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Thread 4785

Thread ID: 4785 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2003-02-04

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Avalanche [OP]

2003-02-04 15:00 | User Profile

[url=http://www.mugu.com/pipermail/upstream-list/2002-January/004042.html]http://www.mugu.com/pipermail/upstream-lis...ary/004042.html[/url]

From safety valve to safety net Marian Kester Coombs Published 1/13/02

 Read any serious newspaper, and the plot of virtually every story is the struggle of People vs. People - not classes, but races (or cultures, to be polite).

 One people seeks its "fair share" of the land and water controlled by another people. One people complains its borders are being breached by another people. One people seeks to avenge an injury to its self-esteem inflicted once upon a time by another people.

 One people grovels to be taken in and cared for by another people.

 One people petitions the government to favor it at the expense of another people. One people demands the erasure of another people's cultural-religious symbols and their replacement with its own.

 Ethnologists would do a better job reporting the news than journalists can.

 Then add to this basic plot the end of the Cold War. The emigration/immigration patterns thawed out by the end of the East-West standoff are so striking that many have analyzed and characterized them, including Robert D. Kaplan, Francis Fukuyama, Samuel P. Huntington, Paul Kennedy, and most recently Patrick Buchanan in "The Death of the West."

 Just as motion in the atmosphere is away from high-pressure areas and toward low, the demographic momentum of Asia, Central and South America,  nd to some extent Africa is causing a seemingly irresistible outflow of population toward the relatively less populous nations of Europe and North America. This latest round of the "rise and fall of peoples" proceeds as it always has - but with three major differences.

[list][*]First, the expansion of these Third World populations is not due, as was the pattern in the past, to the flowering of their own societies, but to the globalization of the generous genius of Western civilization.

[*]Second, today's desired destinations are full up, unlike the vast tracts of emptiness that drew population to places like Australia, Canada, the United States and Argentina beginning in the 17th century and continuing throughout the 20th. Although large areas of today's destinations are "depopulated" by Third World urban standards, they already teem as "colorfully" as the people who live there wish them to.

[*]Last, people now emigrate as much to be kept alive by rich societies as to find work. Salvadorans trying to get to El Norte, for instance, are better informed about U.S. government programs for health, education and welfare than are native-born Americans. They are drawn here by them, and it would be unnatural if they were not.[/list] By contrast, European immigrants to the "empty" continents encountered no safety net and precious few "jobs" in the modern sense of an employer offering specific paid positions. Often there was no work unless you invested, invented, created and drummed it up yourself.

 There was no infrastructure unless you built it yourself; no welfare, no food stamps, no universal free education, no unemployment or health insurance, no disability, no workers' comp, no Social Security. The dread "poorhouse" was the best you could hope for.

 Now the global frontier is closed; the Wild West of the entire world is past. So what are those faced with futurelessness to do?

 Population movements have historically functioned as a safety valve, easing the growing pains of nations and expelling "ungovernable" elements before they could coalesce to unbalance the status quo. Yet despite the open valve of emigration throughout the 18th and 19th centuries - more than 43 million people quit Europe between 1770 and 1914 - it was an age of revolutions: first the French, inspired by the brilliant rhetoric, ideals and success of the Americans in throwing off the dead hand of hereditary monarchy, then the Greeks, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Belgians, the French again (and again), the Germans, the Hungarians, the Italians, the Poles, the Russians.

 Today, however, population flight allows dysfunctional, kleptocratic regimes to remain in power decade after decade, as all who have the wit or will to oppose them get the hell out - Cuba, Haiti, Mexico, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Algeria, the Philippines, Vietnam, China. After their enemies, these regimes then export their hard-core poor for the West to take care of.

 For this is now apparently our function: We are the adults of the world, caring for masses of hapless childlike asylum-seekers, economic and political and social refugees, immigrants legal and illegal, as well as entire hapless childlike nations that have not yet physically landed on our shores with hands outstretched.

 The West - specifically, the European, Canadian, Australian and American men whose inventions like the piano, representative democracy, pasteurization, vaccination, antiseptics, antibiotics, electrification, engines, generators, suspension bridges, "Lord of the Rings," the antislavery movement, the doctrine of Free Will, computers, opera, the theory of evolution, stainless steel, asphalt roads, telephones, photography, refrigeration, indoor plumbing, the movies, insecticide and the skyscraper have made the world infinitely better for its billions of inhabitants - constitutes a Head Start program for the entire planet.

 As with the version tried with "underprivileged" kids in the U.S., performance improves during the intensive initial effort, but once the program's over, the improvements fade away.

 People in the West used to understand how unprecedented and unique their achievements were. To pick up on a new idea is one thing; to conceive a new idea is another thing entirely. Anyone can be taught how to drive a car, but only a few dozen Western men had what it took to design, build and  perfect the automobile.

 This is a difference of kind, not of degree. Objectively speaking, one Albert Schweitzer is "worth" all his patients put together - but of course that's not at all how men like Dr. Schweitzer are wont to view their fellow human beings.

 Hoping that demography is destiny, the races of the human race are now engaged in a different kind of race: reproduction.

 Hispanics boast of reconquering California and the Southwest through numbers alone. The Palestinians speak openly of "Arabizing" Israel with their "population bomb." "Greater Albania" is on the move throughout the Balkans, parlaying the "greatness" of numbers into domination of Serbia,

Kosovo and Macedonia.

 The same race is on in Kashmir and a hundred other places. Only the West is failing to weaponize population growth.

 The ancient Romans imploded demographically, and Rome fell long ago. Yet the Eternal City still stands, and much of Roman civilization lives on in our minds and hearts. So it is possible to believe that we too, like Tolkien's Aragorn, "will not let the White City fall."

Marian Kester Coombs is a freelance writer.

Avalanche

2003-02-04 15:10 | User Profile

VITAL SIGNS: CULTURE Kulturklatsch of the Wholly Global Empire by Marian Kester Coombs

“All politics is local”: once a savvy saying, now a wistful whine. All culture, too, used to be local, but that’s changing fast. The rule of thumb for distinguishing between vestiges of the merely local and harbingers of the emerging global is simple: efficiency.

You can fit many more units of global into your life because each unit requires you to do far less. Global is 24-7 with no capricious “day of rest.” Local culture coats your tongue, colors your speech, flavors your mind, gets all over your clothes and under your fingernails, makes you a veritable zombie in its service, while global culture is clean and modular: Simple, interchangeable units plug easily into and out of the desired modemality. Local means being stuck in character all your life; global means never having any character at all.

Global permits you to be a tourist in life, just driving through, as opposed to being “on the ground,” rolling around in the dirt with the rest of the planet’s lower fauna; it allows you to pick and choose among the nice parts (cuisine, amusing dances, bizarre costumes, touching legends), while leaving the nasty parts (nationalism, chauvinism, sexism, religion, military service) alone. Would you rather be very good at just one culture, or appreciate many? Would you rather be “just yourself,” or all things to all people? Global regards local much as the Dustin Hoffman character in Wag the Dog regards the masses whom his artfully crafted sentimentality has moved to tears. (“Real tears,” he murmurs. “It’s my greatest production ever!”) In other words, local culture is a spectacle, but not one you’d want to take seriously enough to be trapped inside forever.

The globally cultured realize that, all things being equal, nothing in particular is worth a damn. There’s always someone or something bigger, better, smarter, faster, cooler, hipper, weirder, or just different somewhere else or other, so why bother? Everything suffers by global comparison. If you’ve seen them all, you’ve seen that one—been there, done that. Why stop at anything? Instead of wasting your life painstakingly mastering a particular culture in order to recreate and reproduce it, wouldn’t you rather subscribe to Humanity’s Greatest Hits and have them all at your fingertips? Why learn and transmit a culture when you can simply access one as needed? And why spend time and energy creating when you can consume with a fraction of the effort?

The entire process of evolution itself has been advanced—or, perhaps, miraculously reversed—by modern methods. The primitive form of evolution led to greater complexity, difficulty, differentiation, separation, incompatibility, and unpredictability. The progressive form reunites, standardizes, equalizes, and radically simplifies. This has already led to a new (but quite temporary) global division of labor. For instance, the best (and cheapest) baseball players come from the Dominican Republic. The best comedians come from Canada, the best motelkeepers from India, the best taxi drivers from Kashmir, the best Defense Intelligence Agency and National Security Council employees from mainland China, and so on. Instead of trying to compete for all these professions within a single historically distinct geographic entity (“nation”), let each region specialize in its own area of expertise until such time as progressive evolution has at last abolished all distinctions and all jobs are One.

The following guide highlights the local versus global distinction (senseless busywork versus efficiency):

Local: Listen to the particular melodies of the wind as it blows through your native forests and mountain passes; carve woodwind instruments from selected branches; reproduce these melodies; move slowly to the music in intricate dance patterns so deeply a part of you they are almost unconscious. Later, develop the dance music of your people into symphonies, symphonic poems, variations, mazurkas, polonaises, barcaroles, tarantellas, rondos, minuets, ballads.

Global: Press another selection on your CD player.

Local: Cultivate certain vines and breed them into bearers of the perfect grape; wreathe hillsides with carefully trained and tended plants; pick the grapes at just the right moment; crush them, steep them, rinse them, ferment them, mix them, age them; decant the wine at just the right moment, for a distilled draught of sunlight from a long-lost vineyard.

Global: Drink a can of Coke.

Local: Spend hours in passionate argument at a cafe, sipping the regional aperitif or cordial or wine or beer or downing small cups of strong coffee, you and your friends constituting a long-standing, self-established debating club, informal court, floating chess game, and drinking society.

Global: Watch CNN while drinking a can of Coke.

Local: Proudly prefer your own people; know its history intimately; defend it as if it were your extended family (which it is); revel in the unrivaled beauty of its characteristic complexion, hair texture, eye color, nose and head shape, its famed musicality, its sense of humor, its melancholy verse; loudly discuss among friends its many faults and shortcomings, but disdain hearing these pointed out by outsiders; bask in the “narcissism of small differences,” those quirks and oddities and endearing strangenesses that mark your people as truly itself and none other; extol its precious and unique accomplishments; worry about its vibrancy and potency in a hostile world, since you know that whatever is not growing is probably dying, and that a people without a territory is just another extinct race in the making.

Global: Watch CNN; recognize that all other peoples are much superior to your own, except perhaps for the one that’s been earmarked for this month’s Group Hate.

Local: Memorize hours’ worth of poetry, stories, and legends and many verses of songs for every occasion; sing or recite in company when the spirit moves you.

Global: Download and watch a movie online.

Local: Compose a stew that simmers on the stove all day, combining fat from your ducks and lard from your pigs, dried local beans, a bouquet of garden herbs and vegetables, wine and whatever lamb, sausage, or chicken you have on hand; know how to tell if an egg is good or a nut is ripe, how to dress a goose and remove its liver, how to make a watertight basket out of woven dried grass, how to gather and use herbs and essential oils to lessen fever and heal wounds, how to read the signs on earth and in the heavens for sowing and harvest, drought and blizzard.

Global: Order Thai takeout.

Local: Hew logs into planks; cure and bow the wood into ribs, a hull, hatches; build your craft without computer calculations or simulations; rig it to be seaworthy; navigate by compass, sextant, or dead reckoning; endure months of hard physical exertion, uncertainty, exposure, bad food, hostile encounters, and rough seas; land in uncharted coves and explore unknown landscapes; contact and learn to communicate with strange peoples; draw beautiful maps by hand; make your way home to tell the story.

Global: Adjust the headrest on your airplane seat.

Local: Meditate upon transcendent, paradoxical ideas; withdraw from society in order to devote yourself to purity and illumination; rise daily before dawn to sing matins; fast, pray, labor, look inward; selflessly engage in good works; walk barefoot for hundreds of miles to worship at a shrine.

Global: Watch Touched by an Angel.

Marian Kester Coombs writes from Crofton, Maryland.

Avalanche

2003-02-05 14:48 | User Profile

**I'm putting you in charge of our 'awakened women' divisions, on account of the excellent work you've done in that category. We need some diversity here, soldier!

And while you're at it, get Edana to visit us more often.**

:blink: :unsure: :rolleyes: :huh: :( Um, and just HOW am I supposed to accomplish these feats of derring do?! Sir?!