“253 Killed, $66 Billion in Damage as Hurricane Sandy rips apart Eastern coast of U.S.”
“Some 270,000 Killed by Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami.”
“90,000 Burn to Death after Mount Tambora Erupts in Indonesia.”
“Deadly Tornado Flattens Everything in Bangladesh Killing 1,300.”
“Plague Sweeps through Eurasia and Europe Killing 75-200 Million Souls.”
“Fed Up God Torches Two Cities Burning Thousands of Residents to A Crisp!”
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Of the six news headlines above which ones do you think derive from actual data and first-hand accounts? Did you choose three? Did you choose two? If you are very well read, you might have chosen all six headlines. If you are not only well read but also more reasonable, then you would have chosen only five headlines as accurate. But mixing and comparing journalism of today with ancient storytelling from then is not such a labor of futility as one might think.
Interpreting events is done through two lenses: one is subjective and influenced by the viewer’s own personal and historical experience; or two it is objective, void of the viewer’s personal experiences and opinions; which can seem unrealistic when considering human nature but not entirely out of the question. Is that it? Are there only two? I would like to add a third lens: collective. In other words, viewed and checked, as well as open for future checking, by cumulative relevant data. This third lens is an amalgamation of the previous two. For example, an expert reporter in culinary arts, an expert reporter in interior design, and an expert reporter in Danish climates and transportation all combine their experiences and expertise to give us the most fabulous arrival, dining, ambiance, and cozy evening of eating that could ever be hoped for. And it was accomplished by a collective lens.
Depending on which lens is used there are Judicious, Entertaining, or Advertising Derivatives
ProPublica is a non-profit independent news firm dedicated to providing investigative journalism in an industry that has become increasingly proliferated with opinion and corporate agendas. Their mission statement goes in part like this:
“In the best traditions of[quality] journalism in the public service, we seek to stimulate positive change…We do this in an entirely non-partisan and non-ideological manner, adhering to the strictest standards of journalistic impartiality. We won’t lobby. We won’t alley with politicians or advocacy groups. We look hard at the critical functions of business and of government…[and also]institutions…”
Such a noble mission of reporting and investigative journalism, however, that M.O. would not have been commonly understood or embraced by the small group of exiled Hebrews who compiled the Torah in 2nd and 1st century BCE Arabia and Mesopotamia. But if you had to choose between the lenses mentioned and described earlier, which of the three lenses would you think the books of the Torah were written through? For that matter, which lens was used to scribe the entire canonical bible western civilization popularized? Pardon the following C+C Music Factory reference…
Things That Make You Go Hmmm
Most of us are familiar with the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. We may also remember that the bible story implies that every single resident was depraved and unholy. It can also be reasonably inferred that this ‘divine judgment’ included the infants and children of the two cities. What town or village, past or present, has no infants or young children? If you would like to read the entire story, the passages in Genesis read like this depending on which version you select; this link is the Mishnah Torah Code by the Mamre Institute in present-day Israel: Genesis 18:16-19:29.
Quickly paraphrasing the biblical story, Yahweh was willing to spare both cities for the sake of fifty righteous residents. However, because Lot and his family were surrounded by such moral filth and because the two visitors he was protecting from an immoral mob, Yahweh felt that Lot, his family, and His ‘chosen people’ would become too influenced by all the evil. Hence, Yahweh rescues them before raining down fire and sulfur, obliterating both cities and every single living thing in them and nearby. From these verses millions of reading and taught followers gain theology and a strict moral compass about sexuality. Oddly enough, the specific sexual act inferred from the verses is later omitted or overlooked in the Ten Commandments.
There are always three sides to every story: Yours, Mine, and the Monday Morning Newspaper
Geologists have long been puzzled by the landslide remains in the valley of Ötztal, Tirol, Austria. For centuries they had considered the cause(s) as inconclusive but possibly that something impacted the mountain due to pressure and explosion evidence. This was the commonly accepted cause of the Austrian landslide until two engineers subjected a copy of a much older Sumerian clay tablet to their cosmic-trajectory program. What followed was completely unexpected.
Path of 3123 BCE asteroid and debris area
Alan Bond and Mark Hempsell of Reaction Engines, Ltd and Bristol University respectively, created a computer program that could not only track the exact trajectory of objects in space, but can also reconstruct the exact position of stars thousands of years in the past. With this precise mathematical knowledge they were able to translate the 700 BCE Sumerian astronomer’s tablet-copy recording an event in the night sky of June 29, 3123 BCE. The tablet also notes that the object was large enough to be seen in space well before the event of June 29th further revealing the angle of approach into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Coupled with historical geological data of asteroid impacts or airbursts of asteroids, and forensic science, many scholars find it very plausible that the debris field of the 3123 BCE asteroid blast – equivalent to ~ 20,000 times greater than the Hiroshima atomic bomb – sprayed burning sulfur and stone over the Mediterranean Sea and onto northern Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula and up to the Dead Sea (see diagram right). The Dead Sea area is generally agreed to be where the ancient towns of Sodom and Gomorrah are located.
Does this mean that myths, tales, and legends of old about an angry God or gods are creations of men’s minds to help them calm their fears of a very volatile fragile world around them? Has the recent advances of media-telecommunication technology enabled more scientists to more quickly share, collaborate, and hence collectively theorize about the data…improving the accuracy of science’s answers? Are there more of these recent scientific discoveries? Yes, I have already shared a few under the category of History, and will gladly share more in the near future.
Changing Our Lens of the World
Research and rebuttals continue about Bond and Hempsell’s findings, but the consensus is gaining favor. One particular discovery would close the case. If rock or asteroid-debris in the Levant region of the Mediterranean is confirmed to be the same rock and debris found at Köfels, Austria then there would be little left to conclude about the “cause” of Sodom and Gomorrah’s fiery end. If we apply the same cause and source of Sodom and Gomorrah’s demise to the first five news headlines above, then that says New Jersey-New York, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, and all of 14th century Europe and Eurasia, were all filthy unholy people — infants and children included — deserving of horrific death. That type of rationale seems to me very extreme; i.e. curing a headache by decapitation.
With that said perhaps mankind can start to revise, maybe overhaul their ancient beliefs in a jealous, temperamental, homicidal God that originates from only ONE region of the planet and from only a small part of Hebrew books/testaments selected from a library of many sacred Judeo scriptures. Assuming that one supreme God exists, can we really know Him from ONE book, from ONE tiny narrow lens? Liken this dilemma to a fine restaurant and you are given an abbreviated menu; one single-sided page. Around the restaurant you see other patrons reviewing menus of three two-sided pages. You must ask yourself, “How much do I really know?“
Inspired by Renee at rasjacobson.com and her clever idea for embarrassing moments from friends, found on her page So Wrong, I wrote this particular story. Check out the 13 funny ones over on her site; you’ll be glad you did! Thank you Renee!
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Waiting in the plush lounge of my doctor’s office and having completed the necessary forms for the outpatient procedure, thumbing through those typical magazines they scatter about, I reflect…asking myself again “Why on Earth am I doing this?” And I remember vividly my history with this sort of thing in this sort of place. This is a short story about a boy, now a man, constantly forced – perhaps charmingly coerced – to face his fears no matter how many times he’d rather not.
Shear-size may or may not be realistic
I travel back in time to my adolescence. I am in one of our family pediatrician’s patient-rooms atop the medical table, Mom is also there, and we are waiting on the doctor’s remedy for my illness. I am nervous, probably because my Mom seems to know something I do not, which makes me more uneasy. The doctor enters the room, talks in a soft calming manner explaining to us but more likely just to me, what he is about to do…to me…in order for me to feel better. Before my eyes he reveals this syringe with a needle I KNOW is three to four inches in length! The remaining words this evil doctor is uttering become oblivious to my ears. There is only one thing I want to know: where are you sticking that and how far? Yes, I know…that is actually two things, but I was desperate and my breathing was becoming more labored.
Well apparently my feeble defense went unwarranted and I don’t know why. Then as if my rising fear meant nothing to the angels of compassion, I had to drop my pants and underwear! Now my palms are very clammy and I’m beginning to perspire. Suddenly and completely unexpectedly I reared up from the table; that evil agent of Satan’s pain-army stuck me in my ass-cheek with that needle. It frickin HURT! Tears are forcing themselves out of my enlarged eyes when I start to feel dizzy and cold. Next, I am in this bizarre dimension of half-reality, half-trippy world with people (if you can call them people) I don’t recognize.
Fast forward 60-100 seconds later. When I woke with the doctor, a nurse, and my Mom looking over me on the floor, I was completely disoriented and worse, I had wet my pants. And if that wasn’t humiliating enough, I had to walk through the patient hall, past the business office and through the lounge in front of everybody to exit the building. A little scared, Mom explained to me that I had fainted but after careful monitoring I was apparently fine.
Soon after this experience, I learned a trick I could do with my butt-cheeks when my father was disciplining me (for direct disrespectful disobedience I’m sure) with THE BELT. If I tightened up my cheeks, the whippings would hurt proportionately less! I thought hey, I can do the same thing when I’m getting a shot! Yeah, stupid move. After the next time, I couldn’t sit down for days. Everything that touched my buttocks made me whelp!
The next thirty-something years were filled with a few similar episodes involving medical equipment, staff, and their facilities. Significant episodes followed like this briefly.
In high school while getting tested for what turned out to be mononucleosis, a lab-technician drawing vials of blood, having me hold the first full vial, pushed the needle too far and through my vein causing me to pass-out onto the floor, bursting the first vial everywhere. When I was awakened I had blood, my blood all over me. Walking out of that clinic I’m sure it looked as if I had come straight from a Stephen King horror movie or was a complete doofus with a ketchup bottle.
Many years later I was helping my teammates erect a large tournament pop-up tent. Using zip-ties to secure down the tarp over the framing-poles, I was using a box-cutter to trim the ties. Being a little too hasty, my motion accidentally slipped off a tie and I sliced into my left wrist. For you newly self-appointed psycho-analyst reading this, no it wasn’t a Freudian-slip trying to escape my inadequacies! While waiting at a nearby medical clinic for stitching, once again I fainted. The nurses there wisely decided to use a butterfly suture instead of stitching me up. Bravely, I concurred.
Lacking representation of a plasma needle
Just a few years ago I went to give plasma. Like I did then, you are now perhaps asking the same question: Are you utterly out of your mind? But I was trying to carry out two things: one, do a good and useful thing, like giving blood, and meanwhile conquer a long-time nagging fear. Second, its easy decent money, right? Um, not so much. I’ve learned in those situations to share all pertinent information and background as possible – ironically that applies in marriages too, as I’ve also painfully learned. Because I volunteered my long history of fainting, the clinic Director pulled me into his office for a quick discussion. He asked a couple of questions and then to make his point pristinely clear, he opened up his desk drawer, pulled out a clear package, and laid it out in front of me.
If any of you know what a blood-plasma needle looks like, then you can appreciate its size…or better, its GIRTH! Holy SHIZZO that thing was as thick as my middle-finger! The doctor explained that the needle I gasped at would be inside my arm for some 45-minutes. “Stop” I said. “I think I’ve had delusions of courage coming here, haven’t I?” As gently as he knew how, he went on to explain to me the cumbersome paperwork he’d have to fill-out for the EMT’s, ambulance service, and plasma center if I fainted there in his clinic; something he must do by law in potential cases like me.
I decided humanity had more than enough plasma.
But my most significant episode with that nagging Dream-Reaper was when my former girlfriend convinced me that a vasectomy would promise all kinds of mutually euphoric pleasure. She portrayed the resulting steamy spontaneous ecstasy better than any quality porn I could imagine, but I think she forgot to mention at whose expense! I had been blindly enamored by her narrations of condom-less tantric-release as much as my lack of upward blood-flow. A common occurrence in men I have learned.
So I am at my urologist’s office for what he and his nurses have explained insistently is a simple outpatient procedure. They urge me this way because apparently thousands upon tens of thousands of men successfully have the procedure, and most return to their daily routines within a half-day or so. One of my close guy-friends has had the procedure done and affirms this while every time laughing at me! “Snip, snip” he said “and your done.“
What is it that these titans of visceral vasectomy aren’t getting about me? Do they even realize that this “simple procedure” is in an area of about the only testosterone-filled manly-ness I might have remaining given my history? Hello? I am going to be awake the entire time he has his….(swallow Adam’s apple) tools down there!
My urologist and his nurses and I come up with a plan: his pleasantly calming assistant will constantly talk with me during the procedure – I don’t care what about – in an attempt to distract me from the REMOVAL. “Alright, you will feel two slight bee-stings” the doctor explains “and shortly after, the anesthesia will kick-in and you will hardly feel a thing.” He was such a blatant liar!
While the nurse continued talking and asking me a few questions, only a few moments later I felt ever-so-vaguely him pulling things down there. A sharp pain rode up from my groin, through my kidney areas, and into my chest. I let out a large groan! “Are we good so far?” the doctor asked pausing. I gritted my teeth and in my head I replied, are you seriously asking that right now? But I fronted a reply of yes. Seconds later I feel the same discomfort but more dull…and as I’m trying to pay attention to what the nurse was saying the walls began closing in on my ears and eyes. I hazily remember trying to fight it but it was futile; it just happened too quickly.
Once the Dream-Reaper had his cerebral fun in my head and departed, the doctor and nurse were hovering over my face repeating my name, placing every so often the swab of ammonium carbonate under my nose. They tell me I was out for about 45-60 seconds. The nurse covers me with 2-3 blankets because I’ve gone into minor shock. Wonderful. She remains with me for five, ten minutes until I am fully coherent to talk with the doctor. It is when he returns to the room that I am informed of the stunning details of what had happened.
“Well[ProfessorTaboo], are we feeling back to normal?” the doctor asked. I answered yes and apologized for what I knew might have happened. He assured me it was okay and began explaining our new options. “We have three choices. We can schedule the procedure for a later date at a hospital and put you completely under, or we can reschedule the procedure for here on another date, or we can try it again.” After carefully considering his three options, I realized that I could not make an informed decision without knowing more…like what my status was down there! In my brilliant moment of clarity I asked, “How far did we get?” He took pause to carefully (and in hindsight tactfully) consider his answer. With a slight smirk he said
“Umm, I barely even nicked you. Basically, all you’ve had done is the injected anesthesia.”
I cannot describe how utterly deflating his answer was. I thought I had inflicted some major blows to my historical blood-n-needle-issues and staggered that damn Dream-Reaper. I just took no less than TWO injections into my privates! God, is my macho-ness ever going to peer over reality….just a bit, even if only for a few seconds?
The procedure was later completed much to the prodding laughter excitement of the culprit, my girlfriend. But again, at whose expense…and more so WHAT expense? Am I forever scarred?
Perhaps I should find a moral to my story? Alright, here it is.
Life has strange and many ways of humbling the cocky, and just as effectively (and indiscriminately) to those men who aspire to be despite their neurological and psycho-somatic flaws to the contrary: point and case, me!
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P.S. Stay tuned for a sequel to this most humbling experience: You Must Do What with What!? The humility just keeps coming.
“Scientist Prove 7-Billion Earthlings All Similar!”
Quite a news headline don’t you think? But it isn’t that far off. Just as modern nuclear physics and quantum mechanics have shown that everything in existence on our planet is connected, including humans, years of DNA sampling and genetic research from around the globe increasingly shows that all of us are from the same family and same place. Indeed, socially and culturally mankind is very different all over the world. Yet much of our presumed diversity turns out to be only “skin deep.”
Human Genetics 101
The field of genetics and in particular human genetics is the study and research of inherited traits from paternal and maternal ancestors. Traits such as physical appearance are part of every human’s genetic code and are easily identifiable. However, other traits such as blood type or immunities are not so easily identified by the naked eye but can be through DNA, or genetic coding. The order of these genetic units gives a living organism, in this case a human fetus, instructions about how to be built and how to eventually operate. During the lives of a father and mother these units can evolve into mutations, or different instructions based on environmental factors such as diet and climate, as well as by external factors such as the spouse or partner and their internal and external factors during development. Over many generations these mutations become subtle or dramatic based on the ancestral story. For a more in-depth description of human genetics click here.
The Genographic Project
Primary migrations of the human race
In 2005 the National Geographic Society, IBM, and the Waitt Family Foundation, and a panel of genetic scientists led by Dr. Spencer Wells, began a monumental anthropological tracking of human migration patterns using DNA samples from over a half-million people (and rising) from over 140 countries around the world. What the project has revealed is nothing less than remarkable.
So far – and I emphasize “so far” – continued advances in DNA science and technology have shown geneticists that all mankind have evolved from mothers and fathers from southern Africa about 200,000 years ago. Then 154,000 to 134,000 years ago some began to migrate northward. This introductory map has been constructed over the last decade by geneticists Dr. Douglas C. Wallace of Yale and Cornell Universities, Dr. Peter A. Underhill and Dr. Peter J. Oefner both of Stanford University, and now continued by Dr. Spencer Wells and The Genographic Project.
Dr. Wells approaches the movement of mankind not from our distant ape/monkey ancestors of billions of years back as Charles Darwin attempted, but instead from a genealogical approach. Most of us can trace our ancestors back three, four, perhaps five generations back. However, beyond this point it becomes increasingly harder to find details about our ancestors; where they lived or moved, or how they lived. This brick wall is sometimes called the fog of history by genealogists when family specifics become sketchy and grey. Many times this is the result of catastrophic events where the record is lost or destroyed, or perhaps when wars and invasions wiped-out the population and the victors wrote their own ‘version of history.’ For example, my own particular family history – primarily my maternal history – at this point can only be traced back to the late 1700’s. We are unable to find more ancestral details due to harsh religious persecutions in central Europe at that time from which my maternal family were imprisoned or killed. Nonetheless, this isn’t a far rewind on the ancestral clock compared to what Dr. Wells and The Genographic Project have achieved.
Migrations after 7 years of DNA collections
Today the ancestral records can be tracked further back…much further back; like 40,000 years back. And due to the continuing advances in DNA research, we may soon discover much more than basic demographics of where we came from and who we belonged to. You may ask “how is that possible?” The answer is that our DNA code is a very, very long blueprint of molecular signatures; over 6-billion signatures going back to your…our earliest ancestors. Any moment when a signature changes and is passed on to a descendent this is called a genetic marker. It is from these genetic markers that geneticists like Dr. Wells have been able to trace backwards all of mankind’s migrations everywhere in the world AND where our earliest mothers and fathers originated. The above news headline would then read: We Are All Africanus-Humans! Imagine how popular or unpopular that news would be.
The Religious Sidenote
Cuneiform script from Mesopotamia
Before too many jump up and down hysterically that these genetic-DNA advances show scientific support for what the Holy Bible or other holy religious scriptures have taught for millennia, it must be clarified that the original mother and father discussed in this project were among a group of some 2,000 humans hunting and gathering together for survival. Those 2,000 were descendants of even earlier Homo erectus mammals. For the sake of simplicity for the masses, these geneticists have colloquially named the first known mother “mitochondrial Eve” and the first known father “Y chromosome Adam,” both from the 2,000 in southern Africa. These two parents should not be confused with the biblical Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden – that would be a premature jump of some length. Keep in mind that when Homo erectus on through Homo sapiens began communicating to each other verbally and with cave art, it would be another 14,000 years before writing systems took place such as chiseled tokens, sequenced pictographs, and scripted cuneiform. The Semitic alphabet (earliest forms of Hebrew) did not become widely used for another 1,400 years approximate. Therefore, to force the religious testimonies into context with the current genetic evidence, the scriptural stories are based long after the original 2,000 Y-Adams and m-Eves, and hence tell a story of only one leg (if taken literally) of many migratory legs coming from Africa some 16,000 years and 640 or more generations later! That is an unimaginable and incomprehensible amount of events and variables well beyond prehistoric human memory and perception of the time. Therefore, to say the biblical story of Eden is from a very narrow genealogical lens would be a gross understatement. It is enormously unrealistic. It simply cannot be the one and only historical source.
Back to The Genographic Project
Like it or not as it turns out, we are all from an African family. “Within the last 200,000 years” explains Dr. Wells, “we all share a common ancestor; a mitochondrial Eve, a single African woman. What’s more amazing is…the Y-chromosome Adam only lived around 60,000 years ago.” What is inferred from this genetic discovery is that up until 60,000 years ago all of mankind resided on the African continent. It wasn’t until after this time that a subgroup migrated outside the continent. Why did this subgroup decide to leave then? Why didn’t they leave sooner?
The continent of Africa has always been the most tropical continent on the planet over the past 200,000 years. Above the Tropic of Cancer and below the Tropic of Capricorn most landmasses are cooler-to-frigid climates depending on the historical time period discussed. The bulk of the other six continents do not reside inside the warmer more moderate climates of the two Tropics. About 80 percent of Africa lies within the two Tropics making it the most ideal landmass to live during an Ice Age or glaciation. The last hard glaciation started ending about 70,000 years ago (see graph below). By 50,000 years ago the polar ice-sheets were a little larger than they are today. When the warming began, Africa began to dry out and the food sources diminished. Consequently, this is the time when groups began migrating north following their food sources onto other continents. This is the time when mankind’s physical, cultural, and linguistic diversities began.
It is at this point when Dr. Wells and The Genographic Project began the journey of tracing the origins and migrations of some 560,000 individual DNA samples from around the world. The project consists of three core components:
Genetic anthropology – with the use of a GenoChip the project is able to collect 150,000 individual genetic markers revealing a person’s extensive ancestral-relevant story.
Indigenous field research – collecting and analyzing data in cooperation with groups that have remained in local or regional areas for thousands of years. This connects more dots on the human migrations map.
Collective global DNA database – invite the general population to discover their own DNA ancestry through the Geno 2.0 Kit with a portion of the proceeds going toward conservation and revitalization of indigenous projects through The Genographic Legacy Fund.
What makes this project so profoundly revolutionary are the ancestral results for all of us. It will show your incredible family lineage and show it within the context of mankind, something never imagined or done on such a personal basis. This project connects you not only to your particular ancestral makeup, but all humans to our singular African community 200,000 years ago. This has to be one of the greatest evolving stories ever told. How many questions about the origins of you and mankind will be answered? Other questions the Genographic website asks:
“How many migrations out of Africa were there? What role did the Silk Road, with its caravans and bazaars, play in dispersing genetic lineages across Eurasia? What can our genes tell us about the origins of languages? How did the great empires of history leave their genetic marks on our DNA? And if we all share such a recent common ancestry, why do we all look so different?”
The last question above is one I find most intriguing as well as enlightening. As mentioned earlier, climate has played a significant part in shaping our physical bodies. With varying climates, some extreme, come varying food sources and subsequent diets. During abundant food sources or during scarce food sources, how the group manages the sources will decide their survival. And this determination, the question of how a group will survive is a question being answered on all genetic levels. Whether it is familial, local, continental, or as a global species, the question today is always the same on every level: how will we survive together? With this in mind, the operative word in that last question above is “look”. With the advances in genetic science and the continuing work of The Genographic Project, we have learned that on a genetic level every single human being on this planet is 99% alike. It is only the 1 percent outer differences, our “looks”, our adaptive evolving physical features of survival that are different.
A New Viewpoint
Earth seen from the ISS and human space-travelers
While orbiting the Earth inside the International Space Station 250 miles up, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev said while looking down at our home planet, “from space you do not see any borders… you feel yourself part of humankind, not just man from one country or one city.” Krikalev could not be more accurate. As if from a height of incredible omniscience, Sergei points out that Earth is not a child’s sandbox to be selfishly divided and toys hoarded by the biggest bullies. On the genetic level of inner space to the orbit of outer space, mankind is really the same. What we are capable of accomplishing in collaboration with each other is now demonstrated from the molecular to the cosmos without interruption thanks in part to The Genographic Project. I recommend everyone join, after all, we are from the same miraculous yet harsh place moving on the same journeys.
The adage “hope for the best, but prepare for the worst” comes to mind. As Earth’s paleolithic record shows, our planet can be abundantly sustaining as it can be horribly unforgiving. As the most dominant intelligent species, together we can learn, respect, and grow from it, or we can fight against her and our cousins and perish. It is a simple choice with a simple answer when all the understood parts, from top to bottom, left to right, atomic to macrocosmic point to the same overture:
Our genetic blueprints and Sergei Krikalev’s recognition from space agree, we are all simply humans from the same Earth-family; nothing more, nothing less…yet a little more and a little less.
The changing of the seasons can sometimes bring sudden unexpected weather. Take for instance a time when my slender 5’ 4” girlfriend was caught off-guard. She and I were walking one windy day out to my SUV, when suddenly things went sort of like this…
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Fortunately, she did not travel quite like a tumbleweeding chick; however, I did have to rescue my damsel-in-distress from “leaving me”…albeit unintentional. I am happy to report that my lovely Mary Poppins was unharmed despite all her screams. The moment did offer us a blustery love-lesson: being swept off your feet is not necessarily a good thing!
As I watched one night the 6-part series “The Men Who Built America” on the History Channel, I kept saying to myself What has changed in our socio-economic America today? The answer is a lot…and not much. Watch the following 4-min video clip to get an idea why much has changed and not changed:
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Resting on Star-Spangled Laurels
Ask most Americans on the streets today who Cornelius Vanderbilt, John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and Henry Ford were and what they meant to America and you will get a variety of answers – although many could describe briefly some connection to Ford Motor Company, Chase Morgan, and Carnegie Hall in New York City. Beyond those mutterings, the depth and accuracy might be in question. However, ask the same question to Donald Trump, Jerry Jones, the Waltons of Walmart, Bill Gates, or Sumner Redstone and they will give you a hyper-patriotic narrative of how these progenitors founded and built the greatest economic nation in the world. In the annals of Western capitalism, Carnegie, Ford, Morgan, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt are the founding demigods.
John D. Rockefeller, 1888
By the age of retirement all five of these 19th century business-moguls’ fortunes made up anywhere between 1-3% of America’s GDP by a single person. Those five net worth’s have been adjusted for today’s 2000 dollars, but the amounts are incomprehensibly staggering. Vanderbilt’s estimate: $140 – $180 billion dollars. Rockefeller’s estimate: $392 – $663 billion dollars. Carnegie’s estimate: almost $300 billion. Ford’s estimate: $188 billion. Morgan’s final net worth was divided between several holdings but his estate was estimated to be worth about $68 million at death. If 1-3% of the economy of America – one of the world’s richest nations – consisted of five men, then that is perhaps the truest definition of oligarchynot democracy. J.P. Morgan’s wealth was so vast that during the economic panic of 1893, President Grover Cleveland borrowed from him in order to restore the nation’s treasury.
How was it possible for a handful of entrepreneurs to accumulate such epic wealth during sixteen national recessions (1865 to 1933) as well as the Great Depression of 1929? I will attempt to answer this question simply.
Do not mistake this web blog as promoting Karl Marx or Vladimir Lenin economics. There is nothing inherently wrong with making and earning money for quality work. What is under question, however, is how efficiently and fairly that economy — which provides the wealth — is working as a whole and perpetuating itself. Despite the great success of these five American entrepreneurs, the “machine” from which they profited broke-down sixteen times. Those failures in a long line of many failures as recently as 2008, are what is in question. Why does our “strongest nation in the world” economy and government keep failing?
I am a lifetime sports fan. One way to answer the question is to use a sports analogy. Pick your favorite sports team, the team you grew up watching with family or friends. The team’s performance should elicit some level of passion inside. You’ve always wanted them to perform well, maybe even win several championships. When your team is playing say in the playoffs, do you feel that referees or umpires are necessary? Why are they necessary? No fans, or for that matter no team players or coaches on the competing rosters cheer for the referees or umpires. Why is that? We like them when they punish or discipline our opponent, but we dislike them when they punish or discipline our favorite team. Why are the referees and umpires needed for the games?
From a biased point-of-view the answer is obvious: we want them there so that our opponents won’t cheat or win the game unfairly. But from an objective standpoint, we need them there to ensure a “fair or level playing field” for both teams, correct? Imagine what the games would be like if there were no referees or umpires. Cheating, even intentional maiming would no doubt take place. Whether we like referees and umpires or not, we need them so the games can be won or lost fairly. Well, in economics and social policy the government is no different: we need a strong government to ensure that the game of economics and social policy are fairly played.
During the era of Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan, and Ford there were weak referees or umpires, and in several cases no referees or umpires at all. Even though the United States grew into the most powerfully economic and productive nation on the globe after 1870, doing it inside an unrestrained ungoverned free-market economy it eventually led to the worst economic and social collapse in modern history: the Great Depression and two world wars. Is that performance really deserving of grand boasting and fan-fare? Resting on the laurels of post-1870 Wild West growth is at the same time condoning unfettered greedy oligarchists and market manipulation. Domestic and global economics today are much more complex and dynamic than antiquated 19th and 20th century philosophies can manage and diluting the power of the referees and umpires (i.e. our government) is a sure way of returning to another Great Depression.
Let’s look more closely at what outdated economic systems, still pushed today by some American parties, nurture over several generations.
Fallacies of Incentive-Opportunity Economics
Some political parties and economists today swear by and blow their Reaganomicsbugle, or trickle-down economics as the best economic system. Another more modern name for this system is incentive economics. Within this philosophy its adherents proclaim that inequality is a natural product of its efficiency: some will produce more than others. Proponents of incentive economics (primarily those from the political right) argue that if programs and policies redistribute wealth, then it will deconstruct incentives and motivation toward efficiency. They also argue that if we focus too much on disparity of outcomes, i.e. a growing gap between socio-economic classes, especially over one year or a four-year presidential administration, then the public is missing the bigger better picture. What is more important, they proclaim, is only lifetime inequality and how much more opportunity is created. In other words, there is a natural trade-off of the-haves and the-have-nots based on efficiency as if it is “natural selection” of the strongest over the weakest or genius over ignorance. They add that private wealth created by opportunity and perfect competitive economies will soon feed or trickle-down into social returns for the less fortunate. But for the last four to five decades this simply hasn’t been the case.
Remember the definition of rent-seeking from the earlier post Productive Inequality? It said when a company, organization, or individual uses their resources to obtain economic gain from others without reciprocating any benefits back to society through wealth creation…this is called rent-seeking. For the last several decades declining public investment, declining support for public education, distortions of the true health of our economy, declining worker morale and labor fairness, have all contributed to a widened gap between the top 1% and 10% from the middle and bottom economic percentile. Redistributing wealth and opportunities would reduce inequality and increase efficiency, the exact opposite of what the Right contends.
Both the lack of wealth and minimization of risk available to the lower 99% – 90% are two major market failures of our capital economy. Consequently, this lays the burden of upward economic mobility on parental wealth; in other words, what their parents can or cannot provide through digressing public education and their work income. And too often in the lower economic third both parents are working for wages that hardly keep up with inflation. The Right consistently underestimates these failures.
Stronger or weaker team?
The Right also consistently overestimates the benefits of incentive pay. Before revealing the true risks of incentive pay, what does the term mean? Barron’s Business Dictionary states it is a wage system that rewards a worker for productivity above an established standard and within a defined time period. It is often called pay for performance. Many incentive pay schemes are used by corporations each with varying success rates, or resulting in higher worker productivity. However, history has repeatedly shown that the schemes can also come with many counterproductive results. Take for instance the program at Hewlett-Packard in the 1990s (click here for the CBS News article). After setting up pay-for-performance schemes across thirteen or more American production sites, most of the HP worker-teams outperformed management’s projections costing the corporation excessive payouts. As a result, HP management made the goals higher and harder to achieve. This move had the exact opposite effect. Teamwork within the nationwide teams declined, primarily because self-interest dominated over corporate gains. Why do you think this happened?
Another example of failed incentive pay schemes but using instead a disciplinary fine, or negative reinforcement, to stimulate better results as told by Joseph Stiglitz:
“…a cooperative day center had a problem with certain parents’ picking up their children in a timely way. It decided to impose a charge, to provide an incentive for them to do so. But many parents, including those who had occasionally been late, had struggled to pick up their children on time; they did as well as they did because of the social pressure, the desire to do “the right thing,” even if they were less than fully successful. But charging a fee converted a social obligation[teamwork] into a monetary transaction. Parents no longer felt a social responsibility, but assessed whether the benefits of being late were greater or less than the fine. Lateness increased.”
This begs the question, why is an extrinsic monetary reward scheme imperfect? Because it is human nature to be socially connected; it is a primal instinct…for most, and in the end it often outweighs individual, secluding self-interest. What is the point of an opulent palace with opulent toys on a grossly opulent island, if there is no one at all to enjoy it with? Stiglitz goes on to write:
“The reason that[incentive pay] economic theory failed to gauge accurately the effectiveness of team incentives is that it underestimated the importance of personal connectiveness. Individuals work hard to please others in their team – and because they believe it is the right thing to do. Economists overestimate, too, the selfishness of individuals (though there is considerable evidence that economists are more selfish than others, and that economics training does make individuals more selfish over time)[particularly when resources, opportunities, and rewards are scarce/hoarded; ala the 2012 film The Hunger Games]. It is thus perhaps not surprising that firms owned by their workers – and who therefore share in the profits – have performed better in the crisis and laid off fewer employees.”
All four must be equally balanced
Many incentive pay schemes will never be able to fully ignite the best of human-worker performance because often monetary rewards, extrinsic gains, fall short of a greater good. Why? Because all four types of human motivation (table on right) must be as closely balanced as possible for a person to be peacefully satisfied. This is just as true in economic and political laws and policies.
As a result of the Right’s shortsightedness, i.e. underestimating the real costs of socio-economic inequality and overestimating the costs of fixing it through progressive taxation and public spending, America needlessly spins its congressional and executive wheels in gridlocked hyper-partisanship eventually invoicing her 90 percentile taxpayers. President Reagan pushed for a less progressive tax system, lowering taxes on the top 1 and 10 percent, claiming that would raise more funds due to increased saving and worker productivity. He was incorrect: tax revenues plummeted. H.W. Bush’s cuts had the same effect: an increased deficit. During President Clinton’s administration, taxes were raised on the top percentile and the United States enjoyed a brief time of rapid growth and a minor decrease in economic inequality. Then George W. Bush entered office and…well, we had the 2008 financial crisis in which the majority of Americans, indeed the lower poorer classes, are still suffering. Naturally, the Right contends that if the marginal Americans paid 100% of their taxes, then “incentives” for the public would be harmfully weakened. But this claim is really nothing more than crying wolf. Stiglitz points out:
“…University of California professor Emmanuel Saez, Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, and Stefanie Stantcheva of the MIT Department of Economics, carefully taking into account the incentive effects of higher taxation and the societal benefits of reducing inequality, have estimated that the tax rate at the top should be around 70 percent – what it was before President Reagan started his campaign for the rich.”
What many on the Right fail to recognize in their economic, social, and political theories and/or systems is that no one succeeds on their own. They fail to recognize that a more level playing field, a more fair game if you will, almost always produces more efficiency, more brilliance, and a higher quality of life for a greater number, which in turn nurtures itself. A healthier “team” is a more productive successful team; and when these healthy teams are playing other healthy teams on a fair game-field with strong powerful referees or umpires, the “game”…the economy is brilliant! Therefore in return, the players, the coaches, the fans, everyone benefits and is more motivated to excellence.
On the other hand, an economic theory/system of scarcity and hoarding, i.e. weak public spending and regressive taxation for the strong/resourceful, is actually the antithesis of motivation-for-excellence; it too often maligns individual behavior to succeed-at-all-costs. Survival-of-the-Fittest economics does not encourage unity, particularly in times of severe crisis, and does not encourage real democracy. Thank the good stars that most human beings need MORE than just extrinsic rewards and require equally intrinsic rewards, if not more. But oh dear, that would mean less egocentrism, less arrogance, less consumption, and more community, more intimate connectivity, more humbleness, and a more permeable comfort zone to name a few life-changes. I feel there are many who are simply terrified of this idea, unfortunately, but I can hope.
Retrieving the American Dream
Joseph Stiglitz and those economists inside his camp have several profound ideas, policies, and reformations that will return America to its former collective glory. To share these here would extend this blog series by two or three more; a length I have no time to carry out and likely readers and visitors here will have no patience with. Hence, I will only recommend strongly that everyone purchase The Price of Inequality and read it, study it, and digest it. If you wish to better understand what has happened and will continue to happen to our American economy and social classes, and avoid being a naïve puppet in a oligarchial corporate capitalist show in a failing free-market economy, then it is a must read!
Here is the pressing question: Is the American dream still alive? Is the American dream still available? More importantly, is the American dream available to all as our “pledge of allegiance” implies? The present fifth version, which Congress passed in 1954, states in the last half “…one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” How accurately does this pledge reflect America today? How does one measure its accuracy?
Surprisingly perhaps to most, measuring America’s success of “…with liberty and justice for all” is quite easy. In modern statistical tables, polls, experiments, or graphs all mathematicians will say that the greater the data collected, the more accurate the results. Take for example a simple school student-poll on say thermostat comfort of the buildings. Of a student body of 700 students, would the pollers achieve an accurate reflection of their student body if they obtained 150 student opinions? Of course not; a poll of exactly 700 students would be the most accurate. This statistical truth is always the case whether one is measuring ten people or elements, or whether measuring 314 million.
This statistical truth therefore applies to larger numbers or polls, like the world (see earlier postThe Land of Opportunity?for a comprehensive indicator of America’s global standing). In order to get a truly accurate and objective reflection, we must include the rest of similar industrialized nations, and to be most accurate all other non-industrialized nations. But this raises more complex dynamics that in some cases go beyond economic, social, and political elements I have covered in this series of three web-blogs. Fortunately, this formula…this gauge of happiness, justice, and liberty for all is not exclusively owned by one person, one group, or even one nation. It is collective and shared. The discouraging reality is that on the American horizon – and maybe the world horizon too – this Collective Goodness Gauge, if you will, is constantly threatened. My next and last web-blog in this series, A Collective Imperative, will examine these threats and how to fight its extinction.
I have zero expectation that anything I ever say will end someone’s belief in their God. Not my goal or purpose. That alone belongs to the individual. ~ Zoe
'Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it' - Terry Pratchett
The Professor's Convatorium 