Saturday, December 31, 2011

non-stop disgust

a: Dear Gringo, don't you really go to extremes?

b: Why not?

a: You just make it all worse.

b: No, it could be worse. If I forgot what life is really like, if I thought that this misery which I experience on a daily basis is all there is.....that would truly be evil and hell.

a: but you are making yourself unhappy.

b: No, I am reminding myself that I am unhappy, and will continue to be so as long as I live in this wretched place.

a: So you think everyone around you is unhappy?

b: More or less.

a: But why should you be different?

b: Because I have lived elsewhere and cannot forget it. Everything reminds me of the ugliness of this place. For example, suppose I wanted to go for a walk. Where could I go? I would walk upon sidewalks in front of suburban homes. I would be the only one on the street, as large trucks zoom by. It would not be surprising if people shouted at me from the windows of the zooming trucks. A police car might slow down to inspect me. All those things are what I have experienced.

I would, essentially, be a lone pedestrian in an environment not designed for pedestrians. And it would not be pleasant or relaxing. On the contrary, it would be a stressful experience.

By contrast, were I to leave my apartment in a Central European city, the minute I hit the street, there would be other people on the street---either walking with a definite destination or not. I would not stand out like a sore thumb. I would feel the anonymity of crowds not the isolation of an irresponsible culture...... large trucks would not zoom by, and no one would shout obscenities at me as they sped by in their enormous climate-destroying vehicle. I would not feel like a potential crime victim or an object of curiosity and suspicion.

Multiply that difference by 100 or 1,000 and you begin to comprehend the desperate misery of this place----on the most mundane and banal level. It is painful to imagine; but that is my life today.

etc
etc

GMOOH

Friday, December 30, 2011

you could not make it up

I often learn about news items I would otherwise not notice through Brian Leiter's "Leiter Reports". But today, he's got a link to an item you've got to see--a catalogue of insanity and sheer hubris courtesy of the Department of War and other familiar criminal organizations such as the IMF.....



Insanity and hubris are, apparently, infinite........

Monday, December 26, 2011

border madness

A friend whose family lives in Juarez, just across the border told me: He waited four hours last night at the border, coming back from visiting his family.

That is unnecessary.

The Berlin wall is down.
Slovaks can travel freely to Vienna.

But in North America, people are not free to travel........

I don't see any real progress here.

disgusting usa

There are those who would like to turn the Internet into a big sieve whereby funds are transferred from the workers, the poor and unemployed to the parasites with money and power.

I've just received an unwanted email message from a drug company because I've said in cyberspace that I care for my elderly parents.

This is not progress, but the opposite.....

sad U.S.A.

I just realized that Christmas fell on a weekend. That means that working citizens of the USA (an increasingly endangered species) got no benefit from the holiday.

That's terrible! There are already so few holidays in the USA......in Slovakia Christmas is a three-day holiday...

another reason to say: this isn't a very nice country. People here work too hard and get too little for it....

Sunday, December 25, 2011

in a moment of depression

Whenever I attempt to read a book of "moral philosophy" I become angry and depressed.
It is as if someone had decided that Beauty=Lace.
And, this person was the member of a club of lace-wearers---a quite exclusive club.
And they spent all their time comparing the different patterns in their very beautiful,
nay wholly beautiful lace.

The colorful reality in the background would blind them if they were not so very busy, busy, busy with their competitions......whose lace has the finest pattern?

Oh, so injudicious words!

Saturday, December 24, 2011

clever boys

Oh how cute.
The clever boys at apple --but it could just as easily have been microshit....
have put a default thingie
in my computer
so that
when the internet crashes
it takes me to the apple homepage
as if I needed to hear form them

in their Popish ways......

no thank you

what crap

what arrogance

The Pope Boys who will deliver just THE RIGHT MESSAGE
that I don't want to hear.

how boring

what they won't do with their high tech toys.....

those little boys......

some people just want to turn the internet into a place for online shopping
and nothing more....

I would say:
they should burn in hell
---if I believed in the place....

Friday, December 23, 2011

collective amnesia

Not so very long ago, before the occupation of Iraq, there were a series of embargoes.
And, during the first Iraq war (led by Papa Bush I seem to recall) water treatment plants were bombed,
among other war crimes.....And the UN estimated that as a result of the embargoes during the Clinton administration, 500,000 children had died.

(Actually, someone in the government of the USA had done an estimate of how many elderly people would die during the embargo, due to a shortage of things like bleach, things needed to keep the water supply clean.....So, you see, they knew exactly what they were doing......)

When asked about the claim that about 500,000 children had died, Madeline Albright said it was a price worth paying. --Of course, she did not pay it, did she?

And what did it accomplish? The stategy, often used by the USA, of trying to change a government by causing suffering to the population, is not right. It treats people as mere tools of ones wishes. You could say it uses violence (the death of innocents) to achieve political ends.

You could even say that by justifying and supporting this immoral policy, Albright had given aid and comfort to people who used violence to achieve political ends.

I heard recently that there is a new law in the USA which metes out harsh punishment for people who do that. (I am sure it will never be applied to Ms. Albright.)

Nonetheless, I say this because I saw her picture in the paper today. Apparently she was attending the funeral of a Central European playwright, former dissident, and head of state.

Someone recently pointed to the contrast between the absolute lack of punishment for the thieves of Wall Street --as compared to the police brutality directed at the ordinary young and old people who were publicly protesting those crimes. So, too Albright and people like her strut about in public as though they were members of a superior breed of person, and people seem to forget their crimes, the many innocent lives destroyed by them.

Something is rotten in Denmark.

And, yes the emperor really does have no clothes........not a stitch of decency, justice, or respect for humanity.....


Tuesday, December 20, 2011

a new low

I have recently expressed my amazement and disgust at the role that weapons play in North American fantasies about power. However, the link below is beyond my wildest nightmares. Apparently, two men put an ad on the internet, promising a paying job and a place to live. Then they took the "successful" candidates to a remote area where they murdered them.

The article (from the "Guardian") at the link below does a good job of placing this event into the context of the misery which is being experienced today in the USA.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Blocks

There is a basic lack of culture—a coarseness about life itself—in El Paso, Texas. It is something wholly unnecessary, but omnipresent, a feature of daily experience.

Some parts of this coarseness must extend beyond EL Paso, Texas, but I leave it to the reader to decide that.

Yesterday I waited for over three hours (with my elderly parents) in a doctor’s office. Now, as it turned out, there was a very good reason for our wait. The doctor had been called to the hospital for an emergency, and I was informed of this.

However, I want to contrast the casual and after-the-fact way in which I was, individually, informed of that cause for inconvenience with the routine operating methods of the public transport system in Vienna.

In Vienna, if a train or tram is delayed, there is an announcement apologizing. Usually it is a recorded announcement and regular riders of the metro have memorized the words of these announcements. People even repeat them and make a joke of them.

Nonetheless, the messages are polite and apologetic, even if formulaic.

Yesterday, the “office manager” casually, and as it were, as a footnote, mentioned to me that the physician had been delayed in the hospital. She told me as I was leaving.

She did not apologize.

And, as I think of it now, I don’t see why she could not have entered the waiting room (full of people) and made an announcement, an official apology, much along the lines of the U-bahn message in Vienna. It could have been done hours earlier.

Why was this not done?

I put the difference down to lack of culture, a fundamental coarseness in the way people deal with one another in the USA. (I don't think it is merely an El Paso or a Texas phenomenon.)

And here is another example---not exactly an example of coarseness in manners, but coarseness in thought--an example of limited or blocked thinking.

In a conversation with a pair of ex-soldiers in what was, it seems, a roomful of ex-soldiers, I was (metaphorically speaking) slapped in the face, shocked by the coarseness of thought among the citizens of the USA. I came up against a brick wall, a block in their thought processes.

I have heard dancers speak of a block—the physical sensation that something is stuck, much like the sort of thing that causes heart attacks, but they mean something temporary, that one can work through. The kind of block I am talking about—though dangerous and deadly—is a failure in thinking captured by the word “profit”. This sort of block seems permanent and fatal.

Overhearing a conversation about the presence of USA soldiers in Iraq, I mentioned that work such as cooking was being done by non-USA citizens, brought to Iraq by independent companies, who had contracts with the US Army (military). This was news to my conversational partners.

I managed to convey the thought that people from such countries as the Phillipines were being paid much less than a North American would receive. And that point was met with the quick reply, made with the force of self-evidence, that the companies in question needed to make a “profit”. (As if that were sufficient explanation or justification. As if it were something obvious.)

But what is a profit? The USA government pays money to the companies. They provide a small share of it to people from the third world who are performing real work such as cooking and cleaning. (And those people do not work under conditions which would be considered standard.)

Is that right? What makes it right? Why should a Phillipino receive less than a Texan?

In fact, though I did not inform my conversational partners, it is also true that among the mercenaries in Iraq there are soldiers from such countries as the former Yugoslavia—and they receive less money than North American mercenaries.

“The companies need to make a profit.”—They do? Why?

What is a profit? This is what a profit is: Someone who has more money than they need invests it in a company. They demand a “profit”. The profit comes from the activities of the company---activities performed by people who have less money than they need, or maybe only just as much as they need.

That situation stinks. It’s not right and can’t be justified. And that’s what “profits” are. The man who has more money than he needs demands that the person with little or no money perform activities which increase the wealth of the man who is already wealthy.

It’s not a law of nature. It’s not universal to all human cultures at all times and all places. And it is a filthy rotten thing, but something which that guy yesterday took for granted as if it were a fact of life.

And so these people move through the world as if they were blind, bumping into one another, hurting themselves and others, not knowing why. It is as if a straw doll somehow came to life, unable to see with its eyes, unable to move normally upon its weak and wobbly legs, and it struggled to move, bumping into things, falling again and again. That is the sort of thing which they call "living" in this country which has more weapons than any other......

Thursday, December 15, 2011

the birthday celebration that was...

Unknown to me, on the anniversary of my birth, Slavoj Žížek was in Prague on Vaclavske Namestie, speaking the truth....


(in English with simultaneous Czech translation)

I know it is a self-indulgent fantasy, but, seeing as I've had no birthday celebration for three years running (as I am friendless in the land of militarism and pseudo-freedom--or, coffee without milk sort of freedom-----) I like to imagine that my birthday was somehow connected to the yearly celebrations in what was once CSSR......

Sunday, December 11, 2011

U.S.A. not a Christian country (E. Flyn)

"Christian men don't make war on the wounded, or those who shelter them."
--Erroll Flynn, Captain Blood

The United States of Perversity

From time to time I go swimming at the local YMCA. One of the more peculiar institutions I have encountered there is called "Community Service".

Quite simply this is a form of punishment meted out to people for smoking pot.

The hypocrisy of USA laws is obvious. In the first place, the laws as written serve only a small number of people. (The corruption of the system is well-documented elsewhere. It is at the point that businesses literally write the laws to favor their interests.)

In the second place, punishing someone for smoking (or even selling) pot can't be compared to the injury caused by alcohol--a completely legal drug. (There is a puritanical campaign against those who drive drunk; but, frankly, as I have said before, alcohol ain't the problem. The problem is a lack of public transport.)

But, most ugly of all is the idea that some forms of work constitute punishment. As one man told me: his Community Service was, in effect, the requirement that he work for nothing. (Now, I must confess that I don't know the details here. Is he not paid at all? Or is he paid next-to-nothing?)

What hypocrisy! Who contributes to the society? Not the creators of advertising. Not politicians. Not bankers.....Who contributes? The guy who empties out the garbage does contribute. Without garbage collection, there would be no society. But those who are mere parasites---and here one could include corrupt judges---are not punished and mistreated.....

Here is work, something that genuinely helpful, and it is treated as though it were shameful! Apparently the manufacturer of weapons used to kill innocent civilians---as weapons always do---has more respect than someone who actually contributes something positive. The society has things upside down. There should be no shame associated with emptying out a garbage can. And there should be no shame associated with the desire to get "high" and forget one troubles. As one sociologists put it, the question to ask is why, in the first place, people want to get high?

But, to ask that question would require greater maturity and culture than is to be found in the world's most destructive empire.

The USA is a very strange place. (gmooh)

Saturday, December 10, 2011

bullshit in the U.S.A.

1. Albertson's

"Your gift card is now activated."

"Gift Card? Gift Card!! What fucking GIFT are you talking about? I PAID in order to get a few more minutes on my telephone!!!"

2. Wal Mart

Where you are guilty until proven innocent....... "You have activated Wal Mart's Inventory Control System..."

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Crimes of capitalism

the individually piloted vehicle of glass and steel is a crime of capitalism....

the other night, driving down "Sunland Park Drive" in El Paso, Texas, I had a very unpleasant experience.

Barreling along at 40mp or 35 or whatever the g.d. speed limit was, in the dark, with bright lights glaring unpleasantly...

The bus to my right could not stay in his lane, and the enormous truck to my left was also crowding me.

I did not have an accident, but very easily might have.

why the hell do I have to live like this? IT is totally unnecessary. Trams, trains, and buses are a well-developed technology. The bugs have been worked out.

In addition the designers of Sunland Park Drive must have sawdust for brains.....three lanes, then one disappears....then there are four lanes.....

This is pure bullshit.

GMOOH

noted in passing

If you read Marx (and I am no Marx scholar) he discusses the adulteration of bread in the 19th century. Bakers were throwing all sorts of stuff into the bread. Poor people could only afford to buy bread of very low nutritional value.

That's nasty and that's dirty.

However, the situation in the USA with ordinary teas seems to me, in some ways, worse.

Why worse? Granted teas are not especially nutritious--not a source of calories or minerals or vitamins. Yet, teas can have medicinal value.

Last night I had an upset stomach, and attempted to soothe it with chamomile and peppermint teas sold by USA companies.

The tea sold in this country is inferior to that available for sail in the Czech Republic or Slovakia. The tea in the USA is weaker.

However, USA tea features a pretty box with inspiring words and pictures......
The triumph of appearance over reality.

It sort of pisses me off. Instead of providing something of quality, they waste time with sophistry and illusion.....and I want to say: How typical of this country! (Indeed, young people go to school to learn the pseudo-science of illusion......aka "marketing"........)

GMOOH

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

The United States of Stupidity; El Paso Texas Version

Monday El Paso enjoyed snowfall--more than usual. (Though unusual weather is becoming more common, as is consistent with climate change/anthropogenic global warming.)

There were many automobile accidents.

This could have been avoided---if El Paso had pubic transit----reliable and regular trains, trams, and buses.

However, El Paso does not have a good transit system. There are only slow, pokey buses which run irregularly. To travel from one side of the town to the other is a nightmare. One must make several transfers, and there are ridiculous waiting times. (The buses themselves are cheap, low quality buses, I might add, thinking of the cold----cold air rushes into the bus through the central doors which do not close tightly, leaving a large gap through which cold air rushes into at least half of the bus.....)

If El Paso had a metro and trams (streetcars), many drivers would have chosen to use public transport. I know. I've seen it before in Bratislava. Whenever it rained hard, people chose not to drive and used public transport. I see no reason to think that the residents of El Paso, Texas would behave differently---if they had a choice....

In fact the weather was not so cold, not so bad. There was not enough snow to prevent trains and trams from running----if El Paso had a real metro system.....

My mother tells me that she has seen zero progress in the more than fifty years that she has lived in this city. I believe her.

El Paso, Texas is a miserable, unpleasant place---but such misery is not necessary, not an inevitable law of nature. Its source is the stupidity and arrogance of the rulers.

GMOOH!

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Occupy Everywhere

As I think about the fundamental rightness of the Occupy Movements, it is also relevant to consider that in Greece and Italy, elected government representatives have now been replaced by unelected representatives of foreign banks..... That ain't democratic.

Thanks to Costas Lapavitsas and The Real News for reminding me of this....




ugly El Paso

I used to enjoy the generous pedestrian spaces available in Europe. Nothing like that exists in El Paso, Texas. Everything is organized around climate destroying individually steered vehicles. In Vienna or Bratislava every grocery store does not have an enormous parking lot. (More accurately most don't; and only the monstrosities like "Tesco" built in Petrzalka do....) It makes a difference when a store is fronted directly onto the street, and need not be entered only after one has navigated through an enormous parking lot, in which one must (as an unarmed pedestrian) be in a state of constant vigilance lest one be squashed by an enormous truck.

But the buildings of El Paso are not designed with any thought about beauty. They are functional, and to judge by the house my parents own, most are not even particularly well-designed from a functional point of view. (Not to mention the numerous doctors' offices located in buildings without handicapped doors!--shameful!)--Of course, there are bank buildings--"monuments to their own magnificence"--apparently designed to be intimidating and proud, full of the false glory of the capitalist, but never really beautiful or pleasing to the eye. (Unlike, say, St. Stephen's in Vienna, or the "Blue Church" in Bratislava....)

Or consider the coffee shop nearest to my house, a place which supports aggression abroad. You can send coffee to the soldiers abroad. That coffee shop has a few tables outside. Sitting there you can see a hundred trucks, sitting in the parking lots which extend into the distance. Now that is really ugly!

Nonetheless, I am---by way of contrast---putting in a link to a recent entry by Keith Oatley at"On Fiction". Oatley is a good deal less dissatisfied with his life than I am with mine. The contrast might be of interest.


Note: correction made 3 February 2012

Sunday, December 4, 2011

the insanity of the U.S.A.

Regular readers of this blog know that I hate living in the USA.

One reason is that the food is very bad--low quality, not fresh.....

I just spent twenty minutes "cleaning" a bag of rice--well, actually, not the whole bag--more like a quarter of the bag, and I'm not yet through..... In any bag of brown rice, there are many green grains, occasionally the hard husk, and even (more rarely) stones. Also, there are sometimes black flects of I don't know what. It's a trivial thing, except that I like rice. In fact brown rice is nutritious. And to have a meal with rice I must spend between thirty and forty minutes cleaning the rice.

In Vienna/Wien when I lived there, I could purchase a bag of brown rice with no green grains,
no hard husks, and no stones. I spent no time cleaning the rice before I cooked it.

Or, there is the case of lettuce. In the local stores it is soaking wet---hence not fresh.
Stored in an extremely cold area, and then wet, it is not fresh. And it is not just the outer
layer that's wet. Somehow the moisture extends two or three layers deep. Wetting lettuce hastens its decline.

And then there's the case of broccoli. It's not fresh either.

When I think of these facts I just want to throw up or cry. I should be very angry. You should be angry too. Or, is it just that El Paso, Texas is a poor community? Do people really not know how bad the food is here?
GMOOH!!!

The U.S.A. is an insane society. People live badly here. And their bad way of living requires the misery of people elsewhere---e.g., the miserable conditions in Chinese factories which manufacture IPods and the stuff we buy in Wal Mart. ---Insane and immoral!

Note: Further Reading

You can learn more about the situation of the Chinese workers who produce IPads at a recent Monthly Review:


The important details occur in the section titled "Global Labor Arbitrage". The footnotes are also useful.

As with the abandoned shopping mall in my parents' neighborhood---whose buildings are now being demolished---it is not a question of some profit versus zero profit; it is a question of how much extra profit Apple (e.g.) makes by having their machines assembled in China. Apple would make a hefty profit even if its products were assembled in the USA. Local businesses would make a profit even if they were located within walking distance of my parents' home, but they can make a higher profit if they are located elsewhere. Considerations such as community simply don't count in the world of neo-Liberal values.

ugly things just get uglier

ugly things just get uglier
every day....

Why are these people, these "Americans" so unhappy and miserable?
Why is it so joyless to live among them?
Is it the false mercantile smiles?
Or the endless promise of intrusive phone calls?
The monotony of enormous vehicles?
--Or, merely, their mountains of ignorance about the world outside:
Their inability to imagine another world,
Their inability to imagine that people actually do live differently elsewhere,
and are more happy on account of it?

My catalogue is incomplete,
but serves to indicate the depth of my inability to face the ugly truth.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

remembering "The Quiet American"

The Grouch Reads; The Grouch fails to read...

Notes on my continuing failure to read Kahneman's new book....

The psychologist says: Look at this picture, and tell me which guy looks more competent.

Me: "Competent"???!!!!*** expletive deleted


Since when are politicians competent? "Competence" seems hardly adequate to describe the complex world of politicians---not only the corruption, but the social background of a society with massive injustice and inequality. To use the word "competent" is to ignore all that--i.e. most of reality, or most of the actual factors influencing the events.

"....I had been examining Pyle's innocent question: 'Are you playing straight?' It belonged to a psychological world of great simplicity, where you talked of Democracy and Honor without the u's as it's spelt on old tombstones, and you meant what your father meant by the words."
--"The Quiet American", 2.2

So, is it that psychologists live in a "psychological world of great simplicity"?----Or, is it that they, condescendingly, imagine their "subjects" do so?

after-thought
I have never been a fan of what one might call "mainstream" USA culture. Spending the better part of thirteen years out of the country has contributed to this, no doubt. But words like "assertive" are not words I use in propria persona, yet the research reported by Kahnemann requires individuals to do so (As in: Imagine x incidents/situations in which you were assertive...)
reply: well, there must be some terms you use to describe yourself! No, not really; there is something distinctly bizarre about the requirement that we self-describe ourselves as, e.g., "go getters", or "team players"---but from what I've read in K's book, it would appear that psychologists rather blindly (or naively) buy into such bizarreness.

My doubts also concern the actual meaning of "assertive". Do USA psychologists imagine it is a good thing, or what? To my ears, it is a word of pop psychology and prone to cliche---something to be avoided by serious thinkers...... unless, perhaps, it might be needed when speaking with the "vulgar"----but, if it's that latter possibility, there is some question in my mind about what this psychological research is really doing. Consider the following;

Can you imagine a situation in which some generic person (not any particular individual who you know) but just some non-specific person would say you were acting assertively?

Answer: No I cannot imagine a generic person. I can only imagine NN and MM, and they have different ideas about who I am and how I act.

Question: What about someone you don't know at all?

Answer: How the hell am I going to predict how someone I've never met before is going to react to what I say or do? Some people might actually think I am being assertive now because I am not simply playing by the rules you lay down, but questioning them, but that does not mean I am being "assertive". That does not justify the claim that such a single term is the best way to describe what I am doing.

Echoic uses are by their nature ironic. For me whenever I speak in this bizarre pop psychological language of "assertiveness" or that favorite term of school teachers "in-/appropriate [behavior]" I am dishonest.........Yet, most jobs I have had involved the requirement that one use such limited language. It is requirements like that which make most jobs a form of slavery or mental/spiritual prostitution.


Saturday, November 26, 2011

The Grouch FAILS TO Read a bit of Popularized Psychology

The Grouch tries to read......

Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman

Daniel Kahneman? (did he win the "real" Nobel Prize----or wasn't it the phony bank of Sweden's prize?--see note below)

I would very much like to get through Thinking, Fast and Slow, but thus far I haven't been able to.

I do believe, however, that I have identified two sources of irritation.
First, there is the style, the direct address of the reader---telling me what I will think.--That naked "you".....

Secondly, there is the language: Which of these two men do you think is a competent (or more competent) politician?--that sort of thing.....

Well, actually that does not compute. I don't talk about (or think about) politicians in that way at all. It is not part of my vocabulary to describe politicians as competent or not.

Moreover, given the corruption of every political system known to me, I don't think anyone should be eager or willing to do so.

So, the book strikes me as a rather smug thing....and I cannot bear to read it. It is not only that the author is telling me what I think, but he is also putting words in my mouth.

A further note about evaluating faces of politicians: We are supposed to decide which man is...well, I've forgotten which exact word was used: what is it "more trustworthy" or "more competent"----some such psychological predicate. But, once again, these are not words that I use in this manner.
So, I draw a blank. (I am too lazy to look at the original experiments/descriptions but this problem for me as a reader crops up on every other page. Perhaps, if I ever manage to read the book without puking I will be able to be more specific.)

In fact, the first time I came across this kind of research (about faces and quick character evaluations) I saw two men who were equally obnoxious looking (that in a book by Johnson-Laird).......So, when someone starts to tell me what I think and why I think it, well, I do get sort of annoyed. (I confess, if I stared at the faces for a long time, and thought about what they told me I was supposed to be seeing---but hey, wasn't it supposed to be 'fast' thinking?------then I sort of could see a difference, but not one that I would express with the words that the psychologists were telling me to use.)

I really would like to read this book someday because I do suspect there's a sort of error here in this popularization, and even if I am wrong about that, I could learn from Professor K. -----if I could manage to actually stop getting annoyed--- But I may have to restrict myself to more scholarly tomes to avoid throwing up.

Don't get me wrong. I think that the research which K. reports is important, although it tends to be summarized very briefly...... And the research which K. himself has done is also important. It's just this book! At this point I wish I hadn't purchased it.

NOTE
Brian Leiter has spoken of the "fake" Nobel Prize and he supplies this link:

Monday, November 21, 2011

some publications


Some of My Publications

“Advertising; The Uninvited Guest”: Think; Summer 2011, Volume 10, issue 28, pp. 53-66.

“The Difficulty of Understanding”, Think, Volume 10, issue 27, 2011, pp 57-69.

“Creating a Cultural Niche for the A-Social?; Or,Speculation about how cultural factors might defeat altruism.”
In Think: Philosophy for Everyone (The Royal Institute of Philosophy), Issue 17/18, Spring 2008, pp. 59-66.

The Contextual Nature of Cognition and Dancy’s Moral Particularism,SORITES, Issue 18, February 2007, pp.18-28,

“American Optimism Meets Slavic Fatalism: Reflections on Social Categories and Political Power”, The Journal of Mundane Behavior, 2.3, October 2001,
The above is not a direct link; you'll need to find the article through the "all issues" page.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Why I hate Albertson's

apples on sale
ha ha ha
they are not fresh
brownish yellow inside
bruised
taste like shit
not crisp


lettuce?
ha ha ha
all wet
not fresh

Hello! Twenty or thirty or more years ago, I heard that wetting fruits and vegetables does
not preserve them--on the contrary, It hastens their decline...

Oh yeah, I really hate Albertsons'.

They also have disgusting in-house radio: A lady with a disgustingly insincere pretend-friendly voice telling us all about how great Albetson's is.

Albertson's is a load of crap.

Message for InHome Care, Inc. and Medicare...

I don't pay rent. Since I don't pay rent, I should be prepared to hear a representative of Medicare make the following argument:

"Why should we give you someone to help your mother with housework? You don't pay rent! So, you should do it!."

Thus, you hear above the sort of wise words/thought (that's not an exact quote! but only the gist of it) supplied by a nurse from InHome Care Inc.

Yeah right! I've just come from the grocery store, where I bought the groceries my parents need. Then I started scrubbing the pieces of my mother's stove. Then I was interrupted because my eighty-six year old father had to "make a bowel movement". He is moaning, and he is groaning. He is whimpering like a baby. "It hurts," he says, from time to time.

And, it stinks. The whole house stinks.

And I've got to go round opening the windows. And when my father is done, I will help him stand up. I will remind him to wash his hands, and I will give him the salad I've just prepared.

This whole process takes from forty to fifty minutes----every day.

But, I don't pay rent. So, I must be a bad boy, not contributing to the wealth of the already wealthy and all that jazz.

Oh, no! That's what the nurse said. She was warning me about the people at Medicare, what they might say. In other words--what she did not say, but the message is clear---they will look around for excuses so my parents wont' get help....

In other words, my parents should regard me as a source of income----and I, presumably, should do a "cost-benefit" analysis of my relationship with them. (In which case, I would move out immediately, and find a job and an apartment of my own....)

The nonsense I hear in this country----out of the mouths of so-called professionals---makes me want to puke.

Oh yeah, I feel guilty because I actually haven't done any vacuuming for a month. --That's the sort of thing clever visiting nurses notice. But when my father is shitting, they ain't here, are they? When he's moaning and groaning, and my mother is struggling to help him. When the house smells like a cesspool, and I'm running around opening the windows, I hear the wise words of the so-called professional care-givers echoing in my ears...... since you don't pay rent you should do the housework....

What a clever insight into our situation. For that I needed a nurse to appear with a thirty minute warning, and to take three or more hours of my time.......(Of course, we shall be lucky if at the end of the process my mother and father each get physical therapy once a week.....)

how very generous is the USA system!!....... a genuinely don't-care system!

On "Venting"

the philosopher Robert Solomon has written about the inappropriateness of the image of emotions as hydraulic creatures.

That sort of thing comes out in the fondness which Americans (citizens of the USA) have for the expression "venting".

I do not like that expression.

I do not like it when someone tells me that I am "venting"---as if I were a mere machine which
needed to release pressure or explode.

This USA language ignores the genuine content of what I have to say when I am angry or upset.

I don't get angry without reason.

This seems to be connected with a sort of cultural taboo. Anger is forbidden. And, due to the class nature of the society, and the extreme injustice which colors ordinary lives, perhaps
people revert to this image in order to excuse a momentary grasp of the fact that the society is terribly unjust.

Perhaps. But there is no doubt in my mind that the words "you are just venting" are only an excuse, and an evasion, a way to avoid looking the truth in the eye.

Another misery in a miserable country.

"No", I am not "just venting". I am a moral creature, capable of thought and feeling, who is saying something about the world I live in, and how I have been treated. I am reacting to injustice and stupidity. That is not merely something mechanical. It is a reaction out of which is built something better than the morass in which you live.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

The Illness Which is the U.S.A.

InHome Care, Inc.

Yesterday a nurse employed by InHome Care, Inc. visited us.
She was collecting information in order to request help for my mother.

As I understand these things, she will send the information to the company--isn't it a "for profit" company?---and then they will send this to the USA government, or the division known as
"Medicare". (Is it a "for profit" or not? I do not know. However, I believe it doesn't really make a difference. Not for profits have CEO's with lavish salaries just as much as the for profits, and as there is a broader cultural surround----which I am about to describe----it really doesn't make much of a difference. Everyone is infected with the same illness of thought.

(Moreover "InHome Care, Inc." and every other provider of help for the elderly (as far as I know) have a hierarchical system in which people are not paid what they deserve. So far as I know, every organization which provides help for the elderly does not pay the hardest workers what they really deserve. The man who comes three times a week to help my father shower does not receive a living wage. Of course, this is legal! --So much the worse for the laws of this land. More evidence that the laws of this country have nothing to do with justice! Shameful!)

But Medicare is, today, under attack. They have less and less money to use helping people because the rulers of the USA prefer to spend money on killing people abroad, or paying the gambling debts of the wealthy at home. (Of course the rulers and the wealthy are one and the same set of people.)

The nurse was well-meaning. However, at one point, she adverted to an argument against me, an argument against the way I am living, and aimed at disqualifying my mother from getting the sort of help she would like to receive.

The key point was this: Since I do not pay rent, I should be vacuuming, and doing other household chores. And, therefore, it was not necessary that Medicare should pay for help for my mother.

Now, as a matter of fact, I do household chores, including vacuuming. And, as a matter of fact, I could not work and provide such services as I do currently provide to my parents. If I were working a full-time job as a teacher (whether as a Professor of Philosophy at aUniversity or as an EFL/ESL Teacher at a language school) I would have to move out of this house in order to have a quiet space where I could prepare lessons or lectures. That I could not do while living with my mother and father.

However, it is the following thought which I wish to examine:

An adult child living with a parent should be paying rent; or, else he/she incurs
a debt.

I want to suggest that this facile thought implies that the parent-child relationship is
being modeled as an economic or business one, and I want to say that this is a distortion.

Neither are my relationships with friends economic. I do not count up how much my friends have done for me, and measure out whether or not what we've done is equal.

Insofar as Medicare or nurses engage in such thought processes, or grant them any legitimacy, they are destroying the natural relationships between family members.

Of course, the nurse did not think of it that way; but in that thoughtlessness, she was deeply mistaken.

I believe that some have found my thought hard to understand. They say something like this:
She (the nurse) was only repeating what Medicare would say. She was not endorsing it.

However, my response is: The way she repeated it lent it more validity than it deserves.

There is a dangerous game here with misrepresenting the world. And in this, I believe that Socrates had the exactly correct thought. When we are talking about how to live, you should never put forward propositions that you do not believe, that someone else believes---unless you are prepared to defend them, and, of course, if you can defend them, then maybe you should believe them...

We do not, I suppose, generally obey that Socratic recommendation. And, so we become confused. It is also true that we thereby lend a certain respectability or authority to wholly indefensible thoughts, such as indefensible thoughts as that human relationships are primarily about buying and selling--which was implied by the well-meaning Nurse's attempt to speak as if she were an agent of Medicare.

recommended reading:

"Provisional Autonomous Zone; Or, The Ghost-State in Madagascar", David Graeber, in Possibilities; Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire, AK Press, 2007, pp. 157-180.

recommended viewing:


after-thought:
Of course, there are important questions raised by what I have said above, questions which I have not raised or even attempted to answer.


a miserable country

what kind of place is this?

they would rather spend billions killing people to maintain the empire than to spend money on an elderly person's health care.....

A nurse came today, and she gave me a headache---questioning my mother for three hours.

Asking personal questions. Intruding into our private space.

And the visit was not expected. She phoned up, and then appeared thirty minutes later.

Every day, in every way, this country is more and more disgusting and horrible.

Get Me Out Of Here! Please! As Soon As Possible!

Thursday, November 17, 2011

weather report:

Life in the U.S.A.
Life in Texas
Life in El Paso
is
sheer misery,
anti-social,
and empty.

gmooh

High tech machines
do not
a life make.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Weather Report: El Paso, Texas, U.S.A.

El Paso Texas U.S.A. is a place of great misery:
where old men indulge fantasies about weapons,
as if they were boys
dreaming of the toys that Santa will bring.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

cradle to grave exploitation

all across the world's greatest purveyor of destruction and exploitation
the citizens are dying
getting old
living in homes
which existed in the first place
only
in order to create profits for the vultures of capitalism
and now
the vultures are hovering
looking for more profit
longing to pick the bones of their victims

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

those crazy Gringos....

The other day I had a conversation with a man at the local "Y".

He was complaining that the swimming pool was cold if the windows (large doors actually) were open. Apparently the life guards were uncomfortable if the doors were shut. It became unpleasantly warm for them.

But, what shocked me (and even now seems incredible) was the superior/antagonistic/aggressive attitude of the man toward the lifeguard. He said something like this:
"WE are paying, so you have to make it comfortable for us."

He might have equally said: YOU are the WAGE SLAVE..

shocking. If you are getting paid, you are no longer a person....

This ordinary American---not a rich man, not part of the "1%" or the 0.01%----was asserting his rights to command another human being........It is disgusting when you think about it..... I pay, so I must be comfortable; your comfort, on the other hand, is not relevant.

Monday, November 7, 2011

diary entry

I spent the morning reuniting dust covers with dusty books.
Not once did I fall prey to an untidy passion.

the sheer misery of the u.s.a.

When I speak to people who live here, what strikes me is not merely their ignorance
about the outside world, and the incapacity to imagine a better world, but the general gestalt of insularity. They live as they must, day to day, with scarcely a breath of fresh air, not knowing that they live in a prison. Yes, they have hopes and dreams, but all is seen as if through a dirty window, or with one eye shut.....

Friday, November 4, 2011

El Paso, Texas: weather report

El Paso, Texas:
a wretched, uncivilized, ugly place

The crowning glory of the madness being a system of roads designed by a madman
upon which climate destroying individually piloted vehicles rush in an insane reverie,
risking life and limb,
roads going to nowhere,
roads which abruptly end or start up again
traffic lights to stop vehicles traveling at 40 or 50 miles an hour

all a form of ugliness designed to shrink the brains of the formerly human beings trapped within the walls of ugly vehicles, ugly houses, in a best case scenario illuminated by a merciless sun, and at worst, not illuminated but tortured by pinpricks of bright light cast by an approaching vehicle, blindly rushing into an ugly future

all for the sake of no greater good
all for the sake of perpetuating ugliness and injustice, misery ad infinitum,
grotesque and ignorant
harsh and unfeeling
not a civilization but the death of all beauty


gmooh

Thursday, November 3, 2011

a great man---my foot!

I had noted with increasing cynicism the hagiography surrounding the recent death of a computer guy who allegedly had given us this or that toy to play with.
I do not believe that computers or the internet have made my life better. The low quality of my life is due to enormous job insecurity, excessive supervision by managers, supervisors, and such --usually persons less well educated and less well read....
(And today, while doctors surely know things I don't know, they are over-generous with recommendation of an extremely vague nature, whose practical consequences involve my labor in the home. If there's a real problem with my elderly and frail father--if, for example, he happens to fall over while reaching for something--I shall have to deal with it, and there will be no doctors or nurses present....So, I class the so-called "health professionals" among the professional busy-bodies who have stolen the beauty out of my life....)

However, all of that ignores the more fundamental fact that Apple products are created in the most disgusting, immoral fashion, as I began to fully realize after I had read something at the "Monthly Review", from which I now select the following two paragraphs:

Apple’s enormous, complex global supply chain for iPod production is aimed at obtaining the lowest unit labor costs (taking into consideration labor costs, technology, etc.), appropriate for each component, with the final assembly taking place in China, where production occurs on a massive scale, under enormous intensity, and with ultra-low wages. In Foxconn’s Longhu, Shenzhen factory 300,000 to 400,000 workers eat, work, and sleep under horrendous conditions, with workers, who are compelled to do rapid hand movements for long hours for months on end, finding themselves twitching constantly at night. Foxconn workers in 2009 were paid the minimum monthly wage in Shenzhen, or about 83 cents an hour. (Overall in China in 2008 manufacturing workers were paid $1.36 an hour, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.)

Despite the massive labor input of Chinese workers in assembling the final product, their low pay means that their work only amounts to 3.6 percent of the total manufacturing cost (shipping price) of the iPhone. The overall profit margin on iPhones in 2009 was 64 percent. If iPhones were assembled in the United States—assuming labor costs ten times that in China, equal productivity, and constant component costs—Apple would still have an ample profit margin, but it would drop from 64 percent to 50 percent. In effect, Apple makes 22 percent of its profit margin on iPhone production from the much higher rate of exploitation of Chinese labor.44