Trust

Aristotle continues to fascinate me as I read further into his study of politics. In his opinion, one of the greatest dangers to demomcracy is running for office because it exacerbates the conflict between rich and poor--the greatest threat in his opinion because it can lead to civil war.

It works like this: The rich believe they should have more say because they have the wealth. The poor think they should have more power because everyone is equal and there are more of them. Both have a point, he says, and both are wrong because whichever one gains the power will govern in their own interest and not for the common good. This, he says, is the flaw of democracy.

I’d add another flaw. It’s quite possible for a group of people to exercise their democratic right and vote in a dictatorship. Hitler was elected to power. But I digress.

Running for office is dangerous to the common good, he says, because candidates for office have every reason to become demagogues and appeal to the naked self-interest of each group. Particularly damaging is what Aristotle calls “the wanton behavior of the popular leaders.” In other words, graft and self-interest, leading to an erosion of trust and the destruction of balance between competing interests. Maintaining a democracy, in other words, requires balance and trust.

How do we compare? Not a lot of balance these days, I’m afraid. It seems that 39% of the nation’s wealth is in the hands of 5% of the population and that 5% has learned it can do without most of the rest of us. Producing wealth doesn’t require a middle class or even much of a blue collar workforce when money is made by manipulating funds across nations.

I’m reminded of what someone once told me about the car rental business. “Hertz isn’t in the rental business anymore. They make more off the insurance they sell. So they’re an insurance company that rents and sells cars on the side.” Same thing can be said for the large corporations. They really aren’t into customer service and producing a product. Their major money comes from creating and spinning off subsidiaries. They manage by crisis. Just ask BP and, for that matter, the Corps of Engineers, the subject of an unflattering documentary called “The Big Uneasy.” But then, who cares? There’s no accountability beyond maintaining stock prices and CEOs are proving to be yet another disposable product.

As for trust—well, the depressing roster of politicos called on the rug—and I’m sure those are just the ones we know about—doesn’t create much of a climate for it. Plus the ravenous media who have turned journalism into pandering create a fertile climate for national paranoia. Those who were screaming about Obama attending the Rev. Wright’s Christian church are now screaming about his being Muslim. The only consistency appears to be that it’s OK to make up facts as long as you don’t like the man.

For those who think I exaggerate on the press, consider the headline (real)” Thirty percent of Americans support the Tea Party.” Impressive? Turn it around: “Fifty-six percent do NOT support the Tea Party.” I don’t about the others who are undecided. I guess they don’t have TV sets.

Aristotle’s point on democracy is that if the friction between rich and poor is allowed to widen and deepen the result is civil war. So he’d say what we need is some balance. Here’s my idea of it:

Tea Party—calm down. You do not have the market on civil rights. In fact, many of your members (male, white, over 50) didn’t support the civil rights movement when it happened; it’s only the most blatant hypocrisy and ignorance that is driving your self-righteousness. You are being funded by corporate interests, which means you are being used.

Media--go back to the days when your profession was honorable and you had some ethics. Mainstream media should not be the same as the paparazzi. Let’s have some Pulitzer Prize winning investigative stories that don’t just confirm everyone’s biases.

Republicans—for heaven’s sake repudiate some of the lunacy. Candidate Maes’ comments that he doesn’t have to pander to the moderates is going to turn off everyone. Remember when you received 1% of the vote with an extreme candidate? If you feel you can’t win without the extremes, it tells me that you have become a party of extremes.

Democrats—will you please stay out of things that don’t concern you. And will you please understand that you are never going to get the Republicans to agree with you on anything until they find their voice and their direction. It wouldn’t hurt you to find a clearer voice either.

If democracy matters more than just using a slogan to beat someone on the head, then it has to matter to all of us. Maybe we can learn to trust that our government really has our best interests at heart--once our collective heads stop spinning. Until then, screaming at one another may be cathartic—but how valuable will that be when this country goes up in smoke and we live under martial law?

Selling in a Down Market

Well, we finally did it--we put the house on the market. It took months of preparation--downsizing, sorting, and packing things away to unclutter the place, conducting serious negotation over what could go to Goodwill, and removing pictures from the walls that could detract from the archeterctural details of the vaulted ceilings. The windows were professionally washed and all routine maintenance completed in the house(hot tub, sump pump, evaporative cooler, fireplace, windows), the papers duly filled out detailing screened, cedar-lined pation, new roof, new high efficiency furnace, new water heater, and generous concession on the now-aging carpet. The garden was put into perfect shape. Up went the sign--and what happened?

One showing, and that person complained that our appliances weren't stainless steel.
Our real estate agent says no one else will look at the house because we have an industrial grade evaporative cooler rather than central air conditioning (never mind that an evaporative cooler is a good choice for Denver because it puts moisture into the air).

Such, it seems, is the way of selling a house in Denver these days. Apparently, I made the mistake of putting major money into maintenance (I have a binder of everything done to the house and it's thick) rather than glamour.

It's been a number of years since I last sold a house and I must admit I'd forgotten how vulnerable one feels-- and not just because one's furnishinigs are suddenly fair game for comment from people who would never otherwise be inside the house. "Not my style," said the person who wanted stainless steel. I hadn't thought it was about my style, but apparently it is. "It's price wars and a beauty contest," my agent says. Except, I have no idea of what today's buyer considers the criteria for beauty except of course for the stainless stuff.

I suppose this all results from buying a house in a development where there are lots of houses with only a few floor plans to differentiate them. It's like a predator with a school of fish. How do you choose? There they all sit with their standard four to five bedrooms, three to four bathrooms, three-car garages, representing the homeownership we are supposed to mortgage ourselves for and thus declare ourselves having lived the American dream.

Right now, there are approximately thirty houses for sale in our development and those around us. Thirty all roughly the same. I suppose I can't blame the agents and buyers for categorizing the houses in order to get make some sort of order out of chaos. Buyers also have to wonder whether the houses are going to lose value over time. I suppose they want to get as much as they can for as little as possible. It's a given that even with a full price offer, the financial loss on this house will be significant.

I suppose I should look on the loss as the cost of living in the house, which has been comfortable and welcoming. If I'd been renting, the money would have been gone anyway and I'd have nothing to show for it. Perhaps also I should look on the house as a sort of generational endeavor--the people before us did so much (actually they ran it into the ground and unloaded it when it started to give trouble, but no matter), we do so much, and then it's passed on. With this market, untold millions of people are probably trapped in houses they'd love to unload so maybe houses are going to remain in people's hands for longer. If there's a silver lining, maybe the home improvement people will benefit as bored homeowners try to prepare for the next beauty contest.

In the meantime, Sid says he'll check to see if we can change out the fronts on our black appliances to stainless steel.

Telos

I’ve been rereading Aristotle’s Politics lately, feeling rather glad that our thinking has advanced a bit since he wrote that there are some people who are born to be slaves and that women are naturally inferior. As usual, I had to get beyond those parts and, as usual, once I did, I remembered why I find him worth the time.

Most interesting to me are his concepts of the goal of politics and his concept of telos, roughly translated as meaning purpose or use.

To paraphrase, Aristotle believes that politics exists to train citizens to recognize the good and do noble things. Since contemporary politics seems to exist to aggrandize politicians, enrich corporations, and convince citizens they are being kissed while being screwed, that sounds quite refreshing. Naïve, perhaps—given the enshrined role of greed in every level of our political and social life—but still more attractive than the world of lobbyists and naked self-interest on every level.

The telos of human beings, Aristotle says, is to be happy, which means living what he calls a virtuous life. This, of course, begs the question of what virtue means. Virtue, he says, is doing the right thing because it is right. Note—not expedient and profitable. Someone living without morals and ethics cannot, by definition, be happy no matter how that person feels.

All of which is well and good, you might be saying—but what’s in it for us? I would answer, telos. What, in other words, Aristotle offers us is the challenge to look into the purposes of our own political structures. In this, he invites us to link outcomes to our purposes.

Consider, for example, the former administration’s political purpose in removing all impediments to individual initiative and economic expansion. Who was made happy? Obviously the upper echelons of business and investment in this country. Did it make them virtuous? Hardly, since a bunch of them are in jail. All Bernie Madoff managed to do (beside rob his friends) was demonstrate how unregulated exchange between people leads to economic cannibalism.

If I were someone from outer space suddenly cast into American society (and presuming I could understand the language) what conclusions might I come to about the purposes of the government? Well, for one thing, I might conclude that there is no clear purpose. In fact, there are multiple purposes working to undermine each other. The result of all the tumult being that no one’s better nature is appealed to. Listening to the excuses and posturing offered by those in political power, I would, in fact, have to conclude that the term public service is an oxymoron and the only service provided being what is bought and paid for.

Which brings me back to the question of slavery. We aren’t too hot on the subject of a class of people born to be slaves. Aristotle was talking about physical enslavement, particularly of losers in various wars, so I think there’s another way to consider this. If we define slavery as he does: slaves are people who work and act for other people’s purposes than their own, then I think a case could be made for intellectual slavery. How many times have people spouted unexamined truisms about such things as justice and virtue without ever examining them? War is a dirty business—why is it glorified? Why do some argue that if a majority vote for something then it is all right to tyrannize the minority? Why do we believe that our way of life is the only way? Why do we trot out Jesus Christ to urge him to bless our efforts in some ignoble personal pursuit? Why do we accept some political or philosophical position because our parents did or for some reason of guilty national pride?

It seems to me the way to virtue these days is to look for the rational in every situation, and open up assumptions to the light of day. This requires reason, debate (real debate and not just yelling), and a curiosity to find the truth collaboratively. If we are unable to do this and merely parrot the enthusiasms that clog the world around us, then we are indeed no more than slaves.

Haven't Lost My Touch After All

I can still clear a room all by myself. How did I do that? I met up with an honest to God Birther. I probably shouldn't even give that a capital letter since it justifies the argument that Obama was born in Kenya instead of Hawaii. One of our local Colorado politicians called the people who cling to the theory "dumb-asses." He was asked to apologize, which is a pity, because he is right.

Our local newspaper chided the politician and said the people who believe this crazy theory are "sincere"--HAH. In a pig's eye. They may believe (or hope) sincerely he wasn't born in the US, but the insincerity lies in the reasons why they choose to ignore overwhelming evidence to the contrary--some of it my personal observation since I knew Obama's mother slightly from my undergrad days the University of Hawaii.

The birthers purport to be trying to rectify a great wrong--an ineligible man has been elected president. But it's not that at all. They hate him. Now, if they were sincere indeed they'd look at themselves and be honest about why that is so. There have been many Democrat presidents, many liberal leaders, many others who run in fear from the Republicans, who have not generated the level of personal venom Obama has. What is it that has created such a threat to the nation that thse loons don't attack on the many legitimate grounds for attacking any political party in power? What makes Obama such a target?

Well, it's pretty obvious, isn't it? He's from Hawaii for one thing, the newest state and the one the Mainland US is least able to comprehend. Hawaii's ruling culture is heavily Asian and the folks there don't do things the same way. They don't confront one another; instead, as I like to say, they go one floor down and cut the floor out from around your feet and you never know what hit you. I would guess shrewdly that Obama has made his way in Chicago politics by applying a lot of Hawaii--quiet, scandal and confrontation free, highly effective, and not given to blowing his own horn. Good old Hawaii. If you want drama and conflict and winners and losers, Obama wasn't your man--when you elected him, you said you wanted an end to Washington politics--well, deal with it--maybe you didn't after all.

Then there's the fact of his parentage. It was a heck of a brave thing in Hawaii of the early 1960s to mix African and Caucasian. There weren't many Africans to begin with. Obama's father was the first on the campus. I remember about three others later--all from Nigeria, I think. They were glamorous young men, at least one of whom had studied at the London School of Economics, with self-assurance to the point of swagger. Hawaii was intrigued by them, but the marriage was still unusual. It had been only twenty or so years before that the Massey case hit the headlines (look it up on the internet if you don't know). That's why I remember meeting Obama's mother when she was pregnant with him--she had come with his father to a foreign student gathering where Obama senior was talking. I overheard her friends talking about her, worried that in Africa multiple wives were acceptable. I was horrified for her--that's why I remember so clearly.

So, given this background, where I had lived a tiny bit of Obama's story and knew infinitely more about Hawaii than the birther I was confronted with, I took the bait and pointed out where ignorance was intersecting with foreign-phobia. Birthers can't forgive Obama for having a foreign-sounding name and for having a foreign father and a mother who later lived in Indonesia. It's all just too outside mainstream America. Never mind that John McCain was born in the US Panama Canal Zone--my late husband was too and we had to get a State Department Birth Certificate to prove his citizenship. I'm sure McCain has one too. Would the birthers have pursued McCain on this? Doubtful because they agreed with him (at least until he went a bit off message).

The birther left rather suddenly from the gathering where I met him--I can do that to people. Part of my charm, I guess. But the fact remains--the world is moving on. I quote here (from memory so it may be completely accurate) my favorite poem from the Rubiyat: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on. Nor all your peity nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it."