Ray, You said:
"I realize this is dangerously close to Harry's "privilege" laws but I argue with him over sloppiness, and an over generalization that is too diffuse to be practical, not over the underlying problem." What on earth do you mean? Harry ******************************************** Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141 -- Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net ******************************************** -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ray Evans Harrell Sent: Saturday, January 03, 2004 9:03 AM To: Keith Hudson; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] An imminent American invasion of Saudi Arabia? Well done Keith, The one thing you have not mentioned is the cultural mentality in America that is totally against planning and pre-emption as Bush has stated it. Pre-emption is a form of trying to control the results of an obvious event through careful planning and pre-emptive action. One of the things that America is dealing with is the implications of pre-emption for economic policy. The invisible hand is the opposite of pre-emption and as Americans tend to take Jesus' sermon on the mount at its word that "thinking something is the same as if you have done it in your heart" they are not very good at even thinking about future planning.i.e. they can't conceive of limited action. If you do it a little then you may as well go all the way. There only protection is a metaphor called "Apples and Oranges." It means that a bad idea in one area can be a good idea in another because the end product is an "Apple" rather than an "Orange." It doesn't matter that the whole concept is a fruity idea in the first place. Laissez Faire in environmentalism creates a garden gone to seed but in economics it represents God's saving grace for the wealthy because one is and Apple and the other is an Orange. Preventitive long term planning in government is considered bureaucratic and anything longer than four years is government intervention in the private marketplace, while relatively impoverished and resource limited nations like Russia, China, Korea and even Japan are able to compete with the world's most resource rich nation because their systems allow for continuity and long term planning. I don't advocate those systems as they screw the individual but one should be truthful about the strengths of your enemies and plan for them. Every system sacrifices something for survival and yet America trys to survive with as little sacrifice as possible and squanders her wealth on individuals and families that then move it off shore to other places. The metaphor for action in foreign policy in America is Allopathic Medicine. We use terms like "surgical strike" and others. The doctrine of pre-emption is a bastard version of planning from a surgical medical model. "Cut out the cancer!" "Shock and Awe" is really a post operative model when the system is shocked back into life or dies. These models interact in the unconscious and create unconcious metaphorical connections that come out as "common sense" in a world that does not share the same stories. Its all a part of the conflict in America built into the system. We are forced to deal with the real world so we dabble in planning, poorly, and still try to preserve individual wealth at all costs. I realize this is dangerously close to Harry's "privilege" laws but I argue with him over sloppiness, and an over generalization that is too diffuse to be practical, not over the underlying problem. Until all Americans give up a little of their stories for the common good and try to preserve sensibly the concept of private property within a civic responsibility then America is in great danger for we become to inflexible to survive. Dogmatic doctinaire political and economic thinking that screws a large portion of the population, even if it is less than half, is not a civilization but a civil war. Getting the whole population involved in market speculation is not the answer anymore than making every banker into an artist to save complex cultural. But a little information in both catagories is necessary to responsible citizenship in a Democracy. Simply buying the government and avoiding the vote is no answer. Doing the proper amount of analysis of a problem and long term planning for a goal without jumping ship at the next negative election is the problem of Democracy. Our form of Congressional government is not a parliamentary form that benefits from a single party government. Single parties always must have too broad a reach to be politically efficient in their future planning with fixed elections. For example, the problem for me with Swarzenegger is because it seems too much like mutiny on a ship when the current captain had made too many deals with the opposition and thus created a way for the opposition to replace him. Now the opposition must deal with the same problem in the legislature as the former governor and all it can do thus far is whine about the same type of treatment they gave the former governor around regulation. Negotiation has been replaced with a "winner take all" mentality that is the opposite of civilized discussian. Frankly, if I lived in California I could do with a little less wheeler dealer business ethics and more enlightened education. Balancing the two to get the quality is more important than another cheap terminator movie or the cheap thrills of a survivor show. Now Keith, you may say as you have in the past, that I am wandering around on this issue but instead of a court of law I see the world more like a web where principles are the stuff of the web. Principles travel, for me, across the entire length and breadth of the civilization and if rigidly enforced create dogmatism but if ignored create fragmentation. It is in the search for balance that we attain the kind of flexibility necessary to deal with the world. I believe it is important for thinking and for the wiring in the brain that we understand when we are using a principle in one situation while demeaning it in another. Knowing how that works is important for wise action. Serious action in America is crisis management because only a crisis will motivate us to do the work necessary to meet a need. Without realizing that: 1. the problem of future planning is built into the American economic system, 2. the belief that the poor are somehow wrong instead of victims of an unjust system based on the accident of birth, 3. the fake belief that any kind of limited action is either the beginning of immorality or ultimate good or 4. in America all political action can only be crisis management then we are stuck yelling at each other for our inability to get around these issues and deal with the real world. Your article was a delight in bringing that diplomatic world to us. Thanks, Ray Evans Harrell --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.558 / Virus Database: 350 - Release Date: 1/2/2004 _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
