quick thought experiment
How many species of (overwhelmingly male) power are exercised in one way or another by inflicting (not merely accepting) suffering on other people? Actual examples.
Follow-on: When I was in the army, we had a strange practice of going to the rifle ranges at the end of each fiscal quarter to shoot up all the remaining ammunition inventories. Not to train with it, or husband it as an expensive and important material (setting aside moral questions for the moment). We went out and had a supervised rifle-range free-for-all where we had rare permission to really let loose with automatic fire in training. The object was to waste the ammunition. That was the goal. Because if you had remaining inventories at the end of the quarter, that was read by the institutional feedback loops as you had more than you needed, therefore you will receive less the next quarter, and the next.
Understand, the exigencies of training calendars did not easily accommodate marksmanship and live-fire exercises to the quarters in the fiscal cycle. You might not need a lot of ammunition this quarter, but the next quarter may require a great deal in a few days. Nonetheless, the entire system was thrown out of whack if you didn’t consume ammo at a very regularized rate. The rate of consumption trumped the details of actual need. So the whole army had these quarterly ammo expenditure free-for-alls because we had to waste money to maintain access to more money.
I submit this as one actual example of dog-waggery – that institutional deformity that gets a lot of play here. May I solicit others for real-world examples of an institutional tail wagging a practical dog?
Josiah:
I think academia is basically the same. Just substitute books, articles and conference papers for bullets
.
I’m actually serious, and I say that as someone who’s getting a Phd at the moment. (In lieu of better job opportunities elsehwere). I think the institution is, arguably, as invested in indoctrination, taxpayer-subsidized waste, and cynical careerism as the military. In a way, it is also just as implicated in structural violence. That’s most obviously the case, of course, in how American universities are the world’s #1 manufacturer of neoclassical economists, neoconservative think-tank strategics, Green Revolution agro-chemists and so on.
But they’re also the world’s #1 manufacturer of a certain type of putatively radical middle-class professional. The ivory tower is to left intellectuals what the Democratic Party is to grassroots social movements. It is a vast machine for turning good, well-meaning, decent people into functionaries deeply invested in perpetuating the status quo. People are flying around the world every day to go to academic conferences to theorize about climate change and resistance global capitalism, even while living lifestyles deeply implicated in both.
Of course, you could argue that the much of the precious intellectual heritage of the past is no less implicated in rotten systems. I’m thinking of Rumi here. He was born in Afghanistan about eight centuries ago, and his family had to flee the “unipolar” power of his day, the Mongol Empire, to Konya in what is now Turkey. He wrote some of the most beautiful poetry in history after an angry crowd of his own disciples killed his spiritual teacher, Mehmet ?emseddin Tebrizi. They were angry that he wasn’t giving them enough attention.
Sorry for rambling L). I guess I’m saying that intellectual production has been bound up in systems of empire, feudalism, slavery, patriarchy, etc., for thousands of years, even while (at times) creating things that seem to cut at the heart of structural violence and oppression. Certainly, for me, Rumi’s poetry (again, written in reaction to impassioned male violence against other men) does exactly that.
Can things enabled by a rotten system challenge it, or are they always part of its perpetuation?
2 May 2012, 4:51 pmMichael Anderson:
Recycling, reusing:
When I worked at a local RV manufacturer in the 90′s (now defunct because of the economy), and at a place that built barcode scanners (since outsourced to Asian production) I saw stuff going into the garbage that was generally 1 of 2 things—-reusable or extremely toxic. When I inquired about REUSING some things in the trash (generally new or nearly new), the reply was—-no one is to touch the stuff in the dumpster, because it could be industrial espionage. Guilty, and never proven innocent. A false reality of Corporate paranoia rules…
2 May 2012, 7:06 pmAndy:
I think it’s a reality of the corporate world, as well. I hear stories of departments buying stuff they don’t use, just so the budget numbers will show the same when accounting time comes. Some of it, I suspect, is just a way for middle and senior managers to maintain power on their piece of the pie. There is also the possibility sometimes that the managers have genuine concern for their subordinates, and do what they can to justify to their superiors the need for the current workforce. On the other hand, the seniors may know the numbers better, and may offer personal incentives to their subordinates, who save money through layoffs.
What I said is all speculation based on similar stories of buying or using up useless/surplus assets/services to justify budgets, and from there just assume how a bottom-line mind might operate. I could be way off. I’m just a low-tier computer guy where I work, at a mid-size investment firm no less. Wont’ say who, just telling you who writes my checks currently
A man on our team did a lot of IT contract work for the Army, and learned how things really work. His politics are nowhere near the Left by any stretch, but he admitted the huge waste that goes on. I asked him in his opinion, how much thinks goes down the drain. He figures about 2/3!
2 May 2012, 9:37 pmLatte Lenya:
On the level of local governnment:
Schools which need to diagnose a certain number of kids with learning disabilities (and medication) so they can justify staff numbers. So they come up with new diagnoses all the time, i.e., oppositional-defiant disorder, (pissed off kid), ADD (creative kid), auditory processing disorder (bored kid), etc…
Police depts that need to generate a certain amount of criminals to justify their budgets and suspension of liberties and general stance in the community, so they provoke and taunt groups of working class kids until the kids do something that justifies a police response. Meanwhile police benefits and pensions are being slashed on the state level by tea-partiers.
Depts of transportation that make work in the summer, bridge-to-nowhere kind of projects, usually aesthetically and environmentally destructive, so they can count on more money for the same next year.
None of these people are bad. Their job insecurities put them in positions that pit them against the rest of the community and keep everybody cynical, irritated, and distracted from the real issues that should bring us together.
3 May 2012, 7:07 amMichael Anderson:
@ Andy—I agree. I also think the companies I worked for COULD have been good citizens and separated and donated materials….but that, of course, would take up too much time and effort—NOT contributing to efficiency! The machine again.
3 May 2012, 1:48 pmMichael Anderson:
…and all that crap goes in a landfill….for future generations to deal with.
3 May 2012, 1:54 pmm.c.:
@LatteLenya:
I remember reading an article in probably the Atlantic Monthly or Harpers Monthly sometime in the 1990′s or early 2000′s. I don’t remember the name of the author or what the central topic was. What I remember was the author interviewing the then Dean of Harvard Medical School. On the first day of Med School for incoming first year students he gave them an introductory speech in a large auditorium. One of the things he said was, “10 years from now 50% of what we teach you will prove to be wrong. But we don’t know which 50% so we’re going to teach you everything.”
4 May 2012, 12:51 pmMy point is the practice of medicine and more narrowly here, psychiatry/psychology/social work/developmental teaching specialist evaluation/ etc. are not exact sciences. Are they more useful than Astrologers & Alchemists? Probably, but there are many type of intelligence and many ways of measuring intelligence and learning disorders.
Justin Liu:
@Josiah, thanks for raising some good points about academia. I think rather than the structure you describe being integral to science or other areas of study, I think the universities and other academic institutional are mirroring the greater economy. One of the fundamental truth about our society is that those who control the incentives/money/prestige controls the product, same is true in the universities. It’s become painfully apparent that for all intents and purposes polisci majors that come out of our prestigious institutes of higher learning have become the function equivalent of Soviet apparatchiks, there to defend the legitimacy of power. They make a career in thinktanks categorized by ideological alignment and rewarded for conformity and propagandizing rather than challenging ideas. And considering that thinktanks are the most direct conversion of cash to ideological influence, it just reinforces our system of money = power.
5 May 2012, 1:25 pmLatte Lenya:
@m.c.:
Although I don’t doubt the sincerity of the various professionals involved in educational medicine (a term I just coined), that doesn’t change the fact that the end result does immeasurable harm to the minds of young people.
I suppose a good analogy would be war. The many courageous and loyal soldiers on a mission don’t alter the fundamental immorality of the war.
What is the point of ‘measuring intelligence’? The very fact of different kinds of intelligence means it is impossible to measure. Turning human potential into measurable units keeps people employed, and as young people keep turning into adults, the system keeps needing more young people to measure and find deficient and medicate.
Up to a third of the student body can be on medication of one kind or another (this is the case with the school where I work), but nobody wonders if it’s the school that has a problem.
At this point in the conversation, I am usually assured that ‘there is no conspiracy,’ as if standing back and noticing that there is a system at work is tantamount to a paranoid mental disorder. But there doesn’t need to be a conspiracy. Well-intentioned staff will do as much damage as sinister megalomaniacs, for a lot less money.
OWS notwithstanding, young people have been taken out as an organized political force, or a disorganized one, for that matter. They are in many ways a lot more
conservative than their grandparents.
Dog-waggery only seems absurd and wasteful if your framework of understanding is too small. These are actually efficient systems for the transfer of wealth and power.
5 May 2012, 3:56 pmHenry:
Debunking Handbook
http://www.skepticalscience.com/docs/Debunking_Handbook.pdf
5 May 2012, 11:58 pmTom:
Thanks for the link, Henry. Interesting, informative and concise.
6 May 2012, 7:36 ammichele:
Food wastage all over the world..in Vienna, we throw out about a half ton of bread every day. One reason cited is safety issues; another is that there is no write-off for it.
6 May 2012, 9:41 amIt is the same in the states. So many times, various groups i belonged to, approached businesses about donating food or goods. The answer was often that the liability was too great. i have never heard of a homeless person suing someone for a loaf of bread that made their stomach upset, or a blanket that kept them warm..
michele:
Oh..one other example here in Austria is the recycling industry. i can walk less than a block to dispose of plastic, paper, metal, or biologic trash..which is pretty cool. The problem here is that there is a real lack of public education about how things need to be readied for disposal. Another problem is the corporate end of recycling. Businesses sell their own compostable bags and are rewarded for doing so..but there isn’t enough oversight to ensure that their bags are the proper content of potato starch to be considered compostable. i am sure there are many other ways that industry drives good practice in recycling, instead of the other way round..but those are the ones that are prominent in my mind.
6 May 2012, 9:47 amMichael Anderson:
recycling….2-liter Pepsi bottles “recycled” here go to a landfill in India. American feel good, Indian get shit on.
http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/Dumping-Pepsi-Plastic-India94.htm
6 May 2012, 1:28 pmm.c.:
This statistic I heard today; The U.S. creates 40% of the World’s garbage/trash, from 5% of the World’s population.
6 May 2012, 3:07 pmCompared with most of the Advanced Industrial & Post-Industrial Economies the U.S. has relatively low taxes on Consumption, including Petroleum.
Curt:
This comment should perhaps go to aphilsophical publication like the Princeton Law Review rather than a practical web site like FS.
14 May 2012, 5:42 pmThe comment is; Is privacy, or secrets, really good for anything at all other than making babies? CooCoo clocks perhaps?
I bet no one touches that with a Taser.
Robert Karaffa:
I’ll touch that.
14 May 2012, 9:01 pmRobert Karaffa:
@Curt. Just wrote a huge long post. And deleted it. Don’t want to hijack anything here. Have read your stuff here for a long time. Your turn to elaborate on this one if you wish and if moderation allows.
14 May 2012, 9:38 pmRobert Karaffa:
I’ll start actually. I know what secrecy and privacy are supposed to mean in a multiplicity of socioligical contexts. But I don’t believe they actually exist.
14 May 2012, 9:46 pmRobert Karaffa:
And I don’t always spell well! Sociological. And really no agenda. Want thoughts.
14 May 2012, 9:55 pmCurt:
Robert, When I woke up this morning I did not know that you would be ringing my doorbell. Yes I did have a well researched and thoght out Anthropoligical Study prepared.
15 May 2012, 3:14 amIt will not take long to write. Here it is.
Once upon a time some people aquired more wealth than others. With that wealth they created privacy. Those people who were not so wealthy saw that privacy was nice.
Those with privacy had more children. As they were wealthly and their privacy contribted to being able to maintain their wealth they could better care for their children and more of thier children survived to adulthood.
Thousands of years passed. During that time no one questioned what people actually do with their privacy and what effects it has on society. Then along came the income tax.
At first no one paid much attention because it was small and only applied to rich people. But after a few decades had past it had become a burden on rich people. So they used their laws to create loop holes that they could use to avoid taxes in general income taxes in particular. There was a constant tug of war between those seeking to close the loop wholes and those seeking to create new ones. Then someone who was in favor of protecting the wealth of those who had already become wealthy made a connection between privacy and income taxes. Privacy is good for everyone but it is much much better for those who have something to hide. In addition to that their wealth gives them much grater resources to hide just what it is that they want to hide. This concept could also be applied to taxes. A call for tax cuts in general and a flat tax in particular could work just like the need for privacy which not only is no longer questioned in is even greatly promoted by those that it does the most harm to.
That brings us up to 2012.
Last night, or perhaps it was early this morning that I raalized that privacy is connected to the problem that humans usually act for their own self intrests, or that of their family, or in some cases their tribe rathter than for the common good. The risks of acting in the common good are great the reward small. But privacy is one of the key components of allowing powerful vested intrests to extract a price from those that would publically oppose them.
Once privacy were eliminated there would still be a problem with how to level the playing field in terms of accessing information as the potential amount is so large. Also there is the problem of how to train people so that the many people with average intellegence do not get manipulated by a group of highly intellegent people working together.
Josiah:
@ Justin Liu, I think the distinction you make is crucial.
One of my favorite quotes on this site’s Memebar is from Stan: “War technology is science in the service of vandalism.” Unfortunately, much of the biggest non-military science these days is no different.
My other favorite is from Jason Marks, which (to paraphrase from memory, because I can’t find it) is, “The dominant system of resource extraction and human exploitation is like the Titanic. Instead of walking around the deck with placards reading “This system sucks,” it’s better to focus on building an alternative.”
I just discovered his book, “Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots,” and it’s fantastic. There are interviews with great people like Gopal Dyaneni, Lois Gibbs and Maude Barlow. There are a lot of (largely unsung) folks doing what we might call science in the service of mending/healing. To return to the theme of this thread, these sorts of people have found ways to challenge/sidestep the institutional imperatives that keep us on the treadmill of waste and social status-seeking. And I admire that a great deal.
15 May 2012, 1:22 pmRobert Karaffa:
Thanks Curt. Last third (privacy/self interests) was where I was mostly headed. Privacy as a construction that is used for one set of goals by a limited few while remaining defined in the minds of most as something it is not. May ring that doorbell again sometime.
15 May 2012, 2:15 pmCurt:
Robert,
15 May 2012, 5:27 pmIn one of my posts that I wrote yesterday I was mocking the book 1984 which at one time was almost like a Bible to me. People who are not murders, rapists, child molestors, or muggers should not fear a society in which there are cameras everywhere recording what is going on in the streets. Now as you probally recall, but perhaps some younger readers might be unaware of, in the story 1984 cameras were in every room of our home and work place.
Work is NOT a private activity it is a SOCIAL activity. So why should there not be cameras in every office and on every assembly line, in every mine, and in every construction site?
Here are some reasons that I think that a normal person might be oppossed to such potential survaelence. One it is very difficult for the information that is on all of these survaelence tapes to be widely dissemented. Normal working people would not have time to watch them. It would be representives who would have access to the tapes by default. Would these representatives be representatives of the working people or of the rulers?
I think that theoretically everyone should have access to all survaelence tapes under the freedom of information act. What I would strongly suggest is that in addition to the police being able to review survaelence tapes they would also be reviewed by newspaper reporters and representives of political parties. As I stated working people do not have time to be amatuer Stazi agents. Perhaps if the work week were reduced to 36 or 32 hours a week some people might like to make it a hobby.
Two, people who are not rapists or child molestors but do work in contraversial professions such as drug dealing or prostitution or gun dealing, or spray painting or disseminating anti government pamphlets or racist pamphlets or pamphlets for a despised religion, or who want to do a multitude of other things that many other people in society do not want them to do could also be really irritated by agents of the government knowing what, when, and where they are doing such things. I guess that my response to that such survaelence will help sharpen the legitimate conflicts with in a society
and actually resolve these conflicts if handeled through a jury nullification court system which I have written about before.
Third if the government knows that certian people represent a threat to the government it would be harder to organize a revolt against an illegitimate government if the police know who all of the associates of potential rebellious leaders are. I do not have a counter to this arguement. In a society with wide spread intensive survaelence any potential rebels will clearly be at least initially clearly at a disadvantage. At least some of the time that will be a good thing as rebels are not always the good guys.
Fourth, corporations can use survaellence to learn more about us and use that info to manipulate us. Perhaps that is a good reason to support Parecon.
Survaelence by the government inside people homes clearly goes to far. That leaves a really big blind spot for terrible crimes to go unpunished.
In the world of 1984 not only is electronic survaelnce wide spread but so is human survalence. I think that this could also usually be a good thing.
The Hells Angles or Banditos or Costra Nostra would have never gained a foothold in East Germany. Furthermore government agents should be infiltrating continuing criminal enterprises not only to know what they are up to but also to try to alter the devolopement of the memmbers in a more enlightened direction.
Birds of a feather flock together. People trying to live an honest life seldom associate themselves with those who do not try to live an honest life unless they happen to be related. So if dishonest people are only associating with other dishonest people who are they going to have to challenge them and question their way of life. This applies not only to the people on Madison Ave. NY but also Rhode Island Ave. D.C. Who will set a good example in such environments except for a government agent who would be paid to accept such risks? A tantric Buddhist Monk perhaps?
Hill:
On quick thought experiment…, Insane actions within an insane social structure…there can be nothing intelligible or sane. We can ONLY continue to degenerate. 1600-2012 I’m sorry for being so wordy…(<;
16 May 2012, 4:28 pmpetra gallert:
Stan–
23 May 2012, 4:08 pmthe ammo you shot (used) up made room for “new product” from the manufacturer, as you well know. And congress critters are happy to have manufactures of such in their districts.
I sat in on Health Advisory Council meeting at Shaw (over 20 yrs ago) where TPTB concluded to hospitalize enlisted in dorms if they showed up sick but could, technically, be released back into their dorms. Why? to justify number of beds in hospital. Parallel to what you saw.
Given the relatively recent study that found hospitals, doctors as huge causes of patient suffering if not death, the policy of that HAC was likely to cause suffering.
More historically, you’re likely more aware than I how much suffering has been caused by the “medical profession” in the 19th C to women. Deidre English, Sandra Gilbert, and later Natalie Angier wrote about that.
petra gallert:
PS: the study I was thinking of is by Barbara Starfield, in JAMA, 2000.
23 May 2012, 4:46 pmcabdriver:
If you haven’t read this, you should-
Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: Inside Dartmouth’s Hazing Abuses
A Dartmouth degree is a ticket to the top – but first you may have to get puked on by your drunken friends and wallow in human filth
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/confessions-of-an-ivy-league-frat-boy-inside-dartmouths-hazing-abuses-20120328#ixzz1wC6GmpDO
28 May 2012, 2:26 pmStan:
Facebooking
29 May 2012, 7:10 amJosiah:
Two passages that are especially revealing:
“Dartmouth was one of the last of the Ivies to admit women, in 1972, and only in the face of fierce resistance from alumni. In 1986, conservative students armed with sledgehammers attacked a village of symbolic shanties erected on campus to protest South African apartheid. More recently, students assailed members of an Occupy vigil at Dartmouth, heckling them with cries of “Faggots! Occupy my asshole!”
[...] “Or, as one of Lohse’s SAE brothers puts it: “Having a 3.7 and being the president of a hard-guy frat is far more valuable than having a 4.0 and being independent when it comes to going to a place like Goldman Sachs. And that corporate milieu mirrors the fraternity culture.”
29 May 2012, 9:44 amm.c.:
This is my opinion so I’ll take any grief for it. I read the Rolling Stone article and it didn’t surprise me. Our last two Treasury Secs. are Dartmouth guys.
29 May 2012, 11:40 amIMO the most Country Club(upper class undergraduate populations; graduate schools, professional schools, profs. & univ. staff being slightly more pluralistic.) of the elite Universities in the U.S. are in no particular order: Dartmouth, Yale, Princeton, and Duke. True, they accept poor kids from the wrong side of the tracks and give them financial aid but if you look at the percentages these are probably the big 4. Heavily represented in Wall St. and other NYC white collar big money jobs.
Michael Anderson:
The Yale Skull and Bones Initiation—lying in a casket naked with a candle confessing your sexual indiscretions to your prospective housemates. Didn’t “Animal House” do a right enough parody on this bullshit?
Association is one of the features of human existence that helps give our lives some meaning—-our interactions & relations with other humans shape our perceptions and more importantly, our conscience. When there is no conscience and/or the conscience is centered on sociopathic associations and activities, like making boatloads of fictional money in a “game” & the pursuit of power and privilege, well, we get what we got.
29 May 2012, 12:08 pmMichael Anderson:
@ Stan: Facebooking as dog-waggery? Bingo! I would agree, at this point. Let’s hope it fades away, since it’s become a public corporation now…..this from a person who has an account, and deleted it once already. I reinstated it to use as a medium, more or less, for publicizing musical events, but I think saturation was reached a long time ago.
Not to mention the privacy thing (!)
29 May 2012, 12:20 pmRuss Seibert Sr.:
Am retired now but I worked in computer rooms both private and government. You could always tell the end of the fiscal year was coming because the supervisor would go around and ask everyone if they needed new equipment like a new PC or anything really. Same reason as Stan stated, if you do not spend your budget allotment, you get reduced next year.
4 June 2012, 11:59 amL.D. Stroyo:
Regarding the thought experiment, in my own view our (US at least) dominant system of organization seems to be some kind of kleptocracy. If I’m using the wrong word, I mean to say that it seems to be based on stealing/wasting/covering up same. I am just noticing patterns in my own area of experience and observation where waste is tolerated as Stan’s situation of the ammo being wasted to insure future funding. My train of thought has derailed to the point where I can’t offer any examples of my own, but the behavior exists in seemingly the same way from the US government down to the smallest business. I think it better to talk about possible solutions, and the first thing that pops into my head regarding the ammo situation was “why not just hide all that ammo somewhere and pretend it got fired?” saving it for a rainy day, sell it at the gun show for beer money or to fund some more important activity. Like, if the System itself is broke, is it wrong not to follow it’s rules?
6 June 2012, 12:19 amStan:
Driving home from the Dominicans’ Permaculture Office yesterday, and noticed a truck crossing an intersection. Male driver. Big pit bull in the passenger seat. Giant tires, black paint job, loud pipes. Driver with shaved head and a ‘tude. Some kind of decal on the truck (mental lapse on specifics) that was (as is the case with many men) designed to intimidate. My own mind got tangled up with the word “intimidate.” To provoke timidity in others. Many men, in so many ways, seem to be compelled to put on these masks and acquire these props that are meant to intimidate. Then it occurred to me that this is — like the nuclear weapons of the Cold War — seen as a deterrent. It is motivated by fear, which is disguised as aggression. Without it, without these cultural artifacts of intimidation, these men fear something. For a long time after I was shot once, I went armed. Months and months, I carried a concealed firearm. Men fear men; and given this cycle of fear-intimidation-arms race, there are good reasons for both men and women to fear a lot of men. Because the arms race aspect of it, the one-upmanship aspect of it, is the driver of probative masculinity. And the only way out, it seems to me, at least speaking for some men, is to disrupt the cycle by becoming intentionally meek… for lack of a better word. We need to become participants in a movement of men who are meek (it is an alliterated movement). If there is any courage in that, then it has to come without the bluster. Even and especially when we are dealing with other men who are still trapped in the compulsion to intimidate. Thoughts before tea. The first question in this thread seems to have been neglected in favor of the second, so I’m raising it again. What are the examples of masculinity construed as cruelty? The outcome of aforementioned arms race.
7 June 2012, 5:24 amJosiah:
On that note, check this out:
http://books.google.com/books?id=QxHMc3hwCqMC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
7 June 2012, 8:52 amJosiah:
A friend of mine was recently shot by a crazed man in broad daylight while walking to work. The bullet passed through his side but miraculously did not puncture any vital organs.
I don’t know anything about this man. Since this happened in the morning, my guess is that he was hopped up on something all night, and hyped himself up to mug somebody but couldn’t contain his nerves. My guess is also that he is an extremely marginal individual, deinstitutionalized in the recent past, maybe off his meds, homeless or semi-homeless.
In the masculine pecking order, this is someone who is close to the lowest of the low. I imagine that, through that insane act of violence, he got to feel very powerful for a brief moment. He got to terrify somebody else and briefly be on top.
I think that kind of rush from power is something all kinds of violent men are seeking, all the way up the social status hierarchy to the likes of Donald Rumsfeld or Donald Trump. Their violence was externalized from their own posh surroundings through a vast institutional machine, though. Men on the bottom of society get their rush by lashing out at those in their tiny sphere of influence, whether their families or strangers down the block. The fact that some will do these things is predictable; who, where, why, when and how is unfortunately not. I know many of my female friends are carrying pepper spray; one recently bought a gun. I’m not ready to take that step, but if it’s a matter of self-defense I don’t disparage the decision to be armed.
I linked to Finkelstein’s book on Gandhi because he makes a very important distinction, IMO between non-violence and cowardice. Gandhi believed, as I think King did as well, that true non-violence is the bravest thing of all. And bravery, needless to say, does not have a gender.
7 June 2012, 9:12 amBruce F:
In answer to Stan’s question “What are the examples of masculinity construed as cruelty?”, a song comes to mind.
A Boy Named Sue.
lyrics – http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/johnnycash/aboynamedsue.html
The whole thing is played as a joke, but I think the reason it’s been so popular is because it touches on some truths. A man gives his son a girls name to ‘toughen him up’, because the dad knew he wasn’t going to stick around to help raise his son. (And give him the armor/mask/attitudes he assumes his son will need to “make it”?).
In a nice little twist, the grown boy almost kills his father in a bar fight. “Proving” the wisdom of the father’s decision to name his son Sue.
7 June 2012, 10:03 amMichael Anderson:
“Terrorism”.
Terrorism works, on the intimidation level as well as the physical level. Not just those stereotypes of the Brown Muslim “other”, with (of course)big noses, dicks, and guns; but also seeing pics of (overwhelmingly white male)soldiers @ Abu Ghraib and wherever the “black” prisons are, reading about it, hearing about conditions in prisons generally. The trophy hunts in Afghanistan. The NYPD knocking down OWS people.
For the Suburban Metropolitan Core experiencing reality through the screen, it is intimidation and cruelty. And a set of behavioral standards.
http://www.thenation.com/article/tortures-dirty-secret-it-works
“As an interrogation tool, torture is a bust. But when it comes to social control, nothing works quite like torture.”
Also, the Evangelical Christian Strong Father Figure, who just might beat the living daylights out of you if you misbehave or don’t believe correctly. Unmentioned, of course, is that he might rape you, too. Not that that doesn’t occur elsewhere, like in the military.
Lots of those pickups around here (Coos Bay), Stan. Saw one that had a set of (large) chrome testicles hanging on the trailer hitch. Big older Ford 4WD, not so big older guy. We ended up at the same hardware store. Didn’t want to engage him in conversation.
I had a C&C card for a number of years, and let it expire and sold the guns. For the first time in 48 years, I was unarmed. One thing it does is make you very aware of living by your principles, and how vulnerable you are to violence. But the thing about THAT is that the reality of it is that violence actually happens much less than it is construed to happen, by those who are afraid or those who want to exploit that fear. The fear card is right on the money—another thing Bob Altermeyer mentions in his book, “The Authoritarians”.
Here’s a link to an op-ed in the Eugene R-G about C&C, and how it affects behavior:
http://www.registerguard.com/web/opinion/28152397-47/concealed-handgun-safe-county-lane.html.csp
I don’t agree with everything he says, but there are some illuminating comments:
“As a retired law enforcement officer I carried a concealed handgun on and off duty for decades. For the uninitiated, I want to identify some of the hidden costs that come with a concealed weapon license fee.”
The first hidden cost is your loss of innocence. Because the perception of danger is more pervasive than the reality of danger, hyper-vigilance becomes the sluice that separates the nuggets from the nuts. Situations that otherwise might be ignored or avoided now will be viewed through the sights of a .357, 9 millimeter, or .45 caliber handgun, and the call to action will be sounded.”
“Downtime at home becomes guard time. What good is a personal safety weapon in the home if it is not readily available? The burglar, armed robber or rapist no longer lives in the newspaper story or nightly newscast; he now is an uninvited guest in your home. Of course kids and visitors must be kept away from the guns unless they, too, are packing. Special care also needs to be taken when both the six packs and the six shooters are handy.”
And—it sells guns. Bottom line.
7 June 2012, 12:29 pmcabdriver:
Plenty there to ponder, Stan. I’d like to add some thoughts, but it’s late…I’ll do it when my mind is clear, and I have time to write.
In the meantime, here’s an interesting article from the 5/7/2012 New Yorker, on women’s boxing:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/05/07/120507fa_fact_levy
Just the abstract, unfortunately- the rest is behind a pay wall. You can probably find the issue easily in recent magazines, in the library.
A sample quote from the article:
“…Hal Adonis, a retired high-school principal who has been president of USA boxing since 2009, is a rickety white man in his seventies with rheumy eyes and hair the color and texture of Donal Trump’s. He was dressed in a USA Boxing tracksuit with the word “President” stitched on the chest when he met me for a breakfast of eggs and coffee. He has never had a problem with women’s boxing, he said. His criteria for exclusion have nothing to do with gender. “When kids call me up, I say, ‘Let me ask you an honest question: have your parents ever hit you?’ If they say no, I say, ‘I don’t think you belong in boxing.’
Adonis himself was qualified to box because “may father invented child abuse,” he said with an incongruous smile. “I learned how to play chess when I was six years old. My father would have a strap and smack me across the face if I made a wrong move. So when I got on the streets and got into boxing, I was so used to getting hit that it was like Hey, this is nothing! When he trained kids, he said, before a fight I’d start smacking them real hard in the face. Because you can feel, in boxing, the first couple of punches. After that, the endorphins kick in and it’s like someone gave you Novocain.”…
“…many people share Adonis’ belief that a childhood scorched by abuse is advantageous to a boxer…”
Many, many gender-related questions are brought up in the article, as well.
What prompted me to think of the article in relation to this topic is a quote from a letter printed in the magazine in response by Joyce Carol Oates, whose essay “On Boxing” was quoted there:
“…I suggest in ‘On Boxing’ that “the machismo of boxing” is, at least in part, a condition of poverty; in an ideal society, professional boxing would cease to exist.”
Related: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/story/2012-04-16/Saints-bounty-lawsuit/54317976/1
Not to be overlooked: the comment section.
A reminder that it’s all fun and games, until somebody gets seriously hurt:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=football-concussions-felt-long-after-retirement
http://www.cbc.ca/sports/story/2001/05/16/nfl-concussions010516.html
I’ve never been a hardcore sports fan, but I’ve certainly been known to enjoy watching games from time to time. Unfortunately, the mounting evidence about concussion injuries is definitely giving me second thoughts about my enthusiasm for enjoying football.
11 June 2012, 2:26 amcabdriver:
An epigram from a blog comment writer that I read on-line a while back, which seems to me fairly insightful:
“Alpha males are the most insecure of them all.”
‘Alpha male’ is a sociobiological construct, of course. I do happen to think that human identities and social realities are partially constructed by the same sort of sociobiological factors as other primates, a stance which often places me at variance with both Marxist doctrine and interpretations of Christian thought that discount any modeling of the human condition that upholds congruency with the social roles of mere apes and monkeys.
However, since I do consider myself a Christian seeker, I also recognize that the human species carries the stewardship of something unique- the uniquely advanced potential of our consciousness. Humans share at least the capability of minding our own decisions as a common capacity, rather than being mostly captive to instincts and driven by drives, so to speak.
The Jews modeled the identity early on, of course, as the “animal soul” and “angel soul”, considering it a dichotomy with which humans continually struggle. I agree with that conceptualization, at least as far as I understand it. It amounts to a reminder that “enlightenment” or “conscious evolution” in humans is a continuing process- and that as such it works quite differently than Darwinian biological evolution through genetic mutation.
In biological evolution, a species gets, say, opposable thumbs as genetic inheritance, and that’s that. But in humans, it’s difficult if not utterly spurious to claim that once the ‘angel soul’ is acknowledged, that it proceeds inexorably to transcend the ‘animal soul’ as a linear upgrade. The animal soul sort of remains as the default position, so to speak. And constant vigilance and reflection is required to turn the commands of the animal soul aside- sensual gratification, reification of pack status and power concerns, raw biochemical states like lust and rage, etc.- when they conflict with thought formulations and decisions that cultivate the ‘angel soul’ of truly advanced consciousness- ‘moral law’, justice’, long-term foresight’, ‘concern for the well-being of others’, and so on.
11 June 2012, 8:40 amcabdriver:
Moderator, for the reader’s sake I’d appreciate it if you’d edit a couple of typos in one of my posts above for clarity. Suggested corrections are in bold.
“my father” for “may father”
and
“…When he trained kids, he said, “ before a fight…”
(And then delete this comment as superfluous.)
11 June 2012, 8:48 amMichael Anderson:
This vid may be stating the obvious….that technological advancement is driven by the military. It addresses both the idea of industrial policy….part of the system, or having a systemic approach, and posits that the military IS the systemic approach, in the U.S., and, quite possibly, the rest of the industrialized world. And, I wonder, in every civilization/empire that has risen and fallen.
You spoke of men becoming meek. Looks like this embraces a lot of the present day technology, also defined by the word “progress”. Is progress symptomatic of sociopathic, probative masculinity?
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=8410
11 June 2012, 10:01 amJosiah:
One more thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M__gPKB1z5s
12 June 2012, 11:34 pmmichele:
Michael, what you speak of reminds me so much of a book i am reading: “Technics and Civilization” by Lewis Mumford.
13 June 2012, 10:51 amHe speaks of the army as “a body of pure consumers..In war, moreover, the army is not merely a pure consumer but a negative producer: that is to say, it produces illth..instead of wealth-misery, mutilation, physical destruction, terror, starvation and death characterize the process of war and form a principal part of the product.”
Michael Anderson:
Thanks, Michele….seems like I’ve been so disheartened lately that some things have become very clear. Can’t change them, have to change me. Non-violence as a course of action, or INACTION, is a somewhat terrifying prospect, unless you’ve made your peace with death. I know a woman whose father was one of the original Freedom Riders in the 60′s. They made out their wills and signed them before going on the ride.
Martha Stout said in her book that approximately 4% of the entire human population operates without a conscience. Bob Altermeyer talks about the compartmentalized thinking these people do. 4% of 7 billion is 280 million—-that’s a lot of trouble brewing in one form or another. They seem to prefer business, politics, and the military—-occupations of power, but it can take other, more passive forms, like the insights that came out of Milgram’s obedience experiments about “Cold Evil”, and some are your garden variety (!) sociopaths who ruin lives in other ways.
We have to look this stuff in the eye and admit it exists. Then comes the hard part—trying to show love and compassion in the face of it. It does make one feel rather meek. Maybe that’s the only way—I don’t know.
14 June 2012, 5:09 pmMichael Anderson:
Wave of Violence Swallows More Women in Juárez
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/world/americas/wave-of-violence-swallows-more-women-in-juarez-mexico.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120624
24 June 2012, 1:38 pmStan:
Lord, have mercy.
25 June 2012, 5:39 pmHenry:
Didn’t know where to post this, but it is urgent. Please help.
==============
Navy to deafen 15,900 whales and dolphins and kill 1,800 more
Enough already with the out of control spending on weaponry. Show this to your Congressional representatives or economist friends if they ever tell you that, “that Keynesian stuff doesn’t work.”
We spend on military hardware without limit; there’s mysteriously never a need to raise taxes, nor is there difficulty finding money to create these weapons systems.
Enough!
Spend on finding the cure for cancer, health care (not giving trillions to insurance companies so that we have…insurance), basic science, education, infrastructure.
This is sick. The U.S. military already has enough weaponry to kill all the life on this planet 10 times over. Why is it necessary to kill whales and dolphins in such huge numbers. Not cool, Navy…not cool.
—
To be delivered to: U.S. Navy EIS Comments
Stop the killing of 1,800 whales and dolphins and the deafening of 15,900 more by ceasing the operation of the Navy’s underwater sound system in the Hawaiian Islands, the California and Atlantic Coasts, and the Gulf of Mexico.
The Navy is required to include comments on their Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) re: the use of high frequency underwater sound for testing in Hawaii, the California and Atlantic Coasts, and the Gulf of Mexico. According to their estimates it will deafen more than 15,900 whales and dolphins and kill 1,800 more over the next 5 years. Whales and dolphins depend on sound to navigate and live. Your signature and comment will have to be included in the EIS and could stop this Naval program, potentially saving the lives of these ocean creatures. The comments must be in by July 10, 2012.
NEW goal – We need 75,000 signatures
There are currently 53,280 signatures
Please go here to sign-up”
http://signon.org/sign/navy-under-water-sound?source=homepage
3 July 2012, 1:30 pmcharles:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2177048/Savannah-Dietrich-Teen-faces-jail-lashing-Twitter-naming-boys-sexually-assaulted-her.html?ICO=most_read_module
23 July 2012, 12:22 pmdavid:
Dog waggery has been going on for a long time. In the early 70s I worked on a Mississippi River operation for the Corps of Engineers. The federal employee bookkeeper for the operation, near retirement age, recalled that during the 1930s, at the end of the season’s operation, if there was material left over, such as spools of cable, everything would be dumped overboard. This was to ensure that the operation would be fully funded for the following year.
31 July 2012, 1:23 pmcabdriver:
” May I solicit others for real-world examples of an institutional tail wagging a practical dog?”
Here’s a noteworthy example:
http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2013/01/15/kids-for-cash
I heard about this story just yesterday, driving through central Pa. listening to a local public radio station, WITF… WITF, indeed.
16 January 2013, 10:54 pmStan:
damn
17 January 2013, 12:33 pmcabdriver:
I heard that story on Tuesday- here’s a story from the Washington Post this morning- similar phenomenon, different state:
Students sent from classroom to courtroom across Mississippi, report says
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/students-sent-from-classroom-to-courtroom-across-mississippi-report-says/2013/01/16/6b04f1ac-5ff9-11e2-b05a-605528f6b712_story.html
“…Called “Handcuffs on Success,” the report asserts that zero-tolerance and other harsh discipline approaches “fail to make schools safer” and push tens of thousands of students out of classes, sometimes with police involvement.
The report says that in Jackson public schools just 4 percent of school-based arrests in the 2010-2011 school year were for conduct that seriously threatened students, staff or the school.
In Holmes County, according to the report, school officials referred a 5-year-old to police for wearing shoes that were not the required solid black color. According to the report, the principal told the boy’s mother the child was being “taught a lesson.”
Suspension rates in several Mississippi school systems are more than nine times the national average, the report says…”
17 January 2013, 9:10 pmcabdriver:
To return to the Luzerne County, Pa. story:
Here’s a link to the Juvenile Law Center files on the scandal:
http://www.jlc.org/current-initiatives/promoting-fairness-courts/luzerne-kids-cash-scandal
Excerpt from the summary
“…The scope of the violations of the children’s rights in Luzerne County turned out to be more egregious than anyone could have imagined. From 2003 to 2008, the Luzerne County judicial corruption scandal altered the lives of more than 2500 children and involved more than 6000 cases. Over 50 percent of the children who appeared before Ciavarella lacked legal representation; 60 percent of these children were removed from their homes. Many of them were sent to one or both of the two facilities at the center of the corruption scandal. Believed to be the largest judicial corruption scandal in our history,the story was featured in a 2009 episode of ABC’s “20/20…”
I also thought I’d note that the entirety of the audio program that I listened to is included in the first link I supplied- re-posting it here http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2013/01/15/kids-for-cash
It’s a little over 15 minutes.
The entirety of the program is worth hearing, but for me, the chilling part is found near the end, beginning from about the 14:27 mark and running to 15:00.
As noted, this scandal went on for 5 years without drawing any serious scrutiny from the residents of Luzerne County- despite reports in local papers that referrals into their local juvenile justice system amounted to several times the number in neighboring areas.
A few quick stats from the 2010 US Census concerning Luzerne County:
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/42/42079.html
Total Luzerne County population- approximately 321,000
number of Luzerne County residents between 5 and 18- 14.9%, or approximately 48,000
From the JLC page:
Number of youth adjudicated delinquent by ex-judge Mark Ciavarella in the “kids-for-cash” scandal whose records were expunged by Special Master Judge Grim: 2,251
So, as a quick and dirty estimate: it appears that around 5% of the residents of Luzerne County between 5 and 18 were locked up in the local juvenile jail at least once in the years 2003-2008. And it’s reasonable to surmise that those percentages rise even higher for children between 11 and 18.
In other words, the residents of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania- including the parents- passively assented to having a huge percentage of their own teenagers arrested, locked up in juvenile court, and branded with criminal convictions, by virtually unanimous consensus. Until one fateful day when the daughter of a local social worker was arrested for writing graffiti on a traffic sign, and the mother wouldn’t bow at the altar of Tough Love. After five years of that nonsense.
To me, that’s a community to worry about.
I think that it’s also worth pondering the notion that it’s entirely possible that racism or ethnic bigotry may not loom very large as a primary motivator for this attitude of widespread community acceptance of the Draconian approach to school discipline- at least not directly. Luzerne County is 87.5% “non-Hispanic white”; only 4% black, 7% Hispanic.
I’d posit that what we have here is a case of a citizenry terrified of the future- and, by extension, the people who will populate that future: their own children. And they’re reflexively willing to support whatever it might take to help hold off the changes besieging their gates (and their media-fed fantasies; I’m certain the adults watch as much TV there as anywhere else)- or at least to maintain the illusion that those changes can be rolled back to a restoration of the Good Old Days.
Whatever it takes, even unaccountable and corrupt tyranny in the local judicial system. It isn’t even questioned, for years on end. (Who’s eventually required to put a stop to it? None other than the Federal government. I mean, that’s really pretty pathetic. Or at least ironic. Heavily.)
No coddling the kids here. Tough love. Man up.
But from perusing the headlines of today’s Luzerne County Citizen’s Voice, the hardline siege cultural lockdown mentality hasn’t gotten them very far:
http://citizensvoice.com/news/magistrate-taken-off-cody-lee-case-1.1430678
http://citizensvoice.com/news/missing-woman-found-wanted-felon-arrested-after-car-chase-1.1430616
http://citizensvoice.com/news/forty-fort-man-faces-prison-time-probation-for-heroin-charges-1.1430694
http://citizensvoice.com/news/lawyer-deputy-coroner-s-censure-invalid-tainted-by-5k-bounty-1.1430677
http://citizensvoice.com/news/one-dead-two-injured-in-wilkes-barre-shootings-1.1431017
http://citizensvoice.com/news/ex-coach-pleads-guilty-in-sextortion-case-1.1431047
Whoa. That’s what I call a Shadow side.
I lived in socially liberal, counterculture-embracing Northern California for 25 years. I encountered some bad local news days there on occasion, but I’m hard-pressed to recall anything as grim as this compilation. And it seems to be unleavened by anything positive.
17 January 2013, 10:49 pmm.c.:
Back in the 1950s & 1960s, before there was an EPA and what became SuperFund Sites to clean up toxic/hazardous waste areas(Love Canal maybe being one of the most famous); one story I heard was in NJ or PA, at least one big multinational Chemical/Pharmaceutical every once in a while, maybe at the end of the year would have big burns of old drugs, garbage, chemicals etc. out in a field. They knew it was dangerous enough that volunteers from local jails would be recruited to do the actual work. This required a court order from a local county judge. I’m sure the jailee was promised something like early release and maybe the judge got a big campaign contrubution or kickback in some way.
18 January 2013, 2:13 pmNow, this isn’t in some South American or African military dictatorship, or even in the Jim Crow Era South of Alabama or Mississippi. This is a few hours drive from NYC in the latter half of the 20th century.
m.c.:
Damn. If you go on Wikipedia and search List of SuperFund Sites, there is a map of the US with Red Dots representing Current Sites. NJ and eastern PA are practically covered in Red Dots…
18 January 2013, 2:21 pmcabdriver:
Thanks for supplying that information, m.c.
Links are live in this discussion, so it’s easy to post them directly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfund_Site
Fortunately, the news isn’t all bad. For one thing, those sites cover a lot less territory than the shorthand of the dots would seem to indicate. (The dots virtually obliterate the territory of New Jersey, for instance. There are some nasty, toxic parts of Jersey. But it isn’t that bad.)
There’s a lot more specificity in the state-by-state lists of Superfund sites that’s found on the same page.
The list shows that in New Jersey, for instance, there are 112 Superfund sites. The good news is that as of 3/10/2010, 29 others had been cleaned up and removed from the list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_New_Jersey
There’s more data specificity for some states than for others. For example, the Pennsylvania list supplies data on the type of contamination found on some of their Superfund sites.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_Pennsylvania
In that link, Pa. has 95 sites listed, with 2 more proposed. The good news is that 28 other sites have already been cleaned up and removed from the list. It stands to reason that the Northeast corridor would have the most sites- it’s played host to the most extensive industrialization, for the longest period of time.
Cleaning up toxic dump sites is arduous work. And some sites are worse than others. I’d like to think that some triage has been applied, so that the worst and most extensive sites of contamination were tackled first.
It’s also good news that Superfund designation doesn’t automatically indicate a horror zone of environmental devastation. Residual chemical contamination tends to impact humans more than a lot of other animal species, mostly because of two reasons: we’re so long-lived, and those of us who are omnivores are at the top of the food chain. So although chemical poison is always bad, in the less severe cases it doesn’t result in the desertification of the natural world, or even in substantially long-lasting degradation.
The Superfund site found on the Pennsylvania list in Centre County, for instance, is adjacent to a spring creek trout stream, which is one of the more fragile ecosystems out there. That watershed has seen a few species of the more aquatic insects- mayflies and stoneflies- almost eradicated. It’s been decades since they’ve been found, and its an open question whether they’ll repopulate. But many other mayfly species still remain, the trout are plentiful and healthy, the aquatic and terrestrial vegetation is verdant, and the surrounding woods and meadows host a wide array of wildlife, including chemically sensitive bird species like hawks and falcons. It’s officially deemed unhealthy for humans to eat any of the fish- Centre County’s Spring Creek is regulated as catch and release only- but at least at this point the remaining chemical contaminants doesn’t seem to be causing difficulties for the abundant populations of ospreys, kingfishers, otters, the mink, muskrats, raccoons, etc.
This, despite the continuing presence of the chrlorinated hydrocarbon pesticide Kepone and heavy metals like cadmium in the substrate of the streambed there. (The Kepone is due to break down and disappear within a few more decades; the toxic metals are a more intractable problem. It will take quite a while until they work themselves deeply enough into the ground that they don’t impact the soil.)
I don’t mean to unduly minimize the problem of Superfund sites. But everything isn’t Love Canal.
The bad news is that there are undoubtedly some sites out there that haven’t been identified yet. Environmental waste management was unfortunately one of the businesses that the large dynastic organized crime syndicates exploited as part of their efforts to “go legit”, after cleanup efforts started to be mandated by law as a result of the upsurge of environmental activism in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This was particularly true in the Northeast corridor, although eventually that corruption was largely uncovered and exposed in a series of scandals that led to successful criminal prosecutions. But for at least 20 years or so, crime syndicate-linked “waste management” firms typically handled their contracts by disposing of their cargo by dumping it untreated, anywhere they though they could get away with it.
Personally, I think selling heroin to teenage kids is comparatively more moral (only in comparison, mind you.)
20 January 2013, 12:33 pmcabdriver:
Incidentally, the contamination of the Spring Creek watershed in Centre County wasn’t mob-linked. It came from factories.
The source of the Kepone and Mirex was the Rutgers-Nease Chemical Company.
http://www.epa.gov/reg3hscd/npl/PAD000436261.htm
The heavy metals were from the Titan/Cerro Metals factory on the Logan Branch tributary to Spring Creek.
I gotta move on…it’s easy for me to get carried away researching this stuff. I find the nuts and bolts of it sort of fascinating. It’s also heartening to me to know that people are actually involved in serious efforts to clean up these problems- that the dreaded Big Government EPA is, overwhelmingly, involved in serious work rather than bureaucratic over-reaching.
20 January 2013, 12:56 pmm.c.:
What got me about the NJ story I heard was its not a big surprise that a big household name multinational would burn toxic waste, and its not a surprise that a county jail would have its jailees do dirty even dangerous tasks around the jail. But to have a county judge write a letter with his official letterhead/stationary on it in response to a high level exec at the multinational with the corporate logo on the letter with copies to the records department, and warehouse supervisor, and VP for Operations; and they had PhDs & probably pharmacy experts out there that weekend from a distance with diagrams of wind direction and hand drawn maps of smoke plume/toxicity figures etc….
22 January 2013, 1:56 pmcabdriver:
That’s how they used to roll, back before the rise of the grassroots ecology movement in the late 1960s.
Things have improved considerably- for example, I never thought I’d live to see the Androscoggin River revive, but it’s in the process of recovering remarkably well.
But we are nowhere near the end of resolving these problems
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/03/top-10-polluted-rivers-waterways
I remember the first Earth Day, it was a big influence on my thinking. Along with Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring- I remember doing a presentation to my 8th grade class on that book. In retrospect, I think some of the dire admonitions in that book were exaggerated. But she was more right than wrong. I shudder to think of where we’d be without the alert she sounded.
I later read Frank Graham’s book Since Silent Spring, which detailed the public relations media blitz backlash to the book from the chemical industry. That was also quite enlightening for a 15-year old to read. And much later on, I became aware of the book The Pesticide Conspiracy by Robert van den Bosch, the U C Berkeley entomology professor who was a pioneer in integrated pest management ag strategies that minimized pesticide use. Bosch’s book was an expose of the collusion and cronyism between the chemical industry, big ag, and academia that systematically blocked research into more environmentally friendly farming methods.
Coincidentally, I’ve just done some on-line follow-up, and I found this 2012 article examining Rachel Carson’s legacy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/blog/2012/sep/27/rachel-carson-silent-spring-legacy
As far as your example from the 1950s, here’s the worst example I can think of from that time, at least in the USA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site
So, yeah, that was pretty insane.
But what the Soviets did was worse, and I’m not talking about Chernobyl
http://www.wentz.net/radiate/cheyla/index.htm
In the interest of stirring up some controversy here, I’ll volunteer that I think that nuclear power deserves to play a more important role in energy production- I advocate the use of Gen III or Gen IV technology to build small reactors that don’t require drawing water to cool them, using a single design blueprint and carefully sited. I don’t think it should be necessary to mine any more uranium- we have all too much high-grade material already refined and stored in our absurdly massive arsenal of atomic bombs. And I also personally favor deep ocean disposal for most nuclear waste, possible near subduction lines in the crust of the earth. That’s DEEP ocean disposal, not this reckless and ignorant laziness:
http://www.sfweekly.com/2001-05-09/news/fallout/
There are fairly large expanses of the deep ocean that hold very little sea life, and where properly entombed radioactive wastes can remain while they decay, surrounded by many square miles of minimally populated sea floor and many cubic miles of frigid ocean. The Farrallon Islands is not one of those places.
23 January 2013, 12:30 pmm.c.:
I’m thinking this went on at least through the mid 1970′s. The SuperFund law(1980) was sponsored/passed in the U.S. Congress by NJ Rep./later Governor of NJ, James Florio. So even after the creation of the EPA in 1970, shady stuff still continued.
24 January 2013, 1:26 pmcabdriver:
Undoubtedly. For that matter, I’m sure that it still continues
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303410404577468921667124942.html
http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/environment/western-pa-polluters-sentence-sparks-dispute-642500/
To be clear on my own position in regard to natural gas fracking: there’s a proven way to do it with propane gel instead of water.
http://www.businessinsider.com/waterless-natural-gas-fracking-method-unveiled-2012-5
If it’s going to be done- and I think it will be- that’s the way to do it.
And in that regard, I think that the most effective way to stop hydro-fracking is to insist on gel fracking. I don’t think that the environmental movement has a hope of shutting down the ongoing boom in extraction of natural gas, except in a few scattered locales.
27 January 2013, 11:37 pmMichael Anderson:
@ cabdriver:
“According to an industry report, the project is focused on using a technology that pumps a thick gel made from propane into the ground as opposed to using traditional methods of hydraulic fracking that make use of a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals to extract natural gas reserves from deep shale formations. Unlike traditional technologies, the gel from the new liquefied propane gas (LPG) fracking method reverts to vapor while still underground, and as a result returns to the surface in a recoverable form.”
So, if natural gas GEL is a better way, how does that gel turn into a “recoverable form”?? What, exactly, DOES it turn into, in an airless underground environment with other compounds? Nobody sayin’ nothin’ here.
I question the source here—Business Insider. More Rah-Rah crapola from the same people who brought you the 2008 housing crash and the Macondo well. Let’s compartmentalize our collective thinking so we don’t have to deal with consequences.
Although, I do agree with you that they’ll keep at it— until it’s just not profitable anymore—or until enough poor people are out of the way to make the point academic.
28 January 2013, 1:22 pmcabdriver:
“So, if natural gas GEL is a better way, how does that gel turn into a “recoverable form”?? What, exactly, DOES it turn into, in an airless underground environment with other compounds? Nobody sayin’ nothin’ here.”
Actually, (very) basic organic chemistry has a lot to say about it.
http://www.propane101.com/aboutpropane.htm
Propane (+butane) gel evaporates- boils, actually- at -44 degrees Fahrenheit. A temperature that it most assuredly reaches underground. And then it’s recovered along with the natural gas, when it’s pumped out. It needs to go to a refinery after that. My guess is that the propane and butane are separated out by the standard method, fractional distillation.
Propane doesn’t “turn into” anything unless it burns- which requires a rather specific set of conditions. It’s a simple hydrocarbon molecule- C3H8. It’s typical of similar hydrocarbons in that complete combustion turns it into CO2 and H20- carbon dioxide and water. In the real world, as with similar hydrocarbons, it doesn’t combust completely, and hence produces some CO (carbon monoxide) as well.
What this property of flammability means for gel fracking is that gel fracking has to be done with specialized equipment and specially trained personnel, because it’s a riskier procedure than hydro-fracking. It’s a tradeoff between a method that doesn’t use or pollute huge volumes of water and produces more complete gas extraction, but that requires more expensive equipment, technical knowledge and care; versus a method that does use and pollute huge volumes of water, using cheaper equipment that doesn’t have an explosion hazard. But it’s well beyond the drawing board or prototype stage. Over 1000 wells have been drilled using it, which seems to indicate that it’s a reasonably safe technology.
And “reasonably safe” is the most one can hope for in the wider context of what’s being discussed here. Fossil fuel extraction, transport, refining, disposal: it’s all hazardous, to some extent.
But there’s nothing out there that can replace fossil fuels, in the near term- 10 to 20 years. Not even a full-scale global commitment to nuclear power production could do it. It’s going to be all we can do to significantly reduce the role of coal, which is by far the worst offender in terms of global warming, air pollution, extraction industry accidents, and toxic waste transport and storage- including waste that would be judged as low-level radiocative contamination if it came from a nuclear power plant.
So as long as the game is all about fossil fuels, I think we should go with the ones that are the cleanest burning. Not to mention those produced on our own land, it being a strict matter of fact that it’s about time that we as an energy-consuming nation take responsibility for more of the risks and expenses of extraction ourselves, rather than simply continuing to export them to places like Ecuador and Nigeria.
As for cutting future global energy demand in absolute terms, from the amount presently being used: I don’t know of any proposal anywhere that purports to do that. It’s wildly optimistic to propose that we can keep that demand flat, given that the planet is on schedule to greet the arrival of another 2 billion humans.
The US presently accounts for 14 per cent of global energy use, so I’m told. So if we were to go on a drastic diet next year and reduce our total energy use by 50%- I think we’re talking rolling blackouts, 2 and 3 day work weeks, similar measures of that magnitude- that would contribute to a 7% reduction in annual global energy use. But this country isn’t going to cut its energy use by that amount, or by anything close to that amount. The American nation and economy may be able to keep it flat, or perhaps even cut it by a few percentage points, while gradually adopting cleaner sources of energy over the next decade or so.
I don’t know if this means that we’re due to go into systems failure and collapse or not. I think the best we can hope to do is to keep turning the ocean liner slowly and steadily, so to speak. Tedious though that may be. Because the most radical organized regime of energy use reduction imaginable wouldn’t be sufficient to stave off any systems failure and collapse that might already be impending, due to the momentum of the past.
“I question the source here—Business Insider.”
Yes, now that you’ve proved yourself roughly bereft of basic factual knowledge on the subject, you think you have the latitude to impeach the credibility of the source (leaving aside the point that Business Insider is hardly the primary source for the content).
I’m familiar with the tactic.
And in the absence of any legitimately parsed skepticism, this is merely cant, empty talk:
“More Rah-Rah crapola from the same people who brought you the 2008 housing crash and the Macondo well. Let’s compartmentalize our collective thinking so we don’t have to deal with consequences.
Although, I do agree with you that they’ll keep at it— until it’s just not profitable anymore—or until enough poor people are out of the way to make the point academic.”
That’s all very rhetorical, Michael. It’s also presumptuous, arrogant, and pre-emptorily hostile. The pretension to the moral high ground comes off as pompously elitist.
That opinion also demonstrates an ill-informed notion of how “those people” operate…if you were to read the stock-trading website Seeking Alpha, for instance, you’d find all manner of derision about the company, GasFrac, that holds the patents for the gel-fracking technology. The hydro-fracking industry status quo does NOT want this technology to become the new “best available practices” standard; it will side-swipe their act. That, too, is Capitalism.
It’s all well and good to express skepticism about gel fracking technology, if it’s grounded in specifics. But I’ve surfed all over the Internet, and all I’ve been able to find from the self-identified environmentalist skeptics is attempts to reject it out of hand.
I’ve read more factually based objections from within the oil business itself. Most of it sounds like sour grapes to me, resorting to exaggerations about the increased risks of explosion associated with employing the tech, and downplaying the ways those risks are being ameliorated (increased reliance on robot operation, for one). But at least the objections show some evidence that the skeptics possess a knowledge base.
I don’t mean to be unnecessarily hard on you about this, Michael. But your response is exactly the sort of knee-jerk rejection that feeds the image of “environmentalists” as wolf-criers running on emotion instead of facts.
I’m counseling you as an ally, to realize this: if you were to broach the objections that you’ve raised thus far in a general forum with an audience partially comprised of chemists and engineers, some people in the crowd would roll their eyes. They might even laugh out loud at you.
And if all you could imagine as a result of that mockery would be to conclude that they were mocking you because of their evil nature, as greedy poisoners of the Earth- you would have learned nothing.
30 January 2013, 11:39 pmcabdriver:
“…it being a strict matter of fact that it’s about time that we as an energy-consuming nation take responsibility for more of the risks and expenses of extraction ourselves, rather than simply continuing to export them to places like Ecuador and Nigeria.”
okay, that isn’t a “strict matter of fact”. It’s simply my personal opinion.
30 January 2013, 11:57 pmMichael Anderson:
I’ll admit that fracking sets off a nerve in me—”Gasland” was not a nice movie to watch. Having grown up in a town that relied on extractive industry for more than 100 years, and seeing revealed what got left behind as a result of ignorance and concealment, has influenced me too.
So I will ‘fess up to reacting on the subject.
What you said about the mainstream industry’s reaction to gel fracking; the “side swiping their act”; has been echoed to me by others in businesss in discussions of business practice, i.e. disturbing the status quo. The accounts of the events immediately preceding the Macondo well disaster certainly illustrates the results of doing it with cost reduction as the bottom line.
I was never much good at chemistry, but I’ll try and get through that link.
Not that I am suspicious of knowledge, but I think sometimes people WITH knowledge can lose sight of it’s broader implications. Like obedience…obeying without questioning the ethics and morals of what you are obeying.
And I’ll try not to spew and hit the send button immediately. I did violate a personal rule there…think about it first. Maybe for an hour or two.
1 February 2013, 1:17 pmm.c.:
The Bhopal India Incident in December 1984 was perhaps the single worst Industrial Accident ever.[from wiki]
“Over 500,000 people were exposed to methyl isocyanate gas and other chemicals. The toxic substance made its way in and around the shantytowns located near the plant.[2] Estimates vary on the death toll. The official immediate death toll was 2,259. The government of Madhya Pradesh confirmed a total of 3,787 deaths related to the gas release.[3] Others estimate 8,000 died within two weeks and another 8,000 or more have since died from gas-related diseases.[4][5] A government affidavit in 2006 stated the leak caused 558,125 injuries including 38,478 temporary partial injuries and approximately 3,900 severely and permanently disabling injuries.[6]”
The parent compnay at the time was Union Carbide, they were later bought by Dow Chemical in 1999.
2 February 2013, 4:13 pmcabdriver:
Yes, the corporate personage Dow Chemical somehow managed to assimilate the moribund corporate personage Union Carbide, an act of transubstantiation that resulted in Dow acquiring its material assets while assuming none of the responsibility for the outstanding debts of the recently deceased.
None of the humans involved in that reorganization process actually died, which highlights a significant difference between corporations and human beings.
10 February 2013, 5:46 amcabdriver:
Michael, it’s a rare and unexpected treat to receive well-reasoned and temperate response on the Internet. Among other things, it reminds me that the typically much more rancorous level of dispute in cyberspace is not due to some inherent flaw in the Internet.
I’m with you on the ghastly track record of resource extraction industries. They require adult supervision, and the rule of law.
Meanwhile, in the related area of mapping out an energy future for the planet, it’s also important to maintain a tethering to practical reality. Here’s one of the main outcomes of the “green initative” in Europe thus far, which shut down so many nuclear plants in Germany:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe-consuming-more-coal/2013/02/07/ec21026a-6bfe-11e2-bd36-c0fe61a205f6_story.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/rise-of-cheap-us-coal-in-europe/2013/02/07/3ae56870-7189-11e2-8b8d-e0b59a1b8e2a_graphic.html
And now Germany is back to burning lignite, of all things. Beyond the CO2 problem there, that’s liable to give the continent an forest-killing, stream-sterilizing acid rain problem that will take decades to ameliorate.
The info in that article also highlights the shifty bookkeeping behind “cap and trade”. It’s yet another exercise in self-deception. The planet needs a carbon tax.
10 February 2013, 6:02 amcabdriver:
A little bit of good news: in this country, the shift away from coal burning power plants, and the scrubbing equipment mandated for plants that do burn coal, has resulted in turning the corner on the acid rain problem in the Northeast after 35 or so years of effort. Although insane people in Congress, mostly Republicans, persist in viewing this as some sort of defeat, vowing to undo it.
10 February 2013, 6:11 am