Inequality – Page 3 – Auxiliary Memory

What Would Give Us Hope for the Future?

by James Wallace Harris, Saturday, May 25, 2019

I have little hope for the future. I’m not alone, my most popular essay with over 60,000 hits is “50 Reasons Why the Human Race is Too Stupid to Survive.” So I keep asking myself: “What would give us hope for the future?”

If certain changes were made in our laws I might change my mind about the future and be hopeful. However, I seriously doubt they will be made because the current state of corruption is too ingrained. Until we can solve these five problems I don’t think there can be any hope for the future.

Greed
Corruption
Deception
Inequality
Pollution

Our current system has wired our society for self-destruction. If we don’t do something to alter course our civilization will collapse in the next 50-75 years. Just count the countries that have collapsed around the world in recent years. There are several bald spots on civilization right now. Civilization is thinning around the globe. We need to repair those bald spots and make civilization sustainable economically and ecologically.

I no longer feel electing a new leader every four years is a solution. We need to tweak our political system so that it’s more democratic. We need to redesign capitalism so it’s equitable and ecological. Our current political polarization leaves a majority of the population depressed because we effectively have minority rule. Even we got rid of the Electoral College it will only help a little. We’d also need to get rid of all the corruption in the voting process such as gerrymandering and unfair laws to control who votes.

Even if we overhauled the voting system so that it’s 100% fair and open, we’d still have lethal problems. The most important of which is corruption. People with money control too much. We live in a plutocracy. The solution here is to remove all campaign contributions. The government should pay for all campaigning so every candidate has equal resources and no reason to be beholding to any special interests.

Ending political contributions would not end corruption. We’d also need to overhaul the tax system so businesses couldn’t strive to get a better deal. By allowing tax breaks for certain industries or to lure them to specific locations we create a structure for corruption. The influence of greed needs to be removed from politics.

Some people don’t want a true democracy because they fear it would bring mob rule. I’m not so sure. But we might need to change the definition of majority. Winning with 50% causes polarization. We’ve coalesced around two parties by forming coalitions of special interests. We need to get back to bipartisan compromises. We should change the percentage to win an election to 55%, and maybe eventually larger. We should change the percentage for a law to pass to 66%. And more laws should be based on referendums, rather than politicians.

We need to elect leaders who work for 100% of the people. Every political issue, no matter how divisive needs be base on solid compromises. Right now everyone wants extreme solutions, ban all guns – allow all guns, ban all abortions – allow all abortions, etc. We need to find middle paths that satisfy at least 66% of the country. If two-thirds of the population were satisfied, I feel the country would eventually heal itself.

And we need to stop endlessly arguing. Our polarized politics have made the country into one giant trench warfare where the lines never move. We need to find compromises, and then shut up for a while. We need to make a decision and stick with it for at least a decade before we argue over it again.

Part of our problem is we argue with lies and deception. We need to learn how to validate the information we club each other with. People with power and money know how to deceive. If we had a true democracy, those who want to influence change would have to appeal to everyone, and not just a few corruptible politicians. We need to eliminate lobbyists to politicians shift lobbying to the voters.

Part of the problem is inequality. A powerful minority are born with decisive advantages while too many are born without the opportunity to compete.

Capitalism is the only mechanism we have to create wealth and inspire innovation, but it unfairly creates too many losers. We want a system that rewards effort, but we don’t want a system that allows unjust competition. All of us are born on Lifeboat Earth without our choosing, but some were giving more of the provisions than others at the start. We are a greedy species, so we couldn’t stand a society that divided everything equally. However, for stability, we do need a fairer divvy up of what we have.

I would have hope for the future if everyone had an equal say, had equal opportunity, and the winners of society left the losers with at least a respectable life.

And we have to do all this while preserving the Earth. Seven billion people cause a lot of pollution. Climate change is a byproduct of pollution. Our pollution is destroying the environment for us and all other species. Not only should we seek equality for all humans, but other species deserve a share of equality too.

I think it’s possible to create a fairer sustainable society, but I’m not sure we will. As you consume the news each day, pay attention to these five problems. Are we moving to solve them, or increase them? Keep your own scorecard. How would you bet on the future?

JWH

Is This Cartoon Sexist?

by James Wallace Harris, Tuesday, January 1, 2019

I told my wife I was going to put this cartoon on my Facebook page and she said I shouldn’t because it might be considered sexist. It’s a cartoon by Alex Gregory whose work appears exclusively in the New Yorker. You can read an interesting bio of Gregory and a description of his work methods at A Case of Pencils, a blog devoted to New Yorker cartoonists.

I didn’t post the cartoon on Facebook because I’m now worried it could be sexist, but I wasn’t sure either. I asked a few women friends and some said it was okay and some weren’t sure. None took offense. So I went looking for definitions to “sexist” online. I was surprised by how many different definitions I found.

referring to women’s bodies, behavior, or feelings in a negative way
a person who believes that particular jobs and activities are suitable only for women and others are suitable only for men
suggesting that the members of one sex are less able, intelligent, etc. than the members of the other sex
a person who believers their gender is superior and says unfair things about the other gender, or assumes that only one gender as a certain trait
relating to or characterized by prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex
a person with sexist views
if you describe people or their behavior as sexist, you mean that they are influenced by the beliefs that the members of one sex, usually women, are less intelligent or less capable than those of the other sex and need not be treated equally
relating to, involving, or fostering sexism, or attitudes and behavior toward someone based on the person’s gender
involving sexism and the belief that men and women should be treated in a different way

By studying these definitions I might need a Supreme Court ruling to know if this cartoon is sexist or not. Part of the humor of this cartoon is it plays around with all of these issues. It assumes the stereotype that men are usually in the car and women are looking in the window. Just reversing roles is funny. If the man wore hotpants and the woman a suit, it would be a different kind of funny even without a caption. The cartoon is making generalizations about men and women behaviors, but are those generalizations negative? Is it an absolute generalization? Few people are prostitutes or hire them, so maybe it’s making no absolute assessments about either gender. However, many people, including myself, see prostitutes as victims of a sexist society.

I think the first thing we should ask: Does it offend anyone? Now I can’t answer that because I don’t know how all seven-plus billion people on Earth think. The next question: Could it offend anyone? And this is my present quandary. I don’t want to offend anyone, nor do I want to be perceived as sexist. The prudent solution: never generalize about gender. I shouldn’t be writing this essay and I shouldn’t post anything on Facebook that could ever be construed as dealing with gender differences.

I feel sorry for comedians, humorists, and cartoonists. This morning I read “These 13 Jokes From ‘Seinfeld’ Are Super Offensive Now.” I have to admit I thought them funny back in the nineties. So much of humor is observational generalizations.

But here’s the thing, almost everyone along the gender spectrum likes to occasionally generalize about others on the spectrum. This cartoon is funny to some people because it makes observations that coincide with their personal observations. We have a natural ability for organizing patterns into behavioral traits. We see certain kinds of clouds and we think it’s going to rain. We see certain prices on a menu and decide a restaurant is expensive. We see a movie preview with a superhero and we assume it’s based on a comic book. All of these can be false assumptions, so this ability creates a lot of prejudices.

What is this cartoon assuming? Even here I can’t say for sure. Everyone will see something different. My assumption is women think men don’t listen and wouldn’t it be funny if some women are so horny to be heard that they will pay for a professional male listener. However, I know men who feel women don’t listen, and a reverse of this cartoon could work for them. There are stories about prostitutes with Johns who pay just for conversational companionship.

Cartoons about prostitution generally involve men who can’t get laid paying women for sex. Should men consider such cartoons as demeaning to them? I would never use a prostitute. Should I be offended by the possible suggestion that all men would? Or will some women be offended at the suggestion that some women would be willing to pay to be heard? And will psychiatrists feel offended if they think their profession is a kind of prostitution?

I would guess that many women would say they know plenty of men who are poor listeners so the idea of paying a man to be attentive to their conservation all night long could be funny. Is that an insult to men? I know plenty of men who complain about having to listen to their wives and girlfriends, so this cartoon should be funny to them, but will it offend women in general? The reason why I even have this cartoon is one of my male friends thought it insightful because he feels his girlfriends talk too much. I thought it funny because so many women I know seem to like me because I’m willing to listen. I thought I could be that guy in the cartoon.

Maybe the humor is even simpler. Maybe its saying men want sex and women want conversation. Many married couples might agree, but does a portion of the population seeing humorous validity mean its not offensive to couples where the woman wants sex and the man conversation?

And where’s the inequality? Is it offensive to desire talk more than sex?

But you never know what words will do. For example, when I wanted a copy of this cartoon I searched on Google for “Male Prostitute” and selected the Images tab. I got copies of the cartoon but I also got mug shots of male prostitutes. It didn’t even occur to me what those words could also bring up. That’s the thing about worrying about offending, we never know the full consequences of words.

(Now I worry about what kind of ads I’ll be seeing in the next few days.)

JWH

Inequality and Overpopulation

by James Wallace Harris, Saturday, October 20, 2018

In the 21st-century countless problems threaten our survival. Long before climate change can drown us, inequality and overpopulation will dissolve our civilization. People tend to obsess on a single issue when all our problems are interrelated. Republicans have laser-focused on reducing their taxes while denying all other threats due to their expense. Our economy is a million times more complex than a nuclear power plant, yet Republicans feel they can control it with just one knob.

Nuclear power plant control room

We won’t solve problems we refuse to see. The past tells us we need a convinced percentage of the population before we act. History also shows progress is slow, and sometimes humans never change. We live in politically terrorizing times. The frog in boiling water analogy Al Gore used for climate change works for all the problems we need to solve today. In the middle of the last century, John Calhoun’s experiments with rat and mice overpopulation probably say more about our times than we want to believe. Watch the video if you don’t believe me or this longer one, Down the Rabbit Hole.

Today, most people ignore the issue of overpopulation even though most of our social problems are directly connected to 6 billion too many humans. Deniers claim food production has always grown faster than population, so we don’t have to worry about overpopulation. However, starvation was never the sole threat of too many people.

If you regularly watch TV news, the same stories cycle over the same periods of days, weeks, months, and years. And with each new iteration, these same problems intensify. I have been pessimistic about the future for decades. I don’t know if my pessimism is the natural one of old age or there’s real evidence for worry.

Honduran migrant caravan October 2018

The new Honduran migrant caravan is much larger than the last one and Donald Trump is panicking. Trump thinks he can control the border. The past tells us that won’t work. Whenever people suffer they move to where people don’t. Just look at Venezuelans pouring into Columbia in the photo below. Don’t the two groups look similar? Haven’t we seen them before? Won’t we see groups grow ever larger and more frequent for the rest of our lives? How are they different from those fleeing hurricanes Florence and Michael? Imagine yourself in such a group. It’s almost certain you’ll either be a refugee in your lifetime, or you’ll be building walls to keep them out. What will it take to avoid both fates?

Venezuelans migrating to Columbia.

This isn’t overpopulation, but inequality. Overpopulation and inequality are related. When populations conflict over war, there is inequality of peace. When there are extremes of rich and poor, there is economic inequality. Where society deems a physical trait of the body superior to another there’s racial inequality. When society treats men differently than women, there is gender inequality. When there are more people than jobs, there is work inequality. When one species takes all the natural resources, there is inequality of lifeforms.

If you watch the Mouse Utopia Experiment film, it’s easy to forget you’re seeing mice and see us instead. As the population grows on Lifeboat Earth, the passengers will fight over the remaining rations. We can’t solve overpopulation right now. We can solve the inequality to reduce the conflicts until we reduce our numbers. If we don’t, nature will do it for us.

Republicans believe the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many. They are not the ethical Vulcans from Star Trek. The only way our species can survive all the problems we’ll face in this century is by providing equality to all. That will require turning all the knobs in the control room in subtle ways until we find the correct settings. A difficult but not impossible task. And it’s not just for our country. If anywhere in the world one group is singled out and not given equal rations and opportunity, this lifeboat will sink. We have grown so large, that even a 1% minority is 70 million people, a powerful force.

We fail because we lack empathy for people unlike ourselves. I recommend two essays to prove my point. I could list thousands, but please read these two to see if they don’t change your mind. They are “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates and “The Longest War” by Rebecca Solnit.

No matter what kind of walls you build to keep out whatever kind of refugee your fear, that wall will never be big enough. The only way not to need walls is to create equality uniformly everywhere. As long as you believe you can wall yourself in you’re doomed.

World-War-Z-photo-zombies-1