Who Are We?

In Robert Sheckley’s 1953 story, “The Specialist”, a disabled spaceship lands on Earth to find a Pusher in order to complete the crew of their ship.  It seems that interstellar travel is enabled by a confederation of different life forms and humans play a key role – they “push” thus causing the ship to travel faster than light. They try to convince a person they capture that “pushing” is the essence of their nature. Of course the person thinks it’s insane. But when the confederation begs him to try, he discovers that he is indeed what they claim and the ship moves away at eight times the speed of light and still accelerating.

In our everyday life we assume we are the collection of roles we play, the interests we have and the relationships we are part of.  We know that even in the interstices of the most fascinating activities, sexual energy and interest can be awakened and flood our consciousness.  We experience a panoply of welcome and unwelcome feelings in rapid fire succession. Civilization developed as a mechanism to keep the expression of dangerous feelings under control.

Wisdom literature, especially the collected aphorisms of the ancient and pre-modern world paint a picture of our deep nature. One of the most intellectually refreshing activities is to pick up a book like “The Anchor Book of Latin Quotations” translated and edited by Nobert Guterman or “The Viking Book of Aphorisms edited by W. H. Auden and Louis Kronenberger.” Wikiquotes and other websites are also rich sources although not as intelligently selected and organized.

At a meta-level, one of the most profound insights that emerges from reading these distilled nuggets of truth is that for the most part we humans tell ourselves (and others) one thing and feel something completely different. It’s not simple hypocrisy. Rather, it’s the need to maintain a consistent self-image as part of a society whose values one must integrate in order to be accepted and thrive. This disjunction between our everyday mindset and our deeper natures creates a subtle tension that often results in somatization.  To trick ourselves even more, we create a collection of internalized ‘stories’ that we accept as a true picture of the world. When one of these stories proves itself to be a complete fabrication, the shock of recognition is often so powerful, we turn away and refuse to face the reality.

Much of literature concerns itself with what happens when our illusions get shattered: the husband never who never did love his wife, the attentive children who were only interested in an inheritance or the neighbor who was not the charming, cheerful fellow we thought, but someone who kept a woman prisoner in his basement.

Science has been pushing boundaries in the attempt to answer the question “who are we?” Often, these boundaries are the fault lines of deep societal injunctions against speaking the hateful truth. What is IQ and how does it vary among individuals and groups? Is the tendency to impulsive violence genetic? In what ways do men and women differ?  Is homosexuality indistinguishable from heterosexuality? Why are women attracted to violent men? Is feminism simply the reaction of women to an ugly modernity that neutered men?

T.S. Eliot said that humanity cannot bear too much reality. As more truth gets revealed every day, established institutions push back very hard against the exposure and try to suppress it. A guaranteed way to lose one’s job, terminate one’s career and be cast into the outer darkness is to publically utter a forbidden truth. However, when truth remains underground and laws and rules are made that are based on lies, the social contract is corroded.  Ultimately, the very foundation of a society can collapse because of an unspoken but powerful injunction against telling obvious truths.

So who are we? We are a shifting reality that sub rosa is becoming clearer and clearer every day. One day perhaps the classic literature of the past, the poems and epics of the ancient world and the sayings of sages will be accepted for the truth and wisdom they contain and the pretty lies that fill the air will be driven into the darkness from which they emerged.

Will America Survive? – Conclusion

So what’s the answer?

TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It)

or

MOTS (More Of The Same)?

Prognostication is a game played by people who usually end up living under bridges wearing old barrels. It’s like waltzing into the Bellagio in Las Vegas with a sure fire system for beating the roulette wheel. But, like gamblers, some people are compulsive predictors. They scan the daily happenings on the web with a practiced gimlet eye. When some favorite indicator jumps, their pulse quickens and the part of the brain that says “I told you so!!” gets so highly juiced that a EEG three miles away can detect it.

Lord Monckton, a well-known climate change skeptic, had this to say today:

“If you thought the crash of 2008 was bad, think again. The crash that is coming –I cannot put a date on it, but it is not far away now – will be orders of magnitude worse.

So, what should you do to protect yourself and your family? First, get rid of every dollar you have. Dollars are now all but worthless. When the crash comes, they will have no value at all.

In hard times, most financial instruments – currencies, stocks, bonds – are not worth the paper they are printed on. Get rid of them now. Buy silver coins. They will quintuple in price once the crash sets in, and they are small enough to be fungible when the dollar dies.

Buy land, some of it well-wooded, some of it arable, some of it grassland. You will need the timber to power your steam tractor. Gasoline will be a costly rarity. And make sure you can defend yourselves. Starving mobs are no respecters of persons. Do what the Mormons do: Get three months’ supply of imperishable foodstuffs and hide them in the basement.

Absurd though this advice may now seem, there is a real danger that the crash will sudden. If so – perhaps for several months, and even for years – the fabric of civilization, including the food-supply chain, will fail.”

Meanwhile, Mohamed El-Erian, CEO and co-CIO of fund giant Pimco said today after the close of the market above 15,000 and last Friday’s job report that “the economy continues to heal” and:

“The question now, and it is an important one, is whether positive interactions among the two will create sufficient momentum for the U.S. economy to attain escape velocity,”

In fact, there are so many contradictory indicators that point in opposite directions that they all seem to cancel each other out.

-       A good jobs report, but the new jobs are mostly temporary, low paying service jobs.
-       A booming stock market fed primarily by the Fed’s QE money pumping.

Pulling back up to 30,000 feet, are there some clear indications that one can identify on the landscape that are more valuable in predicting an answer to the question? Just ahead is the full quagmire of Obamacare. Whether or not it was just a well-intentioned idea to provide healthcare benefits to the uninsured, what emerged and is now being implemented is such a terrible and expensive bureaucratic folly that even Congressional Democrats are backing away and trumpeting warnings about the absolute chaos that lies just ahead. The IRS is being charged with its enforcement. That should make chills run down the spine of most rational people.

But even a badly designed and implemented program is not a fatal blow to a country as robust as the United States. The worst culture in fifty years and the scary, violent streets of urban America are not enough to derail the country. Racial conflict will most likely subside after it runs its current course.

There has to be a deep cancer or a nearly blocked artery to make any kind of doom-filled prediction. And there are: the cancer is the looming debt and solvency situation and the dangerous blocked artery is unchecked immigration.

The dynamics of debt have been studied for many years. History is replete with examples of individuals, companies, cities and countries that have been destroyed by debt. The Fed is keeping interest rates near zero (and effectively below zero) by inflating the money supply and purchasing government Treasury bills. The world is just barely tolerating this because most of the power centers (including China, Japan and Europe) fear the consequences of a dollar collapse. That is slowly changing, however. Lord Monckton again:

“Watch some of the straws in the wind. China and Korea have come to a little-noticed agreement that international trade between them will no longer be denominated in U.S. dollars, but in Yuan, or Won.

Behind the closed mahogany doors of the world’s finance houses, elaborate and secret preparations are being made for the upheaval and international financial collapse that will follow the deliberate printing-out and consequent implosion of the dollar.”

The day the dollar is no longer recognized as the world’s reserve currency is the day the dam breaks. It will be preceded by rises in the interest rate. Given the current level of debt, a rise of only a few percent – still below normal – will crush the ability to fund both the government’s operations and pay the interest on the debt.

Immigration as we currently see it operating in the United States is a slow, insidious invasion. It displaces Americans, especially low-wage Americans. It changes the character of cities and towns. It Balkanizes the country and turns familiar landscapes into terra incognita. It leaches the resources that should go to citizens such as welfare and education. It is a slowly-building arterial plaque that threatens to burst and produce a fatal societal heart attack.

When will these forces separately and together generate a fatal threat to the nation? Sometime in the next two-to-five years most likely. But will they actually cause the nation to die? No. But the character of the United States could change in ways that make it unrecognizable.

Americans will not accept chaos and anarchy for very long. The call for order and security will be overwhelming and the Federal government will respond powerfully. An economic collapse fueled by ethnic conflict will most likely produce a response that will make the police presence following the Boston Marathon bombing look like a boy scout campfire gathering. All of the lurking capabilities for surveillance, police militarization and other forms of civilian control will be released if the crisis grows in intensity and does not abate.

I remain hopeful that this scenario is simply a bad dream of a temperamentally dyspeptic person. I am not optimistic however.

Will America Survive? – Politics

My historian friends love to regale me with stories of the political frays from the 19^th century. Fisticuffs were a common debating tool. Manufactured scandals and Grand Canyon-deep corruption were a standard feature. Andrew Jackson was famous for beating up opponents with his hickory stick. Perhaps nothing in the history of the politics in the United States can match the vituperation and acidity of the anti-slavery campaigns of the 1850’s. So are the politics of today any worse than the rough-and-tumble of the past? No and yes.

For the most part, the conflicts of the past related to certain policies – the gold standard, expansion of slavery, trust-busting, etc.  Today’s conflicts are centered around ideology and the nature and structure of government. There is really no middle ground between the positions of the progressive left and the conservative right. It is a pure tug-of-war with the loser to fall into an abyss if they get pulled too far.

The intention of progressives is not just to win a battle over this or that issue, rather it is to completely destroy any resistance to achieving their goals. That means enfeebling and castrating the Republican party (who are doing an excellent job of self-destruction themselves).  This will be done by flooding red states with new immigrants who will pull those states into the blue column. Once iron-clad, veto-proof majorities are achieved, then the full progressive program can be driven to its ultimate goal – an uncompromising socialist state with an all-powerful Federal government enforcing all the government’s diktats and ukases from a position of unchallengeable power and authority. Of course this will also require a progressive majority on the Supreme Court, but that is clearly within reach.

Once progressives hold all the levers of power, changes will be made to the underlying political system to guarantee that they will never lose power again. The Constitution will effectively be null-and-void. No challenges to their hegemony will be tolerated. The combination of total political power and elite institutional dominance can not fought by old-fashioned political methods.

A key event will be the Congressional mid-term election of 2014. Republicans feel that the president’s growing unpopularity and the fast-approaching train wreck of Obamacare will translate into the Democrats losing control of the Senate and their retaining control of the House. Are they right?

There is at present no recognized conservative leader who can speak to issues with the rhetorical power and presence that is required to cut through the Kultursmog. Anyone who pretends to that position will receive a beat-down from the media unlike anything we have seen in the past. No rock will be ignored, from elementary school pranks to pencils missing from the office supply cabinet. If per chance, some actual minor malfeasance is found, it will be trumpeted every day at full volume until the target cries uncle or simply walks off the stage.

Even someone who has rhetorical gifts can be undermined if they cannot turn around the attacks with humor and creative ignoring.  The media will concentrate their full power on destroying the conservative opposition. Lies will be repeated endlessly until they are accepted as truths. And of course, the president will use all of his tools to discredit and shame conservatives. They will receive the blame for the failure of Obamacare. After all, they refused to spend the money needed to make it a success. They wanted the program to fail and the people to suffer. That story will be front page news every day for a year before the election. Will it work? That is an unknown.

The depth of election fraud and abuse from the 2012 election has never surfaced and certainly it is a story that has been suppressed. It is certain that 2014 will see many times that level and 2016 will be so rife with fraud that it will make elections in the former Soviet Union look like the election of a new leader for the Southern Baptist Convention.

If the progressive left achieves its goal of total political control, then politics as we have known it in the past is over. The opposition will be neutered and made irrelevant. The grumblings of nearly half the country will no longer matter as the train roars down the track to the shining utopia that is surely over the next hill.

As a counterpoint, we know that politics has an action-reaction dynamic. Push too far in one direction and resistance will grow and grow until a critical point is reached and the pushers themselves get shoved out the door.  Maine, a reliably liberal state, elected Paul LePage, a tough conservative governor, in 2011.  There is a growing resistance in the country to the current direction of increasing government power and control. The media tries its best to ignore that resistance, focusing instead on soi disant Republican malfeasance and 60’s retreads like the Occupy movement.  It is possible that resistance will solidify and derail the progressive train before it reaches its final destination. I remain hopeful.

Will America Survive? – Race and Social Comity

The year 1944 saw the publication of  Gunnar Myrdal’s landmark work, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. The book made the case that a vicious circle existed between white racial prejudice and black societal performance that ended up mutually reinforcing each other and perpetuating institutional oppression of blacks. The study was a key factor in the civil rights revolution of 1954 (Brown v. Board of Education) to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by Congress.

In 2013, the attitudes of many whites are still being influenced by what are perceived to be the antinomian behavioral norms of black culture: the prevalence of violent crime far out of proportion to their percentage of the population and low achievement relative to other non-white groups (especially recent Asian immigrants). The reason given for these unquestioned realities is always the same: the legacy of slavery and persistent white racism. And yet, ameliorative approaches as a solution have been the order of the day since the first affirmative action rulings in the late 1960’s. While the black middle class has grown significantly since then – especially in government employment – the problems of the overall black community have persisted and in many ways grown significantly worse.

Since the election of Barack Obama in 2008, new deviant behaviors have appeared that have spawned new terms: polar bear hunting, the knockout game and flash mobs.  All involve groups of young, black males attacking whites without cause or reason. Almost every day another incident will be reported in Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis or other cities with large black populations.

Within the black community itself, an epidemic of murder and maiming has been growing out of control, primarily caused by rival gangs fighting over turf in an escalating war to control the sale and distribution of drugs. Random bullets find their way to innocent babies and young mothers. Cities with the toughest gun control laws like Chicago have seen a dramatic increase in gun-related violence.  Almost all proposed gun laws seem to be directed at lawful gun ownership, and not where the problem is actually concentrated – in neighborhoods filled with illegally owned handguns.

Before the Internet, the news about racially-identifiable violence could be controlled by the mainstream media. But now both eyewitnesses and alternative news outlets are providing dramatic evidence of the growth in horrific violence. Surveillance videos and cell phones provide a daily stream of images that are causing whites to shift their opinions about their relationship to blacks.

What is more shocking are wildly popular sites such as World Star Hip Hop which is directed exclusively at non-whites and features many celebratory videos of both racial and interracial violence.  In addition, sites which allow whites to vent their anger and frustration at what are perceived as black behavioral norms are growing exponentially in popularity. This does not bode well for restoring the social comity needed for a largely urbanized population.

The toxin of political correctness does not allow truth tellers such as Bill Cosby to directly address this issue. Race is the third, forth and fifth rail of American political discourse.  Walking on tiptoes to avoid giving offense is not a path to a solution. Neither is absolving the perpetrators of violence in the name of “white privilege.”

Is there private racism in this country? Of course. But institutional racism has been effectively eliminated.  There are no more barriers to the advancement of blacks. Every door that could be opened has been opened. Every obstacle has been removed. Therefore, excuses are only that – excuses. The growing problem of black violence and under achievement must be faced honestly and workable solutions found.

Whites and blacks are inextricably intertwined together and nothing short of another civil war can alter that reality. If we are to have a society where people do not cower in their houses after dark and are not afraid to drive into large sections of a city then we cannot hide and pretend these problems will go away by themselves. I remain cautiously hopeful.

Will America Survive? – Immigration

Imagine that you live in a mid-size American city. You’ve lived there for twenty years. You know your neighbors. When you go downtown, you know the merchants and many of the people on the street. There have been changes as more chain stores have replaced mom-and-pop establishments, but fundamentally the feel of downtown is the same. One morning you wake up and head downtown. Instead of signs in English, the signs are all in Spanish. You recognize none of the people you see. You walk into a store and the proprietor can barely speak English. None of the conversations you hear as you walk around are in English. There are more people on the street making it difficult to navigate. The level of street noise is many times greater than before. For many native-born Americans this has become their reality.

Before you think this only affects whites, there are traditional black neighborhoods in Los Angeles have been effectively ethnically-cleansed by Mexicans. There are parts of Los Angeles, you will never hear English spoken. And this is true of Miami, Houston, Denver and many other cities.

When people express their concern about immigration (both legal and illegal) it is because it is seen as a form of theft. Theft of civil & social space, of employment opportunities, of taxes and most importantly of the cultural landscape that should be the birthright of citizens who were born and grew up here.

It is not a racial issue. It is an economic and cultural one. Besides the United States and Canada, only England and Western Europe allow levels of immigration that threaten to rend and Balkanize their countries. It seems to be a disease restricted to the peoples of European origin. That disease is universalism and is a product of the Enlightenment. It comes directly from the writings of Denis Diderot in the late 18^th century.  The core article of faith of universalism is that all peoples are essentially the same. Given the right environment we would all converge into an indistguishible mass, albeit of slightly different skin tones and language. But inside, in our psyches, there would be a common foundation that was shared by all. Universalism is the foundation of multiculturalism as well as being the core belief of modern Christianity. It is also, deeply and profoundly wrong.

Empirical evidence from many sources show that when groups of different people are put in proximity, their differences intensify as each group struggles to retain their cultural identity.  In Europe, second and third generation Muslims are significantly more Islamic than first generation immigrants.

There is a growing Mexican cultural nationalism now found in young, second and third generation immigrants. La Raza (The Race) and MechA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán) are growing in members and political power. They believe that the Southwestern part of the United States (viz. Aztlán) was unfairly stolen from the Mexican nation and should be returned. Their influence is growing and their message is spreading.

The immigration policy of most other nations is based on a simple rule: is the immigrant good for the country. Will they bring economic value and not try to disrupt the society. Only the West has a policy which reverses these priorities: will our country be good for the immigrant.

Politics in addition to philosophy has caused immigration to become an essential wedge issue. The Democrat party seeks to destroy the Republican base and remove them from political power for one or more generations. Since third-world immigrants overwhelmingly vote Democrat, they support amnesty and increasingly levels of immigration. Country club Republicans believe that immigrants provide a source of cheap labor and thus, also support high levels of third-world immigration. It is only conservative whites and worried blacks that oppose it.  Immigration reform, as it is euphemistically called, is on the front burner today. Some version will probably pass.

As the country becomes more and more Hispanic and black, and native born whites approach becoming a minority, internal relocation will grow. White flight has been a fixture since at least the late 60’s. Middle class whites are leaving states like California, New York and Illinois and are heading to whitopias in the mountain states and northwest. This internal migration could become a torrent if there is a significant economic crisis that generates civil upheaval. Defacto segregation will become defacto separation as time goes on.

A counterpoint can be found in the growth of Asian immigration. While there is still the alienation factor that will be felt by non-Asians as their neighborhoods feature increasing numbers of Asian-owned and run stores and the houses in their neighborhoods are more and more occupied by Asian families, there is no doubt that Asian immigration has been a net positive for the country. Asians are hard-working, family-oriented and their pictures are not usually found on the walls of the local post office.

The bottom line on immigration is that it is the one social force that could split the country irreparably. I am not hopeful.

Will America Survive? – The Economy

America in 2013 has two distinct economies – a real one and a virtual one. The real economy has been stuck in the mud since at least 2008. Modulo inflation, there has been no real income growth for the average American since 1976. The median wealth of the average American has fallen since 2008.

In contrast, the virtual economy is booming as never before. The virtual economy is often termed financialization. It is the use of highly-leveraged debt to inflate asset bubbles. The top 1% who own these assets have seen their net wealth soar to new heights.  In affluent communities such as the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City and especially Washington, DC, housing prices have been soaring as virtual money has become a torrent. Hedge funds and Asian investors have added to the real estate roundelay in cities such as Las Vegas and Vancouver.

Even where there is a tangential connection between the real and virtual economies such as in technology centers like Silicon Valley, it doesn’t take much thought to see that iPhones and iPads and hundreds of thousands of marginally useful applications cannot power a real economy which comes from digging things out of the ground and manufacturing.

Healthcare which accounts for nearly 20% of GDP (and which Charles Hugh Smith calls ‘sickcare’) doesn’t add to the real economy – it drains it.

It doesn’t take a long to drive from a thriving affluent community to one that has had its back broken by outsourcing, taxes, regulations and crime. It takes about one and half hours to drive from San Francisco to Stockton, a bankrupt city in California’s Central Valley. Once you leave the boundaries of the virtual and enter the real, stark reality slaps you silly.

For those who live in the virtual world, life is good. Very, very good. San Francisco and New York have new ultra-hip restaurants opening every week. Glass and adamantine towers and cranes, their precursors, dot the skyline. Even the tired old Bay Bridge which connects San Francisco to the East Bay has become a beacon of the future with the installation of The Bay Lights (thebaylights.org).

In many ways, we are evolving not to some egalitarian future, but rather we are heading backwards to a new medieval past. The classes are moving further and further apart. A new landless, homeless peasant class is growing. The denizens of this new Belle Époque are swilling their modern-a-go-go cocktails with little knowledge or understanding of the desperation that is happening just outside the walls.

David Stockman a dour truth teller who worked in the Reagan administration recently published a book, The Great Deformation (subtitled The Corruption of Capitalism in America.) Quoting from the New York Times review:

“The Great Deformation is a searing look at Washington’s craven response to the recent myriad of financial crises and fiscal cliffs. It counters conventional wisdom with an eighty-year revisionist history of how the American state—especially the Federal Reserve—has fallen prey to the politics of crony capitalism and the ideologies of fiscal stimulus, monetary central planning, and financial bailouts. These forces have left the public sector teetering on the edge of political dysfunction and fiscal collapse and have caused America’s private enterprise foundation to morph into a speculative casino that swindles the masses and enriches the few.”

Stockman is no wild-eyed gold & silver hawker. He’s not a survivalist with a bug-out bag. He’s a sober realist. He describes exactly how America (and the developed world in general) became addicted to monetary intervention and ultimately to unrestrained levels of money-pumping and debt. He understands (but doesn’t say explicitly) that this will not end well. If interest rates are ever allowed to rise to their natural level, the economy and all debtors, especially Federal and state governments would drown under increased interest payments. If the Federal Reserve stops buying Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, a crash would happen almost overnight. So it can’t stop. It must continue what it is doing – pumping more and more money into the economy and enabling an increasing level of debt. That per force, must end in default, hyperinflation (followed by deflation) or what is euphemistically called a ‘reset’. The road to Hell is paved with the engravings of dead presidents.

The stage is set for the crash of Europe. The people of Germany are tiring of being the continent’s Sugar Daddy. Cyprus and the seizing of its citizen’s assets from the banks was the first calling card of the financial Grim Reaper.  Slovenia is being teed up for the next bailout. What the terms of that will be are still unknown.

Behind the scenes, the BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China are planning a monetary coup d’état. They are putting a gold-backed scheme in place for payments among themselves and the oil producers in the Middle East. The United States enjoys relatively low prices for what it imports because the dollar is still the world’s reserve currency. That means the demand for dollars remains high and the dollar’s price relative to other currencies does not truly reflect the highly lopsided balance of payments. The US is the world’s largest debtor nation and its trade accounts are nearly one trillion dollars in the red every year. When the dollar is no longer recognized as the reserve currency, the price of every import will skyrocket. The price of imported oil will double or triple.  The economy was dealt a body blow by $4/gallon gasoline. $10/gallon gasoline will be a lethal injection.

Are there any positives in this fairly grim picture? There are. One of the most important is the intangible but very real creativity and innovation generated by America’s entrepreneurs. A real breakthrough – in energy especially – could reverse the grim course we are now following.  Technology centers are seething with new ideas. Some of these are niche-filling extensions of current technologies, but some are so revolutionary that they are only whispered about sotto voce in cafes in Santa Clara and Austin. Nanotechnology, robotics and intelligence amplification are some of the breakthrough areas that might transform the economic landscape.

In addition to these, potentially the most important new manufacturing modality is currently in its early stages. It is high value-added, small-in-scale but highly customizable. Imagine an eBay not for existing goods, but for goods that can be created quickly and to the exact specification of the customer. 3D printing and construction are leading the way in this direction. It may be possible within a decade to have bespoke anything at a low cost.

The near term economic future will not be a trip to the spa. Metaphorically, it will be a journey through a chamber of horrors. But once the toxins are wrung out of the patient and he is reconstituted in a healthier form, then the future might very well turn around and again be something we want to live in. I remain hopeful.

Will America Survive? – The Culture

YouTube has within its purlieus the seeds of a revolution, or at least the nucleus of an awakening. Simply by juxtaposing videos from different decades, but especially the 1940’s and today, the starkness of the cultural transformation of the country cannot be gainsaid. To an adult in his late sixties or older, the comparison creates two simultaneous emotions: a profound disbelief and a frisson of terror. Pictures of Harlem gatherings from the 1950’s will also be shocking, but for a different reason – all the men are wearing hats, jackets and ties and the women, modest dresses. When I was young, the thought that an adult man would go into the street without a tie and hat was unthinkable. And I grew up in the South Bronx.

When I started my first job after college, I wore a starched white shirt and tie. To do otherwise would invite censorious looks from nearly everyone. That was in 1965, the fulcrum year when the devil’s smile began to beguile those who saw it and the invitation to toss off all restraint was accepted. In the memory of people my age are two disparate worlds. One of those worlds vanished – the ordered, but free sphere of mature adulthood, intact families and rules to be unconsciously absorbed and followed. What remains is a Hieronymus Bosch universe. The young of course have no idea that they live in such a cosmos. The everyday is accepted without question or reflection.

One of the most insidious transformations is the speed at which society seems to evolve. “That’s so fifteen minutes ago!” used to be a funny joke. Not anymore. For a twenty-something living life at Warp 9 can seem exhilarating. Opportunities to be part of the Next Big Thing abound. The famous SXSW (South by Southwest Interactive Festival) in Austin, Texas being the perfect nexus for faster-than-light change. The race to be au courant to the microsecond can be fierce. But what else is there? That is the only game in town today. Mobile technologies and an infinite space of possibilities for new applications have created a world that whizzes by with no incentive to get off at any particular place. Spiritual motion sickness is the danger.  The ambitious young person looks at callow billionaire Mark Zuckerberg and imagines him or herself also smiling a smile of Marianas-Trench-deep satisfaction. Just a few more all-nighters, a few thousand positive tweets and the house in Palo Alto can be theirs.

Yet….it’s not all like this. Not even close. Most Americans live in fear, abject fear that they might not survive the tumultuous roller coaster that now constitutes their life. The loss of a job, even a low-paying one, can send a family into a spiral of despair and hopelessness. The shiny baubles that peer out of the television cannot comfort those who have fallen. With the exception of religious communities such as Orthodox Jews and Mormons, every family is alone, naked, exposed, and vulnerable. The government hands out mountains of EBT cards and a plethora of other goodies, as if that can reconstitute a sense of independence and security which of course it can’t. The future has been mortgaged to the hilt and repossession is on the horizon.

Often, cultural critics like to wag their tongues about Honey Boo Boo and Dancing With The Stars and the Mencken doofus americanus, low-information voter eating junk food and trawling the mall like zombified, mind-numbed robots. But this contempt from the cognitive elite is both supercilious and insulting. At the core of most outsourced Americans is a desire to be independent, self-sufficient and productive citizens, not dependent children.

Changing gears….For a guaranteed hour of unadulterated face palm, I go to the iTunes movie trailer page and watch this week’s crop of future releases.  They all seem to be manufactured by two factories. One factory’s specialty is CGI special effects of things flying through the air and exploding. The other factory has a lock on psychos, splatter, dysfunction, whining, prematurely aged children, magical thinking and alienation. After viewing about fifteen of these, I wonder why Hollywood has not been turned into a Ninth Circle theme park. They wouldn’t have to do much to make that happen. Just design a nifty costume for the bus drivers.

A counterpoint was promised and here it is. The Internet has enabled the development of a new golden age in music. Between iTunes, Amazon, Grooveshark, Spotify, Soundhound, Jamendo, the Free Music Archive and hundreds of other sites, new music appears everyday that is shocking in its beauty, depth and honesty. On YouTube, there are thousands of videos of music by once obscure composers from the 19^th and 20^th century. Today, my iTunes library has 27,000 selections. Not everyone is a masterpiece, but the percentage grows every day. Why music and not film? Music production today does not require a corrupt and corrupting infrastructure of A&R men and corporate slime balls. A microphone and a few great music applications are all that is necessary. And a local artist to do an album cover, of course.  Whenever my soul feels assaulted by the damp cloud of cultural despair, I put on my earphones and listen in wonder to the music that comes from the depths of young people today. I’m still hopeful.