DCJMay2007

Volume 41

MAY 2007

41. 7: SYSTEMS AND TRADITIONS 5.29.2007

Friends sometimes ask me why I have returned so many times to live in Hong Kong. It's not the Cantonese food. As I age, it is less and less the beautiful women. The vibrant, intense urbanism, remains its powerful magnetism. But as I reflect more upon the question something else, more recondite, keeps coming up, something that harkens back to the days when I taught seminars in Planning Theory, days when I and my students pondered the differences of systems and traditions.

Hong Kong presents an interesting case for such considerations, not only for its contrasts with the West, but for its contrasts with its own recently rejoined motherland, The People's Republic of China. Consistently cited as a jewel in the crown of unfettered capitalism, a business-friendly environment with minimum regulations and corporate social responsibilities, of course, very low tax rates, Hong Kong is laissez-faire in concrete. Workers rights and protections are all but non-existent; if you don't want to work overtime until 8PM for no extra pay, there are a hundred million workers up in the PRC ready to take your place.

That is the tradition in Hong Kong. That's how Hong Kong got prosperous, through the business of trade and exploiting the labor supply. That's how its heroes, the tai pans, became the models that so many Hongkongers want to emulate. Before Gordon Gekko, Hongkongers believed that “greed is good”; and before Deng Xiao-ping they belkieved that “to be rich is glorious.” That is why there is a bank on nearly every corner in Hong Kong. That is why so many people here are individual capitalists—because they must be. They are pretty much on their own; their government—mostly an institution that colludes and paves the way (often through people's neighborhoods [1] ) for private enterprise to increase private profits—does not see much responsibility for looking after the welfare of individual citizens. The government only recently inaugurated a sort of Social Security fund, at a paltry small percent of workers salary.

To the extent that most Hong Kong yan (people) buy into this tradition, or really have little choice, most of them tend to be socially conservative. This is not meant in the way political conservatism has come to mean in America, but in the sense that they see tradition—the established ways of doing things—as the form of social-political behavior. It means that most Hong Kong yan tend to believe that they have to look out for themselves because government is not going to look out for you. That's their tradition . Part of this comes from Chinese history, a long one in which there was never any reliable government, and in which famines and revolutions and centuries of social unrest left only the clan and the family as the social institutions that could be relied upon. There was no overriding, collective social institution, no system. Eventually, all that flipped 180 degrees into the Communist revolution. But more on that below.

In Hong Kong this all distills down to a corollary to the real estate adage that the three most important things in real estate are location, location, and location. In Hong Kong this is nearly the same thing as to say that, in Hong Kong life, the three most important things are money, money, and more money. It is only money, in bank, in pocket, in gold, in securities, that provides any real security. It is money that will give you a chance at a flat higher up the hill, with more space and perhaps a view. It is money that will buy a ticket out if things go bad, or if you need a good doctor. That is why there is a bank, and not a government office, on nearly every intersection in Hong Kong—people want their money close to hand.

Tradition teaches Hong Kong people that this is the way of things. What convinces them more is the collapse of the system up north in the motherland. Not so much collapse, as its rapid elision, via the now fabled rhetoric of the late Deng Xiao-ping, into market capitalism “with Chinese characteristics,” of the “one country-two systems.” There it is, that word, system. Systems differ from traditions in that they come about—and we are talking only about social systems here [2] —by way of projection, by theoretical reasoning, by rationality, rather than by the results of trial and error that underpin traditions.

A system might come to be the way of things virtually overnight, as people who have lived through revolutionary change well know. Systems come about from observing traditional life, but they extract regularities from tradition and conduct critical analysis of it. The traditionalist says, “this is the way we have always done things, and it worked well enough; it's what we know.” That's what makes them “conservative.” And that might be just good enough—so long as circumstances remain somewhat the same as they always have. Traditions work pretty well rural/agricultural societies where the men from one village have always married the women from the nearby village. [3] But when things change (sometimes from imposed social systems), traditions are usually a problem. The Poles always used to fight the Prussians with horsed cavalry; it didn't do them any good against the Pansers in 1939.

Systemic thinking says things can be the way we want them to be. We just have to understand the system attributes of things, and then we design it they way we want. Sort of like genetic engineering. Tradition comes from a naked empiricism (observation); systems come from analysis (taking things apart and seeing how they work). Systems theorize about things (sometimes very well, or we wouldn't have been able to put a man on the moon), develop relationships, coefficients and laws and such, from which we can hypothesize that “we now know that doing X produces outcome Y, so if we want Y, then we do X.” Tradition and systems come from different ways of learning about things.

But sytems can have problems too: entropy, for one. [4] Systems change, and have breakdowns and become corrupted. They need to be monitored and adjusted. Remember Mao's adjustment to the communist system called The Cultural Revolution? Hong Kong yan remember it very well, a lot of them are refuges from Mao's China. And now, the big mother up north has some sort of cockamamie hybrid of system and tradition. The somewhat natural entrepreneurial tendencies of the Chinese have been encouraged in the atmosphere of Deng's dualisms—a freewheeling market economy under the hegemony of the good old Communist Party. China's new economic ascendancy has become the world's third largest economy, and in the process threatens to eat Hong Kong's lunch. What happens when “one country—two systems” becomes (and will it) one country—supposedly becomesone system. Can such a system of rigid political control continue to sustain itself?

In both paradigms there are problems, problems that Heraclitus, the author of my own personal motto— everything changes, nothing remains the same —told us about long ago. [5] Traditions don't always work in globalized societies; some systemic policies and regulations are necessary to deal with poverty, pollution, aging populations and new educational needs. And highly socialized systems must address the same problems without succumbing to the entropic elements of corruption, rigidity, and in the case of leaders like Mao—outright stupidity.

Somewhere in the vast middle ground between Traditions and Systems, between what seems natural and known, but is not, and between what seems rational and certain, but is not, is a place and a process that provides sort of a gyroscope between the momentum of tradition and the progressive potential of systemic thinking. The candidate answer is usually these days democracy. And the place we usually look to for how that works to address the balance between tradition and system is usually the USA. Well, the past six years have shown us just how corruptible that is; the putative traditionalists have corrupted the system.

In the end is a perplexing question: (A) Do systems corrupt people, or (B) Do people corrupt systems, or (C) Why is my gas $3.69 and 9/10ths a gallon?

Email me with your thoughts on this subject (not in Greek). There is a lot more to be said about it.

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[1] There is, however, one tradition that does not stand in Hong Kong and that is land use. When business needs or desires land for its purposes there is no historical site that will stand in its way. Tradition does not extend to retention of the collective memory or to nostalgia for the city and buildings of the past.

[2] Systems, which etymologically derive from the Greek words for “stand together” (sus+tematikos), comes to us from biology, which, as we know, represents things that stand together (and then fall apart) that long precedes social systems. This has not prevented the borrowing from biology in, for example, the representation of urban transportation as the city's “circulation system” or the central business district as the “heart of the city,” with all the consequent errors that go with reifying such metaphors.

[3] Here's where the bio-systems start coming into pay and producing too many “village idiots.”

[4] Another Greek etymology, this time from Physics: en ( inside) + trepw, ( to chase, escape, rotate, turn) in thermodynamics is central to the second law of thermodynamics , which deals with physical processes and whether they occur spontaneously. In other words, systems don't always operate the same.

[5] Sorry, Greek again (Thank you Fr. White, S.J.): panta rei kai ouden menai.

41. 6: THE CULTURE OF ENTERTAINMENT 5.25.2007

A news item on Hong Kong television in early March shows four local boys in their late teens emerging for an all-night McDonalds and striding down the street abreast like characters in West Side Story. The news story is about sleep deprivation, in this case happily self-induced by these video gamers; they play way into the wee hours of the morning, sometimes getting only an hour of sleep, and they can do it for days on end. They neglect their schooling and obviously can't hold jobs; their life is almost totally absorbed by their favorite—only—form of entertainment. At first thse guys seem odd and anomalous, changing color like chameleons in Hong Kong's garish neon as they stride to their next gaming hangout. But maybe they are only a reflection of something more pervasive in modern culture.

For most of human history people had little time for what we call “entertainment”; they were too busy getting food into their mouths. [1] They may have told some stories around the campfire and they did do a little painting in their caves, but even these activities had a more social and functional purpose than pure “entertainment.” In fact, the French word for the more aimless human activity of entertainment sounds more apt— divertissement [2] ; it conveys the connotation of self-diversion, or distraction, apparently from something or things else that we might be doing with our limited time of existence. Except for people whose job it is to be “entertaining” (and there are a lot of them), divertissement is pretty much non-productive activity.

So it may seem that I am leading up to another bitchy jeremiad against another feature of modern social life I find abhorrent. Well, only partly. The pursuit of entertainment, whether it is all-night video games, pulling slot handles at a casino, listening to an iPod for hours on end, or reading your one-thousandth romance novel, and of course, watching TV, is voluntary and usually harmless to others. So I don't give a rat turd about it; it's your life. Well, not completely. If your entertainment, or what it does to you, becomes a social concern—in economics terms this means has an externality, particularly a negative externality—then I do care. If I have to pay your welfare, hospital bills, or police protection because you spend your life in un-productive divertissement , then it becomes my business. So beware.

But presently I am more curious about the why of the matter. Why must we be so entertained? Why do we need to be so diverted and distracted?

Seems there are no simple answers. First of all there is no easy dividing line here, and some of it is highly subjective. Is going fishing sport or entertainment? Maybe watching a sport is entertainment and engaging in a sport is sport. Going to the movies is being entertained, but it is also viewing an art form (sometimes) that can be educational and edifying. Comedians entertain, but sometimes their material gives us a social perspective that other communication does not. And let's face it, some entertainment may keep some people from getting into anti-social pursuits. Better to have some kid listening to his iPOD rather than breaking into my home. (Hey, wait a minute! Is that my iPOD he's listening to?”)

But to be entertaining, to be a divertissement, it must contrast with and be a diversion or distraction from something else. So one concern, when people become obsessed with being entertained is that there might be something wrong with the rest of their lives. Sitting for hours in front of the TV and looking at other people's lives, especially reality programming, may be an indication of not being able to face one's own life. Another concern is that much entertainment is passive. Then again, such activity might be a welcome distraction for a shut-in with little live company and options for distraction.

I think we may all need a little entertaining at times, some diverting activity that is unproductive and meaningless. I myself spent almost an hour the other day trying to perfect my impression of actor Christopher Walken. I think I got him down pretty well. It was entertaining, but useless; nobody is going to mistake me for Christopher Walken. I should be working on my impression of Brad Pitt.

OK, enough silliness; I was just trying to be a little entertaining there. But seriously, while it seems there might be more social merit to entertainment than I initially thought, I think there is a problem when being entertained becomes the dominant activity in our lives. Being entertained is passive, not active. I am always amazed when someone makes the statement “it helps pass the time,” as though time is a burden (Jesus, we don't get that much of it, dude!). It seems to me there must be a problem with your life if you are trying to pass what little time we really have. It's like the card game of solitaire. I am never sure what people get out of that game; it seems a waste of time. Some people even try to cheat at solitaire. Who can they be cheating, the Jack of Diamonds?

By the way, just plain sitting and thinking, or meditating or contemplating, are more worthwhile activities (and they are intellectually “active) than bombarding ourselves with externally produced stimuli. It is a way of conversing with ourselves, of heightening our consciousness. Some people, I think, are just plain afraid to be alone with themselves. More people should give thinking and self-reflection a chance; they might even find it entertaining. [3]

I worry entertainment might be the only satisfying activity in some people's lives; that their work, their relationships, are what they wish to escape from. That means, if you are always in need of being entertained, you need to take a good look at what, or whom , you are trying to divert and distract yourself from. Because if the passive side of your life is more satisfying than the active side, then you are not taking enough time to address your real problem(s), or you've just got your life bass ackwards. [4]

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[1] Although they probably weren't always as busy as popular understanding leads of to believe according to John Pfeiffer, "How Man Invented Cities," Horizon , Autumn 1972, pp. 13-18

[2] The French must like their time divertissement, having perhaps the shortest work week and more vacation days than anybody else—something Monsieur Sarkozy aims to change. Right wing Americans believe this will give them less time to look down their aquiline noses at the American divertissement, which is making preemptive war on other countries.

[3] I exclude prayer from this list intentionally. But some people might want to argue with me about that.

[4] Or am I going dyslexic?

42.5: THE PR WAR PRESIDENT 5.18,2007

The only thing that George Bush has that distinguishes his presidency is preemptive war in Iraq. Prior to 9-11 he was widely regarded as a buffoon who had won high office by the intercession of highly placed friends. Domestically he has accomplished nothing but to exacerbate the divisions in the wealth of the people, ignore domestic disasters such as that of Katrina, and give a bunch of religious bigots and hypocrites unprecedented access to political power in the history of this nation.

Bush liked calling himself a “war president,” but it sounded hollow coming from a guy who sent his national Guard duty during the VN war (a duty obtained for him by his father's connections that jumped him over other candidates) drinking, failing flight physicals and otherwise blowing it in the manner of a spoiled fratboy. The mere thought of this goldbricking dimwit in charge of the most powerful military machine on earth gives on a shudder (especially if you have oil below your feet).

Bush reveled his PR tendencies in his commander-in-chief image, wearing military regalia and flying onto carriers to announce his “victories.” But he proved soon enough that he was not a real “war president.” Bush is the public relations war president ; he manages (or tries to) public opinion and imagery of the war. But as to managing the war itself Bush's stupidity, arrogance and bad judgment have produced a war that exceeds even Vietnam as a colossal blunder.

By slow, painful reveal it has emerged that most of what Bush says is affective rather than effective. References to vague, unsubstantiated, occurances such as the so-called Iraqi purchase of yellow cake, are never retracted, connections between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda are spurious but left in place, the widespread belief that Iraqis were among the 911 terrorists are not countered with the truth. Colin Powell is set up and used and thrown away. Generals who do not agree with what has proed to be a disastrous war plan are fired, toadies are put in place. Common soldiers are used as part of the PR machine: Jessica Lynch in Iraq and Pat Tillman in Afghanistan. Others are scapegoated as a “few rotten apples, when debacles like Abu Ghraib occur. Within his own administration Bush's image as steadfast and loyal, a “stay the course guy,” is maintained by never firing anyone, but by pushing them out behind the scenes, making it appear that they have elected to leave because the fault is all theirs, not his.

The real truth, not the PR “truth,” has another way of emerging. The enemy quickly learns because for tem it is truth or die. And so the tactical war has been won by the enemy. After the fireworks of “shock and awe” they came out and undertook their low-tech war of attrition with guerilla strategies, IED's, using the arsenals that Bush's army never destroyed, effectively—even as they conducted a civil war among themselves. The Bush administration PR machine tried to convince that the use of IED's are the dastardly tactics of AQ, but likes to portray bombing from high altitude or missiles sent from ships in the gulf are nice, clean surgical instruments of war. Torture is torturously parsed and re-defined, detainees are regarded as guilty until (but never get a chance to) proven innocent. New enemies are made, old friends are lost.

The problem is that this war, for which Bush (like his British lap dog, Blair) will be remembered in perpetuity, is the only chance Bush has for anything positive in what we call, and he no doubt thinks of as, his “legacy.” In the past, Bush was able to be rescued from his incompetence by his father and family friends. His business failures, his so-called military service, his boozing, have all been managed out of the record and replaced by his born-again Christian image.

But this reality re-emerges in a different guise, Bush himself knows the truth, and no doubt feels that his victory in what he regards as the GWOT would expunge it all, forgive it all, and supercede his father's not so hot legacy. No matter the impossibilities or irrelevancy of winning a war on a tactic by repeating nonsense like “they hate our freedom,” it is what fears can be manipulated and created by the well-selected words, or what is left out that matter, not the truth.

So the result sought is an unexpressed policy of the most selfish, callous sort: what will rescue the legacy of Little George. This is what we get from a man who has been handled as a product, as a recipient of privilege from his earliest years, and for whom past failures are not “failures” but just missteps on the road to ultimate and glorious success in an endeavor that justifies it all. In time even he wioll come to believe the PR version of the “truth.”

It is not truth, but the result that is the essence of public relations. It is what public relations wishes to appear as the truth that is its prime function. It has more to do with belief than facts, half rather than whole truths. It is a profession that has becomes so toxically attached to politics in the form of campaign committees, focus groups, handlers, spin-meisters, press secretaries, and lobbyists that even the word democracy has become one more part of the image. But at its most fundamental it is the professionalization of that most calculating, dangerous, and self-serving justifications—that the end justifies the means.

This is why Bush must hang onto his war; he has nothing else. At this point even the oil might not matter to him. So what if the death, torture, destruction and the ruination of America's legacy are the cost. If he can hold out so that the Democrats must clean up his mess this time at least he can say that he was winning when he left (Cf, 38.2: The Ole Dumperooski).

The problem is that it will be difficult to set things right. George Bush is America's creation, and Americans don't like having to fess up to their mistakes on the international stage. It will be political suicide for any politician to do that. It was once said that, if you need a PR person, select an Austrian because Austria, which happily leaped into the arms of Hitler in the anschluss of 1938, managed to convince the world after the war that “Beethoven was an Austrian and Hitler was a German.”

Maybe the Republicans will try to change the Constitution so that an Austrian-born governor of California can run for President.

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41. 4: THE REAPER PAYS A VISIT (SOS, Part 11) 5.16.2007

I already knew that there are people who die on cruise ships. But when the lady sitting next to me a today's bible study meeting leaned over and told me there ad already been two deaths on this cruise, it seemed a little too close for comfort. The bible class gave it another level of poignancy. Although there were some participants that drifted in an out of the class it di8d not appear that it was one of “our own” who had gone off the get some real answers.

When boarding a ship several years earlier I remember wise-cracking that it looked like our first port of call should be Lourdes. I was younger and in better shape myself at that time, but I could still remark when I had a look at my current fellow passengers, that they should paint a big red cross on the side of this ship. One elderly man from Australia struggled along behind the nurse pushing his wife, a woman frozen in incapacitation from a stroke or neurological disorder, in a wheel chair. Following them was a ship's steward pushing a special toilet chair and other medical equipment. I wondered how the hell they were going to have a good time; but with the money they must have shelled out for a disabled cabin and the medical assistance, they had to be as financially able as they were physically disabled. One had to admire their determination. On deck each day another couple took the sun by the pool, he wheelchair bound and totally dependent upon his wife. She read to him and fed him and always had a ready smile. They were both brown as nuts the sunbathing, and either oblivious or disdainful of skin cancer. There were many canes, some walkers, loads of hearing aids and who knows how many pacemakers and other less evident medical aids.

One has to admire such intrepidity. The average age aboard must have been over sixty. Most of my fellow passengers were of an age where it is not so much “good to be alive” as it is simply preferable to be alive. These were not people who were there just for the food, and this was not a ship with rock climbing walls, miniature golf courses, and wet T-shirt contests. These people were aboard to add or re-visit our destinations in spite of their infirmities, some of them out to squeeze just one more new experience out of their lives, to see a lion or giraffe up close, or buy some handicraft from a native artisan. For some it would be their last chance to change the scenery for the last time before the final curtain comes down. For two the show was over; they had failed to cheat the Reaper one last time, or sought his cold comfort.

The Reaper is always a shadowy presence in religious discussions. I think people see no point in believing if there is not an afterlife (see DCJ, No. 39.5), and if there is one, they must employ some imagination to it, or accept a packaged version, to what lies beyond. Heaven or Hell; it's so simplistically binary. There are voluntary inputs of personal stories of how faith was used or tested by illness, or the efficacy of prayer (see DCJ No. 40.2). But our departed shipmates are only invoked in whisper. Our spiritual leader, of he knows (he must) does not bring up the matter. I, too, think it would be unseemly.

So I am left to ponder religion's ineluctable reality while the group is led into some vague and safe Old Testament passage about whether widows of rabbis should be allowed to wear thong panties or some such irrelevance. What interesting, and vexing, questions might have been brought up. I wondered, for example, whether there were some among our number who would have raised an objectio or an opinion of eschatological destination had it becomes known that one of our departed had decided to slip over the back rail into “that good night.” This happens more often than is accounted and is definitely not a “call for attention” in its grim certainty.

I would have raised the matter of the objections that most religions have to suicide and euthanasia. Would any of them have objection to someone in unpalliable pain, to a “quality of life” reduced to zero, to the negative effects of useless medical care, deciding to go “over the side.” There would be some, I would guess, who would summon the old bromide that it is God's choice to give us life and His when to end it. This can be heard from pulpits and rostrums in state houses and it hardly worthy of rebut in its arrogance and stupidity, if not its outright cruelty. Who is anyone to say what “God's purposes” are as they insinuate themselves into the lives of others. Maybe God intends that you should make that decision, if you like, or he will make it soon enough for you, I might counter. But this issues is one of our rights over our own bodies and destinies. This must ultimately trump and all so-called “theological interpretations,” and therefore, includes that other contentious subject, abortion.

Religions are nothing if not hypocritical about the rights of death. Martyrs are revered in the Roman Catholic Church, often sainted for throwing themselves on the swords of infidels, and sent to certain death in crusades and peril in wars, always in the name of the Lord. [1] In America at least the strongest supporters of capital punishment come from the same evangelical groups that support the politicians who give it the state's “blessing.” [2] They have non problem is hastening the departure of another person, justified, of course, in their terms.

I would love to put it to the Bible class what gives any other person the right to say I have no inalienable rights as to the use and disposition of my being (excepting mitigating or avoiding any public or social externalities in so doing) and then supporting laws or prohibitions that essentially arrogate those rights to their religion? Who are these American Taliban to prolong say, someone's suffering because they desire a social world that fits their faith. Nothing is more fundamental to a person's being, and damn anyone, I say, who gets in the way of another by playing God. [3]

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[1] See Jonathan Wright, The Jesuits , Harper Perennial, 2005, who writes that many young men sought to enter the Jesuits because of their dangerous assignments and the prospect of a martyr's death.

[2] At this writing almost all of the Republican contenders to succeed George Bush profess as well their approval of methods of torture (which sometimes results in death) of prisoners—and just plain detainees—in the so-called War on Terror. They all, of course, seek the blessing of the religious Right.

[3] By the way, I think it is in Leviticus that Hebrew law says the widow of a rabbi who wears a thong on the Sabbath shall be stoned to death.

41. 3: EMAILS FROM THE EDGE , Ken Haley 2007 [BR] 5.11.2007

When I first began foreign travel over thirty years ago I brought with me a bottle of aspirin. I do remember using them. These days It looks like my suitcase belongs to a “mule” for a Columbian drug cartel. The necessity for such an array of medicaments owes more to the aging process than to the increased hazards of travel. Many people are daunted by foreign travel at the aspirin stage; I seem to push on, at least until my prescriptions push out the final change of underwear.

Probably everyone who writes a travel memoir [insert here shameless self-promotion of your own travel memoir] thinks that they are writing about places from a unique perspective. Unless they are plagiarizing from Jan Morris, Bruce Chatwin or Pico Iyer, they probably are; we all see things from our unique perspective. This is what caught my eye about Ken Haley's memoir. He has, as he says, two perspectives on the places he travels to, one from normal height, the other from the height of his wheel chair. Haley has traveled to over forty countries since his severe spinal cord injury, and they are not easy countries and he has not been on package tours. Haley travels alone. So, if you are a traveler, you are almost obliged to pick up a book by a guy like that.

Haley is a journalist, in both sides of his travel career, abled and disabled. So he has a sense of the story, and in his case he doesn't expose all of his lead in the very first paragraphs. The reader doesn't find out—as curious as one must be about it—how Haley ended up in his wheel chair. In the United States, the results of accessibility legislation can be seen everywhere, in curb cuts for wheelchairs, enlarged toilet stalls, elevators, even cruise ship cabins. But in most of the countries Haley travels through in this book one is more likely to become disabled by the lack of those and elemental safety concerns. Just think of trying to do famous tourist sites like the Foro Romano, or the Athenian Acropolis in a wheel chair. Tiananmen Square might be a nice, flat space for the paraplegic, but the rest of Beijing and most Chinese cities are a tort waiting to happen for the most able-bodied traveler.

An Aussie from Melbourne Haley, like many Australians, goes out on “walkabout,” and more recently, “rollabout,” for considerable periods of time. He has worked for newspapers and news organizations in several countries over the years. We pick him up in this book in Bahrain in just prior to what is now called the first Iraq (Bush) war. Haley is noit a clear as he might be in this section, perhaps because it is part of the build-up to what we are most curious about. I maker it out that he finds himself somewhat stranded in Bahrain at the time of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and quite nervous that Bahrain might well be next and he would find himself a captive of Saddam's nasty troops. That does not happen, but probably because there are other things in play in Haley's mental state, helped along by some problems with his employer, the author has what can only be called a serious psychological breakdown.

That sort of problem is one that no one would wish to experience even at home, but far from home, in a culture that might not quite understand it the same way, and you can be in real trouble. In rather short order Haley goes from making a public disturbance, to threatening police, to landing in a hospital for people with his type of problem. He may not be so clear about subsequent events because he was not so clear about much at the time.

After his release Haley is clearly not in good shape psychologically, and not, over a hundred pages in he is a depressive insomniac back in Melbourne, but even friends and family seem unable to help him Finally, he can't take it any more and throws himself from the fourth floor window of an apartment intending to kill himself, but breaking his legs and crushing vertebrae. Haley hoarded pills for a while, intending to finish the job that insufficient altitude did not do, but the long process of rehab seems to have given him time to think his way through his problems. Now he had a new purpose—to see if he could resume his life of travel and writing from a sitting position.

Eleven years after his breakdown Haley is, amazingly, back in Bahrain at the beginning of what at times—maybe it s just because this section of the book reads largely like notes from a travel journal, with too few insights, very often banal and uninteresting. At times he seems more interested in checking places off his “dance card,” and providing information that seems gratuitous, than in the more existential aspects of the travel experience. Sometimes the pace is manic as over the months he travels through, almost exclusively by land, the entire Middle East, and then through the former Jugoslavia, Greece, eastern Europe, Russia and the Baltics.

There might have been more attention to the problems of getting on and off various modes of transit, the inaccessibility of hotels and bathrooms, safeguarding his belongings. There are people who assist him, people who ignore him, and fewer—those infamous border guards and immigration officials--who place obstacles in this path. At one point his suitcase that contains the catheters and other necessities for his health and cleanliness is stolen, on another his money is stolen, but Haley prevails, in surprisingly good spirits and an attitude of “what can you do to me that is worse that what I have done to myself.”

Haley finishes his remarkable journey, in time, space, and mentality, 69 degrees North of the Equator, pushing his wheelchair through the snow in Norway, but not before spending a couple of chapters on interesting self-examination and introspection. I especially liked it when he said, neat the end, that “Like all good journeys, this was one of self-discovery . . ,” almost the exact words that are below the title of my own travel book. This guy has traveled not only to a couple dozen more countries, a few thousand more miles than I have, but he also made that fateful forty-foot trip out of that window. He's here, as they say, to tell the tale. One suspects there might be some more from this resilient wanderer from down under.

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41. 2: CITY WORK 5.7.2007

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you - just one word.

Ben: Yes sir.

Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?

Ben: Yes I am.

Mr. McGuire: 'Plastics.'

Ben: Exactly how do you mean?

Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will

you think about it?

Ben: Yes I will.

Dialogue: The Graduate , 1967

“Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.” So advised Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle in the 18 th Century. He might have emphasized that he meant “chosen” work; for most of human history the work that most men and women have done was whatever needed, or could be done just to survive. The idea of their “finding” their chosen work, the way in which a university student might seek a “major” that fits his or her ambitions, would have been a fanciful prospect, if entertained at all. Indeed, most of human experience was spent in the “work” of hunting and gathering and, even since the foundation of the first cities, the majority of the world's population has been engaged in the work of agriculture, fishery, and pastoral life. Only on the eve of the 21 st century would the majority of the world's population be defined as “urbanized.”

By “urbanized” is meant, increasingly, not just or necessarily, people who reside in cities, or places with physical “urban” characteristics, but those who perform urban “work.” Indeed, work, or more specifically, the division or specialization of labor, is central to the definition of urbanization. Permanent settlements both enabled and necessitated the expansion of different forms of work. Even at the most rudimentary levels of urbanization occupations expanded exponentially: crafts for storage of products, such as pottery and baskets, scribes to maintain records, building trades, and the beginnings of administrative functions, were among the first new “jobs” of the city. Various cities were founded upon some industry or economic activity, the location of particular natural resource, for example, as in the case of the Turkish city of Catal Huyuk, established in 6800BC as a “manufacturing” center for products made of glass-like obsidian. It was the precursor of Silicon Valley.

The specialization of labor, assisted by the development of tools and technologies that increased efficient productivity and created surplus products were characteristics of the earliest cities that remain the fundamental features of contemporary urban economics. [1] Manufacturing created new specialties: tool makers, suppliers of raw materials, fabricators, assemblers, etc., and subsequently those concerned with retailing and trading finished products. Record-keeping required the new occupation of clerks and scribes. Trade itself engendered new occupations associated with transportation of products. Regionalization, the precursor to today's “globalization,” first bringing about the expansion of agriculture to accommodate the food and fiber requirements of the increasing number of workers engaged in non-agricultural occupations, and then the colonization of other territories that functioned as markets, related manufacturing centers, and distribution points on the expanding trade network. By the late 19 th century most of the necessary preconditions for the rise of the large industrial city were in place. The dynamic forces of industrialization and urbanization were reciprocally nurturing and grew up together.

The social effects of origination of cities and urban economies and trade are too extensive and profound to even enumerate, much less discuss. It might suffice to say that it changed—and continues to change—two sets of relationships: that between Man and Man, and between Man and Nature. Relationships between men, women and children were profoundly affected by the urban economy. New forms of property, among them the new knowledge and skills fostered by industrialism, were created that vastly changed relationships between social classes. Virtually every social institution: Family, Religion, Government, Warfare, Education, was changed and continue to change. Moreover, Mankind's relationship to Nature, once passive and benign, now turned exploitative. The Environment became a factor of production; forests were cleared, rivers dammed, mountains mined, and the “gods” that once resided in them were replaced by a monotheism that “gave” mankind authority and dominion over the earth. The “environmental issues” of today are an outgrowth of attitudes toward Nature that were shaped in the very first cities.

The opportunities created by the vast expansion in numbers ands types of occupations was a powerful lure of cities that also had profound affects upon the countryside. Nineteenth Century industrialization created a push-pull effect upon rural society; cities lured country youth away from farm life and also produced the mechanization of agriculture that would make farming less labor-intensive, eventually leading to the agricultural imitation of the factory today called “agribusiness.”

The dividing of labor into various specializations produced an efficiency of production that could not have been achievable in non-urban society. As specialization produced surpluses these surpluses could be employed in the next stage of economic development: trade. Trade would bring increased wealth to the urban community that would express itself in the expansion of other types of economic activity, particularly services, that would produce increased levels of labor specialization. This relationship between the income produced from trade and the services it produces is referred to by economists and the multiplier effect: a generation of economic activity produced as money is circulated and re-circulated throughout the community. As technology developed—the harnessing of power and the invention of efficient techniques for the production and distribution of products and services—all these economic functions accelerated.

It is also noteworthy that manufacturing was also instrumental in the “mechanization” of time. With the development of urban economies, that were more complex and in their necessity to orchestrate, integrate and manage the diverse forms of labor and other factors of production that the clock replaced the “natural day” as the prime regulator of time. The factory did not need to conform to the circadian segments of the day as did the farm and the pasture.

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you - just one word.

Steve: Yes sir.

Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?

Steve: Yes I am.

Mr. McGuire: 'silicon.'

Steve: What the hell is silicon?

Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in it. IPods:10,000 songs, and only the size of a pack of cigarettes. Will you think about it?

Steve: Yes I will. (iPods? And where the hell am I going to get 10,000 songs?)

Dialogue: Valley of the Nerds , 1987

____________________________________________

[1] The development and the use of technology predate cities. Humans developed simple technologies such as the bow and arrow, throwing stick, and other “tools” many millennia before cities were founded. Such technologies might be referred to a “bio-technic” in the sense that they were derivative of and composed of elements found in nature and involved little “manufacture”. The technologies of the first great revolution in human history—The Agricultural Revolution—were primarily bio-technic and mechano-technic. The second Agricultural Revolution of the 19 th century was a result of the of capital substitution of labor brought on by technologies that made the sewing and reaping of agricultural produce more efficient. More advanced forms of technology, for example, the shaduf, a device used to elevate water from rivers for irrigation purposes, employed the lever, or even a screw, to more efficiently perform the function. Such technologies, which appear to bridge pastoral and nomadic and early urban societies might be classified as “mechano-technic” and cover a large range of technologies ranging in sophistication to the internal combustion engine and the movie camera. The Industrial Revolution that began in the English midlands in the late 1700s was predominantly a mechano-technic revolution. Today, we take almost for granted “electro-technologies” whose operational properties might take place in the invisible world of the mirco-chip at speeds that make the piston movements of an internal combustion engine seem like slow motion. Indeed, it is not beyond the bounds of imagination, and even possibility, that technological functions might one day be performed with wholly different physical properties and energy, as in the “technology” of psycho-kinetics. Still, “bio-technics” may be yet again play a role, albeit a more sophisticated and complex role, in human social evolution, as recombinant DNA and other “techniques” of genetic and other biological “engineering” emerge with great promise and portent. The fusion of mechanics and electronics in the form of artificial limbs or organs, or the prospect of “nano-technology,” further blurs the traditional distinctions between and among different “technologies”..

41. 1: ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS 5.1.2007

Religion and war making go all the way back to Gilgamesh, the great priest-warrior-king who expunged his enemies and razed their cities in the same lands and with the same self-righteous zeal as does his successor, George W. Bush. So things haven't changed much, despite the fact that America is supposed to be a secular, democratic nation and Sumer was a theocracy. American evangelistic Christians are among the most ardent supporters of George Bush's war in Iraq, a war that was sold largely in an emotional atmosphere of vengeance for the atrocity of 911, but also plays well with those Christians who draw from Revelations the prophecy for the Armageddon that its to come from the Middle East. Images and examples of American pietism and patriotism can be seen everywhere (and, with criticism, in these pages on many occasions). Of course, the perpetrators of 911 were themselves religious fanatics who believed that Allah blessed their cause and welcomed their martyrdom. It bears repeating that the Bush Administration, ardent friends of the Saudi monarchy, continues to ignore the fact that almost all of the perpetrators were from Saudi Arabia (preferring to nurture the falsehood that they were Iraqis, when none were), and that Saudi Arabia's Wahabbism make it arguably the most primitive and fanatic theocracy in the world. American fundamentalist evangelist Christians dumbly buy into the deceits of their president the way they buy into most of the feces that is fed to them by their religious leadership.

So wielding the sword of the Lord requires to some extent that the military sign on to the program. (Cue the archangel trumpets and the Blue Angel flyover in the crucifix formation.) There's General Boykin, for example, publicly stating that his god can whip the enemy's god's ass, but he's only the dunce cap on the top of an iceberg of evangelical Christianity that has crept into the military over the years.

Now it is true, even if your faith is only of the most dormant form, that the terrors of war and the horrific wounds in can inflict will bring it to the surface. “God help me” is something seared into our brains, heritable if not conditioned, to utter when it seems there is no earthly succor available or suitable. The true believer and the atheist might chorus such supplications as they share the same foxhole and the sound of an incoming artillery shell. But it is conditioned reflex. The foe is, of course, pleading the same, but our side take some comfort in that our God is sorting their body bags into a different pile, lest we forget that war is not just the last phase of diplomacy, it's is also our God's injunction to expunge the infidel.

None of this implies any connection between war and the other connection religionists like to make—morality. The latest disgusting example has been the Pat Tillman issue. Tillman, the Army Ranger who turned down a million-dollar contract to play professional football was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan. He had been set up as a poster boy for the Army, so they decided to lie and make him a hero rather than a victim, lying to his family in the process. The truth came out when fellow Army Ranger Bryan O'Neal told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, “I was ordered not to tell” the family of Pat Tillman the truth about how he died by friendly fire. Somebody was also ordered to immediately burn Tillman's uniform and other evidence so that a tale of his “heroic death” in battle with the enemy could be cocked-up, complete with the awarding of a Silver Star. [1] That's Pentagon morality for ya. Hell, if you are going to get people killed, you can't do them much more harm lying about how you got them killed. (I guess the don't think there is any “collateral damage” from that reasoning.)

The Pentagon had good practice in this sort of deceit, having turned Pvt. Jessica Lynch, early in the war from the badly injured truck driver who's life was probably saved by Iraqi doctors, into an amalgam of GI Jane and the Terminator. Lynch has since written a book somewhat meekly setting things straight, but the Bush Administration propaganda machine has better access to the public. She is at least around to testify for the lie the Pentagon fabricated for her (“ I am still confused as to why they chose to lie and tried to make me a legend”). But the Army seems content to let the lie stand and one suspects that there has been more than a little pressure on Lynch to shut up or they can make life miserable for her. After all, when the Commander-in-Chief is a proven liar, you have no place to go but down. Any military officer who has the guts to hold “duty, honor, country” higher than allegiance to a guy who boozed his way through his National Guard “service” has been canned.

The Tilman family doesn't care for having this lie clouding the death of their son to persist and they have to fight on his behalf. They've been pressing for the truth to be made public since they learned it; they just don't realize that it was a casualty before their son was. Most recently the family was told at a hearing they demanded by a Col. Kauzlarich that because their son was not a Christian he would not be going to heaven anyway, but would be “worm dirt”; in other words they shouldn't give a damn about him and drop the matter. [2]

There's an interesting little matter of reasoning in this that we have seen in the whole “left behind” logic; that is, believers and “born agains” get to go to heaven, those who are not are left behind and are “worm dirt.” This is why Christian were called “cretins” in the Middle Ages. When we think this one through we get the following:

• Bad people, who kill, lie and whatever, will get to go to heaven if they say they are believers.

• Any good people, who don't kill, lie and whatever, if they are not believers, will not get to go to heaven.

• God, if He exists, is stupid enough to have set things up this way.

One would think that the infusion of religion into the military and its academies would produce higher standards of reason and morality than this. But this would only be to further the delusion. We are not talking here of the somewhat simple and underplayed religiosity that we get from mention of God in the Pledge of Allegiance, or “In God We Trust” on a dollar bill,[3] or even some silly prayer at the opening of a Congressional session, but we're talking about Christian Evangelists here. We're talking about people who think the see the whole divine plan and prospect laid out before them in the Book of Revelations. [4] We're talking about people who see the world in terms of contending forces of “good” and “evil” and the good forces just happen to be aligned with those people in mega churches in red states standing and waving their hands in the air and singing halleluiahs to the blow-dried blather of some erstwhile roofing and siding contractor with his hand in their pocket. We're talking about people who see religion as war.

Pretty much since the time in which Christ preached to forgive our enemies and turn the other cheek Christians have been following their “human nature” and not Christ's divine counsel, preferring to kill their enemies and giving it right back to those who smite their cheeks. Bush's admittedly “preemptive” war actually follows the principle of “do unto others before they do it to you.” Like the sanctimonious scumbags that fill the airwaves and Fox News with their warmongering wrapped in religious zealotry, Bush pushes his war as though it were a messianic duty—he was, after all, in his own words “selected” by God and Antonin Scalia to keep America safe and well-oiled for Christianity.

Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,

with the cross of Jesus going on before.

Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;

forward into battle see his banners go!

Refrain:

Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,

with the cross of Jesus going on before. [5]

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[1] When it is said that the first victim of war is the Truth, the connotation is broader than is presumed. The military will lie like hell when it suits its need. The Navy might be the best at this particular talent. When there was an explosion in a gun turret on a battleship that killed several sailors, the Navy decided to pin it on a putatively gay seaman and say he caused the explosion to commit suicide over some gay tiff.

[2] http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/04/24/pats-worm-dirt

[3] “In Alan Greenspan We Trust” was too big to put on the dollar.

[4] See, DCJ Archives, No. 33. 2, The Crapture: It's A Revelation! June 2006

[5] Words: Sabine Baring-Gould, 1864. Music: Arthur Sullivan, 1871.