This is the right question, Marcus, and I don’t know. > Can we conclude that filling bellies will stop the growth of resentment? I > don’t know about that. The economy is in relatively good shape right now. > The unemployment rate has been at or below 5% for a year and jobs have been > added to the workforce month after month. The participation rate is about > 62.4% which is just about where it has been for 50 years on average. > However, the mean incomes in the large population blue states are higher than > in rust belt states, but the cost of living is really much higher in those > blue states too. > > > From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Gary Schiltz > Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2016 8:37 AM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: what other subject is there this morning > > If it's any consolation, I waded through your entire bounce-formatted post, > it was that good. > > On Wednesday, November 9, 2016, Eric Smith <desm...@santafe.edu> wrote: > Sorry Friam. I sent this before from the wrong address, and then I foolishly > forwarded the bounce, which had been reformatted and partly chopped up. > > This was what it looked like the firs time. > > E > > > > I think what this all is about is the power of resentment. > > > > I think the engine underneath the rejection of Hillary is that people look > > at her and see a face that they think believes itself better than them and > > that looks down on them. For people who were already under the power of > > resentment, that sets it on fire and opens this thing that is weirdly > > borderline with hatred. All the other stuff, news items or whatever, is > > just opportunistic window dressing that gets recruited after the fact as > > rationalization. Nobody cares about emails. If that hadn’t been > > available, it would have been something else. What they care about is > > indulging in rage at being “disrespected”. > > > > I acknowledge the sophistication as well as the goodness of the Dalai Lama, > > and I defer to the willful positivity of the Buddhists who have been > > thinking about this systematicaly for nearly a thousand years, and I > > understand that they know things I don’t know. But I also work with > > primatologists, of which anthropology is a sub-discipline. The meanness of > > chimpanzees is probably retained from the recent ancestor, and it isn’t > > that far below the surface in humans. Whatever it is about social status, > > that gets wrapped up in the phrases “looking up to” or “looking down on” is > > big in us like it is big in them. Humans on some occasions have other > > layers of culture that put some checks on it, but that superstructure is > > not all that robust. I am not compelled by the Dalai Lama’s interpretation > > (for which I am nonetheless grateful) that this is about the loss of > > feeling needed. It is much meaner and more primitive than that; it is the > > resentment of feeling looked down on. > > > > But now we have trouble. Americans seem to have a kind of negligent > > optimism that the mechanisms of democracy will still be there as a path to > > backtrack from mistakes they didn’t escape before. But the keys to > > everything have just been given to a strange hodge-podge of people, to none > > of whose members are the mechanisms of democracy anything particularly > > desirable. They are merely obstacles to their own small and predatory > > ambitions. I don’t take for granted that there will be mechanisms of > > backtracking the next time a calendary cycle rolls around. > > > > The motive power here is the power of resentment, at the bottom. But > > mechanisms matter too, and individuals matter. A few articles here and > > there seem to me to capture large chunks of this in a way that seems > > coherent and clarifying. > > > > There are architects like Newt Gingrich, as he is called out in the article > > from (2012) “Let’s just say it: the Republicans are the problem”. There is > > a systematic effort on all fronts all the time to dismantle the > > institutions of democracy to capture spoils in a competition. The method, > > for me, is best brought into clarity in the Malcolm Gladwell parable on > > David and Goliath, about the girls’ basketball team that won without > > particular skill by implementing the full-court press on every play of > > every game. Gladwell dwells on this as an honorable strategy because it > > employs conditioning as the thing that can be bought with discpline when > > there isn’t native talent. He comments, obliquely, that the teams of more > > skillful girls who were beaten in games were annoyed at being beaten by a > > full-court press. He doesn’t develop this, but I think it matters. For > > the skilled girls, they were in a _game_. The point of winning was to be a > > reward for being good at the play of the game. Their upset was that > > suddenly there was no game any more, there was no skill, there was no > > aesthetic to be aspired to or served. Winning became its own currency > > separate from whatever art the game had been meant to enable. The story > > has both sides, and there is credit due both where Malcolm calls it and > > where he bypasses it. But the analogy to me here is what happens when > > winning is separated from the game’s having a purpose in doing something > > else, which one might call “bigger”. In basketball, the bigger thing was > > the cultivation of an art. In politics, it is the preservation of a > > society. > > > > We have seen the full-court press. It is middle-American right-wing talk > > radio. It is the constant campaign of hysteria, over everything, > > everywhere, all the time, that Paul Krugman notes over and over in his > > columns. It is the congress’s commitment to demolish everything, to > > obstruct and to block everything. Because there is nothing they are trying > > to build or to accomplish, there is no currency with which to negotiate > > with them. Where there are no values, there is no foundation for rules of > > play. It is the district gerrymandering, and the voter disenfranchisement > > acts of closing polls and DMVs in southern states. These things work. > > Once a democracy is dismantled, the tools to oust the ones in power can > > only come from outside. But where is “outside” when the keys to everything > > are handed over at the level of a country. > > > > There are those who aren’t “architects”, like Gingrich, but rather these > > skinny venomous little blonde women who come out of the woodwork to fill > > local roles, or minor con men like Paul Ryan, or various slimy and > > disgusting and yet dangerous things like Ted Cruz. > > > > I feel like these are the machery that channels the motive power of > > resentment and enables it to do things. The machinery matters, but if the > > motive power of resentment were not there, the machinery would have nothing > > to drive it or flow through it. Conversely, as long as the motive power is > > there, there are always architects and local operators who can come in and > > try their hand at machinery, and a kind of Darwinian dynamic will filter > > out the ones that succeed. > > > > Under the power of resentment, there is no choice so mean, or so stupid, or > > so self-defeating that people cannot be led to make it. The ones who > > thought this was a good idea will plough themselves under as fast as they > > take down others, but there is no value in looking forward to that in > > vengeance. Facts matter in the real world of cause and effect, but in the > > choice world of resentment, they are beside the point. People under the > > power of resentment are unreachable in all those terms; they have shifted > > into a different space. > > > > Somehow that is what we have to deal with. Any pleasure or luxury in > > analysis or speculation is no pleasure now. There is just what options are > > left. I do think that the mistake was, and will continue to be, not > > finding ways to stop the growth of resentment. A line in one of the > > English-language translations of the Dao de Jing goes “The wise rule by > > emptying hearts and stuffing bellies.” I won’t claim to understand what > > original Chinese political theorists intended this to mean, but I do think > > the failure to take seriously the need to stuff bellies (and the more > > subtle and perhaps honorable human needs for safety, fulfillment, and > > freedom from want) hasn’t been taken seriously enough, for decades now, by > > any of those who were comfortable. > > > > Now that all the keys are in the hands of the predators, we have fewer > > tools to work with than we had before. It would have been good if the > > sense of urgency to stop the undermining and the feeding of resentment, > > which I think Bernie felt and tried to speak for though without a serious > > plan to deal with the complexity of the mess, had weighed on more people > > before. But we are where we are now, and the question is what can hold off > > or reverse the coming active damage from here. > > > > > > > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
