The human abstract

I have long been aware from personal experience and observation that being poor is not nearly as much fun as some people who aren't tend to think it is. This piece by Barbara Ehrenreich in the Atlantic points out that it's also expensive.

Ehrenreich's article reminded me of this classical sociological analysis by Herbert Gans of all the ways poverty benefits people who aren't poor.

Come to think of it, that reminds me of these lines of the divinely mad and inspired English poet William Blake from the poem "The Human Abstract" in Songs of Experience.

Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody poor,
And Mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.

(Note: if you want more of Blake, search the Goat Rope archives in the upper left hand corner of the screen.)

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Not your average mead hall

The theme at Goat Rope these days is Beowulf, that first surviving Old English epic. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts. You'll also find links and comments about current events below.

As I mentioned earlier, there are some direct references to the Bible in the poem. Most of these are to early chapters in Genesis. Anglo-Saxons were fascinated with the Cain and Abel story and they liked the parts about giants in the earth and the Great Flood.

There may also be some indirect biblical references. The story of the building of Heorot, the mother of all mead halls by Hrothgar, king of the Spear-Danes, could be an allusion to the tower of Babel story. The whole raiding/pillage/tribute thing was going pretty good for this king:

To Hrothgar was given such glory of war,
such honor of combat, that all his kin
obeyed him gladly till great grew his band
of youthful comrades.

As often happens, powerful rulers like to create architectural monuments to their power. And among the North Sea raiding peoples, any self-respecting lord needed to have a drinking hall where all he could get the band together for drinking and reveling.

(I'd be pretty much down with the program, although I'm not a real mead fan.)

Anyhow, Hrothgar decides to build a truly grand mead hall. As the poem goes,

It came in his mind
to bid his henchmen a hall uprear,
a master mead-house, mightier far
than ever was seen by the sons of earth,
and within it, then, to old and young
he would all allot that the Lord had sent him,
save only the land and the lives of his men.
Wide, I heard, was the work commanded,
for many a tribe this mid-earth round,
to fashion the folkstead. It fell, as he ordered,
in rapid achievement that ready it stood there,
of halls the noblest: Heorot he named it
whose message had might in many a land.

Here he doled out rings and goo-gaws with the best of them, gift giving being the preferred way of ensuring the loyalty of his retainers.

But as often occurs in myths and legends, such ambitious efforts often come to naught. A shadow of doom hangs about the place. It is destined to be the scene of terrible carnage from the monsters and of still worse from family strife.

But that will keep till next time.

THE STATE OF WORKING AMERICA has just been released by the Economic Policy Institute, which has been publishing these every other year or so since 1988. My short summary of the latest edition: not that great.

EXTREME WEATHER. Get used to it. Better yet, do something about climate change.

JOBLESS CLAIMS dropped last week, although not enough to dent the unemployment rate.

WHITHER PROGRESSIVES? Here's what Barbara Ehrenreich suggests. I don't always agree with her but generally find what she has to say to be interesting.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Award ceremony

It is not the usual practice of this blog to issue awards, mostly because nobody cares what I think, but I'm making an exception in this case. The first official Goat Rope Rock On With Your Bad Self Award--the highest award I have to bestow--goes to WV Senator Robert C. Byrd for having the guts to speak some truth to the WV coal industry about climate change, mountaintop removal and the industry's bullying tactics.

Here's what he has to say.

Byrd deserves particular commendation for not caving in to the latest hissy fit by the WV Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber's latest stunt consists of urging Congress to torpedo health care reform unless and until that body bows down and worships the coal industry as its lord and master and supreme deity.

There are several problems with this approach, but I'll mention only two. First, the Chamber would have opposed meaningful health care reform anyway, even if there were no coal controversies. Second, exactly who died and left the most backward parts of WV's coal industry in charge of the United States of America?

I'm sorry if this offends anyone--and I know this may be a shock to some people--but that sector of the coal industry does not own the hearts, souls,and other bodily and spiritual parts of everyone in West Virginia, much less of the United States as a whole (even though it seems to for some folks).

The thing that I admire most about Senator Byrd is that he improves with age--may we all be so lucky. In the past, I believed that Byrd's greatest moment was his courageous opposition to the Bush administration's unnecessary war in Iraq and its assaults on the US constitution. I don't want to take anything away from that but I now believe that his greatest moment may be the one where he speaks truth to power much closer to home, which is always a much riskier proposition.

Thank you, Senator Byrd!

UNFINISHED BUSINESS. From the New Yorker, here's a look at the history of health care reform efforts in the US.

THE COST OF NOT REFORMING health care is too high, according to Krugman's latest.

BRIGHT SIDED AGAIN. Here's an interview with Barbara Ehrenreich on the perils of unrealistic positive thinking and its effects on the US economy.

ANOTHER TAKE ON JOHN BROWN here.

"IMPROVING" THE BIBLE. Here's more on the "Conservative Bible Project." (Suggestion: it might be easier if these guys just took out all the stuff about Jesus and the prophets.)

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A cosmic ATM?

The last few days have been devoted, among other things, to giving a shout out to Barbara Ehrenreich's newest book, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.

While there's clearly nothing wrong with happiness, being cheerful and having a sense of one's ability to improve things, some versions of this kind of thinking view the universe or God as a kind of cosmic ATM or good fairy, one which has nothing more important to do than to grant the wisher a Hummer, MacMansion, or some other object of conspicuous consumption.

Further, this kind of thinking has permeated a corporate culture in which CEOs are viewed as charismatic visionaries who never allow themselves the luxury of a negative thought. In that climate, anyone a couple of years back, for example, who might have suggested that sub-prime mortgage securities might not be the ideal road to prosperity might well have been dismissed or discharged as a negative person.

Even worse is the kind of magical thinking which views the universe as a projection of one's own mental attitude. In that view, people who are wealthy and powerful are getting what they deserve. Those who are dying of poverty, drowned in a tsunami, languishing without health insurance, or are blown up as collateral damage in warfare are presumably only getting back from the universe the kind of energy they sent out.

I'll pass on that one.

On the other hand, one doesn't need delusional thinking to be grateful for the good things in life. So on that note, happy Thanksgiving!

NO LINKS TODAY. El Cabrero is on a long road trip so no links today other than this earlier post from one of Goat Rope Farm's talking animals, Self Help Guru Rooster.

If anything bad happens between the time this post is written and when it's posted, please accept my condolences.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: POSITIVELY ELEVATED

Shiny happy people

As I mentioned yesterday, Barbara Ehrenreich's latest book, How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, is a real hoot. In it, she traces America's penchant for positive (and sometimes magical) thinking from roots in the 19th century, where it began as a reaction against the dour Calvinism that was such a strong ingredient of early American life.

In Calvinism, each soul has been predestined from the beginning of the world for either damnation or salvation, with most of us getting the former. There is nothing we can do about it, nor can one be totally sure one is among the elect. Believers were often urged to continually examine their consciences in fear and trembling.

That could be a bit of a downer. No wonder people sought for some kind of relief. One version that emerged in the late 1800s was called the "New Thought." According to this view, the universe was largely seen as a mental construct willing and waiting to come to our aid if we only got our minds right, to borrow a phrase from the classic movie Cool Hand Luke.

The first half of the twentieth century saw the popularity and commercial success of such enduring best-sellers as Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People and Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking, which in turn inspired many similar efforts.

While the popularity of positivity is hardly new, modern Americans have consumed and have often been force fed a steady diet of motivational speeches, prosperity "theology," and magical thinking--even while living standards have gotten worse for millions.

Purveyors of this viewpoint sometimes promote the view that one's status and level of material success and health are primarily a matter of mental attitude, which means that people are getting pretty much what they deserve at any given time.

While clearly there's nothing wrong with having a cheerful outlook on the world, once an ideology dismisses other social factors that can hit us no matter how positive our attitude is, then it becomes just another justification for inequality.

If you buy all that, then the 10.2 percent of Americans who are jobless or the 47 million who lack health insurance or the 45,000 or so who die prematurely each year because they don't have it don't need better policies--they just need think positively.

As the saying goes, whatever.

FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH, here's an interview with Ehrenreich about the book.

STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS are facing shortfalls which could compound the recession, reduce jobs, and cut vital services in the absence of additional aid.

SAVING THE PLANET. Here are some weird ideas about how to do that.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Smiley faces

El Cabrero would like to take this opportunity to give a shout out to Barbara Ehrenreich's latest book, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. I just finished listening to an unabridged recording and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I haven't read all her books, but the ones I have tend to fall into two categories. Some, like Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy and Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War, are interesting and sometimes speculative investigations about human history, culture and evolution.

Others, like Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America and Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream are snarky investigations of current economic and political trends. Bright-Sided is the author at her snarky best.

More on this to come.

WHILE WE'RE AT IT, the Rev. Jim Lewis also touches on this theme in the latest twilight edition of Notes from Under the Fig Tree.

WHO'D A THUNK IT, CONTINUED. Health care reform cleared another hurdle in the US Senate this weekend after having been declared DOA on more than one occasion. The lady with weight issues has not yet sung however.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, WV Senator Jay Rockefeller continues to be a champion of reform.

TOO MUCH OR TOO LITTLE? In responding to high unemployment, maybe the latter.

HOT AIR. Here's a Gazette op-ed by yours truly about climate change and WV's response to it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

BAD CROWD, GOOD CROWD

This is a very bad crowd.

As noted in yesterday's post, crowds have a generally bad reputation--one that is not altogether undeserved. But two fairly recent books talk about the good side of groups.

Let's start with the most recent. Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, recently came out with Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy.

Her main thesis is that for most of human history, until the lamentable rise of the Protestant work ethic (from which El Cabrero is striving manfully to free himself) and the subsequent bureaucratization and commodification of the world, people used to get together and get down in group celebrations that often strike modern observers as "savage."

Relics of this tradition still survive in some sports situations, in carnival (as in Mardi Gras) celebrations, and occasionally in other settings. She argues that "we need much more of this on our crowded planet, to acknowledge the miracle of our simultaneous existence with some sort of celebration."

Our old friend Nietzsche, Goat Rope's mascot of the week, pointed out long ago the two poles of human existence and culture: the Apollonian, based on individuation, reason, and moderation (named for the Greek god of music, prophecy, and measure); and the Dionysian (named for the god of the vine), in which people loose their sense of separateness through group revelry.

(While totally appreciative of the gift of the vine, I lean towards the Apollonian.)

The other book on the good side of group behavior is a little older: James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economics, Societies, and Nations, which came out in 2004.

Surowiecki writes the financial column for the "New Yorker" and this book deserves the same wide circulation as those of his fellow writer Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote Blink and The Tipping Point.

I was shocked by the title, since "wisdom" and "crowd" are two words that I rarely associate. His main thesis is that large groups of people--including people who aren't necessarily the "smartest guys in the room"--often arrive at better decisions than experts:

If you put together a big enough and diverse enough group of people and ask them to "make decisions affecting matters of general interest," that group's decisions will, over time, be "intellectually [superior] to the isolated individual," no matter how smart or well-informed he is.

And again:

The argument of this book is that chasing the expert is a mistake, and a costly one at that. We should stop hunting and ask the crowd (which of course, includes geniuses as well as everyone else)instead. Chances are it knows.

But there's a catch: it doesn't work in herds. It seems to work better if you have a diverse group of people (by almost any measure) who arrive at their decisions independently, with the results compiled and aggregated. I'd say that' s aggregated Apollonianism (with no disrespect for Dionysus). There's lots of interesting data from experiments and experience in the book that make it worth a look.

SUSPICIOUS MIDDLE EASTERN CHARACTERS. I'm talking, of course, about cats. This from the NY Times:

Some 10,000 years ago, somewhere in the Near East, an audacious wildcat crept into one of the crude villages of early human settlers, the first to domesticate wheat and barley. There she felt safe from her many predators in the region, such as hyenas and larger cats.

The rodents that infested the settlers’ homes and granaries were sufficient prey. Seeing that she was earning her keep, the settlers tolerated her, and their children greeted her kittens with delight.

That's just how it starts, however. After a few thousand years, they start horfing up hairballs on your rug and waking you up in the middle of the night. It's a conspiracy....

(If you check the picture of the Middle Eastern cat on the link and check the gratuitous animal picture in yesterday's post, you will notice a strong similarity between that cat and Goat Rope Farm's Seamus McGoogle. I'm gonna call Homeland Security...)

WHY IS IT that I'm writing more about animals than economic justice issues these days? I don't even like them all that much. I'm kind of tired of them--they're a pain in the @$$. Maybe it's because justice is elusive but animals are inescapable...at least around here.

MSHA CITES ITS OWN SHORTCOMINGS. This from Ken Ward at the Charleston Gazette:

Federal inspectors and their supervisors displayed an "unacceptable lack of accountability and oversight" prior to three major coal-mining accidents last year, the nation's top mine safety regulator said Thursday.

Inspectors missed or ignored obvious violations, agency managers failed to ensure inspectors did their jobs, and repeated safety problems were not hit with escalating enforcement actions, according to three lengthy internal reviews issued Thursday by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Richard Stickler, assistant labor secretary for MSHA, said such oversights will "not be tolerated" and announced an improvement plan the agency said "ushers in [a] new era of accountability."

Comment: fair is fair. Lots of people, including myself, criticized Stickler when he was nominated for this post by the Bush administration. I apologize: he seems to take safety very seriously and is a welcome change from the past.

Question: do you believe that things like coal mine safety should be left to the "market" or the whim of corporations? Some people do...

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED