Rainy Season

"Rain" by Yukie Adams. Though it feels late, the rainy season seems to be starting here on the North Coast. But we had unusually cold and clear days last week--while much of the U.S. was getting hammered by snow, ice and wind. El Nino perhaps? Anyway, if that was our rain, sorry... As for El Nino, it along with global heating has led the UK Met Office to conclude that 2010 is "very likely" to be a warmer year than 2009, and it could become the hottest year on record (exceeding 1998.)

The Future of Hope

Recently I've been trying to read Hope in the Age of Anxiety by Anthony Scioli and Henry B. Biller (Oxford), which was blurbed to suggest it surveys psychology, philosophy and theology for news on hope. Instead it seems more of a self-help book, with little tests and inspiring examples. But what's most troubling to me is that I can't locate an idea of what the authors define as hope that makes much sense to me. Some of it may be optimism, or faith. Some of it may be courage. But hope? What is hope?

The question was raised again in some of the responses to President Obama's Nobel Prize address [see the post below for more responses.] Here's one from Alex Steffan at WorldChanging (a site I like and find useful), which includes the last paragraphs of Obama's address:

President Obama's Nobel Prize acceptance speech is a truly remarkable piece of writing. He manages, in an incredibly conflicted moment, to neither dodge the conflicts nor let those conflicts define the possibilities of our time. It is a speech that is honest, humble and at the same time profoundly high-minded. The last few lines, in particular, reveal a sentiment that's critical for the era of instability we know we're headed into:

"So let us reach for the world that ought to be — that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls. Somewhere today, in the here and now, a soldier sees he's outgunned but stands firm to keep the peace. Somewhere today, in this world, a young protester awaits the brutality of her government, but has the courage to march on. Somewhere today, a mother facing punishing poverty still takes the time to teach her child, who believes that a cruel world still has a place for his dreams.

Let us live by their example. We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the intractability of deprivation, and still strive for dignity. We can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace. We can do that — for that is the story of human progress; that is the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth."

"This is a set of ideas very much the moral core of the politics of optimism that I've written about before," Steffan concluded. And if you follow the link, he expresses a fairly nuanced view of the concept of optimism. But I don't quite buy it--that is, I don't quite buy that it is necessary, or more particularly, that this is what Obama is expressing.

Steffan opposes the negativism that says we are incapable of solving the major problems, of saving the future. I agree with most of what he says, but I stop with this definition of optimism: That we have the capacity to create and deploy solutions to the world's biggest problems."

I believe it's wrong to say solving great problems is impossible: that we can't. But I don't believe that we necessarily "have the capacity to create and deploy solutions to the world's biggest problems." I believe that it is possible we do. But it is impossible to know.

Admitting uncertainty is not an excuse to not try, but optimism may help to motivate people. Just as faith may. But neither is necessary. In terms in what will or won't happen, or even what can or can't happen, optimism and pessimism are irrelevant.

Envisioning what success might look like--that's something else. That's useful.
Yes we can is a clarion call, an assertion of possibility, although it can equally mean "yes, we can try." But even belief in the possibility isn't necessary for hope.

To clarify what I mean, here's another interpretation of Obama's speech, by Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan and I apparently share a Catholic background, including some knowledge of what they were calling the New Theology in the early 60s. Otherwise, not so much. Plus he's stayed with the Church and I have not. But he writes this:

" Hope is not optimism. We have little reason for optimism given the first decade of the twenty-first century. Hope is a choice."

(He also adds: As much a choice as faith and love, which I don't entirely buy. Love is something of a choice, and something of not a choice, and faith is less of a choice than either love or hope. According to my definitions.)

But I do agree that Obama makes the case, especially in those last paragraphs, that hope is a choice ("we can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice," etc.) But I would take the concept further.

To me hope is embedded in a quotation from F. Scott Fitzgerald, which is famous only for the first part: "…the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." But the full statement concludes: "One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise."

Fitzgerald may well have been thinking of the ending of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, in which the Time Traveller has seen a future when humanity is finishing its self-destruction. The novel's narrator is his friend, Hillyer, who acknowledges that the Traveller "thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end." Though this is not Hillyer's view he still concludes, "If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so."

My own sense of hope takes elements from all of these statements. In terms of fact or reality, hope is based on complexity, on the absurdity of our reflexive either/or: humanity is either evil or good, selfish or altruistic, destined for greatness or damned, etc. And also on fallibility and uncertainty: I am convinced that the Climate Crisis is real and is heading us towards the end of human civilization. But how it will all play out, and whether our efforts can really stop it, no one really knows.

So in that sense hope is a choice. It's not optimism--yes, we will solve it! Or pessimism--not with our selfish genes we won't! It isn't even about what will or won't happen in the future. It's about what we choose to do now. Hope is a condition of the present.

But in another sense, it's not even a choice, at least not as a discreet concept, any more than Samuel Beckett's famous"I can't go on. I'll go on"--is a statement of despair. It's just living. Hope is just another word for choosing to live, although it does imply an embodiment of values: a larger sense of life that includes doing for others, and for the future. Or put it this way, it's not so much a choice as a commitment.

When we do for others, we often can see the results (though not always.) But when we act for the future, we will never know if we were successful. Some people have faith. For me, faith is a trick of the heart, but it's possible that for others it is more, and they aren't deluded. But hope is more humble--it only hopes. Yet hope without works is empty. Envisioning and building a future worth hoping for is the work of hope. Idea by idea and brick by brick (or solar panel by solar panel.) "We can do that — for that is the story of human progress; that is the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth."

Nobel Speech Reaction

I admit to being a bit surprised at the response to President Barack Obama's speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. My own response was that it was a trenchant presentation but, as Andrew Sullivan wrote, "Nothing in it was very different from anything he has said before." I don't think it was Obama's best speech, and it was not as good (or as bold) as a speech he quoted from, President Kennedy's American University speech.

Nevertheless, this speech has been almost universally praised, even by GOPer and hardliners. "I am staggered that so many neoconservatives and conservatives seemed shocked and enthused by the address," Sullivan writes. "This does not, it seems to me, reflect on the address's novelty for Obama....Distilling it all in one 36 minute address may have clarified it for his opponents. But I have to say their welcome applause merely reveals that they have not been listening for so many months."

Joe Klein at TIME describes the speech's balancing act: "How does a rookie President, having been granted the Nobel Peace Prize, go about earning it? Well, he can start by giving the sort of Nobel lecture that Barack Obama just did, an intellectually rigorous and morally lucid speech that balanced the rationale for going to war against the need to build a more peaceful and equitable world."

But as Klein suggests, they're impressed with the justification for war, the statement that there is evil in the world, and Obama's assertion to the European audience in the room that their peace has been largely paid for by the U.S. military. But a lot of GOPers had to close their ears to other balances. Sullivan wrote: "The neocons are also trying to coopt Obama for Bush, while his speech, if you examine it closely, is, in fact, as brutal a debunking of Bush utopianism and incompetence imaginable. Just give the principled neocons time to save face and they'll understand (and appreciate) him in the end for how he is marshalling and rescuing American power from the Cheney wreckage."

Sullivan also quoted these two paragraphs by Peter Beinart :

"[Obama]...understands, in a way Cheney and Palin never will, that true moral universalism requires recognizing that Americans are just as capable of evil as anyone else. And that means recognizing that we are in just as much need of restraint. For Obama and Truman, the paradox of American exceptionalism is that only by recognizing that we are not inherently better than anyone else, and thus must bind our power within a framework of law, can we distinguish ourselves from the predatory powers of the past.

He didn’t just condemn human rights horrors in Congo, Burma, Zimbabwe and Iran; he acknowledged that an unfettered America is capable of moral horror itself—which is why we must ban torture and submit to the Geneva Conventions. He didn’t just praise US soldiers; he praised the peacekeepers of the United Nations, thus acknowledging that military force can occur within a framework of international institutions and international law."

Frankly I wish the public dialogue were mature enough for Obama to get beyond conclusions I came to in high school so he could envision and articulate practical steps towards creating peace--the skills of peace that are required. He could have given Europe more credit for creating institutions that have used the time and space American protection has provided to keep their continent--the focus of two devastating world wars--unthinkably peaceful.

But what he did say was worth saying. Especially having given the tragic justification for war he recognizes: "So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. And yet this truth must coexist with another - that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy.

The soldier's courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause and to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.

So part of our challenge is reconciling these two seemingly irreconcilable truths - that war is sometimes necessary, and war is at some level an expression of human feelings. Concretely, we must direct our effort to the task that President Kennedy called for long ago. "Let us focus," he said, "on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions."

Except that when I heard the speech, I didn't hear "human feelings" but "human folly."

I suggest (or will suggest) more in the post above. This one is getting too long.

Far and Near

In a new image, Hubble shows us farther into the universe than we've ever seen before, including galaxies formed in the first 600 million years of the universe, some 13 billion years ago. And a recent photo from orbit of the blue Earth, the only place in that vastness known to have at least a little intelligent life.

Hey, Deny This

After a lot of hot air about global cooling, the World Meteorological Organization and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have concluded that the current decade--beginning in 2000--is the warmest on record. The WMO said:

"The decade of the 2000s (2000–2009) was warmer than the decade spanning the 1990s (1990–1999), which in turn was warmer than the 1980s (1980–1989)."

It was the warmest in the 30 decades since instruments records began. This is a global finding, and many areas of the world were warmer this year specifically as well. According to the secretary-general of the WMO, Michel Jarraud: "There were above-normal temperatures in most parts of the continents, and only in USA and Canada there were significant areas with cooler-than-average conditions," he said. "But in large parts of Southern Asia, Central Africa, these regions are likely to have the warmest year on record."

Mr Jarraud says the year has also been notable for extreme weather events. "China with the third warmest year in the last 50 years, heat waves in Italy, UK, France, Belgium, Germany, an extreme heat wave in India, and Australia the third warmest year on record with three exceptional heat waves," he said.

Not So Hopeful News

Update 12/9: Howard Dean, Bernie Sanders and others insisting on a strong health care reform bill were speaking this morning in favor of the compromise. So maybe it's good news after all?


There was some good news Tuesday. The U.S. Senate decisively defeated an amendment to the health care bill that would have added a provision that for all practical purposes repeals Roe v. Wade. And President Obama spoke about jobs and the economy, outlining plans to tap into TARP for more job creation. The LA Times story (and video) is here, and the White House statement with more details is here.

But on our two fateful topics, some news was not good at all. The AP is reporting that the Senate has reached a compromise eliminating the public option in the health care reform bill. The CBO has been asked to score the compromise, so it isn't public yet. But other "news" or "rumors," suggest it's even worse than it sounds. There's been discussion of a Medicare buy-in but it may be so narrow and limited as to be meaningless. There's disquiet about whether the bill will really save people money, or just indenture them to the same insurance companies, but this time with force of law.

Reporting since then suggests it isn't quite as bad as that, although it's hard to call it good. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid insists the public option is still part of the bill, but other reporting suggests it's on a hard-to-pull trigger. We'll see, but probably not until the CBO scoring (for its financial impact) is done in a few days.

There's also talk that there won't be a conference committee to reconcile the House and Senate bills, but a straight up or down vote in the House of the Senate bill. While conventional wisdom has been saying that the Senate was unlikely to pass a public option, the hope was that it would be restored in conference.

Bad news coming out of Copenhagen, too, of a leaked draft of a proposed agreement backed by major nations that disses the developing world in several significant ways, so that, according to the Guardian (which broke the story) "The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN's role in all future climate change negotiations."

Perhaps the most sinister element in this proposal is to bypass the UN and give power over major climate provisions to the World Bank. The same World Bank that enforced the "Shock Doctrine" on developing nations, destroying their social infrastructure, devastating their economies and enslaving them to pay debt to rich nations and institutions. The last thing we need is a Climate Crisis Shock Doctrine.

But the good news about the bad news is that both stories are in process. Nobody actually knows what the Senate compromise is, nor do they know whether the climate agreement draft that was leaked really represents what big nations (including the U.S.) intend or ever intended to propose. So stay tuned.

Hi. Remember Me?

Fateful days, especially with the Copenhagen Climate conference beginning today, the subject of an unprecedented editorial appearing simultaneously in newspapers across the planet, trying to save the planet. More about that in the post below.

This Fateful Moment: Everyone

The whole world is watching.

Because the whole civilized world is at stake.

The Copenhagen climate meetings begin with excitement and dread, and a strong message that 56 newspapers around the world deliver in concert.

Fifty-six newspapers are printing the same editorial in 45 countries, in 20 languages. The newspapers include 20 in western and eastern Europe, 11 in Africa, two in China, an Arab language newspaper, a newspaper in Israel. They include the Guardian in the UK, Le Monde in Paris, the Star in Toronto, and the Miami Herald--the only English language paper in the U.S.

The editorial begins with a statement of purpose behind the "unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial: " We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency. Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security." Excerpts:

"In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted."

"Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone."

The editorial admits that the hope for a "fully polished treaty" at the end of this conference is probably gone, "But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty."

This has been President Obama's announced goal, and one set of good news so far has been the targets announced not only by the U.S. but also China and India.

"At the deal's heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided..." "Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. "

And there's hopeful news here, too, as President Obama has done what no U.S. administration did before: he's agreed to a global assistance fund to help developing countries deal with the Climate Crisis. John Podesta of the Center for American Progress noted: "President Obama’s decision to commit the US to a global climate assistance fund for developing countries and to go to Copenhagen on December 18th is a game changer. After the President’s trip to Beijing and the Indian Prime Minister’s visit to the White House, subsequent commitments to reduce carbon intensity by both China and India have produced a burst of momentum in advance of next week’s UN summit in Copenhagen."

Even more momentum is expected later today (Monday) when the "EPA is expected to finalize its endangerment ruling on CO2 ...making regulations on CO2 legally mandated and all but inevitable."

The editorial includes support for cap and trade, and other measures that the developed world, the rich countries, must take. It doesn't dismiss or even underestimate the challenges. "The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing."

The editorial mentions "fair rewards for protecting forests" as part of the deal, and some good news is emerging on this as well: a deal between rich and poor countries to protect the world's forests is reportedly near. If it happens, it's likely to be announced in Copenhagen.

"But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice." Yes, and some find this exciting as well as scary, while others find it just scary. Change is frightening, and I'm convinced that much of the support for Climate Crisis denial comes from deep fear of change, to the world we know as well as anxiety over the impact to individuals and families. But once again, there really is no choice between change and not changing. Change is coming--the effects of the Climate Crisis have already begun--the Copenhagen conference will hear from some of those who are suffering from it now--and these effects will spread and grow.

The editorial concludes:

Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation.

Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature".

Those better angels will have to overcome well-funded disinformation as well as the revival of political thuggery, including break-ins and intimidation. Even if Copenhagen succeeds in getting a deal started, there are prominent scientists and others who don't think what's being proposed is nearly enough, especially in goals for reducing carbon. But let us begin.

Back when Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection was in its first decades, T. H. Huxley (and his most articulate disciple, H.G. Wells) proposed that while human beings were subject to natural selection just like the rest of nature, through its unique cultures and civilization, it could to some meaningful extent guide its own evolution.

Now we are faced with a profound test. We have unconsciously altered the natural world, and consequently it is changing in ways that can actually end human civilization. Can we summon the consciousness, and the knowledge, the will and the best of ourselves ethically and morally, to confront this challenge? If we do, human civilization has a chance--not only to survive, but to take the next big step. If we don't, human civilization is unlikely to last another century or so, along with the natural world as we know it. The changes will accelerate. No one can really say just when. But soon enough.

This Fateful Moment: Health Care

President Obama's visit and talk to Democratic Senators signalled the home stretch for the Senate health care bill, while negotiations apparently still continue within the Senate. According to TPM: President Obama evoked Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the creation of Social Security today in a rare weekend meeting with the Democratic caucus, in a bid to keep his party united behind a historic health care reform bill currently being debated on the Senate floor.... A number of senators suggested Obama's remarks provided the party and the legislation with much-needed momentum. "I think it helped, more than significantly," said Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT).

The slog through the posturing, lies, obstructionism and politicized idiocy is enough to make anyone sick beyond the help of any health care plan. If President Obama had to remind them of the whole point of this effort, that speaks volumes in itself. This is beyond politics. Catastrophic illness and accidents hit Republicans and Democrats, people of all genders, races, ethnicities and religions, in every region of the country. Except for the richest few, health care costs are increasingly a cause of fatal human tragedy.

I've been thinking about this column all week. It is only one story among too many that sickens the heart and mind, that this could happen in this wealthy nation. But this one, about a sawmill worker in Oregon not far from where I am, has features that surprised even me. This man has a condition that causes him daily pain, including pain so severe that he vomits, every day. His condition can be cured with surgery, but no surgeon will do the operation because he has no health insurance. Nicholas Kristof writes: "Without insurance, John has been unable to get surgery or even help managing the pain. When he collapses or suffers particularly excruciating headaches, Esther rushes him to the emergency room of one hospital or another, but an E.R. can’t do much for him. One hospital has told them not to come back unless he gets insurance, they say."

This is human abuse. This is cruelty for profit. Forget for a moment that businesses large and small are going broke because of health care costs. Forget for a moment that U.S. business are less able to compete in the world because of health care costs, when other nations pay for them, contributing to America's slide into second class status. Forget for a moment that unless health care costs are reigned in, the federal government will face ever more massive deficits and the economy could collapse.

And maybe even forget for a moment about FDR and history. Think about the people who are suffering and dying needlessly. And about what that says about us as a people. As a Christian, if that's what you are. As an American. Think about what it says about you as a person.

It might be different if this were Somalia. This is America. Health should not be for sale. It still will be, apparently, but maybe it doesn't have to be at such a high human cost to all of us, body and soul.

Working (and the Dreaming Up Daily Quote)

Fewer jobs lost and lower unemployment than anyone had expected in the monthly report for November issued today had the New York Times story beginning: "The nation’s employers not only have stopped eliminating large numbers of jobs, but appear to be on the verge of rebuilding the American work force, devastated by the recession."

President Obama was more measured, telling an audience in Allentown, PA that there are going to be ups and downs before the economy settles. Most economists agree, but according to the Times "Many forecasters suggest that the turning point — from jobs being cut to jobs being added — will come by March, assuming the economy continues to grow, as it finally started to do in the third quarter. If they are right, the beginning of a work force recovery would come more quickly than after the last two recessions, in the early 1990s and 2001, despite the much greater severity of this downturn."

The uptick suggests that the much maligned Recovery Act is helping, which is what the Congressional Budget Office affirmed in a mostly ignored report earlier in the week. Another usefully obscure report named a different benefit related to the act--yet another quiet limitation on the influence of lobbyists ("Pursuant to the President's memoranda, restrictions have been placed on certain kinds of oral and written interactions between federally registered lobbyists and executive branch officials responsible for Recovery Act fund disbursement. ")

Early next week, President Obama will announce further plans to encourage employment. Statements this week have been quoted to emphasize the private sector's responsibility in creating jobs, which can be interpreted in different ways. There's certainly frustration that the bailed-out banking sector is not loaning enough for investment, while continuing pressure on home foreclosures. But all the right wing rhetoric and anticipated problems with the deficit aside, the private sector isn't primarily interested in employing people but in making profit. If that means overworking and exploiting fewer people that's great, especially if they're too frightened by the spectre of unemployment to complain. Thanks in part to the electronic workforce--the Internet and cell phone alliance--I seriously doubt this country will ever again see just 5% unemployment, the usual measure these days of "full" employment.

That's one reason FDR was right, in words from his second Inaugural that Jed Lewison at Kos quoted this week, and which are worth quoting again here:

" Instinctively we recognized a deeper need—the need to find through government the instrument of our united purpose to solve for the individual the ever-rising problems of a complex civilization. Repeated attempts at their solution without the aid of government had left us baffled and bewildered. For, without that aid, we had been unable to create those moral controls over the services of science which are necessary to make science a useful servant instead of a ruthless master of mankind. To do this we knew that we must find practical controls over blind economic forces and blindly selfish men. "

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"This weather does not belong to us. It belongs to someone else."

--Inuit hunter. Photo by Stanley Green. Click to enlarge.

For all the concerns about new committments, both real and reflexive, a very different emphasis to U.S. foreign policy emerged in President Obama's address at West Point Tuesday night. See post below.

Deepest of Fears or Highest of Hopes

Update 12/03: The New York Times reports "interviews on Wednesday suggested that, while opinions on the war remained wildly diverse, Mr. Obama managed to persuade a significant number of people on both sides of the political aisle..."


The first reactions to President Obama's address on Afghanistan seemed even more than usual to reflect the mood and prior political position of the reactor. But certainly the tenor of many responses expressed a war weariness, and a wariness of more commitments.

The President announced a greater troop commitment, a set of goals, a basic strategy, and a date when the troops start coming home. I don't know if the specific steps the President outlined will meet the goals he stated. I do know that this effort, though it may sound somewhat the same as in the past, is quite different.

Though the military goal is fairly narrow--to finish off the terrorist infrastructure in Afghanistan and the border region of Pakistan--there are other efforts to help create a context where such safe havens won't exist and grow. Apart from training Afghan troops and police, the additional U.S. and NATO troops are being sent partly to protect a vastly expanded civilian presence, and so that our own "peacekeepers"--ironically enough, our military--can engage local leaders and people in rebuilding their society, and especially their agriculture.

It is different because of the credibility of the man who says it's different. When President Obama looked into the camera and told Afghanistan and the Muslim world that the U.S. will not be an occupier, it was another occasion that his race and his background and his demeanor spoke volumes. President Obama's dip in popularity in U.S. polls is due almost entirely to white people. But for much of the rest of the world, his race has a different message.

"We will have to use diplomacy, because no one nation can meet the challenges of an interconnected world acting alone. I have spent this year renewing our alliances and forging new partnerships. And we have forged a new beginning between America and the Muslim World - one that recognizes our mutual interest in breaking a cycle of conflict, and that promises a future in which those who kill innocents are isolated by those who stand up for peace and prosperity and human dignity."

I react from my own point of view. I don't see Obama as another Bush or Nixon or LBJ. His speech I believe will be historic, even if his attempt fails to change American foreign policy and to rededicate it to goals and ideals lost in the past.

He acknowledged his own opposition to the Iraq war. "I opposed the war in Iraq precisely because I believe that we must exercise restraint in the use of military force, and always consider the long-term consequences of our actions."

He announced a date for the beginning of withdrawal from Afghanistan, just as he has begun the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. "So as a result, America will have to show our strength in the way that we end wars and prevent conflict."

He said that this engagement in Afghanistan and Pakistan is essential to our national security, but he also acknowledged the great importance of our economy. "Over the past several years, we have lost that balance, and failed to appreciate the connection between our national security and our economy." We've frittered away a trillion dollars in Iraq and in haphazard efforts in Afghanistan. We can't keep doing that, and so this effort has limits. "That is why our troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended - because the nation that I am most interested in building is our own."

He affirmed that the U.S. must walk the walk as well as talk the talk. "That is why we must promote our values by living them at home - which is why I have prohibited torture and will close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. And we must make it clear to every man, woman and child around the world who lives under the dark cloud of tyranny that America will speak out on behalf of their human rights, and tend to the light of freedom, and justice, and opportunity, and respect for the dignity of all peoples. That is who we are. That is the moral source of America's authority."

"In the end, our security and leadership does not come solely from the strength of our arms. It derives from our people - from the workers and businesses who will rebuild our economy; from the entrepreneurs and researchers who will pioneer new industries; from the teachers that will educate our children, and the service of those who work in our communities at home; from the diplomats and Peace Corps volunteers who spread hope abroad; and from the men and women in uniform who are part of an unbroken line of sacrifice that has made government of the people, by the people, and for the people a reality on this Earth."

He noted the danger of being so reflexively and irrationally divided. "This vast and diverse citizenry will not always agree on every issue - nor should we. But I also know that we, as a country, cannot sustain our leadership nor navigate the momentous challenges of our time if we allow ourselves to be split asunder by the same rancor and cynicism and partisanship that has in recent times poisoned our national discourse."

No one should be surprised that President Obama decided to finish the fight in Afghanistan--he said he would during the campaign. The number of troops he is committing is great, but he committed even more without much comment several months ago. What is most significant here is the plan. It may work more or less well. If it does, it will change how America uses its power in the world, and it will be a great change from Bush, Reagan and Nixon. It may not work, but it may well be worth the trying.

This is the President who stood up to the military and demanded a strategy with a beginning and an end--he denies open-ended commitments that military leaders adore, or that questionable leaders abroad look for, all the better to soak the U.S. for all it's worth. Of course this is just the first step--there will likely be difficult tests ahead.

No one should be surprised that President Obama is redefining American foreign policy even as he brings it in line with American ideals, and his own perspective:

"We will go forward with the confidence that right makes might, and with the commitment to forge an America that is safer, a world that is more secure, and a future that represents not the deepest of fears but the highest of hopes."

No President in my lifetime has faced so many challenges of such huge consequence, nor has any acted with such comprehensive vision, while dealing with such a potentially catastrophic and volatile inheritance. I have as much confidence in him as I ever did, though I can't say I am as confident that what he is attempting will succeed. But I wish him well. For what is the alternative?

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

" For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep."

--William Stafford

The Copenhagen Context: Gaia or Medea?

The wires are burning with news relating to the Copenhagen Climate talks--how things are moving fast towards agreements, how things are hopelessly bogged down, how it's a great step forward, how it's a predestined failure.

There are also a flood of announcements of study results timed for maximum impact, leaving no doubt how truly serious the Climate Crisis is, and an ill-timed diversionary flap over mostly misread and willfully distorted stolen emails among some climate scientists.

Rather than trying to keep up with contradictory reports even before the conference begins, there are a few interesting articles out there that perhaps help to create contexts for what's about to happen--which of course may well also mean what's about to not happen.

There's an interesting review by Tim Flannery of three important recent books bearing on the Climate Crisis context, in the November 19 issue of the New York Review of Books. The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning
by James Lovelock posits an extreme outcome for the Climate Crisis, both in terms of consequences (civilization essentially eradicated) and in terms of predictions. James Lovelock: In Search of Gaia by John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin (Princeton University Press) is both a brief biography of Lovelock, including recent interviews, and a history of global warming science.

Flannery passes on some of Lovelock's biography, including his scientific discoveries in several fields (he's the guy who figured out that the common cold is spread by touch, not through the air), which apparently are due to his skepticism of both outcome and method, and his powers of imagination. "Lovelock's exceptionally effective research method derives from a strong capacity for empathy," Flannery writes. He imagines himself being the phenomenon he is studying--even if it's bacteria in a drop of water.

Lovelock's greatest--and certain largest--insight was Gaia: the planet as a self-regulating system in which, over time, life alters conditions to maximize the continued existence of life. He first proposed it as an hypothesis, which was ridiculed by, among others, the Selfish Gene guy, Richard Dawkins. However, this criticism sparked Lovelock's imagination anew, and he created a model of a planet with just one form of life, and set about testing whether it would become Gaia-like through Darwinian determinism. It did. And other models like it have as well.

So for all the New Age appropriation, Gaia is now a theory, like the theory of natural selection, not just an hypothesis. The theory explains several situation in earth's past where the survival of life defies the logic of physical conditions. Scientists from four international climate research programs endorsed a version of Gaia in 2001.

The third book Flannery reviews is The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? by Peter Ward (also Princeton.) Ward recites a record of huge catastrophes and massive extinctions which make the earth sound less like the goddess of life than a raging murderer of her own children, the mythic Medea. "This name thus seems appropriate for an interpretation of Earth life, which collectively has shown itself through many past episodes in deep time to the recent past, as well as in current behavior, to be inherently selfish and ultimately biocidal."

Flannery doesn't think much of his book, mostly because author Ward never confronts the evidence for the Gaia theory. Ward is a strict neo-Darwinist, a Selfish Gene ideologue, it seems, and that style reminds me of circular theological argument. But when it comes to humanity, he may be on to something.

Is it Gaia, guiding the scientists trying to save the planet with evidence and argument, with their latest warnings of rising temperatures, record levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, of impacts piling up faster since the Kyoto treaty, of a whole set of scary evidence? Of the Arctic sea ice all but vanished, and the East Antarctic ice, previously considered solid, is melting?

Or is it Medea, handily provided purloined e-mails to make specious headlines and further confuse a public that--at least in the U.S.--seems to want to believe that the Climate Crisis isn't happening? (Here's a taste of the email distortions, and an even more instructive and detailed account of just how several supposedly damning statements were taken out of context and willfully misunderstood, with a wealth of available evidence that the interpretation was distorted.)

Will it be Gaia, inspiring humanity to heroically save its own future, even if it means sacrifice and change, to steeply reduce greenhouse gases, quickly create a green energy economy, and respond compassionately to emergencies caused by the Climate Crisis?

Or will it be Medea, selfishly sowing the seeds of discord and doubt, fear and ignorance, in order to hold onto wealth and the order that created it, to keep on burning oil and coal, and when things get really bad, lashing out to destroy supposed enemies and temporarily grab their resources? Is this The Road to Medea as child cannibal?

As for Mr. Gaia, James Lovelock, when it comes to humanity, he's a Medea man. He doesn't believe civilization can or will avoid its collapse, based partly on what reviewer Flannery suggests is outmoded information on green energy such as wind and solar. (Lovelock doesn't think they can supply enough energy to discourage coal and oil use.)

His climate projections are themselves out of the mainstream, which does make you pay attention, because all of his discoveries were, too. He uses a particular climate model to predict, that when COs concentration gets past 400 parts per million, the planetary temperature will lurch upward suddenly by 9 degrees C, which is very hot indeed. Flannery points out that carbon concentration probably has already exceeded 400 ppm, so according to this model the lurch could begin at any time.

He adds that the model also predicts that just before the lurch happens, global temperatures cool a bit. In the six weeks since his review was published, the Climate Crisis Deniers have been crowing about evidence that warming has stalled on a global average for the past few years. The evidence is partial, but even so, it's enough to send a chill up your spine when you read Lovelock's theory, proposed months ago.

Other scientists don't buy this model, but Flannery notes that a summit of climate scientists in Copenhagen this March concluded that"the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised." Scientists also propose several "tipping point" or "time bomb" scenarios that could lead to relatively sudden and drastic Climate Crisis effects.

Anyway, Lovelock has proposed in the past that the end of industrial civilization and a steep reduction in human population could be Gaia's way of getting rid of her biggest problem, and allowing life to go on, although absent most current species of any size. I tend to believe that Gaia not only operates by Darwinian mechanisms, but by other principles we see in various forms of life, including ourselves. We all have some Gaia in us, as well as some Lovelock: skeptical, empathetic, imaginative, cooperative, compassionate, life-loving.

But we also have a lot of Medea. Which is stronger is really the fatal question, and it may be answered for this civilization relatively soon.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Via Pixdaus via Kos.

Gratitude

Three years makes a tradition, right? The perpetual crisis, it seems. Here again are some excerpts from an article by Joanna Macy called "Gratitude," published in Shambhala Sun magazine:

"We have received an inestimable gift. To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe--to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it--it is a wonder beyond words. It is an extraordinary privilege to be accorded a human life, with self-reflexive consciousness that brings awareness of our own actions and the ability to make choices. It lets us choose to take part in the healing of our world."

"Gratitude for the gift of life is the primary wellspring of all religions, the hallmark of the mystic, the source of all true art. Yet we so easily take this gift for granted. That is why so many spiritual traditions begin with thanksgiving, to remind us that for all our woes and worries, our existence itself is an unearned benefaction, which we could never of ourselves create."

"That our world is in crisis--to the point where survival of conscious life on Earth is in question---in no way diminishes the value of this gift; on the contrary. To us is granted the privilege of being on hand: to take part, if we choose, in the Great Turning to a just and sustainable society. We can let life work through us, enlisting all our strength, wisdom and courage, so that life itself can continue."

"The great open secret of gratitude is that it is not dependent on external circumstance. It's like a setting or a channel that we can switch to at any moment, no matter what's going on around us. It helps us connect to our basic right to be here, like the breath does. It's a stance of the soul...."

"There are hard things to face in our world today, if we want to be of use. Gratitude, when it is real, offers no blinders. On the contrary, in the face of devastation and tragedy, it can ground us, especially when we're scared. It can hold us steady for the work to be done."

And this year we can at least add this, from a Thanksgiving eve email from President Obama: "So when we gather tomorrow, let us also use the occasion to renew our commitment to building a more peaceful and prosperous future that every American family can enjoy."

But even though this is a U.S. holiday today, let's not limit that committment to American families.

Sky Show

I don't have a camera capable of taking shots like this, but the top photo approximates what I saw at dusk on Monday:the crescent moon with the planet Jupiter just below it, as the evening star. Skygazers with telescopes will be watching Jupiter's moons this week. It was about a year ago that the November lst quarter moon was joined by both Jupiter and Venus, commemorated in the lower photo. I did spend an hour or so watching the sky last week during the Leonid meteor shower. Mostly what I saw were sinuous clouds moving around the sky, though there were large, ever-shifting swatches where stars were visible, and I did actually see three shooting stars. I've still to see a real shower--the kind with one meteor per second.

The Healthcare Tragedy

The Senate is now debating and amending their healthcare reform bill. It took an enormous political effort and the least possible number of votes just to allow it to be debated, as if it's unworthy of the Senate's time. I don't pretend to know if it will pass, or what will be in any version that does pass, or what if anything will get into law. But whatever the outcome, I have to regard it all as a tragedy.

Tragic partly because the best that's even being proposed only makes the U.S. healthcare system less unjust and less wasteful, and less tragic, while probably further enriching the same people who have created a vastly unjust and inhuman self-serving system exploiting the very lives of vulnerable people for some very literal blood money.

But also tragic for what it has revealed about the civic life of America. Opponents of reform have used outright lies with so little basis in fact that no kindergarten child would get away with anything like them. Yet these transparently false and truly vicious statements get repeated as legitimate assertions, and they become believed.

The suffering of ordinary people is being ignored, and now in perhaps the most shocking moment of all, laughed at and scorned, by other supposedly ordinary people. People who are themselves at risk of losing their savings, their homes, their health and even their lives if they dare to get sick or injured in a way that insurance companies can use to deny them the care they need. People whose hysteria and mob viciousness is being fed by people who probably will never have to face any of this, because they are rich enough to afford the best care. Yet even some of them are likely to suffer from this current system.

Though it is not the only such incident, this moment in Illinois-- where vicious "tea party" people who probably call themselves righteous Christians verbally abused a woman whose daughter-in-law died because she didn't have health insurance--should itself be enough to blow away this fog of insanity that passes as a health care debate. But somehow I won't be surprised if that doesn't happen.

Health care as a right is something the rest of the civilized world has recognized, but here it can't even be politically suggested. It died with Teddy Kennedy.

Yes, I know the monied interests are fueling this. And I recognize the ability through history of a few rich white people to convince the many poor white people that their interests are the same (although I can't think of any reason why it works other than racism and xenophobia), but how much more generally tragic can it be that in the 21st century, the wealthiest nation ever to exist on the planet cannot even recognize the need to reform this destructive system and at least try to deal with the widespread suffering it causes, especially when it can easily do something that will be to its economic benefit and in its own national interest.

Well, there's the intense denial of the Climate Crisis, ultimately a bigger tragedy. But right at this historic moment, there doesn't seem a deeper one for this country than healthcare reform. It tests our soul, as well as the ability of our discourse to deal with increasingly complex and threatening problems.

For all I know a healthcare reform law will emerge that will save lives, prevent so much injustice, and begin to tame the power of rapacious corporate interests and their cannibalism called healthcare insurance. And perhaps the nation will look back on this debate with shame and disbelief, and history will record this debate as a tragedy as well as a travesty.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible."

Maya Angelou. Illus: The Salmon People, blanket by Susan Point at Spiritwrester Gallery, Vancouver. In honor of salmon season on the North Coast.

This Day in History

On this day 46 years ago, nobody believed a President could be assassinated in America. Political and racial feelings were high in some parts of the country, right wing fringe rhetoric was a little violent, but nothing that seemed significant--for example there wasn't a former Christian fundamentalist leader charging that elements of the right were "trawling for assassins," nor was there a brisk business in t-shirts and bumper stickers applying a particular Bible verse to the President: "Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow." A situation taken seriously enough that several manufacturers stopped selling this merchandise.

The Daily Nightmare Babble

When they say history repeats itself, they usually mean not in a good way. There is this tendency--a law some say-- which I have never quite understood but which I acknowledge may well be true, to turn into the opposite. Enemies turn into each other, partly for the good, but also absorbing the evil they once fought against. Or as William Irwin Thompson has it, we become what we hate.

Are our painful centuries of two steps forward, one step back progress, coming to an end? Are we seeing the last dangerous spasm of a dying order, or are we entering a Dark Age? And quickly, right now?

The U.S. has a history of religious and racial intolerance, hatred, mob violence, willful ignorance in high places. Are we doomed to repeat it? Is it because we are ignorant of it, too far in time from the last major eruptions to remember in our bones and skin, what a terrible world they make?

On and after 9/11/2001, this country responded with cohesive strength and with fear, and our leaders chose to cultivate the fear. After manipulating themselves into power in 2001, their Rabid Right is now threatening to try to seize power by force. Do they really mean it? At a certain point it doesn't matter: they can create a firestorm they can't control. It's already feeding on itself.

It's hard to know how strong it really is. The kids at Kos have diverted themselves from attacking each other and even from highlighting Republican hijinks and simple (if Big) lies, to note in a remarkable series of recommended diaries the incidences of anti-Semitism and racism, of threats of violence against the President, of armed insurrection. But they are prone to their own firestorms.

Yet---since the Attorney-General announced a public trial for the alleged main perpetrator of the 9-11 massacres, one would expect this would be greeted with pride in the strength of the American judicial system and rule of law. But instead Rabid Right leaders call for summary execution without trial, and super-patriot O'Reilly shouts "I don't care about the Constitution."

Place these in context of the increasingly extreme and violent Big Lies and it seems clear that the Rabid Right is becoming what it beholds: their own example of Nazi Germany.

Last week, also on Kos, the writer who calls herself Plutonium Page wrote about the surviving navigator of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb exploded on a city, on Hiroshima. It was about an obscure newspaper article from New Mexico, which quoted Dutch van Kirk as being alarmed about today's casual public attitudes toward nuclear weapons. "You know, you get all these people that go around saying things like, with Iraq, 'We ought to go and nuke those bastards,' said Van Kirk, a spry 88. "They don't know what they're talking about. They have no idea what a nuclear bomb is."

I thought and felt the same way when all that talk was happening about the Bush plan to nuke the suspected nuclear sites in Iran, and I wrote extensively here and elsewhere about what a nuclear bomb is. Plutonium Page's article got many responses, mostly from readers old enough to remember the thermonuclear threats of the 50s and 60s, the renewed fears of nuclear war in the 80s. Those younger, or with inattentive memories, have less substance to grasp, and so the realities of nuclear weapons--even as far as we knew of them--can't combat the glib assumption that they're just blips on the video screen.

I mention it now because I wonder if part of the problem is that the reality of Nazi Germany, of Fascism in Europe and all that it did and represented, is also too remote in history now. People have no idea of what the reality is of a government brought to power by violence, which rules by fear and fiat. A government that really doesn't care about the Constitution, or trials, or rights.

But we do have artifacts of memory still existing in our main repository of meaning: popular culture. Just as the references to nuclear war that remain most vivid are movies and novels of the Cold War period, there are popular culture artifacts of the late 40s and early 50s especially--before the Red Menace took complete hold of the national soul, and in too many respects we became what we hated--and it's there: the way of life that we fought World War II to ensure. After all, that's basically how those in my generation absorbed the weight of the war that ended just before we were born.

It's there in something as otherwise silly as the first George Reeves appearance as Superman, in a low budget movie which later was folded into the first year of the series. The aliens from under the earth, the Mole Men, were pretty pathetic looking. But Superman's first act was to defend them against mob violence. He stopped one human (American) mob by shouting that they're acting like storm troopers.

Stormtroopers, the Holocaust, were fresh in the national mind. Though embattled, there was a strong strain in popular culture through the 60s that defended truth (as opposed to verifiable lies), justice (defendants had rights) and the American Way. The horror of torture in World War II and Korea led to the U.S. not torturing as an essential element of the national idenity. Our democracy was about ballots, not bullets, and our free press existed to convey and test the information we needed to know in order to come to agreement on how to proceed on our common destiny.

But it seems no generation of youth is ever ready for the reality of war, no matter how many war movies they see or video games they play. It may be that some of those fomenting chaos now are doing so intentionally out of some deluded faith that this is God's will. No doubt others aren't really thinking ahead, they're just inflating the rhetoric to get attention, to get ratings and political power and wealth. But how many others are being swept along for the ride?

It seems alarmist to even consider that armed insurrection could succeed, but the thrust of the Rabid Right rhetoric is aimed at destroying President Obama's ability to govern, and the dog whistle is sounding for some deranged assassin to do what they would swiftly condemn, but what they are overtly encouraging. In either or both cases, the aim is chaos, and then anything is possible.

There's been so much barely veiled rhetoric--to the extent that a former Christian Right leader charges that former compatriots are "trawling for assassins"--that I wonder if the trauma of JFK's assassination is itself too remote in history to resonate. JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King (the most prominent of the murdered black leaders) were all assassinated within a five year span, but the impact of an assassination attempt on this President could well be like all three at once, just for starters.

We are so smitten with the speed and power of our electronic communications that we haven't yet faced the reality it is creating: many sources, none trustworthy, certainly not for everyone. There is so much more noise than signal that we may not notice this until it all stops, until we really need to know what's going on, and we're helpless. It all fosters a disregard for truth that is in itself frightening, and it is already leading to an incredible credulity: people believe things just because their chosen media outlet or authority figure says so. But the noise is deafening, and swamps attention to meaning, or to what the past can still tell us.

Not that I'm a good example. I haven't yet learned from the past not to waste several hours babbling here for no good reason. And these days, the hours gone forever weigh more heavily. But I have babbled on, and there seems to be less point in deleting than posting.

Polarizing Express

There's plenty to worry about in the tendencies and policies of the Obama administration, and in a sane country in a sane time, debating them sanely would be a good idea. But the most glaring apparent problem is that we haven't gotten beyond the ideological polarization of the Reagan through Clinton through Bush years. In fact, it's become so extreme that is seems headed for some kind of apocalypse, before age and race demographics take firmer control. Sanity is the casualty.

Still, even in this toxic atmosphere where dealing with reality is a dream, the realities remain. The upcoming fateful Afghanistan decisions. Iran and its nuclear fixations. Policies on leftover Bush atrocities--trials, torture, rendition, secrets. But the most pressing "domestic" issues are funnelling again into one: the economy.

There's a lot of anger everywhere about the financial sector, which is spilling over into anger about efforts like the Recovery Act to deal with employment and the real economy. At the moment, Congress and the media are responding to the anger. They just don't seem to have any ideas on what to actually do.

The Obama administration, like most administrations that take governing seriously, is caught in the middle. Reigning in Wall Street, getting help to Main Street, are taking a lot of time and wearing out everyone's patience.

But the problems are complicated and I find myself so confused that I am equally persuaded by two diametrically opposed columns in the New York Times today, one by Paul Krugman, the other by David Brooks.

I usually find myself agreeing with Krugman, and hardly ever with Brooks. Yet even those these columns take opposite sides on the effectiveness of Treasury Secretary Geithner, I see ways in which they both are correct. It's possible that the Obama team was dealt some really bad cards by the Bushies and Wall Street, and they've done the best they could. The second Great Depression was avoided, and for the vast majority life goes on. Yet what the Obama team did and is doing may not be enough, or it may have not really been what was really needed--just what was possible to avert the worst.

The road ahead looks at least as complex and confusing. Unemployment rates in the nation and in individual states (like California) are higher than in recent memory. Business experts say unemployment nationally is likely to hang around 10% for another year. And though there are signs of stronger economic activity and a slowing of job losses, the social fabric--as well as many lives--may not be able to take much more of this strain.

Can unused TARP money be devoted to job creation and targeted to Main Street? Will the pressure to relieve the deficit and the GOPer-whipped up antigovernment sentiment prevent the kind of aggressive job creation efforts that Krugman and others believe is necessary?

Then there's the healthcare bill, which is itself a healthy job creation and anti-deficit measure, a necessity for future economic health. If it goes down, the immediate future is bleak. If it passes, then the atmosphere may change, or at least we'll get more clarity on where the public mood actually is.

Update: Apropos the Recovery Act, an article in the Saturday NY Times claims that a consensus of economists agrees that it is working: "The legislation, a variety of economists say, is helping an economy in free fall a year ago to grow again and shed fewer jobs than it otherwise would. Mr. Obama’s promise to “save or create” about 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010 is roughly on track, though far more jobs are being saved than created, especially among states and cities using their money to avoid cutting teachers, police officers and other workers."

Our Hero in China

They seem to like him pretty well there, too.

On "Hero-Worship"

Then-Senator Obama poses in front of the Superman museum in Illinois, conveniently illustrating the post below, in which I respond to the "charge" of hero worship.

I'm taking a little flak here for writing too much and too enthusiastically about Barack Obama, most of the comment being good-natured so far. I mentioned the North Coast blogger who links here not with this site's actual name but as an Obama blog. Now "cousin Lemuel" (old joke, between two old jokers) has broadened the charge in a comment, referring to my "propensity for hero worship of charismatic personalities." Could it be he's still sore because I backed Bobby Kennedy over Gene McCarthy?

On the more general charge, I'll say this: I've never been successfully accused of being an optimist, nor do I have a record of being uncritical (I do dispute "cynical" however). But I have shown evidence of preferring pop culture heroes and phenomena that represent the light over the dark, hope over despair, the commitment to good over the bad boys: from Superman to Spiderman and Harry Potter; Star Trek and Doctor Who over those s/f stories that are predictably described as "gritty." I even chose the Beatles over the Stones.

Whatever this says about me, here's what I say about context. The dark, the apocalyptic, the "gritty" are said to better represent reality and human nature. But it's not just half-empty or half-fullness in how you view this.

A century of Darwinism made the Social Darwinist analysis of ingrained, genetically programmed selfishness and cruelty in the struggle for survival into dogma, so dog eat dog capitalism, the rich preying on the poor and the sectarian violence serving the greed of those who make weapons for profit etc. have become enshrined as unalterable Human Nature.

This conveniently supports the rationale and lifestyles of militarists (and their video games), capitalists (who pay good lecture fees for intellectuals supporting this view) as well as TV and film writers who can't come up with a plot that doesn't depend on violence and the same old motives of jealousy, greed and revenge.

But now that even evolutionists are admitting that humans and other animals are also cooperative, caring, empathetic, compassionate, altruistic and yes, heroic creatures, human nature has room for all of this. Human behavior and the culture that supports it become matters of emphasis, of the value placed upon behaviors. But even those disposed to good may need models, and a sense of possibility. Heroes can personify those possibilities.

As for the function of charismatic figures in real life, particularly in politics, they can be powerful forces for bad or for good. But they are powerful, they do get things done. Here in the U.S., we had a series of Democratic Party candidates who would have made decent to very good Presidents, but they weren't, because they couldn't get elected. Barack Obama had the charisma, if you want to call it that, to inspire people to action.

Bobby Kennedy had two advantages over Gene McCarthy: he could have been elected, and he could have been a transformative President.

In Barack Obama (as in JFK and RFK), I value what I perceive as a complex intelligence, which includes complex feelings and a consciousness monitoring it all. I trust him and his judgment accordingly. But I don't worship him. I don't think he's infallible. And neither does he. That's partly why I have confidence in him.

Let me put it another way. I have long been interested in the insights of Eastern religions, but I had enough of priesthoods in my childhood, and my suspicion of gurus and their true believers probably stopped me from finding even a teacher. But I admire the Dalai Lama, partly because he doesn't believe in gurus either. He doesn't believe he's always right. Yet he has strong views and commitments, strong abilities to communicate, and--something else I value highly in RFK and Obama--a great sense of humor, including a saving sense of irony.

But here's the main point: we're up against a terribly crucial moment in human history. Humanity sliding into self-destruction and a long Dark Age is a very live possibility. Things in the U.S. are particularly dangerous. What happens in the next decade may tell the tale for America and quite possibly the world for centuries to come.

At least at the moment, the President of the United States is in many ways the psychological king of the world. Everyone projects onto the President their hopes and fears, and especially what they won't face about themselves. I've seen this with every President but of course it is more obvious to me when the President is one I voted for. I saw it clearly with Bill Clinton, who I kept called the President of Projection.

Though uncharismatic leaders can do just about as much damage, charisma in a leader can be dangerous. I was more than immune to Reagan's charisma but apparently he had it, and there wasn't another politician alive who could counter it. We got through that decade only by the charisma of writers and (for some of us) musicians. The critiques of the age came in songs by Joni Mitchell, Sting, Jackson Browne, Paul Simon, etc. They inspired us to hang on, by giving form and voice to our intuitions and observations.

But all charisma is not created equal. Barack Obama is a positive role model and a force for good in so many ways. We're going to need every ounce of his charisma, his ability to speak and inspire, the personal power to make and effect positive change and to hold off the gathering forces of evil.

He's the best hope going and I'm sticking with him until convinced otherwise. And because I trust his judgment I'm going to give him every opportunity to explain and convince me he's right, or at least that he's made the best possible choice.

I choose to emphasize the good he does, though some expect him to never disappoint them, to do everything they want immediately. Who is being unrealistic then?

I am not going to attack him and try to weaken him, as some on the left are now doing, because he isn't measuring up to their preconceptions of what he should be doing on some particular issue that's important to them. He isn't Bush. I don't see that weakening him is ultimately a positive.

Is that hero worship? I don't think so. I may look for the good and underestimate the bad, but I am not deluded and I gave up worship a long time ago. A couple of other dangers in hero worship are passivity and narcissism. I'm not passive, at least beyond my own fatalism, laziness and personal self-delusions. I believe that people find direction and hope by identifying to some degree with heroes and role models. Sure, I see the danger of such identification becoming psychotic, especially in this celebrity-crazed culture, but let's not throw out the planet with the bathwater.

We follow the leader who is leading in the direction we believe in, and in whom we have confidence. We follow what in a hero defines for us what we value, what we want to be, where we want to go, who we are committed to being. For those defined by their fears there is Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and a host of others, mostly to the right, but also left and center. For those defined by their hopes, there are lots of quiet heroes, lots of role models past and present, but mostly, there's Obama. Or maybe I should say the Obamas, because women (among others) are inspired by Michelle, and children (among others) are inspired by Sasha and Malia.

It's all a matter of emphasis. I'm for tipping the delicate balance towards equality, compassion, empathy, freedom, "truth, justice and the American Way." Technical adjustments may be necessary to get there, but we need more than technicians. There are powerful forces in opposition that are inside us as well as arrayed in the shared world. This looks like a job for the Superman inside. Out there, too, we need all the heroics we can get.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"If all possible scientific questions are answered, our problem is still not touched at all."

--Ludwig Wittgenstein

Welcome to the Neighborhood

A new portrait of the central Milky Way using infrared and X-ray photography, a composite with contributions from the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, and Chandra X-Ray Observatory. [Click on the photo to enlarge. Credit: NASA, ESA, SSC, CXC and STScl.] It's enough to make you wonder--which, it turns out, even the Vatican is doing, at their conference on whether there is other life in the universe. Could Galileo being orbiting in his grave?

The Hypocritical Oath

There's a war on Americans that has killed twice as many U.S. veterans in one year as were killed in Afghanistan since 2001. It's the war against universal health care.

A new Harvard Medical study finds that 2,200 vets under the age of 65 died last year because they didn't have health insurance.

This is only one item in the scandalous treatment of veterans. I'm not going to join in all the hyperbole about soldiers that's customary on Veterans Day. The military is not the only way to serve and protect, and heroism used to mean something more than the pious name given to every member. But the hypocrisy of a country that doesn't take care of its veterans, that skimps on care and allows huge loopholes in coverage, is simply disgusting.

But this is a specific instance of the war against universal health care now being waged, which even victimizes the veterans that the hypocritical patriot mouths will praise today. It's a war on the many--especially the least powerful--by the very powerful few, as most wars are.

It's a war that has already watered down even the strongest health care reform proposals currently being considered. But former President Clinton is right--something is better than nothing. If universal health care had become law in 1997, those veterans would not be casualities of this war, nor would the estimated 45,000 Americans who die each year because they have no health care coverage. And as baskeball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said Tuesday, as he revealed his serious medical condition that fortunately he can afford to have addressed, "It’s a just and noble cause to make health care available to everyone."

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience."

--Albert Einstein
painting: "The Boulevard" by Gino Severini