Sam Harris Rational or Irrational Fear of Islam?

Recently the hotly debated topic of whether "new atheists" such as Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens have irrationally overhyped the dangers of Islam has broken out on the internet.  It all got started when Glenn Greenwald posted a tweet with a link to an article by Murtaza Hussain, and Nathan Lean at Salon.com, which led to Sam Harris emailing Greenwald in response to the tweeting of the aforementioned article.  This led to Greenwald posting his exchange with Sam Harris with Harris' permission.  Then Greenwald posted an article on Sam Harris, the New Atheists, and anti-Muslim animus.  After some back and forth on twitter Harris replied to the claims in Greenwald's article.  There was also more twitter arguing and Richard Dawkings chiming in to support Sam Harris.  I have been a fairly faithful reader of Greewald's writings first at Salon.com and now at The Guardian as well as reading his book With Liberty and Justice for Some.  Since I'm also a (less avid) reader (although I have watched numerous debates, speeches, and interviews) of Sam Harris it took me some careful review to form an opinion on the subject due to my respect for both Harris and Greenwald.  However, after reading some of the articles and the twitter fights between the two I must say I'm a little shocked at the whole incident.

First I'm an atheist in that I don't worship any gods or attribute natural phenomena to some sort of spiritual deity.  I believe Islam is deserving of harsh and precise critiques due to the obvious abuses and  the behaviors it can create in its adherents.  People can and should be able to criticize the religion without fear of being labeled bigots or racist simply for critiquing a religion.  However, Harris' critique of Islam and Muslims is often overblown in terms of having a rational fear vs having an irrational fear of Islam.

While Harris has taken the time to clarify some quotes that were perhaps misconstrued (albeit confusing in the first place), Greenwald and Hussain were not the only people to complain about his "fascist quote".  Christopher Hitchens did as well stating, ""When I read Sam Harris’s irresponsible remark that only fascists seemed to have the right line, I murmured to myself: “Not while I’m alive, they won’t.” Nor do I wish to concede that Serbo-fascist ethnic cleansing can appear more rational in retrospect than it did at the time. The Islamist threat itself may be crude, but this is an intricate cultural and political challenge that will absorb all of our energies for the rest of our lives: we are all responsible for doing our utmost as citizens as well as for demanding more imagination from our leaders."  Harris has explained the remark in his response to the controversy, but aside from this and a few other remarks I find his response unconvincing and failing to rebut many claims made against him.  While much controversy has erupted over this singular comment, there hasn't been as much discussion of other damming evidence showing that Harris overstates the threat of Islam and even radical Islam.

Let's consider the article the quote came from.  It is a scathing attack on the failure of liberals to realize "a cult of death is forming in the Muslim world," and "the truth is that we are not fighting a “war on terror.” We are fighting a pestilential theology."  What is most striking to me in this entire article is the constant dichotomy between western civilization and Islam and his use of this dichotomy to explain the moral failings of Islam while attributing the US and Israel with having a "moral high ground."  Since Harris himself uses this dichotomy, I think it is fair to make concrete comparisons between what is being done by the US and Israel (as well as other western states) towards the middle east or "Islamic world" in order to put in perspective just how dire these threats are.  Even though Harris makes the claim that "nothing about honestly discussing the doctrine of Islam requires that a person not notice all that might be wrong with U.S. foreign policy, capitalism, the vestiges of empire, or anything else that may be contributing to our ongoing conflicts in the Muslim world."  He uses comparisons between the US and Islam writing "they (liberals) ignore the fact that Muslims intentionally murder noncombatants, while we and the Israelis (as a rule) seek to avoid doing so," and therefore Harris makes it fair game to critique the rationality of the extremity of his fear of Islam vs fear of the crimes of our own state.

So just how dire is the threat of Islam?  Harris states that "The truth is that there is every reason to believe that a terrifying number of the world’s Muslims now view all political and moral questions in terms of their affiliation with Islam. This leads them to rally to the cause of other Muslims no matter how sociopathic their behavior. This benighted religious solidarity may be the greatest problem facing civilization."  Harris is making the claim that religious affiliation and solidarity with other Muslims who commit "sociopathic behavior" just may be the greatest threat to civilization.  Putting aside the facts that civilization actually began in the areas that he calls the "muslim world," often making a sharp distinction between this world and civilization, this is an easily provable falsehood.  We can establish this by putting the threat in perspective, much as Harris has done in his article earlier this year on guns and gun control in the US.  In the article Harris seeks to put into perspective the true reality of gun violence in the US by stating that there are an estimated 100,000 deaths due to the failure of doctors and nurses to wash their hands properly, which is obviously greater than the number of deaths caused by gun violence.  Although he concedes that "A narrow focus on mortality rates does not always do justice to the reality of human suffering" -It should be noted that a mere mortality rate doesn't even come close to doing justice to the suffering caused in Iraq by the US and that it's subsequent foreign policy continues to cause suffering in the region.  Between refugees, secret prisons, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and injuries the toll becomes incalculable-.  Therefore to put the threat of Islam into perspective we can look at the data on the subject.  The odds that you'll die in a terrorist attack are around 1 in 9.3 million worldwide and 1 in 20 million in the US.  This puts your odds of dying in an extremist muslim attack behind the the risk of being mauled to death by a dog.  It's actually lower since not all terrorist attack attributable deaths were committed by Muslims.

However, if you lived in Iraq your chance of dying from the US led invasion was over 1 in 50, because the US wiped out 2.5% of Iraq's population.  So while Harris attributes the US and Israel with a moral high ground for avoiding the killing of noncombatants he fails to note we kill more both in percentage and in number than do Islamic extremists.  However, we do have to pay attention to the very high death toll and real threat posed by Islamic extremists, but anyone with any detailed study of the effects of Islamic extremism would have to concede that those who suffer the most from Islamic extremism -in both attacks and other heinous forms of oppression- are those who live in the "muslim world."  As Hussain points out in his reply to an article shared by sam harris on twitter, "The simple fact is that Islamic extremism is almost exclusively a threat to people like me- not rich, white, westerners like Sam Harris."  This distinction is important because it comes to the heart of Harris' argument for secularism and against Islam.  As Chris Hedges put it, "they externalize evil. Evil is not something that you struggle with within yourself. Evil is embodied in religion."  This is why Harris asserts that Islamic "benighted religious solidarity may be the greatest threat facing civilization."

Harris' arguments for why Islam is such a threat come off somewhat convincingly unless we apply the same standards to ourselves.  Let's be clear that a failure to apply the same standards to our own state result in an externalization of evil and a sanitization of crimes being committed in our own name -Harris himself has argued for US and Israeli rightness while arguing against Islam using this same tactic-.  Harris states that "the only way that Muslims can reasonably be said to exist as a group is in terms of their adherence to the doctrine of Islam," and that Muslims have "an equally dogmatic commitment to using violence to defend one’s faith, both from within and without, is similarly central to the doctrine of Islam."

So how would those claims be applied to the US?  The war in Iraq was launched based off of the belief of protecting the US and its interests from the threat or potential threat of Iraq, specifically from the unproven and zero evidence claims that they had WMD.  This war was one of many wars where a majority of the US public supported the war at the beginning of the war.  Further evidence shows that the US public supported the war even over a year after the conflict began with 54% supporting it in September of 2004.  What kind of dangerous dogmatic beliefs would the US public need to have to support a war based on false claims?  The answers could be said to be blind patriotism, and viewing all their moral and political questions in terms of their national identity.  What's important to note is that the US public adhered to an illegal doctrine of preemptive war, with a dogmatic commitment to using violence to defend our faith that Iraq had WMD, and protect our country from within and without.  The legitimization of the use of violence against our "enemies" is no less radical and follows a very similar process to religious indoctrination, whereby the public was indoctrinated to believe in a profound threat to their country with no supporting evidence.  It's also worth noting for perspective, that 93% of Muslim's when polled, condemned the 9/11 attacks.

Now we have to pause to concede that Islam and more correctly Islamic extremism poses a threat in more than just one arena to the inhabitants of the globe.  This is why it deserves strong critiques from Harris and others.  Honor violence and extreme patriarchy are just two cases.  It is also in part responsible for over 3,000 deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2011.  However, Iraq and Afghanistan are the two countries with the most terrorist attacks in the world.  This begs the question of what exactly motivates the violence throughout the "muslim world," and whether or not the relationship to Islam is the fundamental factor.  Does rationality or religion tend to dominate more of the so called "muslim world"?  Dalia Mogahed,  former Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, says "Politics, not piety, differentiate moderates from radicals' in the Islamic world."  

Still more experts like Tariq Ali (an atheist British Pakastani) have argued, "the "war against terror" is immoral and counterproductive. It sanctions the use of state terror - bombing raids, torture, countless civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq - against Islamo-anarchists whose numbers are small, but whose reach is deadly. The solution then, as now, is political, not military. The British ruling elite understood this perfectly well in the case of Ireland. Security measures, anti-terror laws rushed through parliament, identity cards, a curtailment of civil liberties, will not solve the problem. If anything, they will push young Muslims in the direction of mindless violence."

This analysis was generally confirmed correct by the CIA, as Greenwald pointed out, back in 2004.   "American direct intervention in the muslim world has paradoxically elevated the stature and support for radical extremists while at the same time diminishing support for the United States to single-digits in some Arab societies."  Another report about the 2008 gallup poll, that Greenwald also pointed out, has Mogahed saying, "Some actually cited religious justifications for why they were against 9/11, going as far as to quote from the Koran -- for example, the verse that says taking one innocent life is like killing all humanity."

This last quote is so poignant to the debate, when you compare what actual Muslims are reported to have said vs the characterization of Muslims by Sam Harris "While there are undoubtedly some moderate Muslims who have decided to overlook the irrescindable militancy of their religion, Islam is undeniably a religion of conquest. The only future devout Muslims can envisage—as Muslims—is one in which all infidels have been converted to Islam, politically subjugated, or killed. The tenets of Islam simply do not admit of anything but a temporary sharing of power with the “enemies of God.”  Please read the full article so I'm not accused of taking him out of context.

The article goes on to state, "We are now mired in a religious war in Iraq and elsewhere. Our enemies--as witnessed by their astonishing willingness to slaughter themselves--are not principally motivated by political or economic grievances."  These are assumptions that I have yet to see evidence for, and as a skeptic I think we should ask Harris to provide his evidence.  Then Harris continues, "It is not enough for moderate Muslims to say “not in our name.” They must now police their own communities. They must offer unreserved assistance to western governments in locating the extremists in their midst."  He's actually advocating that they must without reservation allow foreign governments access to their nation to locate the extremists, although it is a well known fact that the US doesn't just locate extremists.  The US kills them, captures them, and even tortures them.  Imagine just for a second if we applied the same standards to our own country.  We would have to give up Bush and Cheney to the International Criminal Court for war crimes.  We would have to submit our country to foreign governments to give up people that other countries decided were criminals outside the normative processes of international law.  But this is only hypothetical as they would have to have the most advanced and expensive military in the world, and currently that's our game.

Harris continues in that same article and goes on to say, "However mixed or misguided American intentions were in launching this war, civilized human beings are now attempting, at considerable cost to themselves, to improve life for the Iraqi people. The terrible truth about our predicament in Iraq is that even if we had invaded with no other purpose than to remove Saddam Hussein from power and make Iraq a paradise on earth, we could still expect tomorrow’s paper to reveal that another jihadi has blown himself up for the sake of killing scores of innocent men, women, and children. The outrage that Muslims feel over U.S. and British foreign policy is primarily the product of theological concerns."  This in not only in stark contrast to the poll cited above about the middle east, but absolutely ignorant of the history of the middle east.  Perhaps Harris is unaware of the use of cluster munitions in Iraq which means "Iraqi civilians will be paying the price with their lives and limbs for many years," according to Steve Goose -This is also evidence contrary to Harris' claim that we avoid killing non combatants-.  The part that shows true ignorance however is that the outrage in the middle east is not primarily driven by policies of; aggressive preemptive war, bombing of civilian infrastructure, torture, black op prisons, and  just maybe the death of 2.5% of their countrymen after a decade of sanctions that caused the death of children to increase dramatically with reports ranging from 170,000 to 500,000+, but is "primarily the product of theological concerns."

Again, I'm not arguing against criticizing Islam, I'm arguing against using religion as a basis for overtly political arguments in favor of "civilized human beings" (inferring that those in the middle east are less than civilized human beings) that are attempting to improve the lives of Iraqi people when Iraqis are obviously being harmed by policies of continued war waged by these same "civilized human beings."  Harris then writes that, "there is, after all, little possibility of our having a cold war with an Islamist regime armed with long-range nuclear weapons. A cold war requires that the parties be mutually deterred by the threat of death."  This brings to mind the question of whether Harris realizes that Pakistan is both an Islamic republic as well as a nuclear state -with the highest levels of support for Islamic fundamentalism-, but again he asserts that because these countries are muslim they are not deterred by the threat of death.  Therefore they pose an extreme threat to the country with the most powerful military and intelligence organizations on earth, and with the most advanced nuclear deterrence system on earth that is currently considering investing even more money in nuclear weapons.

While Harris isn't wrong in asserting that religion plays a major role in the politics of the middle east I believe his arguments are a vast oversimplification of the problems with an overemphasis on religion while virtually ignoring the political and social motivations for extremism.  After all Harris may be  unaware there is a long history of the US supporting religious groups (such as the Mujahideen) to stop Arab socialism and communism, and continues to fund the Taliban.   Not to mention US support for Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, and Indonesia.  How this support has in many ways led to the de-liberalization of the middle east is debatable, but dismissing them to focus on motives of faith is irresponsible, and a mischaracterization of the issues.

Harris continually asserts that the problems are overwhelmingly religious rather than rational or political, yet still more experts like the Middle East Research and Information Project claim that, "Because it is associated with Western modes of thinking and behavior, liberal democracy is always in danger of being associated with Western misdeeds, real and alleged. To many Arabs and Muslims, Western economic, political and cultural influence appears more pernicious than ever. The so-called intellectual onslaught (al-ghazw al-fikri) on Arab-Islamic culture and identity is a main theme of the day, and many see liberal democracy as part of that assault...  Western debate frequently mirrors the themes, concerns and obsessions of the Islamist one, albeit with different connotations. The more sophisticated skeptics usually refer to Islam as an effective barrier against development, modernity and democracy; the less sophisticated to “the Arab mind,” which is allegedly inclined toward authoritarianism and incapable of accepting pluralism and self-critique."  Instead of asserting that religion plays the dominate role in middle eastern politics as well as every area of their life, it is much more correct that religion, poverty, education, as well a foreign political policies all play a central role in the problems facing the middle east.  Why Harris places so much emphasis on the religious aspects of these issues is both predictable, as he is mostly preoccupied with religion, but also a mischaracterization of the problems with too much emphasis on religion, while at the same time arguing for many imperialist policies.

The policies Harris has argued for are; torture, saying that, "I am one of the few people I know of who has argued in print that torture may be an ethical necessity in our war on terror", -the argument that says this is merely a hypothetical and that he has philosophers penchant for controversial subjects or ethics is absurd when he is purposely coming up with outlandish situations to justify the use of torture at a time when torture is being authorized by the US publicly-, profiling of Muslims, "We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it... there are people who do not stand a chance of being jihadists, and TSA screeners can know this at a glance.", and to me the most repellant claim that, "there are tens of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney."  The reason why I find this last claim so repellant is that it is a crime against reason to suggest that tens of millions of people in the muslim world even have a sliver of the destructive force that Cheney had under his influence.  This is especially true  because Cheney is a radical proponent of preemptive wars which are held by international law to be illegal, and one of the crimes brought up against the Nazis at Nuremberg.  The reality is that yes the threat of Islamic extremists are scary, but not nearly as scary as those who have the power to subjugate an entire country to the foreign policy of their making by military force in a preemptive and unilateral invasion.  How can anyone not see that a man with a gun is probably more powerful than a man without one, and a man that can influence the most advanced military force the world has ever known to invade a country on false premises (and did precisely that), constitutes more of a threat to the world than Islamic extremists?

While I'm willing to concede that Harris is neither racist or bigoted, it is obvious why he has had to defend himself from such claims.  Perhaps with some perspective on the claims Harris makes over and over again about obviously over exaggerated threats of Islam, we can take a step back and see it's a much more complex problem than merely boiling it down to religious extremism.  Harris is right to criticize Islam on many fronts including the religious dogmas which have hurt mostly their own people, but he is wholly wrong to use religion as the primary factor in all that is wrong in the middle east while ignoring the crimes of the west, and suggesting the US has a moral high ground in the war on terror.  Political motivations as well as international policies -specifically US policies- are just as important if not more important in shaping what seems to be the growing violence of the middle east.

Further, I would also like to say that Harris, and even Dawkins, on this controversy, have not responded with composure or respect at times.  Harris and Dawkins have both tweeted "quote mined" attacks against Greenwald which do a great deal more to distort the views of Greenwald.

This claim that Greenwald supported the Iraq war by writing in the preface of his first book explaining his apathy towards politics and "coming of age" in political terms - that uses a quote that merely states he gave Bush the benefit of the doubt in his handling on the war on terror- is a mischaracterization of enormous proportions.  If you'd read the book you'd know it is anything but a source of support for the Iraq war nor does it give support for Bush's policies.  Harris has also made claims against Greenwald's character which have nothing to do with the debate at hand.  Simple vilification of ones critics, while straw-manning, crying libel and slander at your critics, and failing to provide either context or a reasonable rationale for the obviously over inflated fears Harris propagates about Islam -especially in the context of an endless war waged by those who Harris asserts have a moral high ground- are reason enough for rational and reasonable atheists and theists alike to condemn not Harris, but some of his ideas as both irrational and unfounded in reality.

When a person attacks another on character because they have been attacked on their work, is not only disingenuous (as Harris supposes of Greenwald), but more importantly counterproductive to a much needed debate on just what role Islam plays in the middle east and the world in general.  Rather than see two (or more) influential writers debate the topic of what does and does not constitute a rational fear of Islam the debate quickly spiraled into attacks on character, accusations of bullying, and claims of being attacked unethically while complaining about having to defend controversial statements -and in my opinion (and others) irrational and contradicting reality-, we as a society benefit from open discourse.

Update: I've written a second post on Sam Harris here.

UpdateII: I came across a gallup poll asking...

Apparently people in the US must be a "cult of death" as well.  For more on this see this.
Update III: For more on Sam Harris and his faith in government while criticizing religion read this.

Markets and Art: The Commodification of Music Destroys Art

"Man really attains the state of complete humanity when he produces, without being forced by physical need to sell himself as a commodity."
— Che Guevara

A recent Truthdig article found here, caught my attention because of the similarities in the views of artist Robert Shetterly, a painter of activists, and my own views on the commodification of art.  Although I've already written before on the subject here, in a post about Music and Industry, I have decided to revisit the subject spurred by some very piercing quotes about art by Shetterly.

He says, "Artists today, are using the dominant culture system to determine how they value themselves and I think that’s a very dangerous thing for artists. ... Art is one of the few places where critical voices can live. Even in universities these days it can’t live with so much political pressure. The real voice is lost.”

Shetterly continues, “Art, is one of the last places where people can have the freedom to live outside the system, or at least on its scraps, instead of trying to be one with it, which robs you of your voice finally. It’s so easy to be co-opted.  This system will take anything from anybody and if it can commodify it, it will embrace it.”

The general point I think Shetterly is making is that artists are losing their true voice in order to turn their art into a commodity.  It's important that we define specifically what we mean by a commodity.  A commodity is any good or service that is produced by human labour and offered for general sale on the market.  Commodities also have specific characteristics that help us further define, and conceptualize commodities.

A commodity is something that has a value, which can be further subdivided into use value and exchange value, as well as a price.  Use value is simply the utility of use a good has, which differs from it's exchange value, although Marx's concept of use value is somewhat different from more classical definitions (I will abstain from going into too much detail on the subject, but highly recommend reading A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx).   A common example of this is a diamond which although it may have a high value of exchange, it doesn't serve much of a purpose as a  utilitarian item.  A commodity has a use value because, by its intrinsic characteristics, it can satisfy some human need or want, physical or ideal.  Use value also means that the commodity has social value, or that it is useful not just to the producer itself, but has a use for others generally.

The exchange value of a commodity means, that the commodity can be traded for other commodities, and thus the owner of a commodity can benefit from others labour.  It differs from price value which is the monetary manifestation of exchange value.  In other words, exchange value could be seen as the trading ratio between two commodities without using money as a medium of exchange.  Perhaps a few examples will illustrate these points better.

If I create music with my bass and make it a tradable product of human work (like capturing music on a CD) with social value and offer it to the market, it is a commodity.  However, me playing my bass in the music room of my home where no one else can hear, then it has no use to anyone else and therefore is not a commodity.  If I invite a friend to listen to me play my bass as a gift to them, it is not a commodity because it has no exchange value even if it serves a utilitarian use to that person (assuming they have a use for what they hear).  If I invite many people over to listen to me play a concert and require an exchange of either money or another commodity to play for many people, then the music I produce is certainly a commodity.  This is because it is being traded and has both use value, and exchange value that will probably have a set price as well (often called a cover).  Even though the act of me vibrating the wooden top of my bass by coaxing my strings to oscillate, a tree consisting of the same type wood as my bass, vibrating because of natural phenomena, which may cause it to creak or fall over, (no matter how pleasant the sounds may be) are not a commodity (unless of course I perhaps recorded and sold these sound recordings).  Nor is the bass by itself a commodity if it's only use is for firewood, unless I specifically trade or sell the bass as firewood.

So as artistic as my own or anyone else's playing may be, there is a specific process by which we turn this art into a commodity.  However, commodities often have another peculiar characteristic which is the lack of qualitative differentiation.  The term fungibility is used to describe this similarity of quality which implies that certain goods or services can have full or partial mutual substitution.  As Marx states in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, "From the taste of wheat it is not possible to tell who produced it, a Russian serf, a French peasant or an English capitalist."  Now perhaps this is why I find the blind fold tests in DownBeat (a feature were jazz musicians are played records without being told what is being played, and asked to comment on the music, who they think it could be, and give it a rating) to be so interesting especially in the last ten years.  Often the musician being tested doesn't recognize the recording straight off, or a specific individual sound of a musician.  Comments along the lines of "it sounds like" or "it could be anyone", or my favorite "it's somebody sounding like..." are all too common.   I would wager that in many cases with the amount of technically proficient jazz musicians out there in the world, even the most knowledgeable studied jazz fanatic would have a hard time telling who produced which bit of jazz music, and often (at least with more mainstream or traditional jazz) whether they were French, American, or African in similar sensory tests.

Why this seems to be the case has to do more with the process of making the music (and the business of recording the music) than it has to do with the end result or product.  In Marx's analogy on who grew the wheat, one would have to submit that although different soil types and physical environments would definitely perhaps provide very subtle notes to someone with a very refined palette for tasting wheat, to society as a whole this difference would be nearly impossible to detect.  Even if they could distinguish the differences it would be very difficult to assign the wheat with a country of origin.  Perhaps it is due to the fact that during the 19th century the process for growing grain was very similar from region to region.  Even with the advent of chemical fertilizers and pesticides used to grow crops, in study after study, organic vs. conventional (a qualitative difference in price at nearly any grocery store) consumers given sensory tests usually cannot tell conclusively which is organic or conventional, and the results to which is preferred are pretty evenly mixed.  However, I have on a few occasions taken a sip of milk which didn't taste quite right, (I'm an avid drinker of only organic milk) and was able to tell I was starting to ingest conventionally produced milk.

Are the processes by which we make art really coalescing and homogenizing to the point that we can actually say that the qualitative differences between different musicians are being reduced to a point of full or partial mutual substitution?  Since commodities are defined not just by the utility that the commodity has to the producer of the commodity, it has to have some larger social value.  What's clear, at least within the record industry, is that the company who is financing and distributing a record often could care less about what type of music is being sold, or how artistic the music on the recording is.  They simply care about how many units are being sold.  Although there may be some record labels that only market specific types of music or music that represents a certain set of ethics (i.e. ECM), but if they want to stay in business they have to factor in how many units are going to be sold.  Similarly, a restaurant that has live music or any music venue must concern themselves with how many people are showing up at the door and paying a cover, or patronizing their business in order to continue as a business entity.  This in and of itself leads to the disappearance of qualitative differences making music played for the entertainment or enjoyment of others and for money, most definitely a commodity that has at least partial ability for mutual substitution.  If one band can draw an audience the same size or of similar size to another, the utilitarian purpose they serve of drawing a crowd is the same as any other no matter how well or artistically they perform.

What this means is that artists survive by adhering to market rules and a market based ideology.  This leaves artists to replicate the obsessions of society and popular cultural ideas (even when the dominate culture is a culture that is destroying the very earth we live on).  Obsessions of this society may include the extreme obsession with falling in love (often lyrics in music concentrate on gaining or losing someone in terms of a possession with an extremely narcissistic attitude of how this make them feel), or even superhuman musical feats of playing an extremely large amount of notes in a very short amount of time with (and sometimes without) an underlying logical structure.  They champion the self and the heroism of the soloist, whether in jazz or in rock, while almost all forms of aboriginal music champion group or communal participation over individual performance.  The last point is perhaps best shown by the famous story Dave Liebman tells about when he asked Miles Davis "why he had a saxophone" in his band.  Miles responded to Dave, "Because people like to see you move your fingers!”  Perhaps that's the reason some people also like incomprehensibly fast "shredding" metal guitar.  Mostly in the jazz world at least there is a very heavy concentration on aesthetics.

“But aesthetics are a means to an end,” says Shetterly. “When they become the end themselves it becomes tiresomely academic [which does not] invite us to think and feel about something human. Instead it’s about composition, color and brushstroke. Those things are a means to delivering the message. If a painting is only about its own medium, it becomes very narcissistic and ingrown. ... It is either academic or about titillation ... it’s about flash. It’s about turning our nerves on but not our minds. It’s really about distraction. ... It all goes by so quickly and it’s exciting and feels good, but it also takes us away from what is important.”

I doubt I could begin to count the number of jazz or modern classical music concerts I've been to that Shetterly's quote would be a perfect review for.  There is a serious fetishization of the quality of the performance we give in the here and now, with the constant shadow of every other jazz musician and jazz performance ever made (even and especially the recordings) for direct comparison, both within the performer, (often to the point of it being a plague to the music itself amongst the less experienced) and the seasoned listener.  Musicians in the field often concentrate more on crushing time feels, face melting solos, and other aesthetic ideals in the music than conveying a sense of humanity or a message greater than the sum of its parts.  However, the part that I found most intriguing about his quote is that he calls out most of the commodified art for what it really is, a distraction.  Art that expresses little beyond perhaps individual, self reflecting, and inward looking emotional content that also fetishizes mastery of aesthetics, serves little purpose to society at large beyond momentarily distracting us from the real state of the world around us.  Further, the musicians who blatantly commoditize themselves and their music, are often those who produce trivial musical content that is mostly about titillating the audience.  This can be seen in pop music, as scantly dressed singers dance in an erotic fashion while singing songs that contain the musical and lyrical depth of an emotionally disturbed toddler.  Even amongst artists who reach for higher aesthetic beauty and lyricism, the musician is often well removed from the realities of both the world and their culture in favor of creating some sort of transcendent momentary escape from social conditions and even mortality.

Very few artists who are in any way able to make a living within the performing arts, are willing to tell the truths of the world both within and outside of their art.  You don't here too many songs about the fact that 90% of the large fish in the ocean are extinct, or that industrial civilization, using the once vast stores of fossil fuels, is leading to severe climate change that threatens life on earth as we know it.  The reasons may seem obvious as very few people want to buy this kind of music, and specifically within the more artistic traditions in the US, jazz, and modern classical music, the marketability is already so small it is becoming nearly impossible to survive on their performance "career" alone.  There may be something to be said for not just reducing music or art to protest music, but if the music doesn't even serve the purpose of getting the audience to at least begin to question their own existence or self, what purpose does the music serve?

The article continues, "Shetterly says that people who have a genuine interest in art are often beaten down and stripped of their ability to pursue the truth. The commoditization of art, if it hasn’t already reeled you into its arms, exiles you to the world of academic theory and nonreality, where you do not have the capacity to rebel against the free market. Either you adhere to the rules or you are cast into an irrelevant pool of degree-holding artists who have left the real world in search of vague ideas like space, subjectivism and postmodernist expression."

In my own personal experience with music that first sentence couldn't ring in any truer.  Whether it's instructors that insisted the music isn't as popular or happening because the players and music today just isn't as good, or whether it's setting aside any personal artistic goals or approaches to the art form, and instead focusing on playing more like the people who they came up listening to on records.  However, the blame can't be placed squarely on the shoulders of teachers and professors as usually they're just trying to relate to you the real world facts of the music business, which is that you must succumb to the market and the demands of the field or you will not survive as an artist.  People wanted me to play like the guys on the "great" records because that's what everyone is used to hearing and that's what gets you work.  They don't beat your individual creativity down for fun, but they realize at least on some level that until you obtain a certain level of respect within the clique of your specific craft and more importantly within the general market for music (the consumers), no one will care about your search for truth.  Some of them have spent countless hours pursuing their own musical truth in the face of market conditions that could care less about their art.  Not relating that same thing to you in advance would be cheating you of the advance knowledge that it takes adaption to the market in order to make a living, no matter how meager it may be.

Those who have other means of support often find themselves relegated to pursuing meaningless advancements to the tradition, whether it be blending genres or styles, adapting their music to current pop trends, or worse, pursuing total abstractedness that serves not even the producer.  It does nothing for  bringing people together, but instead pushes people further away from music, partially because it is entirely foreign to the general listener.  Those that pursue music along the lines of this total abstraction often are guilty of making it obviously clear that they have little or no purpose for why they produce such music beyond narcissism and to distract themselves and others from pursuing anything meaningful in their lives.  It is a music where there cannot be an objective, or even truly a subjective good or bad, but also masks any intent the performer lacks for seeking truth with their art, while at the same time allowing them to claim to be the hippest thing around.

The article continues "If university art departments haven’t already shrunk, they’ve transitioned from the traditional style of instruction to one that is based in abstraction and historiography."  The truth is often hard to take, but jazz departments across the US, as well as any modern music department, focuses in on the historical development of music as a linear history leading us up to the current time, not simply to enlighten the student, but to help them find a place to fit into the relevant musical trends.  It's focused on helping students find success within the trends and often, as previously stated, pushes aside personal ideals of finding a voice within themselves to finding a niche within the scene.  This is purely a market dominated process by which universities seek to help students find a way to achieve marketable success as that is just about the only thing left to be attained.  Often, rather than having a student really seek an individual voice, they push homogenizing many voices from within the tradition into some sort of cohesive voice they can label as their own.

“So many people today know that there’s a lot wrong but it’s not being articulated for them so that they can act on it,” Shetterly says about young artists like Samuel Scharf. “Art should do that. It gives you the permission to act. But it’s been removed on purpose because it has an effect on the consciousness of people. It verifies what they sense is wrong, but cannot articulate for themselves.”  In other words we can use music to express the wrongness of our culture with purpose, just as we can use music to express the rightness of love or any other thing.  However, there is a purposeful denial of using art to express often even purposeful individualistic emotion in favor of a focus on aesthetic and the commonly accepted values of musical traditions as they relate to style.

“A person who painted a portrait for a king,” Shetterly says, “was painting what the client wanted to see. A person who’s painting for the rewards of an economic system is painting, similarly, for what the client wants to see.”  The difference between then and now, Shetterly says, is that art today is not about superiority and propaganda, as with royal portraits, but about turning our brains off. It is about silencing pain and suffering, and distracting ourselves with images that bring short-term pleasure, surprise, and satisfaction.  Mainstream culture, Shetterly says, keeps us distracted from the fact that our luxury, for example, comes at the expense of cotton farmers in India, garment makers in Bangladesh and Hispanic tomato pickers in Florida. The goods we buy at retail stores and supermarkets are cheap because the labor used to cultivate those products is underpaid.   “Our culture has been taking a lot of warmth and comfort from the rest of the world in a very exploitative way,” Shetterly says, “so that we can live that way while other people don’t.”

Once again, the art of today pushes us into the world of the surreal asking us not to engage with either each other, face our own selves, or face the deteriorating planet, but to shut ourselves off to the world in order to use the music like we're shooting up dope.  Stick your earbuds in when you're walking in the city to avoid having the homeless ask you for money while you transplant yourself into an individualist pleasure seeking state riding the melodic lines of your favorite artist, while the sounds of poverty and the increasingly disconnected modern age pass you by.  Shut yourself in a room and place much of the value of your identity on your ability to make changes on the tunes everyone must know and play at increasingly faster tempo for hours.  Forget the fact that without drastic action, climate change will make the earth uninhabitable in any comparable way to its present state, and make sure you transcribe and learn yet another "god of music's" first chorus so you can wow future audiences with stylings you stole from them.  Most of all don't focus your music or your life on anything that can't be marketed to others or you risk falling into obscurity.

The article closes with, "Art today is about protecting the consumer. It is no longer propaganda for those in power, as art has been for most of history. It is about reassuring customers that there is nothing wrong, as long as they continue to shop."  As some would say, why worry about the real state of affairs when it comes to art.  Just escape the harsh realities of the world with your art because after all the world will eventually be swallowed up by the sun at some point anyway, and why spend your life not always trying to be happy?  Meanwhile, the same people that espouse this philosophy will continue in a marginally unhappy existence at best, while ignoring the very real steps and actions that humanity could take to erase the causes of much of this suffering.  Indeed, it is akin to drug use as more and more youth and adults alike, buy into musical or artistic escapism in order to dull the realities of a world with suffering.  I'm reminded of the history of work songs that the African American slaves created in order to make bearable the pain of working as a slave in the fields of the American south.  While I do believe that music can and should at times be used in a role of transcending the horrific circumstances of life, the work songs have little in common with modern market driven music that is created not to build a sense of community amongst workers and lend voice to others suffering, but to convince everyone that it's all okay, and if you order another drink the fine establishment we're playing at will be happier.

Also, the fact that the sun will eventually destroy the earth is of little importance or meaning to the fact that the earth is being systematically destroyed by industrial civilization.  If I tied down the person you loved most and began to slowly dismember them toe by toe and finger by finger behind a locked door I suspect you would find an object to break the door down and try to stop me, not concede that they're going to die someday anyway.  We as human beings need to stand for something (as one of my teachers constantly told me), and the other millions of species on earth along with our future generations of humans that depend on clean air, water, and the planet at large, are worth standing up for.

Before anyone gets too angry at me for attacking either their livelihood, or their probably deeply held views about the importance of their own artistic expression and that of others, I'd like to clarify a few things.  First, I don't think it's impossible to receive some sort of exchange for music or art in order for someone who spends much of their time pursuing musical truth to survive in a decent manner.  There are plenty of sphere's of non-market based exchanges that happen constantly within our own society and which dominate other cultures.  This post is specifically about the fact that we as artists are being forced not to be able to seek truth through music and art, but to conform to market principles in order to get a piece of the ever shrinking music markets, especially for performers of live music.

Second, there is no reason why we should have to subject ourselves, and our art, to being forced into these very same market principles.  Although I could write an entirely new entry on this, it is easily imaginable that as a society we could support ourselves with the necessary needs that we have such as food, water, shelter, clothing, and sociable environments needed for proper brain development in a non-violent society with plenty of time left over for pursuing our own artistic truths.  There would even be time for exploring both our individual place in the universe, as well as societies through music and art.  Aboriginal cultures in many climates spend drastically less amounts of time as do modern cultures providing for their basic needs.  It's not impossible for us to adopt a different system.

Third, the thing that is missing from music, despite the constant complaints of those in the music profession about lack of culture and interest in art music, is a sense of community.  We do not socialize our music, we market our music.  Anyone with more than a few musician friends on Facebook understands the gig-spam problem of marketing themselves rather than sharing and socializing themselves and their music with others.  Some people give the gift of music to others and do so out of love for their art.  Their songs are about what life in the real world is like to them, only expecting to hopefully affect others with their music positively, and live off any scraps that get thrown their way.  Even if I would applaud a musician expressing something beyond their individual feeling about the world it is more commendable than those who are motivated in large part by market forces.

Fourth, if you care about music, whether it's jazz or modern art music, it's up to us to change the culture that surrounds it.  I'm reminded of the all too frequent psychosis of the modern parent who seeks to protect and shield their child from anything bad in the world, rather than pursuing the true role of a parent, which is to socialize their child, and turn them into a capable adult.  It's ridiculous because even if one does somehow manage the impossible feat of shielding their child from all that is bad in the world, at some point they're going to grow up and leave your house (although that time seems to be coming later and later in life for the youth of today, especially with males).  Then they're going to have to step into the real world, sooner or later, and deal with all those evils of the world.  If the culture is so bad that we can't entrust our children to it, then perhaps we need to build a culture of resistance towards the destructive dominant culture, and work towards changing our own communities into a place we feel comfortable enough to socialize our children in.

The same could be said of the world of music and art.  We may constantly try to protect our music or art from those that seek to profit off it or change our art away from the truth, but the fact remains that if we intend to survive from it, we need a piece of the pie or at least some scraps.  If the musical world makes playing art music untenable, we should be actively trying to change the musical landscape that surrounds us.  This means that we have to do something about the incredible centralization of capital in the music industry, the centralization of the media that market music in both radio and TV, and that we connect to each other within our community in more meaningful ways than those dictated by market incentives and motives of profit.  The musical dumbing down of the populace has not only affected the musical quality within the general popular culture, but as I've argued it has changed the purposes for playing jazz, and even "folk" music, which are two examples of truly american music.  It's up to us to realize that music is connected to more than just a tradition of the music itself and it's aesthetic ideals, but that it intertwines itself into everything else about our culture from economics, to social issues.  If it's not working, we need to make changes, not just spend our time making the "changes".

Finally, I appreciate, on what I feel is a deep level, the music of jazz and contemporary or modern classical music when it is at it's best and have marveled, at how much of an affect music can have on me personally.  It can force me into both self reflective and culturally reflective states which brings about a change not just psychologically, but a change that manifests in my daily actions.  However, this is a rare occasion and often I hear/d this type of purposeful music at gigs and venues that were ill attended, with little pay offered for the musicians.  The vast amount of vapid jazz and modern music I've taken in over the years since I became somewhat obsessive over music, far outweighs the meaningful music that compels me beyond a sense of momentary titillation.  The culture of narcissism and the extreme fetishization of aesthetics are what I want to see gone, not a tradition or musical art form, and it is these things I'm speaking out against.  I'm reminded of a jam session I played where a saxophonist called a bebop standard at a nearly unplayable tempo for the rhythm section, not in an order to create music of a high magnitude with the other musicians, but to cut the band members and to provide a sense of self worship and reward for the unnamed musician, who was merely flaunting his daily practice routine.  If we're not even interested in making quality music with the people we play with over sounding "good", then we have no right to call ourselves artists let alone perform compellingly for the listeners.  While all the aesthetics of music are important we need to realize they are a means to an end and stand for a deeper purpose behind why we create music, and work to install that ethic in our surrounding culture.

The Re-election of Obama: What Forward Means

Whether you're reading your Facebook stream, or perusing the writing of journalists and pundits alike you're bound to come across a sigh of relief from the liberals in the US that Obama won (or maybe more correctly that Romney did not).  The Obama victory, as well as the senate being retained by Democrats, has been the continuation of a Democratic victory that began in 2006 in response to George W. Bush and the Republican party's toxic political legacy.  Four years ago a wave of excitement amongst liberals in the US was at it's peak with the election of the man many considered to be the leader to pull the US back from many of the most horrific policies of the Bush era.  When Obama claimed his victory in 2008 he did so with so many Americans hoping for change, that he used it as his campaign slogan.  It's no secret that there has been a wave of disappointment in the presidents first term among liberals due to things like; signing the NDAA into law, failing to close Guantanamo, and the failure to bring about a real or palpable sense of change.

However, what lies beyond the general consensus of placid dissaproval are the real meat and potatoes issues that the liberal class has all but ignored in this country.  These are the direct continuation and expansion of some of the worst Bush era policies which have either gained support or have been consciously ignored by the liberal class in America.  These policies include; the continuation of warrantless wiretapping and other domestic spy programs while at the same time immunizing telecom companies as well as the political leadership from any liability whether it be criminal or civil, extrajudicial killings of US citizens expanding on Bush's policy to not only be able to detain citizens without judicial review but to kill them, a war on whistleblowers that has seen more prosecutions under the espionage act than under every other president combined, a continued veil of government secrecy (from a president who promised an open administration), and the continuation of US hegemony in the middle east as well as the rest of the world with continuation of a war on terror and militaristic policies. 

So as the Democrats and their supporters across the nation rejoice in the victory over Romney and the GOP keeping out a new era of politics controlled by what have come to be known as "job creators," but are more rightly the wealthy elite, what do we really have to look Forward to?  It could be hard for many Americans to remember just what issues are important after an election season of each candidate attacking the other only on issues they disagreed to some degree on while ignoring the issues where their policies were in agreement.  It may also be hard for them to decipher just what the president is responsible for as many of the most hotly debated topics in the election were in fact legislative issues rather than executive issues.  For example taxes came up in debates over and over again as the candidates argued their views on tax policy and other fiscal issues.  However, a quick read of the constitution places all the powers of taxation as well as the ability to spend and borrow money in the hands of the legislative branch.  Although anyone familiar with the actual modern process of governance on the federal level will be quick to point out that the government works more along the lines of party organization than individual branches as Democratic and Republican leaders meet secretly to discuss and agree on policy.  It should be noted that this is NOT how our government was intended or designed to function.  It's these deals off the floors of the house or senate that allow negotiations between the parties and push through legislation that often have no or little support by either party's base.  One such issue will be arising very soon.

Obama and the Democratic leadership are soon expected to make a deal with Republican leaders to allow for modest tax increases in exchange for significant cuts to social and entitlement programs in order to reduce the federal deficit and possibly even begin to tackle debt in the future.  These cuts will no doubt come to programs like social security, medicare & medicaid, as well as other foundations of American liberalism.  What's coming to the US in 2013 or sooner is austerity and it's going to be enacted via bi-partisan deals that are going to be hated by what's left of the liberal class, but most likely accepted.  This is part of the political process in the US now.  First ideas that are raucously disturbing to liberals such as warrantless wiretapping or domestic spying get put into place by the "opposition" party while the Democratic leaders act disturbed and begin to criticize such policies.  However, as shown by Obama it's very easy once you assume the mantle of power to not only renege on such stances but to actually turn around and support bills that ensure immunity for those who committed the crimes.  Then when he was the one in control of the same programs he continued their expansion under a new veil of secrecy the policy has become a bipartisan policy that gains acceptance not only with the party that originated the policy but is accepted or ignored by the liberal base.

So as US Democrats support a liberal victory, they overlook that they have put into power a Democratic president and senate that will surely bring about cuts to programs they support.  What is sure to happen is that the blame for such cuts will be placed on the "evil" GOP because in order to avert massive financial and fiscal damage to our economy and government they had to make a deal with the devil.  Keep in mind this comes after a term where Obama has undoubtedly carried out a more egregious attack on our civil liberties than the previous Bush administration and yet has still managed to keep support from his base and the liberal class in general.  All this support came in spite of his political failures and anti-liberal policies mostly in fear of having an even more extreme president elected to office.  The number of pundits whose fundamental guideline in choosing a new president was to go for the seemingly less crazy of the two, because even though they may have been unhappy about Obama's first term they ran back into his arms after looking at Romney.  This type of fear based voting against the other opponent rather than for the true support of the president and his policies seems to have gripped the American public as well.  After all most of us accept that it's a choice between the lesser of two evils anyway. 

As we move forward from the election season and past the vicious campaign ads and general environment of political division that it creates, it's my hope that the American public wakes up to the fact that no matter who won, we the American public are going to lose.  In fact we've already lost.  We've lost control of the political establishment because they use money and often brilliant campaign strategies to convince the public to turn a blind eye to their abuses of power and the law as well as our own convictions and ethics.  We've lost because now corporations can fund both candidates for elections to guarantee government policies that are friendly to them.  We've lost because while the parties make plans to cut spending and tackle the public debt our political leaders ignore the actual causes of the debt problem both publicly and privately.  When quantitative easing becomes a normal state of affairs and banks are given over $16 trillion dollars in zero interest "loans" from the federal reserve in order to keep the bloated financial sector of the economy going while US manufacturing continues to suffer losses and lower worker pay rates, we lose.  When the economy minus government stimulus programs is actually smaller than it was in 2007 and yet the power to circulate money into the economy is controlled by a private central bank that creates money through debt, we lose.  When we continue sanctions on Iran which do little to the leaders but cause food instability, hunger, and general conditions of unrest in order to bring about a more US friendly regime and keep Iran from being able to defend itself against US hegemony, we lose.  When all but the smallest minority of climatologists are telling us that climate change is not only real but a grave threat to life on planet earth and no politician will take a stand against oil company lobbied policies to cut back our use of fossil fuels and invest in sustainable energy, even after a decade of increased hurricanes have pummeled the east and gulf coasts, and after a summer of record droughts, we lose.

So instead of celebrating whatever victories the liberal class in America has achieved (of which there are a few victories to celebrate) I recommend a stiff shot of honesty in regards to US politics and doing whatever you can to hold the Democrats whom you voted for accountable. Hold them accountable not just on the issues that the parties disagree on, but specifically on the policies that have now become the norm even though they go against the true ideals of the US liberal class.  If we continually allow the Democratic leadership to manufacture consent for policies not in line with our own views then we will have allowed the quasi-aristocratic elite to rise up and take hold of our nation beyond the degree that a peaceful election will be able to restore normative processes of government.  We risk allowing such a grab of power that as our world economic system continues to slide into the abyss of a cessation of growth the bankers and elite fat cats will control a system too powerful for the public to defeat.

It may sound alarmist, but when you consider the Walton family of Walmart fame has a net worth greater than the bottom 40% of US families combined and dump millions upon millions of dollars into the political system to support (or more correctly buy) a candidate which will continue to enact policies that benefit the elite, it's not so far fetched.  It's time the all too placid liberal class actually organized and took a stand for liberal ideals whether it be defeating charter schools which provide public funds to corporations to educate our children or stopping the vacuous economic policies which are turning the US more and more into the "haves" and the "have nots".  Failure to admit to the fact that the corporate state owns our government, and most of us, is not only to be dishonest but it is to be a coward in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, all because we accept their rule.  After all congress has been seeing historic lows in approval and yet we voted the vast majority of them back into office.  What could be more Orwellian than not only having an unpopular government voted back into office, but accepting that this is the way our democracy works?  Doesn't that inherently imply that our democratic institutions and our republic are broken?  As Jill Stein (Green Party candidate for the 2012 presidential election) has said "Neither Obama nor Romney has a single exit strategy from the deadly crises we face."  This responsibility lies now with the US public and those who have the moral courage to fight back against the corporate state and the government they control by holding even leaders that we supported responsible for our welfare and the welfare of the planet.  It's not a victory when the US public loses, and this election won't be a victory unless the US public stands up to hold our leaders accountable rather than continue looking the other way.

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any,”
Alice Walker

Economic Growth in the 21st Century

"As the decline in production begins first in oil and then later this century in coal, the decline and collapse of modern civilization will also occur without a society already adapted to less net energy usage.  This phenomenon is known as resource depletion...  It's not just energy or erosion we're dealing with, but a crippling combination of things which will make it impossible for economic growth to continue."

The study of economics has become known as the dismal science, a phrase coined by the 19th century historian Thomas Carlyle.  Carlyle coined the phrase, most likely in response to a prediction by economist Thomas Malthus.  Malthus' Essay on the Principles of Population predicted that, "The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race."  A dismal prediction indeed, and likely one that would cause some sort of cognitive dissonance among those who fully understand just what his essay implies.  However, in the modern era of economics, any such notion of a catastrophic or dismal failure of the earth to be able to provide for the needs of man has been removed from thought and theory.  This is not true of every economist, but it is far too often true that "legitimate" economists do not believe in such nonsense.  These "legitimate" economists are often simply the result of corrupted academe so adeptly described by Charles Ferguson, both in the Academy Award winning film Inside Job, as well as this article.  It's not just the corrupt few on the side of wall street, but nearly every mainstream economist has a commonly held belief that economic growth - the increase in the capacity of an economy to produce goods and services - is the proper response to alleviating poverty.  In fact, the 21st century will not continue to see this ever expanding increase in goods and services.  Here's why...

The basic assumptions of modern economics, going back to Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, are flawed. They're based on a scientific paradigm that ignores ecological realities, as well as a flawed view of exactly what is responsible for this production.  John Michael Greer in The Wealth of Nature: Economics as if Survival Mattered points out this very thing.  Greer points to the beginning of The Wealth of Nations which states, "The annual labor of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessities and conveniences of life."  Greer's response to this was that, "left unrecognized is the crucial fact that the annual labor of a nations would be utterly useless without the goods and services provided free of charge by Nature, which enable labor to be done at all by making human life possible in the first place and by providing all that labor with something to labor on."  What Greer is referring to are the natural processes which allow us to grow food.  These would include the hydrologic cycle, pedogenisis (soil growth), and the large amount of solar energy provided by our center and steward of the solar system, the sun.  However, they also include the anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms which have become our fossil fuels (such as oil and coal).  This would also include ore genesis processes, which create the various mineral deposits in the crust of the earth.

The thesis of The Wealth of Nations asserted that the division of labor increases productivity - and therefore the increase in the capacity to produce goods and services - as well as asserting that a condition of opulence or great wealth would arise.  This thesis overlooks the simple fact that increased productivity doesn't necessarily mean better productivity, or a better life for everyone indefinitely, by increasing production.  Without the understanding that the economy was both dependent upon the environment that supported it, and limited by Nature, it is easy to ignore that economic production can damage the earth that supports it.  This could be seen in early agricultural economies and the great empires of ancient times.  For example, ancient Mesopotamia suffered greatly as the increased agricultural production from irrigation caused soil erosion that made farming impossible and caused collapse.  Another example would be the economy of ancient Rome which collapsed due to over expansion, which was largely due to resource shortages and environmental degradation.  By the CE the Mediterranean basin had been largely deforested, which in turn caused erosion and the need to seek timber for their growing economy elsewhere.  The erosion this caused made Rome more and more reliant on the fields of Northern Africa to feed the population of Rome.  This was also a case of military expansionism that deforested Northern Africa and turned it into "the bread basket" of Rome.  Much of the area once plowed under to raise grain for the Romans has now turned to desert.  So in past times there have been collapses due to this increasing capacity to produce goods beyond what the primary economy (the primary goods provided to us by natural processes) can provide.  For further evidence of this, or a detailed study of societal collapse for similar reasons, see Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies.

The main difference between the modern economy and the ancient agricultural empires, is that we have used enormous amounts of fossil fuels to power industry and production.  Coal literally sprang up as a replacement for fuel for heating homes after timber shortages made this fuel - that was once banned by Edward I (blacksmiths using coal could be hanged) - an in demand item.  However, as I've talked about in my early post on Energy and Society these fuels are not a limitless resource, but a finite source of energy that has brought about unforeseen environmental effects like climate change.  As the decline in production begins first in oil and then later this century in coal, the decline and collapse of modern civilization will also occur without a society already adapted to less net energy usage.  This phenomenon is known as resource depletion, and has played its role as previously stated in the collapse of empires.  It's not just energy or erosion we're dealing with, but a crippling combination of things which will make it impossible for economic growth to continue.  These include desertification, loss of fresh water sources from overuse and pollution, loss of biodiversity/extinction rates which signal a new era of extinction, depletion of fossil fuels, topsoil erosion, climate change, as well as the limits to a debt based monetary system (more on this later). 

With all this in mind and the mountains of evidence that humans are doing seemingly irreversible harm to our ecosystems, why is it that economists continue to propose more growth as the means to help our society?  Usually clear headed economists, like Paul Krugman, still throw their weight behind policies to continue or try to continue growth even after writing in a NY Times article: "What the commodity markets are telling us is that we’re living in a finite world, in which the rapid growth of emerging economies is placing pressure on limited supplies of raw materials, pushing up their prices. And America is, for the most part, just a bystander in this story."  It's truly a case of the old saying that when the only tool you have is a hammer then everything you see starts to look like a nail.  Rather than refocusing our energy towards real solutions to material problems, economists keep positing that more growth can and should be achieved even by the taking on of more and more debt privately and publicly because, well, it will keep the economy growing and unemployment will lessen.  Why doesn't he mention that there is simply a class of dependent laborers without access to resources or the freedom to live life without the managers of capital (which direct economic activity in the modern world)?  Instead he suggests more economic growth will help alleviate the poverty caused by this second "great depression."  Perhaps he is failing to ask whether or not growth in the modern era has begun failing to make us richer (as is it did when the world was not yet entirely conquered by European empires and industrial society), and if it now makes everyone poorer, as we deplete what is left of our resource base. 

Of course I'm not alone in saying that the previous trends of growth are not going to continue indefinitely.  In fact a recent study at MIT, which set out to re-examine the famous 1972 book The Limits to Growth, has stated that the world could suffer from a "global economic collapse" which could cause "precipitous population decline" if resource consumption was left unchecked.  Richard Heinberg has also warned in 9 of his award winning books, about the perils of energy depletion.  In his latest book The End of Growth, he explains with detail how policies that once led to prosperity are now leading us to disaster.   He also argues that growth in consumption should be dropped for a new goal of improving the quality of life.  The problem with this is that the obvious answers to improvement in the quality of life involve sharing, which has become labeled as class warfare.  Self interest can only take a society towards the interests of those that come to dominate society and communities when it is not checked by some sort of ethical or cultural standard of caring for the community around you (including not just humans, but rivers, streams, fish, wildlife and Nature as a whole).  Without delving too deeply into the subject, it's easy to summarize that there are alternative economic theories and ideologies that involve cooperation, and more local and communal living that probably provide our best chance to stabilize our society.

If resource depletion wasn't bad enough, there is also a very big problem with monetary systems and especially debt.  The amount of debt in the world has been growing steadily, especially debt held by sovereign nations.  The world debt held just by these nations alone is more than $45 trillion dollars.  At the same time, especially within the US and some European countries, the percentage of domestic corporate profits in the financial sector boomed.  As Simon Johnson cites "From 1973 to 1985, the financial sector never earned more than 16 percent of domestic corporate profits. In 1986, that figure reached 19 percent. In the 1990s, it oscillated between 21 percent and 30 percent, higher than it had ever been in the postwar period. This decade, it reached 41 percent. Pay rose just as dramatically. From 1948 to 1982, average compensation in the financial sector ranged between 99 percent and 108 percent of the average for all domestic private industries. From 1983, it shot upward, reaching 181 percent in 2007."  What this information is telling us, is there has been a serious amount of financialization within the world.  Even though resources necessary to the continuation of our industrialized society are beginning to go into decline, the financial sector is claiming greater and greater wealth. 

In order to understand this process it's useful to be able to classify the economy into its smaller parts.  E.F. Shumacher has classified the difference between the goods and services provided by human labor, and the goods and services provided by nature.  He labeled the former secondary goods while the latter he called primary goods.  Primary goods in fact, make it possible for the secondary goods to even exist.  The world's primary goods like oil or mineral deposits are being depleted.  However, there should be a third tier added to the economy above the primary and secondary goods.  This is a class of goods that are neither produced by nature or labor, but they are produced by the financial sector.  This comes right to the heart of modern monetary policy as it involves all bonds in creation.  A bond is simply nothing more than a promise to pay an amount in the future.  This is viewed as an economic good as there are those who produce them and those who want to sell them.  This good can be passed along from seller to buyer any amount of times and even if it's highly unlikely for this promise to be honored, the chance of collecting is seen as an object of value.  As the primary economy begins to shrink in the amount of goods provided, the tertiary or financial economy continues to claim more and more wealth from promises to pay, by selling these debts not just to private citizens, but national governments.  Since the world has increasingly come under a debt based monetary system it has become possible and very profitable to exchange money for money.  The entirety of the financial sector uses this concept to make its money, and it has created a sort of economic monoculture wherein all economic exchanges are valued by their exchange value for money. 

The end result from this is that a collapse in the primary economy (one that many ecologists are warning is coming) would certainly cause a collapse of the secondary economy of goods and services provided by human labor, as the materials to labor on and with become scarce.  Such a scenario would surely collapse the bloated financial economy with it's continual growing debts and it's metamorphosis into treating money as a good to be produced and sold.  The limit to debt is the ability the debtor has to pay back that debt.  Therefore, the economy is going to need to produce a serious amount of goods to pay back the debts already on the books at a time when the amount of goods and services available is on the brink of a serious decline.  Our financial sector has been issuing debts that the earth simply cannot pay, especially when these debts are necessary for financial growth on a continual basis.  With these simple and logical conclusions about our new economic reality, how can we continue this radical view that limitless growth is not only possible, but desirable and the only way to fix poverty?  Any economist that still holds the ability to value human and all life beyond merely its monetary exchange value would tell you that while growth does provide more goods and services in the world, it does not cure poverty because the same economic conditions that produce growth also produce poverty by the distribution of goods and services.  It's like building a wall with one hand while the other knocks it down. 

The most important thing to take away from this is not some depressing doomsday scenario (although it is important to acknowledge the disaster just around the corner), but to realize that other, better options exist to meet our economic needs than endless growth.  Without adoption of the environmental sciences and some simple logic into economics, we are doomed to fail.  If we instead adopt more ecological understanding into our economic system, we are destined to change the nature of economic exchange to a nature based system, erase the class of money rentiers which monopolize current economic exchanges, and possibly design a society with the stability needed for a healthy ecosystem with a more healthy and just human society.  It's simply a matter of re-framing our view that more is better into one in which we seek improvements in the quality of life.  This could also mean reestablishing our connection to the community of people, as well as nature that surround us.  None of this will be accomplished though without the diffusion of economic and environmental knowledge to the increasingly radical majority that believe growth can and will continue infinitely. 

Obama: LGBT Rights Warrior or Campaign Strategist?

On May 10th 2012 President Barack Obama on "Good Morning America" stated, “I’ve concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.”  Before anything else is said on this issue it should be noted that this is important, and I'm personally glad that he supports the rights for same sex couples to marry.  However, we have to understand this comes with a caveat; he thinks that states should decide the issue.  In other words, he supports states rights to discriminate against same sex marriages as long as that's what the state wants.  It seems to me that most people in support of gay marriage would agree, this is historically important.  Even if it doesn't mean Obama actively supporting changes to federal laws allowing gay marriage, it is still a step forward for gay rights.  The problem is Obama is using this PERSONAL stance on gay marriage to campaign for re-election.  Take a look at this "documentary" produced by the Obama campaign.

Documentaries are usually thought to be for instruction or maintaining the historical record, and this is clearly a campaign video.  That aside, President Obama assures us he is that strong asset in the white house for the LGBT community, and he can keep us "leaning forward."  What does that really entail though?  If he supports letting states decide the issue of gay marriage, and would lend support to repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, but is no longer part of the legislative branch then what policies are going to change?  Even with the repeal of DADT, (Don't Ask Don't Tell) same sex marriages within the military don't allow a military member's partner the same rights as non same sex marriages when it comes to travel or housing.  If a vote for Obama is a vote for gay rights as the Obama campaign is lobbying hard for his base to accept, then what political outcomes is he seeking?

This is not a critique of Obama on his personal stance on gay marriage (which I applaud him for). This is simply a critique on campaign politics and the mindless followers intensive propaganda campaigns (AKA election campaigns) generate, which ruin electoral politics.  What I'm saying is,  Obama is clearly using and touting himself as being a warrior for LGBT rights, while at the same time refusing to say that he thinks it should be legal federally, or even decided on that level.  That to me equates to saying, "well sure even though 12 states prohibit same sex marriage by statute and 30 via the constitution, I think states should decide what right same sex couples should have even though that means nearly nationwide discrimination."

As an exercise in thought if we were to travel back to say the late 1850's when the issue of slavery was a hotly debated topic; imagine a president running their campaign as a warrior against slavery or being a strong advocate for slaves in the white house, by simply stating they personally viewed slavery as an evil, and their view had evolved to say they personally support ending slavery.  However, they note that states should decide whether slavery should exist.  This at the time was known as popular sovereignty and that was exactly what the Democratic nominee for president in 1860 supported.  Although he didn't support ending slavery and his views were considered more moderate on the issue, he supported the right of states to decide.  This man was Stephen Douglas of Illinois.  The debates in 1858 between Lincoln and Douglas have become somewhat famous, but in these debates Douglas clearly stated attitudes now seen as racist or bigoted.  Namely he insisted slavery was not a moral issue, that Lincoln advocated equality of races and even that they should be able to intermarry (Lincoln denounced such radical equality), and the government was drawn up "by white men for white men".  What's important is, he used this tactic because he had to walk a fine line to keep the support of the northern states where abolitionism was popular, while not upsetting the southern base of democrats at the time. 

It's a very similar situation back here in good ol' 2012.  Rather than being hotly debated on the grounds of how this issue should be approached politically or what should be done politically about it, it's being used merely as a social issue, and to show personal virtue to garner support for the president from his lackluster base.  The aforementioned announcement of Obama's support for same sex marriage came just before he held a fundraiser at George Clooney's house in which he touted his support for same sex couples and raised a total of $15 million.  Remember this isn't a political position, but a personal position as he doesn't support anything more than popular sovereignty outside of his comments of support for repealing the Defense of Marriage Act.  This seems to amount to a kind of "progressive" hypocrisy where the left constantly criticizes the right for it's election of government on the grounds that they have similar views on religion, or other social issues.  This while ignoring the fact that many of the leaders of the religious right advocate policies that are harmful to their constituents economically, environmentally, and in some cases like abortion and defense, go against the core conservative value of a small government.  However, as I've written about earlier, the Hypocrisy of Obama supporters is not a new thing.  Electing a president or throwing full support behind a candidate because of a non-political stance on same sex marriage, while at the same time continuing policies which any truly progressive person should find deplorable (and often are illegal or borderline illegal), shows either personal moral decay, or the total corruption of the electoral system.

What it means to support someone because of a personal stance on a social issue, is that we've made a bigger deal out of something that is in fact politically trivial and thus trivialized more important issues.  That's not to say that LGBT issues are unimportant by any measure.  They are profoundly important issues, but if a president was going to campaign on being a gay rights president than one would expect him to have the courage to say that he believes that the nation should stop discrimination against same sex couples federally.  Merely calling on democrats in congress to address the issue and stop discrimination would even suffice.  After all, there are federal laws against race discrimination.  So what could these more important issues be than the president's personal opinion on same sex marriage?  How about you name one; education, energy, agriculture policies, economic solutions to get out of this "Great Recession", foreign policy (which includes global conflicts, drone war campaigns, and making threats against Iran for purportedly manufacturing or seeking to manufacture nuclear weapons), monetary reform, Wall Street regulation, the student loan bubble, domestic spying, and crushing levels of government debt, and that's just to get you started. 

Take for example education.  Obama and his now official Republican opponent Mitt Romney are nearly identical on education policies except for Romney's support of the voucher system and some small differences on higher education.  (There was an interesting Washington Post article about this recently that pointed out their similar stances.)  It's also true that Obama's educational policies don't differ from President G.W. Bush in any substantial way.  His policy is that of "high stakes" testing which punishes schools and teachers that don't meet standards or show improvement.  A mandate that schools be 100% proficient in reading and math by 2014 now has the administration allowing a waiver form for states as no school will be able to reach this seemingly impossible goal.  What isn't often stated is, the education reform Democrats aren't really much different than their education reform Republican counterparts that were responsible for No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in the first place.  The biggest problem of NCLB is that it made test scores the ultimate measure of educational quality, ignoring aspects of critical thinking, and providing a liberal sciences education that citizens need to keep a functioning republic.  Instead it focuses on education for competition in the global market, re-affirming our deep subconsciously held belief that man's purpose is to participate in global markets.  In other words to not work against the global markets that determine your place in the economic hierarchy, but instead support it.  Obama's plan goes a step further than NCLB and its obtuse measures of educational quality.  His plan asserts that teachers alone are the only thing responsible for whether test scores go up or down.  They attribute nothing to poverty, students, parents, or economic status.  If there's one thing that can be pointed to as being a factor of lower test scores it's poverty.  If you're still not convinced that Obama has an expanded version of Bush's education plan, just think after Obama appointed Arne Duncan to head his education department.  Duncan went on tour with Newt Gingrich to promote this "Race to the Top" education plan.  Obama however flew to Florida to promote it at a Miami high school with Jeb Bush.  If you're still not convinced, just wait a decade and watch how schools privatize as public education continues to become stigmatized as underachieving wastes of money despite this manufactured crisis.

How about another issue like energy.  In reality, Obama's energy policy is really no policy at all according to Bill Mckibben.  He makes the point, if you think about it, if a president had a foreign policy of everyone is an equal ally, he would be laughed at, but that's precisely Obama's policy for energy.  Mckibben said, "Burning all the oil you can and then putting up a solar panel is like drinking six martinis at lunch and then downing a VitaminWater. You’re still a drunk — just one with your daily requirement of C and D."  Obama's strategy is to promote that under his administration the US has drilled a record number of oil and gas wells.  He also touts the great reserves of natural gas the US has, but fails to state that hydro-fracking practices necessary to get this gas are extremely environmentally dangerous, especially to water sheds and the safety of our water supply.  No one is mentioning that at some point all the carbon based fossil fuels are going to be either too expensive, too hard to get to, and simply put, too depleted to power industrial civilization as it currently stands (which is as a society under the yoke of the carbon barons).  The most Obama can do is promote fuel efficiency as a solution to the depletion of fossil fuels, which is not a solution, but a continuation of dependency on fossil fuels.

I could go on about every issue including agriculture policies which give large subsidies to Agra-business and helps Monsanto keep it's business up by: not allowing for GMO labeling or banning, keeping a former Monsanto lobbyist as a senior adviser at the FDA, and pushing African countries to accept "investment" by Monsanto in order to start the next "green revolution".  Meanwhile his FDA goes around shutting down those who wish to sell raw milk using armed FDA agents to seize goods.  Then, we could look at his economic solutions, which amount to take on more debt without providing a meaningful jobs program while continuing with the mindset that an economy is akin to a family budget.  This clear in statements like, "We have to cut the spending we can’t afford so we can put the economy on sounder footing, and give our businesses the confidence they need to grow and create jobs."  He won't get in to the very complicated subject of resource depletion and an economy that demands constant growth as the norm (which only came about because of fossil fuels).  Nor has he clamped down on Wall Street and the financial sector as he continues to give key positions to people within the financial market.  Most assuredly we could discuss Obama's foreign policy, which includes his position that as President of the US he has the right to launch drone missile strikes in countries without their co-operation, away from any war zone, even to strike targets they haven't identified by secret executive authority with no review by the legislative branch.  Obama has declared himself the judge, jury, and executioner to decide who can be targeted and killed anywhere in the world.  Imagine if any other country in the world declared the right to strike with a drone by internal secretive process inside the borders of another country, (or even the US).  The US would denounce it strongly.  This amounts to a failure to hold ourselves as a country, to a standard we expect of others.  We could also talk of his support for the Bahrain-an dictatorship that has been protested against, much like Egypt protesting against the Mubarak regime, or Libya's protests against Gaddafi.  The point is Obama doesn't really have a progressive leg to stand on.  Many of his own policies go against the heart of progressive thought yet he needs to continually bolster his image as the champion of the people or the champion of gay rights.  What's really true is that Obama has a nicely paid team of campaign strategists that promote the president and his persona to pacify the left, while continually caving in to demands of the right, or more accurately big business.  So it's worth it to take a look at exactly what his strategies are, even if that means having to think critically about the only person standing in the way of a US with Mitt Romney as president. 

One of his big campaign points is he's strong on terrorism, as well as ending the war in Iraq, and putting the steps into place so that down the road the US can leave Afghanistan.  What he promotes is that he killed Bin Laden, while he continually leaks more and more information to the press about this otherwise classified operation (as long as it makes him look like a strong leader that's tough on terror).  It just seems that no matter what issue you examine, Obama talks a certain talk, but when it comes down to real policy, the talk is replaced with policies that show talk is all it is.  The failure of the US public (and specifically the progressive portion of the population) to hold Obama accountable for keeping Bush's policies on warrant-less wiretapping not just intact, but expanded, as well as expanding his ability to wage war without congressional approval and authorize drone killings via a secretive kill list, amounts to a betrayal of not just progressive, but humanist principles that eschew a consistent moral or ethical standard in favor of blind political worship or demagoguery.

This is why The Association of National Advertisers awarded him for marketer of the year in 2008.  This is because he got into office convincing the US public that this was not going to be politics as usual, but change was going to sweep the white house and all of government.  In the hangover from this progressive orgy of hope without political substance that has become the Obama administration's first term, it has become more and more clear this is not just more politics as usual.  The acceptance and now normalization of activities once decried by progressives and even moderate democrats put in place by the previous administration, undermines any moral authority they might have once had as they foolishly support a wolf in sheep's clothing.  Citizens that can't demand a president work within the confines of the constitution and uphold the rule of law, but instead insist the president be supported merely because he personally believes in anything, have shirked their duty as citizens of the nation.  Isn't this the exact same thing Liberals have decried when it comes to electing official because of religious belief?  After all if it really comes down to the lesser of two evils, and Obama's personal stance on same sex marriage is the deciding factor for you, doesn't that analysis also entail that the electoral political system of the US is broken?  Maybe the whole point is, while Obama pushes to raise a billion dollars to convince the US he should remain president, we keep accepting a broken system every four years to elect another person to look after the interests of those who paid to get them in office.  What remains to be seen is how long the US citizenry is going to keep buying into such ridiculous and trivial campaign tactics while the environment, rule of law, education, and economy collapse around us.