Frozen Ideals

We like to believe that as a civilized people we are rational and informed. We’ve left behind meaningless taboos and idol worship. Our enlightened goals are carefully crafted .

But, of course, the important ones are not. We are as driven by hormones and ignorance as any of our pre-dawn ancestors. Our knowledge is too vast and complicated to understand, so we fall back on what we believe we know to be true from personal experience .

The problem with that is that personal experience tends to be limited. Folks claim, for example, that everyone always used to get “married” in some conventional modern sense. Even a brief glance at history or ethnology would prove that wrong. But who has the time? And do I trust a book or my own intuitions and memories?

Factions construct ideals into taboos which they honestly feel reflect eternal truth. Which is fine. Then they try to impose that on others. Which is not fine. If rulers become infected with those ideas, society is in for a terrible time. 

Individuals are incredibly complex. Society is infinitely messy. Shiny ideals soon tarnish. Frozen ideals are a disaster. Everything always changes, and those who do not change to fit new circumstances are usually doomed .

Initiation

Babies are born with few instincts, beyond the most primitive reactions to pain. How to suck, making eye contact, possibly fear of snakes. Most everything we become is acquired via learning. Any baby placed in any social environment will pretty much work out, all things considered .

Of course we learn quickly, spontaneously, consciously and unconsciously. Children are amazingly flexible and accept almost any situation as normal. Until they grow old enough for logic to kick in. Then things get complicated indeed, more so as experience and contact networks enlarge .

So, for the most part, it is no surprise that most people born into any culture support that culture. Not only that, but support their own class and the position of their family in that culture. That is probably a kind of innate human instinct, necessary for tribes and societies to survive .

Oh, of course we can “reprogram”. We often do – or at least think we do – as adolescents, prime youths, or middle-aged adults. How well we adjust to “paradigm shifts” in society – which now  seem to arrive with frightening speed and frequency – depends much on how old we are .

I find that after much turmoil and adjustment as the entire world changed, I still retain many of my early initiations .

For better or worse .

Wage Slaves

Pre-Civil war plantation owners often claimed that their slaves were better off than the “wage slaves” toiling in northern factories. Of course the main difference was that Southern slaves were permanently slaves, unto the last generation, and had no rights at all outside of being a valuable piece of property .

But I wonder if those gentlemen have a point in the modern world. Not long ago we would laugh at the notion of wage slaves. The world was fat in America, companies took care of employees even providing good health care, and there were always alternate possibilities to escape to .

Now? Not so much .

Medical coverage is frightful. Unions are weak and often destroyed by corporate power. Non-compete clauses are enforced. Entrance certifications are insane. More hours are demanded, more severe effort is demanded, each minute is monitored like in an old Charlie Chaplin film. There is no stability, loyalty, pride, or hope. Any worker can be “sold down the river” by email, gone with no trace at the end of the day .  And forbidden to work at the same type of job for years.

There is still a mythology of work in the United States, but it is fraying rapidly. Successful entrepreneurs and the billionaire inheritors are the new plantation owners. It’s a very mean world. 

I wonder how long the center holds .

Taxes

The Roman Empire ran government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich. Wealthy individuals were required to pay a lot for government positions, in the expectation that they would be more than reimbursed (by bribes, extortion, etc, within reason). It worked remarkably well .

The Roman Empire mostly ignored individual taxes. Entities like cities and provinces were expected to pay decreed amounts, and were free to raise money any way they wanted. If they failed to do so, the legions went in and looted it. That also worked well for hundreds of years .

Modern government is more “enlightened”. It is run “for the people” meaning, by definition, the poor. It is paid for by multiple … well, the problem is that it really is not paid for. The wealthy, as always, have ways to protect their wealth. Their bribes go to preventing taxation, sometimes by illegal evasion, more often by legal maneuvers like “exemptions” or “investment”. The result is increasingly government by debt

In an age when everything will be made by machine and billions of humans helplessly consume, all bets are off. The very idea of paying for scarce items may be obsolete. 

But, of course, that land of cockaigne remains ever over the hill, far away, and in the future .

Crowd Pleasing

We all love a crowd-pleasing act. It is fun to be amazed and entertained by improbable performances that lift us out of our ordinary thoughts. We willingly spend time and money to enjoy the show .

Every crowd pleaser starts as a clown. Bright clothes, exaggerated gestures, loud sounds, and crazy antics. No magician wants anyone to be looking at the sky while they pull a rabbit out of a hat. They must keep us focused all the time on what they want us to see. A wonderful moment, when all goes well .

But is it any way to run a country? Democracy relies on it. Other systems may use brute force, or rigid tradition, or even intellectual logic. But votes (real free votes, anyway) require a massive crowd-pleasing act, first to grab attention, then to follow through on what must be done .

All systems have flaws. The exact type of the democratic tradition matters. Technology and situations radically change things. In a rainstorm a magic show doesn’t work. There’s no reason to believe crowd pleasers are worse than any other kind of ruler .

The only problem – in all methods – is when the audience is too small, too isolated, too ignorant and begins to believe it represents everyone else, or a god, or the universe. Then the performer becomes purely a cult leader rallying fanatics – and often only trying to maintain a tiny audience’s attention and duration .

Father William

“You are old, Father William…” (look up the Lewis Carroll poem if you don’t know it.) It pretty well captures my outlook and that of many of my more sane friends .

Young people think a variety of things about their elders. It’s natural, we did the same thing years ago. In some ways they revere what we have done, they think we have accumulated wisdom and gained perspective. In other ways they know we are irrelevant, stubborn, and often irritating, not to mention completely out of touch. All true .

But the key – as in the poem – is silliness. Elders can hardly take the future seriously (those of us who do so are the worst enemies of civilization.) Old people should be irrelevant to everyone but their immediate family. Our knowledge is vast and hard won, but hardly applicable to various modern crises. We enjoy our personal shell and bubble, but are well aware of how fragile it is. It won’t last very long …

So Father William jokes a lot and seems out of touch and a little sly. And yet – my days are joyful and my worries more immediate than they used to be. I think that attitude is appropriate for my age. But, of course, I would think so.