How Choices - and Changes - Are Made

 Romans 12:1-2 - Therefore, I urge you, brothers, on account of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.

We like to believe the way we change is to think things through, apply reason, derive a course of action, set our will, and then act on what we resolve to do. That's the way we're told people work. Rational actors, applying will to a plan, producing consistent action, alone, sovereign, untouched by what lies outside.

However, every scrap of evidence science has laid in our hands tells us "That isn't the way change works." If you ever needed urgently to address your patterns of behavior, you may have directly experienced the emptiness of this model first-hand.  

The clash between the science and this, our culture's most comforting and cherished myth, points to the essential flaw in the myth. Whatever our ability to repulse what lies outside, convincing lies live inside. Patterns of understanding, learned early, provide the very language we use to think. No effort of reason can dislodge them, because all our reason rests on them. We need something stronger.

If thinking isn't the path to change, isn't writing a post about the dilemma pointless? Only if thinking plays no role. The above verse suggests we can be "transformed by the renewing of our minds," but it also makes clear this isn't where the process starts. If reason emerges from blood and bone, so does better reason.

Where does the impulse to change begin? Perhaps we see something we know is wrong. Perhaps we do something that hurts ourselves. Or perhaps we hurt people near to us, and hurting them hurts us. While doom-scrolling, wallowing in helpless outrage over the plight of inaccessible strangers, drains us, we can direct our outrage at structures designed to leave us so helplessly isolated. As in law, "wrongs make rights".

So the will to "stop the bleeding" doesn't follow after reason; will emerges from love of some sort, while thought runs to catch up. Our first and best impulse is to act, but what to do? The first action that pops into our head may not be effective. Our action can be downright foolish (but being foolish doesn't necessarily make it wrong, either.) We're more in need at this moment of applying strong love-driven axioms than clear reason. "Do not allow anyone to be attacked and humiliated in your presence." "The most powerful thing one person can do for another is to believe in them".

We may act swiftly and impulsively or slowly and deliberately. Thought can help us sort out what will be more effective, if we resist the temptation to choose what is safest. But if we respond to the situation, commencing immediately, this is the root of substantial choice, of change. Following the dictates of love means doing something, starting now, as "living sacrifices, our spiritual service of worship." 

The impact doesn't end in the act, though. Acting on love breaks isolation. By becoming visible, we step into a threatened space and place ourselves at risk beside another. We start to learn the language of other peoples' experience, a glimpse into the world before their eyes. We can't claim, in any single act, to have "been there", only to be there now, an immigrant "fresh off the boat." Acting does not signal deep virtue, but is a first step in "the renewing of our minds". 

And this is the real point. The shape of our thinking, the language in which we understand what is happening, is forged in the pattern of the actions we choose every day. At some point, a new understanding takes enough root that our thinking becomes clearer. We can begin to see not only what is wrong, but what is right - "the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God." May it be so.

"Berning" Gently

A friend and I attended a Bernie Sanders town hall meeting at the local middle school gymnasium last night. My own politics have always been populist, carrying a mix of liberal and conservative strands, informed by deep spiritual values. So I wasn't surprised that I found resonance in a lot but not all that Bernie had to say.

I am deeply concerned about social justice and fundamental human rights, which include healthcare, education, a living wage from any one 8 hour job, equal pay for women, and a stable place to live. Being afraid all the time is no way for a human being to live, regardless of their situation. We should all be provided the opportunity and encouragement to try things until something works. The worst part of poverty is its pervasive sense of precariousness, the feeling that trying only leads to deeper disappointment. If you want to end the drug crisis and make suicide no longer the second greatest killer of young people, #MakeLifeSuckLess.

I firmly believe the future of America's success is surer when we include and welcome people rather than when we exclude and marginalize people. I would like to see us absorb as many Syrian refugees as possible because I firmly believe such a welcome would provide a fresh generation of passionately loyal and energetic Americans. It is working with refugees that shook me out of my own apathy into a deep appreciation of the American dream by watching it happen.  There's room here.

I support expecting more of the rich and of corporations in a society where the distribution of wealth is so deeply skewed. I respect what Bernie has seen on the committees he has been a part of. I have no great love of Goldman-Sachs or Morgan-Chase. I do have a deep appreciation of American manufacturing, especially small, local manufacturing. The making of tangible goods has a stabilizing effect on an economy that is absent in the creation of intangible goods like software or financial products.

So I find a lot of resonance in what Bernie says. I will support him in the primary and, provided he wins the primaries, in the general election. However, I do differ from Bernie in several areas.

Abortion -

I'm not sure at what point a collection of cells in a woman's body becomes a viable human being. We shouldn't legislate away a reasonable right to support some abstract doctrine. I'll lose no sleep over a "morning after" pill. However, I find the evidence compelling that there is "somebody home" by the end of the first trimester and I believe that individual should be afforded some rights as well, even if those rights include a temporary claim to occupy the body of another person to ensure his or her own survival.  I also believe that the edge cases - like rape or excruciating birth defects - can't have satisfying statutory solutions. Roe v Wade overreaches but right to life doctrine overreaches, too. 

So Bernie and I must disagree on this. We do agree that the arrival of a new soul places an obligation, not just on a mother, but on the whole society, to provide for that soul with compassion and generosity. We belong to each other.  #MakeLifeSuckLess

 Economy -

I agree with Bernie that there are bad players, suffused with greed, who must be forced to participate in society rather than merely exploit it, that hourly workers need a living wage with full benefits, that office workers need an 8 hour day, not a 10 hour day, that when a company is doing well, it should be reflected in wages.

However, I see another profound historical force at play, one that none of the candidates are talking about. We have reached a level of efficiency where only 80% of the available workforce are needed to provide 100% of the needs of society. With tech innovations in AI, this percentage will drop to perhaps 60% over the next decade, even if we eliminate the 20-40% overwork imposed on many of those who do have jobs and pay people enough that they're able to buy what they need, driving up demand. 

When only somewhat over half the population will have the opportunity to work at any given time, the work ethic that has informed our thinking for 400 years and fuels the producer-consumer economy becomes capricious and cruel, declaring people worthless and punishing them for circumstances they can do nothing about. We need to start espousing a new set of values now and building them into the social fabric, so that we are ready to leave behind the producer-consumer value system that asks "What good are you? Show me what you delivered this quarter. Show me what you will deliver next quarter" and embrace universal human value. #MakeLifeSuckLess

Trade -

The Trans-Pacific Agreement (TPA), although it has a few very good clauses, seems to do harm to most of the parties affected, leaving tremendous power in the hands of American business to overrule the laws of many countries. With Bernie, I oppose it.

On the other hand, I'm not convinced that all open trade borders are a bad thing. There is no such thing as a national economy, only a shared global economy. Trade barriers, which always end up being reciprocal, will just prevent anybody but the rich from buying anything from anywhere else or anybody but the rich elsewhere from buying our stuff. I don't see how anybody wins.

I am happy that Mexican businesses are doing better than they have been in the past. It is likely to produce a more prosperous Mexico, and in a more prosperous Mexico, there will be enough money for the people to be able to raise issues of distribution in their own political process, questions that are pointless if the country lacks anything to distribute. The very issues we are raising in this election are worthy of discussion precisely because American business is doing so very well and the people aren't.  #MakeLifeSuckLess

Mobility of Wealth - 

Some of what Bernie says seems to me to be deeply naive. It is expensive to relocate wealth built on manufacturing, with its mountain of capital equipment, one reason I welcome a greater mix of manufacturing in the economy. However, the great fortunes today are built on international finance and the Internet, which are location neutral.

Closing tax loopholes and reducing corporate influence on Congress, as Bernie recommends and I support, produces a climate that is less favorable to business. This can be bypassed by moving headquarters to a country with a more favorable climate. If you aren't heavily invested in capital equipment, and the incentive is strong enough, this isn't prohibitive to do. I am reasonably convinced that American companies, steeped in Reaganesque laissez faire values, will go wherever advantage leads them. No one government can do anything to prevent this mobility. Multinational corporations are functionally supra-national and ungovernable at anything less than a global level.

Just because things are beyond legislative control doesn't mean they are beyond hope. The deep mystery in all of this is that companies, even international corporations, are run, not by doctrines, but by men and women. We need to encourage them to leave behind the pure-market values of the Reagan era that have produced the current crisis, and to embrace the notion that we belong to one another. We need them to reflect this in the way they invest and what they expect from the companies in which they invest. Even bankers are human. Money doesn't change that. They need to get to know the rest of us and connect that to their work. Then there is profound reason to hope. #MakeLifeSuckLess

Summary

So I will vote for Bernie, even if I have doubts in some areas. There is no other candidate that doesn't wholeheartedly embrace the dry well of trickle-down economics of the corporate right. Even Hilary assumes a structure where corporations are firmly in charge. Only Bernie is likely to attempt to do anything to overhaul our economics and, critically, to change the foundation of policy discussion to one that puts the human condition at the center of priorities.

Shifting digs...

Hello, everyone - I suppose that just means Debbie and Matt :).

As a part of consolidating the maze of social connections around my writing into a coherent writer's platform, I am pulling in all the bits and pieces from hither and yon into a single WordPress site on my webhost. You can check it out on http://www.lupestro.net/wp.

While you're there, sign up for my newsletter to be informed of upcoming events or use the links there to connect with me on Twitter or Facebook. I've also posted two pieces of flash fiction there - Telephone of the Gods, which is also posted here, and a darker piece entitled Choir Rehearsal.

Waste and Employment

I recently heard a review of an economic study showing how the rise of technology has polarized the kinds of available work to produce a technical and managerial elite and a nontechnical service class. The many jobs for mid-level paper pushers and other such positions, it is claimed, have been eliminated by the new technologies.

True, many such jobs have been removed from the economy, but I have seen compelling statistics that suggest at least some of these jobs have vanished for a reason I never see mentioned in print. It isn't really a technology, but the reasonable questions of Kaizen. "Where is the waste in this process? How could we arrange the process to achieve the same throughput with less effort?"

Every industry has set itself to puzzling over this question, rearranging offices and assembly lines to put things closer together, removing steps from procedures and piles of stuff from shop floors, redesigning the work so that the materials that enter the receiving bay in the morning are going out the shipping bay as finished goods in the afternoon in a nonstop continuous flow. As a result, we are now making much more with better overall quality at much lower expense than at any time in history.

But think carefully about the person who spent their life futilely copying figures from Form 2166a (used in one department) to Form 2166b (used in another) or the person who ran the forklift putting the output of Line 1 in a holding area from which somebody else driving another forklift delivered it to Line 2. These people went home to houses in the suburbs where they made their kids study so they could get into a good college. The substance of the job didn't mean a lot - they knew this was no way to run a rodeo and commented on it frequently among friends - but a steady job at a good company provided them with the things their family needed.

We aren't talking about an insignificant number of people. The operating efficiency created by throughput accounting has brought with it staggering savings, often on the order of 50 percent or more. Some of this was material savings and opportunities created by versatility, but the largest part of it was the discovery and elimination of work that never needed doing.

So what's the lesson here? That it is good for the greatest part of a society to be engaged in, and paid for, meaningless labor? Well, no. On a limited planet, waste isn't just foolish, it's lethal. The lesson is that something historic is fundamentally changing.

What happens when it takes only a modest fraction of the world's population to produce all the goods the world needs? It isn't a frivolous question. This happened in farming years ago. It was one reason that young people from the country flooded into the cities and the factories. The trend has swept through factories with Kaizen and now into offices. The service sector lacks the capacity to absorb such a population, so many are unemployed, barely employed, doing what day labor they can find, or beyond even trying to look. With it comes futility, hopelessness, a desperate sense of invisibility, that it would make no difference whether they had ever lived. 

If, suppose, the labor of 10% of the worlds population could supply 100% of its material needs, a system in which only the needs of workers are fully met would be grossly unjust, and would force us to rethink some deeply held values. Is my value in the community determined by what I am paid to produce for it? If employment were unavailable to me for my entire life, what would I spend my life doing? What would I do and how far would I go to give it meaning?

It would need a completely different sort of economy. I don't know what sort of economy that would be, but I think we may be about to find out.

Going through changes....

Followers will notice that I've just pulled the content of Life Support and two story seeds from the blog. The story behind this is that I've finally (after four years) finished a draft of Life Support and will be revising it in a month or so with an eye toward publication. Likewise, I've decided to plant at least one of the story seeds to see what I can grow from it. I'm also working on several other stories.

So what am I going to do with the blog? A lot more than I have been, certainly. I will continue to post poetry and lyrics as a form of self-publishing from time to time. Also, over the past few months, I've been writing some carefully considered pieces as comments to posts in other folks' blogs. This blog will be a natural environment in which to develop some of these themes more broadly and to post essays exploring other areas of interest. The topics that come to mind are far ranging - from technology and teamwork to community and social policy, meditations on holy writ of many faiths, the role of faith in life, both public and private, and speculation on the future.

So we'll see if this blog goes where I project it will. Expect a predominance of commentary and little if any fictional prose. If my commentary strikes a chord with people, perhaps it will attract a little attention to the ideas. At the same time, more of my energy is going to go into fiction so, hopefully, you will eventually be able to pick up samples of my fictional prose at your local newsstand on a regular basis for a nominal fee.

I'm interested in what folks think about the change in direction. You probably won't know what to think until you start seeing some of the new commentary, but feel free to comment. I'm always listening.

Shared Transport

I'm sitting in an express bus that's half-empty on the way to Boston. It's the right sort of bus - comfortable seats, Wi-Fi. I can do things like blogging en-route. But I was nearly the only person on it until about a minute before it started to move and only a handful of people got on at its only other stop. There is no doubt that the people running the bus will lose money this run.

This reflects the numbers I have seen from just about every form of public or private passenger service. Some people do use it - but not enough. The others drive, complaining bitterly about the conditions of the commute, but they continue to do what they do not enjoy.

I understand why this happens. I have tried to use public transport in almost every place I have lived around the greater Boston area. I have lived in Acton, Lowell, Lawrence, Nashua, and - for the last 20 years or so, Hudson. In every case, aside from the present peculiar situation, getting from where I live to where I want to go has involved a bewildering array of transitions from one mode of transport to another. The uncoordinated schedules have guaranteed that a 20-minute drive would translate into a two- or three-hour commute. The reasons not to do this are compelling.

This bus is different. I still drive 15 minutes to get to the bus I am on now and then walk ten minutes at the other end, but the nature of Boston driving makes the drive-time nearly a wash and the problems of parking in downtown Boston make choosing the bus a no-brainer for me.

Public transportation is an investment problem. It has to go the places people are going and it has to go there often enough to be convenient. A city bus that runs once an hour will only be used by the truly desperate who are willing to structure their entire life around its schedule. A city bus route that runs every 15 minutes stands a much better chance but will be nearly empty unless it runs very close to where people want to go. People will switch buses if they don't have to wait very long and only if they only need to switch once. All of this means that in order to have a thriving public transportation system where the buses actually fill up, a city needs to have a lot of buses with a lot of routes. This is very expensive, and in spread out places with lots of parking, it is completely cost-ineffective.

I think the basic underlying problem of public transportation is that our cities and towns weren't built around it. They were built and rebuilt around the automobile. Public transportation works best when you have a lot of people in one place going to the same other place. Where civic planning has people living in one tightly-clustered area and working in another tightly clustered area, it doesn't take many trains or buses to get them from one to the other.

We didn't build America that way. Americans value privacy and personal space above all else and we apply our money and attention to achieve that privacy. We are ever wont to spread out. In many societies, people will take great efforts to live close to their families, sharing the same neighborhoods together. In America, this is the last thing that we want. Even when we cannot afford an acre of land to call our own, we would prefer to live as strangers among strangers than to live clustered with our families, with our relatives in and out of our houses and our lives on a daily basis. We avoid the pressure of stifling connections of all sorts.

Perhaps I am over-projecting. Perhaps this is a peculiarity of the New England in which I was born and raised. But it would appear just from how people have chosen to spend their money on housing that this isn't limited to a small part of the country.

So what is the prognosis for shared transportation, public or private, in this country? I'm not sure, but it doesn't look hopeful. Economic forces may drive people back to their families. Environmental forces may drive people to consider more efficient ways to live together. If the pressures remain over a couple of generations, it could even change the culture. But until that happens, it honestly doesn't look promising.

Thoughts on disease outbreaks...

Here's a really interesting website - HealthMap. It led me to an entire line of thought about contagion.

If you'd like to get a chill up your spine, go to HealthMap and navigate to the east coast of Egypt, where H1N1 and H5N1 have shown up together in a couple of individuals after this year's Hajj. H1N1 is very contagious in humans but not so deadly to most. H5N1 is less contagious in humans but very deadly. Viri are notorious for picking up one another's "useful tricks". It seems clear that, at some point, matters of contagion in travel are going to go beyond wearing a mask, washing hands, and having good air filtration systems in aircraft.

I've come to understand a little of the psychology of sickness when traveling from personal experience. In late April, I took a two week trip to Morocco that I had been hoping and planning to take for a few years. Perhaps from excitement or nervousness about not speaking either French or Arabic usefully, I had a really edgy tummy through the entire trip. Although I enjoyed my Moroccan adventure thoroughly in spite of it all, by the time it was over, the one thing that I desired most desperately was to get home, crawl into my own bed, and eventually stop feeling the perpetual need to run to the bathroom every couple of hours.

I left for Morocco on the very week that the news broke about H1N1 in Mexico. In the course of the journey to Morocco, I missed my connection to Royal Air Maroc in New York and had to wait until late the next day to get a ticket for the evening flight. While I waited for the RAM counter at JFK to open, I watched the lines at the Air Mexico counter two booths down, as people rearranged their travel. I followed the whole affair in the news while I was traveling, and I was a little nervous when I got to the airport in Casablanca for the flight home whether a diligent RAM employee would notice I wasn't feeling particularly well and that I was in JFK that particular weekend and prevent me from getting on the plane. Nothing happened and I got home just fine.

My condition wasn't communicable, just a reaction of my unfortunate digestion to the stresses of travel, but if my situation were different I might have become a disease vector. I would have been strongly tempted to lie if I had to in order to get home. Whether I would actually have committed a blatantly immoral act like that if it came down to it, I don't know. I hope that I wouldn't. However, when you're feeling sick in a country where you don't speak the language and just want to get home, that isn't the best time to be thinking about these things for the first time.

Sometimes it isn't black-and-white. Arguably my actual situation was a little more iffy than I believed it to be. In the middle of the trip, I had one bad night - fever, sweats, and chills - that I put down to dehydration due to the traveler's tummy. I spent a day in bed, drinking tons of water, and then adjusted my diet. There could have been something more. How would I know? I was never in one place long enough to have anything tested and have results come back. Except for that day, I stuck to my universal remedy for life's troubles during the journey, the' marocain in a street cafe in the morning, watching the crowds go by, one touristy visit each day, an afternoon nap, and a stroll in the late afternoon or evening for a bit of window-shopping, and I enjoyed my trip. Very relaxing. Was that irresponsible? I don't know. I also don't know what my other options would have been. How many travelers do?

I can't help but think that the twin natural human compulsions to trundle on as planned as much as possible and to run home, however far away, when things are going badly are going to both be significant factors in the spread of disease.