BS: What's Wrong With Us?

Subject: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 05:41 PM

Today's San Francisco Chronicle contains an op-ed piece by Harold Gilliam in which he laments the changes that have occurred at UC Berkeley. But near the end he puts those changes in a larger context and states very elegantly what we have been feeling for many years:

    "A man is rich," wrote Henry David Thoreau, "in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone."

    By that measure, the multibillionaires are the poorest among us. But we don't have to adopt Thoreau's Spartan lifestyle at Walden Pond to recognize that there is much to be said for the moderation of accumulation. Peter Whybrow, a UCLA neuropsychiatrist, in his new book, "American Mania -- Why More Is Not Enough," writes that an insatiable drive for wealth is hardwired into our brains by evolution. Most prehistoric humans lived on the edge of starvation; those who failed to gather as much food as possible did not survive. Those who did became our ancestors. So our genes are telling us to grab all we can. More can never be enough.

    The market conveniently tells us how to indulge that atavistic mania for more. But markets have no conscience. They have no values other than the dollar. And conscience, Whybrow writes, comes not from our genes but from the values we absorb from our culture, including respect and consideration for others.

    So our lives are shaped by the tension between the market and the conscience. Whichever is dominant at any given time depends on the climate of the culture. Who could doubt that the climate of the U.S. at the beginning of the 21st century overwhelmingly favors the values of the market? The pressure to eat more, drink more, drive more, buy more and pile up more debt is dinned into our ears and flashed before our eyes day and night.

    Is it any wonder, then, that the demands of the marketplace have invaded academia? Is it reasonable to expect universities to reject the current values of the national culture?

    But a seismic shift in public priorities could occur.

    There have been periods in the past, including the administrations of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, when a new climate of opinion took over, shifting national values away from the unregulated market toward conscience, compassion and common sense. If this shift should occur again, it is likely to have a salutary effect on academia -- in Berkeley and beyond.

    Maybe we can only wait with hope for the next swing of the pendulum. Or maybe we can give it a push.

Here is the rest of his piece.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: GUEST,Wesley S
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 05:48 PM

I read a story by Jimmy Buffet where the protagoninst had adopted the motto "Want what you have". And I've always thought of that as pretty good advice.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: Peace
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 05:51 PM

The new face of God.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: Greg F.
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 06:26 PM

...an insatiable drive for wealth is hardwired into our brains by evolution... our genes are telling us to grab all we can. More can never be enough.


Just another convenient excuse for people being greedy dickheads.

Humans are apparently no longer responsible for ANY of their actions, however outrageous; its all genetics.

Bullshit.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: GUEST,memyself
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 06:37 PM

...an insatiable drive for wealth is hardwired into our brains by evolution... our genes are telling us to grab all we can. More can never be enough. Most prehistoric humans lived on the edge of starvation; those who failed to gather as much food as possible did not survive. Those who did became our ancestors. So our genes are telling us to grab all we can. More can never be enough.


So why is it that those societies that are closest to prototypical hunter-and-gather societies tend to be the least acquisitive?

I suspect that many a prehistoric man would have agreed with Thoreau.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: Tootler
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 07:09 PM

The same kind of mentality has invaded academia this side of the pond. It is one of the reasons (though not the only one) why I decided to retire when I reached 60 rather than staying on a few years as I had originally planned.

<rant>
The attitude to education at all levels in this country is a disgrace. Read Mr Gradgrind's speech at the beginning of Charles Dickens' "Modern Times" and you have a pretty fair summary of the attitude of too many of our politicians to education. It has to be "useful" to be worthwhile. The notion that education is about developing the mind and encouraging people to think for themselves is anathema in some quarters.
</rant>

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: Peace
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 07:17 PM

The problem is that education in North America has become about causing students to think in specific ways, inside certain parameters. Business wants kids trained for certain things. Look at public schools. Soon as the budgets get cut (one way to 'bring in' corporate financing), art is the first thing to take the hit in most regular curriculums. Then music, then special needs kids.

Education today is about pleasing corporate masters, not developing minds.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: Rapparee
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 07:18 PM

I've given away a lot of things (my wife and I, I mean). What we kept either meant something to us or was useful to us.

Now when I can afford to acquire stuff I find that I'm not all that interested in simply having things. I purchase what I need or what I truly want instead of what I'm told I need or want. And usually the purchase isn't spontaneous, but thought out and researched (books are an exception!).

I drive a seven year old car and don't plan to replace it until my wife's car is paid off.

Gad! I must be a commie or something, 'cause I'm...I'm...content with what I have!

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 08:38 PM

If you have everything you want, you want for nothing. That is another way of saying you are rich. Seems obvious enough.

"An insatiable drive for wealth is hardwired into our brains by evolution" - I think that is probably nonsense. Taking more than what other people see as your fair share is not a good survival technique in a hunter gatherer economy. Eating up the seed corn is not a good survival technique in a society that's moved on to farming.

And I am pretty sure that "an insatiable drive for wealth" is likely to be anything but a good survival technique for modern humanity.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: GUEST,Bee
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 11:13 PM

There's quite a lot of evidence that prehistoric (early, stone-age, etc) humans normally had more than sufficient food. Hunter gatherers had vast and unpolluted territories from which to take animals, fish, edible plants. A very quick Google brought up one brief account, for those who like links, but I am a pretty well read enthusiast regarding prehistory, and the notion of half-starved savages is, according to most evidence, just not true. Early humans weren't weak or stupid. Greed in early societies would not likely have made one more likely to survive - altruistic people may have been more likely to attract mates, in fact, since gifts are always appreciated, so the whole premise of "An insatiable drive for wealth is hardwired into our brains by evolution" is most unlikely.
I see Harold Gilliam is an award winning environmental journalist (Wikipedia), but I see no evidence that he knows much about prehistoric humans or evolution.

http://www.primitivism.com/health-civilization.htm

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: Rapparee
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 11:24 PM

Greed, rather than altruism and concern for the group, is contra-survival (contrary to those idiotic television shows!). Hunter-gatherer groups almost certainly had more "leisure" time than we do today (based upon studies of such contemporary groups).

My ancestors were smart enough to survive ice ages and other natural disasters. YOUR mileage may vary.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: GUEST,Bee
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 11:34 PM

Rapaire, I seem to remember one study reported in, I think, British Archaeology Magazine, which suggested four hours work a day on average would keep an ancient family fed, clothed, sheltered and warm.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: Rapparee
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 11:45 PM

I believe that's about right, perhaps less for someplace like the Amazon and a little more for the Arctic. Nor was it either feast or famine -- these people knew how to dry and smoke meat and fish, for example, as well as how to store seeds, berries, and roots over the winter (that was the "gatherer" part).

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: Amos
Date: 09 Oct 06 - 12:32 AM

One good hunt could feed the group for a week, which is why these primitive people had enough time to invent the kind of incredible artistry found on the cave walls in France and other sites. When you need little, it is easier to get ahead. There is no mortgage on a cave, nor taxation on a bison, nor fuel costs to commute to the forests on foot, no electric bill to light a fire at sundown, and no phone bill involved in blowing a conch or conversing with your own tribemates.

There were many OTHER drawbacks and overhead costs in effort and risk, however.


A

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: Amos
Date: 09 Oct 06 - 12:40 AM

As to the original question, I think it has to do with several vectors. One is that the more message driven instead of fact- and experience-0 driven out cultures become, the more out of touch with reality we become, especially when you add in a growing literacy deficit which undermines the map of messages to reality even further.

A second is that because we have developed more complex, far-flung tribes and hives than any one persona can keep track of, our connectivity has multiplied numerically and shrunken in terms of responsibility.

A third is the extremes of specialization required by our sophisticated and widely distributed social models make it easy to fall into a mind set of counting on other-responsibility to solve things, making individuals who become apathetic, externally-driven, and out of integrity with their own worlds. This leads to an effort to repair the psychic holes by having lots and lots of stuff, instead of fully experiencing the stuff we have.

A

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: Barry Finn
Date: 09 Oct 06 - 12:46 AM

So why do we work?
To retire, of course.

Barry

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: Ebbie
Date: 09 Oct 06 - 03:24 AM

The official consensus in Alaska is that the Tlingit and the Haida, being coastal tribes, lived easy. The Athabascan, on the other hand, being farther north and inland lived much more on the edge. They wre far more dependent on speedy, elusive, unpredictable food sources. There were times when almost everyone in a village starved. That was never true for the coastal people. They had time and energy for wars and they made full use of it.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: GUEST,Bee
Date: 09 Oct 06 - 11:09 AM

You can't get much more extreme in terms of survival than far north and inland. Most human cultures have chosen more friendly territories to inhabit.

I'll have to do some research regarding the Athabaskan people - I'm curious about why they chose or were forced to live where they did.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Oct 06 - 01:10 PM

far-flung tribes - like this one.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: Rapparee
Date: 09 Oct 06 - 08:55 PM

If you research the Athabascan, be sure to include the Apache and the Navajo -- who are ALSO "racially" and linguistically Athabascan.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: GUEST,Bee
Date: 09 Oct 06 - 09:14 PM

Thanks! I'm more familiar with Maritime (Canada) First Nations, since I live here, but I always have headroom for more reading. (All right, I am a paleo-archaeo-bio-and-a-few-other-ologies nerd who mistakenly majored in Fine Arts. Damned misspent youth.)

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: Rapparee
Date: 09 Oct 06 - 09:55 PM

Oh, you mean like the Haida, Tlingit, Nootka, Chinook, Makah, Skagit, Bella Bella, Eyak, Tillamook, Yurak and Coastal Salish (among others).

The peoples of the Pacific Coast did have a fairly easy life. I wonder about the Atlantic Coast and the Great Lakes...must check.

(I was an English Literature major who should have been in History but ended up with minors in Drama, Theology, and Philosophy -- and then I became a librarian. Damned pool halls and beer joints!)

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: M.Ted
Date: 10 Oct 06 - 12:56 AM

My thought has always been that part of the function of "civilization" was to keep people busy--owing to a nasty tendency they have to fight amongst themselves about anything and everything. And the ruling classes were always outnumbered by those that they ruled, and found expeditious ways to keep them otherwise occupied--burgers, fries and cable TV is just bread and circuses. in't it?--

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: GUEST,Coyote Breath
Date: 10 Oct 06 - 06:45 PM

Technology (which is ANY solution developed to assist in the maintaining of our lives)

Technology is the rock chucked at the rabbit and the Pentium chip.

There were civilizations that were comfortable in their lives and lived in balance with their environments.

Europeans have the "gotta have it all" disease and with some European descendants (especially Americans) the disease has completely absorbed us so that WE are a disease as well.

Ask any Native American

Technology is a sin against all life including our own.

The problem is the constituency for technology is all of us, our children, loved ones etc. so we are not inclined to abandon technology for natural selection.

One of the earliest eco-criminals was Hippocrates. Medicine has added to global overcrowing.

We strive for universal health care.

Our refined definition of justice and equality causes us to support failed states, individuals.

What is wrong with us is our unwillingness to make our planet "work".

We don't insist on true economic equality. Universal justice.

We talk a great game but it is all bullshit.

I'm done, thanks for allowing me to rant.

CB

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: GUEST,Bee
Date: 10 Oct 06 - 07:14 PM

Sounds like a PETA rant - rid the earth of humans and everything will be good.

Technology isn't evil - it is how you make it and what you use it for that shapes its morality.

There is no 'true balance' - just the option of coming infinitely closer to balance.

Global 'overcrowing' (okay, I thought that was sorta cute) is more to be blamed on religion and lack of education than on medicine.

Failed states and individuals? Right over my head, I'm afraid, unless you mean the US and driving alcoholics.

Me, I think 'letting' the planet work is more feasible than 'making' it work.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: Bobert
Date: 10 Oct 06 - 08:19 PM

Well, well, well, good people...

...but lets get real here!!!

We are collectively being consumed by consumption... But are we any better off??? Well, heck no, we aren't... We are collectively worse off... Our rate of saving in the country is like in the negative category... And this ain't just families but government, too...

(But, Bobert, if we aren't "saving" then who is financing all this consumption??? Answer me that one, will ya???)

Well, the Chinese for one but it's not just the Chinese... Remember the big tax cuts for the wealthy??? Remember how Bush said that this would invigorate our economy??? Well, those tax cuts haven't done that... There are no new factories... We are producing less durable goods, not more... We have outsourced "production" to China and other countries where kids still work in sweat shops...

And back to those tax cuts... Where have those dollars gone??? Well, lots of them have gone into ***financing*** the consumption spree that Americans have been caught up in...

Buy, buy, buy... If you ain't buyin' then yer neighbors are gonna talk, yer co-workers are gonna talk, yer bosses are gonna talk... Buy, buy, buy... And don't worry, we'll finance you with the tax relief that you gave us????

Hmmmmmmmm???

Don't take a Wes Ginny Slide Rule to tell which wzay the wind blows and it blows hard into the bank accounts of the upper 1% of Americans and hard into China...

Yeah, this is the biggest ****conspiracy**** ever as the Republican party is out to keep every middle class (haha) family in debt and punchin' a time clock until the day they die on Boss Hog's widget assembly line....

Yes, the revolution is over!!!

We lost!!!

Now get yer asses back in the cotton fields!!!

Ya hear, boy???

Bobert (resident commie...)

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Oct 06 - 08:39 PM

I have difficulty thinking of any bedrock culture as having a whole lot of leisure time. When you have to do everything from feeding your family two or three times a day, make your own bedclothes, not to mention, catching said bedclothes, make every stitch of your own clothing and that of everyone in your family, gather not only the daily fuel for cooking and warming fires but gather huge piles of it for the winter, find and chase and kill fleet and often resisting, sometimes deadly, four-footed animals for food and clothing, make your own tools, flake arrowheads and spears and find and cut the lengths of the right kind of tree to tie them on to, find and dig field edibles at the right time of the year, dry them, store them to avoid spoilage, guard those stores against theft and raids - there's lots more to do, I've no doubt - but given all that I have trouble visualizing a laidback lifestyle.

A friend of mine became divorced and lived alone. He learned to cook, as he said, with a ladle in one hand and a cookbook in the other. What dismayed him most, however, was how much time it took just to get the every day essentials done every day.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 10 Oct 06 - 08:58 PM

I don't have a problem with wealth in general, just that so much of it is in the hands of people who do nothing but move money from one place to another. They grow nothing, they build nothing, they create nothing. They don't even sell anything created by others. They just sell money.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Wrong With Us?
From: Bobert
Date: 10 Oct 06 - 09:17 PM

Well said, Beezer, but with alot less words...