Micro or Macro Society

Where we live affects who we are and how we think.

Case 1:  Bigger is not necessarily better.  The larger the social context in which we live, the greater the risk of isolation and impersonal relationships. Large scale social institutions replace traditional community involvement, and they remove our personal investment in social efforts.  Things that used to be handled by neighbors or by a local committee are now relegated to some impersonal government office and program.

The larger the social context, the more we tend to be observers, untouched by the lives we see and by the things that happen.  We tend to spend our lives walking by on the other side of the street.

Mass society, mass media, mass market, massive mindlessness.

As the mass media ramps up, our personal involvement in the public forum is generally seen as of little value.  You can't really speak louder than the talking heads.  There's no venue where your voice matters much these days unless you're mega-wealthy.

Case 2:  The greater the social and economic inequality, the less voice most individuals will have in their own lives and country.  The problem is not being poor, although that is deadly enough.  The problem is having no voice or power to affect any change for yourself or your family.  Your children are in the forefront of your mind as the priceless treasure they are and for whom you cannot do anything no matter how hard or how long you work to make a difference.  That's the brutality of persistent inequality.

How hard can it be?

So among those things which disengage, demoralize, and demotivate a culture ... we find western norms. Mass media, mass programs, and massive economic inequality, all are common in post-industrial developed economies.

Normal life less than a century ago included deeply connected neighbors, communities, families, towns and villages ...  even states were cohesive and culturally distinguishable...



... but not so much anymore, and now we perhaps understand; that's why we fight being thoughtlessly conformed to the world.*






So how might we adjust our focus to improve our own thinking and for the good of others?


*It's a relatively controversial phenomenon called mass society.  Much useful conversation while the academics debate the processes.

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Carl Jung stressed the importance of individual rights in a person's relation to the state and society. He saw that the state was treated as "a quasi-animate personality from whom everything is expected" but that this personality was "only camouflage for those individuals who know how to manipulate it",^[a] and referred to the state as a form of slavery.^[1][2][3][4]  He also thought that the state "swallowed up [people's] religious forces",^[b] and therefore that the state had "taken the place of God" -- making it comparable to a religion in which "state slavery is a form of worship".^[c]  Jung observed that "stage acts of [the] state" are comparable to religious displays: "Brass bands, flags, banners, parades and monster demonstrations are no different in principle from ecclesiastical processions, cannonades and fire to scare off demons".^[d] From Jung's perspective, this replacement of God with the state in a mass society led to the dislocation of the religious drive and resulted in the same fanaticism of the church-states of the Dark Ages -- wherein the more the state is 'worshipped', the more freedom and morality are suppressed;^[5] this ultimately leaves the individual psychically undeveloped with extreme feelings of marginalization.^[6]

Was he right?

Leave me alone

The multi-billion dollar advertising industry is aggressive, persistent, conscienceless, and apparently impervious to reality.

Targeted advertising aims to sexualize our teens and tweens.  It aims to make folks obese and materialistic.  It insists that merchandise is immediately perishable and needs to be replaced regularly. They're somewhat successful, since they're getting paid.  A lot.  But they're lagging behind reality.

They haven't noticed that direct mailings have produced a less favorable response for twelve consecutive years.  The USPS total is approaching 140 billion pieces sent per year, almost half of which will go straight to the trash. They've missed the fact that no one wants to get their marketing emails or robo-calls.  They haven't a clue why TV ads are ignored or skipped.  Catch a customer on a bad day, and they'll report you to the FTC and the Better Business Bureau.

The second most destructive industry in America after the financial corporations, they are the enemy of health, reason, and meaningful life. Fortunately, most in the emerging generation have figured it out.  They're smarter than their parents; annoyance is apparently instructive.

The Majority

This is Nusrat; she's just 8 years old.  Her family is homeless in Mumbai, so she does her studies
on a sidewalk in the city, and she supplements the family income by rag picking.  Her family's
circumstances are not of their choosing; such inequality is done to you. Where she lives,
she is guaranteed a more difficult path, but still, she wants so badly to learn.

                                     Equality is not yet.  Nor is justice. 

We've been unable to locate the family.
Photograph: Arko Datta/Reuters 20070831

Worldwide, about 31 million girls of
primary school age aren't in school,
and about half the world's children
(about 1 billion) live in poverty.

White.  That's the only majority with which I've been affiliated, and we've had our moments.

I was walking on the beach with a staffer from the embassy in western Africa, and I was ruminating aloud on the problems associated with being white.  Meetings are awkward, relationships can be clumsy, and a straight answer is hard to get.  I said something like I wished I was black for such occasions.  My friend fell to the sand, laughing so hard he had difficulty breathing.  "You have no idea," he finally managed to say, laughing and wiping away tears, "how many times I've wished I was white, and for much the same reasons."

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't survive long in this world as one against whom discrimination is the daily norm. I don't think I could endure it. And I couldn't face a life where my children were guaranteed a more difficult path and where opportunity was bent in favor of some privileged group in which they weren't welcome.

But I would gladly live in a world where justice is real, especially for the children's sake.  Dear Father, especially for their sake.

Wouldn't you? So then, what might we do to make a difference?

Curious what life might be like in the real world?

2013 - Our friends were evicted again.  They were living on lands their tribe had owned and occupied for more than a century when the government sold it out from under them and bulldozed their homes.  They moved further into the tribal region and rebuilt their simple homes.  After a couple of years, the government did it again.  They'd sold the land to some wealthy folks.  Ethiopia did better; our friends there were relocated from their tribal lands but they were provided new apartments at low cost.

2014 - Our friend needed his secondary school transcript so he could go to trade school, but the official wouldn't give it unless he was paid a bribe.  He held out for awhile.  A local pastor, a reputable bishop, went to the office and firmly explained to the agent that he was to provide the transcript, which he finally did. (Kenya)  According to survey, the average Kenyan household pays 17 bribes per month for everything from getting their children a seat in school to getting a building permit.

2016 - A young fellow whom we've known since he was a kid found himself in a bind.  He and his partner had been granted 4 hectares (about 10 acres) of land to develop agriculturally.  After they had invested time and money for equipment and cleared the land, the new government minister rescinded the grant and confiscated their equipment.  They lost a couple of years work and all their savings. It's devastating for the extended family, and moving on is difficult.  (western Africa)

In America, if you're poor, you're probably trapped in it, but it's a different framework.  Minimum wage is about half of what it was intended to be, education is required but difficult to complete if you're poor, and advanced education is likely to indenture you for a decade or more.

Any ideas?

The price of independence

Source: This image was created for netivist.org.

Consider the important issues with which the nation has grappled since the beginning of this presidency and administration. 

• the economy:  When the administration proposed to tackle deteriorating conditions in the economy by an infusion of federal spending, virtually no Democrats found the proposal unacceptable and virtually no Republicans found it acceptable. 
• crooked finance:  When Democratic Senators Dodd and Frank drafted a plan to increase oversight of financial institutions, Republicans were united against, and Democrats for. 
• health care:  Plans to reframe the government's role in health care produced a solid wall of Republicans against an equally solid group of Democrats. 
• budget:  Budget deliberations fell apart because Democrats were almost uniformly lined up in supporting higher tax rates for citizens who earn more than $250,000 annually per couple and Republicans were equally unified against. 
• the court:  The president's nominations for the Supreme Court faced the same polarization. 

In a sane world,  the men and women we elect to Congress would apply their own research and intelligence to the important decisions that confront them.  Some number of Republicans would vote with Democrats and vice versa.  Today, on the issues that matter most, solid blocs face other solid blocs, unmovable, unflinching in their commitment to the party "team." Party loyalty appears to be more important than progress.

Party leaders control important committee assignments, provide or withhold money for reelection campaigns, and advance or block team members' legislative priorities; in our political system, one often pays a significant price for exercising independent judgment despite the fact that it is supposed to work that way.  If you don't toe the line, however, you won't get a place in the game.

Such polarization and inability to negotiate are indicative of a nonfunctional system.  Only the uninformed would continue on that path going nowhere.

Time for change.

Harsh History

Despite the best of intentions ... history is harsh.

It doesn't matter to those who died how good our intentions might have been. It doesn't matter to those left behind how we explained the decisions. When innocents die by our hand, the cost cannot be adequately justified.

There's defense of family, of community, of nation. Then there's war for empire, for ideology, for oil, for control of influence in a region.  National policy can blur ethical boundaries and drag both soldiers and citizens down into the pit.  

Whether you've been on the front line or the back line, whether you've been for or against national decisions, there's a price. Some things that touch your soul inevitably leave a wound.  For some of us, visiting the Vietnam Memorial is a blinding horror, a wound that reopens with each reminder of our brothers who served.  Even if your personal issues have been resolved, the national heart has not, and it weighs heavily on many. National recognition and acknowledgement of wrongdoing remain unaddressed.

Those who served did so nobly and deserve our respect.  Those who sent them, sometimes not so much.  Only a few people remember, Ho Chi Minh was our ally during the war in the Pacific. After the war, he asked America for help many times.  Many times.  The public wasn't told.

The French had abandoned their colony and handed it over to the Japanese early in WWII. After the war, we could have helped, but we chose to back the French colonial return to the region. We ignored the Vietnamese people and their desire to be free of colonial rule. They had declared their independence, deliberately following our example and offering to join us and the other democracies. We should have been friends and supporters. There was no public discussion, just propaganda.. More than two million Vietnamese died in the war that followed, but they needn't have.  

The following are collected at a single site, ordered by timeline.

Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, September 2, 1945

Letter to President Harry Truman, October 17, 1945 

Letter to U.S. Secretary of State, October 18, 1945 

Letter to U.S. Secretary of State, October 22, 1945 

Letter to Secretary of State James Byrnes, November 1, 1945 

Letter to President Truman, November 8, 1945 

Letter to Secretary of State James Byrnes, November 23, 1945 

Telegram to Secretary of State James Byrnes, November 26, 1945 

Letter to U.S. President Truman, January 18, 1946 

Letter to President Harry Truman, February 16, 1946 

To the Governments of China, United States Of America, Union of Socialist Soviet Republics and Great-Britain. February 18, 1946 

Telegram to President Truman, February 28, 1946 

Memorandum of Discussion with Ho Chi Minh, September 12, 1946

Message to the American People, December 23, 1966

Exchange of Letters with U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson

Exchange of Letters with U.S. President Richard Nixon

Or do your own research at the U.S. National Archive

Remember the draft?  Our young men were required by law to register and serve.  You could have strong convictions against the war in Vietnam, but you could be sent there to kill and die anyway.  If, like most of us back then, you couldn't escape the draft, there were a few opportunities to choose where and how you might serve, but you had to obligate yourself for years and take your chances.

I was adamantly opposed to the war, enlisted to stay ahead of the draft, and I managed to pursue a military career that didn't take me to Vietnam. My willingness to serve was derived from the Cold War, and when the Berlin Wall came down, in my heart I was released.  I'd done my part for my country and satisfied my conscience, however imperfectly.  The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was opened in 1982, and even though I live just an hour away, it took me 30 years to gather the strength to visit there. There are 58,195 names on that wall, but fifty times that number died in the war.

We are still engaged in foreign conflict; civilians and soldiers still die. The greater war effort today is economic, however. Military strength is tied to national economic strength, and power in the world is tied to power in the marketplace. While not openly discussed in the public forum, competition for wealth from other countries has become the goal of national economic policy.  Is this the freedom and justice for which our fathers fought?

Memorial Day is a remembrance, not a celebration.  We remember.  As always, there are deep issues to acknowledge; issues of life and loss, of justice, and of responsibility before God for our actions as a nation.  As veterans from the Vietnam War era tell us, we each bear the burden.

At some point ...

INEQUALITY is growing.  The GAP is increasing - between the rich and poor in every country and between countries.  Some say that inequality doesn’t matter as long as markets are working well.  Others argue that inequality hinders growth, or that only so much is ethically acceptable.

At some point, the death and deprivation must be attributed to more than chance.  Justice calls clearly across the years, echoed by each child denied a life of meaning, by each father unable to provide for his own family, and by each grandfather who weeps as his children's children endure the same poverty into which he was himself born.

They neither choose nor deserve the abuse they endure.  Persistent poverty is done to them.

You can change things; you really can.

Did you know that one child in five lives in poverty in the U.S.?

Did you know that an undernourished child will have health issues for the rest of their life?

Under height for age and under weight for height, signs of an inadequate diet scare the hell out of parents who are doing their best to just keep their family alive.

Change takes time and effort.  It means the whole community needs help and change, investment and assistance.  And leadership.  It means more than just sponsoring a kid for $25 a month.  :)  Do the research and get involved, get your family involved.  World Vision tops my list for effective work in communities both internationally and in the U.S.

Or you could (1) go (2) see (3) for yourself!

Persistent poverty - reference (1) (2) (3) (4)