Rochester NY

Rochester, NY

We just returned from a week-long excursion to Rochester. Our son and his wife recently purchased a small, solid home built before 1900, in “Swillberg”, a city neighborhood once covered by an extensive farm exporting pork via the Erie Canal. 

We visited fairly often since 2000 or so. I’ve always liked Western New York, possibly because of my fascination with American history. There is a lot in the region – Seneca Indians, Dutch colonization, the Erie canal, boom and bust, the heyday of “rust belt”, giants Kodak, Xerox, Bosch and Lomb, all long gone. Current industrial revival based on education, medicine, science, and technology. 

Parts of the city are still in hard times but much is well maintained and recovering well, the near suburbs are thriving. I enjoy small city ambience, which I consider “true America” as much as small town culture. Rural mythology is dead – food is mostly produced by automation and industrial giants. Big cities are a weird global culture unto themselves. 

But places like Rochester are deep America to the core. So much history. Much of it built long ago, layers of prosperity and decline. Parks and sidewalks. The Genesee River and its magnificent falls. And – yes – still the Erie canal. I’m always contented and happy after I’ve refreshed memories there. 

Once again, by the way, I noticed during the (extremely) long drive up from Long Island just how vast and green the state is, almost more wilderness than cultivation. Magnificent and hopeful spaces. 

Corporate Raptors

Mammals generally fall into three categories. Herbivores eat relatively specialized plant diets.. Carnivores eat only meat, which they either find or kill. Omnivores like us can get along on just about anything. Lifestyles vary. In a working ecology, a lot of herbivores, like deer, support a few carnivores, like wolves. The predators keep down the damage caused by overpopulation, while also removing the sick and the old. A useful function. On the other hand, too many wolves can make some of them starve.  Omnivores generally stay out of the way, unless forced into food or fight situations. 

The corporate ecology is not so different. A lot of companies graze on the economy producing value. A few omnivores collect groups of them into larger entities. And the wolf pack takes over stocks, privatized for “increased profit” and usually destroys its prey after gorging. Ah, “creative destruction”. 

Obviously, too many wolves will eliminate too many deer, sometimes eliminating both species and certainly ruining life for individual animals of either type. 

Right now, it seems there are way too many corporate wolves, tearing apart our civilization. “Iinvestors” who seek only quick returns, buy gentle useful things like hospitals, daycare facilities, farms, and schools to suck them dry in hopes of never having to work another day in their lives. Everyone suffers sooner or later. 

Jurassic raptors have nothing on SPACS and stock swap kings. The government electric fences are down, and the park is wide open for carnage. 

Holy Writ

Fundamentally, I believe most people are just like me – pretty smart and dumb at the same time. In general, I think small groups of people construct sane outlooks most of the time. There are exceptions. A few people are brilliant in certain areas, a few groups turn into insane cults. 

I do not accept that gods directly write anything. All words are formed by other humans. And so I have a skeptical opinion of anything taken as “holy writ”, immutable and perfect from the moment marks are made on a surface. 

No need to get directly into religion. What I most detest at the present moment is the “conservative originalist” interpretation of the US Constitution as not only inviolate and perfect, but also the result of a brilliant gathering of minds whose choices can never be questioned nor seriously modified. 

The problems go beyond the obvious – that some of it may be wrong or have become irrelevant. Anything stiffly frozen is in some ways fragile, and in others just an obstacle to be destroyed. And there is a nearly nonsensical position taken by some specialists that they alone can determine what the folks who wrote it were “really” thinking and what they “really” meant. 

It is simple madness, usually twisted to make words seem to say or mean exactly what interpreters and their cronies have decided. Sad times for our country. 

Risky “Makers”

The smug justifying fable of the wealthy these days is that they “make” things, while the peons just take them away in order to exist. The poor are thus all morally thieves, and the virtuous rich sweat and labor to keep civilization staggering along. 

In our capitalistic system, of course, most of the hyper affluent don’t know the difference between a hawk and a handsaw. They take risks (in other words, gamble) mostly with other people’s money on things that might turn a profit. Only a few of these “investments” work out, and of those that do a lot are straightforward manipulation of financial assets with no “making” involved .

I admire free enterprise. These are generally small time entrepreneurs who risk their own time and money to truly make something or provide a necessary service. They rarely climb into the ranks of the hyper-affluent, but they often do well enough and truly provide the frameworks of civilization. To keep them striving, the myth of makers is endlessly proclaimed .

I do not mind the billionaire class, whose equivalent has always been with us. I do prefer the old desire of this class to be “patrons” doing public works to show off. Our current set of selfish “makers” tend to think they should use their assets as “takers” to buy islands and other fantasies that are hidden and private, hence of no use to anyone. “Grabbers” might be a better term .

The current real dream of grabbers is to become immortal and omnipotent rulers of space and time. Individual private “glory” with no connection nor responsibility to anyone else .

Spoiled, dangerous, and increasingly in control .

Missing Middle

Since the rise of agricultural civilization, wealth has always been unequal. A small rich elite floated over the “masses”. Admittedly, in both groups, there were variations, sometimes major. But to speak of the rulers and the ruled pretty much said it all .

For a while during the turmoil of world exploration and industrial revolution, there came to be a myth of a “middle class”, neither rich nor poor, in control of their lives but not lording it over everyone. American economists continue to focus on this fairy tale which is no longer even partially true .

In the scientific, automated, predatory modern economy there is truly only a normal curve of wealth distribution. Sure, there is still a middle, but it is not defined by the endpoints. Most people in first world economies are affluent beyond the dreams of their ancestors. Even if “poor” they have food, shelter, clothing, dignity, and hope. Even if “rich” they fear they may lose a gamble once too often and drop out of the top percentile .

More importantly, from the economists’ viewpoint, it is impossible to define what “middle class” means. The marker once taken for granted – the suburban nuclear family with one man the breadwinner – no longer exists as a reliable guidepost .

The point is that we should abandon any desire to fortify a non-existent “middle class”. We need to concentrate on basic minimum living standards for all, and how to pay for them. “Work”, for example, may or may not be involved. We need fresh new viewpoints, and strategies as old certainties mutate or vanish .

Human

Sages calmly explain “we are just another animal.” Other sages claim that “surely in infinite space there are others just like us”. Adventurers announce humanity will soon spread to the solar system and beyond. Cyberneticists predict we will develop and give way to the next mechanical stage of consciousness .

They are wrong .

The difference between human consciousness and that of other animals is like the difference between an amoeba and a drop of water. The evolution of human consciousness depended on a series of unlikely fortunate accidents. Anything may be possible in “infinite space”, but in a universe that is merely ALMOST infinite most stuff is flat out impossible. Our only comfortable home is this planet. Our “mechanical descendants” are only like us in bad science fiction, no more akin than that drop of water and amoebas.

We have been told that the great shock of modern times was that “man” discovered “he” was not the center of the universe. Another great shock may be the realization that you, I, and each human is, in fact, the ONLY meaning in the universe. Right here, right now. 

That may take a little while to settle in, just as it took a while for the older myths to be swept away. For those becoming aware, however, it means we must treasure ourselves, our planet, and each other as never before. 

We are probably all there is .