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/