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A Whole New Ballgame (Special Edition)

7/21/2024

A Whole New Ballgame

Joltin’ Joe’s decision today may be the most momentous political event of the year…or, it may be just turn into an eerie footnote. As of today, no one knows (or, as a friend of mine says: “KNK”). Historians are bad at predicting the future (as is pretty much everyone), so I won’t go out on any limbs here. You will be able to read hundreds of scenarios covering the next few months printed and posted everywhere and at least some of them are accurate. Whatever….

He shouldn’t have put himself, his party, and his country in this position. It just goes to show that even nice and non-ostentatious guys can fall prey to the “indispensable man” self-mythology. It’s particularly hard as President to avoid it, with all the fawning and kowtowing, most have succumbed, one way or another. At least he caught himself.

The events of the past week or so have amply demonstrated why prognostication is a mug’s game and the foolishness of the concept of inevitability. Those who have heard me talk about the origins of WWI have heard about the flukiness of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and it’s (hardly inevitable) consequences. The same can be said of a recent visitor to Western Pennsylvania who turned his head at the precise moment that some discontent pulled a trigger and nicked an ear. Football is not the only game of inches.

The ”coulda, shoulda, woulda”s come cascading down. An open Republican convention simultaneously mourning for its lost monarch without any ideological or institutional coherence would have been quite a sight. What would Joe have done then?

Now, the bullet missed and Joe bowed out and we enter into territory untrodden by any modern political party. We haven’t had anything close to an open convention (in either party) for over sixty years. It’s almost fallen completely out of living memory. History, despite the many references that will (inevitably??) be trotted out over the next few weeks, gives no guidance. The changes in the electorate, the parties, the media, etc. ensure that both precedent and analogy are meaningless.

[btw, you can see my discussion on alternatives to Joe and Mr. MAGA from January here.] http://www.steveharris.net/condemned-to-repeat-it/alternatives

I, for one, am optimistic; and not just because the prospect of the orange-haired one swearing to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States” is nauseating.

The Dems have multiple plausible candidates. These folks will have a chance to stand before the public and make their case. The Convention Delegates will choose, but they will do so with the real attention of the country on them. Let’s see some real politics for a change, where the media hype can’t keep up with the real stuff and there’s little time to pre-package and pre-judge. If we’re lucky….

I’m reminded of my all-time favorite scene from “The West Wing” where, just seconds prior to the Presidential debate, the First Lady snips off the President’s tie, causing a great fluster. The adrenaline charge was tangible and Jed Bartlett crushed his opponent. I’m hoping the same is true for the Dems and for the millions who are bored and disenchanted with our current politics. Game On!

For all the noise about immigration, abortion rights, taxes, and Ukraine, this election (like almost all) is not about the issues. To some extent, it’s not even about the actual candidates. It’s about feelings. It’s about feeling like we’re being listened to. And, when I say “we,” I mean the folks in the center who are exhausted by the rhetoric and the prioritization of secondary and tertiary issues. They (we) are looking for inspiration and hope in a troubled world. We’re looking for policy directions that affect real people now ( not hypothetical tweaks to Supreme Court terms or picking fight the Chinese). Still, many of the significant issues are not readily solvable, certainly not in the space of one term and not without more fundamental changes in culture and attitude. Further, our system is pretty stultified, so that even if one party sweeps, their majorities in each house will be marginal.

So, no, it’s not about policy. It’s about leadership and energy. Joe’s done well, but he’s out of gas. The other guy is great at negativity and anger, but that won’t carry the day unless a fair number of folks sit it out. It will be up to whoever emerges from Chicago in mid-August to figure out how to get them off their butts.

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Labouring Away

7/19/2024

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It’s been a while since I commented on the state of His Majesty’s United Kingdom. (See 031723: Britannia Rules the Waves, 090922: Bye, Bye, Boris, 121021: Brexit II, and 091520: Brexit). I have been roundly critical of the hapless Tories in terms of both policies and personalities. After five prime ministers, four elections, and fourteen years in power, they’re clearly out of gas (or, I should say, in this new era: “Their batteries are out of charge”). Now the voters have spoken.

Labour’s victory would be shocking in its magnitude if it weren’t so extensively foreshadowed by polls and pundits alike. Labour received 34% of the popular vote, but with the British “first-past-the-post” electoral system, this translates into 412 seats in the House of Commons (~63%). As a result, Sir Keir Starmer’s new government can pretty much drive the boat where they want, even though. After all, the UK effectively has an elected dictatorship with only limited judicial review, a toothless King, a House of Lords with only a couple of teeth, and no real political counterweight to the Commons. But, …but….

Bearing in mind Marx’s comment about the limits of human free will in the face of embedded history, Labour can do little to salvage the Brit’s well-entrenched pride (arrogance?) both in terms of the projection of power around the world and as to its global competitiveness. Secular decline is the key descriptor here.

Labour also published a manifesto of the policies on which it was running. Unlike the party platforms in the US (which are typically only so much pabulum), it will be expected to stick to it (more or less). Count this as a directional indicator and minor constraint.

Certainly there is much to be done and doable regarding the National Health Service, tax and regulation, energy and climate, and a host of other domestic issues. The legislative structure (the aforementioned House of Lords and the highly-distorting pro-duopoly electoral system for the House of Commons) has been incoherent for well over a century. Globally, Britain will punch above its weight, but with only limited effect.

The question about which I’m most curious is: What to do about Brexit? It was the central political issue in the UK for over a decade but you have to work to find it in the Conservatives’ Manifesto (no great surprise, since it’s been a complete clusterf&%#). It’s extremely well-buried, too, in the Labour document.

Polls show that there has been a clear majority that wishes Brexit hadn’t happened. Many “Leavers” regret their stance and recognize that the (mostly Tory) leadership of the “Leave” campaign misled them about the process and effects of their vote. The tortuous process from the vote (June 2016) to final agreement (January 2020), followed by a “transition period” (officially through July 2021; but effectively still on-going) has only highlighted the intricate ways in which economies and cultures were integrated. Indeed, since 2022, a clear majority of British voters have indicated affirmative support for rejoining the EU.

Well, that’s not going to happen. From the EU’s perspective, the excruciating process and disingenuous behavior of several British leaders left a very bad taste in their mouths. After a period of “should we or shouldn’t we?” about British entry into Europe in the 1950s-170s, the UK finally jumped in, only to jump out 40ish years later. Who can have confidence that they wouldn’t flip-flop again? Presumptive PM Starmer has already acknowledged that the UK won’t rejoin the EU formally “in [his] lifetime.”

Nonetheless, despite PM Theresa May’s famous declaration (2016) that “Brexit means Brexit,” [WTF does THAT mean??] there was always a lot of ambiguity around what avenue the UK would pursue. Many less severe interpretations around the complexities of their relationship with the EU could easily have been implemented under the general rubric. Indeed, a large part of the Torys’ problem is that they chose the hardest path—voluntarily. But if there’s no going back on the formalities, there’s an awful lot of the damage—symbolically, practically, and culturally—that can be undone.

At the same time, a large part of Labour’s problem is that they finally went along with Boris and the Tory’s exit strategy rather than continuing the fight to remain. A sharp riposte to Theresa May articulating a minimalist exit strategy might well have been effective (but for the fact that Labour’s then-leader was a bit of a cranky anti-globalist).

So, they don’t have much to crow about either. Going forward, Labour’s Manifesto goes on about “rebuilding relationships” in Europe with a wholesale lack of specificity. On the hustings (Brit-speak for campaign speech), Starmer backed down from rejoining the EU, citing the domestic political turmoil such a debate would instigate. However, even without running the public referendum gauntlet again, he’s got a lot of room to smooth off the rough edges of what the Tories wrought.

With the caveats noted above, the British governance model at least nominally allows for action. This is a stark difference from the US experience where split government has been pretty much the norm for two generations (32 of the last 44 years). Even where the House, Senate, and President are of the same party, differing personalities and Congressional independence have made it hard to get too much done. A massive Labour majority could, as a result, enable far more extensive change than the US model allows for. Starmer is not an ideologue and his government will be pretty centrist compared to the oratory on either end of the spectrum, but radicalism is not tied to the extremes, it’s a function of vision and courage.

As I said at the outset, I don’t know that the structural fundamentals of British society could be remedied, but such a jolt –on climate, health, taxes—might at least wake people up and get them engaged in the process of salvaging the situation. Rejoining the EU in any significant way will just have to wait a generation or so until the bad taste of Albion’s perfidy has faded.

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Eulogy

7/12/2024

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[As I noted a few months ago, I assign my students in a class called “History and Me” to write their own eulogy as if they have lived to their projected life expectancy (for them about 60 more years). Eulogies are usually entirely retrospective, but they have a relatively small base of historical facts to work from, so I use this assignment as an exercise in projection. It only seems fair that I take a crack at the same assignment for myself, even though (according to the Social Security Administration) my life expectancy is in the neighborhood of sixteen years. On the other hand, I have a lot more history to cover than they do. So, here’s mine:]

What is the point of a eulogy?

There is scant historical evidence for the proposition that a person can “defeat” fate or fortune. Of the (+/-) 100 billion people who have lived over the past 100,000 (+/-) years, I am no outlier. Nor, despite the efforts of historians, Wikipedia entries, or vast and interconnected genealogical tables, little is remembered for long; so, is there much solace in the idea of a good historical reputation? Even if 10 billion of those 100 have left some recorded mark, it is doubtful that more than a million or so have accomplished anything of lasting and visible effect. And of those, only a passing few can be pointed to with respect and distinction. Besides, what worth is a memorial to the dead.

For most of us (i.e., the “other 99.999%), it is only to ourselves during life and to those with whom we treat that anything we do can matter. For myself (or what was myself), I now can remember nothing. So, for you still here, I can only ask you to consider your own experience of me and assess whether my own goals and perceptions comport with those memories.

I write this at 70 and can only hint at the balance [although I may update the report from time to time].

Steve Harris was born July 8, 1954, the first child of Merle and Shirley Harris, a young Jewish couple (Shirley was only 21 at the time) in suburban Detroit on their way to the upper-middle class. Steve was shortly joined by Jeff (1955) and Julie (1957). Steve’s grandparents were always in the picture, indeed his first family funeral was not until he was 31. There were many family holidays with cousins, particularly on his dad’s side, and it was a great gift that he was in regular contact with them throughout his life.

Steve was affable, but always pretty shy; insecure about his social position and, later, his lack of athleticism. He compensated by applying himself at school; generally near, but not at, the top of his class. These days, we would call him a “nerd.” He was an avid reader, a vocation which lasted throughout his life; science fiction was on-going staple of his reading lists from adolescence onward. He had a sharp wit; punning from an early age. Indeed, Steve always enjoyed his own humor and wordsmithing; others sometimes agreed. He moved away from religion early on, and wrestled with the crafting of a life of meaning in the real world.

Steve enjoyed many benefits, financial security, and opportunities for travel and enrichment. He went to Temple Beth El Sunday School from kindergarten on, and summer camp in Wisconsin from the age of 7. He went to public schools in Berkeley and Royal Oak through Grade 7. Then his parents decided to send him to Cranbrook, the premier prep school in Michigan, from which he graduated in 1972. Cranbrook was an extraordinary opportunity. Fine mentors and an extraordinary set of classmates fostered good academic skills and a range of curiosities; however, he was best known there as the manager of several teams—particularly track and soccer—a way to part of a group without being athletic.

His two best and life-long friends, Mark Schatz and Bruce Benson, date from 1964 and 1969 respectively: Mark at camp, Sunday school, and Cranbrook; Bruce at Cranbrook, Brandeis, and law school.

After a brief and problematic freshman year at the University of Chicago, he transferred to Brandeis where he majored in Politics, dabbled in legal studies, and graduated in 1976. Leaning into his academic strengths and not pushing very hard against what was “expected” of him, Steve went to Law School at Michigan where, again, he ended up towards the higher end of the class, focusing on international law.

He worked in law in Philadelphia and Washington, blown by circumstance from an international legal matters to telecommunications, a brief stop in the government, and on to San Francisco where he lived for the last fifty years. Work was fine, often interesting, amid new technologies and new ideas, but though bureaucracies were stultifying, conventionality and inertia kept him going. For breaks, Steve went traveling and trekking in obscure corners of the world, collecting rugs, discovering the provinciality of modernity, and expanding his eating tastes far beyond the “suburban Chinese” food of his youth.

It wasn’t until his late thirties that, despairing at loneliness, he pushed himself into a more social stance. Steve was lucky beyond words to find someone who, like him, was willing to work at living better; someone to help him and whom he could help. Gina was bright energy and, fortunately, different in style and interests. The fact that, to Steve, she sometimes “made absolutely no sense,” was the key to opening his overly-tight self-image, coldness, and arrogance. Gina brought with her a therapist, Bob Thur, who labored for decades to help Steve figure things out; together they made some progress.

Shortly thereafter, Steve left PacTel and worked for several small firms and projects for a few years until he was willing to recognize that he had no passion for law and business. They were occupations, not vocations. He shifted his attention to the study of history, loving the learning and the teaching, the research, and the intellectual energy. He was extraordinarily lucky; first, to have the financial wherewithal not to worry about “work,” and second, to have found work teaching at SF State. He gained new energy from engaging with students (a half to a third of his age). He found a way to slip in a bit of philosophy and perspective into the substantive history that he taught. That streak ran formally from 2006-2024 and, informally and with occasional outings for some years thereafter. History provided an endless set of engaging issues which, with Steve’s philosophical bent, he used to provoke his own thinking, and share a few ideas with those who read or listened—in classes, discussions, a few scholarly publications, and the blog he started in 2020.

The month he left PacTel, Steve and Gina were in Bhutan—karmic at several levels—a combination of resonant spirituality, intellectual curiosity, and an appreciation of the wonders of the world. They was to go back five times. Certainly to their benefit and with some contribution back to a culture that has held up an important mirror to the rushing modernity of the rest of the world.

Steve and Gina lived quietly. Wealth was in hand, but they shared an aversion to ostentation and consumption. Inheritance enabled resources to give back to the world, a responsibility he also inherited. His studies enabled Steve to recognize that the grand crises of civic culture, modernity, and planet could not be solved by any individual, but that he would feel himself empty if he didn’t make an effort and use his brain and his money to try. He came to recognize that what we humans had done to the planet risked our existence and that fighting that tide was the priority. So he focused time and money on making such difference as one person could.

Steve was never a model physical specimen, but he worked out regularly from his 30s and was fortunate that, into his 70s, his health issues were mundane and merely aggravating. He loved to read and had stacks and shelves to prove it. He loved to travel and see the world, both to learn of it and to get a better sense of where he was at home. He was no fashionista and, as he said, “when you have natural beauty, you don’t have to spend much time enhancing it.” A sentiment his wife did not share.

Steve was focused on order and organization (sometimes to the point of obsession); hoping that such localized control of the physical world could replace the underlying chaos. He often acted conventionally, even if he had a radical streak underneath. Steve had a strong belief in personal integrity, but cheated both himself and others from time to time. Steve was devoted to Gina and good friends and searched for more. Steve was committed to learning, and teaching, and stretching his mind. He didn’t suffer fools gladly, but came to be nicer about it as he realized his own foolishness.

Regrets? Of course, but what’s the point…

Overall, Steve had far, far more good fortune than problems: Gina, family, friends, and the ability and inclination to figure things out. If the Buddha took 25,000 lifetimes to reach nirvana, Steve made some real progress this round.

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The Pursuit of Happiness

7/5/2024

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It’s been 248 years since Jefferson penned the famous words: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as the touchstone of the kind of human society to which he aspired, both in general and for his country. The revolutionary energy of the Enlightenment (“bliss it was in that dawn to be alive,” Wordsworth said) has long faded; worn out by time and circumstance. Still, as a species, we have made some considerable strides towards that goal, albeit with real costs and some backtracking along the way.

Despite American Exceptionalism and the visions of the 19C, there is no guarantee of progress; no right to assume that things will get better. Improvements in technology and the vast expansion of economic elites around the world have made this deep truth too easy to forget. Our “Western” culture, its epistemology still baked-in from the glory years of the later 20C has fixated upon what is likely a peak (at least for a while) of that grand experience. We have forgotten or dismissed the work, pain, expenditures, and fragility that accompanied this “progress.”

The happiness which Jefferson challenged us to pursue is not to be conflated with luxury, or even comfort, much less “fun.” Along with myriad other terms, the idea of “happiness” seems to have been diluted and emptied of its texture. It certainly has little to do with pleasure or painlessness or the sating of appetite. Yet so much of our culture is focused on delivering pleasure (for those with the resources) or dreaming of it (for those who lack). Rather, we might be better off describing Jefferson’s “happiness” as “virtue,” for that is what he had in mind. It‘s a goal resonates with consideration, commitment, and contentment.

I had a friend from college (since passed) who, from time to time, would tell me: “I just want to be happy.” He was, in all the conventional ways, “successful.” But he wasn’t happy and he couldn’t figure out why. If I had been able at the time to ask him what he meant by “happiness,” and what parts of his life helped him get more of that, I would have been glad to do so. I’m not sure he had the self-grounding to really wrestle with all that and figure out what to do. (I’m not sure that twenty years later, I do.)

It takes work and attention, even (especially) if I don’t lean on those who have thought usefully about how to achieve this goal. Jefferson did. He had the luxury of wealth and education and the support of an elite culture which spoke this language rather than just the mechanics of wealth and the fetishes of consumption which passes for sophistication today. Many (not just the elites of his era) could also speak this language, sometimes from philosophy, sometimes from religion. It was enough that it was possible to speak of the “pursuit of happiness” and have it mean something serious.

I recently finished reading Vassily Grossman’s novels (“Stalingrad” and “Life and Fate”) set in the Soviet Union in WWII. It wasn’t all that long ago. His characters faced the brutal desolation of the war amid the Russian winter, some in battle, some in Nazi concentration camps, some in Soviet prisons, and some in civilian life. Life was hard. It wasn’t all that long ago. Life is hard and no less brutal for many today, both here in the US and in many places around the world. Many have no bandwidth for anything beyond survival. Those of us that do seem to have forgotten that we therefore have the opportunity (obligation?) to spend some time and attention on figuring out this “happiness” thing.

Jefferson’s Declaratory phrase is prefaced with the idea that we have the “right” to this life/liberty/pursuit of happiness thing—as if they are entitlements. Well, the “rights” might be entitlements, at least vis-à-vis society and the forms and legalities of the state. But the achievement of them is no right; it is an opportunity. Indeed, Jefferson did not say we have a right to happiness, but merely to its pursuit.

And, what are we to pursue? Benjamin Franklin (who was also on that drafting committee in Philadelphia) shared Jefferson’s concerns and hopes (and his reading list). For him, the components of the happiness to be pursued consisted of Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality, Industry, Sincerity, Justice, Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquility, Chastity, and Humility. All internal. All free. The goal of organized society was to enable people to have the space (moral and economic) to work on being virtuous.

Individuals thus not only had the duty to respect others’ space for such a pursuit, but, as citizens, to contribute to the support of such a society. The idea of participatory democracy was thus to be mutually reinforcing with this sense of virtue. Allowing monarchy and other forms of dominating government were an abandonment of the responsibility—the self-responsibility—of governing oneself. There was, in other words, no distinction between one’s duties to oneself and one’s responsibilities as a member of society and humanity.

We’ve been at it for almost a quarter of a millennium. The United States, as it were, remains unparalleled in history; so much so that there is no basis to say whether we’re making a “good” or “bad” job of this audacious project and certainly no way to know whether or how we will carry forward what Jefferson, Franklin, and the rest started.

Much could be said about the Founders’ flaws. The best of them would not deny their presence. But for us to focus on them is a distraction; they (and all others in the world then and now) are too easy a set of targets, so it is natural that we gravitate towards criticism rather than a mirror. Happiness lies not in saving the world, or even “these United States.” Neither America’s “Greatness,” nor mine, was on Franklin’s list. The only real work—the only effective pursuit of happiness—lies much closer to home.

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Fences and Neighbors

6/28/2024

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One of the central components in the rise of the modern nation-state across the 17-19C was the idea of territoriality: a demarcated chunk of ground over which each particular nation-state claimed jurisdiction to the exclusion of other claimants. Contributing factors included the decline of feudalism and dynastic claims that had made Europe a hodge-podge of allegiances, the rise of nationalism in which geographically-concentrated groups of ethnically similar folks recognized themselves as the foundation of political power and organization, and—not least—the development of more systematic and precise methods of surveying and mapmaking.

We’ve come some distance from the development of ground-based surveying that enabled governments to comprehend and depict the scope of their country’s territory to the satellite-based precision of the 21C. Still, we shouldn’t conflate precision with accuracy; nor with political realities. Issues about terrains that were inaccessible (at least to Europeans) in the 18/19 C were resolved by the expedient of drawing a straight line on a map in some Chancery in St. Petersburg, London or Berlin. Such lines were drawn for expedience and clarity, a little thought was given to any sense of social or economic or geographic sensibility; much less to any cultural traditions of the peoples who had lived in those lands for centuries.

We see the remnants of this practice all across the maps of the contemporary world. The end of empire in both Africa (20C) and Latin America (early 19C) brought issues as to how newly independent countries would draw their own lines and claim territory. In the latter case, with a few exceptions, and in the former case (almost completely) the imperial lines were accepted and fixed. Conscious decisions were made to avoid the complexity and conflicts inherent in revisiting those old lines, regardless of the contemporary cost or historical rationales. Thus, the hodge-podge of imperial claims in Africa shows up today in the plethora of small countries with too many straight lines; largely because the British, French, and other Euro powers didn’t sort things out, but merely passed on power to their own local elites. In Latin America, which was nearly all Spanish, it was administrative boundaries originally sanctioned in Iberia in the 16C, that froze the lines we see today.

In sum, in these places, it was a shared decision to forget the past that set the stage for a more stable (even if “inaccurate”) future. Nonetheless, there are still a long list of unresolved border issues on the books today (Wikipedia lists over 150). The underlying principle seems to be that if some predecessor regime (no matter how many centuries ago) once claimed/ruled/occupied a particular chunk of dirt, then the current government maintains that it still should be recognized as including that territory. In some cases, there is an ambiguity in some treaty language; in others, the treaty is criticized as being “unequal” and therefore not binding (as if there ever was a treaty among “equals”). Sometimes, inaccessibility meant that lines specified were inaccurate. The modern world seems increasingly reluctant to accept the traditional model of acquisition of territory by conquest, the basis of a bunch of claims.

Most of these disputed lands are pretty small and quite obscure. You have to wonder why countries continue to bicker. Why does China pick on tiny Bhutan over a few square miles of the Himalaya? Doesn’t Venezuela have something better to do than bluster over a (larger) chunk of Guyana? Often the answer is that a nice foreign “enemy” makes for rousing nationalistic politics, ripe for exploitation in terms of domestic insecurity or as a make-weight in an international dispute on some other issue.

Unfortunately, things sometime spiral out of control and actual military conflict results. People die because of disputes over our modern remnants of national “honor”: the Falklands War in the 1980s was one example, a series of “low-level” fights between China and India since the 1960s is another.

Fortunately, most of the time, these disputes are put on the back shelf and the local folks “make-do.” No one expects a confrontation between the US and Haiti over Navassa, a small, uninhabited island south of Cuba. Nor will Italy and France start shooting over the precise demarcation of their border on Mont Blanc. On the other hand, Russia claims some (all?) of Ukraine, and places such as Kashmir (India and Pakistan), Jerusalem (Israel, Jordan, and Palestine), and much of the South China Sea (China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines) remain live and dangerous disputes.

More fundamentally, the very idea of territoriality as the premise of a governance regime/state is coming under increased pressure. New diasporas—caused by wars or climate change—are putting larger, reasonably coherent populations in new places, with the potential for dispute or new forms of shared power structures. Global integration, particularly through telecommunications /internet capabilities, means that link between land and jurisdiction mean much less than a century ago.

In the 19C, Ernst Renan noted that modern national sensibilities were formed by a shared agreement to forget past disputes. Where this doesn’t occur (Catalonia, Scotland, South Sudan, Taiwan) various degrees of trouble continue to brew. The same is true of international boundaries. For all of the challenges which Africa has faced since decolonization, things would likely have been much worse if extensive international boundary disputes had led to wars, destruction, and distraction.

So, even if fictitious, the acceptance of the status quo; consigning the past to the past is likely the better course. China would gain a great deal of diplomatic prestige by renouncing a bunch of claims to bits of snowy mountains or piles of rock in the South China Sea that had minimal social or economic value. The majority of the global list of open issues could be similarly resolved and attention and effort put to more pressing issues. But “planting the flag” remains a powerful symbol of national glory. It’s another way in which we are trapped by the past.

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Tapestry

6/21/2024

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One of the best and most important albums of my youth was Carole King’s Tapestry (1971). The title song (not nearly the best on a collection that included: “I feel the earth move,” “It’s too late,” “You’ve got a friend,” and “Will you love me tomorrow?”) speaks in general terms of the complexity of life and connections and intersections it comprises.

I was recently reviewing (and cleaning out) my contacts file on my computer, recalling the periods and events in which the various folks listed there came into my life. Many dropped in for one particular reason or project and vanished (most of those got dropped from the contacts file); they are just little pips of thread. Some, for reasons that often pass understanding, still resonate with me, even if their thread in my tapestry was brief (they got kept in the list). Quite a few from pre-internet days are rich lines, even if they don’t show up in my contacts file. Some threads are long and narrow, a few are long and thick (some are short and thick) . There’s a whole section of cloth filled with overlapping fabrics of family members. Different colors and textures show the presence of school and work groups. Some threads appear for a while, vanish, and then show up again in another section of the cloth.

I imagine that my thread shows up in all these ways in their tapestries too.

My life is filled with (is comprised of?) all these interactions; the vast majority of which were transient and unmemorable. These people (who never made it into my contacts list) provided services, or were colleagues in work, students, clients, or neighbors. Their appearance was so short that they can’t really be seen individually; they only show up as a different weave or general color trend in one section.

It’s a strange and moving way to envision a life. “Whatever happened to Jimmy, my best buddy from elementary sixty years ago? Or that girl I dated when I moved to Washington in 1980? Etc. etc. etc.

I distinctly remember a time (I’m sure I was in single digits) when I realized that I actually knew a full hundred people. That realization wasn’t about accomplishment or hitting a milestone; it was a change in my understanding of the world: it was stunning to me that a person could know so many other people and that I could be such a person. A decade later I’m sure I passed a thousand; and now it’s over 10,000, but by then such a range wasn’t so remarkable and wasn’t marked at the time.

What if my tapestry could be an event? A retrospective collection of the lives that have intersected mine? A souped-up version of that old TV show “This Is Your Life” (1952-61 and various follow-ons) in which all the bit roles, supporting actors, and stars of the “Steve Harris Show” all came together. I don’t envision it so much as a party (or a podcast); rather as a way to see how I have fit into the broadest tapestry of the world: a high school classmate who sells gemstones in Bangkok, a girl on whom I had a crush at 13 becoming a medical researcher, my secretary at PacBell, now retired, who lives quietly in Walnut Creek.

It's strange and moving to realize that the nature of a lifetime is the compilation of all these interactions; that the billions of people in the world all have the same type of connections (and that all of us interconnect in unimaginable ways). “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” on steroids, an Ancestry.com matrix that goes beyond genetics to social contacts. My tapestry—with all its different colors, fabrics, and textures—is interlocked with those of all these other folks (and their connections…and theirs…). The ultimate multi-dimensionality is mind-boggling: to think about how the 100 billion people who have lived are connected to each other (and to me). It’s a fine antidote to statistical thinking and grand collective nouns like “the human race.”

Of course, just sticking with my direct contacts, and even with all the tools at our disposal these days, we don’t have the means to find and contact and interview all these folks (although it could be an interesting AI application/business opportunity), nor do I have the time to relive my life (some sort of autobiographical version of Borges’ imperial map that was drawn at a 1:1 scale), much less more than scratch the surface with all these other lives in play. It’s all I can do to imagine it all and explore just a few lines: track a few folks down on the internet, find their websites or public listing info: the guy who was with me on Safety Patrol during elementary school is a pro bono lawyer in Anchorage. Another guy I knew a bit from Junior High in Royal Oak, MI is an orthopedic doc two miles away from my house here in SF. I could (literally) go on and on; but we only get one life and we can’t live it just doing self-history.

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The Struggle of the 20C

6/15/2024

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Recently (051024), I wrote about WWII’s Battle of Stalingrad and hinted at a broader interest in the “cultural and epistemological effects” of the three world wars of the 20C. By request (JSS), here’s an expansion in that direction.

As a preliminary matter, the conception of the 20C being dominated by the struggle between communism, fascism, and liberal democratic capitalism as manifested in WWI, WWII, and the Cold War, I take from Phillip Bobbit’s “Shield of Achilles.” The upshot was the demise of the former two and the “triumph” of the latter.

The First War was an overdetermined grasping at survival on the part of four empires (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Turkey) whose post-war dismemberment demonstrated the failure of their attempts to hold off various aspects of modernity. The Versailles Settlement showed that the Allies didn’t really understand modernity very well either which, in combination with an antiquated and self-serving view of economics (i.e., the Great Depression), cleared the way for Hitler/Mussolini/Tojo to again overreach themselves and be crushed in WWII by the US and the Soviets with redoubtable support from the fading British Empire. Then, as Toqueville predicted in 1835, the globe became dominated by the US and the Soviet Union who kept global “hot” wars to a minimum for 45 years until the contradictions of capitalism (which Marx described) proved much less problematic than the contradictions of communism, leading to the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the end of what Hobsbawm called the “short 20th century.” [Whew! Catch your breath.]

Of the myriad riffs I could take from this abruptly condensed history, I will focus on two points here.

First, WWI drove Europe off the cliff. Europeans (especially elites) were exhausted (fiscally, physically, and emotionally) by the War and their robust formal global empires became increasingly creaky. More fundamentally, their worldview of progress disintegrated. The romance of technology and power and culture and their sense of embodying the pinnacle of human “civilization” was eviscerated by the brutality of the War, the pointless deaths and dismemberments, and the realization of the fragility of what they had wrought.

The term “shell-shocked” (what we now refer to as PTSD) arose in WWI to describe the psychological impact of the noise and physical brutality of the war on ordinary soldiers. But it also applies at the societal level and its effects can be seen as late as the 1930s where British and French political leaders rationalized their way to accommodation with Herr Hitler since the prospect of another war—with all its resonances and fear echoing from the trenches in Flanders twenty years earlier—was, in an important sense, not comprehensible. Hitler manipulated their desperation for peace to his (temporary) advantage.

The undermining of European self-confidence also echoed globally. Britain and France in particular, leveraged their empires for manpower, commodities, and financial support in defense of freedom.” But the War laid bare the drain (financial and psychological) on imperial governments and heightened colonial awareness of being used for imperial purposes. The Allies propaganda about fighting for “freedom” rang especially hollow for the many millions who had little prospect of political self-determination themselves. Finally, the barbarity of the War in Europe (there was little fighting elsewhere despite the “World” War moniker) wholly eviscerated European claims to cultural superiority as the basis for their “civilizing mission” to uplift the benighted peoples of Asia/Africa. This same trope was essentially reiterated after WWII, this time to effect as first, India, then the rest of the British, French, Dutch, etc. empires were rolled back.

Second, WWII itself was a rare to unique situation in that it was easily cast in stark Manichean terms: evil fascist bad guys vs. resolute forces of liberty. This was due to the manifest crimes in which all of the Axis powers engaged compounded by a propaganda effort by the “good guys” that was much more effective and widespread than previous efforts. Prior wars (other than the European wars of religion (16-17C)) were not so much put into a good/evil context (however much the Brits liked to denounce “Boney” (as Napoleon was called) in the early 19C). Dynastic wars, imperial wars, civil wars were usually seen as power struggles, without much ideological or moral baggage; WW I & II were different.

In the First War, there were a fair number of efforts to paint a picture of the evil “Hun,” and the attack on Belgium was regularly described as a “rape,” but for all that Kaiser Bill was portrayed as a “bad guy,” he wasn’t in the same league evil-wise as his German successor. Wilsonian invocations of the War as a crusade for democracy were another means of modernizing the overall characterization of the War. All of which was ‘doubled-down’ in WWII, with the additional angle of racist stereotypes vis-à-vis the Japanese. A variety of Axis crimes—war crimes, crimes against humanity—made it easy for us to dichotomize the world (our own war crimes (esp. by the USSR)), notwithstanding.

This frame of reference was easily adapted to the “Cold War,” which was drenched in ideology and existential animosity and carried through the bulk of the 20C, amplified by the brooding omnipresence of nuclear annihilation. Even Nixon/Kissinger, practitioners of realpolitik, were only running the show because RMN had spent decades honing an anti-communist stance. The collapse of the Soviet Union eliminated our designated target and the US was left without a convenient bogeyman until 9/11.

Looking across the 20C, we can see the rise of democracies and the concomitant need to mobilize popular support amid “total” war, changed the language, methods, and purpose of portraying one’s opponent. Diplomatic subtleties and shadings (and opportunities for future reconciliations) couldn’t cut it in the noise of popular discourse. In a democratic world, war had to be characterized as being about freedom, regardless of the interests/benefits to elites and the deep national interests that underlay statesmen’s assessments of international relations.

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Cleaning Up

6/7/2024

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“Clean up after yourself!” – few phrases are more firmly embedded in my memory of childhood than this admonition from my mom. She came by it honestly, of course. Her mother Edythe, was always (so it seemed) a stickler for propriety and neatness. We were not suffered to leave clothes around our bedrooms, toys around the family room, dirty dishes, etc. etc. At least that’s the memory that I have constructed in the decades since. At summer camp, making the bed, sweeping the cabin, and policing the grounds of litter were all parts of the daily regimen. The distance from history to mythology is never far and nowhere closer than in the events and relationships of early childhood.

It might be suggested, looking at my life since those years in suburban Detroit six decades or so ago, that I have well and truly incorporated this neatness sensibility. Indeed, it might be suggested (and actually has been!) that I have often honed this sensibility into a fetish or compulsion. My wife, who has been on the receiving end of my insistence more than anyone else, has often urged me in such circumstances to “Get a life!” or similar sentiments and she has (at least part of) a good point.

My concern with order extends well beyond the physical condition of our house and other places where I spend time; nor is it entirely physical, my computer is tidy, with stacked and nested files and folders so that there are only three top-line folders on my desktop. The substance of my life (at least selected portions thereof) gets similar treatment: checkbooks are balanced regularly and calendars are populated with reminders. My history and scifi books are each alphabetized by author. I delight in getting the grocery shopping stowed promptly. Ditto for unpacking after a trip. There is no clutter on my bathroom counter. I could go on, but you get the idea.

I remember back in college, accounting, order, and control were tools I used to cope with my vast uncertainty and insecurity. I may have had no idea what was actually happening in my life, but damned if I couldn’t keep track of precisely how much I was spending on food, beer, books, etc. I was constructing a highly artificial island of order; a tiny corner where I could be sure I knew what was happening. It was a site of solace and calm and (nominal) psychological safety and, as I look back, a hint as to the stridency with which I still sometimes cling to the image of neatness/cleanliness/order. If I can’t bring order to my universe (see my comments from 050324 about entropy), at least I can bring the appearance of order. It’s a way to fight off death (the ultimate dis-order from a personal perspective).

Even as I recognize that I may carry this approach to life to an extreme, I can still respect the core sentiment. As my wife has noted, better a neat-nik than a slob.

I similarly enjoy planning: trips around the world or weekend errands, dinner party menus/cooking schedules, stacks of upcoming books to be read. It’s the same motivation, just future oriented. I am fully aware that the only thing we know about any plan is that life will unfold differently, but the sense of coherence gives me comfort nonetheless. After all, whether due to serendipity or SNAFU, contingency is just an opportunity to develop a new plan!

Speaking of planning, the ultimate planning…for the “post-mortem” period… is increasingly in mind as my body works less-and-less well. I spent a bunch of time a few years ago writing out a pretty extensive document (called “contingency”) which includes lists of things, accounts, assets, and ‘to-do’s’ for whoever is around for the final “clean-up.” I’m pretty proud of it, actually. It’s a gift to those who will be giving me a gift when I’m not there to thank them. But even before that sentiment; I am motivated by a sense that it’s “my stuff” and I should be the one to clean it up (as much as possible).

I am sure that my approach to environment/climate issues –while well-grounded in fear and science—also finds some roots in this deep personality trait. The line from not littering to using less water and fossil fuels to planting trees to “clean up” carbon is a short one. It’s an interesting intersection of personal psychology and global impact. As I have noted elsewhere, externalizing nature and ignoring those costs has been a hallmark of capitalism and modernity’s fixation on human power/domination. The legacy of my (and prior) generations on the world of the late 21C will likely be seen as highly problematic in many ways.

Tidying up the distortions and detritus of the “Anthropocene” era will require lots of people over decades. This time it’s Mother Nature saying to all of us: “it’s time to clean up your room.” Shirley and Edythe would be proud.

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A Crook

5/31/2024

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It’s hard to hold Richard Nixon up as a paragon of moral behavior. But pretty much everything in history is: “compared to what?” and we now have Nixon bracketed among the 46 people ever elected to be the chief magistrate of the country. His champions must be relieved that he is no longer the limiting case of bad actors among Presidents.

Presidents are, in the end, only people and have committed a multitude of sins both in and out of office. Few—beyond Jimmy Carter—have been willing to acknowledge their shortcomings. Large egos and a keen eye on their legacies have minimized their time in the confessional. There has been denial and dissimulation. Nixon famously proclaimed in the midst of the Watergate scandal that “I am not a crook.” But he was. Clinton famously asserted that he “did not have sex with that woman” [Monica Lewinsky]. But he did. Pretty much everyone has cut corners on policy matters. Promises made during campaigns were too dear to keep once they were in office and all manner of disingenuity resulted. Some were pretty scurrilous on a number of grounds (LBJ comes to mind, as do several in between J.Q. Adams and Lincoln).

Indeed, it is one of the shortcomings of the American electorate that we construct myths of perfection around our political leaders and then we declare (as Captain Renault said in Casablanca:) “I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” But popular sanctimony is not the central issue here. So, I am not arguing for the necessity of sainthood in politics.

On the other hand, there is a thing called “conscience” or, as Jefferson wrote in the Declaration, “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind.” There is some considerable evidence that many Presidents had one and wrestled with intense moral conflicts. It is notable that perhaps even our most admired Presidents felt the weight of their decisions. Washington and Lincoln come most immediately to mind (perhaps it is because of this that they are held in particularly high regard).

As we know from just looking around at our fellows—family members, co-workers, business connections, “friends,”—not everyone has a conscience; or at least many don’t take theirs out for daily exercise. Self-indulgence, rationalization, and the full range of the seven deadly sins are all powerful ammunition. Acting with integrity—all the time—is tough. Power and pride are a particularly dangerous combination; especially at the Presidential level. So, we have plenty of reason to be wary in general.

Nixon’s proclamation of innocence kept him afloat for nine months. Then, he had enough political clarity and enough integrity to realize that the gig was up. The fiftieth anniversary of his resignation is coming up this summer. In fact, he was a “crook,” even if denied and pardoned. But, he had enough character to leave the stage. I’m not saying it was a lot; but he had something.

We are now faced with another Presidential crook. Duly tried and convicted. He may appeal. He may never see the inside of a jail cell. So far, however, there’s no indication of conscience. No sense of easing himself off the stage. We may, as a result, see a felon in the White House; which says more—much more—about the state of the nation than about the character of He Who Shall Not Be Named. Suddenly, Tricky Dick doesn’t look so bad.

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The Meaning of Truth

5/24/2024

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I’ve been reading in some curious corners of history lately: controversies in medieval and early modern Christianity and their implications for the modern world. One thing I’ve noticed in several places, even in works by thoughtful and considered writers, is their looseness with the truth. By this I don’t mean that they’re historically sloppy, glib, or generally prevaricating; rather, their conceptualization of “truth” needs to be tightened up.

Take, for example, the ideas of “Christian truth” or “scientific truth.” They’re not the same thing. They’re great illustrations of the fact that faith and knowledge are two different realms, that their adherents speak, in effect, two different languages, even though some words appear in both. (“Son” means male child in English, “are” in Spanish, “his” or “hers” (depending on the nature of the object) in French, or “the end” in Turkish). So, even when we hear two English speakers use the word “truth,” we have to figure out what they mean. If we just assume that a person of faith and a person of science mean the same thing, we’re headed for semantic confusion. And, in the case of this word and these two cultures/languages, we’re headed for a pretty important divergence in understanding epistemology and history.

Historians, of course, are acutely aware that meanings change over time and I caution my students that “democracy” in the 17C resonated quite differently in the 20C. “Liberalism,” “enthusiasm,” and “physician” are just a sampling of such terms.

“Truth” on the other hand, seems such a fundamental concept that it might be seen as constant; but it’s not. (Nor, for that matter, is “fact” a concept whose ordinary meaning today arose only in the 19C.)

“Scientific” truth carries two essential, if implicit, conditions. First, what we all know as scientific progress and second, what we all know of scientific method. The first says that science is tentative, that it’s statement and findings are “true” insofar as we have figured things out (to the best of our ability) so far. Newton may have cracked the laws of motion, and optics, and calculus, but he believed in phlogiston and the ether. Darwin figured out evolution by variation and descent, but he had no idea about genes or DNA. Einstein proposed theories of relativity, but couldn’t quite wrap his head around quantum mechanics. These are not criticisms, but merely reflections of the nature—the inherently incremental nature of scientific discovery. What is stated is the best we know so far.

The second constraint is that science only accepts as truth that which is demonstrated and which is replicable. Ideas and intuition are great, but they’re not true until experimentally demonstrated in the real world. Thus, we come to “metaphysics” which (as the word says) is ‘beyond’ physics. That is, pretty much by definition, it can’t be proven by science and so, it can’t be “true” in the same way gravity seems to be. In our modern world, this consigns that which is outside science to a diminished limbo, unavailable for truth and classified as merely “belief.” However, if we don’t postulate science as the essential standard, then the line between physics and metaphysics can be seen as a limitation on science; confining it to those areas which are demonstrable.

We moderns are, for the most part, so deeply imbued with this outlook that even raising such questions looks like nonsense. There are two reasons, epistemological and historical why such a dismissal is problematic. The epistemological frame asks how and why we are sure that science is the definition of truth. Pretty much by definition, science cannot address, much less resolve metaphysical questions. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Who is “god”? How many gigawatts of power does God have at hand? (for that matter, does God have hands?). If you start from science, all this is excluded (i.e., the entire class of religious claims are, per se, not true). If you start elsewhere—in metaphysics or faith—the questions are different. Such a stance allows for—indeed, demands—the creation of a space beyond science beyond “knowledge” (which, after all is just a descriptor of scientific output). It is limitless, non-rational and non-sensical (i.e., outside our senses). In addition, the very divergence of religious views and interpretations (whether Christian or otherwise) seems to undermine each of their claims to truthfulness on their own terms. Science says everything is (sooner or later) provable or disprovable; faith says: no; your “facts” and your “methods” are just projections (see Plato’s Cave); they are fine as far as they go, and even if they have gone far and seemingly squeezed God into a corner, behind genetics and quarks and dark matter, they have only made a minute dent in the infinite. In other words, at root, science is just another term for disbelief in the truth of faith. Moreover, the same applies to the divergent claims of religious truth made by other beleivers.

The historical basis for doubting the power of science finds roots in the politics of church and state in medieval and early modern Europe (1100-1800); a politics which was absorbing and distracting and pushed such issues to the side. The nominal certainty of scientific method, especially as it emerged in 17C England, provided a much-needed respite from the sectarian strife of the Reformation. Its promise of mastery of nature and (implicitly) power and riches (much of which have furnished our world today) was seductive as compared with deferred grace. Its momentum and (apparent, but questionable) links to technologies, the “industrial revolution” and capitalism have become inextricable parts of modernity and how most moderns think.

I’m a pretty modern guy. I guess I would take the mantle of “skeptical agnostic” when it comes to God. I don’t think “atheism” is quite right; after all, how can science say definitively there’s nothing beyond (see Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem); it’s certainly not “provable.” Besides, there are billions of people who claim a worldview based on faith and if I’m any sort of tolerant/diverse/democrat, I have to allow for them in the world and not claim an exclusivity on my scientific approach to “truth.” The successes of modern science have bred an unhealthy smugness.

One final note, which combines both history and epistemology, is the observation/suspicion that there is a strong correlation between faith/belief/trust in science on the one hand, and wealth and power on the other. Satisfaction and comfort in this world makes it easy to downplay the glories of the next. On the flip side, earthly lives that are, in Hobbes’ words: “nasty, brutish, and short,” may be more tolerable and sensible if there is something to look forward to. There are, as soldiers say, “no atheists in foxholes.” Faith has little presence among intellectual and commercial elites. I’d be curious to see a global study of the correlation of religious faith and socio-economic status.

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A Whole New Ballgame (Special Edition)

Labouring Away

Eulogy

The Pursuit of Happiness

Fences and Neighbors

Tapestry

The Struggle of the 20C

Cleaning Up

A Crook

The Meaning of Truth

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Musings on history, society, and the world.