The therapist's assistant is here.  Good for my father:  He can go on and on and on, and say what I've heard him say 1,000 times---to a new audience.

Bad for me.  I cannot focus or work or even concentrate to pack my bags so I can leave this tiny, crowded, dusty house.....

But I just wanted to mention another way in which the USA has gotten things wrong.

Medicine does not exist in order that the already wealthy can add to their wealth.

Medicine exists in order to make lives better----to decrease human suffering.  But a Martian who visited Planet Earth and wound up in the USA might not realize that fact.

a great victory?

Was World War Two such a great victory for freedom and democracy?  If it had truly been, we would not today be in the terrible situation we are in.  The USA is a militaristic nightmare---that is part of the legacy of the so-called "victory".  And that "victory" is part of a continuous chain of events leading to the massacre of millions in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, the war in Iraq, the murders in Panama by Papa Bush, etc., etc., etc.  And, anyway, the war would never have been won without the sacrifice of millions of Russian lives.....The propaganda machine does not allow these truths to be told.

The man who keeps a machine gun under his bed would refuse to hear this!

Recommended reading:
The Sorrows of Empire
http://www.americanempireproject.com/bookpage.asp?ISBN=0805077979

Great Philosophers

Oh! Those great philosophers---starting with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and including Frege, Sartre, Kant, Hume, whoever.  I despise them.  What did they know?  Not one of them every had to empty their elderly father's urine bottle.  Not one of them lived to see their elderly father tumble to the ground, or their mother slide down, lose her balance, end up on the floor, unable to get up again without help. What did they know of life?  You do not know what a horrible, terrible, ugly thing life is until you have experienced these things.  The indignity of it.  The helplessness.

Maybe there is one exception--Simone de Beauvoir--if it is true that she took care of Sartre when he was old and sick....

funny thing, that...

I have been re-reading Milan Kundera's book, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being".
Funny thing that. During communism (in Eastern or Central Europe) you could lose your job if you were too outspoken.  (So, a person like me, who was qualified to teach Philosophy at a University might have to perform other work.  But, then here without what used to be called "communism".... I have to perform other work---if I can find it.....)

So, the main character loses his job as a surgeon. He takes a job as a window washer.
But, he doesn't have to worry about health insurance, or oil changes for his car, or car insurance, or even driving a car.....

Funny thing.  What they call "communism" looks better to me than what I'm facing.....(Oh, you say I have free speech?  Really?  What good does it do me?  When I don't have health insurance and I've got to get up at 6am tomorrow morning to take my father's car in for an oil change----I'm not so sure that all that's balanced out by this blog!)

(Counter-argument:  Take the protagonist in another novel by Kundera,  "The Joke".  His being outspoken got him a much harsher punishment.....Yes, but even he didn't have to worry about health insurance, and he was eventually re-instated......)

And, now that I think about it, lots of jobs require something like the public affirmation of the place's rules, values, design---something like a public statement, swearing allegiance to the corporation----as well as the right smiles and nods, facial expressions at the right time.  All that seems pretty damn authoritarian to me....(and we aren't even guaranteed health insurance.......or a pension....)

bullshit capitalism, unfriendly capitalism

Why are some things easy? (It is easy to purchase a book.) Why are some things hard?  (It is hard for me to actually find time to read any of the books I have purchased....)  Is it God's decision or the "laws of economics"?---or is it the laws of Capitalist Economics?

I have just returned from an unsuccessful attempt to have the oil changed in my father's car.

I am not blind.  I see the tired looks, the nervous looks, the suffering of those who work for a living.  They are harried.  They have not got real rest.

Some among them are full of fantasies--they accept the rules dictated by the ruling class and believe that they can do something, buy something, achieve something--but the rules about what's good and what's bad are not debated  (cars are good/the latest technology is good)....... but they too are nervous.

And the friendliness which exists in the marketplace cannot replace relations of genuine equality or solidarity.

What pure and total bullshit is the USA obsession with technology!  My computer's manufacturer seems to be in collusion with a host of companies........

The local grocery store is in collusion with a host of companies; for, it wants to sell me all sorts of ridiculous cards giving me credit at other stores.  (Clear monopoly that, or monopoly envy on the part of the store---the desire to extort every cent a person has, not to allow them to leave the store with a coin in their pockets or a dollar in their bank account.....)

Cars?  I hate them.  They are a curse.  So, I have to drive the god damn thing.  I lose time I could spend sleeping or reading or daydreaming.  Driving a car is work---unpaid work.   When I drive a car, I am wasting my time, working......(and not getting paid for it).

Then I must worry about parking it.  Always a problem when grotesque overgrown trucks fill up every inch.

And I must worry that it might get stolen.  Or that I might lock the keys inside.....

And I must wait while the oil is changed.  No, I will not wait in a room with an idiotic television.

(Chomsky was right:  Do you want to be free?   Stop watching television.)

I am not blind.  I can imagine something of the life of someone whose time is devoted to "servicing" cars.  What does that mean?  Is it interesting work?  Everyone who comes in is like me.  They don't want to wait.  But they must wait.  And, how, by the way,  can I avoid waiting?   Waiting in a room dominated by an idiotic television.  (Or, you wait at home----but then the whole business takes even longer.)

The god of the car must be placated.  My time must be sacrificed on the capitalist altar.

This is simply an idiotic country of un-freedom, a sad place.

But I cannot forget the worried, harried, tired face of the man at the auto "service" shop.
Am I different?  Luckier?  Maybe not.  I don't have to do his job, but my future is uncertain.
But right now, I am exhausted from getting up earlier than usual--not early enough to be at the front of line for auto "service", but early enough to be ruined, destroyed.

(And even that tired man was not the only one there.  Younger, arrogant workers were there as well.....men who had not yet realized how few opportunities are really available......)

Tomorrow I shall try again.  I haven't been destroyed like this since I had to arrive at 6am to win my Slovak residency permit, a yearly tax, a yearly pain-in-the-ass........(Cars, I believe, need regular oil changes, many times a year.......)

The god of capitalism demands regular sacrifices.

I had begun by wanting to say something about my unpleasant experiences with stupid, arrogant manger-types.....But somehow those memories seem to be slipping away.  I once knew a manager who refused to be angry until.....He accused me of disrespecting him.  What an interesting and revealing moment that was....

In the days when I was employed at an International School, we regularly were insulted by bizarre meetings where nothing happened.  I would say that my colleagues at the time were sufficiently professional and committed that, had a meeting actually had some value, they would have gladly and attentively attended.  But, most meetings happened because a higher authority had decreed that there must be weekly meetings.

One day we were engaged in some sort of watered-down (buy it from a company) psychological game to proof "how it feels" to be excluded.....(Oh sorry, just let me open my mouth and let my audience hear my "not from ' round here accent", and I know how it feels....)

Of course, the ability to imagine how someone else feels is very important, but this idiotic game....well,
it was soooooo obvious.....

And only an idiot could imagine otherwise.  (Strange how I could not tell the manager all of this....)

When I was sixteen I began to attend the University of Texas-Austin, and in the week before, at a so-called Orientation Session, I attended a certain event.  I had been advertised as something about racism.  I don't recall the exact title.  When I got there, the white, mostly male audience sat there as darker skinned students stood in the front of the room and insulted the horrified young men (who I assume came from small towns).  They said things like, 'Shut up Honkie!", or "White boy.....".

It was funny.  The audience did not know what was going on.  I started to laugh.  A tall Chicano man, with long dark hair became enraged with me, pushing me and shoving me, forcing me to leave the room..... Maybe I am crazy, but it seems to me now that he asked me why I didn't shove back,
and I actually said something about Gandhian non-violence.  I think that enraged him even more.          ( Don't get me wrong.  I didn't actually know anything about Gandhi, but I'd somehow gotten the idea that this method might be a good one.)

So, you see, dear reader, I never fit in wherever I go........

But what I meant to say was this:  The manager who refused to get angry was insulted when I left the pseudo-psychological session in which teachers were treated like children in order to explain social exclusion (or whatever)......All of this nonsense had been orchestrated by the manager.  Obviously, he could not have thought it up all by himself.  (I have no idea where he got the idea.)

And, I suppose he thought it was clever.
And his intentions were good.  He doesn't want children to be bullied.

But, really, it doesn't take such silly theatrics---whose goal is obvious from the first step......

Anyway, I simply left from this charade when I saw what was going on.  And that insulted him.
It's a pity I didn't take the time to sit down with him and explain at length why left.

But, there's a high probability that he wouldn't have listened.  And since his name is above mine on the great organizational chart in the sky, my words wouldn't have counted......

So, you see I don't see that there is any especial dignity involved in forms of employment which require  obedience to managers who are, actually, not particularly imaginative.  And it is a sort of hell to see them every day.....

a few publications

Recently, I found myself trying to explain my life to a friend--trying to explain why my current life is so unsatisfying.  No, it's not enough to have a clean, warm place to live and food.

What I miss most of all is time to myself, quiet interruption-free hours---which, in the past, I always managed to arrange.  When I worked at a so-called International School, while my colleagues were traveling to Spain or Italy, I was staying home, reading books.  And, I was happy doing that.  But, now, that's not an option. I have no weekends and no holidays.

Anyway, in that context, I was making the argument that my history shows that when I've had time, I have managed to write something. (See End Note)  Professional philosophers won't find everything I've written to be worthy of mention.  (Indeed, one item on the list below is something I hereby forbid any professional philosopher (who got lost and ended up here) to read....

But I compiled a list of things I'd managed to publish despite lacking the usual sort of supports professional philosophers expect---support such as a library....And I reproduce that list now:

1.  Three "rants" in the (Outbursts section of ) The Journal of Mundane Behavior.
        
(Professional Philosophers are forbidden to read these!) 
http://www.mundanebehavior.org/index2.htm

2.   A piece about "Slavic Fatalism" and "American Optimism" :

http://www.mundanebehavior.org/issues/v2n3/lovas.htm

3.  An essay in "Sorites" about Jonathan Dancy's "moral particularism":

http://www.sorites.org/Issue_18/lovas.htm

4.  Three different essays in "Think":

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=5969360

Incidentally, the above abstract is rather bizarre.  The article started with a quote from Chomsky; so that quote looks to be the abstract.---not by design, I assure you.... 


The next essay, "The Difficulty of Understanding" was written while I was in Vienna, just before I left Europe.  Had I stayed, I would have been able to continue to develop ideas I had at the time.  But the disruption of returning to the land of the free and being overtaken by my parents' needs has put a stop to that.

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7950458

The final article---about advertising---was actually written in the land of the free.  Since that time my parents have declined and demands upon my time have increased.

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=822703

ENDNOTE

You could well say with emphasis:  When I've had time, I've managed to write something....  (I half think the reason (or at least half of the reason) I bothered to write a novella was that I did not at the time have access to a proper research library......)

Increasing Poverty

"An injury to one is an injury to all."--motto of the IWW

Christians who read their holy book literally may take refuge in the thought that the "poor will always be with us", while Marx and his followers believe that for the first time in human history we have the resources to end poverty---thanks to capitalism.

However, today poverty is increasing, along with hostility toward the poor and government policies that say:  we don't need you or want you, and we want you to disappear.   There was an article last week in the Vienna paper, "The Standard" ("Der Standard":
http://derstandard.at/1328508137157/Armut-ist-unsichtbar-Eine-Million-Oesterreicher-arm-oder-armutsgefaehrdetabout 

about poverty in Austria.  (A million who are either in poverty or in danger of falling into poverty--in a population of around 8.5 million....)  And the Guardian yesterday had a story about a family who starved to death in Japan.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/24/family-die-starvation-japan?INTCMP=SRCH

(Two articles don't make a trend, but there is a trend.)

The reality of the situation is easy to see---but powerful ideologies (representing the interests of powerful individuals)--make us blind.

I can do no better than paraphrasing a Christian philosopher:  If a man has more bread than he needs, that is not his bread; it belongs to the poor.....

(I couldn't have said it better myself.)

Recommended reading:


http://www.nationofchange.org/criminalizing-poor-welfare-cellfare-1330094117

Thanks Brian!

Brian Leiter got it right today (over at his "Leiter Reports").....

The New York TImes "liberal"?  or "left"? ha ha ha .......


http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2012/02/the-ny-times-can-acknowledge-the-obvious-when-respected-experts-who-are-not-leftists-notice.html

Why I hate living in this wretched land....

Aggressive marketing is one thing; but when wage-slaves feel a need to defend "their" company, telling me about company policies whose nature is evident.....I lose my patience.

A few weeks ago I asked a company called "greatcall"  (ha...ha...ha....Do I believe that/??  Is the telephone industry regulated?  Do the laws favor me?  I doubt it....)

I wanted to know about services for elderly people, especially about easy to press buttons on devices which would call 911.....

I was ASKING not ordering, not requesting a service be started.

Today I got in the mail a very nicely colored and larger than usual envelope:
"Thank you for adding [name omitted]." and then they specified the name of the so-called service.

Well, I didn't ever express a decision to add; so I phoned up these jerks to ask them if they
had misunderstood me.

Fortunately they hadn't.  And, when I complained that this was "aggressive marketing" (or some
such bullshit)---and that it should be illegal....

Explaining that:
Thank you for giving me a cake IMPLIES (presupposes) I gave you a cake

And so, by parallel,
Thank you for adding X.... implies (or assumes) I added X---which I never did.....

The lady started into an explanation of customer policies (as if I were an idiot or a child)
"Well, sometimes if a customer asks.....", and she went on to describe the background to what had happened, as if it were a hypothetical case.....

Well, she was describing what I already knew, and what I already told her---i.e., wasting
my time.....

And when I bent over backwards to be concessive by saying "Look, I know you are
only doing your job...."
she started to deny that she was only doing her job....

Really, does she have such deep false consciousness?  Maybe she never heard of bad faith?

But, then again, we know companies have gotten so arrogant and authoritarian as to expect their employees to "believe" in them.....

What a sad country.

What a miserable way for me to start my day......

No I won't be adding this so-called service.

And someday I shall leave this country, never to return.

The fact is that I never experienced this sort of irritation for the 12 or so years when I lived in Central Europe, experiencing both a post-communist country (which remains in many ways like a so-called communist one).....and also experiencing a country which never was under the Soviet thumb.....And in neither of one did I experience such irritation.  It seems to be a uniquely USA form of abuse....

Apparently the laws favor Capital,....and there's no other word for it.

INcidentally, I spoke to a fellow with a machine gun under his bed yesterday (again).
He appeared recently in one of my entries.  Yesterday, he really spoke like a dogmatic
asshole.  Very specifically, when he complained Obama is a 'socialist", I attempted to
provoke him by claiming to be a socialist.  (yes, I know, that was a provocation.)
His response was to close down the conversation, to end it, to stop listening, and to
make a dogmatic remark about how he knew better....Well, my friend, I actually visited
the CSSR, and I've known many people who lived through the thing you call "communism"
(which is actually state capitalism---err, it was......)...

Of course, the machine-gun-man's real idiocy is something like this:  to think that preferring an economic system or a set of political arrangements is not a matter of fact, argument, reasoned
considerations, but something like rooting for a sports team.  He who shouts the loudest wins.  And if the fans on one side drown out the competition, that's all there is to it.

So, all in all, in so hostile an environment as the land of the free, I find zero advantage in
being fluent in the local language.  Really, I experienced less irritation as a foreigner
speaking SLovak with less than perfection, but more like intermediate competence......

Oh, I rue the day that I let my sisters trick me into coming back......
But my poor parents do need help.......

Creativity or moral progress are not to be found in the places inhabited by smug drudges who have schooled their brains to satisfy their task-masters, limited and maimed their intelligence to complete the tasks that others set for them.

Moral progress requires dissatisfaction and discomfort--an ache of conscience to see unnecessary suffering.  Curiosity means not being satisfied with what others have done, not leaving things to someone else.

But the world I live in is one where mindless, smug drudges are on the rise.

And they represent a true force for evil, for decline, and increased misery.  The kind of world they are creating is not one I would ever choose to live in.  But I will not be complacent and I will not pretend that the crap they are selling is gold.

If words are the only tool I have, then I shall use them.  And if I express rage, discuss, anger, despair, and sadness, as well as contempt, so much the better.  These are not the emotions of the smug conformist, the sell-out, the well-paid informer for the secret police.  And if the informers who toady up to the powers that be dislike these emotions, so much the better...... They can say it is in poor taste; and I shall become a connoisseur of poor taste, a devotee of poor taste, a fan of poor taste, the best friend of poor taste.  Childish, they may say---and I shall giggle with delight.  Their dislike and distaste cannot equal my enormous appetite for speaking the truth with as little indirection as possible.  Even, you can say, in as unacademic a way as can be imagined; for academia is the realm of truth writ small and the original home of indirect expression---though, I can hear proud voices mentioning a few, very few, exceptions.........

(I am thinking, I suppose, of the danger of translating a philosopher----not from one language to another, but from one time period to another, the danger, .e.g., of making Socrates not a pagan, or of making surprising ideas less so, warping and shrinking them to fit our concerns, and our easy solutions, rubbing off all of the rough edges.  I will be a man of rough edges, not an advertising slogan that slides off the tongue like melted butter, and most assuredly not a "presentation" projected via my laptop, something which is as unoffensive as possible.  I want to be a stone that remains in the shoe until the problem is solved.  And if it is never solved, I shall continue to rub the skin, continue to be abrasive.  Just as I remain a problem to myself, every day, so I shall be for anyone willing to listen something incomplete and unsatisfied by the banalities which replace effortful thought.)

Given the way things are, one could only be truthful and just and honest if one were "uncouth"----considering all the lies that are concealed in the most banal of ordinary transactions.  All personal relationships are based on an enormous underground structure of falsity and injustice.

(I feel that my prose has become Nietzschean.   So much the better---if that is true.  I may have to try on a few more styles before I reach the point I really am aiming at.)

Sane commentary about war-mongering

Thanks to Brian Leiter, I offer to you, dear reader, the following link.  Glenn Greenwald provides sane analysis of some insane war fever....(No, I do not believe that Iran is--in any sense--a "threat"...)

http://www.salon.com/2012/02/14/us_media_takes_the_lead_on_iran/singleton/

destruction

I had hoped to comment upon this matter at greater length, and perhaps I shall in the future, but....for now, let me just say this:  The pictures which adorn the borders of this blog were taken a couple of years ago.  The deserted buildings, I thought at the time, looked better in the pictures than they did in reality.  Orange buildings, blue sky, etc.  The expanse of asphalt surrounding them was not so ugly in the pictures as in reality.  Now those buildings (which were once a functioning set of shops relatively close to my parents' home) have been destroyed.  I have been told that a "Wal Mart" will be built there.  IMHO that's not progress.....but I have no say in the matter.   (My views have no effective influence upon the course of events---which is to say there is no democracy here.)

Sartre's war diaries

I've just begun reading Sartre's war diaries, and it has been a pleasant surprise.  There are a mixture of reflections---philosophical and personal.  I continue to be angry and sad to realize that he could work twelve hours free from interruptions.  I haven't enjoyed that sort of possibility since 2009--and even then, only during weekends or vacations/holidays.  (Of course, in Europe, people have more vacations and holidays than they do in the land of the free.)

Nonetheless, I just wanted to comment now about one thing.

Sartre remarks a couple of times that he tends to identify with the less powerful and privileged.  As is his wont, he subjects that tendency itself to reflection, however, my point lies elsewhere.


I want to contrast that attitude with the rather smug, self-satisfied emotions and cognitions I recently heard expressed by a midwestern originated employee of an investment firm........The man seemed to be in complete denial about the actual situation of most people in the world.  The Third World was for him nothing more than a joke---because the people there had so little money---and as for the poor in the USA, his thoughts were little more than cartoon-like stereotypes.

Yes, it would be better to have a knee-jerk tendency to identify with those who lack power and privilege. No matter how Sartre might represent himself as affected or inauthentic, that tendency represents some sort of consciousness about justice----a consciousness wholly lacking in my recent visitor

And, indeed, the critique here equally applies to myself, for my own reticence.  I regret that I evaded the real issue in my conversation with the fellow, allowing his smug world view to sit there largely unaffected by the multitude of facts of which he has neither awareness or interest.

bookstores?

There are really very few, very very few bookstores in El Paso, Texas.
There were many, many more in Bratislava---a city of approximately the same size.

And "quality"?  Quality bookstores? Ha ha ha ha.

I mean "Barnes and Noble"???  I went there recently.  It is amazing what garbage gets published.
So much of it seems to involve a kind of pampering of the audience and appealing to prejudices, especially nationalistic ones......as well as superstitions.....

Really, very very many things that are called "books" are .....well, how can you describe them?
It makes me think that very very many people called "editors" are rather ignorant and most likely
unconcerned about their ignorance.  (Exercise for the reader:  compare and contrast crass commercialism in Hollywood and in the publishing industry.....)

a new attack upon the working class

Richard D. Wolff and Dr. Harriet Fraad have a commentary on a recently published book,

Charles Murray's "Coming Apart". I recommend their comments, and also recommend Wolff's blog where the audio commentary is found:

http://rdwolff.com/content/working-class-coming-apart-podcast

Ned Block's incisive critique of an earlier book co-authored by Murray (The Bell Curve) is also worth reading:

"How Heritability Misleads about Race": http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/Heritability.html

the misery which is the USA

I see in my parents' cluttered home a perfect representation of the failure of the USA as a country--not its failure as a "military power" or its failure to dominate the economy of the world---but its failure to be a good place to live. For, even during the heyday of American capitalism the USA did not provide a rich life of culture and sociality. On the contrary, the life of the citizen of the USA is lonely.

My father has purchased extra t-shirts, extra toilet seats, and countless other objects which now fill this house to overflowing. Then, again, there are my mother's collection of used bottles and jars, and various mysterious items in her kitchen, all serving to create clutter, clutter which is actually dangerous for two frail people who need to move about with walkers.

My parents are old and really cannot take care of themselves. They are isolated. Children and childhood friends are far away. And my mother and father are drowning in all the consumerist crap which this miserable society provided for them----not meaningful relationships with other people, not the sort of health care they really need, but clutter from consumerist crap. That is the United States of America----and that problem is wholly separate from the current so-called crisis.

And why is crap readily available? Because the capitalist class, the one-tenth of one percent who are in charge get richer by selling it to the rest of us. No other reason. Not because we really want it or need it, but because it's part of a system designed to exploit and use us for the benefit of a small group of undeserving people.

The system never worked. And the current problems are only the latest version of the misery which it creates.

hating Sartre

I've been reading (and enjoying) Sartre's wartime diaries, and I keep thinking: You bastard! You fucking bastard. You've got a job. You've got money coming in. And you've got time to write. You don't have to fucking take care of two old people. Damn you!

the decline in living standards

Noted in passing:

A local university is advertising that it offers on-line and "face to face" classes.

I suppose the latter feature real, live professors.

key questions

Who does this really help? (e.g. school closings/privatization in the USA, or privatizations in Greece)

Who gets hurt?

Why is this happening?

Those are the sorts of questions to ask. There's an accepted vocabulary of so-called "economics" that makes such questions impossible to ask.....

key questions

and another thing

I have mentioned the intrinsic loneliness, alienation and isolation of the USA-life style,

but this drive me insane:

My father is relatively healthy for a man of eighty-six years, but he has no one to talk to,

and nothing to do with his time when he is feeling well.

He sits in his chair, would like to talk to me, would like to recount his memories of, as it happens, 1935 or 1945, or his youth, but I have things to do. And my mother has things to do.

What's the point? Isn't this awful? He should have someone to talk to, and something to do.

I can give him something to watch, play the podcast of "Democracy Now" for him......but that's really not enough. He needs human interaction.

But he doesn't have it.

That is bad and sad.

PS Okay, a guy will come to give him a shower in a couple of hours. But, that's really not enough!

PPS Oh yes, there is "daycare" for the elderly, but not in our neighborhood! It's fifteen or more miles away!

a note about Sartre

warning: this is rough, and should be corrected/re-written.

Nonetheless, off the top of my head:

I recently listened to a snippet of a lecture by the Sartre scholar Jonathan Webber

about Sartre's philosophy.

A famous and cute phrase which Sartre is fond of gets translated into English something like this:

Man is the sort of creature who is what he is not and is not what he is.

Webber said that this involves two senses of "existence', but then he also threw in something about essences. If I recall correctly he seemed to identify the is of predication with saying what a thing's essence is. That would not be right. I am bald, but that is not my essence. I am a citizen of the USA and that is not my essence either (though it sure matters a heck of a lot to the kind of life I have.)

But so far as the general strategy goes, of course there needs to be some further elaboration or development of the original paradoxical saying. Otherwise, Sartre would be talking nonsense, and if he only speaks nonsense, then why read him!?? --n'est pas?

I thought Sartre meant something like this:

Man is not what he is: IE what he is at this moment does not determine his choices about the future.

Man is what he is not: For Sartre, the "is not" or "nothing" (hyperbolically I might add) means the realm of future and possibility and imagination. So, we are "what we are not" in the sense that our nature is tied up with possibilities and choosing to realize plans that are currently not actual.

So, in the first half of the saying: "He is not what he is", 'is not' is ordinary negation, but what he is has a sort of temporal restriction.

"He is what he is not" ---in that bit, "what he is not" does not mean negation, but is Sartre's special meaning involving possibilities. (Of course, I suppose Sartre thinks that ordinary negation (as I have put it) is a sign of this special power we have, the power to realize what is possible, but I write now as someone who is not fully fluent in Sartre-eese.)

When I heard Webber on this, I thought he was stuttering. (Even Homer nods.) What I should do is give a reference to the lecture, and listen to it again. I hope that I shall do that soon. In the meantime, I wanted to at least get started on this little project. And perhaps it may have some amusement value for anyone who happens to be reading this blog.

I am no Sartre scholar; Webber is. So, what I've just said is dangerous. On the other hand, it's possible (likely) that I read this analysis (paraphrase) somewhere. (If I can find out where I got this idea from, I will be happy to credit the person. So, that is the second point at which this entry is incomplete.) But, in the meantime, I just wanted to get this out of my system.

Footnote: As far as I can tell--it's now late at night and my eyes are tired---but from a quick look at Thomas Flynn's article on "Sartre" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, my above suggestion about how to understand Sartre's paradoxical saying is not at all original. What I say is pretty much what Flynn says....

human reality that “is what it is not” (that is, its future as possibility) and “is not what it is” (its past as facticity, including its ego or self,

Nothing there about the "is" of identity, or "is" of predication......

Link to Flynn's article:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sartre/

excerpt from a letter to a friend

I hope you'll forgive me for writing with the same old story.

The fact is that if I leave my parents,no one will do what I am doing. My two sisters are not merely selfish; they seem to be in some way infantile or regressed, stilted. Neither works and both devotes time to purely

self-centered activities. (I don't say that if a woman doesn't work she performs no useful activities. But, my complaint is that the genuine needs of my parents are not getting the attention they should. One sister sleeps excessively (apparently the result of medicines she takes), reads religious books, and knits. The other has two dogs which she

treats as though they were human. The sister

with dogs has no young children at home, and the dogs seem to be some sort of substitute. (Neither sister has young children at home, and neither husband needs help the way my parents do. Both husbands are healthy adults who can take care of themselves.)

But what's disgusting is that I recently overheard a conversation between my father and my older sister (the one with

dogs), and my sister went on and on and on about the health condition of one of her dogs.

(It was necessary to amputate one of the dog's legs.)

At the same time, this sister never once asked my mother about her health. She is more concerned about her dog than she is about our parents.

And that conversation happened after a six (or eight or nine?) month silence.

So, who is going to take care of my parents if I leave?

Today my father is more senile than ever before. My mother is weaker and weaker. They are both frail.

On the other hand, I have been depressed, anxious and suicidal every night after they go to sleep

because I feel as though I have no life.

It's not as though I can talk to my mother about this. If I raise the subject she becomes upset. She rightfully fears abandonment. The other day she did express hope that if

my father is stable and she can solve her bladder problem, maybe they can stay here and cope on their own.

But it's not so simple. They simply cannot live here on their own. There are a million small things that

neither of them can do. In fact they cannot even open the windows safely. There is so much clutter in this

house that the activity of opening a window is dangerous. You have to climb on something or lean forward

to a dangerous extent (dangerous for a frail eighty-something year old).

The other day I saw my mother climb on top of the toilet seat to open a window in one bathroom.

She is frail and if she fell, it could be very serious. She should not be doing that. But she said

that she has to do that when I'm not home (I told her I could do that for her when I was home) and, she mentioned that I am not always here. That felt like an accusation.

I see no solution. My parents want to stay here, and go on as though they were not frail.

My sisters are not willing to give them they help they need.

So, you see, I keep going round in circles.

Thanks

tomatoes

the tomatoes in this country

NEVER

taste good

And when I cook them

they fall apart

as if

they never really were tomatoes

but only papier mache replicas......

Another personal note

As a quick follow-up to my previous posting, I want to add a brief thought. I am happy to help my parents. I am happy if, for example, I find a film I know which they enjoy. And, when I see my mother or father laugh, that makes me feel good. I am happy to think that by being here I make their life better.

But the price of helping my parents is that I cannot live my own life.

And, I have two sisters. So, it seems unfair that the burden has almost wholly fallen on my shoulders. My sister can continue to live with the love of her dogs, while I must purse a life empty of the friendships I enjoyed in Bratislava and Vienna---and I have lost those friendships because she needs the affection of her pets.

Dogs and imagination, or the lack thereof--an even more personal reflection

Is a dog's life more valuable than a human life? No, I don't advocate cruelty to animals. Nor do I wish to take away anyone's pet. On the contrary, there is the story of how the USA stole the island of Diego Garcia from its original inhabitants. The first step was the murder of the pets belonging to the original inhabitants. (You can learn the full story form the Australian journalist John Pilger.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3667764379758632511

The cruel impersonality of the imperial USA war machine is not something I wish to imitate.

However, I write these words with a fresh memory of a phone conversation I overheard yesterday. My eighty-five year old mother was talking to my older sister, and my mother had turned on the speaker phone.

My sister was engaged in a lengthy account of the recent amputation of a leg of one of her pets. Of course, it is interesting, and touching to hear the story.

However, my sister is telling this to my eighty-five year old mother, a woman who has numerous health problems. Somehow, it seems to me that there is a lack of perspective here.

My sister is lavishing her love on a pet. And because of her pets my sister is unwilling to help my mother in my mother's home. In fact, that is a standing policy articulated by my older sister in the past.

I could understand if my sister had young children who needed her care. But it seems as though her dogs are functioning in my sister's psychology exactly as if they were children. However, they are not.

And, the consequence for me is that I have lost my life. (In 2009 I was living in Europe, where I had friends and a job, and a place of my own to live---not to mention real weekends free from work, and even vacation time free from work.) My life has been taken from me. Here, living with my parents, unemployed, in a hostile environment, I feel that I am the victim of my sister's affection for her pets. My sister won't come here because she doesn't want to abandon her pets. I must admit that her behavior seems self-indulgent, even childish or selfish, even pathological. However, what makes me angry is the thought that the disadvantages of my current situation, the unpleasantness of it as well as the very real damage that has been done to me, are all invisible to my sister. There, too, I believe a very infantile thought lies behind the blindness (of both sisters, in fact): why shouldn't Mark be happy to live at home with mom and dad? Why not? My sisters would be happy to return to a childish past. So, it is incomprehensible to them that their brother would prefer to live a fuller, more independent, more adult life. It is incomprehensible to them because their own lives are in so many ways stilted and not fully adult or independent. And, that, too is very sad. My sisters have, to varying degrees, conformed to a rigid stereotype of "a woman's place", and have abandoned any attempt at true freedom. Sartre would call it bad faith. And in the process, their imaginations have become warped and stunted. They can't imagine why I complain.

John Pilger's homepage:

http://johnpilger.com/

Catholic fanaticism?

Recently the Catholic establishment put out the message that a proposed new law would take away religious freedom from Catholics.

My understanding of the proposal is that no actual Catholic believer would have been forced to stop believing anything, or would have been prevented from attending a worship service. Rather Catholic institutions in the health care business would not be allowed to decide on their delivery of services on the basis of merely religious teachings.

In other words, a Catholic health care service would (according to the new law) not be allowed

to refuse to provide a health service on the grounds that the Pope (or a holy book as interpreted by Catholic leaders) said it was wrong.

Since not everyone believes in the teachings of the Catholic Church, that is not an attack upon the Catholic Church or its members. It is merely upholding the freedom of people who are not Catholics to live their lives as they see fit.

I've skipped a step here; so, please allow me to back up. I, for one, don't agree with a universal ban on abortion. Nor, I believe, does the CC. However, there are cases where I think a woman should be allowed to have an abortion and the CC would disagree. Now, suppose that a woman asked for an abortion from a CC associated hospital. Would it be an infringement upon Catholic religious beliefs if the hospital were not allowed to say "no, because that is contrary to our beliefs"?

One immediate side-issue is the case of doctors whose conscience would not allow them to perform abortions. I certainly don't think they should be forced to carry out the procedure. On the other hand, are we to imagine that any health care facility (hospitals or clinics) only employee the most conservative Catholics? After all, 98% of Catholics in the USA use birth control, contrary to the pronouncements of the hierarchy.

So, there are some details here that matter.

However, the key point, as I see it, concerns fanaticism and the automatic assumption that if someone believes something on the basis of their religion, there can be no criticism, discussion or analysis of it. That automatic assumption leads to fanaticism and intolerance.

A basic principle of tolerance and non-fanaticism is at stake here. A Catholic can attempt to persuade me to change my mind about any issue. I would listen. But if the argument is "The Pope says....", or "The Bible says so", then that's not a good reason. The Catholic has to appeal to some general facts or principles agreed to by non-believers. Otherwise, the demand that I follow the Catholic notion is nothing but fanaticism.

And in this case, it does seem that fanaticism has triumphed.

Otherwise intelligent commentaries upon this issue failed to make this point. There was too much focus upon the issue of "weak or wishy-washy Obama". It is also true that if Catholics behave differently than their hierarchy recommend, and if Catholics can afford birth control whether or not their health insurance pays for it, then the upshot of all this will be that the poor or working class will be denied benefits available to the more prosperous. And that is heinous, as others have pointed out. It would be, once again, a retreat to the sort of dark world which existed in the 1850's when doctors and other professionals had smaller families while denying birth control to working families.

Acknowledgment: The basic point I make above derives, I believe, from a paper Richard Rorty wrote about democracy.

my daily decline

tonight I managed to get out of the house for about 2 hours. I went to Starbucks, which I actually don't enjoy. (It creates an atmosphere when you see "We support our troops" signs everywhere....)

Nonetheless, for a brief period of time I could think my own thoughts---which is not to say that I was there long enough to actually follow a chain of thought to its logical conclusion. Far from it.

And that, dear reader, is what makes my life torture: the certain knowledge that any intellectual skills I once possessed---the ability to read, analyze, write carefully, or to speak a foreign language---all of those skills which need regular exercise, which must either develop or decay......---all of those skills are atrophying.

Instead I spend my time in endless conversations with my mother about her (very genuine but irreversible) worries (worries about her health condition and my father's), or emptying my father's urinals, or helping him do his daily exercises, not to mention shopping for adult diapers and the various medicinal items old people need, as well as regular grocery shopping, etc.

And the visits by various health care professionals are a real time-killer. Their frequent phone calls--not to mention other phone calls----contribute to the overall noise, and put me on edge.

In my most unhappy moments I think: my life has been taken away from me so that my eighty-six year old father can talk about his life in the 1930's or 1940s' (his favorite time periods) and so that he can eat ice cream (his favorite food), or my life has been sacrificed so that my (eighty-five year old) mother can shout and complain to my father (which happens often during the day) and so that she can watch soap operas at night.

In all honesty, I think my elderly parents do deserve these things. They deserve to have a life.--- But at the price of my current unhappiness? And at the price of my future happiness? (Because three years of unemployment will certainly affect my future......--No, not merely three years of "unemployment", but three years of mental and intellectual idleness.)

And it is for all of these reasons (ignoring my social isolation and the absence of joy in my life) that I would like to die. I do not, however, plan to take my own life.

If I do not attempt suicide, it is only for one reason: I know of no painless, fool-proof method.

Any method might fail to kill me, and might lead only to serious injury. And if I did fail at suicide but became permanently disabled, my elderly parents would be in no position to care for me. (I currently have no health insurance.)

Greece

We are all Greeks now.

What they do to the Greeks today, they will do to us tomorrow.

(I believe that I read something to this effect in the comments section of an article in the Vienna paper, "Der Standard"....and I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments thereby expressed.)

an encounter with the American Dream

Last night I had the experience of talking to someone in the "financial services industry".

(I think that's what you call it.) He is paid to speak over the phone to people who want to invest money, and he helps them do so. Unsurprisingly his politics are far right--libertarian right. (He is a Ron Paul supporter.)

Off the top of my head, I would say his knowledge of history, sociology, and anthropology is zero. You don't have to be a Marxist, just someone with a passing knowledge of contemporary anthropology, to understand that in hunter-gatherer societies there were not enormous gaps between rich and poor, or that the societies were more egalitarian than contemporary societies. In retrospect, it is interesting that when I made that point, the financial services worker retreated from the claim that inequality and hierarchy were simply a universal fact of human nature to the thesis that among any given group of individuals, some would be more talented. Without reproducing the entire conversation, I will remark that the gentleman actually seemed to believe that hierarchies are simply "the way things are", so that someone will always have more power. I neglected to point out that this seems to be a fundamental denial of the democratic principle: people should not be ruled by others, but should be allowed to make their own decisions. (As I think of it now, I wonder if there isn't a little incoherence in the fellow's views. On the one hand we are rugged individuals who can achieve lots if we just try hard. On the other, basic facts about how we live are decided without our input. That's not an outright contradiction, but what's needed to get one would be a premise about class conflict. --e.g., it's in my interest to be paid more for working less, while it is in my employer's interest to pay me less for working more.)

(I apologize: What I've just said is not adequate. A complete defense would require more detail. But I haven't got time to say more now. So, I shall simply acknowledge that I have not given anything like a complete defense of what I have claimed.)

Why do I say he knew nothing of history and sociology? I suppose that one crucial thing we learn from history is that the USA's location as a wealthy and powerful country in the world is not the product of hard work and effort, but of processes more akin to looting, not to mention killing and cheating. Hence a USA-centric view (such as my young friend had) is deeply flawed. (He seemed to regard the poverty of the "third world" as a laughing matter....) Secondly, he approached the world with an extremely individualistic approach that ignores the sorts of social forces that interest sociologists--or sociolinguists, (see below).

The Poverty of Poor Countries is Hardly a laughing matter!

It is worth repeating a fact that I've mentioned before: So far as so-called "development" goes, more money goes out of the poorest countries of the world into the richest countries than the reverse. Here's a quote from John Weeks in a review of a recent book:

The reality that the authors demonstrate is simply stated and appalling in its implications: sub-Saharan Africa, location of the poorest countries in the world, has generated net capital outflows for decades. One could with small exaggeration say that for a generation Africa has provided aid to the United States and Western Europe.

The full review is at http://zed-books.blogspot.com/2011/12/africas-odious-debts-reviewed-by-john.html

So far as I could tell from our brief conversation, the fellow believes that the poor are poor because (at worst) they are lazy or (at best) suffer from an incomprehensible psychological mind-set. In other words, anyone who wants a decent life can get it ---if only they make a few sacrifices and work hard.

I suppose what I would have liked to suggest is that some people start life with so few advantages and so many disadvantages that they really never have a chance.

However, I didn't manage to formulate that proposition---let alone make it vivid---during our conversation.

I suppose if I wanted to recommend a book on this subject, it would be Eric Olin Wright and Joel Rogers' "American Society: How it Really Works". (A draft of which is available at Olin Wright's website.)

Or, then again, there are the writings of Loic Wacquant.

Nevertheless, right now I just wish to mention one curious fact. My conversational partner happened to hail from northern Ohio. Consequently, his native accent is one which many citizens of the USA regard as pleasant, or not disturbing, but neutral. Linguists tell us that citizens of the USA find Southern accents and the (so-called) New York accent unpleasant.

In the case of New York City, that hostile judgment is the result of an ideology, a kind of prejudice. Due to television and other factors, people think of New Yorkers as criminals and immigrants who speak "bad" English. As far as the "southern" accent goes, people say it sounds "ignorant", but there have been Nobel Prize winners whose native accent was Southern. (Linguists would tell me that terms like "southern" here are imprecise. I apologize to them, but the general point, I hope, will be clear enough, and would survive precisification.)

Having acquired a (so-called) midwestern accent at a young age, my new acquaintance had an advantage that others did not have. He didn't earn it. He didn't work for it. He never even chose it. And, it certainly helped him get the job he currently has. Other people were not so lucky. But this advantage is invisible to him. (I would have pointed it out to him if there had been more time.)

Recommended Reading:

Race and the rise of standard American, Thomas Paul Bonfiglio, Mouton de Gruyter 2002, reviewed at: http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?SubID=12022

nothing special/nothing good (GMOOH)

A few weeks ago I had a conversation with a citizen of the USA who owns a machine gun.

I believe that he said something like this: I just like guns.

Or, maybe he said, "I've been around guns all of my life and I know what to do with them."

Well, errr, that sounds like a militaristic version of Papal infallibility. (James Joyce, I believe, has the decisive historical account of how that came to be in a case of Papal fiat.......the cardinals and bishops were merely discussing it, when the Pope himself solemnly declared that he hereby possessed it.....)

But my deep antipathy to the people I meet is only illustrated by my conversation with the man who likes machine guns. The fellow also happened to slight another of my loves---crowds.

When I lived in Vienna, nothing made me feel more alive than getting off the U-bahn, going upstairs and facing a throng of people----some speaking Slovak, or Polish, or Czech, and some speaking German.....or even English..........and best of all on a crisp fall afternoon, or even a briskly cold winter one. I love that, and I miss it so much that I could burst into tears right now.

My machine gun friend ( I mean really! Does he think he is going to fight a war against the so-called "commies" or so-called "terrorists"?) also happened to mention that he does not like Paris because it is "so crowded". (As if the local freeway is never dangerously crowded by trucks speeding along at 70mph.....)

I guess it is puritan/capitalist/industrialist: A person without a truck/car is naked.

So, all those naked crowds in Vienna or Paris are just too erotic for the Puritan mind........positively disorderly and anarchistic by comparison with the neat rows and columns of trucks and cars, speeding along adding to global warming.......

Would I really want to spend 300 dollars a month to buy/rent/lease a car when I can spend 50 Euros a month (=approximately 66 US dollars) for the Vienna metro, which runs 24 hours a day? (A local man recently told me he spends $300 dollars a month for his new car...---and that is not counting, gas, oil changes, insurance, etc., or the mental agony which is driving....)

the blind in home health aid and the elephant which is health

I was watching my father struggle to get out of bed. He leans forward, at almost an 90 degree angle to the floor. Needless to say, that's dangerous. He could easily fall over.

I think that the mechanics of this is: he's supposed to use his legs more.

Why doesn't he use his legs more? Are they too weak? Well, he's just finished several weeks of physical therapy. And, according to the supervisor in question, my father has met his goals. (Ergo, there won't be more therapy.)

Frankly, I am pissed off. I am reminded of the old parable of the blindmen and the elephant. Each grabbed a different part of the elephant, and each came up with a quite plausible view of what the thing was---plausible from the individual blind man's point of view. (If you are blind and grab the elephant's trunk, you might think it was a snake. If you are blind and grab the elephant's leg, you may think you've got hold of a tree trunk.)

However, there's something else going on here.

The money men who own the health companies in the USA want proof of results. They don't want their money wasted. That's why there are "quantifiable" goals, etc. That's why there is excessive scrutiny and control of home visits. And that's why students in the USA are weighed and measured at every available opportunity.

But, you can define your goals so that you know in advance they can be reached. (When President Johnson decided to make "war" on poverty, poverty was defined in such a way that he could reach his goals.) I don't think, for example, the PT would list as a goal: Our goal is for the patient to be able to walk more safely, to get out of bed more safely, and to move from sitting to standing more safely. A "better goal" is: the patient can walk 200 yards without getting tired.

Well, I could be wrong. I haven't actually read all the paperwork created by these home visitors.

But my doubt remains. My father has met all of his goals (as defined by the home care agency), but I don't think he is safer when he moves from a sitting to a standing position. He is not safer now than he was before all of these home visits. And if the Money Men far away in a nicer place have ultimately decided that we need reachable goals, and thereby squeezed genuine health and safety out of the picture, then I should blame them.

So, I see the same illness at work in the system of education and the system of "health care". Teachers and administrators (and parents) focus upon artificial tests, and (ultimately) jobs. But the tests do not measure creativity or freedom or open-mindedness. And the jobs that people aim at do not need creativity or freedom of thought; they need people who know how to follow orders and shut up. (And what if a loving parent has only known such a job? And what if a loving parent cannot imagine a different job for their children?---My own answer is that such a scenario would be a sort of hell. I do not know that it is reality, but it would represent my own worst fears....)

I hesitate to confront the physical therapist's assistant with this diagnosis, as she has so little power within the system. She is, after all, following orders. Moreover, my mother (and father) enjoys (enjoy) her company, and that counts for a lot.

So, in the end, I resort to blogging about the problem. I suppose my fondest hope would be if someone with a similar problem gets some insight from what I've said. It has always meant a lot to me when I learned that a problem which I faced was not just my problem, but part of a more general pattern.

After-thought:

Don't get me wrong! It is a good thing that a physical therapist has visited my father in his home. It is a good thing that the physical therapist's assistant has done exercises with my father and corrected his walking, as well as his movement from sitting to standing. It is good that my parents have not been thrown out into the snow.

Nevertheless, I think I can see features of the system which are bad. And, I think I can imagine what a better system would look like. And, I think I know who is to blame for this much-less-than-perfect system.

poem for a physical therapist's assistant

(Corrected 7 March 2012; please also see note at the bottom of the page)


The authorities who distribute resources in the USA are too cheap to allow my father regular visits by an actual physical therapist. Instead he is visited by a physical therapist's assistant. Then, less often, a physical therapist comes to check up on things.

This is exactly parallel to the processes I witnessed when I used to teach at USA-headquartered educational institutions in Europe. Written directions specified in detail what one was supposed to teach. This was supposed to maximize control from the home office. However, an unstated advantage was that it made it easy to replace people.

In truth, I did not follow that ridiculous detailed directions, and neither did my colleagues. Fortunately, administrators did not expect us to. However, there is a general desire by the people at the top to shrink what one knows, to limit the spread of knowledge. The less any given worker know, the better.

This reached megalomaniacal proportions at one Language School where I was employed. I actually saw a department head holding every little piece of unshared knowledge over the heads of other people as if she had a sword......

As for my father's PT assistant, I pointed out that if therapy is successful, my father will

be stronger. But, as their physical therapy does not cure his senility, and as his judgment

is very bad, successful physical therapy may be increasing his chances of falling. Her response was to say that she was only doing her job. What happened when she was not here is not part of her job. (So, implicitly, she is not going to think about it.)

How very capitalist, I thought to myself. First of all, people are more or less aggrieved by non-democratic working conditions, and so resent their jobs. (Not so, in her case, as far as I can tell.) But secondly, the limited narrow mind-set is oh so capitalist. EG: I only sell cars. I don't consider the consequences for the environment.

In any case, thinking about the words of my father's PT assistant......(admittedly, I did not hear them, but only my mother's version of them.....) I wrote the following lines:

Forgetting Nuremberg in 2012

The bombs fell.

I followed orders.

Someone died.

Who died?

I don't know.

I don't care.

I was only following orders.

It's not my job to think about the consequences of my actions.

Of course, there is a very practical problem here. My father wants to move around freely. And that's not surprising. I cannot always be at this side. Sometimes he wants to get up when no one is around. And sometimes he forgets to use his walker. One solution is to keep his walker nearby at all times. Practically that doesn't always work because it creates crowding.

However, I would have more respect for my father's helper if she had simply acknowledged the problem, rather than dismissing it as not part of her job description. That sort of laziness deserves no respect whatsoever.


Note added March 6:  The PT-assistant later made some attempt to give my father advice, so, to partially solve this problem.  She also did arrange exercises with the thought that she needed to think about what goes on when she is not here.  I discuss this fact in a later entry.  I leave this entry here as a record of what was going on (and going through my mind) at that point.  Moreover, I am speaking of general trends which persist even if one particular PTA made a correction on one day.

FURTHER COMMENT 2013:  PT'S have a very important role to play in the lives of the elderly.  When they fix mistakes, it is very important.---And when they fail to notice mistakes, that is also very important.


Now, in 2013, it seems that someone failed to notice that my mother was given the wrong walker--a walker too tall for her, which was forcing her to walk on her toes.
Please allow me to replay that: Normally we walk heel-ball-toe. My eighty-something mother was---because she was given the wrong walker--- walking toe-ball-heel. Now, that incorrect walking could have only aggravated whatever problems she had. She, too, was seeing physical therapists and physical therapists' assistants during that time. First, someone at a private company that contracts with Medicare gave her the wrong walker. Then two or more physical therapists who are paid through Medicare (though, they, too work for a private company) failed to notice that my mother's walker was too tall for her---and, probably aggravating the problem. Last of all, to add insult to injury, Medicare is too cheap to pay for another walker----even though the original walker which my mother was supplied through no fault of her own was the wrong one, and was probably undoing the beneficial effects of any therapy she was receiving.
But I wouldn't want to tar all physical therapists with the same brush. It was a PT who noticed the problem. But before he noticed it, my mother used the wrong walker for two years, and two or three other PT's didn't notice it. That's not a good track record. And, I am willing to believe that it has more to do with the system of medical care than the individual therapists. The system reflects the urbanization of the USA and the excessive use of the individually-piloted private vehicles. This sytem dictates that there cannot be a full-care health service in a given neighborhood. Instead, insanely, those who deliver care to the elderly must waste hours (and add to climate destruction) by travelling in their private vehicles from one end of the city to the other. Altogether an insane system, and insane society---not because individual Americans are insane--not even the PT's who failed to notice a problem. But, it is extremely important to recall the staggering inequality in the USA-- some individuals (aka the very wealthy) do benefit much more than others from this insane system; they benefit much more than they deserve. And with their exorbitant wealth and power, generated by the existing insanity, they don't seem to be in a hurry to change anything.

Why it is stifling to live within the borders of the USA

When I first began to live in Slovakia, I quickly lost track of events in the USA. I am not saying that I failed to know about important events. Rather, I found that my mind was freed from worrying about various pseudo-events which are routinely created by the corporate media.

At that time the BBC was still broadcasting in post-Soviet countries, and so I had an abundance of news in English. And, over time, I gradually learned to read the local papers.

But I did not face the daily barrage of propaganda which infects the minds of the citizens of the USA. To be sure, the propaganda machine is powerful, and its reach does extend throughout the world, but it is at its most powerful within the boundaries of the USA.

Now, by contrast, as I am once again (temporarily) forced to live within the boundaries of the USA, I have taken a step backward; my mind is once again dazed and confused by the absolutely overwhelming omnipresence of propaganda. I can scarcely breathe. To talk to a citizen of the USA is to hear countless words and phrases which are nothing but repeated propaganda tools.

For that reason alone, if there were not so many others (bad food--fresh mushrooms, something so average as that, are not to be found here!!! what a crime! What an utter lack of civilization!)----bad weather, too many cars, climate irresponsibility, Puritanism, the mindless absorption of capitalist dogmas) I could not imagine staying in this blighted land.

As an illustration of the propaganda machine in action, together with an astute response by Glenn Greenwald, I offer the following link (once again thanks to Brian Leiter) on the so-called "menace" of Iran:

http://www.salon.com/2012/02/04/the_growing_iranian_military_behemoth/singleton/