Archive for November, 2008

Realism: The Emerging New World Order

Friday, November 28th, 2008

By David L. Brown

I have failed to contribute to this blog in recent weeks, for which I apologize. It has been a time of chaos in the world, beset with financial doom, political uncertainty, growing threats from every side. No matter where you look—Wall Street, Pakistan, India, Detroit, Russia, Venezuela, Washington, Iran—the world is churning toward disaster. Anything I might have written about on any given morning would likely have been turned on its head by the time the six o’clock news came on the air. Thus I have been in a watch-listen-learn mode, an observer to the on-going collapse of the world as we have known it.

I have never been known as an optimist, and have proudly laid claim to that opposite position called pessimism. For two and a half years this weblog has reflected those darker interpretations of the facts, based on my study of science, politics, economics and other factors that have been in play. My pessimism has been well-founded, at least to my own satisfaction, the result of analysis, research, logical thought and plain old common sense.

But I am now denouncing pessimism because I no longer accept that it is possible to be pessimistic about the future.

What? How can that be? Well, don’t get your hopes up that I have suddenly consumed leftover Kool-Aid from the Jonestown Massacre and bought into the HopeyChangey optimism that is the present public delusion. No, I am seting aside pessimism because it is no longer adequate to define the seriousness of the situation in which we, the human race, now finds itself. I am forsaking pessimism in favor of realism, which is a far more rational response to the facts as they presently exist.

Pessimism is a vague sort of idea, usually interpreted as describing a general suspicion that the future might be worse rather than better. Such a position, although usually based on at least some fact, requires a level of doubt or uncertainty. The facts that are presently sweeping across the globe have become so indisputable that they preclude nearly all doubt about the direction in which our planet is going.

To put the differences between pessimism and realism into perspective, let us imagine a scenario in which a mountaineer is climbing on an unstable rock face high on Mount Everest. The situation looks dangerous and thus a certain amount of pessimism is an appropriate response. He is a pessimist.

Now let’s assume that the climber’s pitons have pulled out of the rock, his companions have cut his rope in order to save themselves and he is falling ten thousand feet to an icy glacier far below. Can we call him a pessimist now? No, for the facts are plain, there is no doubt. He cannot grow wings and fly to safely so his future is certain, if short. The only description that can apply to him now is “realist.”

A “realist,” according to one dictionary definition, is “a person who accepts the world as it literally is and deals with it accordingly.” A synonym is “pragmatist,” which is defined as “somebody who only considers things as they are or appear to be, and avoids ideals and abstractions.” (Sources: The Free Dictionary; Encarta)

The transition of the climber in our scenario from pessimist to realist is analogous to the world situation now. The problems we face are real, indisputable, and innumerable. Not only that, there are no practical solutions to most of the problems. It used to be said that every problem held within it an opportunity. That aphorism may no longer hold true in the post-growth world that we have entered. The old economic model of “progress” as defined by never-ending growth is crashing on the reality of resource depletion, acerbated by over-population, greed, political and religious strife and a multitude of other factors including, and far from least, the on-going collapse of the Earth’s environment.

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Posted in Economics, Essays and Opinion, Politics, Resource Depletion | Comments Off

On Words and Their Importance

Friday, November 28th, 2008

By David L. Brown

I’ve noted that our President Elect has declared that he will “create or save” 2.5 million jobs in the next couple of years. Since I think words are important, it is interesting to analyze that statement, to see what if any meaning it may contain.

First, we need to note that the obvious intention is to convince the public that increased employment lies ahead, more jobs for happy American taxpayers, a payoff for those faithful supporters who voted him into office. But a closer look at what the words actually mean belies that interpretation.

Okay, here’s a worst case scenario to test how Obama’s statement might hold up if things don’t go at all well. Let’s say that employment drops by 25 million, but in the meantime Obama “creates” 2.5 million jobs (say, by hiring chronically unemployed street people to join civilian brigades to enforce new taxes). The net job loss will be 22.5 million jobs—but his prediction will have been demonstrated to be completely true because he will have “created” 2.5 million jobs. Nevermind that millions more were lost in the meantime.

Again, let’s say that employment drops by 22.5 million, but due to Obama’s efforts another 2.5 million jobs are “saved” (perhaps by keeping union workers on the payrolls of nationalized Detroit automakers and other failed companies). Again, his statement will be perfectly true, but the employment picture will be disastrous. He would have made good on his promise to “create” or “save” those jobs, and no one can deny it.

Now some might argue that AND and OR mean pretty much the same thing. That is not true. In Boolean logic OR and AND have specific meanings, and the same is true in the English language. OR does not mean the same as AND or NOT, those other key Boolean factors. The use of OR means that there are two (or more) possibilities and that they are mutually exclusive. Example: “Tomorrow it will rain OR snow.” Viewed analytically the form of that statement excludes the possibility that both will occur, while insisting that one of the alternatives will. To indicate that both might occur, one must say “Tomorrow it will rain AND snow”.

Apply that insight to the Obama statement and one can conclude that he will possibly create 2.5 million jobs, OR that he may save 2.5 million jobs. These are weasel words that allow for the possibility that there may be no job growth whatsoever (lost jobs = created jobs) or even net job losses. In this case there are multiple factors (individual jobs) so the OR command must be applied to each individual case. Thus, there could be a subset of “created” jobs and a subset of “saved” jobs. Either one could consist of any number less than 2.5 million but the total number of jobs “created” and “saved” must equal that amount.

As pointed out above, the promise is not pegged to any baseline, such as present job numbers. One might “create” one unit of something while many identical units are destroyed. One might “save” one unit of something while many identical units are lost. To lay claim to the former actions in these two statements without recognizing the latter possibilities is quite misleading.

We can also observe that nothing is implied about the quality of the jobs that will be created or saved. We could see 2.5 million highly paid technical personnel laid off and taking jobs as greeters at WalMart or hamburger flippers at McDonald’s. Would they represent individuals for whom jobs had been created? In terms of the vague statement issued by Obama, absolutely. This is an example of PITS reasoning. (I just made up that acronym for the occasion, so you saw it here first. It stands for Pie In The Sky, and can be used in phrases such as “It’s the PITS” or “Our economy seems to be in the PITS,” or even “Life may be a bowl of cherries, so why do we only get the PITS”.)

All of the above scenarios could be accurately described by the words of Obama’s statement, which is therefore meaningless and misleading rhetorical garbage.

Unfortunately we better get used to this kind of empty rhetoric, not only from the One but from those already practiced in the art of obfuscation, the experienced political class of our nation. Example: Bill Clinton on what the meaning of “is” is. Some of them have been learning this craft for decades, and perhaps were born with the natural ability to be human weasels. In fact, maybe they ARE weasels, having taken human form, perhaps through some mysterious process involving intelligent design. Could be….would explain a lot in fact.

George Orwell would have understood all of this very well, as a re-reading of Animal Farm will confirm. (“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”)

Meanwhile, be prepared to listen even more carefully than ever to what comes out of Washington. And never forget that the best way to tell whether a politician is lying is to check whether his mouth is moving.

Finally, in case one might wonder if Obama’s choice of words might have been due to mere carelessness, I have two comments:

First, it should be of no little concern to think that our future President makes careless use of words (and there was much evidence of this during the campaign).

But second, I think it extremely likely that direct, formal statements such as the one we’ve discussed here are very carefully drafted and vetted by the President elect’s advisors, and it is almost certain that the use of the word OR was deliberate, and with intent to obfuscate and deceive. (Unless these people are even more dim-witted and sloppy than I think, which is a definite possibility.

Posted in Communications, Politics | Comments Off