping center
to replace the current changing center.

this seems to me a bad strategy. We don't need a better changing center. We (passengers/bus riders) need to
spend less time in the buses, and (above all) less time waiting for buses.

The whole idea of making better changing centers seems bad logic. It is like the idea that the purpose of airplanes
is to bring people to high-priced shopping malls in the airports...

Incidentally, I don't mind mentioning that the downtown changing center features unhealthy food.

(And a television, which I for one, could happily live without....)

Why spend money on changing centers? Is this a transportation system? Wouldn't it be better to improve
transportation? Better to have fewer time gaps between buses. The current building is fine. I don't want to spend
my life in those changing centers!

It seems to me that Sun Metro and the City of El paso have their priorities wrong.

LEss waiting time is the goal.

More buses and more drivers.

In fact, given the facts about global warming and our (USA) propensity for over-consumption, I think they should
replace the freeways with a metro system--trains, a train or elevated train or underground train, but not buses!

BECAUSE BUSES ARE JUST TOO SLOW!!!!
too pokey
and less comfortable than trains.


3. Gossip

I hear the city is planning to get rid of the experienced bus mechanics....

That would make the buses less safe.

WARNING NOTE (added November 2010) THIS IS GOSSIP; you should not believe it because you read it here.
The reasonable thing to do is to check it out at a reliable source. I was told this by someone who works for Sun Metro. that does not mean it is true. However, we do know that the policy of getting rid of more experienced, and better qualified, more competent workers is nothing new. It would not be surprising if it were happening in El Paso Texas. That does not, however, prove that it is happening. Use your mind. Don't believe everything you read.
((ThIs post should be a rough draft; I hope to return to it and beautify/clean up the prose....)

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

apology to Slovakia; Shitty El Paso

when I lived in Bratislava I noticed that when glass was broken (because a window had been smashed
probably by drunks or some idiotic street level billboard had been broken) the glass lay around
for months, and no one cleaned it up..

I complained about this to my students, and they were very unhappy with me.

Now I've noticed something similar in El Paso Texas
On McCombs, a busy street near my residence, someone broke glass (it looks like glass from a car windshield)
and it has just been laying there in the street and on the sidewalk for weeks. I guess that slowly the wind
and rain will remove it, but so far no person has cared to do anything...

And then there is a bench with advertising at one bus stop.... A bus stop with no shelter from wind, rain,
or sun.....

And someone allowed a large animal to leave its waste products there... a large piece of shit...
and it smells very bad, very bad...making it impossible to comfortably sit on the bench..

and it's been there for more than two weeks.... Perhaps the rain today may have washed it away,
but no human being would bother to clean up the shit.

So the citizens of El Paso are no more public spirited (when it comes to shit and broken glass) than are
the citizens of Bratislava or Mean Wien....

Not the world itself, but the people who live in the world make this life hell on earth.

miserable El Paso

Sun Metro? The bus service won some sort of award from some organization in Texas.

If this is the best TExas can do, then Texas is in a very bad situation vis a vis public services.

I rate Sun Metro as mediocre, at best.... definitely far behind Bratislava.

And on the English home page of Bratislava metro, they mention that most European visitors complain about
the public transport in Bratislava...

America... a miserable country where so many people are, simply put, climate criminals...

Today I spent more than an hour waiting in the freezing rain and the wind,
because the City of El Paso does not think it is important to have bus shelters..

And, then again, buses are infrequent....

What an ugly city this is!

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

get me out of here

what a miserable country
just saw a photo of a typical street scene in wien

how could usa citizens have any concept of public good when there are no public spaces?

what a horrible way to live

this is neither pleasant nor comfortable

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Nothing in particular

EO Wright does make a brief mention of the inefficient and wasteful transportation system of the USA.

my daily experience resounds with his scholarly detached observation. I do not apologize for that property which others refer to as my emotionalism.

The memory of Karlskirche... the crowded U-bahn..... Turkish mothers with their strollers....
chance conversations in a language I don't recognize.... or even Slovak or Czech....
There is nothing in this sun drenched city to compare to that...

Or is it that I don't know Spanish?

I don't like the streets of El Paso....the mean, truck-filled streets....dogs barking at me in the suburban neighborhoods,
sometimes they are silly
like the four tiny chihuaha rat dogs that pipe their silly voices at me just before I cross the too wide street
or the more vicious sounding large dogs that bound at me and seem determined to jump over the fence which
protects me from them

insanity
whence the desire to have a small bit of turf and fill it with a shit-generating animal?

the unpleasantness of this city
crossing a street, a too-wide street, made unpleasant by the cruel sun
and the anxious knowledge that some car or enormous truck wants to turn left at the light
and I am impeding their progress

In truth I knew that unpleasantness equally in Wien as well
when I went for my daily teaching task to that horrific ungodlybuilding of the uniqa insurance firm
and it was no less unpleasant to perceive the impatient cars
though few of them were enormous trucks
and i did not experience the burning sensation caused by
a
merciless
sun

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Current Reading

been reading the draft of Eric Olin Wright's new book about the nature of the USA

very sad reading indeed.....

makes me wish I lived in Europe....

but Wright, in what I've read thus far, doesn't talk about the sexual puritanism....

which produces a miserable sort of hypocrisy about touching in public and other matters.

But I've only read a couple of chapters so far....

I did get the idea that the conditions he describes (lack of social guarantees, markets for jobs)
do lead to the rather intense individualism of the u.s.a

I think there's a sort of hypocrisy here as well. You can hear it when people say of someone who
is relevantly similar to them: "Well, what s/he did is just wrong! No excuses. They had freedom of choice."

As if to say: I wouldn't do that bad thing. They did it; so, end of story. No question of sympathy, compassion
or understanding why they did it.

If the two people (the one lacking sympathy and the "wrong-doer") are, in effect, competing, this lack
of sympathy makes more sense....

Although I also think the insistence (oh she protests too much!) that I am not like them is, actually,
suspicious--too dangerous to think that I might do what they have done....

I put "wrong-doer" in quotes because the USA criminalizes activities which other countries treat as
social problems (drug use, prostitution)...
I recently sent the below letter to a reporter at the El Paso Times in response to something he wrote:

Public transport is not and should not be treated as a mere curiosity.

The fact of global warming with the inevitable premature deaths, migrations and diseases should be at the forefront of your journalistic consciousness.

In this respect El Paso is a community which seems to be in denial. And the management of Sun Metro fail to understand the role they could play in achieving a more sustainable life style. Unless buses become truly convenient (as they currently are not) people will not voluntarily choose to forego using their cars.

I understand that you think your article says that bus riders are individuals—each with his or her own story to tell. But that is not the whole story about what you have written.
You both trivialize and exoticize the activity of riding the bus and the people who ride the bus.

Riding the bus is not fun. Even less fun is waiting for the bus. You should try taking the bus from Northeast El Paso to North Mesa—using lines 44,42, and 15. And you should add up the time you spend waiting for the next bus. I suspect your enthusiasm for overheard conversations would diminish.

The bus shelters—so called—rarely provide any shelter from the elements. There are truly scenic bus shelters on North Mesa which look good from a distance, but provide little shelter from wind, sun, or rain. Most bus shelters have as much in common with a shelter as a cardboard cut out tree on stage does with a real tree. If I took a cardboard tree to the bus stop, I’d get as much protection from the elements as I would with the typical bus shelter.

It was insightful that you noticed that Mexicans seem to accept the fate that others don’t so easily accept. This insight, however, could be developed. You stop short of recognizing the obscene injustice and inequality which is characteristic of our United States --as well as global political and economic structures.

You have, quite simply, missed the bigger picture.

I am sure it was not your intention, but nevertheless your article manages to lend support to the unspoken ideology which says that real people have cars.

Your article reinforces the image of the bus rider as an outsider, as an “other”, as not one of us, and consequently, less important—an object of curiosity but not an object of genuine respect—the kind of creature who deserves less time at intersections because real people have cars.

Perhaps you say that since most people have cars, it is only natural that they have more influence.

But there is nothing natural about it. Why is it that some cannot afford cars? Not because they are stupid and lazy, but because our political and economic system is cruel and insane. (That you or I are relatively comfortable is no counter-argument.)

If there were no global warming, I would condemn the use of the personal auto on cultural grounds. Cars are noisy and the foster a me-first mentality. Cars and trucks make El Paso an extremely ugly city. North Mesa, filled with glass and steel shining in the sunshine is one of the most inhuman (and inhumane) places on the face of the earth. Cars and trucks are noisy—whether or not they have loud stereos.

The City of El Paso adds insult to injury with poorly timed pedestrian crosswalks—which become obscenely unsympathetic when they count down (with flashing lights or some perverse artificial voice) the time remaining before the impatiently enormous trucks (brutal as no mere animal could be) race forward.

You have missed the bigger picture. Public transport does provide a public space that is less competitive than the space of the personal automobile. That’s why there are conversations for you to overhear.

And you are right to notice that this is an unusual phenomenon in El Paso, Texas. Unfortunately you have under-estimated the power and importance of your own insight.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Ugliness

It is difficult for me to describe the unpleasantness which is El Paso.

I would like to take a walk, to get out of the house, but where would i go?

I might walk along the sidewalks, sidewalks in front of small square suburban boxes. Most homes surrounded
by a fence or wall. many have three or four or five trucks--usually trucks, big trucks--parked in front.

dogs bark at me.

There are no trash cans. That is no public trash cans--indicating that walking is not desired or encouraged.

If I walk from my home to the Northgate bus transfer center, there are no public garbage cans along the way--a thirty minute walk.

I look at these houses when I walk to the bus stop, and I think: What is the point? To have your own little house with
your own little piece of grass?!

Sterile and anti-social. It's mine, mine, mine, all mine. No wonder these people continue their climate criminal
life style...
driving at the least whim...

driving large trucks here and there...

I prefer Vienna's crowded public transport--more frequent than El Paso's buses--to walking in the
blazing sun along the sidewalks as enormous trucks zoom by me in the obscenely large streets...

not civilization this
always a barren wilderness in the land of the free...

Friday, November 6, 2009

USA not advanced

I am about to walk to the nearest pharmacy to pick up medicine for my father.
IT is not easy for him to go out.

There's a bus every hour. I am too impatient to wait for it.

Even if I caught it immediately, I'd still have to wait for another bus to return.

Since I am impatient I will now waste 90 minutes or so walking.

This wouldn't happen in Bratislava or Wien.

It would be unthinkable.

Don't tell me the US is an "advanced" country. This is primitive.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

The myth of El Paso's "good" weather--El Paso Texas--city of Miserable weather and cars

My neck is burning from the sun. I am sure it looks like leather.
The bus stops here have no protection from the sun or the elements.
The joke is occasionally there is a bus stop, but it's more an aesthetic experience
than a shelter.

I am sure the local government doesn't think any protection is necessary for bus riders.

Of course they do have money to do desert scenery landscapes in the middle of the massive
roads they build here. Landscaping with rocks and stones and palm trees.

Not to mention the atrocious would-be sculpture in the new changing center
downtown... a sculpture of hideous unoriginality...... pointless in the extreme...
Instead of desert landscaping, why don't they expand bus services?

But it would seem that landscaping is very important to the local city
government..... More important than public transport.

One of the things I hate most is waiting for the bus on Mesa Avenue at 7pm as the aggressive
cars speed by at forty or fifty or more miles per hour, their headlights blinding me...
not pleasant....
not nice...
not civilized...

a wretched uncivilized place

I suspect that many are pleased by their enormous trucks and the mobility
it gives them,
ignoring the fact that people are dying from global warming...
a culture in denial...
technology does not make for civilization......


Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Blind Militarism El Paso Style

Last weekend there was an event in El paso Texas--sponsored by Toyota--
which involve (primarily) military war planes flying around.

It was very loud and disturbing in my neighborhood, so I posted a longer version of the
following message on the web site of the El Paso Times.

Apparently it was CENSORED because when I went to check it out today, Tuesday,
it wasn't there...

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Today should be, by rights, a quiet Saturday.

Instead my nerves were just destroyed by a jet passing overhead.

This is part of an event which is euphemistically called an “air show”.

This is not an air show but a show of military might, part of a broader propaganda program designed to convince ordinary people that wars are waged in their defense and for noble reasons.

The truth is that what we have here is a display of weapons of truly mass destruction. To say that airplanes are not weapons but merely the means by which weapons are “delivered” is a cowardly evasion. The delivery of bombs is not like the delivery of a letter from your sister or mother. It is the delivery of death, destruction, and suffering.

We should stop kidding ourselves. Technology is wonderful, but the uses to which technology is put are rarely as wonderful as the promises of marketing and advertising agencies and the politicians whose life styles are deeply entwined with those dubious businesses.

after-thought

The key point, as I think of it now, should be that

these machines are primarily used to kill civilians. That was true in Europe and Japan during World War Two.

It was probably so in Korea as well, and in Vietnam.

And then there is the case of Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and even Palestine.....




Saturday, October 3, 2009

El Paso Texas's Celebration of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Today should be, by rights, a quiet Saturday.

Instead my nerves were just destroyed by a jet passing overhead.

This is part of an event which is euphemistically called an “air show”.

This is not an air show but a show of military might, part of a broader propaganda program designed to convince ordinary people that wars are waged in their defense and for noble reasons, and that they are perfectly normal and routine business.

The truth is that what we have here is a festival of destruction--a celebration and display of weapons of truly mass destruction. To say that airplanes are not weapons but merely the means by which weapons are “delivered” would be a cowardly evasion. The delivery of bombs is not like the delivery of a letter from your sister or mother. It is the delivery of death, destruction, and suffering.

We should stop kidding ourselves. Technology is wonderful, but the uses to which technology is put are rarely as wonderful as the promises of marketing and advertising agencies or the politicians whose life styles are deeply entwined with those dubious businesses.

Friday, October 2, 2009

El Paso Texas: an isolated community?

Yesterday I took a new bus. that is I took a bus route which I'd never taken before.

When I boarded the bus I asked the driver, "Do you go (motioning with my hand)
as far as UTEP?"

My hand motion was intended to express what one would say with the words:
continuing along Mesa Street, the street we were then on...

I would have thought that my question was enough to indicate that I was unfamiliar
with the bus's route, if not the local geography.

Soon thereafter, the bus turned left, off Mesa Street, and I became apprehensive.

I requested a stop, and then decided I could continue, apologizing to the driver.

Then, about a minute or so later, I began to recognize the local streets,
and, seeing a stop coming up, I requested the bus to stop.

As I was leaving, the driver admonished me. I should have requested a
stop sooner--at least half a block in advance. I explained to him that I had
recently moved here, and didn't know the neighborhood. (How the hell
was I supposed to know where the bus stops are when I'd never been here
before? How could I know when one was half a block away? And, how can I recognize bus stops when most don't have any shelters and the signs indicating bus stops are curiously
similar to signs which don't indicate bus stops but only say "no parking"????)

But, he seemed to presuppose that I knew his route and the local geography,
advising me to signal him "half a block in advance."

Frankly, I don't even know how to count blocks in the neighborhood in
which the bus was traveling.

I don't know what landmarks to use. I'd never been down that street before.

The conclusion I drew from that experience is that people in El Paso, Texas
resemble the way people used to be in Bratislava, Slovakia: both assume
that everyone is from there, and that everyone knows certain things--
in El Paso: where the bus stops are, how to count blocks, what route
the bus is going.

For a newcomer or foreigner that can be maddening. Not everybody knows,
and, really, you have no right to assume that everyone does.

This seems to be characteristic of an isolated community, a village,
a stagnant backwater....

an afterthought: nonetheless, I have often found bus drivers to be helpful when
I tell them I am lost or don't know what to do. So, don't want to generalize too much
on the basis of this one example.


Saturday, September 26, 2009

Idiotic El Paso Texas

a golf course in the desert?

do you really need that?

I suppose it's for the generals fresh back from killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan?

a golf course in Scotland or England, that makes sense.

But in a desert?

irresponsible.

stupidity

Friday, September 25, 2009

El PasoTexas is NOT friendly...

I'm sorry, but today it happened just one time too many.

I have been stared at by bus drivers--who are usually friendly.

I have been stared at by people in cafes.

But it happened today again, twice.... in two different locations and that's too many.

A rude, direct, uninhibited stare, starting at my feet and moving up.

An aggressive, uncivilized stare, as if I were not a person.

My clothes are none of your business. If you don't like them, you can keep
your opinions to yourself....

And the clothes I'm wearing are exactly what I wore in Vienna, Austria,
and not much different from what I wore in Bratislava..

But I have never seen such rudeness and such primitive stares as I"m getting
in El Paso Texas.

What a village.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

meanderings...

as I think of my friends in Wien I would not want them to think
badly of me.... my unhappiness in Wien had more to do with my
wage slavery than anything my friends had said or done...

as I think of the gleaming metal and glass boxes on Mesa street in El Paso Texas,
the boxes moving swiftly, boxes which don't like to stop for pedestrians...

I ask myself: how can human beings accept this ugliness? such miserable
living conditions?

Do they really not see this nasty, inhuman environment for what it is?

Yes, I prefer a crowded U-bahn to waiting for the bus in the merciless sunshine,
watching the shining cars speed past.

You don't really see people in El Paso Texas. You see cars.

Unless you enter a shop, or a crowded bus....

And the streets are so wide--not on a human scale---that when you cross them,
and you hear the mechanical voice counting down ..... it adds insult to injury...

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

the insanity of the usa, el paso style

This is an insane country.
Nothing here is convenient.
Everything is far away.

I despise the air conditioning even more than the merciless sun.

Today I stood on Mesa Street waiting for a bus, smelling gasoline from the
nearby pumps.

to cross the street I had to listen to the obnoxious voice of a machine counting down the
time left for a pedestrian to cross....Nine....Eight....Seven...

How horrible!

How can people live like this? With no concern for anyone except themselves?

Buy cars. Buy new phones. Buy computers.

And just across the valley, on the other side of the ocean of traffic, lies Mexico.

Can you just ignore the poverty? Someone is born on the wrong side of the
border, and, so they will have half a life?

Just because of that arbitrary border?

How can someone look everyday at Mexico and not feel outrage or disgust?

Do they just think: I'm here. I'm okay. the hell with them?

And they all drive enormous trucks! Shiny enormous cars. Such arrogance.

I hate this city.

So ugly.

The noise of traffic is ugly.

the presumption of the numerous cars is maddening.

It is ugly, mindless, heartless......

not culture, but anti-culture

not a society in the true sense, but a wholly un- and anti-social way of being.

global warming? Let's just ignore it....

Friday, September 18, 2009

Chile's 9/11

Memories of what happened when the democratically elected government of Chile
was overthrown in a military coup supported by the United States...


From a film by John Pilger, link at "Z Net"


Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Horrible, Unpleasant El Paso, Texas

I would like to pop round to the local store to buy fresh fruit!

Think again! That's impossible in El Paso Texas.

To buy fruit I'd have to take one bus, and then transfer to another...
repeating the process to return home.

The entire process would take at least 1.5, maybe two hours.

Contrast that with Vienna or Bratislava.
In Bratislava there were five places I could buy fresh fruit or vegetables
after a five or ten minute walk..

In Vienna, there were five or six grocery stores in easy walking distance--
not more than ten minutes away, some closer...

Perhaps this may have something to do with the number of grotesquely
obese young people I see walking around.... like beached whales waddling...

Saturday, September 12, 2009

El Paso Texas not a nice place to be

due to the wholly inadequate public transport,
minor activities,
routine tasks,
become a pain in the ass,
inconvenient and excessively time-consuming:

e.g. going to the library, returning borrowed books:
requires at minimum one hour of time

as opposed to:
a quick 10 minute trip there and a ten minute trip back,
which would be possible if El Paso had street cars

buying printer paper or printer ink at Wal Mart
requires a transfer--so requires a minimum of 45 minutes
one way--90 minutes for a round-trip

There's no place within easy walking distance where I could buy
grocereries or printer ink, or paper for my printer....

Not convenient
Not nice
Not pleasant

Thursday, September 10, 2009

gmail

I've just read that

"Gmail is built on the idea that email can be more intuitive, efficient, and useful."


"And maybe even fun."
Fun?
Fun????

email is a g.d. pain in the ass
it will never replace face-to-face contact

ha ha ha
what universe do these people live in?

yeah, right, if I had a wad of money in the bank,
and all the time in the world,
maybe,
just maybe lots of things would be fun.

But not in the real world
It's a pathetic, condescending joke to say email or any gmail or xmail
or y mail or you-name-it mail is fun.

an insult to the English language.
fun?
my god. it's amazing how people start to believe their own propaganda...
Or maybe these people don't believe what they've written

either way it's bullshit.

Oh, and by the way, anyone interested could learn that the psychologist
Dacher Keltner generally doubts whether electronic contacts could
or should replace face-to-face.....

Sunday, August 30, 2009

El Paso's Inadequate Public Transport

I've not conducted a scientific survey, but, thus far no one I've met

--and I don't get out much--has been hostile to the idea of

improved public transport.

If the politicians in El Paso had courage and creativity, they would

think about putting in street cars and improving bus service.

I do not believe it costs more than personal automobiles. You can

get the conclusion that public transport doesn't pay if you ignore

the costs associated with the use of private automobiles:

the construction of environment destroying roads, road construction

which contributes to global warming and makes an anti-pedestrian

culture...as well as the problems of social isolation and road rage....

and the problem of road accidents and deaths due to alcohol consumption.

There are even parts of the US where you can use public transport to go

home after a night out....



Saturday, August 29, 2009

Poverty in El Paso Texas

The official way of counting poverty is flawed, as was conceded by its
designer many years ago.

Nevertheless, I was surprised to read the following:

" a quarter or more of all people living in Philadelphia, Buffalo, Milwaukee,
Long Beach, Atlanta, Newark,Miami, and El Paso [were poor]"

source, "The Failures of American Poverty measures", Stephen Pimpare, Journal of Sociology &
Social Welfare, March 2009.
Available at
http://web.me.com/stephenpimpare/webpage/Welcome.html

A quarter or more of the residents of El Paso Texas have incomes at or below
the official poverty level.

I do not see that prices are lower here than Vienna. I haven't noticed that food is cheaper.
Nor is it cheaper to rent a house. I've seen efficiency apartments advertised for 600US
dollars per month--more than I was paying for a similar apartment in Vienna.

Possibly it's cheaper to use the bus if you buy a monthly pass. But buses are much, much
less convenient than the public transport that's available in Vienna. Public transit in
Vienna runs through the night and is very easy to use.

I can only guess that no one lives alone and people live with their families or
have roommates...

Lack of Imagination in El Paso, Texas

as a follow-up to yesterday's post in which I complained
that the citizens and politicians in El Paso, Texas seem to be in
denial about global warming,

I note in passing that in today's Editorial Page of the El Paso Times
there is an editorial in which the newspaper approves of the attempt
to lure the auto industry to El Paso...

I would be curious to know how much of El Paso's economy relies upon
the Department of War (the correct name for the "Department of Defense")

There are better ways to build an economy....




Friday, August 28, 2009

Unfriendly, Unpleasant El Paso, Texas

It would appear that neither the good citizens nor the mayor of El Paso Texas
know that last year

BETWEEN 300,000 and 400,000 people died as a result of global warming

and that's a conservative estimate.

I just got back from walking to my local library. It's a thirty minute walk one way.

As I walk, large trucks and a few cars zooom by. At the light, I see a proud young
man with sunglasses, proud of his youth and his shiny car.

But I would like to say to him: owning a car is no achievement. The scientific
and technological
discoveries necessary to make a car were hard won, but you have nothing to do with them.

And I would like to remind him that when he uses his car he contributes to global
warming,
and people have already died, and more will die...

Then there's the unkempt situation of the sidewalks I use. Most have stones and
weeds. In one case the sidewalk is covered with dust and dirt.

Most houses have large stone walls around them. The sidewalks are public, so
the attitude seems to be: who cares?

Then I get to a stoplight. Before I can finish crossing four lanes, the light changes.
The driver opposite is considerate enough to wait for me to cross. I am not walking slowly,
but I would have to run in order to cross before the light will change.
Behind the patient driver, another car starts honking from impatience.

I would like to say to that driver: Am I supposed to fly across the street?
Why are you in such a hurry?

In El Paso Texas, pedestrians have no rights.
Cars don't like us.
The city does its best to discourage us.

Unfriendly, unpleasant El Paso, Texas.

See also my 18 August post for another story about unfriendly drivers.

Drive friendly? Ha Ha Ha. What a joke.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

El Paso, Texas

I've been surprised at how often people in grocery stores say
"excuse me" or some such thing.

It is as though there is an invisible fence around everyone which is
I guess about 3 feet away.  When they get within four feet, they say
"Sorry" or "Excuse me".

This seems strange to me.

I guess in ten years of living in Central Europe my experience was different....

This is consistent with research by the psycholinguist Aneta Pavlenko.

However, it is surprising to me, in a way.  Latin cultures touch more than
Anglo-Saxon....and most people in El Paso are Spanish-English bilinguals...

Thursday, August 20, 2009

les autres

"l'enfer, c'est les autres"

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

today

Today I went to Wal mart.

It was not pleasant.

I found myself wondering why stores in Europe are smaller, and
thinking about how just the size changes things...

and makes it less unpleasant to shop.....

not to mention:  a McDonalds at the entrance!!!!

but I did notice the Mcdonalds had free water with cups.

The unpleasant heat is a reality that even the worst business has to recognize
and deal with

And I do find the heat unpleasant, increasingly so.

But I have a theory that it would be better if there were no air conditioning,
and if houses were designed more intelligently.

I think the basic design of many houses was copied from houses located in
more temperate regions

I wonder if with a combination of proper ventilation and shade, the heat
could be tolerable without air conditioning...

As it is now, the constant change from freezing cold to burning  hot is very unpleasant.

Often I am glad to get out of the air conditioning.

Yes, I do not like El Paso Texas, and I am not enjoying my stay here.

I hope to leave soon...



Tuesday, August 18, 2009

angry and primitive

I am finding the USA to be a very unhappy country.

I note with sadness the absolute lack of grocery stores in El Paso.

Contrast that with the enormous number of purveyors of junk food.

Exercise for a sociologist:  what is the proportion of junk food shops to real food shops?
I predict that the higher the ratio of real grocery stores, the healthier the population.

Angry?

Yesterday I crossed five lanes of traffic to reach my bus stop.

Of course, I waited for a gap in the traffic.  I am not suicidal.

When I reached the bus stop, as a car sped past on the opposite side of
the street, the driver screamed at me at the top of his lungs:

"XXXX****!!! Get out of the f...ing street!"

By that time, I was out of the street; so his anger was directed at an activity
of mine which had terminated.

I had not interfered with his contributing to global warming.

So, why was he so angry?

It was very disturbing.

REally, between 300,000 and 400,000 people died last year as a result
of global warming.  I should be mad at him.

But it seems to me that people just don't care.

Anyway, it was unpleasant, and I never had such an experience in Europe.
Are Americans really so sick as to believe they have a right to drive cars?
And to drive cars fast?

Are pedestrians really people with less rights than global warming fans?

And the guy yelling at me, to judge by his accent, was another gringo....

The sort of thing that makes me eager to leave this country asap.

Monday, August 17, 2009

freedom my ass

el paso texas = barbarism

when you have no grocerystore within walking distance
when the nearest grocery store is two or so miles away

that is not civilization

that is b.s.

barbarism

land of the free my ass---land of capitalist exploitation and corruption

Sunday, August 16, 2009

out of fairness to Europeans...

I'll continue, at least for a while, to write from El Paso, Texas under the Wien heading,
since I have fresh memories of Europe....

Yesterday I had a long conversation with my older sister.

During the conversation it emerged that she is cynical in exactly the way my former
students in Vienna were...

And, out of fairness, it is important for me to acknowledge that.

Cynical in what way?

Cynical in the way that she doubts the motives of anyone with political opinions.

Cynical in the sense that she thinks it is pointless to be in any way or at any level
engaged in political activities.

But, the disturbing element for me is that she enjoys a level of comfort not enjoyed
by most of the world's inhabitants....

so for us, who are so comfortable, it is part of our comfort to do nothing.....

Am I better?  

Well, my sister seems to doubt the very foundation of democracy:   the ability of ordinary people to make wise moral decisions.

I admit this is a difficult question, but I am not convinced that ordinary people are incapable of making wise decisions.  Of course, if they have been manipulated by the media, then they are at a severe disadvantage.

Friday, August 14, 2009

writing from El Paso

the food in this country is a disaster

and it is not cheaper than Wien

bread?  unbelievable.  so called healthy bread: tasteless and as expensive as
good bread in Wien

tomatoes:  tasteless and not cheap

etc.

too many chemicals 

this is barbarism

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Civilisation Versus Barbarism

Now writing from El Paso, Texas...

It just occurs to me that all of the grocery stores in El Paso are surrounded by enormous parking lots.

If I, as a pedestrian, wanted to buy groceries, I would have to enter the large
parking lot, and cautiously navigate through parked cars and trucks
(mostly trucks and SUV's)  ...."cautiously" because there are cars and
trucks driving around....

By contrast, the grocery stores in Vienna are simply on the street, and are not
surrounded by enormous parking lots.

Which do I prefer?  You got it!  Vienna....

and I'm saying nothing about global warming and other harmful side-effects
of the automobile....

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

the stupidity and inhumanity of AT and T

today I got internet service through the company AT&T

In order to get this service I had to pay in advance, and endure numerous
phone calls where I was forced to listen to a computer generated voice with
an obnoxious sickeningly sweet tone of voice...

I also had to endure the idea that every conversation I had with an actual
living person was being recorded...

a violation of their and my rights...

and every one who spoke with me had to worry that they were being overheard...

and I don't like being asked to assess every one i talk to...

I do not like to perform their task of monitoring their employees.

It puts too much pressure on the employees.

Last of all, to get my service today,I had to endure numerous
idiotic questions in order to set up the account.
Ihave no childhood heroes.  and I have no hobbies.  What I do, I do
seriously.  And my childhood resists descriptions by such cliches
as 'childhood heroes".  When I am forced to employ such cliched 
mindless language, and to actually use it to describe my own life,
my personality is being robbed from me.

This is a perfect example of how capitalist corporations destroy
creativity and encourage uniformity and stupidity. 

All in all, it has been a thoroughly unpleasant experience.

An illustration of Chomsky's remark that corporations are nothing
more than
PRIVATE  TYRANNIES

Cao for Now....

I hope to come back, so let's not say goodbye; just, cao for now...


Dear Friends and Colleagues,

 

As I come to the end of my stay in Austria, I am filled with many ideas and suppressed longings.  It is hard for me to find words, but I feel I must say something.  Please forgive me for the inadequacy of my language.  I hope you will get some inkling of my true thoughts.

The last year has been difficult.  I have been living in a cold, noisy apartment.  It was not cheap.  My earnings have been so meager I have found it difficult to pay bills for basic necessities such as heat and health insurance.  Sometimes CEF forgot to pay me.  And, oddly enough, I got no apologies from the woman who likes to say that she is the boss, the person with ultimate responsibility for everything.  I did, however, get profuse apologies from an individual who seems to work very hard—and who doesn’t scream or shout or self-indulgently guffaw.

What I have I learned?  Am I better?

 

I have learned that hard work does not necessarily pay.  I have learned that one should

 

never move to a country trusting the good will of an employer.  One should always have

 

a contract. 

 

I have seen students who genuinely wanted to learn English, for a variety of

 

reasons.  Sometimes their reasons were confused, and sometimes the only reason

 

was that it was what the boss wanted, but I would not say that most of

 

my students have a slave’s mind-set.

 

On the contrary, it is not primarily the students I met who fail to understand what

 freedom is.  That failure rather belongs above all to the upper level managers at CEF 

and, indeed, those who run the other companies where my students are employed.  I say

that managers fail to  understand freedom (and the correlative notion of responsibility)

because they engage in excessive control of their employees.

           Excessive control suggests distrust, and a failure to respect the autonomy of workers.  And, I confess, I simply think we don’t need any bosses.  People are capable of that degree of self-control.  I can see what needs doing, and I can do it—without interference from above.  And if a manager is excessively on the look-out for “mistakes”, eager to point them out, that takes away an employee’s respect and diminishes everyone involved.  In fact, I would say it is petty and mean-spirited.  Someone of a psychoanalytic bent might say that it shows that the manager, sub-consciously recognizes that the situation is unfair, that the worker or teacher is being exploited, that the profits are not being shared fairly, and so the manager knows very well that the employee is being asked to do more than the company is owed.

            Two examples of what I mean by excessive control:  At CEF, the lady who calls herself my boss goes nuts every time I am late.  Actually, I have rarely been late.  But, she does not know that.  And, every time I am late, she gives me a little lecture as if I were thirteen years old and had never had a job in my life.

            Well, actually, now that I think about it, it seems like she lectured me twice on each individual occasion that she knew I was late. Every time I was late and she knew it, I had to endure a condescending lecture twice.   The last time was the most irksome, “Mark, I know you have a problem, but you are cutting into my profits!”.-- NO!! (-: o-: Ha! Ha! Ha! (-:  she didn’t really say that bit about profits, but it was just under the surface of what she did say.  The truth is that she did say that I had a problem—referring to the fact that my father was sick recently, and for that reason I felt obligated to return to the United States.  I also note in passing, that this one oblique reference to my father’s health condition is what passes for sympathy and human understanding at the Vienna Branch of the Institute Christian Ernst Fuchs.

            Is it possible that I am overly sensitive?  Perhaps the lady who would be called “boss” had only made a bad translation from German.  Perhaps her thought was indeed kind.  My response:  Not likely.  And, if somehow it was a sort of mistranslation, all the more reason to doubt the lady’s competence to be running an institution which represents itself to the world as a language school.  Competence in a second language is precisely measured by one’s ability to respect such niceties.  If Frau Boss can’t manage to speak polite English, then that tells you something about the Institute Christian Ernst Fuchs.

(And it’s not just me who doubts the lady’s sincerity.  As one student said to me after a conversation with Frau Boss:  She’s only pretending to be nice to me because she knows I work for a big company and she’s thinking about money.)

            But I have to add:  My experience in Central Europe in the past twelve years has been that people do not know what respect is.  My so-called boss at the so-called Institute Christian Ernst Fuchs cannot possibly treat me or anyone else at CEF with the respect I or they deserve because she herself probably does not know what respect is, and has probably never experienced it.  Respect comes from working together with people as equals, and is incompatible with constant paranoia about who is doing more or less work.  Respect means trust; and an obsessive concern with profits destroys trust.  (Here in my own words I have just endorsed the traditional leftist value of solidarity between human beings, the value of our common humanity.)

            A second example of excessive control:  at a large insurance company where I have taught, the students tell me that their performance is frequently monitored.  They must set goals and they must meet them.  They must make constant “improvement”—that is improvement measured by the Procrustean measure of benefits to the stockholders of the company—not the society at large.  Oddly enough, this mechanistic and anti-social mind-set was applied to the teaching of English.  After forty hours of English lessons, every student must prove progress by scoring higher on a test.  Even more oddly, the test they took was the very same multiple choice test that they took before they began their course.  (A university linguistics professor who I happen to know, a teacher with many years of experience teaching English as a Foreign Language has told me this is bad pedagogy:  You never give the same test twice.)  Of course the test itself is also degrading.  Intelligent educated adults who have genuine abilities in English are having their skills measured by the most reductive, idiotic, mechanistic of tests.  The idiocy and cruelty of that fact takes my breath away.  And the way in which we administered the test was also insulting and degrading for everyone involved—behaving as if the students would cheat if they were not observed! That fact alone is enough to show the extremely anti-cultural nature of CEF.

However, there is a second way in which the Austrians I know seem un-free, and here they illustrate a general phenomena of modern society pointed out by the Frankfurt School, so we shouldn’t think this is a uniquely Austrian problem.  (I have in mind Adorno’s classic essay on “leisure time”, and Fromm’s “Escape from Freedom”.)  The basic point is this:  if you spend your life doing a job that doesn’t bring you respect, you can’t get it back in your free time.  I’ve known students who delighted in their holidays, and no other subject interested them so much—except talking about how at work they were not treated with respect.  Most people in Austria seem to live for their generous holidays and the weekends.  Some of them collect cars or motorycles.  But such pursuits cannot win back your self-respect if you lose it during the work week.  (In truth my car-collector student seemed happy at work, but in my mind there still remains the question whether his leisure time activity isn’t deeply frivolous.)

            An error I did sometimes see among students was a tendency, not fully fulfilled in any student, but present as a threat for most of them, the tendency to identify one’s self totally with one’s company, and with the products one sells.  This too destroys the self and makes any notion of freedom trivial.  I told my students that they are learning English for themselves, not for their company, because once they know English they can use it for many purposes.  But if one only learns so-called Business English, one will not allow one’s self to be enriched by the potentialities of a different culture.

            Another error, presciently described by Fromm, is a love of disconnected facts, without any organizing theories or insights.  This is a deliberate artifact of so-called media outlets.  Whether it is done to make us mindless or done because journalists are themselves mindless does not matter.  The point is that people fear lively discussion and controversy. 

            In my students’ case, I sometimes witnessed a general dogmatism and fear of new ideas.  At any rate, that was my experience during my classes at a large insurance company where I tried to find interesting things to read and discuss.  To give this observation some perspective, it is also true that university students can be dogmatic, but with an older adult situated in the workplace, an older adult who has a degree (and especially a higher degree) there is a kind of confidence and creativity in finding ways to reject any new ideas.  (Indeed, there is as well a Cerebus for this Charybdis: Sometimes people are too receptive to new ideas.  I’ve seen that too—both in Vienna and elsewhere--but, oddly, it seems less prominent than dogmatism.)

When people have a degraded notion of education and its place in culture 

and when their very notion of a good life is equally degraded, then there is no chance that

they can use their powers for good.  Any good which such people may happen to create

can only be a matter of chance.  But to see education and knowledge merely as things

we can sell to a boss is to degrade them, and to degrade ourselves.  It means 

allowing our very selves to be defined by other people, people who have happened to

 have risen to the top of the heap—and heaven forbid that we should ask how they got

 there!

 

Last year I did have the good fortune to come across a German translation of Eric

 

Fromm’s classic work (which he wrote in English!!) “Escape from Freedom”.  I can only

 

recommend it to all of my friends and acquaintances.  (Erich Fromm, Die Furcht vor der

Freiheit.)  Fromm details many of the pathologies I have witnessed in Austria, and 

especially at the For-Profit Center which calls itself “Institut CEF”.

And I can also recommend Hannah Arendt’s classic work, “Eichmann in 

Jerusalem; A Report on the Banality of Evil”.  Both of these works were originally 

written (by German speakers!) in English; but there are German translations.

Arendt’s portrays Eichmann as a man who—above all—wanted success and 

social status—very much like many people we meet everyday.  Arendt’s portrait of 

Eichmann is equally a portrait of all those managers who value nothing like success, and 

are incapable of recognizing any other values.  (For those who don’t know or who have 

forgotten:  Eichmann arranged the transport of people to the Nazi death camps.  He was a 

manager and he played a key role in the Holocaust.  He was sentenced by a court in 

Jerusalem and he was hung from the neck until dead)

Indeed, what Eichmann said about Hitler is exactly the same level of 

sophistication as the ordinary person’s thinking about Bill Gates:  He must be important 

because he got to the top.  And who do I mean by “the ordinary person”?  My students in 

Austria and Slovakia have told me this.  And it would seem to be the implicit assumption 

of the American textbook manufacturers who actually include an essay by Bill Gates 

in textbooks which teach literature—an art form—to young people.   So deep is the 

universal moral degradation of our societies. 

(As one student remarked to me during a discussion about the Profit Center CEF: 

Some people get to the top by stepping over the corpse of their dead grandmother!!!) 

As I leave CEF, I find myself thinking of the other language schools I have known, and 

how they all, without exception, exploit their teachers, and all unthinkingly promote a 

hideous and barbaric ideology of profit and success. 

I am glad to be leaving CEF, although I cannot say I am glad to leave Austria or

Europe.  I regret that I did not learn German.  I regret that I could not learn more about

 Vienna and Austria. 

 

Farewell Friends!

Farewell Colleagues!

Farewell Managers!

Farewell Profit Center CEF!  I hope you get what you truly deserve!


 

APPENDIX:  Exploitation, Profit Centers, and the Value of Language Study

 

1.  Exploitation

 

I say that CEF exploits teachers.  That is a serious claim.  I will not

 

attempt to defend it at length here, though I think I could.  I will, however, give some

 

prima facie evidence. 

 

First of all, what is exploitation?  An example from my native country will serve to illustrate the idea.  Often in the inner cities, there are no normal grocery stores.  The only grocery stores you find in some city centers are very small and over-priced.  If you want to pay fair prices for groceries you have to travel to the suburbs.  And, in the United States, that means that you must have a car.  Poor people cannot afford cars, and so are forced to pay higher prices for groceries.  I think that is unfair.  It is taking advantage of the poor.

            If a teacher at CEF needs a paycheck to buy groceries and pay rent, then the teacher is in a position of inequality compared to the owner of CEF.  The owner of CEF can impose conditions upon teachers, and teachers simply must accept those conditions, not because they are fair, but because they need groceries and a place to live.  Consequently, they are in no position to argue.  (Some people reading this will say:  But you can always find another job.  Anyone who says that is, I think, living in a fantasy world.  The other jobs are usually equally exploitative.  The correct reaction to the situation is this one:  teachers need a union.)  And I want to stress:  The company CEF itself represents the resources of an individual who is not faced with such immediate existential demands; hence any bargaining between owner and worker  starts from a situation where the employee is disadvantaged.

            A further fact is relevant:  CEF does not provide teachers with sufficient work (a

 

sufficient number of teaching hours to provide a decent income.  They do not provide

 

enough money for a person to live on.  (In itself that fact needn’t be damning, but it is

once one adds the following:  when I was interviewed for the position the CEF

 

representative asked me not to take any other work.)  It is, finally, a very part-time job in

 

terms of pay and benefits,  but demands are made just as if it were a well-paid,

 

full-time job.  In my experience, there is nothing unique about CEF.  Like other private

 

language schools I have known—CEF aims chiefly at profits and only secondarily at

 

education, and fears nothing so much  as that teachers might strike out on their own and

 

give private lessons to students from the school. 

 

  1.  Profit Center or Educational Institute?  Is CEF really just a “profit center”?

 

Can I justify my claim that the main goal of CEF is profit?  Consider the following. 

 

Once in conversation, the head manager in Vienna admitted that the exams given to

 

students at a large private insurance company were not pedagogically sound—but the

 

insurance company required them.  Thus, we have a clear case where educational values

 

were sacrificed for the sake of profit.  She also said that if CEF had not agreed to this

 

demand, the students would not have had language courses.—But is that true?

 

Is it not equally probable that the client in question would simply have gone to

 

another language school, one which would sacrifice educational values for the sake of

 

profits?

 

On the contrary, the truth is that CEF would have lost this particular possibility of

 

earning money if CEF had placed higher priority on education as a value.  And, in

 

fact, the real result is that CEF lost its integrity—as I told the boss.  But she did not show

 

any sign of having understood what I said.

I have just described one case where profit overrules educational value. A second case where the profit motive triumphs is in the pay and benefits given to the teachers.  The actual policy of the school is inconsistent because professional performance is demanded but teachers are not rewarded with professional pay or benefits. True enough, here the profit motive does not win out over educational values, but wins out over justice or fairness; but in any case, that shows the true motivation of those who run the so-called “Institute” Christian Ernst Fuchs.

Why do Profit Centers fear their teachers?  (Irony:  the teachers really are teachers

 

but the place of employment is only in a degraded sense a school.)Why do Profit Centers

 

greedily guard their students from private lessons with teachers?  Why does the Big Boss

 

at CEF Vienna expend energy trying to convince me that she works hard?

 

Implicitly both the Profit Centers and the Big Boss recognize the possibility of the

 

following argument:  it’s not fair that teachers have so small a share of the profits.

 

And, incidentally, no matter how hard the Big Boss works, that does not prove that she

 

deserves to earn more than a teacher or a member of the secretarial/support staff.

 

Teachers and the other employees at CEF work hard too.  And, I would say (in

 

my humble opinion) advertising and marketing are much less respectable and honest

 

activities than teaching.  (For some further details about how advertising and marketing

 

exploit or take advantage of weaknesses of human psychology, one might consult The

 

Robot’s Rebellion by the psychologist Keith Stanovich.)

 

 3.  The Value of Language Study

 

But what is the value of studying languages anyway?  Is it valuable merely because someone will pay you to do it or because the boss wants you to do it?  I don’t take those answers seriously.  If Austrian companies desire to set up an economic empire in the post-socialist countries, that doesn’t make studying English good.  Many of my students are learning English because their companies want to expand.  There’s nothing intrinsically good about that.  It reeks of economic imperialism.  There is, however, a reason why the study of language is valuable.

            Confronted with unexpected grammatical structures or unusual sounds the student’s mind expands.   A teacher is forced to take, at least to some degree, a more external and less personal view on that most personal of creations:  his/her mother tongue.  The study of a language should be a humbling experience.  It should make us marvel at the gift of gab.

            In the soulless spirit of commercialism that infects the world today such thoughts are not likely to be appreciated.  But there is an implicit recognition of the value of education even amongst capitalist philistines.  Their confused appreciation of reality is evident when they invoke the idea of “professionalism” in an inconsistent and self-serving way.  Thus, the big boss at the Vienna Branch of the CEF Profit Center once remarked that a teacher should be fifteen minutes early for lessons because that’s professional.  But the same manager feels no need to provide teachers a guaranteed minimum monthly salary, or paid vacation days, or paid sick days—all of which are part of really professional jobs!  That is inconsistent because it means requiring professionalism from an employee when it is beneficial for the employer, but denying employees the status of a professional when it would require expenses for the employer.  Otherwise said, the employer demands professional performance but does not reward professional performance with a professional wage or professional benefits.  That is a double standard and it is unfair.  And, since employees need jobs, it is exploitation.

The situation, finally, comes to resemble one of Aesop’s fables, the fable of the turds and the lilies:

            One day a collection of cow turds rolled down hill into a stream, and found

            themselves surrounded by lilies.  As they floated downstream amongst the

            fragrant flowers, they cried out ”Oh!  Don’t we lillies smell sweet!”

So, too greedy managers may attempt to cloak their greed in the robes of education and culture.  But no sane person will be fooled.

Vienna, Wednesday, July 15, 2009; Latest revisions Friday, July 24, 2009

Notes:  1.  “Profit center” is a term I borrow from Ted Honderich.  2.  The idea that

Managers don’t have to indulge in excessive control is something I first found clearly formulated in a paper by the philosopher Daniel M. Hausman.  Other advocates of workplace democracy mention it as well.   When workers feel in control at the work place, they work harder, and are happier.  3.  In general, anyone who works as a teacher of what ever sort must constantly do battle against an archaic stereotype of teachers which portrays them as saints who do not need to eat or defecate, and holds them to impossibly high standards.  The archaic stereotype makes exploitation easier because no flesh-and-blood human being can satisfy it.  It also aids exploitation because the mythically efficient manager is implied to be all-knowing and wise about such crude things as money and profits, whereas the teacher is considered crass or impure if he or she dares so much as to raise a question about his or her salary or working conditions.  The stereotype implies that teachers are, by definition, not competent in such a region.  Plainly, the stereotype is not only false, but also a tool of oppression.

After-Thought on Institutions, Individuals, and Wage Slavery

In Plato’s “Symposium”, sometimes translated as “The Drinking Party”, Socrates describes the soul’s progress from loving one beautiful body, to loving many beautiful bodies (because one beautiful body is just as beautiful as another), to loving, souls,

and then laws and institutions and, finally something he calls “The Beautiful Itself”.

We must not forget that the Institute Christian Ernst Fuchs is one of many flawed institutions within our imperfect societies.  Most of us are forced to rent ourselves to more powerful and richer individuals such as Christian Ernst Fuchs in order to survive.  This system encourages and invites exploitation and the abuse of power.  Despite talk of democracy, our world is very feudal.  And recognizing our backward situation, I must respect every individual who is forced by our cruel and unjust system to tie themselves to masters such as Christian Ernst Fuchs.  But, I must also protest with all my energy and every nerve in my body that this system is a cruel and unjust one.  You can call it “capitalism” and that is part of the story.  Wealth is proxy for virtue, and often identified with it.  All very sick and hopeless.  As long as it continues we shall all be less for it—less free, less noble, and less intelligent and caring than we could be.

No gods!

No kings!

No masters!

No slaves!

No bosses!

No wage slavery!