Tuesday, December 31, 2013

coarse world

This is the kind of coarse world I see around me.

My father, even if senile, even if a member of the category "frail elderly", is yet a human being deserving of respect and dignity.

He is not a child, and it is wrong to condescend to him if he makes an attempt to please you through humor.

He has suffered disrespect in his life---indeed, at an early age.  He was told, when quite young, that his father was "too poor" to pay for a college education.

And, so naturally, the fact that my father achieved a college education is important to him.  (And, it was an important fact for my life as well.)

So, today, if you speak to him as if he were a child, and do not listen to him, if you do not attempt to grasp in some measure that he has had a long life, and he was once young and full of life as you are today, then you do him wrong.

If your powers of imagining are so limited that you cannot understand that his "stories" are glimpses of a past you do not know, then you do him wrong, and you impoverish yourself as well.

I don't feel that my father is getting the respect he deserves.

ethical dilemmas

In the trite and reductive way in which ethical philosophers spin their yarns, I now offer the following:

Imagine that a family member who you love is drowning.

They have fastened their arms around your neck.   They are fearful, but also grateful that your neck is available, as they find amazing strength to squeeze it.

You can, for a time, support them.  However, let us suppose, that the desperate energy in their grasp is slowly pulling you down with them.

If you extricate yourself, have you done something wrong?

Would it be better that you both drown?

And, imagine that, at the same time your loved one is pulling you under, small sea creatures are nipping away at your legs, or that birds are poking your skull, attempting to eat your brain.

Now, that's getting close to my current situation.

Sunday, December 29, 2013

compare and contrast: capitalism and communism

As I prepare my morning coffee, I worry that sounds from the kitchen will wake my elderly parents.

I recall that in Slovakia, in the high rises built by communists, the kitchens had doors, allowing you to seal off the noises and smells from the bedrooms.  (Do you say the communists don't deserve credit for that?  They didn't design the layout.  Perhaps, but it doesn't matter to the point I'm making.)

No such possibility exists in this house where my parents live, a house constructed after the Second World War in the U.S.A..

How annoying.  How thoughtless.  How characteristic of the sort of massed-produced lives that we enjoy in the land of the free.

totalitarianism watch

As I've just written friends describing the difficulties faced by my elderly parents,
I can confidently await the response of the email provider:  advertisments targeted to me,
as if they knew a g.d. thing about me.

The sheer arrogance of it is breath-taking.

No, this new intrusiveness is not welcome or helpful.

I do wish, however, that I could punish these intrusive assholes, but merely to catalogue
the outrageousness of it exhausts my vocabulary and my power of imagination.

No thank you.  I am not grateful to the geniuses of the internet for what they have done,
and what they are doing.

Long live Trotsky!

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

what do these assholes think?

Here I sit in El Paso, Texas (which I have sometimes described as the asshole of the universe, and at other times as the desert outpost of a cruel empire)..

and it is that day of peace and goodwill toward all exploiters,

and there's a dog barking himself hoarse,

and he's been doing it for twenty minutes.

What does the asshole neighbor think:  Fido is sooo cute.....

Having purchased the dog, the neighbor has property rights, etc.

Get me out of here.  This is a miserable place.

What a cute dog!  How cute to hear him bark!  How could anyone possibly find it disturbing if my dog barks for hours, and hours, and hours, .......

trite axioms of thought

"What you can't imagine, you won't imagine..........."

Yesterday, the perfectly good care-giver for my elderly parents did the grocery shopping.
I was encouraged by my mother to stay home because there are so many drunks and bad drivers on the road, and, tired from lack of sleep, I did so.

Today, I may yet have to go out, on an official holiday, to impose upon people who are forced to a labor during an official holiday, to buy items not on the CG's list.

Does the word "holiday" mean anything any more?

In effect, the CG was not just shopping for my parents, but for me as well; but she's got no idea of my eating habits.

Is it petty of me to complain? She endures the penalty meted out to care-givers:  poor pay, insecurity, and a lack of respect.  Indeed, the prettiest point of such jobs is that employees are simultaneously expected to follow orders and not complain, but also expected to exercise creativity and independent thought in order to prevent the management from experiencing any discomfort.

The need to accumulate capital always wages war with the attempt to be human.

"I hate you."

In my mind, "I hate you" is a childish, or overly-dramatic saying.

Nonetheless, a couple of years ago, when pushed into a corner, I could find no better way to register my opposition to the suggestions being made to me.

Moreover, I had, at that time, endured three years of lost autonomy on account of giving in to the suggestions of family members.

Recently  apologized to the target of that childish saying. Yet, I worry that an apology went too far.

More words are needed.  By saying IHY I did not intend to convey a desire to do harm to the person.  Rather, I was engaged in an act of self-defense.  I wanted him to cease pushing me.  In truth, he had arguments of a sort.  But, in actual fact, he also made assumptions I did not share.  And, I'd not got the energy to unearth those assumptions.  Nor, I think, would he have been interested in discussing them.

In that context, IHY was, whilst childish, probably the best I could have done. 

totalitarianism watch : German and Texan versions

As Capitalism continues to crash, states become more repressive.....

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/12/24/pens-d24.html

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/12/patrick-durusau-salinas-card.html

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

disgusting capitalism

Obama murders at a distance with high-tech airplanes that we pay for.
Companies lie and cheat.
Bankers lie, cheat, and steal---and when they get in trouble, governments come to their rescue.
And intellectuals "justify" it.

But if I just go to the grocery store to buy food, my behavior is monitored by in-house cameras, and a TV screen at the entrance stands prominently as a threat to all of us that we had better not even think about taking something without paying, telling us "We are watching you!".  And who is watching them with their crappy food and high prices?

And if I board a crappy, crowded bus, with shit suspension, high off the ground, with stinky people, and noisy technology---doors beeping, computers with phoney voices telling me someone is getting on and off---subjected to ALL THAT SHEER UGLINESS, and, on top of it all, you can be sure that someone will poke me in the side and demand that I prove I've paid for the ride.

Capitalism is offensive on every possible level.

25.12.2013

Long live Trotsky!
Vsetko je kapitalisticke svinstvo.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

What the hell are they thinking?

I love little Fido.  So I take Fido everywhere.
Unfortunately, those cruel people at the grocery store (unlike trains, buses, and pubs) do not allow me to bring Fido with me.

I have to tie him up outside.

Little Fido loves me and I love him.  So, when I'm inside buying groceries, he cries,
and whines, and barks---pretty much non-stop.

He can be heard for miles around.

I am sure everyone loves Fido as much as I do, so the sound of his voice could not possibly
be irritating or annoying or maddening.  No.  That would be impossible.

I do sometimes take a long time to shop.  And little Fido, dear sweet thing that he is (You know he loves me so!  And I love him too!) barks himself hoarse.

That's so sad.

Oh, life is sad.  But I love little Fido, and he makes me feel good in a world where there is so much unnecessary suffering and people can be very inconsiderate.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

internet idiocy

I shall never forget the student in my English class in Vienna who told me
she hadn't read something we were supposed to discuss...... because
the article took longer to read than her daily commute.....

Now I want to complain about something else.

I do not like this relatively new (though not totally new) feature of internet pages whereby the picture or content or whatever changes every five seconds or whatever it is.  It is g.d. annoying.
Seems like this is for people who have a short attention span?  (Do we really want to encourage that sort of thing?  I mean, e.g., "we" as in people at a university?)

The two seem connected--as in, "I read it once (quickly) during my commute, and that's what I got out of it...." (Implied:  I don't intend to read the thing again; one quick reading was enough.)

Well, some texts don't deserve a second reading, but you can mis-read even a short text of little value.  I do it all the time with all the stuff coming into my email----some of which is crap,
and some of which is good stuff.....(Personal confession designed to increase sympathy for my griping.....)

Monday, December 16, 2013

what absurd things people say

I mention that my parents are in their eighties and I hear, "Oh what a nice age..."
A nice age!  Have you got any idea of the problems they have?
Have you any idea of what it means to rely upon in-home care provided by a for-profit
company?  A company that pays good people a wage so low that they can't survive?
And pushes them and controls them in other ways as well....

Can you imagine how painful it is for me to be so far away, and to be able to do so little
to help?

Can you imagine how a phone conversation is upsetting because it only brings home the distance?  And I hang up with a dread feeling of emptiness.........

To be old and to be far from your children and family!  Do you think that is sweet or nice or lovely?  Are you so stupid?

No, you obviously have no idea, none whatsoever.  You fantasize about what it
must be like, and your imagination overreaches.

Just as so many fantasize about what the USA is like on the basis of propagandistic
Hollywood movies and American serials.....

The human race has many flaws, and there are times when talking is utterly pointless.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Saint Kevyn Orr

Link to the World Socialist Web Site on the benevolence of Kevyn Orr; as I read this story, I thought, "This man's a saint!  How could anyone complain that he's well paid?"
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/12/10/orri-d10.html

bang..bang...bang

Who would I complain to?  What would be the point?
My employer has a modest workshop below my building, and the workers are banging.

I do not welcome spring or summer when we open our windows to noises---noises like
their bang, bang, bang.

God knows.  Within the confines of this building there are enough noises.  The elevator alone is a nuisance.

Talking in the central tube of the high rise.  Cars outside.

And best of all:  the dog left chained or tied outside the local German-owned grocery store,
where we must,
everytime,
prove,
PROVE,
that we've not stolen,
with an ostentatious display of our empty grocery cart,
proving that we assembled all of our purchases
onto the conveyor belt,
which the sleepy or grumpy or indifferent woman
(unless it's the one man)
will scan for us.

And,
just to be sure,
there's always the security guard,
equally emitting an air of boredom and lack of job satisfaction,
watching us,
lest we get out of line.

The fresh air of so-called democracy,
has never smelled so much like the stale air of a toilet.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

miscellaneous notes from nowhere

A. Shaikh's "Rethinking Microeconomics" deserves careful study.  Even the opening pages by themselves brush aside a lot of bullshit I've heard recently.

Human beings are complicated.  It is pefectly possible to serve the profit motive, and, so insist on keeping the upper hand over one's employees (if one is, say the owner-manager of a company which supplies home care to the elderly) and, at the same time, be horrified (as a human being) at the thought that one of the employees might steal from and elderly client.

Saturday, December 7, 2013

looting of pensions

I haven't got time to discuss in detail the so-called "bankruptcy" of Detroit.

I do believe that there is no real "crisis", however, and that the entire procedure is a smoke screen to give legality and the appearance of a just process to something that is no more than theft--looting.

A valuable source of information here is the website of the "Socialist Equality Party" in the USA
https://www.wsws.org/

as well as their Workers' Inquiry:

detroitinquiry.org


Wednesday, December 4, 2013

newspaper prices

If I buy the local so-called "left" newspaper, it costs 16 crowns (I think; I'm not checking.)
If I buy the so-called business newspaper, it costs 25 crowns.

That's a big difference. 

Yesterday, I was struck by the portraits of business personalities.  Large photos of businessmen posing.  Yes, I do mean posing.  Standing in a smart suit with legs arranged in what ballet calls a third or almost fifth position, with one hand on the rail of stairs.  (Or did I imagine it?)

Arms crossed over the chest, as if to emphasize one's manliness.

And so on.

Could the price have something to do with these silly pictures?  I mean it reminds me of the friend who once said (looking at the aesthetics of a communist era dormitory in Bratislava):  It's not just that the Communists had no taste, but they actually attempted (and failed) to propagate some sort of new aesthetic.....  (IE better if they had stuck to purely utilitarian buildings)...

Something similar seems to me to be true of the local business newspaper.  This is pure hagiography,  Just as in the medieval times there were statues of saints, now we've got these portraits of successful businessmen.

And those propagandistic drums!  I mean when you repeat something a thousand times, it lose all meaning, right?

As in the man who runs a construction business and was inspired (sic) by American practices.
Would-be workers wait around outside near the construction site, and the employer comes around and chooses the fittest.  (Reminds me of a slave auction)  The Czech enterpreneur, inspired by the American system, had been doing that until the naughty government came and made a terrible "labor law" (how dare they?!)---and so he could no longer hire people in that fashion.

The newspaper coyly notes that he actually complained of "socialism"!

I must study this with greater objectivity---"this" meaning this so-called business newspaper.  It is really an outstanding piece of anthropology.  What sort of culture would produce this entity?  What sort of culture would produce such a cult?