Bill Maher had Bill O'Reilly on his show. O'Reilly said a couple of completely misleading things that really bother me.
The first problem was when Bill Maher was asking O'Reilly about Sean Hannity reading incorrect information about Obama's trip to India (something about the trip costing $200 million). O'Reilly's defense was that like him, Hannitty is an opinion guy and not a hard-news person. That was his whole defense. This defense doesn't stand up on any level. The station is called Fox News. This implies that whatever they're going to say on the television is fact, and not make believe. Even if Hannity doesn't report news stories, his opinions are supposed to be about facts, not blatantly incorrect statistics. O'Reilly, it is not OK for a news organization to report on fiction as if it were news. He's not reviewing a fictional book. He's commenting on current political events.
The second problem is this; O'Reilly was equating social justice with redistribution of wealth. He was talking about how Obama believes in social justice and that the Constitution does not say "transfer money". His problem is that raising taxes on the rich to pay for social programs to improve the lives of the lower class is wrong; America is about self reliance. This is infuriating because...
The Constitution also doesn't say anything about the type of economic system the U.S. is supposed to have. It doesn't say anything about Capitalism or the 'Free Market'. His argument is completely absurd.
The Constitution was written to benefit 'The People'. Of course, when it was written, it didn't include any rights to women or minorities or slaves or people that didn't own land. Although a revolutionary document at the time, it's outdated and changes have been made to it. Now the document is usually interpreted as offering equal rights for everyone. Nothing about it indicates a mandate to pull ourselves by our boot straps and go it alone. We're not isolated people. We live among and depend on other people all of the time. Where would these rich people be without teachers, maids, construction workers, waiters, cooks, and the thousands of other people that make their lives possible? The least they can do, is provide assistance to people that have made them rich, and sustain their lifestyle.
He makes the blatant claim "this is a Capitalistic society". This is not in the Constitution Bill. What we have now is a redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich. Maher's statistic about the top 1% owning 8% of the wealth in 1980 and now it's 23% indicates the real redistribution of wealth. If you are so against the redistribution of wealth, you should encourage programs to bring the percentage back to 1980 levels.
It's really a shame that so many people listen to Bill O'Reilly. He is very smooth and self assured when he talks. Even when bullshit if dribbling down his chin. I like Bill Maher a lot, but I wish he would call him out on this on the spot.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Being a spectator versus being a participant
Since the advent of TV, people in the western world have been increasingly taught to be spectators. Being a spectator is a very old activity of course. TV just made it seem like being a spectator is the default way to experience the world. “Don’t experience it yourself, but watch others experience it.” This has encouraged many negative behaviors in our modern society.
A sedentary lifestyle is now standard for Americans. Outside of work, many Americans do no additional physical activity. Many jobs require minimal physical activity to begin with. Office jobs and working behind a counter come to mind.
Few adults play sports. They prefer to watch them. Few people as a percentage of the population cook their own meals. Microwaving Mac and Cheese doesn’t count as cooking. Almost no one grows any of their own food. Almost no one could fix their own car. Some people drive their car every day and don’t know how to check their oil. Skills have just fallen to the wayside, as everything can be paid for and done by an expert.
All of these daily losses of power (being incapable of doing any of the above things are all losses of power) make it very easy for people to be manipulated and led on by corporations and governments. People are literally powerless to take care of their health and possessions, and that in turn breeds powerlessness in thought. That’s partly why the outrage over the BP spill has pretty much subsided. Few people still think about it. BP has done a tremendous PR effort to get people to think everything is ok. In a world where people are active participants instead of spectators, BP would have been liquidated as a company with all top executives going to prison. But instead business as usual will continue.
Every time you stop being a spectator and become an active participant, you can change the world for the better.
A sedentary lifestyle is now standard for Americans. Outside of work, many Americans do no additional physical activity. Many jobs require minimal physical activity to begin with. Office jobs and working behind a counter come to mind.
Few adults play sports. They prefer to watch them. Few people as a percentage of the population cook their own meals. Microwaving Mac and Cheese doesn’t count as cooking. Almost no one grows any of their own food. Almost no one could fix their own car. Some people drive their car every day and don’t know how to check their oil. Skills have just fallen to the wayside, as everything can be paid for and done by an expert.
All of these daily losses of power (being incapable of doing any of the above things are all losses of power) make it very easy for people to be manipulated and led on by corporations and governments. People are literally powerless to take care of their health and possessions, and that in turn breeds powerlessness in thought. That’s partly why the outrage over the BP spill has pretty much subsided. Few people still think about it. BP has done a tremendous PR effort to get people to think everything is ok. In a world where people are active participants instead of spectators, BP would have been liquidated as a company with all top executives going to prison. But instead business as usual will continue.
Every time you stop being a spectator and become an active participant, you can change the world for the better.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Slow Down
As technology has increased, become cheaper and ever-present, the speed of life has increased significantly. 200 years ago, New York to San Francisco would have taken months with a strong possibility of dying. Now it's a 6 hour plane flight, affordable to most people that aren't living in poverty. The observation has been made many times now that although things can be done much quicker, it seems like we have less and less time. It seems trite to even mention it again.
And it's great that so many things are done quicker. But not everything should be done quickly. Industrialization has made efficiency such an important quality. And being efficient is certainly a good thing for many things. But some things take time. One thing that sticks in my mind is getting results from meditation. You can't just meditate for an hour the first time you try. Meditating for a few minutes at a time can be a monumental struggle. You can learn the technique in minutes, but you can improve your ability for decades. There is no shortcut.
Meditation is just one example though. So many things take time. You can't make a delicious microwave dinner. My concern is that soon people will be able to communicate directly with computers, and people will be able to use computers to communicate with other people much faster. What will be lost in the interactions between cyborgs? Will all of the things that require patience and effort be cast aside because they're not fast enough?
And it's great that so many things are done quicker. But not everything should be done quickly. Industrialization has made efficiency such an important quality. And being efficient is certainly a good thing for many things. But some things take time. One thing that sticks in my mind is getting results from meditation. You can't just meditate for an hour the first time you try. Meditating for a few minutes at a time can be a monumental struggle. You can learn the technique in minutes, but you can improve your ability for decades. There is no shortcut.
Meditation is just one example though. So many things take time. You can't make a delicious microwave dinner. My concern is that soon people will be able to communicate directly with computers, and people will be able to use computers to communicate with other people much faster. What will be lost in the interactions between cyborgs? Will all of the things that require patience and effort be cast aside because they're not fast enough?
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
DIY in hard economic times
Americans are used to convenience. Convenience is certainly a good quality. The problem is that convenience takes precedence over many other more important qualities for many people. As just one example, many Americans choose convenience over health with their food choices. It's the whole appeal of fast food.
Convenience relies on our monetary system. The reason we can do things conveniently is that money pays for it. We save time, but spend money. And we spend money on lots of things that we could do ourselves cheaper (and more healthfully). It's just that it takes time. It's a trade off between time and money. But the hidden cost of convenience is that it shifts your expectations of how long something should take. We fill our time with a lot more things to do. Doing a lot of things in a short amount of time can certainly have its virtues. But it really depends on what we're doing. If we are spending our extra time being lazy (i.e. watching TV), which convenience encourages, convenience is really robbing us of time. It also robs us of skills. It makes people less able to do things. Everything can be done for you if you have the money for it.
But if you don't have the money for convenience, you can still have things you want. You just need to spend time on them. In the process you become capable of more things. It's empowering to be able to fix your own car, or make your own pie. It can also help your self esteem. That is something this is slipping for a lot of people as they spend more and more time out of work. Time out of work gives you the time to learn new skills, and the time to do-it-yourself.
And what can you do yourself? Anything! Some things are costly, like welding, but plenty of things can be done relatively cheaply, or even free. You can make your own soap, cook your own soups, grow your own food, and sew your own clothes. You can make your own liquor or wine, you can build your own furniture, and you can design your own posters. And if you really want to weld, you might be able to rent or borrow the equipment for little to no cost. Being unemployed or underemployed is the time to learn to do these things, and the skills will last a lifetime.
Convenience relies on our monetary system. The reason we can do things conveniently is that money pays for it. We save time, but spend money. And we spend money on lots of things that we could do ourselves cheaper (and more healthfully). It's just that it takes time. It's a trade off between time and money. But the hidden cost of convenience is that it shifts your expectations of how long something should take. We fill our time with a lot more things to do. Doing a lot of things in a short amount of time can certainly have its virtues. But it really depends on what we're doing. If we are spending our extra time being lazy (i.e. watching TV), which convenience encourages, convenience is really robbing us of time. It also robs us of skills. It makes people less able to do things. Everything can be done for you if you have the money for it.
But if you don't have the money for convenience, you can still have things you want. You just need to spend time on them. In the process you become capable of more things. It's empowering to be able to fix your own car, or make your own pie. It can also help your self esteem. That is something this is slipping for a lot of people as they spend more and more time out of work. Time out of work gives you the time to learn new skills, and the time to do-it-yourself.
And what can you do yourself? Anything! Some things are costly, like welding, but plenty of things can be done relatively cheaply, or even free. You can make your own soap, cook your own soups, grow your own food, and sew your own clothes. You can make your own liquor or wine, you can build your own furniture, and you can design your own posters. And if you really want to weld, you might be able to rent or borrow the equipment for little to no cost. Being unemployed or underemployed is the time to learn to do these things, and the skills will last a lifetime.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
The Century of Self
I just finished watching a 4 hour BBC documentary entitled "The Century of Self". It's one of the most impressive documentaries I have seen in a while. It should be required viewing for all people in Western societies to understand why the world is the way it is. It chronicles how the ideas of Sigmund Freud and other members of his family have deeply affected our current society. His daughter Anna Freud and his nephew Edward Bernays have had a huge influence on our consumer and mental cultures.
Freud had many ideas about human nature, but the main point that has stuck with us is that people are irrational and are driven by unseen and unnoticed instincts. At the time, it was a very astute realization and it's undoubtedly true. He is the father of modern Psychology. Not discussed in the movie is the fact that Freud was a coke head, and he saw and studied (almost exclusively) mentally ill people. He concluded that people are unpredictable and dangerous unless their inner drives are suppressed or redirected. I knew all of this because I studied Psychology. What I didn't realize was how far reaching his conclusions have become in our society. This is thanks to Edward Bernays.
Bernays also had a decidedly negative view of human nature, as he agreed with many of Freud's ideas. He was concerned that Democracy was not sustainable if people's impulses were not controlled and manipulated. So he developed modern Public Relations. He believed that the elite few should control how people expend their energy and how they behave by directing their desires to consumer products and appealing to their basest emotions. He wanted conformity through consumerism, and boy how did he succeed! He was a mastermind of getting people to do what companies wanted. For example, it used to be taboo for women to smoke cigarettes publicly. One cigarette company was concerned that half of the market was unavailable to them. Bernays set up a publicity stunt. He got a bunch of well dressed debutantes to march at the front of an Easter Day parade and to light up their cigarettes all at once on his cue. He told the media that suffragettes were going to light up 'torches of freedom' at the parade. It got huge media coverage, and the idea that women were sparking cigarettes for freedom's sake appealed to women, as it challenged men's power. The taboo was broken, and now women wanted to smoke too.
That was just the beginning of Bernay's long career in making people desire things that they didn't need. He worked for the President of the United States as well as many companies finding ways to make people desire their consumer goods. He was a very rich and powerful person. His whole strategy revolved around targeting people's base desires and connecting them to politicians or companies.
Anna Freud moved to America after her father died, and began the study of child psychology. She based her findings on her work with 2 children. She believed that if she could influence the children to conform to society, that it will keep them mentally healthy. Her worked influenced many other psychologists and has gone on to be a dominant influence of modern child psychology. What is bizarre to me, is that out of the two children she based her conclusions on (who were brother and sister), the sister committed suicide, and the brother didn't seem to be too well off either. This leads me to the conclusion that modern child psychology is deeply flawed, and we have Anna Freud to blame for it.
Starting in the 1960's, there came a change to American society's view of conformity. More and more people and a different school of psychologists focused on individual needs, and thought that these are what really drive some people. These inner driven people want to be individual and unique. At first, manufacturers were scared; their business model focused on mass producing goods and conformity. If people didn't want to conform any more, they wouldn't be able to sell their goods. Luckily for them, the same focus groups that were used from the 30's to the 60's changed tactics. Instead of trying to get people to conform, they had people describe their base desires and whims. And then the companies started making products that they might want to buy. What a gold mine! Now instead of losing out on the people that were inner driven, they could keep the conformists and get the inner driven people to buy products that 'expressed' themselves. No consumer left behind?
And America and much of the rest of the world has suffered for this. Rational discussion is no longer possible with many people. They want what they want. It's like we're all spoiled children, demanding to get what is ours. This is why people want lower taxes, and better public services. These are opposite ideas. You need to raise taxes if you want better public services. But politics is now all about pandering to the masses. Whatever they want to hear, they'll say, because being elected is what matters. Later in the documentary is shows how Bill Clinton and Tony Blaire in England changed their political parties forever. At the start of Clinton's presidency, he was pushing for health care reform and welfare. But people saw the increase in taxes as a personal assault on them. He lost popularity and was afraid that he would lose the re-election campaign. He hired Dick Morris, a public relations genius who started doing market research on swing voters (people that might vote Republican or Democrat). From that point on, all Clinton did was pander to those people so that they would vote for him. There was no longer any long term goals, just the short term goals of satisfying swing voter whims. And it worked beautifully. Blaire's campaign followed the same strategy, and his Labour Party gave up on their long time political stances.
How badly has this damaged society? It's hard to tell, but it seems to be damaged beyond repair. How do you get people to realize that they're not independent in this world? Everything is connected. When people have been advertised to so incessantly, and told that they deserve the best of everything and to be focused only on themselves, you can't just strip them of this idea by reason. Because emotions are irrational, and that is what they have been following for so long.
The only thing I can think of right now, is that connections need to be shown. To a married woman with that expensive diamond ring: it depended on people doing backbreaking work for little money, company executives marketing to you, people shipping the diamond, the people at the store selling the diamond, your husband who worked however many dozens or hundreds of hours to afford it, and all the people he interacted with at his company and his customers who paid his wages. It didn't just appear out of nowhere. <-------- This message though is much harder to convey than what diamond commercials have to do. "A Diamond is Forever", show some romantic silhouettes, and the name of the company. Especially hard is the fact that a commercial showing how diamonds actually get to your finger would never make it to a television station. It would hurt their advertisers ability to sell diamonds.
What can be done? How can people be shown that individual well-being should be connected to the well-being of everyone? If rational discussion can't be had, how do you fight base instincts? Through other emotional appeals?
Freud had many ideas about human nature, but the main point that has stuck with us is that people are irrational and are driven by unseen and unnoticed instincts. At the time, it was a very astute realization and it's undoubtedly true. He is the father of modern Psychology. Not discussed in the movie is the fact that Freud was a coke head, and he saw and studied (almost exclusively) mentally ill people. He concluded that people are unpredictable and dangerous unless their inner drives are suppressed or redirected. I knew all of this because I studied Psychology. What I didn't realize was how far reaching his conclusions have become in our society. This is thanks to Edward Bernays.
Bernays also had a decidedly negative view of human nature, as he agreed with many of Freud's ideas. He was concerned that Democracy was not sustainable if people's impulses were not controlled and manipulated. So he developed modern Public Relations. He believed that the elite few should control how people expend their energy and how they behave by directing their desires to consumer products and appealing to their basest emotions. He wanted conformity through consumerism, and boy how did he succeed! He was a mastermind of getting people to do what companies wanted. For example, it used to be taboo for women to smoke cigarettes publicly. One cigarette company was concerned that half of the market was unavailable to them. Bernays set up a publicity stunt. He got a bunch of well dressed debutantes to march at the front of an Easter Day parade and to light up their cigarettes all at once on his cue. He told the media that suffragettes were going to light up 'torches of freedom' at the parade. It got huge media coverage, and the idea that women were sparking cigarettes for freedom's sake appealed to women, as it challenged men's power. The taboo was broken, and now women wanted to smoke too.
That was just the beginning of Bernay's long career in making people desire things that they didn't need. He worked for the President of the United States as well as many companies finding ways to make people desire their consumer goods. He was a very rich and powerful person. His whole strategy revolved around targeting people's base desires and connecting them to politicians or companies.
Anna Freud moved to America after her father died, and began the study of child psychology. She based her findings on her work with 2 children. She believed that if she could influence the children to conform to society, that it will keep them mentally healthy. Her worked influenced many other psychologists and has gone on to be a dominant influence of modern child psychology. What is bizarre to me, is that out of the two children she based her conclusions on (who were brother and sister), the sister committed suicide, and the brother didn't seem to be too well off either. This leads me to the conclusion that modern child psychology is deeply flawed, and we have Anna Freud to blame for it.
Starting in the 1960's, there came a change to American society's view of conformity. More and more people and a different school of psychologists focused on individual needs, and thought that these are what really drive some people. These inner driven people want to be individual and unique. At first, manufacturers were scared; their business model focused on mass producing goods and conformity. If people didn't want to conform any more, they wouldn't be able to sell their goods. Luckily for them, the same focus groups that were used from the 30's to the 60's changed tactics. Instead of trying to get people to conform, they had people describe their base desires and whims. And then the companies started making products that they might want to buy. What a gold mine! Now instead of losing out on the people that were inner driven, they could keep the conformists and get the inner driven people to buy products that 'expressed' themselves. No consumer left behind?
And America and much of the rest of the world has suffered for this. Rational discussion is no longer possible with many people. They want what they want. It's like we're all spoiled children, demanding to get what is ours. This is why people want lower taxes, and better public services. These are opposite ideas. You need to raise taxes if you want better public services. But politics is now all about pandering to the masses. Whatever they want to hear, they'll say, because being elected is what matters. Later in the documentary is shows how Bill Clinton and Tony Blaire in England changed their political parties forever. At the start of Clinton's presidency, he was pushing for health care reform and welfare. But people saw the increase in taxes as a personal assault on them. He lost popularity and was afraid that he would lose the re-election campaign. He hired Dick Morris, a public relations genius who started doing market research on swing voters (people that might vote Republican or Democrat). From that point on, all Clinton did was pander to those people so that they would vote for him. There was no longer any long term goals, just the short term goals of satisfying swing voter whims. And it worked beautifully. Blaire's campaign followed the same strategy, and his Labour Party gave up on their long time political stances.
How badly has this damaged society? It's hard to tell, but it seems to be damaged beyond repair. How do you get people to realize that they're not independent in this world? Everything is connected. When people have been advertised to so incessantly, and told that they deserve the best of everything and to be focused only on themselves, you can't just strip them of this idea by reason. Because emotions are irrational, and that is what they have been following for so long.
The only thing I can think of right now, is that connections need to be shown. To a married woman with that expensive diamond ring: it depended on people doing backbreaking work for little money, company executives marketing to you, people shipping the diamond, the people at the store selling the diamond, your husband who worked however many dozens or hundreds of hours to afford it, and all the people he interacted with at his company and his customers who paid his wages. It didn't just appear out of nowhere. <-------- This message though is much harder to convey than what diamond commercials have to do. "A Diamond is Forever", show some romantic silhouettes, and the name of the company. Especially hard is the fact that a commercial showing how diamonds actually get to your finger would never make it to a television station. It would hurt their advertisers ability to sell diamonds.
What can be done? How can people be shown that individual well-being should be connected to the well-being of everyone? If rational discussion can't be had, how do you fight base instincts? Through other emotional appeals?
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