Monday, January 31, 2011

death is coming too slowly

the loneliness
isolation
and emptiness
the anti-social nature of daily existence
in this miserable place

all of it

is killing me

alas
too slowly

Sunday, January 30, 2011

shocking!

Shocking! An economist speaks the truth!

"The wealthy hate the idea of government money going to anyone but them, and since the vast majority of Social Security benefits are going to low and middle-income families, the program is an outrage to their sensibilities."

--Dean Baker--full article at :


And one can even hear the truth in Egypt:

“The country is full of wealth and resources, but where are they?”—Egyptian heard on Al-Jazeera

(We might well ask the same thing about the USA.)

(What's that I hear? Billions of dollars to support a dictator in Egypt?)





draft of a letter

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Egypt and beyond

There is a predictable, inevitable, and not wholly inaccurate mention of the fall of the Berlin
wall in today's Guardian...in discussing Egypt...

Unfortunately, the end of what was called "communism" is not widely understood. Perhaps I can express my own point of view most quickly if I recall the words of one former dissident in Czechoslovakia who said that what they'd gotten in the end was not at all what they had wanted when the 'Velvet" revolution started... They had wanted something more like a Swedish social democracy and had gotten something too much like the United States...

There is, as well, a genuine question, rarely asked, about the real costs of the transition to the current form of organization in "Eastern" Europe...whether it might have been carried out differently, what was the extent of bad influence from the U.S.A. and its allies.....
So that, e.g., among western capitalists, unemployment is just the price to pay for business
as usual--a penalty meted out to workers not capitalists....and I did once read in a Czech newspaper about estimates by a sociologist, estimates of the number of people who had died younger under capitalism than they would have under the old regime, dying younger because they had become unemployed and started drinking.....As I re-read these words, they seem altogether too premature-- the course of events in Egypt and other countries is very much unfinished. But I think I've made my point about the easy comparison to the events of 1989.



Friday, January 28, 2011

sociological?

I can imagine what it's useful to say when you want to communcate with undergraduates in North America if one attempts to teach philosophy...I can imagine the sort of thing...

So, when George Rudebusch adverts to a hollywood style image of bombs exploding in his explication of Socrates, I'm not surprised.

Of course Rudebusch is a responsible scholar, and knows what he is doing, controls his exposition with appropriate qualifications.

Nonetheless, I don't find the image of bombs exploding (or was it bullets firing?) and people dying to be a useful metaphor when it comes to explaining the idea that what we do makes a difference. And I actually recoil away from the sort of high style language we need in English to talk about this--phrases like "the importance of morality"....too abstract, hopelessly abstract, it seems to me.

(hastily added explanation: I've not got the text before me, but as I recall the basic point was that our actions do impact upon the lives of other people, and that this gives an urgency to a kind of moral seriousness and inquiry as typified by the life of Socrates. I shall have to come back to this entry and fill it in, I fear....---it's that important for us to get our thinking straight about how to live! how important? as important as it would be if our thoughts could bring about the immediate death and injury to innocent people, people we didn't even know...)

I prefer the literary style of Elizabeth Bowen in "The House in Paris" where two young people fall in love, bringing with it a host of consequences, and a child.

There's not the flash of explosions, but there is, first of all a dreadful excitement due in part to plunging into the unknown, and later a growing awareness of how little one understood what one was really doing, and, later, an attempt to deal with what's become of one's actions....all truer to reality than anything like the Hollywood style....

(Kundera says something like this: we try to portray ourselves when we act, but when we look at the results of our actions, it's hard to find ourselves in what we've made.)

But, then, again, how many North American undergraduates would bother to read a book like "The House in Paris"? (I suppose that last remark was said in Rudebusch's defense.....) Then again, how many philosophers would consider a novel to be irrelevant? (I don't know the answer to that last question....)

Note: (A somewhat political remark.) It's a point made by Ted Honderich (though, I suppose, not only him) that our fascination with violence makes us less aware of the slow dying of starvation....That's another way to begin to express discomfort about Hollywood style drama. It reminds me of the complaint that mere books or articles or blogs change nothing.....a disguised appeal to the Hollywood rapid change picture of history...... as if words were ever mere words.... (I end this remark with an unpleasant feeling that I've not yet begun to get to the bottom here...)

Further note/after-thought; Then, again, there is something bad in a life that lacks conversation--or, as we are wont to say, lacks honest conversation. I'm not sure (though I say this without great confidence) that we find this portrayed in Plato's dialogues: the halting, self-censored conversations we find in Bowen's "Death of the Heart"... but there too what's portrayed is badness in a human life, an absence of a certain good--and, once again, it lacks the simplicity of a Hollywood portrayal....(and by "simplicity" I do not mean clarity, but, instead a kind of inappropriate childishness... a kind of over-simplification...)

free egypt

courtesy of my sister who watches fox
we get the usa propaganda version
the danger in Egypt is that there will be a "right wing Muslim" takeover...

no, I don't believe that....
the "danger" is that the usa might lose influence
that's what the usa ruling class fears....

Thursday, January 27, 2011

THE USA's WE DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU/R HEALTH SYSTEM

Oh cursed be the USA's WE DONT CARE ABOUT YOU/R HEALTH system

my father is an invalid
my mother nearly
and thanks to a lifetime of hard work
and a lifetime of believing in their country
their reward is
three hours of help per week
two hours for bathing
one for a nurse to say BLA BLA BLA BLA BLA
meaningless general advice
and empty cheerful smiles

doctors no better
they tell us the facts
usually very general

but do not acknowledge
and seem not to know what it means
to take care of a very sick person day and night
let alone two very weak and elderly people
day and night

I suffer alone
but not in silence

damn them all

I wish I had Dante's creative powers
to describe a suitable punishment

but no
I think of the lady who bathes my father:
she is poorly paid for her genuine contribution,
---no, she is not to blame

who then?
no person?
a system?

a damnable system
only a knave or a fool would defend it.....

the most obscene words

A: Oh? Your plans have failed? You have no job? You're stuck in a place you despise? You have no hopes, and see no way out of your situation? Cheer up! Don't be alarmed! Don't despair! It must be part of God's plan.

B: Since there is no evidence whatsoever that this will turn out for the best, and evidence suggesting it will only get worse, this creature you call "God" is apparently very wicked and cruel.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

amateur sociology and more

I just followed the link from Leiter Reports to Robert Paul Wolff's blog, and Shit! I don't know nothing about political philosophy...

Nevertheless, I shall continue to say what I have been thinking and feeling insofar as I am able...

Shocking

That's what I thought yesterday when I overheard a conversation between a few residents of EPTX. Who are the real citizens? Who deserves the full rights of citizenship? Not those who don't work!

The opening move was a complaint about how schools don't have money because the children of illegals are attending. (About that I say nothing, as I don't know....)

But as the conversation continued, it was clear that certain salient facts were ignored: such as, who really decides who's legal and who's not?

(I admit to liking the slogan: No human being is illegal.)

Other omitted questions:
Whose interests are served by what we euphemistically refer to as "immigration policy"?

Why is it exactly that Mexico is so poor? What role is played by US agribusiness selling their government supported products?

Who really profits from the overall system?

I imagine a group of people in a small town, located in a valley far below a distant castle, arguing amongst themselves about who will eat the humble bread, while above, on the distant mountain top the king and queen and their servants are feasting on every delicacy known to man. They enjoy the best and we fight over the crumbs from their table. But, due to the distance and an obscuring fog of propaganda, the castle is actually invisible.




Saturday, January 22, 2011

recommended reading/link

I just read Margaret Betz's essay, "ARE DOGS THE NEW HUMMER?"
She cites a recent book which points out that pets have a carbon footprint greater than Hummers!
But, there's an ethical issue as well: shouldn't we just leave animals alone?
It's a short essay, and worth reading. I would add that Betz's essay represents the sort of reflection we need. Most human activity is ignorant--hence the unpopularity of thoughtful people (sometimes called "intellectuals").
I would only add that capitalism is, in particular an economic system prone to create people who don't consider the consequences of their actions.

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7950509&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S1477175610000448

Think, Volume 10, Issue 27, pp. 105-8

Recommended Reading:
Arguing for Socialism: Theoretical Considerations, by Andrew Levine
Levine argues that socialism does a better job of realizing freedom and democracy
than does capitalism. (That's a very broad description of the book, which has other interesting details.)






did I hear that right?

No, it can't be!
A former dicatator has returned to Haiti.
The former president--democratically elected--is not allowed to return.
Because that's what France and the USA have decided...

So, France and the USA just don't give a damn about democracy.


I must have imagined it.

Friday, January 21, 2011

self-immolation?

Did I get the story right? In Tunisia, a young man, college educated, was unable to find a job, was selling fruit on the street, hassled by the police..... set himself on fire.... and a revolution ensued.

While I am no longer young, I believe myself to be (relatively speaking) educated, and
my own job prospects are very dim.... and, actually (embarrassing though it may be)
I have myself been harrassed by the police here in EPTX (though, of course, they don't see it that way)....

but, no, I don't think I'll do it, tempting though it is.... (No Jan Palach am I)

Thursday, January 20, 2011

The obscenity of "hardship"

Words can be cruel. They can cut like a knife. And when I've been cut, I don't apologize for screaming.....

The entity called the Department of Aging and Disability recently informed me (through the vehicle of an actual person, of course) that...

Were my aged father and mother to receive the help they need--though note that the word "need" is mine, not that of any government agency or representative thereof--any money whatsoever left behind by my parents would go to the state to pay for the services rendered.... (Note an ambiguity in what I've written: a sufficiently large estate would not be wiped out, but in many cases a moderate estate would be.... Here we should look at what happens in the case of inheritance among the truly rich---the sort of people who would never ask for the sort of help we're talking about...... but that's just the little bit of hypocrisy behind this whole disgusting matter...)

However, in the event that an unmarried child had lived in the home for a year (presumably caring for the parent or parents) prior to the death of the last remaining parent, it would be a case of what they call "hardship", and the state would make no claim upon remaining property or money.

"Hardship"
The online Cambridge dictionary gives the following entry for that word:
"(something which causes) difficult or unpleasant conditions of life, or an example of this.." (added bold)

Let's think about this. I've been helping my parents. Has this caused me hardship? I can't work and take care of them; and if I did work and try to take care of them, that would be very, very difficult.

But is it "difficult" and "unpleasant"? Of course it is difficult. But then life itself is! Isn't it? Is it unpleasant to live with your parents? Sometimes, but not always.

But how dare they presume to describe my relationship with my family!??!!! How intrusive!
How disrespectful!


But, suppose I'm just in denial. Suppose my situation is actually very unpleasant and difficult.
Surely the thought must be: more difficult and unpleasant than the norm or average.

But I don't like any of that. We might equally well describe what I'm doing in the following fashion:

The Health Care System has failed to give my parents the help they need and deserve.
I've been making up for that failure.

To say that would be to characterize what I've been doing in positive terms. So, an honest statement would be the following:

We won't sweep down like vultures on any money or valuables left by deceased parents if it should happen that an unmarried child has been doing our job for us....

Alternatively, it would be unfair to penalize a person who had been saving the Don't Care System money....Hey! Maybe they should pay me for the year I've been here! Now, that's an idea!

Second thoughts:

Let's see. How about this? You give me some money now, and later I'll give you something.... say health care....Okay? Fair enough.

Now, let's try a different scenario. You work hard all your life, and you give me money. That money is for you, to take care of you when you get older. Now, when you get older, and you need that money back in the form of help (paid services), I say, "Okay, I'll help you, but when we're done, you'll have to pay me again."

That's pretty damn rotten. Lousy!

Oh yeah: I know that this sort of thing is happening all over the world. We are all getting fucked..... (and just who is it that is fucking us? hmmmmm, good question)

What's that I hear?? A voice saying: There is no "who"! It is the impersonal (and objective and fair ha ha ha ha) laws of ECONOMICS (all bow before the mighty God!)

Sorry. I don't believe that for one minute.

New Link

I've now added a new link--to the list of the ten most popular articles in "Think" (subtitle: Philosophy for everyone).

A little essay by yours truly appears there--number ten....

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

getting down and dirty

I've had it with trying to be polite.... about America's Health DON'T CARE SYSTEM!

Two especial pet peeves:

VISITING NURSES who come once a week to monitor an aged person's condition,
and are just full of all sorts of helpful hints---no matter that they are ultimately unrealistic
and impractical....

visiting nurses who aren't there to help at four in the morning when the patient who just
happens to be a beloved family member is anxious or needs to pee (or, more likely, both)

NURSES AIDS who come to offer their services at inconvenient hours..... I mean if I've been up at four or five in the morning OR at four, five, and six, and seven helping a family member, then I'm not going to be very awake after four hours of sleep, am I?

A SYSTEM WHICH OFFERS STRICTLY LIMITED CARE AND INSISTS UPON PROOF THAT YOU NEED HELP, even when it is obvious you do..... As if it would be some terrible crime if a frail, ill old person got "too much" attention--Oh, that would be such a terrible thing! Better spend the money to kill civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Sudan, or Palestine. Better pay the gambling debts of America's ruling class! Now that's what's really important!

all in all
a SYSTEM that is DON'T care, no matter how concerned and reasonable seeming, and friendly the nurses and nurses aids may seem (or even be) during the exteremely limited hours that they are actually present...

Most civilized parts of the world figured out that children need care, beyond what parents are able to provide. And certain institutions exist in order to help--institutions which are universal, and not only available to the privileged. (And while in practice inequality is everywhere, in principle, there is recognition that education should be universal.) In the United States, that level of civilization has not yet been reached when it comes to caring for the elderly. So uncivilized, bellicose, and puritanical a society.....

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

on the whole

on the whole
people in the united states
have a hard life
harder than life need be

even tho
many might not like to hear it

many might not like to hear it
and then again

many might say: Tell me something I don't know!

footnote
harder: harder than in other technologically advanced nations, more full of tension, stress, and an absence of solidarity....

Recommended Reading,
Erik Olin Wright and Joel Rogers, American Society: how it actually works,
final draft posted at:

The actual book:
published by WW Norton, 2010

Monday, January 17, 2011

I don't understand...

isn't it better they say...
to own your own home?
than to live in an apartment?

Really?

I hadn't noticed any advantages.

I mean the homes here are so close together you hear as much of what your neighbors
do (especially with their cars) as when you live in an apartment...
unless it's cold outside, and all of the windows are shut and the noisy heater is going....

It's not so quiet here with these houses.,

And a home? Why would I want one? It's just a burden. Repairs and so on. home ownership? well, it means that a portion of your income is dedicated in advance to various parapharnelia (garden gnomes, exotic chinese gardens and pools filled with exotic fishes, or perhaps basketball courts, etc., etc.--just listing a few of the mostly unnecessary items I've seen locally....(I can think of many better ways to spend my money---if I had any, that is...)

No, I don't see any advantage in the American style of living....not to mention the alienation and isolation and the whole anti-social character of the society.... simultaneously full of hidden unwritten rules about what you can and can't say, and especially which sorts of emotions are allowed in public, and then at the same time competitively consumerist... and oh, I can't go on, it bores me and gives me a pain in my side at the same time....

Sunday, January 16, 2011

a return to sanity?/The Grouch Reads

shall we back up a bit?.....
My previous post may have been a bit over the top. I mean, can you really responsible say, "I hate a city", or the population therein?

To be sure, once you divide a mass of people into individuals, and get to know them a bit, actual hate is difficult. Reason backwards then: musn't my experience of EPTX mostly be at the group level--that of anonymous individuals in enormous trucks with painfully bright lights?

Have you seen Hitchcock's "Psycho"? Too old school for you? Not high tech enough? I hope not. What? Is it redundant to say "H's"?

There's a scene where Janet Leigh is driving at night in a rain storm. Cars are coming towards her. But what she sees is bright glaring lights moving towards her. It is hard to imagine how she can see where she is going, how she can avoid an accident. And, at the same time, the sound track is pumping us up, increasing tension: dum--bum-bum-bum;dum-bum-bum-bum (strings I guess, accent on the first beat; with some extra sound every fourth or fifth measure--I think....don't quote me...)

Well, if you recall that scene, let me tell you: whenever I dare to drive to the grocery store in El Paso Texas, I feel like Janet Leigh in that scene in Psycho. Large trucks on either side of me. Some coming towards me. Constant stress and tension. Not pleasant. And then when one of the monsters parks beside you, you can hardly get out of your car.... yes, I do, in fact, hate cars and hate driving.... (Dyer Street, by the way, is on the top of my hate list in the crowded streets department. I think it is sheer idiocy to have so many lanes of traffic moving so quickly.... and of course the sheer size of the vehicles only aggravates the insanity......What in the world are the so-called traffic engineers thinking? I bet their math doesn't count in human psychology.....)

And speaking of bright glaring lights, have auto headlights gotten brighter in the past twenty years? It is painful for me to take a walk in EPTX. The streets are poorly lit, and the cars coming towards me seem to aim directly at my retinas with their overly bright lights, as if to boast of their pride in their imaginary achievement (I've bought an enormous monstrosity of glass, steel, and plastic, a climate destroying monster, a noisy monster, and I'm proud of it! Who are you to walk around naked in the night without the protection of a climate destroyer?!)

Let's hope this post constitutes a return to partial sanity...

as a final coup de grace, here's what I'm reading these days:

THE GROUCH READS (slowly....?poorly?.....lazily?...too rarely.....)

Robert Brenner, "the Economics of Global Turbulence".
(Verso, London and New York, 2006, originally 1998) Capitalist economies have been in decline since the 1970's. Why? A popular theory says it is the fault of workers, and their unions, for demanding higher wages. Brenner is critiquing that thesis. So far as I understand, he sees the problem in the undisciplined and chaotic nature of competition between capitalist firms.

Terry Penner, "Socratic Ethics and Socratic Psychology of Action", in Morrison ed. The Cambridge Companion to Socrates (Cambridge UP 2011):
This essay is too pregnant with rich ideas for me to say much right now.... except that on Penner's interpretation Socratic ethics was then and is now truly revolutionary.... as I think of it now, given the way that Penner's Socrates rejects a special moral "ought" and the idea of purely selfless action (the latter sounding perverse to common sense in any case), I wonder whether that wouldn't give us a new handle on America's sick puritanism.....I've noticed in my USA born and bred family members a tendency to be embarrassed when they are enjoying themselves...(we're supposed to work all the time like machines).... If that thought bears up under examination, that would be very interesting because Plato (from whom we have the most philosophically interesting portrait of Socrates) was no hedonist....(ahh but Socrates' argument in the "Protagoras"????....not now, please, dear conscience....) I prove my worth by working for others even at the cost of pain or the absence of pleasure-- VERSUS I should enjoy my life and recognize that my own happiness is tied to the happiness of other people, (with the consequence that I can't purchase my happiness at the price of someone else's misery).........(With that inconclusive, but hopefully suggestive, thought I will stop....)

Saturday, January 15, 2011

hating el paso texas -- a rant

First time visitors to this blog are advised to read the entry from 1/16 as well as this entry. (In any case, anyone who is not a regular reader of this blog is likely to mis-judge what is written below if it is read in isolation from other entries as my reasons for disliking EPTX are numerous, and not listed in detail below....neither are they collected in one place, but are scattered throughout numerous entries ....)

I hereby declare that the below words are a RANT, hence do not presume to follow standards of evidence appropriate in the academic world.


despite that fact
there may yet be
truth behind what i am about to say...


i hate el paso texas
i hate the cars
i hate the people
i hate the stupid presumption that every human must have a car
the brutish inaccessibility of everything
the need to have a car
the size of the cars
the poor quality of the food
the bright lights of the cars
the assumption that this is just the way it is
the failure to recognize the ugliness and stupidity of it all.....


On top of that today I visited a so-called video store. I was forced to endure the sounds of a stupid movie. It apparently was about a bank robbery and a kidnapping. The voice I heard was speaking in a tone pretending to be objective. Of course, the movie itself is a piece of ignorant hysteria masquerading as social science or description. Fear of crime! --Itself a religion among the USA middle class, and a device of social control, a means to cloud the mind. The bright lights, the ugly sounds of the movie (played loudly)--boom boom.... the voice of the truth-sayer ( who actually is a liar) uses the conventional sound and tone which marks objectivity in the minds of the audience), the rows and rows of movies with pictures of muscle men and guns! It was all too much for me. And then, worst of all, a large part of the store devoted to crap food. It was really all too much for me. I felt nauseous. And as I ran for the exit, a young woman asked me if she could help me. It was all I could to summon up the energy to lie and "politely" (i.e., falsely) say, "No, thank you. I was just looking around." In truth, I was thinking: "Help me? The only way you could help me is to let me leave this ugly environment filled with propagandistic images, perversions of reality...." But I am afraid to speak the truth these days, after previous unpleasant experiences in the land of unfreedom.... free speech? make me laugh. The most insidious form of social control is already in the minds of the populace....


NOTE
On the gap between the reality of violent crime (e.g., that it primarily occurs outside of middle class neighborhoods) and the popular imagination about its nature (that it involves the poor, and violent person of color preying upon the white middle class), see Loic Wacquant, Punishing the Poor; The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity, Duke University Press, Durham and London 2009.

el paso sunshine

What??!!!***
You don't like!!??? sunshine?????

El Paso's painfully bright sun
just makes the ugliness and the emptiness
painfully obvious.

in passing

I thought that Brian Leiter at "Leiter Reports" had some pertinent things to say about the shootings in Arizona--as well as good links...

But for my own sake, I've been listening with one ear to "Democracy Now" and certainly haven't made a habit of reading what the NYT or others have to say.,..

Nonetheless, I have heard an invocation of one sort of secular religion: the American religion of happiness and it will be better and we're all basically good people.... and let's look at the bright side. (For me that sort of talk echoes badly: first with Depression era songs, and secondly with the lie about Vietnam that we could see the "light at the end of the tunnel"....)

I wouldn't want to trivialize real suffering, but there a sort of ideology here that I think isn't deserving of much beyond critical examination. Once this [happy! happy!/we're all in this together/look for the good, not the bad, in the bad.....]-machine gets rolling, any sort of analysis is crushed. Any real attempt to understand is drowned by a wash of emotions generated only, it seems, to avoid self-examination.

Further there is a problem about levels of explanation. As is always the case in the USA, explanations at the individual, not the social, level are preferred. It was only a mad man, not a society which is itself violent, and thereby increases the chances that a mad man will act out his violent fantasies.... (What does it mean for a society to be violent? Well, I suppose a responsible answer would involve comparing societies. Is the USA more violent than Europe, e.g.? Is the popularity of the death penalty in the USA relevant evidence?)

I believe that there's as well something to be said here about the popular psychotherapy developed by Ellis, which articulates a current in American culture. (An opinion based largely on reading Magai and Haviland-Jones's book, "The Hidden Genius of Emotion"...) It might be necessary for someone who has to survive a very tough situation to deny certain emotions, but there is a question about the price one thereby pays....

I apologize that I've not got the time do spell that out more here and now. (I wasn't trained to make that sort of remark without filling in the details, so please don't blame my teachers.)

And one final comment: the murderer in question is sometimes said to have not been political.
That, too, is a way of avoiding analysis, and blaming the event on the pathology of an individual.
Yet, the claim is patently false. If the man actually had an incoherent belief system, he also had a belief about the essential badness of government. The question of the role of government (or the need for government) is a basic and essential political question. It may not be "party political" as they say in the UK, but actually it does sound like an incoherent (inconsistent) Republican or Tea Party view... (incoherent because what's usually meant is that when government does something for poor people or people in general, that's bad.... what the government does to aid the ruling class or to fund the war machined is not counted as government activity--an inconsistency...)

Thursday, January 13, 2011

John Pilger on Assange/Wikileaks

recommended reading

http://www.zcommunications.org/the-war-on-wikileaks-by-john-pilger

mean Wien/Ugly Vienna? Wien?

"Mean Wien"--this blog's original title-- was a reflection of my experience in Wien as a wage-slave.

I won't go into the details of my employment. If you're interested you can find out about that in earlier postings at this site. (See, esp. August 5, 2009, "Cao for Now"....)

Today my strongest memory of Wien is of the people there---people who I miss very much....

By contrast with El Paso, Texas, Wien has a real public transport system, and generally higher quality food in the grocery stores. Are there nice people in El Paso? Frankly, I don't know; but don't take that as a scientific statement. My social contacts are currently extremely restricted. I'm not going to make an attempt to be objective and distance myself from the bad mood I am currently in and have been in since I came to this sunburned outpost of empire.

I know that there are earlier posts where I complained about rude people in Wien's UBahn, but I would gladly trade my current life for the life I knew in Wien--even with occasionally rude people in the U-Bahn and dog shit on the sidewalks in my neighborhood....

I would like to return there, and also live there.... but at present my freedom of movement is severely limited.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

technology

i phones
mobile phones
etc
etc
comforts for the already comfortable---

--or tools of enslavement.

technology?

to what end?
who decides? (Hint: not me and not you)

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

picky! picky! picky!

I just read that dementia is a "descriptive term". (added emphasis) But that's not right. "Crazy" is a descriptive term. Now, maybe the idea is that "dementia" in Latin is a descriptive term in Latin.
But in English"dementia" is a sort of general term, not a descriptive term.

In fact, as the entry I read went on to explain, it is (my word now) an umbrella term because it is said to collect together a number of more specific ailments.

Of course, there's a sort of joke here. We're using the high tone language Latin to say someone is "crazy"--if, indeed that's what dementia would mean for people speaking Latin. (I don't know Latin; so I can't say.)

But that's very silly. We want to put on airs about being scientists or professionals or whatever, so we use a dead language. (Or, perhaps the dead language was once more universal than any others.....) But what we're saying is just that someone is "bonkers" or "crazy" or "loopy".....Not at all high tone or fancy; and to call it "descriptive" is ridiculous and false.

Important note:
I apologize in advance to any professional linguist who might happen to come across this entry. Please feel free to correct any inaccuracies or confusions, should you be in the mood.

Reference:
"Demential: Hope Through Research"
National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke"
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/dementia.htm#148391213

Monday, January 10, 2011

engineers who are idiots

during my time in Bratislava, capital of Slovakia, I regularly lived in buildings with steam heat. Slovakia is not Switzerland or Germany, though Bratislava is the most prosperous city in Slovakia....

Yet, in El Paso, Texas, a peculiar form of heating system exists, flawed in enough ways to qualify as STUPID ENGINEERING...

to wit:

the hot air blows from the top of the room

it blows onto you through vents that,dare I say it, can't really be properly cleaned....

before you get hot air, you first get a lot of cold air blowing right onto you...

This is unbelievably stupid. Is it cheaper? (for the manufacturer--it increases profits?)

Why do people put up with this crap?

Is it a question of inferior technology being foisted off on people who don't know better?

It it a question of inferior technology being foisted off on a complaisant population?

Is it part of a local tendency toward denial (about bad weather, rain, wind, cold weather?)--cliches: in El Paso, the sun always shines--->suggesting: the weather is always good. (What crap! Sun shining, wind blowing--that's a bad, unpleasant combination if you're outside for more than five minutes.....)


Whatever the explanation, this style of winter heating is bullshit, as are so many things in this ugly place...

anti-generosity

we need help
we're not getting it
a hospital bed?
it doesn't fit in the room properly and creates a crowding problem!

undoubtedly some financial manager somewhere figured that it's cheaper to give my
father a bed than to give him the care he needs and deserves

and that financial manager probably got a raise when he figured that out

a system designed to make things hard
to make you jump through hoops

a system which never quite manages to give you half of what you need

there's nothing respectful about that

what more can I say?
a cruel country
a cruel excuse for health care

"care"???? h a ha ha

no, the value here is "cash".......

((individuals within an uncaring system may happen to care; but the logic of systems is such that their caring comes to naught)....

if I die soon, it will be because I've become collateral damage to this cruel pretense

Friday, January 7, 2011

at the neurologist

Not an unfriendly man, though he does have his pride....
but mostly a man who strikes me as well-meaning,
the neurologist remarked with amusement about my father...
"They do forget how to ..."
in this case, I think, it was standing up or sitting or some basic movement....
And his words rang oddly in my brain...
"They..."
and I am still wondering what the hell he was thinking....
"they?"
would you say that about your own father or mother?

"They" --thereby indicating that the doctor had observed a symptom.
But this put in motion a series of thoughts:
So what? You recognize a symptom for a disease you can't cure?
But was the doctor amused?
Was he surprised?
Was he pleased with himself?

Or was his demi-amusement equally a kind of surprise, a newly renewed surprise
at observing a regularity which he himself knew he did not fully understand?

There are, as well, variations in my own moods:
paranoid: how dare he!
calm: who knows what he was really thinking?

Variations in my own moods and limitations to my memory: Did I fail to notice something? Were all of the intonation in his words understood by me? Did his smile have a specific shape that I did not notice? Am I sufficiently aware of the man's own speech and facial patterns to be sure that I have not misunderstood? Amusement can be innocent--if you're not a fanatical puritan...



Monday, January 3, 2011

I haven't got the vocabulary to describe
the ugliness of everyday
or
the misery of capitalism
the painful falsity of social relationships
the hypocrisy of the powerful and wealthy
the ideological blindness and brutal emptiness of the lives I see around me
the grating willingness to swim in a foul river of lies and ugliness...

Nor can I face up to the fact that myown life thus far
has been lived badly

Sunday, January 2, 2011

health care and the contradictions of neo-liberalism

the grouch reads....
David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism.... Oxford UP 2005, pp. 79-80:

"It is one thing to maintain, for example, that my health-care status is my personal choice and responsibility, but quite another when the only way I can satisfy my needs in the market is through paying exorbitant premiums to inefficient, gargantuan, highly bureaucratized but also highly profitable companies. When these companies even have the power to define new categories of illness to match new drugs coming on the market then something is clearly wrong."

stakeholders?

As I understand the term "stakeholder" it was originally introduced to help powerless individuals who suffer the harmful consequences of corporate decision-making and stockholders (among others).... It allows us to say: we should consider not only the shareholders, but also, more broadly the stake holders--those who have a stake in the business deal--people who are regularly excluded. (If I live downstream from a polluting industry, I am a stakeholder in that industry's activities....)

(AKA stakeholders are victims of the in-principle unrecognizable side-effects of doing capitalist business--"in principle unrecognizable"= within capitalist economics...)

Yet, in its contemporary usage, the meaning has been twisted to suggest that the interests of wealthy corporations should be given equal weight to the interests of powerless individuals.... as if it would be so unfair to silence those mighty tyrannies....
A victory for the ruling class...
If I've read it correctly, the link below contains precisely such a perverse usage....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jan/02/blindness-drug-avastin-nhs-nice

Not to mention the fact that behavior by the drug company in question is deplorable...

(you might say: the link takes you to "The Guardian", a so-called "liberal" newspaper.....)

Saturday, January 1, 2011

capitalist crime

happy new year my ass!

no cost of living increase for people living on social security = an actual decline in income

increased medical costs = a decline in income

increased food prices = a decline in income

We are paying for their gambling debts, and their wars.