So this fellow sends a manifesto <http://lileks.com/screed/?p=98>/Oh, for heaven's sake <http://lileks.com/screed/?cat=1>/ *This was sent to m*e by Amitai Etzioni, for reasons I cannot imagine. A big broadcast of a paradigm-altering manifesto, perhaps. For some reason the opening line caught my eye: President Obama has a unique talent: He is able to inspire people all over the world to deliberate and dialogue about burning issues. As well as consider the impact on the environment caused by reckless issue-burning, as well as the clear-cutting of old growth issue-thickets. But is it true? As far as I can tell we're not having a debate at all. He won; spending is good; Debt will save us from the terrible secret of space, which is Debt. We have concluded our debate about Federal funding of stem-cell research, and now the magic Government dollars, imbued with a power no private sector dollars contain, will help us cure all those diseases that are very important despite the lack of support from prominent actors. At the top of the agenda for such a global give and take is what makes for a good life. The moment the "good life" is put in global terms, I know I'm going to have to give up something. It's just a question of what, to whom, and in which quantities. At first, it may seem preposterous for a nation deep in an economic crisis and mired in wars to pay mind to what at first blush seems like a philosophical subject. But the good life is not just a "philosophical" subject; it's something that has practical manifestations every day. It's only a philosophical question for those who don't have it themselves, or believe the people who think they have it . . . shouldn't. But I'm interrupting. Let him state his case again: At first, it may seem preposterous for a nation deep in an economic crisis and mired in wars to pay mind to what at first blush seems like a philosophical subject. Actually, there is a profound connection between our multiple crises --- add that of the climate to the mix --- and the characterization of what makes a life good. Do you have the suspicion that the characterization is going to be made for you? "Climate," after all, is the hard left's version of what they thought the Patriot Act was for the Right - an rationale to expand the powers of the state. The difference is that we don't have satellites intercepting conversations between cold fronts conspiring to strike the Crusaders where they sleep, but never mind. "Climate" is a physical manifestation of a sick zeitgiest. Climate is a hot June and a cold March. Climate is a dry December and a hot July. Climate is Silly Putty: it stretches, takes any form, and when you press it on the Sunday comics, it shows you the pictures in reverse. Which only proves your point! As long as those whose basic needs have been well-sated, whose creature comforts have been secured, keep defining the purpose of life as making more and more dough in order to purchase more and more consumer goods, we will not rein in wild capitalism, protect the environment (climate included), advance social justice, or, arguably, stop killing one another. At this point I almost stopped reading, because anyone who can pack that much boilerplate claptrap into one sentence is destined to end up explaining why things /have/ to be taken away from people. Basic needs: the words of someone who knows how big your house should be. Creature comforts: he knows how many pairs of pants you should own. "Defining the purpose of life as making more dough to purchase more consumer goods" - the earnest snit of a petty puritan who believes you put in long hours so you can afford a Cuisinart kiwi-peeler. To boil it: if you think life is about making money to buy things, we will kill each other. On a grand philosophical bong-water level I understand, but that's the sort of sophomoric profundity that usually discovers the strange fact that the men in charge of planning and directing wars are usually younger than the soldiers they command. /Really/. Look it up, man. As for "social justice," it's "climate" plus laws that treat people according to skin color and the quantity of their possessions. Which is perfectly fine by some, but please: spare the lectures about the Constitution-shredding. "Created equal" means nothing if the end result isn't equal 10, 19, 27, 43 years hence. "Social justice" is achieved only when the outcome of any given system looks egalitarian to the Jacobins; otherwise, the existence of unequal outcomes is /de facto/ proof of injustice. It begins with the laudable idea of enforcing colorblind laws, and ends up insisting that the higher rates of premium cable subscriptions in insufficiently diverse suburbs proves the existence of systemic inequality. Only after we come to see that additional goods add precious little to our happiness; Nonsense and hypocrisy. Computers aren't basic needs. E-mail isn't a basic need. Who says so? Me. So this person's life cannot possibly be happier by the addition of a device that lets him peruse the words and deeds of the world. As for me, base shallow grasping materialist that I am, let me spell it out: My computers bring me happiness, for they are instruments of knowledge and art. My cameras bring me joy, yea, for they allow me to capture the fleeting shadows of the day or the laughter of my child or the happy romps of my old dog in the new snow, and fix them forever in a form whose quality exceeds the fond dreams of D. W. Griffith. My car gives me pleasure, for it gives me freedom and ease of movement, allows me to meet friends, gather food for the family, and drive to work with the glories of Beethoven crashing from the speakers. Or AC/DC, depending on the mood. For that matter the morning drive is made pleasurable by possessions like the coffee maker, which serves up a hot delicious beverage the moment I wake from a comfortable bed - and the waking, I should add, was gently occasioned by a machine that cost a bit more than one of those $19.99 alarms that sounds like someone tripped the perimeter alarm at Los Alamos. Since I seem to be seeing possessions in terms of the flow of the day, let me go on: my computer, which is hardly a basic need, gives me freedom at work unchained to a veal-pen desk; my cellphone lets me write messages to a network of beloved strangers or listen to music from around the world - and take a picture of something, if I choose. Photography is art, right? Art is good, right? Yes, I know - if it serves the general weal in a spiritual burning-issue sense. If I use the camera to snap a picture of the Catholic-run men's shelter down the street, do I get a pass if I buy a new camera this year? Or would that be overshadowed by the bilious negativity that rolls in dark waves from my large TV? It's not a basic need, I admit - can I still have one? Yes, if it's not LARGE. People who grudgingly admit the usefulness of a TV for pedagogical purposes reserve the right to frown on your TV if it's larger than it need be, for several reasons: 1) you probably went into debt to get it; 2) it uses energy that makes the planet die; 3) you watch the wrong kind of programs; 4) the size of the screen is regarded as a direct reflection of the stupidity of the viewer. Unless we're talking about careful, pained, exquisitely sensitive motion pictures about the horrors of life in the suburbs in the Fifties. But I have to admit something: I love my big TV. I want a bigger one, too. If I won the lottery I would build a house that had a large screen in the basement, in a room that looked like the great old Moderne palaces of yore - a Trans-Lux, for example. Would that be okay? Movies are art, right? And art is life? Sorry, I interrupted. He was saying: that pursuing (additional goods) is Sisyphean --- the more we gain, the more we seek; and that deep contentment and human flourishing rise out of spiritual projects and bonding with and caring for others, shall we be able to come to terms with much that bedevils us. If human flourishing rose exclusively out of spiritual projects, the Dalai Lama would have been the first man on the moon. I don't mean to discount the role of "spiritual projects" in human development, but conflict pushes progress. Sorry; full stop. Pause. We're mixing terms. I suspect that "human flourishing" to this fellow is not "progress," at least as I understand it. I see progress in the scientific as well as cultural and political sense: better medicine, cooler media, faster information-distribution systems, more freedom, more prosperity, the spread of individual and property rights across the globe. I think he means "human flourishing" to mean everyone agrees to wear the same itchy hemp robe and chant the Happy Planet Song while we tote buckets of night soil to the communal plot. These are hardly new thoughts. Brother, you said a mouthful. What is current --- and provides the reason the new President is well advised to keep this topic in mind and in the public eye --- is that the incessant quest for ever more material goods is at the heart of the economic crisis. He has a point. We loaned too much money to too many people who wanted too many things and couldn't pay for them. Pity we didn't tighten standards and cut off millions from access to mortgages and credit cards. Because that would have sailed through Congress like WD-40 through a duck's intestinal tract. President Obama correctly mocked President Bush for calling on people to go shopping after the September 11, 2001 attacks on America. However, today Americans and the citizens of many other nations are again urged to go shopping to dig us out of the current economic crisis. (This is what a stimulus package is all about.) Hence the controversial provision to give everyone a $500 Target gift card. Moreover, there is no doubt that given the way the economic system is set up, if people do not buy stuff, there will be more unemployment and more people will lose their homes and empty their retirement funds. To translate: if there is no economic activity, the economy will suffer. Like the hoofbeats of a messenger from another kingdom, the insights come one after the other: However, the good way out of the crisis does not lead to a return to the old ways of the better-off purchasing ever larger homes, stocking them with ever more appliances, and driving SUVs and Humvees. Again: stop. Ever more appliances. Which appliances do you want me to give up? Be specific. Hot water heater? Clothes drier? Waffle iron? It does not call for people to save nothing and to go into debt in order to buy still more goods --- many of which those who are better-off do not really need --- Spoken like someone with a keen insight into what people should not have. The new Puritans are finely tuned to what you need and are so blinded by their hatred of consumerism they actually think "those who are better-off" go into debt to buy "still more goods" that are utterly superfluous to their lives. I know people who are well-off, and their debt is almost always involved with their business. But to our author, people with lots of money put Ambergris Separators on the credit card and make the minimum payment. nor for people to labor long hours, take work home, delay retirement, send their teenagers to labor at fast food chains, and cut short social and cultural life to make some more money. Ah. Well. We are dealing with a youngun here, I think. Many people labor long hours and take work home because they have demanding, complex jobs they have freely chosen. Assembly-line jobs have a quitting whistle; your average OB-GYN is on the clock 24-7. Even if they are unhappy about their jobs, and don't quit them for something that pays less, the fact that they have cut short cultural life - whatever that possibly means - to make some more money is no one else's business. Of course he can say what he wishes, of course; surely whatever suggestions he has for making our lives and society better, they'll be voluntary. The precept of a good life calls for setting ceilings for purchases and for work, for setting fairly modest limits on that which we seek to own and purchase, and on the amount of time we are willing take away from our children, spouses, friends, communities and ourselves, in order to work. And there you have it. We have to set limits on what you can buy, how much you can work, what you can own, and how much time you are spending on work as opposed to the obligatory devotion to COMMUNITY. These are the people who regard themselves as the finest champions of the individual. Well, inasmuch as the collective is made up of individuals, yes. But how to achieve this world in which people stop working to buy appliances and spend more time on friends? There are a whole slew of public policies that can express, foster, recognize and promote the good life. A steeply progressive income tax will do wonders. Oh, it'll do wonders, all right. Remember: the secret to expressing, fostering, recognizing and promoting the good life is taking away half the money of people who are too stupid to work long hours and bring work home. If they complain, it's because they don't know what the good life really is. It's not sitting down at the end of the night to watch a fine movie on a sofa with a single-malt. It's having friends over to a small sustainable apartment with a small fridge that doesn't have an icemaker, breaking the crappy plastic ice trays by hand to get a few usuable cubes, serving everyone cheap scotch from a plastic jug then heading down to the Community Cinema for a movie - only to find that the projector is still broken because the owner can't afford to fix it, so you go to the local coffee shop, which is staffed not by teens forced to labor but by middle-aged guys who lost their jobs because they worked in fields we have deemed socially regressive. Consumption tax (or VAT) on all items that are not defined as basic goods, will help send a message. And the message is: don't buy anything. Limiting government insured or subsidized mortgages to houses of a reasonable size (McMansions are out), Because if there's one thing the housing market needs now, it's changing the game on the mortgage deduction, undercutting the value of larger properties. Why wait for the market to figure out the right price for these structures, when we can simply pass laws based on how much space you should really have? It's not like a stranger wouldn't look at your life and come up with a perfectly reasonable evaluation of your square-foot requirements. I'll go for that as soon as I can have a law that dictates how much memory, processing power and hard-drive space you can have. Don't ask me why. I think you're using the space for pirated movies. No one needs that much computing power. Computers use fossil fuels. I'd also argue that your internet connection is too fast, especially when some people have faster connections than others. Ideas are expressed best in text form. Three hundred baud ought to do. a tax on gas guzzlers and on cars by weight, and insuring only one bank account up to 100,000 dollars (rather than the current, unlimited number) are but a few illustrations of setting limits. That last one fascinates me. It's not enough to take away from people who have property; he wants to change the rules to make sure they lose legitimately accumulated property if their bank fails. The idea that someone out there has two accounts with $100,000 each - guaranteed - gnaws at him. Last but not least, there is a deep connection between a life worth living and social justice. And thus are the lives of private citizens - utter strangers, millions of them - delegitimized. "Social Justice" trumps any individual right, and the confiscation is sainted with the collectivist's benediction: through sacrifice your life is now worth living. That life you had before, when you worked and saved and provided for your family? A thin sham, unconnected to the greater good. When your house is the size we want, your bank account duly humiliated, your appliances small and few, and you have time for culture - then you will have a life worth living. To achieve a major reallocation of wealth, those who have more than enough must find sources of contentment other than laying their hands on still more goods. Don't accuse him of being a tyrant; you're free to find your own alternate sources of contentment after they've taken away your laptop because you have an old Dell tower in the basement somewhere. Remember: property is theft and possessions are slavery. Imagine the contentment you will feel when you are forgiven of the former and relieved of the latter. Really: imagine it. This is not optional. This is what many religions offer. So the tax code should be used to push people to faith-based compensations? But don't accuse him of wanting a theocracy; that term is reserved for people who . . . Well, the scary ones who use religion for dark reasons that choke your freedoms, and don't understand how God weeps everytime SubZero comes out with a side-by-side model that lets you buy in bulk and freeze for later. Those who have lost this source of goodness, or have found it twisted, are called upon on to search for other springs of meaning. And nobody is better placed or more equipped than President Obama to return us to this old, but never more current, subject: What makes a good life. You can understand the fellow's frustration. What's the point of freedom if people waste it on themselves? *One niggling contrary note*. A recent piece in the Weekly Standard <http://www.theweeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/265rxhcw.asp?pg=2> described the social-welfare benefits in a Swedish city. Rosengård lies in the world's most generous welfare state. Those who cannot provide for themselves and their families have a right to social welfare, which according to Swedish law must cover the cost for food, clothes, shoes, leisure activities, health and hygiene, health care and medicines, a daily newspaper, a phone, living expenses, electricity, commuting to work, home insurance, membership in a workers' union and unemployment insurance. The frustrated and angry youngsters in Rosengård get health care at a minimal cost, free dental care, free school, and free college and university education, with the right to student benefits and loans. Sounds pretty socially-just, no? Well, give it a few hundred years to work. For now, the experiment seems . . . inconclusive: In December, the neighborhood was shaken by violent riots after a so-called basement mosque was not extended a new lease agreement. In response, local youths occupied the mosque, set cars on fire, and fired rockets at the police. In the Swedish media the riots were largely described as an expression of frustration and anger, due to social inequalities. The article is fascinating, as it details the ways Malmo's residents have enthusiastically expressed their objections to the presence of Jews, either in the form of Jews gathering for a political reason, or Jews showing up in the country to kick a ball around. It's really quite disheartening - you raise taxes, you provide all manner of benefits, you do what you can in the name of eliminating social injustice, and you still get people incapable of mustering the requisite manifestations of post-cultural civilization. But it helps you identify the Wreckers, at least: SUV drivers who go into debt for appliances, and Jews. In the old days, we'd just burn them, but we've evolved. No one would dare build a crematorium today. The carbon impact would be ruinous. /posted by Lileks on 03.14.09 <http://lileks.com/screed/?p=98> @ 5:58 am/ | // <http://lileks.com/screed/?p=98#comments> *1 Comment so far* Leave a comment <http://lileks.com/screed/?p=98#postcomment> [...] . . .to post it on Friday, inasmuch as I started editing the screed before midnight. It's here. [...] /By Techically, I honored the promise | <http://lileks.com/bleat/?p=1517> on 03.14.09 6:23 am/ http://lileks.com/screed/?p=98 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
